Lisa Scottoline - Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog - The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

BREAKING NEWS: CHOCOLATE CAKE IS DELICIOUS.

That was my chain of thought, and before you can say Benjamin Moore, one of the pundits had disenfranchised the voters of Florida, one of whom was my mother. Between us, I knew she wouldn’t be happy about that. If my mother leaves the kitchen, she wants it to count.

BREAKING NEWS: IT’S GOOD TO HAVE FEET.

But the point is that I had lost track of what was going on because I was trying to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banners and trying to read the crawl, and then I tried to take in all three at the same time, which was impossible. Even if I managed to ignore the fake BREAKING NEWS, I got only the gist of the tornados and the gist of the primaries, and they both seemed like natural disasters.

I can’t do two things at once, much less three.

I had the same problem last week, when I did my grocery shopping while I was on the cell phone. It seemed to be an efficient use of time, and I was continuing a conversation I had been having while I drove, which by the way, was hands-free. The only problem was that I went into the store for eggs, light cream, and romaine lettuce, and came out of the store, albeit hands-free, with the wrong kind of cream, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and spinach in a plastic box.

So I have to face the fact that I can’t multi-task anymore. I used to be able to, but somewhere along the line, I lost my multitasking mojo. In a world of BlackBerries, cell phones, Sidekicks, and iPods, I don’t know what to do about it.

I have to do more than one thing at once, or I won’t get everything done. And I can’t do away with my electronic toys, because I need them too much. For example, when Francesca was away at school, I loved sending her photos of the dogs from my BlackBerry, like the time Penny discovered the sunroof.

And daughter Francesca sends me cell phone photos when she’s trying to decide which dress to buy, so I can see her wearing both. I don’t think that’s what shop-by-phone meant originally, but women are good at finding innovative ways to buy things.

We all know that our kids are texting, IMing, and calling each other all the time, bringing them closer to each other and making them happier, which is a good thing. And the devices can be lifesavers-calling for directions in a pinch or texting to find your kid, brother, and mother in a graduation crowd of 35,000.

So what’s the answer?

BREAKING NEWS: THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.

One of the great things about getting older is that you’re tired enough to fall asleep, all the time. Or maybe it’s that you realize you’re not missing anything if you nod off. You know that it will all be there when you wake up, for good or ill. This might be called perspective.

Or laziness.

For example, I never used to be able to take a nap, but now I’m a big fan. I love naps. When I told a friend about this, she called them power naps. She said, “After you take one, you can work harder.”

Not exactly.

To me, the term “power nap” is an oxymoron. I don’t take power naps. I take out-of-power naps.

I don’t nap to work harder. I nap because I’m tired and I need to lie down.

I used to have all manner of sleep quirks. I couldn’t sleep at night unless the room was completely dark, absolutely quiet, or if there was a man next to me.

Then I got over it. My second divorce cured me.

Nowadays I have no curtains on my bedroom windows, and daylight streams in at dawn, but it doesn’t wake me. Nothing wakes me, these days. Here is a true story-a few years ago, a fire broke out in a field next door to my house, and it took ten firetrucks all night to extinguish. I slept through it. Why?

I was tired.

But I relapsed on book tour, in different hotel rooms for four weeks, and I got to thinking that I couldn’t sleep unless it was dark. Hotels have those double curtains; you know the ones, the top curtain made of some lovely fabric and behind it the secret curtain, made of gray impermeable rubber to block out light, noise, and nuclear war.

I closed the curtains, using that weird plastic wand, went to bed, and settled down. Then I noticed the flashing red lights on the fire detector and my BlackBerry. The phosphorescent glow of the digital clock. The red switch of a surge protector. The ghostly whiteness from the bathroom nightlight. The hall light spilling under the door. The bright pinpoint of the laptop. The green of the thermostat.

Christmas in Room 373.

I got up and started unplugging things like crazy, turning over the BlackBerry, covering the thermostat with a towel, and tilting the alarm clock to the wall, but when I went back to bed, no dice. I reached for a pillow to burrow under, which was when I realized there were twenty-six of them on the bed. They were of all types and sizes; some were thick rolls like logs, and others were soft and square as ravioli.

I tried all the pillows, found some too hard and some too soft, then threw them off the bed like a latter-day Goldilocks, until I came to the widest and tallest pillow I’d ever seen, maybe six feet long and two feet wide. I turned on the light and called the front desk, “What’s this big thing in my bed?”

“It’s an organic body pillow.”

Huh? For organic bodies? “What’s that?”

“Our guests love our body pillows. They hug them. It’s a sleep aid.”

“Really? Thanks.” I hung up, turned off the light, and flopped back down. After a minute, I leaned over and gave the body pillow an awkward hug. I admit it, I felt silly, looping an arm around an inanimate object. But it was kind of cuddly, and after a few minutes, it felt like a warm and friendly thing that I didn’t have to marry and divorce.

I named him George.

As in Clooney.

Luckily I was in town for two dreamy nights, during which George and I slept happily together. I snoozed like a baby. So did he. It was hard to leave him, but we vowed there would be no strings. We made no promises we couldn’t keep. When I had to move on, he didn’t ask me to stay. In fact, he said nothing. He couldn’t. He knew the way it was from the beginning.

I bet he’s already sleeping with someone else.

With the curtains closed.

The Flying Scottolines are zooming around everywhere, like protons spinning crazily out of control. I may be wrong on the science, but I think this why we just had a familial nuclear explosion.

It started because I’m on book tour, brother Frank is visiting daughter Francesca in NYC, and Mother Mary is left at home in Miami.

Alone.

Without a cell phone.

In other words, she could fall and not get up. No one would know but two toy Pomeranians.

I find this unacceptable. I’m not her daughter for nothing. Mother Mary raised me to understand that the American home is a perilous place and lethal accidents can happen at any time. I’m still afraid my blow dryer will jump in the sink and electrocute me. Also I could choke if I eat too fast. Plus if you read without enough light, you could go blind.