Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

by Lisa Scottoline

  My prostate’s fine, thanks.

  But a few months ago, I started to dislike the idea of being on a drug for the rest of my life. I began to take my award-winning cholesterol for granted. In other words, I was on a cholester-roll.

  Sorry.

  Also, Crestor cost a mind-blowing $400 a month, which my high-priced, top-drawer health insurance declined to cover. I pay for Personal Choice, but it turns out that the company is the one with the personal choice.

  They chose not to cover me, but I didn’t take it personally.

  Because they don’t cover anybody.

  My cardiologist even appealed, but they turned us down, so every month, I had four hundred reasons why I hated being on Crestor.

  On top of the many more reasons I have for hating my insurance company.

  So I asked the cardiologist if I could go off the drug and see what happened. He said sure, give it a try for three months, and told me to make sure I ate the right foods, exercised, and kept my weight down. So I did, experimenting on myself, throughout the summer. I became my own guinea pig, without the piggy part.

  I dieted, I worked out, and I hosted a visit by Mother Mary, which did wonders for my cholesterol because I forgot about it in favor of my blood pressure.

  But two weeks ago, I took one last blood test and just got back my cholesterol scores. And they were as disappointing as my SAT scores. Nothing I did worked. My cholesterol is back up to 233, which earned me another bold-faced HIGH, and my LDL is also HIGH again, at 129.

  So I’m back to being very, very good and very, very bad again, and you know what that means.

  I should divorce my insurance company.

  Final Curtain

  By Lisa

  More misadventures in home makeover, this time with curtains.

  I recently painted my family room myself, on a Type A tear, but I took the Scottoline route. By which I mean, I took shortcuts. Lots of them.

  I painted around pictures rather than removing them, and the paint only reached five feet six inches up the wall, which is my height plus my arm length, minus a ladder, which I don’t own.

  This would be the mathematical formula for do-it-yourself wainscoting.

  You could barely tell since I used the same color, which was white, but about two years later, I started hating that my walls were white. So I went crazy and hired real painters to make the family room a gorgeous yellow. And it looks so yummy, like melting butter on a stack of pancakes.

  If your walls look fattening, you picked the right color.

  But then I started to notice that I had no curtains in the family room.

  Correction.

  I have no curtains anywhere in the house. All my windows are bare. Sometimes this bothers me, like when I’m bare.

  But mostly I stay away from the windows at times like that, and there are only trees around me anyway. Still it’s a little creepy late at night, when I’m working in the family room and those scary commercials come on for Saw 5 and Hostel 6.

  I’m hostile to Hostel movies.

  I hate movies where people get murdered, especially when they distract me from writing novels where people get murdered.

  Anyway, since I was worrying about psycho killers and also classing up my house in general, I thought I’d get some curtains on my windows, but I didn’t know where to buy some. I asked Best Friend Franca, and she knew somebody who made them, and long story short, the curtain lady came over and showed me a yellow swatch, which was perfect, with cottony white flowers on a buttery yellow background. A few months later, the curtains were ready, and the lady came and put them up. I stood, watching in happy amazement. They looked beautiful.

  It wasn’t until the next day that I saw the problem.

  They were covered with black flecks.

  I didn’t see them from a distance, but close up, they were obvious. It looked like mold, and I panicked, running to check the furniture, to see how I had grown mold overnight.

  But I hadn’t.

  The only moldy things were the curtains.

  So I emailed the curtain lady, who called the manufacturer, and they said that the curtain material was supposed to be that way. The black flecks weren’t mold, but authentic bits of cotton seed, which was supposed to be in the fabric.

  This would be the proverbial good and bad news: Your new curtains aren’t moldy, they just look that way.

  My curtains have fake mold. Or in decorating terms, faux mold.

  I tried to visualize the flecks as something other than mold, but it didn’t help. They also looked like dirt, but I’d like to dirty my curtains myself, not have them come pre-filthy. The flecks also look like black pepper, but I can’t remember the last time I seasoned a fabric.

  It gives new meaning to a high-fiber diet.

  Meanwhile, I own a lot of cotton clothing, and none of it retains its cotton seeds. This would be like lumber that comes with its own family of squirrels.

  I went and checked my sample swatch, and it has no fake mold.

  In fact, I held the swatch up to the curtains, and they were so different, it looked like the Before and After pictures in a Proactive commercial.

  My curtains have blackheads.

  Then I realized what had happened. The swatch is only three inches by three inches, and if I looked hard enough on the curtains, I could find maybe one or two three-inch patches without the black dots, but they were the rare exception, not the rule.

  Bottom line, I’m calling the manufacturer.

  It’s a clear case of bait and swatch.

  Emotional Baggage

  By Francesca

  Old habits die hard.

  I was reminded of this many times during my mom’s last visit to New York. I had just moved into a new apartment, and my mom wanted to stay and help me set up my new place. In the process, she noticed my old television was gone; in fact, it had short-circuited and had to be thrown out.

  “I still can’t believe that TV broke already,” she said. “That was a new TV.”

  “We got it my freshman year of college.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mom,” I said. “That was seven years ago.”

  She looked stunned.

  Listen, I don’t like to face it any more than she does.

  She asked, “You couldn’t get a TV repairman to look at it?”

  “I don’t think they exist anymore. Anyway, it’d be cheaper to buy a new one.”

  My mom shook her head. “I sound like Mother Mary, don’t I?”

  I laughed. “Kinda.”

  We unpacked all day and ordered health-food takeout for dinner. After fifteen years living in a place so remote they can’t deliver a pizza, my mother thinks takeout-anything is paradise.

  “So we’ll have to get up early tomorrow morning to buy a new TV,” my mom said.

  “In this city, the Best Buy is open twenty-four hours.”

  Her eyes lit up. “You mean, we could see that new Sarah Jessica Parker movie tonight, then go?”

  “Why not?”

  We were getting crazy now!

  With our new devil-may-care attitude, we grabbed our things and hustled to the door. But mothers can only suspend their practicality for so long. She said, “Wait, you need a coat.”

  “I have a cardigan.”

  “It won’t be enough, you’ll be cold.”

  Did I mention it was August?

  But that doesn’t deter my mom. She said, “You’ll freeze in the air-conditioning.”

  We went back and forth about it. I know my mom only wants to take care of me like she always has, but I’m twenty-five years old.

  “I don’t want to carry a coat around!” I stamped my foot.

  Like I said, twenty-five years old.

  “Fine. Then let me carry it for you. It’ll make me feel better, okay?”

  I couldn’t argue with that. If she wanted to act like my footman, I figured I’d be a jerk not to let her. I gave in.

  It was almost midnight
by the time the movie had ended and we made it to Best Buy, my mother still schlepping the coat. The odd hour made the errand fun, the way being in school after hours felt reckless and exciting. But walking home with a brand-new TV in the city at midnight was crazy even for us, so I flagged down a cab to take us home.

  “Look at you, honey, hailing a cab like a real New Yorker!” my mom said.

  I love that my mom is easy to impress.

  After a short ride, we were back on the curb in front of my building, with me holding the TV box and my mom holding …

  Nothing.

  We looked at each other, then down the street, where we watched the cab turn the corner and disappear from view, with my coat inside.

  My mom turned back at me with a look of such cowering dread, like Kermit the Frog before a slap from Miss Piggy.

  I was surprised, what did she think I was going to do?

  Then I realized I was looking at the effects of PTTD—Post Traumatic Teenager Disorder.

  She thought I was going to give her a hard time, like I might have done when I was young and obnoxious. But I’ve grown up since then, and I wasn’t angry at all.

  “Aw, Mom, don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault, I forgot about it, too.”

  “But I was supposed to hold it for you!”

  “It was an accident, I leave things in cabs all the time, it’s so easy to do.”

  “You didn’t want to bring it!”

  “You just wanted me to be comfortable, it was nice of you.”

  “No, you’re the nice one. You’re the best daughter.”

  “Aw, I love you.”

  “I love you too!”

  We dissolved in a flurry of hugs and girl noises, my mom practically crying, my doorman rolling his eyes.

  Five minutes later, we were still hugging and telling each other how great we were, when a car honked.

  It was our cabbie, who had reappeared and was waving to us from his window.

  “Lady, you forgot this?” he called, holding up the coat.

  This was a New York miracle.

  We ran over, thanking him profusely. He was very sweet, trying to refuse my mom’s extra tip and our calling him a hero. We hugged him through the window, we were so happy.

  The new couple in the backseat were less thrilled.

  That night, I felt as if the universe was rewarding our new mature relationship, and the good karma of forgiveness brought the lost coat back to us.

  Every mother-daughter relationship is a work in progress. I’m learning not to play the blame game, and my mom is learning that I can dress myself. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong, sometimes we’ll get it right. And we’ll bore the tears out of every doorman in New York City.

  Old times were great, but the new era looks better than ever.

  Willpower and Won’tpower

  By Lisa

  Now I’ve seen everything.

  Apparently there are people in this world who are supposed to be working on their computers, but spend so much time cruising the Internet, playing online games, and posting on Facebook that they go out and buy an application to lock them out of their fun and games, so that they force themselves to use their computer only for work and research.

  I’m not making that up.

  The app is called Self-Control, and I’m not making that up, either.

  Once you install Self-Control, it can’t be disabled in any way, even by turning off the computer and restarting it. You install the app and set it for a certain amount of time, like three hours, and you get no access to any of your time wasters until the time is up.

  Amazing, right?

  And who are those people, who lack self-control to such an extent that they have to buy it?

  Well, for starters, me.

  In other words, if you lack maturity, there’s an app for that.

  I love this idea.

  I haven’t bought the Self-Control app, but I’m thinking about it, then I’m going shopping for all the other apps I need. Namely:

  Eat too much chocolate cake?

  There’s an app for that.

  Watch too much TV?

  There’s an app for that.

  Yap on the cell phone until it singes your cheek?

  There’s an app for that, too.

  With these apps, you can willingly give up your power to something that prevents you from having any fun at all.

  Sounds like my second marriage.

  Or, as I now think of it, my Thing Two app.

  What a concept! An app is a chastity belt, for your life.

  Here we are, living in the United States, a country that fought wars for its freedoms, and somehow we’ve come to the point where we have to pay a computer to take our freedoms away.

  Because a machine has more common sense than we do. Though we, allegedly, have the brain.

  Like the song says, lack of freedom isn’t free.

  Tell you what worries me about this.

  Watson.

  You know who that is, right? Watson is the computer who beat all comers at Jeopardy! Did you watch that? I did, with a sinking heart. The studio audience was all happy, full of shills for the IBM engineers who built Watson, but I feared for all of humankind.

  Why?

  Simple.

  How are we going to win anything if the computers start going on game shows?

  Mark my words. The cursor is on the wall, people.

  The smartphones are already smarter than we are, and now the computers will be raking in all the cruises and refrigerators.

  You can kiss that dinette goodbye, bucko.

  The price may be right, but you aren’t, when you play against your laptop.

  And it gets worse.

  I heard about an app that you install in your laptop, then you put your laptop between your mattress and box spring, and the app records your movements during the night. If you set the app’s timer to wake you up within a half-hour period, it will wake you up when you’re moving around the most. Theoretically, this would be when you weren’t in your deepest sleep, and you’d wake up refreshed.

  Okay, that’s officially scary.

  I want my computer asleep when I am.

  I don’t want my computer to know more about me than I do. The next thing you know, it’ll be sneaking around my bedroom, trying on my jewelry and sticking its fingers in my face cream. My laptop has its own sleep cycle, and it should stay out of mine.

  And what happens if you’re the kind of person who sleeps with four dogs, all of whom walk around the bed all night, scratching, snorting, and farting?

  I mean, who are these people who sleep with four dogs? And sometimes a cat?

  Okay, that would be me, too.

  That would create havoc with the app, if it was to measure the movement in my bed, which turned out to be Peach and Little Tony.

  But enough about the movement in my bed.

  In fact, there’s not enough movement in my bed, of late.

  Think there’s an app for that?

  Hairy and Crazy

  By Lisa

  It’s that time of year, when spiders beat a path to my door.

  I know.

  Still got it.

  As soon as I open my front door, big wolf spiders come from God-knows-where to run inside my house.

  Of course I can’t bring myself to kill them. Spiders are good bugs, even if they’re scary and creepy, so I turn a glass upside down over them, slide a paper underneath, then flip the entire assembly right side up and throw the spider back outside.

  But lately, I’m finding problems with my method.

  First, it means that I always answer the door with a glass in my hand, like a drunk. The neighbors and the UPS guys are starting to look at me funny. I tell them it’s because of the spiders, but the spiders hide when other people come over.

  My UPS guy winks. “Right, the spiders. Gotcha.”

  It doesn’t help that I usually come off slightly potted around this time of year, writing all day i
n sweatpants and frowzy hair, with my glasses cockeyed. It’s not a good look for a single woman, and about the only thing it attracts is spiders.

  Second, the spiders are onto me, and they think it’s a game. This morning when I opened the door to get the newspaper, I had to throw out a huge wolf spider, and just now, when I went to take the dogs for a walk, the same spider tried to get back in.

  And he was smiling.

  He was so big that between the spider going in and the dogs and I going out, it was a traffic jam of furry legs.

  Mine included.

  The furriest.

  Hey, it’s fall, and that’s how you know. My leg hair grows in, long and fluffy.

  That’s what women really mean when we say that we love the seasons. Half the year, we’re not shaving our legs.

  Men would never know, if I weren’t busting us. They’re too busy looking at our busts.

  Which are unhairy, generally.

  Or maybe that’s another column.

  To write when I’m drunk.

  Or you are.

  Anyway, the third problem with my method is that spiders network better than teenagers. They used to run in one at a time, but now each one is coming back with five hundred friends, and I bet they’re all on Facebook and Twitter, calling for a flash mob at my doorstep.

  They’re LOL. And I’m WTF?

  When four or five run at me, there aren’t enough glasses to catch them all, and at the end of the day, I have a dishwasher full of glasses used only by spiders.

  Half the time, there are no glasses left for my margarita.

  Er, I mean, Diet Coke.

  Plus, I don’t have time to clean up after insects. Who needs it? I live alone. I’m an empty spider-nester.

  I decided to use only the tallest glasses for spiders, but Daughter Francesca didn’t know that, and the last time she visited, I caught her drinking out of one. I yelped, “Eeek, a spider glass!”

  And she dropped it.

  It must be a buggy time of year, because I just read in the newspaper that parts of the southeastern United States are being invaded by hairy crazy ants. I’m not making this up, and that’s what they’re called.