Chick Wit

• Column Classic: Greased Lightning June 15, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  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.

  They’re not worth dung.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Big-Ass Night Table June 8, 2025

  by Lisa Scottoline

  

  Size matters in only one thing.

  Night tables.

  I’m on a quest for the perfect night table.

  This quest began forty-odd years ago.

  I’ve looked for the perfect night table longer than I’ve looked for the perfect man.

  Honestly, only one is essential in a bedroom.

  Let me explain.

  I started life with a really small night table, and I would put my glasses on the night table and they would fall off instantly, usually face down.

  I scratched glasses nonstop.

  I would pick them up if I was still awake, but if I was too tired, I would leave them there. And step on them on my way to the bathroom.

  Plus I never had enough room for a real-sized lamp, which I needed to read.

  The night lamp is itself a quandary.

  If you get one that’s big enough to read by, you won’t be able to reach the knob and turn it off when you want to go to sleep.

  And if you get one that’s too small, you’ll stop reading because it’s too hard on your eyes, then you’ll start scrolling Instagram and end up hating yourself.

  The only thing instant about Instagram is self-hate.

  I actually don’t know if the pretty shiny people on Instagram are real.

  If they are, do they scroll Instagram and end up hating their lives, too?

  To return to point, in time I learned that lamp size didn’t matter because inevitably, the dog would fall asleep on my arm and I didn’t have the heart to move him to turn off the lamp anyway.

  I’d lie wake in the brightly-lit bedroom, only one of us snoring.

  Any true dog lover knows to stay put when your dog falls asleep on you.

  Like, our dogs teach us to stay.

  The other bad thing about my too-small night table was that I had to stack my books on the floor, where they would be ready for me to slip on when I went to the bathroom.

  It wasn’t a bedroom, it was a booby trap.

  And I was the booby, trapped.

  So at some point I started using a big-ass night table, which was actually an antique card table I had for years.

  At first I was excited. I could put all my books on it, and a big-ass lamp, a big-ass Yeti of ice water, and a big-ass jug of Cetaphil. My phone charger would be closest to the bed, plus the lint roller in case I found a tick on a dog before bedtime.

  What, you don’t lint-roll your dog for ticks before bed?

  Must be nice.

  To return to point, I just fell out of love with my big-ass night table.

  It was so big that I would hit my hip on it every time I got up to go to the bathroom. Not only that, but what I learned from having the big-ass night table is that you use only the three inches closest to the bed.

  The rest is just clutter you can’t reach anyway.

  A night table that you makes you get up defeats the purpose.

  Also the dog told you to stay.

  So the quest continues.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025

• Column Classic: Upgrading the Macaroni Necklace May 31, 2025

  by Francesca Serritella

  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.”

  Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

  Copyright © Francesca Serritella | www.francescaserritella.com | @FrancescaSerritellaauthor | @fserritella

• Forza Mother Mary May 25, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I’m turning into my mother.

  But only in the weird ways.

  Let’s begin with the ways I’m not turning into her.

  I cannot make her tomato sauce.

  Which honestly, we called gravy.

  It’s a South Philly thing.

  In my early books, I would write about gravy, and the copyeditor would replace it with tomato sauce, to which I would reply stet, which is bookspeak for back off.

  Her gravy was unbelievable. It was rich, but not heavy, with incredible taste.

  Never mind that she didn’t use a single fresh ingredient.

  The tomatoes were canned, the paste was canned, and she added garlic salt and onion salt.

  Nothing had to be washed or diced for her gravy.

  Which is proof that it didn’t matter.

  I guarantee this was the best gravy on the planet. We ate spaghetti in some form almost every night, whether it was regular pasta or her homemade gnocchis and ravioli, which were also out of this world, but the gravy made everything great.

  You could put that gravy on cardboard and never stop eating.

  I remember asking her what the recipe was, and she said, “You’re not getting it.” Which is pure Mother Mary.

  I never thought to question it, because like all kids, I never imagined her dying.

  But then she did, and of course I miss her, but you know what else I miss?

  Correct.

  So fast-forward to the rest of my life, when I try to make the gravy and fail miserably. Then I try a variety of jarred gravy that would make any card-carrying Italian-American shudder, but I do it anyway and I hit upon Rao’s.

  Which is the closest to my mother’s but honestly, hers was even better.

  So now I have pasta with an inferior gravy and think: “Mom, really?”

  So fast-forward again to me in my dotage when I watch everything on Netflix, and for some reason I get hooked on Drive to Survive, which is all about F1 racing and I like it because I’ve always liked cars.  And I’m lucky enough to be able to write about what interests me, so I find myself sneaking cars into my novels, then I find myself going to car events.

  And last weekend I went to one and bought something my mother would’ve bought.

  You may remember that Mother Mary always wore a lab coat.

  She’s still the only person to have checked into a hospital in a lab coat.      

  She got them at the Dollar Store and she liked them because they had pockets for crossword puzzle and her cigarettes.

  In any event, fast-forward to me, finding myself at an exotic car event and shopping at the stands where they sell shammy clothes and ceramic wax to more serious gearheads than I am, and I see a thing of beauty.

  A Ferrari technician’s jacket.

  It’s authentically Italian, and real Ferrari mechanics wear them when they work on real Ferraris.

  I put it on, fell in love, and bought it, then realized it was a lab coat, only red.

  The color of Ferraris.

  And gravy.

  It even has pockets on either side, for my cell phone and my dog treats.

  So I can’t make the gravy, but now I have a gravy-colored lab coat.

  Thanks, Mom.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025

• The Tao of Eve May 18, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I love sleeping with dogs.

  But sleeping with a puppy is a different matter.

  Let me explain.

  You may know that I recently added a new member to my family, namely Eve, who is now a seven-month-old cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She joins my other two Cavaliers, Boone and Kit, who are almost fourteen now and differ on their opinion of her.

  Boone loves Eve.

  Kit wishes her dead.

  I’m hoping he comes around.

  Spoiler alert: He’s not going to.

  But so far he’s not trying to kill her.

  And Kit has his adorable moments with Eve. Like this morning, I took them out for a walk, and he peed on her leg.

  By the way, it was raining.

  So I actually got to watch a demonstration of “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

  Which is the perfect description of my second marriage.

  This is only one of the many great things about dogs.

  In any event, I love sleeping with Eve, but she’s very busy all night long.

  At this point you’re wondering why I don’t put her in a crate.

  Because I tried to in the beginning, but she cried and I’m a big softie.

  Luckily she’s never peed on the bed and told me it was raining, but she is an insanely restless sleeper.

  First, she loved to bring her toys on the bed and squeak them most of the night.

  I took away the squeaky ones, and she started playing with the ball, rolling it around the cover, then on my body.

  I took away the ball, and she would jump off the bed and find my socks on the floor, bring them up, and drop them on my face.

  Then I picked up all my socks and took away all the toys and she found a way to amuse herself, running up and down the ramp that leads to the bed.

  I couldn’t take that away because I already felt heartless.

  Plus how else do you get a dog onto a bed?

  Where she will disrupt your sleep.

  Obviously, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The sensible thing to do would be to put the dog in a crate and a moat around the bed.

  But not all decisions are sensible.

  That’s why God made divorce.

  Meanwhile every single piece of furniture in my house has either a ramp or a set of little wooden stairs, but Eve loves to chews wood, so she makes a meal of those stairs.

  She’s on an all-wood diet.

  She eats doors and baseboards, and now my place looks like I live with a woodchuck.

  Now you’re probably asking, why don’t you spray the wood with that stuff called Bitter Apple, which is supposed to make dogs not chew wood?

  The answer is, I do, and Eve thinks it improves the taste of wood.

  It’s the dressing on her wood salad.

  She would drink Bitter Apple if I let her.

  And when she’s not eating wood, she’s running around outside, finding a rock, and chewing that, too.

  In the beginning, I started taking the rocks from her and putting them on a pile on the table. Now the table holds a pyramid of rocks, like oranges at the grocery store.

  I should sell rocks.

  Or I could spray them with Bitter Apple, then Eve would have a rock casserole.

  I took her to puppy kindergarten and puppy elementary school, and next week we start puppy middle school.

  After that, puppy Harvard.

  She learned all her lessons, including Leave It, which I now use forty-five times a day, when she finds a sock, chews wood, or eats a rock.

  And she Leaves It.

  Until she finds something else.

  This is all by way of saying, I love this puppy.

  She’s completely adorable, despite all the puppy things she does.

  Or maybe because of them.

  She’s simply an incredibly affectionate ball of fluff.

  When she finally settles down to sleep at my side, she has an adorable snore.

  She loves to snuggle and kiss, which is a job requirement for any animal I live with.

  Actually she’s a Make-out Queen, but I won’t elaborate.

  She loves people, other dogs, and fun in general.

  All the time, every minute.

  Even at night, but that’s okay.

  Life is to be savored, all the time.

  And that’s what Eve reminds me.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025