Laura Done Died

For years I've had a love affair going with old-time radio. Shows like Suspense, The Jack Benny Program, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Your's Truly, Johnny Dollar - they all transport me to a place where my imagination does the work - if you could call it work. 

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

And because radio ruled for decades, my mind dances to places where Art Deco might have been new-ish, as could Colonial furniture, or Mid-century modern, and atomic design motifs. I love it all, and somehow, those decades seem safer - until you factor in for things like the Great Depression, Jim Crow, World War II, and the Cold War. Damn reality.  

I wish my kids could slip away into these shows like I can; I listen to them in my car on Sirius XM, where a host named Greg Bell airs them in what feels to me like something close to Heaven 24/7. My kids are politely tolerant of the Way Back Machine I'm running out of our dashboard, and they typically plug into their phones when I'm listening to these shows. 

Last Saturday my son was at a sleepover, leaving my daughter and me to what we call our "girls' nights." These girls' nights aren't what you might imagine. They're usually us ordering pizza and binge-watching shows like Buzzfeed Unsolved, Will & Grace, and the show we're currently crazy about, the "re-imagined" One Day at a Time. 

But sometimes on girls nights, we like to take drives in the country. We sing along with the radio at the tops of our lungs or I listen to my vintage radio shows while she plugs in to something newer. We still talk off and on, but the backdrops are these two different worlds into which we've chosen to escape while I drive. 

So after Syd and I dropped Jon at the sleepover, we set off for the open road. There was a big moon, a clear sky, and unusually warm temperatures for late January. All these elements combined to give me a kind of contentment I don't usually feel. I was all wrapped up in an episode of Inner Sanctum hosted by the cheeky Raymond Edward Johnson, and Syd was plugged in nice and snug, listening to music and texting. About halfway through the episode, she piped up and commented on the fate of one of the characters: "Laura done died," she quipped.

My heart soared. Could it be my darling daughter was, dare I say, listening to my radio show? Note that I say "my radio show" as though I were Jack Webb. I decided to encourage her and played along.

"Don't be too sure of that. These shows have a way of misdirecting you. You might get a surprise!"

In the end, even Raymond was surprised - surprised and disappointed by what proved to be a total lack of murders and how there wasn't "a drop of blood spilled all evening." Had this opportunity to engage my daughter in a sliver of my world just fizzled? After all, she had grown up under the shadow of the Twilight series and others of its ilk. This show - the ending anyway - might have been a letdown. After a few minutes, I asked her. 

"Syd, did you get into that story at all?"

"Sorry, Mom, not really. Except for that one little part, I didn't even hear it. My friend, Juliana texted me then started a group chat where she introduced me to someone she thought I'd like. That person ended up liking me, but I didn't feel the same way. It was a whole big mess. I was trying to get out of it without hurting anybody’s feelings. Now I’m totally drained."

And not even by a vampire. I stared at her, my mouth open.

"All this happened just now? You got fixed up with someone, went on a blind date, got to know this person enough to know it wasn’t a fit, and then broke it off - all on the phone and all inside an hour?

"Yeah. I guess I kind of had my own drama going on."

We drove home and binge-watched Netflix. Syd still occasionally fiddled with her phone - probably nailing down a four-year degree, getting married, and having my first grandchild - all at the same time.

How to Sleep with a Dog

If you have a dog, you know that, like humans, dogs sleep, and that they prefer to sleep with a partner. This is where you, the dog owner, or parent of a fur-baby (depending on your level of attachment), come in. 

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

If you are a dog owner who allows your dog to sleep in your bed, you sleep with your dog. If you are a parent of a fur-baby who sleeps in your bed, you co-sleep with your fur-baby. 

No matter how you share your bed with your dog, the dog thinks he is sharing his bed with you. In addition, the dog probably sleeps much better than you. Remember: the phrase is "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," not "bright-eyed and bushy-bottomed." 

The fastest route to better sleep with Fido starts with leveling the playing field so that he does not play the alpha in the bedroom. Your dog will respect you for it, and you will both sleep better as a result. To avoid the awkward his/her/he/she, we will assume that your dog is male.

Step One: When your dog springs onto the bed at night, you spring onto the bed. This will startle your dog, and he will automatically surrender much of the alpha status he has enjoyed until now. 

Step Two: Once your dog recovers from the shock of Step One, he will likely begin walking in a circle on top of the bed clothes. This is known as "rounding" and is an instinctual ritual dating back to your dog's wolf ancestors. Dogs round to tamp down sticks and leaves and make a more comfortable bed. Similarly, dogs often scratch and dig at times like this. 

When your dog begins to round, you begin to round, all the while explaining to your dog how ridiculous rounding is when there are no sticks or leaves in your bed. If there are sticks or leaves in your bed, assist your dog in the rounding process. This will get the job done faster so that you and your dog can fly off to the Land of Nod that much sooner.

Step Three: Anticipate your dog's impending plop to the mattress, then plop first. This tactic allows you first choice of valuable prime mattress real estate, and surprises your dog into relinquishing more alpha status. Once you have both plopped, be the first to snort, preferably in your dog's face. Some dogs prefer to burrow under the bed clothes before plopping and snorting. If this sounds like your dog, once again, beating him at his own game is key. Just don't forget to snort. 

Step Four: Roll closer and closer to your dog until your bodies slightly overlap, yours on top. Next, inexorably work your way tighter and tighter against your dog. Your dog's body will at first be unyielding, but be patient, as this is normal. Eventually he will give just a bit, and you will be on top in more ways than one. 

Over the course of the night, continue inching towards him as he slowly moves away from you. When you have your dog at the edge of the mattress, roll one last time. Your dog will drop gracefully from the mattress, landing safely on the nice, soft dog bed you secretly purchased earlier in the week and placed on the floor for just this moment. However, if your dog is a Great Dane or St. Bernard, the fall might not be as graceful, and damaged flooring could result. With overweight large-breed dogs, damage has been known to extend as far as splintered floor joists. In addition, the resulting thud can be unnerving but, provided the dog bed is nicely cushioned, your dog will not be injured during his fall. 

And there you have it. It is best to perform this process on the weekend, or some other night when you can nap the next day. 

Do everything just right, and your dog will need a nap too. 

Congratulations, Alpha.

Feeding the Christmas Beast

I've had an epiphany: Christmas is a bit too commercialized, and some of us spend a bit too much.

Christmas Beast, copyright, Teece Aronin

Every January I start budgeting to feed the Christmas beast, the tinseled, bulbed behemoth already lurking at the end of the year. Christmas, for a lot of us, has become akin to a fluffy white snowball rolling toward us down a mountain, getting bigger and bigger and badder and badder, until it rolls right over us and stops. Then we're expected to dig ourselves out and start pushing it back up the mountain again.  

But the good news? Every Christmas you have the next 364 days to do it - if you start right away. It's like a pinball game automatically resetting and demanding $700 from you for the privilege of losing again.

Then there's online shopping which is great in a lot of ways, but not so great in others. For instance, it's still surprisingly hard work. Nothing tightens up those shoulder muscles like opening an email from Amazon alerting you to the fact that your order of 47 items was cancelled because your "payment method" has expired, and you try to straighten things out on a glitchy cell phone while waiting in line at UPS and pushing two 40-pound boxes along with your feet. 

I don't think this is how Christ would want us to celebrate his birth.

Another thing I doubt is that he'd want us giving children hundreds of dollars worth of presents they'll be too polite to say they hate, but you can tell they do anyway. This sad circumstance sets us up to discover vast Christmas gift graveyards that sprawl under kids' beds and bone piles of unwanted toys that lie heaped in their closets. What a waste. 

As my kids got older (my son is 17 and my daughter 19), it all changed, but not for the better. Instead of telling me what they wanted, or handing me a list, they would text me links to things, mostly tech products with purposes I didn't understand, things that Oppenheimer would've asked his mother for if he'd been a Millennial. And I don't blame my kids; it was a natural outgrowth of what we'd come to as they got older and more tech-savvy and I shopped more often online. Having them do that actually made my shopping a lot easier. Easier, but somehow colder.  

Today I'm pledging to kill the Christmas beast by refusing to feed it. I'm not alone, by the way. Lots of people are cutting way back on the amounts of gifts they buy - even for their kids. And some people have stopped buying their kids any gifts. If an article I read recently is true, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are two of them. Many parents now opt for gifts requiring more time and imagination than money, like  buying a kid art supplies and then committing an afternoon to making art with said kid. 

Also according to that article, some kids, and even some adults, have gotten pretty testy during the adjustment/withdrawal phase, but a lot of families feel their lives are on a healthier track now that they're doing things differently.

When I told my son what I was thinking, he said he could really get behind it. When I mentioned it to my daughter, she said, "I think that's a good idea, but can I think about it?"

I said, "Nope, you're already handling it a lot better than some people, so I'm taking your answer as a yes."

Besides, it's not as though I plan to go all Kutcher-Kunis on them. What I'm thinking is $100 each in presents plus treats and surprises spread throughout the year, like an afternoon playing my son's computer games with him then dinner at his favorite restaurant.

The idea is to give more from your heart than from your wallet and to give your kid a memory because those can't get lost under a bed.

Then again, if you saw my kids' rooms . . .

Giving Christmas the Old Heave-Ho-Ho-Ho

Those of us who celebrate Christmas are coming down to the final turn with just eight days left until the big day. Or the big show. Or the “really big shoe” as Ed Sullivan used to say. More appropos might be “the really big stocking.” At this point, however, many of us are ready to give Christmas “the really big boot.”

Until December 26, a lot of us will be losing it a little, and some of us have been losing it for quite a while already. About a week ago I looked down at my hands and realized that when I removed my nail polish the night before, I had overlooked my right thumb. Its nail coated in chipped “Santa Suit Red,” the thumb gazed balefully at me, pleading, “Don’t leave me this way.”

I wondered: Do other women fail to take the polish off some of their nails? The next morning, a coworker flashed the backs of her hands at me. Seven nails had the polish removed and three did not. Most definitely an observer of Christmas, I thought.

On Christmas Eve, years ago, one of my gal pals was coping with her first Christmas as the single mother of a toddler. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, nose dusted with flour, she was baking cookies, wrapping gifts, screwing toy ovens together and bathing her child - all simultaneously thanks to the six temporary arms single mothers grow during the holidays. When a friend phoned to invite her to a Christmas Eve church service, my friend exclaimed, “I just don’t have time for Jesus tonight!” If Mary had said that on the first Christmas Eve, Christmas, as we know it, would have even more baked goods in it.

Maybe it’s because my children are older now, but I am much calmer these days at Christmastime. Gone is the pressure from telling a four-year-old that I was sorry, but the present he wanted was too expensive, only to have him say, “Don’t worry, Mama - Santa can get it for me.” Long past is the night I rocked my daughter in my arms, both of us in tears because I failed to understand that she didn't "really want the truth about Santa."

Today, my children are nearly grown, so if they suggest I make cheesecake this year, they won't be too disappointed when I lovingly point them to the kitchen, and if I do happen to be a little frazzled, text them the link to a fudge recipe.  

Never Take "Bedadryl" Before Proofreading

Last week I wrote a blogpost, then proofread, and proofread, and proofread it again. When it “rinsed clear,” which is how I think of proofreading to the point of spotting no errors, I saved it as a draft and proofed it in preview mode which displays it as it will look once published. Then I pushed the publish button to send the essay hurtling into the blogosphere.

I know that even if something rinses clear, immediately publishing it is unwise if you can avoid it. It's best to wait a bit and then look at your work again, when you're fresher and not as emotionally attached. But that was the problem: I was too emotionally attached to wait and no longer fresh. Such conditions can only lead to premature ePublication. 

After I pushed the publish button, I read the piece on my actual webpage. I always do this because I find that proofing something that way reveals more things to tweak. I'm not sure why that is since the preview is essentially the same thing, but still, it just seems true for me. Then I quickly make what are usually minor fixes by this point, hit the update button, and the revised version instantly becomes what readers see. The problem is that spotting any error makes me think there might be others, so I proof it from my webpage one more time. Every time I fix something new, I go back and read again. Despite how it sounds, this process just takes a few minutes. When I proofed last week’s piece from the website, everything seemed fine. It rinsed clear. 

Now it was time for bed, but the light exposure from my computer monitor plus the tension from all that proofing, would probably jam up my sleep. So I swallowed a couple of well-known over-the-counter allergy meds. I won’t name the brand, but when my daughter was little, she used to call them BED-adryl. Then, to kill time until I felt sleepy, I read the post in bed from my phone - and spotted this:

Within days, our carpet was so buried under dried out henna-hued needles that it looked like the floor  of Donald Trump's barber.

Is it as obvious to you as it is to me - the extra space between floor and of? Oh, the humanity!

I sat bolt upright in bed and logged in to the Blogger app on my phone. Logging in took three tries because the "Bedadryl" was kicking in. I finally got in, closed up the space, then accidentally eliminated two spaces instead of one and had to put one back in. Then I fat-fingered while trying to tweak something else, which ironically was fine as it was, but could have been better and then mutilated a word which had to be tapped back in twice before my fogged-out brain cried, "Close enough!"

This is where OCD stepped up and said, "Whoa there, writer friend! Best to go back to square one and proof everything all over again because if you missed that extra space, God only knows what other horrific errors and typos are waiting to blind your readers! Actually, you can look that up! Get on that!"

Even my OCD had brain fog. It didn't mean that I could see how many people had been blinded by my errors; it just meant that I could see how many people had read the post: 205 so far. That many? It was after midnight, so maybe I appealed to other insomniacs, those who wished they hadn't thrown out their phone books. Or maybe they were reading me in Copenhagen where it was about 6 a.m. and time to kick off yet another happy day. Denmark ranked third in 2017 among the world's happiest countries. But who cared? What mattered was that things had to be made right - immediately. 

Propped up in bed, I started proofreading again, but kept dozing off, fumbling the phone, and making more typos. Then I tried sitting on the edge of the bed, nodded off, and was rudely awakened when the phone clattered on the hardwood floor. I thought standing might help, but all my concentration went toward not swaying. 

Then it occurred to me that this was a great time for cake. The refined sugar would perk me up long enough to finish my proofing. But I'd have to hop to after that because a crash would follow the rush, and there'd be no fixing my essay until about 10 a.m. That would be 4 p.m. in Copenhagen, where it would be dark and time for their afternoon bonfires. Those Danes would be warming their hands around the fire and discussing me: “That woman in the States writes error-laden essays. Best to avoid her work from now on."

So I ate some cake, sacrificing for my art, whizzed through the proofing and by 1:30 a.m. felt confident about the blog post. But I was wide awake and buzzing in my bed until almost lunchtime. 

But it wasn’t really all that late - I mean lunchtime in Copenhagen.

Christmas Trees Aren't as Innocent as They Look

Getting a Christmas tree up gets many of us down. It’s enough to make even the most placid souls ditch cutting down a tree in favor of cutting up an elf.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

My father suffered the agonies of the damned every time we put up a tree. It was as if the tree had it in for him and had taken it upon itself to avenge every Christmas tree everywhere, along with a couple of poorly maintained topiaries. My father tried to show the tree who was boss, swearing at it in curse words more colorful than a birthday bash for Katy Perry. Then my mother would say things like, “Honestly, Kenneth, the kids." And my father would say things like, “Well, by God, it’s time they grew up!”

One year, after I'd grown up, I became not only a single parent, but a single parent who was the only obstacle between my kids and their dreams of the perfect Christmas tree. Even before my divorce, I was more or less on my own Christmas tree-wise because my ex-husband is Jewish and has cerebral palsy, so he might as well have been permanently exempted from Christmas tree duty twice. He would giggle, salute, and say, “It’s your holiday, not mine.” Then he'd be off to wherever it is Jewish husbands go when they don't want to help shikza wives put up Christmas trees. 

Another complication with which many of us cope when putting up, and keeping up, a Christmas tree, is pets. Pets have been known to make or break a Christmas tree. They make them by lying peacefully beneath the trees, like contented lambs or break them by - well - breaking them. I'm in a few cat-lover groups on Facebook and am amazed by the number of photos I've seen of cats nestled among the boughs of their humans' Christmas trees. 

When I was about 13, the tree my father put up taunted him by leaning, no matter how many times he re-screwed it into its base. As a last resort, he secured the tree with twine tied to a picture hook in the wall. In the middle of the night, our dog took off after our cat and both dashed behind the tree. The tree-trunk, weakened by all the screwing and re-screwing, snapped, along with the twine, and the tree landed in the middle of the sofa bed where my brother was sleeping with his wife.

One year, my kids and I had a tree that started falling apart as soon as I got it up. Within days, our carpet was so buried under dried out henna-hued needles that it looked like the floor of Donald Trump's barber. It took weeks after we got rid of the tree to truly get rid of the tree. 

By the following year, the kids were old enough, yet naive enough, that I could stick them with most of the work. Now that they're in their late teens, I pretty much sit back and supervise. But I'm noticing something interesting, that every year as they put up the tree, they curse just a little bit more. 

But in a way, I don't mind; it makes me feel closer to my dad, rest his soul. 

I See Where You're Coming From

Her name was An, and somewhere during the course of my stay, she mentioned that she was Vietnamese. She kept hesitating, swallowing, and saying "um," as she struggled with her English, and I think she thought she was harder to understand than she was. She was being too hard on herself. 

Image by Teece Aronin

She was about to cut my hair at a chain haircut place where they don't do much more than just that. I had a stylebook in my hands. My hair was very short, and the style in the book, medium-long. 

I climbed into the chair and pointed to the photograph. I explained that I wanted to grow my hair out until it could be styled like the picture in the book, but that, in the meantime, I wanted it cut in a way that wouldn't ruin my goal. 

She misunderstood and froze on the spot. She thought I wanted her to make me look like that immediately. She glanced from my bewildered reflection in the mirror to the photo in the book and back to my bewildered reflection. She looked stricken, as though wondering how she was going to break the news that my request was impossible. I explained again, more slowly, and this time she exhaled, saying quickly, as though it were one word, "OhthankGod."

There seemed to be a big personality and a dry sense of humor tucked inside her bright, attractive noggin that she felt too self-conscious to unfurl. But again, her English was better than she seemed to think - her spoken English, anyway; I can't know what her comprehension was except that she seemed to understand me just fine after I slowed my speech.  

Once we established that I didn't expect her to extract a longer hairstyle through my very roots, she smiled, calmed down a bit, and chatted more. It was mostly about the haircut, little about me personally, and nothing about herself. When she finished her work, she passed me a hand mirror and swiveled the chair so I could see my vastly improved head from all angles. And her shaky nerves seemed to return. 

"I love it," I said, smiling at her reflection. "It's perfect." 

She exhaled another long breath, her palm moving to her heart. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"I worry that I did not understand what you want."

I turned to look up at her, the flesh-and-blood her, not just the reflection over the workstation. 

"An, I could never do what you did. I could never go to another country where the language was so different from mine and earn a living. I don't think I'd ever find my way. Your English isn't bad at all. I have great respect for you."

Then she smiled, a broad smile built on complete understanding and immense relief, and with no need for scraped-up words.