I Am A Pig, And You Are?

So, the other day I was blabbing to my mom about all the fun stuff I've been to lately. For instance, last night we went to Hillary's house for dinner and she cooked Thai food that I think was blessed by Thai angels before it entered my mouth. For that same reason I ate more than anyone else seated at the table, except for lovely baby Moira who was loving on her Gerber's.
Then my mom said this;
"You know Courtney, you can have parties too. You are a wonderful hostess."
And just like that my feelings were hurt. When my feelings are hurt it doesn't last long because I'm like Teflon. You would be too, my sweet, if you grew up in a home where your nickname was Tooney for your uncanny semblance to Petunia the Pig.
Oink. Oink.
The reason why it hurt my feelings is because I thought I was taking a well deserved break from hosting. I happened to be the friend whose parents had the awesome cabin where endless parties, far away from any parental supervision, were executed. Some of these soirees bordered on debauchery.
Just kidding mom. Oink. Oink.
But I do remember certain boys running around with nothing on but llama skins sent from Peru. And out of control hot tubing (roll in the snow, jump in the hot tub, that sort of thing), and I saw my friend's special part on accident, when he was changing. (But Mom, it was fine because I had a crush on this boy and seeing his thing ended it.)
Good, good times.
When my parents sold the cabin my hosting reign, finally ended.The baton was passed on to my friend Haley, who has done a fine job (except, where the in the crazy heck is the Christmas party this year? I'm so angry!) And it was okay. I had exhausted my ideas, and I was married, so inviting boys up to play quarters kinda didn't sound fun anymore.
It's fun to be on the receiving end. The husband agrees, as I believe he was the same sorta friend, but up in TF, at a cabin in Van Demon's land, wherever that may be (Thank you U2). We show up at parties and eat, talk really loud, use the bathroom, ask the hostess for impossible things and stay until we are the last people to go home. All the stuff that everybody else got to do. Now, it's our turn. (If only we had kids to do something destructive at the party whilst we are involving ourselves in a conversation about the death of Tookie Williams -perhaps next year?)
Hoping(oink). Hoping (oink).
But to our credit, for the first year or two of our married life we made it a goal to invite another family over to dinner at least once a week. Sure, it was fun! It introduced me to the power of crockpot cooking and stuff with lots of sour cream mixed in. One time Gina brought light and fluffy cornbread, and we listen to Maroon 5 before any of the other suckers knew about them.
Oink! Oink!
When I turned vegetarian last year, things changed. Since then our dinner parties have been reduced to zilch. Except and if, you count when I had the Laurels over last month for a Japanese dinner where CK made his famous sushi and you could dress in your Chinese dress and claim that you just didn't know that it wasn't Japanese because, Chinese and Japanese who can tell a difference anyway?