Margaritaville

I overdid it on New Year's Eve. With ice I mean. Way too much ice. For some reason, I can never figure out how much ice to buy for a party. I'm either way over or way under. Food and drink, I'm not so bad at.

And instead of just melting the ice, I had to keep it. Can't throw away money ya know. So for 3 months my downstairs freezer has been full of ice. This is a problem because I'm on a mission to fill my freezers with homemade bread for the summer. I have already baked and frozen 12 loaves plus countless loaves we've already consumed.

Hey, it keeps me busy.

Cleaning the kitchen one day, I noticed the margarita mix given to Brian one Christmas during a neighborhood exchange.

I think you know where I'm going with this. Couple the ice, the margarita mix, and the leftover decorative paper plates from other soirees and we have a party in the making. I started telling the neighbors.

It was a spur of the moment thing so I tried real hard not to go overboard by making everything nice and pretty. An impromptu party should be impromptu not planned down to the last toothpick.

The worst time for me is right before a party starts as I wonder if anyone is going to come over.

At 4:15 pm, I looked out from my porch to a deserted street. A ghost town. No one was going to come.

If you make a pitcher of margaritas and no one comes over to drink it, is it still a party?

Luckily, I didn't have to answer that because by 4:20 I saw the Cuban coming out his back door with a huge red sombrero on his head. That sombrero must have signalled the neighborhood because they started dropping in along with their kids and some more food.

We needed that food.

Poor Brian had the worst of it; as soon as he made a pitcher of margaritas, he'd return to the blender to start again. He used a lot of ice (well that was the point) so instead of being too strong, they were quite diluted. Perfect for a Saturday afternoon.

Once the margaritas were gone, we decided we should start grilling. It might have been the collective mothers' instincts; we needed to feed the kids because it was 6 pm, even though the kids had been grazing on munchies for 2 hours.

So Brian switched from the blender to the grill. Luckily, with the number of guys around, he wasn't lonely.

How many men does it take to cook hamburgers?

The kids ate a bit and the adult ate more. Not a stitch of food was left - which made the cleanup very easy.

The party broke up around 10 pm after some guitar playing of course. Brian was accompanied by Guitar Man, another neighbor we had forgotten to call. Luckily, he just happened to be strolling by with his wife when we were on the porch. Nothing like taking a walk and happening upon a margarita party already in progress.

It was such a great party, relaxed and jovial. Just a perfect way to blow off steam and for no reason at all--well, except for the ice. But sometimes, the best parties are the ones for no reason. Actually, Dancing Queen (a mom in the hood with 2 boys) suggested we do it every month.

And now, for me at least, it's back to the grindstone: I have a freezer to fill and a couple of races to run, not to mention The Seafarer which will put me out of commission for a couple of months. Oh well, I'll just have to party with my buddies at the Arden.