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!
I’m a big fan of combinations, like soup-and-sandwich. Peanut butter-and-jelly. Spaghetti-and-meatballs.
You may detect a pattern.
Carbohydrates are the leitmotif.
Or maybe the heavy-motif.
One combination I never thought of is jeans-and-moisturizer. Lucky for women, marketing has thought of that for us!
You may have read the news story which reported that Wrangler is selling a line of jeans that embeds microcapsules of moisturizer in the fabric, which evidently explode on impact with your thighs and moisturize them.
I think this is an awesome idea. I often fantasize about things that would explode on impact with my thighs, such as Bradley Cooper.
It gives new meaning to the term thunder thighs.
The line of jeans is called Denim Spa, which is quite a combination, right there. Denim and Spa are two words I have never experienced together.
Like love-and-marriage.
But to stay on point, Wrangler markets three types of moisturizer jeans. One comes embedded with Aloe Vera and another with Olive Oil, but choosing between the two is a no-brainer for me. I wouldn’t pick Aloe Vera, because she sounds like someone I went to high school with and I don’t share jeans.
I’d leave the aloe alone.
Instead I’d pick the olive oil. If I added balsamic, those jeans would be delicious.
But only extra virgins can wear them.
Count me out.
Come to think of it, if I were going to infuse jeans with food, I would go with Cinnabons.
Extra frosting is more fun than extra virgin.
The moisturizer in the jeans lasts up to fifteen days, but Wrangler also offers a “reload spray” that you can squirt your pants with. I’m not sure I’d buy the spray. It would be cheaper to pour olive oil on my pants, like a salad. I’d dress them properly, before I got dressed.
But the third type of moisturizer jeans is my favorite, and it’s called Smooth Legs.
I need Smooth Legs. I have only Scaly Legs and Hairy Legs, or a combination of the two, which is Scary Legs.
The amazing thing about the Smooth Legs jeans is that they not only moisturize your legs, they fight cellulite.
Wow!
According to the website, the way they do this is by a “special formula” embedded in the jeans, which contains “caffeine, retinol, and algae extract.”
Which contains mayonnaise.
Why fight jeans that fight cellulite?
I wouldn’t. I’d be scared. They can “reload.” I wouldn’t buy them without a background check.
If you ask me, fighting cellulite is a lot to ask from a pair of pants, much less clothing in general, and you’ve got to hand it to Wrangler, which charges a mere $150 for a pair of these hard-working jeans. That’s only $75 per leg or approximately $.03 per cellulite dimple, if you have 2,928,474,747 million dimples, like me.
In fact, I just got another 4,928,749, in the time you took to read that last sentence.
In my experience, cellulite comes only in packs of 4,928,749.
I wouldn’t mind having a pair of pants that fought cellulite for me, which would be like having a lawyer for my butt.
This is because I don’t spend any time fighting my cellulite. On the contrary, my cellulite and I have an arrangement. My cellulite agrees to stay on the back of my legs, thighs, and tushie, and I agree not to look at myself from behind.
This turns out to be easy. Because I always move forward and never look back.
Metaphor not included.
In truth, I’ve come to accept and enjoy my cellulite. I can amuse myself by playing connect the dots on my thighs or finding constellations on my butt. For example, my left rump sports not only the Big and Little Dippers, but also The Serving Spoon, The Soup Ladle, and The Cake Knife.
The best thing about the moisturizer jeans is that all that grease must make them easier to get on. But being menopausal, I might need more lubrication.
Like motor oil.
Come to think of it, I won’t be buying the moisturizer dungarees.
My mom’s birthday is a month away, and I’m wracking my brain about what to get her—but really, it’s my favorite thing to obsess over. Here’s a Classic Column, which might be new to you as it never ran in the Inquirer, about birthday shopping for my favorite person.
When it comes to giving a gift to your mother, kids get a pass for a long time. But when your mother has a milestone birthday like sixty, a macaroni necklace will not do.
It was time for me to get my mother a grown-up gift.
This is not to say that I haven’t gotten her nice things in the past, but this year I wanted it to be really special. Maybe because I know that my mom is single, I wanted to get her a gift as nice as a husband would get.
Not one of her husbands—a really good husband.
I got in my head that it had to be jewelry.
I’d never bought a piece of fine jewelry before. First, I studied. For months leading up to her birthday, every moment of procrastination was spent searching the websites of jewelers and department stores for every item within my budget.
Since I couldn’t afford ninety percent of their inventory, this took less time than you might think.
After obsessively zeroing in on a few favorite options, I decided to make a trip to Cartier. Embarrassingly, I’d dressed up for the occasion. I wore a shirtdress that I thought said, “I use ‘summer’ as a verb.”
It was like that movie Baby’s Day Out, except with my parent. I turned my back for one second, and the little rascal got away from me.
I imagined her crawling along an I-beam at some high-rise construction site.
But she’s afraid of heights, so more likely she’d be in Times Square, telling The Naked Cowboy he isn’t dressed warmly enough.
It started with tickets to see the new Larry David play. My mom checked that she had the tickets for the third or fourth time.
“It says, ‘late arrivals will not be seated,’” she read, for my benefit. My mom is early to everything. We left with an hour to spare.
And yet, we found ourselves in a cab crawling up Sixth Avenue for a half-hour with fifteen blocks to go. I checked our route on my smartphone; the driving estimate to get to the theater was fifteen minutes, the walking was only ten.
I’m a terrible negotiator. I’m too emotional, and I can’t pretend I don’t want something I really want.
Like George Clooney.
But today we’re talking cars, and this is the tale of my first attempt at negotiating.
To begin, I have an older car that I take great care of, and it’s aged better than I have, sailing past 100,000 miles without estrogen replacement.
But around 102,000 miles, things started to go wrong, and flaxseed wasn’t helping. I knew I’d be driving long distances on book tour, and I started to worry. I called up my genius assistant Laura to ask her advice, as I do before I make any important decision, like what to eat for lunch.
I asked her, “Laura, do you think I need a new car?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“But it’s paid off, and I love it.” And I do. It’s a big white sedan called The Mothership.
“I know, but you have to be safe. What if it breaks down on tour?”
“That won’t happen.”
“Except it has. Twice.”
An excellent point. One time, The Mothership died on the way to a bookstore in Connecticut, requiring the bookseller to pick me up at a truck-stop on 1-95. I bet that never happened to James Patterson.
So I needed a new car, and since I love my dealership, I went there. I thought they loved me, too, which they did, except when it came to the bottom line. They gave me a good deal on a new SUV, but a rock-bottom price on trading in The Mothership.
I asked, “How can you do that to her? I mean, me?”
I told you I get too emotional.
And I added, “Plus you’re supposed to love me.”
But they don’t. They run a business, and it’s not the love business. However, it’s my secret philosophy that all business is the love business, so I got angry. They had taken care of The Mothership for the past ten years, at top dollar, and it was worth so much more.
Guess what I did.
I walked out.
I took my business elsewhere. That very day, I called up another dealership, who said, come on over, we love you, too. In fact, we love you so much that we’ll give you a better deal on your trade-in. And they did, after inspecting The Mothership and calling her “the cleanest 100,000-mile car they had ever seen,” which we are.
I mean, it is.
But just when I was about to say yes, my old dealership called and told me that they still loved me. I told them I was already rebounding with my new dealership, but they said they’d top the offer on The Mothership, and after much back-and-forth, I went back to my old dealership, like ex sex.
But long story short, the day came when I was supposed to pick up my new SUV, and I felt unaccountably sad. I took final pictures of The Mothership. I stalled leaving the house. On the drive to the dealer, I called daughter Francesca and asked her, “Wanna say good-bye to the car?”
“Mom? You don’t sound happy.”
“I’m not. I love this car.”
“Aww, it’s okay. It’s probably not the car, anyway. It’s that you have such great memories in the car.”
I considered this for a minute. “No, it’s the car.”
By the time I reached the dealership, I was crying full-bore, snot included.
My sales guy came over, and when he saw me, his smile faded. “What’s the matter?”
“I love my car. I don’t want to give it up.”
“So keep it,” he said, which was the first time it even occurred to me. I know it sounds dumb, but it simply never entered my mind. I’d never bought a car without trading one in.
“But what about the money?”
“We’re only offering you a fraction of what the car’s worth. If I were you, I’d keep it.”
“But I’m only one person. Why do I need two cars?”
“They’re two different cars. The old one’s a sedan, and the new one’s an SUV.”
I wiped my eyes. “You mean, like shoes? This is the dressy pair?”
He looked nonplussed. “Uh, right.”
“Really?” My heart leapt with happiness. I decided to keep The Mothership. It’s strappy sandals on wheels, if you follow.
Thus ended my first attempt at hardball negotiations, which backfired. Having bargained for the best price on a trade-in, I couldn’t bring myself to trade anything in.
A column classic in honor of Mother Mary, who passed eleven years ago, but whose memory lives on. Thanks to all of you who continue to celebrate her and read about her.
I believe in science.
Except when it comes to Mother Mary.
I always think of her this time of year, because she passed away 5 years ago, on Palm Sunday.
Yes, I’m aware that the date of Palm Sunday moves, so that it’s not the actual day she passed, which was April 13. But it’s so Mother Mary to remember her on the holiday, and I’ll explain why.
She was only 4’11”, but her personality was ten times her size.
I love talking about her, which I just did, on book tour. I’m supposed to talk about my new book, Someone Knows, but I always end up telling funny stories about her, and oddly, they all involve the weather.
I tell the story about how she was the only person in South Florida who felt an earthquake that had occurred in Tampa, a fact proved by a call she had made to the Miami Herald to report same. When the TV newsvan went to her house, they called her Earthquake Mary.
Which she loved.
I tell a story about how I made her fly north to get out of the path of a hurricane, and when she was interviewed about it at the airport, she said, “I’m not afraid of a hurricane, I am a hurricane.”
I tell a story about the day of her memorial service, when it rained so hard that my entrance hall flooded, which has never happened before or since.
And then this Palm Sunday, she sent me another weather-related sign.
I was sitting on a plane in St. Louis and heading for Chicago, when we heard that there was a sudden snowstorm blowing into Chicago.
In the middle of April.
I know it snows a lot in Chicago, but not that much in April, and this storm was unexpected. My flight and others were delayed because the Chicago airport was putting a ground hold on all flights, so we sat on the plane and waited.
And waited.
It turned out that 4000 flights were canceled that day, and mine was one of them.
Unfortunately, I missed my book signing in Chicago.
My apologies.
And I thought of my mother, which is when I wondered if, in fact, that was what she’d wanted all along.
Mother Mary was the youngest of nineteen children, so we can guess she didn’t get much attention. Even now, I think she’s saying, Look at me.
Think of me.
Remember me.
Of course, I need no reminder, nor do you, to remember those you loved and lost.
Holidays are bittersweet for those who have lost people on or around them, but there’s a part of me that thinks Mother Mary likes being remembered on Palm Sunday.
An extraordinary day for an extraordinary woman.
She loved whenever Francesca and I wrote about her. You may remember when Philadelphia magazine published its Best of Philadelphia awards and gave Chick Wit an award. For Worst of Philadelphia.
Thanks, Philly mag.
I’m still laughing.
Last.
Mother Mary happened to be visiting when I got that award and she was very disappointed.
Because it didn’t mention her.
Thanks to all of you who like the stories about her. Many of you have been to my house for our Big Book Club Party and were as loving to her as if she were your own mother.
With profanity added.
Mother Mary bathed in your affection and talked about you readers all the time. You gave her a gift that she didn’t even know she needed.
A spotlight.
In my opinion, every mother deserves one.
Mother’s Day may be around the corner, but honestly, I don’t think we give mothers the credit they deserve.
They were the invisible force of nature behind all of us, and if we were lucky, it was a fair wind, not an ill one.
I was lucky, and so was my brother Frank.
Mother Mary was the most loving of mothers and adored being a grandmother, too. I love when Francesca writes about her, because though we know how much grandparents adore their grandchildren, it’s not often you get to hear how much a grandchild loves a grandparent.
Even more.
We call Francesca The Grandmother Whisperer, because my mother would do anything if Francesca asked.
But not if I did.
Because Francesca asked, Mother Mary even went to the fireworks on July 4, and you haven’t lived until you’ve sat under an exploding sky with your vaguely combustible mother.
When Mother Mary was in hospice at our house, Francesca was at her side, caring for her, talking with her, and doing my mother’s nails, a loving act made more poignant by its circumstances.
Mother Mary used to joke that when she passed, she wanted a mausoleum.
At least I think it was a joke.
She was proud of herself.
She stood up for herself.
She tried to get the best for herself and her family.
She loved people. She could not walk into an Acme without greeting the produce guys, whom she knew by name.
She struck up conversations with every shopper.
She played peekaboo with every baby.
She made life fun.
If Mother Mary grounded 4000 flights, she had a good laugh over it.
What’s the difference between accepting yourself and giving up?
I’m talking of course, about going gray.
Because that’s what’s happening.
I’ve had glimmers of gray hair before, but it was concentrated on the right and left sides of my head, which gave me a nice Bride-of-Frankenstein look.
But I’ve been working so hard over the winter that I haven’t bothered to get my hair highlighted, and today I noticed that there’s a lot more gray than there used to be.
And you know what?
It doesn’t look terrible.
Also the world did not come to an end.
In fact, nothing happened, one way or the other.
But before we start talking about going gray, we have to talk about going brown. I seem to remember that brown is my natural hair color, but I forget. In any event, sometime in the Jurassic, I started highlighting my hair. It was long enough ago that highlights didn’t require a second mortgage.
But no matter, some women are vain enough to pay anything to look good, and she would be me. I figured my highlights were a cost of doing business. In fact, I named my company Smart Blonde, so highlights were practically a job requirement, if not a uniform.
In fact, maybe highlights are deductible.
Just kidding, IRS.
(I know they’ll really laugh at that one. They have a great sense of humor.)
Anyway, my hair appointment for new highlights is tomorrow, but I’m really wondering if it’s worth it. Not because of the money, or even the time, but because I’m starting to accept the fact that my hair is not only secretly brown, it’s secretly gray.
And so I’m thinking, maybe I should just let it go. Accept that I’m not only going gray, but I’m going brown, which I used to think was worse. And that maybe I should just accept myself as I am.
Or, in other words, give up.
Now, before I start getting nasty letters, let me just say that I love silvery gray hair on people. I know women who look terrific with all-over gray hair, but mine isn’t all-over yet. It’s coming only in patches, which looks like somebody spilled Clorox on my head.
You know you’re in trouble when your hair matches your laundry.
Also, my gray hair is growing in stiff and oddly straight, so it looks like it’s raising its hand.
But that might be my imagination.
And before you weigh in on this question, let me add the following:
I’m also deciding whether to start wearing my glasses, instead of contacts. Yes, if you check out the sparkly-eyed picture of me on the book, you’ll see me in contacts. Actually, I took them out right after the photo, because they’re annoying. Fast forward to being middle-aged, where any time you’re wearing your contacts, you have to wear your reading glasses, and so one way or the other, glasses are going to get you.
And I’m starting to think that’s okay, too. In other words, I may be accepting myself for the myopic beastie that I am.
Which is good.
Or I may merely be getting so lazy that I cannot be bothered to look my best.
Which is not so good.
Because in addition to gray hair and nearsightedness, I also accept that I don’t have the answers to many things. For example, I just drove home from NYC and I don’t know the difference between the EZ-Pass lane and the Express EZ-Pass lane.
But all I want is a delicious cup of coffee that I can make myself, at home.
Is that so much to ask?
Evidently.
Right out front, I have to confess that I love Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
Sometimes I’ll have Starbucks and other times Wawa, but my coffee soulmate is Dunkin’.
We’ve been together longer than either of my marriages combined.
Daughter Francesca likes to tell the story of the time we were watching television and a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial came on, and I whispered, “I love you, Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Okay, that’s embarrassing enough.
But then Francesca tweeted that to Dunkin’ Donuts, and Dunkin’ Donuts tweeted back:
“We love you too, Lisa!”
OMG!!!!!
Anyway, you get the idea.
So I stop by Dunkin’ Donuts whenever I can and I also pick up a lottery ticket. When I lose the lottery, at least I’ve had a great cup of coffee, which makes me almost as happy.
You’re supposed to be able to make Dunkin’ Donuts at home, and I have a Keurig coffeemaker, so I bought the Dunkin’ Donuts K-Cups and did the whole Keurig thing, but it wasn’t the same as the real thing.
And unfortunately, I developed almost a superstitious belief that a cup of great coffee is essential to my writing process. I’m not the first writer to believe that a beverage is essential to great fiction. Ernest Hemingway had booze, but I have caffeine. And when my good luck charm is on shaky ground, I fear my books will start to suck, and Mrs. Bradley Cooper can’t have that.
So I decided that I would give up on making Dunkin’ Donuts at home and try different types of coffee. I understand this is called being flexible, but it’s not something that comes easily to me.
Nor should it.
One of the great things about being single is that you never have to compromise anything, and I wasn’t looking forward to compromising my one and only vice.
Nevertheless, I decided I should go back to basics, namely percolated coffee. I admit this was probably nostalgia-driven, because I remember the days when Mother Mary perked coffee on the stovetop, brewing Maxwell House from a can, but I couldn’t find a stovetop percolator and had to settle for a plug-in, and I thought I could beat Maxwell House, so I got myself to the grocery store, where I stood before a dizzying array of types of coffee, coming from everywhere around the globe, including Africa, Arabia, and the Pacific.
This was coffee with frequent-flier mileage.
Likewise there were different kinds of roasts – light, dark, French, Italian, and Extra Dark French, which sounded vaguely racist.
I went with medium Italian, because that’s basically what I am.
Then I had to choose the “body” of the coffee, which evidently meant “the weight of the coffee on your tongue.”
Everywhere you look, body issues.
Again I chose the light-to-medium bodied, ground it at the store, brought it home, perked it, and it sucked. I persevered for another week, but I couldn’t do it. I decided to throw out the baby with the coffee water and went back further to my roots to buy a little Italian Bialetti espresso maker, perked on the stovetop. But that meant I had to go back to the grocery store and start all over again, since the new coffeemaker required the moka grind, which is not even a word.
I brought the coffee home, perked it, and took a sip.
My passion for perfume started long before it became the inspiration for my new novel FULL BLOOM, out August 5th and available for preorder now! Consider this Classic Column “Sniff Test” a certificate of authenticity for my fragrance obsession. Maybe some of you can relate…or I hope it makes you laugh!
Every woman has one department at the shopping mall that calls to them, nay, sings to them, like a choir of angels, radiating a warm, golden light from the top of the escalator.
For me, it’s fragrance.
I’m hypnotized by those glittering little bottles on glass countertops, each one with a secret inside, winking at me from across the room.
I’ve always loved perfume, ever since I was a little girl, when the crystal bottles on my mother’s dresser seemed like magical potions.
And whenever I smelled them on her, I knew she was going somewhere glamorous, mysterious, and as-yet-off-limits to me.
They say you don’t really know a person until you travel together, but is that true if the person is your mother?
I asked myself this on our recent trip to Arizona, our first mother-daughter vacation in almost ten years. We had an amazing time and got along great, but I noticed some new quirks, beginning as soon as our first flight.
“Can you open the window?” she asked.
“Sure.” I slid the shade up and squinted into the light. “Wow, you can see—”
“Nm-mm,” my mother grunted, and I noticed she was shielding her eyes.
“Sorry, too bright?”
“No, I don’t want to see how high we are, it scares me.”
I wondered again by the pool in Scottsdale, when I lowered my sunglasses to see my mother approaching with what appeared to be a cloth napkin tied around her head.
“Perfect, huh?” She posed like a pirate beauty queen. “I went to the gift shop for something to cover my head, but then I realized, I could get this from the restaurant! It’s just like a bandana!”
“It’s even more like a napkin.” And I reminded her she had a ball cap in the bag.
“Nah, the brim blocks the sun.” She settled down on the chair next to me, readjusting her bandana-napkin.
I slid down behind my book.
Another of my mom’s quirks is that she loves to order drinks, or “dwinks” when she’s ready to party, but she hates the taste of alcohol. She always forgets this last part.
“Can I taste it?” She sipped my Sauvignon Blanc and grimaced. “So winey.”
The only wine sweet enough for her is Lambrusco, an unusual, sparkling red, and when she asks for it, she tricks waiters into thinking she’s a jaded oenophile. Most restaurants don’t have it, so the waiter will suggest other esoteric options, using words like “tannic” and “peaty.”
I wanted to tell him, she wants notes of “juice box,” do you have a juice box wine?
As the server left to bring a sample of a “jammy” Pinot Noir I knew she’d suffer through, I said, “You don’t have to order a drink.”
“Of course I do, we’re on vacation!”
She had a point.
I was getting the hang of Vacation Mom, when I anticipated a problem. If a peek out an airplane window was too much for her vertigo, how was she going to enjoy the Grand Canyon?
The irony was that she’d planned the trip. The Grand Canyon was entirely her idea; she had even booked a guide to take us hiking into it.
I sat her down. “I’m worried about you. You need to mentally prep that it’s going to be really, really huge and you might get freaked out by the height.”
She waved me off. “It’ll be great, I just won’t go on the high parts.”
“Mom, I think the whole thing is a high part.”
Cue the soundtrack to City Slickers.
But when the day came, my mom closed her eyes for much of the mountainous drive up (don’t worry, she was in the backseat) yet remained in good spirits!
We arrived at the Canyon, and the guide showed us to the top of the steep trail. Or at least he pointed to it from a safe distance, since my mom refused to get out of the car. I said I couldn’t leave her in there like a dog, but she insisted:
“You go, that’s why I hired him, I want you to have a good time.”
I was touched. And I realized how much of my mom’s behavior was to make me happy: a good view from the window seat, fun drinks at dinner—okay, the napkin thing was just weird, I got nothing for that—but she wouldn’t let her quirks keep us from having an unforgettable vacation.
In the end, I made it less than thirty minutes down into the Canyon before my own vertigo forced me to turn back. When I reemerged on the top, flat ground, there was no sweeter sight than my little mom, bravely out of the car, trying to take a photo with a shaky hand while gripping onto a signpost for dear life—a good ten yards from the gorge’s edge.
When she saw me, she broke into a grin, still clinging to the signpost like a koala. “How was it?”
