Resolutions for my better half

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions about five years ago after I broke resolutions number one and two (to lose weight and to finish writing my novel) 12 years in a row.

Now I prefer to put my efforts into compiling a list of New Year’s resolutions for my husband. Each year, he claims he can’t think of a single resolution he wants to make, so I feel it’s my wifely duty to help him out.

So far, the resolutions I’ve come up with for him for 2006 are as follows:

· When I have insomnia, I no longer will ask my wife to tell me about her day all over again, to help put me to sleep.

· At least once a week I will watch a TV movie that does not contain bloodshed, weapons of mass destruction, scantily clad women or car chases that involve crashing into fruit stands or sidewalk cafes.

· At least once a week I will watch a TV movie that contains love, romance, shopping, cute little children or puppies. And I will not roll my eyes and complain about getting a toothache from all of the “sweetness” while watching it.

· I will refrain from driving the 50-mile round trip to Pizza by George in Raymond every weekend to buy a 20-inch pizza and an 18-inch steak-and-cheese sub.

· And if I can’t refrain from buying the aforementioned 20-inch pizza and 18-inch sub, I will try not to moan about the stomachache I have or how I need a priest to administer the last rites, because I stuffed myself to the bursting point with 38 inches of food.

· I will learn that my red and black Mickey Mouse and Goofy necktie does not go with my tan checkered shirt. Also, that my “kiss my butt” tie tack that features a little silver man bending over and pointing to his rear end, which has the outline of a pair of red lips on it, is not appropriate for a business meeting.

· I will accept the fact that my wife is always late for everything so I no longer will nag her or try to rush her. I also will learn that when I do try to rush her, she inevitably will end up dropping things, ripping things, spilling things or poking her eye with the mascara brush and making us arrive even later.

· I will admit that arriving late for a movie and having to feel my way to my seat in total darkness and then accidentally sitting on someone’s lap is no reason to pop extra blood-pressure pills.

· I will try to refrain from spontaneously bursting into such songs as “I’m Just a Love Machine” when my wife is trying to concentrate on her e-mail.

· I no longer will whine for every new tool and gadget advertised on TV…even though I still really could use The Clapper because when I’m stretched out in my recliner and I want to read, I hate having to exert myself by sitting up to turn on the lamp behind me.

· I will stop getting upset every time my lottery ticket isn’t a winner, even though my dream of traveling all over the country in a private jet and sampling cheeseburgers from coast to coast still has not come true…and my gallbladder may not be able to handle it if I have to wait much longer.

· I will consider taking my slacks or jeans to a seamstress and having them hemmed when the legs are dragging on the ground…instead of compensating by pulling the waistband up to just below my nipples and wearing it that way.

· I will not beg my wife to make orange Jell-O for me unless I fully intend to eat it before it turns into a shriveled-up ball.

· I no longer will watch TV shows based solely on how attractive the lead female character is rather than on the plot.

· I will throw out all of my socks that no longer have toes or heels in them. Ditto for my underwear that looks as if it got caught in the crossfire during Bonnie and Clyde’s shootout.

· I no longer will wait until my wife’s on the phone to ask her a dozen questions about such things as where my toenail clippers are or on what channel the Xena, Warrior Princess, reruns are.

· And last, but not least, I promise that I will hire a housekeeper to do all of the housework for my wife…and that the housekeeper will look like Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith Show, not be imported from Sweden and wearing a skimpy maid’s outfit.

The cold shoulder

Two weeks ago, I got out of bed on a chilly Saturday morning, padded out to the living room and turned up the thermostat to 68 degrees. I then waited for the familiar sound of the furnace kicking on.

Nothing happened.

I cranked up the thermostat to 80. Still nothing.

I opened my mouth to shout to my sleeping husband, but then changed my mind. First, I decided, I would try everything possible to get the furnace to pop on. If I failed, then, and only then, would I wake up Rip Van Breslin.

First I checked the oil tank. The gauge said it was half full. Then I checked the circuit breakers. They were fine. Finally, I hit the furnace’s reset button. Nothing happened. There was only one thing left to do…write two obituaries – one for the furnace and one for myself…if I dared to wake up my husband on a Saturday morning.

In a last-ditch effort, I called my cousin, the heating/refrigeration technician, and asked for advice. He ran through the list of everything I’d already done, then said there was one more thing I could try.

“You know those two screws on the motor that are holding the wires down? Well, sometimes you can jump-start the furnace if you take a pair of needle-nose pliers and touch the two screws with them at the same time.”

“Won’t I get a shock if I do that?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it will only be a mild one.”

I woke up my husband.

“We’re not calling a repairman till Monday,” he said after he tried and failed to get the furnace to pop on. “They charge double, even triple on weekends. I’d rather wear a hat and long-johns around the house than pay all of that extra money. Besides that, the furnace is practically new. It can’t be broken!”

“Well, I hate to say it,” I said, “but the blue tint on my lips and my teeth chattering like castanets are a pretty good indication that it just might be!”

So all weekend, I suffered with a frozen nose and a bloated bladder (from drinking 400 cups of hot tea to keep my body from stiffening up).

The repairman arrived on Monday afternoon and spent a lot of time fiddling with the furnace. At one point, he actually got it to pop on, only to have it drop dead again. This continued until he finally got frustrated, muttered a few things under his breath and called for backup. Another repairman arrived within 15 minutes.

Together, the two of them stared at the furnace as if it were a UFO. “I think it’s the heat sensor,” one of them said. “And let’s change the nozzle, just to be safe.”

An hour later, the familiar sound of the furnace running filled the house, followed by the long-awaited blast of warm air. I removed my scarf and earmuffs.

“That should take care of it,” one of the repairmen said. “If not, be sure to give us a call.”

“How much do I owe you?” I asked, bracing myself for cardiac arrest.

He shrugged. “You’ll get a bill in the mail.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Visions of them leisurely sipping coffee and taking extra time to add every little nut, bolt and screw to my bill, filled my head. Christmas shopping, I decided, would have to be put on hold until that bill arrived.

A week later, I still hadn’t received the bill, so I got up that morning with every intention of calling the billing office and asking about my balance. First, however, I turned up the heat.

The furnace made three loud booming sounds, coughed and died. The strong smell of oil began to fill the house. The furnace then struggled to pop on again and made a helicopter sound. I, picturing my house going airborne and landing somewhere in Munchkin Land, dashed to the furnace’s emergency shut-off switch and flipped it. Then I called the repairman.

I was put on hold for 45 minutes.

There have been only a few times in my life when I’ve been really angry, like the time I found out that my supposedly sick boyfriend actually had taken my best friend to a drive-in movie, but I honestly can say that after minute number 35 on hold, I was feeling just about that angry. In fact, I was so hot under the collar, I didn’t even need the dumb furnace.

The repairman arrived two hours later. This time, he decided it was a clogged fuel line. Maybe it was sediment from the bottom of the tank, he said. Or maybe it was a kink in the line. Or maybe it was air in the line. Or maybe it was a clump of jellified oil.

I was waiting for him to say that maybe a rattlesnake had crawled up into it and died, but he stopped talking and set to work clearing the line.

The furnace, knock on wood, has been purring like a kitten ever since.

And I’m still waiting for both repair bills. 

I have the sneaking suspicion I'll be doing all of my Christmas shopping at Dollar Tree this year.

Truly tasteless gifts

My mail carrier is a petite woman who probably has a huge hernia, thanks to all of the catalogs I receive every week. I still can’t help but wonder how on earth I ever got on the mailing lists for some of them.

For example, last week I received a catalog for horse breeders. Another one was full of fencing equipment (fencing as in dueling with swords). I can’t even begin to imagine why these catalogs were sent to me.

There was one catalog, however, that really intrigued me. In fact, it made me stop to wonder exactly what the guy (or woman) who orders the merchandise for it must be like. The words “wacky” and “eccentric” immediately came to mind…which probably explains why I received it.

The catalog, “Things You Never Knew Existed,” features gift items that I doubt anyone on anybody’s Christmas list ever would already have. So for the shopper who is looking for a gift for the “person who has everything,” I pretty much can guarantee that this catalog contains plenty of stuff that the person won’t have.

Here is just a sampling of some of the actual gifts and their descriptions as listed in the catalog:

1. Pipi,” the drinking, barking, puddle-making toy pup with hand-held controller. Leaves a puddle wherever he goes! ($20)

2. The Christmas Chicks CD. Hear the chickens as they join the “Fowlharmonic” Orchestra to sing such classics as Silent Night and the Little Drummer Boy, for 28 minutes of sheer “egg-citement!” ($10)

3. The world’s largest men’s underpants – size 100. Have a party to see how many people you can squeeze into them! Made of 100% cotton. Machine wash and dry (which might shrink them down to size 99). ($17)

4. Nose-hair trimmer in the shape of a finger. ($10)

5. Big Barf and Big Burp candy dispensers. Push down on the top and the dispenser makes a barfing (or burping) sound as your treats “gush” out. ($4 for a set of two)

6. A genuine acre of the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Own a piece of the ocean floor located midway between California and Hawaii, while supplies last. Comes complete with a deed, suitable for framing. ($20)



7. Money soap. This soap comes with a surprise tucked inside – cold cash! Once the soap wears down, your prize, tucked safely inside is guaranteed to be one of the following: a real $1, $5, $10, $20 or even a $50 bill! Great incentive to get children to wash their hands frequently. ($11)

8. Doggy Doo Christmas ornament. This little ornament is made of faux doggy doo and is decorated with a sprinkling of glittery snow and tied up nicely with a holiday ribbon. A great holiday reminder of man’s best friend! ($7)

9. The Butt/Face towel. This soft terrycloth bath towel has “BUTT” embroidered on one end and “FACE” on the other, which makes it easy to remember which end to use when you are drying yourself. ($17). Also available, the butt/face bar of soap ($5) to go with it.

10. “Shocking” TV remote control. Is someone at your house always hogging the remote control? Here’s a great way to get even. Just hand him this remote and then step back. Pushing the power button will give him a real jolt! ($7)

11. Set of eight self-sticking can labels. These labels, from Cousin Skeeter’s Backwoods Cookin’ Kitchen, fit over the labels on your real canned foods. Guaranteed to turn heads and stomachs! Labels include cream of cockroach soup, roadkill ravioli, possum stew, mashed maggots and more! ($6)

12. Magic bean plant. Just open the can, add a little water and sunlight, and watch the magic bean grow to reveal the secret message, “I love you,” right on the live plant itself. A real surprise for a loved one! ($10)

13. Genuine quarters with your choice of two heads or two tails. Finally, those “let’s flip a coin” decisions will land in your favor! ($8)

14. Remote-control talking dog collar. Just clip this small bone-shaped speaker on your dog’s collar, then operate the remote control and watch the reactions as your dog appears to actually be speaking one of six clever remarks and witty lines such as, “I’m a lover, not a biter!” ($19)

I could continue, but I think you get the idea (and I didn’t even mention the dozen or so items that make rude bodily sounds).

Would I ever actually buy something from this catalog? Never!

Okay, maybe…just maybe…I did order the lifelike animated turtle that crawls across the floor while singing, “Slow down, you move too fast.”

I'm late, I'm late

I have this terrible habit of being late for everything. This distresses both my mother and my husband, especially when they have medical appointments. They like to arrive so early, the receptionist usually is just hanging up her coat and turning on the lights.

“Why does it matter if you arrive late for a doctor’s appointment?” I once asked my husband. “You know you’re just going to end up sitting there with a bunch of germy people for an hour anyway.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “If my appointment’s at two o’clock, I want to be there at least by 1:45. That’s just the way I am.”

So the other day, when I promised my mother I’d take her to her 2:15 doctor’s appointment, she was quick to lecture me. “You promise you’ll be here a half-hour before my appointment? The last time we went, we got there 15 minutes late. I really hate that.”

“I’ll try. I really will.”

“Well, try hard,” she said. “I don’t want to be late again.”

I couldn’t blame my mother for being concerned. I hadn’t been on time for anything in years. And the one time that I actually did arrive on time, it was because I’d misunderstood what time to be there.

All I can say is that on the day of my mother’s appointment, I had every intention of picking her up early. I set my alarm and jumped right out of bed without even hitting the snooze alarm the usual three or four times.

And everything was moving along pretty smoothly…until I looked into the bathroom mirror.

“Ohmigod!” I shouted. “I’m hideous!”

You see, the day before, I’d had a doctor’s appointment (and arrived 15 minutes late) to have a couple small growths removed from the bridge of my nose. After the doctor attacked them with a laser, he’d asked, “Would you like me to get rid of those dark circles under your eyes, too? The laser will really help fade them.”

“Sure, why not?” I’d answered.

Which was how, on the day of my mother’s appointment, I ended up looking as if I’d gone a couple rounds with Mike Tyson. Not only was the skin below my eyes all red and puffy, it was covered with blisters.

I tore through the house, searching for sunglasses to conceal my hideousness. I couldn’t find any. Meanwhile, the minutes on the clock were ticking away. I finally decided that if I left the house right then, I’d have enough time to stop at the local pharmacy and buy some sunglasses.

I slapped on some makeup (which really hurt on top of all those blisters) and bolted out of the house. I rarely wear sunglasses, so my plan was to buy just a cheap pair to serve the purpose.

I rushed into the pharmacy. “Sunglasses!” I practically shouted at the clerk. She pointed to a rack facing the checkout counter.

As it turned out, the only sunglasses the store carried were by Foster Grant. I had the sneaking suspicion that the $5 bill I was clutching in my clammy little hand wasn’t going to cut it.

The worst part was that I had to look into the mirror on the display rack, bathed in fluorescent lighting, to try on the sunglasses. Believe me, I looked even scarier in that mirror than I did at home. Blisters with makeup plastered over them, I discovered too late, looked even worse than naked blisters. I grabbed the darkest glasses I could find. They were $12.99.

There was one woman in front of me at the checkout. I frantically glanced at my watch. I had 20 minutes to get to my mother’s house…15 miles away.

The woman was buying only one item – a can of baby formula. “Do you have a pen?” she asked the clerk. “I want to write a check.”

Perhaps it was just because I was in a hurry, but the clerk seemed to move in slow motion as she searched for a pen. And then the customer took so long to write out the check, I suspected she was doing it in calligraphy. I was tempted to leap in front of her, grab the check and write it out for her.

“I’ll need to see your license,” the clerk said to her.

The customer began to dig through her purse.

“I’m doomed,” I thought, rolling my eyes. “My mother is going to disown me, cut me out of her will, change the locks on her doors…”

“Next, please!” the clerk called out, snapping me back to reality. I tossed the sunglasses and a $20 bill at her.

“Oh, I’m out of register tape,” she said. “Hang on a minute while I get a new roll.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to giggle. “This can only happen to me,” I said to no one in particular.

The clerk, I have to admit, was the speediest I’ve ever seen at replacing a register tape. She then rang up the sunglasses, looked up at me and said, “Oh…do you want me to cut the tags off them so you can wear them now?”

She wasn’t doing a very good job at making me feel less hideous.

I, wearing the sunglasses, bolted out of the store, jumped into my car and headed for my mother’s. I was making pretty good time…until I hit construction in Hooksett and had to sit in traffic for 10 minutes. That did it. I officially was late…again. I figured that my mother would be so upset with me, she’d probably put me up for adoption.

I didn’t even dare look at my mother when she finally got into my car. I gripped the steering wheel and braced myself for the inevitable lecture in punctuality. Instead, she asked me why I was wearing such big, dark glasses…on a rainy day.

I took them off and turned to face her. She gasped, her expression resembling that of someone who’d just seen Frankenstein’s monster.

Funny, but she never mentioned a single word about my being late.

Good fences, good neighbors

Robert Frost once said that good fences make good neighbors (probably because he used to live in my old neighborhood). In the past, I might have been inclined to agree, but where I live now, I’m fortunate to have neighbors who are both quiet and helpful.

It wasn’t always that way, though. Over the years, I have had some real doozies for neighbors.

Back when I was a teenager, there was a woman who lived next door who not only was pretty, let’s just say that from the waist up, she made Dolly Parton look like a 12-year-old boy. This neighbor was in the habit of wearing a low-cut latex leotard and doing calisthenics out in her back yard.

Believe me, her jumping jacks were the reason why every man in my neighborhood had a flat nose…from pressing it against the windowpane. To this day, I still don’t know how many boys walked me home from school because they actually liked me…or because they wanted to see “Mrs. Bouncy” doing her exercises.

After I got married and moved out to the country, we had a neighbor who spoke only French. Even worse, she didn’t understand a word of English, so the only way I could communicate with her was to use charades.

One day, for example, I was in the middle of making a cake when I ran short of milk by a mere quarter of a cup. I went next door to see if the French woman could lend me some milk. She, of course, had no idea what I was talking about.

Desperate, I held up my fingers to simulate a cow’s udders and proceeded to “milk” them with my other hand, to show her that I needed milk. She nodded, disappeared into the kitchen…and returned with a pair of those big yellow Playtex rubber gloves.

This same woman also happened to have three little children whose main objective in life was to make the Guinness Book of World Records for unrelenting brattiness. Every time I looked out at my yard, there they were, tossing rocks at my shutters, hanging from my clothesline, or trying to skewer my cat on the end of a stick.

Their mother did try to discipline them…by shouting every French curse word in history (and even a few she probably invented) at them. I’ll never forget the day I asked my father, who spoke fluent French, “Dad, what do these French words mean?” and then proceeded to spew every word my neighbor had shouted at her kids.

My father’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Where on earth did you learn words like that?” he asked.

I suddenly had the feeling that my neighbor probably hadn’t been shouting, “Please behave yourselves, my little darlings!” at her children.

After the French woman moved away, there seemed to be someone new moving in and out of that place every two years or so.

One night, at about midnight, there was a knock at my door. I thought nothing of opening the door at that hour back then (but believe me, I’d never do it now). Anyway, there on my doorstep stood a young woman about 20. She looked as if she’d been crying.

“I’m moving in next door,” she said, “and I locked myself out. Can I use your phone to call someone to bring me a key? It’s a local call.”

I let her in and directed her to the phone. Not wanting to appear nosey, I pretended to have something to do in another room so she could talk privately. Every night thereafter, she asked to use my phone because hers hadn’t been installed yet. And every night, I let her use it.

When my phone bill arrived a couple weeks later and I saw the 10 calls to California on it, to the tune of $115, I stormed next door.

“I fully intend to repay you for the calls,” the girl explained. “When I get my food stamps, I’ll give them to you.”

I just stared at her. “Food stamps? How can I pay a phone bill with food stamps?”

“The money you save on food, you can put toward the phone bill.”

She moved away only eight days later. Maybe it was because her landlord wouldn’t accept food stamps as payment for her rent.

Nowadays, our neighborhood is very quiet. In fact, the majority of the residents are couples with grown children.

It sure is boring.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

TURTLE UPDATE: For those of you who have been asking about whether I found a home for my snapping turtle, Snippy, the answer is yes! A reader, Edith Bailat, told me about a woman, Mary Doane, who runs a turtle rescue in Deerfield. I contacted Mary and she referred me to Chris Bogard in Epping, who specializes in rehabilitating snapping turtles to prepare them for release in the wild. Chris now is rehabilitating Snippy to “un-sissify” him and make him a big, mean, fearless snapper, so he can be set free in a pond next year. So I want to say “thank you” to everyone who helped Snippy find a new home! (I sure do miss the big lug, though!)

Say cheese!

My cousin called me the other day and asked me if I could do her a favor and take her son’s senior yearbook photo for him.

“Photographers are SO expensive,” she said. “Luckily, the kids can submit their own photos, wearing whatever they want and posing however they want.”

I found myself feeling very envious of the kids of today. Back when I had my senior photo taken for the yearbook, there weren’t any such options. We were given appointments to show up at Rheault Studios on Elm Street in Manchester and were told, per penalty of death, to look neat and well groomed. And the boys had to wear jackets and ties.

I remember how stressed out I was the week before my appointment. I tried on every piece of clothing I owned, and even some of my mother’s. Nothing seemed right.

“How about this?” I asked my mother as I modeled a pink flowered blouse.

“Too busy,” she said. “A solid-colored sweater with a nice necklace is all you need. After all, the photo is going to be in black in white anyway.”

I hadn’t thought about that. No matter what color I wore for the photo, it was going to be black, white or some shade of gray in the photo. I finally chose a light blue sweater and a heart-shaped locket.

The day of my photo, I had to walk to Rheault’s Studio directly from school. I’d worked hard all day to keep my shoulder-length hair in a perfect flip. There had been endless trips to the ladies’ room, where I’d sprayed my hair until it was so stiff, if I’d fallen down a flight of stairs and landed on my head, I wouldn’t have hurt myself because my hair would have acted like a helmet.

On a normal day, I would have been wearing pink lipstick, rose blusher, green eye-shadow and eyeliner, but one of my friends told me that colorful makeup looked terrible in black-and-white photos. “You don’t want to look embalmed,” she said. “Go for the totally natural look instead.”

So there I was, walking across Granite Street Bridge, heading toward Elm Street and feeling less than confident with my stiff hair and colorless naked face, when something completely unexpected happened…it started to rain. By the time I reached Rheault’s, I looked as if I dunked my head in a bucket of lard.

I remember climbing a flight of stairs up to the studio and meeting two of my classmates who were coming down. They took one look at me and started to giggle. Needless to say, I was getting the feeling that my mother probably wasn’t going to be ordering a case of 8x10 enlargements of my senior photo to hand out to the relatives.

The studio was small and dark. The photographer, a man with a friendly voice and a smile to match, greeted me and then said, “Um, there’s a mirror over there if you want to comb your hair and freshen up a bit.”

I was afraid to look into that mirror. When I finally gathered the courage to open my eyes, I saw a stringy-haired, pale-faced girl in a rain-splotched sweater. Even worse, I realized that I’d forgotten to wear the heart-shaped locket. I looked positively drab.

“Great,” I muttered under my breath. “If I look this bad in living color, I can just imagine what I’m going to look like in black and white.”

I combed my hair. The teeth on the comb made a row of lines through my wet hair, especially on my bangs, which were drooping down to my eyebrows. No matter how hard I tried, I still ended up looking as if my hair had just been plowed in preparation for crop planting. I finally gave up and took a seat in front of the camera.

The photographer took a few serious, pensive shots of me and then said, “Now give me a big smile.”

I managed a tight-lipped smirk.

“No, I want to see some teeth!” he said.

“I don’t want to show my teeth,” I protested. “I never smile with them showing…because of the gap.”

“Don’t worry, I can touch up the gap,” he said. “No one will even know it’s there.”

My eyebrows rose. The thought of finally seeing a photo of myself smiling with even, gapless teeth was enough to make me forget about my limp hair. I flashed a toothy smile at the camera.

It seemed like years until I finally received the proofs of my photos. Anxiously, I opened the envelope. My mouth fell open in horror. The photos were hideous, horrible, even worse than I ever could have imagined. My eyes looked like two oysters on the half-shell, and my teeth as huge as a horse’s. My bangs had more ridges than Ruffles potato chips.

“You’re being silly,” my mother said when she looked at the proofs. “I think they came out really nice, especially this one right here.”

I studied the photo she’d selected. Out of all of the proofs, it was the best of the bunch. But that wasn’t saying much. I had wanted to be immortalized looking like Miss America in my yearbook, not like Seabiscuit.

The finished photo that went into the yearbook didn’t please me at all. For one thing, the gap in my teeth hadn’t been retouched, as the photographer had promised it would be, and I also looked as if I had one solid eyebrow running across my forehead.

Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to take my cousin’s son’s senior photo. I may not be able to suppress the urge to put him through the same torture I went through when I had my photo taken.

A Halloween ghost story

Every year when the Halloween season rolls around, I think about Jimmy.

I met Jimmy late one October night just before my sixth birthday. I was in bed and was supposed to be sleeping, but actually I was hiding under the covers and shining a flashlight on a Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book.

I thought Casper was pretty cool because he was such a nice ghost. All of the other ghosts in the comics seemed to enjoy frightening people and making their hair stand up straight on end, their eyes bulge out of their sockets, and their tongues stick way out of their mouths (at least that’s the way they were drawn in the comic books). But Casper never tried to scare people. Casper always was a kind ghost.

Anyway, as I was looking at my comic book, I suddenly heard a noise in my room. It was like a soft thud and came from somewhere near my bedroom door. I held my breath. I heard it again.

Cautiously, I peered out from underneath the covers. I gasped. Standing there, to the left of my closed bedroom door, was a shadowy figure. It was tall, droopy-shouldered and was wearing a coat. Its hair was long and white. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

“Don’t be scared.” A young-sounding voice came from the shadowy figure. “I’m Jimmy. What’s your name?”

I was certain that my eyes were bulging, just like the people’s in the comic books. “S-Sally,” I managed to squeak.

Jimmy didn’t move from his spot. In fact, Jimmy didn’t move at all. “I’m a ghost,” he said. “I’ve been a ghost for 100 years.”

At that point, I was pretty sure I wet my bed. So many things were running through my mind. Was he a good ghost like Casper or one of those mean ghosts? Was my hair standing up straight on end? And what did his face look like? Was he a cute ghost or a really ugly one with huge fangs and glowing eyes? The streetlight just outside my bedroom window cast some light on him, but not enough for me to see his face.

“Wh-what are you doing here in my room?” I asked.

“Well, you were born on Halloween and you like Casper,” he said. “That makes you the perfect person for a ghost to visit.”

His voice sounded friendly enough. In fact, he sounded just like my cousin Eddie, who was one of my best buddies. Still, until I could see Jimmy’s face, I wasn’t about to trust him. For all I knew, a Wolfman-like monster was hiding underneath that coat and long white hair.

“How come you don’t move?” I asked him, though I didn’t really want him to come any closer.

“Oh, I’ll be moving in just a few seconds.”

Sure enough, he suddenly looked as if he were floating sideways – kind of like a flag in a soft breeze. I noticed that he had no feet.

“How did you get to be a ghost?” I asked.

“It happened on Halloween. I went out trick-or-treating and I got bags and bags of candy. Then I came home and sat up all night eating it, even though my parents warned me not to. The next thing I knew, I was a ghost.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. My parents frequently had warned me not to eat too much Halloween candy. I’d thought it was because I’d end up with a bellyache or maybe a toothache…not end up being a ghost. As much as I thought Casper was cool, I was in no hurry to become Casperella.

“Can I see your face?” I asked Jimmy.

“I don’t have one,” he said. “You should be getting to sleep now anyway or you won’t be able to get up for school in the morning. Oh…if you get a Hershey bar when you go out trick-or-treating, save it for me, okay? I’ve been craving one for 100 years.”

Before I could say anything else, the door to my bedroom creaked open and Jimmy was gone.

“Who on earth are you talking to?” My mother’s half-asleep voice came from my doorway.

In a frantic rush of words, I told her all about my encounter with Jimmy, the ghost.

She flipped on the bedroom light, looked around, and laughed. “Look, Sally, here’s your ghost!” She pointed to the clothes peg on the back of my bedroom door, where she’d hung my gray flannel coat and a white kerchief earlier that day.

“See? It looks like long white hair and a body with no feet!”

“But he moved!” I protested.

As if on cue, the furnace popped on, and through the grate, which was right near the door, a blast of hot air hit the clothes. They began to sway to the right.

“And I talked to him, and he talked back to me!”

“Honey, I’ll bet you were looking at your Casper comic books again and you fell asleep, or were nearly asleep, with ghosts on your mind. You were dreaming! Nothing about Jimmy was real.”

Mom’s explanation made sense…but still, I refused to believe that Jimmy didn’t exist. And when I went out trick-or-treating a few days later and got a Hershey bar, I saved it for him, just in case he came back.

And that year, I didn’t stuff myself to the usual bursting point with Halloween candy the way I’d always done in the past.

I was too scared I’d end up like Jimmy.

I've got the turtle blues

I have a little problem – actually, make that a big one – that I need help solving.

It all began exactly a year ago when I was walking down Podunk Road in Allenstown. About nine-tenths of Podunk Road is dirt, surrounded by thick woods.

While I was walking, I spotted a big crow standing in the middle of the road up ahead and pecking at something. When the crow caught sight of my dog and me, it took off. I thought nothing of it until I got closer to the spot where the crow had been and saw what it had been pecking at. It was a tiny snapping-turtle hatchling, not much bigger than a quarter.

I studied the stiff, unmoving turtle, which had a pretty mangled-looking hind leg, and assumed it was dead. I picked it up and was going to put it in the bushes on the side of the road, but for some reason, I popped it into my jacket pocket instead.

When I got home, I removed the turtle from my pocket and thought I saw it move just slightly. Quickly, I put some water, small stones and flat rock into a plastic container and then set the turtle down on the rock. I decided to call the poor little critter “Snippy.”

“Why do you have a dead turtle in a bowl of water?” My husband, peering into the container, asked.

“I thought I saw him move,” I said.

“Move? Rigor mortis already has set in!”

Despite my husband’s remarks, I decided to leave Snippy in the container overnight. If he still was lying in the same spot in the morning, I would give him a decent burial.

The next morning, when I approached Snippy’s container, his little head popped up and he stared at me. I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or scared. I mean, I’d never played mother to a snapping turtle before, never mind an injured one, so I didn’t have the slightest clue what to do. I rushed to the Internet to look up information.

After I waded through all of the Web sites that listed recipes for snapping-turtle soup, a real delicacy (according to the info) in many areas, I found the information I was looking for. It said to offer such tempting treats as cooked chicken, shrimp, mealworms, beef and tiny bits of fruit and vegetables on the tip of a toothpick to the turtle.

Everything I offered Snippy, he voraciously attacked and gulped down…except the fruit and vegetables. He turned his little nose up at every piece I tried. The turtle obviously was a carnivore…and my husband’s clone.

Through the winter, Snippy thrived. His injured leg healed, but he dragged it behind him when he walked and seemed to have trouble swimming. He also grew into a very chubby turtle. I bought him a five-gallon aquarium, which he promptly outgrew. I bought him a 10-gallon aquarium, which he also outgrew. I looked up more information on the Internet. “Snappers can grow to weigh 65 lbs.” one site said. “Turtle owners should build fenced-in ponds in their back yards to provide proper housing.”

Somehow, I couldn’t picture myself, spade in hand, digging a pond in my back yard.

I hate to say it, but the more I babied Snippy, the less he acted like the vicious finger-biting turtle he was meant to be. He liked to be held. He liked to have his shell rubbed. He also liked to sit in his aquarium and watch everything that was going on around him. The minute I’d reach for his bag of shrimp, he’d instantly spot it and would do a little head-bobbing turtle dance in anticipation of mealtime.

The truth was, I was raising a wimp.

A few weeks ago, I finally decided to consult a reptile expert and ask what I should do with Snippy. “Can I let him loose in a pond, even though he’s totally domesticated now?” I asked her. “My plan all along has been to nurse him back to health, get him strong and then set him free, but I’m not sure if he can make it on his own or not.”

“Oh, he’ll adapt just fine,” she assured me. “Snappers are very hardy creatures. And now’s the time to set him free before winter sets in.”

So that next Monday, I, with a heavy heart, put Snippy into a cardboard box and hiked up to Hayes Marsh, which is about three-quarters of a mile off Podunk Road, where I’d originally found him. I figured that his family had to be in that marsh, mainly because it was the only body of water in the area.

When the marsh finally came into view, I made myself feel less depressed by envisioning Snippy happily swimming off into the sunset, free at last.

But alas, my vision turned out to be a far cry from reality. I set Snippy down on the shore and he immediately backed away from the water, terrified. I picked him up and put him into the water. Panicking, he began to thrash, his chubby legs flailing wildly. He continued to thrash, remaining in the same spot and getting nowhere, until I couldn’t bear it any longer. I yanked him out of the water and set him back on the shore. At that point, a dragonfly flew over his head and he actually cringed, trying to tuck himself into his shell (which snapping turtles, unlike other turtles, can’t do). I finally had to admit that Snippy probably wasn’t such a hot candidate for making it on his own in the wild.

I brought him back home.

And here he still remains, perfectly content in his too-small aquarium, eating like a horse…and growing bigger by the hour.

The bottom line is that Snippy needs a place where he can have lots of room, be safe and well cared for, and be accepted for the big wimp that he is. If anyone can help or offer any suggestions, please e-mail me at sillysally@att.net.

That is, unless you’re thinking about whipping up a batch of turtle soup.

Arabian Nights

Last Saturday night, my husband and I finally realized we are old. Why? Because we’d gone out to dinner at four o’clock in the afternoon and by seven o’clock, we already were in our pajamas and settled in for the evening.

“Remember when our Saturday nights used to start at eight?” I asked him. “We’d be out dancing till one in the morning.”

My husband groaned. “I could never do that now. By one o’clock, I’ll already have been in bed for three hours.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and then added, “We sure had some good times, though. Remember Al Sirat?”

I smiled. Al Sirat was an Arabian-style nightclub located in the China Dragon Restaurant in Hooksett. The first time we went there was back in the early ‘70s, when my friend Sandi invited us.

“Gorgeous Harry Moy Junior runs the place!” she excitedly told me.

For years, Sandi had drooled over Harry Moy Junior, whose dad was a friend of her dad. She never, however, referred to the guy as just plain “Harry.” The word “gorgeous” always preceded his full name. To be honest, I wasn’t as enthusiastic about going to this new Al Sirat nightclub as I was about finally catching a glimpse of Gorgeous Harry Moy Junior.

So, on a Saturday night, my husband and I, along with Sandi and her husband, headed over to Al Sirat. The moment we entered, we were awed. We instantly were transported into a world of harem girls and sheiks. The perimeter of the huge nightclub was lined with ornately draped, Arabian-style tents that had huge, tasseled velvet cushions for seating on the floor. Rich velvets, silks, gold brocade and gauze were everywhere. There also were traditional tables and chairs. The club’s lamps all looked as if genies might be lurking in them.

My husband’s eyes were riveted on the navels of the attractive harem girls who were serving drinks, while Sandi’s eyes frantically darted back and forth. I suddenly felt an elbow jab my ribs. “There he is!” Sandi whispered to me. “Gorgeous Harry Moy Junior!”

I followed the direction of her eyes and spotted the living, breathing epitome of tall, dark and handsome. Not only that, he was wearing a tuxedo. The man looked as if he’d stepped off the cover of GQ Magazine. When he smiled, his teeth were so white, I nearly needed sunglasses to ward off the glare.


“This place is unbelievable!” Sandi’s husband said to her.

“Uh huh,” she said, her eyes still riveted on her longtime crush.

“I guess we should go take a seat,” he added.

“Uh huh,” Sandi said, not moving.

“Oh, look!” her husband teased, “Here comes a completely naked woman!”

“Uh huh,” Sandi said.

“Where?! Where?!” My husband asked.

We were seated in one of the tents right near the stage. The “band” actually was just one 40-something guy with a synthesizer that, with the push of a few buttons, sounded like several different instruments, including a small orchestra.

Right after our drinks were served by a shapely harem girl, the lights dimmed and a spotlight directed our attention to the center of the dance floor.

To our amazement, a beautiful, exotic-looking, dark-haired belly dancer with a stomach so flat, she barely had any belly to dance with, magically appeared. I thought she’d popped up from a trap door in the floor, but my husband insisted she’d dropped down from the ceiling.

My husband couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he watched the dancer gyrate. “I am really liking this place,” he said. “We’ll have to come back here…often!”

After the dancer finished her routine, the musician onstage launched into a romantic love song. We couldn’t help but notice that as he sang, he kept staring directly at us.

“I’m getting uncomfortable,” Sandi whispered to me. “He keeps staring at me!”

I’d thought he might have been staring at me, but Sandi was model-pretty, so I figured she probably was right. As the singer began his next song, “You’re Just Too Good to be True,” another man took over at the synthesizer. This allowed the singer to grab the microphone and roam. He headed straight for our tent.

“Oh, no! He’s coming to serenade me!” Sandi whispered. “I’m going to die of embarrassment!”

“But at least you’ll have Gorgeous Harry Moy Junior’s attention!” I whispered back.

The singer then proceeded to sing the entire love song…directly to my husband.

Never in my life have I had more trouble trying to keep a straight face. And never in my life have I ever seen a more panicked expression than my husband’s. To make matters worse, the singer must have extended the song by at least 30 choruses.

We did go back to Al Sirat a couple more times after that, but the place became so popular and so crowded, with hours-long waiting lines to get in, it lost a lot of the magic we’d felt on that first night.

Besides that, they hired a new singer.

In search of Room 212

My husband spent most of last week as a patient at Concord Hospital…and I spent most of it getting lost.

Concord Hospital used to be a pretty simple place to get into. You’d drive up to the visitors’ parking lot, walk up to the automatic doors near the cafeteria, enter the lobby, come face to face with the elevators and push either the “up” or “down” button. Simple.

The night that my husband was admitted to the hospital, however, I discovered that Concord Hospital, as I knew it, no longer exists. The hospital grounds look as if they were in the direct path of a giant meteor.

As I pulled into what used to be the emergency-room parking lot, all I saw was a crater the size of Rhode Island. “Drop off Patients Here,” a sign said.

“Am I supposed to dump you into that hole?” I asked my husband.

He shrugged. “Maybe it’s their way of drumming up more business for the emergency room.”

I backed out and drove to the “new” main entrance, then left my husband in the car and ran into the lobby. I was pleased to see a woman sitting at the information desk. “How do I get to Admitting from here?” I asked.

She stared at me as if I’d just asked her the final question on Jeopardy. “Um, I think it’s up in the emergency room,” she finally said.

“I was just there. The parking lot is a giant hole.”

“You have to park on the roof of the garage,” she said. “Next to the helicopter landing-pad.”

It was my turn to stare. It was bad enough that my poor husband had to be admitted to the hospital, but to be flattened by a helicopter before he even got out of the car would be, well, downright tragic.

“I know that all of this construction is an inconvenience,” the woman said, “but when it’s done, this hospital will be much bigger and better able to serve its patients.”

There was only one patient on my mind at that moment. I went back out to the car and drove up to the crater formerly known as the emergency room and parked where the woman had instructed. Then my poor husband and I walked the 12 miles to the building. Fifteen minutes later, he was settled in his room on the second floor. It took me a half-hour to find my way back to the car.

The next day, my mother and I headed up to the hospital to visit him. We followed the signs that said “Visitor Parking” and were stopped by a hospital guard. “Sorry, the lot is full,” he said.

My mother and I looked past him and spotted at least six empty parking spaces. “I’m just dropping off my mother,” I lied.

“Okay, go ahead then,” he said, stepping aside to let us pass.

I parked in one of the empty spots and my mother and I entered the lobby. An elderly man wearing a smock cheerfully greeted us. “Good afternoon! Where are you headed?”

“Room 212,” I said.

“Well,” he said, looking thoughtful, “if you walk to the end of this hallway and take elevator B up to the first floor, then take a right, switch over to elevator C, take another right, then a left and go straight down the hallway, that should get you there.”

He lost me after the word, “elevator.” I nodded, smiled, and Mom and I were off to search for room 212.

Five minutes later, we were standing in front of two doors that said, “Authorized Personnel Only.” There were no other doors around.

“I think we took a left when we should have taken a right,” my mother said.

By the time we found my husband’s room, it was time to head back home. My mother and I were hungry, thirsty and had blisters on our feet.

“How do we get back to the main lobby?” I asked one of the nurses when Mom and I were ready to leave.

“Hmmm, let me think,” she said. “I never go out that way.”

That was not a good sign.

She recited a lot of “lefts” and “rights” and then mentioned that the lobby was on the ground floor. That was the only thing I remembered when Mom and I entered the elevator. I looked at the buttons. There was a “G” and a “GR.” I pressed the “G” for ground.

The doors of the elevator opened and my mother and I stepped out into the dark depths of the hospital. The hallway looked creepy enough to be the setting for one of those horror movies like, “Dr. Hacker and the River of Blood.”

“Ohmigod!” my mother said. “I think we’re in the morgue!”

We nearly trampled each other in our haste to get back onto the elevator. That’s when I figured out that I should have pushed the “GR” button.

My husband called me from the hospital later that night and said, “Remember, the minute I get discharged, I want you to rush right over here and get me. I don’t want to be stuck in here one minute longer than necessary!”

I laughed. “Then I’d better start heading over there to pick you up as soon as I hang up, because it’ll take me a week to find you.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll call a cab.”

Computer facelift

There’s a show on TV called “10 Years Younger,” where a person is put into a soundproof glass box on a busy downtown sidewalk and the show’s host then asks passersby how old they think the person in the box is.

“Twenty-five!” someone will say.

“The woman in the box can’t hear you,” the host will point out.

“She can’t? Well, then, she looks 50! Talk about sun-damaged skin. She looks like an armadillo!”

The show then proceeds to spend a week transforming old Armadillo Face into something so ravishing, the next time she goes back into the box for public scrutiny, people guess she’s in junior high.

One of the magical tools they use on the show is some relatively new procedure called Thermage. Thermage, according to the show, is a facelift, but without any cutting, bruising or stitching. It uses radiofrequency to lift and tighten skin, renew facial contours and produce new collagen. Just one treatment keeps working for about six months, and then the results last for two to three years.

From the moment I saw the first woman on “10 Years Younger” emerge from her Thermage treatment looking as if she’d just taken a swan dive into the Fountain of Youth, I thought, “Quick! Get me some of that stuff!”

Every time I look in the mirror lately, I see another part of my face sagging. Not only have I officially entered the jowl generation, people keep telling me I look “drawn” (which basically translates into “jowly”).

So a couple weeks ago, I searched the Internet to find out who, if anyone, in New Hampshire performed Thermage. I found only one doctor. I rushed to dial his number before another jowl popped out.

The woman who answered the phone couldn’t have been nicer. She raved about the procedure and its results, then asked if I wanted to schedule a consultation with the doctor. I made the appointment for the middle of September. She recommended that I check out the doctor’s Web site for further information and for directions to the clinic.

I hung up the phone and smiled…until I checked out the Web site and read, “Thermage treatments begin at $2,500 for a small area.”

My heart stopped. Naïve person that I am, I’d expected the treatment to cost a couple hundred dollars. And what did they consider a small area? An eyebrow? A dimple? Half a frown line?

I canceled my consultation.

A few days later, I went to turn on my laptop computer and nothing happened. I checked the plug. It was plugged in. I checked the battery. It was properly inserted. The computer, however, was deader than dead.

Luckily, the computer still was under warranty, so I figured I’d just have it repaired and use my backup computer, another laptop, in the meantime. I dug out the other computer and turned it on. I couldn’t click on anything. The cursor just sat there, mocking me. I turned off the computer and turned it on again. It didn’t help.

So I had two dead computers…and no more backups.

I spent three hours on the phone with a computer technician who had me do everything but call an exorcist. Still nothing.

“Want me to find a priest and have him administer the last rites?” I joked.

“No, ma’am,” the technician said seriously. The man had all the personality of a cantaloupe.

“Do you use the laptop on your lap?” he asked.

“Well, yes…that’s why it’s called a laptop, isn’t it?”

“No, ma’am. It’s called a notebook now. You can ruin a laptop computer if you use it on your lap because it can’t get proper ventilation. You should use it on a table.”

“But doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of having a laptop?”

“Notebook,” he corrected.

Finally, he admitted defeat and told me to bring in both computers for repair.

“Ten days to two weeks,” the technician at the store said when I asked him how long I would be computerless.

My eyes widened. “I can’t go without a computer for that long! I need it for work! I need it for…everything!”

“We have a nice little notebook computer on sale this week,” he said. “It’s a real steal.”

Before I knew what was happening, I was buying a computer. Sure, it was on sale, but after I added the service contract and all of the accessories, I was over $1,000 poorer.

For what I spent on that dumb computer, I could have had half a Thermage treatment…at least one jowl lifted. Now, I am doomed to look like a basset hound.

But at least I’ll eventually end up with three working computers…and I can use them to go to the Thermage Web site so I can mutter at all of the “before” and “after” photos of women who have had the procedure done.

The 1970's Were Tough

There is a new show on TV that is both hilarious and painful for me to watch. It’s called “The ‘70s House.”

This reality show features a group of eight young men and women, most of them barely in their 20s, who must live together in a house that represents the lifestyle of the 1970s. They have to eat, talk, dress and act exactly the way people did back in that decade. Every time one of them breaks the rules, he or she will be evicted from the house. The last person remaining will win an assortment of expensive prizes, including a new car.

I don’t think I realized just how tough we had it back in the 1970s until I saw the reactions of the contestants on the show.

“Look at this phone!” one of them exclaimed. “It’s attached to the wall and has a… cord… on it!” The group gathered to stare at the relic, which also had a rotary dial.

“No microwave?” another one asked, his eyes scanning the kitchen.

But their faces really paled when one of the show’s hosts announced that they had to hand over all of their modern-day items. “I want your cell phones, your CD players, your iPods, your laptop computers and your name-brand cosmetics and hair products,” she said. “None of those were around in the ‘70s.”

If she had told the group that all of them were about to undergo appendectomies without anesthesia, they couldn’t have looked more stricken.

“And now for a tour of the house,” the host said.

As she led the contestants through rooms of flowered wallpaper and shag carpeting, their eyes widened in disbelief, especially when the host pointed out the state-of-the-art stereo system that included a record turntable and an 8-track tape player.

“I’ve never seen an 8-track before,” one of the girls, visibly awed, said.

My eyes immediately darted toward my own stereo, which had a Bay City Rollers tape still sticking out of the 8-track player.

The contestants also laughed when they were given a crash course in the language of the 1970s and were told that they had to begin using words such as “groovy,” “flower power,” “outta sight” and “far out.”

But what cracked them up the most was the clothing of the 1970s, which the show provided for them and insisted that they wear.

“This polyester isn’t very comfortable,” one guy said, wincing as he tried to adjust the crotch of his pants, which clung to him like a second skin.

When I saw the guys standing there in their hideous plaid polyester bell-bottoms, matching vests and Frankenstein-like platform shoes, I dissolved into laughter.

My husband frowned at me. “I had a pair of pants just like those green and blue ones!”

“Now that you mention it, didn’t they go with your green leisure-suit jacket?” I laughed even harder.

I stopped laughing, however, when the girls emerged from the bedroom and one of them was wearing a wildly flowered sack-dress that practically was a clone of one of my favorite dresses back in the ‘70s. Even worse, the girls were standing on some ugly carpeting that looked exactly like the one we still have in our living room.

“Now, I’m going to teach all of you how to do a popular 1970s’ dance called the Hustle!” the host said brightly.

Ironically, just the other day my husband and I had been talking about the “good old days” when we used to go out dancing and do a pretty mean Hustle, and how over the years, we’d completely forgotten how to do the dance.

We were offered a refresher course as the contestants on TV lined up in their polyester finery and attempted to learn the Hustle. Awkwardly they flapped their arms and clomped around with all of the grace of a herd of elephants…drunken elephants.

“Did we look that ridiculous when we used to do the Hustle?” my husband finally asked me.

“Lord, I hope not.”

Half of the show’s contestants, because they’d won an earlier basketball challenge, were told that they were going to be treated to a special meal that was really popular back in the 1970s…fondue. They seemed less than thrilled, mainly because most of them had no clue what fondue was.

As one of the guys popped a speared melted-cheese-covered cube of bread into his mouth, he made a face that usually would be reserved for smelling a stink bomb.

“This tastes more like fon-don’t!” he muttered.

The show ended with one of the contestants being evicted because he mentioned that he wanted to get Botox, a procedure that was unheard of back in the 1970s.

To be honest, I can’t wait to see next week’s show. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up spotting a clone of my current living-room set on there.

Curse of the physically fit

While at the mall the other day, I noticed a T-shirt that had, “Eat Right and Exercise…Die Anyway,” printed across the front of it. I was tempted to buy it.

The shirt was a painful reminder that this is the time of year when winter flab no longer can be hidden beneath a bulky sweater or a down parka. For this reason, it’s also is the time of year when most people rush to get into shape.

But this year I’m not going to be one of those rushers.

When it comes to trying to get a shapely well-toned body for summer, past experience has taught me that no matter how noble my intentions are, I’m cursed.

Take, for example, back in the 1960s, when I joined Lillian Powell’s Figure Salon, the first salon of its kind in the Manchester area.

My one-year membership fee entitled me to unlimited use of the salon’s state-of-the-art equipment, which featured such torture devices as vibrating-belt machines and mechanized wooden rollers that acted like giant rolling pins to flatten flab.

On my first visit to the salon, an overly enthusiastic, leotard-clad employee who looked as if she hadn’t eaten a solid meal in about four months, took my measurements. She held the measuring tape so loosely, the numbers she jotted down easily could have been mistaken for Moby Dick’s. She then put me through my paces.

I learned an important lesson on that first night: never gulp down a burger, fries and a big glass of milk just prior to getting strapped into a vibrating machine. The employee hitched the belt around my hips, turned on the machine and walked off. For 20 minutes, I stood there, shaking worse than someone standing near the epicenter of an earthquake, until she finally remembered me. By then, I felt as if the milk in my stomach had turned into a giant clump of butter.

The wooden rollers also were less than comfortable. The machine was about hip-high with horizontal rows of rollers going up the front and down the back of it. I was instructed to drape my body over the top and then let the rollers roll away my midriff bulge.

The entire time I was bent over the machine, I was acutely aware that my least flattering and most jiggly side was sticking up in the air and greeting everyone who entered the salon.

When my measurements were taken a week later, the employee pulled the tape so tightly, she nearly cut off my circulation. Naturally, my measurements came out much smaller than the ones she’d taken the week before.

“Oooh!” she practically squealed. “You’ve lost a total of 10 inches! Keep up the good work!”

I had every intention of keeping it up, but two nights later, Lillian Powell’s Figure Salon skipped town with all of the members’ money. I was so distraught, I turned to a hot-fudge sundae for comfort.

Not long after that, I decided to enroll in a modern-dance class. I figured that not only would I learn how to do some fancy footwork, I’d get a good workout at the same time.

Once again, I was wrong.

The dance instructor, a barefooted young woman with straight black hair that nearly was as long as her long black skirt, was more into “interpretive” dance. In fact, I spent more time sitting cross-legged on the floor and “meditating” about dancing than actually dancing.

Finally, during the third lesson she said, “I want all of you to stand up now and pirouette around the entire perimeter of the room.” She demonstrated several concise turns.

Eager to finally be moving and burning a few calories, I began to rapidly pirouette around the room. Within seconds, I felt so lightheaded, I had to lean against the wall before I keeled over.

“You’re not spotting!” the instructor shouted at me.

I cast her a blank look. I definitely was seeing spots, if that was what she meant.

“Spotting!” she repeated. “You have to pick a spot on the wall and then focus on it every time you turn. That way, you won’t get dizzy.”

“Now you tell me,” I muttered to all three of her.

Finally, a fitness center opened that seemed tailor-made for me. It featured something new called passive exercise machines. The brochure said that all you had to do was lie on them and they would do all of your exercising for you. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

My first day there, I stretched out on one of the machines and to my delight, it methodically began to lift my legs, up and down, up and down. Soon, I was so relaxed, I fell asleep.

I actually looked forward to working out on those machines every week, even though I never lost a single pound. But even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because the place went out of business a couple months later.

So when a friend of mine called me the other day to tell me she’d just joined a women’s fitness center called Curves and wanted to know if I’d like to join, too, I said, “Unless you want Curves to immediately go out of business, you won’t let me set foot near the place!”

The poor woman had no idea what I was talking about.

The Agony of the Feet

Even though the temperatures lately have been hot enough to turn streets into rivers of molten lava, I have been clomping around in thick, black leather ankle-high shoes. Why? Because it’s not easy to look good in sandals when you have bunions the size of jawbreakers.

So the other night when I took off my shoes and had to pour the perspiration out of them, I decided that bunions or not, I was going to buy some sandals. I didn’t want just any sandal, however. I wanted one with a wedge heel and a wide sling-back strap.

And what I didn’t want was any sandal that had a strip going between my toes. I have learned from experience that any person whose feet are extremely ticklish never should wear anything that rubs up and down between the toes.

I began my search for the perfect sandal by leafing through my four-foot stack of mail-order catalogs. Finally, after about two hours, I spotted the sandal I’d been looking for. It had a wedge heel with rope wrapped around it, a strap around the heel, and was made of my favorite material - denim. I rushed to my computer and found the catalog’s Web site so I could place an order.

I filled in all of the pertinent information and then pressed “submit.”

“Sorry,” a message in red popped up on the computer screen. “That item has been discontinued.”

“Noooooo!” I whined. “You can’t do this to me!”

Desperate, I decided to do a sandal search on the Internet. The computer found 709,000 of them. I looked at sandals for the next three hours, until my eyes began to feel as if I’d taken them out and rolled them in rock salt. Let’s just say that if I’d been looking for sandals in hideous colors with long strips of leather winding all the way up to the knees, I would have been in luck.

I also would have looked like Xena, Warrior Princess…with bunions.

So the other night I decided to go sandal shopping. In the first store, every sandal had a strip between the toes or a loop that went around the big toe. Those toe loops were so small, I couldn’t have wedged my big toe into one of them even if I’d slathered it with axle grease first.

In the second store, the sandals either laced up to the knee or looked as if the soles were made of recycled tractor-trailer tires. In the third store, I tried on a dainty sandal that had two thin strips of leather running diagonally across the foot. My bunion popped out from between the two strips. It looked as if it had been lassoed.

By the time I reached the fourth store, it was 8:45 and the store was closing at 9:00. By then, I really didn’t care because I was certain I wouldn’t see any sandals I liked anyway.

The minute I set foot inside, however, I felt as if I’d just entered sandal heaven. Not only did the store have racks and racks of wedge-heeled sandals, the majority of them were on sale.

I tried on a pair of black and white wedges. They had adjustable Velcro-lined straps around the toes and heel. I loved the adjustable feature because I could loosen the straps to fit around my bunions. I was carrying the sandals to the checkout counter when I happened to spot a sale table. A tan suede sandal caught my eye. I found my size and tried it on. It fit perfectly and was so comfortable, I decided to buy it on the spot. The best part was that it had been $22.99 and was marked down to $9.99.

There was a problem, however. Only one sandal was in the shoebox. The left one was among the missing. I checked every sandal on the table. I looked at my watch. The store was closing in three minutes. Panicking, I asked the sales clerk to help me.

I have to give her credit. She worked so hard searching for that sandal, you’d think it was lined with $100 bills. She searched underneath counters. She opened dozens of shoeboxes. She crawled on her hands and knees to peek under the shoe racks. She even went out back to see if it might have been tossed into what she referred to as the mismatched shoe pile.

She then enlisted the aid of another clerk, who didn’t seem quite as intent on finding the sandal, especially since the store officially had already closed for the night.

“I have no idea what happened to the sandal,” the first clerk finally said to me, her tone indicating defeat. “I mean, where could it have gone?”

“A shoplifter with two left feet?” I answered.

She just stared at me.

I ended up buying just the black and white Velcro-strap sandals.

At least my bunions finally will get some air.

Just give me a buzz

I answered the phone the other night and thought the caller was being attacked by a swarm of killer bees.

“Can you BUZZZZZ hear me? BUZZZZ,” was all I could make out.

“There’s something wrong with your phone!” I shouted into the receiver. “Call me back!”

As it turned out, every call I received that night sounded the same. I had to face the fact that either there had been a huge sale on cheap phones and all of my friends had rushed out to buy one…or there was something wrong with my phone.

Although I tried to deny the inevitable, I finally was forced to do something that I knew would end up making me pop half a bottle of Tylenol for a tension headache: I called my telephone repair service.

The recorded voice that answered wasn’t the robot-like automated one I’d expected. In fact, the woman sounded as if she had spent a few years on one of those 1-900 hotlines that teenaged boys like to call when their parents aren’t home.

“Do I understand correctly that you need a repair?” the recorded voice asked me. “Please answer yes or no.”

The buzzing on my line suddenly became so loud, I could make out only every third or fourth word she said. I decided to answer yes to everything, just to be safe.

“I’m sorry,” the voice kept saying. “I didn’t quite understand you.”

Finally, after five frustrating minutes, the voice was so confused, it transferred me to an actual human. “I hear a buzz on your line,” the woman, intuitive person that she was, said. “Is it on all of your phones?” When I said yes, she added, “Have you tested everything inside?”

“Yes, all of my phones are buzzing,” I repeated.

“No, I mean have you unplugged everything? Answering machines, computers, adaptors, all of your phones? If you do that, then plug them back in one at a time, you can find out which one might be causing the buzzing.”

“No,” I muttered. “I haven’t done that.”

“And after that,” she said, “take a working phone outside to the phone box and plug it in there to see if you can hear the buzzing outside, too.”

“Do I really have to?” I asked.

“No, but if we send out a repairman and the problem isn’t ours, it will cost you close to $100 just for the service charge.”

“I’ll go check everything right now!” I said.

I headed into the bedroom where we have two phones and an answering machine. My husband, who was home sick with a bad chest cold, was peacefully taking a nap. “You have to get up,” I said. “This is an emergency. I have to crawl behind the bed right now!”

He sat up and squinted at me. I could tell by his expression that he was trying to figure out what type of emergency possibly could be lurking behind our bed. “Mice?” he asked.

I unplugged everything associated with the phones and even a few things that weren’t, like my husband’s digital alarm-clock and the bedroom TV. By the time I was through, only one phone still was hooked up. I picked up the receiver. The killer bees had transformed into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I unplugged that phone and plugged in another. It was worse. I sighed in defeat.

“Where is the phone box outside?” I asked my husband.

He shrugged. “Probably up on the telephone pole somewhere.”

Visions of myself dangling by the seat of my pants from a telephone pole made me think that it might be worth my while just to fork over the $100 for the repairman. Still, I grabbed a phone and headed outside.

The phone box turned out to be sticking up out of the ground. It had a little door on it that was screwed shut. I ran back into the house, grabbed a screwdriver, then knelt down in what I was certain was a big nest of starving ticks and began to work on the screw, which, by the looks of it, probably hadn’t been unscrewed since Bell invented the telephone.

As I struggled, it started to rain…really hard. Finally, I opened the door on the box and plugged in the phone. I heard nothing. No buzz, no dial tone. Nothing. By the time I re-screwed the screw, my underwear had absorbed two pounds of water.

I called back the telephone company. The woman told me that I couldn’t possibly have no dial tone outside but still have one inside.

By then, the buzzing was driving me crazy. “Send a repairman!” I shouted over the noise. “I don’t care if I have to pay!”

“Will someone be home between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. tomorrow in case they have to come inside?” she asked.

“That’s 10 hours! I can’t guarantee that someone will be here for 10 hours! Just check everything outside, okay?”

The next morning, the phone rang and woke me. It was the repairman. “Your phone’s all set!” he said. “The problem was in the line from the street.”

His voice was crisp, loud and very clear. I heaved a sigh of relief.

Five minutes later, the phone rang again. “Hello!” the voice said. “How would you like to reduce your mortgage payment by up to 15 percent?”

Where are the killer bees when you need them?

Stockings vs. Pantyhose. The war of the ages.

I received an e-mail the other day that supposedly was a test to determine whether or not I’m older than dirt. One of the questions it asked was, “Are you old enough to remember when your mother used to wear two separate nylon stockings?”

Heck, never mind my mother. I used to wear two separate nylon stockings myself. That, I suspected, made me even older than “older than dirt.”

My years in high school were extremely painful, thanks to those nylon stockings. Back then, there were only three ways of holding them up. There was the girdle, which took two hours to squeeze into each morning, and that was only if you greased your hips with butter first

Then there was the garter belt, but back then it wasn’t the lacy little thing that’s so popular nowadays. No, these garter belts were made of plain white turbo-elastic about four inches wide. Four long elastic bands with metal hooks on the ends dangled from the belt.

Believe me, those metal hooks were no fun to sit on during six hours of classes. And not a day passed when one of the hooks didn’t manage to twist sideways and dig into my thighs. There was no discreet way to adjust them, because reaching up under my skirt in the middle of class just might have attracted a bit of attention, so more often than not, I sat and suffered in silence. I think I still have hook scars on the backs of my legs.

The third way to hold up the stockings was to buy the brand that had built-in elastic around the tops. These stayed up pretty well when you first put them on in the morning, but as the day progressed they would start to relax, stretch out and slide down. As a result, a lot of girls in my freshman class walked around looking as if they had saggy knees and wrinkly ankles.

I guess in an era when my school’s dress code enforced the “skirts must be long enough to touch the floor when you are kneeling” rule, not a whole lot of our stockings showed anyway, so it really didn’t matter how ugly they were. But little did we know that the worst thing that could ever happen to the girdle and garter-belt generation was about to occur…the invention of the mini skirt.

The tops of the stockings back then always were a few shades darker than the rest of the stocking, and combined with the metal hooks holding them up, they looked anything but fashionable hanging out from underneath those short skirts. Even worse was the white long-legged girdle showing at least two inches from beneath the skirt. From a distance, we looked as if we had bandages wrapped around our thighs.

I can remember the first time I wore a mini-skirt and tried to climb into my father’s car. I’m pretty sure that most of my neighbors immediately were stricken blind by the sight.

Fortunately, manufacturers realized that something had to be done about the ugly stocking situation, especially since the mini-skirt fad really was catching on. The solution was a product called pantyhose.

I’ll never forget the first day I heard about pantyhose. I was working at Leavitt’s Department Store in Manchester at the time and the clerk in the lingerie department was very excited. “They’re like ballet tights!” she said, holding up a package of pantyhose. “Only they’re sheer, like nylons! No more hooks!”

I was intrigued, even though at $4.98 they were a pretty big extravagance for someone who was making only $1.50 an hour. But to save myself from further girdle humiliation in my mini-skirts, I doled out my hard-earned money for some of the new-fangled stockings.

And I put a huge run in them just trying to tug them up over my hips.

I wasn’t a big fan of pantyhose at first. The crotch on them never seemed to pull up high enough to be comfortable on me, and I also never knew whether to wear them over or under my underwear. Wearing nylon pantyhose over nylon underwear didn’t work because it made them as slippery as ice. And wearing them underneath my underwear didn’t work either, not with the crotch hanging down to my knees.

Then one day as I was walking through the main aisle at Leavitt’s, one of the employees, an older man who usually worked in the men’s department, was standing in the lingerie department and pointing to a display on the counter.

“Look, Sally!” he shouted. “They must have made these especially for you!”

I moved to take a closer look. The label on the package said, “Fat Fannie Pantyhose.” At that moment, I wanted to wrap them around the guy’s neck and strangle him with them.

Even if those pantyhose had been a perfect fit, I wouldn’t have bought them, just because of their name. And as it turned out, I don’t think many women did buy them, probably for the same reason, because the product wasn’t around for very long.

Since then, I have bought and worn all sorts of pantyhose – fishnet, patterned, textured, opaque, sheer to the waist, control top, support, silky and energizing.

And I still haven’t found a pair that fits me right.

I’m thinking that maybe Fat Fannie should start making them again.

Another one bites the dust

It seems as if every time I fall in love with a food item, I jinx it.

I swear, the minute I say something like, “I just LOVE chocolate-covered Winky Blinkies!” you can bet that within a week, the company that produces Winky Blinkies either will cease production, file for bankruptcy or be struck by a meteor. And inevitably, this will send me on statewide search that ends up costing me about $500 in gas, just so I can stockpile as many of the last remaining Winky Blinkies as I can get my paws on.

Recently, I have had a sinking feeling that another one of my favorites, fresh-mint Skittles, also is about to bite the dust.

I first bought them about six months ago because I thought the little plastic flip-top container they came in was pretty nifty. Little did I know that the moment I popped that first spearminty Skittle into my mouth, I would be hooked. You see, these weren’t ordinary mints. These were shaped like M&Ms, with chewy, jelly-bean-like spearmint centers. I emptied the entire container in one sitting. I had to have more.

I got into the habit of buying five or six containers of fresh-mint Skittles every time I went into my local pharmacy. They were $1.19 there, as opposed to only 99 cents at the supermarkets, but I didn’t care. I figured that the money I saved on gas by traveling only three miles instead of 12, evened things out.

Throughout the day, I chewed on Skittles. I could feel the fillings loosening in my teeth and cavities popping up like gopher holes, but still I chewed.

Then I made the mistake of sharing my Skittles with my mother and my husband. They also became hooked. The three of us were like Skittles junkies, carrying them with us wherever we went. At first, we’d eat only one Skittle at a time, but soon, we were stuffing our mouths with five or six to get a bigger rush of flavor. There were times when I couldn’t even talk because my teeth were stuck together with a giant Skittles blob.

Then, a few weeks ago, the inevitable happened.

“We don’t have them any more,” the clerk in the pharmacy said to me the minute I set foot in the door.

My eyes widened and I stopped dead. “Don’t have what?” I asked, even though I already knew what he was going to say. After all, he’d rung up about 90 percent of my purchases and even had hinted that I might benefit from a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic to try to shake my Skittles dependency.

“The spearmint Skittles,” he said. “I think the company’s stopped making them. We still have the fruit-flavored and sour ones, though.”

My heart began to pound. “But I don’t want the fruit-flavored or sour ones!” I said, my voice coming out in a whine. “I want the fresh-mint ones!”

He shrugged. “Sorry.”

So I drove to the nearest supermarket and bought all of the fresh-mint Skittles they had. The supermarket never restocked. I cleaned out the supply in another supermarket. They never restocked either. I was becoming desperate.

A few weeks later, I received a call from my mother. Her tone was undeniably excited. “Guess what! They have our Skittles at the Dollar Tree store! And they’re TWO for a dollar!”

At first, I thought her words were cause for a “break out the champagne” celebration, but then I realized what they actually meant. If the Skittles were being sold at a discount store and no longer at regular retail stores, then their days were numbered. I rushed over to Dollar Tree and stocked up.

If I’d have been smart, I would have rationed them, eating only a few a day as a special treat and making them last for as long as possible. But instead, I ate two or three containers a day and acted as if I were trying to fatten up my body for hibernation.

And to make matters worse, my mother broke our sacred Skittles vow and shared some of the tasty treats with her friends…who also are trying to buy them now, adding to the competition.

So I did a search on my computer the other day and found a place that will sell me 16 packs of spearmint Skittles for “only” $25 plus $7 for shipping. That averages out to $2 per pack. And seeing that I need about 500 packs just to get me through the next month or two, I may have to go to the bank and take out a personal loan.

Either that, or I can hit up my dentist, Attila the Driller, for part of the money. I’m sure he’d consider it to be a good investment.

Attack of the Killer Bee

I saw something the other day that made me gasp in terror; something I hadn’t seen in well over six months and wouldn’t mind not seeing again for another 600 months.

It was a hornet.

I’m pretty sure that I am the reason why the word “beeline” was invented, because whenever I spot a wasp, bee or yellow jacket, I make a beeline for shelter.

Our friend in Texas isn’t much help. For some reason, he enjoys telling me horror stories about the killer bees in his state. And with every story, the bees get bigger and meaner. I wouldn’t be surprised if in his next e-mail, he tells me that a swarm of bees flew off with a school bus.

I guess I’m lucky to live in a state that’s so cold, even if the killer bees were given complimentary first-class tickets to come here, they’d refuse. Still, a few incidents in the past have led me to suspect that some of the killer bees’ distant cousins may be hiding out here in the state and secretly forming an army.

One weekend, for example, my husband and I were riding down Route 28 when he suddenly pulled the car over to the side of the road, slammed the gearshift into park and jumped out of the car. In the middle of the road, he proceeded to do a terrific imitation of Michael Flatley in Riverdance.

“Honey, I really appreciate the entertainment,” I called out to him.
“But I think you’re about to get run over by a truck!”

“Something’s down the back of my shirt biting me!” he shouted as the truck swerved around him.

I got out of the car, yanked him to the side of the road, and untucked his shirt. When I shook it, out flew a yellow jacket. Unfortunately, it left its calling card behind - two big red welts on my husband’s back.

And if that incident weren’t bad enough, just a few days later, we were sitting in the living room when a huge shadow suddenly moved across the wall. It was a hornet…the biggest and meanest-looking hornet I had ever seen…the Hulk Hogan of hornets.

My husband and I both froze. “Go get the fly swatter,” he whispered to me, not even moving his lips.

“You’re closer to the kitchen than I am,” I whispered back. “Why don’t YOU go get it?”

“Because I got stung the last time. It’s your turn.”

We both sat there, our eyes following the hornet until it came to rest on a ceiling beam too high for either of us to reach with anything shorter than a broom.

“He’s landed,” my husband said. “Now’s your chance. Go get the fly swatter.”

“But I’ll have to stand on a chair to reach it with a fly swatter,” I protested.

“Then get a chair, too, while you’re out in the kitchen,” he said.

Slowly, one measured step at a time, my eyes fixed on the hornet, I inched my way out to the kitchen and grabbed the fly swatter.

“Don’t we have any wasp spray?” my husband called out to me.

“Yeah, but it’s only for outdoor use,” I answered.

“So? The hornet won’t know the difference!”

“No, but WE will when the fumes turn our lungs into raisins!”

I crept back into the living room and handed the swatter to my husband.

“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked.

By then, I could have given him a few creative suggestions, but I held my tongue. “Kill the hornet!” I said. “You’re taller than I am.”

Sighing, my husband stood and began waving the fly swatter in the general direction of the beam on which the hornet still was perched. Within seconds, the winged assassin swooped down toward us. My husband ducked and started to run as I stood screaming, “Don’t run! Kill it!”

Suddenly my husband stopped, turned around and, grasping the fly swatter as if it were a baseball bat, took his best Joe DiMaggio swing at the hornet. I heard a “whap” and then a “ping.”

“I got him!” my husband cheered. “A home run!”

“I won’t relax until you show me the body,” I said.

We searched the room for the next 20 minutes and found nothing.

“Maybe you just stunned him,” I said. “And when he wakes up, he’s going to be one mighty ticked-off hornet. Why did you hit him in mid-air anyway? Why didn’t you wait till he landed on something?”

“Believe me, he’s dead,” my husband said. “I hit him so hard, it was like a bug hitting a windshield.”

“Then we should have heard a ‘splat’!” I said.

Unconcerned, my husband decided to go to bed. I, on the other hand, could not even begin to think about sleeping while there still was the remote possibility that a revenge-crazed hornet was on the loose somewhere in the house.

Which brings me to the hornet I saw the other day. It looked familiar. And I’m pretty sure it was missing a leg.

Just to be safe, I’m buying a case of Raid.

Concrete Vs. Cotton

Every time I see that commercial on TV for the bed that has dual controls that allow you to make one side of it as hard as a slab of concrete and the other as soft as a giant cotton ball, I'm tempted to pick up the phone and dial the toll-free number.

"That's it!" my husband always says, his eyes widening as he stares at the commercial. "That's exactly what we need!"

Although I tend to agree with him, the fact that the announcer talks about "easy" payments for the next 20 years always makes me hesitate to call.

One of my friends recently bought one of the dual-control beds. She said that the bed has a dial on each side that you're supposed to adjust to the appropriate "number" for your own personal comfort level. She said her husband found his number in two minutes flat. She, however, is up to number 1,196 and still hasn't found hers.

"I feel like Goldilocks!" she complained to me just the other day. "No matter which number I try, it's too hard, too soft or just too darned uncomfortable. I'm losing sleep trying to find my (insert any curse word here) number!"

My husband and I have spent most of our marriage trying to find a mattress we both like. So far, we haven't even come close. That's because he thinks a proper mattress should feel as if you're lying on the kitchen table. I, on the other hand, like to sink so far into a mattress, only my nose is visible.

The first year we were married, when money really was tight, we bought a cheap foam mattress that was only about two inches thick. It was so lightweight, we were afraid to keep the bedroom windows open because a strong breeze would have blown it off the bed.

Finally, after months of saving our pennies, we splurged on an actual brand-name mattress and box spring. My husband loved the new mattress, but I thought it was about as comfortable as sleeping out on the sidewalk. Still, after all the money we'd paid for it, I convinced myself I would learn to like it.

I never did. In fact, every night that I slept (and I use to term loosely) on that mattress, I grew to dislike it more and more. For one thing, it had no "give" to it. An elephant could have tap-danced across it and not even made a dent in the darned thing.

And the worst part was that the mattress had come with something like a 100-year warranty, which meant it probably was indestructible. So I knew that unless a hand grenade accidentally landed on it, I was going to be stuck with it for life.

I tried to compensate by buying a soft, down-filled pillow, so at least my head would be surrounded by comfort, but that didn't help my hips or back. I still woke up every morning feeling as if I'd been sleeping in brick underwear.

Finally, after about six months of suffering, I came up with what I thought was a creative, economical solution...I'd buy a featherbed and place it on top of the mattress.

The only featherbed I could afford was pretty cheap, but still, I loved it. It was so thick and fluffy, I felt as if I were sleeping on a cloud. And it made the bed so high, I nearly had to use a stepladder to climb into it.

Not surprisingly, my husband was less than impressed with my purchase. "I feel like I'm being swallowed by a giant duck!" he complained. "And I sink so far down in the feathers, I keep having nightmares that I'm in quicksand!"

Unfortunately, I learned all too quickly that cheap featherbeds are made of thin cloth that eventually allows the feathers to work their way through. After a few weeks, the little points on the tips of the feathers begin to stab me in some pretty painful places. And I usually awoke with a crop of feathers sticking out of my pajamas. My husband and I began to look like two overgrown chickens.

"I've had it!" he finally complained one morning. "If I find one more feather in my chest hair, I'm going to burn the featherbed!"

Just as I was about to resign myself to the fact that I was doomed to spend the rest of my life sleeping on a concrete slab (a.k.a. our mattress) my mother came to my rescue. For Christmas she bought us a high-quality, triple-thick featherbed that was guaranteed not to molt. I was thrilled. Of course, my husband didn't share my enthusiasm.

"Men like to sleep on a nice solid mattress," he said. "The word 'fluffy' isn't part of our vocabulary."

"Well, I happen to like fluffy," I said. "And the fluffier, the better!"

I detected a sudden, evil gleam in his eyes. I soon found out why.

He began going to bed earlier every night so he could get there ahead of me. Then, with a sinister cackle, he'd roll like a steamroller all over the bed until the feathers were compressed to about the thickness of a flapjack.

All I can say is that this ongoing concrete-versus-puffy mattress war of ours nearly has convinced me to take out a second mortgage and buy one of those beds with the dual controls.

On the other hand, bunk beds would be a heck of a lot cheaper.

Jack Frost, Criminal Mastermind or Savior?

I am sitting here wearing two pairs of sweatpants, a sweater, wool stockings and a sweatshirt with a hood. I just drank my sixth cup of hot tea in an attempt to warm myself from the inside out. The heat is cranked up to 72 degrees but still, I can’t seem to thaw out. Winter definitely is here.

The truth is, I love winter. In fact, it ranks right up there on my list of favorite seasons. Am I a skier? A snowmobiler? A skater? Do I run a snowplowing business? Nope.

I love winter because there are no bugs.

Call me cruel, but the thought of all of the creepy crawly things that come out in the summer, now lying stiff and cold under a ton of snow somewhere, unable to hum, buzz, bite or sting, really pleases me. In fact, if they just could stay frozen for the rest of the year, I’d be one very happy person.

There are a lot of other things I love about winter, though. For example, cold weather is refreshing and invigorating. I love to bundle up and take long walks in the snow out in the woods, especially since I don’t have to worry about later stripping off my clothes and doing a full-body tick check. And it’s a scientific fact that walking or jogging in frigid weather burns more calories than walking or jogging in hot weather.

This year, however, I must confess that the frigid temperatures already have resulted in a few incidents that have made me love winter just a little bit less than in previous years.

First of all, on our street, the mail is delivered to outside lock-boxes at the bottom of the hill. For three days last week, the lock on our box was frozen solid. The worst part was that I knew my paycheck was sitting in that box, so I was eager (make that desperate) to get into it.

I heated my key with a cigarette lighter. The lock wouldn’t turn. I pounded on the door with my fists. Still nothing. I stood out in the wind and held an insulated glove over the lock to warm it…until I got so cold, icicles began to hang from my nostrils. Still nothing. Upset, I drove to the post office to complain.

“Well, you can have someone build a shelter around the boxes,” the postal employee told me.

Hiring a carpenter and waiting for him to build a shelter didn’t exactly sound like a speedy way to get my paycheck.

“Or you can try squirting some WD-40 into the lock,” he added.

“Can’t you just have the guy who put the mail into the boxes get it out again?” I asked. “He obviously knows some secret I don’t!”

“I can’t ask him,” he answered. “He’s not back from his route yet.”

I ended up buying some lock de-icer, which, after several squirts, accompanied by a few well-aimed whacks, finally opened the box. When I, at long last, got my frozen little paws on my paycheck, I rushed down to the bank. The lobby was closed, but the drive-up lane still was open. There were four cars in line ahead of me when I pulled in.

I sat there for at least 15 minutes before I finally made it to the front of the line.
That’s when I discovered that my car window was frozen shut. I pushed on it. I aimed the heater vent toward it. It wouldn’t budge. When I looked in my rearview mirror and read the lips of the guy in the car behind me, I figured that unless he was singing along with some song on the radio that had a lot of four-letter words in it, I’d probably be better off just opening my car door and getting out to do my transaction. The problem was, I’d parked so close to the concrete island, there was no room to open my door. Muttering, I drove off, my paycheck lying uncashed on the front seat and taunting me.

And the other night, I came very close to repeating a cold-weather mistake I’d made a few years ago; a mistake that had required my husband to use a blow dryer on my hand…because it was frozen to our back door.

I was doing the dishes when my dog, obviously in a hurry to do her “duty,” whined at the door. Hastily, I dried my hands and went to let her out.

Fortunately, in the nick of time I remembered that metal storm-doors and damp, dishpan hands make a dangerous combination in sub-zero weather…unless you’re a criminal who wants to lose his ability to ever be fingerprinted again.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that my own left pinky still is fingerprintless.

Maybe spiders and ticks aren’t so bad after all.

Paging Florence Nightingale

I was in one of the malls the other day and the place sounded like a refuge for wild geese. It seemed as if just about everyone in there was honking, sneezing or coughing. I even walked behind one man who, without exaggeration, sneezed with every step he took. I got away from him…fast.

Needless to say, I came home feeling as if I were a giant, walking germ. “Don’t come near me!” I said to my husband as I backed away from him. “I need to take a bath in Lysol. I feel like Typhoid Mary!”

He laughed, thinking I was joking, but I was serious. The last thing I wanted was for him to catch something. You see, too vividly, and in recurrent nightmares, I still recall the last time he came down with the flu.

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. At first, I tried to deny the inevitable. When he started sneezing, I attributed it to using too much pepper on his mashed potatoes. When he said his throat was sore, I reasoned that it was because the house was too dry. And when he began to look flushed, I passed it off as a male hot flash.

But when he developed the chills, a temperature of 101, and a cough that rattled the windows, I had to face the truth. The flu had reared its ugly head and claimed another victim…and I, the farthest thing from Florence Nightingale imaginable, was going to have to take care of him.

“Let me take your temperature,” I said to my husband that first night, as I shook down the thermometer.

“Noooo!” he whined. “If I keep my mouth closed with the thermometer in it, I won’t be able to breathe through my stuffed-up nose! I’ll suffocate!”

“Well, I can take your temperature another way, if you’d like,” I said calmly.

It’s amazing how long he managed to hold his breath while the thermometer was in his mouth.

Still, even though he looked as if he’d been run over by a train, he was determined to go to work the next morning. “There’s an important meeting I HAVE to attend,” he said when I threatened to tie him to the bedpost to keep him home. “You don’t want me to lose my job and end up unemployed, do you? Then you’d have to go out and get a regular 9-to-5 job.”

I packed his lunch.

The next morning, the alarm rang at 5:30. My husband sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and slid one foot into his slipper. Twenty minutes later, he still was sitting on the edge of the bed.

I finally asked him what he was doing. “I’m trying to get up the energy to put on my other slipper,” he said.

That did it. I called his office and said he wouldn’t be in. Thus began two of the longest weeks of my life.

For one thing, I thought he would stay in bed all day and either sleep or watch the portable TV in the bedroom. But he wanted to watch the big TV, so he parked his aching body in his recliner out in the living room from early morning till late at night, about 125 hours a day.

So instead of my favorite TV shows, I was forced to watch countless reruns of CHIPs and Gunsmoke. If any show dared to show even a hint of romance, my husband had his finger on the remote control with such lightning speed, he outdrew Marshal Dillon.

And then there was the ice cream incident. Because of his sore throat, my husband wanted ice cream to soothe it. Of course, on the particular day that he absolutely had to have it, the second coming of the Ice Age was in progress. I wouldn’t even have sent my dogs out in weather like that, but my husband’s whining made me decide to brave the elements and risk wrapping my car around a tree. I drove only as far as the nearest variety store, however, which had a limited selection of items.

My husband specifically had requested Hood brand Patchwork ice cream, which is nothing more than squares of chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream put together to look like a patchwork quilt. Naturally, the small store had no such thing, so I, being clever, bought a container of Hood chocolate ice cream and one of Hood vanilla. I figured I’d just cut them into squares and put them together in the same dish, and my husband would be none the wiser.

It didn’t work. “This isn’t Patchwork,” he complained after only one bite.

“It’s the same exact ice cream,” I told him. “It’s just that the little squares didn’t come all hitched together, that’s all!”

“Well, I don’t like it,” he said, pushing the dish away.

I was tempted to hold him down and force-feed the ice cream to him, but I knew that Florence Nightingale never would have done anything like that, so I refrained.

The worst part of the flu was my husband’s coughing, which kept both of us awake all night. Six days into his illness, after we both looked so haggard from lack of sleep, we could have landed roles in the movie, “Night of the Living Dead,” he finally told me to call the family doctor and make an appointment. The moment I dialed the number, however, he changed his mind.

Ten times a day, it was the same thing: “Call the doctor.” “Don’t call the doctor.” “Make an appointment.” “Don’t make an appointment.” I was ready to drink hemlock.

“Maybe I have pneumonia now,” my husband groaned after yet another night of endless coughing and wheezing. “Or it could even be something much worse!” Despite his obvious concern, he still wouldn’t allow me to call the doctor.

“Well, we’ll find out for sure what you had when they perform the autopsy,” I said, shrugging.

It’s miraculous just how quickly he recovered after that.