Jose Feliciano aka Marquis de Sade

I apologize for the long absence, dear readers, Hubby was out of town on business again and I had to use all of my energy to not hang myself in the basement.  He has since returned from his trek across the Himalayas with only a canteen of water to sustain him.  Or at least that's how he bills these trips before his departure, returning only to regale me with stories of the four hour train trip during which he spent not a single moment in his seat, but rather in the bar car.  Boo-fucking-hoo.  So now he's back and while it is nice to have adult interaction once again, I did notice the marked lack of eight pairs of work shoes by the front door and open saline bottles left on the bathroom counter for the baby to play fire hose with while he was away.  Perhaps he needs a sticker chart like the girls.  But instead of calling it his Big Boy Chart, as I do for the kids, I'll label it "Shit I Should Do Unless I Want to Be On the Business End of an Ass-kicking".  But I digress...

Speaking of apologies, let me formally apologize to the inhabitants of apartment #2 at 925 Park Avenue in Hoboken, NJ during the month of December, 1996.  Let me 'splain.

It was during that month I decided to host my first party in my first solo apartment.  It was a tree-trimming party and I invited the fifteen or so guys and gals I was working with at the time to join me in my shoe box of an apartment (seriously, you could prop your feet on the opposite wall when sitting on the couch watching TV).  We were all fresh out of college, barely making ends meet in these first apartments and constantly trying to prove how grown-up we were - and failing miserably.  In this vein, I decided my soiree would not have the usual cases of cheap beer and various snacks from Frito-Lay.  Instead, I was serving only cheap champagne and various finger foods I had read about in Bon Appetit.  Nary a plastic cup was in sight, I was, instead, insisting on only using stemware - a trait I still possess to this day and I keep a set of cheap "hotel" champagne flutes bubble-wrapped in a box that I pack in my suitcase whenever I am going on a hotel vacation.  Drinking bubbly out of a plastic bathroom cup is just depressing.

So the time of the party draws near and having set up the tree (or having paid the guy who helped me drag it home twenty bucks to erect my Clark Griswald-esque selection in its stand -  it almost poked me in the eye in the bedroom when I woke up the next morning) and after having spent the day making finger foods and cleaning glasses, my guests all arrive and we begin decorating the tree with a variety of ghetto ornaments crafted by the impoverished guests.  I still have the star made from a Sam Adams carton and tin foil.  It's in with our current Xmas stuff and it makes me laugh ever year.

Fast forward three hours and many bottles of Freixenet later, and things are getting a little out of hand.  My friend's boyfriend, who was the Fun Bobby of our group had already smashed three glasses, claimed control over the stereo, and thus began a two hour long constant replay of Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad with sixteen drunken idiots singing along at the top of their lungs.  Nice.

Thank you, former neighbor, for not coming down the stairs with a baseball bat after the tenth replay.  I did not, at the time, possess the manners or knowledge of apartment etiquette that dictates you invite all neighbors who might call the cops to your soirees to prevent such phone calls.  You were very understanding.  And please know, I am now getting my comeuppance.  My children are obsessed with this song and I swear, if I have to hear this blind guy sing "prospero año y felicidad" one more time at eight in the morning on the way to school, I will fling myself out of the van while it is still in motion.  Goddamn Dora.  I have them, mercifully, listening to the original, but it was that little bitch who turned them onto it.  If it was her version we were listening to I'd be dead already.  

I think I have been paid back in spades, no?