A big shout out to all those presidents who not only worked so hard to build our nation, but gave us a week off right in the middle of February. Is this a great country or what?

It’s been a pretty interesting week. Of course with any vacation week, there are always home improvement projects. The fact is, we’re actually starting to run out of projects. The last big thing is installing new bathroom linoleum, but that’s a little pricy for our current budget. We also have to wait on replacing the landlord-grade bathtub with a jetted soaking tub, a personal dream of mine. Hey, I’m not greedy or anything; I just want the entry-level model with three basic settings: “stimulate,” “arouse” and “frenzy.” I think I deserve that.

But this week’s projects were pretty simple: we cut and hammered in some wooden risers onto our stairs so that no more underwear would tumble into the closet below and be lost for eternity. No wonder everyone’s gone commando around here! We also made a little bookshelf at the top of the stairs and shelved the big pile o’ books. In the process of sorting and organizing, we found Mr. W’s missing nuts. He’d been looking for them since last fall. Well, I’m glad to report they’re safely back in his hands.

Speaking of nuts, I saw a new product being offered at the checkout of our hipster grocery store. It’s a party mix of walnuts, almonds and cashews called “Doug’s Nuts.” This is the actual text from the label: “To serve DOUG’S NUTS, place in a warm and receptive hand and enjoy. If you are not 100 percent satisfied with DOUG’S NUTS, return the unnibbled-on portion for a full refund. To learn more, visit our website—Doug likes to go on and on about his NUTS!”

Well, I shared that with the boys when I got back to the car, and pretty soon we were brainstorming some varieties we might see on the shelves soon. “Doug’s Roasted Nuts,” I said.

“Doug’s Salty Nuts,” the 11-year old put in.

“How about ‘Doug’s Hairy Nuts?’” our teen suggested. At that point I had to pull over. Honestly, I don’t know where these boys get their low-brow humor.

That reminds me: earlier in the week, our big brown retriever ate an entire grocery store receipt. Then yesterday, she pooped it out on the trail during our morning hike. Unbelievable! Pop-Tarts at a buck eighty-eight? Now that’s a great price!

But the really big thing that happened this week is that I temporarily (I hope) took leave of my senses. It all started with the Cadbury Cream Eggs. The regular kind with the sugary yellow centers don’t excite me too much, but Cadbury used to make one with a fudge center that rocked my world. Well, we found the chocolaty kind at Target and picked up two boxes to last the whole week. I’m not really sure how it happened (I might have blacked out) but I ate an entire box while measuring for the stair risers. Then after the stairs were done I ate the other box. Immediately I was overcome with a sense of complete and utter happiness. The blood was pounding through my veins and if I held the empty foil wrappers up to my ear, I could hear the ocean. What a rush!

But here’s where things started to go wrong. The next morning, while the boys and I were walking the dogs along the railroad tracks, we spotted an old wooden boat on a trailer. There was a sign flapping from the prow that said, “Boat and trailer FREE!” We climbed up on the trailer and looked in. The boat was filled with trash, but there was a cute little captain’s cabin and wheel.

Right then and there, I wanted that boat more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. The boys tried to talk me out of it. Finally I agreed that if it was still sitting there, TOTALLY FREE, by the time we got back from Loleta, I would borrow a truck and tow it home.

We went to the Cheese Factory in Loleta and filled up on free samples, then cut the cheese all the way home. But my mind was already busy with plans for my new boat. We drove to the railroad tracks and it was gone.

I was devastated. But as the last vestiges of the Cadbury Cream Eggs wore off, I tried to rationalize my loss. What would I have done with a boat? I don’t fish. I don’t even swim well; as the great Paul Stookey said, “Swimming to me is like staying alive in the water.” And speaking of water, the nearest body of fresh water is more than three hours away. What was the plan, to tow the boat there with our Prius? And I was setting a dreadful precedent for Mr. W, who is just one junk vehicle away from being required to hold a scrapyard license. The thing is, this experience gave me a glimpse into the dark recesses of Mr. W’s mind. It was a scary, compelling place.

And if I’m honest with myself, all I would have done with my boat is park it in the yard, paint it pretty colors, hang a bell from the cabin and every once in a while stand in the wheelhouse and shout, “EAT MY WAKE, LANDLUBBERS!” Clang clang!

Well, today looks like a pretty peaceful day after all the week’s excitement. My youngest is overdue for a haircut and that’s definitely on the list, if I can tear him away from the nuclear reactor he’s building. Unfortunately the boys hid my salon shears and all I have to work with are some left-handed safety scissors, but I’ll do my best. My eldest is working on his “controversial topic” essay in between bouts of trying out his vintage “Sega Genesis” game console he bought yesterday at the thrift store and got working within the hour (the kid’s a freakin’ genius!) Mr. W is hard at work at the home office doing taxes, but I’m hoping I can persuade him to fill my inbox later.

And me? Well, I’m not up to anything much. Just out on the water doing twenty knots.

Clang clang!

Psychologists say that even after decades of marriage, many husbands feel more closely bonded with the family automobile than with their spouses.

Don’t believe it? It’s true. I know, because I married such a man. Mr. W was born with 10W-30 coursing through his veins. As a babe in arms, he dreamed of a ground-up rebuild on his pram. He cut his first tooth on a piston ring, spoke his first word (“camshaft”) at ten months and would only drink his milk if his mother set him in the Winner’s Circle. As a toddler, he tricked out his tricycle with three-wheel drive and all-terrain tires. When he was four years old, he traded in his training wheels for a kickass exhaust system; at nine, he turbo-charged his Schwinn with parts he’d lifted off his dad’s gas mower.

By the time we met ten years later, Mr. W was ready for love. And he found it: in a 1975 powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle.

As young lovers, we crossed the country in that Bug, jammed to the headliner with all our worldly possessions and with three bicycles strapped to the roof. It was when we reached Minnesota that it began to dawn on me there was something a little different about this man. Just west of the Twin Cities, the temperature hit 90 and Mr. W began to fret. “I’m not sure she can take the heat,” he said.

“That’s sweet of you, honey, but I’m fine,” I told him. “We can just roll the windows down.”

“I meant the engine,” he said. “Between you and all those bikes, she’s under a lot of load.” He thought a minute, then snapped his fingers. “Got it,” he said. “We’ll just crank the heat up.”

“Are you crazy? It’s a hundred degrees in here!”

“No, it’s the only thing to do. And we should close the windows to reduce wind resistance.” He turned the heater knob to maximum and smiled with satisfaction as the ambient air temperature inside the car climbed from “bake” to “liquefy” within seconds. Sweat rolled down our faces. After a few miles of this, I spotted a convenience store and suggested we stop for cold drinks. “She’d probably appreciate a chance to cool down,” I said cannily.

He gave me an odd look. “Do you always talk about yourself in the third person?”

It was a strange little episode, but was easily outweighed by Mr. W’s other considerable attributes, so I married him. Now don’t get me wrong: there’s really nothing fundamentally awry with these men. Far from it, actually. They’re often highly intelligent, with advanced problem-solving abilities and superior hand-eye coordination. They think nothing of whipping out a roll of duct tape, patching a faulty distributor and driving 300 miles on the repair (true story). These are men who can be relied upon in a crisis. They’re nothing short of modern McGyvers.

So if there’s any problem at all with men who loves cars, it’s, well… you.

Do you sometimes feel like a fifth wheel in your relationship? Sister, it’s not just your imagination. Unless you can squeeze yourself into a chrome jumpsuit or have boobs that light up on foggy nights, you simply may not be measuring up.

If you think I’m talking out my exhaust pipe, ask yourself the following questions:

- At your wedding, did your mate slip a 14-carat gold band on your finger or a 14-millimeter chrome plated box end wrench?

- How many times a year does he rotate your tires, lube your joints or take you out and fill you with high octane?

- Does he agonize over every ding and dent to your chassis, apply expensive polishes and waxes and buff you for hours? Or does he suggest that as a daily driver, you should expect a little wear and tear? Has he ever recommended that at 50,000 miles you have your front end lifted and your sagging rear bumper tightened, insurance permitting?

- When you break down, does he arrange for a flatbed to get you safely home? Or does he wait for the county to transport you to one of their secure lock-down facilities?

- After you gave birth to his first child, did he tenderly wrap your bottom block in a thermostatically-controlled quilted blanket and pledge to rebuild you to like-new condition? Or did he give you a pat on the back and an inflatable rubber donut to sit on?

- Is he a fanatic about your timing—adjusting, fine-tuning and often employing state-of-the-art equipment—in an effort to bring you to peak performance? Or does he simply fiddle around with whatever tool is close at hand and hope for the best? Does he frequently leave you over-revved? Has he ever told you that premature ignition can happen to any guy?

If the answers to any of these questions gave you pause, you’re a Woman who loves a Man who loves Cars. But you’re not alone. We’ve all been there.

For the first ten years of our married life, we drove nothing but classic Volkswagens. And we were happy. But as it so often happens, as our family grew, a modern car found its way into our fleet. I was delighted by the wide array of features I never knew existed and pointed them out to Mr. W.

“Look at this,” I said eagerly. “I think they call this a fuel gauge.”

“That’s for people who can’t do math,” Mr. W said stiffly.

“Check out these seatbelts. One for every member of the family.”

“Then why did we invest in that case of duct tape?”

I flicked a switch on the dash and two wiper blades swished across the windshield. “Honey, it has windshield wipers! Isn’t that great?”

“I suppose,” he said. “But what’ll the kids do on long trips?”

Of course, we still kept our fleet of classic VWs, and Mr. W maintained them with consummate skill. Except for one.

I suppose it’s only fitting that a man named after Herman Melville would have his own white whale to haunt his dreams, to pull him into an impossible quest that might ultimately lead to his ruin. For Mr. W, it was a 1974 Volkswagen Westphalia camper.

We bought it in 1999 for $400 and thought it was a steal, even after we discovered we were responsible for $940 of back DMV penalties. It came with a poptop tent, a sink with running water, an ice box and a baggie labeled “oregano” under the back seat. It also came with an engine in approximately four hundred and thirty-seven pieces.

Mr. W set to work. In his first Type 4 rebuild, he used 396 of those pieces and installed his creation in the bus. It looked great, but it wouldn’t go.

For his second rebuild, Mr. W took his heads to Hermann at German Motor Works for machining. Hermann spoke with a thick accent and had a tattoo of Dusseldorf on his bicep. Unfortunately, we later learned his real name was Stan Leftwich, he’d been born and raised in Duluth, he thought a valve guide was a tourist pamphlet and he’d relied on JB Weld for most of his work.

For rebuild number three, Mr. W ordered parts by mail, which arrived in the middle of the night in an armored truck. He worked day and night on the engine, consulting experts by phone, internet and psychic emanation. His family gathered round as he turned the key for the first time. There was a rumble, a squeal, and then a steady metallic rat-a-tat. Mr. W turned off the ignition and scratched his head. “Sounds like there’s something in there,” he said.

The next day he pulled apart one of the heads and showed me a small object, crushed and yet strangely familiar.

“It looks like a little bell,” I said.

In what has to be pure coincidence, our neighbor was out that day posting flyers all over our street that said, “Have you seen Fluffy?” The photo showed a black cat with a red collar and a little silver… uh oh.

Well, Mr. W has just announced his intention to start rebuild number four. And I’m sure, this time, it will be successful.

But until he’s done, it might be best if we keep the children and the animals inside.

My favorite half of Mr. W

Well, it finally happened: Mr. W returned to work yesterday.

I thought I’d be glad. The boys had the day off from school in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and I was looking forward to some time with just the three of us, packed with wholesome and rewarding experiences.

Mr. W shows dishwasher who’s boss

But I miss him. He’s a really useful guy to have around in a lot of ways. Take this repair he did on the leaking dishwasher, for example; he really put his back into it.

Task completed!

There are a lot of other ways in which Mr. W is irreplaceable–I just can’t put my finger on it. The way he does, anyway.

But a change of routine is always nice, though I admit things got off to a rocky start right off the bat. Since there was no compelling reason for me to get up early and make breakfast as usual, I’d decided to sleep in. I was deep in a dream where I’d just removed my glasses to take a closer look at the inspirational words tattooed across Colin Kaepernick’s chest and biceps (go 49ers!) when my youngest leaned in and hollered, “MUFFINS!”

Still groggy and with a little slumber drool dampening my chin, I staggered into the kitchen to start the day. Mr. W was just getting ready to leave for the office, looking sharp in a shirt and tie and with a few fragments of toilet paper dotting his face from his first shave in six days. We shared a perfunctory kiss—Mnch!—and he was off in a haze of exhaust to slay the demons of inadequate withholding.

The boys and I leashed up our dogs for their walk, and that’s when I got the first inkling the halcyon day I’d pictured just wasn’t in the cards.

“What’s for dinner?” my eldest said as we trudged along.

“Chicken.”

“What kind of chicken? Fried?”

“No.”

“Barbecued?” the 11-year-old guessed.

“Nope.”

“Roasted? Grilled? Stir-fried?”

“Boiled.”

The teenager groaned aloud, while his brother halted in his tracks. “No way! You promised you’d never serve boiled chicken again! You swore it!”

“I did not. It’s nutritious.” Plus it gave me a chance to throw in everything I couldn’t identify from the back of the vegetable crisper.

My youngest dragged his feet along the ground. “This day sucks,” he said.

When 2012 looks like this, it’s time for a new calendar

Not an auspicious start, but I figured things were bound to improve. Before we left for the mall to score 2013 calendars at fifty percent off, I suggested we do a little work under the deck, where we needed to replace some wire netting torn up by our recent beam work. Had I suggested we don matching outfits of raw meat and go taunt some pit bulls, that would have better corresponded to the level of enthusiasm with which my idea was greeted. But off we went with a staple gun, a sledgehammer and some tin snips. Well, it probably doesn’t need to be said that if you ask your 11-year-old to swing a sledgehammer in order to drive a stake in the ground, you probably shouldn’t brace the stake with your foot. I’m sure the swelling will go down in a day or two.

At last it was time for the mall. But as we motored down the highway, I found I was having trouble keeping up with the conversation that ensued between my offspring, which went something like this:

Boy #1: My new texture pack is over the top. I had a custom brick block and three sheets of sprites in my inventory and my cows were dropping maximum leather. But I got jammed by a troll when I tried to summon my ore and got bumped down to obsidian level.

Boy #2: Dude, have you tried the LAN upgrade that puts you straight into hyper build mode? It takes a graphics card tweak but it’ll like totally boost your spawning power. I netted two Nether Reactors and was outta my skin with redstone and coal.

Boy #1: That’s the power of creative mode, man.

Boy #2: Rad.

I could be mistaken, but I believe they were discussing a wildly popular computer game that looks like LEGOS on crack. On a few occasions I’ve watched over their shoulders so that I could better understand the game, but when the imagery started giving me seizures, I gave up.

It wasn’t long before I was included in their conversation, though, because pretty soon my youngest mentioned that his friend “J” didn’t have any restrictions on how long he could play on the computer. “None of my friends do,” he said. “And they can play any game they like and surf the Web.”

“Different families have different rules,” I said.

“Worst…mother…ever,” he muttered.

I had to defend myself. “Look, guys, it’s my responsibility as a parent to prevent you having even a minute’s fun. You think I like to thwart you at every turn? Of course I do! I lie awake at night dreaming up these horrible, unfair restrictions. But you know what? When you get to be my age—”

“Ancient,” the teen put in.

“—and have children of your own, you’ll look back on this time and say, ‘I sure appreciate everything my mother did to make sure I was miserable. Thanks, Mom.’”

“That reminds me,” my teenager said. “I heard about a 15-year-old girl whose parents wouldn’t allow her to surf the Web after 10 p.m. So she and her boyfriend had this great plan where they crushed up sleeping pills and gave them to her parents in milkshakes every night.”

A silence fell in the car. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw the boys exchange a sidelong look and smile in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Thank God I’m lactose intolerant!

A little after two, I got a text from Mr. W: “Meeting with new clients who haven’t showered since tax year 2010. Had big-ass burrito for lunch. How’s your day going?”

I texted him back: “Don’t drink the milkshake!”

Everyone misses Mr. W

There’s nothing I love better than a bright, shiny new year. It’s a clean slate, a fresh start, a blank template with unlimited possibilities. Anything can happen. And I’m not one of those superstitious types who contend that a year in which the number thirteen appears is bound to be unlucky, knock on wood.

True, the year’s off to a bit of a rough start, but it can only go uphill from here, right? Or is it downhill? I always find that expression confusing. Financially things are a bit unsettled, but  a bounced check can happen to anybody, especially when your near vision’s a little flaky. And our fortunes are bound to change now that my book has sold an astonishing nineteen copies (and only eleven of those were relatives!)

On the other hand, today, just the fourth day of the new year, we completed the shingling of our shop face, a painstaking job that’s been dogging us since the end of 2012.

We have shingles!

It was a wholesome and satisfying family experience that taught our boys a number of useful new words. And a learning experience too: I’ve been married to Mr. W for 22 years without knowing he had a deep spiritual side, because every time I told him, “You’re going off your chalk line,” he’d yell, “This is not the Zen experience I was looking for!” I couldn’t figure out why he was wearing ear protection for the job even after we were done with the power tools, but I suppose everyone marches to their own drummer.

I did relish the opportunity to school my youngest in the art of driving nails, something my mother taught me as a child (or was that the cross-stitch? I always mix up those two.)

I showed him how to start the nail with a few light taps and then adjust his body angle to maximize his power. “Now you’re ready to address the nail,” I said.

“How do you do, Mr. Nail?” he said. Then he smacked the shit out of it.

The best part of any new year is the opportunity to make resolutions. I LOVE making resolutions! Let’s take a look at my list from 2012 and see how I did. Check, did that; check check, took care of those; yep, did that too. I kicked ass on this list! Oh wait, these aren’t my 2012 resolutions, it’s my grocery list from last week. Well, at least I remembered to buy the naturopathic massage gel guaranteed to plump up and energize my lady parts. Won’t Mr. W get a surprise in 2013!

I know it’s a little late to be writing up my goals for this year (putting an end to procrastination should probably be the first item on it, but I’ll do that later.) However, I always say as long as the list gets done before the end of the year, it’s valid. In fact, I’ve been known to put items on my list after they’re already accomplished, just to experience the satisfaction of crossing them off. So brace yourself—here they are:

My 2013 Resolutions

1. In 2013, I will finally learn what a “hash tag” is, figure out how to “tweet’ and listen to the sensitive lyrics of “Gangnam Style.”

2. In 2013, I will not claim that space aliens shrunk my “skinny” jeans. I will eat more bran and cut at least fifty percent of the fat and cholesterol from my diet by switching to dark chocolate exclusively.

3. In 2013, before touching Mr. W in an affectionate  and loving manner, I will first warm up my hands under hot running water.

4. In 2013, I will be a source of infinite patience and wisdom to my children, unless they really tick me off.

5. In 2013, the word “multiple” will become part of my intimacy vocabulary. After all, what does “Fifty Shades” have that I don’t?

And most importantly:

6. In 2013, I will NOT serve Red Bull and bean dip at the same New Year’s Eve party unless I have an adequate supply of industrial-strength toilet bowl cleanser on hand.

Happy 2013!

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,

And I feel fine.” (R.E.M., 1987)

I’m a little fuzzy on this whole Mayan calendar thing. I mean, isn’t it possible the Mayans just ran out of papyrus or whatever before they had a chance to write up 2013? It’s not like there was a Staples just down the street back then.

And I’m almost certain the nonstop rain, wind, sleet, power outages and mudslides over the last three days are just a coincidence, right? (Hey! I just saw a unicorn fly by!)

Here at the W household, we’re celebrating the end of the world with frozen yogurt, pizza and beer, plus a few other activities I’m not going to describe in detail (Mr. W assures me he’s saved his best for last.) And since my teenager tells me this is the right time to make my End of the World confessions, I’ve put together the following list:

To my eldest son: Remember the Talking Buzz Lightyear™ you got when you were four years old? Well, I accidentally spilled my strawberry margarita on it and without thinking, held it under the faucet to wash it off. That’s why, instead of saying, “To infinity—and BEYOND!”, Buzz says, “Brrrzzzp.”

To my youngest: The reason so many moms were volunteering as classroom aides and field trip proctors when you were in third grade was not because we believed parental involvement was a vital part of your academic and social success. It was because your teacher was super hot. (Didn’t you wonder where all those volunteers went when you hit fourth grade?)

To Mr. W: There’s no such thing as a Towel-Eating Toilet. That was me all along.To my mother: The driver’s side mirror on your Chevy Chevette was not busted off by some careless Kmart geriatric in 1979. I was backing out of the garage and I cut it too close.

To my mother-in-law: One of my sons peed on your matched Samsonite luggage while you were checking flight times and we were waiting for you in the airport parking lot. Give ‘em a break: they were little! (Oh wait, this was last year).

Heck, I’m feeling better already! Now for some confessions from my not-so-stellar career in real estate:

—I crawled through a doggy door to unlock a deadbolt so I could show a house to some clients (this incident was chronicled in my real estate mystery, “Good Bones,” but for the record it was a pug I came face-to-face with, not a pit bull.)

—That old gas line that ran ankle-height along the ground and was a serious health and safety hazard? I stacked a bunch of firewood around it so the appraiser wouldn’t see it. He didn’t.

—I hung a picture over a hole a client had punched through the drywall of his living room so the buyers wouldn’t notice it. They bought the place.

You know, confession really is good for the soul! I feel ten pounds lighter!

That reminds me: boys, remember all those times I told you your Halloween candy had been recalled by the manufacturer? That was, um, well…look! Another unicorn!

Somewhere in the bowels of my hard drive I have the beginnings of some posts that are a lot funnier than this one. But like much of America, my funnybone is temporarily on the fritz. So bear with me.

Until this week, I never fully understood what it means to have “a heavy heart.” Maybe because I don’t follow country music. Now I know it’s the dull, persistent ache under your breastbone that is impervious to antacids, that imbues the most joyous activities—hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree, for instance—with an undercurrent of sorrow.

Becoming a parent is something a lot of us undertook rather lightly. It required less hand-eye coordination than getting a driver’s license, fewer organizational skills than writing a high school history essay on “A Colonial Boy in Jamestown” and less pre-job screening than working for the county road crew (though half of us still had to piss in a paper cup).

Sure, we knew there would be inconveniences. Any pretenses of dignity you might have had go out the window when your fourth-grader introduces you to his teacher as “My mom who farts a lot.” Any disposable income you might have enjoyed ends up invested in LEGOs. And your social life is transformed from late nights, short skirts and high heels to fluffy slippers, old reruns of “Remington Steele” and bedtime by 9.

What we didn’t expect is that parenthood would require courage, more courage than we ever dreamed we could summon. Because the minute you become a parent, the fences you built around your heart to keep it safe get torn down. Any illusion you cherished that you could never be hurt beyond hurt is gone. You’ve done the one thing that guarantees you can be totally unraveled and exposed. You’re dancing on the edge of a cliff, unable to tear yourself away from the spectacular view. You’re Superman in Kryptonite underwear.

And you don’t care.

Courage is dancing on that cliff and managing not to look down. Because you have a job to do. And you’re a better, more complicated, more compassionate person for doing it.

Our country has a job to do too, but governments move slowly. So let’s work and pray and push for change, and make it happen. Before we forget.

I hope that all those touched by senseless, cruel acts can heal. My heart aches for you.

For those evil enough to perpetrate such acts, I hope you enjoy an eternal stay in a very hot place, and that they lose your luggage.

And for my own children, you remind me every day what it means to be human, to laugh and cry and hurt and love. Maybe it’s been a while since I told you how much I love you. You’re the long, nerve-wracking climb to the top of the roller coaster track, and the heart-stopping, cussword-riddled descent. You’re Mel Brooks, Weird Al Yankovic and Clark W. Griswold all rolled together. I love you more than Rocky Road, more than Snickers, more than hot cocoa on a cold day, more than life itself. Thank you for being my kids.

Now go take out the trash.

LaserCat will protect your heart!

This morning I got up on the wrong side of the bed.

It’s hard to put a finger on what’s bothering me. Maybe it’s because yesterday I awoke with such a gargantuan zit on my face that the lady checking my groceries complimented me on my high cheekbones. Seems to me I should be able to move on to liver spots by now.

Maybe it’s that we’re on Day 2 of a winter storm system that’s supposed to dump a ton of rain on us over the next six days, accompanied by 50-mile-an-hour winds. I’m not looking forward to the hardships that will surely result: I like a good storm as much as the next guy, but with no power to run my blow dryer, my hair just won’t look right.

Maybe it’s the fact that I heard a strange sound from the kitchen, and upon investigation, found that our roof was leaking all over our display of musical holiday greeting cards. It’s bad enough there’s so much water outside I swear I saw salmon spawning in a low spot on our driveway, but to come inside and deprive us of  the theme song from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”? That’s just not right.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m suffering from that little-understood phenomenon known as TML. That’s right, Too Much Love. Because everywhere I turn, I find Mr. W, the Sweetest Man in the World, eager and ready to please me in any way I can imagine—and in some ways I haven’t dared to imagine—and I’m slowly being driven insane.

I know it sounds strange. Here I have this charming, sexy man at my beck and call 24 hours a day. He’s good with his hands and smells nice, more often than not. He’s funny and attentive, shaves every day and is generally out of his sweat pants by 10 a.m. And let’s face it, there’s something about a man who can coil up a 100-foot extension cord with machine-like efficiency that really gets my juices flowing. So what’s the problem?

It’s hard to pinpoint. Let’s take last Tuesday as a typical day. I woke up to find Mr. W at my elbow. “How was your night’s sleep?” he said eagerly.

I yawned and stretched. “Not that great, actually. I just felt sort of twitchy and wound up. Think it might have been Restless Leg Syndrome.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he said. “I could have helped you with that.”

“Because it wasn’t Restless Vagina Syndrome.”

“Same difference,” he said.

After the boys were off to school, I got ready to walk the dogs. As if on cue, Mr. W started lacing up his trail shoes. “Want some company?”

When we returned from our walk, I felt more stressed out than ever. I needed a nice hot shower to help me unwind. As I stepped into the tub with a sigh of contentment, the bathroom door opened and there he was, stripped down to his socks. “You look like you could use some company,” he said.

Thinking fast, I said, “Sometimes I pee in the shower.”

“I’ll take mine later.” The door closed.

After my shower, I was shrugging myself into my clothes when Mr. W magically appeared at my elbow. “Let me help you with that,” he said, manipulating a lacy undergarment like a 20-year veteran of the Macy’s fitting rooms.

I had a little business in town. The jingle of my car keys brought Mr. W catapulting out of his chair, just as the rattle of kibble into the food dish brings dogs running. “Need some company?” he said.

You see what I mean? A lot of women, I suppose, would love to have my “problem.” They complain that their husbands are chained to their work and they never have any quality time. So it seems churlish to say that quality time is unraveling me. Sometimes I just need time to myself.

I consulted my reliable marriage and relationship book. This book has withstood the test of time and is the backbone of our 22-year union (except for the chapter on Special Occasions, where it advised me to shave my pubic hair in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day and I developed a rash the shape of Slovakia, it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.)

The author suggested Mr. W might be suffering from “displacement syndrome,” wherein he was unable to find an appropriate outlet for his professional skills. This made a lot of sense to me, because right after he was laid off, Mr. W spent a lot of time poring over the family budget, first laying everything out in an Excel spreadsheet, then creating a bar graph and then a pie chart (we ate that) to illustrate the debits and credits; then he folded the various documents into elaborate paper airplanes to see which would fly the furthest. But for a man of his considerable financial expertise, there clearly wasn’t enough meat in our budget to satisfy his numbers-crunching craving (indeed, it’s much like the carpenter who complains, “I keep cutting and cutting and it’s STILL too short!”)

So I decided the best thing to do was to give Mr. W a task to complete in order, as the book said, “to allow him to recapture a sense of his special purpose.” And the task I so generously gave to him was cleaning the litterbox. Strangely, he balked at the gesture.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I had a vasectomy.”

The non sequitur threw me off for a moment, but I rallied. “So?”

“Well, remember when you said if I got the vasectomy, I’d never have to clean the cat box again?”

“No, no. The deal was that after the vasectomy, you’d never have to buy me tampons again. The litter box was never mentioned.”

While he pondered this, I stuffed a kitchen trash bag into his hands and told him not to get any litter on the floor. Then I went outside for some “alone” time.

When I returned, Mr. W was nowhere to be found. But he’d exacted his revenge by leaving a pile of soiled kitty litter where I couldn’t fail to step in it. So then I used his towel to clean it up. Ha ha! Take that! (oh jeez, he’s going to read this! Never mind that last part, I just made it up!)

Anyway, it looks like the Special Purpose plan is down the tubes. I’ll have to think of something else.

In the meantime, I’m drinking sixteen ounces of water before every shower.

Apropos of nothing, these two headlines appeared in our paper THE SAME DAY:

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

Once a year, I put aside my obligations and renew ties with kith and kin. I consider those less fortunate and vow to make a difference in their lives by dropping a few coins in the Salvation Army pot (even if the bell-ringers of late look like they’ve been recruited off Death Row). I gather my family around me and we count our blessings, sometimes making up the juicier ones.

And once a year, I dust off the deep-dish pie tin, roll up my sleeves and create an homage to chocolatey excess so sweet, so rich and so packed with saturated fat that you literally can hear arteries hardening with every bite. We served a slice of this pie to a diabetic once (he insisted) and he turned beet red and had to give himself an insulin shot right there at the table. That’s the power of this pie, made from a recipe so secret only those who own a dog-eared copy of Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking printed before they excised all the fat and sugar are privy to it (page 656 if you really must know).

So on Thanksgiving morning, the pie-making ritual began. Into the double-boiler went fresh creamery butter, a mountain of snowy white refined sugar and a half-dozen squares of bittersweet chocolate. We melted those ingredients down into a puddle of thick cacao-y liquid, then added a couple of whole eggs and a spoonful of vanilla. Then we poured the mixture into a ready and waiting pie shell and baked it until the sides were firm, but the center jiggled ever so slightly. We set it on a shelf to cool, inhaling its intoxicating aroma and visualizing a wedge served warm, dripping with melted vanilla ice cream. Excuse me while I fan myself. Whew!

Well, the pie was made, the turkey stuffed and roasting, the crock-pot was bubbling with black-eyed peas and ham hocks and our one culinary emergency had been addressed (apparently when Crisco says, “Use by March 2003,” they really mean it.) It was time for another one of our holiday rituals: the Family Outing.

I may have mentioned geocaching, the greatest outdoor sport ever, in previous posts: it’s basically treasure-hunting with a hand-held GPS device. It just so happened that a new cache had been posted twenty miles north of us, on a beautiful stretch of beach, and… it hadn’t been found yet. Among geocachers, there’s a friendly and occasionally cutthroat competition to be the first to find a new cache. We thought we could do it, and told the boys to load up our gear.

“But what about the hound?” our eldest asked. “She needs a walk.”

That was when I had one of my Brilliant Ideas.

“Why don’t we bring her along?” I suggested. “We’ll walk her on the beach.”

This notion was met with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as the basset was known to be flatulent, but in the end we loaded her up in the wayback of the Prius and set out. We’d only got as far as the shopping center when Bailey began to whine with some urgency. “Pull over,” I told Mr. W.

We unloaded the hound and encouraged her to explore the grassy verge along the roadside, where she sniffed and wagged happily.

“She’s just excited,” I said.

A minute later we were back in the car and merging onto Highway 101. We were still on the ramp when there was an outcry from the back seat. “She’s barfing!”

Mr. W screeched over to the shoulder and uttered a succinct word while I hopped out.  “Don’t worry, this’ll just take a sec,” I told him. We made a rapid job of the clean-up and moved the hound to the back passenger seat between the two boys, theorizing that they would be able to encourage her to look at the road ahead. She wagged her tail and licked our youngest’s face.

“Blech,” he said.

We resumed our journey. We were just south of Patrick’s Point when the whining started again. Mr. W glanced at me. “Just a few more miles,” he said desperately.

Suddenly there was a chorus of unholy shrieks from the back. “She’s barfing again! Pull over! Pull over!”

Mr. W rocketed down the Patrick’s Point off-ramp and skidded over to the side of the road. Three passengers leaped out of the car to escape the horrible smell that rolled like a noxious fog through the vehicle.

“I’m gonna be sick,” our youngest said. “Can we go home?”

“No!” his father and I said together.

I glanced in the back and assessed the damage. It was clear that the first incident had been a mere warm-up, because almost none of the rear seat was unscathed. I scraped at the upholstery sadly. “I suppose we can fumigate this.”

“Better just to burn it,” Mr W said.

The clock ticked by as we cleaned up partially digested kibble for the second time that morning. Bailey wagged her tail.

A few minutes later we reached the parking area. The waves were spectacular, crashing to beach in a furious crescendo; three pelicans cruised between the swells and settled into the surf. Bailey trotted along with a jaunty step, delighted with the world around her.

We reached the cache site a few minutes later. Mr. W caught my eye and pointed out the fresh footrmarks in the sand. We found the cache and discovered the first-to-find prize had been claimed 20 minutes earlier.

“At least we can be thankful for this this great view, right?” I said lamely. “And there’ll be pie later.”

Everyone groaned and clutched their stomachs. Our eldest turned to the hound prancing at his feet. “Bailey, you cost us a first-to-find!” he said. “And now we have to ride home in that stinky car.”

Bailey wagged her tail.

Thanksgiving mission accomplished!

It’s been a week of perfect storms.

First, Hurricane Sandy swept over the eastern seaboard, wiping out man’s creations as easily as a foamy wave takes down a child’s sand castle.

The aftermath of Sandy’s devastation leaves us with many lingering questions. First of all, who named this hurricane? Because I genuinely believe citizens would have been better prepared for the ferocity of the storm if it had been named something a little more ominous. Hurricane Damien, perhaps. Or how about Hurricane Genghis, after the infamous 13th-century marauder? Or Hurricane Paula, after the ruthless slayer of bacon? “Sandy” is so your BFF from high school—you just can’t picture her doing anything worse than borrowing your Kappa Gamma Tau sweater and getting a little mustard stain on it.

So America was unprepared, and God had a good laugh over that. The storm caused much hardship and heartache, even touching those close to us: my parents in New Hampshire lost power for a terrifying 24 hours, and were unable to view “Ken Burn’s Baseball, Part 3: The Evolution of the Screwball” on their DVR.

But it was the potential for a dramatic impact on the upcoming presidential election that concerned me the most. It seemed to me that Obama supporters were disproportionally affected, awash in high water and downed power lines, whereas Romney supporters could simply take their private helicopters to the polling places. Thankfully, as it turned out, the great American pioneering spirit prevailed as voters overcame obstacles, flocked to the polls and cast their votes. Or maybe there just wasn’t a decent place to land those helicopters.

Even as that drama played out in the East, another staggering event took place much closer to home. Just before the election, a surfer off our own North Jetty was attacked by a great white shark. The shark pulled him under, took a mammoth bite out of his surfboard, ruined his wetsuit and left the dude with so many staples in his body he’ll never be able to make it past airport security again. But he’s alive—and yes, he told our local television newswoman, he’s going back out there!

That just doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, I know you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being attacked by a shark. But if you were struck by lightning once and survived, how compelled would you be to trot back out in the same field you were in the first time and stand under that solitary tree during a storm, holding a short length of metal rod? This is natural selection in action, people!

Hard for a shark to tell which is tastier

I saw “Jaws” in the seventies along with millions of others, and we came away from the theater vowing to stay out of any water not decently chlorinated as God intended. Why on earth would anyone choose to bob around in the great white’s soup bowl like a tasty seal-shaped cracker?

Of course, surfers are a unique breed. They’re wired in a way the rest of us aren’t. According to their philosophy, a bad day surfing is better than a good day of doing almost anything else.

I know this for a fact, because Mr. W is an avid surfer. This is a typical conversation that takes place after every outing:

Me: How’d it go out there?

Mr. W: It was brutal. The break was too far out and my arms feel like spaghetti from paddling. I tried to pop up on this killer wave but got flipped off and my board caught me right in the nuts as I went under. Swallowed a bunch of salt water, lost my bootie and a seagull pooped on my wetsuit.

Me: Bad day, huh?

Mr. W: Best ever.

See what I mean? Surfers live for that glorious six-second ride that erases all the pain and suffering that comes before it. I suppose it’s equivalent to childbirth, because some (male) scientific yahoos once put forth this preposterous theory that Nature blocks the memory of childbirth pain in order to encourage women to produce more children and profligate, I mean propagate the species. (This is utter bullshit: we have more children not because we don’t remember what it’s like to get our vaginas stitched up, but because we’re POOR PLANNERS.)

Well, Mr. W really wanted to take me surfing, and even went out and bought me a wetsuit. It took three strong men who swore their eyes were closed to stuff me into the wetsuit, and after it was all zipped up I couldn’t bend from the waist and looked like a Teletubby. Mr. W lashed me to the roof of our VW bus and drove to the beach. “You’re going to love this,” he said as he rolled me onto the sand.

Over the course of the next hour, I swallowed six gallons of seawater, went head-first into the sandy bottom twice and peed in my wetsuit when a seal bobbed up twenty yards away. I was bruised and battered, and one particularly devilish wave drove my board into the top of my foot, which fortunately was numb from the 40-degree water. But glory be, on my last run of the day I popped up at the right time, stayed on my feet and rode my board all the way to shore. Pretty sweet, indeed.

But I wasn’t converted. In fact, I developed a massive bump on my foot where the board had struck. When it got bigger than a half dollar and I couldn’t get my shoe on, I called my sister, an R.N. in Washington state.

“Sounds like a ganglion cyst,” she said.

“Shit. Is it fatal?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “It’s a sort of minor hernia. You reduce it by striking it with a heavy object, like a book.”

I pondered her diagnosis and decided that I needed a second opinion, so I went to the local foot doctor. Dr. Tarsus took a look at my bump and asked me how the injury had occurred. “Surfing mishap,” I told him, feeling a little proud at how hip that sounded. In another minute I was going to show him my tattoo.

“Well, I recommend we treat this surgically,” he said.

“You’re kidding. Why don’t you just hit it with a book?”

“We don’t typically do that here,” he said. “Did you have any particular book in mind?”

I thought a minute. “‘Gray’s Anatomy’ would seem appropriate.”

His laughter was polite. “You can schedule the surgery at the front desk on your way out,” he said.

I drove home and went straight to our bookshelves. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary seemed like a possibility. Then I found Business Management Strategies and Practices for the New Millennium and I knew my troubles were over. I lugged the book to Mr. W. “Hit me,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“You have to. Right there on the bump.”

“No.”

“This is your fault,” I told him in exasperation. “If you hadn’t dragged me out surfing against my will…”

Whap!

That was the end of the cyst.

But it was also the end of my surfing career, because a few weeks later we donated the book to a local charity along with a bunch of other junk.

Like I said, those who don’t pay attention to evolution are doomed to be downsized by it.

A cold swept through the W family over the last two weeks, leaving a cacophony of coughing and sneezing in its wake.

Our eldest was the first to go down; he missed a day of school, conveniently creating a long weekend for himself, and spent the day recuperating over Twitter. Mr. W was next, and probably suffered the most; he still has coughing spells at night, which are only relieved by my holding a pillow over his face. Our youngest was the third victim, missing two days of school and a cross-country meet. He developed a taste for the cherry cough syrup we keep locked in the medicine cabinet, though he complained it kept him up at night. “It gives me strange dreams,” he said.

“That’s because it’s all-natural,” I told him.

Fortunately I have what I call “super-mom” immunity, which is Nature’s way of making sure someone is left standing to spoon in the cough syrup and find the remote when it’s time to change Scooby Doo DVDs. But somehow it failed me. Sunday afternoon my head felt a little disconnected from my body, and by evening the boys were feeling my forehead and wagering over whether or not an egg could be fried sunny-side-up there.

Monday morning, I staggered out of bed to prepare breakfast for the crew before school. Mr. W took one look at me and planted me on the couch wrapped in a sleeping bag, with a bag of frozen blueberries cooling my head and a blank “Last Will and Testament” form to keep me occupied. Then he squared his shoulders and disappeared into the kitchen.

I don’t know what happened in there, but after a series of thuds and scuffling sounds, the 11-year-old appeared in the living room with a pancake shaped like a Rorschach ink blot and a cup of what appeared to be black coffee. His brother followed a minute later, brushing cat hairs off the object on his plate.

“My pancake fell on the floor,” he grumbled.

“It’s fine,” his father called from the kitchen.

The boys departed for school, and I convalesced rapidly under Mr. W’s tender caregiving. The nutritious lunch he prepared for me (a Mounds bar, a Snickers bar and a Milky Way “Extra Dark” bar) put the final restorative edge on my constitution.

I’m lucky to have a nurturing man like Mr. W at times like this, because we recently downgraded our insurance coverage from “Go to the doctor when you don’t feel well” to “Go to the doctor only after a shark bites off your right arm and you drive a stick shift” (even under this plan, the insurance doesn’t actually kick in unless you can prove the shark was at fault.)

Irrespective of insurance, which I regard as a form of legalized fraud, I don’t have a high opinion of doctors and their ilk. I know this flies in the face of the cloying admiration and near-deification that doctors have come to enjoy from their patients. This, I believe, is due to the psychologically complex relationship that develops when a person wearing a floral-patterned handkerchief open down the back is forced to discuss the activity of his or her large intestine with a fully dressed authority figure. To top it all off, all visits to a doctor are now required by law to end with a referral. Here’s an example of a typical visit:

Doctor: Hello, Ms. Wills, I’m Dr. Itch. I see the nurse forgot to instruct you to strip down to your suntan. What seems to be the problem?

Me: It’s my left thumb. It kind of swelled up.

Doctor: How long has it been this way?

Me: Since I hit it with a sledgehammer this morning.

Doctor: Hmm. Well, unfortunately I only treat conditions south of the navel. For anything north of the navel, you’ll need to reschedule with Dr. Scratch across town. Here’s a referral.

Me: Can I at least get a bag of ice?

Doctor: Not unless you’ve met your deductible.

The referral law came about because the simple expedient of actually curing a problem on the first visit was not doing enough to support the medical community in the style to which it had become accustomed. In medical school, the study of the diagnosis and cure of disease has been replaced with in-depth training on which waiting room magazines create the greatest patient retention.

With the medical field mired in such an unhealthy state, I’ve taken on the responsibility of safeguarding the health of my family through the use of a number of self-help books, including the best-sellers “Simple and Effective Home Surgery” and “What Kind Of Rash Am I?” For internet sites, I personally swear by  athirdnippleisnotatalluncommon.com.

It took a bit of trial and error, because some forms of alternative medicine just didn’t work for us. For instance, I went through a nasal lavage or “neti pot” phase where I poured salt water into one nostril and out the other in the hopes of dislodging any allergens that might be lurking up there. But I discontinued that practice after my youngest sneaked up behind me while I was lavaging, held a cup under the dribble and ran around the house shouting, “Get your fresh snot water here!” It just wasn’t worth the humiliation.

However, with time and practice I’ve succeeded in maintaining my family’s health without ever stepping foot in a doctor’s office. I’ve identified the following as key elements in my system:

1. A balanced diet with plenty of antioxidants (chocolate is our favorite) and lots and lots of fiber, which explains why there’s always a line at our bathroom door. We also supplement with vitamins A, C, D, E, F and Z.

2. Homeopathy. Homeopathy (from the Greek homeo, meaning “cheaper than your co-pay”) are those cute little blue tubes filled with sugar pellets that are now available in every grocery store. Each tube contains a remedy for the affliction typed on the label. For instance, if you’re suffering from “stage fright or delusions of grandeur,” you simply drop three pellets from the appropriate tube under your tongue, and a cure is practically guaranteed. The only drawback I’ve found is that the print on the labels is so small that I’ve occasionally given the wrong remedy by mistake, but I will say that Mr. W is no longer bothered by menstrual cramps or hot flashes and he hasn’t wet the bed in over a year.

3. Frequent hand-washing is a sensible and easy way to avoid illness. Many people erroneously believe this means their own hands.

So with our first winter cold out of the way and our immune systems fired up and ready, we’re looking forward to a trouble-free cold and flu season. Pathogens, bring it on.

But just to be on the safe side, we plan to stay out of the ocean in our bacon-flavored wetsuits.