My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or a Culture-Up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster Read Free Book Online Page B

point B, how do you plan on making it go?”
    “I have plenty of strongs , and the rapids will do most of the work for me. Plus, Maisy can sit in back and provide ballast.” At the sound of her name, her tail began to thump.
    “Well,” Fletch said, clapping his hands together, “I can see that you’ve thought long and hard about this. Tell you what. I insist you give up your opportunity to see yourself on television and have a great weekend with your friends in New York to get this raft. Here, let’s get it right now.” He scooted me out of the way and went for the keyboard.
    I stiffened in my seat. “Whoa, wait. . . . Hold up. I should maybe reconsider the raft for a second. I mean, summer’s mostly over, so I won’t get in a lot of sailing—”
    “Rafting. You’re only sailing when there’s a sail.”
    “I mean, rafting —what are you, Captain Stubing now?—and I really do want to see everyone. And what if I can’t find a matching life vest for Maisy? Maybe it’s a better idea to go to New York? Plus those little helmets would mess up my hair.”
    He mulled over the idea for a moment. “If you don’t get a raft, you won’t have to throw your baby pool away.”
    “We do like sitting in the pool when it’s really hot out,” I admitted. Although I always have to monitor Maisy when we’re wallowing because she won’t get out to pee, either. This dog truly is my soul mate. “Maybe I should just get the plane ticket.”
    “Only if you feel like that’s a better idea,” he called over his shoulder as he walked back to the living room.
    I chose New York, so I’m here in my first-class seat, 49 trying to figure out how many free Bloody Marys it will take to assuage the guilt I feel about being a thousand miles away from my unfinished manuscript.
    I blot at a tomato juice spot on my black Lacoste, then lean back and sigh contentedly.
    Looks like three is the magic number.

    The girls pick me up from the airport and we drive straight to the beach. When we landed, the pilot said it was ninety degrees out, so it’s the perfect day for a nice wallow in the Atlantic.
    Most of us live in different parts of the country and rarely get together, so the car’s alive with excited chatter as we make our way up the Long Island Expressway. If being together weren’t enough, today’s extra-exciting because we’re taking our friend Angie to see the ocean for the first time.
    “I just don’t understand how someone can be our age and have never seen the ocean,” I say. I mean, I know it’s possible—the kids on Amish in the City —my second-favorite reality show ever 50 —had never seen the ocean before, but they’d also never ridden on escalators or tasted coffee or had zippers on their pants. Plus, Angie’s not Amish.
    “I grew up on a Great Lake. Ask anyone in Michigan, and they’ll tell you it’s the same thing,” Angie replies. She doesn’t need to demonstrate on her hand where she spent her childhood because we already know she’s from the Thumb. Plus, she’s shown us a dozen times before. What is it with people from Michigan? They throw up their hands as often as a newly minted fiancée flashes her diamond. Is it because Michigan’s the only state shaped like something familiar? I wonder if Italian folks are always rolling up their pants to show you where they’re from on their boots? 51
    My WASP-y pal Poppy, who spent every second of every summer for twenty years on Atlantic beaches before moving to the Midwest, interjects, “It’s so not the same.”
    “Do you feel like you’ve been missing something?” Wendy asks.
    “How can I miss it if I’ve never had it?” Angie replies.
    I can’t wrap my mind around this. “You haven’t even been to the Caribbean? Or, like, Florida? I bet you’ve been and you just don’t remember. You’ve seen it. You must have seen it.”
    Angie frowns at me. “I’ve repressed my memory of the ocean?”
    “Yeah.” I bob my head enthusiastically,