Chick Wit Archives – Lisa Scottoline

Column Classic: Lift and Separate

August 24, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

Once again, you’ve come to the right place.

If you read this, you’re going to LOL.

But this time, I can’t take the credit.

Sometimes the world hands you an ace. All you have to do is set it down on the table and play.

I’m talking, of course, about the SmartBra.

Have you heard about this? If not, I’m here to tell you that at the recent consumer electronics show, a Canadian tech company introduced a smartbra, which is a bra that is smarter than you are.

Or at least smarter than your breasts.

Microsoft is reportedly developing a smartbra, too, and I’m sure the other tech companies will follow suit.

Or maybe bra.

If it creeps you out that the male-dominated tech industry is thinking about what’s under your shirt, raise your hand.

Just don’t raise it very fast.

They’re watching you jiggle.

Bottom line, the smartbras contain sensors that are supposed to record your “biometric data” and send it to an app on your mobile device.

It’s a fitbit for your breasts.

Or a fittit.

Sorry, I know that’s rude, but I couldn’t resist.

Like I said, the world handed me an ace.

Anyway, to stay on point, the biometric data it monitors is your heart rate and respiration rate, but Microsoft has taken that a step further. According to CNN, their smartbra is embedded with “psychological sensors that seek to monitor a woman’s heart activity to track her emotional moods and combat overeating.” In fact, their “sensors can signal the wearer’s smartphone, which then flash a warning message to help her step away from the fridge and make better diet decisions.”

Isn’t that a great idea?

It’s a bra that tells on you when you’re hitting the chocolate cake.

Forgive me if I’m not rushing out to buy one.

I already know when I’m being bad, and I don’t need to be nagged by my underwear.

By the way, the smartbra sells for $150.

If that price gives you a heart attack, the bra will know it.

Maybe the bra can call 911.

Maybe the bra can even drive you to the hospital.

Don’t slack, bra.

That’s for breasts.

The Canadian company says that wearable tech is the latest thing, and that it developed its smart bra because it had “a plethora of requests from eager women who wanted in on the action, too.”

Do you believe that?

I don’t.

On the contrary, I know a plethora of eager women who wish they didn’t have to wear a bra at all.

I also know a plethora of eager women who take their bra off the moment they hit the house.

Plus I know a plethora of eager women who skip the bra if they’re wearing a sweatshirt, sweater, or down vest.

Finally, I know a plethora of eager women who would never use the word plethora in a sentence.

Okay, maybe I’m talking about myself.

Frankly, I don’t want “in on the action” if the action means a bra that will tell the tri-state area I’m pigging out.

However, I want “in on the action” if the action means Bradley Cooper.

And nobody needs a smartbra to monitor what would happen to my heart if Bradley Cooper were around.

By the way, researchers are not currently developing a pair of smart tighty whitey’s for men.

That’s too bad because I have a name for it.

SmartBalls.

But maybe men don’t need underwear with a sensor that detects their emotional changes.

They already have such a sensor.

In fact, they were born with it.

Too bad it doesn’t make any noise.

Like, woohooo!

Cats and Dogs in 500 Square Feet

August 17, 2025

By Francesca Serritella

Francesca’s new novel, FULL BLOOM, an Instant USA TODAY National Bestseller, is in stores now. Here is a Dear Reader guest column she wrote recently:

I recently welcomed a puppy into my life. A roly-poly tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, with russet eyebrows that tilt with cartoonish expression and a penchant for belly rubs. I named him “Bobby Baby” after the Sondheim musical Company, because company is what I needed most.

Especially after I’d lost my beloved dog Pip. I didn’t know if I’d ever feel ready to get another dog, until I heard about this puppy born on the one-year anniversary of Pip’s passing.

I felt like he was heaven-sent.

My eighteen-year-old cat Mimi disagrees.

I thought hard about inflicting a puppy’s chaotic energy on Mimi’s golden years. But Mimi is aging like the feline Demi Moore.

Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

Column Classic: Extra Extra Crispy

August 10, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

My faith in American ingenuity is restored.

We just invented fried butter.

Whew!

You may have been worried that we didn’t have any more tricks up our sleeve, but you would be wrong. We used to invent things like electricity, heart valves, and polio vaccines, but we’ve finally come up with something useful.

Somebody at the Iowa State Fair developed a recipe for deep fried butter.

It sold like hotcakes.

Fried hotcakes.

What an idea! How else you gonna meet your daily cholesterol requirements?

They make it by freezing a stick of butter, dipping it in batter with cinnamon and sugar, deep-frying it in vegetable oil at 375 degrees, then drizzling it with a honey glaze.

You know you want one.

The other bestsellers at the state fair were deep-fried pickles, deep-fried corn dogs, and deep-fried macaroni and cheese.

I might move to Iowa.

Land where the tall corn (dogs) grow.

It’s not just state fairs, either. My favorite fancy restaurant serves microgreens with fried goat cheese. Guess which I eat first, the microgreens or the fried cheese? Right, and thank God the fried cheese isn’t micro.

Tell the truth. Who hasn’t dived into a plate of fried mozzarella sticks?

Bottom line, it’s time to concede that we love fried things. French fries, fried onion rings, fried chicken. And we don’t just love fried food, we even love the fried part, all by itself.

Everybody on earth has nibbled the fry off of something.

Case in point, me.

Back in my non-vegetarian days, I used to love Kentucky Fried Chicken, extra crispy. Extra crispy was code for really really fried. When there was no more chicken left, I ate the nuggets of really really fried. Even after two days in the refrigerator, I ate delicious knots of crunchy, salty, really really fried.

The chicken was beside the point, because the only thing that mattered was the fried, and that’s true with every fried food.

It tastes the same.

Fried.

Yay!

This is why I order shrimp tempura at a Japanese restaurant. Because all I taste is the fry, and I might as well be at Seafood Shanty.

Tempura is Japanese for corn dog.

We agree that frying will make a good thing better, but the truly amazing thing about frying is that it will make even disgusting things better.

Example?

Calamari.

It’s a squid, for God’s sake. Have you ever seen a squid? If you had, you wouldn’t put it in your mouth.

But fry it, and people fight to get to it first.

Same thing with softshell crabs. A softshell is a crab that has recently molted its shell, so that its exoskeleton is still soft. You wouldn’t normally eat a soft exoskeleton, much less all the stuff that’s inside a crab, namely whatever he ate last.

Do you think crabs are picky eaters?

I don’t.

So you have to factor that in.

Plus the eyes are still attached.

Enough said.

If you had to eat a softshell crab as is, you would refuse. Your better judgment would prevail.

But fried?

Everybody’s there.

The proof is that people in Thailand eat fried bugs.

Now you know why.

Tastes like (fried) chicken.

The next step is only logical. If frying makes disgusting food delicious, there’s no reason to stop at food, at all.

I’m not only thinking out of the box, I’m thinking out of the refrigerator.

If you can fry squid, you can fry flip-flops.

If you can fry butter, you can fry bark.

If you can fry bugs, you can fry Crestor.

And you’re gonna have to.

Column Classic: Handygirl

August 3, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I just put in a hundred perennials, which if you’re not familiar with gardening terms, means that I never have to do this again for the rest of my life.

Because perennials are supposed to be automatic, in that they come back every summer.

Like a yeast infection.

It took me five days to plant a garden, because I made every rookie mistake possible.

First, let me just say that I had no idea that gardening is so much hard physical labor. I toted sod, plants, and big rocks, in ninety degree heat.

Gardening isn’t a hobby, it’s a chain gang.

My back, legs, and shoulders ache, my leg is swollen from a sting, and I got scratches from rose bushes I bought when I was temporarily insane.

There can be no other explanation for buying a plant that bites.

The problem with gardening is that the very term is a euphemism.

It fools you into thinking that you’ll be swanning around a bunch of flowers.

Wrong.

Remember when you delivered a baby? It was called labor for a reason, so you had fair warning. Because it’s work. There’s pushing and pulling and yanking and profanity.

And that’s just conception.

Sorry.

Anyway, back to my mistakes. Second mistake, I bought plants online because they were cheaper, then I found out that the nursery near me is going out of business and everything there was 40 percent off.

What I had already spent.

The online plants didn’t come when they were supposed to, so I started thinking I’d need more plants anyway, and I could get them cheap at the nursery. I read through my new perennials books, went to the nursery with my To Buy list, and they had none of them.

So I bought whatever perennials they had on sale.

It’s the Going Out of Business Garden.

And for what these plants cost, it’s going to put me out of business.

Anyway, the books said I had to take the grass off and make a bed.

I had no idea. I thought you could just plant flowers in grass. I should have known I’d screw up. I never make my bed.

Third mistake, I thought the garden was a big area, but I’m not good at eyeballing it, as my father always said. Of course I know there are tape measures, but how would you know how many plumbago plants you need to fill a foot of garden? Until yesterday I thought I plumbago was a back problem.

Now plumbago is giving me a back problem.

Bottom line, it’s a big garden, so I got a great handyman, Dale, to help me, which is what you do when you’re divorced.

You hire a husband.

Anyway the first thing Dale said was, “there’s a machine that takes off sod.”

Oh.

So we found out the machine was called a sod cutter, and we rented one right away and started cutting the sod, which is the garden equivalent of scalping your grass.

It took all day, cutting and hauling the sod, then raking the bed so no grass seeds were left. Then we started putting in plants, with Dale doing the manly work of digging and me doing the girly work of putting in the potting soil and covering the hole.

I was a cover girl.

Yay!

Next mistake, we used up all the plants I had bought on sale, and still had two thirds of the garden left. The online plants still weren’t here, so I went back to the garden center and bought more plants.

Three times.

I no longer consulted the books.

I bought any perennial that wasn’t nailed down.

I would have planted a file cabinet if they’d let me.

But now I’m finished, and it looks beautiful, and it was worth all the trouble, like a brand new baby.

Who remembers their labor anyway?

Okay, I do.

Column Classic: Airport Insecurity

July 27, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

You may have heard about the airline that charges passengers according to how much they weigh, which I think is a great idea.

Because airline travel isn’t humiliating enough.

Never mind that when you stand in the security line, you have to undress in front of perfect strangers.

First you take off your shoes, so you can stand there awkwardly in your bare feet. You lose three inches, but you gain ringworm.

Next you have to take off your belt. It is not embarrassing at all to have to lift up your shirt and unfasten your belt, especially if you have to suck in your belly.

Not that I would know.

I have a belly, of course.

I just don’t bother sucking it in.

Then you unfasten your belt, and try not to make eye contact with the man in front of you as you slide it slowly through your belt loops.

I’ve had marriages with less sexual chemistry.

Fifty Shades of Delta.

Finally you take off your coat and your sweater, stripping down to your T-shirt. Nobody throws any dollar bills at you, and there’s not even a pole. It’s the Terminal A striptease, and believe me, I’ve seen some of those businessmen in line and I know their wheels are going up.

Next you proceed to the full-body scanner and lift your arms over your head, so the machine projects a life-size image of your bra to everybody in the tri-state area.

With some women, it’s free porn.

In my case, it’s comic relief.

Plus I read recently that some of these machines use x-rays, and all I have to say is, TSA is in deep trouble if my breasts glow in the dark.

Whose side are you on, Marie Curie?

Let’s not forget that when you’re in the full-body scanner, you have to put your feet in the yellow outlines on the mat. But I’m short, and I can never reach the outlines with my feet. The other day, a TSA guy actually said to me, “Lady, you have to move your legs farther apart.”

Dude. No, I don’t.

Although I’m a sucker for a man in uniform.

With a big wand.

Besides, I don’t think my legs go farther apart, anymore. They like to be close together, all the time. In fact, they might have grown together, so when I travel, I’m a mermaid, with carry-on.

But let’s be real, ladies. Which machine is more embarrassing – a full-body scanner or a mammography machine?

How about a show of hands?

Or something else…

Obviously, I’m all for airlines charging us by weight. Our self-esteem can be dangerously high at times. So by all means, why not put a big scale right next to the gate? Make sure it has a large, blinking display, so that everybody can read it clearly. Better yet, announce it on the loudspeaker systems.

WELCOME TO PHILADELPHIA. LISA SCOTTOLINE WEIGHS 132 POUNDS. ALSO HER LEGS NO LONGER SEPARATE. SHE MAY EVEN HAVE A HYMEN, WHO KNOWS?

And why stop there, in terms of humiliation? Get an overhead projector and show the world our W-2s.

And by the way, the airline charges overweight baggage at the same rate as the passenger’s “personal weight.”

Cruel.

You know what I think?

The weight of this old bag is none of your business.

And I feel the same way about my luggage.

Column Classic: Mother Mary and The Retirement Village

July 20, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

Sooner or later, most families will deal with the question of whether an aging mom or dad should move to a retirement community. The pamphlets say it’s not an easy decision, and they never met Mother Mary.

We begin with some background.

As you may know, my mother lives with Brother Frank in South Beach, and lately they’ve been talking about selling their house.

By lately, I mean the past twenty years.

The Flying Scottolines move slowly. So slowly, in fact, that we try to sell houses in the worst recession of all time, in which the real estate prices are at an all-time low. If you need investment advice, just ask us. We hear that tech stocks are superhot.

If Mother Mary and Brother Frank sell their house, the question becomes whether they should continue to live together, or whether Mother Mary should move to a retirement village.

It takes a village to raise Mother Mary.

And I wish it luck.

Anyway, they can’t decide what to do. They love living together. He’s gay, and his gay friends love their moms, so they’re all living in a happy circle of fragrant stereotypes.

And Frank takes wonderful care of her, taking her to all of her doctor’s appointments, grocery store runs, and occasional dinners out. There’s a special place in heaven reserved for people who take such great care of their parents, and once my brother gets there, he’ll not only get a free pass, he’ll be allowed to park anywhere.

By the way, Mother Mary doesn’t want to live with me, because Pennsylvania is too cold. Plus she always says, “All you do is read and write.”

To which I plead guilty.

And though we prefer her to live with family, we all know that Frank might not always be able to take care of her, and that even though she’s in great health now, she might not always be. So we’re all confused, and I decided that we should go visit a retirement village, since none of us had ever seen one. In fact, we’re so old-school that we kept calling it a “nursing home,” which is the last term that applies.

On the contrary, it’s paradise.

We were shown through a lovely building, complete with two restaurants and a “pub,” which serves drinks in front of a big TV. We read a daily menu that included trout almandine, duck with wild rice, and baked Alaska. We toured a gym that had a Jacuzzi and an indoor pool. We saw a beautiful one-bedroom apartment with freshly painted walls, cushy wool rugs, and maid service. We got brochures on discount trips to Egypt and London. And they have a computer class, a book club, canasta, bridge, and pinochle clubs, plus yoga, aerobics, free weights, and “seated” exercise.

So you know where this is going:

I’m ready to move in.

Now.

Say the word.

Retire me.

I’m old enough, at least I feel old enough.

They had me at “seated exercise.” Exercising while seated is my kind of exercise. It’s a piece a cake.

Just do it.

For example, I’m seated right now, watching football on TV, which I gather is “unseated exercise.” How conventional. All that moving around.

Who needs it?

But to stay on point, I fell in love with the place, and so did Brother Frank. It even had a huge model train set, which he began playing with immediately, pressing the button to make the toy locomotive chug through the fake forest, until it derailed, careened off the track, and vanished into some fake shrubbery.

He walked away quickly.

I blamed it on my mother.

Why not? It’s the American way.

And I bet you think you know what Mother Mary thought of the place.

She loved it.

Surprise!

I think they got her thinking at “maid service.”

She’s hasn’t decided she wants to move there, and they’re going back to Florida to let it sink in. We’ll see what happens, and I’ll let you know. I’m just happy that’s she didn’t reject the idea outright.

Or throw food at anybody.

Column Classic: Just Desserts

July 13, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

It can be a problem when your kid comes home to visit. You’re not used to living together, and even the littlest thing can cause a fuss.

For Daughter Francesca and me, it was dessert.

We’re finally on the same page, food-wise, which is a nice way of saying that we’re both trying to lose weight, so we’re eating healthy foods. She’s home this weekend, so for dinner I made politically-correct pasta. By which I mean, I sautéed a few tomatoes in olive oil with whole cloves of garlic, and when the mixture got soft, I took it out of the pan and dumped it on top of whole wheat spaghetti.

By the way, the best thing about this recipe, which I invented, is that it uses garlic without having to chop it up. I hate it when my fingers smell like garlic, and I don’t buy garlic already chopped, because that’s cheating. But this way, if you toss whole cloves in the pan, they get mushy, and you can mash them with a fork. Mashing is more fun than chopping, and doesn’t involve your fingers.

You pay nothing extra for these culinary tips.

Go with God.

And before I tell you about the fight, let me mention also that I’m working on portion control. I know that’s my main problem. This should have been a reasonable-calorie dinner, even though it’s pasta, but I always up the ante by getting a second and a third helping. You might ask, why do you make so much food in the first place, Lisa? The answer is simple.

I’m Italian.

Actually the truth is, I like to make extra of everything, like scrambled eggs, so I can give some to the dogs. Every morning, I make six eggs, knowing that I’ll eat two and give them the rest. They wait patiently during my breakfast, knowing that their eggs will come. It’s all very easy.

But I was doing the same thing with whole wheat pasta, making extra for the dogs, until I realized I was using them as my portion control beard.

I busted myself and stopped.

To stay on point, I made a delightful spaghetti meal, and Francesca made a side salad. We had a fun dinner, yapping away and trying not to eat more helpings of pasta, even though it was calling to us from the colander. When we finished our meal, I wanted dessert.

This, I can’t help.

I love to eat dessert right after dinner. And when I say right, I mean immediately. Timing is everything. It doesn’t have to be a lot of something, just a taste. It’s not my fault, and I figured out why this is so:

It’s because dessert sounds so much like deserve. Also, we say that people get their just desserts, which means they get what they deserve. So, ipso fatso, I feel as if I deserve dessert.

Right now.

But Francesca doesn’t like dessert right after dinner. She can wait, which I consider a four-letter word.

This is a long-standing battle we have, because I like us to eat together, and the conversation usually goes like this: I ask her, “Want some dessert?”

She answers, “No, thanks. We just ate.”

“But don’t you want something sweet? I’m having mine now.”

“No, I’m not hungry for dessert yet.”

I get cranky. “When do you think you’ll want dessert?”

“I don’t know. Later.”

“Sooner later or later later?”

Okay, so usually I don’t eat my dessert then, and we retire to the family room, where we watch TV and work, and I spend the rest of the night asking her, “Is it later yet?”

Just like she used to ask me, “Are we there yet?”

Payback, no?

So last night, I figured I’d solve this problem. All I wanted was a small helping of vanilla ice cream, with a banana. And because I wanted it right after dinner, I decided to have it then. If I had to eat alone, so be it. Plus, this way I’d have more time to burn off the calories, by reaching for the remote throughout the evening.

So I had my ice cream and banana.

Delicious.

Column Classic: Dressy

July 6, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m getting ready to launch THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA on book tour, so I’ll be running Classic Columns for a month.

Details about my signings are on my website, and I hope you’ll come see me on the road! Thanks so much for the love and support! I’m grateful for each and every one of you!

Guess what I got for my birthday?

A dress with a bra already sown into it.

You didn’t know that was a thing?

Or rather, two things?

I didn’t either.

But my bestie Franca did, and not only do I thank her for the dress, but I got this column out of it, which is awesome.

To explain, I’ve seen tank tops that are for yoga, which have a bra sewn in, and that I understand. But I’m talking about a flowery cotton shift that was otherwise normal except for two massive foamy cups, sewn into the front of the dress.

I packed the dress for book tour, not realizing there was a bra inside until I tried it on in the hotel room, then looked at myself in the mirror.

D’oh.

The dress fit great except that the foam cups were way bigger than my breasts, which are your basic B.

For Boobs.

The cups were like a C or maybe even a D, which is a terrible grade in anything but mammaries.

I don’t know who wears these bra dresses.

Strippers who love florals.

So you get the idea.

My cups were half-empty.

Or half-full, for you optimists.

Either way, they gave my chest a pair of dimples far lower than they’re supposed to be.

Plus the pads were higher than my breasts, so I had double-decker nipples, which is not a good look even on dogs.

Evidently, the world thinks our breasts should be earrings.

I didn’t get it. Then I realized that maybe the dress wasn’t for my age group. It was a size eight, not size sixty-two.

But I hadn’t packed another dress for the book signing.

What’s an author to do?

I took off the dress and examined the seams to see if I could take the pads out, but I couldn’t. I put the dress back on and tried to figure out what to do with my breasts. I pushed them up into the cups, but they wouldn’t stay there because there was nothing to hold them up, like elastic or an underwire.

Or a suspension cable.

Or a crane.

Gravity is real, people.

I took the dress off again, put on a bra, and put the dress back on. Of course the only bra I had with me was my good bra, since that’s what I save for book tour.

Every woman has a good bra.

You know it’s the good bra because it’s new and cost too much.

“New” means bought less than five years ago. If you have mustard older than your bra, your bra is new.

Also a good bra has lace, because women think men care about lace.

When they have boobs in front of their face.

Guess again.

Or the good bra is a sexy color, like red.

For harlots.

Or black.

For harlots with class.

I go with black.

I have aspirations.

And my good bra is padded because my breasts want to sell a lot of books.

They want to be breast-sellers.

Sorry.

So back to the story, I put my bra and the dress on, which meant I was wearing a padded bra with a padded bra dress.

You’re thinking I looked bad?

On the contrary.

I looked great!

Okay, I had a bad case of boob sweat, but you have to look for the silver lining.

In the dress lining.

I would sell tons of books if my audience were composed mostly of men or the blind.

Because you could be blind and still see my chest, which had turned into The Continental Shelf.

I mean, you could use my chest as a bookcase.

Or a bar, if you want to rest a beer and a bowl of chips.

I turned to look at myself, and my breasts were so sticking out so far they bumped into the wall.

Luckily I felt nothing.

I bounced back.

It was like wearing a trampoline.

I feel pretty sure I would be flotation device.

Or a bulletproof vest.

In any event, I wore the dress and I sold plenty of books, so my grades improved from D to A+.

And here is my question:

Why stop at bras?

If we’re going to start sewing underwear into dresses, why not sew in a pair of panties, too?

Then you could just jump in from above and be ready for the day.

Like Supergirl, with implants.

Column Classic: Love Boat

June 29, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m getting ready to launch THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA on book tour, so I’ll be running Classic Columns for a month.

Details about my signings are on my website, and I hope you’ll come see me on the road! Thanks so much for the love and support! I’m grateful for each and every one of you!

It’s everybody’s favorite time of year again.

My birthday!

That’s how I feel about my birthday, and that’s how I feel about yours, too.

I celebrate your birthday in my head, so I hope you’re celebrating mine your head.

It’s cheaper that way.

Also we don’t get drunk.

Well, maybe I do.

But this birthday felt different to me, in a good way.

I feel super happy just to be alive.

Let’s pause a moment.

I know that sounds kind of Splenda, but it’s really true. And the fact is, absolutely nothing has changed from last year.

In fact that’s exactly what is making me happy.

It really is a good thing to be grateful sometimes that you’re still living.

I get constant reminders of this, and I had one just this weekend, with Francesca. We were scheduled to give a speech about our collections of funny stories like these, the newest of which is out this July 11, entitled I NEED A LIFEGUARD EVERYWHERE BUT THE POOL.

Actually I need a lifeguard at the pool, too.

But that’s another story.

Literally.

Anyway we were supposed to speak at the American Library Association conference in Chicago, and we were both excited because we love librarians.

Hug your librarian the next time you see him or her.

They don’t get enough hugs.

Nobody does.

See what I mean?

Splenda!

Anyway, when I go on a business trip, I fly out, do my gig, and fly right back. I don’t do anything other than the gig, because it’s business.

But Francesca had a different idea. “Mom, I’ve never been to Chicago,” she said. “Why don’t we go sightseeing and leave later that night?”

I rolled my eyes. Inwardly.

Don’t roll your eyes outwardly if you’re a mother.

You’ll get in a lot of trouble.

But I said yes, and Francesca went online, researching the things you could do in Chicago, which I heard about with an inward eyeroll.

Because I didn’t think you were supposed to have fun on a business trip.

And before I knew it, we were in Chicago, we did our gig, talked about our book, and gave a lot of hugs, then we woke up the next day, ready for tourist fun in the sun.

What did we do?

We saw the cool bean statue at Millennium Park.

Cool beans!

And we went to the gorgeous Buckingham Fountain, which is next to a body of water they say is a lake but anybody from Philly would call an ocean.

But the best thing we did was take a boat ride with a billion other tourists down the Chicago River, with a volunteer telling us the architectural history of the skyscrapers.

Inward eyeroll?

Same here, but I was wrong.

It was awesome.

Because this amazing volunteer knew everything about architecture and gave us almost two hours of her time simply because she loves architecture and her city.

And because we learned everything about the brilliant architects and engineers who imagined and then built a slew of incredible buildings, each of them a tribute to human ingenuity and hard work.

And even because people on the bank waved to our boat as we floated by, and Francesca and I waved back, even though we had no idea who they were, or they us.

In fact, we waved at people on the riverbanks the whole damn boat trip, and people on the riverbanks waved back, and that made Francesca and I tear up, unaccountably.

Okay, accountably, since we’re Italian-American.

We cry all the time.

That’s how you know we’re happy.

The boat trip was a reminder of the simple truth that we’re all just human beings, floating down some river, waving at each other as we go by.

And when I thought of the architects, the engineers, the volunteers, and the librarians, I felt awed by all of us, just normal people, filled with so much vision and heart, following whichever endeavor we choose, our passion or our job and sometimes both. With just ourselves, we build communities, cities, and even countries.

Like this one.

And by the end of the day, I remembered I was happy to be alive.

You probably already know this lesson, but in my life, I need to teach it to myself from time to time.

Which is to go slower.

Enjoy yourself.

Feel the sun on your face.

Wave.

And do really touristy things, because there’s a reason so many people like to do the same things, wherever they go.

Because people are basically the same, everywhere you go.

We’re all tourists in this life, aren’t we?

None of us is from here.

And none of us is staying.

And so my biggest birthday present was that I got another year on my trip.

I pray that will be your present, too.

Happy birthday to us.

And of course, to America.

Classic Column: Love Bites

July 1, 2025June 22, 2025

by Francesca Serritella

Bust out the citronella candles, it’s mosquito season! Here’s a Classic Column about feeling favored by the summer pest and what these bloodsuckers might have to teach us about attraction. Tell me, do mosquitos like you, or love you?

Mosquitos love me.

I’ve always believed I get an inordinate number of mosquito bites, but I never said it out loud. Everyone feels this way. Brandish a bottle of OFF! at any summer barbeque, and five people will proclaim that mosquitos love them with equal parts self-pity and pride. It’s almost a humble-brag, as if mosquitos are real aesthetes, the blood-sucking playboys of the insect world.

The subtext is: “There’s just something about my exposed skin that attracts all species, whatta hassle!”

Then I recently came across an article explaining mosquitos actually do have a “type:” they’re most attracted to humans with the blood type O.

My blood type.

I wasn’t imagining it, it wasn’t some messed up version of vanity, it was science!

Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

Sign Up for Lisa's Newsletters!