Chick Wit

By Lisa Scottoline

Everyone is talking about the exorbitant price of gas, as well as groceries like eggs, bread, and produce.

You know what I’m worried about?

The price of cake.

I can’t even believe it.

Last week, my best friend Franca was nice enough to send me an entire chocolate cake, because I was talking about how much I love it and she’s such an amazingly generous person who would do something that wonderful.

As soon as I got the cake, which came delivered in a cardboard box, I opened it up to find the most delicious-looking cake ever, with glistening chocolate icing topped with orange and black jimmies for Halloween.

To me, every holiday should be about saturated fats.

Why should kids get all the sugar?

But the receipt for the cake was taped to the back of the box, and I caught a glimpse of the price.

Thirty-five dollars.

What?

That’s a lot of money for cake.

You shouldn’t get sticker-shock over baked goods.

Gas is one thing, but carbs? 

They’re all I want to eat, all day long.

To be fair, I’d already noticed the price of cakes going up, but thirty-five bucks has to be an all-time high.

I remember when cake was under ten dollars, then it went to twelve, then it zoomed sky-high, like my cholesterol.

I mean, what gives?

It made me think of Marie Antoinette’s quote, “Let them eat cake!”

Would she say that if she knew how expensive cake was?

At this rate, we’re going to have to eat vegetables.

And that’s going to start a revolution.

By the way, I went online to learn about Marie Antoinette and found out that she did not say, “Let them eat cake.” 

More accurately, what she said was, “Let them eat brioche!”

I bet brioche is up to fifty bucks a dozen, because it just sounds expensive.

To return to point, I cut a big piece of the chocolate cake Franca gave me, which probably cost five bucks right there, and it was delicious.

I put the rest in the freezer.

Maybe I should put it in the safe.

I might be able to pawn it even.

And if you hadn’t noticed, pie prices are crazy, too.

Pies used to be cheap, and I always get pumpkin pies around this time of year. They used to be eight bucks, but now a pumpkin pie will run you six dollars a gallon.

My favorite pie isn’t pumpkin anyway. 

It’s pizza.

Remember, pizza is a pie.

As in, pizza pie.

Pizza is just its first name.

Pizza prices have gone up, too, but in the end, I will pay anything.

Cake, pie, and pizza are necessities.

And I always freeze my saturated fats, because otherwise I will eat them in one entire sitting. 

Even so, they call to me from the freezer, and I think about them all the time.

Nowadays people call this food noise. 

I call it food music.

It’s the soundtrack to my life.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Is it me or is it fruit?

Here’s what I mean.

I don’t know when anything ripens anymore.

Except for me.

Believe me, I’m plenty ripe.

In fact, I’m overripe.

I’m practically dying on the vine.

But to return to topic, I didn’t have a decent peach all summer, and this is why:

I couldn’t figure out when it ripens.

I would buy the peaches and bring them home and they were hard. I let them ripen in a bowl on the counter, but in one day, they were not only ripe, but spoiled. 

They had brown spots everywhere and weird fuzz.

This also describes my face, but nevermind.

I figured that a fly got them and I remembered you’re supposed to

put them in a brown paper bag to ripen. So I did and then I checked on them the next day.

Spoiled again, even fly-free.

Meanwhile the peaches cost a fortune because I was buying organic. 

So I thought maybe that was the problem, so I got the nonorganic kind. They looked normal enough and they were hard, so I assumed they were unripe. But just to check, I took a bite into one when I got home, and it was brown inside.

Wait, what?

And the other three non-organic peaches started to implode, getting soft spots all over, like cellulite.

Not that I would know what that looks like.

So I gave up and finally bought pears. They were hard when I brought them home, and guess what happened.

Week One, they stayed hard.

Week Two, they stayed hard

Week Three, and guess what. If these pears were men, I’d marry them.

If you follow.

So bottom line, I’m a person who used to eat a lot of fruit but can’t anymore because I can’t figure out when anything ripens.

And don’t get me started on watermelons.

The problem with watermelons begins at the very store.

Because I have no idea of how to tell if a watermelon is ripe or not.

You can smell it, pump it up and down, and try to mush it between your hands like a basketball, but it remains a mystery.

I just take my chances.

All summer long, I lost out. 

I’d bring home a watermelon one week and open it to find it was soggy inside. 

I bring home another watermelon the next week and it would be a weird light pink.

Nobody wants to open a watermelon and see pale pink.

It’s like a ball of veal.

Horrifying and disgusting.

I tried small round watermelons, but they were just as bad.

I tried seedless watermelons, but they were just as bad.

I had a similar problem with oranges, in that I could never get a good one, but I don’t think it was about ripeness. At first I thought I was mistakenly buying juicing oranges because every orange I got was juicy, but flavorless. There was no sweetness to anything. 

And the color wasn’t a true orange, but shade more like my lowlights, which need to be redone.

And now that it’s autumn, apples are no better. 

I read somewhere that any apple you buy in a grocery store is a year old before you even get it, and maybe that’s true. I bought some the other day, which were allegedly Red Delicious, but they were neither Red nor Delicious. 

I took a bite, and the inside was mealy. 

Not a good meal.

Same with the Yellow Delicious, but they were at least yellow.

So I don’t know what to tell you.

I’ve lost my mojo with fruit.

Instead, I’m turning to chocolate.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

I try to confine my crushes to emotionally available men.

Bradley Cooper, for example.

I’m pretty sure he would be very emotionally available, as a man.

I know this for sure, from the movies he’s been in. Like he plumbed the depths of drama when he played a reserved sniper in American Sniper, and right after that, he played an alcoholic musician in A Star is Born.

Like, that’s emotional range.

And talent.

Also biceps.

And these are the factors I consider in selecting my crushes.

But lately it occurred to me that I should try to pick a crush less embarrassing than a global superstar.

Who’s even too young for me.

So I started getting a crush on this hot silver-haired guy with horn-rimmed glasses on Instagram, who had a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, like me.

I have horn-rimmed glasses, too!

We have so much in common!

Like that’s very relatable emotional availability.

If you like dogs, I probably like you.

And if you’re Cavalier-crazy, you might be my next ex-husband.

Thing Three!

Lucky fella.

So I started following this man on Instagram and noticing how great he is with his Cavalier and loving the various tips he gives in his posts, like special ways to pet Cavaliers that they’ll love. For example, in one post he’s sitting behind his little Cavalier who looks just like my Eve, and he said that Cavaliers like it when you massage them under the ears in a circular motion, and his dog looked completely adorable, happy, and relaxed. 

By the way, his circular-massage technique looked excellent.

I couldn’t help but think how many circles of mine need massaging.

I became a fan of his dog, too, because why not? I follow a lot of dog accounts online and even follow accounts of people interviewing people about their dogs. I also follow lots of other animal accounts, like otters, ferrets, groundhogs, hippos, donkeys, and capybaras. I’ve watched videos of beavers building a dam in a hallway and pet rats driving toy trucks.

Evidently I have a lot of free time.

But this man and his Cavalier really captivated me, so I tried this circular-massage technique on my dogs.

It didn’t work at all.

Eve was annoyed, and New Puppy George kept trying to bite my hand. 

I figured I was doing it wrong, so I kept following in the guy, and in other posts he recommended other massage techniques, all of which I tried and none of which worked.

Meanwhile I kept telling Francesca to follow his account because he has great tips for dogs, none of which worked for me but might work for you.

Finally she followed him, then texted me:

Mom, that Instagram account with the ear massage you sent me is an AI generated account! Not a real person and not a real dog!

Wait, what? I called her immediately. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Francesca answered gently. “Did you read the bio?”

“No.” I didn’t, I was too busy thinking about the circular massage.

“It says it’s AI-generated content, right there.”

I reeled. “So this guy doesn’t even exist?”

“Correct.”

I know this is repetitive but I needed it repeated. I generally can tell when an image is AI slop, but I had absolutely no idea. So I had to ask, “And the dog?”

“Isn’t real, either.”

“What about the glasses?”

“Not even.”

I hung up, disillusioned. 

Until I realized it didn’t matter at all. 

By definition, a crush is a product of the imagination. 

So it can be based on someone real or someone imaginary.

There’s no crush rules.

And I mean, let’s be real. 

I’ve fallen for men who weren’t what they appeared to be.

So I’ve been fooled by slop before.

Why stop now?

Or more positively, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Another day, another doggy drama.

Thank God, this one ends happily, too.

I tell you that up front because I don’t want you to stress.

These weekly columns of mine exist to make you smile. 

I want them to go down easy, like a cup of decaf, with occasional profanity.

I reassure you upfront because, like anybody with a heart, I can’t bear it if something bad is going to happen to an animal. 

I’m so crazy that I actually consult a website called does-the-dog-die.com before I watch a TV show with a dog. If you didn’t know that website exists, you do now. 

I want everybody happy and decaffeinated.

Plus what happened this week will seem like a rerun, if you read a column I write less than month ago, when my spicy little cavalier Eve ate thirty cherry pits from a bowl that I carelessly left poolside.

I’m not blaming the dog.

I’m blaming myself.

Like I’m the problem, it’s me.

So what happened is that it’s tax time, and I have a wonderful accountant who will come to my house and meet with me and explain my taxes to me. I think I dread this meeting, because who loves paying taxes, but I know it’s necessary because I really want to try to understand more about my finances. 

I have math anxiety, which is a medical excuse for freezing up whenever I hear numbers. 

But I’ve been trying to fight my way through it and I haven’t succeeded at this point, but I’m going to keep trying.

So please understand in my own defense that I was sitting at my kitchen table with my accountant, and he was taking me through my tax return and explaining stuff about business deductions and I was really trying to pay attention, when I started to hear some noise under the table right at our feet. 

Eve was under the table with my new puppy George, also a Cavalier, and they’ve been getting along great which is a miracle. George was an older puppy when I got him, so his transition has been miraculously amazingly easy, and Eve has not tried to kill him, which is its own sort of happy ending.

On the other hand, George does everything she does, and she has led him into temptation.

I never should have named her Eve.

I actually thought about naming the new puppy Adam, but that would be stupid.

But it might have been true.

To return to the story, I heard some noise under the table, and I assumed the dogs were playing with their frisbee. I was trying to focus on what the accountant was telling me, and there were so many numbers I was trying to keep my face looking like a normal person and not a confused person.

But finally I looked down and the dogs weren’t playing with a frisbee.

They were playing with an empty box of yogurt-covered raisins.

I did a double-take. I didn’t know where they came from because I don’t buy yogurt-covered raisins. 

I like raisins covered in chocolate.

Obviously. 

In fact I like anything covered in chocolate. You could cover cardboard in chocolate and you-know-who would eat it.

Unfortunately, it turns out the accountant had a box of raisins in his backpack, and Eve had dug them out for her and her partner-in-crime, and they had eaten them.

Uh-oh.

Raisins are poisonous to dogs. 

So I called the vet right away and they said bring them both in, right away.

You may recall that it was only a month ago that I brought Eve in for the cherry pits, also toxic to dogs.

Luckily my vet did not say, “Again?”

Or, “Will you have the usual?”

Or, “Why don’t you watch your dogs for a change?”

Bottom line, I brought them both in, and they both were made to throw up. The box held between twenty-five and thirty raisins. 

All told, Eve threw up twenty-eight and George threw up three.

So she doesn’t even share.

And we live to tell the tale. 

From now on, I promise to watch the dogs better. 

It’s more fun than watching the taxes.

Copyright  © Lisa Scottoline 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

Last week was a great reminder of my new life philosophy.

Namely, YOLO.

To be honest, the truth is I’ve never been a great planner. 

But YOLO makes me sound fun rather than lazy.

YOLO leads to LOL.

At least it did this week, which was momentous in my household. 

I got to have experience my happiest day of the year, which is the day that I actually finish a writing a novel and type THE END.

YAY!

That’s right, I just finished my new domestic thriller, which is entitled The Fall of the LaFleurs, and it will be out next July. It takes me a full year to write, research, and edit a novel, so I celebrate typing The End by rewarding myself, usually with carbohydrates.

But this time, it was with a new puppy!

As I wrote about recently, a puppy became available that was a half-brother of Daughter Francesca’s dog Bobby, who’s mellow and affectionate, so I snapped him up. 

I handed in my novel, then jumped in the car the very same day, excited to go pick up my new little guy, which involved driving to a McDonald’s in Frederick, Maryland to meet the breeder halfway. I remembered her saying that the best way to Frederick from my house was to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike west to 15 South.

Okay, off I go.

I felt like a kid again, getting a new puppy with a carful of new dog toys, a leash, a collar, and a crate pad. 

But that’s when I realized YOLO wasn’t the greatest idea. 

Because on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I started to plug the McDonald’s address into my car GPS, but the screen went black. 

At first I thought I was doing something wrong, so I hit a bunch of keys and hoped for the best.

Still a totally black screen.

Then I realized my car had just been serviced and somehow the GPS must’ve gotten dumped. 

Hmm.

It occurred to me I could get the directions on my phone, so I tried, but I couldn’t get GPS there either because I couldn’t get Wi-Fi or good-enough reception.

This is where I tell you I love GPS. 

It’s the longest and best marriage I ever had. 

I’m a person who used to get lost constantly, and all of my road trips were like a first draft until you reach your final destination. I’ve made more wrong turns in my life than anyone I know, not including two divorces, from Thing One and Thing Two.

Meanwhile, I had left the house too late to go back and get my other car, which has working GPS, because I didn’t want to keep the breeder waiting.

So I kept driving, at speed, nervous.

I’ve never been to Frederick MD.

I had no idea where I was going. 

Bottom line, I was driving to a place I’d never been with only the barest of directions, and I didn’t have the time to make a mistake.

Then it struck me that I had just finished a novel that was about a woman who will stop at nothing to get to her son.

And I was a woman who would stop at nothing to get to her puppy.

But this wasn’t fiction, this was real life, without a net.

I was so nervous that I pulled into the first rest stop to see if I could get some reception on my phone, but I still couldn’t. I realized that while I was hitting all the buttons on my phone and dashboard, I must’ve deleted my own WiFi network, and I didn’t know the password, and somehow I couldn’t even make a phone call.

I thought, maybe YOLO isn’t such a good life philosophy?

Then I looked over and saw the kind of thing I would usually avoid.

A motorcycle gang. 

They were a group of men standing around a bunch of Harley Davidsons, smoking and wearing black leather vests and pants.

But it occurred to me that they would definitely know the roads.

So I got out of the car and approached the motorcycle gang, and they all looked over, puzzled. I said, “I need to get my new puppy!”

And they all laughed, and I realized they were not felons, but fellas.

I explained the situation, then right away they all got out their phones and their maps and their GPS, and they told me exactly how to get to Frederick MD.

They could not have been more helpful.

I mean, they were angels.

For kind of Hell’s Angels.

And I honestly got a crush on one.

I asked them to take a picture with me, because I wanted to memorialize this wonderful day, on which I got to write The End, pick up a puppy, and reaffirm that you don’t always need to know where you’re going in life. 

You should just go.

You don’t need a map or GPS. 

You just need faith in people.

And maybe in yourself.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026