You don"t have to be a fembot to have a sure-fire underwire.

Even nuns like me have a Good Bra. For church.

But the truth is, the trump card loses its effect over time. Men develop an immunity, especially if the ball game is on. I"ve never met the push-up that can face down a World Series.

Let"s get real.

I never knew a lot about men to begin with, and I remember even less, but as I recall, they don"t really care about bras. It"s skin they"re after. If you really want to please a man, I"d save on underwear and put the money into NFL Season Ticket on cable.

In fact, it makes me wonder whether men would spend what we do on undies. Take thongs, for example. I doubt you could talk a man into a thong, at any price. Men want cotton and comfort. They know their trump card is a steady job.

I went through that phase where people told me that thongs were "so comfortable." Liars, every last one of them. Thongs are comfortable only if you"re a fan of shoelaces. I saw that movie Man on Wire, Man on Wire, about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. At one point, he sat on the tightrope and winced. about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. At one point, he sat on the tightrope and winced.

That"s as close as a man will get to a thong.

Plus, the less comfortable the thong, the more it costs. I saw thong prices go from twenty bucks to thirty, and I went back to my Hanes three-pack of cotton bikinis. Why pay more, for panties? In the end, I know they"re just going to end up as chew toys for the dog. My goldens stroll downstairs with them hanging between their teeth, usually when the UPS man is here.

Hi!

Plus cotton undies take no care at all. Throw them in the washer with your sweat socks and go. Even the St.u.r.dy cycle, they can handle it. They"re St.u.r.dy, by G.o.d!

Contrast that with the care and feeding of your thongs. Children need less attention. The woman at the store told me I had to wash my thongs by hand, in warm water and Woolite, then lay them flat to dry. I did that approximately one time. I washed my thongs and set them drying on towels arrayed on the kitchen table. Which was when the UPS man came in.

The curse of working at home is that the UPS man knows way too much about you. The upside is, you don"t care.

So I went back to the store and they told me I could put the thongs in the washing machine, but I would need a special mesh laundry bag to protect them from the mean old hot water. And thongs have to be washed on the Delicate cycle, which I always forgot to put on. In time, they turned into expensive slingshots, and I gave up.

I"m St.u.r.dy, not Delicate.

And I expect as much from my undies, even if they don"t save my life.

Author Barbie

Before I left for book tour, I had to get my roots done and buy new jeans.

This would be the proverbial good news and bad news.

I love getting my roots done, because it makes me feel like a natural blonde for one whole day. I try to schedule as many things as I can that day, just so I can stay out and march around, tossing my head like a shampoo commercial. Later I drive home fast, with the sunroof open.

Wheee!

Blondes do have more fun.

But my blondeness evaporates by the next day, when I start to see a line of darkness advancing from my hairline like a storm cloud. In more recent years, I"ve begun to notice a few strands of gray-okay, maybe more than a few, like maybe Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. The Bride of Frankenstein.

Not a good look for me.

To tell the truth, lately I"m longing for my black roots. In fact, I might even start dyeing my roots black.

Or I could just save the money and buy a Sharpie.

Either way, getting my roots done is fun, but shopping for jeans is my least favorite thing ever.

Please tell me I"m not alone.

Shopping for bathing suits gets all the bad press, but to me, shopping for jeans is much worse. If you"re shopping for a bathing suit, you"re steeled for bad news. Shopping for bathing suits is like the mammogram of clothes.

Plus, most people don"t go bathing-suit shopping very often. I myself have been divorced as many times as I"ve gone bathing-suit shopping, not that there"s any connection. My goal in life would be to get divorced more times than I"ve been bathing-suit shopping.

Then I could die happy.

But shopping for jeans can blindside you, and catch you unawares. It should be easy, but it"s not. You might give yourself a day to find a pair of jeans, but that wouldn"t be nearly enough. You have to factor in your shopping time, plus the times you give up and go home in disgust.

That"s like twelve days, right there.

Buying jeans is much worse than buying swimsuits, mainly because there are five billion jeans companies and none of the sizes fit the same from one company to the next, except for one thing-the jeans are always too small.

Hmmm.

My favorite jeans used to be a super-comfy pair, but then people started telling me they were Mom Jeans. Evidently, I wasn"t allowed to look like a Mom, though I was one, and everybody said that if I kept wearing the Mom Jeans, I"d live a Lifetime of Celibacy.

I"m halfway there.

So I went shopping for jeans, grabbed a bunch of pairs off the shelf, then went into the dressing room, trying on one after the other. Nothing fit right. I could barely get them closed in my alleged size, and if I went up in size, they gapped in the back. All of them were too long, like by a foot. Except for one magical pair. Amazingly, I slid into them and they fit perfectly, but they had a b.u.t.ton fly. of them were too long, like by a foot. Except for one magical pair. Amazingly, I slid into them and they fit perfectly, but they had a b.u.t.ton fly.

Please.

The salesgirl came in, parted the curtain, and said, "Lots of women like b.u.t.ton flies."

"They would be in AP Bio, right?"

She didn"t reply and went away, so I tried on two more pairs with no luck, then slid into the third pair and struck gold. They fit great, closed easily, didn"t gap at the back, and felt as good as my beloved Mom Jeans. The salesgirl came back, and I told her, "I love this pair!"

"Cool. They"re so hot now. They"re Boyfriend Jeans."

"What?"

"Boyfriend Jeans. You know, like if you stayed overnight at your boyfriend"s and the next morning you put on his jeans?"

There were so many things wrong with what she was saying, I didn"t know where to start. I reached out and closed the curtain in her face, then took off the jeans and left the mall, reeling.

So the only pants that fit me were men"s.

And I didn"t have a boyfriend.

And if I did, after I"d spent the night at his place, I would never dream of putting on his pants the next morning. That"s why they call it cross-dressing.

Bottom line, I"m caught between Boyfriend Jeans and Mom Jeans.

I bet Hemingway didn"t have this problem.

Meals on Wheels

I"m not sure when my car became my house, but I think it happened somewhere near Pittsburgh. And I bet I"m not the only woman who has a car house.

I"ve been driving around for book tour, so I"ve been on the road for about four weeks. And you know what? I love it.

I don"t know if I"ll ever move back home. My house is too big. And once you"re inside it, you have to walk around. In other words, exercise.

In my car, everything I need is at my fingertips. I sit on my b.u.t.t for miles and miles, yet I feel no shame. On the contrary, my car empowers me. The driver"s seat is my c.o.c.kpit, and I"ve become the Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger of my own life.

I can land my mothership anywhere. My parallel-parking skills have improved, and now I reverse with impunity.

Bottom line, I used to think of myself as a homebody, but I"ve become a carbody.

I do everything in my car, like the cla.s.siest homeless person ever. I sing at the top of my lungs. I dance in the seat. I take naps, sleeping like a drunk with my mouth open. I know this because when I wake up, my lips are dry and droplets of drool encrust my chin.

I didn"t say it was pretty.

I eat whenever I want, from drive-throughs. Or as we car-bodies say, Drive Thrus. One banner day, I got my breakfast from a drive-thru Dunkin" Donuts (decaf with sesame bagel), lunch from a drive-thru McDonald"s (Asian chicken salad without the chicken), and dinner from drive-thru Starbucks (turkey sandwich with iced green-tea latte). The day they build a drive-thru Sbarros, you"ll never see me again.

I eat while I drive, even the salads. Here"s my secret-don"t dress it, forgo the fork, and use your hands.

Told you it wasn"t pretty.

On the road I pa.s.s lots of other carbodies, all of us doing the same thing. Moms in packed minivans, sales reps with full closets in the back seat, lawyers writing on pads on the dashboard. They talk on phones or text like crazy. Once I saw someone smoking a cigarette, opening a pack of Trident, and driving at 70 mph. It was like watching someone juggle an axe, a gun, and a bazooka.

I always put makeup on in the car, since it has a great magnifying mirror, and I keep the mascara and blush in the glove box so it won"t melt. Then I started moisturizing my legs in the car, and I pack the car moisturizer with two pairs of sungla.s.ses, one prescription and one not, plus reading gla.s.ses, a spare pair of contact lens and big bottle of ReNu solution, so that my console is now my Eye & Beauty Centre.

I added my puppy, Little Tony, to the traveling circus, and he wowed the crowds at my signings and sold books like hot-cakes. I pimped him out mercilessly. It"s the least he can do, after I bought him a foreskin.

Those babies ain"t cheap.

Little Tony has his own seat next to mine, and his own side of the car with his dog toys (plastic keys and Nylabones), bottle of water (Dasani) with paper cup (generic), snuggly blanket (adorable), and spare kibble (overpriced bullshiz). Still, it"s nice to have a man around the house. (adorable), and spare kibble (overpriced bullshiz). Still, it"s nice to have a man around the house.

Last week, daughter Francesca and her puppy Pip came along for the ride, and soon my car house was bursting with mascara, kibble, and Snuggie blankets. Francesca rode around with two puppies on her lap, plus a chicken salad and drive-thru lemon cake. But in Arlington, Virginia, the air-conditioning broke down and the navigation system went on the fritz. The carhouse was melting down, and our road trip had come to an end.

On the way home, the car was quiet as we drove past the Washington Monument, all lit up, at twilight. It was a perfect white spire reaching heavenward, before a sky deepening to the hue of fresh blueberries and an orange moon proud as a newly minted penny.

"Check it," I said to Francesca.

But she was already looking.

Only the dogs missed it.

They were sleeping with their mouths open.

Heavy Cable

I give up. I admit it. I flunk multi-tasking.

Here"s when I figured it out, finally: I was in a hotel room watching MSNBC, as political pundits ma.s.saged an endless loop of the same election news. And at the bottom of the screen there were white banners with short phrases, evidently intended to explain the obvious, like OBAMA SPEAKING TO CROWD OBAMA SPEAKING TO CROWD and and MCCAIN LEAVING PLANE MCCAIN LEAVING PLANE. Under the white banners was "the crawl," a moving line of script that reported the events of the day, from whoever hit the last homerun in Cincinnati to the stock market in Tokyo to new evidence that pomegranates aren"t all they"re cracked up to be. I tried to focus on the pundits but the crawl kept distracting me, and then five minutes later I was distracted even from the crawl by a bright red banner that came on and said BREAKING NEWS.

But BREAKING NEWS doesn"t fool me anymore.

I used to stop dead when BREAKING NEWS came on the screen, dropping my dishcloth in alarm. Now, I know better. Everybody who watches TV eventually figures out that BREAKING NEWS is neither breaking nor news. BREAKING NEWS is easily the most oversold phrase in the universe, after SUPPLY LIMITED and my personal favorite, LOSE FIVE POUNDS WITHOUT DIET OR EXERCISE!

To get back to my point, what happened was that I was trying to watch the pundits but I had to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banner, and the crawl was telling me something about a tornado in the Midwest, and I starting thinking about nice Midwestern people losing their homes and how they really deserved the BREAKING NEWS banner and not the crawl, which seemed like a demotion, and then I wondered if their insurance had been paid, which lead me to wondering if my insurance had been paid, and then what if there was a tornado that leveled my house and by the way, do I really want yellow shutters? I mean, who has yellow shutters?

BREAKING NEWS: CHOCOLATE CAKE IS DELICIOUS.

That was my chain of thought, and before you can say Benjamin Moore, one of the pundits had disenfranchised the voters of Florida, one of whom was my mother. Between us, I knew she wouldn"t be happy about that. If my mother leaves the kitchen, she wants it to count.

BREAKING NEWS: IT"S GOOD TO HAVE FEET.

But the point is that I had lost track of what was going on because I was trying to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banners and trying to read the crawl, and then I tried to take in all three at the same time, which was impossible. Even if I managed to ignore the fake BREAKING NEWS, I got only the gist of the tornados and the gist of the primaries, and they both seemed like natural disasters.

I can"t do two things at once, much less three.

I had the same problem last week, when I did my grocery shopping while I was on the cell phone. It seemed to be an efficient use of time, and I was continuing a conversation I had been having while I drove, which by the way, was hands-free. The only problem was that I went into the store for eggs, light cream, and romaine lettuce, and came out of the store, albeit hands-free, with the wrong kind of cream, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and spinach in a plastic box. cream, and romaine lettuce, and came out of the store, albeit hands-free, with the wrong kind of cream, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and spinach in a plastic box.

So I have to face the fact that I can"t multi-task anymore. I used to be able to, but somewhere along the line, I lost my mult.i.tasking mojo. In a world of BlackBerries, cell phones, Sidekicks, and iPods, I don"t know what to do about it.

I have to do more than one thing at once, or I won"t get everything done. And I can"t do away with my electronic toys, because I need them too much. For example, when Francesca was away at school, I loved sending her photos of the dogs from my BlackBerry, like the time Penny discovered the sunroof.

And daughter Francesca sends me cell phone photos when she"s trying to decide which dress to buy, so I can see her wearing both. I don"t think that"s what shop-by-phone meant originally, but women are good at finding innovative ways to buy things.

We all know that our kids are texting, IMing, and calling each other all the time, bringing them closer to each other and making them happier, which is a good thing. And the devices can be lifesavers-calling for directions in a pinch or texting to find your kid, brother, and mother in a graduation crowd of 35,000.

So what"s the answer?

BREAKING NEWS: THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.

Pillow Talk