My mom has always been creative. A long time ago-back when “Saturday Night Live” was funny-she’d decorate cakes to look like soccer fields, pyramids, women endowed with Hostess Sno-Balls.You lost your innocence early in my home.

Mom works for the bank-THE bank-so her creative urges surface through cracks in the sidewalk. She mostly takes it out on the holidays.

At Christmas her tree is so burdened with ornaments that it leans to one side like Joe Cocker and children place the star on top without even stretching. Read the rest of this article »

Where have all the kid’s TV shows gone? Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody, Mister Rogers, Soupy Sales, Sheriff John?Okay. There’s Barney, some guy in a lizard suit. But that’s PBS.

Why don’t kids have kiddie shows anymore? Look at what they’re missing. When we were kids, we grew up with these crazy people.

I volunteer to become the new kiddie show MC, Captain Muppie (Middle Aged, Upwardly Mobile). A show updated to reflect today’s world, today’s values, and the street smarts and intelligence of today’s kids. These modern kids know more about sex than I did when I was twenty years old. Read the rest of this article »

Don’t be misled by the title of this column. It’s a touchy, odiferous subject, but harnessing the power of gas could save the world! It is somehow always credited to Dad, his nightly bottle of beer and his three-bean casserole.However, there is something to be said for the ancient dinosaurs who gave their lives to become the goo in the ground that has powered incalculable numbers of batteries. Read the rest of this article »

I called my wife before I left work. I’m not sure why I did this. Maybe it was out of courtesy. Maybe it’s a habit my mom beat into my head when I was a kid. Or maybe I’m just not that bright.I think it’s the last one.

“I’m going to the store on my way home,” I told her.

That was simple enough, right? In the Western world, a guy saying “I’m going to the store” usually means “I’m out of beer.” Everyone knows that. Well, everyone but women. Read the rest of this article »

I found the Foolish Times deadline for the “Adventures with Rex” story fast approaching, and nothing came to mind to write about. In fact, nothing had happened in the last month.”

Rex, what are we going to write about? Nothing is new.” Rex, who had been sleeping on his back on the sofa, cracked an eye open and gave me a dismissive look. His look indicated it was MY problem, not OUR problem. Read the rest of this article »

I was a gregarious child. I used to dance with my belly before I could walk and when I could finally maneuver on two legs, I would grab any unsuspecting human close to my size, shake them, and make them dance with me.My first best friend was my neighbor, Michael Casey. We were together constantly. This was perhaps why a lot of my friends are men now. I entered kindergarten at 4.5 years old and had my first boyfriend named Brian for two years. He was very polite, wore a bow tie, and played the violin. Mom reminded me that I brought him to my birthday party in a headlock. Read the rest of this article »

Recently, I decided to go on a diet.Over the years, I have relied heavily upon my stomach for making the food consumption decisions for the rest of my body. This seemed like affective body management delegation, since no other part of my body sends signals to the home office complaining of hunger.

It’s becoming painfully evident that when it comes to job performance, my stomach has been “overachieving.” In a typical business environment, you usually don’t want to stifle overachievers because they compensate for the underachievers, commonly known as the general workforce. Read the rest of this article »

A week before, I had moved to Hollywood from freezing Michigan. The bikini-clad shoppers and Elvis impersonators on Hollywood Boulevard were a welcome sight at the end of my three-day drive south. I moved into an apartment three blocks from the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and I was chomping at the bit to get out and explore this fascinating place.First I’d need the right shoes. All the shoes I’d owned in Michigan were black, leather, and snow proof. I knew exactly what I wanted: A moderate heel, just enough that I could wear them with jeans and look sexy but nothing that I couldn’t outrun street thugs in. Nothing black, more of a nude color to accommodate the beach feel of L.A. No ankle straps to call attention to my cankles, no pointy toes to further elongate my size 10 feet, and no big price to call my husband’s attention to our bank account. So I set out for the Hollywood and Highland mall. Read the rest of this article »

Uh-oh. A black-and-yellow fuzzball the size of a winged guinea pig is straddling my sandwich. Whew! It’s a bumble bee, not a wasp. In the bug world, bees are the football linemen, intimidating yet mild-mannered, usually history majors. But the wasp families, including hornets and yellowjackets, resemble skinny basketball players with an attitude. And they crave meat-preferably still breathing.Discover the fascinating world of wasps through: (a) books; (b) picnics; and (c) mowing over a ground nest. Interactive learning is such fun! Wasp removal by lawnmower, however, is generally frowned upon by animal rights people and emergency room staff. So I make tiny traps out of staples and peanut shells, then release the caged individuals in another neighborhood. Not yours, I’m 50% sure. Read the rest of this article »

Jeff Gordon… you’ve got nothing on me. Tony Stewart… try walking in my shoes. Dale Earnhardt Jr… don’t even think about it.These boys every Sunday play around in supercharged flying machines designed to go faster than politicians running to a photo opportunity. They swerve in and out of traffic, dodging each other, bouncing around at times like a ball bearing in a pinball machine.

“Tradin’ paint,” the announcer says.

I may be bragging, but I can do one better. I take my teenagers to school every morning. Even more, I take them to high school. Read the rest of this article »

Marla stood leaning against the grill of her boat-like SUV. She had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, a dazed expression in her eyes, and, with her arms dropped, palms outwards, resembled a martyr exhibiting her stigmata. The other women and I were exchanging words lazily as we prepared to enter the monolithic expanse before us.”And this also,” said Marla suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

She was the only woman of us who still “followed a blueprint” and believed in the infallibility of a delivery date. The worst that could be said of her was that she was overly friendly with the hired help. She was a home visionary of the highest order, but she was also an explorer of many styles, and that is where she differed from the rest of us home repair types. Read the rest of this article »

I may have to start shopping at Macy’s again. Oh, not for the clothes, but to thank them for AT LAST placing an ad in the “San Francisco Chronicle” that women can adore.Macy’s soft-core ads of females have appeared in the “Chron” for years. You know the ones-a nubile young thing wearing the latest in skimp, looking out at the reader with her “Come-get-it-big-boy!” stare. As a heterosexual woman, I’ve never figured out why these Macy’s ads should look like the covers of “Playboy,” which in turn look like the covers of “Cosmo.” It’s not like I’m going to drool over the models who appear there. Read the rest of this article »

I’m a sales manager in my alter-ego life and, like Pavlov’s dog, have been trained to respond to business cards. I was having breakfast with one of my employees a few weeks ago when I looked up and noticed a very handsome (and vaguely familiar) man sitting by himself nearby. He was smiling and nudging a business card to the end of his table, so I took the bait, wagged my tail, and approached. Read the rest of this article »

One of the extra perks we receive as parents of school-aged children is school music concerts. This special bonus is similar to your dentist telling you, “On top of your regular cleaning today, we’re going to throw in a free root canal.” Only with a dentist at least you get to suffer in a reclining position. For school music concerts you get to sit on bleachers, where halfway through the concert your butt cheeks fall asleep, which irritates the rest of your body, which is forced to stay awake. Read the rest of this article »

I had been rummaging through the hall closet looking for my high-school senior year book, deciding if I should attend the reunion. The last one I went to, I found out my old flame had married Stinky Jimenez. In a way I wanted to go to see if they were still together; if they had split up, I might make a run at her, but then, any woman who would marry Stinky Jimenez would be the epitome of damaged goods. My old checkerboard set fell from a shelf and Rex buzzed in like a scud missile to investigate. Read the rest of this article »

How is one person’s junk another’s treasure? You could say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but backing up one cliché’ with another is likely to have the word police hunt down a writer and slap him silly with a thesaurus. So let’s just say that people have differing views as to what falls into the realm of valuable.

Have you ever driven through the neighborhood on trash day? Very often some piece of discarded furniture will catch your eye. Read the rest of this article »

Everyone stared as I pushed my shopping cart through the store … ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump. You know, foreign automakers should start building shopping carts if only to force the American cart industry into upgrading that one bad wheel.

But it wasn’t the thumpy wheel or that I was trying not to be seen that made people stare like they recognized me from some Internet police database. People were watching because, despite all the beef jerky, beer, and drill bits bouncing around the basket, they knew I was really at the store to buy feminine napkins. Read the rest of this article »