Schlemiel! Schlimazel!

In a rare run of good luck, Mother Nature took kindly to my plight and helped me out with a few more unsightly snow storms. The first few weeks I didn't have to actually fire Mrs. Kravitz, I simply had to cancel her, using the piles of snow, the slippery sidewalks, the treacherous roads (Oh my!) as worthwhile excuses. "Don't you worry your pretty little head, I will make do..."



So now I needed to figure out how to handle the uniquely insulting invitation...it would be arriving shortly. And since I held a job outside the home, a novelty in the warped new world order I'd entered, it may be picked up and opened and read before I've even EZPassed out of my company's neighborhood.



I needed to create a distraction for me and the kids. Something fun to look forward to. Something we'll count down the days on the calendar toward with gleeful anticipation. A weekend at a resort! An amusement park! Something I just-by-coincidence plan for the same exact day as the wedding and of such enormous gravitational pull that we hands-down choose it over the wedding when the invitation arrives and OH NO LOOK AT THE DATE! I go on line. I sleuth and search and google and bing until I find just the thing. I book the tickets and hotel and tell the kids. We are having a weekend of fun together. They'll have no idea which twin has the real Toni.



Days go by and the invitation arrives. Heavy. Embellished. Calligraphied. Unbending. How apropos.



I open it -- again it is addressed to my married name. (Is no one willing to let her die a natural death?) I vow to call Em by her maiden name for at least a year after her wedding. And maybe even habitually misspell her first born's name. And then mispronounce the married name for all eternity. Maybe even say it like Laverne Defazio might say it.



The invitation is a clear attempt at the appearance of wealth. The gold raised print. The heft of the paper. Oh, and the wedding cake special order stamps. Aaaaawww. What is so odd is that it defies the rules of true formality with its embellishments and the odd off-center placement of the print. And it toggles back and forth between formal and casual language in a schizophrenic identity crisis. Em must have just skimmed the less-is-more section of the book.



Its arrival brings out the Great Gazoo in me. I want to enlighten the Dum-Dums a la Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, perhaps causing a little trouble along the way. Should I accept the invitation and then not show...leaving a vacant seat next to J. where the waitress on autopilot gamely serves prime rib and red bliss potatoes and green beans almondine to no one in particular? Or should I accept for all three of us and write a sweet note forgiving Em her calligrapher's oversight and stating that we'll all be there with bells on? Or do I decline and write a terse and brutally informative note detailing exactly the myriad reasons I would not bother to even mark this non-event on my calendar?



In the end, I chose to be only me. I colored within the lines and respectfully completed the response card. I declined for me, and me alone, using my full, reclaimed, restored to dignity, maiden name. Period.



Two days after I place the Respond-So-Very-Promptly (Thank you, Laverne) into the mail, I got a mid-day voicemail message from J.'s mom - at a time she'd know I'd not be home. She is clearly confused...perhaps rattled by the news of my daring declination, which had gotten the partyline abuzz. She is cancelling her babysitting obligation for the week. She's "all booked up." But it is a week she's not due to sit...



In the words of one of my favorites - Warren Zevon - Bring lawyers, guns and money. The s*** has hit the fan.



I saw an opportunity and pounced. I called her back and left a sweet, melodious message. "Not a problem, Mom. With the weather being so unpredictable, and Spring Break coming, and then surely you'll be busy with the wedding, why don't I just plan to have the girl up the street cover you for the foreseeable future? Don't give it a second thought. OK? Thanks!"



Pink slip unobtrusively, yet deftly, delivered.