CLARISSA’S CHANGE

Clarissa Martin, Italian bombshell, devoted wife and mother, wakes to find herself an empty nester in the dark wasteland of menopause. It’s time to change her life or explode.Frank her husband advises, “Do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Take those cooking classes you’re always talking about or maybe go back to selling houses. Go to college and study whatever you want to study. You’re a young, beautiful woman, Clarissa. Just don’t leave me, I couldn’t live without you.”To go back to selling real estate, she has to confront her past with Johnny Mack and his wife Maria’s long memory. Her dream night class in French pastry dissolves into a sticky nightmare, surely because Chef Suzanne hates her. When her secret campaign finally convinces Frank to remodel the house it quickly escalates from an update of the kitchen to a total gut and demolition of his beloved childhood home. In her quest for a new kitchen, open floor plan, and a jetted tub for two, there are skirmishes to survive with contractors, inspectors and handymen determined to leave her poorer and crazier.While she is juggling all three disaster areas of her life, her sister Louisa moves in with them, along with her transgender nurse Terry. It doesn’t help that her three adult children are each in their own throes of love and desperation, her adorable husband has suddenly become a sex-crazed maniac, and her best friends Tina, Beatrice, and Inez offer advice and help in all the wrong ways.Who and what can survive Clarissa’s change?