{"product_id":"i-love-everybody-and-other-atrocious-lies-isbn-9780812969009","title":"I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies)","description":"Here are more scathingly funny tales from the wild side! Laurie Notaro survived the debauched ride of her twenties and the bumpy road to matrimony. Now she’s ready to take on the thirtysomething years . . . and \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e middle age has never been more hilarious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLaurie is married, mortgaged, and now—miraculously—employed in the corporate world, discovering that bosses come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of mental stability. After maxing out her last good credit card at Banana Republic, she’s dressed for success and ready to face the jungle: surviving feral, six-foot-plus Gretchen (“Three Thousand Faces of Eve”) before battling the overbearing, overstuffed (in \u003ci\u003eway\u003c\/i\u003e-too-small pants) new mom Suzzi, who ruthlessly cancels Laurie’s newspaper column and learns that payback can be a bitch. Laurie also explores the backstabbing world of preschoolers at a Halloween party, the X-rated madness of a family trip to Disneyland, and the pressure from her QVC-addicted mother and the rest of the world to reproduce. But while losing more friends to babies than to booze, she realizes there’s a plus side: at least for a couple of months she gets to be the thinner friend. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eI Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) \u003c\/b\u003eis Laurie Notaro at her deliciously quirky best. Can a woman prone to what her loved ones might term “meltdowns” (she considers them “Opportunities to Enlighten”) put a smile on her face and love everybody? Take a guess.“[Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eLaurie Notaro\u003c\/b\u003e has been fired from seven jobs, laid off from three, and voluntarily liberated from one. Despite all that, she has managed to write a number of \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling essay collections. She lives with her husband in Oregon, where—according to her mother, who refuses to visit—she sleeps in a trailer in the woods.\u003cb\u003eGun to the Head\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can't believe it,\" my mother said from her end of the phone, \"I  simply can't believe it. First you got married, and now this. Who  would have thought a year ago that I would be hearing news like this!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I know!\" I exclaimed from my end of the phone. \"I'll get to go  shopping for new clothes and everything!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's a big thing,\" my mother added. \"It will change your whole life,  you know.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I know,\" I said happily. \"But I think it's time. That clock was  ticking, and it was just time I did something about it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You're sure this is what you want?\" my mother asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's too late to turn back now, isn't it?\" I laughed. \"I took the  test, got a little pee on my hand, and everything says we're good to  go.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I can't wait to tell my friends!\" my mother gushed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, maybe that's not such a good idea just yet,\" I suggested.  \"Maybe we should see if it sticks first. But you can tell Dad and the  rest of the family.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He's going to be so happy to find out that you're going to have\"--my  mother paused, I believe to wipe a tear of elation from her eye--\"a  job!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI really couldn't believe it either. A job. After I had successfully  passed the drug screening test (simply and vaguely put, I was a  freelance writer with a mortgage payment and a husband in college who  barely had enough money for a generic box of macaroni and cheese, let  alone a hit of X just so I could have a good excuse to wear a Dr.  Seuss hat), the newspaper at which I had been a freelance columnist  also offered me a job as a columnist for the newspaper's website--a  full-time gig. I could hardly pass the offer up; it was a good  salary, came with health insurance, my potential boss seemed cool,  and after I discovered that the 401(k) was not an annual marathon  that every employee was required to participate in, I nodded and then  we shook on it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn all honesty, it was a relief. The last time I had held a steady  job it was as an editor for a small magazine several years before. I  worked for a man who commonly came back from business lunches with a  big purple wine mustache and had the habit of uttering phrases such  as \"make that more better,\" \"irregardless,\" \"for all intensive  purposes,\" and picking a five-syllable word from the dictionary then  e-mailing it out to the staff as the \"word du jour of the day!\" which  for an average drunk boss would be fine, but for an editor in chief  was somewhat unsettling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter he called me into his office one day and slid two envelopes  across the table--one for my last paycheck and the other for  severance--he tried to soften the blow with the comforting words,  \"Don't look so upset! You're not being fired, your position has just  been eliminated!\" It wasn't a surprise per se, I had expected the Two  Envelope Incident ever since I had freely used the phrase \"blow your  wad\" in an editorial meeting when vocalizing an opinion about why it  would be a mistake to name the murderer in the headline of an  investigative piece about a longtime unsolved crime. From across the  table, I had seen his purple mustache quiver, then collapse into a  frown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMatter of time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince then I had embarked on a series of freelance jobs that led me  down the creative, soul-drenching path of writing about air  conditioners with pollen-capturing filters; weaving prose about  toenail fungus and the bacteria living happily in the track of your  shower door that can kill at will; two hundred witty and  classic-caliber-status product reviews of kitchen gadgets, including  profiles of slotted spoons, rubber spoons, stainless steel spoons,  serving spoons, and the good old spoon spatulas (spoonulas); a  pamphlet about the money-saving benefits of hiring temps; and a  booklet about gun safety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHonestly, I didn't go to journalism school to write pamphlets  advising otherwise oblivious parents that it would be in their best  interest to store their loaded weapons out of reach of their  younguns, but one day I found myself in a job interview discussing  just that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith a gun in the middle of the table.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Have you ever held a gun before?\" the lady whom I was meeting with asked me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No, no,\" I said with a little nervous laugh, feeling a little  underqualified for the job. \"My family were staunch believers in  physical violence, not automatic violence, and we had a Safeway  around the corner, so we never really needed to kill anything.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Would you like to hold the gun?\" the lady asked. \"It would be useful  to know what a gun looks like when writing the material for the  booklet.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh. Oh, okay, in that case,\" I replied nodding hesitantly, as I  reached slowly for the gun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's not loaded,\" the lady informed me with a wave of her hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sure, that's what they all say,\" I tried to joke, with a wave of my  hand that wasn't touching a deadly weapon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI picked it up. It was heavy. It was some sort of pistol, I don't  know what kind, but I did know that I did NOT like having a gun so  close to me. I felt like I should be wearing a tracksuit with racing  stripes or a Members Only windbreaker and sucking on a toothpick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Okay, that's good,\" the lady said, then put her hand out. \"I'll take it now.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I handed her the gun, I mean, it was her gun, I certainly hadn't  brought a gun to the meeting, what was I going to say, \"No, Annie  Oakley, you can't have your gun\"?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat was I supposed to do?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eObviously, however, I had done the wrong thing. Because in a fraction  of a moment, I was looking down the barrel of a gun that was now  being pointed straight at me. At my head. It was nothing short of a  miracle that I did not suddenly lay a big brown egg in my pantalones,  if you know what I mean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"NEVER,\" the lady commanded, \"LET ANYONE TAKE A GUN AWAY FROM YOU, NEVER.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoly shit, I thought. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. What the hell  is happening here? What the hell just happened? Is the gun lady going  to kill me? Did she lure me here to kill me? Oh my God, I'm not that  Notaro! I wanted to scream. Those people live in New Jersey!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"IF YOU GIVE SOMEONE A GUN, THEY JUST MAY POINT IT AT YOU,\" she  continued, the pistol still focused on the spot between my eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You said it wasn't loaded,\" I said, trying to stay calm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And you believed me?\" the gun lady said. \"I only met you five minutes ago.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI really didn't know what to do. Should I be putting my hands up at  this point? I wanted to ask her; if it's possible, could you shoot me  in a major organ below my neck as opposed to, say, an eye, I don't  want to be the ghost with one eye or half a face or anything like  that, I would prefer to be spooky in the spirit afterlife, not  creepy; can you please dump my body where someone will find me  relatively quickly so my mother can have the funeral she's always  dreamed of because it will be hard for folks to work up an appetite  for the party after if they know I'm all rotten and yucky under the  lid, and I bet she'll probably have better catering at this shindig  than she did at my wedding, so if I'm all decomposed it will totally  ruin the whole thing for her; do I have time to make a phone call so  I can tell someone what I want to be buried in, because otherwise,  I'll be spending the remainder of history in my Gone with the Wind  wedding dress, and it's superhard to pee in, a skirt would be much  better, especially if the afterlife has a bar; and by the way, I am  not having an affair with your husband, if that's what this is all  about, and if you're having an affair with mine, he's all yours.  Enjoy the ear hair, it keeps getting longer every day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInstead, I just looked at her and decided I really didn't need to be  concerned with being rude at this point, since lethal elements had  already been introduced into the scenario, so I said, \"You know, you  are really freaking the shit out of me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That,\" she said as she smiled and put the gun back on the table,  \"was your first lesson in gun safety.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI just looked at her as my heart dropped to my ankles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I can pay you eight hundred dollars,\" she said. \"Are you interested?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConsidering that I had a mortgage payment due, the aforementioned  husband in college, and not enough disposable income to even  entertain the thought of purchasing illicit drugs that I desperately  needed at that very moment, I nodded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sure,\" I said. \"Why not. But if you need anything written about  butcher-knife or machete safety, I'm not your girl.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith experiences like that one ringing the memory bell, I took the  job at the newspaper and got ready to become employed. I got a Banana  Republic credit card and charged away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving a job, I quickly found, involved more than orchestrating a  visually delightful and stunning ensemble every day and then having  the opportunity to show it off, especially when it's required that  you absolutely ruin your fashion gift to the rest of the building  with a big, huge, nasty plastic badge pinned to your brand-new,  perfect, and as of yet unblemished white Banana Republic shirt  purchased at full price.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEspecially when the picture on that badge resembles one of the more  unflattering photos of Janet Reno wearing the same full-price Banana  Republic shirt although it is your name printed beneath it. And you  are never, ever, ever granted an additional opportunity to take  another badge photo unless you are disfigured in a  gasoline\/propane\/diesel fuel accident, lose a nose, or have the  vanity to cough up the twenty-dollar replacement-badge fee. Which I  did not, since I already owed Banana Republic my first eight  paychecks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn my first day at my new job, I was thrilled to find out that I had  a real office--not a cubicle, not a desk among many, but a real-live  office with a door and a window and my own phone extension. Woodward  and Bernstein never had it so grand, I thought, and as I sat down and  wrote my first column as a full-time columnist, it felt pretty good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was really happy. I loved my job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had an hour for lunch, a wonderful editor, the office was close to  my house, making my commute about seven minutes, and I now had health  insurance for the first time in years. I reveled in the fact that if  I now had a sore throat, I could actually go to the doctor instead of  rummaging through my mother's medicine cabinets looking for expired  antibiotics and hoping I hadn't grabbed her hot-flash hormone pills  by mistake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was going to take full advantage of my new coverage too, despite  the fact that I believe that I've been dead for a while. I am only  able to wake up on a daily basis because the things keeping my body  together are the preservatives and chemicals found in all Hostess  products, chocolate-flavored Twizzlers, Bugles, and particularly  Funyuns. Due to my snack-oriented eating habits, I believe I was  completely embalmed by the time I graduated high school, and as a  result, my molecules are most likely bound together in some sort of a  plasticlike riboflavin substance. In several years when my shelf life  expires, my edges will become hard, crusty, and kind of yellow, and  you'll know I've passed when I simply stop talking or am no longer  rolling my eyes at other people when they are speaking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNevertheless, in recent years, the parts of me that believed they  were still alive tried to reinforce their philosophy by emitting  sharp, stabbing pains and on occasion, spectacular thrusts of  discomfort. I'm sure this has probably happened all my life, but now  that I was swimming around in my thirties and people my age didn't  really die from simple things like mixing Jim Beam and downers  anymore but from causes that require more treatment than substance  abuse programs, it brought those bolts of ache to the forefront. I  started paying closer attention to these episodes, and mapped out the  occurrences on a grimacing stick figure I drew named \"Laurie's Random  Pain Pangs.\" Oddly enough, most of the regions seemed to be located  where there aren't organs or anything with a specific function, so I  could at least then say, \"Whoa, there goes my gallbladder and that  tortilla chip I apparently didn't chew very well,\" or, \"There's that  aorta constricting again!\" Nope. These places were basically empty  spots, or places I thought were just used for storage, for things  like extra bile, a couple of feet of rolled-up intestine, balls of  hair that may come in handy in the future, maybe some additional vein  parts, and bits of corn. Therefore, I had no other choice than to  believe these pangs were cancer announcing its arrival, just to let  me know it's moved in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKnock, knock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWho's there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's Cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCancer who?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCancer of the Section Right Behind Your Belly Button That You Have  Been Trying to Pass Off as the Pinch of Ovulation. But It's Not. It's  Cancer. It's Me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt wouldn't be at all surprising. In my family, you have just as good  of a genetic chance that you will get cancer as you will get an eye.  It's that built in. It comes with the package.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo far, according to my map, in addition to Cancer of the Section  Right Behind My Belly Button That I Have Been Trying to Pass Off as  the Pinch of Ovulation, I also had Cancer of the Place Below My Last  Rib on the Left Side, Cancer of the Fatty, Puffy Spot Right Above My  Right Knee, Thumb Cancer, and Cancer of the Upper Asshole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving health insurance was a definite plus, because not only did it  look like cancer was going to call in all of my bets, but I was also  convinced that every time I heard about a new, horrible affliction, I  was positive it was my destiny to get it and I began exhibiting  symptoms immediately. I was like the Zelig of disease. When my sister  told me that her neighbor had some virus that disfigured her entire  face with large, protruding lumps that could not be cured, I found  several of my own in my neck, but thankfully my doctor informed me  that they were my lymph nodes and it would be in my best interest to  stop trying to pop them. After I read a story about fibromyalgia in  Ladies' Home Journal in my mother's bathroom (limited availability of  reading material; it was either that or my mom's favorite book, Find  Me by Rosie O'Donnell), I started getting aches and pains all over my  legs, until my doctor pointed out that my feet were stuffed into my  shoes like pig's feet in a jar, and it didn't matter if the shoe on  sale was not available in a seven and a half, only a six and a half,  I still had to buy my own size. And when smallpox was mentioned as a  possible biological weapon, I developed tiny bumps all over and  thankfully my doctor looked me over and said, \"You've been here three  times in two weeks. I'm glad you have insurance, too, but there is  nothing I can do for pimples. You have pimples, lymph nodes, and  tight, cheap shoes. Go home, wash your face, and only call me from  now on if you see blood.\"New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club and Autobiography of a Fat Bride; [quote] --The Miami Herald","brand":"Villard","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305179173093,"sku":"NP9780812969009","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812969009.jpg?v=1767729667","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/i-love-everybody-and-other-atrocious-lies-isbn-9780812969009","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}