My guests have gone home, and nobody would ever know by looking at the tidy dining room that only an hour ago it was full of laughing, talking people, happy in each other’s company and snarfing down the food like there was no tomorrow.

 

That’s why I invited them.  My daughter’s friends are wonderful, but then what would you expect?  My daughter herself is so wonderful. 

 

Almost five pounds of pork tenderloin,  a huge bowl of au gratin potatoes (with four kinds of cheese in the sauce!), green beans, baked beans (they’ll be farting all the way home.)  (Did I really say that?) homemade rolls, and blackberry pie.  Don’t you wish you’d been here, too?  It was starchy but delicious.  I’d offer you some leftovers but there aren’t any.  I packed it all up and sent it home with them.  

 

Well, they told me it was delicious.  I didn’t eat any of it; I just made it all.  I intended to eat some of it but at first I was too busy and then I was too interested in watching them eat and talk and then they were all gone and the leftovers with them.  That’s just as well because I’m too fat anyway.

 

I think my daughter’s kitchen contains more of my pans and Tupperware containers than my own kitchen now has.  I need to go up there and reclaim my stuff.  Not all that long ago I owned twelve beautiful pie pans and now I have exactly. . . . one.

 

Would whoever took leftover pie home from my house over the past few years please return the pans? 

 

A house is always spookily quiet after the crowd leaves.  I like it better when it’s loud.  I don’t ‘do’ silence very well.

 

I think I’ll go back to the kitchen and crank up the music.  Way out here in the country, there are no neighbors to complain.

 

Of course, the acoustics out here are so good, a person can sneeze in the middle of the night, in his own home, in a room with the doors shut, and the next day the neighbor down the road will ask him how his cold is.

 

I do love company.