I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places Read online

  So I taught myself a lesson:

  Vote with my feet.

  If I want to live in a community that has bookstores and all other kinds of stores, as well as local people happily employed in those stores, I have to go out and buy stuff.

  I’m putting on my coat and going shopping.

  I look forward to the cranky shoppers, the waiting in lines, and the fighting over the parking space.

  And I’m wishing you and yours a happily stressful holiday.

  Not a Creature Was Stirring

  Lisa

  Wanna hear what I got for Christmas?

  Tularemia.

  Don’t know what that is?

  Allow me to explain.

  Rewind to a few days before Christmas, when Daughter Francesca came home for the holidays and was about to build us a fire, so I got in the car to go buy firewood since we didn’t have any split logs.

  I may be hardy but I don’t know how to split logs.

  I’m not a lumberjack, I just dress like one.

  So I hop in the car and take off to the store, but I’m thirsty, plus I had a canker sore, which considering my pain threshold, feels like childbirth.

  All week, I’d been painting my tongue with every canker-sore remedy they sell. I am the biggest baby on the planet, especially for mouth things, because they interfere with talking and eating, which are my hobbies.

  To stay on point, I was in the car driving to the store, but I had left an open bottle of water in the cupholder from the day before, so I picked it up and took a gulp.

  It tasted funny, but everything tastes funny, seasoned with Orajel.

  Also it felt heavy, but I figured the water had frozen overnight.

  Either way, I wasn’t looking at the bottle, I was driving forward on my mission, with the task-oriented determination that women manifest at the holidays.

  We get things done.

  Stay out of our way.

  Anyway, I drank the last of the water, tilting the bottle up, which was when I saw two black beady eyes staring back at me.

  From inside the bottle.

  The eyes belonged to a dead mouse.

  In other words, there was a dead mouse inside the water bottle.

  And I had drunk all the water.

  Which the dead mouse had been marinating in, for a day.

  Eeeewwwwwwwwwww!

  I started spitting, nearly avoiding driving off the road, and found myself at the traffic light, screaming inside my car.

  People in other cars looked over, but figured it was just another task-oriented woman at the holidays.

  Then I did the only sensible thing, which was to call Francesca and wail, “I drank a mouse!”

  And she said, “Eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!”

  Because I raised her right.

  Don’t ask me how a mouse got inside the bottle, or in my car. All I know is that I felt like barfing, but instead I hung up and kept driving to the store, where I bought the firewood and a bar of Hershey’s chocolate with almonds, which I ate instantly.

  Not the holiday surprise I was hoping for.

  Chocolate being the remedy for all things.

  And also the cause of canker sores.

  But never mind, I needed to feel good right away.

  By the way, I also took a picture of the mouse in the bottle, because I knew no one would believe me, then I threw the bottled mouse away.

  On the way home, I got a call back from Francesca. “Mom,” she said, “you should call a doctor about the mouse.”

  “Why?”

  “I was reading online that you can get bad things from drinking water contaminated with a dead mouse.”

  “Like, what? Nightmares?”

  “No. Seriously, the mouse droppings in the water can cause disease.”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t believe her at first, but it turns out, the answer really is really.

  I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say, ’twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, a creature was stirring, but it wasn’t a mouse.

  It was me, sitting on the toilet bowl.

  All Christmas Eve.

  Because of a mouse.

  On Christmas morning, I called the doctor, who put me on a major antibiotic. He said that drinking water that contains a “mouse carcass” or droppings can cause an array of diseases, though they weren’t generally seen in the Philadelphia suburbs.

  Until now.

  Go, me!

  Well, as I write this, it’s several days later. I’m beginning to feel better, and even my canker sore is gone.

  Chocolate for everyone!

  And Happy New Year!

  Auld Lang Sayonara

  Francesca

  The New Year is traditionally a sentimental, bittersweet, and reflective time. But upon reflection, all I can come up with is this:

  Last year sucked.

  Not for everyone. I sincerely hope that the past year was your best one yet, a harbinger of the even more amazing years you have in store. But if it was good to you, you’re the exception that proves the rule. Unless you got engaged, married, or had a baby—in other words, everyone on my Facebook feed—it probably sucked.

  International news was a parade of horrors. I don’t want to get into it. There was nothing funny about it. If you don’t believe me, think about it for one minute and then try not to hide under the covers.

  Domestic news was a depressing series of lose-lose partisanship battles. Same as above.

  Even Hollywood, Lalaland, a fantasy world of money, glamour, and escapism could not escape the wrath of the last year.

  Just ask Sony.

  Or Bill Cosby, allegedly.

  Or any starlet who thought the iCloud was private.

  The year sucked for me personally. My beloved grandmother died, my boyfriend and I broke up, my dog had a limp, I gained weight, then lost weight—a nice end result but the process is not nearly as fun as gaining weight.

  I could go on, but I’ll spare you. I don’t care to go over it myself. Suffice it to say:

  It sucked.

  I was a pickup short of a country song.

  And I don’t have a positive spin on it. There’s no silver lining to not having my grandmother anymore. If you read us before, you know how much she meant to us. She was awesome and funny and cool, and I miss her all the time, but especially at the holidays. There’s no silver lining to losing her.

  Sometimes the only silver lining you get is to get through it.

  So if you’re at all like me, and you had a challenging year, I want to hug you and say this:

  We made it.

  And we all get a do-over starting next week.

  Whether you envision the forward motion of the New Year as one foot in front of the other, or as my fantasy of being shot out of a cannon after lighting the fuse myself, let’s embrace it.

  Time marches on whether we like it or not. And this year, I like it.

  My bad attitude is freeing. In my haste to put the past year behind me, I feel a good energy going into the New Year, or at least, an excess of it.

  Pedal to the metal.

  No looking back, eyes on the horizon.

  I welcome the change, the unknown. Bring it on.

  If I survived the last twelve months, then I’m bullet-proof.

  This feeling was described to me back in 2008, when the author J. K. Rowling gave my college commencement address. In telling her story, she said:

  “And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

  I love this idea. I’ve been working on a novel for years, but I’ve been too busy (read: too scared) to show it to anyone. What if they don’t like it? What if it isn’t good enough? What if I’ve wasted all this time?

  That’s last year talking.

  Now I realize it can’t get any less published than it is sitting on my computer.

  An iCloud leak may actually improve my chances at achieving my dreams.


  My impatience for the next step, for progress, for change, for something, now outweighs my fear of failure. I have nothing to lose.

  That’s the New Year talking.

  I’m not saying it’s easy to stir up optimism after a period when you’re feeling down. But it’s never easy. Even when things go perfectly, you can get scared. You get the feeling that one false move could mess it up, that you have to be careful.

  But if your last year wasn’t so great, be brave.

  You don’t like something about your life? Change it. Don’t let another year go by before you try something different.

  Because one year from now, on the next December 31, when we count down our good-bye to this year, you know what I want?

  I want to miss it.

  Changing Tide

  Lisa

  I get a lot of great fan mail, but sometimes it’s less than adoring. For example, somebody recently wrote to me, “You call yourself ‘middle-aged,’ but you’re already fifty-nine. Do you think you’re going to live until you’re 118?”

  Not very nice.

  But then again, absolutely true.

  And though I generally don’t pay attention to the occasional hater, this time I did. Maybe because her email arrived around the New Year, when we all think about the passage of time.

  I considered her point, and it changed my mind.

  I made a decision.

  I won’t call myself Middle-Aged anymore.

  From now on, I’m going with New-and-Improved.

  Because that’s exactly how I feel.

  Why should detergent have all the fun?

  I’m at least as cool as a box of Tide.

  Because age isn’t about Age.

  It’s about how you feel inside.

  I know I’m not the first person to have this thought, because we’ve all heard the expression, “You’re as young as you feel.”

  But frankly, that expression never resonated with me.

  Why?

  The truth, at least for me, is that I don’t feel Young.

  And in my opinion, that’s a good thing.

  Let’s get real.

  I’m not going to lie to you.

  (Because we weren’t born yesterday. And how great is that?)

  I know I’m not Young, physically. I own a mirror and I’m not delusional.

  My body doesn’t look the way it did when I was Young. I have more dimples, and not on my cheeks.

  At least not those cheeks.

  I also have a lot more laugh lines.

  Because I’ve had a lot more laughs.

  Years of them!

  Which is great!

  Plus, my body doesn’t feel the way it used to when I was Young. My back aches in the morning, and I gain weight easier.

  Not that gaining weight was ever a struggle.

  We all have our cross to bear, and mine is chocolate cake.

  My cross is a fork.

  Yum.

  The truth is I feel energetic, happy, and excited about life. These are characteristics of Young, but not all of Young.

  At least not my Young.

  When I was Young, I wasn’t in control of my life. I didn’t even try to be in control of my own life. I didn’t make good decisions, I went along with letting others make decisions for me. I didn’t have my own agenda, but I followed the agendas of others.

  How do I know I did this?

  When I was asked to do things, I could never say no.

  I used to feel guilty when I said no.

  I wanted to make everybody happy.

  So I ended up fulfilling a million obligations that I didn’t want to, and I turned my whole life into a Things To Do List.

  And it wasn’t even my Things To Do List. It was everybody else’s.

  It took me fifty years to figure out what I was doing wrong, and how to fix it. I started saying no, and the world did not end. Then I kept saying no, and it got easier and easier.

  It takes practice.

  All risk does, and all change. The more changes you make, the easier it is to change.

  And I taught myself that every time I said no to someone else, I was saying yes to myself.

  At the end of the day, some people still liked me, some didn’t.

  Either way, I didn’t die.

  On the contrary, I started living—my own life.

  It was New for me, and definitely Improved.

  So here we are.

  If you used to call yourself Middle-Aged before, why don’t you join me?

  Let’s change history.

  Our own personal history.

  We’re all New-and-Improved!

  Love Match

  Lisa

  I don’t want to ruin your undoubtedly excellent opinion of me, but there’s something you should know.

  I watch The Bachelor.

  I confessed this to an author I know, and she said, “I get it, it’s your guilty pleasure.”

  But she was wrong.

  I don’t feel guilty about it, at all.

  In fact, I feel guilty if I miss it.

  I told another author that I watch The Bachelor, and she said, “I understand, you hate-watch it.”

  But she was wrong, too.

  I don’t hate-watch anything.

  If I hated something, I wouldn’t watch it.

  Just like food.

  As in, I hate liver, so I don’t eat it.

  Who hate-eats liver?

  Exactly.

  Nobody.

  So I don’t hate-watch The Bachelor, and on the contrary, I love-watch it.

  I love, love, love-watch it.

  Let’s be real, I know a lot of women love The Bachelor, but I’m not sure many of them are in my age range.

  New-and-Improved.

  But so what?

  You would think I’m supposed to be older and wiser, but age is giving me a perspective that there are no right answers, especially when it comes to love.

  After all, I did everything right, or at least what right used to be before TV entered the dating picture. I met Thing One and Thing Two, spent a lot of time getting to know them, fell in love, got married, and then got divorced.

  Who saw that coming?

  Not me.

  So who am I to say it’s crazy to meet your husband on a TV show?

  And even if you don’t, it’s fun for me to watch, and I love watching it.

  Why?

  People make out!

  For starters.

  In fact, as I’m writing this, the second episode just came on, and The Bachelor, an Iowa farmer named Chris, is about to go on a date with six women at once. And the women about to go on the date have just said, “I’ve never been this happy in my life,” “I love Chris and he’s amazing,” and “I feel so lucky to have my first date with my future husband!”

  Did I mention they have known him exactly one episode?

  Excluding commercials.

  But to be fair, it’s a two-hour show, so you have to factor that in.

  Like I said, I’m no expert, but maybe you should know someone for six episodes before you decide to marry him.

  Then Chris sent them a note that said, “Show me your country,” and the six women put on their bikinis.

  Wait, that came out wrong.

  And once the six women were properly dressed, they staged a tractor race in Los Angeles. The winner, Ashley, got to go on a date with Chris, which meant she sat on his lap and drank champagne while the other five women wished her dead.

  Then Chris asked out Mackenzie, while the other women watched and said he was “such a gentleman.”

  That, I didn’t agree with.

  A real gentleman waits until you’re out of the room to cheat on you.

  The leftover women felt sad. One was Tara, who got drunk, and said, “Tara always walks away empty-handed.”

  So now we know why she drinks.

  To fill up her hands.

  Though if you ask me, anyone who refers to themselves in th
e third person isn’t drinking enough.

  Chris took Mackenzie on a date and she told him she has a son and showed him a photo on her phone. Chris said her son is cute, and she said, “Chris has everything that I want in a guy and a father figure for my son.”

  You know what, that’s as good a test as any.

  Next, Chris flew on an airplane with Megan, but she didn’t know where they were going. Megan didn’t mind. She said, “I like a good mystery.”

  Yay!

  I write good mysteries.

  Think she reads me?

  Or hate-reads me?

  Later, they saw the Grand Canyon and had a picnic, after which Megan said, “Today, I am 100%, absolutely head over heels in love.”

  So am I.

  With a TV show.

  SWF Seeking Tamiflu

  Francesca

  Last week, I had the flu.

  Rather, the flu had me.

  More accurately, the flu ran me over in a truck, reversed back over me, then sued me for bumper damage.

  And I’m no baby when it comes to being sick. I’ve soldiered through many illnesses. I performed in my high-school musical with whooping cough, and I cracked two ribs from coughing. I had mono in college without knowing it.

  I’m a tough cookie.

  But the flu waged a sneak attack. It got me last Saturday when I was on a date.

  As if a single girl in New York doesn’t have it hard enough.

  We were seeing a Russian film, and somewhere between the grim middle and the grimmer ending, my throat started to feel really sore. Then a splitting headache. Soon teeth-chattering chills.

  I sent my date home without even a kiss on the cheek.

  I’m great at playing hard to get with a temperature.

  I thought it was a bad cold. I was sure my home-remedy voodoo would do the trick—neti pots and saltwater gargles, questionable uses for apple cider vinegar—but by Monday, I couldn’t stand up without feeling faint.

  And I live alone, with a cat.

  (And a dog, but he’s more likely to dial Domino’s than 911.)

  I’m at risk for Sad Single Lady Death. You know the fear. It’s the reason we chew our food slowly and step carefully out of the shower. It’s the nightmare scenario where you die alone in your apartment from something avoidable to non-spinsters, go undiscovered, and your cat does something that reveals it didn’t really love you anyway, like eat your face.

  I couldn’t allow this cliché to come true. So I did something no twenty-something likes to do: I found a doctor.