Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

Writer, blogger, author and humorist

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Cover Up Your Legs, Princess! It’s Gown Season

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It’s that time of year again: when normally sensible, well dressed women throw all they know about fashion out the window and put on princess costumes to go out in public.

It’s floor-length gown season, bitches.

Which means it’s the twelfth time I’ll go against my own better judgement and half-heartedly walk out my front door looking like an evil stepsister.

I knew this was coming but I was still not prepared.

“I was not prepared for this,” I told a salesperson at Bloomingdale’s, who helpfully suggested a gown with a full-skirt that seemed to have been built  around a dog crate. I could have smuggled in a troop of dancing Nutcracker toddlers under it.

I put it on and she — chronically helpful now — came in to check on me and laughed nervously. “You could have it altered,” she said. “You know, have the hem taken up.”

Oh yes, let’s do talk about short girls and gowns. When covered in a gown, my legs appear to be 8 inches shorter than they are. I once tried on a shimmery pink gown, thinking I’d feel like Glenda the Good Witch and instead I felt like the lead female Munchkin. You know, the one with the hoop skirt and puffy sleeves. [Read more…] about Cover Up Your Legs, Princess! It’s Gown Season

Yankee Go Home, But Flush First

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Being an American these days is becoming more and more embarrassing. We look really bad to the rest of the world and I’m not talking about how we run our elections or our unwillingness to learn the metric system. We’re known globally as the race of people who don’t know how to flush their own poop.

When we travel abroad, it’s bad enough that we can’t speak the language, we’re picky eaters, and we stop to ask people where the closest Starbucks is. But we have become spoiled by toilets that automatically flush, sinks that spew water with a wave of a hand, and paper towels that are delivered right to your snapping fingers.

We’re not living in a sci-fi future, we’re in a Bewitched episode. [Read more…] about Yankee Go Home, But Flush First

Where’s My Coffee?

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I’m not a self-centered person. Really I’m not.

But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t blurt out, “Oh, come on!” when I found out the replacement coffee carafe I ordered was going to be slightly delayed because of a train derailment.

One day. The delay was one day. Because a train had a terrible accident.

Did I see the phrase train derailment and think what any human with a beating heart would think? You know, maybe: Were there any children hurt? Was there a resulting explosion that caused injury, death or dismemberment to anyone nearby? And what about the train conductor? How’s he doing?

No.

“If I have to go one more day drinking coffee from the ancillary backup coffee pot I’m going to kill myself,” I told my husband.

“Yeah, seriously, how much more can a person be expected to take?” he deadpanned. If I didn’t know better I’d think he was being sarcastic. [Read more…] about Where’s My Coffee?

Spicing Up Old Age

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They say that as you get older you are more likely to be a hoarder of at least one thing, and now that I’m (ahem) older, I can definitely see that happening. Not that I’m wading through mountains of on-sale collectible dolls and dirty Kleenex to get to the bucket next to the broken toilet every morning, but I’m entering a phase of life in which I can’t see the sense in throwing away something that is perfectly good. Combine that with compulsive buying of a specific thing and you’ve got me: Almost 60-years-old and the owner of more spices than hairs on my legs in winter.

I seriously don’t know what to do about my spices. They’re out of control. This is not surprising, since I love to cook and I get an almost orgasmic satisfaction out of reading a recipe, seeing some unpronounceable spice that would cause a lesser woman to turn the page and just make a tuna casserole, and realizing that I not only have it in the house, I might have three of them, one of them the Cajun version.

This spice hoarding goes unchecked because it’s only egged on by the other quirks taking hold as I age. Like being more and more okay with eating things that might be expired. Anyone who has ever opened the refrigerator in his grandmother’s house knows that the older you get the less you care about eating spoiled food. You never see a 25-year-old, no matter how near death from starvation, open up a Tupperware container, sniff it, wince, and then say, “I think it’s still good” and then serve it to loved ones. That trait definitely comes from reaching a certain age. When my mom was doing it, I thought it had something to do with her growing up in an orphanage and living through the Great Depression. But now I know that even Richie Rich grew up to cut the blue spots off the brie. [Read more…] about Spicing Up Old Age

Sewing Machine Self Esteem

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I hate to see someone get picked on. And when it’s my sewing machine, I feel compelled to defend it with the same zeal with which I rip out seams: Slowly, methodically, and with a burning hatred in my heart.

My poor sewing machine. She’s just a basic little thing, as plain as Jane and twice as homely.  She’s old and cheap and she has bad habits . . . like if I don’t put the bobbin in just so she leaves a tangled mess of thread in her wake . . . And when trying to thread the needle, she squinches up the hole and releases an invisible fog of odorless gas that blurs my vision  . . . And the pedal is so sensitive it goes from zero to sixty in the time it takes me to get my fingers out of the way.  She doesn’t do anything fancy like automatically cut the thread or embroider in cursive celebratory wishes.  In fact my sewing machine is kind of a douche, but she’s my douche and I would thank you not to bring up her inadequacies in front of me.

And I’m talking about you, people at the sewing machine maintenance places who have a wisecrack convention every time I take her in for regular maintenance. [Read more…] about Sewing Machine Self Esteem

When Broadway Sent Me to Hell

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If I go to hell — and the heavenly jury, that persnickety bunch of fuss budgets, is still out on that — it won’t be because of any of the Commandments. It will have nothing to do with all those pens I took from newsrooms across northern and central Ohio, or the free HBO I did not report for almost two years.  It will be because of a blasphemous little number called The Book of Mormon.

Who knew that a ticket to eternal damnation would cost $159.50 plus service and handling fees? I always thought that if I stood face to face with fire and brimstone it would be because of something I did to make money not spend it.  It is surprisingly easy to go straight to hell. You can print your tickets at home or pick them up at will call.

I will take full blame, since it was my decision and I pulled the trigger on the ticket purchases. It was last summer and my husband, son and I were looking for a show to take in while on a trip to New York. As expected, everyone had an opinion, but that didn’t help.

Me: What do you guys want to see? Give me an idea so I can start to narrow it down and choose.

My son: Anything but Cats.

My husband: Cats! [Read more…] about When Broadway Sent Me to Hell