A Scandalous Christmas

This morning at breakfast, as I sat eating fresh pineapple and looking out over Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head in the distance, an article in the The Honolulu Advertiser caught my eye.

Oahu, it seems, is experiencing a Christmas tree shortage. Hundreds of buyers got in line at 4 a.m. yesterday in hopes of snagging one of the trees being flown in at the last minute from Oregon.

For me, it brought back memories of the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 1995.

In the late 1980s, my parents bought a condo on St. Augustine Beach, and they were there every chance they got. Of course, they always spent the week after Christmas at the beach, usually leaving the day after Christmas to get there.

From the time we kids first married and the issue of scheduling our holiday gatherings arose, Mom and Dad were always great about saying, “We want everyone together, but it doesn’t have to be Christmas Day or even Christmas Eve. Sometime in the week leading up to Christmas is perfectly fine with us.” Part of the reason, I think, was that preachers work on Christmas Eve. And if Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, they work on Christmas Day. Like most families, for the Adams, holiday flexibility is a matter of survival.

In 1995, though, we somehow managed to celebrate the Adams Family Christmas actually on Christmas Day at lunchtime. Mom and Dad were planning to leave for Florida after the celebration.

We loaded our children into the car and drove to Grammy’s house. Morgan was five years old, and Lauren was not quite two. As we pulled into their driveway, Morgan said in a horrified voice, “Why is their Christmas tree in the road?”

Their limp and lifeless and sad tree was already at the curb on Christmas Day, flecks of tinsel blowing off the tree and across their yard in the cold December wind. They never have, and never will, live it down.

This year, when it came time for me to decorate a tree, I understood how my parents felt. My artificial trees were ruined in the water heater flood back in September. Since I’m moving to Florida, I didn’t want to buy another artificial tree and then have to move it. But I didn’t exactly have a vehicle big enough to bring home a real tree.

I found a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina that would ship trees to my front door. I ordered a 6’ Fraser fir for the rec room and a 7’ one for the main level of the house. The trees arrived two days later, and Lauren helped me pull them from their boxes.

The 6’ tree was my height. And the 7’ tree wasn’t 7 feet tall. I grumbled, and Lauren laughed, but what were we going to do? Send them back?

After an hour of sawing off lower branches to get them into their stands, I was covered in needles and sap. I picked up the “6-foot” tree and made my fourth attempt to shove it into the stand. When it still didn’t fit, I began cursing and slamming the tree and stand against my newly-replaced hardwood floors while telling Santa where I wanted to put the trunk of that tree. Lauren’s eyes got big, and she said, “Mom, why don’t we take a break and go get some dinner?”

I went upstairs to grab a jacket and saw the 3x3 inspirational card I keep next to the mirror in my bathroom. It reads, “Attachment to the way things should be is the source of all your suffering.”

“Should” is a dangerous road. See, my family should be intact. My kids should all be home, and we should be decorating the tree together. I should be watching the man of the house wrangle with the artificial trees that never got ruined. My basement should never have flooded, and my beautiful house shouldn’t be on the market. “Should” is a recipe for misery.

So rather than sitting around and shoulding on myself, I’m in Honolulu to see Petras and Baptiste, the two boys from Europe who lived with us and are now a part of our family, play in a tournament in their last year of college. While Atlanta is enduring freezing rain, I’m sitting on Waikiki beach drinking a pina colada and listening to Bing Crosby sing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” I’ll be home on Christmas Eve to celebrate with my children, but because of scheduling difficulties, we won’t actually celebrate Christmas with my mom and dad and the rest of my family until the day after Christmas.

And since we’re leaving for St. Augustine after that celebration, my trees will be already down when all my nieces and nephews pull into my driveway.

They won’t be on the street, however. I’ve cut a deal with the guy selling trees in Honolulu. When I get home, I’m going to overnight him two slightly dry Fraser fir, and we’re going to split the profit. It will forever be known as the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 2009.

Since that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be. It should be a great Christmas.

Sexy on Display

Several years ago, I actually inspired an item for sale at Victoria’s Secret. Well, sort of.

My sister, Holly, and I were at the Mall of America in Minneapolis for our annual Christmas shopping trip. The mannequin in the window of the Victoria’s Secret was wearing a sexy little Santa suit, a red lace bra and panty set lined in white fur and completed with a Santa hat. I nudged Holly and said, “I bet Kevin would like that for Christmas.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Grinning, she said, “Yes, he would.” We entered the store and began looking for the little Santa suit. It was nowhere to be found, so my sister asked a sales associate, a spandexed and stilettoed twentysomething who was rearranging tiger-print bras, if they had sold out of the Santa suits. The girl looked at us with an expression that said, “Who let the nutjobs out of the psyche ward today?”

“It's for display only,” the little snot informed us as she rolled her eyes. We slithered out of Victoria’s Secret, somehow ashamed to have been asking for an outfit in the display window. Like we were some sort of perverts with a Santa fetish, some real-life ho-ho-hos. “It’s for display only,” I said, mimicking the snotty sales girl, “not for personal use.”

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who asked. Because the very next year, we walked into the very same store to see a mannequin clad in a fuschia-colored Santa suit. And behind the mannequin was a whole rack of the outfits just waiting to be taken home for personal use.

A pretty blonde approached and asked if we needed help. Holly said, “I want one of those Santa suits.”

“Aren’t they pretty?” the girl gushed. “It’s like Christmas, only pink! And it's accentuated.”

I looked at the padded hot pink bra. It was studded with tiny rhinestones and lined with the white fur. Accentuated, indeed.

Holly paid for Kevin’s gift and brought it home to Georgia. On Christmas Eve, after all the toys were put together and laid under the tree, they exchanged gifts.

Unfortunately, it was after midnight and they were both battling the flu. So the much-appreciated gift was set aside to be used at a more opportune time.

The next morning, after the excitement over their toys had subsided, one of the four-year-old twins noticed the box. “Mommy! It’s beautiful!” the girls said, obviously thinking Santa had brought the pretty outfit for her. Holly, already busy with the breakfast she was preparing for the extended family, quickly grabbed the box and stashed it in her bedroom.

Later that morning, as Kevin’s parents, our parents, the grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and two teenage exchange students sat enjoying the breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, and freshly-squeezed orange juice that Holly had so carefully prepared, one of the twins came running out of her parents’ bedroom with an open box in her hands. She headed straight for my dad, stuck the box into the space between his face and his breakfast plate, and excitedly said, “Look what Santa brought Mommy!”

The Santa suit was back on display. It was, I think, a new twist on the old saying, “Use it or lose it.” Because everyone in that room lost it -- except for Kevin’s mother, who somehow pretended not to notice.

On Monday morning, Holly and I are going to Lenox Mall to celebrate her birthday and to finish our Christmas shopping. At some point, we will pass by the Victoria’s Secret on the main level of that mall, and I will nudge her and snicker and say, “I bet Kevin would like a sexy little accentuated Santa suit for Christmas this year.”

And my sister will say back to me, “It’s for display only.”

Who's the Bobblehead?

My girl went back to college yesterday. She's nineteen, and she boarded an airplane bound for La Guardia all by herself. Once she landed, she got into a taxi all alone and made her way back to her dorm on Third Avenue in New York City.

Now, I didn’t travel alone until I was thirty-five years old. So hugging her goodbye made me nervous and proud all at that same time.

“Be safe,” I whispered to her as I hugged her. I wanted to say, “Don’t talk to strangers,” but I knew she had to talk to the man who checked her bags, the stranger seated next to her on the airplane, and a cab driver.

And speaking of cab drivers, I knew better than to tell her not to accept a ride from a stranger. Not because that’s the nature of the beast when you’re getting into a New York City cab, though. I couldn’t tell her that because she and I both know I’m guilty of violating that rule.

Several years ago, I had a friend named Ty, a football player who was a little too small for the NFL. Ty signed a contract to play for the Philadelphia Soul, a team in the now-defunct arena football league that just happened to be owned by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.

“Ty,” I said to him one day in December 2004, “My girls and I were in New York City this past weekend. Tell your boss, Mr. Bon Jovi, that my girls went to Madame Tussaud’s but were unable to see his likeness. Apparently, he’s been fondled and kissed so much that he had to removed for refurbishing.”

“Why don't you tell him?” he responded. “Bon Jovi is kicking off the football season with a mini-concert doubling as a pep rally. I can get you front-row tickets, and I might even be able to get you backstage.”

Ty came through for me. In mid-January, Morgan and I flew to Philadelphia. We had a few hours that afternoon before the concert, so we did what all good tourists do. We took a cab to the corner of Ninth and Passyunk in South Philly and ordered a Philly Whiz at Geno’s. Across the street from Geno’s is its competitor, Pat’s, the restaurant credited with actually inventing the cheesesteak sandwich. The two have a long-standing rivalry, and each has its loyal fans who argue about which has the better product.

What we didn’t know when the cab dropped us off in front of Geno’s was that the establishment has no indoor seating. It was 17 degrees, and our hands were shaking as we inhaled our sandwiches.

After we finished our food, we began looking for a cab to take us back to the hotel. When it became obvious that we were going to have to call for a cab, I said, “While we wait, let’s go get a sandwich from Pat’s and judge for ourselves which one is better.” We marched across the street and ordered another Philly Whiz and we sat down outside to eat that sandwich.

We must have stuck out in our overcoats suited more for a winter in Georgia than one anywhere north of, say, Chattanooga. As we waited for the cab that obviously was not going to show up, a short, skinny man wearing thick glasses, a black overcoat, and a plaid wool scarf got out of a car and approached us. “I been watching from my car. I see that you’s freezin’, and I can’t watch ladies freeze like that. If you’ll pay me money for gas, I’ll take you anywhere you needs to go,” he said to me.

“No, thanks,” I quickly responded.

“Lady, look, it’s 17 damn degrees out here, and your kid’s cold. I’m a good, honest man who can’t stand to see people suffer. And Geno’s my cousin. Anyone in the joint can vouch for me.”

I started to refuse his offer for a second time. But Morgan leaned over to me and whispered, “Mom, please. I’m so cold.”

I looked at the man’s car. The dash was lined with six or seven Virgin Mary bobbleheads. Several sets of rosary beads hung from the rearview mirror. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not. Was it an overt attempt to assuage a horrific amount of guilt, or was he simply a harmless nutjob?

I looked at the man. He was small enough, I figured, that I could take him, provided he wasn’t hiding a gun in the glove compartment under all those bobbleheads. He stuck his hand out to me and said, “My name’s Carlos Diego MacLauchlin. I’m the only Irish/Spanish/Greek/French Polynesian you’ll ever meet. Let me help you.” I don't know if it was the cheesesteak talking, but my gut told me to go with the nutjob theory.

We got into his wonderfully warm car. I dialed 9-1-1 into my cell phone and kept my finger over the “send” button. The Virgin Mary bobbleheads nodded in unison as he drove, almost an unspoken affirmation that I’d done the right thing.

And true to his word, the crazy man delivered his even crazier guests safely to our hotel. I thanked him with a generous amount of cash, shut the door behind me, and then said to my daughter, “Don’t you ever take a ride from a stranger, do you hear me? Not unless I’m with you.”

That evening, as Ty escorted us past security guards and we waited in the tunnel to meet Jon Bon Jovi, Ty whispered to me, “By the way, he agreed to meet you because I told him you actually bought his old statue from Madame Tussaud’s.”

The rock star came out of his dressing room, and my heart sank. Up close, he wasn’t as handsome as he is when performing on stage. He wasn’t much taller than I am, his face was covered in that awful orange stage makeup, and his teeth had obviously been overly refurbished – they were purple. When he realized I was the woman who had supposedly purchased his statue, he smiled and said, “Oh, thank you for being such a dedicated fan.” I know the man was probably thinking, This nutjob has a life-size likeness of me in her house, and I can only imagine what she does with it. The dash of her car is probably lined with Jon Bon Jovi bobbleheads. At least she looks harmless.

I stammered stupidly, “Don’t believe everything Ty tells you.” But he just continued smiling that famous smile and said, “I don’t mind.”

I left the City of Brotherly Love the next morning having learned a few things about life. First, never believe everything you hear. Second, don’t let appearances deceive you. Next, a rock star will always look better from a distance. And finally, for God’s sake, trust your gut, listen to your mother, and don't ever let a bobblehead be your guide.

What a Beach

As the saying goes, you never know how many friends you have until you own a beach house. Back when I was married and owned a fancy-schmancy condo in Destin, Florida, friends came to spend a summer weekend. They very thoughtfully left me a hostess gift – a hand towel printed with the quote about owning a beach house and an illustrated print titled “How To Be A Beach Woman.”

Back then, I appreciated the print because of its cosmetic appeal and because it made me laugh. I hadn’t mastered all of the prints recommendations, but I had a few of them down pat.

For example, the very first recommendation is this: "Lose the Uncomfortable Shoes." During those Destin-owning days, two of my friends and I went down for a beached-whale weekend. In other words, we lay on the beach the whole weekend, only pausing in our talking and drinking to come up for air. At some point one evening, one of us suggested we take our pretty selves to a nice restaurant for dinner. Donna pulled her cellphone out of her beach bag and called the restaurant to make a reservation. When she hung up the phone, she took another swig of her margarita and announced, “Six o’clock, party of three, and no close-show-toos.”

“Close-show-toos?” I said. “What’s that?”

“I mean close-two-shows,” she said.

“They’re closed for two shows?” I asked, wildly confused.

“Closed-toe shoes!” Ann said. “No flip flops allowed!”

We opted not to eat at that restaurant since the only closed-toe shoes in my condo were for playing tennis. I was already on my way to becoming a beach woman.

Next in the list of suggestions is “Come About.” When my friends gave me the print, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I assumed it had something to do with, “Come About six for drinks. We’ll go out to eat around seven.” Since I’d mastered that concept, I checked that one off my beachy woman list.

The third ingredient for becoming a beach woman is “smell like a coconut.” Given that I could eat my weight in coconut pie and consider pina colada mix a pantry staple, I didn’t even need Hawaiian Tropic for my pores to ooze coconut. Coconut smell? Check.

Not long after the print came into my life, my life fell apart. I filed for divorce. My ex-husband got the gorgeous condo. I got, among other things, the “Beach Woman” print and the dachshunds and enough money to buy myself a beach house in St. Augustine. The print now hangs in my St. Augustine beach house, and more than ever, I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom in its simple instructions.

“Pretend that you forgot how to work the oven and that the vacuum broke” is another step in the beach-woman transformation process. My ex got the expensive German Miele vacuum I’d purchased for the condo. But in keeping with the Beach Woman advice, I turned the job over to an eight-pound black and tan dachshund. Technically, I still have a German vacuum cleaner, even if it’s one that only works in the kitchen. For me, that's close enough to check off my beach-woman list.

There is one recommendation on the print that I always had trouble with, however. “Remember that the opposite of perfection is character” just sounded wrong to me. The opposite of perfection is chaos and disorder. It’s a middle-school field trip or a teenage daughter with a surreptitious tattoo.

And it’s also reality.

I’m slowly learning to ease my death’s grip insistence that life should be the way I think it should. Perfection, I'm realizing, is the opposite of character. And happiness.

And one more thing: I discovered that “Come About” is a sailing term. It means “to change course so as to be sailing at the same angle but with the wind on the other side,” which is kind of what my whole life has been about since I filed for divorce four years ago this month.

Which brings me to the final piece of advice on my print: “Be Thankful.” Today, for all the changes that have brought me to this porch overlooking the beach, for the imperfections and the flip flops and for the beachy woman I’m becoming, I’m grateful.

Oxymoronic Dicks

Rhetorical devices such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, oxymoron, and allusion are the little frills that make writing interesting. “See Dick play” becomes “See Dick play with himself” using personification (some may think this is a stretch, but personification is defined as “ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects.”) “Play hard, Dick” is an example of a pun (or an oxymoron, depending on Dick). “Dick did Deb,” -- alliteration. And to complete our little story, “Run like hell, Deb” employs the use of simile.

Of all the rhetorical pretties, my personal favorite is irony. There’s nothing like a little contradiction to perk up a story; in Dick and Deb’s case, we could add Donny to the mix. Deb could run like hell into the arms of Donny, who is creepier than Dick ever thought about being. That’s irony. And if Donny’s as horny as a hippo in heat, that’s alliteration, simile, and irony all at once!

One of the best examples of irony I’ve ever come across involves a friend of mine. She’s a beautiful woman, my friend, who also happens to be a hotshot in a huge government agency. The woman makes a lot of money, and on top of that, she's very thin. As often happens, her dumbass husband -- let's just call him "Dick" -- left her for a dimwit freelance aerobics instructor with bad skin and a nasty personality several years ago. That marriage lasted sixteen months.

Not long after that marriage failed, Dick reconnected with a woman he knew in college. It was a whirlwind romance, and it wasn't long before my friend’s daughter called her mother during a weekend visit with her father.

“Mom,” she whispered, “Miss Diana has clothes at Daddy’s house now.”

“Well, sugar, they're together a lot,” my friend said, adding, "They're probably going to get married.

“Mom, I went through her stuff,” her daughter continued, “and guess what?”

Before my friend could scold her child for going through the woman’s things, her daughter came out with this gem: “She wears Granny Panties!”

The lesson, of course, is the age-old "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it." And I love the irony of Dick trading his beautiful wife for a couple of big asses. In fact, I wonder if he ever asks himself this question: "Does this ass make my dick look smaller?"

I Am What I Eat -- In What Year?

The Whole Foods on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta has a sign admonishing its customers to “only eat it if you can read it!”

That’s good advice, actually. Those yummy Pepperidge Farm Orange Milano cookies, for example, cookies I have no business eating, contain “interesterified and/or hydrogenated soybean oil.” Now, I’m not quite sure what interesterified oil is, but the very fact that the name includes a form of the word “terrified” kind of terrifies me.

The subject of scary foods reminds me of green Fruit Rollups. Years ago, back when I didn’t know about only eating what I can read, I thought Fruit Rollups were actually made of fruit. I now understand that they’re like having a little fruit with your psychadellically-colored chemically-based food additives. We owned a condo on the beach in Destin, Florida. Friends were staying in the condo, and their toddler, Anna, ate a green Fruit Rollup or two. Now, I don’t think the Fruit Rollup made her violently ill, but Anna barfing up that Fruit Rollup in six different spots on my white carpet made me violently ill. After that, my kids no longer enjoyed those little pancake-thin fake fruit thingies ever again.

But I wonder, is the reverse of the “if you can’t read it, don’t eat it” axiom true? Just because you can read it, should you eat it? I remember back to a time when I was a little girl and clearly read a food label for something that I would not have put in my mouth for all the Ding Dongs in Dallas.

My grandfather, my mother’s dad, was a World War Two fighter pilot who flew jets for a worldwide shipping company after the war. He retired in 1982 to a 300-acre farm in Milner, Georgia, where he raised what we now know as organic local grass-fed beef.

I was raised on that beef and on the pork from his pigs. And on my grandmother’s chickens, which were just as organic as Pa’s cows. And on those chicken’s eggs. And on vegetables from their garden and from my father’s garden, which might have been the most organic garden in three counties. I vividly remember how our yard smelled when Dad spread a load of stuff he got from the Clayton County Water Authority to put on that garden. He called it “sludge,” a kind of euphemism for what really was just sanitized shit.

Eggs, steak, beans, greens, pork – words a kindergartener can read. According to the experts, that’s what is healthy. And I’m pretty sure that’s why the people in my family have consistently enjoyed terrific health.

Back when Pa had the farm, he and my grandmother had a large chest freezer in the basement of that farmhouse. When my cousin Barbie and I got tired of playing in the creek and swinging on the tire swing and naming the cows, we used to go down to their basement and investigate the contents of that freezer.

I remember one time pulling out a package wrapped in brown butcher paper that had a three-inch strip of masking tape on the outside. The words “pork shoulder – 1965” were written in my Nanny’s perfect cursive handwriting. Barb dug her hand deeper into that freezer and came out with “beef ribs – 1963.”

“Ewwww!” we shouted in unison. It was around 1976, and I was probably nine years old, Barb ten.

“Eat it if you can read it?” We read those labels loud and clear. That shit was older than we were.

Nanny and Pa sold the farm several years ago and moved to a house with no basement. Pa died nearly three years ago, and Nanny will celebrate her 86^th birthday this month. That old chest freezer, now completely rusted over but still running just fine, sits in their carport, and I’m willing to bet there’s still some stuff in the bottom of it that’s older than I am.

I joke about staying on Nanny’s good side because I don’t want her to leave me that freezer in her will. But if she does, I’ll drive down to that house in Barnesville and dig through that old freezer. And I’ll laugh through my tears when I read her handwritten labels on packages that will surely remind me of the fun times I spent at the farm when I was a kid.

But there’s no way in hell I’ll eat any of it.

All That Candy is Going to My Head

The day before Halloween, my niece, Kate, came out of school carrying two bags of candy and the hat to her witch’s costume.

She was a cute little witch. But the best part of that costume, according to my sister, was the fact that they didn’t have to fix Kate’s hair that morning. Tangled, matted curls are part of a witch's persona.

Kate climbed into my car and immediately began rummaging through her candy. She pulled out a Twizzler and said, “Oooh, I like these!” before polishing it off in two bites.

She held up a Twix and said, “Want one?”

“No, baby, but that’s really sweet of you to share. You eat it,” I answered.

As she unwrapped the Twix, she said very matter-of-factly, “I know what too much candy doos to you.”

“Does,” I said, the English teacher in me feeling the need to correct. “What does too much candy do to you?”

“It makes your hair tangled.”

Someone could have told me that when I was a kid. You see, I have enough hair for three people, and when I was a kid, all that hair was a major pain in the ass.

I remember making my brother and sister late to school because both my mom and I were trying to tame the wild kingdom on top of my head.

It was so bad that my brother nicknamed me “Werewolf.”

Raymond Adkins, the boy who sat in the assigned seat behind me every year in school because Adkins came after Adams, loved to shuffle his hands through my hair and say during Bible class, “I bet this is what Gideon’s golden fleece looked like!”

Kate’s answer made perfect sense to me because I clearly have hair issues and I dearly love Milk Duds, Raisinets, and malted milk balls. In fact, my hair kinks up just thinking about Heath bars.

The next day, I received an email from Disney with this teaser: “Unleash Your Inner Disney Villain!”

I’ve already explained how the whole Disney princess thing turns my stomach. But I can do villains; they're more realistic, in my opinion. I clicked on the email, and to my great delight, Disney had provided a quiz to help me discover who, exactly, is my evil cartoon altar ego.

The first question was, “Your closest friend is . . .” The choices were (A) My hairstylist (B) My gym buddy (C) Anyone who would lend me money (D) I prefer henchmen or (E) I have lots of close friends.

Hmmm. I’m pretty close to my hairdresser. One can’t cope with hair like mine without a dedicated and competent hair stylist. Josh has been taming my mane every four weeks for nearly fifteen years, and in that time, he’s seen me through the birth of a child, a bitter divorce, and sending a kid off to college. He’s a friend and amateur therapist with enough dignity to consistently refuse my offers to live rent-free in my home in exchange for doing my hair every morning.

As for the rest of my options, I have no gym buddies because I prefer to do walking lunges alone. I don’t borrow money from friends. I prefer to pay my henchmen in order to guarantee their silence. And the “I have lots of close friends” option is a copout – that answer will surely result in some sappy “You can’t possibly be a villain” result.

Having eliminated the other choices, the answer to that question is (A) My hairdresser.

Another question: Do you have a fatal flaw? For me, the most appropriate answer is again the first choice, A, which reads, "Well, I do collect more than my fair share of speeding tickets."

And this: What do you worry about? The choices are (A) A bad hair day (B) Looking bad in front of my loyal fans (C) Getting outwitted (D) Nothing (E) Failing in my quest. Of those choices, unfortunately, my best answer is (A).

I tallied up my score to find that I’m not Ursula the Sea Witch, even though I am of German heritage and feel much better when I’m near the ocean. I’m not Maleficent or the Evil Queen or Gaston or, thankfully, Hades.

I am Cruella De Vil, thanks to my over-processed hair and horrendous driving.

It’s quite funny, actually. Three horribly mischievous dachshunds run my life, yet I’m cast as a villainous puppy killer. I finished the quiz and walked downstairs to put my dogs outside for the day. I opened the door leading out to my garage to find that during the night, they somehow managed to jump onto the seat of my golf cart and from there reach onto the shelf of my barbeque grill and pull down the large bag of chewy treats – doggie Milk Duds, if you will. They ate all the treats and then shredded the bag. And then they got sick from eating too much candy.

At least their short hair won’t tangle.