Read Online Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter (Reading Group Gold) by Lisa Scottoline, Francesca Serritella - Free Book Online

fifteen minutes, boil it for fifteen more, then add tomatoes, cheese, and olive oil. And devour.
    I’m in food heaven.
    I read the Nutrition Facts, and am happy to see that only 15 of the 170 calories are from fat, and farro is so filling that I’m not hungry all day or night, so I hardly snack at all. I try it with cheese and artichokes, then asparagus and all kinds of different veggies, and I love it so much I eat it for lunch and dinner.
    Every day, for the next ten days.
    I become Queen of Farro.
    Or better yet, Pharaoh of Farro.
    Ten pounds later, I’m starting to wonder. Francesca comes home for a visit, and I make her a bowl. “Delicious, right?” I ask her.
    “Awesome.”
    “I gained weight, but I never snack anymore. I don’t understand. Do you?”
    “Maybe. Did you see this?” Francesca shows me the Nutrition Facts. “One serving is 36 grams of carbs.”
    “I know, but it’s only 170 calories.”
    “Okay, but did you read the serving size?”
    “No,” I admit. “Most serving sizes are like two a bag, right?”
    “Yes, but this one says ten. There are ten servings in one bag.” Francesca gestures to our bowls, which are full. “This meal is probably five servings a piece. At 36 grams of carbs a serving.”
    I feel dizzy. I can’t multiply that fast.
    “In other words, your meal is 180 grams of carbs.”
    I blink.
    “And if you eat it twice a day, that’s 360 grams of carbs a day.”
    For a second, I can’t speak. I know this can’t be good. A low-carb diet like South Beach is 20 grams of carbs a day, but that’s crazy. We go online, where we learn that the average female, if she’s not dieting, should consume 180 to 230 grams of carbs a day.
    Uh oh.
    I can’t subtract that fast, either. But I’m getting the gist.
    360 grams of carbs minus 230 grams of carbs equals my jeans don’t fit.

In Which We Lose Angie, and Nothing’s Funny
    By Lisa
    Today I have sad news to report.
    No joke.
    Our older golden retriever, Angie, passed away. I’ve been putting off telling you, because I’ve been putting off telling me.
    The good news is that she was healthy all of her long life, then she got cancer. The bad news is, though she fought it, she didn’t win.
    And we lost.
    You might remember Angie as the Zen golden, the unsqueaky wheel who was soft and fluffy, with a coat the hue of creamery butter. If you remember the stories about her from the earlier books, she was the one who helped me figure out why my dishes were cloudy. Until we heard from plumbers that what she and I figured out was impossible, pipe-wise.
    Still, what can you expect from a dog, much less a woman?
    After the diagnosis, Francesca came home and we took Angie to chemo for weeks, trying to save her life. She cooperated, too, trying to hang in there, and in the end, we were all sleeping on the floor together, day and night, until one of us needed to rest, forever.
    What’s interesting now, a few months later, is how this has affected the other dogs, especially Penny. You may remember that Penny is my other, and last, golden. They say that a dog is man’s best friend, and that’s true. But it turns out that dogs have best friends, too.
    Penny’s best friend was Angie.
    They played and hung out together, every minute. They usually rested side-by-side, their postures mirror images; in fact, they were half-sisters, having the same father. The only difference between them was that Angie liked to sleep with her ball in her mouth. Evidently, dogs need pacifiers, too.

    Our Angie
    And though Angie was quiet and Penny rambunctious, together they seemed to make halves of the same doggie whole.
    Their favorite game was fetch, and Angie loved her red Kong ball, pockmarked with teeth. When we threw it for her, Penny would run to chase it down and always reached it first. We’d have to load the dice by throwing the ball closer to Angie, or even holding Penny back to give Angie a head start. Truth was, we did that more for us than for her.