The trouble with the world can be characterized by an example of human behavior that is readily recognized, but is nonetheless unexplainable.

This example happened while I was driving home one night.

The thoughts in my head were the usual reminders my subconscious is always sending me: What to buy, who to drop off, what to fill out, when to buy, drop off and fill out.  I was solving problems and calculating to the beat of a soft rock station.  I listen to soft rock when I solve problems.  Hard rock makes me angry at everything. Country/western makes me think I’m having marital problems even when things are going well.  Rap is… well… rap? Are you kidding?

Soft rock is my music of choice when traveling alone at night.  I was mellow but not sleepy, enjoying my alone-time with Josh Groban.

As I came around a corner, a car coming from the opposite direction flashed his high beams at me.  Since I did not have my high beams on, I thought perhaps he was warning me of a speed trap.

I sent him a silent thank you and slowed down.  I didn’t know exactly what the speed limit was on that road.  It was not one on which I traveled frequently.  But if someone flashes me, I just assume I might be going too fast.  A mile or two down the road I realized… there was no speed trap.  I wasn’t speeding.  So why did the other driver flash me?  I took back my silent thank you.  In fact, I hoped he never received it.

I assumed it was a male because only a male would’ve done something so arrogant.  My husband would’ve assumed it was a woman, because only a woman would have done something so daffy.

A few miles down the road, on a straight stretch of road, another oncoming driver flashed me from well in the distance.  He thinks I have my high beams on, I thought.  To show that I did not have my high beams on, I quickly flashed him back, friendly-like.

The problem with high beams is that you cannot attach an emoticon to them. The other driver did not think I was being friendly.  In fact, he thought I was being a smart Alec.  It didn’t occur to me that if he thought my high beams were on before, flashing them higher would’ve rendered him temporarily blind.

He evidently had been listening to hard rock because it was definitely anger that motivated him to turn his high beams on full and treat me to a blast of light not unlike the second coming of Christ.  I think he even had flood lights mounted on his roof to enhance the apocalyptic experience.

Celine Dion, now crooning through my speakers, was not the right accompaniment for this onslaught.  I needed Queen, Kiss, or the Rolling Stones.  In two beats of Celine’s My Heart Will Go On, I turned off the calming music and embraced my inner Mick Jagger.

Almost involuntarily, my fingers flicked my high beams on full. “Satisfaction” was playing at a bazillion decibels in my mind.  If I’m going to die, Mr. High Beams was going with me!

Squinting, as I drove through what looked like a Red Giant going super nova on that dark stretch of road, it occurred to me that I was definitely, categorically, unquestionably… stupid. That was the blinding truth.

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.

In the past, the concept of Ladies Night Out has been a “yeah, right!” in the back of my mind.  It happens so rarely that, when it does, I don’t even recognize it as a Ladies Night Out.  It’s more like a “Oh-my-gosh-we-forgot-the-kids Night.”

I recently made a couple of new friends that reintroduced me to the concept.  Admittedly, our Ladies Night Out was probably quite tame compared to a Single Ladies Night Out, but it was just as fun and probably did more for us, psychologically, because it was so hard won.  If we were talking about a race, it was more like the victory than the event.

I will call these two new friends of mine Friend A and Friend B to protect their identity and because I want them to remain my friends.

Friend A used to instruct soon-to-be-parents on how to have a baby and what to do with it when it arrived.  She had once shown me a model of a baby-filled uterus that she had handmade for her childbirth classes.  I was very impressed with her creativity.  This kind of knowledge is exactly the sort of thing that we veteran moms are very comfortable talking about and it would provide some stimulating Ladies Night Out conversation.  Friend A has three children.

Friend B is a kindergarten teacher who had just landed a new job.  We were celebrating her good fortune in finding a teaching position that night.  Oh, the stories she could tell… and did tell.  Another stimulating conversationist.  I was in a restaurant with some conversational geniuses!  Friend B has four children.

I have five children.

Let me start by revealing that we went out for dinner and none of us had consumed a single drop of alcohol.  I told you, we were pretty tame.  We had responsibilities waiting for us at home.  We understood what the impact on our families would be if we didn’t come back home.  We took our role as “Mom” very seriously.  That means… no drinking and driving.  But to listen to us you never would have thought that the hardest thing we were drinking was Pepsi.

Not surprisingly, the conversation revolved around kids:  Birthing them, teaching them and writing about them.  Mothers never completely leave their children or all the habits we’ve developed over the years.  Fortunately, we did not succumb to the portrayal of the stereotypical media mom and start cutting each other’s food into tiny bites.  However, to anyone watching, it was clear that we were moms and had been for a long time.

The table had not yet been cleaned when the hostess seated us. We asked for a wet cloth and, when it was clear that the hostess had no idea what “clean” meant, we commandeered the wet cloth and wiped down the table ourselves… It’s what we do.

When Friend A stepped into a rather tenacious wad of gum under the table, she very calmly used a napkin to de-goo her shoe.  Then, because it was a perfectly logical thing to do, she ducked under the table and proceeded to de-goo the floor as well.

Adult conversation has always been a bit more difficult for me, a writer.  My idea of a great day is sitting in a quiet room and writing with no distractions, especially of a conversational bent.  With kids, that is rare.

When Friend A was talking about her passion for helping new parents through childbirth, I felt compelled to share what little I knew about her impressive talents with Friend B.  But, like I said, the spoken word has never been my forte.

Pointing a thumb in Friend A’s direction, I blurted out to Friend B, “Have you seen her uterus yet? It’s fantastic!”

While Friend B gaped like a large-mouth bass, what I had just uttered registered in my feeble brain and we all went into uncontrollable laughter.

Friend B recovered enough to remark that, no, she hadn’t seen it, and she wasn’t sure whether she should be offended or not.

Friend A didn’t want Friend B to feel bad because she hadn’t shown her the uterus yet, so she said, “I’ve got a breast I can show you, too!”

By this time, the other diners were staring, waiting for some kind of show to start, and the waitress was too embarrassed to come back to our table.

We decided by mutual consent that we needed a lot more practice with this Ladies Night Out concept.  We’re going to try again next week.

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.

Maybe today was a good day to start that diet and exercise program I keep putting off.

I padded to the kitchen in bare feet and my nightgown which still fit, thank heaven.  I looked around for something healthy to eat.  In the fruit bowl, there were a couple of spotted bananas, an apricot that had gone mooshy, and three Macintosh apples (not the kind that lay claim to computing abilities).

The bananas were edible, but unappetizing.  The apricot was unacceptable; I tossed it in the trash.  And the Macintoshes were too tart for so early in the morning.  The last thing I needed first thing in the morning was to feel my face shrivel up.

There were cereals, of course, but the kind I keep in stock for my kids were not of the nuts-dried fruit-tree bark persuasion.  They were mostly the stick-to-the-kitchen-floor-when-wet variety.  I knew I couldn’t eat those if I was planning to lose weight.

I decided to skip breakfast.

Going for a brisk walk would have fit into my plan, but like I said, I hadn’t any clothes to wear.  Walking sans clothes in my neighborhood would have attracted unwanted attention, briskly or not.

To forget about my hunger, I put a load of laundry in the washer, sat down, still in my nightgown, and began to do some writing.  My mistake here was that I sat facing a window.  You see, the birds and squirrels were still eating their breakfast.

Believe it or not, when you are hungry and you see a bird pulling a nice, fat, juicy worm out of the ground, even brown bananas start to sound appealing.  I was actually jealous that the birds and squirrels seemed to be getting breakfast, but I, a human being, top of the food chain, was starving!

Do birds and squirrels ever go on a diet?  Or exercise? No!

By the time I had downed my second bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, which was the healthiest cereal I could find – it has honey, right? – I had convinced myself that diet and exercise went against the laws of nature.  And who am I to deny laws that had been written since the beginning of time?  Honey having no calories being the exception.

For some reason, it was easy to ignore the fact that sitting at a computer or watching TV went against the natural order of things as well.  Honey probably has that effect on people.

The next order of business was to determine what I was going to wear.  Fortunately, it didn’t occur to me to compare my wardrobe with that of the natural world.  My body, seen au naturel, would’ve terrified even the birds and squirrels.

After I had retrieved some clothes from the dryer and donned my best pair of elastic-waist pants, I decided a little retail therapy was in order.  I was going clothes shopping!  It was time to make the birds and squirrels jealous!

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.

click image to enlarge

This is an excerpt from my book, Laura On Life: Corn Dogs and Dust Bunnies:

I witnessed a rather amusing spectacle the other day:  A bird was picking a fight with my cat.  As I watched, this bird would swoop down and bean my cat on the head with her beak.  My dense cat, however, just stood there and took it.  I walked over to her, hoping to save her from the dive-bombing bird when I saw why the bird was doing that and why my cat was just standing there.

Apparently, my cat had discovered a meal on the ground that happened to be one of the bird’s offspring.  Obviously, the mama bird didn’t feel inclined to give up her baby for my cat’s dining pleasure.  So instead of saving my cat, I shooed her away and stood there looking at the baby bird while mama flitted around chirping uselessly.  I looked up at the nest, high in a tree, and decided I was too young to die, so that baby bird would not be going back up there via this human elevator.  Instead, I decided to make a small nest in a box, put the baby bird in it, and placed it high enough that my cat would not be able to feast on it.  My hope was that the mama bird would see the baby in the nest and start feeding it again.  As I was doing all of this, my cat discovered another baby bird that she had decided would make an excellent hors d’oeuvre.  Once again, I shooed her away and placed the second one in the box with its unfortunate sibling.

I watched that box and the mama bird from a distance for two hours before I decided that the mama bird was too dumb to raise children.  First, she let her babies fall out of the nest, and then she couldn’t even locate them.  The babies were peeping a blue streak, but that mama bird couldn’t seem to find them. Well, heck.

The babies were hungry and had to be fed.  It was the weekend so there was no veterinarian to call so I called my son, who is a biologist and has studied animals in college.   I told him that I would like to feed these birds as naturally as I could until I could get them to someone who knew what they were doing.  How do I do that?

“Well, mom,” he said, “unless you plan to get a worm out of the ground, chew it up, swallow it, and then puke it into their little mouths, you can’t do it the way their mama would.”

I looked at those tiny, ugly, critters with no feathers, huge eyes and a face that could stop a train.  There had better be another way or they were doomed.

“Okay,” I said to my son, “Say, I didn’t want to do that, hypothetically, of course. What do baby birds eat?”

“They eat the same thing their mamas eat, only mashed up.”

“You’ve been a huge help, thank you very little.”

Just then the mama bird came to the birdfeeder hanging off my house and started nibbling.  “Well, your appetite hasn’t been affected much by losing two children in one day, has it?”  Stupid bird.  But then I realized that she was eating birdseed, not a worm.  I can do birdseed!

A short time later, I was looking first at the birdseed, then at the scrawny little necks of those ugly baby birds and realized that trying to get that seed down their tiny throats would be a little like forcing a bowling ball through a garden hose.  After some experimentation with hammers, rolling pins and other hard objects, I finally came upon my nut grinder.  I ground up those seeds and nuts with some raisins, mixed it up with a little water and made custom birdie pabulum.

I found a small tweezers and since the babies’ beaks were permanently open because they were so hungry, I merely dropped a little of my birdie potion in there and crossed my fingers.

It turns out that baby birds, ugly as they are, must be pretty resilient, because they managed to survive my concoction.  It seems they may have a chance after all.

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.

We’ll just add some trim.

"Trim" Do it yourself word - Click image to enlarge

This is an expression that is used with astonishing frequency in our home.

As do-it-yourself people (read cheap), we are always taking on projects for which we have not been properly trained.  “Trim,” as a noun, is the word we use to express what is needed after the inevitable mistake has been made.

I have also come to realize that “trim,” as a verb, is just another word for fix.  I have never gone sailing in my entire life, but if I found myself on a sailboat and the captain yelled, “Trim the sails!” I would immediately understand that he meant for me to “fix” the sails.  Of course, “fix” is such an ambiguous term.  The boat would probably sink before I could figure out how to fix those pesky sails.

Pilots also use the term “trim” to describe the condition of the plane in reference to the horizon.  Again, it’s a very good thing I have never been in a cockpit.  Otherwise, before long, everyone on the plane would be intimately acquainted with the horizon.

“Slim and trim” has been used to describe the condition of one’s body.  Not mine, of course.  If “slim” was the objective and “trim” was the vehicle one used to get there, we are, once again, talking about fixing something.  Although, in my case, “trim” doesn’t even begin to explain all the fixing that would be required.

I could say to my daughter “I want to fix your hair.”  But if she didn’t see anything wrong with not being able to see anything because of her disorderly locks, she might balk.

However, if I tell her I want to trim her hair, it implies that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her face looking like a stage after the curtains have closed.  I simply want to enhance the look she has already developed.  She’ll understand my meaning of trim after I bring out the hedge clippers, but by then, it’ll be too late.  Her protests will fall on obtuse ears.

What do we use hedge clippers for?  We use them to TRIM bushes.  If your hair looks like a bush in need of a trim, it follows that a hedge clipper is what is needed to trim it… Work with me here.

When your skirt is too short, you add trim.  When you trim your roast, you are fixing it for dinner.  Decorating for Christmas is called trimming your tree.  When you trim your nails, you are fixing them.

As my husband and I are finishing yet another home improvement project, one of us will always look around at our handiwork and say, “This is going to need some trim.”

It’s simply a nice way to say, “We’re going to have to fix this when we are done.”

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.

Compromise by Laura Snyder (Click image to enlarge)

Alright, so that’s a lie.  But so is the long-held belief that compromise is the secret to a happy marriage.  Not true, doesn’t work.  Compromising doesn’t make either one of us happy.

That win-win situation that many self-help books preach?  It doesn’t exist.   Whoever wrote those books never had a spouse whose core temperature was nowhere near their own.

Of all the techno-gadgets in our home, no device is handled more often than our thermostat.  Why the man can’t leave the thermostat at a constant, comfortable 73 degrees is beyond me.  For him there are only three temperature settings:  polar breeze, arctic blast, and colder than a witch’s wart.  If it isn’t one of the first three, then it’s hotter than Hades.  He has the air conditioning cranked up to arctic blast in the summer and in the winter, he sets it just above the point where the pipes might burst.

Meanwhile, I can either spend an enormous amount of time outdoors in the summer for fear of frostbite, or I can turn off the AC and open all the windows and doors.  Guess which one really ticks him off?

I have asked for a down-insulated bathrobe and matching slippers for Christmas every year, but until Santa leaves that lovely ensemble under my tree, the only thing I can do in the winter is turn the thermostat up.  An hour later, it will have been turned down again.  Oh, he’s good.  I’ve never caught him doing it and he’s never caught me.  We do it on the sly because we know it will cause an argument.  There’s nothing dumber than arguing about the temperature of the room.

In the winter, he likes to bluster about how much the electric bill is going to cost if we don’t keep it turned down; no doubt trying to guilt me into willingly freezing my nether parts off.  However, he doesn’t seem to mind the high electric bill in the summer while my lips turn blue.

Compromise?  I don’t think so.  If we set the thermostat higher than what he would like and lower than what I would like, then neither of us will be happy.  I would rather have it exactly where I want it 50% of the time, but I find I need to be very vigilant about claiming my 50%.  This is not exactly what the self-help gurus would call compromise, but what do they know anyway?

Traveling in a car is even worse.  I have to wait until my husband is distracted by traffic before I can adjust the AC and fan to thaw out.  Sometimes he’ll catch me, and acting as if he is trying to help me out, he’ll turn everything all the way on or all the way off depending on what season it is.

Now people, just because I don’t want to freeze does not mean that I want to roast.  But he’ll wait until we are both beginning to get crispy before he turns on the freeze machine again.  Then he’ll apologize to me, “I’m sorry, Laura, but it’s just too hot in here.”

No kidding, Mr. Freeze.

Do you remember the old Batman series?  One of his archenemies was Mr. Freeze.  He was a very unhealthy-looking, bald, fat character who looked the color of death.  It was as if he could not quite handle the cold he was creating.  I would bet that he didn’t have a wife.   If he did, he’d have had a chance to thaw out now and then… whether he liked it or not.

Holy witch’s wart, Batman!

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.

Hazards of Reading (Click image to enlarge)

When I want to stimulate my mind without stimulating the rest of me, I read.  There is nothing more relaxing.  Even watching TV has a certain stress factor attached to it, especially if you are not in possession of the remote or you are not technologically inclined, both of which are issues for me.  The frustration of going through all 1256 channels and finding nothing whatsoever to watch is bad for your psyche.  You start to wonder what’s wrong with you.

Trying to figure out how to fast forward your TiVOed shows through the commercials, only to realize that you’ve passed the beginning of the segment is a lesson in many of the virtues that I don’t possess in great quantities.

For these reasons and many others, reading will always be my choice for true relaxation.

My love of reading has extended itself to my children as well.  Every one of them likes to read before falling asleep.  I’m sure there is some expert on children’s issues or sleep apnea who will say that reading before sleeping is not healthy.  It seems that anything that makes life worth living is not good for you.  Maybe their eyes will go bad if they read at night or they’ll become dependent on reading to fall asleep. There’s probably something, somewhere, but I really don’t know.

What I do know is that children who read are smarter and do better in school.  I have seen the proof of that in my own family.  You can get a kid glasses, but you can’t fix dumb.

My husband only reads in the bathroom.  I don’t think that counts.  I think there must be more harm that can come from being dependent on books to have a bowel movement.

What if he were stranded on a deserted island with no reading material?  He would be near to exploding when a rescue ship finally arrived.  Imagine the look on the captain’s face when my husband thanked him:  “Thanks a lot man.  Now, I need a book or a magazine or the back of a shampoo bottle – anything to read! Now!”

I would not want to be a sailor on that ship if they had so much as a fortune cookie.

I digress…

My youngest boy likes to read Calvin and Hobbes comic books.   They are practically his bible and he reads them religiously.  Calvin is his role model for his constitutionally-granted right to the “pursuit of happiness.”  I tried to get him to read Little House on The Prairie, but he wouldn’t go for it.  It would have been disloyal to Calvin and not half as much fun.

If any one of us had a true addiction to reading, it would be my thirteen-year old.  He’ll start reading at bedtime and forget that the goal is to eventually sleep.  He has a reading light that he straps to his forehead.  Sometimes, when I wake him in the morning, the reading light is still dangling off one ear, and… it’s still on.

My daughter is a big reader as well, but her comprehension is a little warped.  She was reading about the huge coniferous forests that once spanned the United States until deciduous species took hold.  She tried to explain to her younger brother why we have so many pines trees in our yard.

“It’s because of the confederate forests that used to be around here.  Now there are a lot more delicious ones.”

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.

When having a garage sale, there are two kinds of people:  Those who want to make some extra money and those who simply want to get rid of their stuff.
            My husband is a hoarder.  Not a full-blown, needs-therapy kind of hoarder, but the kind that thinks if we’re going to sell our stuff, we should get top dollar for it.  Otherwise he can’t bear to part with it.
            I was of a different mindset.  I thought if I could sell the stuff at a cheap enough price, I wouldn’t have to muscle it into the back of my car and haul it to the Goodwill.
            There is a certain amount of angst when trying to decide which stuff to keep and which was good enough to spend money on a few years ago, but now you realize you must have been on some kind of drug.  The cost of the space it took up in your home, plus the time it took to dust it and reposition it every few months was more than it was worth.  So what is it worth now?
            It isn’t new, but there’s nothing wrong with it.  I find myself second-guessing myself a great deal.  It works, so… $5.00.  But would I buy it for $5.00?  No… okay, $2.00.  If I can only get $2.00 would I keep it?  Maybe… $4.00.   Do I want to dust it, clean it, or trip over it, ever again?  Hmm… 25 cents it is!
            I have to set up for my garage sale without the help of my husband.  Otherwise, he’d be walking around behind me saying things like, “You want to sell this?” or “Why are we selling this so cheap?” or “This gravy bowl was somebody’s grandmother’s wasn’t it?”
            To avoid giving him conniptions, I put him in charge of making dinner.  He was just as happy to do that because he got to use his new grill.  We were selling the old one, which was the only item marked “$5.00”, marked down to “free to good home.”
            I guess he thought if we didn’t get rid of the old one, I’d make him take the new one back.  Not so, but the new grill kept him busy while I cleared out our house of all the useless stuff taking up space.
            Later in the day, he came to me and said, “We used to have a little white basting brush.  Do you know where that is?”
            Oh drat!, I thought.  “It’s in the garage in a shoe box full of old utensils marked 25 cents.”
            “You’re selling our basting brush?” he asked incredulously, as if I’d lost my mind.  Here we go…
            “I never use it.  I use a spoon to baste.”
            “Still, you shouldn’t sell things we can use,” he said, as if basting was a diversion in which he regularly dabbled.
            “I’m only selling things we don’t use.”
            “Well, I need the basting brush for my barbecued ribs.”
            I put my salesman hat on and said stubbornly, “Fine, that’ll be 25 cents, please.”  I held out my hand.
            “I’ve only got a dollar.”
            “I don’t have any change yet,” I said tartly.
            He looked at me, and waited for me to change my mind.  I looked back unblinking. 
            Finally, he broke, “Oh, for crying out loud!  I’ll go out to my car and get some change.  Where’s my slippers?”
            “Oh… um… no need for change, those are $1.00, but for you… 75 cents.”
 
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.