Genesis

"Househost?" you say.

Why yes, a househost. As in:

One beautiful summer day, our dear friend, the excellent and talented Mr. Lowe, enjoyed an afternoon of tea and cake at our apartment.  Our new apartment.  As in the apartment that we had recently purchased and moved our lives into a week earlier.

Puzzled, he looked around at the furniture, the books, the paintings, the plants, and the conspicuous lack of moving boxes overflowing with stuff.  Sadly, not much credit could be taken for our neat and cozy new surroundings.  After living in a 400 sq. ft. studio with your significant other for 4.5 years, plus two cats, you quickly learn to try not to accumulate too much.  Besides, the boxes overflowing with unpacked clothes were stuffed in the bedroom closet.  They wouldn't be empty for a another 3 weeks or so, but I digress...

The conversation was thirsty business. Tea was offered and accepted along with cake.  If I had been alone, chances are the cake would have been eaten standing up at the kitchen counter, attacked with a fork straight from the box (Yellow pound cake with raspberry jam and cream cheese frosting from Two Little Red Hens, for the New Yorkers out there. Can you blame me?).  But we had a guest.  The tray came out, along with the teapot, buggy teacups (the bugs were painted on the teacups, not crawling around inside them), saucers, sugar bowl, creamer and wooden teaspoons.  The cake was served on koi patterned dessert plates with miniature wooden forks.  It was a pleasing set up, and when everything was brought out to the dining table and arranged, Mr. Lowe spontaneously remarked, "Why, you're such a good house...host!"

A phrase that could have been interpreted in a million different ways by a million different people, but at that particular moment, I identified "househost" with the following:

• someone who takes pleasure in the domestic aspects of life
• someone who sees entertaining as an opportunity for a little something extra
• someone who by virtue of their age/gender/career/disposition could potentially be categorized as the sort of person who might take offense at outright displays of either of the above

A strange mix of emotions ran through me. Pride, embarrassment, pleasure, guilt.  How should I react to such a comment?

I guess I'm still trying to figure it out. Hence the blog. Cause I'm sure there's some great advice available out there on the internets.  And now it can find me.

P.S. You know it's kitty cat love when the little germ would rather spontaneously puke up a hairball on the couch than get even one inch further away from the hand that's giving him scratchies.