The Hostess with the Mostess

And I'm not talking about the great Hostess Blog that makes me want to buy oodles of unnecessary items and host swanky dinner parties. I'm talking about moi.

Last year, I declared that I wanted to start hosting small little dinner parties where we'd invite another couple over for a fancy schmancy dinner (we only have 4 dining room chairs... hence the small dinner party). We did this about 4 times and I felt we did a pretty decent job. When the wedding month hit and all the time thereafter with the home renovations, we sort of dropped the ball. And then when it was time to pick it back up, The Mr went on a stupid diet. No more dinner parties.

Anywho - it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that I hate hosting stuff. This mostly has to do with my insane inability to allow people to mess up my house. I wouldn't even claim that our house is supremely clean and spotless, but it's clean enough and I don't want people's grubby little hands leaving water rings on my tables, spilling dips all over my counters and dribbling crumbs all over my couch.

I love the idea of hosting parties. I love it. I mean, the Hostess Blog is in my blogroll for Christ's sake. I watch Martha fucking Stewart. I covet dinnerware and serving dishes. It's a sickness.

I hate the stress of having a lot of people in my house. It destroys me. I can't relax and have a good time because I'm constantly picking up after people. Thankfully The Mr. is really good about keeping things fairly neat but if you happen to be one of the people who stick around late, you'll catch me washing dishes and scrubbing tables because I can't sleep knowing my house is in disarray.

So, this weekend the Mr really wanted to host a BBQ. I had ordered this Smoker Grill through my company's online catalog (their gift for working here for 5 years). There wasn't much to choose from and The Mr promised we could smoke some vegetables... because you know, that's such a common way to prepare veggies. Really - how did he convince me to get this thing?

I guess this prompted him to want to host a BBQ after our kickball game. Well, the smoker grill arrived damaged so nothing got smoked. And I spent a good portion of the evening staring at my bowls of guacamole internally screaming, "Why are people scooping up the guac so that it spills over the side like that?!" completely convinced that people were testing my sanity.

I also tried to play it cool when I saw that someone was leaving an entire tray of deviled eggs behind in my fridge. Seriously - take your deviled eggs home!

All in all, I guess it was a success. Everyone said they had fun. I ate too much, drank too much and stressed too much but the highlight of the entire evening was hitting up the bar on the corner of my street. We've lived in our house for almost 3 years and have never stepped foot into Tracey's House of Darts. It.was.awesome. I love old school Baltimorians. I hung out with a man named Bernie who had lived in Baltimore for a very very long time and apparently lost over 150 lbs while overcoming blindness. Seriously.

My favorite line of the night? The bartender said her favorite drink is a Cherry Bomb.
Bartender: I always order cherry bombs when I go out.
Bernie: You can drink those as much as you want but it ain't growing back, honey!

I love Baltimore!