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I have two daughters, so it is widely accepted that their parents have had sex twice.

As a novelist, I have considered inserting (poor choice of words) a sex scene or two into my work. I have not done this.

This is because I have actually, like everyone in the world over a certain age, had sex more than twice. So I have experienced enough “things” that would allow me to write a scene about intimacy. I have not done this.

I have not done this in fear that three of my readers might a) vomit after reading one of these scenes, or b) in the case of reader number three, wonder where on earth the activities in said scene originated. I know, fiction writers use their imagination, but would reader three really understand that?

My problems in writing the scene would entail (not an intentional pun)

• Arranging the location for the scene. Would it be inside? A hotel, or maybe someone’s seedy basement? Or would it be somewhere in the glory of the outdoors, say along the banks of a pebble-strewn stream or in a bosky dell?
• Would the participants be young and lithe, or more in my age range, complete with arthritis, cellulite, various sagging parts, etc.?
• Would it be an affair? If so, an air of stealth and anxiety at being discovered  would have to be a part of it. The anxiety could cause erectile dysfunction, and frankly, I don’t want to go down that road.
• What kind of sex would they have? Vanilla (I am a sort of expert in that area of carnal activity), or more kinky? I have read other writer’s sex scenes involving props. Toys. I have to admit that everything in a brown wrapper coming to me has been from Amazon. I would have to do some research into “toys.” Again, I am not sure I am ready for that.
• And the act itself. Arms, legs, faces, buttocks. How does one write about the arrangement? Sex involves a lot of thrashing and sometimes it’s very unruly. Sweat and other liquids. One participant might be into biting. Biting what? Oh, and foreplay. Where should I have them start? In the hallway of the hotel? By the pool, very surrepticiously?
• Who faces in what direction? Arms caressing cheeks or hands exploring inside underwear? How do they get their clothes off? And then what?  Will one of the lovers swoon, or will one pass gas? That stuff happens. The act itself–discuss or leave it up to the reader, to fill in as desired? How explicit is too explicit?
• Do I want to sweep my readers into the scene to the point that they lose themselves and emerge at the end of the chapter sweaty and exhausted, or uplifted and deeply moved?
• And will they reach nirvana simultaneously, as they do in just about all romance novels, or will one partner become delirious and the other resentful?

It’s something that I never have come to grips with (another innuendo I didn’t mean) as a novelist, and thus I write what many classify as “young adult” fiction.

This is a complete cop-out on my part, because who is it that is having all the sex? Yup. The young adults.

I think Colleen Hoover can handle this. I am going to end it with her.

After dinner, we settle down to watch TV. We don’t watch anything that is on network TV. We prefer the mystery series that are on the streaming. You know the ones–they surround a crime, usually murder, and they have at least six episodes.

It requires two people to watch these, because these shows are so crammed with red herrings, a cast of thousands, and so many blind alleys. This is how our evenings in front of the TV go:

HIM: “Wait. Pause it for a minute. Who’s Larry?”

ME: “Larry is Maurice’s brother.”

HIM: “The one with the false eye?”

ME: “No. That is Tony. You know–Tony runs the coffee shop. Larry is Mary’s father.”

HIM: “So they think Larry did it? I thought he had an alibi. He was eating pizza with Don and his wife–what’s her name? Violet?”

ME: “Larry’s alibi may be shaky. He is sleeping with Violet, so she is probably lying for him.”

The show continues, and we watch as some new characters emerge, and a plot detail from the first episode comes up big time. Neither of us remembers it.

ME: “Wait. The mailbox??”

HIM: *rewinding* “See that? She put a letter in the mailbox.”

ME: “Who? The next door neighbor?”

HIM: “Yeah.”

ME: “So she is important to all of this? Is she a suspect? Wasn’t she the one who moved back to London in the first episode? I thought she was just Violet’s roommate from college.”

HIM: “Yes, but she must be important. Maybe the letter has incriminating facts in it.”

ME: “Or maybe not. She could just be mailing a letter.”

HIM: “Is this the show where the girl got raped on roofies?”

ME: “No wonder you are confused. No. That was the last show–the one with the body in the lake beside the boy’s boarding school.”

HIM: “Oh, right. This is about the poisoning.”

ME: “Yeah. So maybe the letter is a flashback. Or, maybe the letter has the poison.”

Why we watch these is the real mystery, because number one: the guilty person is always the one you least suspect, so just pick the most ridiculous cast member, and you will be right ninety percent of the time. Remember Tony, with the false eye? HE did it. The fact that he appears in the first episode for exactly three seconds is the giveaway. Who would guess Tony? We would. But wait, is it Tony??

Number two: The same famous actors, like Olivia Coleman, are in all of these shows, so we get confused. Olivia was the good true woman in the last show we watched, and then she is in a show  sending nasty letters to everyone in the village. We just can’t keep it straight–is she the good one or the bad one?

Of course, there is always the plot twist. Or worse. Tony, whose eye gives us the creeps, turns out to be a former priest. A man of God, who just looks like someone who might be a murderer. The actual murderer is Violet, whom we would have never suspected, because she has such a small role. They elevate her in the last episode, when she tries to push DCI Bradley off the roof, because he is on to her for murdering Ralph with the poison. Ralph, the seemingly innocuous schoolteacher.

After the last episode, we both shrug. We knew it was coming. The person you least suspect.

HIM: “But what was in the letter? It wasn’t poison, because Violet kept the poison in her purse in that little bottle. What was the letter all about?”

ME: “Something unimportant. They wanted us to get confused.”

HIM: *nods wisely* “Of course. Remember the brother in the chicken suit? THAT WAS CONFUSING.”

ME: “That wasn’t in this show.”

HIM: “I know that. But it was still confusing.”

We turn off the TV, shut off the lights, and go to bed. Just before he starts snoring, I sit bolt upright.

ME: “But wait! Violent and Tony were both threatened by the London mafia! Violet murdered  Ralph to protect Tony! Ralph was mafia; remember the black gloves? They were setting us up for Season Two!”

HIM: “The chicken suit was so confusing…”

I have a lot of time on my hands, it’s true. Some days, I look around from the fourth episode of 48 Hours that I have seen without a break, and I think to myself: “Molly, you should do something productive, like Swiffing the hall. I don’t, but I think about it before switching to 20/20.

Today, I turned off the tv and decided to look online for things that people with time on their hands do. Things that I might take inspiration from. Have you heard of Rajiv Surendra? He has a YouTube channel that I love to watch. Rajiv is so adorable. The problem with Rajiv is that what he wants me to do is wash my window wells, clean my baseboards, or make my own silver polish with things I already have in my pantry. I gave my silver to my daughter, and I took one look at my window wells and decided to put off cleaning them until 2030. I simply ignore my baseboards.

But today, I stumbled onto a thing. A thing that people do who have completed all of Rajiv’s projects and long ago surpassed Martha Stewart. This is the truth:  they decorate the inside of their refrigerators. This is so that when the fridge door is opened, the person looking for a cold snack instantly forgets hunger and is transported by the beauty of the interior of the icebox. It’s beautiful. It’s aesthetic. It’s color coordinated. There’s a bouquet in there, on purpose.

Here are my questions:

• Why?
• Is the bouquet real, or can you use plastic flowers?
• Will your husband open the fridge door and after saying “WTF?” immediately want a divorce, because the sock drawer is one thing, but this crosses the line?
• Are you trying to make your friends jealous?
• What do you do with all of the milk jugs, egg cartons, mayonnaise jars, and juice bottles that you replace with decorative containers? Trash them? Who takes out that trash? Oh, right–your husband–the one who wants a divorce.
• How often do you open the fridge door to admire it?
• How do you get your guests to do the same? Or do you throw open the fridge door at every opportunity, saying something like, “Would anyone like a cold drink out of this antique jug I picked up during our last trip to Spain? It’s food safe!”
• Do you need a hobby?
• Did you get this idea from Joanna Gaines?

I guess I should clean my baseboards.

We are all very busy. I am way too busy to read every single news story out there. I rely on the headlines to keep me up to date with things. Especially the Olympics-all I need to see is, for instance, JORDAN CHILES MUST RETURN OLYMPIC BRONZE AFTER COURT RULING to know all I need to know. I feel for her, but I don’t want to soak myself in the whole traumatic story. That is enough.

But  just a few minutes ago, I saw this headline: WOMAN STEALS 1.4 MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF CHICKEN WINGS FROM SCHOOL DISTRICT. Really? I went to get a quick glass of water, and when I came back to my Google feed, the story had disappeared, to be replaced with other more newsworthy items, like 100 YEAR OLDS SHARE WHAT THEY ALWAYS EAT. I know the answer to that; it’s kale.

But back to the chicken wings. Try as I might, I can’t figure out why anybody would want that many chicken wings. Wouldn’t this woman’s family get sick of them after, say, $100 worth? And my God, how many chicken wings add up to 1.4 million dollars? Chicken wings are inexpensive. I buy two packages whenever I make noodle soup, and they run me about six dollars for a dozen wings. So I can’t wrap my head around fitting 1.4 million dollars worth in the trunk of my car.

So, okay, you are saying. She stole them over time. Of course she did. Again, how many years does it take to steal that many wings? Ten, maybe? And back to her family–still eating the damn wings, for ten long years? How many ways can a woman cook wings, anyway? You say, No. She sold them. Who did she sell them to? How? Door to door? Her neighbors would get suspicious, wondering why Ethel (I made up her name; the headline didn’t identify her) pedaled wings all the time. I mean, I can see it if she decided to become a drug dealer, but to my thinking, there is just not that much demand for chicken wings. But of course, school lunch rooms don’t serve cocaine, so I guess Ethel’s choices of things to purloin and then sell were limited.

Ethel must have had a plan. But what was it? She couldn’t sell them to restaurants–what restaurant would buy wings from some random woman who showed up at the kitchen door with bags full of them? There might be a dive in some shady neighborhood, but again, we are talking 1.4 million dollars worth of wings.Ok, then.  Did Ethel have big parties? Really big parties? I can just see her friends, rolling their eyes and saying, “My God, Ethel just invited us over for the Fourth. But I cannot stomach another chicken wing.”

Could Ethel have an addiction problem? The kind where at first, ten wings a week, nicely barbecued, were enough, but then ten weren’t enough, so Ethel had to increase the amount of wings just to achieve the same wing high? Like from ten a week to twenty, and it went from there? I did the math. If Ethel ate 20 per week, that is 1,042 wings a year. For just Ethel. Now if her family is factored in, as sick of wings as they would get, then maybe Ethel’s fam could ingest four thousand a week? Not possible. Ethel couldn’t cook that many wings a week.

So what is Ethel’s game? Your guess is as good as mine. But her wing spree is over, because as the headline said, Ethel was caught. I can just picture the other lunch ladies sending anonymous emails to the Superintendent of Schools, noting the lumpiness of the pockets in Ethel’s aprons every day on her way out of work, and perhaps seeing an errant wing escaping from her purse. It’s a mystery.

I wonder how many years in jail Ethel will have to serve. Knowing her type, Ethel will become a kingpin in prison, the head of a chicken wing smuggling ring. The food in prisons is terrible, due to most accounts, so hot wings would be a luxury. Those inmates would not mess with Ethel. A good wing is hard to come by in the slammer.

We are like the rest of America. Schlubs. We love to watch the various Olympic events from our comfortable chairs, and man, do we JUDGE.

But here’s the thing: I want to know how coaches find these athletes. Yes, it’s easy for the runners. Your kid runs very fast. So you put him or her in track and field. And skateboarding kids are everywhere, so the good ones stand out. They self-train for the Olympics.

But the high jumpers. Who discovers them, and how? Most kids I have ever known don’t jump over things backwards. So who discovers their talents? I watched the women’s high jump, and besides wondering how these girls figured out that they could do this, I also noted that they were all gorgeous, with lots of makeup, and Eleanor Patterson approached her take off with a very sexy strut. What??? I guess because they don’t get hot and sweaty, they can come out of the locker room looking like models and stay that way throughout the competition.

How do they find pole vaulters? I assume in gym class, the teacher hands out poles? What about Badminton? Who plays Badminton competitively these days? I confess I think of Badminton as something they play on the vast lawns of Downton Abbey. Where are today’s Badminton players found? Do they scout stately homes?

To change the subject slightly, there are sports in the Olympics that are completely confusing. Unless you have taken part in Judo, how does it work? How is a winner decided? All I could see was a lot of grabbing and leg pretzeling, and then all of a sudden, they were on the ground. A split second later, a winner is declared. While they were down there, what did the winner do? The judge did give warnings. What the warnings were for was unclear to the two of us eating popcorn and reclining. My husband thought maybe it was for using the F word while down there among the knots of arms and legs. Made sense to me.

I loved the surfing, but it took so long for them to decide which wave to take. But to me the most boring sport is soccer, where they run back and forth for eons and nobody scores. Golf: forget it. I also am not a fan of the shooting, although that casual guy in street clothes with his hand in his pocket was a refreshing break from all the other shooters. But shooting. We don’t need shooting in today’s gun riddled world, do we?

I can’t wait for the breaking. And the “artistic swimming.” Now these are competitions that call for extra popcorn.

Let’s talk about food. I’ll start with the fact that whenever we eat at friends’ houses, I am stumped with how they all seem to be able to eat about a quarter of what’s on their plates and then stop. As if they are full. Meanwhile, I have finished every morsel of my first helpings, and I need more. For instance, there are more than enough chicken thighs on the serving platter for everybody to have two, but I am the only diner who reaches for a second thigh.

Do people eat sandwiches before they go out, so that they can do this skimpy dining? Or is everyone else on the planet satisfied with one chicken thigh, two slices of roasted potato, and one roasted carrot? And the salad–when the hostess brings out the salad bowl for eight guests with what looks to me like barely enough salad for two people?

Corn. On the cob. Every other person has one ear, and they seem completely satisfied. It’s corn season, folks–as far as I am concerned, every person should have at least three ears for dinner, because come September, there will be no good cobs available.

It’s even worse in restaurants! I can eat a whole calzone by myself. But I know couples who split one. Or worse, they order a single entree to split. Imagine having half of a pork chop and two tablespoon of mashed potatoes. It’s just wrong.

Dessert. Don’t order a piece of pie and four forks, for God’s sake. And yet, everybody seems to think this is just fine. As for me, getting but one bite of Key Lime is gustatory sin. Do we all feel that if we get our own dessert we will be harshly judged for gluttony?

I wonder if the people who can’t seem to finish their dinners in the restaurant take their styrofoam boxes “for lunch tomorrow” finish them the minute they get in the door. I can even imagine them cramming French fries into their mouths in the car as they leave the parking lot. I have never in my life asked for a box. Oh, no.

Does this mean that I am truly alone in all this? Perhaps “everyone” is normal, and I am actually way too hungry? Should I order one dessert and four spoons? What if it’s ME?

Oh, no.

Why does it get boring every afternoon around three? Are naps things that everyone takes but nobody admits? Do people who see me in the elevator think I am old? How come pedicures last so much longer than manicures?

Why are YouTube videos so engrossing? Do my daughters spend as much time on their phones as I do? Do other people get all of their news on Social Media? Is the election going to happen before the world ends?

What does the tooth emoji mean? What if I want to use the eggplant emoji to mean an actual eggplant? What does FWIW mean? Have they stopped using LOL? Why do they have ads on all the streaming services now?

I am in favor of “intuitive eating,” even though I am not sure what it is. Popcorn is addictive, I do know that. Since I started eating so much fruit, ice cream seems too sweet. Most people cook corn on the cob too long. Butter spray is actually pretty good.

Thirty minutes of exercise a day is enough for a person to lose two pounds a month without changing their diet. Even if you eat a lot of popcorn. Ten thousand steps a day is ridiculous. I can’t do the Asian squat.

Can you divorce the artist from the art, even if the artist is Woody Allen? I never really cared for Alice Munro. Elon Musk is a nut job, but if they had charging stations in our parking lot, I might get a Tesla. I think I read somewhere that Dr. Seuss was a racist. Goodnight Moon is a very scary book; I never read it to my children…

I know people who won’t get colonoscopies because of the prep. Men should do breast exams on themselves. I couldn’t spell diarrhea until I worked for a veterinarian. If a cat vomits, it’s probably ok, but if a dog does, you should worry. I once started reading a novel that mentioned “adult breastfeeding,” and so I returned it to the library.

I have lived in this apartment for five years, but I have never dusted the Venetian blinds. If you brush your cat daily, you won’t have fur balls on all the rugs. I almost never brush my cat. Declawing cats is illegal in California, but it’s because of Gavin Newsom. I wish he were running for President. But President Biden is not too old; he just stutters. And the news is disastrous daily; now they are shooting at one and trying to drive out the other one. Americans are reeling.

You should not put butter on sandwiches. Mayo is what you should use. Mustard is good, but only Dijon. When I was in grade school, my mom packed me a bologna sandwich and an apple every day for lunch until I gagged in the lunchroom. I told her, and from then on, she bought me a lunch box with a thermos and I got soup and Franco American spaghetti for lunch. I went from crap lunches to gourmet lunches, and I hated both. All I wanted was the occasional Frito and maybe a tangerine.

I can’t text with my thumbs; I make too many mistakes. How do the kids do this? What is Snapchat? Is there some woman named Ashley Madison? What is Roblox? Do you have to use hashtags?

Should I start vlogging? What IS a vlog?

Dayton, Ohio. Saturday morning. A busy day ahead.

Do you remember when you used to make fun of old people? You know, the ones with boring lives? We are no longer making fun, because we are not young. This is the dismal truth. I still have trouble grappling with the fact that some of our neighbors in the building “check on us” whenever an ambulance pulls up. My God! But facts are facts.

So. What is a busy Saturday like for old people like us? Well, here is a bullet list:

• Have a grocery meeting. What do we need? What will we have for dinner this week?
• No meals with black beans; we had enchiladas last Tuesday.
• Check to see if we need olive oil.
• Make addendums to the list.
• Grab the reusable bags.
• Head to Kroger, where they have remodeled the store; it is now HUGE.
•  Search for dill pickles; the dill pickle aisle is not where it used to be.
• Chat briefly in the cookie section with a neighbor, and remind husband that he HATES Vanillla Wafers. He looks me in the eye and places them in the cart.
• Eye the self check-out and decide once again not to try it. Maybe next time.
• Try not to explain to the checker why we are buying three different types of mouthwash. He doesn’t need to know our business. No matter how tempting it is to discuss plaque and such.
• Load up the trunk, congratulating ourselves once again that we got one of those shopping wagons, to make lugging stuff into the elevator SO much easier.
• Listen as my husband makes small talk with the man in our building who has a brand-new Mercedes. The man says, “Yes, yes!” A lot.
• Gently take my husband by the elbow and whisper into his ear, “Charlie, that man does not speak English…”
• Unload the groceries upstairs, shaking the box of Vanilla Wafers and pointing out that these will end up in the trash.
• Discuss at length what show we will watch after dinner–Grantchester or D I Ray?
• I vote for Grantchester, since I have been confused by D I Ray from the get-go.

This is only SATURDAY. The rest of the week is nearly this exciting.

Docks, sails, lobsters, linen pants. Fires on the beach. Parties. Adultery. This is what summer vacation is about in all of the books I love.

Covid. Benadryl. Kleenex. Staying behind when everybody else goes to the Safari Park. This is what my summer vacation was about. Not one person at any of the airports we were in wore a mask. I didn’t, either, because don’t we all want to live in a post-pandemic world?

It began with a slight rough feeling in my larynx area. I tried to ignore it. By the evening, it was worse. Then came the chills followed by hotness. This was followed by eye rolls from the rest of the group, who witnessed my covid at the last family vacation. But by the next morning, I had given it to everybody, and they all had coughs but proclaimed that “it’s just a cold.”

I knew better, but since I was the only one getting worse, I let it go. There weren’t any tests around. None of the others seemed upset, despite the fact that I had become a super spreader. They just coughed and left for the golf course.

The end of the trip came, and everybody went home. Not us. We had to move to a hotel and change our flights home so I could be even sicker. We have been home now for five days. We both tested positive when we got back. However, my husband was hale and hearty enough to go golfing, but I have been in the same pajamas for the five days since we got here. The world goes on, but for some reason, my covid is sticking around.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will get up, take a shower, put actual clothes on, and accomplish something, even if it is to stay upright until after lunch.

Mask up, comrades!

Humans are great ones for predictability. We categorize and stereotype. When it comes to naming our children, we choose names that we feel are befitting of a certain cultural standard or current style. When I was in grade school in the olden days, there were a lot of Bobs, Bills, Toms, Sandys, Pattys,  Marges,and some exotics, like Michelle and Renee.

Let’s examine a few examples of what happened to, for instance, a Bill:

Bill would fall off his bike and skin his knees. He would only eat cereal for breakfast, no toast or anything. He would excel at baseball and later on shoot a lot of hoops, in hopes of becoming an NBA star, which of course never happened. Bill would grow up, become a doctor or attorney, and marry a Pam or a Sally. They would have kids, live in a glossy suburb, and maybe stay married.

Or what about a Marge: Marge would have sturdy legs. Her mother would plead with Marge to put her dirty clothes in the hamper to no avail. Marge might say her prayers every night, but she couldn’t be relied on to participate in saying grace along with the rest of the family at dinner. Marge would become a secretary and marry her accountant boss. They would remain childless, because Marge had “female problems.”

When I had babies, styles had changed. There were Whitneys, Merediths, Chads, and Daltons. These kids were typical, still riding bikes; but they carried backpacks and rode skateboards, too. We lived in a suburb with sidewalks, but most kids got driven to school. They asked for kiwis in their lunchboxes. The majority of them got good jobs and had families. Their kids are our grandkids.

These days, I am unable to attach a stereotype to a name any longer, because kids have names like Denyse, Cace, Alinia, Caden, Rebeknia, and Mylan. I have no idea how these children might grow up, but I will take a shot:

Mylan is gifted. His parents noted it when he was 18 months old and stacked his Legos in rows by color and size. He refused to wean from the breast until he could actually tell his mother he was finished with that whole phase, and he used complete sentences. Mylan is so gifted that he became an influencer on TikTok, and he feels confident he will be able to pay for his own college tuition with the proceeds.

Rebeknia has trouble with frustration. She bit her preschool teacher on the arm when they ran out of chocolate milk. Her mother is afraid of her, because Rebeknia is shrill when provoked. Rebeknia spends most of her time on Snapchat or gaming. She has ten thousand friends. She has met five of them in person. “Reb,” as her friends call her, has no desire to get a driver’s license or a part-time job. Instead, she is preparing for a life as a celebrity.

So what can the folks of my generation do? How do we cope with all of these unusual kids, this new world of gens X, Y, Z, or whatever they call them?

We name our dogs Bill and our cats Marge.