Doc’s voice on the phone, as he begins to tell me about “Mission Accomplished – The Davy Crocket Sequel,” is exuberant. The way I spell the word “exuberant,” when Doc is calling from Cabin Glen’s, is T-R-O-U-B-L-E. “Honey,’ I ask him, ‘would you please hold on for a moment?” “Sure,’ he says, ‘but hurry-up. I can’t wait to tell you what I am bringing home.” Ten minutes later, an impatient Doc is still on hold because I have not finished packing for the mad dash I will be making out of the country before Doc arrives home with what I fear will still have hooves attached to it. “Hooonneey,’ he is shouting in a Romanian Crocket accent, ‘are you still there?! Wait until you hear about the surprises!” I am trapped like a dirty dog because I forgot that I loaned my car to our daughter, Alexandra. She and her friends are at the sale at Nordstrom’s, the lucky stiffs.

“Are you ready?” Doc gleefully asks. “No, I’ll never be ready, so why don’t you leave the surprise at Cabin Glen’s, where you whacked it in the first place?” “Sweetheart, I didn’t whack the alligator! You know it’s illegal in Georgia to shoot alligators. The poor Lil’ gator was too small to survive in the swamp. He only weighs two and a half pounds. His mama must have swatted him out – permanently out for the count – with her tail.” “Alligators!!! Doc, there is only one way you are going to march into this house with an alligator, and that is if it has Ralph Lauren’s initials on it in the form of a purse, shoes or matching belt and wallet. And that’s final!”

In our kitchen 4 hours later, something, and they aren’t chicken nuggets, are sizzling in the deep fryer that Jarrett, our son the Rock’n Roll chef, received from his girlfriend Stephanie’s parents for Christmas last year. I am hiding upstairs in the laundry room where my head is buried in a king-sized box of Bounce “Fresh Linen” scented fabric softeners. Doc and Rock, the father/son sizzlin’ duo, are calling to me in a last ditch effort to broaden my culinary horizons. “Aw, mom, you gotta come here and try some. They’re delicious!” “Yeah, sweetness,’ the Romanian Crocodile Dundee chimes in, ‘you’re missing some great grub!” Under my fresh linen scented breath, I mutter, “What are you guys going to drink with those yummy McGator nuggets? Gatorade?”

Heading for the bedroom, I am crawling on my belly to safety (unlike the poor, deep-fried runt of the litter who got tail-gated by his abusive mama,) when suddenly, I hear ice cubes jingling from a Styrofoam cooler. So, the sizzlin’ gourmets have opted for beer over Gatorade. But beer bottles being lifted from a cooler don’t sound like hooves, do they? Could it possibly be because I am hearing hooves? Uh, oh … the word “surprises” is plural, isn’t it? What else could Davy Crockett possibly have dragged back from Cabin Glen’s that would one-upmanship an alligator?

Doc popped two out of the three little piggies of nursery rhyme fame! Now what I am supposed to recite to our future grandchildren?

*THE LITTLE PIGS AND THE BIG BAD WOLF
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in!”
“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”
“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”
“Fortunately, grandchildren, the smart little piggy built his house of bricks, so the wolf could not blow it in and he had to be satisfied eating McGator nuggets. The end.”

“But grandma,’ my future grandchildren will ask, ‘what about the two little pigs that built their houses with straw and sticks?”

“Well, you see, my darlings, Grandpa Doc popped those two during a testosterone bonding trip with Cabin Glen. The piggies didn’t know what hit ‘em and that’s a whole lot better than being gobbled up by a big bad wolf.”

“Yeah!!! Grandpa Doc is a hero!”

“He sure is. Now go to sleep, my angels.”

“Goodnight, grandma.”

Shalom, y’all!

*FACT: In 1890, Joseph Jacob’s version of Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf was published in English Fairy Tales. In March 2007, the famous tale was modified in some British schools to “three little puppies” to avoid offending Muslim families. The name has since then been changed back to the Three Little Pigs.

I am about to humiliate myself.

I thought about delaying the inevitable by writing a lead in paragraph or two, but why keep everyone in suspense at my own expense? “The Pizza Delivery Man” story has been told by me so many times, it should have, by now, made its way, through osmosis, to the Amazon.com discount website. Maybe I can stall just a bit. It is Thursday, 1 p.m. – as it always has been for the past 17 years – and my Southern Steel Magnolia sisters and I are gathered at Rita’s Place, her manicure and pedicure station at the salon, where no holes are barred; men are hated, berated, laughed at, spat upon, beloved, belittled, embraced, erased, divided, but nine times out of ten, exonerated. We will change the lock on the front door, but leave a spare of the new key under the welcome mat. Marriage means, “Always having to take the schmuck back, no matter how sorry you are.”

It seems that on this Thursday, Savannah, who at 56 is still a gorgeous Scarlet O’Hara look-a-like, with an ex-husband list that nearly parallels her age, needs our help: She keeps marrying the same, ultimately good-for-nothing man, in the same body. He may be short this time around, rather than tall, like the last one, or bushy haired rather than bald … but he is the same idiot in a different body, and here is Savannah, yet again, weeping into Rita’s pedicure whirlpool. Her eyes are red and puffy (only highlighting their gorgeous shade of green) and she is hardly able to catch her breath, like a toddler who simply may not have that eighth brownie before supper. “But ‘ah’ (translation: “I”) thought it’d be different this time,” she sniffles with the heaviest, fake Southern accent I have ever semi-respected for its very credible lack of authenticity. We are Southern Sisters, and we do what we must do to help each other, which is why “The Pizza Delivery Man” story must be told. And Yankee, commoner, outsider though I may be, I am the proudest of all magnolias on the tree. Savannah needs cheering up, since the four prescriptions her ex-husbands (all doctors) wrote for her for Xanax, Ativan, Klonipan and Valium haven’t been useful because she sold them to her son’s friends at college at a really decent profit, I am stuck being her mood-altering drug.

In my heart of hearts, I do not think that Savannah deserves “The Pizza Delivery Man Story,” and with it, the deepest of my soul’s humiliation, because this is not the first time Savannah had a bogus nervous breakdown at Rita’s Place: Last April, she sobbed so hard when husband No. 3, a football junkie, left her for a Terry Bradshaw double in Las Vegas, it took every Steel Magnolia sister at the salon nearly 20 minutes to suction her wandering contact lens out from underneath her left eyelid. We called 911 anyway, and off she went, sending the weenie ambulance paramedics into “La-la Savannah Land,” until she arrived at the emergency room into the waiting arms of ophthalmologist, Dr. “Hungry for Large Eyeballs,” husband No. 4. The way Savannah tells it, she did not have the slightest clue that an eye doctor who cannot make love to his wife without having a Gene Wilder movie (Young Frankenstein was his favorite) or Curb Your Enthusiasm – surprise! Only the episodes featuring comedian Richard Lewis, he of huge eyeball fame – playing on the VCR, would find hers in divorce court yet again. She got the house. Dr. Eyeball got the first four seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm in HD and a collection of Mel Brooks movies, none of which Dr. Eyeball coveted as much as he did Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Could it possibly be because Richard Lewis had a featured role in the film? Savannah denies it, saying that once upon a time, she was the ophthalmologist schmuck’s “Maid Marianne.”

Okay. Since I also run an underground medical practice at Rita’s Place – being married to Doc, the Romanian Bredneck (well-bred Redneck) surgeon for 26 years has given me an honorary medical degree of sorts, sort of … as in holding clinic at Rita’s and making the occasional house-call or two. It is my sworn duty to put the patient’s interest first. I have taken the Hippocratic oath and have meant every solemn word of it.

So, all blow dryers in the salon come to a sudden halt. Not a single, blond highlight on foils will be continued, nor will extensions be added to hair that is thinning nor yearning to be longer. A moratorium on perms is called for. Not a broom can be seen sweeping up hair that has bitten the dust. It is gather-round time at Rita’s Place. The Yankee Southern Sister, proudest of all magnolias on the tree, is about to make humiliation history, yet again. I whisper into Savannah’s delicate, perfectly shaped ear that I know she uses disposable contact lenses, and that the next time she pulls this weeping garbage, I will whistle for my sisters in New York City to fly out for an entertaining little visit to Georgia, where they will permanently tattoo any shade of green she fancies into her fluttery phony eyelids. She sniffles, a la Scarlet O’Hara, but nods into her Aloe infused Puff’s Kleenex.

“The Pizza Man Delivery Story.” A bobby pin could drop, that is how silent it is in the salon. I take a shallow breath because I feel like strangling Savannah, but I begin: Once upon a time, when I lived for seven years (instead of the one year Doc swore would be the completion of his fellowship) in grey, barren Pittsburgh, where only the movie Flash Dance brought me any solace, my son, Jarrett, was a toddler. (An extremely articulate toddler.) At 2, he was not only completing sentences, he was engaging in entire conversations. What a proud mommy I was, until I ordered a pepperoni pizza to be delivered to our modest town home one evening. Jarrett was not only articulate; he was a mini-Spiderman in the making and could climb any mountain. It was not unusual for me to find him on or near the ceiling, after he opened the dishwasher, pulled out the first shelf, climbed on it, then the top shelf, then hoisted himself up onto the counter where he would be able to open the cabinet that contained the dishes and last link to his completion of his journey atop Mt. Everest, which was in real life, was atop our refrigerator. Therefore, Jarrett was the sweet, agile, can’t take your eyes off of him, toddler, who had to come with me into the bathroom every time I showered. Otherwise, I would likely never see him again, other than in a current issue of National Geographic, “The Mountain Series.”

The doorbell rang. “Pizza,” Jarrett screamed, running down the stairs. With a $20 bill in my hand, I opened the door to find our very familiar deliveryman holding a piping hot pepperoni pizza. Just as I was exchanging the pizza with the money, Jarrett looked directly at him and said, “Hi, pizza delivery man. My mommy has a string in her private parts.” He also looked directly at the “private part.”

Beet red takes on new meaning when a grown man and grown woman are not expecting to be embarrassed beyond all measure. “Yeah,’ Jarrett went on, “she does!”

“Jarrett,” I screamed, as I threw the $20 at the now statue of a pizza deliveryman (a huge tip in those days), grabbed the pizza and slammed the door, never, ever to order a pizza again. All I could do was to stare, in shock, at Jarrett, as he pulled the warm mozzarella cheese, like a string, from the gloriously piping hot wonderful pizza. I opened a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, since I lost all taste for pizza, and an hour later, I tucked an articulate, innocent, beautiful sleeping toddler soundly into bed.

Shalom, y’all! Wishing you piping hot pizza and a toddler who does not yet speak.

But, redemption, an unbiased saint of a noun, does not favor one Redneck over one Bredneck: In Doc’s life, here on Earth, he is a liver specialist. In his real life, as his brother, Glen’s, Confederate Soldier and Southern Sharp-shooter, Doc unparalled expertise is in Raccoons, and their demise, thereof. Wild Turkeys may stand in line to dance – and unwittingly get whacked by “Caller Glen” – but the uninvited family of raccoons that were entering our suburban home through the cat door and enjoying a nocturnal “all you can eat buffet,” paid a hefty check from Doc that had been endorsed by Tony Soprano.

I’ll tell you how Doc took care of the critter buffet line, Mafia style, but first I must pay homage to my beloved Southern sisters: I never would have made it through the “Rocky Raccoon Era” had it not have been for them; the most magnificent group of “Steel Magnolias” any Yankee woman could have been blessed to have beenadopted by…and blow off steam with…and be forgiven for all the swear words I use to punctuate sentences (a bad habit I picked up working in the cafeteria at New York University.) They listened to “The Raccoon Story” over and over again, howling with laughter, and pleading for an encore whenever a new client came to Rita’s. Like the film version of Steel Magnolias, a beauty salon, in our instance Rita’s manicure and pedicure station, is the gathering place. It is our Camaraderie University of Higher Learning and Advanced Studies in Justified Retaliation. Doc…Doc…Doc…what’s a group of Steel Magnolias to do with a Raccoon whacking escapade like yours? Turn it into a legend for our grandchildren and great grandchildren, of course! And, an opportunity for me, Romanian Rocky’s Bredneck wife, to practice stand-up comedy at Rita’s on every manicure Thursday – my regular appointment with her for the past 17 years.

Now, the Raccoon Legend: My first warning that Doc had fallen into the portal of Tony Soprano’s brain, was when he asked, “Sweetness, did you know that raccoons sound like low humming motorcycles?” My response was to, yet again, speed dial the realtor who sent me to Hell in suburbia. “Theme song time again,’ I told the realtor. ‘from the TV show Green Acres, “Darlin’ I love you but give me Park Avenue!” She laughed and said, “Atlanta has a critter or two. The recipes for cookin’ ‘em are at The Zoo.” Hm…I don’t recall “sautéed animals with rabies” being featured on The Food Network. I must have missed that episode.

Continuing the Legend…Doc went on to say that he noticed the cat’s food supply was dwindling at an abnormal speed, but the cats were developing kitty anorexia. I still didn’t get it. I had the nerve to be grateful it wasn’t bulimia. Barf has to be cleaned up. Certainly, not by a Steel Magnolia sister such as myself. Anyway, I went to sleep that night. Our daughter, Alexandra, was visiting from Medill College. All was peaceful until what sounded like an Arctic blast! Alexandra ran into my room. We huddled together and then we tiptoed on the staircase landing and peered over the banister. A second Arctic blast sent us running back into my room. A third one had us huddling beneath the quilt! Then we heard the deck door opening and closing. Was that a hose? Why was Doc watering the potted geraniums at 3:00 in the morning? Could it possibly be so that I wouldn’t find a trace of what used to be the raccoon buffet line? He whacked them alright, but when he told the story to a very large gathering of our very proper Southern friends later that weekend, I did not have the chance to explain to Romanian Doc that it is not nice to use the “C” word. In fact, he did not know what the “C” word meant, so he used it with full gusto, telling his spell-bound audience, “Yup, I whacked dem three ‘Coons’ and tossed ‘em into Nancy Creek!’” The more I tried to get his attention, the louder the “C” word entered into his innocent yet mortifying vocabulary. “Won’t be seeing those Coons in this house anytime soon,” he bragged. I didn’t think we’d be seeing those friends in this house anytime soon either, but they knew Doc wasn’t deliberately flinging around the worst possible word I could think of in a town where every other street is named for Martin Luther King. It seems that our friends didn’t know there was more than one comedian living under our roof. I didn’t either.

Shalom ‘y’all!

The tour guide came back from his lunch break five minutes early, so I had to scram or go to jail, but, I went all the way with William Faulkner: I slept with “Bill” in his bed at Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans. While he certainly was a wonderful lover, what kind of an upstanding, lowdown Yankee would I be if I didn’t kiss and tell? And I gotta tell y’all, this particular literary giant was surprisingly small! At 5’5”, my guy, Bill, has constructed sentences far longer than his stature. I am no Serena Williams by any stretch of the imagination – I am fine boned and measure right around “Billy’s” (a shared pitcher of martinis breeds familiarity) height – but my feet dangled over William Faulkner’s “Play Mobile” inspired cot to the point where I could have flipped that man over with my toes as though I were King Kong with a spatula at “Waffle House.”

Too bad neither “Rooms-to-Go” nor “Ikea” had been invented when my Bill, quite likely a side-sleeper favoring the fetal position, and as fine a patriotic Southern son as he was a Southern writer, tried to do his duty by enlisting as a pilot in the American army but failed to meet the height requirement. Had he have been able to uncurl in bed, stretching out fully, he may have been able to add an inch or two. Instead, he felt compelled to speak with a phony British accent in order to trick the Canadian Royal Air Force into letting him fly one of their planes. What a shame this couldn’t have happened today: We could have deported the William we have no use for – druggy, pseudo-actor William Baldwin – and as an incentive bonus, tossed in his 3 exemplary brothers to sweeten the pot. Five minutes of Alec Baldwin on their soil, Canada would have inherited one big fat anger management problem, while we would have gotten to keep the good William right here in America where he belongs, bless his little Nobel Prize winning heart. (Refresh my memory: Did a Canadian ever win a Nobel Prize for Literature? Other than 1976, when American writer, Saul Bellow, whose Jewish immigrant parents were forced to make a quick birthing stop in Quebec so they could down-load little Saulie before hightailing it to Chicago for the rest of the Laureate’s incredibly long American writing life?)

I was telling the truth when I said I sat on Papa’s lap and slept with my guy, Billy. I wish they could have been there in person by jumping over the ant hill hurdle of having been deceased for nearly 45 years … but anyone sight-seeing in Spain during its off season may absorb a potent Hemingway vibe by sitting on it in Ronda’s bull fighting arena. And Joe, the kind proprietor of Faulkner House Books at 624 Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans, turned his back for a few minutes so that I could crawl into bed with my guy, Bill. If you’re thinking of taking a trip to Pirate’s Alley, by all means, please DO NOT mention my name! I think I broke a Faulkner box spring or two in the “Play Mobile” cot I had no business romping on in the first place.

Maybe it was the hallucinogenic state of being in spontaneous diabetes after this Yankee experienced her initiation into the sorority of true Southern Iced Tea drinkers – one tall glass of pure sugar poured over ice, with a spot of tea (maybe) – that precipitated the reincarnation of Papa and Bill for one last early evening stroll here on Earth, with me, down the moon-lit and magnolia streets of the best kept secret in the world – Oxford, Miss. But there we were, Papa on one arm, my Billy on the other, as we headed for Courthouse Square. Bookstores remain dominant fixtures on The Square in this city of 19,000, as are “Ole Miss” T-shirts and warning signs reading, “If you are on your cell phone, you are not on line.” It is unseasonably hot, that extraordinary night, but the historic words of an invisible mystery guest resonate: “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.”

Papa, Billy and I know that anyone can pass the Bar Exam in Oxford, so we take the darned test by counting the number of bars we can pass on any given block and stop to have a drink inside each and every one of them. Suddenly, Papa will preach, “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!” Billy and I offer to drop Papa off zt an A. A. meeting, but there aren’t any within thousands of miles of the nearest town. Papa’s idea of the nearest town is Havana, Cuba. He calms down, and drinks up, when he hears my Billy retort, “My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.” Billy did not intend for the folks in LA – “Lower Alabama” – to take him literally by doing all four at the same time! And in a public swimming pool, no less!

The Faulkner descendants – and they all are in Oxford – refuse to use a laser pointer, nor any other weapon (unless it is one of mass destruction), to identify Lower Alabama, a place they would rather not acknowledge as having the Southern right to exist, other than as a legitimate competitor for Los Angeles, another place on this planet that does not have the right to exist. I, “Cranky Yankee,” am on my knees in gratitude that both L.A.s exist: It makes me feel safer after having been born in NYC. Our mystery guest interjects the following: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

Shaken, but not stirred, Billy, Papa and I comment upon the extraordinary greenery dorning Oxford, even during the unseasonable heat. Then we hear the voice again: “Golf is a good walk, spoiled.” We are feeling high on sugar on ice and far too many martinis on the rocks, but we think we are capable of writing the next best American novel. Or play. Or essay. Or poem. In no particular order of importance. We are about to shout it out to our invisible guest, when we hear the voice say, “Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

Papa feels sick and wants to go home to “Ketchup,” Idaho. Billy feels sick, too, but he’s feeling his oats because he won the Nobel Prize in 1949, even though I filled him in on an ego altering truth: He, William Faulkner, won in ’49, but received his award in ’50 because the Swedish Prize Committee could not reach a final decision on time. Who was one of the nominees that nail-biting year? None other than Ernest Hemingway! My Papa and my Billy are going at each other for a change! Just as they are about to do bodily harm, and lick their wounds in the morning, our mystery guest says, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” There is a new love in my life. I send Papa and Billy home in taxi headed for Havana.

If the name of our extraordinary mystery guest, Mark “Sammy” Twain, continues to elude The Swedish Committee of Alfred Nobel fame, then they will continue to bite the hand of the picket fence that not only “taints” them, but “paints” them as the politically biased, derailed railroaders they are. Even the most neglected Mississippi steam boat has the dignity to keep moving forward on more than hot air. This is Mark Twain’s year for a rare posthumous Nobel Prize in Literature. Papa, and my Billy, would raise their glasses, if they could.

Shalom, y’all!

“A person who won’t read, is no better off than a person who can’t read.” Samuel Clemens.

Airplanes work on Doc’s system like Ambien: Even before the flight takes off he is snoozing and will remain down for the count until touchdown. When we flew to Madras, India, it was, for me, like having a scarecrow as a companion. He was basically a prop; but instead of scaring off birds from the wheat fields, Doc’s job was to simply stay propped up while he slept. It was his snoring, during our many years of traveling together, which never failed to keep the other passengers at bay. Farmers ought to consider stuffing a tape recording of Doc’s snoring into their scarecrows. Birds may drop dead and fall out of the sky from the shock, but they won’t mess with the crops again.

When Anthony Burgess said, “Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone,” he didn’t realize that some spouses were trapped with their snorer on an international flight, and that short of parachuting out the exit door into the Taj Mahal, there was no escaping.

The Taj Mahal was designed to be an architectural wonder, but Doc has single-handedly turned snoring into an art form, particularly in the genre of Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism. Sometimes, he combines all three. That masterpiece I have entitled, “Hogs Gone to Slaughter.” It sounds something like this: “HEEE! YULP! EEE! AHGG! EEEKK! EEEKK!!” When Doc expresses this style of snoring, one has the impression that not only are the hogs being slaughtered, but they are in a state of surrealistic panic, as though they had been shown an order form from the McDonald’s chain, world-wide, for ten, trillion tons of bacon.

The alarm clock has just gone off, but I have been fully awake for hours and sitting up in bed while writing this column. Doc asks, “What’s the matter? Couldn’t you sleep?” “Not a wink,” I yawn. “Yes, you did.” “Well, how would you know, Cowboy?” “Because,” he says, “You were snoring.”

Shalom, y’all! Save the crops. Hang on to your snorer!

Are you men still snoring?

Angelina Jolie was born on June 4, 1975.

Now that I have your full and upright attention, Jolie’s impact on world population is far more significant than the coincidence of her birth month. Whether Angie is adopting a child or downloading one of her own, she is a global trendsetter. Celebrities are not only the most vulnerable suckers for trends and fads; they are at the outright mercy of everything Jolie, including tattoos of sacred text like “Ohm.” And since Buddhism will be a
passing fancy on Rodeo Drive, the tattoo can easily be amended by adding an “M” to the front of it. Cool way to spell “MOhm!” Angelina has entire scriptures on her shoulders and an enormous crouching tiger on her lower back from hip bone to hip bone. I’m sure there is a hidden dragon somewhere. Probably it’s hiding from the crouching tiger, far south of the scriptures all the way to her skivvies or knickers, as they say when she and Brad hang out with Prince Charles and Camilla, also famous for her knickers, where Charles was caught hiding.

But it is babies (“Brangelina” have four) who are the latest, must-have fashion accessories of the year. Chihuahuas, dressed in pink tutus and schlepped to lunch at The Ivy in designer Louis Vuitton’s pet carrier bags that cost enough to feed Ethiopia for a year, are soooo yesterday! Louis V. and his staff arehard at work creating new baby slings and snugglies for mom to schlep to The Ivy with trendy baby, the ballerina Chihuahua’s latest replacement.

This summer’s blockbuster, Knocked Up, starring Southern gal Katherine Heigl, contains a scene that will make it into the annals of motion picture history. Heigl’s very pregnant character delivers in the most realistic, graphic scene of childbirth ever to grace high definition screens nationwide.

I love Katherine Heigl for this scene. She released me from the recent trauma of seeing supermodel Heidi Klum, who had given birth to her third child about oh…five minutes before, sashay, live, down the Victoria’s Secret runway. The audience went wild with hoots and cheers for Heidi’s incredibly magnificent, post-childbirth body. She was wearing sexy, elegant lingerie.

Lots of people went wild at the Mount Sinai Hospital’s Charity Ball as I sashayed, during my ninth month of pregnancy (already overdue by 10 days), from the dance floor to the ladies room, again!!! “FREE WILLY!” they cheered, as I urgently ran by. “FREEEEE WILLLLY!” They must really have been turned on by the not-so-secret Victoria’s circus tent I was wearing as a cocktail dress. It was all I could fit into, and all I could get out of after bloating up with water retention like a school of blowfish. Make that a University of blowfish.

Actress Marcia Cross gave birth to twin girls a few months ago. She’s already in fabulous shape when shooting begins on the Desperate Housewives set. Free Willy was still hanging around in the circus tent I was still wearing. Standing on a scale with one foot does not help a new mom lose the baby weight. Turning the scale upside down won’t help either. Darn! I forgot to hire a personal trainer, acupuncturist, masseuse and chef. So, Jolly Mrs. Santa Claus-Stieber would avoid looking into the mirror until that fateful day when her husband, Doc, the Romanian Bredneck* surgeon, came home with an exciting announcement: “Sweetness, I got a job as a Fellow in Liver Transplantation!”

“Wow,” I squealed with joy, “That’s fantastic! When do you start?”

“As soon as we get settled in San Diego. Can you believe it, honey! We are moving to beautiful San Diego!”

Wait a minute…we are moving to California, land of the surfer blondes? San Diego, where cellulite was banned during the time of the prohibition but never reinstated along with alcohol? Mrs. Santa Claus-Stieber in a string bikini, walking behind Christie Brinkley and Claudia Schiffer on the beaches of La Jolla?

Doc is baffled. “Aren’t you excited?” he asks me. “San Diego! You love the beach. Please, say something.”

After a moment’s thought, I lamented, “I’ll miss you.”

I did end up losing all the weight in less than one month, having started by removing the ten pound bags of frozen Milky Ways from the freezer and breast feeding our daughter, Alexandra, 20-30 times a day. I believe it is how she developed the beautiful deep dimple in her left cheek. California here we come.

As for Angelina’s other trend – tattoos – before you commit to ink, remember that a delicate, red rose tattooed on a firm, young breast, will eventually turn into a wilting geranium as you age. By the time Angie reaches 80 years old, the slouching tiger will have sagged into her knickers, and the sacred text will look like a Chinese take-out menu after having been dropped into a bowl of won-ton soup.

Love every minute of time spent with your children. They grow so fast.

Shalom, y’all!

Here in the South, an armadillo, or more accurately, an armadilla, is described as a possum on the half shell. The armored critters, like Tupperware, also have an alternative use while enduring phony vacations trapped in an automobile; to play the game “Count the Road-kill.” Squished animal guts on the road, particularly big ones like raccoons (they count as two points instead of one), go a long way toward keeping children occupied. No matter how disturbing it is for you to see how quickly the sadist is unleashed in your child who will be chanting “Big guts! Big guts!” during the competitive game, it is still better than the torture of hearing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” sung by kids who can’t count past 20. They will start over every time they reach that number. You will wish you had as many Xanax to pop. If at all possible to remember this far in advance, ask your doctor for a prescription as a Christmas gift. Most pharmacies accept insurance co-pays for life saving medication such as Xanax or Valium.

Quite likely the man will be driving. He will swear on the lives of every grandmother he can think of that he knows how to get there. He doesn’t, but will insist that having gotten lost (and you will get lost) is the fault of male-hating ghosts who switched the exit signs in the middle of the night. The Pacific Ocean used to be in New England before those treacherous, male-hating ghosts switched it. Any halfway decent geography student knows that.

There is a marvelous saying: “We plan. God laughs.” I don’t suggest making any plans in the state of Florida if you have anything against the practice of rewarding severely impaired vision and the total lack of depth perception altogether, with a driver’s license. Morris Horowitz, a kindly octogenarian, administered the eye exam for license renewal in my grandmother’s Florida neighborhood – right up until the day he lost his outpatient privileges at the Ann Sullivan Home for Assisted Living. The last I heard of him, he was a Highway Exit Sign painter on the roads haunted by male-hating ghosts.

Remember: Tupperware and Xanax. Don’t leave home without them. American Express ripped off the slogan from survivors of family car trips.

Shalom, Y’all!