Stacey nods and adds, “From the suburbs. Yet I say if that’s what you want, get it. However, if you decide you want to carry the kind of luggage not favored by seventh graders and Girl Scouts, I can send you to where I get mine. Or I can come along and lend a hand. Your choice.”
“Thank you. No one ever wants to help.”
“Does that abate some of your worries?” she asks.
“A little, but then I’m still freaking out about all the mechanics of the tour—like, I don’t sleep well in hotels.”
Stacey suggests, “Try not to sleep on the plane because that’ll wreak havoc on you later when you try to go to bed in the hotel.”
I snort. “Pfft, I never sleep on the plane. I have to be awake and using my mind power to keep it in the air.”
“I . . . see.” Stacey hesitates for a second because it’s clear she does not see. Gamely, she presses on. “Your best bet is to not drink on the plane because you’re already going to be dehydrated, and flying’s going to make it worse. Probably mess with your circadian rhythms, too. Oh, and be as comfortable as you can—maybe wear yoga pants and a hoodie.”
“No, no, I have to drink or I get too nervous. Also, whenever I fly, I try to wear a black Lacoste shirt. I find they best mask Bloody Mary spills.”
“Of course . . . I’m curious, though—the drinking doesn’t interfere with your, um, what is it you said, mind power?”
I shake my head. “I steer the plane better drunk.”
Stacey clears her throat and quickly switches topics. “What are you going to wear to your events?”
“Hopefully it’ll be warm and I can wear my standard summer uniform of black or khaki shorts and a pastel polo shirt. But what do I do if it’s cold?” I wonder.
“Maybe you could bring a little trench?”
“If I wore a trench over shorts, I’d look like a flasher.”
“Then bring some capris.”
“I want to wear my shorts so everyone can see that I have nice calf muscles.”
Stacey tries hard to not sigh. “Um, fine, then why don’t you pack a cute jean jacket?”
“Sure . . . I could do that. Of course I’d have to go back to 1985 to get one. Bah! BAH HA HA HA HA!”
Stacey waits for me to finish. When she thinks I’m done, she continues. “Ahem, right. Then how about—”
I start howling with laughter again. “BAH HA HA HA! 1985! HA!”
“Maybe you could—”
“HA! JEAN JACKET! GET IT? NO ONE’S WORN ONE SINCE 1985! GET IT? HA HA HA!!”
Stacey gives my brilliant humor a small nod and then tries to move on, unsuccessfully. “So . . .”
“HA! HAA!! 1985! I’D BETTER PACK EVERYTHING IN MY TRAVELPRO TIME MACHINE! HA!!”
After five full minutes of side-clenching laughter—all of it exclusively on my part—I finally compose myself and meet Stacey’s gaze. I notice her pinched lips and lowered brow. “Wait, this is why no one ever wants to help me with anything, isn’t it?”
I buy a bunch of cute Empire-waist sundresses and matching cardigans so that whole wardrobe thing is now under control. Plus, I go to Stacey’s luggage store and find a great bag. I’m vaguely disappointed that it’s black, so I pick up a fluorescent pink-and-green luggage tag to add a touch of my personality.
Also? I find a jean jacket. When I put it on, it reminds me of the one I used to love but then abandoned back in 1985 after learning too late that one does not wear a jean jacket to a sorority rush.
And FYI, the Kappas can suck it if they don’t like it because it looks hot.
“Stop holding out on me!” Barbie shouts.
“I’m not!” I grunt.
“You can keep going!”
“Pretty sure (gasp) I can’t.”
“Breathe!” Breathe? She wants me to breathe? My lungs feel like I’m trying to suck a bowling ball through a garden hose. Trust me, if I could draw breath right now, I would.
I’m at the gym getting in my second-to-last workout with my personal trainer before I leave to go on tour next week.
I wrote the book because I figured the best way to shake off all my baby (back rib) weight was to challenge myself to write about the process.25 Somewhere between the Atkins and Zone diets, I accidentally stumbled upon what’s been at the root of my weight problem—my refusal to behave like an adult. By mocking the birthday cake Nazis at Weight Watchers and quietly selecting/competing against various nemeses at the gym, I inadvertently began to grow up, improving my well-being in the process.
Even though I’m not yet thin, I’m healthier both physically and spiritually. 26
Unfortunately, all my effort will be for naught if Barbie kills me on this goddamned treadmill.
For our final session, Barbie decides we’re going to do yoga. Ugh. Yoga. I’ve done this before and it’s never gone well. I normally forget the effect gravity has on loose T-shirts and end up smothering myself. Today I’ve at least had the foresight to tuck my shirt into my shorts, Urkel-style.
I admire the muscle definition yoga enthusiasts sport. They aren’t gross like the professional yogis—their arms are nicely defined and not too ropy or stringy. Strong muscles are beautiful. Visible tendons? Not so much.27
Since it’s gorgeous and sunny, Barbie says we should exercise on the patio that separates the gym from the office building next door. That would not be my first choice, but we’re just coming out of eleventy thousand straight months of winter, so fresh air’s a powerful draw.
The stretching feels good, but between my smaller-but-still-present girth, shorts pulled up to my armpits, and total lack of grace, I fear I may look like Chris Farley in that old SNL Chippendales skit. Sure, he had the same moves as Patrick Swayze28—unfortunately, certain parts of his body kept moving when he stopped dancing. I’m giving myself a real bowlful of jelly vibe here.
That’s when I notice office workers watching us from the building next door. Hopefully they’re leering at the cute blond trainer and not laughing themselves into an asthma attack over the human Weeble. I tell Barbie, “If this ends up on YouTube, you die.”
I’m sweaty and covered in concrete dust from the patio after our session, but Barbie hugs me good-bye anyway. After a year of working out together three times a week, I’ll miss not seeing her every couple of days. I’m going to spend the better part of the next two months on the road, sometimes only coming home overnight. I probably won’t have a chance to do my laundry when I get home, let alone squeeze in a training session.
I’m delighted with the level of strength I’ve achieved, but I worry about keeping up my regimen while I’m on the road. Who knows if I’ll even have a minute to hit the hotel gym between all the travel, media, and events? There’d be a great irony in me getting fatter on tour for a book about dieting, no?
The tour’s over and summer’s officially begun, which means I’m working on the next book. My deadline’s looming, so naturally I feel the best use of my day is to head to Stacey’s family’s weekend place for swimming and grilling and gossiping—basically doing anything but writing. I’m en route, happily singing along to my Fergie CD, when the accident happens.
A few minutes before, I noticed the red pickup truck in front of me with a bunch of new furniture loaded into the back. Since the pickup was laden with a queen-sized mattress and a variety of other household items stacked on top of it, I wisely checked my speed and changed lanes, partially because I’m careful and partially because Fletch urged me to keep his precious, precious car safe. Too bad for him that before he mentioned how important my safety was, he told me not to get the car sticky . . . so I obviously had to get the messiest burger I could to eat en route.29
When I left the house, the skies couldn’t have been more blue or cloudless. I opened the sunroof and windows, delighted to feel the sun on my skin and wind in my hair. I spent the better part of the last two months in airports and hotels breathing recycled air, so I’m loving the breeze blowing through the front seat, even if it means be
ing pelted in the teeth by the occasional grasshopper.
The closer I get to my destination, the more the azure sky darkens and begins to look as though it’s bruised. Having lived in a particularly tornado-y part of Indiana, I recognize these conditions, so I pump the gas a little harder, inching my speed up to a full fifty-eight miles per hour in a fifty-five zone.30
I notice I have to put both hands on the wheel to control the car as winds begin to whip. I close the windows and sunroof when powerful currents begin to blow around roadside trash and kick up loose bits of soil.
As I tool along, I wonder if that bitch Mother Nature’s going to ruin my first official pool day of the year. Seriously, it’s like forces are conspiring against my getting a tan this year. Whenever I’ve had time to catch some rays, it’s rained. Sometimes I’ll use self-tanner, but the end result is always disastrous because self-tanning only seems like a good idea after I’ve cocktailed Xanax and Ambien.
(Sidebar: Even though my doctor says I can take them at the same time doesn’t mean I should. And FYI for you amateur med mixologists, please note that one glass of wine plus one Ambien almost always equals shameful online shopping sprees. My Barbie Fashion Fever styling head and I urge you to trust us on this.)
While I contemplate exactly how pasty I am, a strong gust of wind sweeps one of the boxes off the back of the truck and drops it onto the two-lane highway fifty yards ahead of me. I’m far enough back that it doesn’t come crashing through my windshield, but there’s so much traffic in the right lane that I have nowhere to go but forward.
I’m down to about twenty miles an hour when I plow into the box, which I’m hoping is filled with something light, like Styrofoam peanuts or popcorn or maybe paper plates. Perhaps it’s filled with piñatas, and when I hit it, fun-sized packages of Snickers and Sweet Tarts and Twizzlers will rain down on me and voilà! Impromptu fiesta!
No such luck.
I’m pretty sure I just smashed into an anvil or bag of cement or perhaps some depleted plutonium. The impact isn’t enough to deploy the airbags, but it is enough to deploy the fresh thirty-two-ounce Burger King Diet Coke out of my cup holder. The soda explodes and splashes the windshield and sunroof before raining brown liquid and ice chips all over the dashboard, the front seat, my hair, face, and lap.
I pull over on the grassy shoulder and blot my sunglasses with the edge of my T-shirt while shaking chipped ice out of my hair. Then I leap out of the car to inspect the damage. There’s only a small nick in the bumper, but after the unpleasantness with this same bumper and the side of the garage earlier this spring (and, let’s be honest, the lipstick and the side mirror), I happen to know that it’s going to cost at least a grand to replace it, and damn it, this time someone else’s insurance can cover repairs.
Soda streaming down my legs, I stomp down to where the pickup truck driver has stopped his car. He’s an older man with an oiled black pompadour, Civil War-worthy sideburns, blue eyes, and skinny legs supporting a big gut. He sports some enormous white teeth—dentures?—that he arranges into a scary grin when he sees me coming.
Well, hot damn—Elvis isn’t dead; he’s just delivering mattresses in Northern Illinois now.
The King steps out of his truck, saying, “Oh, thank you, thank you ver’ much for stopping! That’s really ver’ kind a you.”
“I stopped because I hit your stupid box!” I snap. I’m taking a deep breath in preparation to yell like I’ve never yelled before when the Memphis Flash holds out a callused hand and says, “I’m Reverend Smith.”
That shuts me down completely. While I wouldn’t say I’m incapable of evil (as evidenced by much of my sorority career), I simply cannot shout at the Lord’s emissary. Or the reincarnation of Elvis the Pelvis.
While he gets back into his car to call the police,31 I’m stuck muttering to myself about Reverend TossyBox from the Church of the Flying Furniture. I make my way over to the cardboard to see what I hit, and when I get there, I shake my head. Un-frigging-believable.
I return to my car, open the trunk, and pull out my beach towel to sop up as much of the mess as I can. I toss handfuls of ice on the side of the road and sweep out a tidal wave of sugar-free soda. Fortunately, with all the bending and stretching, I find the few stray fries and lettuce shreds that had fallen under the seat. Fletch’s going to be upset enough about the chipped paint—no need to bait the bear with Burger King, too.
While I wait for the cops to take an accident report, I figure I’d better call Stacey.
“Yeah, hey, it’s me. I’m running a little late. Why? Because I just got into a head-on collision with an Adirondack chair.”
“Dude, what’s up with the frogs?” I ask. “This is, like, biblical.”
“The frogs aren’t coming from the sky. This isn’t biblical. This is just annoying,” Stacey counters. Despite positively ominous skies, Stacey and I are in the pool. The second we see lightning, we’ll get out, but until then, we swim, damn it. Plus, I have all that soda to rinse off.
“Well, if they’re not a plague, then where are they coming from?”
“You’ve got me. We get a couple of them in the pool every year, but this is bizarre. Maybe they hopped in from the woods because of the storm.” As we wallow in waist-deep water, we attempt to scoop out the dozens of dime-sized frogs swimming around us. They’d be cute—like, so cute they could be manufactured by Sanrio, actually—if only they’d keep their distance. I had one work its way into my hair a couple of minutes ago, and now my throat hurts from all the screaming.
I brush a wee amphibian off my arm. “What’s going on with you? How’s your book32 coming?”
“Great! I’ve spent the week entering recipe contests.”
Stacey isn’t working on a cookbook, but this statement makes perfect sense to me. Any writer will tell you the best part of being a writer is not writing. Oh, the random, unimportant things you can accomplish when you owe someone a manuscript! In the past two weeks, I’ve: (a) started a Facebook account in order to reconnect with people I haven’t given a damn about in twenty years, (b) organized all our Christmas decorations, rewrapping the delicate ornaments I’d tossed carelessly back in the box seven months ago and testing each string of lights, (c) made significant headway in teaching the dogs to bark on command until Fletch reminded me they don’t need any more encouragement in the barking department, and (d) read the first two Twilight series books. Twice.33
“Yeah? How’d that happen? And what kind of recipes?”
“I was writing and I had the Food Network on in the background. Then I noticed some woman getting a massive check for some lousy chicken recipe. Seriously, my chicken is so much better than what won, and she got something like a hundred grand. For a shitty chicken paprikash! I clicked my Word document closed and began to Google cooking contests. I found a ton of them, and I’ve been entering them ever since. Right now, I’m all about Plugra, the European butter people.” Stacey describes the various butter compounds she’s created, and by the time she’s finished, my mouth is watering.
“The one with bacon and maple sounds amazing!” I gush.
“Would that not be ridiculous on pancakes?” she raves.
“How are you making all this stuff and not gaining, like, a million pounds?”
Stacey wrinkles her nose. “Oh, please, I’m not making anything; I’m just coming up with ideas. I’ve already submitted forty different compound recipes.”
I’m dumbfounded at this news and it takes me a moment to digest what she’s saying. “Wait, you’re not entering recipe contests; you’re entering writing contests.”
“That’s about the size of it.” She nods thoughtfully.
“Ha! On the one hand, I applaud your ability to avoid your deadline, but on the other, you’re totally gaming the system. You’re obligated to cook; otherwise, you’re a butter cheater.”
“Listen,” she says, sending away another duo of frogs with a wave. “I’ve probably made each of these compounds a dozen times.
I’m just writing down the work I already did. Obviously I’m hoping to win the grand prize, but they’re also giving away a bunch of ceramic butter bells to the runners-up. I’ll win some of those, because come on, I’ve already entered forty times and these recipes are gold. I’ll make sure to give you one.”
At that moment, lightning flashes across the sky and thunder cracks and we dunk ourselves one more time to remove any stray frogs before scurrying out of the water.
I don’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure this storm is God’s way of punishing Stacey for her butter—cheating.
After dinner, I convince Stacey our evening would be best spent watching So You Think You Can Dance.
During a particularly stirring piece, I turn to her and say, “Before I started watching this show, it never occurred to me that you could actually tell a story through dance. Like, who knew dance could make you feel something?”
Stacey gives me the kind of endearing, indulgent smile reserved for kittens and children taking their first steps. Since she possesses a master’s degree in an arts-related field and was the educational director at the Goodman Theatre for seven years, I guess Stacey might already be familiar with the power of art. “Listen,” she says, “if you like dance that tells a story, I can get us tickets for Marta Carrasco.”
“What’s that?”
“Marta’s a who, not a what, and she’s the leader of a very cool Spanish dance troupe that does really artistic pieces. I’ve seen her a few times at the Goodman and she’s amazing.”
“Neat! I’m totally in.”
We finish watching the show, and at my insistence, view some quality Flavor Flav-based programming on VH1.34 I finally retire to the guest room for the evening, where I watch an iPod Touch episode of Living Lohan before falling asleep and dreaming that Bret Michaels and I win Dancing with the Stars.
My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover Page 3