Victoria

The family went to Marathon Key this past summer. The Key of Marathon happens to be one of the few places left in the United States that does not have a Barnes and Noble. Accordingly, my literature procurement for the remainder of the vacation was relegated to aisle 6 of the Marathon Key Walmart. And not all of aisle 6. The book selection was a row, no bigger than my wingspan, consisting of a few cookbooks, some Danielle Steele and Victoria Olsteen's book. Since I wasn't planning on cooking on vacation, and I harbor a suspicion that romance novels may be based on a template, that left Vic's book. Truth be told, I was drawn to it like a train wreck.

Victoria Olsteen, for those of you who don't know, is the wife of Joel Olsteen, the preacher that leads the televised sermons out of the mega church at a former basketball stadium in Texas (of course).

Now, I am not going to spout off about religion here, except to say that I have, from time to time, struggled with a desire to believe. My husband believes in the Bible on a literal level, and my mother kept a white Lennox cross by her bedside during the final year of her life. I oh so want to believe that one day I will see her again and we will go to a heavenly ladies lunch and then hit heaven's Nordstrom. But, honestly, I have a sneaking suspicion that's not how its going to go.

So, I can tell you that I really was drawn to Victoria's book out of a bizarre fascination, much like I have for the Real Housewives. Vicitoria, like the Real Housewives, is a curious representation of what my gender can do when we have a self-centeredness that refuses to acknowledge that failure is an option. There seems to be something about all the hairspray and lip gloss and shirts that hug the boobs just so that causes a synapse to form in the brain where these women think that by just showing up, business deals will fall at their feet. And they do. Huh. Huh?

I have a plan. For the next week, I am going to follow all of the advice in Victoria's book, and see what happens. (1) I'm bored, and (2) It couldn't hurt me to be a little more of a respectable person around work. Vic's book is not really heavy on the God stuff. In fact, Vic's version of God is like God Light, or really even Fat Free God. Vic's version of God is even more user-friendly than the friendly white man with the long flowing beard holding a lamb in airbrushed fashion - its more like one of those yellow smiley faces.

Really, to follow Vic's advice, all I must do is be gracious and thankful and pleasant to my husband, my family and my co-workers. (I am paraphrasing here. I haven't picked up the book since I got back from the vacation in the Keys, at which point I started where I left off in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. One of the most brilliant pieces of literature ever composed is the first three pages of chapter two of AHWOSG. And, in my opinion, some of the hardest-to-slog-through literature ever written is the remaining 434 pages of AHWOSG.) But I digress.

Vic's book is full of real life stories of people, mostly cube dwellers, who end up doing miraculous things and have supreme goodness reign upon them simply by having a good attitude and going the extra mile in everything they do. So, hey, I can do that for a week. (In fact, at one time in my life I was known as a perky pleasant happy person. My first boss told me that she almost didn't hire me because she didn't know if she could stand my perkiness all day. True story). I will skim back through Vic's book, follow her advice, and see what kind of funky shit begets upon me this week (but sans the lip gloss, hairspray and shirts that hug the boobs just so).