Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

by Lisa Scottoline

  Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

  Lisa Scottoline

  A non fiction book

  At last, together in one collection, are Lisa Scottoline's wildly popular Philadelphia Inquirer columns. In her column, Lisa lets her hair down, roots and all, to show the humorous side of life from a woman's perspective. The Sunday column debuted in 2007 and on the day it started, Lisa wrote, 'I write novels, so I usually have 100,000 words to tell a story. In a column there's only 700 words. I can barely say hello in 700 words. I'm Italian.' The column gained momentum and popularity. Word of mouth spread, and readers demanded a collection. Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog is that collection. Seventy vignettes. Vintage Scottoline.

  Lisa Scottoline

  Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

  © 2009

  For extraordinary ordinary women everywhere

  Preface

  I love Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote about women being like tea bags. I have it written on a Post-it stuck to my computer and I keep one in my jewelry box, too. The quote is the reason I started writing books, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Here’s the story of me: I’m an English major who became a lawyer, though I always wanted to write a novel. After my first divorce, I found myself single with a young baby (don’t try this at home). I wanted to stay home to raise my baby, but I had no dough. My back was against the wall, so I decided to finally try to write that novel. I figured you can’t get any broker than broke.

  Turns out you can.

  I wrote for the next five years, living on credit cards, nursing my baby by day and reading rejection letters by night. Yet it was a deliriously happy time of my life.

  Women are tea bags, remember?

  My favorite rejection letter was from a New York agent who said, “We don’t have time to take any more clients and if we did, we wouldn’t take you.”

  Thanks.

  No, really.

  He helped me brew my tea.

  I started writing fiction because I wanted to see in books the kind of women I saw in real life. I grew up with a strong, funny, and feisty mom; Mother Mary, whom you will meet herein. She taught me the dangers of swimming too soon after you eat, and also that toasters are out to electrocute you. She ran our family, The Flying Scottolines, alternating kisses and hugs with swats from a wooden spoon. Her tomato sauce was the glue that held us together, and her kitchen table was more powerful than a conference table in any Fortune 500 company.

  But when I read popular novels, I didn’t see any women like my mother, my girlfriends, or even myself. The women were all minor characters-wives, girlfriends, and/or hookers-and their characterization was as thin as a thong.

  In short, women never got to star in books, and it got me wondering. How are we supposed to star in our own lives, if we never see that anywhere around us? How can our daughters realize their fullest potential, if they’re still pouring coffee in fiction?

  So I started to write stories starring ordinary women, who are extraordinary in so many ways. I’m talking about teachers, lawyers, journalists, at-home moms, judges, dentists, and nurses.

  In short, tea bags.

  My characters get themselves into hot water and out again, stronger and better for it. Just like life. Sixteen years and sixteen books later, the books are bestsellers, thanks to you.

  (Big hug.)

  My trademark heroine is everything I want to be, or how I feel on a good hair day. Interviewers always ask me if I’ll write a novel with a male as the main character, (a question no male author is ever asked), and here is what I answer:

  “No.”

  “Why?” they ask.

  “Because I have ovaries. And I write what I know.”

  It was so good to be writing books about extraordinary ordinary women, I thought it would be even better if I wrote about them for the newspaper, too, so I started a weekly column called “Chick Wit” for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Now I’ve rewritten those columns, added some new ones, and turned them into this little book.

  In the next pages, you’ll read about the amazing adventures of our everyday lives-like wrestling with Spanx, juggling hockey and soccer practices, and trying to keep our roots touched up. I also offer plenty of useful advice, like how to survive Valentine’s Day, why you should embrace visible panty lines, and that you should throw away your iron, immediately. The stories that follow are in no particular order, and together they’re a mix tape for moms and girls.

  In short, tea bags.

  As for the cast of characters, you’ll meet my real-life family, starting with Mother Mary, she of the traveling back scratcher. And Brother Frank, who’s gay and lives in Miami with Mother Mary, in a small house that smells of ravioli and really strong aftershave. There’s daughter Francesca, now a budding author who writes herein to give her generation’s take on things. And finally beloved father Frank, who has passed on, except for his soul, which guides me in life and also on 1-95.

  There’s also best friend Franca and assistant Laura, who are so alike that they’re almost the same extraordinary woman, but in different bodies. Every girl needs girlfriends, and they are my besties. If I killed somebody, they would show up with shovels and Hefty bags. A girlfriend is just another word for accessory after the fact.

  And you’ll also meet the disobedient pets that fill my life, and unfortunately, my bed. As of this writing, I have four dogs on rotation-two golden retrievers, a corgi, and a newest addition, Little Tony The Anatomically Incorrect Puppy. I also support two cats, a flock of chickens, and an ancient 4-H pony, Buddy. Whoever says you can’t buy love has never had a pet.

  Finally, appearing in these pages are my two ex-husbands, Thing One and Thing Two. They are minor characters.

  Bottom line, I’m a woman on my own. I’m betting you can relate, even if you’re married or sharing your bed with something other than a golden retriever. In the end, we are all of us on our own.

  And that’s good news.

  Because we’re strong enough to star in our own lives.

  And we tea bags make a helluva cup of tea.

  I hope you enjoy this book. I think it’s funny, emotional, and true. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll swear off pantyhose.

  Welcome to my world.

  And yours, too.

  Tea bags, unite!

  Let’s start a revolution.

  A woman is like a tea bag. You never know

  how strong she is until she’s in hot water.

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

  Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog

  Of Dogs and Men

  I’m old enough to remember Ozzie and Harriet, which means that my idea of the nuclear family was born in the 1950s and never quite grew up. By that I mean, a family has a Mommy, a Daddy, and two kids. And a dog.

  Run, Spot, run!

  We all know that the nuclear family has changed, but what’s interesting to me is that nobody has just one dog anymore.

  I’m not sure when it started, but all of the people who used to have a family dog now have family dogs. I myself have a full herd-three golden retrievers and one Pembroke Welsh corgi, who rules us all. Multiple dogs used to be thought of as crazy. Fifteen years ago, when I used to walk two dogs in the city, people asked me if both dogs were mine. Now I walk four and nobody raises an eyebrow.

  This is true on TV as well. More and more, we see two dogs chowing down in Iams commercials, side-by-side. The Dog Wh
isperer, Cesar Milan, spends many of his episodes trying to get all of us crazies with multiple dogs to live happily together.

  So when exactly did people start acquiring multiple dogs?

  And why?

  Before you answer, consider another phenomenon, which I’m sense is related. What caused the nuclear family to blow up was that people started getting divorced like crazy. All of a sudden, the divorces began to pile up. I don’t mean across-the-country, I mean in one person. People I met had acquired second and third divorces almost as easily as they had acquired second and third dogs. At some point, the third divorce became the new second divorce. No one even bothered to count their first divorce. People didn’t tell their third set of kids about it. It happened so long ago, you could easily forget.

  Nowadays, even normal people are on their second divorce. People like me, for example. I have two ex-husbands, Thing One and Thing Two. To be honest, I used to be embarrassed about being divorced twice. When people asked me if I was married, I would simply answer, “No, I’m divorced.” Okay, technically it was the truth, but lawyers would call it a material omission. Sooner or later, my pathetic personal history would spill out, and I’d be busted.

  But recently, I was speaking at a library in California, and I met a lot of very nice women my age. And when I mumbled something about being divorced twice, one of them said, “Don’t worry about it, honey, I’m divorced four times.” And somebody else chirped up, “I’m on my third.” And another chimed in, “I’m on my fifth!”

  Boy, did that make me feel great! Er, I mean, it made me feel terribly concerned for the future of our nation and the American family.

  And the funny thing is, many of these women had multiple dogs. Everyone I spoke with who had more than one dog also had more than one divorce. Some women had more divorces than dogs, others had more dogs than divorces. It makes you wonder which came first-the dog or the divorce?

  Is the new dog acquired as a result of the new divorce? In other words, do we trade our husband in for a dog?

  Or does getting yet another Yorkie lead to your fourth divorce?

  Are we replacing stable human families with stable dog families?

  You may think I’m comparing two unrelated things, but this really isn’t so crazy when you consider that many women, myself included, sleep with their dogs on the bed. In fact, in my own case, three of my dogs sleep on what used to be my ex’s side of the bed. Plus, dogs do a lot of the things husbands do; snore, toss and turn, and fart. And I think my corgi has restless leg syndrome.

  I believe these things are related. From my side of the bed, I’m smelling a connection.

  The only thing that’s missing is the prenup.

  Body Parts

  I like to write about the differences between men and women, but this time I thought I’d bring up something we have in common. Namely, that we can’t always control our eyes.

  For a long time now, men have gotten a lot of grief when they look at a woman’s chest instead of her eyes. Mostly everybody has made that observation, so that men are terrified to look anywhere but directly into our eyes. It’s gotten to the point that if a weird bony hand burst through a woman’s sternum, like in the movie Alien, the man she was talking to would be the last to notice. Or if he knew, he’d be too afraid to admit it, lest he incur the wrath of Sigourney Weaver.

  It’s not really fair to men.

  First of all, it’s only natural for a man to wonder what a woman’s chest looks like. Men have testosterone for a reason, and if they don’t use it up looking at our chests, then they’ll be causing wars and football playoffs.

  Second, women are getting boob jobs left and right, so to speak. It’s a mixed message to spend all that money on a new and improved chest, then get angry when a man notices your purchase. Women can’t have it both ways.

  Third, what’s happening now is that a man will spend so much time staring fixedly into a woman’s eyes that she’ll wonder if her eye makeup is sliding off or if he has a David Copperfield thing and is trying to mesmerize her. Hyp-mo-tized!

  It’s tough to be a man, with eyes, when breasts are around.

  And women are having their own eye issues lately. There’s a male body part I always check out before I look at a man’s face. And frankly, if this body part doesn’t pass the test, I never get to his face. In fact, if this body part doesn’t go my way, I don’t even care if he has a face.

  I’m talking about the ring finger.

  It’s gotten to be a very bad habit with me. It’s not like I’m on the prowl, or that I want to get married again, because I don’t. My Future Ex-Husband will be very carefully chosen, because after Strike Two, well, you know. Still I find myself checking out ring fingers to see if a man is married, everywhere I go. At Staples. At a party. Even driving on the turnpike.

  In fact, I’m pretty sure that if a man killed somebody in front of me and the police called me as an eyewitness, I couldn’t describe him at all if he had a wedding band on. Married men can get away with murder when I’m around.

  I could give a detailed description of their ring, however.

  Even weirder, I check out ring fingers as if there’s a doubt about the outcome, which there isn’t. Every man I see is married. Every man I know is married. Every man I don’t see and don’t know is married. Checking ring fingers is like watching The Godfather over and over, and hoping Don Corleone doesn’t die in the tomato patch.

  And then the other day I found myself in the awful predicament that men must get into when they’re talking to a woman they’re attracted to and they want to check out her chest, but they can’t because the woman is watching their eyes to see where they go. I happened to be talking to this attractive man, having a conversation that was unusually entertaining, or at least not about his wife or kids for a change, when I realized that by some stroke of temporary insanity, I had forgotten to check out his ring finger first.

  Arg!

  Then he kept talking and being more charming and getting handsomer by the minute, and I kept wondering, is he married or not? I kept waiting for the right moment to sneak a peek at his ring finger, but I knew he would see my eyes look down because he was staring so fixedly into my pupils, because he wasn’t allowed to sneak a peek at my chest. I knew I wasn’t supposed to reduce him to a finger anymore than he was supposed to reduce me to a chest, and for a time, we were almost in danger of getting to know one another.

  What a waste of time!

  But luckily, our eyes got teary from all that staring, and we both lost interest in the conversation because we couldn’t get the answer we really wanted.

  So what happened?

  He turned away first, and I got my answer. Married. So I wasn’t interested.

  Then he got his answer. 34 A. So he wasn’t interested.

  And don’t get me started on married men who don’t wear wedding rings.

  Busted!

  Everything Old Is Nude Again

  Something dangerous is going on in the world of women’s underwear, and I want to nip it in the butt.

  Sorry.

  I am referring, of course, to Spanx.

  If you don’t know what Spanx are, I have one word for you:

  Girdles.

  I got introduced to Spanx by accident, when I bought a black-patterned pair, thinking they were tights. I got my size, which is B.

  For Beautiful.

  I took them home and put them on, which was like slipping into a tourniquet. Then I realized they weren’t tights, they were just Tight, and I checked the box, which read Tight-End Tights.

  Huh?

  I actually managed to squeeze myself into them, then I put on a knit dress, examined myself in the mirror, and hated what I saw. From the front, I looked like a Tootsie Roll with legs. From the back, instead of having buttocks, I had buttock.

  In other words, my lower body had been transformed into a cylinder. I no longer had hips where hips are supposed to be, or saddlebags where God intended. I was the c
ardboard in the roll of toilet paper.

  And another detail. I couldn’t breathe.

  Also the elastic waistband was giving me a do-it-yourself hysterectomy.

  I didn’t understand the product, so I went instantly to the website, which explained that these were no ordinary tights but were “slimming apparel.” This, under the bright pink banner that read, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts!”

  Really?

  The website claimed that “these innovative undergarments eliminate VBL (visible bra lines) and VPL (visible panty lines).”

  Well.

  Would this be a good time to say that I’m in favor of VBL and VPL? Especially VPL. In fact, I want my P as V as possible.

  You know why?

  Because I wear P.

  I don’t know what kind of signal we’re sending if we want our butts to suggest otherwise. Bottom line, I’m not the kind of girl who goes without P. In other words, I’m a Good Girl (GG). And GGs wear P.

  Same goes for B.

  I admit, I get a little lazy, especially at home or in the emergency room, as you will learn later. I don’t always bother with B all the time. But if I’m in public and not wearing a down coat, I wear B. And I also want my B to be V.

  You know why?

  I want extra credit.

  If I went to the trouble to put on a B, I want to be recognized for it. Here’s an analogy; I’m not the kind of person who makes charitable donations anonymously. If I give away money, I want a plaque or maybe a stadium named after me, so everybody knows that I’m nice, in addition to being good. (N and G). In fact, that makes me a N and GG.

  But back to P and B.

  I went back to the mirror and noticed something else-that the fat that properly belonged on my hips, having taken up residence there at age 40, was now homeless and being relocated upward by my tights, leaving a roll at my waist which could pass for a flotation device.