Read My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman for Free Online Page A

prevailed, so we turned our window fans out and sweated in our living room.
    Yes, it sucked.
    Mother Mary also believed in cross-ventilation. In fact, if you ever meet her, don’t get her started on cross-ventilation. She can talk about cross-ventilation like some people talk about politics. According to her, you should throw open two windows opposite from each other, and the air from one window will be sucked in, whoosh magically across the room, and blow out the other window, thus cooling all the Scottolines sweating inside.
    This sucked, too.
    We waited and waited for a breeze to cross-ventilate us, yet it never happened. So we whined and whined for an air conditioner, and one day, they relented, albeit with a compromise. We would use fans and cross-ventilation in the living room, and in the dining room, we installed a window air conditioner, which supposedly had enough BTUs to cool the entire first floor.
    It didn’t.
    It cooled the dining room, but we never used the dining room except for Christmas, Easter, or another day when something really good happened to Jesus Christ.
    And the TV was in the living room, so we were always in the living room, sweating amid the inside-out fans and nonex is tent cross-ventilation, while the dining room remained empty, if frosty.
    When I grew up, I got to be the mother, so my house has central air, window air conditioners, and fans.
    Overcompensate, much?
    But this summer has been so cool that I’m using only the fan. It sits in the window next to my bed and whirrs pleasantly all night, cooling dogs, cats, and one middle-aged woman.
    And it blows inside, the way God and General Electric intended.

Be Home By Ten, Mom

By Francesca Scottoline Serritella
    For a little girl, watching her mother get ready for a night out is an education. I remember being mesmerized as my mother would line her eyes to a feline contour, or wrap her curly hair around a round brush and, with a wave of her magic hair-dryer, pull it into straight, spun gold. I would eagerly slip my feet into whichever pairs of heels did not make the cut for that evening’s outfit, and by the time I was four, I could lipstick my lips without a smudge.
    Today, I can balance in stilettos of my own, and I graduated from regular eyeliner and went on to get my master’s in liquid liner.
    So when my mom called me last week asking what she should wear on her date that Saturday, I thought, can I possibly teach my mother, the master, anything about getting ready for a date?
    Five minutes into the conversation I realized, yes, God yes, I could help my mother. In fact, I must.
    Girlfriend wanted to wear a suit on the date. Blazer and all, the same uniform she wears to meet with her editor. “I feel comfortable in that,” she said.
    Yeah, because a date is the most fun when you treat it like a professional interview. But hey, if he gets to asking about “benefits,” you should throw a drink in his face.
    No, Mom, you cannot wear a suit.
    “But I look dumpy in my jeans.” Truth: my mom does not look dumpy. She and I wear the same size jeans. She is a tiny rocket ship that runs on love and worry. But I can’t convince her of this, so we compromise on black pants.
    “My friend told me men like boots. But I think boots are workin’ it too much, right?”
    I was immediately reminded of when I was eleven and my best friend told me that boys like it when you drink from a straw at the far corner of your mouth. For years, any visit to the mall food court was a chance for my soda-straw act. I don’t know what look I was going for—maybe “sexy dental patient”—or who my target audience was—Dr Pepper?—but it failed.
    Trying to be seductive with a cheap plastic straw is workin’ it too much.
    Anyway, I said, “Boots are fine. You’re supposed to work it a little, it’s a date!”
    “And so a long sweater, maybe that blue one?” She went on to describe a sweater she owns that is the size and shape of a bathrobe. I borrowed it