Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions

by Lisa Scottoline

No dog owner has privacy in the bathroom.

  I used to read on the toilet, but now I pet.

  The worst incident took place a month ago, when Boone lunged after Kit with me on the other end of the leash. It yanked me off balance because I’m a klutz, and before I knew it, Boone and Kit were fighting, Tony and Peach had joined the fray, and Ruby ordered everybody to debtors’ prison.

  I rolled around on the kitchen floor with five dogs, all of whom were fighting, like a big rolling ball of bad news.

  The Cavaliers have tiny teeth, but I still had to take Tony to the emergency vet for a bite on his ear.

  He was fine, I’d had it. Besides which, I work at home, and you can imagine that not a lot of words get written when you type with a growling dog attached to your wrist.

  They say that we make our own prison, but I hadn’t felt that way since Thing One and Thing Two.

  And you can’t divorce your dogs.

  Nor do you really want to.

  So I went back to the vet, and he had a great idea.

  Medication.

  I told him I was already on Crestor but I was open to suggestions.

  It turns out he was talking about the dog.

  The vet said Boone’s problems were due to anxiety, and I guess I didn’t appreciate how stressful it was to choose whether you want to eat, sleep, or chew underwear.

  So now Boone is on Prozac. I give him a pill every day with peanut butter, but he has to sit.

  I train my dog with antidepressants.

  You may remember a while ago that Ruby was on Prozac, which didn’t work. This time, I’m happy to report that Prozac worked for Boone.

  Better dogs through chemistry.

  Boone is back to his old, goofy, lovable, non-aggressive self.

  A very happy ending.

  Working Out on Mount Olympus

  By Francesca

  This summer, I’ve gone to the gym six days a week, sometimes seven. What’s my secret to staying motivated?

  Hot fitness instructors.

  I’m seeing several. I’m monogamous in romance but promiscuous with group fitness classes.

  I’ve yet to meet an ugly trainer. Phenomenal physical shape is a given, and in New York, most are also actors, dancers, and other professionally attractive jobs.

  Thank goodness I’m a writer.

  My first fitness love was Edu. He was head-to-toe gorgeous, with muscles like a superhero.

  I had to let him measure my body-fat percentage with pincers on my belly, which took superhuman humility.

  I wish we could’ve worked out with the lights off.

  Stunning fitness professionals come in every flavor, and I’m determined to taste them all.

  Gregg is my sexy drill sergeant: buzz cut, square jaw, V-torso, not a bad angle on him. He teaches a class called “Whipped” that I only wish was literal.

  Philippe is the spin instructor that makes me dizzy. He’s a green-eyed pretty boy, perfectly buff, tan, and hairless, like he was born Photoshopped.

  There are always several women loitering after class to ask Philippe a pretend question. It’s pathetic.

  Especially when someone steals my pretend question.

  I’m equally enamored with the women. Story teaches a strength class and looks like Barbie with better delts.

  But Aida is my main fitness crush object. A bohemian gypsy in leg warmers, she teaches Pilates with a Spanish accent. Imagine strengthening your core with Penelope Cruz.

  For the first month of class, I thought she was telling us to “excel,” which I found encouraging. Then I understood we were to “exhale.”

  For Aida, I can only sigh.

  Have you noticed their unusual names? These are names befitting the gods and goddesses that they are.

  My gym is Mount Olympus, with a monthly fee.

  We are but their mortal playthings. They control our heart rate, how’s that for playing God?

  I’m happy to do their bidding. A simple, “That’s eet!” from Aida can make my day. I want to impress her so badly, I bought a book, Anatomy of Pilates, to cram for class.

  I’m such a nerd, I can’t even be a jock without studying.

  I feel an instant sense of camaraderie with the other class members, and I’m fiercely loyal to my favorite instructors.

  I think I could be very susceptible to a cult.

  My loyalty was tested last week, when a girl disrupted our Pilates class by packing up early. Aida asked if she could wait, “Please, eet ees only five minutes.”

  The girl muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Bitch.”

  I gasped, expecting lightning to strike.

  “Excuse me, what ees your name?” Aida’s voice was as sweet as crema Catalana, but everyone knew she could break this chick in half.

  The girl wisely fled. She’d better hope she never runs into me in the locker room.

  Yet, all great love stories end in sorrow. I learned yesterday that Aida is leaving me. She’s moving to L.A.

  My heartbreak is as operatic as her name. Verdi had it right: I want to lock us in a pyramid and do mat Pilates with her until death do us part.

  But I’m grateful. Saint Aida performed two miracles in my life. First, she made me like my stomach, a body part I’ve hated since 1999. Second, she made me feel powerful after a period when I’d felt my most helpless.

  The dual experience of breaking up with a man I loved and caring for my adored grandmother while knowing that she wouldn’t get better felt like an exercise in failure. By the time I returned to New York after her passing, I was fifteen pounds heavier on the scale and about a hundred pounds heavier in my heart. In helping me rebuild my body, these instructors reminded me that I’m capable of improvement, adaptation, and strength.

  Aida taught me that even when you’re flat on your back, you can pull yourself up. One vertebra at a time.

  An App a Day

  By Lisa

  These days, all you need to lose weight is diet, exercise, and a smartphone.

  You know what I’m talking about?

  Haven’t you noticed the trend?

  I haven’t, either.

  Daughter Francesca keeps me abreast of such things, so that I can sound remotely relevant at cocktail parties, which I never attend and doubt even exist anymore.

  We begin when I was on my last diet, and Francesca told me that the best way to lose weight was to use an app that was free for your phone, called Lose It!

  Unfortunately, I lost it.

  Not the app, but the phone.

  By the way, the exclamation mark is part of the Lose It! name. Don’t think I’m all excited about a diet!

  Because I’m not!

  I’m excited about food!

  Not diets!

  And most of the time, I don’t Lose It! but Gain It!

  Anyway, the way the Lose It! app works is simple.

  First, you have to tell it your weight.

  Second, you’re not allowed to lie.

  Right there is the problem.

  I never tell anybody my real weight, not even an inanimate object, but you can tell the app that you’re five pounds less than what you really are, so in case somebody finds your phone, you have wiggle room.

  Just not in your jeans.

  And after you tell the app your weight, then it asks you how much weight you want to lose, and when you tell it your goal weight, it laughs for the next fifteen minutes.

  Just kidding.

  But then, through some complex mathematical process, the app figures out how many calories you’re allowed per day, in order to reach your goal weight by the end of the century.

  Lose It! gave me one thousand five hundred calories a day, which I rapidly discovered gets me through midmorning.

  Because every day you have to record what you ate, and this being America, it tells you exactly what calories, carbs, grams of sugar, protein, saturated fats, red dye, and rodent hair you have consumed each day.

  If you’re me, you will fai
thfully record what you ate for two days, then you’ll start forgetting to record anything.

  Which means you ate nothing.

  Just like when something doesn’t have a price tag on it, it’s free.

  On the plus side, you’re also supposed to record any exercise you did, and the app automatically knows how many calories are consumed by the exercise you chose, so it deducts it from the mountain of food that you ate.

  I say this is good news, because I found that whenever I did any exercise at all, I was very happy to record it in the app. But since I wasn’t recording any of the food I ate, many of my days showed a negative calorie count, and I reached my goal weight in minus three days.

  That is, at least according to the app.

  So I gave up.

  Obviously, the way these things work is that you’re supposed to be accountable for what you eat, and I sure hope this craze passes quickly.

  Except that the other day, Daughter Francesca told me that there’s a new weight-loss app and it’s called My Fitness Pal.

  She told me to give it a whirl, so I went on, got the app, and determined that it works basically the same way as Lose It!, except it has one horrible innovation that I didn’t know about until I got an email from Francesca that read:

  MOM, AREN’T YOU GOING TO RECORD YOUR CALORIES TODAY?

  I called her instantly, surprised. “How do you know I didn’t record any calories?”

  Francesca chuckled. “Because with this application, I can see the diet and exercise you record every day. But you’re not recording anything.”

  “What?” I asked, horrified. “You’re inside my app?”

  “Yes, when you signed on, you gave me access.”

  Big mistake, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “Mom, I gave you access and you can look inside my app, too. Whenever you want to, you can see what I’m eating.”

  I stopped doing that when you were three years old, was another thing I thought but didn’t say.

  Because my daughter is My Fitness Pal.

  And there are now special bracelets, activity trackers, and a zillion new apps and gadgets that will keep track of our calories, exercise, and dirty thoughts.

  I’m keeping mine to my chubby little self.

  I’m Spending My Granddog’s Inheritance

  By Lisa

  I’m babysitting my granddog.

  Yes, you read that right.

  I don’t have any grandchildren, but I have a granddog, a little boy aged five, and he looks just like me.

  Our noses are identical. They’re large and they leak.

  My granddog’s name is Pip, and you may know he’s Daughter Francesca’s furry son, but he gets all his best traits from me.

  Namely, begging at the table.

  You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten dinner with me, because the whole time, my eyes are on your plate.

  This could be the reason for my lack of dating success.

  God knows why, but men don’t get turned on when I lean over and whisper in their ear, “Aren’t you going to eat that?”

  The other trait I share with my granddog is that we do the same tricks, in that we both Sit and Lie Down.

  But we don’t Fetch unless there’s a sale.

  And we don’t Roll Over for anybody.

  I know that people love having grandchildren, and some of my friends say that having grandchildren is even better than having children. Plus, one out of every three bumper stickers is about grandchildren.

  Or honor students.

  Or honor-student grandchildren.

  And the other day, one of my readers happened to say to me, “When is Francesca going to give you grandchildren?”

  I was at a loss for words.

  At least temporarily.

  I never thought of grandchildren as something that Francesca would give me, and all of a sudden, I realized what I was missing.

  I was missing an opportunity to guilt-trip my daughter about something, which shows what kind of mother I am.

  Only a bad mother misses a chance to guilt-trip her kid.

  But I have to say, although I’m sure I’ll love being a grandparent, I’m not there yet.

  Not that I’m not a huge fan of babies, because I am.

  I coo at every baby I see in the supermarket in the shopping cart, on the sidewalk in strollers, and even on the bike trail, where they get towed along in little carriers.

  Babies are always on the move.

  But I’m not ready for grandchildren yet, and not for the conventional reason. I don’t mind getting older, and I want my future grandchild to call me grandma.

  Either that, or Mrs. Bradley Cooper.

  But at the same time, I’m divorced twice, and I know that it’s important to choose the right mate the first time.

  And the second time, too.

  I’m looking forward to choosing the right mate the third time, because after three strikes, I get three more at bats, isn’t that how it works?

  So I’m not guilt-tripping Daughter Francesca over not giving me grandchildren because even after my divorces, I still believe in marriage. And what I’ve learned from Thing One and Thing Two, or at least being married and divorced from them, is that I should have taken my time.

  I should’ve taken my time when I was dating, and I should’ve taken my time when I said I do.

  In those days, I never did anything on my time. I did it on everybody else’s time, and I don’t think I’m the only woman who made that mistake in her younger days.

  Please tell me you know what I’m talking about.

  But the wisdom of being a grandparent’s age, even if you’re not a grandparent yet, is that you don’t have to do anything on command.

  Nobody can rush you into anything, whether it’s getting engaged or getting married, or whether you want to see those shoes in your size.

  I believe that older people know this, and you can test my theory yourself, simply by getting in line behind a senior citizen.

  They’re in no hurry.

  They’re not going to rush.

  They’re taking their time.

  And you know what?

  They’re not dull or slow.

  On the contrary, they’re smarter than all of us.

  So I’m taking a lesson from older people everywhere, as well as from dogs, and I sense that Francesca is, too.

  So I’m not rushing her.

  I’m not even rushing my granddog.

  For now, we’ll all Stay.

  The Rebound

  By Francesca

  Getting your hair pulled out by a lunatic isn’t what most people would consider a good omen. But lately I’m not one easily kept down.

  I guess you could say I’m on the rebound.

  My friend invited me to a rooftop party expressly for singles, what in high school we called a “mixer.” Fresh from my breakup, it was out of my comfort zone but seemed like something I should say yes to.

  I decided to flip my thinking and declare it my Single Gal Deb Ball, the event where I’d represent myself to New York as an eligible lady.

  I even wore a white dress.

  The dress stopped six inches north of my knees, but, c’mon. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

  My two girlfriends and I decided to meet for a glass of wine to gird ourselves for the night ahead. It was an unusually warm night, and we staked out a table beside the open window, with me sitting closest to the street. My Sauvignon Blanc had barely broken a sweat when it happened. I never saw it coming.

  A man on the street ran by, reached through the window, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and yanked it full force, almost clear out of my head.

  At first, all I felt was being pulled backwards, hard. My first reaction was to slam my hand down on my purse.

  Because I’m a real New Yorker.

  And as soon as I realized the pain was coming from my scalp, my next thought was, “Did he mess up my hair?”

  Because I’m a real girl.

/>   Although the dude pulled my hair hard enough to induce whiplash worse than being rear-ended in a car, my hair hadn’t come out.

  Next Pantene spokeswoman, right here.

  When I realized I wasn’t being mugged, the attack was over, and I was not bleeding from the head, I finally registered the pain. “OW!”

  My friends sat across me, their mouths in identical o’s of horror.

  “Ohmigod, are you okay?”

  “You were just legit assaulted!”

  Whoever said the Lower East Side lost its grit when the Whole Foods arrived has never had a drive-by tweaker try and rip their hair out.

  Let it be noted that the couple at the table right next to us stared at me but said nothing. The man was sitting right beside me when it happened, and he didn’t even ask me if I was okay.

  I hoped his girlfriend was paying attention.

  “Should you call the police?” asked my friend.

  I tried to shake my head, but it hurt. “Nah.” The truth was, I didn’t get a good look at the guy, he’d disappeared into the crowded streets seconds after it happened and was long gone by now. “The cops would probably ask me what my hair was wearing.”

  “Your hair was kind of asking for it.” My friend giggled.

  I realized I could either let this freak occurrence ruin my night, or I could do what I came to do—rebound.

  I was a soldier of fun.

  Before I could change my mind, I gulped the rest of my wine—nature’s Advil—and we headed to the mixer.

  The mixer was held in an incredibly dark, loud bar—perfect for getting to know new people!

  Not that I had a chance to survey our options anyway. I’d tweeted a joke about my hair-puller on the way over, and inadvertently prompted a flurry of anxious text messages from my mom. As I tapped away on my phone, trying to reassure her so we didn’t graduate to panicked calls, I hoped I looked busy and in demand.

  That’s why we have phones, right?

  We noticed some photographers taking pictures of three really, really tall men, the international sign for basketball players. The three of us looked at each other with the identical thought—why not?

  I’m wary of professional athletes as boyfriend prospects. I think they have it too easy. But one thing basketball players are good at?

  That’s right—the rebound.

  So I let myself be chatted up, or, since he was six-foot-seven, chatted down by Darren, an American who plays professionally in Ireland. Being the best basketball player in Ireland might be like being the best surfer in Switzerland, but I was still impressed. And he was actually very nice and down-to-earth. At one point, he asked how old I was.