So I tried nothing-in-life-is-free on Little Tony, because we're supposed to practice. One of Little Tony's favorite things, after anything edible, is sitting on my lap on the couch. Every night after dinner, the puppy will actually run to the couch, plop his tush on the floor, and wag his tail like a windshield wiper. we're supposed to practice. One of Little Tony's favorite things, after anything edible, is sitting on my lap on the couch. Every night after dinner, the puppy will actually run to the couch, plop his tush on the floor, and wag his tail like a windshield wiper.

Adorable.

Except that I work a lot, so if I'm sitting, I'm writing a book on a laptop, with the TV on. Now I have a puppy who's a laptop, but it's fun to type over a puppy head and my lap is warm at all times. Okay, maybe the s.p.a.ce bar gets. .h.i.t a thousand extra times, and my chase scenes are way too mellow, but it's a small price to pay.

I may switch to greeting cards.

Anyway, I tried to get Tony to obey Watch Me so we could sit on the couch, but no luck. He watched the other dogs, the cats, and even Dancing With The Stars Dancing With The Stars. I tried for half an hour, then gave up. Meantime, he collapsed into an exhausted sleep, spreading out like melted chocolate, and I got no work done. My lap stayed cold, and I even missed Castle, Castle, a TV show about the exciting life of a bestselling writer. a TV show about the exciting life of a bestselling writer.

Castle doesn't have a dog.

Poor thing.

Mom, Interrupted

So I'm in New York, visiting daughter Francesca for the weekend, which is just the thing to remind you that your child is more adult than you.

She drinks stronger coffee, wears high heels with style, and could put on liquid eyeliner, blind. Me, I'd blind myself with liquid eyeliner.

We tool around the bustling streets, talking and walking with our two puppies in tow, Pip and Little Tony. We pick up after them, which is a change for me, because at home I let them go in the backyard and call it compost.

Little Tony, unaccustomed to life in the big city, alternates between barking and cowering. His threat detector is topsyturvy, so he growls at pa.s.sing mastiffs while pigeons send him scurrying in terror to my feet. I try to not to reward fearful behavior, but it's nice to still have something left to protect.

My daughter is on her own.

And it's a good thing, but surprising.

All the things I used to do for her over the years, she now does for herself. I know it sounds obvious but it's still miraculous to me, if only because I can remember her first step. Now she does her own laundry, cooking, vacuuming, clothes to the dry cleaner, hanging up pictures, bed-making, getting prescriptions filled, and all of it, in the toughest, and most glorious, city on the planet. filled, and all of it, in the toughest, and most glorious, city on the planet.

New York doesn't intimidate her, even though the first week she was there, she witnessed a violent mugging on her street, a purse-s.n.a.t.c.hing during which the woman's jaw was broken. A TV news crew arrived on the scene and interviewed Francesca, and she sent me the videotape from the station's website. Great.

Welcome to New York.

And it's time to let go. Again.

I've written before about how parenting is watching your child take a series of baby steps, all of them away from you, which is as it should be. It's both the happiest and saddest moments in the life of any mother and father. And it only gets harder, by which I mean, if you think letting them go to college was hard, try letting them move to New York, where it's not always easy for the puppies to tell the pigeons from the mastiffs.

Last night before bed, Francesca showed me a video game she plays on her BlackBerry, in which you make as many words as you can in thirty seconds, and as you get better, you advance through different seasons while the screen changes from winter to summer and back again. I normally hate video games, but I couldn't resist cuddling up with my big little girl, watching the seasons change in our hands.

My high score was 45. Hers was 4350.

For once, I'm not exaggerating.

I think we moms and dads play a sort of parental video game, where we complete one year to advance to the next, and all the time the years get harder and the little video rewards of fake-gold treasure chests or kelly-green shamrocks flash on the screen only to evaporate instantly, too fast to see. And so we tend to appreciate them in retrospect only, when the game is over and we play I Remember.

I remember your first word. Your first step. Your college graduation.

I remember because when we were making the memories, we were too busy to see, much less savor, the moment.

That's how we know we were good parents. Because we were too busy doing the laundry, cooking, vacuuming, clothes to the dry cleaner, hanging up pictures, bed-making, getting prescriptions filled, and, well, you get the idea.

People ask me where I get the ideas for my columns and books, and the answer is that they all come from my heart. I even wrote an entire book, Look Again, Look Again, about the letting go of a child. In the book, a mother gets a missing child flyer in the mail, and the photo looks exactly like her adopted son. She has to answer the question-does her son really belong to another family, and if he does, should she keep him or give him up? about the letting go of a child. In the book, a mother gets a missing child flyer in the mail, and the photo looks exactly like her adopted son. She has to answer the question-does her son really belong to another family, and if he does, should she keep him or give him up?

Oh, and by the way, she writes for a living.

I write what I know.

And what you know, too.

Babies Having Babies

I am on tour for my new book, so I asked daughter Francesca to help me out, as she explains below: .

When I was in high school, my mother's book tour meant that I had the house to myself, and I would spend the month eating a lot of spaghetti and Top Ramen noodles (cooking = boiling water), staying up late watching cable TV (swear words! edgy!), and cursing myself for not having the guts (or the contacts) to throw a totally sick house party. Instead, I was one of the kids who had her first sip of beer from my grandmother's Bud Light on Ice at ten years old and then not again until college.

I know. Lame.

Well, now I'm at the pinnacle of hip, young adulthood-I can order my own own Bud Light on Ice, and I'm living in the Big City, the single mother to the cutest baby I know, my dog, Pip. I have a nice little routine-I work out at the local gym, I go to work, I walk the dog, I cook food that my roommate reluctantly but kindly eats, I get dressed up on the weekend in hopes of something exciting happening. Being a grown-up is easy! Bud Light on Ice, and I'm living in the Big City, the single mother to the cutest baby I know, my dog, Pip. I have a nice little routine-I work out at the local gym, I go to work, I walk the dog, I cook food that my roommate reluctantly but kindly eats, I get dressed up on the weekend in hopes of something exciting happening. Being a grown-up is easy!

But that's all about to change. I'm getting a new addition to my tiny family. And it was unplanned.

Little Tony is staying with me during my mother's book tour. He's the puppy my mother got just a few months after I got Pip. She and I are like the puppy version of the Sarah and Bristol Palin; a mother-daughter team raising newborns at the same time. Listen, you can't plan these things, not around national book tours and not around presidential elections.

Every puppy is a blessing.

Just not my my blessing. blessing.

See, there was a delicate balance to my life-one girl: one dog. This was enough to impress my friends, the way I blew right through the house-plant stage and onto the house-pet one (twenty-three-year-olds are easily impressed). But now, suddenly, there are two puppies in the house! Two dogs mean two walks, and two walks mean two pick-ups for two ... well, you know. Who said I was ready for double duty? Much less double ... ok, I'll stop.

And Little Tony is not city-savvy. Despite his wise-guy moniker, he's a backwoods doggie, through and through. Far from the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, he thinks peeing on the sidewalk is gross but peeing in the apartment is fun. When I walk him here, he growls at the pa.s.sing Maltipoos and Labradoodles and c.o.c.kadoodle-dos, as if to curse them for their bedazzled collars and fancy grooming appointments. 'Go choke on your organic, free-range bison biscuit,' he seems to say! Pip tongues a piece of said biscuit still stuck in his teeth and feels embarra.s.sed for everyone involved.

Me too, Pip, me too.

But when my mother called me a week ago, sounding stressed and worried about leaving her baby (Tony, not me) behind, I had to offer to take him, and truthfully, I wanted to. I'm happy to be able to actually help my mother with something.

I'm starting to realize that growing up is more than simply distancing myself from my parents. Learning to function as an independent ent.i.ty, a family unit of one (plus a pet and some friends) is certainly part of it, but a joy and obligation of adulthood is learning to re-approach our parents, not as children, but as equals. All my life, my mother has loved and supported me, and growing up means returning the favor. distancing myself from my parents. Learning to function as an independent ent.i.ty, a family unit of one (plus a pet and some friends) is certainly part of it, but a joy and obligation of adulthood is learning to re-approach our parents, not as children, but as equals. All my life, my mother has loved and supported me, and growing up means returning the favor.

I'm lucky that my mother is healthy and young, and she won't need me to really take care of her for a good long time, if ever. But it's nice to know that on the rare occasions she does need a little help, I can say, "I'm here for you."

For all the car rides to play practice, hair blow-outs before the big dance, countless home-cooked meals, fashion second-opinions, career advising, sick-day chicken soup and movie marathons, post-breakup pep-talks, and phone calls for no reason but I'm walking somewhere and I'd like to hear her voice-to repay my mom for all that a mother does, let's just say, I would have to walk a lot of dogs.

Ode to Hallmark

Mother's Day is a good time to address the question of Hallmark holidays.

Bottom line, I'm in favor.

As in, two thumbs way up!

By way of background, a Hallmark holiday is defined by wikipedia.com, my guide in all matters, as "a disparaging term, used to describe a holiday that is perceived to exist primarily for commercial purposes."

In other words, Bah, humbug!

To which I say, Lighten up!

Why celebrate only for excellent reasons? Who can't be bothered to give a greeting card unless it's absolutely warranted? Or bring a present unless it's supremely well-deserved?

I celebrate any and all holidays, commercial or legit, religious or secular, without exception. Life is too short not to celebrate something, plus if you observe all the Hallmark holidays plus the national holidays, we're only talking about thirty days max, which is still just a third of the time Europeans take for vacation.

So kick up your heels!

Especially on Mother's Day.

Anyone who calls Mother's Day a Hallmark holiday has never given birth.

OMG.

How graphic do we need to get? If you were describing childbirth to an alien, where would you start? With the breathing and the sweating? With the contractions like Gas From h.e.l.l? With the fact that sometimes, as in my case, they had to fetch forceps and vacuums and everything else in the tool shed to yank daughter Francesca screaming from my body?

You're right. I don't deserve a greeting card.

I deserve a medal.

And a new car. Plus the Prize Patrol should pull up in front of my house with helium balloons and a giant check.

All moms deserve the same, whether they've been through childbirth or not, because we were there for our little monsters, whether they realize it or not. And before you get all feisty that I'm not including fathers, your day will come. But for now: Happy Mother's Day!

Mothers are the ones on the front lines when noses leak, tears need to be wiped, and prom dresses selected. Moms did things for us we don't even realize and could never remember. We got to school each day, from kindergarten through middle school, washed and fed, lunches packed, with barrettes in our hair. How did that happen?

Moms.

I can't even begin to tell you all the great things Mother Mary did for me, starting with letting me make jokes about her herein.

When I was first published, she had a poster made that read LOCAL AUTHOR LOCAL AUTHOR and drove around with it in the back window of her Dodge Omni. When I called to tell her that I made the and drove around with it in the back window of her Dodge Omni. When I called to tell her that I made the New York Times New York Times bestseller list, she asked in amazement, "Does this mean that they read you in New York?" bestseller list, she asked in amazement, "Does this mean that they read you in New York?"

"Yes," I replied.

She even called me last week after she heard about the swine flu, and told me not to eat bacon.

That's love.

It's not good information, but it's love.

In fact, basically any product recall, from peanut b.u.t.ter to baby strollers, she calls me. If a storm is heading my way, she calls me sooner than it's on TV. Doppler radar has nothing on Mary Scottoline.

Bottom line, she's thinking of me every minute, and any news she hears, she relates to me.

Anything I am I owe to Mother Mary.

Doesn't that merit a holiday?

A three-dollar card?

Some flowers? Chocolates? A book or a sweater?

Is a thank-you so out of the question?

Not to me. I'm on it.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

I love you.

And thanks.

Unmentionable

You may have heard about the bra that stopped a bullet. It happened in Detroit, where a woman heard a break-in at her neighbor's house, went to the window, and a bad guy fired at her. The bullet shattered the gla.s.s, but was deflected by the underwire in her Miracle bra.

It's a Miracle, right?

The story got me thinking that my underwire isn't working hard enough. It would never save my life. It won't even stay in place. All it does is ride up, making a red line across my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as if it's playing Connect the Nips.

For this I paid $35.

I've come to the conclusion that underwear is not worth paying a lot of money for. Ladies, if you want to economize, your undies are the place to do it. Sorry, undies manufacturers. And especially Spanx makers. You know how I feel about you.

You'll get yours.

Anyway, why spend on undies? First off, n.o.body sees it. And if you're lucky enough for somebody to see it, chances are they've seen it before. In fact, if you're married, they've seen it 3,437,464 times before. By now they've memorized your bra rotation, including the one special bra that's your trump card.

Oh, admit it, girls. You have one. We all do.