Channeling my mother

I was on the way in to drop off  Lil'T at her preschool. I happened to be behind a fellow parent and her young son. Anyway, she tried to tell her son to hold the door open for me and my daughter as we were entering. He wandered off as though she were speaking a different language. This mom turned around to me and, embarassed, apologized for her son's manners. I told her not to worry about it and recounted to her how my son will hold open a door for the people behind him but stand in the opening. It is hard to explain without a picture, but we're pretty much left to duck under his outstretched arm or just take hold of the door ourselves. It isn't as much of a problem now.

He's 6 feet tall.

Anyway, we stepped on the elevator not because we were lazy to walk up the steps but because we were with people who insist on pushing elevator buttons. We were laughing about how you just don't see common manners anymore. I mean, the young people these days! They don't know how to open a door for somebody or how to hold a door when somebody is behind you on the way out of a building. We were well on our way to discussing how the music of today is just noise when that recognition came. We both turned into our respective mothers for a moment. Damn.

Sure we laughed it off. Acknowledged it even. Still, I hate that. I am still young at heart (whatever that means) and I've got the maturity to embrace being silly. I've got my radio firmly fixed on 89.5 FM, less talk, more non-stop dance music. I refuse to hear stuff played at my Junior prom on the oldies station. REFUSE! But I know it is there.

Ah hell, who am I kidding? I'm listening to NPR just like the rest of you Class of '87 folks out there.

We got game! Yes, we do! We got game! How 'bout you?

For the second year in a row, we've hosted a geeked out Game Night for New Year's Eve. I apologize if I forgot to invite you directly, and next year I'll improve on that too. Maybe you can just assume that we're hosting and you can come. If you ask what you can bring, I'll say something to eat during game play because I won't be serving dinner, just heavy pupus. I will, however, make mochiko chicken. And if you like, you can bring something to drink, but we'll have punch, sodas, and beer. Each time we host one of these things, I discover something new to add.

The first year, I desperately wanted to play a spooky game called Arkham's Horror, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't recognize Lovecraft's name, you'll recognize all his characters because just about all the scary bump in the night stories out there have their roots in Lovecraft's universe. That was a totally geeked out 5 hour game at least. Not a great choice. Lesson learned. Lost players and interest pretty quickly, and being the host of the festivities didn't afford me the luxury of playing it.

This year we selected games that take a shorter time to play. We had 3 zones of play. There were the console games area and a board game table in the downstairs living room. Upstairs, we had refreshments and a nice place to chat or play in that living room.

I had envisioned that the kids would play games in one room, the adults in another, and the teens in yet another area. But I think the way it went was a lot more organic and worked out fine.

Next year, I think I want to play Puerto Rico and Ticket to Ride with expansion pack. Both are great games but we didn't even open the boxes.

I participated in the game Portrayal (which works best with adult only players) and Mexican Train. We also played Camp which is probably the best game for different age players. It is a trivia game with 4 levels of play:  preschool, school age, teen age, and adult. One of our teen aged contestants was so well versed in the outdoor/wildlife trivia, we voted her to be an adult player.

To improve for next year:

• Short tables for the living rooms. Aside from the dining table, which got overrun with snacks, we need to put coffee tables or ottomans with boards on them to make a good playing surface.
• Short games work better than long games, so use the games  30 min - 1 hour in length.
• Hide the muggle games (i.e. Monopoly, Scrabble, Life - sorry Maggie, Taboo, etc.) Muggle games have their place, but the Euro games are so much more interesting and challenging.  
• Have an area for card games. We didn't really address those and we've got great non-muggle card games. 
• Make a sign that points out the beverages are being stored on the back deck. Make a sign for the recycle bin. Get punch cup hangers. Remember champagne flutes.
• Somehow remove the curse from the dice rolling tower which repeatedly rolled ones for me. It was so bad, other players wouldn't even let me touch their dice for fear that my low rolling cooties would get on them.
• More mochiko chicken. 'Nuf said. 

I'd like to make a plug for game nights no matter what. When my eldest was in preschool, he had a pretty bad stutter. It was gone by kindergarten, but took lots of work and parental retraining... a post for another day.  One of the things that the speech therapist suggested was that we start playing board games. While I'm sure my mind went numb from repeated playing of CandyLand, the board games forced us to slow down, teach good turn taking, and most importantly, listen carefully to our child. Turns out he wasn't the only one who needed to learn how to communicate. We don't play games as often as Hubby would like but when we do, it is always a break from the usual tuning out of each other's lives. The kids laugh and rarely break down in tears. We have an extensive collection of board games and really, they're treasures I'd go as far as to say that if you're considering getting married, you need to play a board game with each other first. You can learn volumes about each other.