Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (14 page)

But flip it.

Enjoy your wait. Breathe it in.

Still your head, and your heart.

This is the time of your life.

Think of it as your own personal busy signal.

And in your head, it will sound like opera.

’Twas The Night Before

By Lisa

For Christmas, I got broken pipes.

Again.

Let me explain.

Just before the holidays, I went down to the basement.

First mistake, right?

Going down to the basement is asking for trouble.

There was water all over the basement floor. It didn’t take a plumber to figure out that one of the overhead pipes was leaking.

Correction. Actually, it did. It took four different workmen to figure out what was leaking, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I called my plumbing and heating company, and they sent over a plumber, who said I needed a heating guy instead, and next a heating guy came over and said I needed a plumbing guy instead, and then a third guy came over who could do both and told me it would take four thousand dollars to fix my problem, which was a combination of plumbing and heating problems.

That’s all I understood, as I stopped listening after the four-thousand-dollar part.

But it had to be fixed, so I said yes, and they put me “on the schedule.”

This was two days before Christmas. I stayed home and waited for the plumber/heater guy to come, though I had three zillion things to do, among them buying last-minute gifts and turkey for Christmas dinner. When no one showed up, I called the company, and they said I wasn’t “on the schedule,” after all.

Oops.

No problem, any other week but Christmas. I had no gifts and no turkey. Time was running out. The company said they’d send somebody as soon as possible, which was Christmas Eve day. This was a problem, because it was the last shopping day until you-know-what, and all I had for the holiday dinner was cereal. Also the tree had to be decorated, so never let it be said that I leave some things until the last minute.

Because I leave
everything
until the last minute.

Also, if you recall, my last Christmas Eve was spent with plumbers and heating guys. If it’s a federal holiday, I’m spending it with plumbing and heating guys.

So I said to the company, no thanks, don’t send the plumbers on Christmas Eve. Send the plumbers on Monday, after the weekend.

What could go wrong?

You’ll see.

Francesca and I enjoyed Christmas Eve day, picked up our turkey and fixings, and stopped by the mall, where we were interviewed by a TV reporter as one of those crazy last-minute shoppers. I blamed it on Francesca. On camera. That’s the kind of mother I am.

So we came home all happy, but as we were decorating the tree, we noticed it was getting cooler in the house. And long story short, on Christmas morning, we opened our presents in fifty-five-degree weather.

Inside.

Whatever had gone wrong in the basement had knocked out our heat, but no worries, we were warmed by tidings of comfort and joy.

Until the house temperature dipped to fifty-two.

Hmm.

We had put shopping ahead of heating, and now we’re going to pay for it.

Still, no worries. We remained calm. We would tough it out for the weekend, then the plumber/heater guy would come on Monday.

But a snowstorm came instead.

And the plumber/heating guy couldn’t.

So you know where this is going.

We have no heat, for five days now. Francesca keeps a fire burning in the fireplace in the family room, and I keep the hot chocolate coming. We sleep on couches, huddled with the dogs, in the flickering light of the fire.

So I asked her if we should have done the prudent thing and let the plumber come, instead of having Christmas Eve.

“Nah,” she answered, with a smile.

Good girl.

Prepare for the Best

By Francesca

Recently, I met a boy. He’s smart and cute and funny. And when I’m talking, he looks at me,
really
looks at me, and makes me forget what I’m saying. So you know what I told myself?

Don’t get excited.

But I was. I could feel it fizzing inside of me like someone shaking up a soda can. Instead of enjoying it, the next thing I told myself was this:

Don’t be stupid.

The butterflies in my stomach felt more like hornets, and I was just waiting to get stung.

When my girlfriends asked about this new guy, I heard myself downplaying it, starting sentences with, “It will probably be nothing…” and just to be clear, “I’m not getting my hopes up or anything.”

After listening to my litany of worst-case scenarios, my one friend said, “You know, you’re allowed to be excited.”

I am?

Oh, right, I am.

So why was I being so hard on myself?

We’re often told that the problem with women is that we live in fairy tales—head in the clouds, nose in the air, dreaming of Prince Charming while overcharging our credit accounts. The adjective
picky
is exclusive to children who won’t eat and adult women.

But I have never identified with that, and the majority of women in my life don’t fit that bill either.

In my experience, it’s women who are the realists, the worriers.

How many real women do you know who are
too picky
? For every one I know, I can think of ten who are not picky enough, who are too quick to settle for a man who doesn’t treat them right and too slow to get out of a relationship gone bad.

Common wisdom says: keep your expectations low, and you’ll always be pleasantly surprised.

But at what cost? What does a life of low expectations feel like?

Surprisingly unpleasant.

We miss out on the giddy fun of fantasy and the adrenaline jolt of new possibilities.

I remember in high school when I could fixate on a random boy in class. My friends and I would discuss him endlessly and put his name into a game of MASH or Ouija board. I don’t remember if I ever told the guy how I felt; that was beside the point. The dreaming was the fun part.

And no offense to high school boys, but most of the time, having the crush was better than having the boyfriend.

As adults, we don’t often allow ourselves to get our hopes up about a new prospect, romantic or professional. In an attempt to guard against potential disappointment, we’ve made happiness the unexpected and pessimism the status quo.

And are we safer for it? Stronger? Braver?

Not really.

I’m starting to think that if you try to steel yourself against every blow, your armor just weighs you down.

And when does anticipating the worst slide into precipitating the worst?

If we expect little, we ask for little. We aren’t as quick to notice when our low expectations have become simply low standards.

I’m not saying we should be reckless, but there is a difference between being grounded and being pessimistic. I think we should seize happiness whenever we can get it. It’s our nourishment, our rocket fuel. It’s worth the risk.

Joy matters.

It’s not so much about trusting the world to take care of us, it’s about trusting ourselves to push through anyway. We must have faith in our ability to bounce back from disappointment and failure.

Failure is an event, not a definition.

We can put it behind us and be open to the next person or opportunity that gets our blood pumping.

Disappointment does happen. But there’s no need to roll out the red carpet for it.

So in 2011, I think we should give ourselves permission to fantasize, to get excited without apology. Let’s go ahead and get our hopes up for a change.

Here, I’ll start: I’m going on record saying I am excited about a boy. And if you see me sometime in the next year, and you ask about him, I’ll tell you the unabashed truth. I can’t promise it will be good news, but I can promise you that no matter what, I’ll still be standing tall.

And so will you.

Because we can handle it when things go wrong.

So let’s enjoy it, just in case they go right.

Join Me

By Lisa

I’ve said that I don’t like the idea of New Year’s resolutions. They’re too negative. Why start out the year with a long list of things you do wrong?

Especially when you’re so great.

How do I know you’re great?

You’re here, aren’t you?

Bottom line, you and me, we’re great already.

That’s why I make unResolutions. In an unResolution, I resolve, in the new year, to keep doing something that I like about myself. For example, I like that I kiss my dogs on the lips. And I resolve to keep doing it.

Why?

It’s fun, and it doesn’t hurt anybody except my dogs, who are permanently scarred.

But they can’t hire a lawyer, so no worries.

Now that we’ve established that I’m no fan of resolutions, you’ll understand why I feel cranky at the people who pressure you into making them. There’s even a website that will tell you to make a resolution and create a contract with yourself about it. You can choose from among the resolutions, which are “lose weight,” “quit smoking,” or “exercise regularly.” Or you can even make a “custom goal.”

You can guess my “custom goal.”

I typed in, “marry George Clooney.”

The way the website works is that if you don’t keep your resolution, you break your contract with yourself. I don’t know if you have to sue yourself or not, but this may be where my dogs come in. If you can sue yourself, they can sue me, and we’re all in deep dog-doo.

The website also tells you to create a penalty so you don’t break your resolution, i.e., it challenges you to “put your money where your mouth is.” It says that you should set a dollar amount, whereby you pay money if you break your resolution.

Do you understand this? It means that you have to lose your own money if you decide to ditch George Clooney.

That’s crazy. And if you ditch George Clooney, you not only lost your money, you lost your mind.

According to the website, exactly 52,283 people have already made contracts, for a total amount of $5,479,151.

Wow!

That’s real dough. I’m pretty sure we could pay off the federal deficit with all the people who resolve they’re going to start working out, but don’t, like me. We’d have to pay off not only the gym membership we’re not using, we’d have to pay the website, too. We can feel bad about ourselves—twice!

Happy New Year?

And if you’re wondering what the website does with the money, it sends it to “a friend, a charity, or an AntiCharity, which is an organization you hate!”

Consider the first option: that it sends the money to your friend. In my case, let’s say I make a contract to lose weight and the beneficiary is my Best Friend Franca. Then, if my resolution is that I will lose weight, which is my forever-resolution from the days when I used to make resolutions, and I don’t lose weight, Franca gets a hundred bucks.

Huh?

This means that Franca, my alleged best friend, would have to sit around and hope that I didn’t lose weight. She’d cash in only if I fail. Is this the kind of behavior we want to encourage in our BFFs? On the contrary, that’s the way to turn a friend into a frenemy.

Also Franca would never do it. She would tell me I didn’t need to lose weight, no matter how chubby I was. In fact, she’d love me more, the more there was of me to love. That’s why she’s a true BFF and not a fake dumb website BFF.

And consider the penalty money going to charity. If I didn’t lose weight and broke my contract with myself, my hundred bucks would go to an animal shelter. That’s a win-win, to me. Dogs get rescued, and I get chocolate cake.

I guess that’s why they came up with the AntiCharity idea, where the money goes to an organization you hate. Let’s pick an organization that everyone hates, like the Ku Klux Klan. This way, if you don’t lose weight, you’re funding the KKK.

Ya happy yet?

Maybe I should start my own AntiCharity.

You can join.

We’ll call it People Organized Against Resolutions.

That’ll fix ’em.

Rewarding, or Why Free Is Dumber Than You Think

By Lisa

Here’s what I’m telling you. Beware of “rewards points.”

What?

Yes, that’s right. I said it, and if you remember, it wasn’t always thus. I used to be a big fan of rewards points.

Let’s review.

I remember the day I found out that my credit card was accumulating rewards points, because I felt like I had won the lottery.

Okay, a really tiny lottery, but still, free is free, and I was excited. The way my credit card worked was that every time I used it, it accumulated points that enabled me to choose free stuff from a free catalog.

Wow!

I even wrote about how hard it was to pick stuff out of the free catalog, mainly because I was so dazzled by the free part that I thought I might faint.

I’m not cheap, but free has a unique power, no? I couldn’t go wrong, if it didn’t cost me anything.

Or so I thought.

And since then, I’ve been all over the rewards thing. I’ve even spread the word. Daughter Francesca is about to get a new credit card, and I’ve advised her to make sure she gets one with rewards.

Who doesn’t want to be rewarded?

Lately, me.

I came to this epiphany with my new spice rack. I saw it in the free catalog, and I forget how many points it cost, because it all came down to the same thing:

It’s FREE!

So I bought/ordered/willed it to exist in my house. And now, sitting atop my oven, is a too-cool-for-school spice rack from Dean & DeLuca. All of the spices are in glass test tubes with real corks, so they’re visible from the side and have nice colors. But the spices are things like lavender and Tellicherry peppercorns.

Huh?

I have no idea when lavender became a spice, but it does look pretty in its purple test tube. Too pretty to use, and anyway, what would I put lavender on?

Marigolds?

The rack also includes imported spices, like Greek oregano and French tarragon. Thank God. You wouldn’t want tarragon from anywhere else, would you? And I smelled the Greek oregano, which smells exactly like American oregano, which smells like a pizza parlor.