esrosedotblog

PARTY PLANNER

I told you that I had acquiesced to having a party for my 70th birthday and the 10th year of our life in the desert.

Well, we are knee deep in preparation and it may actually be a good thing to do!

Amazing.

I am into it.

When we started, I had the idea that there weren't but 10-20 people who would be interested in coming. Then I got the idea that it was not about their interest in me but about my interest in them!

I decided that I would invite people who had pleased me or made a contribution to my life out here or had some part in my personal development. Or something like that.

I would look around and see someone who I know and like a lot and I would put them on the list.

Judas Priest!

The list grew and grew.

I think that maybe there are 122. And John is going to ask some of his friends that I sort of know but do not see that often.

What? 150 people with partners and spouses?

We are into the prep.

We have seen caterers.

We have seen menus.

We have run the gamut between doing a Costco thing—buy the raw materials and get some people to help us lay them out—to a caterer whose menu was so esoteric I could not fucking decipher it let alone imagine the taste of things.

Now, we are in the middle. A caterer who is well known, has great middle of the road food and asks all the right questions.

I will not say what the final choices will be but they will suit me and not some hyper image of me that I might want to project if I was off on some ego trip.

Then, I was able to ask some people for help.

I don't have the last names for some of these people let alone their home addresses. So I have asked three of my friends to help. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do?

Ask for help? ME?

But these guys are really into it. We run in the same circles and they know 'everybody' if we take them all together. I only had a few unknowns on the list and I can do those.

One of my friends has dated half of them! He wishes. But the claim is probably half true.

So they are getting the addresses. And, I suppose, warming people up for the actual invitations.

This being mostly a party for me, John is doing a lot of the work. I do what I am asked to do nearly when I am asked to do it.

It feels really good. It is stirring the pot mightily.

Old pictures have been brought out. Old friends remembered.

I am seeing my world in an entirely different light.

I don't think of myself as having friends actually. I am an introvert. By nature a loner.

But, as it turns out, I have this coterie that I don't often consider en masse. Yes. Coterie. They know each other and sort of hang out together too. Loosely.

A revelation.

OK.

That is it.

All of life is a process; a journey not a destination.

But, if you give a big party the process and the journey get very vivid.