The Dysfunctional Family

They said it couldn't be done! I've had a few brushes with my orange Saturn Vue, but not because I collided with the two trees in the middle of my driveway. I wasn't feeling so hot when we decided to move to Scottsdale--depression had surfaced, and my concentration rivaled a three-year-old's--so I decided to minimize my losses by going for location, location, location. And Scottsdale is, as any snotty Arizonan can tell you, prime real estate. Yesiree, it is! So I figured I had done my job of selecting a house just by picking out the neighborhood. The rest I left up to my husband and fate. So what if an extra room in one house could only be accessed via a steep 20-step staircase? There was a gorgeous jacaranda tree in front (it blooms for at least 20 minutes every year). That more than made up for any knee or hip injury climbing up and down. Then there was the house that kept getting larger every time you walked through it. Did I really need three spare rooms for the

This was yesterday's surprise/mystery: a humongous deposit of dead branches in front of my house. Now that the temp has officially hit 100 degrees, I hid inside the house all day. But look what I found when I ventured outside: Me: WTF is this? Husband (Ray): Looks like our neighbors trimmed a tree. Me: Not just ANY OLD TREE . Clearly these leafy layers have been liposuctioned from one of OUR trees. Ray: Can't be. I compared leaves and they're not ours. Must be our neighbor's. Me: Did you do all the forensics? That bleeding corpse is ours, and I bet DNA would prove it. Why else would the killers put it in front of our house? Obviously the murder took place near us, not on our neighbors' acreage. Ours was both the kill AND the dump site. Ray: You're watching too much "Forensics Files" on Netflix. Me: That's irrelevant and, if I may so, just bad detective work. It Looks like we may have a serial killer on the loose silently hacking up innoce

Depression is a downer, and I say that with great authority since I believe I've experienced most varieties--from the fear and anxiety version that retards your emotional growth to what I call the one-note "drummer" that beats out a nasty mono-rhythm of negativity. It doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, that internal voice taps out unhelpful messages like "you could have done a better job," "it's your fault he (the boyfriend) left you," " you'll never be happy." You get the idea. Sometimes my depression was so obvious that my mother picked up on it and called in the troops. The troops usually consisted of my sister, who had to be forced into indentured service in the form of movie dates and meals, and my aunt (let's call her Eve) who had extended her mah jong gambling expertise to poker, gin rummy and tarot. Of course it was the tarot that interested me. I'm not saying that I believed everything she tol

My backyard is not what you'd call an ecological paradise. First off, we've got fake grass--the kind that looks exactly like the real thing but doesn't grow, doesn't smell and always looks green, green, green. My six schnauzers know it's fake, but they sniff up a storm on it anyway because birds seem to congregate there to munch on seeds and other bird food stuff falling from large nearby trees. And I'm glad the doves, pigeons, and occasional hummingbird or quail still pursue their vegan diet in my yard. I enjoy watching them from my kitchen window that gives me a panoramic view of their birdy behaviors. I'm not keen about the poop they leave behind, but, as they say in Brooklyn, and Woody Allen seconds, pigeons are nothing less than rats with wings. Well, I wouldn't go that far, especially after what happened to me and my menagerie the other day.This is how everything unfolded. The dogs exited into the yard from two doors--a standard wooden kitchen mo

Okay, so the title is a little misleading.I'm not exactly sure what shrink wrap is, but I know it doesn't have much to do with my psychiatric history unless you equate "wrap" with "rap" and I can tell you that over the years I've sung my heart out to a lot of shrinks. But my most recent doctor--let me call him Dr. No, only because of his ultimate decision on my behalf--will go into my personal record book of shrinks as a unique interaction. For one thing, Dr. No is young, 30ish,good-looking but appearing to be overweight by some 10 or 15 pounds. Actually, all of my shrinks have been men if you don't count one New jersey psychologist who tried to cure me of OCD by joining her weekly group therapy session.That's like trying to cure a cancer patient with castor oil. If it works, it's only by accident. Since I don't actually have any prejudice against female shrinks, I think the reason I favored relationships with men is at the time they we

I've written about my two ginger-colored cats that we adopted at the same time, but I didn't elaborate on the medical baggage that Tootsie came with. Along with an ID chip in her shoulder and a mandatory spay, she arrived at our house with a health record that rivaled an orca at Sea World. Mind you this little girl was barely 5 months old, and she already had been dosed with a series of antibiotics that were supposed to cure a bout of upper respiratory disease. The shelter caretaker swore that since she's been exposed to this virus, she won't get it again. Once is more than enough, I figure, judging by her med chart. The little boy, Toodles, has had the infection already, according to Madame Caretaker, so he receives the all-clear signal. Later, when I take both the kitties to my vet, Dr. B gives me the bare-bones lowdown on Tootsie.He sends out some blood that the lab tests for about 100 different viruses. The results? Tootsie has not just one but two different viru

I was reading essays by esteemed humorist David Sedaris and realized that not only did I enjoy the humor Sedaris conveys through well-crafted word pictures, but I also like learning about him and his family. So it's time for another go at my relatives--this time my mom comes under the gun. I think I was toilet-trained too early. There I've said it and now I'll tell you why I suspect that too much attention was directed at my defecation habits. If I had to guess I probably began my relationship with the Friendly Flusher somewhere between the developmental benchmarks of teething and self-feeding. I can't be more specific than that because I suspect the trauma I endured from being summarily plunked on the Friendly Flusher 20 or so times a day probably caused a deep amnesia of the details. All I can say for sure is that the toilet always seemed like a good place to make a quick deposit if you had some reading matter at your disposal, say a comic book or reader's digest