I can't believe it....

Last night I did something I've never done before: I completely forgot I had invited someone for supper.

The phone rang at 6:15pm while I was laying on the bed trying to stop feeling dizzy-- I hadn't felt well all day. LovelyDaughter answered the phone, and the voice on the other end was that of our invited guest apologizing for being late. Would it be all right with us, he wanted to know, if he and his wife were 15-30 minutes late? I heard LovelyDaughter say it would be perfectly fine, since the food wasn't quite ready yet.

I think LovelyDaughter wins the award for Understatement of the Year. The food was not even started. It wasn't even thought of.

When she gave me the message, I flew about a foot off the bed and landed on my feet running. All I could think was, ohmigoodness, ohmigoodness!

Fortunately, the whole family was there (including LovelyDaughter and JD) and when I explained the situation, everybody joined in and for the next 25 minutes it was, in JD's words, pandemonium.

I hurriedly planned a menu (which started out to be soup and ended up to be something else) and peeled vegetables and sliced the meat, Hubby emptied and re-loaded the dishwasher, LovelyDaughter made a cake, JD made a marinade for the meat and chopped vegetables, GuitarGeek vacuumed and picked up, and MB3 set the table. Everyone ran around frantically, jobs overlapping, everyone getting in each other's way, but there was lots of laughter and high adrenaline. At one point JD said, "I love this!"

When our guests pulled in exactly half an hour after the phone call, we were ready, just waiting for the meat to finish grilling. We did it!

We had a great visit and a great meal, and our guests never suspected a thing. If they had been someone else, I might have told them and we all could have laughed together, but these sweet people would have felt badly and not have enjoyed the evening as much if they'd known that we'd forgotten them.

Oh, and maybe you'd like to know what I pulled together. Well, when I gave the invitation I had planned to make Ratatouille, which is something good and a little different, but that required a shopping trip for ingredients, which I had not done, because I had FORGOTTEN.

I still can't believe I did this. It was on the calendar! How could I have spaced it like that?

Anyway.

Here's our last minute menu:

Grilled Marinated Pork Loin

Vegetable Medley (potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, served with plain yogurt, soy sauce and shredded cheddar cheese)

Canned homegrown apples

Homemade bread with strawberry preserves

Texas Cake and Icing (a chocolate sheet cake)

It was very good, thanks to everyone's help, and I was even able to send a little bread and cake home with our guests. But I'd prefer to REMEMBER next time and have a leetle more lead time!

And after our guests left we all took a triumphant breath, and I told everyone, fervently, THANK YOU!