Things at March’s soupapolooza! started off with a bang. Literally. And while I get super irritated with people who misuse and/ or overuse the term “literally” (I’m looking at you with my side-eye, Rachel Zoe), it is both appropriate and correct in this instance. It was buh-nan-ahs.

Semi-sweet Bitters showed up early on Sunday, as he always does, prepared to cut lemons, fill water bottles, light candles or whatever else I’d managed to forget or ignore. I love this. Even when entertaining close friends who are by nature pretty forgiving, I still stress about having things ready to go before the first arrivals (and by the way, I’m never on time). So the fact that Semi-sweet is almost always the premier guest and he’s game for completing the incomplete, I’m spared a great deal of hair pulling and some serious bouts of Procrastinator’s Agita. 

It is also not uncommon for Semi-sweet Bitters to bring his sabre, for sabrage naturally, which is a crowd pleaser to be sure: who doesn’t love watching someone decapitate the top of a champagne bottle with a sword? I have amassed quite a collection of trophies of this handy work on top of my sink, beautiful champagne corks with their glass necks still wrapped around the collar. I love them. They’re kind of like my version of taxidermy animal heads on a study wall, except I don’t have a study and the only things that got killed and stuffed are my sobriety and my good judgement.