Chick Wit

• Column Classic: Upgrading the Macaroni Necklace May 31, 2025

  by Francesca Serritella

  My mom’s birthday is a month away, and I’m wracking my brain about what to get her—but really, it’s my favorite thing to obsess over. Here’s a Classic Column, which might be new to you as it never ran in the Inquirer, about birthday shopping for my favorite person.

  

  When it comes to giving a gift to your mother, kids get a pass for a long time.  But when your mother has a milestone birthday like sixty, a macaroni necklace will not do.

  It was time for me to get my mother a grown-up gift.

  This is not to say that I haven’t gotten her nice things in the past, but this year I wanted it to be really special.  Maybe because I know that my mom is single, I wanted to get her a gift as nice as a husband would get. 

  Not one of her husbands—a really good husband.

  I got in my head that it had to be jewelry.

  I’d never bought a piece of fine jewelry before.  First, I studied.  For months leading up to her birthday, every moment of procrastination was spent searching the websites of jewelers and department stores for every item within my budget. 

  Since I couldn’t afford ninety percent of their inventory, this took less time than you might think.

  After obsessively zeroing in on a few favorite options, I decided to make a trip to Cartier.  Embarrassingly, I’d dressed up for the occasion.  I wore a shirtdress that I thought said, “I use ‘summer’ as a verb.”

  Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

  Copyright © Francesca Serritella | www.francescaserritella.com | @FrancescaSerritellaauthor | @fserritella

• Forza Mother Mary May 25, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I’m turning into my mother.

  But only in the weird ways.

  Let’s begin with the ways I’m not turning into her.

  I cannot make her tomato sauce.

  Which honestly, we called gravy.

  It’s a South Philly thing.

  In my early books, I would write about gravy, and the copyeditor would replace it with tomato sauce, to which I would reply stet, which is bookspeak for back off.

  Her gravy was unbelievable. It was rich, but not heavy, with incredible taste.

  Never mind that she didn’t use a single fresh ingredient.

  The tomatoes were canned, the paste was canned, and she added garlic salt and onion salt.

  Nothing had to be washed or diced for her gravy.

  Which is proof that it didn’t matter.

  I guarantee this was the best gravy on the planet. We ate spaghetti in some form almost every night, whether it was regular pasta or her homemade gnocchis and ravioli, which were also out of this world, but the gravy made everything great.

  You could put that gravy on cardboard and never stop eating.

  I remember asking her what the recipe was, and she said, “You’re not getting it.” Which is pure Mother Mary.

  I never thought to question it, because like all kids, I never imagined her dying.

  But then she did, and of course I miss her, but you know what else I miss?

  Correct.

  So fast-forward to the rest of my life, when I try to make the gravy and fail miserably. Then I try a variety of jarred gravy that would make any card-carrying Italian-American shudder, but I do it anyway and I hit upon Rao’s.

  Which is the closest to my mother’s but honestly, hers was even better.

  So now I have pasta with an inferior gravy and think: “Mom, really?”

  So fast-forward again to me in my dotage when I watch everything on Netflix, and for some reason I get hooked on Drive to Survive, which is all about F1 racing and I like it because I’ve always liked cars.  And I’m lucky enough to be able to write about what interests me, so I find myself sneaking cars into my novels, then I find myself going to car events.

  And last weekend I went to one and bought something my mother would’ve bought.

  You may remember that Mother Mary always wore a lab coat.

  She’s still the only person to have checked into a hospital in a lab coat.      

  She got them at the Dollar Store and she liked them because they had pockets for crossword puzzle and her cigarettes.

  In any event, fast-forward to me, finding myself at an exotic car event and shopping at the stands where they sell shammy clothes and ceramic wax to more serious gearheads than I am, and I see a thing of beauty.

  A Ferrari technician’s jacket.

  It’s authentically Italian, and real Ferrari mechanics wear them when they work on real Ferraris.

  I put it on, fell in love, and bought it, then realized it was a lab coat, only red.

  The color of Ferraris.

  And gravy.

  It even has pockets on either side, for my cell phone and my dog treats.

  So I can’t make the gravy, but now I have a gravy-colored lab coat.

  Thanks, Mom.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025

• The Tao of Eve May 18, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I love sleeping with dogs.

  But sleeping with a puppy is a different matter.

  Let me explain.

  You may know that I recently added a new member to my family, namely Eve, who is now a seven-month-old cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She joins my other two Cavaliers, Boone and Kit, who are almost fourteen now and differ on their opinion of her.

  Boone loves Eve.

  Kit wishes her dead.

  I’m hoping he comes around.

  Spoiler alert: He’s not going to.

  But so far he’s not trying to kill her.

  And Kit has his adorable moments with Eve. Like this morning, I took them out for a walk, and he peed on her leg.

  By the way, it was raining.

  So I actually got to watch a demonstration of “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

  Which is the perfect description of my second marriage.

  This is only one of the many great things about dogs.

  In any event, I love sleeping with Eve, but she’s very busy all night long.

  At this point you’re wondering why I don’t put her in a crate.

  Because I tried to in the beginning, but she cried and I’m a big softie.

  Luckily she’s never peed on the bed and told me it was raining, but she is an insanely restless sleeper.

  First, she loved to bring her toys on the bed and squeak them most of the night.

  I took away the squeaky ones, and she started playing with the ball, rolling it around the cover, then on my body.

  I took away the ball, and she would jump off the bed and find my socks on the floor, bring them up, and drop them on my face.

  Then I picked up all my socks and took away all the toys and she found a way to amuse herself, running up and down the ramp that leads to the bed.

  I couldn’t take that away because I already felt heartless.

  Plus how else do you get a dog onto a bed?

  Where she will disrupt your sleep.

  Obviously, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The sensible thing to do would be to put the dog in a crate and a moat around the bed.

  But not all decisions are sensible.

  That’s why God made divorce.

  Meanwhile every single piece of furniture in my house has either a ramp or a set of little wooden stairs, but Eve loves to chews wood, so she makes a meal of those stairs.

  She’s on an all-wood diet.

  She eats doors and baseboards, and now my place looks like I live with a woodchuck.

  Now you’re probably asking, why don’t you spray the wood with that stuff called Bitter Apple, which is supposed to make dogs not chew wood?

  The answer is, I do, and Eve thinks it improves the taste of wood.

  It’s the dressing on her wood salad.

  She would drink Bitter Apple if I let her.

  And when she’s not eating wood, she’s running around outside, finding a rock, and chewing that, too.

  In the beginning, I started taking the rocks from her and putting them on a pile on the table. Now the table holds a pyramid of rocks, like oranges at the grocery store.

  I should sell rocks.

  Or I could spray them with Bitter Apple, then Eve would have a rock casserole.

  I took her to puppy kindergarten and puppy elementary school, and next week we start puppy middle school.

  After that, puppy Harvard.

  She learned all her lessons, including Leave It, which I now use forty-five times a day, when she finds a sock, chews wood, or eats a rock.

  And she Leaves It.

  Until she finds something else.

  This is all by way of saying, I love this puppy.

  She’s completely adorable, despite all the puppy things she does.

  Or maybe because of them.

  She’s simply an incredibly affectionate ball of fluff.

  When she finally settles down to sleep at my side, she has an adorable snore.

  She loves to snuggle and kiss, which is a job requirement for any animal I live with.

  Actually she’s a Make-out Queen, but I won’t elaborate.

  She loves people, other dogs, and fun in general.

  All the time, every minute.

  Even at night, but that’s okay.

  Life is to be savored, all the time.

  And that’s what Eve reminds me.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025

• Column Classic: Mommy’s Day Out May 10, 2025

  by Francesca Serritella

  

  The last time my mom came to visit, I lost her.

  It was like that movie Baby’s Day Out, except with my parent.  I turned my back for one second, and the little rascal got away from me. 

  I imagined her crawling along an I-beam at some high-rise construction site. 

  But she’s afraid of heights, so more likely she’d be in Times Square, telling The Naked Cowboy he isn’t dressed warmly enough.

  It started with tickets to see the new Larry David play.  My mom checked that she had the tickets for the third or fourth time. 

  “It says, ‘late arrivals will not be seated,’” she read, for my benefit.  My mom is early to everything.  We left with an hour to spare.

  And yet, we found ourselves in a cab crawling up Sixth Avenue for a half-hour with fifteen blocks to go.  I checked our route on my smartphone; the driving estimate to get to the theater was fifteen minutes, the walking was only ten.

  “I think we should get out,” I said.

  Click to read the full column on Francesca’s Website

  Copyright © Francesca Serritella | www.francescaserritella.com | @FrancescaSerritellaauthor | @fserritella

• Column Classic: The Mothership May 4, 2025

  By Lisa Scottoline

  

  I’m a terrible negotiator.  I’m too emotional, and I can’t pretend I don’t want something I really want.

  Like George Clooney.

  But today we’re talking cars, and this is the tale of my first attempt at negotiating.

  To begin, I have an older car that I take great care of, and it’s aged better than I have, sailing past 100,000 miles without estrogen replacement. 

  But around 102,000 miles, things started to go wrong, and flaxseed wasn’t helping.  I knew I’d be driving long distances on book tour, and I started to worry.  I called up my genius assistant Laura to ask her advice, as I do before I make any important decision, like what to eat for lunch.

  I asked her, “Laura, do you think I need a new car?”

  “Yes.  Absolutely.”

  “But it’s paid off, and I love it.”  And I do.  It’s a big white sedan called The Mothership.

  “I know, but you have to be safe.  What if it breaks down on tour?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Except it has.  Twice.”

  An excellent point.  One time, The Mothership died on the way to a bookstore in Connecticut, requiring the bookseller to pick me up at a truck-stop on 1-95.  I bet that never happened to James Patterson.

  So I needed a new car, and since I love my dealership, I went there.  I thought they loved me, too, which they did, except when it came to the bottom line.  They gave me a good deal on a new SUV, but a rock-bottom price on trading in The Mothership.

  I asked, “How can you do that to her?  I mean, me?”

  I told you I get too emotional.

  And I added, “Plus you’re supposed to love me.”

  But they don’t.  They run a business, and it’s not the love business.  However, it’s my secret philosophy that all business is the love business, so I got angry.  They had taken care of The Mothership for the past ten years, at top dollar, and it was worth so much more. 

  Guess what I did.

  I walked out. 

  I took my business elsewhere.  That very day, I called up another dealership, who said, come on over, we love you, too.  In fact, we love you so much that we’ll give you a better deal on your trade-in.  And they did, after inspecting The Mothership and calling her “the cleanest 100,000-mile car they had ever seen,” which we are. 

  I mean, it is.

  But just when I was about to say yes, my old dealership called and told me that they still loved me.  I told them I was already rebounding with my new dealership, but they said they’d top the offer on The Mothership, and after much back-and-forth, I went back to my old dealership, like ex sex.

  But long story short, the day came when I was supposed to pick up my new SUV, and I felt unaccountably sad.  I took final pictures of The Mothership.  I stalled leaving the house.  On the drive to the dealer, I called daughter Francesca and asked her, “Wanna say good-bye to the car?”

  “Mom?  You don’t sound happy.”

  “I’m not.  I love this car.”

  “Aww, it’s okay.  It’s probably not the car, anyway.  It’s that you have such great memories in the car.” 

  I considered this for a minute.  “No, it’s the car.”

  By the time I reached the dealership, I was crying full-bore, snot included. 

  My sales guy came over, and when he saw me, his smile faded.  “What’s the matter?”

  “I love my car.  I don’t want to give it up.”

  “So keep it,” he said, which was the first time it even occurred to me.  I know it sounds dumb, but it simply never entered my mind.  I’d never bought a car without trading one in. 

  “But what about the money?”

  “We’re only offering you a fraction of what the car’s worth.  If I were you, I’d keep it.”    

  “But I’m only one person.  Why do I need two cars?”

  “They’re two different cars.  The old one’s a sedan, and the new one’s an SUV.”

  I wiped my eyes.  “You mean, like shoes?  This is the dressy pair?”

  He looked nonplussed.  “Uh, right.”

  “Really?”  My heart leapt with happiness.  I decided to keep The Mothership.  It’s strappy sandals on wheels, if you follow.

  Thus ended my first attempt at hardball negotiations, which backfired.  Having bargained for the best price on a trade-in, I couldn’t bring myself to trade anything in.

  Because I love it.

  It sits in my garage, aging happily.

  Soon we’ll both be antique.

  Priceless.

  Copyright © Lisa Scottoline