Finding It: And Satisfying My Hunger for Life without Opening the Fridge

Welcome back to chez Bertinelli, where life is as crazy and comical as ever. In revealing talks with her longtime boyfriend, Tom, Valerie gets even more personal about her inner worries: her maternal anxieties about her son, Wolfie (he's fallen in love and, as she writes, "getting your sex talk from Eddie Van Halen wasn't recommended in any of the parenting books I read"); the challenges of dealing with a blended family; her mother's own new diet adventure; and a craving for a deeper relationship with a Higher Power ("I have experienced days of inner peace and connectedness with a larger spirit -- twice," she writes. "Why not more often?"). And as if these everyday challenges weren't enough, Valerie is work-ing to maintain her own very public weight loss.