Time Magazine’s “Are You Mom Enough?” cover model, the California girl exposing her breast, purportedly did the shoot to enlighten the rest of us on the benefits of breastfeeding.

Bullshit.  No one except baby formula manufacturers and their lobbyists disputes the fact that breastfeeding is better for babies.  I think the girl found a way to be famous for a few days and jumped at the opportunity.  (Never mind that her poor kid will probably need to be in a witness protection program just to survive middle school).  But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and go with the premise that she simply wants everyone to accept as normal  the idea of breastfeeding a kid until he’s old enough not to need a step stool to reach her breast.

Here’s the problem I have with extended breastfeeding or extreme parenting or whatever you want to call it:  it’s not really about nourishment.

Think about it.  The kid on the cover of that magazine probably weighs 80 pounds.  He’s not getting all of his nourishment from that tiny tittie.  So it’s not about nourishment.  It’s about comfort.  Probably for both him and his mom.

Don’t believe me?  Dr. Bill Sears, the pediatrician Time cites as the guru for extended breastfeeders, says in an article for Parenting.com that breastfeeding is useful for staving off an impending toddler tantrum.  And the mom bloggers who believe in breastfeeding until a child weans him- or herself gush about how the breast can calm an angry kid.

One extended breastfeeding mom said it best:  “I’m his warm, safe place.”  Congratulations, lady.  You’re teaching your son that every disappointment in life can be solved by a nice long pull on your tittie.  And you’re setting yourself up to keep that job forever.   I feel sorry for the woman your nursling eventually marries.

Have you noticed that there are a lot of grown men who are still sucking mom’s tittie?  Here’s the cycle:  nothing is good enough for them – not even their wife’s lovely breasts.   And since mom taught them that women exist to make them feel better, they’re compelled to keep searching for what they think they deserve.  Furthermore, because they never had to work for anything (good looks and that superb throwing arm were always enough), when they’re caught cheating, they end up back in mom’s house, living off her while she pays the legal fees incurred during attempts to reduce their child support payments.  Mom, for her part, believes that no one is good enough for “precious” because she’s the author of that crap.  And she’s secretly thrilled that her baby still needs her.

Happy Mother’s Day to the truly great moms out there, the ones dedicated to raising self-sufficient adults.   And to you gals who think motherhood is about letting a kid suck your boob forever, please stop trying to convince us that it’s “natural.”  It’s not.  Watch the lions, tigers, bears, and your own dog.  What’s natural is to give birth and quickly start teaching your offspring how to survive.  Good moms are all about working themselves out of a job.

with my mom and dad at The Beach Boys

When I was a little girl, I spent a couple of weeks every summer at my grandparents’ farm.  I’ve mentioned before some of the activities and chores involved in a stay at the farm – egg gathering, exploring Nanny’s freezer for food older than I was, and working on my Uncle Wierdie’s “Ship” Shoveling Crew.  One of my favorite things to do, though, was lay on my belly in front of their stereo and listen to Nanny’s 8-track tape of the Beach Boys.

I was a pretty sheltered preacher’s kid.  I went to a Christian school my whole life, and we didn’t have a television in our home during a large chunk of my childhood.  So it’s probably safe to say that I’d never heard of the Beach Boys until I was seven or eight years old.

I remember playing those songs over and over, listening, and thinking it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard.  It must have driven my grandmother crazy, but all I remember is Nanny occasionally coming into the living room and shimmying to the music, laughing her head off the whole time.

Those songs are on my iPhone now.  A couple of years ago, I mentioned to my son that Paul McCartney once said he thought “God Only Knows” is the most perfect song ever recorded.  We listened to it together, and my son said in almost a reverent tone, “I wonder how they did that.”

I never in a million years thought that I would get to see those old guys in concert.  But somehow, the stars aligned and the surviving members of that original five are doing a 50^th anniversary reunion tour.  I got to hear them last night.

Aside from the fact that Brian Wilson had to be helped on and off stage, you wouldn’t have known they’d gotten old.  Then again, the abundance of walkers, canes, and hearing aids in the audience was a dead giveaway.

I went with a group of friends from my neighborhood, and I sat next to my parents.  Now, my dad has never been known as a partying kind of guy.  And no one who knows the man will dispute my claim that when it comes to dancing, he’s the whitest white guy on the planet.  I looked over at him during “Be True to Your School,” and he was sitting in his chair with his hand cupped behind his ear trying to hear the song because he’s too damn stubborn to get a hearing aid.  But when I pointed out that he and the guy sitting next to him, who was hooked to an oxygen tank, were the only two people in the whole audience still seated, he actually stood up and shook his booty.  Kind of.

I was back on the farm lying on my belly and watching Nanny dance last night while they sang “Surfin’ USA.”  And that, I think, is the point of great music.  It takes you out of yourself.  It puts you in a happy time and place.  And it creates in our bodies what quantum physicists now tell us actually exist and what metaphysicians have always said is the necessary ingredient for making dreams come true – Good Vibrations.

I don’t usually post links to outside, well, anything.  No spreading of salacious news stories or linking to blog contests with 5-pound tubs of mayonnaise giveaways here.  Because, purely and simply, this blog is all about me.

But here’s one I’m going to share with you, my friends.  Because this one is kind of cool.  It’s the “Dear Lucky Agent” writing contest, and all you have to do to get the attention of an agent is write 200 great words.  It reminds me of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving because I think that novel has one of the greatest opening lines of all time.

Don’t believe me?  Here is the first sentence of Owen Meany:

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

Makes you want to read it, no?  It’s got religion, death, mystery, dwarfism, and a hint of an Oedipal thing going on.

When I walk into a bookstore and pick up an interesting book, I open it and read the flyleaf (or for a paperback, the back cover) for a brief description of the book.  And then I turn to the first page.  If I’m hooked, I buy the book.  The first page of a book is supremely important, and that’s why I’m so intrigued by this contest.

So here’s the link to it:  http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/ninth-free-dear-lucky-agent-contest?et_mid=553181&rid=3114796

Enter today, and good luck!

Several years ago, at the height of my nasty divorce, my in-laws called to say they were bringing me something.

Naturally, I was a little nervous.  They’re nice people, but my mother-in-law had once remarked to me about my husband, “He’s your problem now.”  Since they weren’t exactly thrilled that I was retracting that responsibility, I couldn’t imagine what kind of gift they had in mind for me.

It’s a fact of life that when a nice person demonstrates great pleasure in something simple, people will go out of their way to indulge that pleasure.  For instance, I stopped this morning to buy my daughter, who’s visiting for the week, a box of 16 sea-salted caramels from Claude’s Chocolates here in St. Augustine.  Why?  Because I love my daughter, and she loves Claude’s caramels.

I love watermelons, and people have been giving me watermelons my whole life.  Every summer until my grandmother died, I could count on my grandparents bringing me a Crimson Sweet melon.  Last July, my best friend brought me a melon from an old farmer in middle Georgia who’s a friend of her father’s.   Ever since I was pregnant with my son and ate a whole watermelon by myself, my in-laws have been well aware of my passion for that sweet, red fruit and have occasionally indulged that passion.   But here’s the thing:  in every single watermelon gift during my lifetime, I’ve only received one.  I’ve never had a pair of nice melons.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the divorce was at its worst, my estranged in-laws walked into my house bearing two gargantuan watermelons.  I was still a little skeptical until they set them on my countertop and said, “We don’t know if they’re any good.  Uncle Charlie threw out the seeds in the family garden patch at the farm.  No one’s watered them, but there sure are a bunch out there.  If you want more, just ask.”

I thumped the first one with my middle finger.  Thunk.  It sounded perfect.  I grabbed my biggest knife and cut into that melon, still expecting it wouldn’t be much. They’d been neglected, after all, and how good can an unloved melon taste?

After the first cut, it cracked completely open.  A very good sign.  I took a bite, then looked up in surprise at my in-laws.  I started laughing and said, “This is the best watermelon I’ve ever had in my life!”  It was crisp, not the least bit mushy.  And sweeter than a spoonful of Splenda.  But no artificial sweetener has ever run down my arm and dripped from my elbow onto the extended tongue of a begging dachshund.

No, I didn’t eat that entire melon by myself.  My in-laws and I stood over that kitchen as they helped me devour it.  My kids walked through the kitchen and stole a few bites.  Even the dachshunds, Laverne and Shirley, got lucky.  I was brandishing a large chef’s knife, yet no one was intimidated.   It was the magic of the melon.

As we ate, my father-in-law told me the history of my melons.  They weren’t an experiment in genetically altered rindless, seedless, tasteless mush melons by the most hated company in America, Monsanto. The heirloom seeds had been in his family for over 100 years.  “If you save these seeds and plant them,” he said, “they’ll grow.” So I saved three big handfuls of seeds from those two melons and froze them.  The next spring, I planted probably twenty of the seeds in pots inside my pool area, intending to transplant them once they were established. I never got a melon off those plants.  Deer kept jumping my fence and eating the plants.  The closest I got to a watermelon was one tennis-ball sized orb I was watching closely.  But a damn deer got him, too.

After that failed attempt, I forgot about my seeds.  They sat in my freezer for five years, and I found them last May when I sold the house and finally cleaned out the freezer.  I brought them to Florida with me and tucked them safely away in a new freezer.

When my pool construction was completed in January, I asked the guys installing the new landscaping to help me prepare a small garden patch in the corner of my yard.  They tilled a spot and worked in several bags of cow manure.  On a warm day in February, I planted those twice-frozen old heirloom watermelon seeds in hopes one or two would sprout.

This beautiful quote is from the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism:  “I am the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be, and my desires are like seeds left in the ground:  they wait for the right season and then spontaneously manifest into beautiful flowers and mighty trees, into enchanted gardens and majestic forests.”

Or a few perfect watermelons.  But only if you take them out of the safety of the freezer, expose them to a little shit, and resist the urge to tug at them in hopes of making them grow faster.

I’ve told the story about my Granddad pulling his own tooth with a pair of pliers and how he explained his actions by saying, “It was bothering me, so I pulled it.” I’ve also said that I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just go to the dentist.

Now I understand.

I have had some good dentists and some suspect dentists in the checkered chronicle of my choppers. One, I think, was the inspiration for Steve Martin’s character in Little Shop of Horrors.  And when I was just a child, a horrible hygienist told me that chewing on my lip would cause mouth cancer that would mean I’d have to have part of my face removed. The woman successfully ensured that I would always chew my lip and the inside of my mouth when I’m nervous.

So it’s understandable that I’ve put off finding a new dentist since I moved to St. Augustine.  My son and I were long overdue for a cleaning, so this week, I found myself in the office of a new dentist.  I gnawed on my lower lip as I filled out the medical questionnaire prior to seeing the doctor.  Oddly, it was the questionnaire just as much as seeing a new dentist that made me anxious.

You see, I’ve gotten over my childhood fear of dentists, mostly because of the dentist I had when my kids were very little.  I always felt like I got special treatment in his office, and I never once got carelessly jabbed during a cleaning.  I bragged on this guy to everyone who would listen:  “He’s fast, gets me in and out within 30 minutes.  And he never tries to sell me $200 toothbrushes or convince me to let him redo all the silver fillings in my mouth.”  And it was true.  When I showed up at his office, his staff quickly took me back to a special room and cleaned my teeth with lightning speed.  Then the doctor would walk in, quickly check my teeth, and very kindly tell me I was free to go.

Two years later, I found out why I got special treatment when a new hygienist said to me, “So how long have you been HIV positive?”

“I’m not HIV positive,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of her question.

“But you checked ‘yes’ on your questionnaire under HIV,” she said, handing me the form.  I quickly recognized the checkmarks I’d made.  My signature was at the bottom.  And I had checked “yes,” to indicate that I was HIV positive.

To this day, I have no explanation for it.  Every other box on that form was checked “no.”  But it explained the fast service and the special room in the dentist’s office.

I was careful this week as I filled out the questionnaire, especially when I came to the question about HIV.  And I had a rather uneventful visit with my new dentist, happily noting that she tried to sell me an expensive sonic toothbrush and that my time in the chair lasted longer than an hour.

In my euphoria over a successful visit to a new dentist, however, I forgot to ask for an excuse note for my kid, who checked out of school an hour early for his checkup and cleaning. But here’s when you know you’ve found a great dentist:  the office cheerfully offered to fax a copy of the note directly to my son’s school.  And then they mailed me the original.

The next day, my son came home from school and said, “The attendance office said they won’t accept that fax.  You have to bring an original copy of the note to them.”  I told him we were waiting for the original to come in the mail.

This morning, he reminded me that the school needed the note, and he said, “If they don’t get it by today, it will be unexcused.”

I checked the mail, but I still hadn’t received the original note.  So I drove to the dentist’s office, picked up their photocopy of the original  and then drove it to my son’s school, nervously forming my response when the administration rejected it because it was a copy.  I signed in at the front desk and then proceeded to make my way to the attendance office.  The Dean of Attendance at Pedro Menendez High School in St. Augustine, Florida, looked that note up and down as if to check for evidence of a sly Photoshop job.  Then she said, “I remember this.  I decided to accept that fax because I finally determined that it came straight from the dentist’s office.”

You’d better wash your hands after holding that note, I wanted to say, because I’m HIV positive.  But I didn’t.  I simply thanked her for excusing his absence and headed for my car.

So like I said, I now understand why my Granddad just resorts to pliers.  It’s called the Law of Diminishing Dental Returns, which formally states, “A uneventful trip to the dentist is kind of like pulling teeth.”

And I also get why my little nephew Joe insists, “Santa’s real.  But the Tooth Fairy?  Naw.”

You know the old saying about even a blind dog sometimes being able to find a bone?   The meaning, of course, is that every once in a while life throws a little good our way, so chin up.  Be happy.  See the glass as half full.

At my house, we’ve changed the saying, though.  It goes like this:  Every once in a while, even a blind dog catches a UPS guy.

I mention my two defiant dachshunds, Laverne and Shirley, quite often.  And of course, they’re shepherded by Pancho, my three-legged Aussie, whom they despise.  But I don’t say much about Squiggy because he’s very old, nearly toothless, and blind as a bag of hammers.  He gets around the yard mostly by keeping to the same path.  Sadly, when my yard got dug up two months ago for the new pool, I found poor old Squiggy in the bottom of the newly-dug hole a time or two.  He kept bumping in the sides as he searched for a way out.  But Squiggy’s not dumb.  He’s figured out the new layout of the yard, and he carefully makes his way around the house each morning so that he can spend the greater part of his day on the front porch.  Best I can figure, he does this for one of four reasons.

1. The front porch gets full sun all day long, and he likes the feel of sunshine on his snout.
2. Pancho does not hang out on the front porch.
3. Every afternoon, I bring him in from the front porch, feed him the best leftovers from the ‘fridge, and then carry him back to his bed in the garage.
4. The UPS guy delivers to the front porch.

You see, in his prime, Squiggy terrorized UPS guys.  I’ve written before that Laverne and Shirley are biters, but their bark is truly worse than their bite.  Squiggy, on the other hand, was like the Israeli army.  Encroach on his territory, and retribution was swift, accurate, and unapologetic.  He’s had to floss the delicate ankle skin of many UPS guys, a tax collector, a pool guy, more than one yard guy, the Georgia Power meter reader, a babysitter’s boyfriend, and even my grandmother from between his teeth.

But now that most of those teeth are gone, he just sits on the front porch.  He’s waiting and hoping.

Three days ago, I was in my kitchen when the UPS truck pulled up.  I opened the front door, took the package from our nice UPS man, thanked him, and then watched in fascination as he danced around a snarling Squiggy, who was turning in circles trying to locate the man.   “I know that dog’s blind,” the UPS man said, “but he almost got me the other day.”

Squiggy reminds me of a middle-aged person going through a divorce.   A few pounds heavier, with several kids, not much money, teeth slightly yellowed, a slower step, and about to find out that dating in middle age isn’t quite the same ball game as it was in high school and college.  Still, if you don’t at least fumble your way around to the front porch, you really have no chance of catching anything.  Not even a slow UPS guy.

But hey, a dog can dream.

My granddad, Horace Adams, turns 89 today.  I called this morning to wish him a Happy Birthday, and when he answered, he told me he was reading.

That he was reading was good news.  Last summer, he had cataract surgery on his good eye.  A scratched cornea during his recovery caused concern that he wouldn’t regain his vision.

I went to spend a few days with him, mostly so that I could drive him around and be his eyes until his vision was completely restored.  The first morning, I woke to find him in the kitchen cooking me breakfast.  And then I saw that the dryer was pulled away from the laundry room wall.  “What are you doing with the dryer, Grandad?”

“Awww, the cotton-pickin’ thing ain’t workin’ this morning.  I pulled it out to see if I can fix it.”

I didn’t dare mention calling a repairman.  Because even with compromised vision, he’s still the best appliance repairman I’ve ever known.  If he can’t fix it, no one can.

For as long as I can remember, at any given time, he’d have a broken dishwasher or clothes dryer, probably one he’d found abandoned on the side of the road, that just needed a few minor adjustments to make it as good as new.  His grandchildren have never wanted for a major household appliance; we just had to ask Grandad if he had an old one lying around that he could fix.  He mows his lawn with a Snapper he’s had since the 1960s.   It’s older than I am.

My uncle says Grandad is hard-headed.  And he’s probably right.  Last December, I watched the two of them argue over whether or not Grandad should climb up on his own roof to install a satellite dish.  The argument was getting a little heated, and I tried to diffuse it by saying, “Grandad, if you do, someone might think you’re Santa Claus.”  He chuckled, but stubbornly refused to promise us that he wouldn’t climb up on his roof.

But stubbornness is his biggest fault.  If you can even call it a fault.

Thankfully, on this chilly January morning in Atlanta, Georgia, his satellite and dryer were working, the grass didn’t need cutting, and he could see to read.  After we chatted about his birthday party, our conversation turned to a man he knows who has been cheating on his wife and is now dragging out an acrimonious divorce by haggling over child support.

“He’s just sorry,” was Grandad’s take on the whole situation.

I got to thinking about it after we hung up, about how there are many things one could call a man who shirks his duty to a wife and children.  The words I would use are a little saltier.  But Grandad doesn’t cuss.  “Sorry” is the harshest term he can conjure up.  And to his way of thinking, “sorry” is also as low as you can get.

It reminds me of the conversation we had a lunch several months ago.  My uncle brought up the Republican primaries, and he asked who I thought would win.

I hemmed and hawed and basically admitted I had no idea.

“I tell you what, though, Newt Gingrich is the smartest of the whole bunch,” my uncle finally said.

Grandad hadn’t said a word, but at that moment, he piped up and said, “Well, he ain’t smart enough to keep a wife!”

Ten years ago, he watched helplessly as my grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. He still wears his wedding band, and to this day, his eyes fill with tears at the mention of her name.

I’d rather die than every have him call me “sorry.”  And I won’t remarry until I find one like him.  Happy Birthday to one of the best men who will ever live.

By late afternoon, I was beginning to worry that we were going to end up in the emergency room.  You see, when he was a kid, the doctor made sure I kept a supply of Phenergan, an anti-nausea medication that comes in the form of suppositories, in my refrigerator because of previous trips to the ER for dehydration following some nasty stomach bugs.   When I mentioned Phenergan, my son, who was lying on his bed and almost unable to move, vigorously shook his head and said, “I can make it.”

It was three days before he was able to eat solid food, and he was as weak as Newt’s chances of being President.  However, he was right.  He made it.  But he scared his mother half to death.

Three days later, Pancho, our three-legged Australian Shepherd, scared me worse.  I woke up and went to let my dogs out to find that he had apparently caught a similar stomach bug.  My garage looked like he’d consumed a gallon of Colonblow.   The frightening thing, though, was that he couldn’t walk.  He was so pitiful as he tried to pull himself toward me with his two front legs that I almost burst into tears.  I picked up that 65-pound dog, put him into the backseat of my car, and sped to the veterinarian’s.

They checked him out completely and decided that he was simply weak from being sick.  I carried him back to the car, took him home, and he slept on his beanbag chair in the house the whole day.  Thankfully, by the next morning, he was back to normal.

There has been some debate in my family over the past few months about which of my dogs is the smartest.  Certain family members like to joke that my dachshunds are dumb because their brains are only the size of a walnut.  But after what happened this week, I’ve decided that they’re wrong.  And I can prove it.

When my son was sick, several different people said to me, “You’d better watch out because that stuff is going around. You’re next.”  My reply was that I wasn’t worried because I never get stomach bugs.  The reason, I believe, is that I take massive doses of probiotics.  I take a brand called Primal Defense, which is comprised of Homeostatic Soil Organisms (HSOs).  In researching the product, I found this quote by a Dr. Goldberg:  “It has been suggested that bacteria found in the soil referred to as Homeostatic Soil Organisms (HSOs), when ingested orally in a probiotic formulation, may have advantages over non-HSO probiotic formulas, due to their ability to implant and survive in the gut. The value of HSOs reportedly lies in promoting positive intestinal function, with corresponding systemic improvements in the patient’s overall nutritional, immunological and gastrointestinal status.”

Now, I’m not promoting Primal Defense.  I’m just saying that I think the reason I never get sick is that I take probiotics, and this is the brand I use.

But why is that important?  And what does it have to do with my dachshunds?

While all of this sickness was happening inside my house, several men were working outside my house to install the landscaping around my new pool.  Off to one side, I had them prepare a small area for a vegetable garden.  They mixed into the soil a large amount of cow manure.   I walked outside one afternoon after the men had left for the day to find my dachshunds eating that dirt.

I realize this is highly speculative and based completely on circumstantial evidence.  But my dachshunds eat from the same food bowl that Pancho does, and none of them became ill.  I’m going out on a limb, I realize, but I think it might be because of the HSOs in that dirt.  That or they don’t drink out of my son’s toilet like Pancho does.

Either way, in my book, it makes the dachshunds smarter.  And if that’s not enough proof, I got confirmation from a second source.

I was out walking Shirley the other day, and we happened past a group of six neighborhood kids engaged in a game of touch football.  There were five boys and one girl, who was wearing a dress and fancy tights.  She was playing center — bending over and hiking that ball — in a dress.  I was immediately impressed.  When she saw Shirley, she squealed, “Dachshund!” and left the game to run over and pet my dog.  She sat down on the curb and circled Shirley’s head with her fingers.  She held up that circle of fingers to me and said, “Her head is this big.”  Then, closing the circle a bit, to just about the size of a walnut, she continued, “Which means her brain is this big.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, laughing.

She looked me in the eye and said solemnly, “The smaller the brain, the smarter the dog.” And then she kissed Shirley on the lips.

I’ll bet that kid never gets sick.

In early 1992, my husband and I began construction on a new home.  We’d put our home on the market, sold it within a week, and given every penny we had to a “preferred” builder in the new neighborhood we’d chosen as a deposit on the new place.

Right around the time the roof went on the house, we received word that our builder was filing for bankruptcy.  Construction on our home was halted.  Our choices were to walk away and lose our money or wait for three months, buy our home on the courthouse steps, then hire another builder to finish it.

We waited the three months and purchased the forlorn-looking home in progress. Thankfully, my husband was able to talk the bank into allowing him to assume the builder’s construction loan, but we soon found out that the builder had spent a good deal of our loan money on other projects, leaving us with just enough money to complete the home if we were frugal.  But there was not enough money to hire a contractor.  All of a sudden, my husband, a man who had to repeat to himself “lefty loosey righty tightey” just to change a lightbulb, became our builder.

Down the street, a guy named Ruben was building a million-dollar home for a former pro golfer.  Ruben was a former acquaintance of my parents and was familiar with their ministry.  He took pity on us and began sending his sub contractors over to work on our house at his negotiated prices.  And every few days, his brother and business partner, Joel, would stop by to check on our progress.

One day, Joel and my husband were walking through the house, and Joel said, “You know, if you would take the time to screw these floors down, you’ll never have a creaky floor.”

My husband drove straight to Home Depot and bought himself a power drill and a huge box of screws.  He went back to the house and began screwing down the floors.

Joel showed up a couple of hours later to check on him.  He walked into the house, took one look at my husband and at the floor, and burst out laughing.  He motioned for Darren to follow him downstairs to the basement, and then pointed up.  Hundreds of screws were sticking through the particle boards that made up the floors.  Joel had failed to explain that the boards needed to be screwed into the floor joists.   My husband had screwed those floors into thin air.

I realize this is an opportunity to joke about my husband’s wayward screwing, to call it an early omen of his future cheating, and to wonder how I failed to notice that ominous warning.

But that’s not what I take from this story.  I see it as more of a lesson on how we fixate on securing our futures only to find out that it’s an exercise in futility.   We think our security resides in relationships or investment accounts or even houses, finding out when it’s too late that we’ve just been screwing our floors to nothing.

The whole search for certainty, in fact, is like those errant screws.  We can only imagine security in terms of what we already know or have, and that means living in the past.  The answer, then, is to not be a prisoner of the past but to be willing to live in the present.

So although I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, I want to live this next year in the moment, worried neither about what’s already happened or what might happen.

It reminds me of a story my friend Donna told me.  Her granddaughter, who was visiting from California, insisted on an early morning swim in Donna’s pool.  Little Katie, who’s seven, jumped into the chilly water, but Donna sat on the edge, hoping she wouldn’t have to get in.  But Katie was having none of it.   After much cajoling, Donna stuck a toe in, then eased down to sit on the top stair.

Katie persisted in trying to get Donna into the water.  Finally, in frustration, she said to her grandmother, “LaLa, I came here to have fun!”

I’m fairly certain I’m not here to spend my life being worried.  And I’m completely sure I’m not here to be miserable.  It feels right, this idea that I’m here to enjoy my life and to be happy.  I came here to have fun, and in 2012, I’m jumping in.

Apparently, stop doesn’t really mean stop.

I took my car in for service today.  It’s a great little convertible, perfect for a girl who lives on the beach.  But I’ve been thinking about getting rid of it.  First of all, I already have a 5-year-old SUV with 100,000 miles on it that has never given me a moment’s trouble. I don’t exactly need the convertible, even though it is terribly fun to drive, especially on these beautiful fall Florida days when the temperature likes to stay in the 70s.

The real reason I’ve been thinking about selling it is that I keep getting a message saying, “High battery drain.”  Six months ago, I called the service department at the nearest dealership, and the nice guy who answered my call told me the problem is that I have a racehorse of a car that I’m basically treating like a yak.  I’m driving all of three miles every day, and the car just wasn’t built for short, slow trips.

My car deserves better, and although it was going to hurt, I was prepared to do the right thing.

Today I took it for an oil change.  I intended to talk to the used car sales manager about taking it off my hands, but something interesting happened when I was dropping it off at the service department.  The service rep took my key and plugged it into his computer so the car could tell them what it needed.  The guy looked at me and said, “Your car isn’t turned off.”

Huh?

My car has a cool feature called “comfort access.”  That means I can open my driver’s door and start the engine by pushing the start button, and I don’t even need the key.  As long as the key is on my person or even in my purse, the car will unlock, and all I have to do is push the button to start it.

He continued, “With the comfort access feature, you need to hit the button twice to turn the car completely off.  Just hitting it once turns the engine off, but it leaves the car actually on for 46 minutes.”

So I learned something new today.  Something kind of important.

The good news is that the high battery drain is not caused by my grandma-like driving habits.  I can keep my car!  The bad news is that I’ve been causing the high battery drain because I’m too damn lazy to read the owner’s manual.

Then again, I’ve always been the kind of person who believes stop means stop.  The first time.