People tell me I’m fabulously rich, and I guess they must be right. Not too many people  endow a whole hospital in Sao Paulo Brazil on a whim because they're bored after lunch, do they?  Last time I met Bill and Melinda, we made a bet and I won because my checking account balance was higher than his by a quarter million. That was a fluke, though. I’d just sold my house on Bali the day before, and hadn’t done a balance transfer to savings yet. 

People snicker when I tell them my purebred Afghan Hounds live in the guest house on my Long Island estate, and that I bought sixty Persian rugs to carpet the place.  I want them to feel at home, don’t I?  People got really  testy about all those Tempurpedic King-sized beds I bought for them.  I wouldn’t ask my darling dogs to sleep on anything I wouldn’t ask my human guests to sleep on, now would I?  They live with me permanently, after all. I have some limits though—I didn’t get them a custom-made bed like the one I sleep on. And which I take everywhere I go if I’m taking the lear jet and am going to be gone more than two nights.

People gave me grief about those swimming lessons for my cats, but I do worry about rising sea levels. I can’t bear to think of my darlings drowning in some flood. Living on the 55th floor, I have to admit it would take a tremendous flood on the Hudson River to reach my doors, but who knows when disaster can strike?  I have to admit the swimming was a failure from the get-go—the kitties didn’t seem to even want to learn, the ungrateful little things!  And as for Michael Phelps—is he ever full of himself!  The last day, he showed me his scratched arms and said that as an Olympic gold medalist, he was insulted  to have been asked to give swimming lessons to cats, and if I ever tried again, he’d drown them himself. But the worry about them is so bad, sometimes I can’t sleep at night.

I don’t always feel rich though. I just paid private school tuitions for seventy children and college tuition for twenty others last month. (There go the proceeds from the house in Bali right there, but you know… the world is changing and I only had three house party weekends there last year. I couldn’t justify it anymore.) But if you commit to giving a first class kindergarten through college private school and university education to all the children of an entire West African village, it doesn’t come cheap. But that’s ninety children who will hopefully never be conscripted as child soldiers.

I remember in 2008 how John McCain took heat for forgetting how many houses he owned.  And, rightly so, I say! I mean no matter how many houses you own, it’s your responsibility to keep track of your own properties. I have ten…no, I guess it’s nine, now. There’s my  Central Park West penthouse, my Long Island estate in the Hamptons, my Swiss ski chalet, my Venetian palazzo, my  chateau on the Loire—just a little one, mind you!—my cattle ranch in  Montana, the big Victorian out in San Francisco, my beach cottage on Hilton Head Island and…. There was one other one, let me think, for just a second…oh that’s right! It’s that adorable storybook cottage in the Cotswolds. It was just so darling I absolutely had to have it, furniture and all. So cozy, and sometimes I like a simple life.  Really, I think there should be an app for keeping track of your real estate holdings, but even without one, if you can’t remember what you bought off the cuff, you deserve the embarrassment of having to count them on your fingers. 

Well....maybe I was too hard on poor Senator McCain. Rather embarrassingly, I discovered last year that I own a small Greek island that I have no earthly use for. It was part of my divorce settlement from Kostas, of course, but I’d put it out of my mind.  That marriage was such a mistake, I tried to pretend it never happened, and mostly succeeded.  Really, Kostas seemed so charming that night, but he turned out to be so greedy and controlling! Never marry after a night of Ouzo and Retsina. I’ve had to swear them off for good because I never know what other disastrous things I might do under their influence. Kostas wants to buy the island back from me, something about it being an ancestral property of his family back to something B.C., but I can’t do it—it’s the principal of the thing. That marriage was three weeks of sheer, unmitigated hell. And I can’t think why he’d want that island back so badly. There’s nothing on it but a lot of sheep and goats, and a few crumbly old ruins, and a rather nice picturesque village. He says the ruins are historically important, but that’s just the way I roll. My fourth marriage will be different.

I never want to see Kostas again, and that’s made going to Europe complicated, lately, damn him. I had to make the pilot turn my private jet  around over the Atlantic last spring when I was on my way to the Milan fashion show because I learned Kostas would be there. It was really annoying, as that’s where I do most of my  clothes shopping for the year. I know one can get nice things from Paris ateliers, but Kostas is just as likely to follow me there as to Milan. I can invite all the designers to come visit me in New York and buy the clothes while they’re here, but that’s an expense, even for me.  It’s created quite a problem, as when you move in the social circles I do, you can’t afford not to be up to the minute in fashions. Last year’s clutch purse and pumps just won’t do. Even the dear friends you went to boarding school with in Switzerland thirty years ago will whisper behind your back if your charity ball gowns aren’t this year’s hottest look. This silk blouse is a 2009, and I have to say, I’m embarrassed at having to wear an old rag like this, even during a weekday morning at home.   

Speaking of charity balls though, I’m afraid I’ll have to go, soon.  I decided to hold a different kind of fundraiser for my sickle-cell anemia cause this year—a big Oktoberfest street fair. It just seems a little more sensitive and egalitarian to hold a street fair rather than a ball, this year. Beer rather than champagne, and bratwurst rather than Kobe beef—you know the drill. I’m still spending a lot on it—I've hired two polka bands clear from Bavaria to play dance music in shifts.  Musicians always need a paying gig, after all.

The Oktoberfest idea should be jolly--everyone likes beer, right? But the New York chief of police tells me that his officers providing security for the event have point blank refused to wear the imported lederhosen I ordered from Munich. Sue me, I’m a purist for authenticity. I want people to feel as if they’re really there. It’s makes the difference between a good party, and a blow your socks off fantastic party that people talk about for decades afterwards.  But now I don’t know what I’m going to do with those twenty pairs of lederhosen, and I hate waste.

I suppose the police force is still smarting over the time I asked them all to dress up as gondoliers and ferry my guests to the door in gondolas. Yes, real Venetian gondolas, and you can take it from me that they weren’t cheap.  Did the police chief ever have a snit about it: “Ms. H. you own a Venetian palazzo, so why are you holding an eighteenth century Venetian-themed costume ball in New York?”

 Yes, he actually said that to me.  Silly man, anyone can throw an authentic Venetian ball when they're in Venice. But when you can throw an authentic eighteenth century Venetian-themed costume ball when you’re not in Venice, well!  You’re really the hostess with the mostest, then. And I’m under constant pressure to be exactly that.  Nobody else really seems to understand. 

Balanced against that, I know it’s excessive, and I don’t want to upset people. Especially not now when everyone’s so kvetchy and testy about the economy. I see their point, really I do. With all the unrest in the world, I think having more than one ballroom  in any one house is just plain showing off.  I’m more sensitive about the issue  than my parents and grandparents ever were. My grandfather never told my grandmother about the Depression, you know. 

“She would have worried” was always his excuse for keeping it from her.