Secret Agent Josephine

I miss blogging. I miss the old web-log days when I documented major life changes and daily musings. I know I should do Substack and create packets of goodies for loyal readers who pay for a subscription, but I don’t have the will to create “content” when it’s a job. I never seem to sit down at my desk like I did in the old days. I clean houses now and take care of my parents. I have to go away and visit Matt just to get enough downtime to create books. It’s funny how things have changed.

First, I want to share about my first dinner party at my parents’ house. Over the last two years that I’ve lived here, we’ve been working on creating a pleasant place on our back patio. It’s really come along. We removed some old bushes from the tiered garden and replaced them with a playhouse I got off Facebook Marketplace and painted white. I planted a bougainvillea that now grows over the roof of the playhouse, and it looks like a little bit of Santa Barbara. It’s beautiful!

This is the view from the kitchen, and I love it so much more than the old shade bushes and weedy shrubbery and the barbecue flanked by trash cans, bicycles and whatever construction project my dad is working on. We still have the trash cans, bicycles and whatever project my dad is working on, but we move them around to accommodate whatever we’re doing on the patio. A big dinner party was the perfect thing to accommodate for.

So when July rolled around, I sent off a paper invitation inspired by the bougainvillea blossoms that flutter down from the playhouse roof. Everything must be shades of red and pink, I decided! I didn’t put on the invitation that guests must wear pink, but word got around. My friends know me and know I like to dress up. They happily played along.

My parents were so on board. I come from a long line of theme-party enthusiasts, and we threw ourselves into preparations. Every time I turned around, my mom and dad were doing something new for me for my birthday dinner party.

I realize how lucky I am to be living with my parents while they are still happy and enjoying life. So many children of boomers are busy with their own lives and carrying the load of caregiving when their parents are suffering. My parents are happy for the company, and the fact that I cook and clean is gravy. I’m very spoiled and trying like mad to appreciate every golden day.

My mom bought baskets of pink petunias (her favorite color is NOT pink so you know that was all for me). My dad hooked up the solar lanterns in a zig zag across the patio ceiling. I painted the back door red. We cleaned the patio floor and were happy to see that the koi fish I painted is holding up just fine. We bought some more chairs from a thrift store for $10 to replace the old ones that have broken over the years. My mom and I bought pink dishes, my dad made tomato soup sourdough bread. June was a month long flurry of fun party-planning activity.

I planned a pink menu on pink tablecloths with pink dishes. My favorite color of pink is really various versions of watered-down red. I don’t like mauve so as long as the pinks are going in the orange *warm* direction instead of the blue *cool* direction, I was happy.

We started off with tomato soup with a Parmesan crisp and a swirl of sour cream.

Then I set up our outdoor counter with a buffet of all my pink-inspired dishes: a garden salad with fresh-picked tomatoes, watermelon and grapefruit salad (a delicious peculiar combination), pickled beets with goat cheese and a main dish of bowtie pasta with a creamy vodka tomato sauce and chicken. I had big plans for bowtie pasta that was beet-dyed pink that I ordered online from an Italian store but it didn’t show up until 9pm on the day of the party so we just had regular bowtie pasta. A small bummer but what can you do?  AND OF COURSE, WE HAD BRENDARITAS! A summer Brenda party isn’t a party unless there are Brendaritas.

What is a Brendarita? Basically it’s a skinny margarita (no agave or honey or any sweetener for me) with grapefruit juice, lime, silver tequila and muddled berries. I thought I’d make some kind of dried strawberry salt rim but the humidity was not working in my favor and it turned into a crumbly kinetic sand-like texture that had to be thrown away. Good idea but not well executed on the hottest day of the year.

And let me tell you that hottest day of the year STRESSED ME OUT! Bug always moans about not being born in summer and wishing she could have a pool party in January but I was born in summer in the desert and 105-degree weather is no treat for outside parties!!!! We have a clubhouse pool but the whole reason for my outdoor dinner party was the beautiful patio we’d been working on all year. I studiously checked my weather app for weeks. At first the temperatures were predicted to be as low as 50.  I worried about people getting too cold but then every day the predicted temperatures rose until they topped out at 105.  ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIVE!! Seriously???  What I thought would be a pleasant evening of breezes and clinking wine glasses was quickly turning into my worst sweaty nightmare.

So we did what we had to do and served a charcuterie board indoors until we could bear to go outside. I was sweating bullets. Everyone else seemed to be fine. We gathered in our crowded living room with various chairs and everyone tried to convince me that the heat wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Here’s the thing about me and parties: I love to plan and execute them, I’m not so good at actually being at them. I don’t love socializing and I calm myself by tidying and fussing around making everything “perfect.” It’s not a good trait. I make everyone nervous and nobody knows what’s wrong with me. But I love parties so I continue to make this mistake over and over on a doomed quest to create the most perfect party ever.

Eventually the temperatures descended slowly into the 90s. It was still ridiculously hot but if you sat still and didn’t fuss, you could feel a breeze and enjoy the sun setting. Smoke from a fire on the coast (miles and miles away) provided a pink glow in the distance that was right on theme.  We served dinner and drinks and those who wanted to, shared some poetry. I said no presents, only poems, but you know how that works out. Everyone brought presents anyway and only a few shared poems. But I loved it. It was a great idea. I think I’m going to encourage poetry for every birthday party I throw for myself from now on.

Why do you throw birthday parties for yourself, you might ask. Well, 1. because I love planning parties, and 2. I don’t want to mope around on my birthday.

I rang in my fifty-fourth year with all the pomp and circumstance a fifty-four-year-old can handle. I bought a blush-colored pink bridesmaid dress from a thrift store, hacked off the bottom and flicked around like the Birkenstock-wearing fairy that I am. It’s hard for me to look at photos of myself aging. I know everyone moans about this and I’m sad that I can’t seem to rise above complaining either. It’s hard to see my face fuller and my old thin bird-like twenty-year-old arms hidden under layers of padding and flab. I’m pretty muscular for my age (cleaning houses every day will do it) but it’s all hidden under a fat suit. It is what it is, I tell myself as I try to remember to fix my posture and smile. Getting old sucks.

Getting old with your friends who are also getting old does not.

I’m thankful I get to be this old. I’m thankful I am surrounded by people who get me and all my party-planning quirks. I’m thankful that I’m not alone or lonely. I’m thankful my daughter and her boyfriend came. I’m thankful that the evening cooled and battery-operated candles flickered on all the glowy pink things. I’m thankful that everyone stayed a good long time. It was the best birthday present I could give myself and I plan on doing it again next year and the year after that…until I die. It’s not a bad gig. Now if only I could attain perfection or figure out how not to fuss so much.