House warmed, despite a/c

Here I sit, quite tired, and so pathetic that when faced with the choice between a second beer and a Diet Coke, I went with the Coke. We've just said goodnight to the last guests of our housewarming and put the kids to bed. (At least, child 2 is conked out, totally exhausted from all the excitement coupled with a nap that was both short and early and child 1 is being shepherded towards sleep by his father, who will probably drop off first, by the relative looks of them as they left my orbit.)

Posting has been light lately because B sodded off to a conference in Toronto for six days, leaving me to not only keep the children alive and entertained and fed and all that jazz but also try to keep the house clean and respectable and organised so that he could waltz back here last night and then host a party this afternoon. Doing all that left me with not a lot of extra time for fripperies like blog posts. And to be fair, said waltzing involved attending to a long to-do list this morning that had arisen, spontaneous-like, in his absence, and then he had to take the kids swimming to tire them out. On the other hand, since he has spent all week being able to lie in (relatively) if he so desired and socialising with his work buddies (sorry, listening to important talks and networking) whereas I've been getting up at the crack of dawn, cleaning the house, watching far too much PBS Kids and then (sigh) doing all the unplugging of small appliances before going to bed, I don't have all that much sympathy for him.

Anyway, today was the culmination, wherein I got to do some baking and take out the colourful bowls and fill them with snacky things and introduce some friends to some other friends, and show people round the house so they could compliment me on my choice of paint colours. The weather was too hot and sticky to go outside, so sadly we didn't get to use the croquet set we'd procured specially for the occasion. Not as many people came as I might have liked, but if everyone had come we would have been totally sardined indoors. And when you throw a party in the last week of June, you have to expect that a lot of people won't make it and not get all adolescently nobody-likes-me about it. Even the college kids from next door dropped in to drink some water and tell me how much nicer our house is than theirs. We traded cartoon recommendations and I told them they should watch some Phinneas and Ferb. (They looked so young. B and I were that age when we first met. How is that possible? How on earth did I get it so right at such a preposterously early age? Dumb luck? Predestination? Common sense? Crazy love?)

Kids ran in circles and screamed and accidentally locked themselves in the bedroom (and screamed) and had the occasional meltdown and acquired small injuries (and screamed), and all the child-free couples gathered themselves on the other side of the house and talked about... well, I'm not sure actually because, while I would have loved to engage in the grown-up conversation, I was mostly replenishing pita chips or adjudicating meltdowns or distributing juice boxes or wondering where one or other of my children were. Such is life.

When there were just a few of us left we ordered pizza. It was a nice party, I think. We have a lot of recycling to put out, and plenty of beer left in the fridge, and quite a few new bottles of wine, and even two new houseplants. Win/win, I think. (Except for the plants, which I will surely kill in due course.)