how i learned to stop worrying and love the oscars

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to throw an Oscars costume party. I made the Facebook event and promptly never thought about it again. Until Sunday morning, when I realized I AM HAVING A PARTY IN 7 HOURS AND I HAVEN'T DONE SHIT. So here's what my Sunday was like. I:

1) played the piano at an 11:30 AM Catholic mass that ran late.
2) went to AMC movie theater to buy two $10 gift cards (these were prizes.. more on that later)
3) went to the supermarket to buy $25 worth of snacks plus popcorn and movie candy (for prizes).
4) went to PetSmart to buy food and bedding for Huxley the hedgie.
5) waited in the car listening to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson while Matt went into the liquor store to buy beer.
6) cleaned Huxley's whole cage (which was really overdue for a cleaning, so it took FOREVER).
7) haphazardly wrapped up the prizes
8) de-cluttered, dusted, slightly re-arranged, and vacuumed the family room (OK fine, Matt vacuumed while I took a shower).
9) had a crisis when the super cute Oscar ballots I was going to use turned out to be printed in the faintest of gray inks (WTF were they thinking?) and so I had to use a less cute (but highly readable) ballot from Moviefone.com.
10) scrambled to put together my costume at 6:00, which ended up being comprised completely of garments that were either too small or too big for me.
11) ordered the pizza at 6:30, only to find that Matt had called the wrong restaurant branch (the right one is 4 minutes from my house, the wrong one is ...50 minutes away) and so the pizza didn't actually show up until like 7:30.
12) started to get really nervous that the party would bomb and we would all be sitting in awkward silence and my friends would pelt me with M&Ms at me at the end for wasting their time

But that didn't happen, fortunately. The point of this complain-fest is that all of that stress was negated by pretty great night. The ballots provided us (or at least me) with more of a reason to be invested in the winners, and we talked about movies almost the whole time, which is one of my favorite things to do. I'm so grateful to have friends who are willing to debate the distinction between sound editing and sound mixing.

Oh, shut up and just show us the costumes, you are saying. Happy to oblige, my friends. Happy to oblige.

Matt as R.P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Best Picture Winner 1975). Or MAYBE as Joe Pesci in Home Alone. The jury's still out on that.

Me, looking FLY as Frodo from LOTR: Return of the King (Best Picture 2003). Do you see THE PRECIOUS? That's my sister's earring.

Linds as Maria von Trapp from The Sound of Music (Best Picture 1965). She also brought crisp apple strudel, a brown paper package tied up with string, and some fake edelweiss-looking flowers. Unsurprisingly, she won the prize for best costume. (Do you read her blog? You should probably be reading her blog.)

Hey! It's Cait of Finding My Balance as one of the six merry murderesses from Chicago (Best Picture 2002). She also pwned all the rest of us in the Oscar ballot with 14 CORRECT PREDICTIONS. What the how does that even.

Cait's boyfriend E as Sargeant Sean Dignam from The Departed (Best Picture 2006). A very merry Sgt Dignam, if I may say!

Scotty as William Wallace from Braveheart (Best Picture 1995). This party MAY have been an elaborate set-up designed to get him to wear his kilt again. Kilts are awesome.

Jewel as Arwen from LOTR: Return of the King. Her costume is so rad. She has the Evenstar (which you can kind of see here) and a cool hooded cloak (which she took off for this picture) and everything.

Mara as Maggie Fitzgerald from Million Dollar Baby (Best Picture 2004). I have a few pictures of her pretending to punch things but I didn't think she'd appreciate me posting them for all of the Internetz to see.

And finally, my friends Katie and Kevin came dressed in all green in a satisfyingly meta if somewhat literal interpretation of How Green Was My Valley (Best Picture 1941). Unfortunately I don't have blog-worthy picture of them :(

So the moral of the story is: parties are a lot of work, but you should still have them because they're almost always worth it. Especially if you get to see your friends dressed up in funny outfits.