roll the dice

It's Bunco night, it's Bunco night. (Insert my convulsively maligned happy dance here). And it's not at my house, so all I have to do is shove my flattened boobs into a shirt and show up. Whoo hoo!


For all of the innocents out there who are unfamiliar with Bunco, here's the scoop. If you don't feel like clicking on the nice blue type, I'll give you a down and dirty lowdown. Bunco is a game invented by women who were desperate to have an organized reason to get out of the house. There are twelve of us in our group (which is the normal number). Every member hosts at her house once a year, which means that for the other eleven you just show up like a hungry and thirsty slug. There are massive amounts of food and equally impressive amounts of spirits. You have the chance to win money or take home a loser prize that is often worth more than the money. It's a fun, relaxing, non-judgmental way to spend a night with a bunch of women who all know each other far too well for their own good.


The hard part of Bunco is when it's your turn to put it together. As a matter of fact, tonight is my friend Laurie's night to host and she has the slightly dazed edge in her voice to prove it. And her husband's a professional chef. I don't know why this is, because these are some of my best friends in the world, but we all stress out when it's our turn. Home projects get put on fast track, fabulous culinary spreads appear and all of our abodes end up looking a hell of a lot better than they normally do. (Except for our one Martha Stewart clone, who we suspect lives like this all the time. If I didn't love her so much I'd arrange a concrete shoes accident for her. She's skinny, too. And has kids who do every chore on their list without complaint. Hmmm...may need to rethink that accident).


I used to make myself nuts over this. And if you haven't figured it out by now, when I go nuts I like to take others with me. My own achilles heel is my food. I like to cook and I like it when people say nice things about my cooking. In past years I have come up with amazing spreads that people raved about. Well, I hear they raved. I was in the kitchen at the time putting together California Rolls. Or double dark chocolate truffles. Or something else equally time consuming. (BBQ chicken pizza on a homemade crust, anyone?) My house was always pristine and I didn't care how many days after Bunco the FG went without talking to me because I had been such a biatch leading up to it. It was Bunco Night! The one night of the year where we had to fake living a civilized life in a civilized house.


That all came to a screeching halt a few years back. I was in nursing school. I don't even remember what I made to eat, to prove my point that it wasn't terribly memorable. Something with cream cheese is all that comes to mind. (Remember this, it's important later). In my mad rush, I somehow overlooked vacuuming the big Oriental rug in the living room that was covered with dog hair clumps.They clung to the edges of the rug, showing off their density against the hard wood floor. Then, while I was doing the last minute rush things before people got there, Surfer Dude ran across the kitchen floor carrying a package of very soft cream cheese. He lost his balance and somehow ended up with cream cheese on both of his hands. But that's okay, because he managed to stop his flight across the dining area by grabbing onto the sliding glass door out to the deck, leaving a cream cheese trail from one end of the door to the other. He was worried that I was going to be mad, so he tried as hard as he could to wipe it off with his cream cheese hands. Now the streak was a big finger painting looking swirl.


I mentally said a lot of really bad words, sent him off to find his father in the family room downstairs and headed for the windex. But then the front door bell rang and I completely forgot about it. For the rest of the night. Even though you could not possibly miss it if you were anywhere near the area, I just blocked it out.


It was a very fun night anyway. And as I stood at my front door hours later waving goodbye to people, I couldn't help noticing that they all had dog hair butts from sitting on my floor. My filthy floor that I had totally forgotten to vacuum. And at that exact moment, my brain decided to unblock the cream cheese and I saw it in all it's dry, white, crusty glory all over my door. Martha Stewart is safe from me. Forever.


The next day I got calls saying how nice the evening was,which leads me to believe two things. One, that it really doesn't matter how bad your house looks with friends and Two, that these women are really desperate for a night out.


What do you think?