Scratch "Caterer" Right Off the Career Aptitude List

So, Junior graduated from high school this year. We told him we'd host a graduation party at our house for him, but we couldn't do it right away because we were in the middle of getting work done on the house. But by the time he was at the house for the annual 2-week summer visit, the house & yard should be more amenable to entertaining.

Cut to a couple weeks ago, when on a Saturday night I was on my break at Job 2, and I grabbed my phone from my locker to catch up on the outside world. I opened Facebook to see an event invitation. To Junior's graduation party. At my house. On a date that hadn't been run by me ahead of time.

I read the event details, and the scheduled date/time was a Friday, starting at 6:30 PM (at most one hour after I get home from work), ending at 6:00 AM.

6 AM? Must be a typo, right? Nope. In the event details, Jr. stated "I don't know if it will actually last until 6 AM, but hey, if it does, it does." To which I was all OH REALLY?? Oh, and he put 150 people on the event list - including ZERO relatives - and added to the details "If I forgot to include anyone go ahead and let them know. It's an open event." OH MY GOD.

So I get home from work that evening, talked to J, found out that they had picked the only date that worked for both of them, and they should've said something to me but in the end, it wouldn't have made a difference. No big deal. I explained that they had timed it so that when I got the date, it was too late for me to request the night off from Job 2, but too early for me to know if I'd be scheduled to work that night or not. So we'd have to wait and see, but they understood and wouldn't take it personally if I couldn't make it.

It turned out that I got scheduled to work that night, and 2 other nights the week leading up to it, and I had to put in a lot of extra time at Job 1 that week, so not only couldn't I attend the party, I wasn't going to be around to help get the house ready, go shopping, or cook.

In other words, SCORE. I was all "Have fun cleaning the house, motherfuckers!!"

The down side? Since I wasn't available to help plan/work, I really felt like I had to stay out of it completely. So when I didn't see any progress being made on getting the inside of the house straightened up, I just kept it to myself, and told them how great the backyard looked. And I asked precisely once what food they were planning to serve. And when the answer was nothing more than "hamburgers and hot dogs", I just said "are you planning any side dishes?" and left it at that. No one was going to accuse me of being a nag this time.

So anyway, the night before the party, I got home from Job 2 at about 11 PM, and Nicole was sitting in the livingroom. She greeted me with "I have to bake six batches of brownies tomorrow". Oh holy crap. J & Jr. had gone to Costco and done some shopping. I figured that they must have missed the cake order deadline, so they were subbing brownies. Then I headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. And I saw 2 huge bags of mini candy bars (5.5 pounds EACH), and 2 36-pack boxes of Hershey bars. S'mores were on the menu, no doubt. In the pantry I found a few bags of marshmallows and a Costco-sized package (4 full-sized boxes) of graham crackers. There were several huge packages of hamburger and hot dog buns.

What I did not see: a single fruit or vegetable; a container of any party-type side dish.

The next day, I had about an hour to stop home between jobs. I headed straight for Nicole's room to get a reading on the guys' mood. She was sitting in there with the room A/C turned on, and 2 HUGE plates of brownies on her top bunk; she was keeping them in there because we hadn't turned the central air on, and she didn't want them to melt. She'd spent FOUR HOURS baking brownies, because no one took my suggestion of getting some foil pans to bake them in, so she was stuck doing 2 batches at a time & reusing the same pans. Apparently she had also been asked to make, and had flat-out refused to make, dirt cake and cupcakes.

And they had not missed the cake order deadline. There was a Costco cake in the fridge.

So here's the tally of what was bought:

• 1 huge cake (seriously, have you had a Costco cake? They weighh like 14 pounds)
• 11 pounds mini candy bars
• 150 frozen hamburger patties
• a lot of hot dogs (didn't count these)
• A bunch of chicken breast tenderloins
• 6 batches of brownies
• 72 Hershey bars
• 6 boxes graham crackers (a last-minute run to the store was made to pick up more before the party because they were afraid they'd run out)
• 4-6 bags of marshmallows (2 bags also included in the last-minute run)
• 2 or 4 huge bags of potato chips
• 0 slices of tomato
• 0 leaves of lettuce
• 0 ounces pasta salad
• 0 cubes of watermelon
• 0 sticks of carrots or celery
• 0 drops of salsa or any other kind of dip, even something fattening

As they were setting stuff out, Nicole said to Junior, "There are no vegetables!" and his response was "What would we need that for?"

When I got home from work, things were pretty quiet.  There were only about 10 people left at the house, so my worries about things lasting into the wee hours were unfounded.  I guess between 50 & 60 people showed up over the course of the night.  Unfortunately NONE OF THEM ATE A DAMN THING.

Nicole never had to bring a second plate of brownies out.  Maybe 20% of the cake was gone, although Junior decided that when he sliced it, he would cut the whole fucking thing into squares instead of just what was likely to be consumed.

Apparently they were going to make s'mores, but realized there were NO FUCKING STICKS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  So, no s'mores. 

A decent amount of chicken got eaten.  I don't know how many burgers & dogs actually got cooked, but there were plenty left uneaten.

One bag of chips got opened, and no one ever had to freshen up the bowl.  Same thing with the mini candy bars.

Good lord.

The next day, I took a leftover hot dog and a piece of cake to Job 2 for lunch.  It was good, but then later in the afternoon I ended up with a tension headache (gee, where'd THAT come from?) and started to feel generally ill.  My situation wasn't helped at all when I started burping the taste of hot dogs.  Luckily I made it to the end of my shift and got home, where I had to tell Nicole how gross I felt.  She was still ready to barf from brownie overexposure, so she sympathized.  I wrapped up the conversation by saying "OK, well, have to go get this hot dog taste out of my mouth," and she responded "Fruit's good for that - OH WAIT WE DON'T HAVE ANY."

I love Nicole.  That night we demanded salad for dinner.