Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) (21 page)

“Should I friend him on Facebook?” I asked my mom.

“No, I think that’s a little intrusive.”

“Mom, you wanted me to get a criminal background check on that lawyer before our first date, do you remember that?”

“That was for your safety. This is different.”

“
Psh,
you don’t know.”

But why would she know? When she was my age, people called each other on the phone. And instead of reading a list of interests online, they had to actually get to know each other, slowly. And the craziest of all: If they weren’t physically in front of each other, they had to—wait for it—
imagine
what the other person looked like.

I know! Who has the time?

My mom also has impossibly high standards for dating protocol. For example, this guy I met asked me out to drinks, and I called my mom to ask her thoughts on a potential outfit, but she had other opinions:

“Drinks? You should go out to dinner.”

“He didn’t ask me to dinner, Mom. And anyway, drinks are fine. It’s a first date.”

“It’s not a date. A date is a meal.”

“What? There are lots of types of dates, coffee dates, lunch dates, drinks dates. C’mon.”

“I don’t get it. Why would you want to drink and not eat? Is he trying to get you drunk?”

“You sound crazy right now. Drinks are a perfectly normal date.”

“I’ve never been on a ‘drinks date.’”

“Never?”

“In fact, I’ve never been in a bar.”

“Oh, forget it.”

This is one of my mom’s favorite myths—that she’s never been in a bar. I still have a hard time believing it, but that’s her story, and she’s sticking to it. I know this about her, so I should’ve known better than to ask.

Anyway, that night, I chose my own outfit and went on my not-weird-at-all drinks date. Although my date’s choice to order a bottle for the two of us was perhaps ambitious—by his third glass, his eyes were droopy, and he was repeating himself. I was bored. Didn’t see him again.

But it’s no big loss. I’ve since started seeing someone I like much better—not that that makes it any easier. My girlfriends and I have an inexhaustible tolerance for discussing the delicate, early weeks of a new relationship. Our war room strategy sessions can last upwards of an hour. So I don’t know what I was thinking when I asked my civilian mom the question:

“Should I call him?”

“Do you want to see him?” my mom said.

“Well, yeah, but we texted yesterday, and he told me he might be free tonight, but we didn’t make plans. Since I haven’t heard from him today, I don’t know if I should make other plans. I could ask him, but I don’t want to seem like I’m waiting around with nothing to do, you know? Because he clearly has other things to do, otherwise he wouldn’t have said the ‘might’ in ‘might be free.’”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“Mom!”

“Do you want to see him tonight, or do you want to do something else?”

“See him.”

“Then call him.”

“It’s not that simple. I can’t just call him.”

“Yes. You can.”

“No, it needs finesse. I don’t just want to see him; I want him to
want
to see me.”

“It isn’t your job to control what he wants. Your job is to figure out what you want.”

And just like that, she’ll say something that makes perfect sense.

So it’s not that I’m wrong to ask for my mom’s advice.

But every so often, I should listen.

Home, Sweet Gym

By Lisa

Everything in my home office is at my fingertips, and I’m gaining weight. I sense these things are not unrelated.

I’ve set up everything in my life so I don’t have to move around too much, with the completely foreseeable result that now I don’t move around too much. And five pounds later, it turns out it wasn’t one of my better ideas.

It started last year, when I stopped working in my home office, which is upstairs. It’s a converted bedroom that has a desk, TV, and bookshelves, and one side is covered with framed covers of my books, like my wall o’ self-esteem.

Correction.

If I had self-esteem, I wouldn’t need a wall.

But when Daughter Francesca moved out, I didn’t need to stay upstairs to have quiet, and even before then I used to come downstairs and work in the kitchen, which I called my summer office.

And in my summer office, the laptop is right next to the refrigerator, but I’ve mentioned that before and it’s not my point herein. Now I want to talk about how I’ve created a life that doesn’t require me to move around my house, so that now I need a home gym.

Ironic, because my house used to be my gym. By this I mean when I worked in my upstairs office, I used to spend a lot of time running up and down the stairs.

My staircase was my StairMaster.

But now all I do is sit.

Also, shoved in the corner of my upstairs office was an elliptical machine. I used it when I worked up there, because I practically had to trip over it to get to my desk. But you know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.

Though I’m not sure they were talking about ellipticals.

Still, the result was the same. I was thinking that I needed a home gym when I remembered that I already had one.

Oops.

So I had no excuses.

And what happened next is that I said to myself, enough already. Get upstairs and work out on the elliptical. But I had to dress the part. I had some old shorts and a new white shirt of something called Under Armour. Actually I had bought one for Daughter Francesca, who really does work out and run, and an extra one for me, because I think about working out and running.

But when I opened up the Under Armour package, I realized that Under Armour is Spanx for jocks.

I had ordered a Medium, but this size was Postage Stamp.

I could not believe the shirt would stretch out enough for me to put it on, but I tried, and when I got it over my neck, I almost strangled myself. I managed to pop through the neck like some superannuated turtle, then I wrenched it over my shoulders and felt like I’d bound my chest, which isn’t a good look for an A cup.

Still, regardless of how I looked in my Under Armour, it imparted a generally athletic vibe that made me feel good about myself.

Like a shirt o’ self-esteem.

So I jumped onto the elliptical and hit the
START
button, exuberant until I had to plug in my weight. So I subtracted ten pounds and plugged it in.

Yes, dear reader, I lied.

To an inanimate object.

Then I started pedaling, and within thirty seconds I had to hit
PAUSE
button to take off my Under Armour, because I was sweating profusely.

Which must be why they call it Under Armour.

Because it makes you sweat under your armers.

Either way, in time I gave up and went down to the kitchen.

Er, I mean, my office.

The Right To Vote

By Lisa

I believe it’s important to vote. It’s our right and privilege, as Americans. That’s why I vote whenever I can, for
Dancing with the Stars, The Sing-Off,
and
American Idol.

I vote, vote, vote.

I’m a votin’ fool.

It wasn’t always thus. I used to watch all those shows and never vote. I felt silly voting, even though nobody would know it. I thought there was a dividing line between people who voted and people who didn’t vote.

That dividing line would be age nine.

But then, I thought about it. The person I wanted to win wasn’t winning. Plus I wanted my voice to be heard, which is what makes this country great. So now, I exercise my right and privilege, and vote.

From the couch.

I text my vote, which is an idea whose time has come, if you ask me.

If we could text our votes in political elections, everybody would vote. No more worries about getting to the polls or bad weather. And texting can be made secure. For example, I can check my VISA card balance by text. And I’d rather somebody knew my vote than my VISA balance.

We should start texting votes for political elections. We’d have a hundred percent voter turnout, and our politicians would be better singers.

And better yet, you can vote more than once on TV elections. I like that. Why stop at only one vote? You can vote up to ten times, which shows you really really really meant it.

Okay, that’s only three times, but you get the idea.

As a rule, I vote for my favorite TV singer only once. This is my way of saying my piece, but not trying to sway the election. I’m no control freak. I just want to make a record, even if it’s only for myself.

Because my vote is secret.

You don’t think I’d tell anybody that I vote for TV singers, do you?

If they ask, I’ll deny it. And if they read this, I’ll say I made it up.

I tell people I read at night.

I have the same attitude for the political elections, even presidential. I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t vote for either candidate running in this past election. I wrote in my own candidate for president, even though I knew my candidate wouldn’t win. It was impossible, with only one cranky vote. But I really thought I had the best candidate, so I voted the way I wanted to, regardless of who was running. Officially.

Why get technical? I made my point, to no one.

Er, to me.

And to the hapless poll person who had to help me figure out where to write in the name and also lent me a pen, as I didn’t know I’d be doing a write-in ballot until I actually got in the booth. This is what a good planner I am, which is another reason I’m divorced twice.

Now, the only problem with voting on TV shows is that you get too invested. You really want your person to win. I guess this is like playing golf and betting on who wins each hole. I don’t play golf or bet, but I’m sure it ups the ante, and the anxiety.

Either way, now that I vote, I’m nervous. What used to be entertainment has become a cause. For example, right now, I’m waiting for
The Sing-Off
finale to come on TV, and I couldn’t decide who was the best
a cappella
group, so last week, I voted for the two best groups. And I voted once for each.

Again, not trying to sway, just trying to represent.

Myself.

I’m
a cappella,
after all. I can relate.

But now I’m worried that my candidates may not win, even though they’re the most deserving. I can tell they’re not the judges’ favorites, though they should be.

I hate it when voting gets political, don’t you?

The Einstein Workout

By Lisa

Einstein discovered that time is relative, and I bet I know where he was when he figured that one out.

On an elliptical machine.

Five minutes never seemed so long as when I’m on the elliptical, which I started doing again because it’s too snowy to walk the dogs. The dogs don’t do the elliptical. They watch me, and laugh.

Ruby holds the stopwatch.

There’s nothing I can do to make time go faster on the elliptical. I have the TV on while I shuffle my feet and pump my arms, but my eyes keep straying to the glowing digital numerals of the clock on the console. I start watching the time around two minutes in, and as the numbers change from 2:36 to 2:37, it feels as if a second lasts twenty minutes. Sometimes I play a game with myself, where I cover the clock with a towel, but that drives me nuts, because I want to know how much torture I have left.

Er, I mean how much time I have left.

When I remove the towel, the time is always the same: More than I thought. Way more.

The other day I tapped the lighted clock with my finger, just to make sure it was working. It worked fine.

I didn’t.

It reminded me of the time I was giving a speech and nobody was laughing. I would’ve bet that the microphone was off, but it wasn’t.

I was.

Or another time, when I was trying to establish myself as a writer and I thought that the way to do that was to write a screenplay. So I did, and I sent it to a hundred agents in LA. I’m not joking or exaggerating, for once. I sent it to a hundred agents. How many replies did I get?

None.

I felt sure something was wrong with my mailbox, my zip code, the postal service, or the universe in general. But no, I was just failing.

Same thing with the elliptical.

Failing, failing, failing.

I’m good at failing. I take failure well. You can, too. Just practice.

I try to do thirty minutes on the elliptical, but I’m theorizing that the time you spend working out is like dog years. If you do it for half an hour, it will be the same as seven years.

Relatively speaking.

On the other hand, the new year just came and went, and I feel as if 2010 flew by. In fact, if you had asked me which was longer, a half an hour on an elliptical or the whole of 2010, you know which I’d pick.

Right.

Birthdays work this way, too. For example, I suppose that in some technical sense, I’m 55 years old. But it seems like I’m 25, in my mind.

Wait. I just got an idea.

I’m going to live my whole entire life on the elliptical. Then it will seem like I’ve lived seven lifetimes.

What a concept!

And I would never embarrass myself, as in did the other night when I was out to dinner with Daughter Francesca, Best Friend Franca, and her daughter Jessica. Franca and I were in the same law school class, and we were talking about our upcoming class reunion. I couldn’t remember which one it was, so I said:

“It’s our twentieth, right?”.

And Franca said, “No, it’s our twenty-fifth, isn’t it?”

Obviously neither of us was good at math, which is why we went to law school, but Francesca and Jessica started smiling.

Francesca said, “You graduated from law school in 1981, so it’s your thirtieth reunion.”

Franca and I looked at each other, nonplussed. “Is that possible?” she asked.

“Of course not,” I answered, and we both reached for our wine.

The fastest time of all, of course, is how long it takes for your kid to grow up. Francesca is about to turn twenty-five, and this is obviously mathematically impossible.