Nothin' like spending a weekend preparing for a party.

I am in love/hate with myself for volunteering for this madness.

Right now, this very afternoon, I am in a very, very pissy mood.

I got a beautiful manicure and pedicure yesterday.

I have been busy all day preparing for the big day tomorrow and I am only about 1/10 of the way done. It is clearly evident that there is no way in hell, I will be able to do everything that I wanted for the party.

I am actually cheating and ordering a cheese platter and wraps (veggie, ham, turkey wraps) platter. I will promptly place everything on my own serving dishes and they won't know what I made or what I bought by the time I am done.

The party is for a good friend who is moving to Tucson next week.

There is a group of about 12 men who will be playing golf all morning and around 2:00 they will be descending upon my house. Everyone else will be here between 2:00 and 3:00 and I even have 8 people coming after 5:00 - so I will have many hungry men and I need food that will be good for many hours - not things that will get cold. It looks like there will be 45 - 50 people now, actually, the numbers don't scare me. The more, the merrier, as far as I am concerned.

We have plenty of wine glasses and I let people pick their own charms so they know which glass is theirs all day. That is the only thing that I splurge on, good wine glasses (we bought in bulk a year ago). I can't stand drinking wine out of plastic. For the food, however, I have plastic plates and they even have a notch to hang wine glasses. I got those from a fund raiser last year. They are cheap but so much better than paper plates and, anyway, I do not have enough dishes for that many people.

The main clean up comes with my wine glasses and everything else can be thrown away. It makes it easy.


I love adding a southern flair when I can so I will be making some little hush puppies and my aunts amazing deviled eggs. I will also have celery stuffed with pimento cheese as snacks.

I called my Aunt Mary Alice to get her recipe. Mayonnaise, dry mustard, sweet pickle relish, Beau Monde (WTF), pepper and sweet paprika. Paprika to be added just before serving, not the day before - it gets mushy.

Me: "If I leave Beau Monde out, will it make a difference?"

Aunt M.A.: "No. Just add salt then."

Me: "Okay, thanks. They just finished boiling so I am off to peel."

Aunt M.A.: "I hope you have old eggs."

Me: "No, I just bought them this morning, why would I want old eggs?" Personally, I am tired of having old eggs.

Aunt M.A.: "Because you can't shell fresh eggs. The membrane doesn't separate."

Me: "Well fuck. (not really but I thought it)"

Aunt M.A.: "Go put them in ice water and crack the shells a bit and hope that it loosens up."



I have been in my kitchen for the past two and a half HOURS, trying to pick teensy, itsy bitsy pieces of egg shell from the embryonic chicken bastards.

Most of them are dented and picked to death. They will not be pretty but I will present them in such a manner tomorrow that they will be the hit of the party because those motherfuckers are not going to beat me.

My beautiful manicure looks like hell.

I have lemons year round in my yard. Sweet, juicy, amazing lemons. Last week, the tree was leaning so much that I picked a paper bag full and took them to work for everyone there. This is my tree today, remember there were twice as many last week!



Lemons Aplenty 



Here is a better view to show how much it is leaning:



Lemon Leaning 



This is my first experiment with my digital camera so hopefully I did it right.


Anyway!! As you can hopefully see, this tree needs to be plucked!!!

I was going to make something (lemon pie or some other baked item) but I am running out of time. So, I am thinking of picking all the lemons and decorating with them. Perhaps I will put them in glass vases, I could also scatter lemons on the serving tables or maybe I will give them as hostess gifts - just kidding!. If anyone has any ideas, SIMPLE, that would be great.


Our friends that own a winery are bringing a wine barrel full of cabernet, so people will be able to use a "thief" to get their wine which will be cool.

I will have plenty of food, the weather is going to be beautiful and now, we will have amazing, limitless wine.

What to do with the lemons!

Okay, time for me to get back to work. This was a nice little break. Sorry for the rambling and spelling ahead of time. No rest for the weary.

I'm off to get my flowers in order before I get back to those fucking oocytes. I haven't even sliced them yet to get the yellow out. I will never, ever make deviled eggs again as long as I live.