Free 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 Page B

to the City about them all the time? You stole their tree! 73 Now proper landscaping is a problem? I’m sorry. I guess I’m having trouble keeping all your proclivities straight.”
    Unfazed, I continue. “Appropriate yard upkeep isn’t getting to me. The problem here is they don’t annoy me! They don’t do anything wrong!”
    In her most patronizingly soothing voice, she says, “Wow, that’s just awful . Perhaps you can convince the ex-con to move in behind you again.”
    Since I’m on the cordless phone, I’m free to pace between the kitchen and dining room, my socks slipping on the hardwood. Maisy gets off her doggie bed in the corner of the room and joins me, her entire backside wagging in happiness at our being together. “Hear me out—I’ve made a career out of writing about the foibles of my neighborhood, and now I live in the city’s version of suburbia and I’m coming up empty! My next subtitle’s going to have to be ‘ Who Are All These Lovely People and Aren’t I Lucky to Have Them Live Next Door to Me? ’ That blows goats! Don’t get me wrong. I love how quiet and civilized it is here, but what the hell am I supposed to write about? I need struggle! I need to be angry! Annoyed! I don’t have any of that right now because it’s all peace and fucking quiet.”
    “Tragic,” she snarks.
    “The worst part is I’ve already gotten notes from the neighborhood association about banding together against crime. There’s an actual Web site! My new alderman’s even involved. Getting this stuff organized—or, rather, bitching about how this stuff isn’t organized—is MY job. What am I supposed to do now?” I flop down on the living room couch, and Maisy flops beside me, resting her head on my shoulder and looking at me as if to say, “I feel you, my sister. Now let’s have a cookie.”
    “You could be thankful.”
    “Bite me. What else you got?”
    “Jen, it’s simple. Try something new.”
    “I hate new.” I do. I hate it. I like old, established, just like it always was.
    “You enjoy living indoors?”
    “Very much so.”
    “Then my advice stands—try something new. Why don’t you work on that thing you were telling me about a couple of months ago? You know, the one where you go to plays and listen to jazz and try to not be such an asshole?”
    Okay? This? Is exactly why I like her. Here I had this huge epiphany, and the second I started to pack, I completely forgot about it. “Maybe it is time to revisit that, although . . . it seems kind of hard, and things are really starting to get exciting on this season’s Biggest Loser and Amazing Race and America’s Next Top Model and Lost —”
    Angie interrupts me. “Hey, remember when you had to work all those temp jobs and people made you get them coffee?”
    I shudder. “Yeah.” Although I finally got into the swing of temping by the end, the first time I walked into an office to be someone’s secretary after having been an executive was among the worst moments of my life. What if I lose my current momentum? What would it be like to have to fetch lattes again? I really never want to know.
    “Then that’s your alternative.” I hear a beep, which I assume means she’s finished with her workout. Although with Angie, she could be baking a pie or building a fallout shelter.
    I get off the couch to glance out the window again, and Maisy follows. I’m hoping desperately that an episode of Jerry Springer will have broken out on the neighbor’s lawn so that I can report on it. Instead I see their tasteful Fall Harvest decor spilling down their spotless front stoop. There’s nothing but gourds and cornucopias and shit out there. Damn. Then I look in the mirror and see my pajama-clad self—even though it’s lunchtime—with my best friend in the world at my side, and I again appreciate the life I’ve created for myself.
    The way I see it, I have no choice.
    I’m going to try something new.
    Even if it kills me.
    Cultural