Chick Wit

• 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.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• 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.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline

• 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.

  Copyright © 2026 Lisa Scottoline

• 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.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2026

• 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.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2022