Posts Tagged ‘New Year’s Eve party’

Happy New Year – in our own special way

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

 photo: courtesy PDPhoto.org

By Tiber

As I said earlier, Dad decided that to save money, we would all stay home, get dressed up and have our New Year’s Eve party right here. No one else was happy about this but we all did dress formally and meet up in the big living room.

And then we all proceeded to just sit there, like a 4th grade dance, where nobody wants to touch anyone.

Someone finally suggested we play “Charades” but it became obvious that nobody was into it. When my brother, Kru, got his clue and held up four fingers, Duncan just yelled out, “Four words? How about “You…are…an …idiot.”

When the next person did the symbol for “sounds like-,” Dad groused, “It sounds like you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”  The game collapsed completely when the other team wouldn’t even try to name what clearly was “The Sound of Music,” and instead insisted they had solved it with “The Hound of Cusack,” claiming it was a documentary the actor had made about his dog.

The evening went downhill from there and eventually, Kru, Duncan, my sister Vanessa, and I ended up playing poker up with the security guards on the third floor of the staff wing. We’re hardly ever invited over there but maybe they felt sorry for us.

My sister–in-law, Honor, put the triplets to bed, though in their case, it’s much more like day’s end at a zoo, where the animals are conned into being relocked into their sleep enclosures by the lobbing of extra food.

Mom and my sister, Iris Nell, ended up knitting with the housekeeper, Mrs. Brunty, in the staff parlor and even Cook, after putting up orange traffic cones to block people from the kitchen, came out, plopped down, ignored the others and stared straight ahead. Mom was thrilled that she was being so sociable.

The three maids were overheard happily discussing how they can get a reality show to shoot here without Dad knowing. And Brunty the butler‘s head kept looming out of the darkness, like the Wizard of Oz, as he kept roaming from group to group, evidently not finding any of them worth joining.

Mom even took a tin of holiday cookies up to the attic rooms, just in case that unknown old woman she found up there one day is still in residence. Dad even contributed one of his special beers.

Dad himself settled into his study with the same beer, pie, a book on military history, his dogs and his youngest daughter, my teenaged sister, Erin, for company, so he was happy indeed. Erin sat by the big fire and drew pictures of skulls, so I guess she was happy too.

A very cold wind kicked up outside as the new year came roaring in but even with our differences, a good time was finally had by all, here at Villa de Loon.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

 

By Tiber

Since we’re short of money this year, Dad suggested that for New Year’s Eve, instead of our all going out separately and doing something stupid for the holiday, we should all stay here and do something stupid together. He didn’t actually use the word, “stupid,” obviously. He said we could stay in and have a fun time – no, wait, that wasn’t the word he used either, now that I think about it. What he said was, we could stay home together and have an “interesting” time. But that old saying “may you live in interesting times,” isn‘t really a hug, is it?

In any event, we can’t get out of this event. And at least Dad is promising food and liquor and that he’ll keep the heat turned on.

He still doesn’t know that I lost my job and am actually living here full-time up on the third floor, so he said, pointedly, that he wanted me to come home for New Year’s Eve too and to be sure to dress for it.

Dad told everybody to get dressed up for our party. He said that, even at home, he still wants this to be festive. Mom confided, though, that Dad really believes that if all of his children are wearing something formal, we’ll be less apt to misbehave. We were all born years ago and yet clearly, our parents still don’t know us.

Once, I actually saw my brother, Duncan, dressed in white tie and tails for an embassy event. (Evidently, they were under the impression that every other man in the world was dead.)  But even as dressed up as that, Duncan’s personality still had the subtlety of the Joker having a root canal.

And another time, my sister, Iris Nell, was wearing a long formal dress for a charity event, when she saw a woman walk in, wearing fur. Iris Nell raced over so fast to give the woman a piece of her mind, that she tripped on her gown and took a header right at the woman’s feet. Instead of getting back up to tell her off, Iris Nell just started biting the woman’s ankles.

Better clothing, clearly, has never slowed us down so far.