Daughter Francesca Archives – Lisa Scottoline

Classic Column: Technology Hag

March 1, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m not old, but I’m getting older.

I know this because of technology.

Meanwhile, where do I even begin with the story?

Let’s start with the time a few months ago, when I trip over a dog gate, go flying, and can’t walk.

I’ve been hobbling around since then.

Seriously, I’m bent over like the old witch in Snow White. Plus I have stringy gray hair and a big nose.

All I need is the carbuncle.

Oh, wait.

Never mind.

Check.

But not the point herein.

I hobble around for about three weeks, barely able to straighten up, much less sit or drive, and so I finally get my butt to an orthopedist, who takes an MRI and tells me that I have a labral tear in my hip.

At first I thought I heard him wrong.

I didn’t think my labral was in my hip.

I got it mixed up with another body part, which should give you an idea of how good I was at sex.

Kind of not very.

But honestly, who cares anyway?

I’m great at writing!

Anyway, it turns out that a labral tear is a tear in the ligament that’s somewhere in your hip joint, and when I leave the doctor’s office, he gives me a DVD of my MRI.

Like a party favor for the middle-aged.

I take it home, and the first thing I want to do is look at my MRI.

Which is when I realized that I don’t have a DVD player in any of my computers.

What?

I don’t even know when that happened.

I seem to remember that I got new computers a year or so ago, because I like to have a nice big screen. And I don’t mind spending the money, because all I do all day is stare at a computer, and the least I can do is have a nice one. But I never really noticed that they didn’t have a slot for a DVD player.

So I went over to my big TV, figuring that I could watch my MRI on TV, like a medical reality show, maybe one called, YOUR LABRAL ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

I managed to locate my DVD player underneath the TV, but it needed to be hooked up, since I am addicted to Netflix and haven’t watched a real DVD in a long time. It took me a full hour of struggling to hook it up, and even then, I couldn’t get it to work.

Which is when it struck me.

I am so ancient that I have lived through several stages of technology, like the Jurassic and Pleistocene era of dinosaurs.

I remember when there were VHS tapes because I still have them.

I remember when there were camcorders because I filmed Francesca when she was a baby, plus static scenes of my feet, with me saying, “Is this thing on or off?”

Now I have lived through DVDs, which sucks, because I have an entire set of operas in DVD that I was saving to watch in my retirement, and by the time I retire, operas will be transported telepathically into your brain.

Plus I paid to have those camcorder tapes of Francesca transferred onto DVD’s, and now there’s no such thing as DVD players.

So you’re getting a fairly complete picture of what life is like as me, which I’m hoping is like life as you, too.

Who here remembers actual records?

I do.

Who remembers little 33’s?

I do.

Who remembers cassette tapes?

I do.

How about trying to rewind them and having them unspool out of the slot like brown tinsel?

I know. Me too.

So there you have it. Many of us live a life measured in obsolete technological stages.

It’s enough to make your hip hurt.

Post-Holidaze

January 11, 2026January 11, 2026

By Lisa Scottoline

We have our phones with us all the time, but here’s the thing:

You can’t call anybody.

Or you can, but they won’t answer.

I say this because I tried to call my bank the other day, but no one picked up. It rang and rang.

Then I called my car dealership, and the same thing happened.

I’m feeling like no one answers the phone anymore.

And if you look on a website to see how to call them on the phone, there won’t be any number.

They used to say Contact Us, but they lied.

I remember when you could call a company and somebody would pick up the phone. It might not be a person, but it would be a message machine with options one through 7. You’d pick one, wait while music played, then a message would come on and say, “Your call is important to us. Please wait.”

Now, the jig is up.

They’re not even bothering with a mechanical message.

You would think that they could put on a fake voice to tell me how much I matter.

This would be my second marriage in a nutshell.

To return to point, the one bright spot was on Christmas Eve.

No, not that bright spot.

We’re not talking the Star-of-Bethlehem bright.

It was Michael’s.

Yes, the crafts store.

Actually to call Michael’s a craft store is to sell it short. Michael’s sells decorations, art supplies, glue, picture frames, and glittery stuff that you didn’t think you needed until you saw it in its vast store. Also there are rows of candy bars, and I always treat myself to a Snickers.

In our family, the holidays mean a trip to Michael’s to get stuff for the tree, and we even bring the two dogs. We all had a great time there, and I treated myself to a Snickers. Daughter Francesca is our tree designer and she picked out the items we needed, among them a spray can of fake snow.

When you spray a tree with fake snow, it’s called flocking.

Who knew?

You have to hang sheets on the walls so you don’t have an interior blizzard.

Otherwise you’re flocked.

Anyway when we got home it turned out that we’d left a bag on the counter.

This is the problem when you go shopping during the holidays with two dogs. You get distracted by the holidays and the dogs.

Okay, you get distracted by the Snickers, but that’s neither here nor there.

So I called Michael’s.

Guess what happened:

They answered!

A human being!

Wow! I felt like I had entered a portal to an alternative universe or maybe the 1950s. I actually said, “You answered!”

And the man said, “Of course.”

So I told him, “Do you realize that no one answers the phone anymore?”

“I know, but here at Michael’s, we always answer the phone.”

And I thought, I might be in love with you.

But I didn’t say that.

And the next thing that happened was even greater, because he said he would look for our bag, which he actually did and then called me back because he could not find it. So I went to the store anyway to rebuy the missing stuff and Michael’s didn’t even charge me twice. They just swapped it out for the stuff that I left behind in my Snickers haze.

And so on Christmas Eve, my faith in corporate America was restored.

A miracle!

Naughty or Nice?

December 21, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

It’s the time of year when it we find out whether you’ve been bad or good.

Unfortunately, my little puppy Eve has been Evil.

She’s a year old now, so her personality has shown itself, and it ain’t pretty.

Simply put, she’s an total alpha female.

Or more accurately, a boss bitch.

Let’s begin with the fact that she doesn’t like to walk.

In fact, she doesn’t like to leave the couch.

As soon as I get the leash, she throws herself on the ground and refuses to move.

With one exception.

If I ask, “Wanna go in the car?” Then she jumps off the couch and runs over for her leash.

As in, she knows car.

She wants to Uber around the block.

I think a sedan chair would work, too.

She basically doesn’t want her feet to touch the ground.

What woman does?

Don’t worry, there’s nothing physically wrong with her. I took her to the vet, and the diagnosis is that she’s a princess.

And that’s not all.

She doesn’t eat out of a bowl.

At first I thought the problem was her food, so I did the whole thing where you order various overpriced ipsy-pipsy dog meals they ship to you, which involves defrosting, cleaning dishes, and special containers.

But she still didn’t eat.

Then one day I happened to drop some kibble on the floor and she started eating.

Which is when I realized that she likes to eat off the floor.

Now, I have to throw her kibble on the kitchen floor to get her to eat.

This isn’t a problem except that she leaves a fine grit of chicken byproducts.

After every meal, I Dirt-Devil the floor.

Because of my dirty devil.

You haven’t lived until you’ve walked in bare feet and ended up with Purina Pro Plan between your toes.

And if your feet are as dry as mine, you’ll end up with kibble in your heel cracks, which guarantees you’ll be single forever.

The other thing about Eve is that she does not play well with others.

I took her to puppy obedience school, and she graduated, but she’s socially awkward. If she sees another dog on a walk, she barks nonstop at them, which is her way saying hello.

It never works.

Other dogs avoid her.

Yesterday she scared off a German Shepherd.

Or gave him a headache.

As far as people go, she’s picky. She loves Daughter Francesca, me, and a few other of my girlfriends, but she can’t be bothered with strangers we meet. She lets them pet her, but she’ll stand there.

She doesn’t wag her tail.

She checks her watch.

She’s rude.

And it’s awkward.

But randomly, she likes workmen.

Any carpenter, electrician, or plumber who comes over, she flirts like crazy.

Who doesn’t love a man in uniform?

She sees that jumpsuit and she jumps.

Yesterday I had a burglar alarm guy over, and Eve climbed into his lap and wouldn’t move.

Meanwhile she won’t sit on my lap.

She’s supposed to be a lap dog, but evidently it has to be a lap with benefits.

So when it comes to the question whether Eve is Naughty or Nice, I guess I have to say Naughty.

But I love her anyway, which if you ask me, is the point of the holiday season.

Let’s not get all judgy.

There’s too much of that going around lately, and we all need a little more acceptance.

Understanding, even forgiveness.

I love Eve for the little dog she turned out to be.

And that’s Nice.

Happy Holidays!

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.

Classic Column: Tryhard

November 9, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

Mother Mary knew the secret to great parenting.

Don’t try too hard.

And I mean that in the best way.

The thing that both of my parents gave us in abundance was love.

That came naturally to them.

They didn’t have to try very hard at all.

My brother Frank and I were adored, unconditionally.

They thought everything we did was great.

It was the only thing they agreed on, until they divorced.

Their love for us was all out of proportion with any reality. For example, I remember getting ready with my brother to go with my father to the World’s Fair in New York City.

Yes, that would be in 1964.

Welcome to The History Channel, or in other words, my life.

I was born in 1955, so I was nine years old at the time.

Believe it or not, I just had get a pencil and paper to do the math, including carrying-the-one, which shows my great affection for you.

I remember telling my mother that I was excited about seeing New York.

And I remember distinctly what she said to me, which was, “Honey, New York is excited to be seeing you.”

Wow.

That’s love.

Or maybe delusional behavior.

But either way, I grew up feeling pretty great about myself.

And not because I got good grades in school or for any other reason, except the fact that I breathed in and out.

My father was the same way.

I remember that after I had become an author he would come to my signings, and someone said to him, “you must be very proud of your daughter” and he said, “Lady, I was proud of her the day she came out of the egg.”

I’ve told that story before, I tell it all the time, because I think I have the same attitude, and think it’s one of the reasons that Francesca and I are so close.

I just adored her, the moment she came out of the egg.

I still do.

And I said all the dumb things to her that my mother said to me, like “don’t study so much” and “it doesn’t matter whether you get A’s, just so you’re happy” and “stop reading so much, it will ruin your eyes.”

And paradoxically, Francesca turned out to be a wonderful student and accomplish great things, despite me telling her that she didn’t need to bother.

And I can’t say I caused that, or even that it planned it, only that when I think back to my childhood, I realize that there was absolutely no trying going on in my household, at all.

We just were.

And that applied to little things as well, like Halloween costumes.

Nowadays, Halloween costumes have been raised to an art form and there are parades in my town, where they give out a variety of prizes for the most original costume and such. All of the costumes are homemade, and I can see how hard the parents and kids tried to make a wonderful costume.

But we Scottolines never tried that hard.

For Halloween’s when I was growing up, my mother went to Woolworth’s and bought a costume in a box. It had a plastic mask that was stiff and attached to your face with a cheap piece of elastic that would undoubtedly break by the end of the evening.

Which was fine because the mask was too hot to wear anyway.

You could’ve welded in my Halloween mask.

I remember being Cleopatra five years in a row, and thinking back on it now, I realize I wore the same costume.

I mean the same exact costume, which my mother must have re-boxed after Halloween and put away, only to present to me the next October.

“Cleopatra!” I would say with delight, each time.

Because for me, Halloween was when you got to be Cleopatra.

No one ever suggested you could actually change costumes, and I couldn’t imagine why you would want to.

If you could be Cleopatra, why would you be anybody else?

I had diva tendencies even then.

Which Mother Mary evidently encouraged, being something of a diva herself, even though she was only 4 foot 11 inches.

Size really does not matter, people.

The costume was a sheath of turquoise polyester with pseudo-Egyptian hieroglyphics on the front, and the mask was authentically Cleopatran because it had triangle hair on either side of the face, a snake for a headband, and really bad eyeliner.

And I remember loving Halloween, with my father taking us from house to house, me swanning around in my Cleopatra dress and my brother in his pirate headscarf with a fake-silky blouse.

He was a pirate for five years in a row, too.

That was before we knew he was gay.

But he did look damn good in that blouse.

We’d carry paper bags to collect the candy and orange cartons to collect pennies for UNICEF, though we had no idea what that meant, only that it was a good thing to do and made a lot of noise when you shook the container.

All my memories of Halloween, like most of my childhood, are happy, filled with polyester, preservatives, and sugar.

We were happy because we loved each other and it showed.

My parents told us so, and hugged us, and kissed us.

When we fell and skinned a knee, it was a tragedy.

No injuries were ever walked off in the Scottoline household.

They were fussed over, worried about, and cured with food.

No failures or setbacks were ever shrugged off and anytime we were rejected by anybody or anything, fists were shaken.

“It’s their loss,” my father would always say.

And my mother would curse.

One time, in my lawyer days, she wanted to go to my law firm to yell at one of the partners for working me too hard.

I stopped her, saving the day.

For them.

Because an entire law firm was no match for my mother.

Now, that’s love.

Keeping it Real

October 19, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

I need to get a Real ID.

And it’s giving me an identity crisis.

Let me explain.

I don’t know who made this decision or why, but we can no longer use a driver’s license to fly or do God-knows-what-else.

By the way, I just looked it up and God-knows-what else includes entering a nuclear power plant.

So keep that in mind, the next time you stop by your local nuclear power plant.

Bring your real ID and your last will and testament.

Leave your ovaries at home.

To return to point, you can still use a passport to fly, but that worries me because I had my passport pickpocketed in Sicily and it was a pain in the neck to replace.

On second thought, it wasn’t that bad to replace. I had to make a side trip to Naples and rewarded myself with the best pizza in the world.

You know the old saying: Just a spoonful of carbohydrates makes the medicine go down.

For what it’s worth, I understand why it’s not a great idea to link identity to a driver’s license, because not everybody drives or can afford a car.

But I don’t know why we can’t have an either/or system, so you can fly with a driver’s license or Real ID.

But lately we’re not a country that deals with nuance.

We’re all-or-nothing now.

And lately it looks we’re in a lot of All.

But I digress.

So I looked up to see what I need to get a Real ID, and one thing was my Social Security card.

Ruh-roh.

I have no idea where that is.

I seem to remember it was a little piece of white paper even smaller than a credit card, which was its first problem. If it were plastic like a credit card, I would have kept it. I still have credit cards from stores that went bankrupt decades ago.

If Wanamakers comes back to life, I’m ready.

That was a joke for Philly people.

Everyone else will have to insert their own defunct-but-beloved department store.

By the way, department stores were something that existed before Amazon.

Try to play along, young people.

Humor us olds.

The rules for Real ID say that you can use your tax form for your social security number but my tax form has my number redacted, evidently to protect my identity.

Great idea, every week I get a notice that my online identity has been compromised by one website or another.

Hackers have my Social Security card, but I don’t.

The notices I get all ask me if I want to reset my passwords.

Answer, no.

I’m taking my chances.

There are few things worse than resetting all your passwords.

Maybe wearing a bra.

Which resets your breasts.

But I would rather wear a bra 24/7 than reset my passwords.

But I did luck out in my document search because by some incredible miracle, I found my original birth certificate.

Wow!

I have no idea why I saved it because it’s a piece of paper and not a credit card. But it is supercute, and actually filled out in something called a fountain pen.

Pens are something that existed before keyboards.

I know, this is the old-timiest column ever.

Because I was born seventy years ago, and my birth certificate is a seventy-year-old document.

Which makes it the oldest document in my house.

It’s on yellowed paper and measures 5 by 7, which may be why it survived in the bottom drawer of my jewelry box, with Daughter Francesca’s baby teeth.

Please tell me I’m not the only mother who keeps baby teeth.

Or has a jewelry box of biohazards.

Look, if I’m not throwing away a Wanamaker’s card, you know I’m hanging on to those teeth.

Plus the Tooth Fairy bought them, fair and square.

I think Francesca got a buck a tooth.

More for buck teeth.

Sorry.

I keep them wrapped in ancient Kleenex with a rubber band, like a do-it-yourself mummy.

Or Mommy.

And I have to tell you, when I found my daughter’s baby teeth, it reminded me of who I am.

Francesca’s mother.

That’s my Real ID.

By the way, I also save two dog teeth and several cat toenails.

So pet mothers count as mommies, too.

That’s called nuance.

Plot Twist

September 21, 2025

By Lisa Scottoline

My friends, these are plot-twisty times.

Of course I’m talking about my new puppy Eve.

Before I get started, let me thank you for your patience in reading my classic columns while I’ve been finishing my next book. I can’t do two things at once, so I had to take a break in the homestretch of the draft, but now it’s done, so I’m back writing fresh columns.

And you know how fresh I can be.

Also let me say thank you so much for your support of my book The Unraveling of Julia, which came out this summer. Many of you have been reading me for years, even decades, and I’m grateful for you every day.

Okay, back to new puppy Eve.

You may remember that I got Eve a few months ago, for lots of reasons, but mainly because I wanted a dog to take walks with me every day.

My two other dogs, Boone and Kit, are thirteen years old, and they don’t share my enthusiasm for the walk.

In truth, I don’t share my enthusiasm for the walk.

I make myself do it because it’s the laziest form of exercise.

I say that with love.

I have friends who run, hike, ski, and bicycle. I make excuses not to do those things.

Even I can’t find an excuse not to walk.

But we all love a plot twist, and Eve doesn’t like to walk.

As in, Eve will not walk.

If I go towards her with the harness, she runs away.

If I jingle a leash, she scoots under the bed.

If I actually succeed in putting a harness on her, she plants her front end down and her back end up and refuses to move.

I didn’t know why.

Dogs love to walk, right?

And who wouldn’t want to walk with me?

I’m a gas.

Actually I have gas.

Maybe that’s it?

Anyway I wondered if she had something wrong with her, so I took her to the vet, who examined her legs, and at my insistence, even did an x-ray.

Her legs are fine. She just doesn’t want to walk.

By the way, she doesn’t want to go to the car, either.

I jingle keys like the people in commercials, where the dogs jump up and bolt out the door to the car.

Eve bolts to the couch.

I even took her to obedience school.

She was a champ there, like the teacher’s pet.

Literally.

But now Evil is back to her old ways.

Finally I did what any mom would do.

I bribed her.

I carry her outside, then give her treats as we walk along.

You can imagine how comfortable this is, me bending over every ten steps and cheering “good girl” all the way.

Still, I’m into it. I love her and I love walking, so I’m going to make it work.

We parents can’t predict what our children will do, for good or for ill.

I say that because this summer also produced a different plot twist for me, a wonderful one in that my daughter Francesca’s second novel Full Bloom was published. It’s an amazing novel, and thank you to all of you who supported her book with the same enthusiasm you have shown mine over the years.

And because of you, in a wonderful plot twist, Francesca made the USA TODAY Bestseller List, right next to me! In the same week, my novel was the 79th and hers was the 80^th bestselling book of all sold in the country.

Wait, what?

Wow!

We were side-by-side on the list, as in life!

What are the odds?

It’s a harmonic convergence, family-wise.

By the way, I didn’t know Francesca would grow up to be a writer.

I wanted her to be a veterinarian.

For obvious reasons.

But I’m so happy and proud of her, and this summer taught me a great lesson:

You really do not know where life will lead you, or your family.

Sometimes there’s trouble, other times there’s joy.

I celebrate those joyful moments.

With enormous gratitude.

And now, Eve and I are going for a walk.

Good girl!

Intro from Lisa Scottoline

Column Classic: Thanksgiving

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