Chick Wit

• ‘Tis The Season December 14, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I have great news.

  Elastic waistbands have gone public!

  Let me explain:

  The holidays are upon us, which means I have to go to the mall.

  Which is outside.

  By that I mean, I work at home, so I’m in sweats and fleece 24/7.

  My daughter calls it my teddybear clothes.

  Because she loves me.

  But really, I’m a slob.

  And working from home has only encouraged my slobbiness.

  I have an entire wardrobe of sweatpants.

  I even have dress sweatpants, in cashmere.

  They look like 1,000,000 bucks, which is about what they cost.

  Worth every penny.

  Anyway, since I live in sweatpants, I look at jeans as the enemy.

  Because they have a waistband.

  And a button.

  And a zipper.

  Jeans are like a denim chastity belt.

  Even though believe me, I’m chaste.

  Only Mother Teresa is more chaste than I am.

  And she’s dead.

  I’m only dead below the waist.

  But I digress.

  Because jeans feel so confining, I’ve dreaded wearing them, which is a problem for going out.

  Meanwhile, let’s pause for a moment and think back to the time when women had a pair of nice pants, usually wool and in navy or black.

  Mother Mary called them slacks, but you get the idea.

  There was no slack in slacks.

  They had a real waistband, usually with the button and a zipper, and they had a crease down the middle. I have them at the back of my closet, but I can’t remember the last time I put them on.

  Maybe people still wear them, but I don’t.

  Remember I warned you about the slobbiness.

  If I have to dress up for a signing, I wear black stretch pants with a nice jacket on top. No one knows my waistband is elastic.

  Until now.

  What’s funny is in the old days, I wore jeans all the time and dreaded putting on a pair of pants.

  Now I wear sweats all the time and dread putting on a pair of jeans.

  In other words, I’m devolving.

  Unfortunately my waistline is evolving.

  To return to point, I had to go shopping for presents, so I stuffed myself into jeans and left the house.

  I was walking around the mall for five minutes when I realized that no one around me was wearing jeans.

  What?

  Every single person was wearing sweatpants or a tracksuit or some kind of teddybear clothes.

  Drawstrings abounded, swinging back and forth.

  Yes, I stared at people’s crotches.

  Men and women, but mostly men.

  Bottom line I was the only throwback in jeans.

  What?

  Since when?

  This is great news!

  I could’ve been a teddybear, no problem.

  Meanwhile I had a vise around my waist, like a do-it-yourself hysterectomy.

  The only people not wearing some form of sweatpants were women who had gone in the complete opposite direction, wearing yoga pants showing a midriff.

  In December.

  Now listen, if I had a waist like these women, I’d probably show it off too.

  I spotted abs for miles.

  But still, even my chubby tummy was cold.

  By the way, no one was wearing shoes either.

  Everyone was wearing sneakers.

  I looked like something out of the 1950s, with my jeans and loafers.

  So bottom line, I bring tidings of great joy.

  ‘Tis the season for sweatpants in public.

  Truly Happy Holidays!

  Copyright © 2025 Lisa Scottoline

• Column Classic: Christmas With The Flying Scottolines December 7, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  It’s time you knew the truth.

  My childhood Christmases were not the norm.

  I’m reluctant to tell you because it makes the family look bad.

  But I’m a fan of the truth, especially if it’s funny.

  Here’s what happened.

  When I was little, The Flying Scottolines were a family of four, living in a tract house in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.  But my mother had a very large family and she was the youngest of nineteen children.

  Yes, you read that correctly.

  Nineteen.

  I had eighteen aunts and uncles.  Their age span was so large that some were dying while others were being born.

  Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

  What does this tell you about my family?

  I don’t even want to know.

  Let’s just say they were good Catholics.

  Maybe too good.

  What does that tell us about my grandmother?

  That she had more estrogen than the northern hemisphere?

  Can you imagine being pregnant nineteen times?

  It’s like a puppy mill, only with babies.

  By the way, my grandmother was married twice.  Her first husband died.

  You can guess how.

  His heart wore out.

  Before anything else, evidently.

  I would’ve said, Dude, before bedtime, maybe read a book instead?

  Anyway, when I was growing up, most of the aunts and uncles would come to our house for Sunday dinner and on holidays.  The house would burst with colorful Italian relatives, like in an Olive Garden commercial but not as well-dressed.

  Everybody brought potluck, which meant that we had 37 different kinds of pasta. 

  I adored all of my aunt and uncles, but my favorite was Uncle Mikey, the Fun Uncle. 

  He drove a convertible Thunderbird, love to sing and dance, and did God-knows-what for a living.  He loved to play with me and my brother, tickle us, and tell us dumb jokes.  But best of all, he always brought us presents on Christmas Eve, like Santa, only smoking a cigarette.

  All the other aunts and uncles would give us a Christmas gift by placing them under the tree for us to open on Christmas morning.

  But not Uncle Mikey.

  He would bring his gifts unwrapped, so we could play with them right away.

  Of course, we loved that, as kids.

  Delayed gratification was not in our vocabulary.

  I always noticed some tension between my parents and Uncle Mikey on Christmas Eve, and one year, the presents from Uncle Mikey stopped abruptly. 

  Bummer. 

  I asked my mother why, and that’s when she told me that Uncle Mikey’s presents “fell off a truck.”

  Not that that explained anything.

  I remember thinking that Uncle Mikey was the luckiest guy ever, always driving around behind trucks full of toys, just when things started falling off the back.

  What a guy!

  And he must’ve been the greatest catch, too, because when the toys fell off the truck, he caught them.

  Merry Christmas!

  Some kids believed in Santa, but I believed in Uncle Mikey.

  I didn’t care where the presents came from, only that I got them.

  Evidently, Uncle Mikey felt the same way.

  Then one day, after I had become an adult, I heard the term “fell off a truck” used in a movie.  And I learned that it meant the goods were stolen.

  Which is when I realized that Uncle Mikey wasn’t such a good catch, after all.

  No wonder Mother Mary made him stop.

  And no wonder the presents were never wrapped.

  And no wonder they were always the best.

  Because they didn’t cost him anything.

  The Flying Scottolines were receiving stolen goods.

  Luckily we didn’t end up behind bars.

  And so you get the idea.

  That’s who we were.

  Are you impressed yet?

  The truth is never impressive.

  It’s just real.

  And sometimes funny.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• Column Classic: Thanksgiving November 30, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline / Francesca Serritella

  Here is a true classic and the first column Francesca wrote while in college, before she became a regular contributor.

  Intro from Lisa Scottoline

  Thanksgiving is about family, so I thought I’d ask my 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. 

  Column Classic: Thanksgiving

  By Francesca Serritella

  

  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 and 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.

  Copyright © 2007 Lisa Scottoline / Francesca Serritella

• Reindeer Games November 23, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  The holidays are almost upon us.

  Let the game begin.

  What game am I talking about?

  Not food-shopping.

  Not gift-buying.

  Not home-decorating.

  I’m talking, of course, about Hide-and-Seek.

  That’s the game I play with myself, before every holiday season.

  Because invariably, people will be coming over, so I want to make the place look clean, and I get busy.

  No, not cleaning.

  Have we met?

  I don’t clean, I hide.

  By this I mean, I look around the kitchen and all of a sudden my eyes go automatically to piles of clutter that I’ve been ignoring all year, like:

  A stack of bills.

  Catalogs.

  Sweaters that need to go to the dry cleaner.

  Purses shoved in a kitchen chair.

  Books to be read.

  Yes, books are stacked everywhere in my house.

  I actually like that about me.

  And what I start doing is taking the piles and hiding them.

  This is so that when people come over, they’ll think I keep a clean house.

  But I know better, and now, so do you.

  Please tell me that I’m not the only one.

  Let’s play Holiday Hide-and-Seek!

  Yesterday I stuck all the bills in a tote bag.

  Luckily I have 327 tote bags, and I think I used up 150 of them.

  I moved the stack of catalogs to a drawer, but the drawer was already full of other catalogs.

  At least they were in good company.

  Have fun, catalogs!

  I put the sweaters that have to go to the dry cleaners in the trunk of the car, so I’ll take them the next time I go.

  Or more accurately, I’ll forget they’re in the trunk and drive around with them for the next three weeks.

  My favorite place to hide things for the holidays is the steps to my basement. This is because I am actually too lazy to take stuff all the way down to the basement, or sometimes it’s too heavy.

  Yesterday I actually put two dog cages on the basement steps and they slid right down to the bottom like they were sledding.

  How much fun is that?

  Another game!

  Clutter sledding!

  Except afterwards, I realized I couldn’t get down to the basement because there’s too much stuff on the steps for me to get by.

  To get toilet paper.

  How long can I hold out?

  I’ll let you know.

  After the holidays are over is when the chaos really begins.

  Because when you play Holiday Hide-and-Seek, you can forget where you hid all your stuff.

  You can’t find it anymore.

  The clutter has vanished.

  Or it escaped, like Clutter Houdini.

  Or maybe somebody sneaked in and stole my clutter.

  I played Holiday Hide-and-Seek, but I ended up playing myself.

  And every year, the same thing happens: I start to get overdue notices for bills that went unpaid over the holidays.

  I buy another copy of the book I hid because I couldn’t find where I put the one I bought.

  Or sometimes I end up with a stack of papers and This Is Not a Bill whatevers, and since they’re completely miscellaneous, I put them away to go through them later.

  By later I mean never.

  Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

  But that’s all a problem for another day.

  As of now, my house is clean.

  Or more importantly, it looks that way.

  Happy Holidays!

  Copyright © 2025 Lisa Scottoline

• Classic Column: Adults Only November 16, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  Lately, everyone’s talking about adulting.

  No, not adultery.

  Nobody even cares about that anymore.

  Nobody even knows that word anymore.

  Adulting is a made-up word that means trying to be an adult and doing the daily things that adults have to do, like paying bills, putting out the recycling, and establishing a savings account.

  Everyone online is talking and blogging about adulting, so much so that there’s even a backlash against it, with people claiming it’s sexist, boring, or overplayed.

  That’s where I come in.

  At the end.

  I always get wind of something when everyone else is sick of it.

  Just like I always hit the store and find out the sale was last week.

  But as for adulting, I’m a fan.

  I’m even a fan of the word.

  Usually I don’t like trendy, made-up words, but this one makes sense, and honestly, I’ve thought for a long time that adulthood should come with a basic book of instructions, so you know the myriad things that are expected of you, from the macro level like Be Kind To People And Animals, down to the micro level like You Can Wash Your Hair With Dishwashing Liquid if You Run Out of Shampoo, and Vice Versa.

  See, did you know that?

  Well, it’s true.

  Take it from me.

  Don’t ask how I know.

  To stay on point, maybe that’s what happens as we get older.  We accumulate all kinds of little tips for living, which not only help you do the right thing but also make your life easier.

  For example, Tell The Truth is always the right thing.

  But you know what will make your life easier?

  You Can Pick Your Teeth With an Envelope If You Don’t Have A Toothpick.

  See?

  That’s a quality life tip, right there.

  Let’s call it adulting, so we feel trendy.

  I read online that there was a library giving classes in adulting, and I applaud that.  It’s just another thing to love about libraries, though between us, I feel like I could teach an adulting class, with tips like:

  Clean The Lint Trap On The Dryer Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  Change The Oil Filter On Your Car Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  Don’t be Weird About Going To The Doctor Or Something Bad Will Happen.

  We can all agree on those adulting tips.  And then there are ones that only I know:

  Drink Half & Half When You Run Out of Milk Because It Tastes Like Milk, Only Better.

  Don’t Buy Foundation Because It Wears Off After Two Hours And If It Doesn’t, It Was Too Thick In The First Place.

  Don’t Cut Your Hair When You Think You Need To Because That’s When It’s Starting To Look Good.

  Buy Cheap Bras Because They’re Always More Comfy Than Expensive Ones.

  And, Buy Back-ups Of Everything, Especially Toilet Paper.

  Agree or disagree?

  But even though I have learned a few things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m super successful as an adult.

  In fact, I screwed up as an adult just today.

  What happened was that yesterday afternoon, I was standing outside with the dogs and I felt a gnat around my face.  I tried to wave it away, but by mistake, I batted it into my eye.

  So right there, not quality adulting.

  In fact, that’s an epic fail, as the kids would say.

  Of course, they said epic fail three years ago.

  I just got now got wind of it.

  Which would probably be the definition of an epic fail.

  But anyway, the gnat was in my eye, so I washed my eye and thought I’d gotten it out.  It bothered me the rest of the day, but I figured it was irritated and forgot about it.  I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and looked in the mirror.

  And what did I see?

  Well, nothing, out of one eye.

  It was all black.

  Because there was a dead gnat on my cornea.

  Yes, I slept all night with a bug in my eye.

  It must have drowned in my eye juice.

  But I slept great.

  Maybe it was a sleeping bug?

  Anyway, I’m not proud of this.

  No matter how you slice it, it’s not quality adulting.

  I’m pretty sure that if I taught a course in adulting, the first lesson would have to be:

  Don’t Sleep With Bugs In Your Eyes.

  So I’m not always perfect.

  But above all, It’s Okay Not To Be Perfect.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline