A lovely day (with severe initial grumpiness)

I woke up on the WRONG side of myself yesterday morning. Mainly I was overstressing about the very busy day to come. We still had cleaning to do in preparation for the MDFF work party and for my (belated) Birthday Party. The first thing that got me was that I really and truly got myself up too early. I could and should have slept another hour or two, but our schedule was that stuff was to start at noon.

So out I wobbled to go and acquire a batch of stuffed animals for the work party. That done, I came back home to find a very blurry elf whizzing about the house doing final preparations and trying in vain to communicate with me what needed to be done before she had to go for her massage. The best I could growl-ily mutter back was something like "mmmff... Eating." as I attacked my breakfast... and realised I was getting an earache.

Once I dropped her off and arrived home to find no one there yet, I had quite the little snit for myself:
Not a single person who RSVP'd for my B'day Party said that they were actually coming. Boo. Grr.
And so after I read my email, finished food prep, munched some more, STILL NO ONE WAS THERE YET!.
Eventually we got a phone call from people who sounded familiar, but who's names I didn't catch ( a recurring phone thing for me yesterday ) telling me they'd be there in about 1&1/2 hours. Then Holly called to say she'd be there, but was also running late.

"Great. I told myself. A couple of people will show up for the the MDFF work, and we won't have enough hands to get ANYTHING done and then they'll probably all just LEAVE before my party anyway."

Sonya got home to find me on the couch being very small and petulant and muttering things like "Who needs a stupid old Birthday party anyway?" She let me sniffle and cry a little bit and layed me down for my obviously much needed nap.

Things were much better after the doorbell woke me up. The reason I didn't recognise who was on the phone earlier was that this pair of gals were BRAND NEW MDFF RECRUITS who knew a bunch of people we did and eventually recognised me from Pennsic, and jumped right in as if we were old pals and we all began to have a SPLENDID time decorating stuffed animals transforming them from ordinary poppets into Ambassadors from Faerie.

Holly showed up soon after, then Steve (who later ducked out to get Jen), Debera, and then Christian.(Noelle was with him, but to leave for a gig, but she came back after)

We were filled Quite to capacity in our improvised craft space and made short work out of every single animal we had. And they are incredible!!!!

Kal arrived just as we were finished (after calling on the phone where I recognised his voice but could *swear* he called himself a different name- see aforementioned earache)

And so we segued into my Birthday Party which turned out to be a great success. Breno and silmaril showed up, silmaril having just flown back into town (and boy were her arms tired!) but they came and we made some music!!!! Holly's husband showed up and joined in the jamming for awhile, but then HUNGER overtook us as the chicken got finished.

More and more people showed up and the food looked more and more nervous. I got some Lovely Gifts: a gift card for Borders from number12 and Lisa, CHOCOLATE from my ex-housemate, Madam Wu, and a rare "picture disc" LP of _Dark Side Of The Moon_ from Holly's husband Mark (who's also a big LPphile).
And lest I forget, silmaril brought me a lovely handful of little stones that she picked up from the shore of the Mediterranean. Even tho I was born on the Gulf Coast, I don't remember it. The Mediterranean was for me my very first, and is still, my favorite seaside, even tho I haven't seen it for over 30 years. (sniffle)
And Steve brought some yummy mead. Simcha and Ted Rosenberg also brought bottles of wine, which we've added to our liquor stash (which keeps getting added to faster than it gets drunk since we don't really drink any of it unless there's a party or we have guests who drink)

So music got played, live and recorded, food was et, conversations were had, games were played, and jollity prevailed.
Eventually I started nodding off at about 1:00 am, which is a tad early for me, partywise, but was just fine.

It was like one of those days in Florida where it starts out rainy and miserable, but then the sun comes out and all is lovely and warm.

Yayyyy!