Neighborly Company

The Party Getting Started with our New Friends

My wife and I had not planned on hosting a Christmas party this year.  We both have a lot going on and she is preparing for the arrival of a significant proportion of Panamanian population here in January.  Last week our next door neighbor asked when our party was going to be and was crushed when she heard we were not having one.  Apparently, as the parents of two very young kids, this was one of the big social events of the year because they just had to walk across the yard to our house.  There was only one solution – my wife decided to have the party.

We purposely kept it small and invited only neighbors and because of the late decisions only three other couples were free to attend.  It turned out to be one of the finest evenings of the year precisely because it was so small.  We met for the first time the neighbors from two houses away who moved in two years ago.   It turns out they are movie nuts also – do you think we got along?

It was a real Christmas spirit sharing spirits with neighbors.  Each couple also brought their kids and even though they ranged in ages from 2 to 17 they all fit into the crowd seamlessly and it was just a fantastic night.  My wife cooked up a huge ham.  I helped by slicing my thumb deeply while carving.  Everybody else brought a dish and, as stated above, we enjoyed just a great time together.  Buddy spent a good hour and a half out on the deck after the party just destroying the ham bone.

Since there were young kids attending Buddy was sentenced to his cage, something he didn’t take well.  The two young kids from next door idolize Buddy so I decided to let him up to say goodbye when they were leaving.  I opened his cage planning on grabbing his collar and escorting him upstairs.  Buddy had other ideas and quickly dodged around me heading upstairs to meet all these new people and properly greet them.  To prevent this possibly dangerous confrontation I “flashed” my leg out to the side to block him.  While I did succeed in blocking him I also kicked over one of my wife’s favorite plant stands.

Of course it was made of glass and of course it was on a cement floor.  My wife did not see the humor in all of this.  I’ve got to see if I can find one of these before Christmas.  Even this could put a damper on what turned out to be a surprisingly fun evening.  I wrote yesterday that this is exactly the type of therapy we all need while dealing with the Newtown tragedy. 

A final note on that disaster; I really hope the town officials decide to throw out all of the news teams.  At a time when a community is trying to deal with an unimaginable horror and return to some semblance of normality they have dozens of TV news teams roaming the streets trying to beat each other to the most emotional response.  They should be ashamed of themselves.  I turned off the “news” today when they added music to their reporting.  Shame.

Next Door Neighbors with Buddy Idolizers

Buddy Dealing with the Ham Bone

My Wife's Former Plant Stand