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2001-08-07 | 11:16 a.m.

Okay, I'm back. I'm very serious about the bra thing, by the way, because when I was 20 years old I managed an apartment building and I used to sleep late every day. The washing machine repairman got used to seeing me answer the door in my C.P. Shades cotton tank dress, braless---so used to it, in fact, that one day he arrived back at my door, post-repair, anticipating a tryst. He was Mexican and his English wasn't too good, so the proposition had to be accomplished with words, unctuous smiles, and hand gestures. I told him, no, no, sorry, very politely, and I swear to God he burst into tears. It was mortifying.

Anyway, where was I?

At the party, I promised every mother I knew that I would invite her kid to the girls' party at the end of the month. Then when I got home from the party, I took one look around the house and thought, this will never do! We can't invite ANYBODY to this party, because then they will see our HOUSE!! I have the same freakout every year, to be honest, but this time it was different because I had just come from Melissa Must's perfect house. The good angel on one shoulder was having a major existential meltdown while the bad angel on my other shoulder taunted her viciously. The good angel said, "All that really matters is that your house be clean when the guests arrive, which is within your power, and that your children are well-behaved, which they are, and that your spousal equivalent is helpful and pleasant instead of swigging a Riedel glass full of burgundy at one o'clock in the afternoon, like Melissa Must's piggy-faced overgrown frat boy husband." (Okay, I admit, as good angels go, she is complicated.)

To add insult to injury, we are really hurting for money now, because I didn't work for the first six months of the year. I've got work now, but the money won't start arriving until September---after the girls' birthday.

So the bad angel is saying things like, "You won't have enough money to throw a party. You won't be able to afford to fill loot bags, which you feel you must have even though you despise them, you won't be able to feed all those people with nice food, but you don't want to feed them cheap food, even though that's what Melissa Must had. The difference is that Melissa Must can have cheap food because nobody cares; she has a house with a walk-in pantry and a light-filtering pergola in the backyard, which is beautiful, perfectly decorated, and less than two years old. If she comes here, she and everyone else will notice how shabby this house is, and how the backyard is overgrown (and there's nothing you can do to fix that in three weeks), and how you have a treehouse but it's so decrepit it's unsafe to use, and how the glass in the upstairs bathroom door is shattered because Felony slammed it too hard once when she was mad at you, and how the wallpaper is peeling in the downstairs bathroom, and how the toilet seat wobbles, and how there are white pushpins all the way around the front door from where Diane covered the door in wrapping paper the first Christmas we were here, and how the upholstery is dirty as hell because you don't know how to clean it, and the fabric is pulling away from where the arms meet the back and the stuffing is peeking out because the kids climb on it and jump off when you are not paying attention, which is most of the time. What will Melissa Must think of that? What about when her piggy oenophile husband notices that you have BOX WINE in the fridge? Worst of all, they will see that the water in the fish tank is cloudy because you bought the wrong kind of sand!

Only here is the thing. That all happened on Saturday. After I calmed down a bit, I asked the girls if they would mind if we didn't have a big party, but just had cake with family members. They said that was fine. (Which made me think, wow, what great kids!) And then Sunday, I sat on the couch and watched the fish for a while, and I realized something really important: the water in the fish tank is clear.

Slowly, the bad angel's argument started to disintegrate. I began to think about the other mothers one by one.

Sheila: Sheila doesn't care about my house. Sheila's been here when the house was a complete disaster. More than once. She won't invite me to her house because it's always in a state of partial renovation. Sheila likes me.

Barbara: Barbara already knows I'm a bad housekeeper. But she still trusts me enough to have me babysit her daughter.

Amy: Amy's never been to my house. But she has an idea of what it's like, she's not judgmental about the have and have-nots, and she likes me a lot.

Kiki: Kiki will like my house because it's not intimidating. Ditto for Sasha.

Michele: She'd probably have an unfavorable opinion, but what do I care? I don't really like her anyway.

Angie: She's just a punk kid; she won't even notice---or if she does, will lump me together with all the other bougies.

Hermione: I barely know her, but I can tell she's got an anything-goes aesthetic like mine.

And what about Melissa, after all? Even she won't think bad things about me. She is the nicest person in the world. And come to think of it, I seriously doubt she could ever convince her husband to come to a kid's birthday party, anyway.

So finally, some relief. This time, I talked myself down from the cliff. At least until the party starts bearing down on us.

Okay, that's enough birthday party business. I promise to write about something completely different for a while.

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