Chick Wit Archives – Lisa Scottoline

Classic Column: Just Desserts

June 7, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

It can be a problem when your kid comes home to visit. You’re not used to living together, and even the littlest thing can cause a fuss.

For Daughter Francesca and me, it was dessert.

We’re finally on the same page, food-wise, which is a nice way of saying that we’re both trying to lose weight, so we’re eating healthy foods. She’s home this weekend, so for dinner I made politically-correct pasta. By which I mean, I sautéed a few tomatoes in olive oil with whole cloves of garlic, and when the mixture got soft, I took it out of the pan and dumped it on top of whole wheat spaghetti.

By the way, the best thing about this recipe, which I invented, is that it uses garlic without having to chop it up. I hate it when my fingers smell like garlic, and I don’t buy garlic already chopped, because that’s cheating. But this way, if you toss whole cloves in the pan, they get mushy, and you can mash them with a fork. Mashing is more fun than chopping, and doesn’t involve your fingers.

You pay nothing extra for these culinary tips.

Go with God.

And before I tell you about the fight, let me mention also that I’m working on portion control. I know that’s my main problem. This should have been a reasonable-calorie dinner, even though it’s pasta, but I always up the ante by getting a second and a third helping. You might ask, why do you make so much food in the first place, Lisa? The answer is simple.

I’m Italian.

Actually the truth is, I like to make extra of everything, like scrambled eggs, so I can give some to the dogs. Every morning, I make six eggs, knowing that I’ll eat two and give them the rest. They wait patiently during my breakfast, knowing that their eggs will come. It’s all very easy.

But I was doing the same thing with whole wheat pasta, making extra for the dogs, until I realized I was using them as my portion control beard.

I busted myself and stopped.

To stay on point, I made a delightful spaghetti meal, and Francesca made a side salad. We had a fun dinner, yapping away and trying not to eat more helpings of pasta, even though I was calling to us from the colander. When we finished our meal, I wanted dessert.

This, I can’t help.

I love to eat dessert right after dinner. And when I say right, I mean immediately. Timing is everything. It doesn’t have to be a lot of something, just a taste. It’s not my fault, and I figured out why this is so:

It’s because dessert sounds so much like deserve. Also, we say that people get their just desserts, which means they get what they deserve. So, ipso fatso, I feel as if I deserve dessert.

Right now.

But Francesca doesn’t like dessert right after dinner. She can wait, which I consider a four-letter word.

This is a long-standing battle we have, because I like us to eat together, and the conversation usually goes like this: I ask her, “Want some dessert?”

She answers, “No, thanks. We just ate.”

“But don’t you want something sweet? I’m having mine now.”

“No, I’m not hungry for dessert yet.”

I get cranky. “When do you think you’ll want dessert?”

“I don’t know. Later.”

“Sooner later or later later?”

Okay, so usually I don’t eat my dessert then, and we retire to the family room, where we watch TV and work, and I spend the rest of the night asking her, “Is it later yet?”

Just like she used to ask me, “Are we there yet?”

Payback, no?

So last night, I figured I’d solve this problem. All I wanted was a small helping of vanilla ice cream, with a banana. And because I wanted it right after dinner, I decided to have it then. If I had to eat alone, so be it. Plus, this way I’d have more time to burn off the calories, by reaching for the remote throughout the evening.

So I had my ice cream and banana.

Delicious.

But then what happened is that sometime around nine o’clock, Francesca sauntered into the kitchen and returned with a small plate of vanilla ice cream. She strolled over to the couch, sat down, and started eating.

I stared at her, along with the dogs.

It looked so delicious. I could almost taste it on my tongue. In fact, I could taste it on my tongue, because I had it two hours ago.

Two whole hours ago.

So you know where this is going.

I had to have a second dessert.

I told her it was her fault, and we had a fight.

In the end, I apologized, because she was right.

And I got what I deserved.

Classic Column: Bizarro Birthdays

May 31, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

I just got off the phone with Mother Mary, who’s lost her mind. Or maybe it’s Scottoline birthday madness.

Let me explain.

She told me a story that happened to her that day, when she was going outside to do the laundry.

Yes, you read that right.

She lives in Miami with brother Frank and she goes outside to do the laundry because they keep their washer and dryer in the backyard.

This makes no sense to me, but she swears that it’s common in Florida to keep major appliances in the backyard, like shrubs with twenty-year warranties.

Still, it’s hard for me to believe. I suspect that my mother and brother are redneck Italians.

But never mind, that’s not the point of the story.

So Mother Mary is going outside to put in a load of laundry and she sees one of her neighbors, a nice young woman, walking her two-year-old son by the hand. My mother stops to say hello, and the little boy looks up at her with big blue eyes and says:

“I love you, Mary.”

So of course my mother melts, because she loves kids, and she even gets choked up telling me on the phone. The whole story is sounding really sweet until she gets to the next part, which is when she asks the mother of the toddler when is his birthday, and the woman answers:

November 23.

Okay, means nothing to you, but that’s brother Frank’s birthday.

And on the phone, my mother tells me: “I looked at that little boy, and I thought he was like Frank. Like he has your brother’s soul.”

I thought I heard her wrong. “Pardon?”

“When he said he loved me, I looked into his eyes and I could see his soul, and it was Frank’s soul.”

“You mean they’re alike?”

“No, I mean they’re the same.”

I tried to deal. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’m telling you, he has the same exact blue eyes as Frank and he was born on the same day. He has Frank’s soul.”

“Ma, Frank still has his soul. He’s not dead yet.”

“I know that,” she said, irritably. “They share the same soul.”

“Ma, that’s crazy.”

“Sorry, but I know, I can tell. Remember the earthquake?”

This shuts me up, temporarily. It’s matter of public record that Mother Mary was the only person in Miami to feel an earthquake that took place in Tampa, and the South Florida newspapers even dubbed her Earthquake Mary. Ever since then, she thinks she’s Al Roker, but supernatural.

She said, “It’s the same soul. Absolutely.”

“Ma, just because they have the same birthday doesn’t mean they have the same soul.”

“Hmph. What do you know, about birthdays?”

She was referring to something I’ll never live down, which happened to me over thirty years ago, when daughter Francesca was three years old. I had taken her in a stroller into an optician’s shop in town, and a man walked through the door, pointed directly at Francesca, and said: “Her birthday is February 6.”

I was astounded. “How do you know?”

“I just do.”

I went home that day and called my mother. “Ma, some guy just guessed that Francesca’s birthday is February 6! Isn’t that amazing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because her birthday is February 7.”

I blinked. “It is?”

“Yes, dummy.”

Look, I have no idea how it happened, but for the first three years of Francesca’s life, I celebrated her birthday on the wrong day.

Sue me.

Maybe it’s because I was in labor for 349,484 hours, so the exact day she was born seemed like a technicality. And since then, it was just she and I celebrating a day earlier, with nobody around to know better.

So now I can never say anything about birthdays, ever.

But at least I know where everybody’s soul should be.

And their washer-dryers, too.

Giuseppe Scottoline

May 24, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Recently I mentioned that I received an award from International Thriller Writers called the ThrillerMaster, which makes me sound a lot more exciting than I am.

The award was a lifetime achievement award for writing, and I’m so grateful for it, especially to my readers.

But I’m not bringing it up to brag, but to tell you about the subject of my acceptance speech – my grandfather Giuseppe Scottoline.

Giuseppe came to the United States from the town of Ascoli Piceno in Italy’s Le Marche region, which is rural and beautiful. Unfortunately he passed away before I was born, so I never met him. He was only five feet tall, and by all accounts, he was very shy. My grandmother Mary, whom I knew and loved, was taller than her husband.

And she had no problem speaking her mind.

Giuseppe, Mary, and a daughter settled in West Philadelphia, where they had two more daughters and a young son who would become my father Frank Scottoline.

At first, Giuseppe wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in America, and neither did my grandmother. They were intimidated by this big, busy country, and they’d really believed the myth that the streets were paved with gold, which seems incredible.

The Scottolines are adorably gullible.

But they stayed, and Giuseppe decided to support his family by mowing lawns, with a push mower.

You can see the problem with his business plan.

There’s no grass in West Philadelphia.

So he pushed his mower to the houses that had lawns, and my father told me it was miles away. Giuseppe mowed lawns all day, then pushed the mower back home.

And the Scottolines survived.

What’s remarkable for present purposes is that Giuseppe was completely illiterate. He couldn’t read or write in his own language.

He even signed his name with an X.

I know, I’ve seen it. It wasn’t a big X, like an “X marks a spot” on a treasure map, promising untold riches. It was the little x of a shy and silent man, intended not to draw attention to itself or take up too much space.

And it strikes me as amazing that only two generations later, I received an award for writing books. Me, the granddaughter of an illiterate man.

And as you may know, my daughter Francesca is a novelist in her own right, with her debut novel nominated for Best First Novel by International Thriller Writers and a paperback title Full Bloom coming out this July.

What I’m trying to say is that Giuseppe may have been an unassuming man, but he got himself to this amazing country and thereby changed the story of his family.

His legacy wasn’t millions of dollars, but the hope for something better, which is far more precious.

It really makes me wonder how we measure lifetime achievement.

I’ve written fifty books and I’m delighted that I was recognized with an award.

But where’s the award for people like Giuseppe?

I imagine all the things people like him did during their lifetimes, the hardships they overcame and the obstacles they persevered through.

How many times did they think something wonderful was going to happen, only to learn that the streets were hard with asphalt?

How far did they push their mowers?

How did they stick it out when times became impossibly difficult, through World War II and the Great Depression? Or even now?

There are so many people who have achieved so much in their lifetime, survived, and even flourished through so much adversity, but none of them gets recognition.

I’d love to change the way we think about achievement.

Giuseppe was a little man.

But to my mind, he was a giant.

My Wild Life

May 17, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Do you remember Girls Gone Wild?

Well, at my house, Mother Nature is the girl.

And my wildlife is going wild.

We begin with the foxes.

You may know that a mother fox and her five kits moved into an old groundhog hole in my backyard.

They’re adorable!

All I do is film them all day long.

Next I’ll be making baby books for them.

But they grew up really fast and now they’re all running around like crazy, popping in and out of the den.

Last week I didn’t see them for a day and I worried they left for college.

Then they came back, all five kits, with backpacks and girlfriends and everything.

Now I have six foxes in my backyard, which they call home.

Like their den is right outside my den.

I was tempted to try to domesticate one because I read that they’re like dogs.

Hopefully they’re better than Eve/Evil.

Can you walk a fox?

But my friends talked me out of it. Everyone’s worried they’ll cause trouble, but it’s the squirrels causing the trouble.

Let me explain.

I own a Toyota Tundra, which is a wonderful truck in every way.

Unfortunately, squirrels like it, too

Because every year, no matter how much I use the truck, I open the door to find shredded paper all over the front seat. So I follow the pieces to the glove box and when I open it, it’s full of nuts, twigs, and pieces of what used to be the air filter that goes to the cab.

And I have to pay $700.00 to replace the air filter.

So this year, I moved the truck to a different location and hoped that the squirrels wouldn’t find it.

But they did, the next day.

I had an entire squirrel family nesting in the engine.

Honestly it’s nuts.

And it’s costing me money I’d squirreled away.

Between the fox den and the squirrel nest, my life is a children’s book.

Then I started to wonder why squirrels don’t eat the filters in my other cars, which are parked in the same place.

So I went online and got my answer.

Evidently, Toyota lines its air filters in the Tundra with soybean oil, and guess what?

Squirrels are vegan?

Who knew?

Everybody on the online message boards has different suggestions for ways to keep squirrels from eating the filters, like:

“Hit the recirc button.”

No. I’d have to find it first.

“Spray peppermint oil mixed with water.”

Sorry. Too woo-woo.

“Remove the wiper arms and cowling, then secure galvanized mesh over the intake gap.”

No. What?

The only mesh I care about is pelvic.

Me, I’m thinking of another solution.

Not bothering to replace the air filter in my cab.

I don’t know why I need an air filter in my cab.

I don’t know why I need filtered air anywhere.

What am I filtering out?

Certainly not squirrels.

I don’t use the truck often enough to catch whatever contagion is outside the cab.

I guess an air filter is like a mask for your car.

So I’m going commando.

It’s Nature’s way.

Classic Column: Mother Mary Had Priorities

May 10, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Mother Mary was a great mother.

But she was not a great housekeeper.

Guess which mattered more.

I remember her hugging me.

I remember her looking over her newspaper to laugh at something I said.

I remember her telling me I was great.

I remember her lifting an eyebrow when I was out of line.

She never yelled at me.

Her eyebrows did.

She loved me so much she had to bite me.

This might be an Italian thing.

She would just grab my arm and bite it.

She called it a love bite.

You know what?

I liked it.

I remember it.

Do you know what I don’t remember?

That the house was kind of messy.

Mother Mary worked, and I was one of the few kids who had a working mom in my class, so I know she was busy.

But her other priority was carbohydrates.

Every Sunday, she made homemade pasta and homemade tomato sauce.

You can’t even imagine how great this was, growing up.

As I’ve written before, we had pasta every night. I didn’t even think that was weird. And I had cold spaghetti for breakfast the next day, and even had spaghetti sandwiches for lunch, which I brought into school.

How do you make a spaghetti sandwich?

Just take spaghetti and put it between two loaves of Italian bread.

This would be Italian, squared.

If people laugh at you, offer them a bite.

The kids at my lunch table started out laughing and ended up begging.

Looking back, we had our ups and downs, but what I remember most about my mother is that she loved to laugh.

She really was the funniest person. I can’t remember any of her jokes now, but the substance of her jokes don’t matter.

What I remember is she was the beating heart of our family, and there was always a laugh.

So I learned humor can get you through almost anything.

And we find ourselves in a really difficult time in our country.

Joking around may look insensitive, but it helps.

The great Mel Brooks had a birthday was this week, and he said, “Humor is a defense against the universe.”

I think that’s kind of brilliant.

There are days when it seems like the universe is conspiring to break us down.

I know there are a lot of women hurting these days, and ladies, I’m with you.

And it’s hard to find the humor in politics, or a pandemic.

But humor isn’t heartless.

It’s a way to take heart.

This too shall pass.

And not because we’ll sit by idly, but because we’ll make sure it passes.

Mother Mary taught me determination, and action.

But most importantly she taught me to laugh.

So forgive me, but here’s a method to my madness, and next week, I’ll write something funny for you.

In the meantime, I’ll look around for the things that make me laugh.

Like the dogs.

This morning Boone woke me up by sitting on my head.

It’s a dog thing.

The dogs make me laugh every day.

My cat makes me laugh once a year.

But it’s a good laugh.

I also have a barn cat who likes to sit on a horse.

Now that’s funny.

He also likes to ride around in the mower.

Too bad he can’t drive.

I have a horse who’s so lazy he lies down while I groom him.

He thinks it’s funny.

Actually it is.

And I do it.

So the joke’s on me.

And here’s something that’s always funny:

The cable company.

The cable company’s always good for a laugh.

My Internet has gone out three times this week, which of course is the week my next novel is due, and I have gone through four different cable visits, three different modems, and two pounds of pasta, not homemade.

Humor and carbs.

Every time.

We will get through this, together.

Take My Advice

May 3, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

There have been 3 stages in my life.

Childhood, divorce, and advice.

Each one has been terrific.

Let me explain.

I had a great childhood.

My parents adored me, and all I did was go outside and play.

The only screens were on doors.

My mother would tell me, “Stop reading, it will ruin your eyes.”

She was right.

And wrong.

There followed two marriages, to Thing One, and Thing Two.

The good news is that my first marriage produced my amazing daughter Francesca.

The other good news is that divorce exists.

The other day I read a news story about a Florida woman who killed both of her ex-husbands in the same day. When the police came to arrest her for murder, she asked, “Which one?”

Too dark?

Now we come to the present stage, which is advice.

I say this now because a nice thing is happening to me this week.

I’m getting an award from International Thriller Writers called ThrillerMaster, which is basically a lifetime achievement award.

Wow?

Who knew?

I never thought I’d ever even get published and here I am, forty books later.So there are interviews asking me for advice for up-and-coming writers.

Notice I did not say younger.

Because one piece of wisdom is that nothing is about age.

You can write a book at any time.

In fact, Allen Levi was in his late sixties when he wrote Theo of Golden, the mega-bestseller that was his first book.

Actually he’s the one we should be asking for advice.

Anyway what’s happening with me is that the interviewer usually asks, “What is the one piece of advice you would give?”

And I can’t narrow it down.

I am full of advice.

I have so much advice, it’s coming out of my ears.

I’m not saying it’s all good.

It might be bad.

It’s based on mistakes I made.

The more mistakes you make, the more advice you have.

So look on the bright side, when you file for divorce.

You’re just racking up advice.

It’s called experience.

Nowadays we call it lived experience, which I like because I think we don’t pay enough attention to people and what they learn from their lives.

You shouldn’t need a lifetime achievement award to be asked advice.

Everyone who’s lived a lifetime can give advice.

The irony is that as people get older in this culture, we tend to listen to them less, not more.

Mother’s Day is upon us, and the best advice I ever got was from Mother Mary.

Like, Be Yourself.

So maybe on Mother’s Day, take your mom to dinner and ask her for advice.

She might answer, Eat your vegetables.

By the way, that’s excellent advice.

Nowadays there are diet doctors who sell books about plant-based diets, which is what your mother has been telling you for your whole life, for free.

And maybe you have some advice too.

I really think all of us are so thoughtful and have so much more to say than people give us credit for.

Like Daughter Francesca has given me excellent advice, and much of it I’ve followed. Even little things like, thanks to her, I’m going to the gym now and I started lifting weights.

Me?

I have a great trainer who has an array of barbells, ropes, kettleballs, and elastic bands.

He’s like Felix with his Bag of Tricks.

And for half an hour, I do whatever he says.

It’s not a power I’ve ever given to any man before.

And I don’t intend to make a habit of it, other than my trainer.

But you know what, I’m learning.

That’s my best advice of all.

Keep learning.

Stay strong.

Not every weight is a burden.

And I bet you can lift it if you try.

Classic Column: Mother Mary and the Terrorists

April 26, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

They say that the past isn’t even past, and that’s always true when Mother Mary is around.

It all begins with a call from Brother Frank.

“I got bad news,“ he says. “We’re bastards.”

“Wha?” asks I.

“Well, we went to get mom’s driver’s license renewed.”

So far, I’m following. Mother Mary doesn’t drive, but she carries an ID card that the Florida DMV issues. Her last card expired, which I found out on her last visit after I tried to put her on a plane back to Miami. They wouldn’t let her fly until they patted her down, which she enjoyed way too much.

“The DMV says we can’t renew her ID card without her marriage certificate.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a woman who’s using her married name.”

“So what?” I’m trying to understand. I don’t see what a driver’s license has to do with a marriage certificate, especially at this point in my mother’s life. My father passed in 2002, and my parents have been divorced for ever. They were married in 1950, a time when people balanced spinning plates on TV. Now that’s entertainment.

“It’s a new law, since September 11^th.”

In the background, I hear my mother yelling, “Those terrorists, they should be ashamed of themselves!”

I nod in approval. That someone should be ashamed of themselves is the worst thing she says about anyone. And when she’s really mad, she’ll shout, “Out of my sight!” I fear for the terrorists if they ever meet Mother Mary. She’ll order them out of her sight, take off her shoe, and throw it at them. She always hits her target. There are missile-launchers with less accuracy.

But to say on point, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Frank, can this be true?”

“Yes. We were in line behind a 92 year old woman whose husband had been dead for fifty years, and they wouldn’t give her an ID card. She had taken two buses to get there, so we gave her a ride home. She said it was a mikveh.”

I wince. “You mean a mitzvah, which is a good deed.”

“What’s a mikveh?”

“Forget it. Tell the story.”

“So we called the hall of records back home, and they can’t find her marriage certificate anywhere.”

“Do the records go back that far?”

“Yes, but the certificate is lost. Or it never existed.”

I blink. “It has to exist. They got married.”

“Yeah, but they’re’s no proof.”

Behind him, my mother’s yelling, “It’s all because of the terrorists!”

I let it go. “So what now?”

“She can’t visit you until we straighten this out.”

Which would be the good news.

Just kidding.

I ask, “What about a passport?”

“She needs the ID card. She’s gonna show a passport to write a check? And we’re illegitimate.”

“Does it matter?” I wonder aloud. In the olden days, they used to call it being born out of wedlock, but I never liked the word wedlock. It has a faintly incarcerated air, which fits my marital history to a T.

“I don’t know if it matters. It seems like everybody’s illegitimate, these days. I feel kind of cool.”

I laugh. “I know, right? We’re Brad and Angelina’s twins.”

“I’ll be the boy.”

“I’ll be the girl.”

Mother Mary shouts, “Bastards!”

But I don’t ask which ones she means.

Classic Column: Which Spices Would You Take To a Kitchen Island?

April 19, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

There’s nothing like home improvement to improve your life.

At least, not in theory.

I say this because I’m adding a garden room to my house, even though I don’t even know if that’s a thing, because I have a garden and I want a room in front of it so I can see it through the window.

Like TV, only without Andy Cohen.

The garden room is attached to the kitchen and since it needed a door, the oven and cabinets had to be moved, and in any event, you see where this is going. Adding a garden room meant that the kitchen got remodeled. Because the thighbone is connected to the leg bone and the leg bone is connected to the wallet.

Anybody who’s ever started home improvement knows that as soon as you improve one thing, you have to improve other things, so that everything is New and Improved, like detergent, only much more costly.

But I’m not complaining.

I feel lucky to be able to make these changes, and since I work at home, I’m spending 24/7 on the premises, I want to premises to suit me. And while we’re turning that frown upside down, let me add that since I’m still terribly single, it’s great to have everything exactly the way I want.

Finally.

And then I’ll die.

My epitaph will read:

HERE LIES LISA SCOTTOLINE

DID SHE IMPROVE ENOUGH?

To stay on point, remodeling the kitchen means that I’m starting to look hard at my priorities, namely, spices. Please tell me that I’m not on the only woman who owns approximately 75,932 spices, accumulated over decades, and that the spices are dusted off every decade, which is the only time they’re even touched.

I’m looking at you, cardamom.

How this came about is that when I moved the oven, I lost the shelf above it, which is where I kept the aforementioned spices, and that meant that I had to find the spices a new home or concede the obvious and throw them out.

So I began to cast a skeptical eye at my spice rack.

And it took me on a tour of my own life.

Let’s begin with Marriage Rookie Enthusiasm.

In that time period of my life, I had just married Thing Two, my daughter Francesca was young and I had two stepdaughters living at home. I wanted to be not only the best mother of all time, but also the best stepmother, so I instantly bought American Mom spices, which you use when you bake apple pie. You know the autumnal array of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

To make a long story short, I made exactly one apple pie.

Divorce ensued, but I got custody of the spices.

Then it was just Francesca and me, and being Italian-American, I decided that I was going to make homemade tomato sauce, or gravy. Mother Mary made the best gravy ever, but she refused to give me the recipe because I was a lawyer.

Don’t ask.

I watched her do it and she always used onion salt, garlic salt, salt salt, and extra salt.

No fresh spices were involved.

Yet it was delicious.

Still I could never make gravy as good as she did, and in time I gave up, though I still have the garlic salt. I feel certain that Mother Mary approves, smiling down from heaven and hoping that the garlic salt has solidified into a sodium bullet.

The next stage of my spice life was Francesca going to college, and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to act mopey because I was an empty nester, and believe me, I got over that fast.

LOL.

But in spice terms, that was the time of my Indian Awakening, an idea I got from a Williams Sonoma catalog. I bought every Indian spice known to man, extending well beyond starter curry into garam masala, turmeric, and vadouvan. They came in round pots full of orange and yellow powders, like nightmare blusher.

These were the coolest spices ever, but I never looked at them again because as an empty nester, I stopped cooking altogether.

Which was coolest of all.

This brings us to the present day, when the only spices I use are salt and pepper.

They require neither shelf, rack, nor cabinet.

They’re sitting alone together on the kitchen island, like survivors of a suburban shipwreck.

Where they’ll stay until the next Williams Sonoma catalog comes in the mail.

Puppy Envy

April 12, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

I’ve been dog-sitting Daughter Francesca’s dog Bobby.

And it’s created a problem.

Because I like Bobby better than my dog Eve.

Just kidding.

Kinda.

Let me explain.

Bobby and Eve are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, a tri-color and a Blenheim respectively, and they’re both about a year and a half years old. Francesca and I are besties, so the dogs are besties, and they love playing together.

But this last visit, I could see that Bobby is the model child.

Guess who’s the problem child.

Eve/Evil.

Bobby is personality plus. He’s always in a great mood, he’s friendly to other people and dogs, and he loves to cuddle.

I mean, really cuddle.

Anytime I sit down, he sits right beside me.

If I stretch out on the floor to read or watch TV, he comes over and rests his head on my shoulder.

When I go to sleep at night, he cuddles on my pillow or sleeps with his neck on mine.

I know that sounds crazy, but I love it.

In winter, my neck was nice and toasty.

And I could feel his little heartbeat.

I slept better than ever, like he was furry Ambien.

In contrast, Eve always sleeps at the foot of the bed.

I pull her up to get her to sleep near me, but she won’t have any.

She likes lying on my feet, which means I can’t move.

And she barks to wake me up at 6:00 in the morning.

Meanwhile I don’t have to get up until 7:30.

I am my own boss.

My office is downstairs.

When Eve barks that early, Bobby will lazily open one eye. He’s in no hurry to leave our pillow paradise, either.

Then he’ll lick my face, endlessly.

Yes, we make out.

He’s my Employee of the Month.

He deserves a bonus — or a bone.

Honestly, this is my kind of dog.

Only he’s not my dog.

By the way, Eve chews rugs, furniture, and wooden baseboards.

Bobby chews nothing but food.

His only bad habit is that he will find a sneaker, carry it around, and hide it somewhere. It takes a while for me to find both sneakers.

Do I mind?

No, it’s fun!

Eve and Bobby are the Goofus and Gallant of dogs.

The dogs are from the same breeder, who told us, “female dogs love you, but male dogs fall in love with you.”

Before, I thought that sounded gendered.

And I worried that Eve was getting the bitch edit, literally.

But it’s true, of these two.

In the end, one is sugar and one is spice.

But if I could, would I trade Eve for Bobby?

Not really.

Eve is my sassy, spicy, bossy little girl.

She might even be me in dog form.

Adorable!

Just in her own way.

Queen of the One-Liners

April 5, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

My mother passed away on Palm Sunday about ten years ago, and I always think about her around now, not in a sad way, but in a way that makes me smile.

Maybe the following will make you smile, too.

Because Mother Mary’s last days were everything I would’ve wanted for her, complete with her salty brand of humor. She had congestive heart failure, which is surprising for someone with so much heart, and she entered hospice at my house, with my Brother Frank and Daughter Francesca with her.

I’m sure many of you have been through hospice with people you love, so you know what a uniquely terrifying and heartbreaking time it can be. But at the same time, what happened for my mother was glorious, and in many ways, a reflection of the way she lived her life.

None of us knew how long she would live, but she was in pretty great spirits and no pain. So we set up a bed in the living room, but she didn’t need to lie in it and generally walked around the house or plopped on the couch in front of the TV, which was her favorite position.

Mine, too.

We invited friends of hers to come over, and since she hadn’t lived in the Philadelphia area for many years, they showed up in force. Everyone brought food, flowers, and good cheer, and we felt as if we were hosting a very unique sort of party every day, one that was especially meaningful to her.

Then guess what.

She got a second wind.

And a second month.

Mother Mary always loved a good time, and she reconnected with everybody she loved, among them a son from a previous marriage for whom she had been estranged almost all of her life. He was kind enough to come over and spend time with her, too, and the reunion did all of our hearts good.

Hers, especially.

As time went on, her throat became more strained and she couldn’t talk, so she wrote on a greaseboard. The first question any friend asked her was, “How are you?”

To which she would always write: “Outside of all this crap, I’m doing fine.”

I took a picture of her sentence above, and I love seeing it, especially now.

My mother wasn’t the type to give a lot of advice in sit-down lectures. But she had a lot to say and fired off lines like that all the time.

Jokes that made me laugh, then think.

And those quips told everything about her.

Think of the courage it takes to write that sentence.

And at that point, she was dying.

She went from no pain to no picnic in no time.

We were swabbing her throat with sponge lollipops.

But the way she lived her life was to set aside all that crap, and do fine.

By an act of sheer will.

Wow!

I remember that line when I’m having a hard time, or when I’m seeing my country go through hard times.

Dying can teach us so much about living.

Outside of all this crap, we’re doing fine.

So I honor her this week, which is so much about rebirth in Spring, and on Easter, which signifies resurrection for the Christian world.

Mother Mary’s spirit lives on, undefeated.

Brave.

Proud.

Happy.

So does ours.

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