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Make me up before you go go | Lisa Scottoline

To return to point, since I do these live videos, I have to look nice every Tuesday night. That means I take a shower every week, no matter what.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, you must be Lisa Scottoline.

Where to begin the story of my latest calamity?

One of my own making.

That’s my favorite kind.

I make great mistakes.

Nobody’s mistakes are as good as mine.

I’m a mistake professional.

And I make the same one more than once.

A great example of this is Thing One and Thing Two.

But that’s more like strike one and strike 87,227.

To begin, I have a new book coming out in March, titled Eternal, and it’s a big deal for me. I’ve never written a book like it before, because it’s historical fiction, the story of a love triangle set in Fascist Italy.

I did a ton of research for the novel, including a trip to Rome, where I ate carbs.

For research.

You know what I learned from my research?

Carbs are delicious.

Who knew?

In any event, I took a bunch of videos during the trip, illustrating places in Rome where I set scenes in the novel, and I thought it would be interesting for people to see the videos, so I have begun showing them on my Facebook page every Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. EST. After each video, I go live and explain how the Rome video relates to the novel.

Join me. It’s fun, and it’s free.

And I’m running a sweepstakes where I give away an Italian-themed prize every week.

The prize is not always carbs.

Just mostly.

To return to point, since I do these live videos, I have to look nice every Tuesday night. That means I take a shower every week, no matter what.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement.

I even put on eye makeup, most of which Francesca gave me for Christmas so I could look nice for the videos. I keep my makeup in a box, and recently she looked inside and noticed that the cap was off the eyeliner.

She put the cap on for me. “Mom, you have to keep the cap on. You can get an eye infection. I read it.”

“Don’t believe everything you read. Unless I wrote it.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m not.”

Francesca started going through the box. “Some of this makeup looks really old. You need to throw it away. Old makeup can give you eye problems, too.”

I scoffed. “That’s what the makeup companies tell you, to sell more makeup.”

Anyway, that night, I did the video using the eyeliner that hadn’t been capped, and the next morning, I had a sty in my right eye. The first day it looked like a tiny little pimple on my lower eyelid, and the next day, it turned into an orange.

Francesca did not say I told you so.

I would have.

She did say, “You know, you can sterilize the eyeliner pencil by wiping the tip with alcohol.”

“I’ll get right on that,” I told her, which is my adorable way of saying I will never bother.

“Mom, if you don’t sterilize it, it could happen again.”

“It’s not going to happen again.”

Anyway, I spent the next few days with a warm compress on my eye, and all I cared about was making the sty go away before the next video.

Luckily, it did.

Fast-forward to the next Tuesday night, when I couldn’t remember which eyeliner gave me a sty the last time, and of course I hadn’t sterilized or thrown away any makeup, and I noticed some of the caps were off, but you didn’t hear it from me.

In any event, I put on makeup and did my video.

And the next morning, I woke up with a sty in my left eye.

And this time, it was bigger and on the inside of the lid, so the next day my whole eye swelled, then my cheek.

I’m not asking for sympathy.

I deserve none.

I might need a doctor, but I’m too embarrassed to call one.

I’ve succeeded in giving myself sties in both eyes, two weeks in a row.

That might be a personal best in mistakes.

It turns out that Francesca was right, and so were the makeup companies, and so is everything you read.

Tune in this Tuesday night.

When I give away prizes, looking like a prizefighter.

Look for Lisa’s first historical novel, “Eternal,” coming on March 23. Also look for Francesca’s debut novel, “Ghosts of Harvard,” on sale now.