Now I understand we all have our scandals, but the latest news rocking New Rochelle, NY caught my attention. Catholic Sister Marie Thornton embezzled $850,000 from a suburban New York City college as Vice-president of finance. It was all for her personal use. Sounds like a Scottsdale story for sure!

Okay, maybe my mental picture of a woman with a no-nonsense haircut devoid of make-up in plain clothes and nurses’ shoes lacks imagination, but what could she have spent that amount of money on? Designer lingerie? Jimmie Choos to roam her stark apartment? Wigs? Jewelry?

Nope! Gambling in Atlantic City! Blackjack specifically. And she must not have been very good at it. The 62-year-old sister of a religious order worked all week and used Iona College‘s money to play on the weekend. The tony school charges $28,000 a year for tuition.

When the college caught her after a ten year run they said she left for medical reasons. Most of the money was recovered and no one would have been the wiser except…for the fact that Iona College filed the losses on their income tax. Hello? You have an employee who steals almost a million dollars and you not only don’t press charges but you create a cover-up and then you put in down as a loss on your taxes? Given that gambling is an addiction like alcohol is there any moral outrage?

By the way, a recent picture of her fit my description perfectly except I missed the eyeglasses.

Garbage and Flowers

I make an effort to go through all our mail everyday, sorting Maury’s golf and political magazines, solicitations from charities, who, once you make a small donation because they got you with a limpid-eyed-child, dog or horse, will never stop, announcements from new chiropractors, cleaners and dentists in your neighborhood and invitations to charitable events that cost $10,000 a table, you realize that a lot of paper is being wasted.

There’s not a solution for junk mail. It’s a free country and people can send what they want. But, it freaks me out. I can fill up a large garbage bag with discarded mail, paper from packaging and plastic that won’t be bio-degradable for 1000 years. If I add, the flowers that have bloomed and passed leaving purple petals on my kitchen counters, their pistons and stamens naked in smelly water, I could probably win a garbage contest. There’s only two of us and an old dog. Wouldn’t it be great if we could opt out of the mail? And then email? And then faxes? I think I’m stressed again!

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The Borgata in Scottsdale, an open-air shopping center modeled after the Italian village of San Gimignano, features turrets, towers and tomatoes. Glee says we should all be eating organic like Oprah. I usually point out to her that Oprah has a chef to shop and chop for her. I have Maury, an ADD husband who doesn’t cook and wouldn’t be able to identify a Roma from a heritage. Anyway, on Fridays from now until the Spring our lovely European emporium will feature a farmer’s market with tomatoes, squash, olives and honey from local growers. We definitely support anyone who thinks they can grow food in the desert! I think I’ll mosey over there this week in my Birkenstocks, the best shoes for cobblestones, and watch some of the Scottsdale babes balance on their Jimmy Choos.

Falling Off Your Pole

In case you didn’t know, many clubs in Scottsdale have installed poles. Yes, that kind of pole. It seems some women want to show off their expertise after taking “exercise” classes that give them the experience of their first pole dance. Now my friend April already moves like a stripper so she’s not a candidate. It seems her neighbor’s daughter, and let me tell you, April knows everything about everybody in her Scottsdale neighborhood, fell off her pole. She’s a well-developed young woman who shimmied ten feet to the top with the encouragement of her friends and four Cosmos, only to have a piece of the ceiling break away causing her to land on the floor. She wasn’t seriously injured but April says she’s stressed in Scottsdale. Falling off her pole has left her with a sore shoulder, a bruised ego and laughing friends.

Scottsdale Cuisine and Edible Spa Treatments

Now I’m not totally unsophisticated about fine dining, but there are items on menus nowadays I can’t identify. The new restaurant at the Boulders Spa serves sunchoke soup, forbidden rice, garbanzo pancakes, Meyer lemon chervil gremolata, tea-soaked salmon, ancho-dusted sirloin and lemon-thyme sorbert. What happened to a sandwich and a salad? Worse, Glee says the new trend for spa treatments includes chocolate foot massages, caviar facials and milk-and-honey massages. Maury and my dog, Amber, would want want to lick me all over if I tried any of those.

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