Ahhh! After all the preparations, shopping, decorating and sheer hard work, the payoff is finally here and the holidays are upon us!
I don't know about you but I'm fairly well exhausted myself. While I'm looking forward as to how it all unfolds, I'm also looking forward to January 2 when it's all finally over and deep, deep winter sets it. A sweet period of rest and respite before the spring social season starts winding up.
Holiday preparations this year have been especially difficult for two reasons. The first being that house renovations (mostly painting and plumbing) have been underway at the same time we've been trying to decorate both the interior and exterior of the house for Christmas, which has been tricky. (Mud tracked through the carpets next to the Christmas tree is not a welcome sight!)
But the other is my employer's new déclassé lady friend who seems like she doesn't know upside from down most of the time. It's not her fault that she's lost in this world of the super rich, and she seems sincere enough in her affections toward my eighty-year-old employer. But her lack of social skills has been maddening. We got through the small Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas cocktail parties without her messing anything up. But suddenly she's decided to throw a soirée of her own to introduce her friends to my employer, right between Christmas and New Year's. And she announced it to me as though I'd take care of everything. But no, no, no!
Her guest list started out at about twenty-five, but swelled to eighty-five when my employer heard about it and decided to add some of his friends as well. Mind you, before my employer's scandalous divorce we've had galas in this house for literally hundreds of people, so eighty-five seems like nothing to me. But this new woman just started to spin around like a child's toy top, as though she had never had to deal with so many guests. To help her out I introduced her to our caterers, and convinced her she needs a bartender and valet parkers. Mercifully this particular time frame is dead for them, so they are able to accommodate her.
But of course with such a late decision she was not able to send out Save-The-Date notices followed by formal invitations to anyone, just phone calls and emails. So her RSVP drop-out rate is a whopping 50%, compared to the usual 20% for a well-planned event. Honestly I'll be surprised if even forty people show up
I hope your holiday preparations have gone more smoothly than mine, and that your drop-out rate is only 20% or even less!
As always, thank you so much for reading and following along this year! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all best wishes for a happy and curious New Year!
Andrew
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