Family Daze
Being on the home party A-list can be addictive and expensive
By Debbie Farmer
Some of you will be shocked to find this out about me, but I've made the A-List of the nighttime party circuit. Yes, it's true. I'm busy every night of the week.
Now, some of you may be having a tough time picturing me on the A-list, trading my fuzzy slippers for a little black dress and spending my nights dancing, drinking champagne, and jet-setting with rich and famous people. Well, I must admit, I am too. Especially since the kind of evening party I'm talking about usually has something to do with sets of matching plastic containers and pyramid marketing schemes.
Frankly, I'm not sure how it happened. I have a hunch it all started the time I went to my friend Lisa's candle party, because she needed a third person, and I ended up buying a pack of fireplace matches out of pity. Shortly after that, the word was spread on the cul-de-sac that I was, in fact, an easy mark who could be lured out of the house at night with vague promises of a childless evening and free refreshments. And, you know, it's true.
Being on the A-list, however, doesn't come without a price. No-siree. Let me just say that since the rise of my popularity, I've become the owner of a whole bunch of stuff I don't need.
Oh, it all sounded like a great deal at the time. But any fool knows that no one--no one--goes to a home party because they want to buy something. At some point, however, between the start of the presentation and the distribution of order forms, something mysterious happens to otherwise rational people.
Like the time I went to a friend's cooking party and ordered a portable chopper. A chopper! Me, a person who buys precut vegetables in plastic bags. In fact, I was not only convinced I needed one, I was completely convinced I'd use it. In fact, I didn't know how I had managed to live so long on this earth without one.
Then there was the time I went to my neighbor's basket party. Now, I know some of you are probably thinking "So, what's wrong with that? Everyone can use a basket." These baskets, however, weren't just your ordinary Easter-Bunny-carrying kind of baskets. They were, judging by their price, the Mercedes Benz of baskets.
Now, you would think that, having absolutely no use for a luxury basket, I'd know better than to buy one. You would think. But by the time the evening was over I had not only ordered a basket, I had ordered a dozen decorative liners, a plastic bottom protector and tie-on tags for every major holiday. In my defense it did give me a convenient place to keep the chopper.
Don't, however, let all of the plates of homemade cookies and fruit punch fool you. Sooner or later you'll get weary of hearing 45-minute dissertations on the virtues of stainless steel mixing bowls and matching handmade bows. But retiring from the party scene isn't as easy as you'd think.
Just when you vow to never leave the house after 5 p.m. again you'll receive an invitation to a party so intriguing that you can't possibly stay home. Like the "lingerie, books and hotlips" soiree that my daring friend Shirley threw--where we all got to try lipstick that doesn't come off and then browse through a display of children's books while wearing fancy nightgowns.
Debbie Farmer is the author of "Life in the Fast-Food Lane: Surviving the Chaos of Parenting," available at http://www.familydaze.com.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
