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boat, riding on the back of his motorcycle, dancing at clubs late into the night. It’s his very sense of boyish playfulness that attracted her to him in the first place that drives her absolutely insane now. She’s always complaining about him not doing his share of the housework, sleeping in on the weekends, and goofing off when he should be doing whatever chore Mom feels he should be doing.

    “I’m going to have to pay hundreds of dollars to have a handyman come in and do some housework because my husband is too lazy to do it.” Mom launches into a litany of chores Frank hasn’t done: He still hasn’t cleaned up the painting supplies from the study. How many times does she have to ask him? And his second car has been taking up half the driveway for weeks with parts strewn everywhere. They look like they belong in a doublewide! What must the neighbors think?!

    “I’m sorry, Mom. I know it’s tough. How are things with the job going? Weren’t you going to meet with that new client? How did that go?” I sit down at my large kitchen table. I spent a bundle to get comfortable kitchen chairs with cushy seats, but I almost never use my table. I either eat at my desk in the study or in front of the TV. I think I had an image of myself being some goddess of entertaining, when in fact I’m more of a solitary TV-dinner sort of girl.

    “Oh, I didn’t tell you?” She laughs.

    “No. What?”

    “So I met with these two stodgy men, really high muckymucks. I met in the one man’s office, and he has those big, big leather chairs for six-foot-tall men that little me just drowns in. I felt like that little girl character Lily Tomlin played. So I went to show them my portfolio,” she giggles again. “And they have that kind of plastic mat that goes over the carpet so you can easily wheel around in your chair. Somehow the wheel of my chair got caught under the mat, and I went crashing down with the chair coming right over my head, trapping me. It was a huge chair. I couldn’t get it off me. So I say…I say…” she’s laughing so hard she’s having trouble getting the words out. “Excuse me. Can you help me get this chair off my head?”

    This strikes me as the most wildly hilarious thing I’ve heard in months. The image of my petite mother trying to make a good impression on clients, only to go flying upside down, landing with a chair on her head, and then saying in a voice muted by acres of leather chair, “Excuse me. Can you help me get this chair off my head?” It’s classic.

    Mom and I laugh and laugh. I love that my mother can laugh at herself. She’s unlike my father in that way. Dad always pretends he knows everything and has never made a mistake in his life. Mom is fully willing to admit she’s a flawed human being, and it’s her genuineness and down-to-earth-y-ness that I love so much about her.

    We say our good-byes and instead of getting to work I go back to my study and jot down my guest list. I want to start figuring out how much a wedding is going to cost. I’ve got money in the bank, but as an independent contractor, I have no economic security whatsoever. When Will and I move in together, that will save me a lot of money on mortgage payments, but until then, I just can’t help being stressed out that my savings account is too anemic to fund a wedding. And I don’t want Mom and Dad to help out because then they’ll want to get involved in planning it, and I’m telling you, that would be disastrous. It doesn’t take me long to write out the list. My bridesmaids are obvious: Sienna will be the maid of honor and Rachel and my girlfriend Gabrielle will be the bridesmaids. My list has fifty people on it. I’m guessing that’s about what Will would put on his, but it’s really inconvenient that I can’t ask him to write his list out so I could know for sure. It’s really going to hinder my ability to plan this thing if the groom doesn’t know that we’re going to have a wedding. I