Suppose I lay down on the pavement and you run over me a few times with my own car...just for old times.

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds.

I really wouldn't classify the books as mysteries. I prefer to say that they're adventures.

I am not menopausal. I just wanted half an hour alone. Is that too much to ask? A crappy half hour!

Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap cheat sheet.

If I gave you a pity position it wouldn't be in my office.

My mother had been slicing up the chicken. She took a drumstick and dropped it on the floor. She kicked it around a little, picked it up and put it on the edge of the plate. "There," she said, "we'll give him this drumstick." "Deal.