Blue Moon

It was a sour end to the year.

In the aftermath, Collette was angry. Angry at the media and at the general ignorance of the public. But it didn’t matter. Rose would find something else to do — but at the loss of working with good friends who had been like brothers to her for the past ten months.

Meanwhile, OLeif was working from home at his desk in the cold basement, which smelled like toast because of the space heater which managed to make things a little less chill.
Nearly all of the snow had melted, and in the early part of the afternoon, the sun returned, bringing hopes of a visible moon that night.
For Kitts and Carrie-Bri had put together a Blue Moon New Years Eve Party in honor of the full moon having fallen on New Years Eve, which had, apparently, not taken place in about twenty years.
And fortunately, Rose was able to spend time with her former co-workers and chocolate peanut butter bars that she had prepared for the occasion.

Theodore and Gloria arrived at 7:30 to spend their night watching a sleeping Puck with a movie, popcorn, Whoppers, etc.
On the way, OLeif and Collette dropped by the grocery store to pick up an item of food to add to the coming night of mayhem. As they walked inside the store, a voice came up over the loudspeaker:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the store will be closing in two minutes.”
Limited amount of time cut down on the initial creativity of OLeif, who had planned to pick up Moon Pies and dust them in blueberry powdered Jell-O. So instead, at Collette’s suggestion, they took a package of Oreos with red frosting sandwiched in the middle. Harvest moon, at least.

When they pulled up to the house, the bass of the music they, at first, thought was coming from the basement next door. However, as they approached the front door, they realized that it was coming from inside the Silverspoon house.
“Now I know why my dad wanted to get out of the house this evening,” OLeif laughed.
As soon as the door was opened, they were blasted with music from the dance floor — the dance floor which was the living room — transformed: sheets of blue hung from the walls, blue ornaments sparkling from the ceiling, all lightbulbs replaced with blue bulbs, silver paper and wrappings, and three packages of blue balloons strewn over the floor. Already present were: Kitts and Carrie-Bri (their hosts), Relevance, Old Blue, Wally and Lolli, Curly, and Izzy. They were followed not long later by Joe, Magnus, and Shepherd and Malaya. Most people had interpretted their own idea of what Blue Moon party attire should look like. But Carrie had taken it the furthest with blue bell-bottom belly-dancing pants, Rose’s blue rubber shoes, additional baby blue hair pieces, silver antennae, and blue face paint.
In the kitchen, the spread was already being munched away: assorted drinks including blue Fresca punch, and then fried chicken with blue cheese dip, blue tortilla chips with salsa, blueberry Jell-O with blueberries, and blueberry pie with blue Cool Whip.
By this time, the dance floor was open. For nearly two hours, almost everyone contributed somehow to the arena. This included various sundry forms of tribal fusion from Carrie and Malaya, ‘balloon dances’, London Bridge (in which Relevance also happily participated), swing dancing by Izzy, Malaya, and Lolli, break-dancing by Wally (until he nearly fell into the television), and then, of course Joe and his many, many signature moves… perhaps the most popular being lifted himself off his back on the floor, with only his leg-power. There was naturally his own belly-dance contribution, head-bobbing from Shepherd, OLeif, and Old Blue (who refused to participate in the ridiculousness in any other way), Russian dancing by Curly… And even Magnus was called out and did some sort of club dancing which Collette, and no one else for that matter, seemed to have any idea he knew how to do. There was generous applause granted to everyone.
Finally, as the music died down, it was an hour before midnight. So out came pads of paper and a cup of pencils and pens for everyone to play a sort of grown-up version of Telephone. The results were amazingly funny.
“Where’s Rose?” everyone asked. “We need her for this game. She writes the most hilarious stuff.”
“Oh, she’s at a party at Jeremy’s house,” said OLeif.
“Jeremy!” Shepherd scoffed. “What does he have for New Years Eve? Cows?…”
The countdown was brief. About thirty seconds total, and they watched the crystal ball fall once again in New York. But no one seemed as interested in that as they were in three rounds of Catchphrase, which was about as ludicrous as the former game. Collette declined to participate for numerous reasons, as did Lolli, who was already asleep on the couch.
The night ended for OLeif and Collette at 12:30.
“Party crashers!” Shepherd called out to them as they left.
It was a good time.

And thus began another year.