Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions

by Lisa Scottoline

  They’re cadaver dogs.

  Kind of.

  Anyway, in five minutes, the contractor had opened the wall and found three dead mice.

  Presumably they were not blind.

  Still, I can live even with dead mice.

  I’m not a picky woman, and everybody’s just looking to keep warm for the winter, myself included.

  But just now, I was at my desk working on the computer when I happened to look down and see something dark, long, and skinny wiggling rapidly across the rug.

  All the dogs were asleep.

  Thanks, freeloaders.

  But to stay on point, at first I thought it was a worm, but it was moving way too fast, and my body shuddered instantly, because it figured out what the thing was before my brain did.

  A baby snake.

  I jumped up and said, eeeeek!

  Because I’m entitled.

  I ran to get a glass, returned to my office, and put the glass down in front of the baby snake, who undulated cooperatively inside.

  Yes!

  I mean yessssssss!

  Then I ran outside with the glass and left the snake in the backyard.

  So he could be a snake in the grass.

  It seemed only natural that there should be a living cliché in the backyard of a writer.

  I thought it was over until this morning, when I saw another baby snake crawling out of my heating vent in the floor.

  Eeeeeekkkkk!

  And now enough is enough.

  I can put up with spiders and mice, but I can’t put up with snakes.

  I thought instantly of the princess in the fairytale, but I want my happy ending.

  Which means that I won’t wait for a prince to save me.

  Because I might be waiting a long time.

  I can’t even get a dog to wake up.

  I’m going to find an exterminator.

  And I’ll live happily ever after.

  Moist

  By Lisa

  You have heard the myth of Sisyphus, the Greek king who was required to roll a massive boulder up a mountain, and when it reached the top, it would roll down to the bottom, so he had to start all over again, an endless exercise in futility.

  So obviously we’re talking about moisturizing your legs.

  Don’t ask me when I started moisturizing my legs, but it was back when I actually cared.

  I would shave my legs and moisturize them, because that was something you were supposed to do.

  We’re talking my twenties, thirties, and forties, and I used a variety of leg moisturizers. Those were the years I was married and divorced and married and divorced, so there was probably some correlation, the common denominator being that a man was seeing my legs, even if it was a man I loved and/or hated.

  In any event, I got very happily single, and while I was dating, I kept my legs as smooth as a Barbie doll. I was looking for Ken, and though I didn’t find him, I found an array of better things to do with my time. But I have to admit, my personal grooming fell down, limbwise.

  I didn’t always shave my legs, especially in winter, when I was not only celibate, but freezing.

  Still, I moisturized my legs every day, on girl autopilot.

  But then in my fifties, I stopped doing even that, even on special occasions, like if I had a book signing.

  God bless pants.

  And today’s the day that I might stop moisturizing my legs.

  I’m looking at them with new eyes. And I’m thinking of Sisyphus.

  Because the bottom line is that I’m fifty-nine years old and I’ve been moisturizing my legs for as long as I can remember, and it doesn’t seem to be working. Don’t tell me the difference is the product. In my student days, I used drugstore products, and then, when I made more money, I started buying moisturizers in the department store, thinking they would be better.

  They weren’t.

  The only difference was that department-store moisturizing creams were called crèmes, so they may have worked for the French, but not for me.

  I wised up and went back to the drugstore, where I bought a big white tub of good old Cetaphil, which is not coincidentally shaped like a rolling boulder.

  They should call it Cetaphus.

  Because the bottom line is, what purpose is all this moisturizing serving?

  If you have to moisturize your legs every day, what is getting moisturized?

  And why isn’t it staying that way?

  And if it isn’t staying moisturized, which it obviously isn’t, then why bother?

  It puts me in mind of some advice Martha Stewart gave somewhere, with respect to basting a turkey. Her cooking tip was that basting a turkey has no effect whatsoever. She said the moistness of the meat depended completely on how the turkey was raised and fed, then whether it was overcooked or not.

  So you see the analogy.

  Turkeys aren’t moisturized by basting.

  Women aren’t either.

  Maybe it lasts for a day, but that’s not long enough for me.

  That’s why I don’t make my bed anymore.

  So if I’ve stopped making my bed, I should stop moisturizing my legs.

  I’ve only been feeling this more strongly as I’ve gotten older and my skin has changed so much.

  And it’s not just that they’ve gone from dry to Sahara.

  The other day, I looked down at my legs and didn’t recognize them as mine.

  Or as even human.

  They were positively scaly.

  There are fish with better legs.

  Oh, wait.

  Okay, dragons.

  Not only that, but they’re insanely ashy.

  The Bible says we came from dust and to dust we shall return.

  But so soon?

  Still, there’s truth in the wisdom of the ancients.

  I don’t mean me.

  I mean the Bible and the Greek myths.

  You can’t beat Father Time with a tub of grease.

  OK Freud

  By Francesca

  I feel like I’m the last of my friends to try two things: online dating and therapy.

  I think I need both.

  Or more specifically, I think I need one for the other.

  I’m just not sure in which order.

  There are times in everyone’s life when you have a tough season. Mine was this winter, when I ended things with my long-term boyfriend and my grandmother passed away, within the span of a month. I knew why I was sad about my grandmother, that part was easy to understand. But within my sadness over the breakup, there was something else—fear.

  As in, that was a close one.

  I’m entering the Era of Big Decisions when it comes to love and life partners. What if I’m choosing the wrong partners for my needs and hopes?

  All of my exes have been great people, just ultimately not great for me. But I’m at an age where my next unsuitable boyfriend could easily become my unsuitable husband.

  Or my first ex-husband.

  And I want to nip that in the bud. Whatever I have within me, genetic or emotional, that could sow the seeds of a divorce, I want to pull out by the roots, now.

  Basically, I want couple’s therapy before I’m in a couple.

  One thing I’d want to fix in therapy is I want to dump dudes faster. Some people need help keeping a relationship together, I need help busting them apart.

  This is why it’s such a misconception that children of divorce don’t respect marriage as much as children from “intact” families. If anything, I’ve overcompensated. In a relationship, I’m a fixer, a helper. I expect to struggle and sacrifice more than I expect to have fun and be happy. I’m not a doormat, but I can be too forgiving for my own good.

  I need that inner referee to shout YERRRROUTT! after three strikes.

  Instead of thirteen.

  And in general, I feel like I could use an emotional tune-up, a fifty-thousand-mile checkup before the age-ometer clicks to thirty.

  So my quest to be a
nd to find a good partner has led me to my next question:

  How do you find a good therapist?

  Sure, I could ask my GP for a referral, but this is an important relationship. I don’t just need a phone number and a PhD.

  I need a match.

  I’ll be entrusting this person with my most intimate, vulnerable thoughts. And part of the bargain is I’d be privileging their opinion above my own. I’m entrusting them with my emotional health.

  What if my therapist has daddy issues?

  That would be the blind leading the blind.

  I’ve heard horror stories of bad therapists. Therapists who over-prescribe medication, therapists who only want to burn incense and analyze dreams, therapists who drive wedges where they’re supposed to build bridges.

  Friends tell me I should meet with a therapist and see how I like him or her, and that I’ll know if it’s a good fit or not.

  But if I knew who was a good fit for me, I wouldn’t need therapy.

  Because I recognize the ways my personality could make this evaluation process hard. One, I have too much respect for authority. I’m a Goody-two-shoes, a teacher’s pet, or, what they call in therapy-speak: a people-pleaser.

  See, I already learned the lingo. In case there’s a pop quiz.

  So it would be hard for me to trust my own opinion of a psychologist over a psychologist’s. That framed Latinate degree would look down on me from the wall, saying “whose name is on here, hmm?” They’re the experts.

  I just have to remember that I’m the foremost expert on Francesca Serritella. My life’s work is in the field.

  I can also see the ways in which I could be downright obstructionist to good therapy. I think upon first meeting, I’d be hell-bent on showing him or her how sane I am, how well adjusted, how insightful.

  I’d do anything to convince my shrink I don’t need a shrink.

  I’d try to be one step ahead of them. Already, when discussing relationships with my friends, I’m always prefacing my feelings:

  “I know this is the codependent in me speaking…”

  “I know I probably get this from my dad, but…”

  “I know…” “I know…” “I know, but…”

  But I don’t know.

  I’m just not sure I can admit that to a complete stranger yet.

  Other than you, that is.

  And if I did have some doubts about a psychologist I was seeing, how do I know when to jump ship? How much discomfort during therapy is part of the path to personal growth, versus just a dud therapist?

  What if there’s not a better one out there? What if the next one is worse?

  See this is already sounding like my problem with dating.

  In both cases, I’m afraid of making myself vulnerable to the wrong person.

  So I need OK Cupid for therapists.

  OK Freud.

  Sweet Tooth

  By Lisa

  Good news for people who live in the Philadelphia area.

  We’re one of the top thirty cities with the largest number of Sugar Daddies.

  Yay!

  I discovered this news item recently, after in-depth investigative journalism.

  In other words, somebody sent me a press release.

  This would be inside information into the workings of the modern-day newspaper business, by the way. The number of journalists is shrinking, so PR companies routinely send press releases to suggest news stories to the hardy few that remain.

  And to me, too.

  I don’t consider myself a real journalist.

  I’m comic relief to the real journalists.

  Nevertheless, I receive probably one hundred emails per day addressed to me as a Women’s Interests Reporter.

  Because somebody thinks Women’s Interests are different from Men’s Interests.

  To be fair, they might be right, but that’s a column for another day.

  I am a complete expert on Women’s Interests, but if I knew what Men were Interested in, I wouldn’t be Divorced Twice.

  So to stay on point, most of the press releases are glorified ads for new beauty products, hair gels, makeups, and the like, but today I received a press release advertising a dating website that was established for Sugar Daddies who want to meet Sugar Babies, to experience the Sugar Lifestyle.

  First, let’s define some terms.

  A Sugar Daddy isn’t that candy you remember, which was caramel taffy on a stick, guaranteed to take out a filling.

  According to the website, a Sugar Daddy is a man who is about forty-four years old, with a net worth of around $7 million.

  It doesn’t matter if he is a nice person, what he looks like, or what he thinks is important in life.

  He has $7 million in the piggybank, which is an acceptable substitute for everything else.

  Except maybe an actual piggy.

  Sugar Babies aren’t those chewy caramel taffy candies that you remember, either.

  According to the website, Sugar Babies are “attractive people looking for the finer things in life.” They “appreciate exotic trips,” “a luxurious lifestyle,” and “wealthy people.”

  The website doesn’t specify the age of your basic Sugar Baby.

  I’m guessing she’s out of the stroller, but not by much.

  Come to think of it, I’m not sure I believe that your basic Sugar Daddy is only forty-four years old.

  That would be your basic Sugar Son.

  Probably the ideal Sugar Couple would be a woman in a stroller and a man in a wheelchair.

  To sign up for the website as a Sugar Daddy, you have to agree to “pamper Sugar Babies in return for companionship.”

  If you are signing up as a Sugar Baby, you agree to “provide companionship in exchange for being pampered.”

  In other words, prostitution.

  Or maybe just pampering.

  Or pandering.

  The website suggests that you could also sign up as a Sugar Momma, but I would bet my last million bucks that there are very few Sugar Mommas.

  I say this as an expert in Women’s Interests.

  My bet is that most women are like me, and if I had $7 million, I wouldn’t be interested in pampering anybody but me.

  My Pampers days are over.

  Come to think of it, that sums it up completely.

  Most women have spent their entire lives taking care of husbands, kids, dogs, then the dogs of their kids.

  And in my case, the kids of their dogs.

  And by the time they reach the ancient age of forty-four, which is evidently their dotage in Sugar Years, the last thing in the world that most women want to do is to keep taking care of everything in sight.

  The website also defines the “Sugar Lifestyle,” in which “users are on the same page,” don’t have to “read between the lines,” and “know what they want.”

  I thought it would be simpler, being called the Sugar Lifestyle.

  I myself already live the Sugar Lifestyle, and it involves … Sugar.

  The small print says that relationships are easier when “goals and starting points are already set forth before entering said relationship.”

  How romantic.

  I went to law school, which was sexier.

  According to the press release, there are 2.95 Sugar Daddies per one thousand males who live in Philadelphia.

  I’m kind of wondering about the leftover .05.

  I seem to recall dating him.

  You’re Just Some Appliance That I Used to Know

  By Lisa

  There are joys to empty nesting, and they increase as the nest gets emptier.

  I just realized this the other day, when I was walking through my kitchen and there was a large object on my right that I barely recognized.

  My oven.

  It’s big and boxy and has four burners in the top, and I remember standing around it, doing something called cooking.

  But that might be a thing of the past.

  Because right now, I ca
n’t remember the last time I cooked.

  I looked at the oven and wondered if I could yank it out and replace it with a TV.

  Or better yet, another refrigerator.

  In other words, an appliance I really love, instead of one that I used to love.

  I think I broke up with my oven.

  It might have become my ex-oven.

  In fact, we have found Thing Three.

  It wasn’t always thus.

  When Daughter Francesca was growing up, I used to love my oven very deeply and I really did enjoy cooking.

  I’m not Mother Mary’s daughter for nothing.

  Cooking is part of my DNA. The Flying Scottolines have tomato sauce in our veins.

  And in the early years after Daughter Francesca flew the coop, I had fun cooking hot meals for myself, at least twice a day. I made a goat cheese and spinach omelet for breakfast, a nice arugula salad for lunch, and I always cooked fish, veggies, rice, or whatever for dinner, even though it was just me.

  I made a point of this, for my own psyche.

  I was proving to myself that I still mattered even though I lived alone, which was completely true, and I believed that somehow the trouble I went to for myself was proof of my self-worth.

  What a bunch of crap.

  I’m at the next stage of life, which is when you stop proving dumb stuff to yourself.

  You stop proving stuff altogether.

  You officially have Nothing to Prove.

  You don’t do anything unless you want to.

  You decide exactly how and when to spend your time.

  You stop doing things out of obligation, even to yourself.

  You realize that salmon is not related to self-worth.

  I think this is called maturity, and I wish it hadn’t taken me fifty-nine years to attain.

  Better late than never.

  Anyway, it’s not like I made a conscious decision to stop cooking, but all of a sudden I started thinking that salad would make a good dinner, or yogurt and honey, or a cheese sandwich.

  Now the way I see it is, I have so much self-worth that I should not put myself to the trouble of cooking for myself. It’s a strange thing, considering that cooking was so much a part of my life, but on the other hand, I have more free time at night to read, work, or watch TV—mainly, the Food Network.

  Now that I’ve stopped cooking, I watch more cooking shows than ever.

  Watching other people cook is the new cooking.