Stuff. And manners.

I am definitely not very good at posting in a quasi-immediate, semi-timely fashion.

Last week's hunting was verrrrrrry fun and fantastic and I have the ill habit of not sorting through my finds very quickly - and they just pile up during the week while I revel and lounge in being shuddering, huddled, useless lump after work. Boo hoo.

I have 4 places marked out for treasure-hunting today and plan to post much more today/tomorrow since I have a social event this evening.

I also have profound intentions of taking my own pictures instead of just copying other people's stuff off the internet. But what can I say, I'm not always entirely original.

And now.

I had a weird thought/memory about a week and a half ago when I woke up and got up in the morning. One of my newfound crazes is this homey, nesting sort of gig where I am into buying dishes and setting up a beautiful dining table and hosting tea parties and all that.

For some reason, I was reminded of this one time I was invited over for a dinner party and sleepover at my good friend Lorraine Sadler's house - and this was in middle school. Probably grade 7 or something like that.

She lived in a nice neighborhood, in a nice house, with nice things. Nothing overly showy, at all, but different from my house. I always slept in the trundle underneath her white metal daybed. Hee. And I remember the nice icy water I would get from the glass bottle with attached stopper (one of those flippy things) that they would keep in the fridge. We certainly never did things like that at my house.

At the dinner party - and I don't even remember who else was there, really - maybe some other family friends?? - there was a "formal" table setting where I had nary a clue.

I remember taking some salad, and putting it on my dinner plate, and then passing it over to Lorraine's mom, who did the same thing.

I know it was not until much much much later - maybe the next day, or week - that I realized there was also a salad plate, and I was supposed to put the salad on the salad plate, instead of on the dinner plate. Oops. I did keep wondering what that extra empty plate was for, really.

You know though, the funny thing is, I am utterly convinced that Lorraine's mom knew salad was for the salad plate, while the dinner plate was for the other stuff, but she saw me doing what I did. And as a hostess, she did the same thing I did to make me feel comfortable. Maybe I had learned a few things about table manners, and etiquette, and such from our mandatory Home Ec classes (for which I am eternally and wonderfully grateful, by the way), but we honestly did not really eat salad in my house growing up, and I was not familiar with salad plates. A salad compartment on the lunch tray from the cafeteria, maybe, but not a sit-down, formal, social dinner.

And I have heard it said that the mark of a true, polite, well-mannered hostess is to make her guests feels comfortable, and not to point out the relatively small gaffe of her daughter's clueless friend. And if you see a guest do something slightly "off", you should do the same thing so as not to highlight the blunder and embarrass her.

I don't know, I was just thinking about that random, little incident and feeling utterly thankful and mildly chided because as much as I like to focus on manners (especially in dealing with some of these wild! untamed! modern! children!), sometimes I feel like quite a shrill, strident Nazi about it. But Lorraine's mom did something silently like that (she was conversing and being entertaining throughout, I remember) and it was very subtle, but I've never forgotten it and feel much appreciation for how she chose to handle it.

So I guess I still have a lot to learn about being a kind, sensitive, and thoughtful person.

Thank you, Lorraine's mom!!!

P.S. I saw Lorraine at the high school reunion a couple years back and I believe she was happily married and being her old brilliant self. Salutatorian of our high school class, I believe she was?? And she was working on her doctorate in physics at Berkeley. Yowza. But I still remember playing "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" at her house during one of these sleepovers and getting the right answers to two questions, but ultimately caving to her insistence on other, wrong, answers.

Because the difference between a rabbit and a hare is the size of the legs, AND THE EARS. Not the teeth.

And the Mississippi River is not the longest river in America.

:P