It's been awful, I can't relax.  The clock is ticking and all I can do is go through my checklist.  Usually at 2 in the morning.  I try and tell myself it's only a Bar Mitzvah, only one day, well, technically two with Ben's kids' party a Friday night later, but still, it's just so fine wired to be stressful.  Little things like ordering beanie hats for sixty-five kids, that over-the-top added clothing bonus that all parents dutifully supply in each kid's goodie bag as they're leaving the party.  It's not enough you just broke the bank for the party, you have to hand them over a thick fleeced sweatshirt advertising that kid's Bar or Bat Mitzvah, best if placed in a drawstring nylon bag also shouting the kid's name and date of party. I'm being cheap and opting for a beanie, at least it doesn't take up an entire sweatshirt-filled row of a closet.

I'm on the phone with Branders, a customized hat company. I've just received four different UPS deliveries from various parts of the country with no clearcut way of telling which beanie was sent. I tell my salesman, Joshua, that we like the black beanie, not the blue beanie, not the black with red trim beanie, not the black with the orange logo, just the black beanie. He tells me he doesn't know which hat that is, to send him a photo of it, only that's the one hat Ben and I can't find in the house.

I tell him his system isn't exactly working, then send an email with UPS tracking numbers of each one he sent. By process of elimination maybe he can figure out which black beanie without a logo he sent us.

We haven't even gotten to the embroidery part yet, which Ben wants to say Ben's Bar est. 10-27-12 across the rim. Kind of cute in a tween soon to be drinking kind of way.

Then yesterday, in a fit of total panic that we hadn't yet bought Ben a suit or me a dress and the Bar Mitzvah only six weeks off, we all got in the car and drove to the that most expensive mall in NJ, the Short Hills Mall.  With Prada and Coach and Wilford stocking, it's  pure seduction walking towards Nordstrom's, that pragmatic choice of store. We work on Ben first, trying on a Joseph Abboud suit that in a size 16 boy's would fit maybe one week past his Bar Mitzvah, or a size 18 that makes him look like the boy in the movie "Big." We decide on the size 18 and hope for a growth spurt.