THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS...

So the time is drawing nigh... for the First BBQ of Summer!  If there's maybe one thing I love more than Home Depot, its a good BBQ, and only because I have to make at least 3 trips to the HD to be adequately prepared.  I'd seriously have a BBQ every weekend if my bank account could stand it.  Its the one time I don't really mind cooking. Lately, I've found the whole cooking thing largely un-fulfilling. I've been a good girl the past three months, sticking to this Paleo lifestyle and consistent with my CrossFit training, but most of attempts have left me with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing. Paleo recipes taste pretty good but they're not the most appetizing to look at it...plus there's something weird and sad about slaving away for three hours just to sit and pick at your chicken-stuffed sweet potatoes at half past midnight on a Wednesday.  Isn't cooking supposed to be sexy?  Shouldn't there be some hulking dude bent over the stove in a wifebeater, dishrag slung over his shoulder, letting you lick the vodka sauce from his outstretched finger? Well?  Shouldn't there be??  That's the kind of cooking I'm talking about. Most nights, you'll find me hunched over the kitchen sink, stuffing my face with some combination of ingredients just trying not to die.

But cooking for guests is a different thing altogether.  I love entertaining!  Everything about it.  The cleaning, the prep-work, the endless lists and countless shopping trips.  I love arranging hors d'oeuvres on vintage trays and mixing gallon bags of macaroni salad the night before.  I love the little things.  Like paper straws in red and turquoise stripes, and crisp, white napkins stacked in neat little rows along the bar. I love the way those colorful little sodapops sweat inside their glass bottles; I love the strings of twinkle lights and steel buckets overflowing with ice. I love the recipes and the cut flowers and the final mad-dash hours getting it all ready just as the first guests begin to arrive. Best of all, I love having no less than fifty of my favorite people drinking and laughing and making a total fucking mess of it all.  Its the best.

So yeah.  BBQs. Its about time.  And because I'm the most impatient person on this green earth, I decided May 31st was as good a day as any to get one going.  I put things in motion before I really had a chance to think about it, sent out the invite to no less than 80 people, which means now I have 22 days to grow a lawn, fix up the koi pond and get the vegetable garden planted.  Not to mention plan a vintage 50s menu of epic proportions.  No BBQ is complete without burgers and dogs, pulled pork and garlic shrimp and all kinds of grilled veggies.  Then there's the pasta salads and fruit salads and the Mexican bean salad and the guacamole and 7 layer dip and chips and baby carrots and pickles and what have you.  I also recently had the good fortune to try fresh pressed watermelon juice which is out of this world amazing. Some kind of watermelon vodka infusion is definitely in order. My biggest hurdle, of course, is finding some dude to be my resident grill man.  Its pretty much a travesty that I don't know how to grill the perfect burger at this stage of my life, but I'm too busy running around like a crazyface refilling bowls of chips and handing people drinks. Plus I need someone strong enough to get the propane tank filled at the corner hardware and schlep it back in one piece. We all know what happened the last time I tried to drag a Christmas tree back here.

If I can get the lawn/pond/garden thing in order this weekend, I should have a jungle paradise ready by the 31st.  And then I can tackle the rest.  BBQ PREP TO-DO LIST IS BELOW:

- GROW LAWN ALREADY!
- ASSEMBLE PUMP AND ATTACH TO FOUNTAIN
- REFILL KOI POND AND CONDITION WATER
- GET SOME FANCY FISH
- PLANT STRAWBALE GARDEN, BUY MORE FLOWERS
- PLAN MENU
- CREATE BBQ PLAYLIST
- LOCATE HARDBODIED GRILL MASTER

FEUDIN'

There have been some interesting backyard developments this week.  Firstly, it hit 75 today and the neighbors with the above-ground pool have been getting it ready for the weekend. Which means I have 48 hours to make them my best friends.  Secondly, I finally met my not-so-nice neighbors to the right.   I like to call them "The Neighbors Who Knock."  It first happened the night of my house-warming party in December.  It was around 4am and we were at that point in the night where we were getting a little rowdy trying to decide whether or not to scale the laundry ladder. I mean, fair enough.   The second time it happened, it was only 10pm on a Wednesday and my bestie and I were out back laughing at some inane thing the dogs were doing.  I know I don't have the best inside voice, but come on.  The lilting notes of ladies' laughter is no cause for knocking.   And the third?  It was 9am on a Monday and I was sorting piles of brick and concrete in preparation for the pond installation.  As far as I'm concerned, 9am is a perfectly acceptable hour to be sorting things in a backyard.  And if its not, the neighborly thing to do is to come out like a man, introduce yourself and ask me to quit my shenanigans.  I'm a very understanding person after my morning coffee.

The last thing you should know about these neighbors is, not only do they own the mysterious Door to Dimension X, but they also rigged a ship's sail from a giant oak smack-dab in the middle of their yard.  The effect is both rad and unsettling.  Not a day goes by that I don't wonder what they're doing with that thing. Between the door and the sail, half my time working out back is wasted staring into space, pondering the cosmic meaning of it all.  My trusty dogwalker has long suspected the N.W.K. have been building a steampunk airskiff back there.  Perhaps he's onto something.

Anyway.  This weekend, the Neighbors Who Knock actually decided to come out of hiding for a little backyard spring prep.  Being the gracious and sociable person that I am, I made it a point to introduce myself and Cricket Jean...which I thought went over reasonably well, even though they made the grand assumption I was living here with some kind of life-partner.  (Who could they be talking about?  My trusty dogwalker??) I also sensed some snark when the older gentleman mentioned they were tearing down their fence to better see all the impressive landscaping I was up to.  Well. I put on my best girl-next-door routine and Cricket gazed up with those vacant, doe eyes of hers, and it was all very civil and neighborly, and by the time it was over, I really and truly thought we were good. I was even gonna invite them to my BBQ bash in May.  

That all changed when I woke up to THIS:

Shut out.

Oh, I see.  You want nothing to do with Cricket and me.  Fenced out, huh?  Well, fine, Neighbors Who Knock, if that's how you want to play it, I'm game.  Just you wait until the 31st of May, my friends.  You'll wanna do a lot more than knock when all my funtime hipster friends rage until the dawn.  Just you wait. We'll burn your steampunk airskiff to the ground.