0451471075 (N) by Jen Lancaster Page B

to pitch the Tao , I was . . . picking up Hambone’s poop in the dining room.
    That night, I learned both NBC and FOX wanted to buy the show.
    If there was a better word for surreal, I’d use it here.
    I celebrated by having dinner with my lunch girls, and then going home to pick up the fresh deposits that puppy Hammy had left in the living room.
    For all the years I’d fantasized about how a Hollywood deal would revolutionize my life, I was surprised at how nothing hadactually changed, particularly the part where my dogs shat with abandon.
    Ultimately, the show didn’t even get a pilot. The networks buy dozens of scripts each year and film only a handful of them. Even fewer of those ever make it to the air. So, though I was disappointed to not see my name on the screen, what really bummed me out was that America would never hear Martha Stewart say the line, “Glitter is the STD of the crafting world.”
    A moment of silence for this loss, if you will.
    Ironically, the Hollywood option process doesn’t pay off unless the product is made, so in the end, I came out with less than one mortgage payment. This would neatly explain why all my contemporaries who do have “moooooovie deals” are still doing their own grocery shopping.
    But hey, I was now on Martha Stewart’s radar, and that was a very good thing. Right before Christmas, my publicist Craig told me that the Today show wanted to feature Martha and me on the day the book came out!
    “What do you mean?” I asked, clearly confused. “Like, she’d be there?”
    “Yes, indeed,” he said. “Isn’t that great news?”
    “And I’d be there?”
    “Yes.”
    “In person, right there, with me next to her on the couch? Spitting distance.”
    “Please don’t spit on Martha Stewart.”
    “I would never!!” I cried. “Well, not intentionally. I think I might get spitty when I’m really excited. Anyway, she’d be close enough to me that I could reach over and touch her. Like, if I were wearing terrible perfume, it would offend her. Or if I forgot my deodorant, she’d know. Real live-in-person BO,” I clarified.
    “Correct,” he replied.
    “If I showed up in a chambray shirt and khakis and cut mybangs so they’d be side-swept, she’d see all of that because we’d be on the couch together?”
    “That’s generally how Today show interviews work.”
    “Oh, my freaking GOD!” I exclaimed, the magnitude of his news finally sinking in. “I’m gonna tell EVERYONE.”
    Craig said, “Except that you can’t tell anyone because the producers don’t like information to get out before the fact. You’ll have to keep this quiet until it happens.”
    “I have to sit on the secret of the greatest thing to ever happen to me for six months?”
    “Yes. You up for it?”
    “I guess we’ll find out,” I replied, truthfully.
    Here’s the thing about me and secrets: We are matter and antimatter. There’s virtually no secret that I’ve ever been told that I didn’t inadvertently blab within twenty-four hours of having heard it. I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain when I hear, “You can’t tell anyone,” because I interpret that as, “You must tell EVERYONE.” I’m a plastic liter bottle and secrets are sixteen ounces of fresh soda having been given a vigorous shaking.
    I can’t stress this enough: I am not to be trusted.
    Not only are confidences bound to come out, but they’ll actually burst out of me with great velocity, spraying everything within fifteen feet. I never mean to be a gossip and I want to be honorable, but I’m profoundly terrible at keeping my yap shut. When people ask me, “Can you keep a secret?” my answer is always an overwhelming NO. I beg others not to share their clandestine news because I am truly the worst.
    With the kind of willpower I never thought possible, I manage to keep my fat mouth closed until May when Today comes to my house to film a Cinco de Mayo party. The five months I stayed quiet were the longest