Ten Things To Offer An Unexpected Dinner Guest
October 8th, 2006
Have you ever been caught out by by the sudden arrival of an unexpected dinner guest? God, I have. The last one that bounced on my doorstep caught me in my jim-jams. Not that that should shock you, dear readers. As you know, when I’m working my habit is to strip my Super KatGirl uniform off the very second I get inside my front door, shower, and don very comfortable house clothes that scream well-worn boy’s pyjamas. My son, bless his heart, never bats an eyelash. They are comfortable, dammit, especially when I sit at my computer tapping away.
So there I was minding my own business, cozy as a bug inside my snugg-a-licious lounge room - tap, tap, tap - when a knock broke my concentration. I figured whoever was at the front door deserved my attention because when I’m writing it takes more than a timid knock to yank me from my creative world. I open the door; and my mother’s ex-partner of twenty something years and her new girlfriend are standing on the other side of the screen door, grinning.
Oh, great. Just fabulous. Don’t get me wrong: I love my second mother to death; she was, and is, a powerful force in my life. But I’m kinda hangin’ to get back to torrid sex. My hero and heroine were just about to do “IT” and frankly, after what I put them through the last seven chapters even I was eager for a romp in the sack.
My second mother breezes in, with mute girlfriend in toe, talking a mile a minute. (The girlfriend isn’t really mute; but when my second mother is on a roll not even death could shut her up.) Hugs and kisses abound. She’s happy to see me. So happy in fact she thought she’d drop by for a chat. It’s 9:00pm in the evening. My second mother lives 5 hours away. That’s one hell of a chat.
My shoulders mentally droop. Great. Just what I need mid-gasp to the best God damn Orgasm I was ever going to have with a computer. Of course I want to chat and chin wag about horses, spiritual curses and out-of-body experiences. I’m damn eager to listen to her reincarnation theories on why she wanted to kill her father when she was a mere eight months old. I’m just dying to debate the ecliptic path of the Sun independent on Earth’s planetary alignments. I mean, I have nothing else to do, right?
I curse myself in newly learned French. That will teach me for opening the front door because that faint prelude to mind-shattering sex is still ever persistent in my mind. I want that orgasm, dammit.
My mind escapes the absurdity of the situation and mentally scratches around my refrigerator. Then the pantry. Hmmm. Not good. I play the perfect hostess; seating them at the dinner table, asking all the right questions as I slam the shiny sterling silver kettle into its blackjack, all the while wondering what on earth would I feed them. I hadn’t gone shopping in close to a month; I refuse to feed my pantry shelves just for the sake of it.
Besides that, I’m terrified to go shopping. The last time I went shopping I was searching for a Christmas tree and I came home with a brand new Peugeot 307 CC Coupé. God only knows what I’d bring home if I went shopping for Weetbix.
Suddenly I’m horribly embarrassed. I have nothing substantial to give them, except maybe a tiny slice of my famous lasagna, which I was kinda hoping I’d scoff down myself. I don’t drink tea. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink alcohol — No! I’m NOT Amish. Grrrr. I am, however, a by-product of my profession. Emergency Service people tend to drink caffeinated drinks and smoke cigarettes 24hours a day/ 365days of the week. I was no less, no more than my fellow officers. I had two choices from what I could see, and neither one of them was going to save by butt.
Choice One: I could offer my second mother and her delightful new girlfriend a Coke Zero, in a tea cup, but if I did that my second mother would spring off into the wretched world of caffeine poisoning and I’d never live it down.
Or…
Choice Two: I could make them feel guilty for putting me on the spot at 9:00pm in the evening, when they should be in bed where the elderly belong. Hmmm. Not life-saving choices, but what the Hell. My mind was otherwise occupied.
So here it is, dear readers. What to offer an unexpected dinner guest when they arrive on your doorstep in the dead of the night, sniffing for food.
- Someting to eat? What? Has Macca’s burnt to the ground?
- Whatya’ mean you don’t like Tofu and Alfha Sprouts? You should be grateful I’m thinking of your elderly organs
- Yep, you guessed it. Coke Zero in a tea cup
- A slither of your world-famous lasagna because dividing the one and only slice into three simply won’t work
- Your precious packet of unopened Tim Tams that you’d had purposefully saved for that glorious moment when you finally lost those dreaded kilos. Fat chance now
- Scrambled eggs made with one egg and a quart of milk. You’d be surprised how far that goes
- Stale bread dipped in scrambled egg juices and fried on a hot grill - wasn’t bad, actually
- Christmas cake some distant relative gave you two years ago - because they don’t know you and you couldn’t care less - and you’d forgotten that it was still there, in your pantry, collecting dust
- More Coke Zero. They say that fluids works as a brilliant hunger suppressant
- A verbal forehead slap because that Orgasm is so out of your grasp. C’mon. She’s my mother!
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