When in Doubt, Add Butter Read Online Free PDF Page A

side, it was a hell of a motivator to find more work.

 
    Chapter 3
    No one promised life would be easy or that the game wouldn’t change without warning. There you are, all ready to pass Go and collect two hundred dollars, and suddenly Colonel Mustard is trapped in the conservatory, ranting and raving and waving a wrench, and no one knows what exactly a conservatory is or why anyone thought a wrench —of all things—would be a good murder weapon, or what branch of the military Colonel Mustard even served in! Has anyone seen his credentials?
    Well, you get my point: You’ve got one life with zero guarantees, so you do your best, adapt if possible, and keep on breathing. I recommend striving for happiness, but many opt for duty and responsibility. Mileage varies.
    Your life, your game, your rules.
    Here’s the only thing I know for sure: Chopped pineapple is incredible on hot dogs. Honest to God, I love pineapple on everything —I would probably even eat it off a cadaver’s hand—but toss it with a little chopped red onion and put it on a hot dog, and it’s bliss. There’s not a lot you can count on in this world, but pineapple? It’s solid.
    Once upon a time, I thought I had bypassed the entire issue of dating into my dotage. Of course, thirty-seven is not dotage, but when I was a teenager, it sure seemed like it was, and given that I had a boyfriend who I thought was my Forever and Ever at the time, I was pretty smug—as only a seventeen-year-old can be—in the knowledge that I’d never have to deal with the dating world again.
    That all changed the day I realized that I’d been happily cavorting in the pool in my swimsuit for two months straight without ever having my period. One EPT three-pack later— BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE! —I was a different person. Right up to that moment of confirmation, I had been myself, even though, of course, the confirmation was just that, and the fact existed with or without it.
    But I will never forget the feeling of standing there in front of the beige counter of my bathroom in my mother’s house—a counter that had, over the years, held everything from plastic tub toys to muddy summer science experiments to Tampax Juniors to my first Maybelline eye shadows—looking at three positive pregnancy tests that confirmed, without any room for doubt, that I would never be the same person again. I would never be the same person I’d been that very morning again. Amazing how your perspective can change your reality, huh?
    I know it seems stupid; to this day, I hear stories about people going months and months without knowing they were pregnant, and I think, Just how stupid are you ? for a moment before I realize I know just exactly how stupid someone can be in that situation. It’s a very easy thing to be going along in your life, doing all the things you always do, feeling the way you always have, and not realizing that something—either within you or outside you—has shifted.
    His name was Cal, by the way. This boyfriend I thought I would be with forever. The father of my child.
    Cal Isaakson.
    As I worked through the shock over the next few days, I wrote that name down a million times, like the child I was myself instead of the woman I should have been in order to handle this situation responsibly.
    Cal and Gemma Isaakson.
    Gemma Isaakson.
    Mr. and Mrs. C. Isaakson.
    And so on.
    There was never a point of relief for me. Never a point at which I thought to myself, Phew, now I really have him . Whether that was because I believed so thoroughly that I did have him or because I knew deep down that I didn’t, I can’t say.
    All I know is that telling him was harder than I expected it would be, and that, right there, was my first clue. He was, immediately, a person I didn’t recognize.
    This is going to fuck up my whole life!
    How could you let this happen?
    I’m not missing college to get married and raise a kid.
    Find a place to get this taken care of.
    Don’t. Tell.