The wrap-up: Girls' Frivolo, Fondue & 2008 Book Exchange

So, this is starting to be an annual thing I'm hosting. I'm hoping to keep it up because I think it's a great chance for all my closest women friends to get together over wine and brunch and catch-up, exchange books, and basically have a henfest. This year's turnout was almost double last year's and lemme tell ya, you could feel it in our teeny tiny house.

Lessons learned?

1. Do not make fondue for the first time in a small house for 13 people
2. If you are foolish enough to do so, prep all the dipping items the night before
3. If you don't prep the dipping items the night before, prep some appetizers for the ladies to eat whilst waiting almost 90 minutes for the fondue to make its first appearance.
4. Have the party in a bigger venue

I'm hopeful that for the 2009 Book Exchange we are in our own house (not our current rented one). I know we will be looking for a house that has good entertaining space because we love to entertain. So if that happens, I'll be able to continue to add names to the Evite.

I had a fabulous time! I hope everyone else did. Even though our book selection was lighter than last year and a few had to leave before we actually exchanged books.

I think next year I'll stick to more traditional brunch fare like last year--quiche or baked eggs and my raspberry bread pudding (although I might try this refined version of it). BT's ebelskivers were a big hit too, so maybe I'll get myself an ebelskiver pan and make those too. And more champagne next year!

Happy reading in 2008 ladies! Save your books for next year's exchange!

Challenges

As of late, there have been challenges thrown my (our) way... most recently...

We hosted a weekend of Big Crush at my family home, which was fun and challenging at the same time. On the one hand, it was great having our good friends at the house with us for a nice getaway weekend, wine tasting was a blast, albeit crowded and overrun with frat boys and plastics (see wintermute's blog). On the other hand, even though we don't have kids yet, it was as difficult as dealing with a colic infant all night long for an entire weekend. M and I didn't sleep, really sleep, at all Friday or Saturday night, yet we drank Friday night and all day Saturday with our guests. We certainly tried to be good hosts, but when you're dealing with *ah-hem* disgusting animal health issues, while trying to keep your guests away from the nasty that is occuring all weekend, it's quite exhausting. Luckily for us, H and O were the most gracious guests, the most understanding guests imaginable. But needless to say we were unbelievably exhausted driving back to the bay area Sunday night (with an accident at the 80-west/50-west junction no less).**

Even more recently, we have just learned that a very good, deserving friend/couple has found out she is pregnant. Over the past couple months B and I have been sharing our ups/downs/insight/speculation/grievances regarding getting pregnant and dealing with my miscarriage. And despite her predictions to the contrary, she and F were so lucky as to concieve on their first try! Of course, I could not be more thrilled for them both. Truly. I am so excited for them and can only hope, with all my heart, that they never have to experience what we went through. But there is an undeniable part of me that is (I hate to say it) jealous. Eww. I know. Gross. I hate it! I am excited, jealous and hopeful that M and I will have similar luck too--all at the same time.

So, it has definitely been a weekend/beginning of the week of challenges. The upside is also a double-edged sword as well. While we acquired a significant amount of lovely, amazing and enjoyable wine during our weekend in wine country, I am also hoping that I am pregnant and thus won't be able to enjoy said wine for another year-ish. :-) C'est la vie, no?

**For H, O, K and G: The animal issues you witnessed were NOT normal. My dad took her to the vet Sunday morning where she recieved treatment for severe dehydration (due to the issues you witnessed) and has been on medication to deal with those issues since. When she returned to the house Sunday night, after spending 6 hours at the emergency vet clinic, she was a completely different dog than the one you encountered. So I'm sorry to had to go through that! She's not normally like that, I swear.

A complete 180?

First, a note about my links. I'm not savvy on blogspot, so apologies that the links to blogs i'm reading aren't great. I'll figure it out someday.

I was thinking about my first few posts, in particular the one about drinking, in contrast with recent events we've attended. I do believe we've done a complete 180. This past weekend we attended 2 drinking events (one big, one small), last weekend--2 drinking events (one big, one small), and next weekend looks like it's going to be the same. To be fair, we are doing other things as a couple besides drinking, but it's hard to break out of the mold of hanging out with your friends and having a bottle of wine (or in some instances 2 or 3). But I must admit, two Sundays in a row of pretty decent drinking have made my Mondays, as well as my recovery from this nasty cough, quite slow. The thing is, I don't see respite in the near future. Next weekend we've got a wedding, at a winery no less, and the weekend after that we head up to wine country for a harvest festival with friends.

I think after that M and my liver are going on strike. M actually loved not drinking when I was pregnant. So I think I'm going to try to preemptively head off his objections to any further drinking events on weekends by scheduling some much needed detox after Big Crush. Some yoga, running, biking and/or spinning, along with a healthy veggie & no-wine detox weekend will do us both some good. Coincidentally, the weekend I'm scheduling detox is the same weekend we have a volunteer event, so it'll good for me, M, our livers and the community. All tied up nice and neat, huh?

Drinks for everyone!

The one thing I've noticed since becoming pregnant is how engrained drinking is in our social lives. I don't mean drinking in the college-chug-a-bunch-of beers-and-do-shots kinda way. I mean, drinking wine at barbeques with friends, lingering over dinner and a nice bottle of wine with your S.O., going winetasting on sunny summer weekends. It almost sounds too Gatsby-ish, but it's kinda true in this town. Almost every social event we normally attend includes, centrally most of the time, some kind of wine drinking. So when you can't drink anymore, it really changes both your social life and your experience of your former social self. Very bizarre.

Since I've been lucky enough not to experience any 'morning' sickness, I still really want to drink and it totally sucks because I really really can't. Over the last few weeks, M and I have been a bit MIA socially. At first we worried about how we'd "cover" for me not drinking without having to tell people that I'm preggers. But we've actually lucked out because a couple of our social engagements have (miraculously) not had wine as the focal point and most of our big wine-centric events were pre-conception (or right after, but before I knew of course). However, now that we are re-emerging a bit, but still haven't told people, manuevering around the non-drinking thing has become quite bothersome, mostly because I still want to drink! I can sniff someone else's wine and maybe have a taste... but damn.. that's almost worse.

At one of the more recent social events, a clam bake at a yacht club (and I only mention those two things because they are both major drinking events & places in my experience), I also got to see what I'm like without a few in me. I gotta say, I think the experience for both me and our friends was quite different. In fact, B's husband even said to us all, "it's too bad your funnest friend is pregnant!" Hm. At first I was like, ok, that's kind of a compliment. But it also made me feel like I'm less fun now that I can't drink. Even though B & F, as well as M all drank, and I'm sure they enjoyed the evening just fine, I couldn't help but wonder whether I really am less fun when I can't drink.

So after chatting about it with M, I've decided that I (and by default he) are going to start branching out and doing things we haven't normally done so much in the past that are [1] fun and [2] don't focus on drinking. Cuz I gotta say, being around a bunch of folks who can and are drinking, when you can't.... ain't so much fun. We're hoping that by fronting the movement our friends will start joining in. We'll see though.

My other thought as of late is that I wish I had a girlfriend going through this same thing with me. Not like in a "misery loves company" kinda way... but rather to be around someone who wants to do the same kinds of things and will start experiencing these radical changes at the same-ish time. Once I started thinking about it, I don't really have many friends who even have kids (I can count 3, but 2 live very far away and all 3 have tons of friends who have kids), let alone who are particularly close to being pregnant right now. So it's a bit lonely here in Bun-in-the-oven-ville.

Not to be a total downer! This is a great thing to be doing and I'm super excited that we'll have a new family member (homegrown nonetheless) here in 7-ish months. All very cool. But sometimes being a cool kid isn't all that.