Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

by Lisa Scottoline

  There was even a table with a couple who wasn’t talking, and between them sat their toddler, who was watching Winnie The Pooh on a portable DVD player. I guess they brought the video so their child wouldn’t interrupt their not interrupting each other. The only one talking at that table was Tigger, who was interrupting Pooh.

  Tigger’s excited!

  And help me out here, but don’t you think that your opinion on interrupting depends on whether you run on estrogen or testosterone?

  Case in point. I didn’t even realize that anyone thought interrupting was rude until my second marriage. Thing Two did not like to be interrupted. One day, he said to me, “Will you ever stop interrupting me?”

  I answered, “Why?”

  So you can see how it didn’t work out.

  And in my experience in aggravating people, I’ve noticed that women are never aggravated when you interrupt them, and men always are, based on my sample of Thing Two and a couple of testy dates, which I admit might be statistically slim.

  The exception is Chris Matthews.

  I love Chris Matthews. I should have married Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews interrupts all the time and doesn’t even apologize. On the contrary, the whole point of his TV show is interrupting, which he has redefined as a sign of intelligent conversation. This was a genius move by a guy who just likes to interrupt. It’s not rude, it’s Hardball.

  It’s the boy version of Excited!

  Compare and contrast with The View, a TV show in which four women are always interrupting each other. It’s not seen as intelligent conversation, it’s seen as a hen party.

  So please, discuss among yourselves the issue of interrupting.

  And remember, show your excitement!

  Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving is about family, so I thought I’d ask daughter Francesca for her thoughts about the day. We spend so much time talking to and teaching our children that sometimes it’s nice just to ask them what they think, and listen to the answer. So take a minute this Thanksgiving to ask your own baby birds what they think about the day, and listen to whatever they chirp up with.

  Because I bet that the thing that you’re most thankful for is them.

  From Francesca:

  My family is small. Since it’s only my mom and me at home, our Thanksgiving has never been the Martha Stewart production it can be for some other families. My dad’s family has Thanksgiving in New York; my grandmother and uncle have Thanksgiving in Miami. My mother and I buy a last-minute turkey, make up some wacky ingredients for a stuffing, and eat together with Frank Sinatra playing in the background and a lot of warm, furry dogs warming our feet. It has always been nice, and I know we’re lucky to have each other, but sometimes it has just felt small.

  Until Harry.

  Harry is our neighbor, he’s in his eighties, and we got to know him from running into him when we walked our dogs. He used to go for a long walk every day, waving a white handkerchief so cars would see him. He would stop to chat with us, always cheery and warm, even when the late-autumn wind made his nose red and his eyes tear.

  A few years ago, my mom invited Harry to our Thanksgiving dinner, and he arrived at four o’clock sharp, wearing a cozy, Icelandic sweater and graciously removing his Irish tweed cap as soon as he came inside. During dinner, my mom asked him about his hobbies, and to be honest, I didn’t expect this to be the most thrilling conversation topic. After all, my grandmother’s hobbies are crosswords and yelling at my uncle. But Harry’s face lit up at the question.

  “I’m a Ham!” he said.

  We didn’t get it.

  And with that, Harry turned into a live-wire. He talked about his hobby as a Ham Radio operator, a mode of amateur radio broadcast first popular in the 1920s. Harry told us all about using radio technology while serving in WWII, and we sat, rapt, as he described sending a signal into the air, bouncing it off the stratosphere, and bending it around the earth. He seemed like Merlin, hands waving in the air-his fingers had lost their quiver and his watery eyes were bright and shining.

  Well-meaning, but being somewhat of a teenage buzz kill, I asked, “Have you ever tried email? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  No, he said. He enjoys the effort-a foreign concept in my wireless Internet, instant-messaging world. Even though ham radios can communicate through voice, he still uses Morse code sometimes, just for the fun of it. Most of all, he enjoys belonging to the community of Hams. “I get to meet people I would never meet. I have friends around the world.”

  That night, it didn’t matter that Harry and I didn’t share a last name, or that we didn’t share the same relatives or the same nose. That Thanksgiving, he was family. He still is.

  What Harry and my mother taught me that Thanksgiving, whether they knew it or not, was that you don’t just get your family, you can create your family. We do it all the time without realizing it; we form bonds with the people we work with, live with, learn with. I’ve felt homesick up at college, but I’ve also created my own little family of friends at school. I hope all those brave soldiers overseas have found second families in their comrades, people to support and lean on when they’re forced to be away from loved ones at home.

  These second families don’t replace our first one, they just extend it.

  It wasn’t until that Thanksgiving with Harry that I really got it: there are no rules for what or who makes a family, no limit on love. The holidays especially are a time when we can reach out and say “thank you” to all the people who make up our many families. And sometimes, if you’re lucky like me, Thanksgiving can even be a chance to set an extra plate at the table.

  Looking out the dining room window, I can barely see Harry’s house for the trees. But inside that house is a man who is not alone. There lives a man who is an expert at reaching out to people, whether by angling radio waves around the globe, or by flagging us down on a walk around the block. He has us, he has our other neighbors, he has friends around the world. Even better, we have him.

  And for that, I am thankful.

  Priceless

  I’m going to tell you the secret behind successful holiday shopping. And it’s contrary to everything you have learned.

  They tell you that when you’re giving a gift, you should give the other person what they like, not what you like. Well, that credo is exactly, one hundred percent, wrong.

  I used to do my holiday shopping just that way. I’d pass up beautiful stuff that any sane person would love and I’d waste good money on stupid junk. The rationale was that if they were happy, I was happy.

  But I wasn’t.

  I recognized this credo as codependency in disguise. I was enabling bad taste and bad judgment. Now, I am codependent no more. If they want Big Mouth Billy Bass, they have to buy it themselves.

  And worse, I used to ask people what they wanted, which was the biggest no-no ever. Every Christmas, I would ask my mother, and she would tell me. Problem was, everything my mother wanted was impossible to find.

  One year, she wanted a knit poncho. Another year, a nightgown with no elastic at the wrists. A third, a perfume she remembered from World War II, called Pois De Senteur, which I think translates to Peas of Health. I gave up after six stores and bought her a bottle of Joy. Her Christmas was joyless.

  Then I wised up.

  I stopped asking her what she wanted and started getting her what I wanted. And the ironic part is, I learned this from my mother herself.

  My mother never gave me what I wanted for Christmas, but gave me only what she wanted. For example, when I was in middle and high school, she fell in love with what she called “estate jewelry.” To this day, I have no idea what “estate jewelry” really means. I don’t think she did, either. I bet she liked the “estate” part, which sounds classy. If you put “estate” together with “jewelry,” you get a mental image of glittery people in tuxes, swanning around mansions. But in truth, I suspect that the term refers to jewelry left by someone who has died, which nobody in her family wan
ted, even though it was free.

  Do you understand the significance of this?

  In other words, even if her family loved this woman, they didn’t want that jewelry, which should give you an excellent idea of what estate jewelry looks like, or, at least, the estate jewelry that my mother picked out for me. She gave me a bronze brooch shaped like a spiked sun. A snake bracelet, complete with scales and a forked tongue, that curled around my upper arm. A pendant with a blue ceramic eye in the center.

  The kind of junk that turned my jewelry chest into Pandora’s box.

  Back then, my mother gave me estate jewelry like it was going out of style, which it was, by definition. Undoubtedly, it cost way too much of her secretary’s salary, so I opened my presents from her with a guilty and sinking heart. On the bright side, I had the best brooch collection of any thirteen-year-old, ever.

  I know I sound like a terrible person, whining about this, but here’s the point, about why you should buy people what you want:

  Because now, over time, my thinking has changed, and so has my taste in many things. Today I look at the jewelry she gave me through the lens of perspective and maturity. Do I still find it unbelievably ugly?

  Of course.

  I would sooner go braless in the emergency room than wear one of those brooches, and we both know how I feel about emergency-room bralessness.

  But nevertheless, now I treasure each one of these pieces of jewelry. Each one of them has enormous sentimental value to me. Each one reminds me that my mother spent money on me that she didn’t have. Each one tells me how much she loves me. Each is the best present I could have gotten, for that holiday or any holiday.

  And why?

  Because my mother gave me things that she loved. So when I look at all that awful stuff, I see what I love the most.

  Her.

  Holiday Guilt

  We all have so much to do around the holidays, and it can be hard to prioritize. But I have a secret weapon that you might like, too, so I’ll fill you in:

  My secret weapon is guilt.

  I no longer try to free myself from guilt. Instead, I welcome guilt and put it to work for me. I built myself a Guilt-O-Meter with a 1-10 scale, which I consult whenever a task presents itself. If it’s a task I’d feel too guilty to ignore, the needle on the Guilt-O-Meter goes to 10, and I do it right away. For example, work scores a 10 on the Guilt-O-Meter, so I work a lot. This is good for my mortgage payments, if not my social life, but whatever. Life is too short to live with guilt. I say, do what your guilt tells you.

  Right now.

  On my Guilt-O-Meter, all housework scores between 1 and 3, except for ironing or cleaning my closet, which are both 0. Recycling is a 10, but rinsing the bottles first is a 2. Working out is supposed to be a 9, but it’s secretly a 5. Accumulating late fees at the library is a 7, but at the Blockbuster, it’s a 2. Why? The former is guilt-inducing, and the latter merely annoying. This isn’t about the Merely Annoying-O-Meter.

  Of course, you don’t have to agree with my scores. Use them as guilt guidelines. Feel free to customize your Guilt-O-Meter.

  Pimp your guilt!

  My Guilt-O-Meter malfunctions during the holidays because there are too many tasks for its sensitive needle. There’s no guilt like Christmas Guilt. Just ask Ebenezer Scrooge. And it’s not only Christmas Guilt. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, and when my friends told me they got Hanukkah gelt, I thought they said Hanukkah guilt. Now I have Hanukkah Guilt, too.

  During the holidays, my Work Guilt conflicts with so many other guilt options. Not-Sending-Out-Greeting-Cards Guilt is a 6. Cat-Hair-in-Scotch-Tape Guilt is a 5. However, Gift-Wrap-Without-Ribbon Guilt is a 0.

  Let go of the ribbon thing, people. We can only do so much.

  My Guilt-O-Meter failed me recently, and it was all because of the holidays. One morning, I woke up in a paroxysm of Gift Guilt because I hadn’t bought a single present yet. A paroxysm is off the Guilt-O-Meter, scoring a 283,949. Paroxysms are usually reserved for Forgetting-Your-Mother’s-Birthday Guilt, which I don’t have, or Accidentally-Cutting-Your-Dog’s-Ear-When-You-Clipped-Her-Fur Guilt, which I do.

  Anyway, when I woke up in the paroxysm, I knew I had to get to the mall immediately. I hurried to the bathroom, where I noticed that the toilet flushed too slowly. I needed to get it checked, but calling a plumber scored only a 1 on the Guilt-O-Meter. I made a mental note to call him later, then clean my closet and iron something.

  I dressed, hurried downstairs, and got a drink of water. Oddly, the garbage disposal was backing up, so I took another Guilt-O-Meter reading. A broken garbage disposal rated only another 1. I figured I’d call the disposal guy after I called the plumber after I cleaned my closet and ironed something.

  So I went to the mall, shopped all day, and bought so many presents that my Gift Guilt fell to 0. My Credit Card Guilt upticked to 3, but that’s comfortable for me. I left the mall happy, or in any event, much less guilty.

  But when I got home, there was bad news. I’ll try not to be disgusting, so I’ll just say that the toilet had exploded and my first floor hallway was awash in human waste. I called the plumber and told him what happened, and he asked:

  “Is it an emergency?”

  Hmmm. I knew why he asked that. Because he was taking a Guilt-O-Meter reading of his own, and Exploding-Toilet-on-a-Friday-Night Guilt was only a 2. Especially when it was Somebody-Else’s-Toilet-Around-the-Holidays Guilt.

  I bet I reached him at the mall.

  For a crazy minute I was stricken with Asking-For-Help Guilt. My Guilt-O-Meter needle shot up to 8, and the wimp inside me said, “Lisa, you meanie, you’re asking him to work on the weekend.”

  Then I flipped it.

  I work on the weekend, so why shouldn’t the plumber? Work = 10. His Guilt-O-Meter was clearly on the fritz. Anyway, I was pretty sure that if you looked up emergency in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of my first floor hallway.

  I told the plumber, “You’re darn tootin’ it’s an emergency, buddy.” Then I put on my galoshes, grabbed the Clorox and a mop, and started cleaning.

  So take a lesson from me. This holiday season, let your guilt be your guide.

  Except when it comes to plumbing.

  Thank You

  Lots of people travel around the holidays, and I’m no exception. I’ve been driving around like crazy, and if I’m driving, that means I’m getting lost.

  Luckily, my car isn’t.

  I have one of those navigation systems, so my car knows where it is at all times. Yesterday, when I missed the turn for I-95 and found myself in Saddle River, New Jersey, it told me to take two left turns and a right, which set me instantly back on track. It even located me near the rest stop, so I could go to the bathroom. I think it knew I had to go to the bathroom.

  In fact, it’s so smart it could probably go to the bathroom for me.

  Not only that, if I press a button, my navigation system will tell me where all the other rest stops are in New Jersey, so I have a complete array of rest stop options. After all, I may be feeling more Joyce Kilmer than Vince Lombardi.

  I love my navigation system very deeply. It’s always there for me, wherever I am. It asks nothing of me, but does its job competently and professionally. It even has a cute little accent, of indeterminate origin. And though it’s always right, it never says I-told-you-so.

  If I could marry my navigation system, I would.

  I would even vow to love, honor, and obey it. Because the only times I’ve gone wrong are when I haven’t obeyed my navigation system. In fact, my navigation system is the only thing in the world I will ever obey.

  I feel almost as good about my cell phone. The other day I realized that I had forgotten the date of a doctor’s appointment, but I didn’t have the doctor’s phone number to call them and ask. I called 411, but they didn’t have the number either, for some reason.

  Luckily, my cell phone is smarter than I am.

  It remembered that I had called the
doctor once before and it kept the number, even though I didn’t. So I called the doctor and found out that I had missed my appointment.

  If my cell phone had had the appointment, it would have been there.

  And now there are cell phones that not only remember your doctor’s number, but even have a navigation system. Those cell phones are going to take over the world. I advise you to get one, before it gets you.

  My TV is a brainiac, too. I was watching it when all of a sudden a little sign came on the screen, reminding me that I had wanted to record a show that was playing on another channel. Of course, I had totally forgotten that I wanted to record the show, but my TV remembered. Unfortunately, it couldn’t remind me why I had wanted to record such a dumb show. But that may be too much to ask of a TV.

  Until next year.

  Then, our TVs will record shows that we meant to record, but forgot to. And shows that we didn’t want to record, but should have. And shows that they don’t even make, but they should. Like funny ones.

  The other day, I got to thinking about how lucky we are to live in a country in which we are so well taken care of. Our navigation systems, cell phones, and televisions are working hard for us, when we aren’t. They have our lives in hand, so we aren’t bothered. They ask nothing in return. They don’t even resent us when we don’t say thank you.

  They free us to do what we want to do.

  They give us peace of mind.

  This holiday, we’ll all be giving gifts like crazy, tons of navigation systems, cell phones, and TVs. I’m going to be giving them, too, so my family and friends will always be able to see whatever dumb show they want to see. So they’ll be able to talk to whomever they want to talk to, and say what they want to say. And so that no matter where they go, whenever they get lost, they can always find their way back home.

  And this holiday, when I give gifts to the people I love, I won’t forget for a minute the people serving so far away in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all around the world, who are giving all of us the gift of their very selves.