Wedding Fever. Kim Gruenenfelder

with dressing up on a Saturday night to gaze at an elegant man with poreless caramel-colored skin and clear hazel eyes?

      During our dinner I discovered (to my astonishment) that this guy was a real guy. He actually pursued me: a rarity in Los Angeles. I was used to typical L.A. neurotic guys. Men who would call once every eight to ten days, with no rhyme or reason to when or why they would call. Men who asked me to go dutch at dinner. Men who were incredibly attentive until they got sex, then talked ad nauseum about how they weren’t sure if they had time for a relationship. (At which point they, too, would call at random times, although at least then I knew the reason.)

      But this guy asked me out again before the first date was even over.

      He knew what he wanted and— like everything else in his life— he planned to go after it until he won. If other men in Los Angeles are like toy poodles— yippy and useless— this guy was a Labrador: hardworking, loyal, a bit slobbery, and beautiful.

      A month later, I agreed to meet his kids. And I fell in love with them immediately. Megan was a gorgeous eight-year-old (now nine) who cracked me up with a knock-knock joke and had fun polishing my toenails. Malika, four at the time, had the cutest voice I’d ever heard. There was (and is) nothing she says that I don’t want to repeat to all of my friends, because it’s just so damn cute.

      That said, it took me a while to feel comfortable in my role as stepmother. And frankly, I screwed up sometimes. Like when I snapped at Malika for repeating the same sentence for the sixth time, or when I drove Megan to her school for her dance recital instead of to the auditorium the school had rented, thereby giving us all of four minutes to run from the parking lot to the correct stage to begin her dance.

      This summer, the girls have been living with us full-time, per the custody agreement. I love it, but I am ready to rip my hair out. I seriously don’t know how mothers do this full-time. We can’t go out to dinner without Malika insisting on sitting next to me (never her father) and screaming in my ear the entire time. And I can’t insist she sit next to her father, because then I’ll look like a mean stepmonster.

      Oh, and on the subject of food: what is it with kids and not eating anything? Malita is the picky eater to end all picky eaters. We had an argument last week because I used tomato sauce on my homemade pizza rather than “pizza sauce.” It wasn’t worth the fight— it’s just pizza— so I nuked her some fish sticks instead. The same thing happened with the gourmet mac and cheese I slaved over one night. It was baked. It was white. It was pronounced “wrong,” “weird,” and “yucky.”

      We have been eating neon-orange mac and cheese from a box ever since.

      And don’t get me started on all the driving! What ever happened to summers off? This summer the girls have had a combination of ballet camp, museum camp, zoo camp, and music camp. Of course, neither girl has the same camp as her sister, and inevitably each week’s camp is at least ten miles (meaning forty-five L.A. driving minutes) from the sister’s camp.

      Jason has had a full-time job all summer prepping his team for the next season. I currently have no job. Guess who does 90 percent of the driving?

      I love these kids. I really do. But in one week, they go on a Carib be an cruise with their mother, and then it’s back to school for them— and back to weekend parenting for me.

      Politically incorrect though this may be, I am not only counting down the days until my honeymoon, I’m counting down the days until I get my life back.

      I look down at the silver carriage again.

      Nope. I’m barely hanging on as a part-time stepmonster— there’s no way I’m ready to have a baby.

      Seema and Mel walk into the kitchen. Seema hands me a Bellini, then says, “Sweetie, it’s a cake, not an augury. It doesn’t mean anything.”

      Easy for her to say. Ever since we were in college, Seema has lambasted me for my belief in fortune-tellers, good luck charms, and fate.

      “Yes it does!” I say, almost crying. “You don’t understand. At the last two showers I’ve been to, every woman’s fortune came true. There was this woman who couldn’t have a baby, who got the carriage. Pregnant two weeks later. One person got the wishing well— said out loud she wanted a new job in New York, totally got an offer.”

      “Okay,” Seema concedes, “but, with all due respect: the woman who got pregnant could have been doing IVF for the past year. And the woman who wished for the new job had probably been working on getting that job for a while.”

      “You gotta admit,” Mel says, opening her hand to examine her pepper. “It is a pretty big coincidence.”

      “No, it’s not,” Seema counters. “It’s people having enough faith in their lives to work hard and go after their dreams. Here,” Seema says, taking Mel’s pepper. “Give me this. Nic, give me your charm.”

      I hand Seema my charm. She places it and the other two charms in the palm of her right hand, covers her hand with her left, and shakes her hands like she’s about to roll dice. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

      Seema opens her hands, then gives the baby carriage charm to Mel. “You take this. Nic, you get the shovel. And I’ll take the chili pepper.”

      “Why do I get the baby carriage?!” Mel practically howls.

      Seema glares at Mel. “I thought you didn’t want the chili pepper.”

      “Well, I want it more than a baby carriage!” Mel whines.

      Seema rolls her eyes. “Fine. You want the engagement ring, right?”

      She waits for a response from Mel, who looks down and shrugs self-consciously.

      “Be right back,” Seema says.

      As she leaves the kitchen, I look down at the shovel. “Maybe since she hid it in her hand, it could kind of count. . . .”

      “What the Hell is wrong with you?!” we hear someone screech in condemnation from the other room.

      Seema comes racing back in, with my friend Ginger running in after her. “Mel! I got you your engagement ring. Quick! Throw the carriage at her!”

      Chapter Three

      Seema

      That night, Scott keeps me company while I clean up all of the shower refuse scattered about my house.

      Or, I should say, Scott comes over so we can get drunk on leftover champagne and hors d’oeuvres, then watch a double feature of wedding movies together. We each picked one: he picked Wedding Crashers, I went with 27 Dresses.

      Okay, so we’re not the most romantic couple in the world.

      “What the Hell is this?” Scott asks, picking up a stainless-steel serving platter from the pile of gifts Nic had left behind to pick up tomorrow.

      “What’s what?” I yell from the kitchen, as I collect some freshly washed champagne flutes from my dish rack. I look through my kitchen doorway to watch Scott as he holds up the platter and scrutinizes it.

      “It looks like a giant . . . comma?” Scott says questioningly.

      “That might be the weirdest gift of the day,” I say, as I emerge from my kitchen with my flutes and an open bottle of just-popped Taltarni sparkling wine. “Someone at the party said it’s a traif dish.”

      “A what?” Scott asks, as he turns it slightly in his hands to examine it further.

      “A traif dish,” I repeat. “You know . . . for serving traif.”

      “And that would be what?” he asks me.

      “Um . . . shrimp I think?”

      Scott shakes his head as he puts down the platter. “Okay, you can make fun of us men all you want for wasting money on lap dances during a bachelor party, but wasting money on a traif dish you’ll never use is just as