- Sleep in until 11 on the day of the gathering.

- Take a nap until 2.

- Sit around reading and messing around online until 3.

- Finally take showers and get dressed.

- Take recyclables to the recycling center so it’s not all sitting in the middle of the hall when company comes over.

- Stop at grocery store for essential ingredients.

- Drop food items at home.

- Go to Target to return table runner that looked silly on new coffee table and look for decent placemats. Also look for small bowls.

- Fail to find decent placemats or small bowls.

- Try Kohls.

- Fail.

- Try the dollar store.

- Buy ugly placemats that you end up liking later.

- Fail to find any small bowls. At all. None. Not even ugly ones.

- Call “dinner party” guests to ask if they can come at 5:30 instead of 5 as it is now 4:45 and you’re not even home yet.

- Get home and begin cooking.

- Realize, mid-chop, that what you thought was chicken is actually pork. Cease cooking.

- Call guests and ask them to come at 6:00 instead of 5:30.

- Run to store to buy chicken.

- Cook delicious meal that gets lots of compliments even though it’s over an hour late.

- Remember to put garlic bread in oven after meal has begun.

- Engage guests, who have already finished the rest of the meal, in small talk while the bread takes 15 minutes to cook instead of the suggested 5-7.

- After meal, in lieu of actual entertainment, show guests your new gadgetry and repeatedly discuss the potency of your McIntosh-apple-scented candle.

- Just before guests leave, remember cool apron you were supposed to wear that says “Whippin’ up something sexy.” Stage a picture: