Stirring the Pot Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Jenny McCarthy Productions, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-553-39086-5

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39087-2

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Jacket design: Alex Merto

  Jacket photograph: Matthias Clamer

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Baby Steps

  When in Doubt, Wing It!

  Know and No

  The High Road?

  Decade-by-Decade Decision Making

  Try Anything Once

  Girls’ Night In

  Five Things You Don’t Want to Hear at a Class Reunion

  Drunk and Disorderly in the Age of Social Media

  Seven Things I Wish Someone Would Invent

  Poke Me

  The Red Scare

  If My Bed Could Talk …

  Ten Signs You’re Spending Too Much Time with Your Toddler

  Nourish Your Soul

  How to Get Souper Skinny

  Ten Signs You Need My Cookbook

  Know When to Fold ’Em

  Ten Signs the Guy You’re Dating Is Too Young for You

  Six Signs You Might Not Have Chemistry in Bed with Your Partner

  Ten Signs the Guy You’re Dating Might Be Gay

  Eight Signs You Might Be Stalking Your Ex

  A Short Course on Being—and Attracting—Someone Special

  My Wet Dreams

  Ten Signs You’re Getting Older

  When All Else Fails … Have an Orgasm for the Soul

  Date Night Etiquette

  Reverse Psychology

  TED Yourself

  Dream It to Achieve It, Baby!

  The Single-Mom Balancing Act

  Giving the Bird

  Pep Talk

  My Resolution to Go Slow

  A Manopausal Road Map

  Four Things Every Girl Should Have in Her Purse

  Pooper Scooping

  Found on the Cutting Room Floor: Alternative Titles for This Book

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Baby Steps

  MY RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

  Ingredients:

  1 girl with a dream

  0 financial resources

  No time for bullshit

  Lots of time for therapy

  A heaping tablespoon of humor

  2 cups of hardheadedness

  Many, many disappointing setbacks

  A pinch of acceptance of my place in the world

  A dollop of flexibility

  Directions:

  Stir up ingredients and season for taste (learn to balance the sour with the sweet). Don’t overmix the batter (don’t overthink things; put one foot in front of the other). Simmer for life.

  This’ll be hard to believe given that I am now best known for being unafraid to grab a microphone and work a crowd, but when I was younger I had a totally crippling fear of public speaking. I’m not only talking about a fear of having to give a speech to the whole school or stage fright the night of the school play. That shit’s obvious.

  I was also paralyzed by something as simple as a request to read a paragraph out loud to a small class. If a teacher asked me to come to the board and show the class how to do a math problem? Hyperventilation time. Give an oral report on my science project? I’d become totally sick to my stomach and have to run to the bathroom.

  To avoid getting to the puking stage, I got creative with my excuses. I conveniently “lost my glasses” a lot (even though I didn’t wear any back then). I was pretty convincing with a sudden bad cough or the development of a splitting headache. One time I went so far as to quickly crack a red pen so that I could let the ink dribble down my leg. I don’t know if the teacher thought my leg was bleeding or that I’d had an embarrassing female accident (as you’ll see on this page, I later became very prone to embarrassing female accidents!), but that was an instant pass to the nurse’s office. I couldn’t really use it more than once, though. Too bad.

  By the time I got to college, I didn’t think it was too much to hope that oral reports and front-of-class participation would be things of my past. I wanted to be a special-education major (little did I know that my son Evan’s needs would give me a front-row seat in that world a decade later) and didn’t see how my fear of public speaking would cause a problem. I saw myself teaching and playing with kids using blocks and games and crayons, not cue cards.

  But wouldn’t you know it … Public Speaking 101 was a requirement for my chosen major. What the fuck? There was no way around it. I knew I had to bite the bullet or I would have to give up on the thing that really interested me. I was determined. For the moment, anyway.

  As I walked to class the first day, I began to shake just thinking about the idea of it. I can still see the big auditorium classroom now—stadium seating sloping down to a classic college lectern and about fifty shaggy students settling in to fall asleep. After introducing himself and giving an overview of the curriculum (all of which sounded terrifying and totally effing pointless to me), the professor announced that he wanted all the students to stand and briefly introduce themselves. Before even the first student had stood to tell us her name and where she was from, I had grabbed my backpack and bolted from the room.

  I ran straight to the freshman guidance office and busted through the door in hysterics. I was crying so hard the advisor thought I had been attacked, and she jumped up from her chair to console me. I tried to relay the problem—my fear, the goddamned public speaking requirement—but wasn’t really making much sense. When I finally managed to spit it all out, she was sympathetic to a point but also explained with a little pat on my back that most incoming freshmen were nervous about speaking in public. My response? I really spit it out—I put my head between my knees and vomited on the floor. Not my proudest moment. I think the counselor got the picture that my case was a little more extreme than average.

  We cleaned up the puke. She calmed me down. And then we got down to business. She said she would help me find a major that didn’t have a public speaking requirement. Nursing looked promising, since it was a career that would still allow me to nurture people and help people heal, and I could potentially specialize in pediatrics; I might be able to work with kids after all. I’d watched a lot of General Hospital and didn’t think it looked so hard. Yes, I know now that was a ridiculously insane thought, and I have convinced myself all these years later that I didn’t say it out loud. If I did, the counselor was cool enough to let it slide. What I do remember is that nursing didn’t require me to stand up and risk shitting my pants in public. That did it for me.

  I was relieved that I’d found something else that I could imagine myself doing and that wouldn’t make me confront this ridiculous fear, but I also remember feeling sad and disappointed in myself because I knew that I was going to let a stupid fear keep me from a goal and a dream (special ed). A little voice in my head shamed and berated me. Not an evil-spirit mean little voice, but a wise-conscience kind of voice that told me, You can’t hide from your fear. It will find you wherever you go.

  For the most part, though, I managed to shake off the soul ache and flick the little guy off my shoulder. I kept focused on trying to pay for and not flunk out of college. For a while there I had the idea to finance my courses by selling weed. I was my own best customer, though, and
spent most of my time stoned to the bone. Financially that wasn’t working out, and educationally it wasn’t so stellar, either. You try focusing on the intricacies of chemistry or biology after a wake-and-bake bender.

  Not yet a nurse, and no closer to staring down my public speaking phobia, I was forced to drop out of college after my second year—no more money, no more prospects—and head back home to live with my parents. Another not-my-proudest-moment moment.

  What followed were many weeks of staring at the ceiling in my old bedroom. And some sobbing. And some serious angsting about what I would do with the rest of my life. I listened to a lot of music. I ate a lot of crap food. I smoked some more weed. I sobbed some more.

  And then something happened that in a movie would be depicted as the skies parting, sun shining straight down into my room, and angels singing. The camera would swing to my record collection, and out of the pile I would pull the Grease album with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John looking up at me with their crazy hairdos and cheesy smiles. Inspiration had struck!

  I was seven years old when I first saw Grease, and like so many girls at the time, I declared to my mom that I was going to go to Hollywood one day and be a star like Olivia. Of course, at seven my phobia about public speaking and performance hadn’t yet taken hold—maybe my teenage hormones helped that blossom? At seven nothing stood in my way. (Just so you know, by the time I dropped out of college, I had stopped dancing around my room singing Grease songs into my hairbrush/microphone, but I still knew all the lyrics … and I still do.)

  By the time I was wallowing at home and trying to figure out a new career path for myself, I was older and a little wiser and knew that making it in Hollywood would be no easy road. I’d need some connections, some auditions, some luck. Oh, and some talent. And I knew I’d need to conquer my fear of public speaking. I simply had to push through and find a way to cope with my nerves.

  Whether it was Olivia’s determined transformation from shy wallflower to badass leather-clad vixen (in Grease, that is) or the flash I had of myself drinking my sorrows away and telling anyone who would listen what I could have done with my life if only I’d had the chance (known around my house as “Irish therapy”), I was inspired to get off my ass and give acting a go.

  So I opened the Yellow Pages. (For those of you who weren’t around when these were in use, this is a big, yellow printed reference book with phone numbers and addresses listed alphabetically by category. Crazy, huh?) I called the Better Business Bureau and got a list of talent agencies both in my hometown, Chicago, and in Los Angeles. And then I started making calls. I begged. I pleaded. I was persistent (aka hardheaded). And as miracles or destiny would have it, I soon found myself on my way to L.A. to audition for producers.

  Of course, wanting to conquer my fear didn’t mean I was able to. I often threw up on my way to auditions. I chewed my nails down to nubs. But I managed to hold my fears a little more in check by keeping my eyes focused on the prize: not spending my life staring at the ceiling in my childhood bedroom. I wanted this more than a degree in special education or nursing. And I was determined not to give up on a dream for a third time.

  Nude modeling didn’t require me to say a thing—and we all now know that I had success in that line of work. But when I did have to speak, I think I fooled people. Turns out I could act unafraid convincingly. And slowly, slowly the nausea turned to plain jitters and it seemed like my nerves were better under control.

  Then came my very first motion picture acting job. God winked at me and saw to it that I was hired to play the part of a nurse—a nurturer and healer after all! The movie was Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, and I only had one line. Drumroll, please … I had to say “Hello!” and then I had to feed Christopher Walken baby food for five days. I managed the hello without throwing up. Spooning food was a snap. Baby steps on the road to success.

  When in Doubt, Wing It!

  It wasn’t a straight shot from Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead to bigger and better things, but I have had a lot of success along the way—you bought this book presumably because you’ve read one or more of my other books or seen me on The View or in a movie (or in the nude, you perv). And unrelated to success in a dollars-and-cents sense, I’ve also had great happiness. In other words, I’ve gotten what I want out of life. So far I’ve gotten more than I could have hoped for, even if on the face of it there have been setbacks (my failed status as a drug lord in Carbondale, Illinois; dropping out of college; and public speaking panic attacks are just the tip of the iceberg).

  If I’m being honest with myself and really trying to distill my experiences into some kind of recipe for success and happiness, I think the story of my winding path through half of college and my old-fashioned “I’m gonna make it in Hollywood” attitude is a pretty instructive first lesson. It shows that my approach to success and happiness has not exactly been calculated (wouldn’t that be a boring story?). Some might say I’m naive. Or lucky. Or all those things. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see patterns in the messiness and can’t draw some conclusions that I think might be helpful to others.

  I mean, let’s go back to the metaphor of a recipe for a minute. Some people follow cookbook directions precisely and want their meals to look exactly like the gourmet concoctions they see in magazines. Maybe they take classes or follow video instruction for every step. And maybe they feel pressure to get it right every time.

  Me, I improvise. I might start with a written recipe, but as soon as I’ve figured out that I don’t have all the necessary ingredients, I can confidently wing it. I open the fridge, sniff out what’s gone bad, assess what might pair well with what, and then start approximating the recipe with what I do have on hand. The result might possibly be a gourmet meal, though it most often looks nothing like the cookbook photo. But more often than not, it looks just fine and it tastes good, too. I also know when the fridge has me beat, and I’m not too proud to call for takeout!

  For as long as I can remember—from finding a way to get out of speaking in class to dealing with criticism about the way I run my mouth—I’ve been up on the stage of life tap-dancing my way through sticky situations with a smile on my face. I’ve been juggling to keep all my balls in the air (career, motherhood, and the actual male gonads in my well-documented love life). I’ve read my fair share of self-help books and held a mirror to myself in some questionable therapy sessions. Like anyone else, I try to learn from my mistakes (aka making the same damn bad choice over and over again until a lightbulb finally goes on).

  I saw a public service announcement on a bus stop recently that said, “Winging it is not an emergency plan”—it was a reminder to parents to talk to their kids about what to do in the event of a disaster. I can’t disagree with that in terms of disaster preparedness … but I don’t live my life expecting the sky to fall! Winging it means being flexible, open-minded, and game for plan B if plan A doesn’t pan out. There’s no getting around the fact that life will be messy and imperfect and disappointing and sometimes hard. But I’m living proof that if you are open to improvisation, you can have a ton of fun and success to boot.

  Try winging it. I highly recommend it!

  Know and No

  Let’s agree on one thing: whatever method there is to my madness, I am not someone who has made success look easy. My path to success has been long and winding. Actually, it’s been more like a roller coaster—more ups and downs than lefts and rights. But trial and error, as well as setbacks and kicks in the teeth, make you appreciate whatever measure of success you ultimately enjoy. No ache, no appreciation, that’s what I say.

  And let’s be honest: I’ve stepped in more shit than I could ever begin to scrape off my shoes. At least the reason for that is clear. Except possibly for not sharing my “watching General Hospital means I could be a nurse” theory, I have made a habit of not considering the consequences of whatever I’m about to say before I say it.

  I like to think that speaking my mind
is part of my charm, but that’s just an after-the-fact rationalization. I don’t say what’s on my mind to be charming. Obviously not, because I don’t just put my foot in my mouth; I often swallow it whole. I don’t care how easy some exotic dancers make that look; it’s not an especially comfortable position to be in.

  Another way to say it? No one has ever accused me of being a closed book. Instead, my friends have been known to say, “Puleeeeeaze put a cork in it!” What I think is what you get. (Except for my rack, what you see is what you get, too. My rack has been surgically altered a couple of times—I can’t lie.)

  Given all that, and given the fact that you expected some advice when you bought this book, let me mouth off a little for you here. Allow me to break my theory of happiness down for you a little further. Based on my highly scientific study of the phenomenon (aka my own life), I can tell you that there are several things we all need to know and also a couple of necessary nos to learn about for good measure.

  Know Yourself

  Knowing yourself in some big, psychological sense means you are in touch with your feelings and your motivations, and if you’re truly evolved (that is, no longer blaming Mom and Dad for everything), you have accepted your shortcomings as your own.

  But there’s another way to know yourself that’s more mundane but not less important: you know what you can tolerate and what you just can’t. When you know yourself in this way, you don’t waste time pretending you’re someone you’re not, and you can voice your discomfort instead of pretending you’re the happiest lady on the block. (See “Decade-by-Decade Decision Making,” this page, for more on this profound topic!)

  An example: me, I’m not outdoorsy, and I just can’t pretend that I am. Angelina Jolie’s regular trips to Africa are inspiring, but I’ll just have to write her a check to support her cause. For me, going to Italy is roughing it! I know they’ve got nice accommodations all over Italy, but I also know that I need a Vegas-style, big-ass bathroom, or I’m nothing to nobody. If you see a photo of me barefoot by a fire pit in Zimbabwe, you know that either it’s a fake set or some producer threatened to fire me if I didn’t make that trek and have that photo taken. Know this: I may be smiling, but I’m not happy or comfortable sitting at that fire pit. Of course, grinning and bearing it is something we all have to do from time to time, but grinning and trying to convince yourself you’re happy is a waste of time. You’re welcome—I just saved you years of therapy.