Hostessing!

I'm putting on my Hostess hat this week!

Full disclosure: I am an awkward human being. I am bad at hugs. I don't know what to do with my arms when I dance. I smile when I get nervous, which goes over poorly when I try to express sympathy. And we never hosted much when I was growing up, so it's not in my blood.

But I really like hosting things, regardless of all this. And this week we're having people over to dinner THREE times!

Which is great, except that my house is pretty much always like this:

I just now noticed the cat in this photo. And yes, he's pretty much always like that.

So whenever we have someone over, I have to spend hours finding homes for all the clutter. It's exhausting, mentally more than physically, because I am also a bit of a hoarder. And today I just don't have that mental energy.

Don't go in the basement

For your own safety. The cat reigns down there, so it's all danderiffic, and there are a lot of shifty piles on the verge of collapse. And spider webs. We had a spider population, but they were all eaten by the house centipedes, so now just their webs are left.

Also, I'm totally about to hide the clutter down there, so please just stay upstairs if you visit and we can have coffee and wine and pretend that we have it all together.

It's going to be a wonderful time!

I dusted, I'm about to throw food in the crock pot, and I have three kinds of seltzer. We have a bar full of liquor - even if the bar is on an old desk. Roomba is vacuuming for me. I even cleaned the coffee table. There may be beard bits in the bathroom, but that is totally the Husband's fault, and I can never seem to clean them all up by the time he shaves again. We have multi-grain Tostitos because we are so hip (and the kids like them better).

But mostly, it's about good company

And after hanging out with a baby and Thing 1 and Thing 2 for days on end, it's super fabulous to have adult conversation! Come, join me, and see what it's like wine-and-dining with

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore