Party Prep

With the exception of finishing the painting of the bathroom shelves (FINALLY), I have not done one damn thing to prepare for the thirty or so people who are coming on Saturday to celebrate Charlie's first birthday.

Well, except for some food prep:

Lamb, anyone?

Yes, those are indeed two of the lambs, and they are indeed enclosed in dog crates in the back of A.'s Roadmaster for a trip to Bill the Butcher's*.

You may well ask why the lambs are in the back of a station wagon. Because A.'s truck is full of scrap metal that he didn't manage to get to the scrapyard this past weekend, and he didn't want to unload it all and then load it again just to transport sheep. And what is a station wagon for but hauling?

Admittedly, perhaps the fine folks at Buick were not envisioning livestock among the items to be hauled in the back of this particular station wagon, but they were good enough to make the back spacious enough to accommodate two lambs. Besides, A. is just carrying on a family tradition. His great uncle once transported a few pigs in the back of a Cadillac.

True story.

Anyway. The lambs have been brought to Bill the Butcher. One of them will be turned into leg roasts and various other packages of meat for our alarmingly empty freezer, and the other will be left whole to be roasted on Saturday as the main course of Charlie's birthday feast.

Charlie, you may remember, is all about the meat, so this is only fitting.

Now I just have to figure out the rest of the food and drinks and how to set everything up and how to entertain the children and buy the napkins and plates and candles and . . .

Well. Now I just have to do everything else. But at least we know there will be lamb. How bad a party can it be if there's lamb?

* Just in case anyone is wondering why we're not just butchering them ourselves . . . The gutted lamb is supposed to hang for several days at around forty degrees, which improves the tenderness and flavor. As it is currently July and approximately double the recommended temperature for hanging meat, we had to pass that task off onto Bill and his walk-in refrigerator.