reverb10 day 9: party

Today's reverb10 prompt comes from author Shauna Reid:

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

I can't believe I didn't write about this back in July, but here goes:

Every year, Greg and I host a Fourth of July blowout for family and friends. July tends to be my busiest month of the year - we host the big Fourth party as well as Jane's birthday party, and it's also the month of the summer theater show I do every year, so I'm at rehearsal constantly - suffice to say, I'm busy pretty much every second of that month. So much so that this year, I hinted I might not do the Fourth, but I was told in no uncertain terms by someone that even if I didn't send out invites, they would show up anyway. Happy that we had created a tradition not just for ourselves but our friends too, we carried on with the plans.

This year, the Fourth was on a Sunday. On the previous Thursday, I was in a good mood as I headed to rehearsal for Chicago. I had a four day weekend, we had fun plans, our party was shaping up to be a good one, and the weather forecast was great (always a concern when you've invited 40+ people to your house). I was at rehearsal for about five minutes when I got a panicked call from Greg saying that Jane was projectile puking everywhere.

Because I'm a jerk, the first concern I had wasn't for Jane - it was the fact that if she was sick on Thursday, that meant that Greg and I would be sick.....right in time for the party on Sunday. (Of course I was worried for Jane too, and spent the night at her side with the bowl).

Flash-forward to Sunday. Because we had no idea if she/we were going to be OK, we had put off getting food because we didn't want to be stick with dozens of burgers, dogs, etc. if we had to call the whole thing off. Miraculously, we were all OK! Cue the crazy circus hectic music as we flew to the grocery store to get the food, and got back to the house and got everything reading in super-duper-fast style. I felt like we were on one of those HGTV reality shows where they have to design a house in 24 hours. Except we had way fewer hours.

July in CT was a blazing hot month - every day was 90 kajillion degrees (approx). As I was flying around the house getting things ready, I noticed how hot I was getting. I figured it was because I was running around. Just in case, I checked out the thermostat and...well, holy shit. It was approaching 85 degrees in our house. Not OK for a house with an air conditioning system that had been replaced a week before. Sure enough, it had stopped working.

So Greg got on the phone with the AC guy as I pulled out our one measly fan and hoped that no one would actually pass out. He managed to convince the guy to come out, and he was able to temporarily repair it so everything was back up and running - and we kept our fingers crossed that our now 90-degree house would cool down a bit before everyone arrived.

In the meantime, we had the sprinkler running in the backyard, to soak the trees down before we set off our (ahem) somewhat-illegal fireworks later. My brother-in-law had suggested we do this so we don't set the whole town on fire. Wanting to be good citizens, we let the water run all morning, and the we pulled the sprinkler to the side yard for the kids to run through, and filled up the kiddie pools as well.

So, the people arrive, everyone one is eating, drinking, and being merry, when my friend yells up to me from the yard, "Your sprinkler is broken!" and at the same time I hear from inside, "why did the faucet stop working?"

Yes, friends. As 40-something people drank and drank their little hearts out, filling their bladders like nobody's business, our well ran dry - we had no more water. No more water = no sinks. No sprinkler fun. No toilet usage Holy shit (quite literally).

My industrious friends Lisa and Luke suggested we go to the grocery store to get many gallons of water - apparently if you dump a gallon of water in the toilet, it forces a flush. Lisa was gracious enough to make the water run, and made some very lovely "If it's yellow, let it mellow/if it's brown flush it down" signs.

Clearly, we have classy parties.

Thankfully - and I cannot stress how thankful I was for this - the water came back within a couple of hours. We had air conditioning. We had water coming out the faucets. Most importantly, we had toilets we could flush.

It was a Fourth of July miracle.

And that, my friends, was absolutely the most memorable party of my year.