This is my fifteen-month-old niece making a break for it! She is clever! She is wily! She wears the Bunnysuit of Supreme Adorability! I don’t even like children all that much (except in a white wine/butter sauce, but that’s not important right now). Yet I couldn’t quit squealing with glee and resume my surly ways for half an hour after I saw the photo. No one’s sure but I might’ve even briefly quit complaining. It’s all a blur!

Flee! Flee!

Miss Sasha is in her charming twenties so I have no school-age children to fuss over, except secondhand. And I’m selfish enough to want decent care when I get to the Old Punks Home, where we’ll all wear torn-up black nightgowns, compare tats and shout, “ANARCHY!” until suppertime and Matlock. A few years ago, when friends who taught grade school mentioned it in passing, I stumbled on two programs. Box Tops for Education lets you choose a participating school anywhere and support it financially. Labels for Education has a similar program, more focused on supplies and equipment. The thing is: you can participate in both programs for the same school or different schools. All you have to do is give the sites a look-see, decide what you’d like to do and what level of involvement you’d like. I collect labels for a teacher I adore in a not-wealthy school system. The box tops are a different story. I collect them for a public school in New Brunswick you just know is underfunded.

Collecting these labels and box tops is an absolute cinch, since you buy some of these products anyway. Just put a shiny little gift bag in one corner of your kitchen counter and toss them in. When you have a bunch, put them in an envelope. Hand them to your favorite teacher! Mail them to your school’s coordinator. This might cost you $.37, but if we all do it, it could make a big difference to the kids who will someday wipe our butts.

Plus, I now realize that I want a bunnysuit. With a fiery passion, I want that.

As I asserted yesterday on Running Scared, though my parents (Abner and Louella) were roughly Miss Sasha’s current age when I was born, they adapted a feminist approach and raised me to believe I was the smartest person on earth, my talents were endless and my future as big as I wished it to be. My babydoll was brown, not petal-pink. There was no discussion of my wedding, my husband, my babies; we talked about graduate school. The school system bought into this fantasy despite abundant evidence that I was not, in fact, the smartest person on earth. I was one of those self-conscious show-pony kids: trotted out by the school when it called the local papers for some odious display. To this day, I can’t think of Joyce Kilmer and that fucking poem without thinking of fourth grade and the Somerset Spectator. I was the gifted and talented program in my school until I refused to talk about my family while my parents (Jean-Claude and Amelie) were breaking up. For a long time, I bought the bullshit and was sincerely confused when I encountered someone obviously smarter than I was.

Just a note to parents (hypothetical Billy Joes and Bobby Sues): don’t foist this smartest-person-ever crap on your kids. Statistically speaking, it’s staggeringly unlikely, and your precious will devote pointless hours and hours to figuring out if they’re deranged or you are.

Tata: At least once a day I slap my forehead and wonder why I did something that stupid.
Corinne: Does that leave handprints? ‘Cause I’d like to see that!

Two nights ago, I fell asleep after 11:15 and slept until a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled around the apartment trying to locate the source of the sound. After a minute or two, the sound stopped. I climbed back into bed. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said, and fell back to sleep.

A short time later, a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me again. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled around the apartment trying to locate the source of the sound. I realized the sound was coming from outside my apartment and threw open the door. One of the something-detectors was squealing, then stopped. I climbed back into bed. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said, and fell back to sleep.

Soon, a piercing, omnipresent whining noise woke me a third time. I looked at the clock but don’t remember what it said. I jumped out of bed and stumbled to the front door to find the sound. I threw open the door, and stared at the squealing detector. Where were my neighbors? Why didn’t they come outside to find out if they were in danger? I went back inside and grabbed my ladder. Standing atop the ladder, trying to pry the detector open, I realized this noise has awakened me for some period of time around 2 a.m. every night for days, possibly weeks, and when I went back to bed, I simply forgot.

Wide awake and freaked out, I couldn’t go back to bed. I spread out on the couch and flipped channels. I settled on something but couldn’t really pay attention. Half an hour later, I curled up inside a frou-frou quilt so only my nose stuck out. When the alarm rang before 6, I called out and climbed back into my bed, certain that noise would not roust me out of bed again. I was right about that much. When I woke up, it was after 11 a.m. I called the landlord and pleaded for someone to put that device out of my misery.

This morning, I go back to work. My co-workers ask, “Do you feel better? Are you okay?”

I tell them: noise, device, every night, forgot. Uniformly, they hoot: this never happens to them! They remember everything! Am I sleepwalking? Have I gone ’round the twist?

In the back of my brain, I believe I should have the answers. In the front of my brain, I think sock puppets are fun! If I’d gone to Harvard like I was supposed to, I might be an undersecretary at the United Nations now. I might be an executive at a major international aid agency. And if I were, and found myself on a ladder at 2 a.m., hammering at a device that inexplicably wasn’t annoying my neighbors, my high-priced hospitalization would make Page Six.

Instead, I do half an hour of stand-up every morning about stupid last night.

Last week, Leonardo di Caprio was on Oprah, talking about global warming. Oprah speaks for millions of purse-string-holding women around the world. So it was astounding to hear Oprah – hopefully playing Devil’s Advocate but it was painfully difficult to tell – ask, “I don’t know much about global warming. I hear these words and my eyes glaze over. What does global warming have to do with me?” The idea that women haven’t connected the dots between those children they fetishize and obsess over and planetary changes is so big and so astonishing I had to stop hating her guts to find room to hate her show’s viewers with the kind of scorching, corrosive hatred one devotes to people who insist everything’s fine as they stubbornly sail the boat you’re standing on into the iceberg.

God damn it, global warming has everything to do with you. And me. And you have to do something constructive about it. And so do I. A few weeks ago, a co-worker approached me for the third day in a row to ask my thoughts on Hurricane Katrina. I expressed horror and dismay in terms that peeled the outer layer of skin off her face. Then this:

Emily: They’re going to have to build new refineries to compensate for all the lost oil.
Tata: The oil companies know that building a refinery has like a thirty-year window of return. Anything built now will cost more to build than it will return in its lifetime.
Emily: You mean because nobody wants a refinery in their neighborhood? Of course, you’re right but someone will have to live with it.
Tata: No, because of peak oil. Have you heard of this?
Emily: No.
Tata: As I understand it, the earth contains a certain amount of oil. We have extracted the majority of it and from now on, oil will become more difficult to extract and we will extract less and less of it until we run out.
Emily: What about the Arctic? There’s oil in South America!
Tata: Yes, and those supplies would have been exhausted long ago if they were easy to tap and not fundamentally dangerous in some way.
Emily: What are we supposed to do? We have to have oil.
Tata: If I owned a house I’d have installed solar panels last year.
Emily: If only they’d build more refineries…

On Sunday afternoon, I read the <a href="
http://www.njcleanenergy.com/residential.html”>NJ Clean Energy brochure that arrived with my October PSE&G bill. It wasn’t easy. For three hours, some sort of domestic situation transpired loudly right outside my bedroom windows, abating when the cops arrived and starting up again when they left; lather, rinse, repeat. Though what I could see was two people shouting – which is annoying but not threatening – I called the police to restore peace and quiet. The damn brochure didn’t offer much information. I fired up the computer and took wild guesses about the providers’ URLs. It’s long past time to go as green as possible. I’m poor, and putting what little money I have where my mouth is.

Rules. It’s the OCD. I can’t help it:

1. I prefer not to patronize businesses that lobby against my interests or are located in states that consistently legislate against my interests, just as I’d prefer in theory to buy a hybrid American car built in a factory on Route 1 over any other car built anywhere else.
2. It’s impossible to be righteous 100% of the time. Okay? Okay!

The brochure uses a teeny font little old persons like myself can barely see. It offers four options. You’re supposed to choose a vendor, which lists a product, the resources that product represents, cost per Kilowatt hour and the average additional monthly cost (average home = 580 kWh/mo.) Apparently, it’s cheaper to stay dirty. Let’s move on.

Community Energy, Inc.
Product: NewWind Energy
50% wind, 1% solar, 49 % low-impact hydro
1.3 cents
$7.54

At this point, I realized I knew bupkis, possibly less than bupkis. This is NewWind Energy’s site. They have a map of where their wind farms are located in NJ, NY, IL, PA and WV. The site sells fetching posters of windmills. Crap, they’re located in Pennsylvania, home of that fuckpig Rick Santorum. Now I have to look up Wayne, PA and find out if it voted for him. Next!

Green Mountain Energy Company
Green Mountain Energy
50% wind, 50% small hydro
.9 cents
$5.22

Hey, I’m poor. If this checks out, I’m golden. Google “green mountain energy” and you get their site and a boycott site, right off the bat. I realize the limits of my intelligence and research abilities when the site’s dated 2000, and I can’t find anything more recent refuting the boycott site’s allegation that BP bought GMEC and moved to Texas. I…don’t know enough to give these people money with a clear conscience. Next!

Jersey-Atlantic Wind, LLC
NJ Wind
50% NJ Wind, 50% low-impact hydro
2.9 cents
$16.82

Holy crow! That’s three times more than the Texans would kick my ass! Since this company is in New Jersey, I’d like to do business with them – I think! I can’t tell because they just started selling their product last month. My last month’s electric bill was during October, when there was no air conditioning and modest activity in my apartment: roughly 93 kWh = $14.08. With NJ Wind, I would expect to pay about $20. I think I can live with that. What’s my last choice?

Sterling Planet, Inc.
Sterling Select
33% wind, 34% landfill gas, 33% small hydro
1.2 cents
$6.98

They’re in Georgia. Fuck that, no matter how righteous they might be.

As a bear of very little brain, I would be perfectly willing to accept that I don’t understand anything I’ve read. If you do understand this and I’m completely wrong about how this stacks up, please correct me.

Is this the best we can do?

Note: if you’re about to quibble with the solar panels assertion, forget it. Favor nuclear? Don’t bother unless you have a magic wand that makes nuclear waste not-radioactive. As for peak oil: I can never be an expert, but I listen when the grownups are talking.

If there’s a motor vehicle without a coat of paint within 500 feet of me it belongs to Paulie Gonzalez and I am climbing into it. We’re on our way to Mom’s Diner for lunch. He starts the truck. He smiles, but it’s an apologetic look of faint disappointment.

Paulie: Well, I’m sorry you missed out on the beating!

At the reception the night before, I sat down at table 5 between the husband of a New York cousin and the brother of Paulie’s dad’s second wife. She died a month ago. The kids used to take turns staying up late with their uncle so when he passed out on the couch someone put out his cigarette before he burned down the house. Everyone passes around photo albums. Paulie’s dad sits next to Aunt Esmerelda, the wife of Paulie’s dad’s gangster half-brother, who was found in an unfortunate package years ago. The cousins are her daughters. Their husbands are odd looking fellows. Paulie reminds me his father’s other half-brother was a superior court judge in a northeastern state. I say, “It’s all cops and robbers with your family, isn’t it?” He giggles. Everyone is excited! or angry! or exuberant! or anguished! I’m waiting for the centerpieces, at least four feet tall from table height, to fall over and set fire to our fruit cups.

All the usual wedding things happen: the bride dances with her father; they cry their eyes out. The groom dances with his mother; they cry their eyes out. The bride and the groom dance; they cry their eyes out. The groom dances with the mother of the bride; they cry their eyes out. All in all, this is a great event for Kleenex. Meanwhile, Aunt Esmerelda tells a story and ends up with melted butter all over the front of her blouse. This does not detract from her perky charm. When she’s embarrassed I consider slathering myself with salad dressing in solidarity.

Paulie and I wander back and forth to the bar, sometimes outside when he wants a smoke; we’re in the bar during the salad course and we never actually see pieces of wedding cake. We nibble gray-ish prime rib and laugh hysterically at the stories. All evening, the DJ’s keep things moving at a vigorous clip. Just before our dinner plates disappear, I turn to Paulie.

Tata: Am I imagining things or is this a lull?

We take the opportunity to marinate ourselves in gin. After the reception ends, we and the cousins all pile into the bar, where one of Paulie’s cousins winks at me for two hours. I express regret about his twitch. After 1 a.m., I decide it’s time to begin peeling off layers of carefully calculated foundation garments and I make my excuses.

Eleven hours later, we’re climbing into the giant pickup truck with a coat of matte black primer when the bride, groom and a biker chick shout and wave for us to come back upstairs with Paulie’s tux. Nicole opens the door in sweats, hair flying all lover the place. Jimmy nibbles leftover fruit. As charming as these hoarse, hungover charmers are, me getting involved in post-wedding wreckage would interfere with my lunch plans. Diane the Biker Chick lets on that her boyfriend awoke in lockup this morning after Jimmy punched him during the wedding –

Wait. What was that?

The dam breaks. All three chatter at once. After the third time through, Paulie and I gasp for breath, we’re laughing so hard. Getting an account of events in order never actually happens. Diane’s boyfriend was skunk-drunk before the wedding, and during one of the spotlight dances, he collected one of the abuelas and steered her toward the dance floor. During dinner, the wedding party – minus Paulie – ended up in one of the suites upstairs in one giant brawl. In the most unbelievable turn of events outside of pro wrestling or Scientology, the groom took control of the situation:

Nicole: So she tells me Kevin was choking her and she’d just about passed out when she realized she didn’t have to take this and she punched him.
Diane: I punched him!
Jimmy: I said, “Hey!”
Nicole: Diane and Kevin were fighting and they flipped over a coffee table.
Tata: You what?
Diane: We were fighting and we flipped over a coffee table. You know – like flipping over a coffee table!
Jimmy: Did you see her bruise?
Diane: I got a bruise. See?
Paulie: Whoa.
Diane: He’s drunk so I’m telling him, “Go sleep it off, go sleep it off.” Instead he chokes me!
Jimmy: So she punched him!
Nicole: So she tells me that Jimmy came running and to break it up between them and Kevin’s like, “You don’t tell me what to do.” And Jimmy’s like, “No, you don’t tell me what to do!” And Kevin tries to head-butt him!
Jimmy: And kick me in the nuts. He missed.
Diane: He missed!
Nicole: So she tells me Jimmy’s growling like an animal. He’s like, “This is my wedding!” She tells me Jimmy grabs him by the throat and pushes him straight up the wall off the ground. I didn’t believe it!
Diane: He was all gurgling blood and still kicking Jimmy.
Jimmy: I put him down.
Diane: Then the cops came and the DJ helped us fill out the police reports.
Tata: What?
Nicole: He’s great. I’d hire him for anniversaries, too.
Tata: Paulie, I believe that explains the lull.
Paulie: Hey, that’s full service! You can’t get that just anywhere.
Nicole: The best man’s family are all doctors and nurses and they made him change his shirt.
Diane: He was covered with blood. They’re kind of sensitive about that stuff.
Paulie: I thought he was just a putz who couldn’t keep his tux on!

Domestic violence is no joke. Just yesterday, I called the cops on a domestic situation outside my bedroom windows. Still, a good drunken brawl is mostly hilarious when no one really gets hurt and everyone gets cab fare home. In retrospect, the wedding amused us, and I would’ve been fine wearing the butter.

Congress votes itself raises and refuses to raise minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $6.25. Pension systems are failing. Why not go the extra mile to ostentatiously fuck the poor, who in many cases are ordinary working people falling out of the bottom of the middle class? They don’t need to eat, right?

What will happen to secure middle class lives, homes and property when the poor – especially those who used to be your neighbors – realize they don’t actually have to tolerate this shit, and if they want to eat all they have to do is take what you have? Because in their growing numbers, they can. And the harder life gets the sooner they’ll get the picture.

If you happen to favor fucking over the poor, cut to the chase and just go put bars over the picture windows of your McMansion. I hope the image of little children going to bed hungry eats at you as much as it eats at parents who for whatever reason find themselves unable to provide and have nowhere to turn.

When I accepted Paulie Gonzalez’s invitation to his sister’s wedding, my intention was to frump my brain, which has been stiff and bored. A friend told me years ago that when you do things you ordinarily do in a different way – stirring your coffee with the hand you don’t usually use, for instance – you create new pathways in your brain. It could be complete bullshit for all I know but who cares? I’m sitting in a hotel meeting room with over one hundred empty chairs five minutes after the wedding’s supposed to have started, and my brain is dancing like a pack of Rockettes on a bender.

As wedding guests file into the room – and fail to file into the room – strange, strange things are happening. First, from the right rear of the room, a giant speaker plays an endless, pasteurized, instrumental version of the passionate, aching Whiter Shade of Pale, the Procul Harem song taken from the Canterbury Tales. The lyrics sound like they’re about faithless lovers. I could be wrong. Then something passionate, endless and instrumental played that I don’t recognize. The groomsmen file in and stand in place. Wedding guests continue not to arrive in droves. The groomsmen break formation. Paulie finds the not-found-in-nature red glow of my hair in the sea of empty chairs and crosses the room to kiss my cheek before rejoining the parade. Guests slowly fill in the seats. The music changes to an instrumental version of Nights In White Satin. The groomsmen march in again. The pastor, who has been doing laps around the room, crosses the finish line and gasps for breath.

Two years pass. A number of videographers hover at the back of the room with a camera set up on wheels and easily seven feet tall. Finally, the back doors open and Nicole’s giggling pre-teen daughter lopes down the aisle, followed by four or five women in matching rust-colored satin dresses and matching shoes. The guests giggle, too. The bridesmaids and groomsmen stand stiffly in place, smiling like they’re pinching each other. The back doors close and mysteriously remain closed. Music plays for a long time. Suddenly, the wedding springs a leak. The guests surrender any pretense of attentive behavior.

When the doors are thrown open, nobody shuts up but everyone stands as Nicole tries to walk down the aisle with her regal mother and very nervous father. Mom is less than five feet tall and glowing on her daughter’s special day. Dad is counting out loud: “Step and…hold and…step and…hold and…” When they finally reach the plastic trees with Chistmas lights, tulle and a flock of attendants, the giant video machine smoothly slides into the aisle and blocks any view of the bridal party. I can’t actually see the ceremony because I am tiny by human standards but I hear the pastor, whose homily is about disappointment. His allegory is a pastrami sandwich incident. While he’s going on and on about horseradish sauce at his favorite deli, the guests behind me debate the fine points of answering the question “Does anyone know of any reason these two cannot be joined in matrimony?” in the affirmative. Across the aisle, guests conduct Chinese fire drills without a motor vehicle. From now on, mine is an ear-witness account.

Talking, talking, talking. Let us pray to the Ramada gods. Blah blah blah. Pastrami sandwich. Horseradish sauce. Parkway. No sauce. Grateful for food. Will you, Jimmy, blah blah blah? Will you, Nicole, blah blah blah? Let us pray. Put your right foot in. Put your right foot out. Disappointment. Story about Nicole’s long history with the pastor and the giggling pre-teen daughter. More disappointment. Isn’t life wonderful to offer us such misery? Talking, talking, talking. I now pronounce you legally obligated to pay one another’s debts.

At no point during this stirring ceremony does the gossiping, seat switching and speculating let up. When the bride and groom skip back up the aisle, everyone claps vigorously and looks around wildly to see what to do. A minute or two later, I climb out into the lobby. My eyes haven’t even adjusted to the change in light when a member of the waitstaff guides me by the shoulders like Glinda the Good Witch around the corner. “Down the hall and to the right.” I wonder if this direction is just for me or everyone else and my little dog, too. I find a bar, heaps of sliced fruit, pinhead-sized tables in a configuration I don’t understand, and three women wearing the exact same pants I am. I can’t deal with the fruit.

Suzette’s got my number. I sit in an overstuffed chair and watch like a Smithsonian anthropologist with a folklore and customs grant. Finally, Paulie appears. We get on line for drinks, where I order a cautious chardonnay and a pack of long-lost Brooklyn cousins on his mobbed-up side leap at him, squealing, “Paaaaaaaaaaulieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Accustomed to flying women, Paulie spills not a drop of his martini. In rapid succession, Paulie introduces me to a tribe of half-Hondurans and another of charismatic New York Italian-Jewish women related to Paulie’s father…somehow. When we each have a handful of napkins, sticks and empty glasses there’s nowhere to put them and no one to ask. We pile the debris where no one is certain to find it.

I change my mind about this wedding business and switch to gin. Though I have no idea what to do or how to act, I decide to roll with it. And shrimp. My brain is not in control here and I’m along for the ride. Bring. It. On.

On Wednesday, when I foolishly believed I’d drive myself, I called Daria and asked about the Holiday Inn I used to pass between Exit 8A and her house. Friday morning, Paulie said, “No, it’s a Ramada, and I think it’s Exit 8.” Maybe you only hurt the ones you love, but often you’d like to maim a few passersby.

Mom had plenty of time to call Daria after I hung up the phone.

Mom: Are you ready to leave the house now?
Tata: Nope. I’m standing in my living room naked and hoping my tan dries.
Mom: The sooner we leave the better.
Tata: I really appreciate your help with this stupid errand! I’m sorry about your errands. I feel so guilty!
Mom: It’s just your sister-in-law’s birthday present. She’ll understand!
Tata: I have to go kill myself now, but I’ll be at your house in half an hour.

I threw the phone on the couch and tapped myself all over to see if the Jergens Natural Glow Daily Moisturizer was dry enough to slap fabric on. Yes? Yes. In a blur of arms, legs and lace, I glopped on foundation makeup and foundation garments and fragrance and powders. Forty-five minutes after I hung up the phone, Mom and I jump into her little truck thing. She hands me a map with directions from the Turnpike. The Turnpike is off to our left. She turns right. I’m paying attention to the road but, nervous and guilt-ridden, I’m just babbling.

Tata: So I ran in my room to get dressed, right? And I put on a black bra and my blouse and I take off my blouse because the plunging neckline plunges a little too far, even for me. And I put on a black sleeveless whatsis and put the blouse back on but I can’t make my fingers button the buttons. So how big is my apartment? It’s really big for a one-bedroom, but how many closets does it have? There are only two where clothes hang but I can’t find my pants in the drycleaning bag, and I can’t go without pants! I put on a pair of Daria’s black slacks and zip up my boots but then I look in the coat closet and there they are so I’m bouncing down my hallway with one leg in each pair of pants and I’m thinking ‘The humor of this will be lost on my mother if I break my neck and she still didn’t get to the post office.’
Mom: You may have noticed we’re not headed toward the Turnpike.
Tata: Yup. You may have noticed I’m getting a little hysterical.
Mom: Daria says Route 130 is our best bet during rush hour on a Friday afternoon.
Tata: She’s sure? I thought after 130 intersected with the Turnpike there was a sign, “Here be monsters.”

Mom and I had a tough few years in which we spoke to each other through clenched teeth when we spoke at all, but it was only the first thirty-eight of our lives together. So we’re pretty good. We drive on Route 130 past the workhouse, car dealerships, strip malls and dirt mounds. The further down 130 we go the less there is to see. It seems to go on forever. We pass the intersection of Route 130 and the Turnpike, but the directions from Daria and Mapquest don’t seem to match the map. We bet on the map. I turn the map upside down so our heading is right in front of us. Counter to the instructions, I say, “We’re very near. Turn right.” Mom panics for one second. She turns right. Ahead, we see a sign for the Ramada Inn to our right, mysteriously hidden from the main entry to the Turnpike. We pass through a tiny road and a wall of trees. The Ramada’s parking lot opens up before us. Birds are singing. We stare at each other for a long minute, then Mom pulls up to the entry and puts the truck in park.

Neither of us believes it. We’re supposed to be lost now. The ceremony is at 6; it is 5:39. I get out of the truck with my overnight bag, a book and and my formal cigar box purse Nicole gave me for Christmas a few years ago. In the lobby, I see no one I know. Spotting the bag, the concierge asks if I have a reservation. No, not exactly, but I leave the bag with him. Just inside the Ramada’s main entrance I passed a room set up for a wedding, complete with giant plastic trees filled with Christmas lights and a tulle canopy. It is deserted. I wonder if I’ve come to the wrong hotel. The concierge says no.

For hours, I’ve been moving at Mach 2; I’ve come to a sudden stop and the noise catches up. I’m noticeable anywhere, but I’m conspicuous in the small lobby. I hate weddings. Nobody’s in charge here. I walk into the dressed up room, pick a chair three from the back and three from the aisle and sit. I can’t figure out why the people around me are acting as they are. Now I wonder what I’m doing here.

I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing here. For a few unpleasant minutes, I wish I weren’t.

More than sixty years ago, political disagreements in Honduras often ended at the cemetary. One day, the famous Dr. Gonzalez was playing cards in a hotel and there was a political discussion where the debate included eight bullets. Dr. Gonzalez did not win the argument. His widow, the improbable-in-the-1920s other Dr. Gonzalez, died of a broken heart. Two little girls – princesses, really – were sent into exile in convent school in Guatemala City. Through a series of almost inexplicably weird investment failures, murders and untimely deaths during the passage of those sixty-plus years, we join our princesses in formalwear at the equally inexplicable wedding of Paulie Gonzalez’s sister Nicole to Jimmy, whose mother is from the Phillipines. And though no one speaks Spanish but the abuelas, all hell breaks loose every time someone says, “Tia! Tia!”

On Thursday, Paulie was working late when his cell phone rang.

Nicole: Are you here?
Paulie: Where?
Nicole: The rehearsal. You’re supposed to be here at the rehearsal!
Paulie: I forgot! I’m sorry!
Nicole: What’s that noise in the background? You’re in a bar, aren’t you?
Paulie: It’s a going-away party! For work!
Nicole: I’m gonna tell!

Ooooh! He’s gonna get it!

My Mechanical Nemesis has an unnerving new quirk. During the 1.2 mile drive to work last Tuesday, I shut off the radio to listen. A bell rang at a familiar interval. I knew I’d heard this sound before, but when? Why? As I parked my car, it dawned on me: that’s the car-on-door-open-seatbelt-off noise, for no reason I could determine. It happened again the next morning, and the next. In a fit of startling stupidity, I didn’t think to ask Paulie for a ride to the wedding. Nope. Yesterday, when I should have said, “I will ride with you and heckle the pre-wedding photos,” I said, “That’s okay, I’ll drive myself.” Then, when he called me every hour to report hilarious developments –

Paulie is dispatched to the rental place because Nicole is aggravated and the enormous groomsman from Pennsylvania is too gigantic for his vest. Behind the desk is an attractive young woman with impressive, undeniable cleavage. Paulie says, “I’m here to pick up a breast – VEST! I’m here to pick up a vest!”

– I didn’t come to my senses and ask if he could pick me up. too. He was so frantic by mid-afternoon he wasn’t really hearing a word I said, anyway.

Paulie: I’m trying to drive and put on my plastic shoes and talk to you.
Tata: Martini. Cigarettes. Scallops. Cravat.
Paulie: My tux has no collar!
Tata: If I get a ride down there, can you bring me back?
Paulie: What? Sure. These are the embarrassing tuxes they hide in the back and hope nobody finds.
Tata: So you’re saying Jimmy had a map. I’m excited that you think he can read.

Almost the moment he was unavailable it finally became obvious – even to me – that I didn’t have the greatest confidence My Mechanic Nemesis would complete the trip to Exit 8, so I did what any modern, mature woman would do: I called my mommy! This phone call was filled with the nervous laughter of the slighty hysterical.

Tata: I’ve called to ask an absurd question.
Mom: How absurd? Really absurd?
Tata: It’s so absurd I’m not sure I can ask it.
Mom: This is getting more and more absurd!
Tata: So I drive to work and my car starts ringing and because I’m a genius three days later I figure out the seatbelt noise has nothing to do with the seatbelt and maybe it’s the door-open noise but the door’s not open while I’m driving and I know this because even though my seatbelt is fastened I’m still not driving around dangling over the road yodelling “whooooooaaaaaaaaaa!” all the way to work every morning. Do you think I should drive on the Turnpike?
Mom: It is utterly absurd to ask me automotive advice.
Tata: Yes, but if I don’t I have to ask you to drive your car on the Turnpike.
Mom: What does Paulie say about this absurdity?
Tata: He’s discovered that his absurd tux has no collar so he’s not really listening when I talk.
Mom: I’ll skip the post office, the chiropractor, the hardware store and bump my dinner plans. Can you drive as far as my house?
Tata: I can. And when I get there I’ll be chanting, “Third Floor! Ladies’ lingerie!”

Today is the birthday of the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm). I leave voicemail at work.

Tata: This is your delightful ex-wife speaking. Happy Birthday, dearest! I hope you’re out doing something super-fab! Call me when you get a chance!

My co-workers have stopped shuffling papers – or for that matter, breathing. They’ve become accustomed to what happens when I leave messages.

Tata: This is Tina from Acme Organic Produce and Sex Shop. Your 12-volt seedless cuke’s in and it’s a whopper! Your balance is $57.99! Our awesome drive-thru’s open ’til 10!
Co-Worker: [muffled] What are you doing?
Tata: Oops! Don’t forget to ask for your Acme Organic Produce and Sex Shop Frequent Shopper bonus gift!

I sit in the middle of my office, where I can hear everyone and everyone hears me. The office is shaped like a lightning bolt so sometimes others play with their phones too, as when co-workers at opposite ends of the room intercom one another.

Beep!
Man 1: Oh, Mr. X…?

Everyone giggles.

Beep!
Man 2: Yes, Mr. Y?

Student workers look around to see if they’re not supposed to laugh.

Beep!
Man 1: Are you available for consultation?

I stop typing and hold my breath.

Beep!
Man 2: Please leave a message after the…damn it…

You may have noticed – if I may be so bold – this week I’ve been rushed and written about as well as if I’d been dangling upside down behind my stove the whole time. I’m still living with piles of boxes, but my new life has begun. Hooray! Still, I feel as if I’ve become very rigid and yesterday couldn’t make myself attend a meeting at work. It was in Camden. I know! I forgave myself that one almost before I got steamed about it! Well, it’s time to try something I wouldn’t do, something I wouldn’t even consider. When Paulie Gonzalez called me up and invited me to act as a human shield at his sister’s wedding, I of course said yes.

As you know, I hate weddings, hate wedding halls, hate rented clothing, hate plastic shoes, hate bridesmaid dresses, hate brides, hate gift registries, hate mass-produced and flavorless cakes. I hate barked orders, hate Lee Press On Manicures, hate matchy-matchy monogrammed napkins and God help the feckless maitre d’ who offers me a Jordan almond! I hate weddings. I hate the Electric Slide. I hate all the waiting around. I hate slicing stations and rubbery mini-quiches. I can’t wait to stuff myself into the most uncomfortable semi-formal outfit I can find and suck down gallons of gin and tonic!

Let’s dance!

Over at the Whiskey Bar.