GetYourGoodNews/LauraOnLife

It’s kind of cozy, sitting here in the dark and writing by candlelight. The
power went out. For the male sector of our household, this is cause for
celebration.

My son was outside when a sound like a canon roared through our
neighborhood. He charged through the door, not knowing that our power had
gone off, and yelled, “Somebody just got shot!”

We had heard pronouncements of a similar nature before and tended to
take such things with a grain of salt. The chances of someone getting shot
and the power going off at the same time were pretty slim. Therefore, we
concluded that a transformer must’ve bit the dust.

After some investigation, we determined that our house and our next door
neighbor were the only houses with no power. My husband knew it was his
lucky day. He found his magnesium flint stick and enthusiastically
proceeded to try to light a candle with it. I whipped out my handy-dandy
butane fire-lighting tool and took all the wind out of his sails. I apologized for
being such a kill-joy.

He spent thirty minutes trying to coax the propane into our gas fireplace
and was almost happy that he might have to build a fire in our wood-burning
fireplace. Another chance to use the magnesium flint stick!

By the time I had lit all the candles we own, the kids had dragged every
blanket on their beds out to the living room. They prepared to spend the
night telling ghost stories and scaring the bejesus out of each other with
mini flashlights held under their chins.

In true outdoorsman style, my husband pulled out a battery-powered DVD
player and put in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the kids to watch.

My son, still convinced that he heard a gunshot, thought that the movie
was somewhat appropriately named, but he would have called it Chitty
Chitty Boom Boom.

I was perfectly happy with my pen and paper and candlelight. It felt
somehow familiar to me; like it was supposed to be done that way. The
computer has always been both a blessing and a curse for me.

I remember the last time we had a power outage. We used toothpicks to
roast mini marshmallows over a candle. With Teddy Grahams and
chocolate chips, they made excellent bite-sized S’mores.

That was also the night we taught our kids to play Pinochle. Those kinds of
moments tend to get lost in the high-tech world of today.

When the lights came back on a few hours later, I heard a harmonized
chorus of “Awwww!” from the living room. I have to admit that I was slightly
disappointed as well.

The kids schlepped their blankets back to their bedrooms. My husband put
away his magnesium flint stick because our youngest was eyeing it with
way too much interest. Chitty Chitty Boom Boom was once again
supplanted in favor of Legos and video games.

I sighed, blew out the candles and put them away… until the next power
outage.

Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You
can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website
www.lauraonlife.com for more info.

The Valentine's Day Conundrum

Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays when, if you are in a relationship,
you know something is required of you. The challenge tends to be
determining just what exactly is required.

On the surface, men seem to have the toughest time with this. Should he
get her chocolate? If she’s on a diet this week, she might never forgive him
for it. Is she on a diet? He doesn’t remember.

How about flowers? She’s allergic to some flowers, he thinks, but which
ones? Flowers are lame anyway.

Maybe jewelry? What did he get her last year? That was so long ago.

At some point, he’s going to get hungry from doing all that pondering and
he will smile because he just had the greatest idea! He will take her out for
dinner! ...Wait. Maybe that is what he did last year.

However, women are just as baffled as men. She loves him. She wants to
show him she cares on Valentine’s Day. But what to get him? Flowers are
out for sure. His friends would pick on him. He’d love a box of chocolates,
but she’s watching his weight because he certainly won’t do it.

Jewelry? For a man? Nope. He’d never wear it anyway. Or worse, he’d
wear and it would somehow get caught in the fan belt of his V8 Triton
engine and then… he’d never wear it again.

She could make him a nice dinner, but chances are good that he will be
taking her out for dinner again this year.

Hallmark has made bazillions of dollars because of this Valentine’s Day
enigma. Ever since an imaginary baby with a bow and arrow shot you both
with his pheromone-tipped projectile, a Hallmark card has been the only
“safe” way to express your feelings on Valentine’s Day.

The problem with a Hallmark card on Valentine’s Day is that it’s like the
minimum amount due on a credit card statement. No matter how heartfelt
the sentiment, the card is the least that is expected of you. At its best, it
will merely smooth over any bloopers you make with whatever it is you
decide to do for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

If there were no such thing as Valentine’s Day, we wouldn’t be under such
pressure to deliver. If it was just another ordinary day and you brought home
flowers, she’d know you were thinking about her, and it wouldn’t really
matter that you didn’t remember which flowers send her into anaphylactic
shock. She’d probably forgive you… eventually.

When it’s Valentine’s Day it’s different, though. In essence, this holiday is
designed to remind us deadbeats to do something special for our loved
ones because we are apparently too stupid to remember without a huge,
commercialized holiday with giant red and pink hearts plastered everywhere
to remind us. We might do something special for each other nearly every
day of the year, but Lord help us if we forget on Valentine’s Day, because,
really… it’s not possible. Therefore, we must have forgotten on purpose.

I wish I could help you decide what to get your one and only for Valentine’s
Day, but I’m as much in the dark as everyone else. The only thing I can give
you is a warning: If you, through some strange series of events, don’t see
the very conspicuous pink and red hearts everywhere, forget Valentine’s
Day, and come home empty-handed on February 14th, the rest of February
is going to be pretty rough for you. March and April aren’t looking too good
either.

A spider's eye view on things

Spiders tend to be more active at night. We’re not dumb. We know that a
size 13 boot is likely to ruin our entire day if we scurry about during daylight
hours, especially if your hosts are particularly squeamish.

This boy, though, he sleeps like he’s comatose. I could crawl on his face
and he wouldn’t budge. I won’t though, because I stand a chance of getting
sucked into that malodorous abyss while he’s snoring.

Spiders eat bugs. You’d think humans would like us for that. Unfortunately,
they consider us bugs, too. Helloooo? Eight legs? Not a bug! What an
insult! That’s like calling a human a cheeseburger.

On my nightly forays for food, I usually start in the smallest boy’s room
because he hoards candy wrappers under his bed. If a spider needed sugar
to live, I would be as old as Methuselah under this bed. Sugar doesn’t do a
thing for me, however. All I can hope for is that the bugs were smart enough
to find his stash.

Sure enough, there were two ants noshing on this candy wrapper buffet…
and they were delicious... the ants, that is.

I had hoped for more, but it’s 20 degrees outside, no bugs in their right
mind would be stirring. Perhaps even the ant community would consider it a
public service for me to rid them of two crazy ants.

Let’s see what is in the other bedrooms…

Wow! This one is straight out of a nightmare. There are tiny, plastic people
all over the place! They look so real! They have their own little house with
tiny furniture! Well, maybe they have tiny food being attacked by tiny ants.
Hmm, the food is plastic too. Bugs don’t eat plastic food.

There is a broom in the corner. A broom is used for cleaning and swatting
spiders. Someone must’ve tried to clean this room – perish the thought! –
because there is a strange assortment of objects attached to its bristles.

A wild array of yellow feathers are attached as if a baby chick exploded
somewhere. A pink squirmel is hopelessly entangled in the bristles as well.
If it was edible, it would be toast.

Purple Easter grass is entwined throughout the broom. Tiny pieces of yarn
are attached to the bottom of the bristles. It looks like the broom of the guy
who cleans up the confetti after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Looking right at me, I swear, are two orange pom poms with glued on
googly eyes. The broom looks like a gigantic monster with a long tail, but
like I said, I’m not dumb. It’s just a broom, right?

I shudder to think what mad world lies under that bed. I find I don’t have the
courage to find out.

Instead, I will find another room.

The only light in this room is on a desk in an aquarium full of sea monkeys.
If I could swim, they might be kind of tasty. I never did get the hang of
swimming, though. I’m all legs. Seafood was never my favorite anyway.

Next to the aquarium, however, is a known source of spider food. A
microscope! Almost every boy puts a bug under a microscope at some
point in his life. This one would be no different, I was sure. In fact, if I was
lucky, it would be pre-killed and waiting for me on a silver platter. Well,
okay, a glass slide.

Good thing I’ve got some kind of magic in my limbs that allows me to climb
on vertical surfaces. Sure enough, when I reach the top, I see a slide in the
microscope. A squashed figure lay there. I scurry forward to get a better
look at my dinner.

Oh no! It’s Dad! Those ignorant humans! We’re NOT bugs!

The family learns the gift of glue

My two oldest sons are 26 and 22 years old. The next son is only 13.
Regardless of the older boys’ unconscious attempts to place him in the “too
young to mess with” box, the younger son is constantly trying to engage
his brothers in conversation, in play, in harassment. Anything to gain their
attention and ideally, their respect.

His obsession with wanting to be part of the big-boy club has led him to do
some very bizarre things.

He plays practical jokes on them, places his sister’s naked Barbie dolls in
their bed when they spend the night with us, and generally acts like a
lunatic in front of their girlfriends.

He likes to engage his brother, the scientist, in exhausting theoretical
discussions and his other brother, the computer programmer, in
discussions about programming video games. His latest attempt to secure
his brothers’ regard and affection, and one that is likely to backfire on him,
manifested itself in the form of gift-giving.

For Christmas this year, he gave the older boys a themed gift: Meat in a
can. One of them received a lovingly-wrapped can of Vienna sausages and
the other opened his gift bag and pulled out a can of sardines. I will add
here that their preference for either can of meat was questionable since
neither had ever tried Vienna sausages or sardines.

To be fair, he was trying to be funny on his dollar-store budget. Nothing
else in the dollar store was worthy – so they got a can of meat.

His budget was so slim that he supplemented the rest of his family’s dollar
gifts with a more personalized homemade gift: He made tiny glue globs with
my hot glue gun and painted them with our favorite things. My glue glob had
a butterfly on it. In this case, it certainly was the thought that counted. I
definitely won’t be re-gifting this little… um, bead… paperweight… whatever.

For his brother’s birthday, he got even more creative. With his Christmas
money, he bought a bright green and yellow dinosaur piñata and stuffed it
with soup: cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, packets of Lipton
instant soup. Yes, that kind of soup. We videotaped the whole thing.

My daughter was no gift-giving slouch either. She gave him a small bundle
wrapped in polyester fiberfill. After he unwrapped it, he was holding what he
thought was an old piece of ABC gum - something you might find on the
underside of a table in a diner.

“It’s a mushroom!” she announced. “I made it with clay.”

“Oh,” he said, relieved. “Thank goodness.”

About fifteen minutes later she brought him another larger bundle wrapped
in a sweat sock. It was another clay creation: a coffee cup, she said.

She whispered in his ear that he shouldn’t actually pour coffee in it or it will
melt. “And don’t put any other liquid in it either.” Here again, you had to
reach to look for the thought behind a cup from which you can’t drink.

How can these types of gifts fail to endear them to their older brothers? I
had always worried about the age gap between them, but as it turns out,
the younger ones know instinctively how to handle it.

A fun clip at yesterday's hair trends

I was looking through some old photographs the other day. The one thing I
noticed, other than the fact that I used to be cuter… and thinner… was that
the hairstyles that were “in” when I was “in” are so… “out” now.

In fact, the more pictures I looked at, the more I realized that nearly every
woman my age has gone through the same phases of hairstyles that I did.

As a baby, you had those wispy little curls of hair that your daughter had:
Those sweet little ringlets of hair that you never wanted to cut.

However, at some point your brother got hold of a pair of scissors and
played barbershop with your hair. That’s how you ended up with the bangs
you always despised.

From about 4th or 5th grade you decided not to put up with those bangs
any longer. They made you look childish. No matter that you were, in fact,
still a child. By the time those bangs grew out you wouldn’t be a child any
longer, you thought.

So middle school was a hair nightmare of barrettes, head bands,
scrunchies and styles that would hide how hideous you looked because
you were trying to grow out those bangs. You knew, though, that once they
grew out, your braces came off, and you sprouted some breasts, you’d look
like a super model.

Except that, by that time, the styles would change again and you were
supposed to look like Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs – not Twiggy.

Well, heck. Now you have to cut your hair in layers and learn how to use a
curling iron. If you look closely, in your high school year book, you are
bound to see at least one girl who had to get her picture taken with a
curling iron burn on the side of her face. Maybe it was you.

After they starting filling emergency rooms with embarrassing curling iron
incidents, celebrities, in a rare moment of solidarity, decided to ditch the
curling iron and embrace the curly perm. When the curly perm grew out, the
shag hairstyle was born.

The shag only lasted until the layers grew out in the back and what was
left was the infamous hairstyle called the mullet. Short on top, long in the
back, no curls, no maintenance. The mullet tried to incorporate every
hairstyle to date and failed miserably. It really only looked good on Billy
Ray Cyrus. Of course, Billy Ray Cyrus would have looked good bald. Who
was looking at his hair, anyway?

At some point, shortly after the mullet became popular, someone - some
influential someone - actually looked at themselves in a mirror, from the
side, and said, “Oh…no.” And the mullet was dead.

Here’s where everything gets a little fuzzy. This is perhaps the time when
women of my age decided to find a hairstyle that looked good on them
individually. There was a lot of guesswork. A lot of walking out of a hair
salon having paid a good tip for a style that you were sure you’d grow to
adore, but when you arrived home, your husband invariably looked at you as
if a Muppet had emerged from your scalp. It was every woman for herself.

You experimented with past styles. You let the hairdresser talk you out of
a body wave and turn your head into a Brillo pad in an effort to show you
that, with her expensive products, you can look like you have a body wave
without actually getting one.

You cut it short. You grow it long. You try a rainbow of different shades of
hair color. You gel it, spike it, tease it, and toss it.

Finally, you realize that it doesn’t matter what you do with your hair, you
are never going to look like a super model because the rest of your body is
not cooperating.

Then you do what many older women have done: You tell the hairdresser
to cut it all off so you don’t have to mess with it anymore. This will make it
abundantly clear to anyone who cares to question your decision, that you
are not trying to look like a super model, you are merely being practical.

PREVIOUS COLUMN:
Having a love-hate relationship with my fridge

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with my refrigerator. Some of you may
wonder why I’m nurturing any kind of a relationship at all with my
appliances. Well, if it’s got to be in your house, you must have at least a
working relationship with it, because if not, you have no influence over it
when it goes on the fritz. Not that my reasoning with an appliance has ever
fixed it, but I believe the repair bills could cost substantially more if my
appliances couldn’t tolerate me.

My refrigerator is the one I’m closest to. It shares everything with me even
if I have just committed to a diet. Opening the door is like an invitation to
Valhalla. Maybe I shouldn’t open the door, but it beckons me: “Come on,
Laura, just this once. I promise I won’t make you do anything you don’t
want to.”

So I grab the door and a world of possibilities opens before me:
cheesecake, chocolate pudding, leftover lasagna. The refrigerator whispers
sweet nothings in my ear: “Go on, Laura. You lost 3 pounds this week. You
owe yourself a piece of cheesecake.”

It makes perfect sense, which you wouldn’t normally expect from a
refrigerator. Maybe mine went to an Ivy League school for major appliances.
After I gorge myself on cheesecake, I hate my refrigerator, which doesn’t
make any sense at all, but I was only an average student.

The worst time of the day is when I have to determine what to have for
dinner. I go to my refrigerator and peer inside. Nothing jumps out at me so I
close that door and open the freezer. There’s that box of Swedish meatballs
that’s been in there for almost a year. They were buy one get one free, but
after we ate one box, my husband left half of them on his plate and asked
me if the cat had eaten yet - a sure sign he didn’t like them. I don’t know
why I’m saving them. Perhaps for the day we run out of cat food. I’ll have a
back-up.

There is a crusted-over Kielbasa that was never put in a freezer bag. If not
for the guilt I feel about starving people in third world countries, I would
probably throw that out.

The various boxes of Hot Pockets, Bagel Bites, and Pizza Rolls are not
enough for an entire meal, but the kids love them. Don’t think I haven’t
thought about plopping a Hot Pocket in the toaster oven and serving it for
dinner. However, my husband would be looking around for the rest of the
meal.

There is about six bags, ¼ full, of frozen vegetables that I have saved in
case I make soup or in the eventuality that a random body part becomes
swollen. After a looking around in there for few minutes I’ve finally
determined something: I need to go shopping. My refrigerator agrees.

So, Pizza Hut it is!

My husband is an after-dinner snacker, so he’ll be visiting my refrigerator
later tonight. Unfortunately, he’ll be stuck with a few partly shriveled
seedless grapes and four-day old Hamburger Helper, because I already ate
the cheesecake. He’ll probably be having a little talk with my refrigerator to
try to secure its loyalty. He won’t win, though. You have to spend a lot of
time with your appliance to develop the kind of relationship I have with my
refrigerator. He’s not even close.

Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You
can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website
www.lauraonlife.com for more info.

PREVIOUS COLUMN:
Taking a long stroll in Santa's Boots

I am Santa Claus and, for once, I am going to break with tradition this year
and get a few things off my chest. As the parents of the children who
receive my gifts every year, I was hoping you could tell me what you think
about some ideas I have.

I thought that maybe one of these years I could have a day off on
Christmas. We could give it back to the child whose birthday we are
supposed to be celebrating. I wouldn’t mind having a different day. Maybe a
warmer day? In July, perhaps?

Okay, maybe that’s asking too much. I didn’t consider all the songs that
would have to be changed if, rather than coming on a sleigh in a furry red
suit and snow boots, Santa came on a surfboard in Bermuda shorts. I can
continue to come in the winter with a few changes:

First, I need to pimp out my ride. I need a sleigh cab with central heat and
a hot chocolate dispenser. Also, Mrs. Claus has patched up my red suit so
many times I look like a Siberian refugee. So, I was thinking, how ‘bout you
all pitch in and buy me a new set of threads? I was thinking maybe a forest
green insulated tuxedo. What do you think? I could switch to a lime green
silk smoking jacket when I get to the tropics.

Speaking of the tropics, would it be too much to ask for a tropical vacation
for me and the Mrs., after I do my job? Maybe I wouldn’t get so much flack
from my wife for working so many hours if I could promise her a vacation
somewhere warm.

Speaking of warm, my wife wants a hot tub for Christmas. Those are pretty
hard to come by in the North Pole. I asked my elves to see what they could
do, but the best they could come up with was a cross between a Malibu
Barbie pool and a coffee maker. Instead of milk and cookies, maybe one of
you can put a hot tub out for me to take home. Make sure there is a big
bow on it, though, otherwise she’ll think I stole it.

About that milk and cookies: I want to know which one of you started the
rumor that I like milk and cookies? When I find out who you are, you are
getting nothing but Barry Manilow CD’s in your stocking for the next 50
years! Just once I’d like to see a fifth of vodka and a bag of beef jerky
waiting for me. I’d even settle for roast beef and mashed potatoes. You can
skip the corn on the cob, though. It gets stuck in my beard and the reindeer
will want to nibble.

They like the carrots that some of you put out for them, but they’d move a
lot faster for me if you gave them jalapeno peppers. That’s like high octane
fuel for reindeer. Riding behind them after they’ve eaten jalapeno peppers
isn’t necessarily safe, though. Processed through a reindeer, jalapenos are
highly combustible. If their hooves nick the metal harness, flames shoot out
their rear. Comet is particularly susceptible. Another reason I could use a
cab on my sleigh.

Those reindeer will eat just about anything, though. They are not picky. If
you wondered why Rudolph’s nose was shiny, it’s because I left my vodka
out in the barn. I would have let Lawrence come that night if it weren’t for
the fog. Lawrence is Cupid’s son. He has separation anxiety and his stall
was knee-deep in reindeer crap when we got back. I made Rudolph clean it
up.

If you ever consider getting anything for me for Christmas, here is my list:

A beard trimmer. (Mrs. Claus thinks if I trimmed my beard, I would look just
like Brad Pitt.)

Power tools. (The elves have requested this.)

Flat screen TV and a Blu-ray player. (Do I need a reason?)

A bathing suit. (For the tropical vacation.)

Oh… and world peace.

Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You can reach
Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more
info.

PREVIOUS COLUMN:
My Boyfriend, The Vampire

Vampires are all the rage now, aren’t they? “Twilight” has brought out many
closet vampire lovers even though they are all destined to be very frustrated
and disappointed. Not with the movie, but with the fact that they will never
have a vampire of their very own.

Even if there were such a creature – and many deranged people would
swear there is, citing hemophiliacs and such – it would be a hopeless
romance. People that believe in dead, blood-sucking, unbearably sexy
beings have lost their grip on reality. These are the same people who
believe the used car salesman when he says “Trust me!”

Let’s just say you are a young, attractive girl – someone a vampire might
be attracted to. First of all, one would think that vampires would not be
attracted by beauty. If he was attracted by anything, it would be her rare
blood type. Type AB could be considered a delicacy among his kind.

However, let’s just pretend that this particular vampire has a genetic
predisposition to appreciate beauty. What girl in her right mind would be
attracted to a dead guy with cuspid issues whose only redeeming physical
factor, other than his smokin’ hot wardrobe, seems to be that he sparkles in
the sun?

Try explaining that when you take him home to meet mom and dad.

“When can we meet your new boyfriend, sweetheart?”

“Well, it kinda depends on the weather.”

You’d have to break it to them slowly. They may have questions:

“Does he come from a good family?”

“No. Seriously, they’re all a bunch of bloodsuckers.”

“Oh, that’s too bad, maybe he’ll like us in spite of his dysfunctional family.”

“Maybe. What’s your blood type?”

“O”

“Oh.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, I think so. I love it when he sparkles and pretends he’s going to bite
me.”

“Um… okay… strange indicators, but how long do you think love will last
on such a thin reason?”

“It depends. If he ever gets around to biting me, it could last for eternity. If
not, then just until I die.”

“What!? Goodness, child, is he that much younger than you?”

“No actually, he’s 326 years old.”

After that you may have to ask your intended beau whether he could use
any of the random vampirical powers he might possess to revive your
mother from a dead faint and render your father comatose until he forgets
the conversation.

Rather than answering questions it might be best to simply wait for the
next cloudy day and introduce them.

“Mom, Dad, this is my new boyfriend, Gregorio.”

“So glad to finally meet you, Gregorio.”

“Gregorio, this is my mom and dad.”

“It is a pleasure to eat you… I mean meet you.”

You would need to backhand your vampire to keep him in line from time to
time, but how to explain the teeth?...

Your girlfriends would all be dying to sleep with him… literally… and your
older brother would be constructing self-detonating bat boxes to see to your
boyfriend’s belated demise.

In reality, and I use that term loosely, having a vampire for a boyfriend
probably isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Unless, of course, dead people
with long canines and the ability to light on your roof are your type.

Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You can reach
Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more
info.

PREVIOUS COLUMN:
A vacation without the kids?!? OMG!

My husband and I finally went on a long-awaited vacation without the kids. I say
“long-awaited” because this was the first vacation we had taken alone since we started
having children twenty-three years ago.

We weren’t sure how to act. What do we do when we don’t have to amuse children on a
long ride? What do we say to each other, if we are not interrupted every two minutes?
How do we converse without the usual breaks to scold a child for spitting on his sibling or
throwing her toy out the window? Who will provide the arguing and nitpicking?

Well, as it turns out, we didn’t have to amuse the children, but because there were no
distractions, we had to amuse each other to stay awake. We sang songs that my
husband learned at camp when he was a kid. We made fun of what the people in other
cars were doing. We tried to identify roadkill.

My husband said he saw a dead armadillo twice. I thought he was delusional, because I’d
never seen a live armadillo, but I was smart enough not to say so. I just agreed with him.
At one point, I saw a flattened something that clearly had fur and mused aloud that it might
be a bear. He didn’t disagree with me, but I could see that he thought it was unlikely. Just
to be ornery, I suggested that it was probably a polar bear. Since we were driving in the
Southeast at the time and a polar was obviously an endangered species there, he finally
had to bite and said, “It was no bigger than a bread box and brown, how could it possibly
be a polar bear?”

Since the albino version of white is clearly brown, I told him it was an albino polar bear. A
baby albino polar bear that was having lunch with the armadillo when a Mac truck rudely
interrupted them.

He didn’t buy it, but he never mentioned an armadillo again.

Things went well until the door on the driver’s side of the car decided to take a vacation
as well. Oh, it was still present but it refused to open, no matter what we did to it. The lock
was stuck in a weird position, my husband guessed. So, every time we got out of the car,
the driver had to crawl over the passenger-side seat to get out. This wasn’t such a
problem when I was driving, but I couldn’t drive more than two hours at a time at which
point we had to switch.

While I watched, my husband would haul his 230 pound frame into the passenger seat
kneeling backwards on it. Then he’d throw one size 12 foot between the seats and
annihilate a bag of pretzels and a bag of white-powdered donuts. That bag exploded
causing a cloud of white sugar to fumigate the inside of the car. Then he would try to turn
around while pivoting on the bag of pretzels and the demolished donuts and haul his rear
end into the driver’s seat. Inevitably, said rear end would get stuck between the steering
wheel and the seat because when I was driving, the seat was pulled forward. The
technique he used to contort his body in a way that would allow him to reach the lever
and pull the seat back again would have made Houdini proud.

After he was finally seated and had yanked his legs underneath the steering wheel, he’d
give me a dirty look that said, “Don’t you dare laugh.”

Like it was my fault the door was uncooperative, I thought. Geez.

“You didn’t have to squish the donuts, you know,” I said peevishly.

“They were in my way!” he said defensively.

“Well then, you could have tried this.” I demonstrated by picking up a corner of the donut
bag between two fingers. The bag, of course, was broken, and as a result, small pieces
of demolished donut plopped out and white powder once again permeated the air.

We both looked at each other and broke into gales of laughter.

About that time, we realized that we were behaving a lot like my kids would if they were
with us. Well… I’ll be darned.

Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You can reach
Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more
info.