back, no matter how many fucking crunches you do.
I take a moment to reply that I think Lisa is crazy not to take Malcolm up on his offer and that if she doesn’t, I will in her stead. Who gives a crap about cop-outs? I ask her. Sin-shmin! Anyone gives you a hard time, just tell them to go to hell, and then go get your new navel pierced!
Now, I love my sister, but she is very much influenced by her peers. And a large percentage of her peers belong to her church, which I call the Praise the Lord Church of the Word of God. I have nothing against good Christians, but the bulk of the women who attend Praise the Lord have made holy rites of quilting bees and bake sales and resembling giant pears, and they believe that anything a woman does that is not related to pleasing God is a sin punishable by ostracism. Taking care of yourself, applying makeup, and trying to look attractive is considered vanity with a capital
V
. Plastic surgery equals downright harlotry. I have told Lisa numerous times that she is still a vibrant woman who has the right to look and feel good. She is beautiful, I tell her. She just needs a little professional assistance to reach her potential. In my opinion, if God wanted people to be fat, He wouldn’t have invented liposuction.
I know that she will suffer over this decision for another six months, and then will probably decide to embrace her inner Dom DeLuise and put on fifty pounds by consuming every unpurchased baked good left on the Praise the Lord banquet table at the church’s holiday sale. She’ll cry and be ashamed, but the church ladies will love her.
After sending off the e-mail, I skim over the PTA notices, which are in reality calls to action. “Spring Carnival is coming, ladies! We need everyone’s help to make this the best carnival ever! Anyone who hasn’t signed up to work the event needs to get on it!” What the e-mail doesn’t say is that if you don’t volunteer, Penelope Larson, the PTA prez, will hunt you down, trusty clipboard in hand, and publicly lambaste you into submission until you are begging her to let you—please, please, please—work the water-dunking booth. Last year I got dunked seven times before the next glassy-eyed PTA sucker—uh, volunteer—came to relieve me. And yes, four of the seven dunkings were at the hands of my own traitorous kids.
The second PTA blast is a too-long, preachy dissertation about the evils of candy in the classroom, written by Caroline Klum. Caroline fancies herself a wordsmith extraordinaire, seeing as how she is the editor in chief of the
Garden Hills Echo
, the free local handout that mostly gets used as liner for litter boxes, birdcages, and kennels of house-training pups. I find three errors in the first paragraph, and this gives me a certain smug satisfaction. I am not an editor in chief of anything. But I know that
i
comes before
e
except after
c
. Yay for me. Caroline does make some good arguments, though, about the blood sugar/hyperactivity connection. Candy equals frenetic and unruly behavior equals overwhelmed teachers equals nobody learns anything for the hour and a half after lunch. It makes me rethink the Jelly Bellies I put inmy kids’ lunch sacks this morning. Oh well, I think, unsympathetically. That’s their teachers’ problem, not mine. My bad mood is exacerbated by the fact that I’m screwed for book club, I’m not even an editor in chief of a stupid local home-printed newsletter, I’m an unhealthy influence on my children, and I can’t think of one effing thing to write about in a blog. Even the teachers whose kids are high on crack candy have it better than I do.
The blog contest. Why am I still thinking about that? I’m not doing it. I’ll fail terrifically. I’ll be a loser not only in spirit, but in glorious megabyte-me reality.
As I scrape the last bit of raspberry yogurt from the container, I realize that my efforts at reinvention are on their way back to the crapper.
Twenty minutes later, I am
I take a moment to reply that I think Lisa is crazy not to take Malcolm up on his offer and that if she doesn’t, I will in her stead. Who gives a crap about cop-outs? I ask her. Sin-shmin! Anyone gives you a hard time, just tell them to go to hell, and then go get your new navel pierced!
Now, I love my sister, but she is very much influenced by her peers. And a large percentage of her peers belong to her church, which I call the Praise the Lord Church of the Word of God. I have nothing against good Christians, but the bulk of the women who attend Praise the Lord have made holy rites of quilting bees and bake sales and resembling giant pears, and they believe that anything a woman does that is not related to pleasing God is a sin punishable by ostracism. Taking care of yourself, applying makeup, and trying to look attractive is considered vanity with a capital
V
. Plastic surgery equals downright harlotry. I have told Lisa numerous times that she is still a vibrant woman who has the right to look and feel good. She is beautiful, I tell her. She just needs a little professional assistance to reach her potential. In my opinion, if God wanted people to be fat, He wouldn’t have invented liposuction.
I know that she will suffer over this decision for another six months, and then will probably decide to embrace her inner Dom DeLuise and put on fifty pounds by consuming every unpurchased baked good left on the Praise the Lord banquet table at the church’s holiday sale. She’ll cry and be ashamed, but the church ladies will love her.
After sending off the e-mail, I skim over the PTA notices, which are in reality calls to action. “Spring Carnival is coming, ladies! We need everyone’s help to make this the best carnival ever! Anyone who hasn’t signed up to work the event needs to get on it!” What the e-mail doesn’t say is that if you don’t volunteer, Penelope Larson, the PTA prez, will hunt you down, trusty clipboard in hand, and publicly lambaste you into submission until you are begging her to let you—please, please, please—work the water-dunking booth. Last year I got dunked seven times before the next glassy-eyed PTA sucker—uh, volunteer—came to relieve me. And yes, four of the seven dunkings were at the hands of my own traitorous kids.
The second PTA blast is a too-long, preachy dissertation about the evils of candy in the classroom, written by Caroline Klum. Caroline fancies herself a wordsmith extraordinaire, seeing as how she is the editor in chief of the
Garden Hills Echo
, the free local handout that mostly gets used as liner for litter boxes, birdcages, and kennels of house-training pups. I find three errors in the first paragraph, and this gives me a certain smug satisfaction. I am not an editor in chief of anything. But I know that
i
comes before
e
except after
c
. Yay for me. Caroline does make some good arguments, though, about the blood sugar/hyperactivity connection. Candy equals frenetic and unruly behavior equals overwhelmed teachers equals nobody learns anything for the hour and a half after lunch. It makes me rethink the Jelly Bellies I put inmy kids’ lunch sacks this morning. Oh well, I think, unsympathetically. That’s their teachers’ problem, not mine. My bad mood is exacerbated by the fact that I’m screwed for book club, I’m not even an editor in chief of a stupid local home-printed newsletter, I’m an unhealthy influence on my children, and I can’t think of one effing thing to write about in a blog. Even the teachers whose kids are high on crack candy have it better than I do.
The blog contest. Why am I still thinking about that? I’m not doing it. I’ll fail terrifically. I’ll be a loser not only in spirit, but in glorious megabyte-me reality.
As I scrape the last bit of raspberry yogurt from the container, I realize that my efforts at reinvention are on their way back to the crapper.
Twenty minutes later, I am
Similar Books
