#1 – Hosting a Party

#1 – A Role That Cheers Me Up:
Hosting a Party

Yesterday I hosted a surprise (and belated) birthday party for a friend of mine.  I haven’t hosted a party since way before I sunk into this downward spiral of depression and mental-misery.  I think the last one was a birthday BBQ for Germany over a year ago.

I love hosting parties.  I love planning them, buying supplies for them, getting my place ready, baking, cooking, setting up games/movies and such, welcoming people, making sure they have enough food and drink, etc., etc.
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I hosted my first true party back in high school.  It was a Halloween scary movie sleepover for a bunch of girl classmates.

I was instantly hooked.  I’d been to other people’s parties before and I didn’t enjoy them usually.  I hate the forced social expectations that just would make me awkward.  But I discovered in hosting, I had this measure of control.  And it was exhilarating.

I’ve hosted many, many, many parties over the years.  Some were fantastic and are still talked about.  Some were awful. And are unfortunately still talked about.  I suppose either way they tend to be memorable.

My Halloween ones were a big thing for years, until I wasn’t able to do one last year.  I miscarried in October and was no where near a good place mentally to plan and host a party. I didn’t even want to celebrate Halloween- which says a lot.
In fact, I’m a little nervous about this October as I’m already feeling that one year anniversary of that horrible week creeping up on me and I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t seem to make myself not think about it…
Ahem. Happy thoughts.

Hence this 30 Day challenge to try and shake the crippling blues!
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The party last night seems to have been a success, though it was a little more relaxed and just simple “hanging out” than most of my parties.

I drank too much due to my extreme nervousness at having a party for the first time in over a year.  Let’s just say the party was in full swing at about 6 or 6:30pm and I was generously tipsy at 4pm…>_>

I did manage to contain a couple alter-freak-outs/triggers.

The first was when I went to check on my cat in my old bedroom and someone had moved my old ballerina jewelry box near the doorway.  Armes was triggered and slipped out and curled up, winding it to play while she sucked her thumb and cried, having flashbacks.
She won’t tell me of what.  She hasn’t parted with a lot of her memories of the body’s early abuses. But she only did that for a couple minutes, and then I was able to return to the party, no one the wiser.

Then later a friend spilled a full cup of a mixed drink onto the carpet.
Due to my father being out of town, I was hosting the party at his house (it’s big enough for a comfortable party and has a big flatscreen TV).  We immediately started freaking out about ruining Dad’s carpet and Rika popped out and cussed up a storm at our friend.
Thankfully he seems to just have attributed it to the mess and us being drunk (though Rika instantly sobered of course).  And he kept trying to pet and massage our head which just triggered me or Roms to come out, so Rika wasn’t able to keep control anyway.

The night ended well and I’m glad I got to do a role I enjoy so much.

Below are some snapshots I took (or Texas took of me….) during the prep and the party itself. Sorry they’re so blurry. My drunk-hands take crummy pictures and Texas can’t figure out how to work my tablet.

Enjoy!

The tray of jello shots chilling in the freezer

All the Mike’s Hard and Smirnoff we bought so we didn’t have JUST hard liquor.

Our harder liquor and booze. There’s rum, vodka, and tequlia.

The red velvet cake we baked!

These are the pizza rolls Texas and I made for the party guests. We should have made a lot more than two cookies sheets of them….they went fast!