WIFE LIFE

What day is it? I figured out that it’s Sunday but it’s not all that strange for me to lately have no idea as to the day of the week. This is my post-drugs life.

I just checked into our hotel in San Diego. Jim has meetings for the next couple days. I tagged along. Because my life is unduly splendid and I’m gleefully—yet gratefully—spoiled. We drove in from L.A. where we stayed for the last two days. We were at the Mondrian on Sunset Boulevard and I specify where so if you are in West Hollywood and looking for a pool area with nonstop really damn loud music where you can surround yourself with impossibly beautiful people who certainly don’t have jobs—and that token pensioner who wore dress pants to the pool—Skybar at the Mondrian is a suitable option.

We flew down to L.A. for a weekend of partying at both ends of the spectrum. Friday night was at the Playboy Mansion. Saturday: a benefit for a Catholic organization. Same shoes. Very not the same dress.

Allow me to disappoint you and say that our Playboy Mansion night was PG-13. You want to know if we saw boobs. We did not. It wasn’t that kind of night. We did see barely-dressed-and-dead-in-the-eyes young ladies gyrating on huge lucite cubes but not too much more racy stuff than that. We were at the event by way of one of Jim’s entrepreneur organizations so while I wouldn’t deign to call it classy, the gathering could have been much trashier. I mean, at one point there was a parrot on my shoulder. I’ll say this though: if you have the hypothetical opportunity to get a lil’ frisky with your person in the Playboy Grotto you’d be a dummy not to take it. I’m no hypothetical dummy.

Our Saturday event was a benefit for St. Anne’s, a social services agency in Los Angeles. My Jessica friend co-chaired the board that put together the event, and since we were in town we got to go. The thing went off without a hitch—I mean, of course; it’s Jessica we’re talking about here—and four killer brownies consumed to the tune of conversation with one of my besties sealed the evening as ideal and the weekend as perfect.   

On Friday morning when I was jamming shit into my suitcase I said to Jim, “It will seem like I’ve packed the entire bathroom because I have. I have no idea what all I’m going to need for this weekend, so I’m bringing everything.”

“No big thing,” he said, “The life of a trophy wife requires a lot of luggage. You’re getting whisked from party to party.”

Trophy wife. Sheesh. This guy.

But until I can figure out what the hell I am now, we’ll enjoy the kick of going with that tongue-in-cheek title. See, you go to enough events where there are folk you don’t know and you’ll get asked frequently to label yourself and then suddenly a merry soiree morphs into an existential mess. Yes, what even am I? Well, at this point, hungry. Once done with post this I’m gonna mow down a Trader Joe’s hummus wrap. But in, like, life, what’s my title? What do I identify with? Ask me that common, “And what do you do?” and you’ll get met with incertitude. I was a drug rep for a decade but I’m not that anymore. I’m a yoga teacher? I’m strongly considering making something of my Masters in writing? I’ve designed things but I sort of don’t want to do that anymore? I do laundry on Mondays and shop for groceries on Thursdays? I’m obsessing over slimming down our dogs? It’s all true but it doesn’t fit under a simple title. “Drug rep.” was an easy answer. That activity took the most of my time. But now, while my day is so full I can’t figure out how I ever had time for the drug career and at the end of the day I wonder if I sat down for even fifteen minutes, there isn’t a thing that takes the most time. I get to divide it out more evenly and do all those things on my own timetable.

Thus it is best to meet “And what do you do?” with “Whatever I want.” All hail Jim.

Prior to our Saturday event, the evening included a spell of panic when I got out of the shower, coated my wet hair with styling goo and subsequently discovered that our room didn’t have a blow dryer. My call to housekeeping didn’t procure one fast enough. So I perched on a chair overlooking the hip AF pool area and fretted that my hair product was going to dry hard and my hair would be weighed down and I’d have to shower all over again to start fresh and we just didn’t have time for that nonsense. Jim phoned housekeeping and said that, yeah, that blow dryer that the lady just called about, we need it immediately. As in now. As in where the hell is that thing and if they don’t get it up here pronto he’ll have to call back every 90 seconds until they get his wife her damn blow dryer before her—[totally justifed]—distress triggers an arrhythmia. Dryer was delivered. Tragedy was assuaged. Absurdly cute and catering husband gets the credit for my satisfactory hair night.

JiMegan: blissfully making friends and family gag and roll their eyes since 2013. 

On the home front, I keep asking Josie when she’s gonna suck. She’s a teenager. 13. As her “stepmother”—as a human, really—I’m supposed to find her incredibly annoying. Can’t. She’s delightful and a piece of really good cake. A sentence not uncommon—from either party—in JiMegan conversations, “How freaking great is Josie?” Very.