Susan dropped off the map for a little bit to spend time with her folks and then recover from having spent time with them. Over the weekend she held her BIG happy birthday party, the one from which she banned all children. In fact, she banned everyone under forty and it worked out so well she may employ that criteria again. The day after the party she felt the full effect of having stayed up late enjoying her guests, drinking and smoking cigars.

Susan struggles with entertaining and tried to avoid the areas of previous party failures like not having enough food, chairs or ice. She rarely provides enough soda because she doesn't think anyone should be drinking it to begin with. In the past she's had to stop mingling in order to wash dishes, hunt down serving utensils and climb up on chairs to look for more red plastic cups.

This time she did as much planning as she was physically able to tolerate but still found herself making critical decisions the day before she needed to feed and entertain people. She abandoned most of the food she was going to make in favor of things she could purchase, and a trip to the health food store provided her with all sorts of options for the compartments of her '70s lazy susan.

She took Friday off from work to clean her pantry, it's not what she intended to do but it's what she ended up doing. Saturday was spent stomping around the house in a completely humorless state taking care of all pre-party tasks. She found the time to scream at the husband when the CD player stopped working even though she knew there was something wrong with it two years ago.

Don't say anything, she's aware that CD players are ridiculously '90s.

She cleaned the bathrooms, strung colored lights along the deck, set the table then jumped in the shower where she relaxed and unclenched her jaw. Susan emerged refreshed, put on her party dress and had a lovely evening.

In a day or two she'll tell you about the wonderful gift she had to hand back to the givers.