Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

Writer, blogger, author and humorist

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I Know What You Did Last Summer

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Am I the only person who is hoping that the new Swiss trend to ban live-lobster boiling will eventually bubble over and take hold in the United States?

I know this country is not exactly on the federal regulation bandwagon right now, but a nice, neat No Boiling Alive policy would prevent people from having to go through what I did last summer. I was complicit in the boiling of eight live Maine lobsters and I feel terrible about it. I know there’s a legal difference between an accomplice and an accessory, but I think I was both. I was only a passenger in the getaway car, but if it were an episode of Law and Order, I would have spent some time at Rikers.

Here’s how it happened: My husband and I were in Maine and were going to be swinging through Boston to visit a conglomerate of nephews, wives, girlfriends, children, a sister and a brother-in-law. Our nephew Steve was hosting a barbecue for us all. There were going to be not one but two babies at this thing and I couldn’t have been more excited about it. [Read more…] about I Know What You Did Last Summer

New Year Weight Loss Resolutions Detour From a V Turn

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How are your resolutions going? Not great? That bad? Not to worry. Only fifty weeks until you can start over again. And in the meantime, you have nine months to jag off until the first of the month falls on a Monday again. And everybody knows that’s the best time to improve yourself. Kingdoms have been built on Monday-the-firsts.

I’m happy to report that my resolutions are going swimmingly. I’m drinking less, thanks to a How to Drink Less booklet that I bought on the internet for seven dollars. I’m reading more, thanks to the research I did for a guest blog on How to Become a Better Writer by Reading More. And I’m eating healthier thanks to something that hit me at the end of last year: In the past forty-five years I’ve tried out almost every diet plan known to woman and the only one that actually had me weighing less was that one where you eat anything you want, cut out all alcohol, and then at the end of nine months you drop an eight-pound baby out of your vagina. [Read more…] about New Year Weight Loss Resolutions Detour From a V Turn

A Place for Mom’s Tattoo

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Sixty-one is a good age to get a tattoo, right?

Please say yes, because I really want to indulge my daughter and get coordinating mother-daughter tats, and I’ll need at least another year, year-and-a-half before I can decide what to get and where on my body to get it.

I figure if I wait long enough my tattoo will still be crisp and bright when I’m on display in my coffin. And who doesn’t yearn for that every darn day of the week?

My husband is not in favor of me getting a tattoo. My daughter, on the other hand, has convinced me that it would be the greatest parental score since I drove her around Lexington, Kentucky, stalking Johnny Depp. I’m no closer to a decision on a tattoo what and where than I was when she first suggested it and I choked on my cocktail. [Read more…] about A Place for Mom’s Tattoo

Forty Years After Graduation, No Career in Sight

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Five years ago I mentioned here that I was going to my high school class reunion and had forgotten to come up with a believable profession. Gearing up for my quinquennial visit back to see my classmates, I got through almost everything on my to-do list: I remembered to get a plane ticket, I remembered to buy a new outfit, I remembered almost everyone’s name, and I remembered to drink loads of water the day of the reunion, as well as pack some Excedrin. But I forgot to put together a good answer to the inevitable question, “What do you do?”

Well, guess what? It’s that half decade again, and I still don’t know what I do for a living.

Of course I know what I do for a living; I just don’t know how to present it so my former classmates don’t think I’m a slacker, an eccentric or a concubine. [Read more…] about Forty Years After Graduation, No Career in Sight

New York Without Hamilton is What Exactly?

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I’m going to New York in a couple of months. I might as well be going to Nebraska, because – swallow whatever’s in your mouth and sit down because I don’t want you to choke and hurt yourself from the shock – I’m not going to see Hamilton.

Why bother? you ask. Is there anything else going on the entire 23-square mile island of Manhattan? Will they even let me off the plane at JFK without a ticket in my hand and will I be put on a terrorist watch list if I try to leave the city without a Playbill signed by at least three cast members?

Why is she even here?          No clue. Better frisk her and check for gunpowder residue.

The first part of my visit will be during my husband’s business meetings, so I’ll be on my own during the day. I will probably go to Chelsea Market shops, where I hear there is a vendor who sells lockets containing the dustpan sweepings from the stage at the Richard Rogers Theater, collected after each Hamilton performance.  And I’ll definitely go to Greenwich Village and hit my favorite indie bookstore, where they sell the few remaining books that aren’t about Hamilton in a newly built annex, constructed from hardback copies of Hamilton: The Revolution, the book about Hamilton. Which I am not seeing. [Read more…] about New York Without Hamilton is What Exactly?

This Is No Way to Get a Crick in Your Neck

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For those of you not from Northeastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania, a crick is either a small stream where you can wade with your pant legs rolled up hunting  for crawdads, making Tom Sawyer and Becky look like preppy Archie and Veronica, or it’s an equally Midwestern condition that lies somewhere between a pulled muscle and a nerve that is being obnoxious.

I refer to the latter.

If you look up What is a crick in the neck you’ll learn that there’s something called cervical radiculopathy, which must be what I have because how I got this is radiculous.  I won’t swear to it, but I think I got it from letting a Vietnamese stranger give me a neck massage in a Dallas nail salon. [Read more…] about This Is No Way to Get a Crick in Your Neck