A little later, I will be off to funnydyke's house to help her prep for a dinner party. funnydyke is amusing in her pre-party frenzy in that the feminist bad-ass turns into a total 1950's socialite. She frets hard core - and this despite every one of her occasions turning out sparkling every time. I like to think it is her Inner Morman showing. The same Inner Morman who freaks out if there is less than 3 months worth of unperishable foodstuffs in the basement for the coming Apocalypse.

She just called me to say I am making CHUTNEY. What was I thinking? I could not get a hold of you for menu planning and I panicked and got on the internet and now I am making chutney. I don't know how to make chutney! I am so flattered at my invaluability.

If you have read this journal long, you know that for me, a central theme in my life is food and community. Dinner parties, like kitchens and cooking in general, are expressions of my values and beliefs. Cooking for and eating with people is fundamental to being human. In my opinion.

My party planning always stemmed from the sure and certain belief that if you get a nice mix of old friends and new in a room and add a reasonable quantity of food you will have a smashing good time. It generally works for me, unless one of those new acquaintances happens to end up being some sort of social vampire/drunky drunk drama queen and you have to break up with her by email. Oh, Livejournal, we have survived so much together.

And we have exciting new ladies coming to visit, which makes me happy. My social posse has been circling the wagons since the Series of Unfortunate Friendships that characterized 2005 and 2006. (That was a mixed-western metaphor, but I am sticking to my guns. Oh, STOP.)

There continues to be fallout from some of the incredibly misplaced affections I was flinging around that year. Let's just say I recently had a nasty shock surface from something pretty much long dead and thought to be forgotten. I suppose that in my adult life, post child brideness, I have always been a bit charmed in the friends-and-lovers department. So I grew up trusting my attractions, and believing that I had a special sense for who was My Kind. And if you were My Kind, I relied on your safety.

I have to remember that this did work about 95% of the time. And I am blessed with the people who responded to my extravagant displays of affection. And truly, all of the people who actually mattered enough to break my heart did it with respect and care, and they are still there if I need them. The rest turned out not to be important enough to miss for more than a short time. I do, in fact have a pretty good intuition about people and my intuition has brought a lot of love and support and amazing conversation into my life. And even the missing of the people I miss has this beautiful quality to it that means I am still fully alive.

To sum up: Dinner party. Fraught with meaning, yo.