Bedtime, Doggie Style

I absolutely love and worship my bed. It is a beautiful queen-sized sleigh bed made of a golden wood and equipped with a mattress about seven feet high which requires a small step ladder to access their pillowed top, somewhat princess-and-the-pea-like. This suits me nicely.

But alas my relationship with my bed is fated for a sorrowful end, thanks to the dog.

My dog, Theo, is the best dog in the whole world. You probably think your dog is the best dog in the whole world, but you are wrong. A 15-pound lap dog, Theo has developed a strange medical condition that causes her to expand to about three times her size during the night, thus relegating my boyfriend and me to the very edge of the mattress where we cling for dear life because it’s a long way down to the floor. Theo has also cultivated a strange old-man habit of smacking her lips incessantly as if anticipating the imminent delivery of a juicy steak, or as if she has finally, after all these years of snacking on excrement, discovered that she has “icky mouth.” This combination of smacking and expanding has resulted in many sleepless nights, punctuated by expletives, for us humans.

We have tried several ways to solve this problem without buying a larger bed. First we built a little fortress of pillows all around the edge so Theo could not jump up. But Theo assumed this was unintentional, and would kindly call attention to our error by sitting at the foot of the bed and whimpering all night.

We tried shutting her out of the bedroom entirely, which resulted in tireless scratching interspersed with panicked barking that translates as, “You’ve accidentally locked me out of the bedroom! I CANNOT ADEQUATELY PROTECT YOU FROM OUT HERE! You could be getting robbed AT THIS VERY MINUTE and there is nobody in there to lick the thief to death! And more importantly – are those cookies I smell?!?”

Next, we disassembled the couch, her second favorite sleeping place, and put one of the cushions on the floor, covered with a blanket she particularly favors, to create a little nest of bedding that would have made Marie Antoinette jealous. We then pointed to it and cried exuberantly, “Ooooh! We wish WE had such a luxurious bed!” and even crawled into it ourselves, curling up into tight little knots, exclaiming and producing little moans of pleasure. Theo sat and stared at us unblinking, clearly thinking, “My humans have some pretty bizarre habits – like voluntarily getting into that cube filled with water every morning - but this is particularly weird, even for them.” She then hopped up on the bed to watch the show from a better vantage point.

For several nights we stuck rigidly to the idea of her separate bed. It became a game of chicken, between the dog and us, to see who would weaken and give in first. Since Theo sleeps roughly 16 hours a day, she was the most rested at bedtime, and therefore had the most endurance. Our evenings quickly established a pattern:

Us: Arrive in bedroom to find dog already established in precise middle of bed, despite having no measuring tools available. Exclaim to dog in extremely chipper voice that it is time to go to her bed – accompany with arm flapping and gesticulating to indicate exciting nature of this suggestion - at which point dog flattens and plasters herself to mattress, expanding to the mass of a sumo wrestler. Using an intricate pulley system and grunting, transfer dog to her bed. Administer enormous quantities of praise while tucking 400-thread-count blankets around her and carefully arranging twenty-seven of her favorite toys in semi-circle. Retreat from dog bed - genuflecting is not inappropriate – while maintaining constant stream of enthusiastic “good girls” at the octave of a 6-year-old.

Dog: Wait five seconds. Leap back onto bed. Assume Uncomprehending, Extremely Cute expression when humans indicate displeasure. Repeat process roughly 15 times until people give up and go to sleep in the approximately 3 inches of bed space you’ve generously allotted them.

So I guess it can be said we’ve all arrived at something resembling a solution, in that we humans, the breadwinners with triple-digit IQ’s and opposable thumbs, have given in completely to a four-legged animal with a brain the size of a hamster poop. In the meantime we are all saving up for a king size bed, although at the rate Theo is going, given her inability to hold down a job, she’s definitely not going to have her share ready any time soon.

Valentine's Day Messacre

Like the majority of the population, I spent the month of December cramming Christmas cookies down my gullet as if afraid a gang of pterodactyls would swoop down out of nowhere and snatch them away from me before I could get them safely in my mouth. So I am now faced, in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, with the challenge of losing those extra five pounds so my boyfriend will find me sexy and alluring enough to buy me a refrigerator-sized box of chocolates - which will slap those five pounds right back where they were.

But like every other woman I don’t want to actually go on a diet. So I spend a lot of time seeking alternative methods of weight-loss that do not a) cost thousands of dollars or b) have side-effects resulting in a tiny layer of hair growing all over my body. But then what?

Exercise? Don’t be silly. For one thing, the gym is too crowded with all the New Year’s Resolutioners. Plus, if you’re like me, you make only a half-hearted attempt at a “work-out” involving a treadmill you wouldn’t touch any other time of the year with a toilet bowl plunger. You have to claw your way through the crowds and fight for the machine in order to proceed with your 30 minute walk at the pace of, approximately, 0.017 miles per hour, before treating yourself to a McFlurry on the way home as a reward for your efforts. So forget the gym, because that kind of weight-loss regimen will only make your pants tighter.

Those miracle weight-loss pills they advertise on TV seem like a great idea, but you know if you’ve tried them that the effect is not so much turning you into a svelte supermodel, as turning you into an overweight psychotic on speed. Although I would not recommend them for weight-loss, I would recommend them if you have an urgent need to paint your entire house in one evening, or if you feel your moods are just too darn smooth and predictable for your taste.

So this year I tried, albeit not on purpose, a new form of weight-loss guaranteed to work: the stomach flu. The stomach flu serves two unintentional purposes: one, it causes you to violently remove from your body everything you have ever eaten, or thought about eating, in an efficient twenty-four-hour period; and, two, it tests, just before Valentine’s Day when you really need to know, how much your boyfriend really does love you.

Forget a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover’s. Any guy can do that. But will he hold your hair while you puke with great gusto into a trash can, even getting a little on his socks, and then, instead of crying “OH MY GOD THAT’S GROSS!” and fleeing from the room with his hand over his mouth (which is what I would have done), reach over and tenderly wipe a string of vomit from your chin? I mean, that is love, my friends.

And who needs a dozen roses when you’re lying in a pool of fevered sweat and sobbing because you’re, frankly, just a big fat baby when it comes to being sick, and he pokes his head in and says, “Can the towels go in with the sheets?” Because he is actually, unprovoked and out of respect for your inability to move even your pinky finger, tackling tasks that heretofore he has always categorized as Needless Chores Women Make Up Just to Torture Themselves.

But the best thing, better than a fancy dinner or a piece of jewelry, is when you are finally able to crawl out of bed, just in time for Valentine’s Day, and hobble weakly straight to the scale to discover that the trauma of the past few days was not for nothing: you have lost five pounds. And you tremble your way back to the bedroom and cry with a watery smile, “I’ve lost five pounds!” and he looks at you, the memories of fever and chills and throwing up and passing out with your head half in the toilet still fresh in his mind and says, “You were already perfect.”

What better Valentine is there?

Happy Valentine’s Day, SC! And thanks for washing out the trash can. That had to be pretty disgusting.

© Karen Bertiger 2005. No changes may be made without permission from the author.

Of All the Things I've Lost, I Miss My Friends' Minds the Most

Author's Note: This column generated my very first hate mail. I was quite proud, because it told me that at least my columns generate some kind of intense feeling, even though I would have preferred awe, joy or delight over anger. Oh well. At least somebody read it. And to him (yes, him!) let me just say two things: 1) One must exaggerate one's point to make the story more interesting and, 2) these are just JOKES, people.

Of All the Things I've Lost, I Miss My Friends' Minds the Most

“No, no! In the POTTY or no jelly beans! NO jelly beans! Karen, I have to-” Click.

This is representative of how most of my conversations with my best friend, who has a two-and-a-half year-old, end. In this particular case, she is attempting to inspire her young son, who received his first pair of Big Boy underpants for Christmas, to use the toilet in exchange for jelly beans. This seems like a very reasonable bartering system to me. I tend to agree with a lot of Zach’s principles.

However, having a lot in common with a two-year-old is a pretty good indication that I am not ready to have children of my own. I am too selfish. I would hoard all the jelly beans for myself. After all, I manage to go peepee in the potty every time, so who deserves those jelly beans more? But you don’t just lose jelly beans when you decide to raise a child. You lose everything. Time, perspective and, most importantly, your mind. Which is why I have remained childless so far. I need to protect what is left of my sanity.

For starters, I can’t afford the time it would take to have a kid. I am too busy lying on the couch doing nothing. If I wasn’t able to do nothing anymore, I don’t know what I’d do. I need to not do anything so that I will have the reserve energy ready should I be called upon to do something. Children, I have observed, are not very tolerant of this approach to life. From what I understand they require enormous amounts of attention, and most of it centers around disgusting liquids that have dribbled out of their various orifices. Mopping up another person’s body goo is not high on my list of ways to spend my time, and I frankly can’t understand why other people freely elect to do so.

These people, who were previously very clean, very presentable adults, are brain-washed by their own infants into becoming total slobs. I watched a stream of snot ooze from Zach directly into his father’s mouth while being tossed around in the air – a game he seems very fond of despite the fact that it often results in projectile oatmeal vomit – and Zach’s father just laughed and wiped it away. This was jaw-droppingly disgusting to me and I would have thought Zach’s father would share my sentiment. Before he had kids, I am certain he would have. Now, he seems to find his son’s inability to keep body liquids where they belong utterly charming.

So here we have a formerly fully functioning individual reduced to ratty hair and sweat pants, who is covered in oatmeal barf and snacking on baby snot. In this case it’s understandable that the next loss involves most of the five senses. For example, a mother manages to remain completely unaware that her three-year-old is running up and down the aisles of the grocery store in a swerving pattern that manages to block grocery cart traffic in either direction, shrieking at a decibel that has car alarms going off within a five-mile radius. Meanwhile the mother, with a distracted, pleasant expression on her face, will be reading the ingredients on a cereal box and whistling softly to herself. Clearly the woman has lost the ability to hear, and her sight is also growing hazy. The only sense that seems completely undisturbed – in fact, is heightened – is the sense of smell. Despite the fact that she has been totally oblivious of her child wreaking havoc on dozens of innocent shoppers, she will detect, from across the store and in the middle of a conversation with the butcher, that her child has “done a poopy.”

This brings me to my final and most important point, which is that I do not want to lose my mind. That distracted “I’m not really here, I’m somewhere nice in my head” expression that you see so often on parents of young children is frighteningly similar to the blank, contented stare of a mental ward patient. I do not want to become a person whose every nerve is braced for a poopy diaper. I do not want to be found wandering the streets, confused, unable to find my own mailbox because I have not slept in four months. I want to be able to remember the names of my friends when they call. I want to be able to talk to them in full, comprehendible sentences.

So I don’t think kids are right for me, not right now. Although if someone were to offer me some jelly beans, I might reconsider my position.

© Karen Bertiger 2005. No changes may be made without permission from the author.

What Will It Take to Put You In This Car Today?

Now that I have lived here a year, I think maybe it’s time to get a car.

I’ve been driving a borrowed car since I moved here from New York City. My thinking was that someone else’s vehicle could suffer the casualties as I familiarized myself with driving again and committed such heinous errors as driving for half an hour before realizing I still had the parking brake on. Now that I have progressed in my driving skills to the point that I can get from home to the grocery store without inciting a mob riot, I think I am ready for my own set of wheels.

I was looking forward to haggling with a car salesman. I had this vision of his cowering under the intensity of my intimidating New Yorker ways. Maybe I would even make him cry a little bit. And then he would sell me a car at slightly below cost – not so much that I would feel like I was taking unfair advantage – and I would swagger on home, keys in hand. It would be hard to swagger while driving, but I would manage it.

What happened was a little different. Despite my five-year-old-like insistence that I can DO IT MYSELF, I finally recognized that it would be wise to bring my boyfriend along to assist in negotiations. Not only did he insist that he knows a lot more about this than I do, but he pointed out that buying a car is the highlight of the male existence and to deprive him of this opportunity would be akin to shooting his dog and stringing it from the tree in the front yard.

An interesting thing happened to both of us as we climbed out of the car and our feet hit the pavement of the car lot. I suddenly felt about six inches shorter and completely out of my element. I was afraid if a car salesman tried to sell me a car without an engine, by way of explaining the lower gas mileage, I would just nod my head vigorously. Whereas Tom, in a birdlike movement reminiscent of a male peacock, actually puffed out his chest and, I believe, although I cannot be certain, growled a little as the salesman approached.

At that point buying the car became less interesting than watching the Testosterone Negotiation Dance that ensued. The men circled each other, bucking their heads forward and back, squinting their eyes, and showing their teeth in an attempt to put their prey at ease. It is rare, in the wild – perhaps nonexistent except on a car lot – for two species each to consider himself the hunter rather than the hunted. They performed ritualistic gestures such as kicking tires, slamming hoods, and emitting hearty, low-pitched chuckles to falsely portray a sense of total ease in an effort to throw the other one off his scent.

Occasionally one would make a sudden, head-butt-like move in the form of a no-nonsense phrase like, “Look, I know State Rapid Redux Exhaust Ejector Tax is complete horseshit.” Then an exchange of rapid-fire pleasantries accompanied with more intense chuckling and bearing of the teeth to show no ill-will meant. “Har har har, well, we put that on there because we have to but har har har of course we can wipe that off the ticket for you har har har. By the way, if you want a steering wheel that will be extra! Har har har.”

As the haggling continued, and both men started to turn red and snarl audibly, I realized that they were enjoying themselves, the way they might enjoy lifting weights heavy enough to crush a house or their own windpipe. It makes sense that, as much as I’d like to be completely independent and take care of everything myself, as a woman I do not naturally adapt to this type of transaction. It is a slow painful torture for me with no reward; whereas for men it is an opportunity to demonstrate wit and prowess by calling each other’s bluff and showing they can withstand the torture longer than their opponent.

But they both recognized that I was the key decision maker where it counted, without my having to say a word. For instance, they swiveled their heads a little anxiously in my direction and there was a tense pause in negotiations until I declared, in the tone of voice of a woman who knows she’s got the right answer on this one and nobody could convince her otherwise, that I wanted the car to be silver.

We all strutted home that day, because we all thought we got the better deal. Who knows what really happened, but now I’ve got a brand new car with which to torture the Huntsville driving population. So you better watch out for me in my... um… well, I can’t remember what kind of car it is, but it’s silver.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Therapy

I volunteered this year to host Christmas, which I believe is a symptom legally accepted by health insurance companies for admittance to a psychiatric facility.

See, my thinking was that it would be nice to have both my boyfriend’s and my family all together for the holidays. Which I believe meets the criteria necessary to prescribe electric shock treatments. They don’t do those much anymore, except in extreme circumstances, such as when you willingly choose to spend a prolonged length of time with your mother, mother-in-law, and a turkey.

It started to dawn on me that perhaps this wasn’t the wisest move when I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up “a few things” that I figured we’d need in preparation for the big feast. About two feet into the store I came across turkey lifters. Did I need turkey lifters? I certainly didn’t already have turkey lifters. I must need turkey lifters. Into the basket.

Three feet further and I came across a holiday serving dish. Did I need a holiday serving dish? Of course I need a holiday serving dish – what am I going to put the turkey on?

By the time I got to holiday-themed cloth napkins I was a broken woman. I sat in the middle of Bed, Bath & Beyond, my hair standing on end, my clothing askew, surrounded by a multitude of holiday-themed kitchen and bath items totaling somewhere close to what they say Gen Xers should have in their 401(k) before retiring. “I CAN’T DO THIS!” I bellowed into my cell phone to whoever was unlucky enough to be on my speed dial, while fellow customers sidled cautiously around me and my potential purchases.

In the end, I put everything back except the turkey baster, which seemed like the most important item, and went home.

But, “You don’t need a turkey baster,” my brother explained helpfully when I proudly announced my purchase. “We put the turkey in a bag and it keeps all the juices in.” He was a little baffled when I started to rock silently back and forth.

In addition to the food preparation there is the intricate sleeping arrangement situation. Although I thought we had plenty of space in that our house is about four times the size of my former New York apartment, it turns out that two bedrooms are not practical for hosting a dozen family members. I have resorted to having three people sleep in the garage, and one in the fireplace, standing up. I think this will work.

My boyfriend now goes through life with a braced look about him, prepared for whenever I might, in the middle of something totally unrelated, such as sex, look at him and announce, “I think we’ll need extra pillowcases.” I have learned that sometimes my one-track mind can be a bit of a problem for others.

I have called my mother to hound her about transportation arrangements so many times that I am no longer in her will, and if I spend any more long lunch hours perusing the mall for any holiday-related item I may have missed, such as a three-foot gold ceramic Christmas tree center piece that plays “Greensleeves,” I will be fired from my job.

Which will give me plenty of time to get started on next year! Oh look, I wonder if those kind-looking men in the clean white coats might want a turkey baster for Christmas?

The Halloween Suburban Myth

I am exhausted. I am covered in goop, my back aches, my hair is a matted mess, my hands are cramped to uselessness and I look like hell.

No, I am not the mother of a newborn. I just got finished carving our Halloween pumpkin.

Two hours into my intricately detailed haunted house carving I came to my senses – the pain in my left hand is what did it – and wondered what the hell I was thinking. But by then it was too late. I couldn’t put half a haunted house out for the kiddies to enjoy; I would get hate mail for the rest of the year. So I plundered on, and in the meantime simultaneously and unwittingly completed my “disheveled housewife” costume.

Turns out it was nearly all in vain because we had only four trick-or-treaters. Back in New York you didn’t get many kids, because the front doors to all the apartment buildings are locked and impenetrable (one hopes). So in an effort to keep out the riff-raff, we also alienated ourselves from a truly enjoyable tradition. Instead of trick-or-treating, Halloween lovers got half naked, sprayed themselves with glitter, threw on an elaborate showgirls-like sequined and feathered headpiece, and paraded through Chelsea in 30 degree weather. And those were just the men. I found this terribly amusing and most certainly entertaining, but it just wasn’t the same as my childhood Halloweens. Now that I am back in suburbia I was truly looking forward to a real Halloween. I envisioned myself the Cool Lady on the block, the one who gives out handfuls of “fun size” candy bars, rather than this new, micro-sized candy “bite” they’ve come up with recently.

(A quick aside, a soliloquy, if you will, on this new Micro size – which, if the old Halloween candy bar was called “fun” size, must be the “Delirious With Ecstasy” size. The Micro Size is simply un-American. Americans enjoy Super Size everything. It doesn’t matter if we can consume the serving within our lifetimes or not – we want it BIG. We want everything BIG and for the most part the entire consumer economy supports us in this, as evidenced by French fry portions that can no longer fit through those little windows at the drive-thru. SO WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE CANDY PEOPLE? Why is chocolate the only thing getting smaller? I have to stop now, or I’ll be too emotional to continue this column.)

Anyway, in my fantasy, the kids would pass each other on the street and throw meaningful advice at one another, as we used to do when we were kids, along the lines of, “Don’t go to that house – they’re giving out toothpaste,” or “That lady is giving out REAL size Hershey’s!” And in these conversations my house would feature prominently, reverently, as they whispered to each other, “She gives out whole handfuls of the really good stuff and there weren’t ANY dum-dums in her bowl at all!” And then all the children in the neighborhood, after they had completed their rounds, would vote me Best Lady on the Block and carry me down the street on their shoulders and vow never to egg my house again.

Well, okay, perhaps that was a tad unrealistic but the point is I was very much looking forward to being generous on Halloween. But we only got four kids. Four. Kids. I can only assume that the trend that had begun when I left suburbia seven years ago has increased in momentum to the point that by next year, trick-or-treating will just be a suburban myth.

When I have children, I will gather them ‘round on Halloween night and tell them fantastic tales of when I was a child, and my parents would dress me up, and take me door to door around the neighborhood, and perfect strangers would each give me a piece of candy, and at the end of the night I would have a pillowcase full of candy that was all mine! And they will roll their eyes at me, and think, “Mom’s been into the wine again,” and ask if they can go IM on their blackberries now.

I understand that we must protect our children, but it really pisses me off that a few crazies out there have ruined this tradition for everyone. It is truly a shame that one day soon children will no longer know the joy of roaming the streets after dark, dressed as their favorite hero or as something to make the girls scream, committing silly little acts of vandalism all in good fun, and eating so much chocolate they puke in your flower bed.

Those were the days.

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Multi-tasking

There are those who believe that women are scatter-brained flibberty-gibbets incapable of focusing on any one task from start to finish. There are others, such as myself, who would like to point out that the ability to do more than one task simultaneously is called, in the workplace, “multi-tasking” and is considered to be a highly desirable asset. But unfortunately those who do not share this talent have a difficult time understanding its benefits.

I can cook dinner, talk on the phone, do the laundry and empty the dishwasher all at the same time. And very rarely will I accidentally dump the salad into the dryer instead of the salad bowl. True, there are these occasional slip-ups when we multi-task, but for every mistake I make, I have accomplished ten other tasks successfully.

Many years ago, when we dwelled in caves and did not shave our armpits, men were expected to do only one thing: kill elk (or buffalo, or mammoths, depending on the century and continent). Meanwhile, the women squatted in the cave and kept the newly-discovered campfires burning, picked berries, made clothes, bore and raised children, healed the sick, and, if they had time, ran out during lunch to the hairdresser’s to get that expertly matted, just-got-hit-by-lightning look that was so popular back then. Our genetics have changed little since those times (although luckily hairstyles have improved dramatically).

My responsibilities around the house are to: clean the house, do the laundry, cook, wash the dishes, pay the bills, walk the dog, check the mail, make the coffee, and shop for food. My boyfriend’s tasks are to: take out the garbage, if he remembers, which is about 30% of the time. I do honestly believe he means to be more helpful, but men have this uncanny ability to tune out chores that need doing. A man and woman can be standing together staring at the exact same kitchen and where she sees coffee grounds, cracker crumbs, soap scum, fingerprints, and rotten food, he sees, well, a kitchen. And so, when she begins her ritualistic high-pitched wail consisting of variations on the general idea that their house is so dirty pigs would be offended by it, he will respond with a resigned look that says, “Great. There goes poker night.” He will then proceed to help her clean in an overly-solicitous manner that states he is humoring her because she is clearly unstable – not because he agrees the place needs to be cleaned.

And he really doesn’t think it does. We must remember that this is the same guy who, when you first met him, did not clean the dishes in his apartment until there was nothing left to eat out of, including the bathtub. Same person also considered underwear clean if you turned it inside out, and saw no reason to wash the sheets ever, since you always bathed yourself immediately after sleeping on them anyway. There was stuff growing in his sink evolved enough to go two rounds on Jeopardy.

To their credit, due to an uncanny ability to block out everything around them including babies crying and the neighbor’s house on fire, men can concentrate so intently on whatever single task is at hand that they do a much better job on it than a woman would. Granted, it takes them seven times longer, but when it’s done, it is really done. I may be able to clean the whole house in two hours while my boyfriend has only gotten halfway through cleaning the guest bathroom’s toilet, but when he is finished with that toilet, by God, you could eat off it, if that’s your kind of thing.

The downside of this intense focus is when it misses the target. For example, you may say, “Honey, while I am chopping the broccoli, cooking the chicken, heating the bread and fixing tomorrow’s breakfast could you please stir the rice?” He will then get up from the couch with every intention of doing the chore you have asked him to do. However, in between the couch and the kitchen and directly in his path is the television, on which there is a shiny black helicopter dodging machine-gun fire in a most seductive manner. An hour later when you glance up, sweaty and breathless from your ten simultaneous chores, he will still be standing there, staring wide-eyed at the television like one of those zombies from Night of the Living Dead. “Honey?” you’ll say, your voice catching on a sob, “the rice?” (which, of course, burned a long time ago). And he’ll visibly shake himself, remove his gaze from the source of his intense concentration and look at you as if he has no idea how you got into his house.

I suppose men have just as much room to gripe about this genetic dichotomy as we do, and hopefully when the frustration reaches its apex we can all take a moment to reflect on how well we balance each other out. But not if the #$%&* trash hasn’t been taken out in two weeks because frankly with that smell I can’t concentrate on anything.