The Party Planners

Currently Anna Banana 2, Kathbert and I are trying to plan Richard Bonomo's upcoming birthday festivities. (He shares a birthday with Abraham Lincoln.) I have been trying to think of a theme, but it's hard to top some of the past ones we've had. The most outrageous was undoubtedly when The Leprechaun decided that Rich had been living with his house for long enough, it was time they made it official, so he married them in an elaborate if awfully surreal ceremony in which the house said "I do" by having Kathbert flush the toilet, and Rich kissed the bride - a pair of chocolate lips wrapped in red foil sitting on the dining room table. The next year there was a "baby shower" to celebrate the supposed fruit of this bizarre union, a giant dollhouse. We all brought baby gifts which were then donated to pregnancy helplines.

How could I top that? I couldn't, but I have planned some memorable parties for Rich over the years, like the Mardi Gras party (my partner in planning that year made a cake that looked like Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety); a pseudo-"luau" (since Rich spent time in Hawaii during his childhood) complete with leis and a pig cake T and I made that was so adorable that we had trouble cutting it; and my most successful venture: The Chocolate Brunch! Although a number of people apparently didn't understand the concept of "EVERY course will contain chocolate," so they arrived, looked wistfully at the chicken curry stir fry I had made (my own personal recipe), and said, "I wouldn't have eaten lunch if I'd known! I thought it was only going to be dessert!" Which was a Death by Chocolate cake with seven separate layers of chocolate stuff; T and I had invaded Rich's house the night before the party with chocolate in hand to make it, but it calls for so much that we ended up using every last half-used bag of chocolate chips sitting around the place. (No doubt from cassatas past.) After eating so much chocolate, I felt a little spacy and very, very happy.

So how, my faithful readers, could I possibly top this? I cannot think of a good mid-February theme other than the obvious one of Valentine's Day, a holiday which holds little interest for most of us attending this party. And of course, I've already done Mardi Gras, so what else is there? It's a bit late in the month for a Groundhog Day theme...

If you are wondering how last night went, I can sum it up in one word: better. I only had to go a mile and a half, since I was running a mile and a half for my extremely pregnant coworker. (If she has the baby before her shower this Friday, I also promised to eat a piece of cake for her - after all, she has already worked it off!) This time it only took me 41 minutes to run the whole three miles at a steady pace of 4 miles per hour. Does that work out mathematically? Maybe not, but at the end I tried to boost my pace to 4.6 miles per hour and quickly gave up on that bad idea. For some reason it was harder to actually complete the run this time (and the sitcoms on the TV in the health club were even more painful than the running!), but afterwards I wasn't nearly so dead, so I lifted weights. Also, a fellow busrider suggested that a good exercise for avoiding shin splints (long a bane of mine) is to trace the alphabet with your feet because that stretches your leg muscles. It does seem to work! Today I am hardly sore at all.

Last night made me come to two conclusions:

1. Maybe I can do this triathlon after all!
2. Boy, I am not missing anything by not owning a TV!

Famous Hat