Our Life as A TV Sitcom

David doesn't ask questions anymore...I'm in charge of our social life and he just shows up. Sometimes, he even has a good time. Like Saturday when the whole family was invited to a big post-wedding bash for someone I know through work. Held in a cool old house in Raleigh, over 100 people showed up for tons of good food, plenty of good stuff to drink, and exceptionally good live entertainment. There were endless interesting paths to explore, both inside and out, and because of all of the nooks and crannies and breakable stuff around , it was important to keep close tabs on our kids.

Almost immediately, Grace announced she had to pee, and the hostess graciously agreed to take her. There was so much going on that it took me about twenty minutes to realize Grace should be about finished now, and by the way, where was the bathroom? I found the bathroom, and found Grace inside, surprisingly calm, as she announced she had been locked in. She hadn't really been locked in, as it was one of those old, heavy doors with crystal door knobs that can be tricky to turn, but she was happy to see me and make her way back to the party.

Since there were so many people, some people had sticky nametags on just to make it easier figuring out who was who. I'd brought my standard artichoke dip and wanted to label it so people would know what they were biting into in case they didn't like artichokes, or garlic, or parmesean cheese. David walked up just as I was writing out "Artichoke Dip" on one of the nametags and he said, "Is that my nametag?"

When the hotdogs and hamburgers were ready, it was easier for me to get in line for the whole family, but I was a little self conscious about my piled-high meat platter and told the guy behind me (who looked just like Ben Kingsley) not to worry, I wasn't going to eat all of this by myself.
He seemed to buy my story then but raised an eyebrow when ten minutes later, I was wandering around the party, sans family, with a plateful of meat.

There were filmmakers and prominent film critics at this party and even though we never knew exactly who everyone was, we knew there were a couple of big shots out there and we tried to act accordingly. At one point an unknown man walked straight up to me, looked me in the eye, and said, "Wait." (Was this one of the filmmakers? Was I about to be discovered?) "You have a dab of mustard on your chin."

But that wasn't my most humiliating moment of the night. That came when I was sneaking off to the bathroom to take care of some personal business and my feminine product fell out of my pocket and landed right in front of the band. Luckily for me, the lead singer is blind. I made it back to the tricky bathroom and couldn't find a lock to lock the door. I felt just like Cheryl Hines in that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where she asks her husband Larry to guard the door that doesn't have a lock. He doesn't and a man walks in on her at the most inopportune time and sees everything. Luckily that didn't happen to me, but it could have and David was nowhere around to help.

We have a secret signal, a code word, that was designed to be used in social situations when we want to communicate something important without spelling it out for all in earshot. At one point in the evening I was giving David the secret signal, but it wasn't working. He was too caught up in making eye contact with the prominent film critic. That's nice and all, David, I thought, but you need to seriously curb your enthusiasm and help me out here.