Laurie Notaro, I'VE GOT A NEW COMPLAINT: Essays on Aging Disgracefully and Other Small Disasters

[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.

[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.

[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show

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[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.

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[0:13]you're really talking about life.

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[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.

[0:24]Enjoy!

[0:27]Laurie and Nataro is the author of,

[0:29]I've got a new complaint, essays on aging disgracefully

[0:32]and other small disasters.

[0:34]She has already been on this podcast

[0:36]and it is a delight to welcome her back this time.

[0:39]Laurie was born in Brooklyn, New York,

[0:40]and then spent the remainder of her formative years

[0:42]in Phoenix, Arizona, where she created something

[0:45]of a checkered past.

[0:46]She is the New York Times best-selling author

[0:48]of the humor memoirs, the idiot girl's action-adventure club,

[0:52]autobiography of a fat bride, I love everybody,

[0:56]and housebroken, along with numerous others,

[0:59]two humor novels and crossing the horizon,

[1:01]a novel of historical fiction that tells the true story

[1:04]of one's famous and now forgotten aviatresses prior

[1:08]to Amelia Earhart that vied to become the first female pilot

[1:11]to cross the Atlantic.

[1:13]She resides in Eugene, Oregon, has a cute dog,

[1:15]a nice husband, and misses Mexican food

[1:17]like it was in her youth.

[1:19]Welcome, Laurie.

[1:20]Thank you so much for coming on totally booked to talk about,

[1:23]I've got a new complaint on aging disgracefully

[1:25]and other small disasters, congrats.

[1:28]Oh, thank you, it is so fun to be here again with you.

[1:31]I always love our discussion,

[1:32]so I'm really looking forward to it.

[1:34]Yay.

[1:35]You're glad that I did not sing the title of the song.

[1:40]I could have, I hear it in my head whenever I look at the cover,

[1:43]so thank you for that.

[1:45]Thank you for getting it.

[1:46]Thank you for getting that too.

[1:47]I do appreciate that, yeah, because a lot of people

[1:51]who are not of my age, and you actually are not of my age,

[1:55]much younger, do not get, because it's not a song title.

[1:58]They don't really get that it's part of a very seminal song

[2:01]of my youth.

[2:02]Yeah, I totally get it.

[2:05]I might not be the exact same age,

[2:06]but I feel a lot of the things that you put in the book,

[2:10]and a lot of the anecdotes, and I think aging is a leveler

[2:14]for us all, and maybe my eyes have not

[2:18]drooped as much yet, but they are on their way down.

[2:22]I got a great guy.

[2:23]I know a great guy.

[2:24]Yeah, I know.

[2:25]I think that might have been my favorite essay was that.

[2:28]Why don't you tell us in there's a little bit about this

[2:31]collection of essays, and what inspired it, and all of that?

[2:37]Well, in my career, as I have been writing books,

[2:41]I write about the age that I'm at.

[2:44]And so this goes back now to the mid-90s.

[2:48]So now I'm 60, and I'm finding that there, again,

[2:54]like my last book, which was Excuse me while I just appeared,

[2:57]there's so many things people don't tell you about aging,

[2:59]and I'm still not sure why that is.

[3:02]So they don't tell you like, when

[3:05]day you're going to go on Facebook,

[3:07]and there's going to be leg tape.

[3:10]So you can do the tape on your legs

[3:13]to hold up the saggy skin just so you can wear shorts

[3:17]and you play pickleball.

[3:18]And I'm like, what is going on here?

[3:22]What is going on?

[3:23]And then there's tape to, like, put your eyes up like this,

[3:26]and there's neck tape to put, like, when it all does tape happen.

[3:30]And it's just when, even up until you're 40s and 50s,

[3:34]you just think this is just the way that I'm going to be.

[3:36]I'm not, things really aren't going to fall.

[3:38]And then one day, it's like gravity hits you with a rock.

[3:42]It's like dark, dense anti-gravity matter.

[3:47]You're just like, I can stick things in my neck,

[3:50]and they just stay.

[3:52]I couldn't move my eyes, and they stay.

[3:54]And so not that I felt it was a duty,

[3:57]but I was just like, I can't be the only one feeling these things.

[4:01]And if I find them hilarious, they're not quite so bad.

[4:05]And I'm, well, I'm talking with my girlfriends

[4:07]who are all the same age ages now.

[4:09]It's just like, did you ever think that we'd

[4:12]need to tape our necks back before we

[4:14]take a picture or just try certain things

[4:17]to just make ourselves look younger?

[4:19]When we're all really against that,

[4:21]we're all really into like, aging gracefully,

[4:25]but somehow it doesn't happen gracefully.

[4:27]It's very disgraceful.

[4:29]So that is what's different about this.

[4:32]But in my parents are getting older,

[4:34]and the things they do are just getting crazier.

[4:36]And while I'm going forward,

[4:38]I see my parents kind of going backwards.

[4:41]And that is a really freaky thing.

[4:43]So they're eating rotten food

[4:44]and what kinds of crazy stuff?

[4:45]So the year dads, what was it, overnight oats,

[4:48]or whatever, I was like traumatized.

[4:50]Yeah.

[4:51]Yeah.

[4:52]And I have to watch them slurp that in the mornings

[4:54]when I, and I'm just like, oh God,

[4:56]like this sound isn't bad enough,

[4:58]but I have to watch.

[4:59]Oh my gosh.

[5:00]I love my dad.

[5:01]But I'm just like, you're poisoning yourself

[5:03]with rotten milk and rotten oats.

[5:05]It's fetid.

[5:06]So yeah, old people eat anything.

[5:09]He eats stuff that like I said in the book,

[5:12]he eats a moldy cookie.

[5:13]There's mold on the back of it.

[5:14]He's like, I ain't afraid.

[5:16]We're like, dad, like I'm sure your immunosystem

[5:19]is really great by now because your biome is like,

[5:21]so infested with all of these like already beginning diseases,

[5:27]but maybe the joke is on us.

[5:29]I mean, look at your dad.

[5:31]It's very, it's very, very possible.

[5:33]But I just would never consider eating a moldy cookie

[5:36]and then proclaim that I'm not afraid.

[5:38]You know, I am afraid of those things.

[5:40]I am afraid of eating moldy cookies

[5:42]and then saying, I'm not afraid.

[5:44]I'm very afraid of that.

[5:45]I will jump on that bandwagon.

[5:48]I also don't want to drink that milk

[5:50]and I agreed with you for throwing it in the garbage,

[5:53]even though everybody freaked out at you.

[5:55]And I'm with you.

[5:57]Yeah, I just, he keeps saying that he's saving

[6:02]for inheritance.

[6:03]I'm like, honestly, just go get a $3 gallon of milk.

[6:07]It's not gonna take that much of a chink out of me

[6:10]when I'm 85.

[6:11]Please, I'm begging you.

[6:13]Don't save that $3 for me.

[6:15]Just don't do it.

[6:16]I'd rather you drink regular milk.

[6:18]So you are so funny writing about your parents, right?

[6:22]You just show, that's the ultimate show, don't tell.

[6:25]Like, immediately we're like, I get this whole thing.

[6:27]Like, I see this.

[6:29]But when you think about a little deeper about

[6:31]like your relationship with your parents

[6:33]and like the way that you became essentially a comic

[6:36]and how you are so, the way you see the world

[6:40]and what you were getting from them.

[6:42]Like, tell me a little bit about how you make sense of it all.

[6:45]Oh, it's all scarring.

[6:46]It's all scarring.

[6:48]It's all scarring.

[6:49]Like, our family motto is, do not address the problem.

[6:56]Do not address the problem.

[6:58]Wait, just ignore it for long enough

[7:00]until it finds another family to bother.

[7:03]So there's so many things that when we were kids,

[7:06]me and my sisters, we had to find our own resolutions for,

[7:09]or just like, okay, we could just,

[7:12]we'll just move on with it and do something else.

[7:15]You know, like, our moms and, you know,

[7:18]it's the 70s and the 80s our parents were never home

[7:22]as everyone always says drinking out of hoses.

[7:25]We never did that.

[7:26]But it was like, yeah, we ate the most processed food ever.

[7:29]And, you know, we were, I just feel bad for my mom.

[7:33]We would call her like a million times at work.

[7:36]Like, mom, mom, this is eating my pizza, mom.

[7:40]And then we try to sound like adults

[7:42]when we call the receptionist, hi,

[7:44]is Carol Naturo there?

[7:45]We're clearly, I'm an eight year old kid, right?

[7:48]So I think it's just all that stuff

[7:50]that we had that Jen's ears, no, we're Jen Xers,

[7:54]kind of had to do it on our own.

[7:55]There was no gentle care of our generation.

[8:00]So I think we grew up pretty resilient

[8:02]and, you know, kids were on milk cartons

[8:05]and I had a curfew at like, you know,

[8:08]10 o'clock at night when I'm 12

[8:10]and especially in Arizona because it's just always sunny.

[8:12]But, you know, it's just that kind of like independence

[8:16]that I think we just really had to forge on our own.

[8:19]And my parents are both very funny,

[8:20]but they're all so very, they're very staunch

[8:23]and they're very Italian.

[8:25]And just everybody was always yelling at our house.

[8:29]They're like, no, even I'm yelling now, even I do that.

[8:32]No, like, like, even these like,

[8:37]the Gen Z, like little videos I see on TikTok

[8:40]where they talk like this.

[8:42]And then the soft gentle breeze comes in.

[8:45]And I'm just like, oh my God, why are you,

[8:48]why are you whispering?

[8:49]Why is that, what's that baby voice?

[8:51]My family yells, we all yell.

[8:53]And even my husband's just like, you're talking too loud.

[8:56]And I'm just like, we're in a loud restaurant.

[8:58]He's like, everyone can hear you.

[8:59]Everyone just said, you know,

[9:01]I have to say, I once, when I was like,

[9:04]parenting my twins in the very early days

[9:06]and was absolutely losing my mind and screaming a nonstop.

[9:10]I had this one, was it a friend or a doctor?

[9:12]Somebody was like, you know,

[9:14]the thing that really rattles kids the most

[9:16]is when you stop yelling and all of a sudden you whisper.

[9:19]Like they get so shocked that they'll do whatever you say.

[9:23]And I'm like, really?

[9:24]So anyway, that was my experience in the work.

[9:27]It works, yeah, it works.

[9:30]Try it, just in the middle of whatever.

[9:32]Not to say it's like a soothing.

[9:34]I'm on a, you know, I'm on the prairie

[9:36]with like a basket or something like that.

[9:38]But right, but just in the throw of it,

[9:39]just say like, did you know what you were saying just then?

[9:43]Just watch, just watch.

[9:45]See, my mom had no qualms about shouting at the cashier

[9:50]at Safeway.

[9:51]Why the hell did I have kids?

[9:54]He would have taught us how hard to do that,

[9:56]a million times when she would hit my sister

[9:58]ass down.

[10:00]was crazy. Like, and that's just the way things work. You know, so I think now that my nephews are starting to have kids, that is a really good trick to try is just drop it way down and then just whisper in a very dramatic tone.

[10:16]Quite as we worked on that again. Yeah, they're telling you that they're glad you're not a twin. He just, and he doesn't, he didn't even think that was funny. He was just like, I'm just so glad you're not a twin.

[10:33]They tell me he's like, you talk too much. What parent tells their kid that they talk too much, right? But that's my dad. That is just my dad. There's just no holds barred ever ever. He's just straightforward right to the heart.

[10:46]So what other parts of aging were you like, well, this has to go in the book.

[10:53]Oh, gosh, well, there are so many things as you know, the being sweaty at night time. I literally woke up soaked, soaked today FYI just for too much information.

[11:06]No, and I'm moving on, moving on. And in my parents house when I'm with them there in Arizona and my dad has this really crazy idea.

[11:15]That if he only puts the air conditioning on from 10 o'clock at night until five o'clock in the morning that cools the house off for the rest of the day when it gets to be 120.

[11:25]So I wake up thinking that I have like, I've wet the bed when it, and I haven't been able to sleep, but I'm looking at the sunrise and I'm like, I've weighed myself.

[11:35]But other things about getting older are just the sounds that your body makes and the things that you're not able to do.

[11:43]And there's every all my friends and we get up. Now we're 60. So this started probably happening when we were 55 upwards.

[11:51]You get up, but you can't make a forward motion just yet otherwise you really risk killing yourself. You really risk severe injury like your pelvis could completely fall apart if you're not warmed up.

[12:03]So if you've been sitting for more than a half an hour, you stand up and then you pretend like you're looking for your keys, your brushing stuff off crumbs off of you until you feel like maybe your hips are warmed up and you can actually take a step without falling down. It's like that part of your body just falls asleep.

[12:19]It's insane. It is insane. So that's one thing that I wasn't prepared for and just like just getting out of bed just like, okay, all right, I got to warm all this stuff.

[12:29]It's like an engine of a really old car. You just you just risk exploding the whole thing like I don't even know how I'm put together how I am erect in one thing because everything is so worn out and bendy.

[12:42]It's I feel just like a jenga game, you know, like I can automatically collapse at any point. So that was really big noises your body makes you have a really funny essay about a sex as a what do you say sex the generic accepted.

[12:57]Yeah.

[12:58]Yeah, enjoy it now enjoy the like they're talking ARP just talks about it like it's a it's yeah, you can just go on with this but again, you face so much danger

[13:11]because there's so much stuff on your nightstand that you can end up grabbing the wrong thing like I see hot.

[13:20]And then I don't want to get too far away, but then you're just like, okay, so maybe this is the new thing and the person you're married to.

[13:29]Again, maybe this is the new thing, but both of you are like an excruciating pain not wanting to say it to the other person.

[13:35]Yeah, turn the light on to my god.

[13:38]We can not complete this act not to put any visuals in your head, but that happened a long time ago right.

[13:45]It's just it's just yeah, like I said, it's basically there's just like dried out rubber bands holding my bones together.

[13:53]And should I try to like manipulate them into a situation where they're not naturally supposed to be at this age.

[14:00]I'm going to have to call 911 like they're going to be like a safer like emergency, you know ambulance something like that because it just isn't.

[14:11]No, you don't want to see you don't want to see yourself naked anymore and imagining yourself naked is just a repulsive idea at this stage because everybody just becomes melting candles you all just become melting candles.

[14:24]And that's just the way to how when when did you realize that you were good at really just telling it like it is that you could put on the page how you feel the funny stories

[14:38]the things maybe other people don't feel comfortable talking about when did that happen for you.

[14:43]My I thought she was my friend she was Liz Langford and we were in 11th grade and we were eating lunch with the cafeteria and I was telling a story and she said you're obnoxious and I thought that meant funny so I said thank you and she's like no that's not good that's not good.

[14:59]I got to consider another table and so it took me a while to warm her back up again to me and I really had to behave myself but I think I had a lot to do with my upbringing like everything in my family except for like anything biological you needed to know about your body was not was not talked about at my family everything else was it was just out there in the open like.

[15:25]I was I grew up a Catholic right and like you have to go like confession when you're like eight right I thought Mr Peabody was a dirty word.

[15:34]And it was that was a cartoon and I was like oh my god I can't believe that's on TV Mr Peabody but there is I always and especially when I started drinking.

[15:45]I'll just come out like that like in my 20s so and and people could relate to it and I just basically have no filter a lot of times it does get me into a lot of trouble but.

[15:56]I think there's a danger in never one of myself when these things happen to me and they're embarrassing and I'm mortified in public.

[16:06]It really helps me wash off the shame if I can put it down on paper and have myself laugh at me and have other people laugh at me and also at themselves because something similar has happened to them that if you can laugh at yourself.

[16:21]I've fallen down in front of the Yale club in New York City on a rainy day and you get up and you have a big round wet spot where your big fat belly is the size of a pizza and you can laugh at yourself the door man will laugh too right.

[16:38]As long as he's those that you're not hurt and you're not suing the Yale club right because that happens to me.

[16:44]The other is famous for pizza so it actually works.

[16:47]Yeah, so it's so it so it feels better and that is my form of therapy, especially now that my shrink retired.

[16:56]I'm not really so sure she retired.

[16:58]I think that she only told me she retired.

[17:00]She's still going to lunch with me, but I can't make an appointment with her at least she doesn't start me, but she said she retired.

[17:07]I think that she wanted to get called into like a court case or something.

[17:11]But I think that's just what it was. It was just like this happened to me and I'm just going to tell you about it because it was awful and let's laugh together and make it a little less bad.

[17:21]So where do you go for your fix of what you give to other people.

[17:26]I really read very weird books. I don't read any humor. I love reading him, but I don't, I don't read it.

[17:32]I don't want something by osmosis or absorption or whatever micro plastics, whatever it is I might get from that book to like seep into me and I don't ever want to steal someone else's jokes.

[17:45]So I read like one book that I'm reading now is Victoria and psycho.

[17:50]I'm not sure how it's going to turn out. It's about a nanny that kills an entire family, but it's a kind of a so weird thing and I read really weird books.

[17:59]A lot of Irish writers.

[18:01]These are not books that your readers would be interested in.

[18:06]But when I read, I think her name is Kate, something Fox Ash about a family, whatever it just turns into a really weird thing where this lady just eats a lot of lettuce and then has a baby and then there's babies and jars.

[18:17]It's just crazy.

[18:18]So I am really far away from what I read. I don't really read a lot of commercial fiction because I'm a hard Italian person and I'm just like, oh my God deal with your problems.

[18:29]Right. So anyway, that's probably not a very good answer for you.

[18:33]It's a great answer.

[18:34]Yeah, but it's I like a lot of yeah, like Sarah waters. I love Sarah waters. I'm going to start rereading some for book soon.

[18:43]So that's the kind of stuff that I read because inside I'm creepy and I love Victorian horror stuff like I have four beds outside.

[18:50]I have no judgment about what people read at all.

[18:53]Like if you're reading, you're in the club is how I feel.

[18:57]Yeah, that's what I think too is especially in this time you know better than anyone how reading has kind of I'm not it has not fallen off a cliff but it's not what it once was like when I was in college everybody had a book and I just don't see that happening.

[19:13]My husband's a professor of English. We just don't see that happening anymore. So whatever you're reading.

[19:18]I'm happy about it.

[19:19]I'm so glad you're reading. I'm so glad you're reading. I'm so glad you're reading does so much for your brain.

[19:28]I completely agree. Yes, 100%.

[19:31]Are you working on a new collection or are you going to wait till like the next sort of life stage and wait for that?

[19:38]Well, I just I'm so glad you asked.

[19:41]I just finished a fiction novel which is based on one of the essays in this book about Lady Motel about which one Lady Motel.

[19:51]Okay, and what that is is that and this is true me and five of my friends basically work we all kind of got doged at the same time.

[20:00]Like, we all lost our jobs. We're 59, 60. We have a ways to go before social security. So we're like,

[20:06]what are we going to do? Like, seriously, how are we going to live? We've kind of aged out

[20:10]of the employment game, which is another really sad fact about being this age. After I got

[20:16]laid off on my last job, I went to the career counselor at the university. I was working for

[20:20]and she said, the best piece of advice I can give you is take all the dates off your resume.

[20:25]So it doesn't matter that I have 30 years experience in publishing and editorial and writing

[20:31]and feature writing. It doesn't matter. I'm just supposed to put 10 years now because otherwise,

[20:35]I've aged myself out of the game. So, yeah. So my friend, Amy and I are just like, why don't we just

[20:42]go to prison? Why don't we go to like a Martha Stewart prison? Like, she made a

[20:46]activity scene out of ceramics when she was in that federal prison. And then my friend went to an

[20:52]art show where all the art was made from incarcerated. You can't call them conflicts anymore. They

[20:57]are incarcerated. And all the proceeds went to the Innocence Project, right? But I'm like, they're

[21:01]painting in prison. I can garden in prison. I can read in prison. There's a library. Yeah, I might

[21:07]have to work in the laundry. That's okay. But I only have, I only need an hour outside anyway.

[21:12]I can just play cars with my friends. That's all just rob a bank and get caught

[21:17]and go to prison. We'll just plead out at our first offense. So that is kind of what

[21:21]Lady Motel is about. It's about women my age who are stuck in this weird gap that is really

[21:26]never existed before. And what you do when you can't make ends meet, they resort to crime. And so,

[21:34]and people in Japan are actually doing this. They actually go to prison. They commit minor,

[21:39]minor felonies in order older people who don't have families, or even if they do have families,

[21:44]to go and have shelter. And that is a really sad commentary on our society. But it's also,

[21:49]we can make it funny. So I decided to do funny. That's what I'm working on. And I'm getting ready

[21:54]to start a new collection of essays because things never stop happening. You know what I mean? Things

[22:00]always, I just write about life. So there's more to come. Amazing. I love that. Well, when you're,

[22:06]when everything is material, essentially, like, yeah, if you can get an essay out of like every single

[22:12]day, I mean, yeah, if not, I just had an accidental facelift. Yeah, I just elaborate. Yeah. So

[22:19]the guy who did my eyes, and they still need to settle a little bit. I have, they would

[22:24]not quite been a year. Thank you. I kept bugging him. I'm just like, I have sunspots, again, grew

[22:29]up in Arizona. I have sunspots. I just want to get rid of them. When are you going to get a laser

[22:33]machine? He's a cosmetic surgeon went to Johns Hopkins, right? He's awesome. And he's also in the

[22:40]book. He's also in this book that we're talking about. So he emailed me and he's just like, hey,

[22:44]he's like, I, I got the laser machine and do you want to be a model? And I was like, sure,

[22:49]yeah, of course I do. Let's get rid of those sunspots. So he's like, okay, so I go in there and

[22:53]they put numbing cream on my face and I go in there and he's got this new thing and there's been

[22:58]a costume change. Now he's like in scrubs. And he starts putting this laser, which is, it's a cold

[23:04]laser. But it hurts a lot. It hurts a lot. And so he started doing my whole face. And that was

[23:13]part of where some of the sunspots were. And I was like, that's okay. Then he did my whole face.

[23:18]And then he's like, all right, you ready for the second round? And I was like, what? There's a second

[23:21]round. And then when I left, I will send you a picture if you want to see it. I left with a bloody

[23:27]face. There was blood coming out of my face, right? And that wasn't even, I got home and my husband

[23:33]was just like, oh my God, he's like, do you want me to wipe it off because my face was on fire?

[23:38]And I just thought we were just doing a couple little spots. But he needed a model for,

[23:42]and I just, it's me. It's Lori. I jump in with two feet before I ask any questions. So it's

[23:48]totally my fault. I had this complete non-surgical facelift by accident. And I had to stay inside

[23:54]for two weeks while my face got more and more and more boiled and swollen. And it, it looked like

[24:01]I had been in a car accident and a fire. And, and the bag hit me in the face. It was all of those

[24:08]wait, what was that treatment called? So I will never get that. It was called a called laser,

[24:13]but it is the best stuff on the market. And then I found out I looked out at online. It's a $5,000

[24:21]procedure. So I was like, I'll take anything for free. I love free. It's like free. It's like shoplifting.

[24:28]It's like cosmetic surgery shoplifting, but I'm allowed to do it. So he thinks I'm healing pretty

[24:33]well. I mean, and it was only really painful for one day. And then it was itchy. And that was

[24:38]the worst part of it was the itchiness. But he said, yeah, he's like in three months. He's like,

[24:43]you're going to look like 15 years younger. Awesome. I'll take that. It's over with.

[24:48]Wow. Okay. It kind of got rid of the kitten ass around my mouth from when I used to smoke.

[24:56]Well, I don't know. You look amazing. Filter or not. I don't even know what's grand,

[24:59]but you look great. And I felt her on high. I do have a photo in that.

[25:03]Laurie, thank you so much. I've got a new complaint. Congratulations. Keep complaining.

[25:08]We will be listening. Thank you. So be so good to see you again.

[25:11]You too. Okay. Bye. Bye.

[25:14]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi. Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books.

[25:20]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,

[25:26]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.