BAQ to ABQ

Kelly and I are moving back to Albuquerque, NM, at the end of the month, and look forward to getting reacquainted with our many friends there.

We've found a wonderful house near Summit Park, within easy walking distance of the University of New Mexico, where I'll be teaching part-time, beginning in January. I taught in the Honors Program at UNM for several years before we moved to California in 2003, and they've welcomed me back. I'll teach "Hard-boiled Fiction and Film Noir" in the spring semester.

It's difficult to leave our oceanside cottage in Santa Cruz, CA, but we'd come here with the idea of spending a Year at the Beach, and the year is nearly up. I've done lots of work while we've been here (launching the E-book Empire and writing a new novel), but the whole year felt like an extended vacation. Just the break we needed.

Looking forward to New Mexico sunrises (no fog!), and spending time with family and friends.

Back in the saddle

I've started a new novel. Only been writing it for a couple of days now, though I've been sketching it out for a few weeks. A comic crime novel with a female protagonist, set in New Mexico and involving some Hollywood types.

Not the novel I'd been planning to write. I'd planned to make use of our scenic new location, and write a revenge thriller set in Santa Cruz. But I'm in too good a mood these days to write dreary suspense. So it's comedy again. And it's New Mexico again. Surprise, surprise.

Like a lot of authors, I may write about a place better when I'm not there. Don't get me wrong, it helps to really know a place before you use it as a setting, even if it's a place you've made up. But a little distance helps, too, keeps you from getting bogged down in concrete detail when your imagination should be running wild.

I often write about locations after I've physically (or at least mentally) moved on. My most recent novel, "The Big Wink,"(currently being shopped around by my agent) is set mostly in Redding and Northern California, and was written as we were busily leaving there. My most recent Bubba Mabry novel, "Monkey Man," set in Albuquerque, was written while we lived in Redding, as were a couple of suspense novels that were set mostly in San Francisco, where we lived in the '80s. Now that we're happily on the beach in Santa Cruz? I'm writing about small-town New Mexico. Go figure.

Luckily, we visited The Land of Enchantment over the holidays, and Kel and I are going again in late March, when I'm toastmaster at the Left Coast Crime conference in Santa Fe. More tax-deductible research!

To start writing a novel, no matter how many times you've done it before, is a leap of a faith, one that might not pay off for months or years. Funny how often that leap lands someplace you didn't expect.

Have a knuckle-cracking Christmas

"Winter break" provides family units with such a prolonged period of intense togetherness, it's a wonder we don't all kill one another.

The kids are home from school for what seems like 17 weeks. Adults who normally would be busy with work get some free days for relaxing and reveling and gaining weight together. Because it's cold outside, the whole family's under the same roof much of the time.

Everything feels a bit off. Routines are disrupted. Social calendars are full. Thoughts are scattered. The kids are antsy. People keep tripping over the dog. The TV is too loud. What's that smell?

Different energy levels bouncing around in the same space create friction. Some of us are slobs; some want to decorate the Kleenex boxes. Some see a vacation and want to go, go, go, while others see it as time for lying perfectly still. We're like cars on a busy street, all going different speeds. Bound to be a few fender benders.

All the togetherness reminds us that even the nicest people have annoying little habits that could wear on anyone, given enough exposure. Repeated sniffing, say. Clearing one's throat 2,309 times per day. If you're stuck in a house all day with a knuckle-cracker or a gum-snapper or a Twitter user, your thoughts might turn to ho-ho-homicide.

Take something as harmless as a Christmas carol. The song gets stuck in a person's mind, like a jumbo thorn, so he goes around singing it all the time. Except he doesn't really know the words, so it sounds like this: "Joy to the WORLD, la-da, la-DAH." Over and over. For two weeks. Until -- snap! -- someone makes a headline.

Minor vices, such as leaving the cap off the toothpaste or the newspaper in disarray, can be ignored for days, but eventually someone will speak up, and the new year is welcomed with fireworks.

(The Murphy's Law winter break guarantee: Whether you prefer the toilet seat up or down, it will always be the wrong way. Mention this to the others at your peril.)

As the winter days of togetherness wear on, we start to see loved ones' quirks as being intentionally annoying. We start perceiving motives.

"She knows she's doing that," he mutters. "She could stop any time. But no, she keeps doing it, because she knows it drives me crazy. She's just getting even because I--"

From the next room: "What's that, dear?"

"Nothing!"

But it's not nothing. It's the beginning. Pretty soon, the couple is locked in an escalating passive-aggressive loop: If she's going to crack her gum, he thinks, then I can pop my knuckles and sniffle as much as I want. She counters with an impressive symphony of tuneless whistling, trying to drown out his honking nose. Which, naturally, forces him to play Neil Young on the stereo, because she HATES that reedy voice. So she runs the vacuum cleaner. He gets a wrench and removes the toilet seat altogether and--

Whoa, whoa. Take a deep breath there, partner. It's always like this at winter break. It'll be fine once we get out of the house, and we're all exposed to smaller doses of our mutual foibles.

The adults go back to work, where our nervous habits can annoy our colleagues instead of our relatives. The kids go back to school and annoy their teachers. The dog gets some rest.

Soon, we're back in our well-worn ruts. Ready for another year.

Together.

Clutter, clutter everywhere

After finishing some projects, I was tidying up today, unearthing my desk. I found birthday cards from three years ago. Earlier, I bustled around, putting away stuff all over the house and garage. It's been that kind of a day. Reminds me of a column I wrote called "Stuff It."

You can read it here.

Lessons learned

The used SUV we bought for our sons came with a lugnut-style lock on the rear-mounted spare tire. But no key.

A special type of star-shaped key was needed to unscrew the lock. We couldn't find a matching one anywhere. I tried auto parts stores, hardware stores, tire shops. Nobody could help. The advice I universally got was to hammer a socket onto the chrome lugnut lock, then ratchet them both off. I tried this several times, buying expensive jumbo sockets each time, and could never get it to work. I showed the lock to friends with power tools. I hit it with a hammer. I tried anything to avoid an expensive trip to the locksmith.

This went on for months and months. Always, somewhere in the back of my mind, was my losing battle with this lock. If I forgot about it, the car promptly got a flat, which required a full emergency rescue and served as a reminder that the spare was useless as long as that lock was in the way.

Finally, I broke down. Yesterday, teeth clenched against the expected expense, we took the car to a locksmith. The locksmith used an expansion socket, which is tapered inside, and had the lock off of there in minutes. The cost? Eight bucks.

I'd spent three times that much on sockets that I subsequently ruined with a hammer. Not to mention the hundreds of dollars spent on antacids and headache remedies and booze. All trying to avoid that expensive trip to the locksmith. Duh.

Two lessons here that we've all heard before, but bear repeating:

1) Use the right tool for the job.

2) Leave it to the experts.

It's much easier to write a check than to jury-rig a solution that probably won't work and may result in personal injury. Often, the experts don't cost as much as we fear. Besides, you can make up the cost with savings on booze.

The Customer Service Two-Step

The router/modem thingy that connects our house to DSL and the greater Interwebs was deader than vaudeville, so I had time on my hands. I called Customer Service.

First, I sat through a lot of recorded messages, occasionally pressing “1” to keep things moving along. The helpful recordings suggested I should plug it in and check the cables, but I’d already tried all that, so I just waited.

A live human eventually came on the line. She was very nice, very helpful. Though we had certain communications difficulties -- I kept referring to the router/modem thingy as “that box on my desk” -- we managed to sort it out.

She asked me the same questions about whether it’s plugged in, but I’d already tried all that. When she heard that even the “power” light wouldn’t come on, she ruled that I need a new box, which I thought was the whole point of this conversation.

Then she said, “Your modem is no longer under warranty. So a new one will be $69.”

“I don’t want to pay $69,” I said. “I already pay you people every month. Without a box, I can’t get your expensive service, which I already pay you for.”

“But the modem costs--”

“I didn’t break the box. I shouldn‘t have to pay for it..”

“Let me go talk to my manager.”

“Okey-doke.”

Several helpful recorded messages later, she came back on: “Okay, my manager says we can give you the modem for free, but you’ll need to extend your service contract by one year.”

“No, I’m not allowed to do that. My wife handles all that stuff. She’s not here.”

“Huh. Let me go talk to my manager.”

A couple of minutes of recorded messages followed, but I wasn't listening. I was playing Spider Solitaire. That part of my computer still worked.

“Okay," she said when she returned. " My manager says we can give you the modem for free and with no contract extension.”

“Free? Great. How soon will it get here?”

“Two to three business days.”

“That won’t do. I need it sooner. This is my home office. My whole business runs through that box. My wife’s business, too.”

“Let me go talk to my manager.”

A few Spider Solitaire games later, she returned: “Okay. We’ll send it overnight delivery.”

“Free shipping?”

She sighed. “All for free.”

“Perfect.”

I report this triumph of everyday life not simply to crow about it, but to remind you that you don’t have to settle for the first answer. With a little mulishness, you often can get exactly what you want.

My wife taught me that. Over the years, I’ve watched her wear down a lot of salespeople and helplines. Her favorite expression: “Can you make an exception for me?”

All it takes is patience. Dealing with Customer Service has developed into a little telephone two-step, and you have to let it run its course. I’m sure the “manager” my helpful operator consulted each time was the next line on a page of sales protocol. In between her ever-improving offers, she was probably doing her nails. Or playing Spider Solitaire.

It’s her job to go down her list and drag her feet and maybe squeeze some money or a contract extension out of the hapless, panicky customer. It’s the good consumer’s job to wait her out.

These companies know they have a lot of competition out there, and to keep customers they must let us have our way with them. Eventually.

All they ask is that we dance with them first.

Pinball lizard

As if I didn’t have enough to distract me from my work, I’ve learned that my computer has a pinball game.

Over the years, I’ve tried to limit computer game-playing because it takes so much time away from productive work. I can kid myself about roaming the Internet and reading e-mail and amusing myself with YouTube idiocies -- those might serve some business purpose or spark some creative impulse -- but games? Not so much.

Not that I’ve been immune. I’m a long-time addict to Solitaire and its evil cousin, Spider Solitaire, and probably could’ve doubled my work output over the years if I would’ve simply eliminated those games from my computer. And there was that long flirtation with Tetris that nearly cost me my career.

But I don’t download games or upload games or generally seek out games that will result in even more wasted time. And I’ve completely avoided the more complicated role-playing games and war games. I’ve seen what those have done to my teen-aged sons. I can’t stand to lose that many brain cells.

But one day recently, I discovered that my computer came pre-loaded with “Space Cadet 3-D Pinball.” Oh, my.

I had to try it, right? I mean it was right there, taking up space, as it were, begging me to check it out and decide whether to eliminate it from my computer’s overloaded memory.

Well. I quickly found that it’s remarkably realistic, if scaled a little small for aged eyes. It sounds just like a real pinball game, with all the bumpers and bells and flippers. Plus, because it’s a space-themed game, it’s flush with laser noises and wormholes and black holes and relaunches and weapons upgrades. All the things that make an old pinball veteran lose his mind.

I’m a member of the last generation that came of age with pinball games. Yes, arcades still feature pinball, but I was a teen when all the games were mechanical, before video games took over. Oh, sure, I remember Pac-Man and Frogger and Pong and some of those other early games, but they were new to arcades back then, and we old pinball hands didn’t think they’d catch on.

I spent many, many hours in the game room of my college’s student union, where it was all about billiards and pinball. I think there was an Asteroids game off in a corner, but the real men were pinball wizards, wasting our lives a quarter at a time.

For years, I rarely engaged in pinball. When my sons were small, I’d occasionally take them to a local arcade. They’d play video games while I’d be off in a corner, whamming away at a pinball game.

If anyone had asked, I would’ve said I finally outgrew pinball. Much too busy and important to sit around, fondling my flippers, pursuing a high score and cussing when I lose.

Then I stumbled across the computer pinball game and became a Space Cadet, playing until my hands cramp. I’m twitchy all the time. I hear bells and lasers in my sleep. My whole life has gone “tilt.”

At least, this time around, my pinball addiction is free. If I’m going to get no work done, I can’t spare the quarters.

That'll show 'em

A man in Egypt cut off his own penis to protest his family's refusal to allow him to marry a woman from a lower class.

The 25-year-old Egyptian man had pleaded for two years to be allowed to marry the woman. After his father's latest refusal, he heated up a knife and sliced off his future generations, as it were. He was rushed to a hospital, but doctors were unable to reattach the removed part.

Full story here.

Quaran-teen

We parents wear many hats and dutifully accept the chores assigned to each, but the one I enjoy least is labeled “jailer.”

Sometimes, the only way to get a child’s attention is to place him/her under house arrest. Grounded. All privileges suspended. Cut off from the world.

Grounding is an onerous punishment, particularly for teen-agers, whose whole world revolves around social scenes and questionable friends. But it’s also pretty onerous for the parents because we’re required to enforce it. Which means we’re stuck in jail, too.

Usually, I have no problem with hanging around the house. It’s where I work, as well as where I do all my important lifestyle activities, such as reading and eating chocolate. But when staying at home is required, I get as itchy as the grounded offspring.

Last year, my wife and I played jailer for two full months, following several school transgressions by our then-16-year-old son. To make sure he understood the gravity of the situation, we went to full-scale house arrest. No social contacts, no leaving the property, no fun. We took away his cell phone. We disconnected his Internet. We found many, many work projects to keep him busy.

To his credit, he was a model prisoner, doing chores without complaint and only occasionally trying to wheedle out of his long sentence. But there were antsy periods, when being cooped up was nearly more than he could bear. (Three oblique animal references in one sentence; I believe that is a trifecta.)

I could tell when confinement was getting to him because he would play a mournful harmonica and drag his metal cup on the bars. (Kidding!) Instead, he’d start pestering me, joking around, poking and prodding, until I’d hit him with my nightstick. (Kidding again!) Usually, I’d play along, in our traditional Three Stooges-slapfight-dishtowel-popping mode, because I was going stir-crazy, too.

Unlike him, I could get away occasionally. Run some errands. Go to the library. Catch a matinee. But one or the other parent had to stay close, so our inmate wouldn’t start hatching escape plans or tunneling under the yard.

The one exception to his confinement was driving lessons. I don’t even try to wear the hat that says “driving instructor.” My wife is in charge of teaching the kids to drive. I’m too nervous. Even with an experienced driver, I’m a terrible passenger, gasping and stomping the floorboard until I’m ordered out of the car on the side of the road.

Ours son’s transgressions also required me to spend many hours in my “senior lecturer” hat, one I’m particularly well-equipped to wear. No one can outtalk me. I gab on and on, slowly wearing down the children, until they can hear my voice in their sleep. If that’s not a deterrent, I don’t know what is.

I’ve retired my “chef” hat during the warm weather, but there are still plenty of parental hats to wear: chauffeur, repairman, laundryman, nurse, pool boy, sunscreen enforcer and TV remote operator.

And let’s not forget “probation officer.” That hat's still hanging around, in case somebody decides to try on “repeat offender.”

Wackos on parade

Do you ever feel you’ve walked into an episode of “The Twilight Zone?” So much weirdness surrounds you that it couldn’t possibly be real?

We who work at home probably get this sensation more than others. We don’t get out much, so we’re less inured to other people’s strange behavior.

The other day, I stopped by a drugstore to shop for sunglasses. When I say “drugstore,” I mean a modern-style drugstore, which is really a department store with a pharmacy in the back. Along with the usual ointments and remedies, my neighborhood drugstore has cosmetics, school supplies, housewares, groceries, a liquor department (my personal favorite), small appliances, DVDs, batteries and a sporting goods aisle, complete with fishing gear.

But that’s not the weird part.

The weirdness came from the customers. While I stooped to a tiny mirror to see how I looked in various sunglasses with large, dangling price tags, I heard so many strange things, I could only assume I’d barged into a “Twilight Zone” set. I kept looking around for Rod Serling.

First came Warren and his mom. Warren was a standard-issue small boy, full of energy and questions and noise. But Warren’s mom was another story. She had the loudest voice I’ve ever heard from a person who wasn’t actively rooting for a sports team.

“Warren! Come over here! Warren! Watch where you’re going! No, Warren, you can’t have that! Warren! Look at this! Warren!”

You could hear her all over the store. She didn’t seem angry or particularly frustrated. Just oh-my-Lord loud. She either had no idea that her voice carries so well, or she was one of those daffy look-at-me types who wanted us all to share in her shopping adventure with Warren.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only customer to wonder about Warren’s future sessions on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Once they left, more yelling distracted me. A middle-aged couple started arguing over a certain product and whether it was cheaper elsewhere. This seemed a minor point to me, but it was enough to set off this happy couple. They screamed and growled and spat like a couple of angry alley cats. The argument went on for several minutes.

I’m sure all married couples have moments of disagreement. Many even get loud. But in public? In a store? Over prices?

Clearly, this was a troubled couple. I could only hope they didn’t have any little maladjusted Warrens at home.

Then a lady walked past me, talking to herself. OK, I know people talk to themselves. I do it all the time at home. But I rarely ask myself questions, then provide the answers. In public.

“Do we need some bread?” this lady muttered. “Yes, I think we do. There’s some bread over there. Hmm. Is this the brand I like? No, it is not. But I guess it’ll do. Now we need some coffee.”

As she wandered off, I thought: Wouldn’t it be easier to make a list?

The sudden lack of distracting conversation allowed me to notice the Muzak, which was playing a song that I hate, hate, hate. The music stopped when an employee came over the speaker to make an announcement. My relief lasted only a moment because, two rows over, a customer took up the tune, loudly whistling. He whistled all the way to the end of the song, including a guitar solo.

That’s when I gave up on buying sunglasses. Better to escape this “Twilight Zone,” even if it meant I’d go around squinting like Rod Serling.

I can always pick up some sunglasses the next time I buy fishing gear.

Monkeying around

Ever notice how households seize upon crazes? Everybody gets the same mania at the same time, a shared insanity, an inside joke.

These family fads can go on for years before something else distracts us, or the kids go off to college, or the family dynamic is fractured by some other tragedy, such as certain people becoming aloof teen-agers.

One goofy fad at our house concerned a Christmas gag gift called the Monkey Toy. It’s the simplest of dime-store toys. A round plastic box with a picture of a monkey on it, connected by a wire to a large push-button. When you push the button, the box makes a high-pitched monkey sound: “Oo-oo-ooh-ah-hah!” One of those silly, do-nothing toys that makes you laugh the first 30 times you hear it, even while driving you crazy.

The joy of the Monkey Toy comes from triggering it at inopportune moments, such as during serious discussions of, say, curfews.

Dad: “And that’s the last time I’ll tell you--”
Monkey: “Oo-oo-ooh-ah-hah!”
Everyone: Helpless laughter.

My younger son thinks it’s extremely humorous to hide the Monkey Toy in furniture, with the trigger button under the seat cushion. When a perfectly innocent person sits, it goes, “Oo-oo-ooh-ah-hah!” This is even better than a whoopee cushion, when you consider the possible whereabouts of that monkey.

Just the sort of nonsense that can overtake a family. Pretty soon, everywhere you turn, you’re stepping/sitting/lying/bumping into that button. “Oo-oo-ooh-ah-hah!”

My brother and I spent a large portion of our teen years jumping into my dad’s big reclining chair whenever he left the room. We had a hierarchy of chairs. Dad’s was best, then Mom’s, then the couch. Beyond that, you might as well go upstairs. Every time Dad returned to the living room and demanded his usual chair-that-he-paid-for, it would cause hilarious shock waves in the pecking order.

Sometimes, whole families get captivated by a particular TV show or computer game, so that everyone’s on the same page for a while, hooked on “The Simpsons” or “The Sims” or Yahtzee.
When our sons were small, we lost years of our lives to Pokemon. Once in a while, I still stumble across a card or a plastic figurine, and I’ll remember fondly the way the folks at Nintendo milked us all.

Sometimes, family quirks stick around long enough to become traditions. In my wife’s family, it’s required that you surprise other family members on Christmas Eve, preferably before they’ve had time to wake up properly, by shouting “Christmas Eve gift!” The original idea was that by doing this, you’d entitle yourself to open a gift one day early. Nobody actually opens gifts early, of course. It’s all about saying it, getting the jump on your siblings. Counting coup.

The best family craze I’ve heard lately came from a friend who returned from visiting his grandkids in Texas. They had these popguns that fired miniature marshmallows. Intended for the children, of course, but soon full-grown adults were laughing and running around the house, shooting marshmallows.

With repeated use, he reported, the marshmallows would get gummy, and once in a while, you could make one stick to your opponent’s cheek or forehead. I believe this was extra points.

The visit soon came to an end, so the Marshmallow Wars were settled by treaty and the weapons will end up retired in a toy box.

But something else will come along to jazz the family and bring it closer together. I recommend the Monkey Toy.

Self-help yourself to a new self

Recently spied on my Internet service provider’s home page: “Best Swimsuit for Your Horoscope.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, may be the ideal headline for our times. If only they could’ve worked in the word “rehab” somewhere, it would’ve been perfect.

What in blue blazes could horoscopes have to do with bikinis? I don’t know. I tried to go to that page, but I got one of those “Error: Page Not Found” messages, which means it was busy because everyone else on the planet was looking at that page right then.

Anyway, the content doesn’t matter (and that’s another lesson for our times). What matters is the beauty of that headline, which manages to stir several of our darkest fears in a mere five words. Genius.

In women, especially, nothing stimulates the “fight or flight” response like the word “swimsuit.” Flashbacks of dressing room disasters are enough send most folks into a whinnying panic. And, oh, the horror of “horoscope,” the thought that our actions are governed by the alignment of distant stars rather than random human stumbling. As if the stars would allow us to be this messed up if they were in charge. As if they’d concern themselves with swimsuits.

We face a blizzard of self-help tips every day. Everywhere we turn -- TV, Internet, newspaper, so-called friends, every magazine under the sun -- we’re shown ways we should improve. These articles and ads and advisements become a steady drumbeat of criticism, telling us we’re too fat, unhealthy, boring, short, shy, predictable, lowbrow, high-falutin’, clumsy, drunk, fat, shallow, rude, vain, weak, small-breasted, big-boned, curly, shemp, fat, happy, grumpy, dopey, stressed-out, sleepless, fat, crazy, lazy, hazy, prone to making lists, etc.

There’s such a flurry of self-help that disparate bits of advice are bound to collide into unlikely pairings such as “Best Swimsuit for Your Horoscope.”

Here are some more possibilities:

Best Automobile for Your Cottage-Cheese Thighs

Lose Weight the Black & Decker Way

Kicking the Rehab Habit

Your Child and the All-Cabbage Diet

Best Negligee for Halftime

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Nuns

Grapefruits and Gunpowder: The Diet With Kick

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Thumb Disease

Exercise Your Right to Make Lefts

Nude Gardening for Seniors

Oprah’s Hardware Helpline

Best Wurst for Your Waistline

Celebrity Dating Secrets and Your Front Lawn

Two Syndromes: Irritable Bowel and China

Are Obscure Movie References Right For You?

How to Stalk Paparazzi

Best Underwear for Schoolyard Wedgies

Internet Romance Cures Eczema

Gum-Cracking for Amateur Astronomers and Their Moms

The Rehab Diet: Lose 20 Pounds While Getting Some “Me Time”

Sleepwalking Through Wal-Mart Fights Heart Disease

Do-It-Yourself Plastic Surgery

Worst Pickup Lines by “Poets” Who Wear Sunglasses Indoors and Who Should Really Go to a Tanning Booth or Something. Duh.

The Tarot of Plumbing

Never Show “The Buddy Holly Story” as the In-flight Movie and Other Airline Secrets

Wok This Way: Cooking With Aerosmith

Wardrobe Tips From the Patients of Ward “B”

Bird-Watching for Dollars

Improve the Feng Shui of Your Office Environment With Sod

Lovemaking Secrets of Civil War Re-Enactors

The Summer Quilting Diet

Best Chia Pet for Your Limo

Packing to Leave: Divorce, U-Haul and a Chainsaw

What to Do If Your Date Emits Greenhouse Gases

Driving Tips From Dieting Celebrities Who Survived Ugly Divorces and Adopted Homeless Pets, All While Remodeling Kitchens in the Nude

And, finally, of course: Best Horoscope For Your Swimsuit. In Rehab.

Top o' the morning mayhem

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Mine started off like this: Dancing leprechauns and animated ads full o' shamrocks repeatedly locked up my America Online so I couldn't get online and clear out the usual spam and check my Facebook.

All my other online functions worked fine, but not AOL, where I've got lots of bookmarks and personal e-mail contacts. After rebooting and task-ending and jumping around the room like "Riverdance," I finally got AOL to work.

AOL and Facebook both have recently forced "upgrades" on their users. Whenever you see the word "upgrade," think "upscrewed."

Lost in Bookland

One problem with working at home is it’s hard to tell when you’re finished.

In a regular work environment, you get a “job well done” or a slap on the back or a new assignment. If nothing else, your shift ends and you go home and try to not think about work for a while.

But when you work at home, the completion of each task merely calls attention to other looming deadlines and to the chores you’ve been ignoring. You’re still surrounded by housework and parenting and errands and the other parts of your “job” that never go away.

I, for one, don’t handle “down time” well. I seem to have two speeds: 1) flat-out, fast-as-I-can-go obsession, or 2) full idle, in which I don’t know what to do with myself. Switching back and forth makes me a little crazy.

Take, for example, those periods when I'm working on a new novel. I'm consumed by the story, barely in touch with the real world. Phone calls go unanswered. Familiar faces go unrecognized. My mind wanders during conversations.

My family has grown accustomed to this distracted condition. They call it Bookland. As in, “There’s no point talking to Dad right now. He’s in Bookland.”

Once I'm done, I emerge from my home office, blinking and scratching like Rip Van Winkle, and try to regain some focus on everyday reality. I usually find that, once again, my wife has kept the household running while I was in Bookland. A new season has arrived. My sons have grown taller.

You’d think I’d relax during this break, return to my senses, have some fun. Instead, I spiral right into the ground in a weird form of post-partum depression. I’ve given birth to a new story, and it’ll no doubt grow up to be a disappointment, no matter how much I rewrite and revise and mutter curses.

This would be the perfect time for a distraction, something to divert my attention away from my own navel. I cast about for a diversion, only to find that I have no interests or hobbies.

Household chores aren’t enough to keep my mind off work. I love to read, but end up comparing every book to the one I’m trying to write. I watch movies and see only the “bones” of the script. The Internet is just more time sitting at my desk.

I’m too fat and injury-prone for sports. Too impatient to go fishing. I haven’t ridden a bike since I learned to drive. I could take a real vacation, I suppose, but traveling is expensive and I travel too much for work already.

Other people have hobbies that take up their free time. But I’m not interested in collecting anything (except books) and I have no expertise or equipment for craft projects. Painting? There’s a mess to clean up. Pottery? Ditto. Woodworking? No, thanks, I need all my fingers for typing.

So I wander around the house, mumbling and overeating and watching inane TV, until it’s time to go back Bookland, a place of my own invention, where I know everyone’s name.

Signed, sealed, delirious

Is there any greater lie in American marketing than "easy to open?"

Products today are tamper-proof, childproof, moisture-resistant, safety-wrapped and vacuum-sealed, but easy to open they’re not.

Many of the foods we eat are sealed so tightly, you could starve to death before you get them open. Every time I wrestle a bottle of medicine, I think how it's a good thing my life's not depending on an emergency dose. Opening over-the-counter remedies requires scissors, a sharp knife and manual dexterity, and that's just the box. To free one of the individually entombed "caplets," you might need a small explosive.

How many minutes out of the average day do we spend trying to open packages? How much American productivity goes down the tubes while workers search for box cutters or letter openers? How much heartburn is caused daily by the phrase "Open Other End?"

I know the manufacturers of consumer products are trying to keep us safe, so we won't sue them, and much of the security packaging is required by government regulation. But it's hard to keep all that in mind when opening a simple bottle of water requires pliers.

People over a certain age can remember when the biggest obstacle between them and an aspirin was that little cotton ball the manufacturers stuffed inside the bottle to keep them from rattling around.

The Tylenol tampering deaths in 1982 resulted in new rules for over-the-counter medications. They now come with multiple layers of tamper-resistant packaging. First, you've got to remove that plastic film that's wrapped around the childproof cap (and good luck managing that without a sharp instrument of some kind). Then you've got to line up the little arrows to pop off the childproof cap. Inside, there's usually a foil seal that must be punctured and removed. By the time you get through those layers of protection, you're either not sick anymore or you're dead.

I had a cold recently, and took over-the-counter decongestants so I could function until the bug ran its course. Which meant that four times a day, you could find me cursing and sniffling and working my fingers to the bone, trying to remove the tablets from their individual paper-foil-plastic containers. There's a reason it's called a "blister pack."

Resealable packages are all the rage at the supermarket, but what's the point of "resealable" if you can't get it open in the first place?

Here's how they're supposed to work: Tear off an outer strip of plastic, and what's left is a zipper arrangement like those on sandwich bags. Does that plastic strip ever tear off straight? Once you do rip it off, how do you get the package open? There's nothing left to grab hold of. Most kitchens aren't equipped with tweezers.

My wife recently ran into this problem with a package of cold cuts. After repeated attempts to get it open, she turned to me and said, "You bought these. How do you open them?"

"I slice the package open with scissors," I said, "then put the meat in a Ziploc bag."

"You don't even TRY to use the package it came in?"

"Who needs the aggravation? I'm crazy enough already."

There's probably a pill for such madness, but imagine how hard it would be to open.

Everybody panic (or not)

If you pay attention to health news, then you know that most everything is bad for us and we’ll all soon die.

Scientists tell us our air, food, water, clothes and homes are full of germs, viruses, bacteria, pollen, pollution, radiation, industrial toxins, hazardous chemicals, deadly diseases, dust mites, insect parts, cholesterol and cooties.

Selfless medical researchers work around the clock to provide us with fresh scares. Every day, it seems, there’s a new study about some health risk we’d never even considered before. Every week brings word of some newly imported tropical disease. It’s a great time to be a hypochondriac.

Most of us read health news, process the information, then go on about our lives exactly as before. Why? Because we know there’ll be another study along soon that will cancel out the one in the news.

It works like this: One group of researchers will find, say, that coffee causes human spleens to explode. Another group (funded by coffee companies) will quickly release a study that shows that not only does coffee NOT cause exploding spleens, but it builds strong bones, makes you taller and was the original fluid at the Fountain of Youth. Later, a third study will find that neither of the above was correct. These impartial scientists will say coffee is OK, as long as you practice moderation, exercise and keep an eye on your overall spleen health. Then another lab will find a link between coffee and some other ailment, and we’re off and running again.

There’s no way to follow that cycle and maintain your sanity. You’d end up changing all your health and eating habits every few weeks. Better to wait it out, keep a watchful eye, wait for the pendulum to swing the other way.

(I, personally, am waiting for the day they announce that tofu causes cancer. I’m one carnivore with a mean streak.)

If you wait long enough, the tide turns against most everything, even medicines.

Remember the stories about Ambien and Lunesta? Those two prescription sleep aids, the most
heavily advertised drugs in America, were found to cause bizarre behavior in some people. The Food and Drug Administration announced that users walked in their sleep, prepared and ate food in their sleep, even went “sleep-driving.” None had any memory of the activities the next morning.

The entire country has been consumed by obesity and its dire effects on the national health. What if it turned out that we’re getting fat because we’re up every night, sleep-eating?

Another recent study found that obese men are 42 percent less likely to commit suicide than thin men. Scientists analyzed statistics from 45,000 men, and found that suicide rates fell as body-mass indexes rose. The researchers theorized that heavier men might have higher levels of mood-regulating brain chemicals.

So, the findings would seem to indicate, obesity will kill you slowly, but it might keep you from killing yourself. Next week, no doubt, scientists will find that obesity causes exploding spleens.

In the meantime, I’m one fat boy who will revel in some good news for a change, while also protecting myself against suicide. I’m going to lay out a big spread of yummy, fattening food, take an Ambien or a Lunesta, and engage in some serious sleep-eating. Maybe go for a nice drive afterward, burping and snoozing my way across the countryside.

What could go wrong? I’m sure some health researchers are doing a government-funded study to find out.

Wanted: Viagra for my trees

Homeowners don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows. We have trees.

Trees are nature’s own neighborhood amenity, and I like having lots of them around for shade and beauty and visual diversity. I don’t even mind raking leaves in the fall, which is easy for me to say considering that all my current trees aren’t much taller than I am.

In previous houses, my family enjoyed the company of big old elms and towering cottonwoods and one fruitless mulberry that always dropped its yellow leaves all at once. Ka-whump.

We now live in a newish hilltop subdivision (though we don’t look newish) and the trees are undersized. While there are green belts around the edges of the neighborhood, the “street trees” (which sounds like a gang) and regular “yard trees” are young.

My yard trees are palm trees, and they came with the house. We’ve got a couple of fan palms, the type used to decorate public spaces, and they’re hardy as they can be. Practically maintenance-free. But these other ones, I think they’re called queen palms, with long feathery fronds? They are a large pain in my subtropical region. They’re puny and they’re ragtag and they whine and they lean over as if fatigued. (OK, they don’t actually whine. But they would if they could.)

These trees have become the botanical focus of my life. We pay a service to do the lawn. My wife fills the house with beautiful potted plants. My only plant-related job is to keep the palm trees upright. I usually fail.

The problem is that our soil is thick, rocky clay and the palm trees’ shallow root systems can’t penetrate. The palms are like eight-foot-tall celeries, standing on end, their little roots gripping the surface layer.

Poorly anchored and top-heavy, the palms regularly blow over. If left that way, they’ll croak. Pulled upright, they’ll keep right on living, but they can’t support themselves. (Much like teen-agers.)

I’ve used stakes and wire and ropes and staples and you-name-it to keep these trees pointed skyward. I’ll get them arranged, and the wind will change direction, and they all start leaning the other way. Then I’ll put stakes on the other side and tie them up, and get everything so snug, you could pluck that wire like a guitar. The next day, the wind will snap the wires or yank them loose, and all the trees will fall over on their bushy heads.

During storms, I stand at the patio windows, monitoring my wind-whipped trees. I’ve been known to run outside during lulls in rain to quickly adjust a tree. Or add another wire.

Eventually, the trees have so many wires and stakes, they resemble a tribe of tied-down Gullivers. My neighbors think I’m practicing tree bondage. I have to remove everything (while a bored teen-ager holds the tree up), and start over.

Saving the trees has become my strange hobby, and it raises certain questions: Am I crazy? Why don’t I replace the palms with something sturdier? Why not get a professional to stake the palms the right way or replant them? Doesn’t Thick Rocky Clay sound like a boxing movie?

All legitimate questions, but I can’t answer them now. I’ve got to go see which way the wind’s blowing.

Conquering a mountain of stuff

Somewhere in your home -- spare bedroom, attic, basement, garage -- lives the Repository of Stuff We Don’t Use Anymore.

It’s a mystical place of letter sweaters and souvenir ashtrays, baby clothes and broken crockery, Magic Eight Balls and eight-track tapes, outgrown toys and outmoded phones and old jeans that’ll fit again after we drop 20 pounds (yeah, right).

Once in a blue moon, someone in your household will feel compelled to clean out this accumulated detritus. We could make better use of that space, the thinking goes, and we’ll never, ever need this stuff again. Why not get rid of it?

This is an admirable ambition, but, as with so many things, it’s easier said than done. Parting with your old stuff is a hard, dirty job that requires elbow grease and grit and resolve. Not to mention backache medication and frequent hot showers and, quite possibly, an expensive divorce.

At our house, the Repository of Unused Stuff was in our three-car garage. I don’t want to say how much dusty stuff we had piled up, but there was barely room for two vehicles. You do the math.

This heap of random stuff didn’t bother me. Sure, we’d moved it all a couple of times. Sure, some of the boxes weren’t even labeled. But I figured, as long as I could get my minivan door open and squeeze inside, everything was fine. The stuff wasn’t hurting anything. We’d sort it out eventually. Maybe a small fire would solve the problem for us …

My wife had other ideas. The stacks of sacks and boxes and assorted belongings bugged her. She’d put up with this stuff for years, and it was high time we did something about it.
Of course, she’s got no time herself. She’s busy having a career. So it fell to me to tackle the garage. She urged me to leap into action, in a sort of X-Treme Spring-Cleaning Challenge, and conquer Mt. Stuff with speed and muscle and brainpower.

I’m not a leap-into-action sort of guy. I’m more of a sit-and-ponder-and-sigh type. When I do finally take action, it’s almost imperceptible.

I oozed out into the garage and started opening boxes and sorting through sacks. I hauled off stuff. I threw some away. I gave a lot to charity. Gradually, the mound of stuff grew smaller.

The goal was to make that third garage useable. Our older son has a car now, and if we could lose enough stuff, he could park indoors. Not that he’s ever home. Not that we care if his filthy car sits out in the weather. But you’ve got to set goals to take on a job like this.

After I got rid of a lot of stuff, I ran into a true dilemma. What remained -- extra furniture, an old microwave, a portable TV -- would be perfect for a dorm room or a first apartment. If I kept it, with an eye toward my son moving out soon, then he couldn’t park in the garage. If I got rid of it, he’d have another excuse to never leave home.

So I took all that stuff and put it in his car.

Kidding! It wouldn’t fit in his car. And he wouldn’t take the hint anyway.

No, I’m still stacking and sorting and throwing stuff out. Slowly making progress. Someday, I’ll be finished. That old stuff will be out of our lives, once and for all.

Then it’ll be time to get some new stuff.

(Editor's note: After this column appeared, I found a way to stack all the future apartment furniture around the walls so our son could park in the garage. It's still there. He still hasn't moved out. Maybe I could just furnish the garage and he could live out there. . .)

Take it from me

Just because you feel moved to give advice doesn’t mean anyone will want to take it.

We all love to dole out advice. We feel we’ve learned a lot during our lifetimes, and others should benefit from our accumulated knowledge. Clearly, our friends and relatives need the help. Just look at the way they’re messing up their lives. If they’d only listen to us, things would be better.

We tell ourselves we have only the best of intentions, but darker motives sometimes are at work. By offering advice, we can be saying: “I’m smarter than you. I’ve got better taste. Only I can tell you how to fix your many, many problems, you shlub.”

Not surprisingly, this primal urge to instruct often is not met with enthusiasm by people on the receiving end. Some simply ignore advice. Some resent the very implication that they need advice, which is why, all across this great country of ours, in-laws aren’t speaking to one another. Others feel compelled to do the exact opposite of whatever was recommended, which is how women end up marrying members of motorcycle gangs.

Yes, giving advice is fraught with danger. Perhaps the quickest way to lose a friend or alienate a relative is to say, “You know what your problem is?”

Some topics are particularly perilous:

RELATIONSHIPS

No woman wants to hear that her new love is, in reality, a felonious scoundrel. You might think you’re saving her from herself by mentioning it, but it works just the opposite. She will run as fast as she can, right into his hairy, tattooed arms. If it doesn’t work out, anything you say will seem like, “I told you so.” And if it does last, she and her new husband will hate you. Forever.

CAREERS

It’s safe to give others career advice because you’re not the one who’ll get fired if it goes kerflooey. It’s easy to say, “Tell your boss to take this job and shove it.” But there should be a rule: If you advise someone to quit a job, you must let that person move in with you and live off your income for a minimum of six months.

PARENTING

Rearing children is hard enough without some self-proclaimed expert telling us that we’re doing it wrong. If you don’t live under the same roof and see daily just what a pain little Johnny can be, then you should keep your mouth shut. Assume his parents are doing the best they can, and smile brightly as a naked little Johnny smears boysenberry jam on the cat.

NUTRITION

If you tell a friend how to eat better, here is what they will hear: “You are a fat slob.” We all know we sometimes eat things that aren’t healthy. We eat them because they taste good.

I was recently in a Mexican restaurant where a woman in the next booth complained to everyone who’d listen, including the summoned manager, because the refried beans were made with lard. Excuse me? You ordered refried beans, then had a problem with lard? By the time she was finished proclaiming how unhealthy lard is, I was ready to say, “Can I have her lard? I want extra lard! Could you pump lard directly into my arteries? Muchas gracias.”

FASHION

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your clothes, but you can’t pick your friends’ clothes.

In summary, only give advice when asked. Even then, use caution in expressing your opinions. Hey, I’m talking to you. Are you even listening? You know, that’s your problem right there--

Egging 'em on

Across America, the "morning scramble" is not a breakfast dish. It's the mad dash to get the kids out the door to school.

In a fit of blind optimism, parents start each day with the notion that everyone in the family will be on schedule, and we won't have to race around crazily at the last minute. Each school day, we hopeful parents watch those expectations dashed.

As is the case with so many things, the children hold an opposing viewpoint. The children do not care if they are late. They're not thrilled about spending the day in school anyway. They maintain that they would happily live forever as uneducated goatherds if they could be allowed to sleep for only five more minutes. Thus it begins. Every day.

Once they're up, younger children tend to wander off. Teens are too busy text-messaging their friends to actually get ready for school. Sleepy kids of any age seem to have difficulty with the question, "Where are your shoes?"

When our two sons were small, the culprit was distraction. They'd forget they were supposed to be, say, rounding up socks that weren't crunchy. Instead, I would find them watching cartoons, or barefoot in the yard with the dog. Or dressing in a ninja costume, "just to try it out," five minutes before departure to school.

And there was always a last-second disaster of some sort. I spilled my milk. I can't find my homework. The dog won't give me my shoe. We'd scramble about, solving crises, until the last possible moment, then zoom out the door, trying to reach school before the final bell, weaving through traffic like an ambulance on Saturday night.

Now that they're older, our boys require only minimal overseeing. The struggle is at the front end -- getting them out of bed -- rather than forcing breakfast down their gullets or locating their missing science project. It goes like this:

5:45 a.m.
Mom: "Good morning! Time to get up. Here comes the light! Get up!"
5:55 a.m.
Dad: "Good morning! Rise and shine there, boys!"
6 a.m.
Mom: "You guys must get up now. You're going to be late."
6:10 a.m.
Dad: "Hey, come on. What's the matter with you? Did you stay up all night?"
6:15 a.m.
Dad: "Get. Up. Now."
6:20 a.m.
Mom: "I'm coming back here in two minutes with a pitcher of ice water. Whoever's still in bed gets it."
6:30 a.m.
Boys reel around house, yawning and sniffling, wolfing food and throwing on the rags that pass for their clothes. Mom and Dad nervously hound them with questions -- "Did you brush your teeth?" or "You call that breakfast?" or "Is that the way you WANT your hair to look?" -- all the way out the door.

One day, as younger son sprinted to his room to fetch something he'd forgotten, the older one waited by the front door. A veteran of years of racing off to school, he gave his parents a wry smile and said, "We were almost on time today."

As a hopeful parent, I thought: There's always tomorrow.