evening on the terrace

Yesterday, E. called to say she was back in town and would like to get together. So I spontaneously invited her and her husband plus a few mutual acquaintances and neighbors from next door over for drinks and hors d'oeuvres on the terrace. Because the acoustics are bizarre and quiet conversations reverberate, I let the Hausmeister know I was having a gathering and issued a Höflichkeitseinladung (courtesy invitation) for him and his wife to come by for a glass of Sekt.

Well, they came by for a glass of Sekt, all right. At the beginning, it was cute - Hausie showed the first guests to the top of the hill behind the house, with a great view over the city. Hausie and wife were horrified when I gave their son orange juice in a handcrafted lead crystal sparkling wineglass, and guests echoed my sentiment that children, if anyone, should be exposed to quality.

My "nice that you could come by, I hope we won't be too loud" fell on deaf ears. They made themselves cosy and settled in. And dominated the conversation. Two neighbors work in the state office for historical preservation. They're full of fascinating factettes about the city, but could barely get a word in, because Hausie had to speak louder and faster and show he knew more. Hausie also deigned to tell me not to bring out more hors d'oeuvres, because he'd had enough. UnGroom said, "Oh, he's right, Molly. Don't get up - it's my turn, I'll be right back." The platter was empty within minutes.

At some point Hausie decided that we should all be using "Du." Um, wow, I get along with E. really well and we've known each other for a few years, but I prefer to continue using Sie with her. Looks were exchanged, conversation was kind of mixed up, and at the end of the evening I said goodbye to each guest using Sie, and they reciprocated.

E. and her husband stayed until 11, despite her jetlag. As they left, E's husband thanked UnGroom and praised his hosting skills. Hausie seethed. Why?

Hausie & Frau were the last to leave. Strange - that afternoon, he'd admonished me to keep the party quiet, but all evening he'd been unpleasantly loud.

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apple juice

Home alone, blessed relief. Didn't know where I was when I woke. Used two bath towels and threw them on the floor after I showered, then remembered I'm not checking out.

Almost tripped over a liter of apple juice on the welcome mat when I went out to do errands.

Last time I was here, about a month ago, there was some sort of kindergarten mob downstairs. Hausmeister-Wife came up and banged on the door, panicking because she had no apple juice.

All those years of therapy so I could leave the house without a diaper bag over my shoulder, since I now have no kid-sibs in tow. Suddenly I'm supposed to stock kiddy vittels?

Maybe it really was a junior guerrilla attack and she didn't know kids were coming. Maybe she didn't know that tetra-packs keep for years. Maybe she never thought of stocking the stuff up. Or maybe she didn't know she had a kid of her own.

What's worse than someone without kids telling parents what they're doing wrong? Someone childfree by choice who's still burnt out from herding a million little siblings, that's what's worse. My siblings were trained to make a list of what they needed, if they wanted to have friends over. I taught them rules of thumb for calculating how much we'd need. It was good math practice for them. And we generally were stocked.

I looked around, pretending I didn't judge her incompetent. Somebody had a 1.5-L tetra pack in the kitchen. I said yeah, here you go, just replace it before the others return.

When S. returned, I used this as an example of insufficient boundaries and one-way relations with the pseudo-hausmeister family. T-M defended that as "friendly neighborly relations."

And she deemed it very unfriendly and unneighborly of me when I asked her whether the stairwell was ever really cleaned, or just vacuumed briskly every month or so.

Technically, I'm liable to replace the 0.5 L of juice the woman didn't replace. I wish I didn't know that.

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