laura simson photography: Murphy's Law

It was still dark in our room when we woke up Saturday morning - not night-dark, more like it's cold and raining outside, so you want to snuggle up and stay in bed for the rest of the day - but we had work to do. It was the day of our first large dinner party and of course we saved all the big stuff to do the day of. We had gone grocery shopping the night before, so all the food had been bought and was ready to go, but our home was another story. Phillip headed downstairs first when I hear him yell "Oh No! (or maybe some four letter word...) You have got to be kidding me."

Our lovely refrigerator, who was not yet 2 years old, but whose warranty had just expired, had decided to stop working. When Phillip opened the door to the freezer, he was greeted with a pool of water since it had decided to defrost itself. Awesome. Of all the days for it to stop working, it picked the day of our dinner party. So after a minor meltdown, we collected ourselves, called a repair man who was there in 20 minutes (thank you Mr. Appliance!). No luck though. The part that needed to be replaced was not common and would need to be ordered. Great. Once this news had sunk in, we weighed our options, but there was really only one - coolers and bags of ice. Thankfully it's winter time, so at least we had that going for us. We pulled out every cooler we owned and then sorted through the items of the refrigerator that were "must save" - sorry old salad dressing that we never use, today's not your day either. Once this was done, we thought we were in the clear and could get back to preparing for the party. Time to run those last minute errands. To do this though, you need car keys, which of course, were no where to be found.

We searched EVERYWHERE - even the places we hadn't been, but could not find them. I then start to think back to the night before when we were cleaning out and throwing away... Is it possible? Did we throw the keys away? As I consider whether or not I can dive into a dumpster, Phillip reminds me that the garbage truck had already come that morning. Time for the second melt down of the day. I went through all the stages of grief in record time and just as I was reaching acceptance, Phillip finds the keys - in our pots... Apparently, they became wedged in the drawer above the pots and then fell into them. Really.

This was it though. No more mishaps - well, maybe one more if you count Harvey's attempt to eat the smoked salmon we had graciously put at his level on the coffee table, oh and when we completely forgot to prepare our first course, but once we remembered, we were back on track again. So, our first dinner party happened despite all the efforts for it to fail, we did it. And it was lovely.