Not My Smoothest Hour

Before I jump into this week’s episode, here’s a taste of what’s going on in our lives right now. We just updated our family website with new content and are out and about on our book tour for Little Kids Big City -- we hope that if you’re thinking about what to buy a mom for Mother’s Day, you’ll get her a book that’s not preachy, that’s lighthearted and fun…ours!

Now, the episode! Oh, what an interesting one. Not my smoothest hour, but it can’t be undone, it’s on film and I’m not sorry it happened. Let’s explore how I got there.

Over the years, I’ve become more and more frustrated by Jill’s behavior, to me specifically and to others in general. Her manner of jumping in and taking over nearly every situation she is in really grates on you after a while. I experienced a build up of annoyance with her constant comments, first about me, my husband and children, but then also about Bethenny, Bethenny and Jason, Bethenny and work, Bethenny and whether or not she might be engaged or pregnant or in LA or on Mars. If Jill wanted to know what was going on with Bethenny, she should have picked up the phone and called Bethenny. Not me, not the girls, just her.

At any rate, when Bethenny called to tell me that the rumors were true, it was after we’d texted back and forth about the Perez nonsense. In between, Jill called me, not even to say “hello” but purely pumping me for information. It was obnoxious, and I told her I didn’t know anything.

You know, when you tell people you’re pregnant, you want them to jump up and down and scream and hug you. You don’t particularly want a lecture. Nor do you want an estranged former pal calling up the press and making statements on your behalf. Last I checked, Jill Zarin is not Bethenny’s publicist. How about, “Congratulations, I’m happy for you!” or “Mazel tov!” or something positive? The reality of life is that when you get pregnant, particularly if you’re a size 0, other women who have had babies are going to figure it out pretty quickly since they know what the signs are. At the Gotham party, B was busty and glowing, and some people asked if she was expecting. Although I told myself at the time it was because of the engagement, it was probably only a matter of time before people started guessing. My question is, how did that make it OK for Jill to speak to the press on Bethenny’s behalf without even talking to her about it first?

I was angry. I was angry at Jill myself anyway, and I was livid when I heard Bethenny, at one of the most vulnerable points in her life thus far, was upset by Jill as well. I wanted to do something that would stop Jill in her tracks and get her to listen for once, and maybe, just maybe realize that life isn’t all about her.

Over this season alone, LuAnn has acted as Jill’s messenger to Bethenny, and also tried to get Ramona to speak to Mario on her behalf, so there’s plenty of message delivery flying around. Should I have agreed to “deliver Bethenny’s message” and done it the way I did? Eh, perhaps, perhaps not. Certainly I would have liked for it to have gone more smoothly. I didn’t expect that Bethenny was sending Ramona a delivery, the bottle of wine, to the same party – prior to that I had planned to pull Jill aside and tell her privately. Once that happened, I knew that if I didn’t spit it out, the words weren’t coming out and I really wanted Jill to hear me – she never listens, or only listens for a nano-second, long enough to form her own opinion and shoot back at you or smother you with apologies. She didn’t even want to listen to me then, and there I was breaking out in hives…so I blurted it out.

Most of the time when people annoy me, I cut them out of my life or just ignore them. I don’t feel this overwhelming need to be understood or liked by everyone; if people don’t get me, it’s their loss. When you keep seeing someone over and over again, whether because of the show or the circle of friends, etc., you get to a point where you have to speak up because otherwise people make assumptions about you. Some people assume that because I rarely cause confrontation, that I lack the cojones to do so. Wrong. I have a long fuse and don’t really care what people say ... to a point. My fuse started to blow when Bethenny and I were on the phone, and that was the beginning. There’s more where that came from ... stay tuned.