Rise of My Machines

This is the February print edition of After the Bubbly for Peekaboo magazine. If you would like to see this or any other essays in your local family publication, let me know!

We are dependent on machines: hair dryer, coffee pot, television, thermostat, washer, dryer, Toyota, microwave. Too many to list, right? And sometimes—like after my family watches The Matrix for the 412^th time—I wonder if we’re not getting a little too used to the electrical and mechanical conveniences, if we’re not getting just a little too soft. On a recent morning when the dishwasher wouldn’t start and my phone froze, I didn’t realize it was just the beginning.

After working for two hours, my computer angrily displayed the message that I had better switch over to real power before my battery died. Afraid to lose any portion of the Important Masterpiece I had been writing, I immediately checked everything—the plug that goes into the computer, the black box it feeds into, and the wall socket. All plugged in. My machine died. I switched outlets. Nothing. Over and over I powered up and the computer shut back into hibernation—trying, I assume, to save what little juice was left in its battery. Finally, it made a high pitched wheezing sound and then gave up humoring me completely.

I’m dead already!

The black screen stared at me. The blinky-blinky orange light on the power button disappeared. I inspected the cord and found it was broken, possibly mistaken for a rawhide by the dog I feed and bathe and medicate. (Not cool, Simon, not cool.) When I whined to my husband that I was on my way to Best Buy for a new power cord, he told me we had a universal cord in the desk drawer. When you hear that–universal–it sounds like something even a technophobe writer could figure out, right?

Right.

The universal cord had several tips to choose from and too many pieces to fit together. I eventually figured it out, but even fully assembled, the master of all power sources wouldn’t turn my computer on. Again, I checked all the holes and connections that could be amiss. All were in order so I gave up on the omnipotent power cord and took everything to Best Buy where two guys younger than my Compac told me I needed a new cord. Perhaps I would like the $149 model. (Not that they’re on commission or anything.)

In desperation I visited the Geek Squad desk. I was outrageously lucky to get a wildly talented geek. She listened to my story and offered a few tricks. While she spoke–and without breaking eye contact–she gently turned my computer over, effortlessly located the battery release, moved the battery slightly, and closed the compartment. So elegant and completely without ego. She sent me on my way.

At home, the tones of the power up sequence melted my shoulder tension and let me know that I would live to log in another day. All it took was a loving touch.

Maybe the machines aren’t so different from us after all.

Lela Davidson’s award-winning column, After the Bubbly, appears regularly in Peekaboo magazine, and periodically in other magazines throughout the country. She is the parenting columnist on HubPages.com and a regular contributor to ParentingSquad.com. She loves ALL her machines and tries to treat them nicely. Find out more on her wildly entertaining blog, www.afterthebubbly.com. Or just Google her. She loves to be Googled.

Anti-Resolutions

This is the January edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

Self improvement is overrated. This year instead of vowing to be better and then letting myself down two weeks later, I’m taking a different approach. I’m making anti-resolutions. That way if I succeed I’m successful, and if I fail I’m successful too.

I resolve to gain weight.

This should be a fun one. Who wants to be skinny anyway? Just think of all the new shopping I’ll get to do when I can no longer zip my jeans—to say nothing of the joy of Brie and chocolate. And once I gain all that weight, I’m going to start a foundation similar to Locks of Love, except instead of donating hair to cancer patients, we’ll get lipo-sucked and donate the results to runway models.

I resolve to stop working out.

It might be difficult to find the time to not exercise, but a little determination goes a long way. Marathons of the Real Housewives on Bravo will help. And hello—double bonus, no workout clothes means less laundry! Who needs extra energy and long life?

I resolve to start smoking.

So many people smoke, I’m starting to wonder what I’m missing. Seriously, if it’s so hard to quit it must be pretty good, right? However, I’ve heard smoking helps keep the weight off so this could make my resolution to gain weight more difficult. I’m willing to take the chance. Besides, considering the state of my retirement account, a shorter life expectancy makes sense.

I resolve to up my alcohol intake.

Next year at my annual physical I’d like to move my answer from the 3-5 drinks per week to the 5-8 category. It’s a realistic goal. Combined with the weight gain, lack of exercise, and smoking, this resolution has the potential to make a real impression on my overall health—and my physician.

I resolve to mess up the garage.

I’ve been trying to organize our garage for five years. (Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’ve been trying to get my husband to pick up his stuff and get rid of the junk he calls tools.) At this point I’m ready to give it up to the family of squirrels that have taken to eating the dog food the children drop on the floor.

I resolve to spend less quality time with the family.

Do you ever get the feeling your family takes you for granted? I do, and I think a little extended absence from Mama is what they need to make their hearts grow fonder. I’m thinking of a solo tour of Europe.

I resolve to decrease my tithe.

Okay, so I don’t actually tithe, but I can cut back on what I drop into that wicker offering basket. Aren’t I helping the world enough by spending money on my $4 cups of coffee and my 38 pairs of black shoes? All those unfortunate people don’t need the money like I do—Retrinol doesn’t grow on trees you know.

I resolve to decrease my vocabulary.

Some of the words floating around my brain have very little purpose in my everyday life and frankly I need to free up some capacity to stay on top of Facebook updates. Autumn for example—who needs it? Fall is shorter and more descriptive. Autumn, you’re dead to me.

I resolve to make less money.

This one needs some clarification. Let’s be clear that I don’t want to have less money or spend less money, I just don’t want to be the person who makes it.

Trotting Out My Turkey

This is the November edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

In the third grade my son’s class put on a Thanksgiving program. Imagine my pride at having him appear as both a turkey and a rapper and read the essay he wrote about being thankful for his education. We value overachievement here. As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one expected to perform.

Two weeks before the show, I received a note from the music teacher saying that because my child had been chosen to be a turkey, I needed to cover a white t-shirt completely with feathers. Use a hot glue gun, it said. The tone had a distinct air of condescension: if you’re not able to make the costume, please call the music teacher. That’s a dare if I’ve ever heard one.

I’m not too interested in competing with other moms via my child, but I’m also not one to back down from a challenge. I skipped off like a good mommy to Hobby Lobby where an entire aisle is devoted to feathers. These are not cheap, especially the turkey-appropriate colors like brown, white, and black. How badly could a fuchsia and chartreuse turkey stand out from the crowd anyway? I compromised, buying one packet of the good feathers and a value pack for filler.

I also bought a natural colored t-shirt because I figured that might make up for my feather scrimping. At least if I ran out of feathers he’d have a turkey-ish color showing through. I bought glue sticks and said a little prayer that my trusty glue gun still worked, because no way was I buying another one of those. At the register I smirked at my ability to get out of there for under ten bucks.

That night I waited impatiently for the glue to melt in the barrel of my ancient gun and started sticking. I attached a few feathers to my own shirt and burned off some fingerprints, but overall I rocked the turkey shirt. After about a half hour, I called it good, even if there were a few spots of natural showing through.

Judging from the feedback I received the next day after the dress rehearsal, I should have kept going. 

“You forgot the sleeves,” a neighbor girl noticed. As if turkey legs have feathers. Sheesh.

My son, ever the encourager, pointed out that one kid wore a plain t-shirt. Plain! I’d done a better job than at least one mom. That was good enough for me. 

On show day, as I took my seat in the cafeteria, tens of turkeys graced the bleacher stage. Some of them looked like Vegas acts and others looked like, well, kids being forced out in public with feathers glued to their shirts. My son may not have been the most attractive fowl, but his ‘Turkey Boogie’ blew the others’ out of the barnyard and his essay proved that he is one smart bird.

I just feel sorry for all those competitive moms whose kids had no t-shirt showing through.

The Trouble With Car Trouble

This is the June edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

A couple of summers ago I was unloading an obscene amount of groceries when I noticed a thick, pink substance on the garage floor. Lemonade maybe? But it appeared to be coming from inside the car. After I got my dairy and frozen goods out of the sweltering trunk, I dipped my finger into the pink stuff. It didn’t smell like anything and looked about as worrisome as IHOP syrup, which is only dangerous to my thighs.

About an hour later I had to run an urgent errand. (Running low on string cheese, most likely.) Because my husband was out of town, I had another car to drive, one which did not have pink goo oozing out of it. However, I chose to drive the leaky car. It started and drove fine, until the thermometer light came on. I tensed when it started to blink, even though I had no idea what that meant.

If I designed cars, there would be a light that said, Pull Over. And if you didn’t immediately comply, another light would come on that said, NOW! If you still didn’t get the hint, the car would turn itself off. But my car doesn’t have this handy imaginary feature. Despite the warning light, my trip was uneventful. I finished my urgent errand and drove home.

The next afternoon, after loading into my car five children, four snorkels, two masks, a box of crackers, forty-five fruit snacks, a gross of beach towels, and enough juice to flood a small country, the car wouldn’t start. I tried again while the children whined, hot and cranky. Clearly this was another urgent situation so I did what I had to do. I switched cars and went to the pool.

Then I had to make the call. “Do you want to hear the bad news?” I asked my husband.

I told him about the harmless smelling gunk, the flashing red thermometer, and the non-starting car. Luckily I married a man who remains calm in the face of mechanical trouble.

“Was the car leaking while you were driving?”

“No,” I said. “It was in the garage.”

“And the light, when was that flashing?”

Here’s where things started to turn against me. “Oh, well…. see…. I needed to go to the –”

“You drove the car?”

He’s even calm in the face of four-digit repair bills, but he felt bad for the car. I couldn’t feed his panic, but had to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about, just a task to accomplish. “What I need to know is whether I should have the car towed to the dealership or if you think we can put in some more of that pink stuff and drive it over.”

My husband sighed from another state and I heard the hang of his head. “I hope you didn’t seize the engine.”

“No.” I brushed it off. “I think it’s something else – something easy to fix.”

Neither my husband nor the mechanic agreed that it was something ‘easy’ to fix, but it didn’t matter. I may not be good with machines, but things always work out for me. For instance, my new car is very shiny.

When You Want to Run Away

This is the September edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

When I was a kid I never wanted to run away and join the circus. Now that I’m older, I get it. Although it’s not my dream to tame lions or become the bearded lady, I understand the lure of escaping to some exotic life where the tightrope you walk is literal as opposed to the figurative balancing act we do here in the world of diapers, homework, and ear infections.

My mother tells a story about her mother, who would tell her children that if they didn’t behave she would run off to Tucumcari, New Mexico and they’d never find her. To which my mother calmly responded that they most certainly would find her – in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Mom shouted similar warnings to my brother and I as kids. She would run away and never return. We didn’t have reason to believe her empty threats, but then again, you never knew. Moms are crazy like that. Our mothers and grandmothers didn’t mess with balance – work-life or otherwise. They didn’t have spa days or antidepressants or Oprah. They just woke up in the morning and did what needed doing. And if they lost it once in a while, well, they were entitled.

Genetics notwithstanding, I have yet to issue such a circus-running-off sort of threat. I prefer short periods of actual escape to fantasies of long-term flight. Running off for weekend writing classes and conferences recharges my depleted mama batteries and gives me strength to face the days of infinite laundry and incessant requests for Nintendo DS cartridges. I schedule my respites months in advance and write them on the calendar – in pen. In Sharpie even.

My retreats may not be as exciting as swallowing swords, but for me, some quality time with a spiral notebook and a half decent pen is usually enough to return equilibrium. And if it’s not, I run off to yoga class, where we make like a tree and stand on one leg, or rest our thighs upon our biceps. That’s balance. These are the things that keep me from losing it.

So next time you’re tempted to run away and join the circus, remember that you can juggle fire in your own kitchen and rig up a tightrope in your backyard. Just make sure you wait until after you’ve finished all that other balancing  – you know, the checkbook, the food groups, and the quality time spent with each child.

And if you hear of any writers’ meetings in Tucumcari, New Mexico, don’t come looking for me.

Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer seeking to balance life, love, and laundry with a husband, two children, a dog, and an ever-changing number of fish. Read more at www.afterthebubbly.com.

Compliments Are Never Weird

Thanks to Kim Enderle at Peekaboo Magazine, I’ve had the crazy good luck to be read by a lot of Northwest Arkansans over the last year and a half. I don’t know how many people actually read After the Bubbly and Chasing Date Night, but I do know that I can’t get out of any social situation (yes, that includes Walmart) without someone mentioning something they’ve read.

I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. Deliriously, giddily, stupidly happy. That some snot mouth remark hatched in my highly scattered mind made you laugh? When I hear that, it’s the highlight of my day.

At a party the other night I introduced myself to someone who mentioned she was just reading me today and almost sent me an email to let me know how much she enjoyed my column.

“But I thought you might think that was weird.”

Let me state very clearly: compliments are never weird. Honestly, the more effusive the better.

What’s weird is when you compliment me once and I subsequently harass you each and every month to make sure you have not only read my columns, blog, and assorted Facebook and Twitter status posts, but that you were also so entertained that you had to stock up on Poise pads. That would be weird.

Thank you, Dear Readers, for playing along. And thank you, Kim, for creating a magazine people want to pick up!

26 Ways to Torture Children

This is the August edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

This is a revenge column. Before school let out in the spring, my son’s class was assigned to write an ABC book. They could choose any topic they wanted as long as they came up with 26 things. My dear son decided to write 26 Ways to Annoy Your Mom. I had to get him back. There are many, many more, but here are my favorite 26 Ways to Torture Children.

A – Always serve spinach, occasionally with a side of mushrooms.
B – Beat them with a stick. Not hard, just enough to get their attention.
C – Cuddle them in public. Singing a favorite lullaby also works well.
D – Drone on about how totally rad the 80s were. Like, they, like, totally were.
E – Eat the last cupcake. Also, lick the frosting off their cupcakes. They hate that.
F – Fail to wash their soccer socks three times a week.
G – Gush over their dimples when their friends come by.
H – Hug your husband and call him Babe.
I – Invite the boy or girl over that they like, and cue up Barry White.
J – Just say no – to Poptarts.
K – Kiss them hello at soccer practice.
L – Limit Nintendo DS use to times when it is convenient for you.
M – Move the chips to the top shelf.
N – Never give extra chocolate sauce.
O – Order broccoli as a replacement for fries.
P – Punish them with chores. Start with poop scooping.
Q – Quit buying bread that that is softer than your pillow.
R – Remind them to pick up their rooms. Again.
S – Sing along to the radio during carpool.
T – Talk about puberty in front of the opposite sex.
U – Underestimate how long it’ll take if they come to Wal-Mart with you.
V – Voice your concern for their safety. Over, and over, and over, and over…
W – Withhold allowance.
X – Xerox their baby pictures and decoupage them on their lunch boxes.
Y – Yodel.
Z – Zing them with retaliatory comments in a public forum.

Are We There Yet?

This is the July edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

Are We There Yet?

This year I bought airline tickets for August in April, which made me wonder when summer vacation changed from a time of pure freedom to just another set of squares on the calendar to coordinate. After a frustrating afternoon working out travel details, I realized there is a life cycle to summer vacation.

When we were kids the last day of school and the first day of the next year may as well have been decades apart. Life consisted of trips, reading lists, and sleeping in. We lived for waterslides, watermelon, and trout fishing. The end of summer was too far into the future to imagine. Just like those long car trips where we simply could not help ourselves from asking, are we there yet? Read more

Get Busted, aka Parents Gone Wild

This is the June edition of the print version of After the Bubbly, an award winning family humor column. If you’d like to see it in a local publication, let me know and I’ll do my best to get it there!

Get Busted

When my kids were little, their doctor busted me.

“Anyone in the house smoke?” she asked.

“No,” I said, totally telling the truth.

“Mom!” My five-year-old daughter looked at me wide-eyed, as if I’d said a bad word. Then she turned from me to her new role model, the kind and presumably honest lady doctor. “My dad smokes.”

“Busted!” said the doctor.

Cut to me backpedaling and using way too many words to explain away my husband’s weekly cigar. Or was it nightly? Either way, he smoked outside so it didn’t really count. Right?

“Right,” the doctor assured. She was nice, unlike the little traitor I’d been feeding for half a decade.

That brush with not-even-bad behavior made me want to let out a rebel yell. Being a grown up can be so lame. It reminded me pool party where, by the time the cops showed up, we had dwindled to a dozen thirty-somethings around a half empty keg making really bad karaoke.

Back in the day, I rocked a pretty hard Love Shack baby, but that involved way more alcohol than my adult liver cares to process. But now I have fun in a mature and non-rebellious way, drinking beer not purchased by anyone’s older sister or boyfriend, but by tax paying and law abiding adults.

We’d started to gather bags and say our goodbyes when two young officers appeared inside the gate. I would have sworn they were strippers. (That, or our host had put them up to it to make us all feel younger and badder.) But they were completely serious. After interrupting a particularly heartbreaking rendition of Prince’s Kiss they said to the homeowners – and I quote – “don’t make us come back out here.”

Had someone been watching Cops? I ached for the DJ to cue up that Bad Boys song. What-chou Gonna Do? The guy who’d had to stop mid-Falsetto looked like my eight-year-old when I say lights out. Just a little longer? Pleeeeeze!

I wondered what the police expected to find. No rebels here – just a bunch of grown-ups amid a sea of mayonnaise-based salads and a beer fridge full of milk. My husband, who hadn’t been too hot on the party idea in the first place, gave me a look that said this never happens while watching World’s Greatest Engineering Feats. But we’d had a great time. Who can argue with burgers, brew and ‘tater salad? The only thing missing were his cigars.

The big question – other than don’t the police have some Meth labs to eradicate? – was who would call the cops on us? Did the shrill of our under-primed voices at 10:15 on a Saturday night rile the neighbors? Was backyard karaoke now a crime? Bad words crowded the tip of my well-behaved, un-pierced tongue.

We shared stories from Fondmemoryland where life was one big kegger. We recalled busts long past and embellished tales of daring escapes and stealth camouflage in basements and shrubberies. Now our booze is tempered with chips and dips, the babysitter needs to be home by eleven, and we really shouldn’t swear, but can’t we have any fun at all? On the drive home I wondered if the OnStar people could fine me for singing off key to the radio.

I wanted to be irked about the cops showing up to ruin our fun, but truth was, the party was pretty much over anyway and there’s nothing to make you feel like your old rebel self than getting busted by the cops. Even if it was only for really bad singing. So slam one back, light one up, sing off key. Get busted! I dare you.

Lela Davidson is a Northwest Arkansas writer with a mean Dixie Chick impersonation. The closest she’s been to busted lately is when her family almost turned her in for serving past dated potato salad.