post-party zen

Just finished cleaning up from the mellowest 12-night party I’ve thrown. Didn’t get invitations out until the last minute, as we were in Arizona and also a state of Lame, but we still had 9 people show up: our two upstairs neighbors and a number of friends of Kate’s from nursing school and beyond.

Plenty of food – I made molasses spice cookies, put out stinky cheeses and applesauce and fruit, made Smoking Bishop and mulled cider (this was the first year we didn’t run out of Smoking Bishop) and we ended up playing Apples to Apples and discussing the ethics challenges inherent in working in hospitals.

Now it’s just shy of 1:30, and I’m the only one awake in the house, save the cats, who are all zippy and wired from the tumult. Listening to Joe Jackson played very quietly in the kitchen while doing dishes, I had glimmerings of that post-party zen state so perfectly captured in Big Night. There’s something about post-social, post-food, post-conversational moments that lets me sit quieter for a bit, especially if I’m washing dishes.