Can I Borrow a Cup of Sugar and Your New Year's Eve Party, Please?

So New Year's Eve turned out pretty fun after all. Sometimes I think the best kind of party is one that happens spontaneously without a lot of stressful planning. Actually, what I really kind of mean is that the best kind of party is one that you let your neighbour plan stressfully and then crash at the last minute, after asking her to babysit your daughter so you don't have to drag her (the daughter) to the hockey arena an hour early (because it's a tournament) and you have it on good authority that this arena falls into the category of inhumanly vampirically freaking cold, and the daughter is playing so nicely with the little girl from next door that wouldn't it be more sensible to just let them continue playing, because after all what kind of plans could they possibly have on New Year's Eve?
My husband claims he had completely forgotten that it was New Year's Eve when he went over to check if they were okay with Eve staying there while we went to hockey. I was perfectly aware that it was New Year's Eve -- pride? shame? what are these things of which you speak? I wanted to just go and watch the damned game, rather than spend the whole time searching frantically in the red striped bag for popcorn, juice boxes, gummy bears, Game boys, ipods, barbies and colouring books. That's right, I wanted to be able to focus my full attention on our team getting their asses handed to them by a bunch of strapping farm lads from Kemptville.


Then when we got back, naturally they asked us in for a drink. And it would have been rude to just snatch our daughter and go home, right? Well, it would have been less a snatch than a really complicated, loud and ugly extraction, since she'd heard rumours of 'staying up until midnight'. There were margaritas. There was fondue. There was the woman who was clearly in desperate need of the life-changing services of my non-wacky chiropractor (I'm pretty sure I managed to write down the correct number, although when you're really drunk it's remarkable easy to flip right past chiropractors and end up at Coatings-Protective and Clothing-Special Needs, and also Clowns, so I really hope she ends up with a less-inflamed sciatic nerve and not a guy in big funny shoes with an anti-reflective coated truss, because she seemed really nice). There was a baby who smiled at my daughter and cried every time Dick Clark appeared, so totally my kind of kid. There were earnest, heartfelt, loving midnight hugs exchanged with people I had met three hours earlier.
Eve was up until after one and ended up sleeping over. At the end of the night, I only had to make it across the driveway (it was a near thing, believe me). And all with no fussing with my hair or freaking out over what to wear (well, okay, I did that for the hockey arena anyway). Love thy neighbour? No freaking kidding. My neighbours kick ass. I should bring them some cookies, or possibly a kidney.