Dearest C,

I fear I may have found the key to happiness, only it involves leaving hearth, home and esp. children safely ensconsed in another’s care while one jets off to a retirement community in Florida for the weekend.  OK, so the retirement community masquerades as a country club, complete with a dress code for sucking soup through a straw, presumably before spilling it down one’s shirt – is that why WASPs always wear the collars upturned?  But look around and smell the incontinence pants, ladies; from a distance, you might look like you still have the body of a twenty year old, but that’s only because my own sight is going.

Husbands are entirely optional, of course, even if the ostensible reason for the trip is to ‘celebrate’ ten inglorious years together, but if I were you, I’d jettison the old man before hitting the club bar (FYI, happy hour starts just before dinner, at 3).  Some of those widowers are hot!  OK, so they’re not, but think how grateful they’d be – enough to leave you a beachfront property, perhaps?

Personally, I tried to have the oldballandchain ejected from the premises – rumor has it, he’s black – and I suspect that some of the sharp turns he made in the open golf cart were entirely unnecessary, but in the end, it seems, we are stuck with each other – for now. 

Alas, reality reared its ugly head when we returned home yesterday pm to find half the lights not working, the oven kaput, and a note from Nemesis declaring an emergency meeting of the traffic committee tonight.  Think this might be her signal for launching the Village Putsch?  Immediately blamed the obc for everything, and declared that if he loved me, he wouldn’t go during our anniversary week, at which point he laughed in my face.  Apparently, the lure of traffic cones (and I speak of the real kind, not simply Nemesis’ legs) is stronger than any marital bond.  As a result, the obc and I are not speaking, which changes remarkably little around here, I find.  But as someone who has already done ten years hard time and counting, please tell me whether or not you think this marriage can be saved?

Faithfully,

P.

P,

As someone shockingly close in age to eligibility for a retirement community, I may need to reconsider our time spent together and find a much older set.  I certainly don’t need to compete with you as we scope out the bar for the older gentleman inclined to forget his own children in the will in order to provide for our futures.  Even assuming obc and hubby are long gone, I know your hair will still be blond (in much the same way it is now, I might add).  I just can’t afford the competition, frankly, especially from one who doesn’t have four cherubs to drag along, each one clinging to a much less buffed appendage than one of yours.

If it appears I’m quite out of sorts, I must attribute it to far too many sightings of Nemesis over your absent weekend.  She now smiles broadly in my direction, much like a satisfied cheshire cat.  It’s as if she thinks she has something I want, and it is all hers.  Assuming for the moment that having the obc on the traffic committee fulfills her every desire, and imagining for a moment that I might care, why still should she be so self-satisfied?  I fear the worst, dearest P.  She has acted on her animosity for me against you and has stolen your husband in the bargain.  I can only say my respect for him has fallen further if it proves to be true.  Why would he ever choose someone with such serious intellectual purpose imbuing every single pore?  I mean, besides you, of course.  It is time to take the gloves off, I fear.  Pull out the latest issue of CPU and a little Tolstoy and pretend it fascinates you, as perhaps you did in your courting days.  Moth to the flame, dearest P, moth to the flame.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to take a little leap off my own cliff in your absence.  Although I fully intended to spend a little time in massage with Headmistress, it seems I’ve found myself in every man’s happy ending fantasy.  Not only can Headmistress manipulate every muscle in my worn out limbs with ease, she managed to make them vibrate as well.  Although I feel it is just too sordid to detail, suffice it to say I’ll never wonder again what women might do together.  I feel awkward asking you whether I must confess all to hubby as you find yourself in a potentially similar dilemma-just holding the other end of an entirely different stick, I suppose.

Faithfully, 

C.