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Granted, I won’t ever be thin eating this way, but I suspect I could eventually be less fat.

It’s a start.

•   •   •

I’m shocked at how the student body’s changed since I graduated. When did kids become so somber and serious? I have a number of events throughout the day, from coffees to lunch to receptions, and I’m struck by everyone’s intensity. My contacts in the Liberal Arts department confirm my suspicions that the good-time-party-uselessness of the eighties and early nineties has morphed into an ultracompetitive pressure cooker and that no one’s allowing themselves any downtime. They’re all driving themselves too hard.

(Sidebar: I also suspect that there’s no way I’d get into Purdue if I were to apply now, but I don’t mention this.)

I had a speech prepared, but I decided to freestyle instead because I’d written it based on wrong assumptions. My message to the students is that they’re doing a great job at academics, but that they also need to cut themselves a break.

I explained how the most important thing I learned in college was to navigate the interpersonal aspect. I instructed them to, at least once a day, step away from a screen and sit down across from a friend to engage in conversation. Have fun. I landed my first professional job not because I was an academic trailblazer (clearly), but because I knew a ton of people from hanging out in the bars and one of these friends introduced me to her mom, who helped
me get an interview. I took it from there, but if it hadn’t been for how social I was, I’d have never had the chance. I explained to these students that they don’t want to hit their forties and realize they’ve never cut loose or been irreverent.

In a world where every moment of these kids’ lives has been orchestrated and micromanaged from the minute they could be taken from soccer practice to violin lessons to dance class to tutoring, they looked at me like I’d just revealed the Holy Grail. I came home feeling like I’d accomplished something important. I’m not sure what, exactly, but I imagine it was bucket list–worthy.

Although maybe the advice I gave them wasn’t different from what Michelle’s been telling me about finally, mindfully, giving myself a damn break.

•   •   •

I’ve lost five pounds in the six weeks that I’ve been working with Michelle. This is significant because I haven’t yet actively tried to lose weight, as I plan to focus more on fitness over the summer. I’ve found that the more I allow myself to have what I want, the less I’m liable to take.

This spring has been hectic, as I’ve been hustling to complete my furniture collection. A week before my show, the paperback version of
Tao of Martha
comes out and I have to go to New York to attend some events.

I’ve just boarded the plane home. I’m all strapped into my seat and trying to figure out what movie I’d like to watch on my iPad (maybe
Wolf of Wall Street
since I’m in a New York state of mind) when I see a familiar face in the aisle.

Holy crap.

Rick Springfield’s on this flight.

He’s seated one row back and one seat over from me and I crack up every time a woman over the age of thirty-five boards the plane, spots Rick, and tries desperately not to lose her shit.
He’s pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, as he’s been causing this reaction for more than thirty years.

That’s when I realize—this is it!

This is my chance to meet an icon!

I immediately download his book (having previously forgotten) so when I speak with him, I won’t be lying when I say I bought it. I start working myself into a frenzy over the opportunity, but then I realize that’s a mistake. I decide I’m not going to waste my time planning what to say when we’re inevitably standing next to each other waiting to disembark. I don’t want to sound phony and rehearsed. I hope to have a genuine, albeit brief chat while the ground crew attaches the gangway. I can’t orchestrate a moment—I need to just let it happen.

To take my mind off of the general OMG-ery of the circumstances, I begin to watch my movie and . . . I quickly discover exactly how much gratuitous nudity
The Wolf of Wall Street
contains. There’s a lot. So much, in fact.

Full frontal. Back frontal. From underneath frontal.

Perhaps Mr. Springfield and I will discuss my penchant for watching porn on a crowded airplane, as he has a bird’s-eye view of my screen.

Nudity aside, the movie’s kind of great and I spend the rest of the flight in a blind fury over Leo’s never winning an Oscar. Good Lord, Academy, what does that poor man need to do to convince you he’s worthy of a win? He
was
Gatsby, okay?
He was Gatsby.
And he’s absolutely been Jordan Belfort, Howard Hughes, and Frank Abagnale, Jr. to boot. What of Romeo and of Jim Carroll and of J. Edgar Hoover? Why do you discount him so? Do you not want him to draw you like one of his French women, Academy members? Because at this point, y’all don’t deserve it. I hope this kid somehow finds comfort in his millions and his supermodel girlfriends, because this shit is not right.

Our flight goes quickly, and before I know it, I’m standing next to Rick in the aisle. I smile at him, he smiles at me, and we have a quick chat about his new book, which was released on the same day as the
Tao
paperback. We speak briefly about publishing and writing and book tours and at no point do I come across as a screaming, seventeen-shirt-wearing fangirl. Instead, we’re two peers ever so briefly discussing that which we have in common.

We have only a moment, but it’s the right moment.

I don’t ask him to pose for a selfie with me, because I want to act like I’ve been here before. I know the adage is “pictures or it didn’t happen” but
I’ll
know it happened.

Because I have the checkmark on my bucket list to prove it.

•   •   •

People not only attend my furniture show, but in the first two weeks, they buy up more than half my inventory. While I’m not going to retire early due to my sales, I’ve definitely recouped all initial investments and already turned a small profit. I’m not sure I have the means or wherewithal to become a Design Mogul, but I’ve definitely started something here. There’s a photo floating around the Internet of the Beatles performing in front of eighteen people, with the caption that all artists have to start someplace.

This is my someplace.

Overall, I feel like I’m emerging from a long, bitter winter
and I’m not sure if that’s literal or figurative. I can’t put my finger on how any one specific change has had an impact, but I feel like my whole trajectory is shifting and that I might finally be pointed in the right direction.

Which, right now, looks like Italy.

15.

P
ARCHI E
R
ICREAZIONE

I leave for Italy today.

By myself, instead of my original idea to travel with my Italian class.

And I’m so nervous that I may throw up.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Why did I consider this trip to be a good idea? I’m not someone who goes places just for fun. I was right not to have had wanderlust for so long. In fact, I’m
all about
the staycation. I enjoy being in my house to the point that I totally empathize with people who become agoraphobic. Like, I could see how it happens. Between pizza delivery, Peapod grocery service, and Amazon Prime, I find very few reasons to leave the premises and I’m fine with that! More than fine, even.

Content. Happy. Possibly even euphoric.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to say yes, only to have my plans fall through at the last minute and I can take off my regular-people clothes and redon my paint-splattered yoga pants. Dorothy Gale was onto something when she said that there’s no place like home. Granted, I’m a nursery of raccoons shy of going
Grey Gardens
myself, but, still, I feel like Big and Little Edie Beale were onto something.

(Sidebar: Although a “nursery” of raccoons is the proper term for a group or pack, a “gaze” of raccoons is also an acceptable expression. Look at us, learning things together!)

What the hell am I doing, boarding a plane that will take me five thousand miles away from everyone and everything I ever loved? What kind of Ambien-induced haze was I in that I considered foreign travel a good idea for a bucket list item? I’d like a bucket right now . . . so I can vomit into it.

Unlike so many others my age, I wasn’t accustomed to traveling anywhere with Fletch, save for our recent trip to Florida and a couple of long weekends, because we were dead broke for most of the 2000s. When we were busy cobbling together mini-pizzas out of stale hamburger buns and canned parmesan cheese in an apartment where the lights had been cut off, jaunts across the pond weren’t exactly at the top of our agenda.

Once we got our financial shit together, I suppose we didn’t travel because trip planning seemed like such an enormous undertaking and I am, at my core, not always motivated to put forth the effort. Case in point? I used to suggest we keep a bucket in our old town house pantry to compensate for not having a bathroom on the first floor. For some reason, this bothered His Royal Highness very much, while I maintain it totally could have worked. Plus, we hated our neighbors, so sloshing the bucket on their patios could have been a rather elegant solution, you know?

(Sidebar: Fletch insists this is why we can’t have nice things.)

Interestingly, planning this trip
has
been an undertaking, but I’ve actually relished the process. First of all, I’ve loved learning the language over the past year. The prospect of Italian travel as my end goal made the experience all the more meaningful. I paid attention to the language’s nuances not because the difference between the formal and casual way to say “excuse me” would be on
a test, but because I’m going to say this phrase to real people on Italian streets and I want to get it right.

Plus, I’ve had such fun poring over the Fodor’s and Rick Steves guidebooks and running Google searches on stuff like “Ten Can’t Miss Italian Destinations” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Italy” and “Just Accept the Fact that You’re Going to Eat Your Face Off, So Pack Elastic Waist Pants.”

Actually, until now, I’ve been super-psyched for this trip ever since I booked it that miserably snowy day in winter. I’d been vacillating about specifically where to head because there’s so much I want to see in Italy. Until I started my language class, I had no clue how diverse the different regions of Italy are. I assumed the country was one homogenous entity and figured anywhere I’d land would be representative. But that’s like going to Fort Lauderdale and assuming the area will give you a taste of life in Seattle or Omaha or Dallas, when, really, the only commonality is our language and shared contempt for Katherine Heigl.

Although I desperately want to experience Venice and I’d love to trace my ancestral roots in Sicily (and hit the beach in Cinque Terre, shop in Milan, tour wineries in Tuscany, etc.), I decided to visit Rome first. I could fly there directly, so there’d be no chance of me causing an international incident in Berlin when I couldn’t figure out how to change planes, plus I wouldn’t run out of sights to see in a week. I found a reasonable air and land package, and before I could talk myself out of it, I made the nonrefundable purchase and then danced around my office for the next twenty minutes, so overcome with joy that I couldn’t even sit down.

I originally planned to visit solo, as a character-building exercise, but shortly after I booked my trip, I realized that everything is more fun with Fletch. If I had him join me at the halfway point, I could still have my alone-in-a-foreign-country bucket list experience, before engaging in more couple-focused activities.
Because wasn’t there something intrinsically
off
about going to the most romantic country on Earth without the person I love?

Plus, I figured if we went to Rome together, Fletch and I could have our picture taken in front of the Colosseum, which means I’d finally have the kind of photo that all my peers took twenty years ago on their honeymoon. Everyone I know has awesome shots of themselves smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower or Buckingham Palace or holding hands on a Balinese beach. When we got married, Fletch and I had two days together in Vegas after the ceremony and we didn’t take a single picture, largely because everyone in our hotel was there for the Adult Film Awards and I really just wanted to forget the whole thing.

But I’ve yearned for my Kodak moment, too, damn it, enough to make
have a photo taken with Fletch somewhere recognizable
a bucket list item. So, I checked airfares and then I went downstairs to discuss the option with Fletch.

“Hey, how do you feel about coming with me to Rome for at least part of the time?” I asked.

Fletch looked up from his spot at the table where he was sketching out a fix for a broken dresser. Fletch accompanies me now when I go junking and his advice on what can and can’t be repaired has been invaluable. This particular dresser had a wonky drawer, so he was trying to determine the best course of action. “Neutral?” he replied.