Free Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler

got in the passenger seat of Lydia’s car. I wanted to get home as soon as possible and weigh myself.
    I went to court about three months later, when I was given my sentence: five hundred hours of community service, a fine of twenty-five hundred dollars, and three months of DUI school.
    My favorite of the three was DUI school. The instructor was a small Asian man who repeated one thing at the beginning and end of each class: Under no circumstances, when being pulled over by the police, do you admit to having had anything to drink. Advice I would have valued much more had I received it months prior to getting my DUI. But still I valued it all the same.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Bladder Stones
    I was visiting my parents in New Jersey for a three-day break during my first book tour, and I had just come from the car wash, where I had taken their minivan to be disinfected. My parents are two of the most unsanitary people I know. They will leave fast-food bags, soda cans, coffee cups, and perishable items in their car for weeks at a time. When my father picked me up from the airport, there was a half-eaten apple rolling around on the floor mat, a melted chocolate bar stuck to the passenger seat, and a small order of McDonald’s french fries in the glove compartment.
    “I have an idea, Chels,” my father said to me as I walked in the door. “I think you should start your own clothing company but only design thongs and lingerie.”
    My sister Sloane was sitting on the couch playing with her new baby girl, Charley, while our dog Whitefoot looked on in disgust. With every baby my brothers and sisters had, our dog became more and more depressed.
    “He’s been talking about it for the last two hours,” Sloane said as she rolled her eyes. “He also wants you to write on all the clothes ‘I’M A CHELSEA GIRL .’”
    “Whaddya think, love? We could really rake in the big bucks,” my father went on. “You’ve got a great sense of style, and with a shape like yours, you could also model the stuff.”
    “Why would I design clothing?” I asked.
    “Why would she design clothing?” he asked the air and then Whitefoot, as if the answer was so obvious, even the dog would know. “Why wouldn’t you design clothing, is the real question. You’ve got a huge fan base.”
    “No, she doesn’t,” Sloane said. “Not big enough to launch a clothing line.”
    “A lingerie line, goddammit! A lingerie line!” he yelled.
    My father is always yelling for no apparent reason. He yells at unsuspecting people all the time, but his favorite person to yell at is Sloane, who usually responds with a “what the fuck is your problem?” look.
    “Calm down, Melvin,” my mother chimed in, as she emptied an entire box of Carr’s crackers into Whitefoot’s bowl along with some freshly made egg salad. Whitefoot’s “bowl” is a stainless-steel baking tray. My parents are under the impression that our dog is Edward Scissorhands and can somehow manage to put the egg salad on top of the cracker and enjoy it like a human.
    “Don’t give him the pepper crackers,” my father said. “He only likes the plain ones. The pepper ones give him gas.”
    I looked over at Sloane, who was rubbing her temples.
    “Anyway, back to the thongs,” my father continued. “We’ll have your sister Sidney run the company—”
    “Can you please stop using the word ‘thong’?” Sloane said, with her eyes now closed. “How do you even know what a thong is?”
    “Yeah, Melvin,” my mother added. “How do you know what a thong is?”
    “Oh, come on! Thongs are the new bloomers. What are you girls, living in the dark ages? All the girls are wearing them; Chelsea’s been wearing them for years. Sylvia, I wouldn’t mind seeing you in one,” he said, looking at my mother with his bowling-ball head tilted to the side and an enormous grin on his face. Suddenly Whitefoot started to bark uncontrollably and run back and forth from the front door to the living room while we