Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions (11 page)

Happiness and pride attacked my heart, causing it to explode with Crestor and estrogen.

Okay, just Crestor.

For me, estrogen is a thing of the past.

Like sex.

In any event, what happened next was that Francesca introduced me to the librarians, and we all hugged each other, making happy noises about mothers, daughters, and books, which is the girl trifecta.

And one of the librarians said, “Francesca is her mother's daughter, isn't she?”

To which I replied, “I can't take any of the credit.”

Which is what I believe.

But I didn't realize why until I left Francesca in New York and came home, where I got out of the car and the first thing I saw was my garden.

You may remember that I started a garden last year, and I planted a zillion perennials, making every rookie mistake in the book—placing plants too close together, digging too deep, putting the plants that needed sun in the shade, or watering everything so much that I broke an underground water pipe and had to have the whole lawn excavated to install a new pipe.

I have a gangrene thumb.

But when I got home, I was astounded to see that while I was away, the plants had sprung up out of nowhere and burst into glorious bloom. The phlox had vivid pink flowers, the catmint smelled minty, and the purple coneflower opened up their spiky faces. Red and yellow roses scented the air like perfume, and the sun shone so prettily on the flowers that I had to take a picture.

In the photo, you can see the sun rays, and honestly, it looks like God himself.

I'm amazed by both!

Nobody can take credit for a perennial garden, because we're not the gardener.

He is.

And that's true of daughters, too.

 

Guilt Tripping at 65 MPH

By Francesca

My mom trusts me to coauthor a series of books, but she doesn't trust me to drive.

And she might be right.

We went to the Nantucket Book Festival on tour for
Have a Nice Guilt Trip,
our fifth book. I feel like our working partnership is better than ever. We've gained an easy rhythm at our speaking engagements.

We trust each other.

Just not in the car.

I realized this on the drive home from Nantucket. We couldn't stay for the whole weekend, because my mom is on deadline crunch, so we arrived on Friday and were driving back to my apartment on Saturday night. Everything was fine until darkness fell on I-95. We were in Rhode Island when I felt my mother riding the brakes.

I looked over at her. “Everything okay?”

“Yup.” She was white-knuckling the wheel. The speedometer needle hovered around 40 mph. Cars and trucks were whizzing by us on both sides, several honked in frustration.

“The speed limit is sixty-five.”

“I'm not gonna drive like a maniac and get us killed, okay? It doesn't matter if we go a little slower.”

“Actually, with almost two hundred miles to go, a five-or ten-mile-per-hour difference really adds up. Forty miles an hour is going to take five hours, whereas sixty will take—”

“I'M DRIVING HERE.”

Every daughter knows when she's pushing it, so I shut up. An hour passed, and my mom was so tense, we drove in uncharacteristic silence. It was only 10:00
P.M.
but she started talking about stopping at a motel for the night.

I sighed.

“So you're going to guilt me?” she said.

“Ohmigod, I
breathed.
”

Sure, I was thinking that we could have spent the evening on Nantucket, eating lobster rolls by the sea before going to bed in the clean, crisp linens of our charming B&B. Instead, we were making our second seven-hour drive in twenty-four hours, posing a traffic hazard in the middle of I-95, and looking for a Ramada Inn.

But my sigh was totally innocent.

Then I had a better idea than passive-aggressive respiration: “Do you want me to drive?”

My mom took her eyes off the road to look at me, aghast.

To be fair, this wasn't an overreaction. I've been living in New York for five years, and I haven't driven regularly since I was a teenager. The last time I had to parallel-park was my driver's test.

But driving is like riding a bike, right?

A three thousand-pound, four hundred-horsepower, steel bike.

We discussed it at a rest stop. Seeing the stress on my mother's face in the fluorescent lights, I understood it didn't matter why she felt uncomfortable driving at night, only that she did. I could be more sympathetic, or, better, I could help.

She was still skeptical. “You're sure you can do this?”

“Please,” I said with more confidence than I felt, “I'm almost thirty.”

So we swapped seats and set out. At first, she wouldn't stop telling me to slow down, even though I was going the limit.

“Mom,” I said. “I'm the captain now.”

From there, we bombed home. I pushed through my fear and ignored my mother bracing against the window and the dash. I didn't know it, but she had her eyes closed for the tricky exit-jumping required to enter Manhattan.

No wonder she was no help reading the GPS.

Toward the end, a Bentley driver flagged me down, asking for directions into the city.

For the money, you'd think a Bentley would know.

I told them and offered that they could follow me.

My mom took a break from being terrified to be impressed.

Somehow, we made it safely home. I felt a greater sense of accomplishment after I parallel-parked than I did after speaking in front of one hundred people.

Out on the sidewalk, as soon as my mom got her land legs, she delivered one of her body-shaking high fives and a giant hug.

Yeah, we make a good team.

 

Hissy Fit Bit

By Lisa

I'm in love.

With my Fitbit.

I'm smitten, which makes me Smitbit.

Or maybe Fitbitten.

Either way, I'm into it.

If you don't know what a Fitbit is, let me explain.

It's a harmless-looking rubber band that comes in cute colors, fits around your wrist, and tracks your activity during the day. In other words, it can tell in real time whether you have been sitting on your butt like me or whether you have been engaging in something called exercise.

It doesn't know if you've been naughty or nice.

But it does see you when you're sleeping.

You can wear it to bed, and it can even track your sleep and tell you when you're restless.

Restless is code for got-up-and-went-to-the-bathroom.

The Fitbit comes preset with goals, like for example ten thousand steps, and when you've walked ten thousand steps a day, it vibrates.

Think of it as a vibrator with a PG rating.

In other words, a lousy vibrator.

My Fitbit is hot pink, and I got it as a gift from my best friend Franca, who reaches ten thousand steps by seven o'clock in the morning because she's a runner.

You could reach ten thousand steps by making 627 trips to the refrigerator, but that would not be in the spirit of Fitbithood.

Okay, I admit I did that on the first day, but not the second. Because what started to happen is that I did more activities so I could get credit from my Fitbit.

I wanted my Fitbit to approve of me.

I'm not only a people pleaser, I'm an inanimate-object pleaser.

Yes, to gain my Fitbit's love, I actually engaged in exercise. I rode my bicycle for six miles and walked the dogs for two miles.

By the way, my dogs do not have Fitbits.

They don't Fitbite.

And after my exercise, I raced home, hurried to my desk, and synced up my Fitbit with the computer, which is one of Fitbit's features. All of a sudden, pretty colored banners started flying across my monitor screen, reading HOORAY, LISA!

I got all excited!

Who doesn't need positive reinforcement in life?

After eight hours of sitting on my butt and writing, my computer never tells me, HOORAY, LISA!

But somebody pays me to write, so I'm not complaining.

HOORAY, MONEY!

By the way, the Fitbit computer display can also tell you how many calories you burn a day, but I don't look.

I want to keep the romance alive.

HOORAY IN GENERAL!

Also I don't need a bracelet to tell me I should lose weight.

I have a mirror for that.

And there's a reason nobody's making a mirror that straps to your wrist.

Another Fitbit feature I ignore is that you can connect online with other people who have Fitbit, called your Fitbit Friends, and this will enable them to see your activity levels.

I don't want Fitbit Friends.

Anybody who wants to know how many steps I walk a day isn't anybody I want to know.

If you follow.

You can even buy a Fitbit scale, which will connect wirelessly to your Fitbit bracelet and a fitness app on your phone, so that all of the inanimate objects you own can talk about how fat you are behind your back.

Needless to say, I declined.

But in no time at all, I was wearing my Fitbit every day, doing as much activity as I could, and checking my progress every night on the computer. Banners flew, badges were awarded, and my spirits soared.

GO, LISA, GO!

I actually lost a pound without meaning to, which has never happened in my life and might in fact be a typographical error.

But then one morning, I tapped my Fitbit to wake it up and it wouldn't wake up. I tried recharging it, resetting it, and doing everything I could, but it was dead. I went to the troubleshooting section of the Fitbit website, and if you've ever been to the troubleshooting section of any website, you know what happens.

You want to troubleshoot yourself.

That was a week ago, and without Fitbit to clap for me, I'm riding my bike less and barely walking the dogs at all.

I gained my pound back.

My world went from hot pink to blue.

The solution?

I might be crazy, but I'm going to buy a new one.

I know I can love again.

 

Can You Keep a Secret?

By Francesca

I'm keeping a secret from my best friend.

This won't be published until after the secret is out, but as I write this, I'm in the midst.

It's terrible.

No, sorry, keeping the secret is terrible. The news is wonderful:

Her boyfriend is going to propose.

“Please keep the following completely secret,” began his email to me last week. I opened the attachments on my iPhone and was temporarily blinded by the photos of drop-dead-gorgeous diamond rings.

My first reaction was pure joy. I love her current boyfriend as a person and I love how he treats my friend; she's never been happier since they got together, so I was positive the “yes” was a lock.

But my elation curdled to anxiety when I realized he wasn't just letting me in on a fun secret, he was asking for advice on her favorite style, setting, cut, size, etc.

And I drew a blank. In our decade of friendship, I thought we'd discussed every topic on earth, twice. We love hypotheticals. I know which type of professional athlete she thinks would make the best husband (tennis pro), her top three cities to raise children (Providence, New York, Boston), and the breed of dog she would get (Bichon Fris
é
) if she liked dogs, which she doesn't.

Yet somehow, we hadn't discussed hypothetical engagement rings.

And now I'd discovered this glaring error in my best-friend duties too late. How had I not anticipated this scenario? As her in-case-of-romantic-emergency contact, I should have this information!

What if I pick something she hates and she has to wear it for the rest of her life? Could we even be friends anymore?

I'd definitely get cut from the bridesmaids roster.

If
she even gets married, that is. What if I pick an ugly ring and she blames
him
for it, thus mistakenly believing that the love of her life doesn't “get” her? And it's all my fault!

It suddenly felt like I was the one proposing. Our entire relationship and future happiness were riding on this question!

Clammy hands on my keyboard, I did my best to answer each of her hopeful fianc
é
's questions. There was only one area I felt confident about—carat size. He suggested several options to me, but expressed concern my friend would find them “too flashy.”

Oh yeah, women hate flashy diamonds.

After I'd written an appropriately tasteful preamble about how they were all gorgeous and how my friend is so in love with him she'd say yes to a shoestring, I was unequivocal: “Bigger is better. It's a no-brainer.”

Just in case my friend ever saw this email exchange, I wanted her to know I had her back.

The only conversation I did remember having with my friend was about how the real charm of an engagement ring lies in imagining the man you love most in the world taking the time and care to choose a ring that shows that love returned.