Fear the Crab

Invited Maile’s family for a late Mother’s Day dinner. Today was the only day all interested parties could attend, in particular my mother-in-law. Besides the usual clean-ups of household areas, we made an adjustment to the arrangements of the house, that of putting the second leaf into the dining table, to extend it for the glorious occupations of more-than-six people.

Expanded dining table

If the table settings seem weird, it is because we only had six place mats and damn it all but for the unexpected but delightfully welcome guests. The flowers were a nice touch, considering we got them this very day. Had to get two more chairs from the parents’ house, but they’re cool with that, because they bought new chairs and felt no compunction to hold onto the old stuff. Why not let the kid have it?

The table does not look as different from the default setting of one-leaf, but trust me, this is naught but the longest table in the history of this one’s experience with tables. Look at the number of chairs, damn it!

I think Maile went into an overdrive of cooking. Consider the proportions of the entree to the dessert:

Mmm...

This is not a trick of the camera, but rather a documentation of the priorities given to consumables. Truly there was a distinct thought given to the order of magnitude for each dish, because as dinner progressed, Maile had much of one over the other. I leave the specifics of the selections up to the reader.

The conversations were excellent, of course, and much was to be said regarding the adventures of men and women, the complexities of living together, and the discomforts of Las Vegas outings.

I had wine. A lot of wine. ‘Twas not because of the company, no, and how rude of you to think so. I had the wine because it was an excuse to have the wine, something I have been sorely lacking as of late. The excuse, that is.

I happen to think the wine was a pleasant by-product of the evening’s festivities, especially since I finished off the Boarding Pass bottle and moved on to the Fat Bastard. Before visions of general verisimilitude of tipsy party-goers fills your head, I was the only one drinking and thus the only one with the verbal thoughts of the true intentions of men and women, living together.

Sometimes I wish I had more drinking buddies, but other times I do not. I don’t think I would particularly enjoy it if everyone else were drunk with me. It’s hard to say when it’s been so long since I’ve gone drinking with more people than myself, but I’d like to think that I would enjoy an outing of tibbly conversations and general silliness. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to remember the fun-timey drunk-timey when one is deep in the nethers of shiraz.