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Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog

The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

St. Martin's Press

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 Whisperer, 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 cardboard 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.

But have no fear. I checked the website, and Spanx has the solution: "slimming camis." That is, camisoles that look like Ace bandages, which presumably pick up the fat roll at the waist and squeeze it upward, so that, having nowhere else to go, it pops out on top, as breasts.

Ta-da!

Or rather, ta-tas!

This is interesting, for physics. Natural law says that matter cannot be created or destroyed, but that was pre-Spanx. With these babies, you could destroy the matter at your waistline and increase it at your bustline, merely by turning your body into a half- squeezed tube of toothpaste.

And of course, you'll need a new bra to catch all your homeless fat, so the website sells "the Bra-llelujah!" It even states, "So, say goodbye to BBS (Bad Bra Syndrome)!"

Thank God. I hate it when my B is B.

I looked at the other articles of slimming apparel, and there were even tights for pregnant women, which was great. I wouldn't want my baby to be born with VIL (Visible Infant Lines).

And there were Power Panties, which made me smile.

If women had power, we wouldn't need Spanx.

Defeated

I was driving down the street the other day when I saw a sign on an empty storefront that read, FISH PEDICURES COMING SOON!

It was the kind of sign that got me thinking. Do fish need pedicures? You'd think they would do without, in this economy.

Unless they were goldfish.

I went home and plugged "fish pedicures" into Google, and I learned that this is a new kind of pedicure for women, whereby you plunge your feet into a tank of water and fish eat your dead skin off.

I'm not joking.

The article said that fish pedicures use doctor fish, who evidently love this sort of thing. You have to wonder why they didn't put their medical degree to better use. To me, the only thing more disgusting than putting your feet in a bucket of flesh-eating fish is being a fish who has to eat dead skin for dinner.

Yuck.

I don't have time to get pedicures, though I love them. The last one I had, my feet came out clean and smooth as a saint's, except for the red nail polish. I opted for red because if you're going to get a pedicure once a year, you have to make it count. Red toenail polish signals that you're single and ready to mingle, at least in your mind.

Otherwise, the sight of a middle-aged woman's foot is not for the fainthearted, especially in mid-winter. Only women have the constitution to deal with it, like childbirth and diaper genies.

I can barely stomach trimming my own toenails, which I do with one of those cheapo stainless-steel clippers from CVS. I try to cut them evenly, but they always end up pointy enough to qualify as a lethal weapon in most jurisdictions.

Plus, my scientific observation is that nails thicken with time, so that a fifty-year-old toenail has the thickness of a ram's horn and is almost as pretty. My toenail trimming would go a lot faster if I replaced the clipper with a chainsaw.

And then there are calluses, which are fun. I can't imagine a doctor fish eating through my calluses, unless he was a surgeon fish.

Or a sturgeon fish.

Plus my calluses have toughened as the years have gone by, adding layer after layer, like the Earth's crust. Sometimes the calluses sprout cracks like fault lines, and when they finally split open, I have my own personal earthquake.

My feet are a natural disaster.

Daughter Francesca is grossed out by my feet, but they have their advantages. I don't have to wear shoes, as I appear to be growing my own pair of wooden clogs.

I don't need a pedicurist, I need a blacksmith.

Of course, my toes are no picnic, either. I don't know when this happened, maybe at about age 40, but all my toes have been become one. In other words, where I used have five vertical toes on each foot, I now appear to have one toe on each foot, but it's horizontal.

Please tell me this happened to you, too.

And what's up with our little toe?

Do you even have a little toe anymore? What happens to that little toe, when we get older? Has it been ignored for so long that it simply decides to vanish? Does it say to itself, I wonder if anybody will even notice that I'm gone?

If you ask me, that little piggy is going to market and never coming back.

The saddest thing about the little toe is the littlest toenail.

Can you even see yours, ladies?

I don't know if you have the Amazing Disappearing Toenail, but I do. About 10 years ago, it was normal size, then it magically cut itself in half, then in half again and again. Now it's a toe sliver. If I could lose weight like my littlest toenail, I'd be Lindsay Lohan.

Bottom line, the fish pedicure isn't for me.

Even a shark would throw up his hands.

Classified Porn

Everybody has their pornography, and mine is the real estate ads. I don't know when this happened or why, but I read the real estate ads with the absorption of a pervert.

At the outset, I should make it clear that I love my house. I have no intention of moving, ever. But I still can't wait to get the Sunday paper and start house-shopping.

I gaze lovingly at ads for condos in town and new construction in far suburbs. I look at duplexes and ranchers, Cape Cods and mansions. I look at houses that are way too expensive as well as ones that aren't half as nice as my house. I study the photos of the Featured Properties and wonder if the stone front is only a façade or goes all the way around. Is that front lawn as big as it looks?

It might be cool to live in a Featured Property instead of a normal house, presumably featureless.

And then there's the ad copy, which can't be deciphered without a decoder ring. What is a "Custm/grmt/KIT/isl/Cor"? I translate "custom kitchen with a Corian island" because I'm a professional. But the "grmt" stumps me. A misprint for granite? And what about a "new LL rec rm/wine clr?" I understand a new recreation room with a wine cellar, but what's LL?

It's a mystery, delicious and tantalizing, which only enhances the sensuality of the ads. It's real estate, semi-nude.

I flip to the shore properties and read about the beach houses. It would be nice to have a beach house, wouldn't it? I love the beach. Lots of people have second houses, why shouldn't I? Today there's a sold stamp over the photo of a four-bedroom at the Jersey shore, and the sight fills me with dismay. Now I couldn't buy the beach house even if I wanted to.

Which I didn't.

This is what I think about as I scan the ads for homes that I will never buy. It's like daydreaming about how I'd spend Powerball winnings though I never play the lottery, which is another of my fantasies.

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Excerpted from Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog by Lisa Scottoline. Copyright © 2009 Lisa Scottoline. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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