especially Jill. He merelyrolled his eyes and revealed his blatant skepticism that book club has any intrinsic value whatsoever.
“You have no idea what book club is all about,” I told him, seething. “It’s a communal experience, a chance for us to connect and discuss topics outside our own limited lives. It’s like church.” Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but still. Jonah hasn’t read a book since the Paleolithic era. He really has no concept of what books mean to me.
“Book club is an excuse for you and your friends to drink wine and gossip,” he proclaimed, as if he were the King Poobah of Universal Wisdom. I really hate that tone of voice. So I clamped my mouth shut and escaped to the loo.
And here I sit, musing about the sorry state of my hemorrhoids as I flip through my cousin’s magazine. I have managed to avoid reading it for more than a week now, but my excuses to Jill are starting to sound pathetic even to my own ears. (“No, I didn’t look at the competition guidelines today, I had to clean my lint trap.” “No, I didn’t read the competition guidelines because I was busy realigning my fifth chakra.”)
I am now twelve days into Operation Ellen, and feeling fine, but it has not been as cathartic as I thought it would. I still feel like me. Not that I expected to be transformed into some higher being, or Angelina Jolie or anything, but I thought I would somehow feel
different
. I have been eating right and exercising regularly and trying to have a positive, can-do attitude, and it’s true that my skin is looking good and my waistbands are slightly looser and I have a slight bounce in my step, but I haven’t yet reached transcendency. Perhaps I should have aimed lower with the whole reinvention thing.
I turn pages of the magazine mindlessly. I bypass thearticle on spicing up your sex life, although after this morning, I could use some advice in that area. I briefly scan a two-page piece about a miracle cleanse that will scrub your intestines so clean you could eat off them and cause your colon to whistle “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I’m not supportive of any diet or fast that erases wine from my daily consumption since, let’s face it, wine is a housewife’s heroin, and withdrawal symptoms include random crying jags over particularly sappy e-mails, littering the kitchen floor with every single pot and pan in the cupboard whilst screeching about how dinner is not going to cook itself, and beating the crap out of my kids—figuratively, of course. In my opinion, it’s better to have dirty intestines and a nonwhistling colon.
A few pages later, I find myself staring down at the competition guidelines.
You could win $10,000 and write for our magazine!
the headline announces.
Create a blog at Ladieslivingwelljournal.com, write about what you know, and the blog that receives the most hits wins!
I stare at the wall across from the toilet for a moment, searching through the cavernous recesses of my brain in an attempt to come up with at least one idea for a blog. The
write about what you know
part puts me at a disadvantage because I can’t for the life of me come up with something interesting that I actually know about. I have spent the last thirteen years as a wife and mother and have done little else. I know how to change a diaper (though even that skill is a bit rusty now), I can make a cake in the shape of the Empire State Building (but who can’t nowadays, thanks to the friggin’ Ace of Cakes), and I can tell you the best places to go for a good bounce: the G-rated, inflatable, kid-kind of bounce, not the lascivious, consenting-adults kind of bounce. But who wants to read about such banal things? Don’t peoplewant to be informed and inspired, made to really think and ponder things, to find enlightenment, to be hit with an emotional impact that causes catharsis?
I know what my friend Mia would say. She’d say, “Girl, you are overestimating the intelligence of the inhabitants of planet
“You have no idea what book club is all about,” I told him, seething. “It’s a communal experience, a chance for us to connect and discuss topics outside our own limited lives. It’s like church.” Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but still. Jonah hasn’t read a book since the Paleolithic era. He really has no concept of what books mean to me.
“Book club is an excuse for you and your friends to drink wine and gossip,” he proclaimed, as if he were the King Poobah of Universal Wisdom. I really hate that tone of voice. So I clamped my mouth shut and escaped to the loo.
And here I sit, musing about the sorry state of my hemorrhoids as I flip through my cousin’s magazine. I have managed to avoid reading it for more than a week now, but my excuses to Jill are starting to sound pathetic even to my own ears. (“No, I didn’t look at the competition guidelines today, I had to clean my lint trap.” “No, I didn’t read the competition guidelines because I was busy realigning my fifth chakra.”)
I am now twelve days into Operation Ellen, and feeling fine, but it has not been as cathartic as I thought it would. I still feel like me. Not that I expected to be transformed into some higher being, or Angelina Jolie or anything, but I thought I would somehow feel
different
. I have been eating right and exercising regularly and trying to have a positive, can-do attitude, and it’s true that my skin is looking good and my waistbands are slightly looser and I have a slight bounce in my step, but I haven’t yet reached transcendency. Perhaps I should have aimed lower with the whole reinvention thing.
I turn pages of the magazine mindlessly. I bypass thearticle on spicing up your sex life, although after this morning, I could use some advice in that area. I briefly scan a two-page piece about a miracle cleanse that will scrub your intestines so clean you could eat off them and cause your colon to whistle “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I’m not supportive of any diet or fast that erases wine from my daily consumption since, let’s face it, wine is a housewife’s heroin, and withdrawal symptoms include random crying jags over particularly sappy e-mails, littering the kitchen floor with every single pot and pan in the cupboard whilst screeching about how dinner is not going to cook itself, and beating the crap out of my kids—figuratively, of course. In my opinion, it’s better to have dirty intestines and a nonwhistling colon.
A few pages later, I find myself staring down at the competition guidelines.
You could win $10,000 and write for our magazine!
the headline announces.
Create a blog at Ladieslivingwelljournal.com, write about what you know, and the blog that receives the most hits wins!
I stare at the wall across from the toilet for a moment, searching through the cavernous recesses of my brain in an attempt to come up with at least one idea for a blog. The
write about what you know
part puts me at a disadvantage because I can’t for the life of me come up with something interesting that I actually know about. I have spent the last thirteen years as a wife and mother and have done little else. I know how to change a diaper (though even that skill is a bit rusty now), I can make a cake in the shape of the Empire State Building (but who can’t nowadays, thanks to the friggin’ Ace of Cakes), and I can tell you the best places to go for a good bounce: the G-rated, inflatable, kid-kind of bounce, not the lascivious, consenting-adults kind of bounce. But who wants to read about such banal things? Don’t peoplewant to be informed and inspired, made to really think and ponder things, to find enlightenment, to be hit with an emotional impact that causes catharsis?
I know what my friend Mia would say. She’d say, “Girl, you are overestimating the intelligence of the inhabitants of planet
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