We’re having a dinner party tonight and the guests are my husband’s retired sensei and his wife, and a visiting sensei from Japan, and his daughter.

Wish me luck. On the menu: steak (grilled, outside, not by me, thank goodness), salad, roasted carrots with rosemary and Japanese small potatoes in sauce. Cookies and chocolate for dessert.

(We tried to come up with the easiest possible thing.)

Our house is half renovated, the stairs are temporary, we have no doors anywhere and the downstairs bathroom is only half drywalled (not yet mudded), and our washer and dryer is stuck in there too. If you look up you can see all the wiring because there’s no drywall yet on the ceiling. You have to walk through the furnace room to get to the bathroom but that’s another story.

My husband has put off having his sensei over for dinner ever since we moved here, because the house has never been quite ready. But we realized it will take us forever and a day to finish renovating, and there are some things you can’t put off for that long. Like having your mentor over for dinner. This has been way overdue.

I’m trying not to be nervous.