Chick Wit

Column Classic: It’s Not The Heat

By Lisa Scottoline

Hot enough for ya?

That’s right.  I like to talk about the weather.  More accurately, I’m fascinated by the weather.  We begin where I begin every day, on weather.com.

For me, weather.com is online porn.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the middle of writing a book, and I’m not sure where the plot is going or what the characters will do, but I love that if I log onto weather.com, I get answers. 

Answers, answers, and more answers.  

I click to weather.com, then click again to Hourly, to break down the weather for the coming day, complete with adorable pictures of shiny suns or thumbnail thunderbolts.  At a glance, first thing in the morning, I can find out that it will be 92 degrees at 11:15 a.m. today. 

Wow! 

Where else can you get someone to foretell your future, humidity index included?    

Come to think of it, that’s what I love most about weather.com.  It can tell all sorts of information about the future with precision, and I want to know everything I can about the future, especially if it includes when my hair will frizz.

For example, once I find out that the sunshine today will morph to light rain at 3:17 p.m., I click over to the Mosquito Index.  Yes, on weather.com, you can click to find out when you’re most likely to get bitten by a mosquito, which turns out to be between 5:06 p.m. and 6:37 a.m., tomorrow morning.  And tonight, if you want to know, the Mosquito Activity will be between None and Limited, as opposed to the top of the scale, which is Very High.  You don’t want to plan your picnic for when the mosquitoes are at their worst, which is Really Frigging Annoying.

And on the Mosquito Index page, there’s even a sidebar asking, Want To Know When The Fish Are Biting?

And suddenly, I do! 

I want to know when the fish are biting, even though I don’t fish.  In fact, I didn’t even know they bite.

I click my way to the Fishing Forecast, where you can search by zip code or by lake, and this astounds me.  Weather.com can tell you when the fish will be biting in a particular lake? 

How great is that? 

It bodes well for our country, if we can foretell when fish will be biting in Lake Whatever, and at what time.  If we can do that, we can put a man on the moon. 

Or back on the moon. 

Or at least make my hair not frizz.

The first lake that pops into my mind is Lake Winnipesaukee, because it’s mentioned in a movie I love, What About Bob?  Of course, Lake Winnipesaukee is impossible to spell, which is a joke in the movie, so to get the right spelling, I have to navigate to google.com, where I plug in the wrong spelling and it asks me, DID YOU MEAN….and supplies the right spelling.

Yes, Google, I did mean that.  What you said.  Thanks for saving my face, online.  Google.com is almost as smart as weather.com.  It can’t tell the future, but it can read your mind.   

Anyway, I go back to the Fishing Forecast, plug Lake Winnipesaukee into the lake search, and am rewarded with a multicolored wiggly line showing that today, the Lake Winnipesaukee fish will be biting the most between 12:01 p.m. and 2:06 p.m.

Ouch. 

If I were you, I’d stay away.

And the same webpage also informs me that the Moon Phase tonight will be Waxing Gibbous.

See? Toldja!  Answers, answers, and more answers.   

I’m so happy to know this about the moon, though I have no idea what Waxing Gibbous means.  I could find out, but I don’t need to to marvel at how great it is to know it, precisely. 

And I’m not talking about horoscope-level precision.  I’m talking, real, no-joke, scientific-type precision.  In my experience, weather.com is never wrong.  Or if it’s wrong, it changes its forecast right away, which is still kosher. 

Politicians do it all the time.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

Fun With Aging

by Lisa Scottoline

This week, everybody’s talking about aging.

But don’t worry, this column isn’t political.

I never write about politics.

Agita is Italian for politics.

And this is an agita-free zone.

So we’re going to talk about age, but the lighter side.

There’s only one lighter side.

You’re still alive.

Like if you’re aging, you’re lucky.

It’s good to talk about aging, in a funny way.

Because as every woman who’s getting older knows, somebody has to be kidding.

Like, I find signs of age on my own body and they’re the worst joke ever.

I had one this week.

I looked down and my arm hair was gone.

I swear to God I don’t know what happened to it.

I can never find my cell phone, but I used to know where my arm hair was.

The trick is in the name.

Now you see why I’m a mystery writer.

I cracked the case.

I’m Nancy Drew in The Case of the Missing Body Hair.

But it’s true, suddenly I looked down and I didn’t have any arm hair.

The last time this happened, I looked up and didn’t have any eyebrows.

I didn’t know what happened then, either.

I used to pluck my eyebrows.

Now I need to paste them back in.

And then I realized, I can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs.

And it’s summer.

Wait, what?

If you’re a woman of a certain age, you might remember when shaving your legs was a big thing.

I used to shave my legs every morning.

I even shaved my legs again, before a Big Date, if you follow.

Because God forbid a man run his hand up my legs the wrong way.

Women grow up thinking there is a Right Way to run your hands over a leg and a Wrong Way, like a one-way street.

By the way, while we’re in the TMI category, no man has ever run his hand over my legs in bed, whether the Right Way or the Wrong Way.

In my experience, men are not interested in legs in bed.

They forget you have them.

You’re lucky if you can get them to run their hands over anything.

They don’t like to waste time.

They find something else to do.

I’m not complaining.

There’s lots to do.

To return to point, when I was a teenager, I used to do the hairy-legs check several times a day.

I was way too intense about the whole thing.

I even remember chasing razors with frequency.

Now I don’t even know where my razor is.

I ain’t crying.

Now that I don’t have to pluck or shave anything, I’m saving time.

Which I immediately put to good use searching for things on Netflix.

Note that I didn’t say watching Netflix, but searching for things on Netflix.

Because if you’ve ever used the search function on Netflix, you know it’s a treat.

You’re confronted with a square of letters and symbols that looks like a puzzle you never wanted to do.

You’re just trying to find some old movie, but you will find yourself using a TV remote in a way God never intended.

You will plug in a single letter and wait two minutes before it registers on the screen, then find out you plugged in the wrong letter and forgot the space bar.

That’s twenty minutes, right there.

That would have been prime plucking-and-shaving time.

Now you’re playing with your TV remote, vainly searching for something you barely wanted to watch in the first place.

What do you do next?

Give up.

Live without it.

You don’t need to keep searching.

Same thing with arm hair, leg hair, and eyebrows.

Don’t even bother looking.

You’re better off.

You’re not getting older.

You’re getting aerodynamic.

© Copyright Lisa Scottoline 2024

Vroom, Vroom

By Lisa Scottoline

It was a busy week, news-wise.

But there’s one story that didn’t make the headlines.

It was my birthday! And I had a great one!

Why?

Because I’m loving getting older.

First, I’m alive.

Like what number birthday was it?

Who cares?

Here’s all that matters:

It was Another Birthday!

Yay!

The second reason I love getting older is that I’ve lost my mind, but in a good way.

It all started with Netflix.

Like everybody, I love Netflix and I watch tons of shows, but somehow I stumbled onto Drive to Survive. If you’re not familiar, it’s real-life series about Formula One race-car drivers, and the bottom line is they’re hot drivers who drive even hotter cars.

Maybe in my younger days I would’ve watched the guys.

But I found myself looking at cars.

Their bodies.

Their muscularity.

Their passion.

The cars, mind you.

And before I go further, I have to tell you that I am the world’s slowest driver.

I not only drive in the slow lane, I live there.

I go seventy only if I’m on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and there’s a big truck behind me, flashing lights and threatening to kill me.

Especially if it has big teeth on the grille.

I love truckers, but really, with the teeth?

Do you need to scare us more than we already are?

Sometimes I see truck grilles that have a teddy bear tied to the front.

Those guys, I love.

Except sometimes it looks like the teddy bear is being throttled.

Anyway, you get the idea, I’m a timid driver.

It’s the only thing I’m timid at in my life, almost. I’ve grown into a mouthy broad and since I run my own company, I’ve learned to try to get what I want.

It’s not easy, and the world will try and stop you.

But as soon as I realized that, I stopped stopping myself.

In other words, I started not stopping myself.

If you follow.

So bottom line, I don’t obey and I try to get what I want.

This is probably why I’m divorced twice, but the good news is I had Another Birthday, I’m happier than ever, and I bought a sports car.

Yes, that was my birthday present to myself.

It has only two seats because I’m only one person. I was tired of driving around in a sedan that felt like an empty warehouse.

That’s the practical reason.

The real reason is I got excited about sports cars from Netflix and then I saw one in a dealership window and I bought it.

It’s also a convertible, and I’ve never driven a convertible in my life.

My roots are too gray for a convertible.

I was too shy to lower the top, then one time I was on the phone with Daughter Francesca, who loves her ancient VW convertible, and she said, “Mom, please, pull over right now and lower that top.”

Every mother knows that when her daughter tells her to do something, we do it.

In fact, Francesca is the only person I obey.

So I did, and it was fun, even though my gray roots showed.

And then my best friend Franca gave me a baseball hat for my birthday, so when I lower my top, I also cover my top.

Plus for my birthday, my best friend Laura gave me a Formula One video game.

This is the first video game of my life.

I can’t wait to play it and drive around fictionally!

I might even put the fictional top down!

My best friend Nan said, “It’s never too late to reinvent yourself.”

And I am reinventing like crazy.

So now I have a sports car that I drive in the slow lane, having the time of my life.

People will say I’m having a midlife crisis, but they’re totally wrong.

I’m having an end-of-life crisis.

My midlife crisis was late.

It drives slow, too.

Besides, it’s not a crisis, it’s my own personal Italian Renaissance.

Bottom line, I’m not sure if I’m going in a good direction or bad one.

All I know is I’m going forward.

And I’m in the driver’s seat.

Yay! And I’m not going anywhere without my daughter and my besties.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2024

Raggedy

By Lisa Scottoline

I just got a fabulous new haircut.

By me.

Do you understand what I’m saying?

Please tell me you have felt this way:

When your hair is bothering you and you can’t stand it another minute, so you grab a scissors and you start hacking away, so impatient that you don’t even put your glasses on first.

This is not a hypothetical.

This is exactly what just happened an hour ago, and you know what?

I’m fine with it.

I don’t know what came over me.

I know you’re supposed to get more patient as you get older, but I am more impatient than ever.

I’m on borrowed time, after all.

I could go at any minute.

And the past few weeks, my hair has been getting longer, but I’m on deadline and I can’t take time to get it cut. So the ends of my hair, which is only fictionally blonde, start to look like hay.

It’s a good look, to attract a horse.

And at the same time, my roots are growing in and they’re gray.

What drove me to the scissors is that I had gray on the top and hay on the bottom.

I remember I used to be horrified at black roots, and then they got cool so I didn’t sweat black roots so much. But when my roots turned gray, I sweated it. I would go with the gray totally, but I don’t have uniform gray, I have skunk.

I’m not looking to attract skunks.

Especially not since Thing Two.

In any event, I was so fed up that I got out of the shower, grabbed the scissors, and started cutting.

I think of it as a rough draft.

As for the gray roots, I’m looking funny at my drawer of Sharpies.

Or maybe I should be looking funny at my drawer of Highlighters.

I could highlight my hair, literally.

Then I could attract office supplies.

My favorite!

I remember a time when my hair really mattered to me, like at sixteen. I would cut pictures out of magazines, which is something that used to exist back then. They even had haircut magazines.

Also, dinosaurs.

In any event, I would bring pictures of haircuts to the salon, then discuss my haircut endlessly, and hold my breath the entire time she cut my hair.

I remember one time my hair came out so short that I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want to make the stylist feel bad. So I fled to the car and went full Italian opera.

Over a haircut.

What was I thinking?

And this was before you could blame social media. There was no Instagram back then to tell girls they should look perfect.

We had to rely on the world for that.

Of course, it came through.

And so what happens in a woman’s life is that she begins to think that all of the things that matter don’t matter as she gets older, she starts to understand that none of it matters.

That she gets to decide what matters.

Haircuts don’t even make the list.

I look like Raggedy Ann on Medicare.

I may look worse than ever, but I feel the best ever. That’s what matters.

© Copyright 2024 Lisa Scottoline.

Column Classic: Ho for the Burn

by Lisa Scottoline

I couldn’t be more excited about two new fitness crazes — exercising in high heels and/or on a stripper pole.

I can’t think of a better message for young girls than exercising is important, but only if you look pornographic.

Obviously, whoever said women couldn’t achieve equality in athletics had no idea what they were talking about.

Or maybe it’s called a craze because it’s crazy.

We begin with Heel Hop, which is an hour-long workout, including sit-ups, stretches, and lunges, but you do all the exercises wearing high heels.

Don’t forget your stilettos — and Blue Cross card.

The instructor is a backup dancer named Kamilah, who says, “I came straight out of the womb with some high-heeled pumps.”

I have one word for Kamilah:

Ouch.

I wish I knew Kamilah’s mother, so I could give her a big hug – and a Bronze Star.

I’m hoping Kamilah doesn’t start a new craze among fetuses, who will begin demanding high-heeled pumps in the womb. Because we don’t need babies making their exit — or their entrance, depending on how you look at it — in even an infant-size pair of heels.

Unless you want to save the doctor fees on your episiotomy.

But that’s not where I’d cut costs.

No pun.

I read online that Heel Hop is taught in classes held in Los Angeles.

I know, it makes you want to move to Los Angeles.

And if you do, you should. Move there. And stay there. Go away and never come back. I don’t want to run into you in the market.

I’ll be the one in muddy clogs.

The article I read about Heel Hop contained an interview with a podiatrist. They asked him about working out in high heels, and he said, “Exercising in them just doesn’t make sense in any way, shape, or form.”

But what does he know?

He’s only a doctor, not a dancer, and therefore unqualified to give an opinion.

I bet he can’t even walk in heels.

In fact, I challenge him to pronounce Louboutin.

Hint: Louboutin is French for you’re-gonna-break-your-ankle.

But an even better fitness craze is exercising on a stripper pole, which I saw on one of the Real Housewives reality shows, where the housewives were taking lessons, spinning around the pole.

I’m sure this is exactly your reality, spending your free time spinning around poles with your girlfriends.

Of course that’s not reality.

Real women don’t have free time.

In any event, you’ll be happy to know that you can find lots of DVDs online that will teach you how to work out on a stripper pole. I like the website called FlirtyGirlFitness, which says, “Treadmills, bench presses, and stair climbers have been replaced with dance poles, kitchen chairs, and pink feather boas.”

This may be news to Nike.

I bet right now they’re figuring out a way to paste a swish onto a boa.

Maybe they should just paste it onto a pastie.

Buy two.

Also I’m wondering what FlirtyGirlFitness is doing with their kitchen chairs. I need mine for sitting on while I eat chocolate cake.

The problem with exercising on a pole is that you need to install a pole in your house, which could be embarrassing when it comes time to sell. Unless you convince potential buyers that you’re a fireman.

And think about what happens when you abandon your pole exercises, as you inevitably will. A pole isn’t like a treadmill, in that you can’t leave your dirty clothes on it. They’ll fall right off.

I don’t buy exercise equipment that I can’t use for a hamper.

But amazingly, FlirtyGirlFitness has an answer for what to do with your abandoned pole. The website says that their poles come with “a special hook that will allow you to use this space to hang a plant.”

How’s that for a sales pitch?

Ladies, now you can combine your love of gardening with your need to look like a hooker!

I’m sure there’s a market for that, and it’s born every minute.

I just hope it wears flats.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

Column Classic: Happy Father’s Day

by Lisa Scottoline

Those of you who read my column know that my mother is extraordinary.  My father is, too, though he has passed away.  The fact that he’s gone doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped loving him.  The human heart doesn’t work that way.  Fact is, I’m still a daddy’s girl.

Let me explain.

I’ll start by telling you what my father, Frank Scottoline, was not.  He couldn’t fix everything; he didn’t have all the answers.  He wasn’t one of these all-knowing, omnipotent fathers who solve all problems, handle all situations, and generally stand-in for God or, at least, Santa Claus. 

He wasn’t a tough guy, either.  He couldn’t even bargain for a Christmas tree.  One Christmas Eve, we ended up paying $50 for the Charlie Browniest tree on the lot.  The asking price was $35. 

Nor was he a sugar-daddy kind of father, granting all the requests of his adored, and only, daughter.  In fact, though I was always adored, I found out at midlife that I wasn’t even his only daughter. 

I learned I had a half-sister, whom he had fathered while in college at Berkeley.  She had been put up for adoption in California and eventually came to find him.  He opened his arms to her, even though meeting her was like a bad episode of The Patty Duke Show, which may be redundant. 

So he made mistakes, some with blue eyes.  By the way, before you feel sorry for her, she got a wonderful adoptive family.  I got The Flying Scottolines.  At least I wrote a novel about it – in fact, several.  My family is a miniseries.

Above all, my father loved life.  He liked everybody and he ate anything.  I cannot remember him not smiling.  He accepted all.  When he found out my brother was gay, he went down to South Beach to help him open a gay bar.  I’m not sure who got the first dance.

He was agreeable and easy.  I remember once he told me he’d seen the movie Hideous Kinky, and I asked him why.  He said, “Because that’s where the line was going.” 

He was a reliable man, too.  An architect, he never missed a day of work for sickness or any other reason.  Never.  He loved his job, always.  Any trip in the car would inevitably take us past a construction site, and he’d get out and explain how the building was being constructed.  He was always home at 6:15 and he always fell asleep on the living room, after dinner.  Sleeping on the floor is a big thing in my family.

Of course, he was most reliable about me.  We talked all the time, about everything, from as far back as I can remember.  He always asked what I learned in school that day and listened carefully to my answer.  He helped me with my trig homework; he taught me to read a map.  He drove me and my friends everywhere, both ways – no trading off with other parents for him. 

He clapped at every high school play when I was young.  He beamed through every book signing when I was older.  At one of my signings, someone said to him, “You must be very proud of your daughter, now that she’s an author.” 

He replied, “I was proud of her the day she came out of the egg.”

And he was.

I felt his love and pride all the time, no matter how I screwed up.  When my first marriage foundered, about the time my daughter was born, I quit my job and went completely broke.  He didn’t have much money, but what he had, he offered to me. 

When I found a job part-time, he babysat for my daughter every morning, made her breakfast, and took her to school.  From him, she learned that it was possible to toast a bagel with the cream cheese already on top. 

She will never forget that.  Nor will I.

Sometimes I feel sorry for fathers.  It’s as if they’re the supporting actor of parents, second-best.  It’s like we have a Father’s Day only because we don’t want them to feel left out after Mother’s Day.  In a Dick-and-Jane world, it’s moms who get top billing, and fathers who are simply, at best, there.

But may I suggest something? 

There’s a lot to be said for simply being there. 

There is underrated.  There is a sleeper.  There doesn’t get much hype, but there is about love and devotion.  About constancy and sacrifice.

My father was always there.  And whenever he was with me, I knew it was exactly where he wanted to be.  There.

And I feel absolutely certain that, even in this day of cell phones and Blackberries, he wouldn’t be on either of them when he was there.  In all my adult life, I have never met anyone who was so completely there.

Here is my wish for you: 

This Father’s Day, may you be lucky enough to have your father there.

© Copyright Lisa Scottoline

Column Classic: Hard-Wired

by Lisa Scottoline

There was an article in the newspaper the other day that scared me.

No, it wasn’t about carbohydrates.

It was about our brains, and the gist was that by going online and cruising lots of different websites, we’re actually changing the wiring in our brains, and this will result in an inability to concentrate and…

Huh?

Where was I?

What?

Uh oh.

This is bad news.  Five minutes ago, I was supposed to be working, but I took a break to go online.  I stopped at all my favorite gossip websites, like perezhilton.com, people.com, and the superficial.com, then I moved onto gawker.com and gofugyourself.com.

I’m not making that last one up.  It’s about fashion, as you would guess if you knew how fussy I am about which sweatpants to wear.

I also visit work-related websites, like galleycat.com and publishersweekly.com, and I post on Facebook and Twitter, too.

Friend me.  Follow me.  This way we can get to know each another without changing out of our sweatpants.

I make lots of other local stops on my train ride through the Internet, and my track winds around and around in circles, does a few loop-de-loops, zooms around a cloverleaf and spells out CALL ME, GEORGE CLOONEY before it returns to the station.

And this will mirror the wiring in my brain?

I’m tempted to say it’s mind-blowing, but that’s the point.

Plus it’s unfair, because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  Everybody deserves a break from work now and then, according to federal law and McDonald’s. 

You deserve a break today.  At least six times today.

So how can it be fair that what you do during your break can break your brain?

That’s like making a funny face and having your face freeze that way.  And if you ever wished that on anybody, I hope you’re happy now.  Our brains are all messed up because of you. 

The article even had a Test Your Focus interactive, so I took the test, which involved red and blue bars in various formations.  I went with my best guess between Yes and No, and scored a  -.33 %, which seemed pretty good to me, considering that I didn’t understand the directions.

I couldn’t concentrate.

To make things worse, imagine you’re a middle-aged woman.

Stop screaming. 

It’s not funny.

It takes a real man to be a middle-aged woman.

If you follow.

Anyway, all middle-aged women know that something happens to the brain after fifty years of age.  I even read an article about it, but I can’t remember where.  Or someone told me, what’s-her-name.  And I think the article said something about declining hormone levels causing a decrease in brain function.  It talked about menopause creating confusion, a wandering mind, and “brain fog.”

Or something like that.

It was hard to pay attention.  At the time, I was daydreaming.

About you-know-who.

Also I like my fog in the air, not between my ears.  Weather, stay out of my head.

To return to topic, all I know is, menopause is bad news, brain-wise. 

Consider the implications. 

What this means is that those of us at a certain age have a double whammy, when it comes to the computer.  In other words, if you’re cruising the Internet without estrogen, you should stop right now. 

Step away from the laptop. 

You won’t understand anything you read.  And even if you did, you won’t remember it.

You’re a goner, cognitively speaking.

You’ll fare no better, offline.  One of the articles said that brain fog can roll in at anytime, and “women find themselves often worrying whether or not they have forgotten to turn the iron off.”

Heh heh.

Silly women, who forget to put the butter churn away, or leave their darning needles all over the floor, where the unwary can step on them, getting a hole that needs…darning?

Darn it!

Well, I, for one, never worry about turning the iron off, because I never turn the iron on.  In fact, I don’t own an iron.  And between the iron and the laptop, I’ll choose the latter.  In a pinch, you can press your sweatpants with a laptop.

Don’t ask me how I know.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline.

Column Classic: Post-Puberty

By Lisa Scottoline

You may have heard that AARP started a dating site.

Now we’re talking.

Get my walker.

And my blood pressure meds.

Mommy’s going shopping.

The site is called, “How About We…”

But I’m not sure what they mean by that name.

“How About We…Compare Our Cholesterol?”

Or “How About We…Have a Cup of Decaf?”

Or “How About We…Take a Nice Nap?”

So, I went on the AARP website to cruise for menfolk, er, I mean, to learn more about the organization. The first thing I noticed was that AARP membership begins at age fifty.

Huh?

AARP stands for American Association of Retired Persons, but if you live in America, you can’t retire at fifty. You can’t retire at a hundred and fifty. I’m thinking that my tombstone will read, RETIRED…FINALLY.

In fact, if you’re a man who retired at fifty, I want to meet you. Maybe you’re on “How About We…Retire While We Still Have a Heartbeat?”

In any event, I read through the website, which was full of articles with titles such as, How To Have Sex Without Intercourse.

Fascinating, but I’ve been doing that for quite some time now.

Sex without intercourse is chocolate cake.

I read the article, but I still wasn’t sure what they meant. There were too many euphemisms, presumably because I wasn’t old enough to be told the truth.

So, I skipped to another article, entitled “Ten Great Cities for Older Singles.”

Stop right there.

I’m not an “Older Single.”

An “Older Single” is a slice of cheese that’s past its expiration date.

I haven’t expired yet. I know because I’m still working.

Still, I read on and found good news. According to the article, Philadelphia was the eighth greatest city for us older singles.

Wahoo!

The article suggested that “icebreaking opportunities for first dates” include a trip to Independence Hall.

What an idea!

When it comes to the forefathers, who doesn’t think foreplay?

The article also suggested a first date to the Philadelphia Zoo.

Another spot that spells romance!

Who hasn’t felt primal at the Primate House?

But of course, the more I read through the AARP website, the more I actually began to find articles that interested me, even though I’m not retired. I started to think that maybe I should join AARP. It felt fraudulent, since I’m not retired, but that seemed kinda technical. And two friends of mine, both my age, joined, and they got discounts at the movies.

I clicked through to the membership page, which said it cost sixteen bucks a year to join, which was cheap enough. I would have saved money if I joined for five years, but by this point I was feeling so old that green bananas were off my shopping list.

Still, I couldn’t decide whether to join.

I felt ambivalent about classifying myself as Officially Old.

I told myself, I may be middle-aged, but I’m not aged.

And after all, Mother Mary is an AARP member. Would I really want to join a club that would have us both?

But that may be a different question.

Just when I was mulling this over, an email request came in from my book publicist to go on RLTV, a channel that I’d never heard of. So, I went online and found out that it was Retirement Living Television.

Me? Fresh cheddar that I am?

It’s a funny thing.

Puberty is a line that’s clearly delineated. Your breasts pop.

But how about old age? Your breasts drop?

Enough said.

I went online to the RLTV website, which had photos of people I admire, like Jane Pauley and Bob Vila. Neither of them are retired, but they’re still cool, even though they’re as old as I am, or even older.

Except that the website did have an article on “Benjamin Franklin – Science Superstar.”

Yikes. 

But still, that kind of thinking seemed mean-spirited and wrong.

So, I joined AARP.

I love being my age, and I’ve learned that age is arbitrary, anyway. So, what if I’m lumped in with sixty, seventy, eighty, and even ninety-year-olds?

I consider myself…lucky.

© Lisa Scottoline

Column Classic: If a Tree Falls in the Driveway…

By Lisa Scottoline

So, a tree landed on my garage, but didn’t damage anything. That would be the good, and the bad, news.

It got me looking at the trees around my house, and there are plenty of them. More good and bad news.

I don’t know what type of trees they are, because it never mattered to me. I operate on the principle that there’s only so much information my tiny little brain can hold, and it’s already stuffed with things I need to know for work, plus essentials like the words to most Rolling Stones songs and the Empire Flooring jingle.

So, I never learned the names of the trees I own. I’d be happy to name them Mick and Keith, and let it go at that.

But I do love the way they look, especially in fall, when they turn bright yellow and gorgeous orange, or in summer, when their rich green shades the lawn. Bottom line, we can all agree, trees are good.

Usually.

But then I started eyeing the trees, close up, and with the leaves fallen, I could see a lot of old branches, thick, dark, and ending in a point. I’m no expert, but some looked dead. I started to wonder when they might fall, like daggers from heaven.

Call this an exaggeration, but recall that I was raised by Mother Mary, who taught me that even the most mundane items can kill you. For example, knives loaded into the dishwasher will stab you. Blow-dryers will electrocute you. Toasters have murder on their minds.

So, I started to see the trees not as examples of natural beauty, but as lethal weapons.

And they could fall at any second, on me, the dogs, or the cats. And some of my trees hang over my street, and I’d hate to think they could fall on a passing car or person. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.

I have enough guilt already.

And made me worry about something worse.

Namely, lawyers.

So I called a tree service guy, who came over and started pointing. He knew the names of all the trees. Hemlock. Sugar maple. Red oak. Mulberry. Tulip poplar.

What lovely words.

Then he started in with the numbers.

$450, $340, $540. Not so lovely.

And then sent me a two-page estimate.

What was it that Joyce Kilmer wrote? I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree…service estimate?

It turns out that I have lots of trees that need servicing. Dead branches have to be trimmed, stumps ground down and hauled away. We’re talking days of work.

For trees?

I expect to pay for home improvement, but I never factored in tree improvement. It reminded me of the time I had to call an excavator to build a swale in my backyard, and if you don’t know what a swale is, it’s like a berm, only more expensive.

No, I don’t know what a berm is either. That’s why it costs extra. Things add up when you start with dirt improvement.

And some of the tree improvement sounded downright exotic. For example, the tree guy told me that it was a spruce tree that fell on the garage, and it would cost $380 to reduce the top leaders.

I didn’t know what a top leader was, but it sounded redundant. Nobody follows a bottom leader.

Can you imagine, a bottom leader running for president? No, we can’t! Give up and go home!

Hmm.

And it would cost $90 for a fir tree that needed cable. I didn’t know trees had cable. Do they have DVRs, too?

And some of it was scary. The estimate read that my sugar maple had to be pruned “to prevent main trunk failure.”

That can’t be good, can it?

Plus, I think it already happened.

To my waist.

© Lisa Scottoline

Oxygen

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m writing this in the middle of the night.

And here’s why.

Steroids.

I’m not complaining.

I’m recommending.

Let me explain.

We begin two months ago when I develop a head cold and can’t shake it. On book tour, I can’t even hug people and that’s the reason I write books.

By the way, it’s not Covid.

I’m still a Covid virgin.

You think I’m lucky?

You never met Thing Two.

So I called my doctor and he refers me to an specialist, whom I go see.

He looks up my nose and says it’s “frothy.”

Froth does not belong in your nose.

It belongs in your cappuccino.

And now I’ll never drink cappuccino again.

The specialist diagnoses a sinus infection and prescribes an antibiotic and steroids.

Thus changing my life.

I don’t understand how I could go from feeling so bad in the morning to feeling so good at night. In fact, I could paint your house.

If you want, I’ll be right over.

I’ve never felt this good in my life.

I don’t know why I can’t live on steroids.

Maybe I’ll grow big muscles, but that’s not the worst thing in return for feeling like you could run the world.

Should I give it a try?

After I paint your house?

I’m happy I’m cured because I’m a bad patient. All I did was complain. In my defense, I live alone. So I was talking to dogs.

But I was extremely profane.

Somebody needs to explain to me the science of steroids.

Are these the same steroids that make people hit baseballs into the next state?

I think they’re different because you inject those steroids in your butt.

Or maybe that’s testosterone.

And maybe you inject it somewhere else.

All I know is now I have two working nostrils, one on each side. I’m breathing like a champ. I’m pretty sure I’m using up all the oxygen in the universe.

Please be careful.

Don’t exert yourself.

You’re only left with nitrogen or whatever.

The other weird thing about steroids is the dosage. You take six pills in a one day, then five, then four, you get the idea. I’ve never in my life taken five of the same pill one day.

Now I want six hundred.

This is why I don’t do drugs.

The only drug I do is chocolate.

That’s why I don’t buy chocolate cake.

Now I won’t buy steroids.

I have no portion control when it comes to steroids.

I’m gonna grow chin hair, but what else is new?

Plus I can write in the middle of the night. By the way, I apologize for not writing new pieces lately, but I’m on book deadline and my nose is frothy.

Now all I have to do is fall asleep.

I’ve been trying for four hours and I’ll succeed in four days.

Meantime I’ll mow the lawn, wash the car, and run the world.

I think I could run it better.

In my world, everybody would be nice and all waistbands would be elastic.

We’d clean up the Earth, the sea, and our bra drawer.

There would be shows on Netflix we haven’t seen already.

Books would never be burned, but Spanx would.

There would be a price cap on prescription drugs and highlights.

Salted caramels would fall from the sky.

Bradley Cooper would be my husband.

The Supreme Court would have the ethical obligations of a traffic court.

Trials would be televised because we saw everything on Netflix. Also, justice.

That would just be my first day on the job.

Mine would be a government on steroids, literally.

Either that or I’m coming over.

Say when.

© Lisa Scottoline 2024