Vacance Update

Darlings, Pretty Lady has finally got a moment to herself; the rest of the House Party is off at the Ordination, and there was such fierce competition for tickets that Pretty Lady bowed out. She was able to congratulate her dear friend on his ascension to the Catholic ministry privately, yesterday evening, at the formal dinner party in his honor. And frankly, she has not got a thing to wear to an Ordination.

But at least she made it to the party, which is more than can be said for the Bishop, that scapegrace.

Pretty Lady is thrilled to report that it has, at last, stopped raining. She goes home on Monday, and it has rained so much that the back yard is in danger of peeling off into the Trinity River, and the mosquitoes and webworms and little bathroom newts are having a Banner Year, but perhaps she will get to bathe in a pinch of sunshine for half a day before trundling back to the big, grimy, stuffy city. And perhaps the airlines will get their act together and she will actually get on the plane she was supposed to get on, instead of another one two days later, with seventy-seven people on standby.

(In answer to your question, k, Pretty Lady has met some former American Airlines employees with a modicum of grace and courtesy, but no current ones. Furthermore, she has inside information that American Airlines is in such financial trouble that they are overbooking every single flight, which means that persons with former-employee cards which enable them to fly standby whenever they like are now unable to fly at all. And they now charge three dollars for a tiny bottle of water in flight, since you are not permitted to carry your own water on board.)

Civilization is truly, overtly, obviously, egregiously in decline.

But enough of that; Pretty Lady and her mother have been attempting to maintain Civilization all by themselves, by throwing two formal parties in one week. They have been beside themselves, racing around for flowers, and polishing silver, and debating which tablecloth goes best with the red-and-blue china. The Menus have been fabulous. Pretty Lady has been listening to recitations of Menus all week, in fact, and she is frankly rather bored with them. So she will spare you the details.

No, Pretty Lady's primary and highly embarrassing dilemma is that she now has to figure out how to make proper use of Fur in the Big City next winter. This is a problem that Pretty Lady has never had to deal with before. Give Pretty Lady a Salvation Army Tweed, and she is all over it. There has been no historical shortage of occasions in Pretty Lady's life wherein Salvation Army Tweed came in handy; it works excellently well for crossing bridges on a reconditioned bicycle in a snowstorm, shovelling snow off the roof, trudging through gray sludge on the way to the Public Library, and hanging out in the sort of bar where the regulars are all 280-lb truck drivers named Moe. It occasions no comment at Art Openings, even Art Openings in Chelsea; Salvation Army Tweed has been the uniform of choice for Artists, going back at least eleven generations.

But now, for reasons too complex to explain, Pretty Lady is expected to show an Antique Fur or three what a Glamourous City Lifestyle entails. Generations of Texas Pride are riding on it. This is quite a heavy responsibility, particularly as Pretty Lady's budget for Season Tickets of any stripe is, still, stringently limited. So Pretty Lady has come up with a Clever Plan: Cooperative Society Winter Vacations. Should any female friend or relation, between sizes six and twelve, come to visit in the wintertime, she may have the use of one Antique Fur for the duration of the visit, in exchange for a ticket to one Cultural Event of her choice. Opera, ballet, Broadway, BAM, you name it; you and Pretty Lady will attend, warmly and in style.

Gentlemen, of course, will just have to suck it up for the ticket and wear the tweed.

And it looks as though Pretty Lady will have to renew her Whitney membership, whatever she thought of last year's Biennial, or all the exhibitions afterward. It seems as though Fate is pressing her to join the herds of the Overdressed, whether she likes it or not.