Lisa Smith Molinari

Archive for 2012|Yearly archive page

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Feel it in your rear

In Humor, parenting on May 20, 2012 at 10:09 am

“God help us all,” is often muttered in response to news that a teenager has begun driving. Other responses include, “Run for your lives!” “Hit the dirt!” and phrases implying apocalyptic events.

We all universally recognize that teenagers don’t know much about life, and that placing one in control of a one-ton combustion engine with the intent that he propel it over concrete at high speeds, is really stupid when you think about it. Nevertheless, our laws provide that 16-year-olds can drive, so we put our parental instinct aside and allow them to do it.

My son has his learner’s permit, and until I rode in the passenger’s seat while my sloppy, brace-faced teenage son lurched our minivan along the open road, I had no empathy for my parents. Now, I feel their pain.

It was June 4, 1984, my birthday, and I was twirling the barrel of my curling iron through my bangs for maximum height. I heard my mother’s voice calling from outside our brick ranch, “Sweet pea! Come out here a second!”

I tsked loudly, rolled my eyes, and ignored.

“Honeybunch? C’mon, it’ll only take a sec!” she continued, eventually appearing at my bedroom door. In classic teenage style I sassed and whined at my mother, annoyed by what I saw as her rude interference with a crucial task in my routine – curling my bangs.

Eventually, I succumbed to her pleas, but not without attitude. I appeared outside, slump-shouldered and eye-rolling, where the cause of her interruption was revealed: on our lawn sat a pale blue 1974 Volkswagen Beetle tied up in an enormous yellow bow.

I offered no apology for my embarrassing behavior. Instead I screamed and ran to claim the gift, which I assumed I wholeheartedly deserved.

That day, I had to deliver pizzas for our Varsity Letter Club fundraiser. My father thought this was the perfect opportunity to use my new Bug. There was one problem that my father cast aside as a minor detail – I didn’t how to drive a stick.

My hair properly coiffed, I jumped excitedly into the driver’s seat and awaited my father’s instructions.

A gruff, ex-college football player, he was not accustomed to being delicate. He operated on pure instinct, street smarts, and gut feelings. I, on the other hand, had no innate abilities, instead relying on conscious analysis to learn. My father didn’t use maps, instructions or cookbooks. I relied heavily on them. He was not articulate, using facial expression and volume to communicate. I spoke in great detail to explain my thoughts. So, when it came time for me to learn how to drive a stick, we were not exactly a good match.

After several stalls, I eventually got my new Bug onto the road. I made every first-timer mistake: revving the engine, sputtering and stalling, rolling back after stopping on an incline, riding the clutch, and constant lurching. Each time, my father bellowed, “Easy, easy! No, not now! There, there! Now! Shift! The clutch, the clutch!” I could not process the words he was blasting in my ear and continued to grind, lurch and stall.

Being the typical hormonal teenage girl, I soon began to cry as my father’s frustration mounted. “Feel it in your rear! That’s how you know when to shift!” No matter how hard I tried, I could not feel anything in my rear or anywhere else for that matter.

I was able to hide my tears at the first few pizza deliveries, but after more yelling and a near catastrophic stall downhill from a barreling coal truck on Route 286, I was soon a blubbering, red-eyed, snotty mess.

“[Sniff, snort] Hello Ma’am, I, I, I, [sniff, rubbing nose with sleeve] believe you ordered two [hiccup] pepperoni pizzas?” I managed to say after ringing doorbells. “Oh, Sweetie, sure! Do you want me to order more? Would you like to come inside and sit for a while?” my customers would offer upon seeing my pitiful condition.

I somehow managed to deliver all the pizzas without anyone calling child protective services, but was devastated at my complete failure to “feel it in my rear.” It was not until I drove alone on the road in front of our house that I was able to think for myself. Without anyone to tell me what to do, I quickly learned to drive a stick like a pro.

I never really felt anything in my rear as a teenage driver; however, I can now say that riding in the car when my son is driving could be described as a huge pain in the butt. Perhaps that is what my father was referring to. Regardless, my childhood experience taught me to hold my tongue when my teenage son is driving so he can think. Parental instinct may urge me to scream, “Holy Mother of God!” and grab for the emergency brake, but I’ll sit quietly and allow him to figure it out for himself.

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Beyond the Whipping Post: Thoughts of a conference newbie

In writing on May 14, 2012 at 2:34 pm

Photo by Larry Najera

It feels good to leave the grit and hustle of the city behind. A fish out of water in the sprawl of streets, strip malls, and strip joints; I’m glad to get a break from city life during my drive to Macon, Georgia for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ Conference. As I put miles between my minivan and Jacksonville, I watch a Deep South documentary out my front windshield.

But the once prosperous small towns where roadway and railway intersect don’t look as charming as I’d imagined. I see old homes with missing shingles and broken porch rails. An abandoned factory stands as a memorial to a heyday years ago. Old storefronts and buildings lie empty, or are occupied by bargain stores, pawnshops, and used car dealerships.

With my shirts hanging in the window and a cold cup of coffee sloshing in the console, I feel like a cheesy traveling salesperson, on my way to my next pitch.

As the bug carcasses accumulate on the windshield, my mind wanders away from the barbecue-joint-strewn scenery, and to the conference. I’m a newbie, a novice, a nobody. They are real columnists, and I’m just some 45-year-old housewife with no journalism experience. What if I find out I’m not cut out for this? Will I be forced to give up my dream of becoming legitimate? Years from now, will my family reminisce, “Hey, remember the time Lisa tried to be a columnist? Yea, that was funny.”

I resist the urge to make a sudden u-turn, and press on.

Macon appears before me quite unexpectedly without the usual urban sprawl. In the Marriott parking lot, I swallow hard, take a deep breath, and head for the entrance. A few minutes later, I am nervously hand shaking and hob-knobbing in the conference area.

I spy Suzette Standring, a comforting familiar face from the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop only two weeks prior. I cling to Suzette, who has achieved a sort of sainthood as author of the wanna-be columnist’s bible, The Art of Column Writing. The word according to Saint Suzette teaches us to believe in being a columnist, and we worship her for giving us faith.

Using Suzette as a life raft, I’m able to tread water and mingle amongst the more experienced newspaper industry veterans. I’m struck by how many of the columnists were full-time staff columnists who “retired” after being bought out or replaced, or who jumped ship when their papers were in decline and now freelance and blog. I hope this is anomalous and am optimistic that I’ll meet thriving syndicated columnists in the morning.

I face the day with guarded optimism, but am soon overwhelmed with the stark reality facing the industry. I can’t help but notice that none of the keynote speakers are presently working as columnists, and each conference session seems to have the underlying message that we need to change our way of doing things because the heyday is over.

Later, a trolley transports us to some much–needed southern food and shameless frivolity at a private dinner and Allman Brothers concert. As I watch the veteran columnists dancing wildly to a 15-minute rendition of “Tied to the Whipping Post,” I wonder what it all means for me. Am I just circling the drain? Will I be able to swim out of this rip tide known as the digital age? Or will I drown, washing up on my own doorstep, regretting having tried in the first place?

Later in the hotel hospitality suite over cocktails, I take a closer look at the eccentric bunch I so desperately wish to call my colleagues. They don’t seem plagued with pessimism; they’ve accepted the changes in the industry, because they know that nothing in this business has ever been easy.

I’m suddenly able to look beyond my fears and see the brave veteran columnists from the New York Times, Kansas City Star, Macon Telegraph, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and other respected publications. They are the real deal. They made it in this industry because they were good at it, they worked hard, and they adapted. If those rules still apply, maybe I have a chance.

The next day, in keeping with the strange irony that seemed to permeate the convention, the most uplifting message to come out of the entire event is delivered by someone admittedly battling depression. Tommy Johnson, former President of CNN and publisher of Los Angeles Times and Dallas Times Herald, utters the phrase that we all longed to hear:

“Columnists DO matter,” he says.

Not in a cheesy, motivational speaker sort of way, but as a knowledgeable industry insider, he tells us that readers, whether they hold a newspaper or digital device, will continue to seek out the unique viewpoints of columnists.

The next morning, I’m back on the country roads leading me home. I pass through the same tiny towns, but this time, I notice the velvety green grass. I see lovely farms and sturdy houses. I see people conversing outside local restaurants. I see charming vegetable stands with Vidalia onions, fresh peaches and boiled peanuts for sale. These towns are not exactly the same as they were 25 years ago. They are different, for sure. They have adapted to our changing times, and they continue to thrive.

Finally at home, I plop down in front of my computer. I find another rejection letter from an editor of a Virginia daily newspaper. He writes that he cannot publish my column, explaining that his slim freelance budget is reserved for local writers only. I skim through the explanation, and focus my eyes intently on the last three words of his message: “Keep at it.”

That’s all I need to know.

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Mother’s Day – A real hoot.

In Humor, military spouses on May 13, 2012 at 10:33 am

(Lee Forrest/Flickr)

“Hey Hon, so whaddya want for Mother’s Day anyway?” my husband inquired a couple days ago, much too late to actually plan anything decent.

My mind flashed to Mother’s Days past. I winced at vivid images of kitchens destroyed by my children’s best intentions. My lips puckered at the distant taste of cold burnt breakfasts in bed. Allowing my mind to reminisce a moment longer, I nearly gagged at the thought of pond scum.

Well, not exactly pond scum, but that scummy film that forms in the bottom of a flower vase containing week-old cut flowers. My uvula twitched at the thought of slimy stems breaking the algae-like skin on the surface of old vase water to reveal murky dregs and the pungent odor of rotting vegetation.

I never really liked cut flowers because of the pond scum, but my husband orders them almost every year. He makes a call to the florist and, voila! his job is done. One year, I delicately suggested he consider potted flowers for Mother’s Day. That year, I received a lovely hydrangea that bloomed in my garden for years. I thought my days of dealing with green slime were over.

The next year it seemed like a heck of a lot of work driving over to the garden center for another potted plant when my husband could simply call the florist from the comfort of his Barcalounger. Back to the pond scum.

I shuddered, and tried to focus on an answer to my husband’s question. Hmm, I thought, is there something that my family would enjoy that would not require me to clean the kitchen and wash out dirty vases?

I recalled Mother’s Day 2007. My Navy husband was in the 5th month of a yearlong deployment to Djibouti, Africa. I met some other “geographically single” military moms at an indoor play center to let the kids run off some steam while we chatted. A couple hours later, the kids, sweaty and sufficiently coated in invisible ball-pit bacteria, told us they were starving to death.

The mothers begrudgingly trudged toward the exit. “Ugh,” one mom groaned, “I really don’t want to cook.” “Me neither,” another chimed in, her lips stretched downward in an exaggerated frown.

After months of parenting alone, I seriously contemplated eating my daughter’s filthy sweat-dampened socks to avoid cooking another meal. “Hey, you guys wanna go out to lunch somewhere?!”

We huddled in the parking lot to plan a lunch outing, but our excitement soon turned to disappointment when we realized that, without a reservation, we’d be lucky to get Slurpies and Slim Jims at 7-11 on Mother’s Day.

We said our good-byes again, and slogged to our respective minivans.

Just then, a 150-watt bulb blinked on in my deployment weary brain with possibly the best idea I’d had in my entire life. “I know where we can go!” I blurted. The other moms and their offspring looked to me with hope in their hungry eyes across the quivering asphalt, and I bellowed with outstretched arms like their pseudo savior, “HOOTERS!”

Much as I had predicted, we had the whole place to ourselves, and lazily munched on wings and fries late into the afternoon. The waitresses seemed more than happy to cater to feminine clientele who don’t giggle nervously and ogle at their ill-fitting shirts, so the service was excellent. While I did have to wipe drool from my 11-year-old son’s chin a time or two, all in all, it was a perfect Mother’s Day.

“Hon, did you hear me?” my husband inquired impatiently.

“Oh, yea,” I said, snapping back to reality. For a fleeting moment, I considered suggesting a replay of that wonderful day in 2007, but I thought better of it when I realized that Mother’s day at Hooters only works when fathers aren’t around.

The taste of chilled scorched eggs and the smell of slimy vase water suddenly seemed appealing when compared with seeing one’s husband stare bug-eyed at a woman half his age while sucking down chicken wings and beer, so I said, “Breakfast in bed and a vase of flowers would be just wonderful.”

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I only have eyes for you, Dear. Whether you like it or not.

In marriage on May 6, 2012 at 11:05 pm

One busy weeknight while chewing the last bites of pork chops and boxed macaroni and cheese, I asked my husband, “Did I tell you about my conversation with the sixth grade math teacher today?”

Gnawing a particularly tough piece of meat, my husband shook his head with a familiar glazed look in his eyes. After 18 years of marriage, he knew that I could take a good 20 minutes to describe cleaning the fuzz out of the lint trap, so he settled into his seat and braced himself for excruciating detail and superfluous analysis.

“Well, I called him about the semester project,” I continued, “and do you know what he said?”

“No. What.” my husband robotically replied, staring blankly into space.

I went on, in great detail, to describe a mundane event in my daily life as a stay-at-home Navy wife and mother of three. However, many years of housewivery had taught me that I could give our regular dinner conversations a stimulating dose of drama and suspense if I merely embellished my otherwise ordinary stories with exhaustive descriptions, exaggerated voice intonation, and vivid facial expressions.

I told my husband all about my phone call with the math teacher, but it came off more like a thrilling off-Broadway play. During a particularly expressive point in my story, my husband, tired and irritated after a long day and a mediocre dinner, interjected sardonically, “Oh, please, do that again with the bulgy eyes. That’s really attractive.” Fully intending to add insult to injury, he mocked me by imitating my Marty Feldman-like eyes, while I sat, stone-faced, glaring at him.

Although his deep-set eyeballs could never mimic the natural prominence of mine, my husband nonetheless contorted his face to look as ridiculous as possible. As I watched his discourteous display and doggedly gripped my fork on that weeknight at the dinner table, our entire marriage passed before my genetically protuberant eyes.

What’s happened to us? I wondered. We used to be so lovey dovey, and here we are pelting each other with insults over Shake & Bake. Is our marriage hopeless? Does he think I’ve become unattractive and annoying? Well, I don’t recall anyone dying and making him God’s gift to women. Hrmph.

Bitter, I finally interrupted his facial contortions, “So, who are you over there, Robert Redford or something?” With blatant hypocrisy, my husband took immediate offense to my sarcasm and scowled.

We sat in silence, sucking the macaroni from our teeth and avoiding eye contact.

Unable to remain mute for more than a minute, I spoke weakly without looking up from my plate, “I can’t help that my eyes bulge, you know.”

My husband’s irritation was suddenly replaced with sincere remorse. “Oh, Honey, I’m sorry,” he said, moving in closer and placing his hand on mine. “I don’t think your eyes bulge. I think you’re bulgy in all the right places.”

His awkward flattery softened my ire, and I released the death grip I had on my fork. Glancing up from the remains of my pork chop and into his deep-set eyes, I realized that, even if we get a little mad from time to time, we’ll always be madly in love.

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365 days and counting

In Humor, parenting on April 30, 2012 at 9:50 am

“You think you got it bad now,” other moms cautioned when my kids were young, “just wait ‘til they’re teenagers.”

Like the weird sisters of Macbeth, they’d give each other knowing glances and chuckle, as they watched me nearly amputate a foot while trying get my screaming toddler’s stroller onto the escalator at the mall.

I thought those moms were too old and summarily dismissed their annoying prophecies. Besides, back in the “olden days” kids played outside unsupervised all day while their mothers lounged around in crinolined skirts, smoking cigarettes, polishing silver, and watching “I Love Lucy.”

No wonder their kids turned out to be horrible teens. I firmly believed that whatever stage of parenting I was experiencing was the worst one, and no one was going to convince me otherwise.

This month, my eldest child turned 17, and it occurred to me that only one year of his childhood remains. I’m not sure if I should celebrate or burst into tears.

The first time I held my son in my arms, I felt an awesome sense of love and purpose. In an instant, my own needs shifted from my top priority to a distant second, and the funny thing is, I couldn’t have been happier about it. I can’t take credit; it was merely a consequence of animal instinct, and like any mama bear, squirrel, or flamingo, focus on my own survival automatically switched to the endurance of my offspring.

Although it is initially a joy to put our children’s needs ahead of our own, over time the task of parenting gets bothersome, frustrating and let’s face it, downright terrifying.

Nowhere does this fact of life become clearer than in parenting teens. I hate to admit it, but those cackling witches at the mall were right as rain.

When my son turned 13, his head didn’t spin, his eyes didn’t roll, and foul expletives didn’t burst forth from his mouth. No, he was the same kid he’d always been. When he turned 14 we saw subtle changes – his first shave, a deepening voice, reluctance to accept affection. How cute, we thought.

We drifted contentedly into our son’s teen years, comfortably secure that our teenager would never be a problem, because we were good parents and had raised him right.

But soon after the candles on our son’s Rubik’s Cube-shaped 15th birthday cake were extinguished, a new period of parenting ensued, which might best be described as “Armageddon.”

Suddenly, the bathroom door was permanently locked. Our son stopped making eye contact. A foul smell hung like a green fog in his bedroom. He snickered secretly into the phone behind his barricaded bedroom door. When we managed to come face to face with him, he was always asleep.

In what seemed like an instant, the sweet boy we had known all these years turned into a smelly undisciplined stranger who, apparently, hated our guts.

At night we lay in bed, our minds racing with anger, frustration, guilt, and panicked thoughts of our son’s future. Desperate, we listened to other parents of teens, and found out that the hell we were experiencing was actually quite common.

Apparently, just as new hairs sprout from a teen’s body, a budding new attitude develops in the teen brain. The once dependent, reverent child suddenly thinks:

“There’s nothing that I don’t already know. I will now run my own life. I find you totally embarrassing, and reserve the right to roll my eyes in pure disgust whenever I see fit. I will, however, continue to associate with you so that you can buy me a car, electronics, clothing of my choice, pizza for me and my friends, and a place to sleep until two in the afternoon. Oh, and don’t forget to save upwards of $100 K to send me off to college so that I can reenact ‘Animal House’ at your expense.”

With one year left before my son leaves the nest, you’d think I’d be chilling champagne and making plans to fumigate his room. But ironically, I’m melancholy and must resist the urge to become one of the witches, warning young moms to appreciate the days when their biggest problem is getting the stroller onto the escalator at the mall.

Instead, I’ll remind myself that every day of parenting a child is precious, and I’ll savor the next 365. And counting.

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One of those days

In Humor on April 23, 2012 at 8:38 am

Ever had one of those days when everything just falls into place?

Yea, me neither.

I always believed that I’d be able to manage our family life without compromising my standards. Apparently, I was wrong.

A decade ago, my husband and I traveled to Boston to visit his old college roommate, who like my husband, was married with kids, a job, and a mortgage. They were a few years ahead of our life schedule, so visiting them was like looking into our future.

Our husbands snuck off to drink beer somewhere, so I hung out with the other wife while she went about her day as a stay-at-home mom to three kids.

Riding in her dingy minivan to school, I felt a subtle twinge of anxiety. My counterpart was somewhat tensely gripping the wheel, wearing her husband’s jacket, workout pants marred with a blob of dried schmutz, slippers and a pair of broken sunglasses that sat crooked on her face. The floor was strewn with debris – discarded kid’s meal toys, juice boxes, crumpled wrappers and tidbits of food

As she chatted about leaving her career as an attorney to raise the kids, my mind wandered. “What is that schmutz on her pants? Can’t she scrape it off with her thumbnail? With those glasses cocked sideways, she looks like she might suddenly run us all off a cliff. At least if we are stranded in a ravine, we could survive a few days on the old French fries and Skittles under the seats,” I thought.

Back at her house, she washed out two dirty cups, served us some coffee and slumped into a scratched kitchen chair with the newspaper. I could tell that skimming the newspaper over coffee each day was her one selfish indulgence, and depriving her of this little break from her chaotic routine might just sever her precarious hold on sanity. I puttered to allow her time to read.

“Hey, listen to this,” she suddenly commanded. “A man filed a missing persons report because his wife and mother of their children disappeared last week. Don’t you know, they found her, happily living in a newly rented apartment. Apparently, she loved them all, but needed a break and just ran away.”

My crazed hostess lifted her head from her paper and stared out the window for a few seconds before mumbling, “she . . . just . . . ran away.”

“I need to go freshen up a bit,” I lied, and hid in the bathroom in hopes that she would find solace and not a loaded weapon.

On the plane ride home, I thought of how the other wife seemed to be hanging on by a thread, and told myself that I would never have such a cluttered, disorganized, chaotic life.

A few days ago, I was crying like a baby while careening down the Arlington Expressway in my dirty white minivan. Wearing my standard black Nike work out pants, those ridiculous looking “shape up” shoes, and a fleece jacket adorned with dog hairs, I struggled to see through my tears and the bug guts still enameled on the window from our spring break trip.

It had been one of those days. The kids sat in their seats, unphased. They’d seen this kind of crazed display before and knew I’d soon be back to “normal,” which for me was a mental state that vacillated between Supermom and somewhat unstable.

The tipping point occurred during an after school conference with my teenage son’s English teacher. News of my son’s academic transgressions, coupled with the normal events of every day life – work deadlines, dirty laundry, the price of gas, dust bunnies, hormones — was just enough to bring me to the brink.

But, I did not drive our minivan off a cliff or run away to find a new life for myself. No, much like the old college roommate’s wife up in Boston, I maintained my grip on that invisible thread from which we moms hang and did what I needed to do to survive the chaos.

On that particular afternoon, it only took a good cry, an entire bag of Combos, and two DVRed episodes of Dance Moms for me to make a full recovery. Ironically, I was impressed with myself and mothers everywhere, who, despite it all, continue to muster the strength to face one of those days.

 

Related Articles:  Mom doesn’t want to be a parent anymore (parenting.com)

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How many idiots does it take to fill out a 1040?

In Humor on April 15, 2012 at 4:03 pm

“Oh crud, we need to do our taxes,” I recently told my husband as I do every year around this time.

After exhausting every reason to procrastinate – cleaning out the vegetable drawer, perusing old Hickory Farms catalogues left over from Christmas, clipping toenails, surfing E-bay for vintage bar signs, napping – we finally had to face the music.

Coffee and a folder haphazardly filled with paperwork in hand, my husband and I reluctantly plopped down in front of our computer to complete the dreaded annual tax forms.

We haven’t had the best luck preparing our tax forms over the years, and are conditioned to avoid the experience. Despite my law degree and my husband’s master’s degree in financial management, neither of us ever grasped the simple concepts relevant to our personal income tax forms.

In law school, I took a Tax Law course and could write a scholarly paper on whether the federal income tax is a direct tax or an excise tax based on the Sixteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Pollock case, but I struggled with my 1040EZ.

My husband’s master’s thesis was entitled “Congress, Defense, and the Deficit: An Analysis of the FY 1996 Budget Process in the 1O4th Congress,” but he couldn’t tell the difference between short and long term capital gains if his retirement depended on it.

But every year, we begrudgingly spread out our paperwork and somehow fulfill our obligations as taxpayers.

One year, we wanted to act like grown ups, so we hired an accountant while living in Virginia Beach. He was a charming southern gentleman with blue eyes, silver white hair and a matching tidy moustache. He called me “ma’am” and politely sat with us one balmy evening in the early days of spring. Over the season’s first lemonades, we casually chatted about our finances, and he gathered all the information he needed to prepare and file our returns. It was so easy, we wondered why we hadn’t been doing it this way all along.

The next year, we tried to contact our charming accountant to do our taxes again, but strangely, he never returned our calls.

We soon found out that he couldn’t call us back because he was locked up in the big house. Turns out, our southern gentleman was politely holding himself out as a CPA without a license, embezzling from clients, and obtaining money under false pretenses. Oops. Back to the drawing board.

Since then, we have been using Turbo Tax, a seemingly idiot-proof program which leads the user through a simplified series of questions designed to accurately calculate all income and deductions.  Somehow, my husband and I still have no idea what is going on.

“Do we qualify for the child tax credit?” I asked, as my husband slurped his coffee. “Hell if I know . . . just do whatever we did last year, that seemed to work,” he said nonchalantly.

“I forget, do we have Roth IRAs or regular IRAs?” I said a few minutes later. Riffling through a pile of papers, my husband found our statements, which might as well have been written in Chinese. “Roth, but what the heck is a recharacterized contribution?”

My eyes started to cross as I tried to decipher our mutual fund papers. “Is cost basis the same as purchase price?” I said, searching my faded memory bank. “I don’t know, just punch in $200 and see what happens,” my husband suggested.

After four hours, two pots of coffee, three calls to our financial manager, and at least a dozen choice expletives, we finally got it all figured out and dutifully sent our forms off to Uncle Sam.

We won’t get our return check for several weeks, but rest assured, we’ve already spent it, and lost the receipt. When our bank statements arrive, we won’t know how to balance the checkbook. And next spring, we’ll be back in front of our computer, dazed and confused all over again.  Apparently, a few more things in life are certain aside from death and taxes.

[Hey, if you're having deja vu, don't worry, you've probably read this before. I posted it last April, but the newspaper that publishes my column -- shout out to my Indiana Gazette peeps -- didn't use it until THIS year. So, here it is again so my newspaper followers can find it. Stay tuned this week for some "fresh meat!" -- LSM]

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Southern Exposure

In Humor on April 9, 2012 at 9:38 am

There’s only one thing more disturbing than seeing a fat woman eating a turkey leg at an amusement park: seeing a fat woman eating a turkey leg at an amusement park in a bathing suit. This eternal truth revealed itself to me after our recent move to Florida.

Despite the well-known adage that “Tan fat is better than pale fat,” I’m not mentally prepared to live in the South, where unseasonably warm weather requires me to show more skin than ever before.

A Northerner at heart, I’m most comfortable packed securely into jeans and a turtleneck. Add snow boots, mittens, hat, scarf, and hooded parka, and I feel downright sexy.

All those layers of fabric not only cover age spots and stretch marks, but they also magically smooth away any flubby bits so I can live in oblivious denial of my body’s imperfections.

However, here in Florida, one can’t be covered in all those layers unless one is in the market for a serious case of heat stroke. To the contrary, the people of this sun-washed peninsula relish the hot climate and use it as the ultimate excuse to expose themselves. At the beaches, in the malls, and, regrettably, at the amusement parks while eating turkey legs.

I’m trying to adapt, but it hasn’t been easy.

It’s difficult to put on spaghetti straps when I’ve eaten too much spaghetti in my life. It’s tough to pull off a maxi dress when I’m at my maximum weight. It’s hard to wear shorts at Epcot when my thighs are at epic proportions.

Ironically, aging snowbirds migrate from northern states in their Chryslers with their wrap around sunglasses to this bastion of retirement. They can’t wait to peel off their gabardine stretch slacks, kick off their orthopedic shoes, and bare their potbellies, flapping arms and gnarled toes to the world in sequined sandals and muumuus.

And what about the thongs, er, I mean throngs of locals born and raised in the South, who think nothing of bellying up to a bounty of fatback bacon, buttermilk biscuits, barbecue and bourbon balls while bubbling out of their booty shorts?

Will I ever learn to let it all hang out?

Apparently the key to enjoying oneself while scantily clad in the South is to be a Southerner. Or, to be so old, you just don’t give a damn.

Considering my Northern heritage, I’ve no option but to wait a few years before I’ll be comfortable showing my armpit chicken fat thingies to my neighbors. In the meantime, I may as well slather myself in barbecue sauce and slurp some sweet tea, because I’ll be sweating like a pig in my jeans and turtleneck.

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The Dirty Secrets of Property Ownership

In family, Humor on April 1, 2012 at 8:56 am

When asked by friends recently what my family was doing for Spring Break, I declared boastfully, “Oh, why we’re going to our beach house, of course.”

Leaving a pregnant pause, I hoped my friends would ask for more details, so I could brag that “my family” has owned a beach house in North Carolina’s windswept Outer Banks since the 1970s. I hoped that my explanation would conjure up visions of Kennedy-esque old money, and me lounging on a sun-soaked chase overlooking the sea, wearing a nautical-striped boat neck top, large sunglasses and a silk scarf blowing in the cool ocean breeze.

Little do these friends know that, although I am one of 12 extended Smith family members who own a beach cottage, our ownership experience is nothing like Jackie’s and John John’s days spent carelessly frolicking the grounds of their estate on Maaahtha’s Vinyaahd. I’d say our family vacation property ownership experience is more akin to what might happen if the Hatfields and the McCoys went in together on a timeshare on Lake Winnipesaukee.

There’s no question about it—the benefits of co-owning a vacation home must be balanced against the reality of sharing the property with relatives.

When the house was first built in 1979, I was most likely humming “Muskrat Love” in a pink halter-top while sipping Tang from the banana seat of my yellow Schwinn, so I was happily ignorant of the practical ramifications of my parents’ decision to invest in a vacation property with our quirky relatives. All I knew was that we had the grooviest beach house ever, and I claimed the loft bedroom with the gold shag carpeting at the top of the mod spiral staircase as my own.

It wasn’t until I bought my own share of the beach house in 1992 that reality slapped me hard in the face. I soon realized that “my” beach house was not really “mine.” I was sharing this place with a bunch of strange relatives, many of which harbored long-standing family rivalries, and some of which thought the upstairs loft bedroom was theirs too.

This was not the beach house ownership status that I’d envisioned, and I soon became aware of the secrets families who co-own keep.

Like, that owning an “equal” share does not necessarily mean sharing equally in the responsibilities. One owner might stain the entire deck on his vacation, while another might sacrifice only the amount of time that it takes to pencil into the beach house repair log, “New light bulb needed in bedside lamp.”

Like, that no co-owners’ cleaning standards are alike. One owner might think it completely appropriate to dump all the Scrabble tiles, Happy meal toys, and a few used cotton swabs into the utensil drawer, while another owner will spend an entire day of every annual vacation reorganizing the toys, linens, tools, cookware, games, cards and cleaning supplies. Oh, and she will spend a few more precious minutes wiping the splattered daiquiri someone left on off the wall behind the blender. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)

Like, that co-owners never own up to breaking anything, and will think nothing of propping the foosball table up with the leg their kid just broke off, knowing full well that 150-pounds of wood-laminate-covered particle board might come crashing down on the next vacationing owner’s foot.

Like, that co-owners will take items that would not sell in their garage sales and unload them at the beach house. Ours has no less that 13 small pans that are meant for sautéing shallots, a plastic plant, seven used bedding sets in every floral pattern imaginable, nine toothbrush holders, and five Thanksgiving-themed tea towels.

Like, that co-owners will vote on strict Rules and Procedures prohibiting pets and smoking, but will do whatever they darned well please, believing the rules to only apply to the other owners, and knowing full well that no one will be able to pin the inhuman black hairs imbedded in the carpet on them.

Like, that co-owners never bother throwing anything away. Our house has a drawer full of owner’s manuals from every alarm clock, toaster, microwave, grill, washing machine, VCR and fan we have jointly owned since 1979. We also have over a dozen clickers that don’t seem to work with any TV. Additionally, our shared storage closet contains a discarded shoe, a bicep curl apparatus, an empty DVD case, a curtain rod, old saltshakers, a can of coffee that is at least 15 years old, and a bottle of cheap Asti Spumante.

Despite these dirty (and sometimes sticky, cluttered and tacky) little family secrets, we all feel fortunate to have something most people only dream about – vacation property ownership. And just like the defunct TV clickers and old saltshakers, no one will ever take that away.

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Bracing for Bankruptcy

In Humor, parenting on March 25, 2012 at 1:30 pm

I’ve done just about anything you can think of while sitting in our orthodontist’s waiting room. I’ve balance my checkbook. I’ve applied concealer to the dark circles under my eyes. I’ve watched “Toy Story” eight times. I’ve torn recipes out of magazines when no one was watching. I’ve discovered an old cough drop in the bottom of my purse, picked the lint off it, and eaten it.

With three kids in braces, I spend half my life in the orthodontist’s waiting room, and unfortunately, half our combined income too.

You’d think the orthodontist would have the decency to pluck a few bills from his mountain of insane profits to provide me with a reclining lounge chair or neck pillow for my waiting room naps. Alternatively, a nice cappuccino bar and mini-fridge with ice cold cans of Diet Coke would provide me with caffeine, obviating the need for naps. A desk and free Wi-Fi would enable me to do more multi-tasking than cleaning out my purse and catching up on women’s magazines. I mean, that’s the least he could do, considering.

Considering that my kids’ teeth never really looked all that crooked to begin with, but somehow, they ALL need full orthodontic treatment to include preparatory extractions, palate expanders, bands, brackets, adjustments, headgear and retainers.

My intuition told me there was a wide-spread conspiracy between our dentist, oral surgeon, orthodontist and insurance company to swindle me out of as much money as possible. But they knew that all they had to do was use big words, show me some murky x-rays, and put the fear of God in me that my kids’ mouths would soon become veritable train wrecks of snaggleteeth. They knew I would cave, and that’s exactly what I did.

Has it always been this way? I don’t think so.

Today, braces are a fashion accessory, as cool as a cell phone in kid’s jeans pocket or a Vera Bradley lunchbox. Conversely, when I was a kid, the general attitude toward any additional hardware such as orthodontics, glasses, orthopedic shoes, and back braces, was that they were instant fodder for ruthless bullying, and as such, should be avoided if at all possible.

I had the unfortunate experience of having braces while in the 5th grade in 1978. My orthodontist didn’t have to use his powers of persuasion to convince my parents to pay. To the contrary, my parents were begging on bended knee to please, for the love of God, do something about my teeth, which were spread so far apart, my brother had started referring to me as “The Rake.”

Unlike today’s trendy braces with their inconspicuously glued brackets, colorful bands and thin sparkling wire, every tooth in my 11-year-old head was cemented with gun-metal grey steel bands welded with cumbersome brackets connected by thick wire. I went from looking like “The Rake” to resembling the villain “Jaws” from 007’s The Spy Who Loved Me.

And of course there was the dreaded headgear. I remember picking the red-bandana patterned neck strap from a bin at the orthodontist’s office, which was a wholly inadequate consolation prize for the utter humiliation I felt when wearing the slobber-producing device in public.

There was no question about it – the only reason I suffered the embarrassment of braces in the 1970s was because my teeth were seriously screwed up and my parents were only too happy to pay for someone to fix them.

Nowadays, not only are the professionals trying to sell you on the latest orthodontic procedure to correct the most minor flaws, even the kids pressure you to sign on the dotted line just so they can pick bands to match their school colors. They won’t listen to reason. You can’t convince them by pointing out that Jay Leno would be nowhere today without his characteristic under bite, and Jewel would be slinging burgers at McD’s if she didn’t have that fang poking straight out of her face.

So here I sit, in the orthodontist’s waiting room, picking stuff out from under my fingernails, while somewhere across town, money is automatically being withdrawn from our dwindling checking account to pad the overstuffed coffers of our orthodontist.

And as we careen ever so slowly toward financial ruin in the name of orthodontic perfection and middle school fashion sense, I comfort myself with the knowledge that, with all this waiting room time, my purse has never been more organized.

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