party animal

I made a goal to host two "parties" this year. I kind of hate the word 'party' because in my head, it conjures up:
--a child's birthday party
--popular high school people
--a lot of people
--noise, crowds, dancing

And I do not have (or in the last case, want) any of those things. So "gathering" is a better word, I guess? But that sounds pretentious.

Two Christmases ago, we had a pretty big gathering at our place, and there was like a total of 30 people who came and went over the course of the evening. That was fun and pretty exciting. There was a lot of wine consumed!

I wanted to do one at the end of May with some former colleagues to celebrate spring and the end of t3sting season, but I never got around to it and I was afraid none of them really liked me after all and no one would show up.

I decided to do a little thing for my birthday. I sent out the invites a good month in advance, since it's such a crazy busy time of year. As always, I was worried no one would come, or even worse, that only a couple people would come. It turned out to be 10-12 or so, which was a nice number. It was a pretty quiet evening, but that's kind of standard, I guess. Anyway, it was fun, and there was cake. I really appreciated that some people made it!

One excellent side benefit of having people over is that it forces me to look at our apartment without my blinders on. I gave away a stack of things that had been piled in a corner for weeks. I moved some little things so the edges of floors were clearer. It made our place look so much more streamlined and attractive! I am motivated to continue keeping things as de-cluttered as possible. Which means continue getting rid of and organizing all the crap that I have.