Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog Read online

  I remember because when we were making the memories, we were too busy to see, much less savor, the moment.

  That’s how we know we were good parents. Because we were too busy doing the laundry, cooking, vacuuming, clothes to the dry cleaner, hanging up pictures, bed-making, getting prescriptions filled, and, well, you get the idea.

  People ask me where I get the ideas for my columns and books, and the answer is that they all come from my heart. I even wrote an entire book, Look Again, about the letting go of a child. In the book, a mother gets a missing child flyer in the mail, and the photo looks exactly like her adopted son. She has to answer the question—does her son really belong to another family, and if he does, should she keep him or give him up?

  Oh, and by the way, she writes for a living.

  I write what I know.

  And what you know, too.

  Babies Having Babies

  I am on tour for my new book, so I asked daughter Francesca to help me out, as she explains below:

  When I was in high school, my mother’s book tour meant that I had the house to myself, and I would spend the month eating a lot of spaghetti and Top Ramen noodles (cooking = boiling water), staying up late watching cable TV (swear words! edgy!), and cursing myself for not having the guts (or the contacts) to throw a totally sick house party. Instead, I was one of the kids who had her first sip of beer from my grandmother’s Bud Light on Ice at ten years old and then not again until college.

  I know. Lame.

  Well, now I’m at the pinnacle of hip, young adulthood—I can order my own Bud Light on Ice, and I’m living in the Big City, the single mother to the cutest baby I know, my dog, Pip. I have a nice little routine—I work out at the local gym, I go to work, I walk the dog, I cook food that my roommate reluctantly but kindly eats, I get dressed up on the weekend in hopes of something exciting happening. Being a grown-up is easy!

  But that’s all about to change. I’m getting a new addition to my tiny family. And it was unplanned.

  Little Tony is staying with me during my mother’s book tour. He’s the puppy my mother got just a few months after I got Pip. She and I are like the puppy version of the Sarah and Bristol Palin; a mother-daughter team raising newborns at the same time. Listen, you can’t plan these things, not around national book tours and not around presidential elections.

  Every puppy is a blessing.

  Just not my blessing.

  See, there was a delicate balance to my life—one girl: one dog. This was enough to impress my friends, the way I blew right through the house-plant stage and onto the house-pet one (twenty-three-year-olds are easily impressed). But now, suddenly, there are two puppies in the house! Two dogs mean two walks, and two walks mean two pick-ups for two . . . well, you know. Who said I was ready for double duty? Much less double . . . ok, I’ll stop.

  And Little Tony is not city-savvy. Despite his wise-guy moniker, he’s a backwoods doggie, through and through. Far from the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, he thinks peeing on the sidewalk is gross but peeing in the apartment is fun. When I walk him here, he growls at the passing Maltipoos and Labradoodles and Cockadoodle-dos, as if to curse them for their bedazzled collars and fancy grooming appointments. ‘Go choke on your organic, free-range bison biscuit,’ he seems to say! Pip tongues a piece of said biscuit still stuck in his teeth and feels embarrassed for everyone involved.

  Me too, Pip, me too.

  But when my mother called me a week ago, sounding stressed and worried about leaving her baby (Tony, not me) behind, I had to offer to take him, and truthfully, I wanted to. I’m happy to be able to actually help my mother with something.

  I’m starting to realize that growing up is more than simply distancing myself from my parents. Learning to function as an independent entity, a family unit of one (plus a pet and some friends) is certainly part of it, but a joy and obligation of adulthood is learning to re-approach our parents, not as children, but as equals. All my life, my mother has loved and supported me, and growing up means returning the favor.

  I’m lucky that my mother is healthy and young, and she won’t need me to really take care of her for a good long time, if ever. But it’s nice to know that on the rare occasions she does need a little help, I can say, “I’m here for you.”

  For all the car rides to play practice, hair blow-outs before the big dance, countless home-cooked meals, fashion second-opinions, career advising, sick-day chicken soup and movie marathons, post-breakup pep-talks, and phone calls for no reason but I’m walking somewhere and I’d like to hear her voice—to repay my mom for all that a mother does, let’s just say, I would have to walk a lot of dogs.

  Ode to Hallmark

  Mother’s Day is a good time to address the question of Hallmark holidays.

  Bottom line, I’m in favor.

  As in, two thumbs way up!

  By way of background, a Hallmark holiday is defined by wikipedia.com, my guide in all matters, as “a disparaging term, used to describe a holiday that is perceived to exist primarily for commercial purposes.”

  In other words, Bah, humbug!

  To which I say, Lighten up!

  Why celebrate only for excellent reasons? Who can’t be bothered to give a greeting card unless it’s absolutely warranted? Or bring a present unless it’s supremely well-deserved?

  I celebrate any and all holidays, commercial or legit, religious or secular, without exception. Life is too short not to celebrate something, plus if you observe all the Hallmark holidays plus the national holidays, we’re only talking about thirty days max, which is still just a third of the time Europeans take for vacation.

  So kick up your heels!

  Especially on Mother’s Day.

  Anyone who calls Mother’s Day a Hallmark holiday has never given birth.

  OMG.

  How graphic do we need to get? If you were describing childbirth to an alien, where would you start? With the breathing and the sweating? With the contractions like Gas From Hell? With the fact that sometimes, as in my case, they had to fetch forceps and vacuums and everything else in the tool shed to yank daughter Francesca screaming from my body?

  You’re right. I don’t deserve a greeting card.

  I deserve a medal.

  And a new car. Plus the Prize Patrol should pull up in front of my house with helium balloons and a giant check.

  All moms deserve the same, whether they’ve been through childbirth or not, because we were there for our little monsters, whether they realize it or not. And before you get all feisty that I’m not including fathers, your day will come. But for now:

  Happy Mother’s Day!

  Mothers are the ones on the front lines when noses leak, tears need to be wiped, and prom dresses selected. Moms did things for us we don’t even realize and could never remember. We got to school each day, from kindergarten through middle school, washed and fed, lunches packed, with barrettes in our hair. How did that happen?

  Moms.

  I can’t even begin to tell you all the great things Mother Mary did for me, starting with letting me make jokes about her herein.

  When I was first published, she had a poster made that read LOCAL AUTHOR and drove around with it in the back window of her Dodge Omni. When I called to tell her that I made the New York Times bestseller list, she asked in amazement, “Does this mean that they read you in New York?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  She even called me last week after she heard about the swine flu, and told me not to eat bacon.

  That’s love.

  It’s not good information, but it’s love.

  In fact, basically any product recall, from peanut butter to baby strollers, she calls me. If a storm is heading my way, she calls me sooner than it’s on TV. Doppler radar has nothing on Mary Scottoline.

  Bottom line, she’s thinking of me every minute, and any news she hears, she relates to me.

  Anything I am I owe to Mother Mary.

  Doesn’t that merit a holiday?


  A three-dollar card?

  Some flowers? Chocolates? A book or a sweater?

  Is a thank-you so out of the question?

  Not to me. I’m on it.

  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

  I love you.

  And thanks.

  Unmentionable

  You may have heard about the bra that stopped a bullet. It happened in Detroit, where a woman heard a break-in at her neighbor’s house, went to the window, and a bad guy fired at her. The bullet shattered the glass, but was deflected by the underwire in her Miracle bra.

  It’s a Miracle, right?

  The story got me thinking that my underwire isn’t working hard enough. It would never save my life. It won’t even stay in place. All it does is ride up, making a red line across my breasts, as if it’s playing Connect the Nips.

  For this I paid $35.

  I’ve come to the conclusion that underwear is not worth paying a lot of money for. Ladies, if you want to economize, your undies are the place to do it. Sorry, undies manufacturers. And especially Spanx makers. You know how I feel about you.

  You’ll get yours.

  Anyway, why spend on undies? First off, nobody sees it. And if you’re lucky enough for somebody to see it, chances are they’ve seen it before. In fact, if you’re married, they’ve seen it 3,437,464 times before. By now they’ve memorized your bra rotation, including the one special bra that’s your trump card.

  Oh, admit it, girls. You have one. We all do.

  You don’t have to be a fembot to have a sure-fire underwire.

  Even nuns like me have a Good Bra. For church.

  But the truth is, the trump card loses its effect over time. Men develop an immunity, especially if the ball game is on. I’ve never met the push-up that can face down a World Series.

  Let’s get real.

  I never knew a lot about men to begin with, and I remember even less, but as I recall, they don’t really care about bras. It’s skin they’re after. If you really want to please a man, I’d save on underwear and put the money into NFL Season Ticket on cable.

  In fact, it makes me wonder whether men would spend what we do on undies. Take thongs, for example. I doubt you could talk a man into a thong, at any price. Men want cotton and comfort. They know their trump card is a steady job.

  I went through that phase where people told me that thongs were “so comfortable.” Liars, every last one of them. Thongs are comfortable only if you’re a fan of shoelaces. I saw that movie Man on Wire, about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. At one point, he sat on the tightrope and winced.

  That’s as close as a man will get to a thong.

  Plus, the less comfortable the thong, the more it costs. I saw thong prices go from twenty bucks to thirty, and I went back to my Hanes three-pack of cotton bikinis. Why pay more, for panties? In the end, I know they’re just going to end up as chew toys for the dog. My goldens stroll downstairs with them hanging between their teeth, usually when the UPS man is here.

  Hi!

  Plus cotton undies take no care at all. Throw them in the washer with your sweat socks and go. Even the Sturdy cycle, they can handle it. They’re Sturdy, by God!

  Contrast that with the care and feeding of your thongs. Children need less attention. The woman at the store told me I had to wash my thongs by hand, in warm water and Woolite, then lay them flat to dry. I did that approximately one time. I washed my thongs and set them drying on towels arrayed on the kitchen table. Which was when the UPS man came in.

  The curse of working at home is that the UPS man knows way too much about you. The upside is, you don’t care.

  So I went back to the store and they told me I could put the thongs in the washing machine, but I would need a special mesh laundry bag to protect them from the mean old hot water. And thongs have to be washed on the Delicate cycle, which I always forgot to put on. In time, they turned into expensive slingshots, and I gave up.

  I’m Sturdy, not Delicate.

  And I expect as much from my undies, even if they don’t save my life.

  Author Barbie

  Before I left for book tour, I had to get my roots done and buy new jeans.

  This would be the proverbial good news and bad news.

  I love getting my roots done, because it makes me feel like a natural blonde for one whole day. I try to schedule as many things as I can that day, just so I can stay out and march around, tossing my head like a shampoo commercial. Later I drive home fast, with the sunroof open.

  Wheee!

  Blondes do have more fun.

  But my blondeness evaporates by the next day, when I start to see a line of darkness advancing from my hairline like a storm cloud. In more recent years, I’ve begun to notice a few strands of gray—okay, maybe more than a few, like maybe Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein.

  Not a good look for me.

  To tell the truth, lately I’m longing for my black roots. In fact, I might even start dyeing my roots black.

  Or I could just save the money and buy a Sharpie.

  Either way, getting my roots done is fun, but shopping for jeans is my least favorite thing ever.

  Please tell me I’m not alone.

  Shopping for bathing suits gets all the bad press, but to me, shopping for jeans is much worse. If you’re shopping for a bathing suit, you’re steeled for bad news. Shopping for bathing suits is like the mammogram of clothes.

  Plus, most people don’t go bathing-suit shopping very often. I myself have been divorced as many times as I’ve gone bathing-suit shopping, not that there’s any connection. My goal in life would be to get divorced more times than I’ve been bathing-suit shopping.

  Then I could die happy.

  But shopping for jeans can blindside you, and catch you unawares. It should be easy, but it’s not. You might give yourself a day to find a pair of jeans, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough. You have to factor in your shopping time, plus the times you give up and go home in disgust.

  That’s like twelve days, right there.

  Buying jeans is much worse than buying swimsuits, mainly because there are five billion jeans companies and none of the sizes fit the same from one company to the next, except for one thing—the jeans are always too small.

  Hmmm.

  My favorite jeans used to be a super-comfy pair, but then people started telling me they were Mom Jeans. Evidently, I wasn’t allowed to look like a Mom, though I was one, and everybody said that if I kept wearing the Mom Jeans, I’d live a Lifetime of Celibacy.

  I’m halfway there.

  So I went shopping for jeans, grabbed a bunch of pairs off the shelf, then went into the dressing room, trying on one after the other. Nothing fit right. I could barely get them closed in my alleged size, and if I went up in size, they gapped in the back. All of them were too long, like by a foot. Except for one magical pair. Amazingly, I slid into them and they fit perfectly, but they had a button fly.

  Please.

  The salesgirl came in, parted the curtain, and said, “Lots of women like button flies.”

  “They would be in AP Bio, right?”

  She didn’t reply and went away, so I tried on two more pairs with no luck, then slid into the third pair and struck gold. They fit great, closed easily, didn’t gap at the back, and felt as good as my beloved Mom Jeans. The salesgirl came back, and I told her, “I love this pair!”

  “Cool. They’re so hot now. They’re Boyfriend Jeans.”

  “What?”

  “Boyfriend Jeans. You know, like if you stayed overnight at your boyfriend’s and the next morning you put on his jeans?”

  There were so many things wrong with what she was saying, I didn’t know where to start. I reached out and closed the curtain in her face, then took off the jeans and left the mall, reeling.

  So the only pants that fit me were men’s.

  And I didn’t have a boyfriend.

  And if I did, after I’d s
pent the night at his place, I would never dream of putting on his pants the next morning. That’s why they call it cross-dressing.

  Bottom line, I’m caught between Boyfriend Jeans and Mom Jeans.

  I bet Hemingway didn’t have this problem.

  Meals on Wheels

  I’m not sure when my car became my house, but I think it happened somewhere near Pittsburgh. And I bet I’m not the only woman who has a car house.

  I’ve been driving around for book tour, so I’ve been on the road for about four weeks. And you know what? I love it.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever move back home. My house is too big. And once you’re inside it, you have to walk around. In other words, exercise.

  In my car, everything I need is at my fingertips. I sit on my butt for miles and miles, yet I feel no shame. On the contrary, my car empowers me. The driver’s seat is my cockpit, and I’ve become the Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger of my own life.

  I can land my mothership anywhere. My parallel-parking skills have improved, and now I reverse with impunity.

  Bottom line, I used to think of myself as a homebody, but I’ve become a carbody.

  I do everything in my car, like the classiest homeless person ever. I sing at the top of my lungs. I dance in the seat. I take naps, sleeping like a drunk with my mouth open. I know this because when I wake up, my lips are dry and droplets of drool encrust my chin.

  I didn’t say it was pretty.

  I eat whenever I want, from drive-throughs. Or as we car-bodies say, Drive Thrus. One banner day, I got my breakfast from a drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts (decaf with sesame bagel), lunch from a drive-thru McDonald’s (Asian chicken salad without the chicken), and dinner from drive-thru Starbucks (turkey sandwich with iced green-tea latte). The day they build a drive-thru Sbarros, you’ll never see me again.

  I eat while I drive, even the salads. Here’s my secret—don’t dress it, forgo the fork, and use your hands.