MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME, BUT BRING YOUR OWN RACQUET

I recently (by recently I mean sometime within the last 48 seasons of Idol) read an article on being the perfect hostess to weekend guests.   It was a freaking half page of the Bangor Daily and started with a description of  the many amenities (including kitchenettes) in each of the guest suites  at the private home in the Bahamas where the writer (perhaps a summer resident of the island, I will neither confirm nor deny) was a recent guest.  Is she merely relating helpful tips, or flaunting her more fabulous than mine lifestyle?  I wasn’t quite sure, so I read on.  

The article continues to say that when she entertains guests at her home in the Hamptons, she promotes togetherness and camaraderie.   Rather than offering her guests suites with their own kitchenettes, she encourages them to start their day by gathering around the massive kitchen table (conveniently located in the massive kitchen) chatting and selecting from a breakfast menu with more options than the local diner (and prepared by a staff more massive than the one at the local diner), with hot beverages created by the large Italian espresso maker that is SUCCCHHH a hit with the guests. Flaunting?  I’m starting to think so.  Then, after a full day of enjoying local activities (yachting, antiquing, being knighted) they return to the manse for cocktail hour and a fabulous dinner made from the finest, freshest local ingredients (her interpretation of local being anything tiny and expensive and harvested on planet Earth).  The group takes a few minutes before bedtime to plan the next day’s schedule  (horseback riding, tennis, audience with the pope). Then they are sent to bed with hot homemade cookies  – lulled to dreamland by the restful melodies of the on-staff string quartet.

Other ‘good hostess’ recommendations included naming the guests’ sleeping quarters to reflect the surroundings, and keeping an ample supply of tennis rackets for guests who arrive unprepared. Really,  that was an actual suggestion.  By the time I read the part about having assistants do the shopping, errands and household chores,  there was no question, she was blatantly flaunting. No person in the real world – and by real world I mean whatever patch of soil orbits around me - could identify with that lifestyle, and would be hard-pressed to glean any useful tips from that article.

To clear my mind, I turned to my porn channel – some call it the Food Network.  Oh look – it’s the Barefoot Contessa driving her shiny new Mercedes SUV from her oversized shingled cottage in the Hamptons (hmmm, that Hamptons place again) to a small shop in the center of  this enchanted village to purchase provisions  for her dinner guests.  Nothing in plastic, nothing presliced and every jewel-toned item worthy of a Vanity Fair cover.  We follow her back to her gleaming white and granite, incredibly well stocked and organized kitchen - with the occasional glimpse into the shiny fridge with its fancy-schmancy mushrooms, pate and champagne - in bottles! No crumbs, no limp, expired herbs, nothing fuzzy, no hardened drizzle of Log Cabin syrup to be seen.  I turned to Nickelodeon.

Thank God for Sponge Bob.   He doesn’t live in some ostentatious (thank you Shostack High School Vocabulary workbook)  shingled cottage in the magical Hamptons.  He lives in a pineapple under the sea. 

Here on the rock, we may not live like they do in that Hamptons fairy tale land.  We may not have 15 bedrooms with private indoor baths, and we may not have clean refrigerators, but we do occasionally need to play hostess.  Here’s how I have adapted her ‘suggestions’ to suit my lifestyle.  Feel free to use any of my tips to make your next hostessing experience a joy, or at least a survival.

First, while I see no reason to slap a label on my guests’ sleep quarters, it’s the only suggestion she made that doesn’t involve conducting interviews or spending massive wads of cash, so here’s what I did. The living room offering the secondhand sofa bed with its inch thick foam mattress, creaky springs and views  of the wastewater treatment facility shall be Thunder Hole, and the oversized closet harboring the yard sale futon with the frayed edges and mystery splotch will be OceanSpray, because I really hope that stain is cranberry juice.

Second, (maybe this shoulda been first, but it's just how my mind rolls) let’s rethink the whole ‘weekend guest’ thing.  I have a large circle of friends, but very few I want slogging into my kitchen in their jammies expecting breakfast and borrowing my spare tennis rackets for 2 or 3 consecutive days.  For the sake of friendship and overall safety, I limit visits to one night.  There have been some ‘special’ guests I've encouraged to stay longer, but they usually sobered up, gnawed through the restraints, and made their escape by Day 2.

Planned activities?  The closest we come to making a plan is consulting the TV Guide channel to see when Cheaters is on – you never know when we’ll spot someone we know. Other than that, I have always found spontenaity is the way to go. 

I do not have an abundance of guest suites with or without kitchenettes, but I have amassed a rather impressive supply of coolers that also serve as nightstands, extra seating and after one particularly ‘spontaneous’ event involving an indecisive deer on Route 198, an impromptu field dressing station/dinner storage facility.

I scoff, but I do respect the underlying theme of being a gracious host.  Therefore, I offer professionally brewed morning coffee.  Or rather a gentle push toward the convenience store right down the road where the coffee is professionally brewed.  It may not be made by a large Italian espresso maker, but Guillermo, the bronzed, muscled strapping 22 year old summer clerk who brews the Hazelnut and restocks the cups, is SUUUCCHHH a hit with the middle-aged women who crash at my place.   Who’s flaunting now?