The idea was to meander up the coast, stopping when we wanted, wherever we wanted, playing it all by ear. We were going to pack snacks. We were going to play car bingo.

We were going to sing songs and have bonding family time, creating memories that Ruby would cherish for the rest of her life. Of course, that is the ideal version. The reality could have involved threats of pulling over and letting mama out of the car immediately so she could walk home. And in fact, this is likely closer to the reality, since, as luck would have it, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation chose this very weekend to close ten miles of what is arguable the busiest freeway in America, the very one we would have needed to take to get to our destination on time (and don’t believe that photo in the article for a second; the 405 rarely looks that barren).

So serious is this closure, that the DOT has, for the last six weeks, been begging people who do not live in Los Angeles, not to come and telling those that do, to stay home. The closure of this freeway will impact every other freeway in surrounding the general LA area. Which is why we ended up buying overly priced plane tickets. Although, they were less expensive than the divorce that might have resulted from any attempt to drive under these conditions. And fortunately, we’ll still have what is supposed to be a two-hour drive. Bingo, anyone?

If you’ve ever taken the I-405, then you know well the impulse to want to stab yourself in the face. And you also understand what that means for anyone needing to get anywhere this coming weekend. It means something like this:

Our neighbors down the block have had their tree up since before Thanksgiving, and a house just a few steps from there has had lights twisted through their porch hand railing since 1274 AD.  Ruby knows this habit of displaying holiday accoutrements of any kind, outside of the month in which the holiday they celebrate takes place, is against my by-laws.  She therefore screams as we drive down the street, “A CHRIS! MUS! TREE!?! IT’S NOT CHRISMUS YET, STINKY!”  Someday, she’ll swear like I do—something more like, “IT’S! NOT! FUCKING! CHRISTMAS! YET! DIPSHITS!”—and I will applaud her.  It’s comforting to know my neurosis is being successfully embedded.

So patiently did my child wait through that long last week of November—excited and yet, forlorn that other people were breaking the rules and she couldn’t—that we broke down and went for the gold last night, on December 1st, about two weeks before we normally procure our Noble Fir (and, as it happens this year, on the first day of Hannukah, which consequently took a back seat for these Jews. Or perhaps I should say, “Jews”.)

To set the mood, I put on a little Sufjan Stevens holiday music, Ruby had some hot spiced cider, Sam and I enjoyed hot toddys and then we went to work. I always seem to forget during the other 11 months of the year, that putting up a tree is a lot of work.  And with a five-year-old assistant, things tend to be a little skeewompus:  Beads don’t gently droop like dew drops, but strangle like string around a brisket; many branches remain empty, while others bend with the weight of six precariously hung ornaments; and all 40 candy canes are positioned within arms reach of a 47-inch person.  This type of disorganization drives me batty, as I like my tree to be Just. So.  But dang if it doesn’t look pretty when I’ve taken out my contacts.

Thank the sweet baby Jesus that this only happens once a year.  And believe me when I say, come New Years Day? That thing will be naked and curbside while our neighbors cling to their decorations through Valentines Day.

I made my most recent pitch the day after fumbling for the remote during a commercial break on Monday Night Football. I had been less than graceful in my attempt to protect the delicate eyes of our 5-year-old from seeing the gun-and-bomb violence advertised during what Palin-fawning Americans insist is a family pastime. Never mind that she’s watching football, the contemporary version of gladiators. As far as I’m concerned, a knee bent in reverse might as well be a pastie-clad nipple compared with those military-recruitment ads or spots for certain video games.

“We’re not getting a DVR,” Sam said to me when I mentioned I was going to call about getting one. “We don’t need it. We don’t even watch any shows besides Mad Men, and there are only two episodes is only one episode left in the season.”

“But—the insufferable Meg Whitman ads! You know you hate her hair!” I countered, mouth agape. He wasn’t moved.

“Election season is almost over. And a DVR just means I’d have another piece of electronic equipment to figure out and manage and program. And I’d have to listen to you bitch about how it’s ‘broken’ when I accidentally erase a show you weren’t ready for me to erase.” I shut my mouth as he continued. “And then I’ll have to call Cox when it goes wonky—because it will go wonky. You know our track record with electronics.”

He had me on this point. And then he added: “It’s not a big deal. I’ll just skip Monday Night Football from now on.”

If you felt a violent jolt last Tuesday evening shortly after dinnertime, that’s because the entire universe came to an abrupt halt as that last sentence was uttered. Apparently, my man is so staunchly in the anti- DVR camp that he’s willing to give up Monday. Night. Football.

I stood before him, arms crossed, one hip thrust forward and one eyebrow raised in my hard-earned Hope Brady impersonation (she’s still on Days of Our Lives).

And then I threw in my best oh-no-you-di’unt neck-wobble when I challenged him: “Even when The Pack are playing?” I had to resist the urge to tap my foot.

He stared at me. I stared at him. There was a little twitch near his left temple. A tumbleweed blew by and it was nothing but crickets up in our house until Ruby broke the tension with the cutest little fart ever. “Excuuuuse meeee,” she said, giggling. With this diversion, I felt the debate shift in my favor. I was getting closer to that DVR by the second.

After a little pre-battle mantra chant on Thursday morning, I dialed Cox Communications—from memory. Like 363-TILT, the phone number of the first boy I ever kissed while sitting on a blue swing at Reservoir Park, 262- 1181 is with me forever. Only, unlike Mike Allen, Cox isn’t cute in that pre-pubescent, disproportionate-facial-features kind of way. And while Mike Allen’s braces didn’t lock with mine as I had worried they might, I am inextricably bound to my cable company.

You see, Sam isn’t the only one who has Cox on speed-dial. I call regularly to find out why our OnDemand isn’t loading or why our modem isn’t working or why our cable bill is escalating. Each time I’m forced to call, I have visions of being on the evening news as the woman who went postal on the cable tech. It’s a good thing they’re usually based out of places like Iowa and Delaware. A flight to their offices would really diffuse the impetus to kill.

The automated lady picked up the phone and chirped directions at me. “I see you’re calling from 619….” Yeah, yeah. I entered all the digits necessary to get to the main menu, and then I pressed zero to speak to a representative. Because that’s what I wanted to do: speak to a human being. But did it get me a human being? No. Communication breakdown: “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand you. Please enter 1 for…” I felt my blood pressure rising.

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.

I pressed zero again—and was looped around again. After the third time at this little game, I held the receiver in front of my face and yelled at the automated lady, “What part of ‘press zero to speak to a representative’ do you not understand?!?” In customer-service training manuals, this particular customer reaction is commonly known as the Belfer Method. It is completely ineffective.

I hung up and called back, starting the whole process again, only to have the automated lady say, “Due to the high volume of calls, your wait time is 11 minutes. Would you like to have someone call you back?” Why, yes, automated lady, yes I would. I selected this option by pressing the key I was told to press. I held it down extra long just so they would understand my request, and then I hung up. More than 11 minutes later, my phone rang. And, wouldn’t you know? It was the automated lady: “Please wait for the next available operator.”

Nam-Myoho-fuck-this-shit!

After another few very long minutes, a human lady came to the phone. But by that time, I’d exchanged my silly mantra for vengeance. I was so pissed that I’d have been more likely to vote for Meg What’s-With-Her- Yoda-Hair Whitman than give Cox a penny toward one of their stupid DVRs.

“We don’t even watch television anyway,” I told the human lady. “It’s just another piece of equipment that won’t work properly,” I said. “So, you can just keep your crummy DVR.”

And we’ll see just how many Mondays go by before the discussion begins again.

(As published—mostly—on Oct. 13th in San Diego CityBeat.)

And as long as I’m narrowing the scope of friends I have not yet offended, I’m going to state here that I am not a fan of facial hair on men.

Generally speaking—and there are rare exceptions—I like a clean shave, and there is no mystery that my preference is directly linked to daddy issues. My father grew a beard during the years before he left my mother, a time in which he was already gone, even if his body and his beard were physically present. He had taken up the guitar back then, and he would sit on the living-room couch, his long body curved around and clinging to the neck as if it were a rescue tube, and he would strum out “Peaceful Easy Feeling” over and over and over again. You can put The Eagles on my Gong List, too.

My husband knows my position, and, over the course of our 13-year relationship, he’s gone to great lengths to respect it. Though he also knows that if he wants to get laid, his chances—with me at least—decrease exponentially with each day the razor sits in its cartridge. The man makes his choices, and as he likes to say when soaping his face for a shave, “A happy life is a happy wife.” He really ought to write a book. Divorce rates would plummet.

His usually clean-shaven state is maintained out of a contractual agreement of sorts, in which I do not wear bangs and which has mostly worked well for us. With the exception of a time a few years back, when our marriage was in trouble and we engaged in a subliminal war of bangs vs. beard, I’ve kept my forehead uncovered and he’s limited his facial hair to a soul patch.

However, this past winter, he stopped shaving, partly out of superstition—his football team was doing well and he didn’t want to jinx it—and partly out of laziness. At which point, I just had to get over myself.

I didn’t have the energy or the right, really, to complain. He does a lot around the house, and I figured he’d earned himself a beard. It’s his face, I decided (I’m gracious like that), and he should do what he wants with it. And anyway, we’re married-with-kid and I have to be honest here: We’re the cliché. It’s not as if we’re having sex all the time and his incentive to keep up the upkeep was—meh. Sex as a tool is pretty ineffective when you’re not having it. Go figure.

When his team eventually lost in the playoffs, he went for a shave at Barber Side on Adams Avenue and, happy that he was going to indulge himself while releasing the demon, I did an end-zone dance. But it was premature because what came of that shave—and the subsequent shaves—was a handlebar mustache. I’d almost rather pet a cat than look at a handlebar mustache.

But my husband is supportive of all my endeavors, even the cockamamie ones; the least I could do was attempt to be supportive of his. Sam was having fun with facial hair, and given that I can change my look with a sweep of Red Stiletto lipstick by Lancôme, it seemed only fair to let him do his thing.

So, I accepted the ’stache when it began to grow. I even acted enthusiastic on its behalf for a while, going so far as to express eye-rolling exasperation when he told me a regular customer had asked him, as if she didn’t get his Halloween costume, “So, who are you trying to be?”

“Whatever,” I said, in solidarity. “Obviously, she doesn’t get it.”

But soon he began to absentmindedly twist it when we were chatting. Sometimes he’d smooth it. Other times, he’d pet it. And then? He started to wax it.

It moved when he spoke, tickled my face when we kissed, and, well—I have officially confirmed that I am not at all interested in Frederic Nietzsche going down on me. I’m glad, though, to have resolved that life-long question. It was keeping me up nights.

So one morning as Sam was leaving for work, just after he’d set my daily cup of coffee on my nightstand, I didn’t say, “Thank you” or “Have a great day, sweetie” or any of the kinds of things that would be appropriate for a woman to say to the man who goes to the store in the middle of the night to bring her back a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.

No. I said—in what I thought was a very diplomatic and reasonable tone—“So, honey, tell me. How much longer is the ’stache gonna be with us?”

After that, it was ix-nay on the ustache-may conversation. Like a deviant teenager, I considered making a hair appointment to cut me some bangs while he memorialized the mustache when he renewed his driver’s license. This thing just had to run its course.

In time, he headed to Barber Side and took off the ends, a happy compromise fully rewarded when we had frantic make-up sex in the backseat of my car. While it was parked in the garage. He pulled a hamstring, but still. He got laid. And I got my baby-faced boy in a mustache I can live with.

(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)

Sam: Well, figure skating is smooth with a series of elements that have to be shown, with dramatic air-type things and turns and jumps and stuff. The ice dancing is more dancey, if you will, with dance moves and lots of those close choppy steps.

Me: What about the long program? Good God, the long programs go on forever.

Sam: I think the longs are more dramatic and the shorts are more whimsical.

Me: Why do people watch this…?

Sam: OHHHHHHH!!! She! Just! Ate! Shit!!! She just went down on the first toss! These are Olympians?!? Isn’t that the whole point: That they defy gravity and don’t fall down? They had four motherfucking years to practice this shit and she falls on the first spin? That’s why people watch this shit! And–and!–you get bitchin’ crotch shots all day. Check it.

Me: “The Way We Were”? For real? Don’t they want people to stay awake for their long program? Hello 1973. Our century doesn’t have any music to choose from.

Sam: I like their little outfitsOHHHHHH!!! She ate shit!!! She went down on the triple salchow! That’s three for three. I don’t know…maybe one fall per deal is normal? I don’t know…Whoooa!!…She almost packed that in! She was starin’ at some serious ice right there…

Me: Okay. I’m gonna go work now.

Ten minutes later, Ruby was handing her pictures over to Miss Sarah. “This is a castle,” I heard her say. I was distracted by her little friend G. who was hurrying to peel away his shoes and socks so I could see how beautiful his pink toenails looked. “And this is Miss Carlee as a princess,” Ruby continued her parallel conversation. I told G. that Ruby’s dad likes to have his nails painted, too. “He likes purples and blues and greens and sometimes sparkles! How cool is that?” I asked him. His mother seemed embarrassed but also relieved at my reaction.

“Thanks for saying that,” she said.

“I’m not making this up,” I told her. “He’s artsy.”

Just then, I turned to see my daughter handing her teacher this:

He’s artsy, alright. He’s 8th grade, trapper-keeper, boy-doodle artsy.

Down there in the lower left quadrant? That is a naked person bending over with an asterisk for a butthole. Up above that guy are two formerly androgynous people drawn “without clothes!” per request of the child. Since Sam decided to make these two clowns G-rated—unlike the blue muscle man bending to pick up a dumbbell—she who is obsessed with all things penis, grabbed a sharpie and filled in the blanks. And then there’s the scary monster thing with hair made of lightning bolts, a squiggly smile and a Sonny Crockett 5 o’clock shadow. Notice the sharpied-on boxer shorts with the open fly. I’m not positive, but given the severe focus of conversation in our home lately, those are either tampon strings or urine running down his leg. Could just as easily be one as the other.

Of course, the upshot—I always like to find an upshot— is that the child is accurate and has some fairly impressive fine motor skills. But back to pre-school.

I saw the drawings and gasped. Then I stammered. So much for having my shit together. I hemmed and hawed and grabbed the paper with less subtlety than I would have liked. “I’ll just take this back home,” I said, withering. “Ruby’s in a phase…she asked Sam to do it and…um…well, we don’t do everything she asks…I mean…she did it.” I was selling out my man and my kid. I was losing credibility. I looked back and forth at the teacher and G.’s mother, apologizing, swearing that we do not normally sit around the house drawing wieners and sphincters. Princesses with giant breasts and “nibbles,” sure. But wieners and sphincters?

No siree.

Normally, we prefer naked dancing.

Could be a shank on a meat hook in a slaughterhouse, could be the leg of a cyclist. I know he wants me to think it’s his leg, but I also know he could never get a tan like that in spin class. Still. I decide it’s his leg and salivate a little. Then he sends this:

I roll my eyes. I giggle. I contemplate how much more enticing a woman’s anatomy is than a man’s and consider taking a female lover. I brush off this impractical college throwback notion and look at the picture again.

Then he sends me another and I have to reconsider:

And then one more comes in and my life flashes before my eyes:

**********************************

What are your middle names?
Mine is Greer. Sam doesn’t have one. That’s right: Doesn’t. Have one. It’s the crack in his façade.

How long have you been together?
Married seven. Together eleven. We’re just a franchise convenience store.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
Six months from the day we met. It’s a long dramatic story that involved me drunkenly drooling on his pillow long before that first date. One word: Shexay.

Who asked whom out?
He did some speculating, but I had a “boyfriend.” I reciprocated once the “boyfriend” was relieved of his post.

How old are each of you?
We’re both 38 but he’ll be 40 before me.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Siblings? Do we have siblings?

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
The fact that I never think he’s having a good time when we go out. This causes me to ask him repeatedly if he’s having a good time? Are you having a good time? Is everything okay? Are you having fun? Did you have fun? Did you have a nice time? and so on until he’s all, “Woman! I had a fantastic fucking time what the hell do you want from me?!?” 11 years and you’d think I’d get past it.

Did you go to the same school?
Nope. He graduated from University of Wisconsin, Madison in four-and-a-half years without one single loan. I, on the other hand, graduated from the illustrious San Diego State University with more credits than most post-docs and more loans than…look, I don’t want to talk about it.

Are you from the same home town?
Sam’s from the Land of Cheese. I’m from the Land of Funny Underwear.

Who is smarter?
This is a lame question because the answer could knock the are-you-having-a-good-time-at the-party inquisition out of the top spot on the Biggest Marital Issue list. Of course he’s smarter.

Who is the most sensitive?
He’s even. I’m crazier than a shit-house rat.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
We don’t have a most often. S’how we keep it fresh. We also don’t have a “my side” or “your side” of the bed. And sometimes, if we’re feeling reeeally frisky, we’ll put our heads where our feet go.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Florence, Italy. Oh, and to the moon. Couple-a times.

Who has the craziest exes?
Oh, Sam takes this one. Definitely. I got the family-crazy all locked up, so it’s only fair if he takes the lead in the loony ex department.

Who has the worst temper?
One of the many indicators that Sam is unbearably dysfunctional is his complete lack of a temper. Therefore, even my teensy, tiny, adorable outbursts look bad in comparison.

Who does the cooking?
I make a super-fly Chicken Pot Pie (let’s have that cook-off, Rachel!) and a deadly chocolate chip cookie. Otherwise, I’m a self-detonating bag of flour. A massive disaster in the kitchen.

Who is the neat-freak?
Sam just loves little boxes and tins and containers. Hidden compartments make him giddy. He organized all of my jewelry for me this past weekend and he begs me not to throw my gym-socks into the hamper inside-out. Need I say more?

Who is more stubborn?
I am not more stubborn. I am not, am not, am not! And that’s final.

Who hogs the bed?
I hog blankets once in a while but as far as the bed goes, we’re respectful of each other’s sleeping space. (Yay! A question that redeems some of my asshole-ish ways.)

Who wakes up earlier?
5:00 AM everyday, baby! (That would be Sam’s wake-up time.)

Where was your first date?
Kate Sessions Park in Pacific Beach. A moonlight walk with the dog. He stood on a park bench to kiss me.

Who is more jealous?
Not me. I’ve given my explicit permission for him to take a concubine. The only caveat is that she wash some dishes and babysit.

How long did it take to get serious?
One year and six months.

Who eats more?
Depends on what’s being served.

Who does the laundry?
Jesus! Who made up these questions? So what if I can’t cook or if I’m not as tidy or if I lose my temper sometimes or if I’ve been prohibited from going near the laundry due to my habit of washing pens and lip gloss? It doesn’t mean I’m not a worthy partner with attributes of my own. It simply means my husband is an enabler.

Who’s better with the computer?
That depends on the perspective. If you want a thoughtful, inquisitive, figure-out-the-inner-workings solution to the problem, Sam’s your man. But if you like something immediate that sounds an awful lot like fists pounding on a keyboard, I’m available in the evenings after 8:00 PM.

Who drives when you are together?
Mostly Sam. I like to be chauffeured so I don’t have to think about traffic can backseat drive. Also, he’s able to take my constant sighing when he misses his exits.