Party Girls

I am such a bad partier that I did not even take a picture of my own dipped pretzels.

In my grumpy old age, I've settled into a Christmas routine that suits me nicely. I don't over-decorate, and I rarely go to a Christmas party I'm not truly excited to go to. Last night was the first of these festive occasions, an end-of-the-year get-together with my Wednesday night ladies' group. I've mentioned before that we call ourselves the Free Space because it's like that spot in Bingo that you don't have to earn, you just land on it.

There are oh, so many things I love about this party. It has a defined beginning time (6:30 p.m.) and end time (8 p.m.), which is appropriately brief and gets us home in time for early bedtime. There simply is not enough time to have a bad time.

We have a white elephant/Yankee swap exchange, which leads to much lively debate. Oh, no, not over the gifts--over the rules of the game. We are the kind of sweet little old ladies who endlessly "You go ahead of me," and "No, no, no, you first, my dear," but are Xena: Warrior Princess when it comes to deciding whether a gift may be stolen more than three times.

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We wear ugly Christmas sweaters, which in some of our cases (mostly mine), means we don't have to change clothes after work because we believe there is no such thing as an ugly Christmas sweater. Those who are believers in ugly Christmas sweaters are perhaps the most festive as they have to use their imaginations to come appropriately decked out. My two favorites were K., who pinned enormous glittery bows all over her sweater and looked gorgeous, and S., who came in costume as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Yes, she did. Down to the captain's pips on the collar. She looked just like this, except with lipstick and a really cute haircut.

We also each bring something to eat and unlike most times when women get together, we are highly non-competitive when it comes to what we throw on the buffet table. I made peppernuts but they didn't turn out right in spite of the fact that I've made maybe sixty-four entillion peppernuts during my life. So I threw some almond bark in the microwave and dumped in a half bag of pretzels and voila, off to the party. It's bachelor cooking at its finest and no one is judging.

So we sort of dress up, yell at each other about bad gifts, and stuff our faces with food other people cook, then we go home in 90 minutes or less and as we leave we agree that it may be the most fun we have during the entire holiday season.

Merry Christmas, Free Spacers. I believe we've pretty much perfected this holiday party thing.