The Perfect Storm

House guests for four days, while hosting a St. Patrick's Day party for 30+ adults in the middle of the visit.  All the associated cooking and shopping, plus the regularly scheduled weekend kid-soccer.  Plus cleaning the whole house, since the babysitter will be upstairs with the kids while the party is going on downstairs.  Ye gods.

I've been a lunatic for a week now, trying to get ready for all this and do what I can ahead of time.  I did a bunch of cooking today, and there is much more to come tomorrow!  But right now I am in my bed with my iPad, surfing the Web and listening to my husband and his buddy laughing together in the kitchen downstairs over bourbon Cokes and the music and silly videos that they are playing on the computer.

These two guys met as sophomores in high school.  Although they only went to school together for two years, they have been the closest of friends for more than 25 years.  To see them now, you would wonder what they have in common: Himself is a corporate attorney, and his friend a helicopter-piloting Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines.  But they have a bond going back to those high school years that time and distance have never broken, and are as brothers in every way but blood.  They served as best men in each other's weddings and travel great distances to get together a couple of times a year.

Himself doesn't have much social time these days.  He works, he commutes, he gets home and spends time with the family, he coaches soccer, he sleeps.  We do spend some time with friends (me more than him) but never enough.

So, despite the fact that I'm tired and the two nutjobs downstairs are keeping me awake, it's okay.  Himself is recharging his batteries and I don't have the heart to interfere!