Category Archives: South Coasting

Testosterone Central

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Ambro freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by Ambro freedigitalphotos.net

How do you raise a boy to be in touch with his sensitive side, but not to be a wimp?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot recently.

I just returned from a few days at “Testosterone Central,” otherwise known as my friend Andrea’s house. She has three strapping young men between the ages of 9 and 15-in addition to her rather strapping husband and large male dog-so Andrea’s house oozes more testosterone than a bachelor party at a NASCAR race on St. Patrick’s Day.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s beautifully decorated and there’s always something wonderful cooking on the stove. But from the moment you get out of the car-and trip over the discarded scooters, soccer cleats, gym bags and tennis shoes-you know that this is not a place for wimps.

These boys live in a swirling cauldron of testosterone and they’ve marked their territory everywhere you look.

Of course, my son Koss loves it there. What boy could resist the chin up bars, Lacrosse sticks and Old Spice products hiding in every corner? I can practically hear Koss’s voice deepen and the hair start to grow on his (barely) ten-year-old chest after a few minutes with “Da Boyz.” It doesn’t matter how much time has gone by, it never takes him long to pick up the stride at “Testosterone Central.” The older kids, and the various neighbor boys who hang out all the time, treat Koss just like another little brother—which is both good and bad.

He loves being part of the gang and tagging along for whatever adventures may happen, but as an only child he’s not used to having to keep up with anyone, and even less used to not having anyone coddle him or help him along. In fact, I know he’s getting older because this is the first time he’s left their house without any injuries.

I’m not saying that “Testosterone Central” is dangerous, only that Andrea is on a first name basis with the emergency room nurses in multiple states. Those kids get hurt and she barely blinks an eye. I guess having three sons toughens you up. Come to think of it, when her kids get hurt they barely blink an eye. I guess having brothers toughens you up too.

Koss is not all that tough. He’s never really had to be. I’m sure part of the reason that he still sits on my lap and likes to cuddle is because he doesn’t have any older brothers to tell him not to. I love that sweet, cuddly side of him.

But he also loves to immerse himself in that boy energy at “Testosterone Central.” It’s not exactly animal house, but you can tell that it would easily slip into fraternity style mayhem if mom-and the housekeeper-went away for an extended period of time. No wonder Koss loves it there.

He’s spent a lot of the summer hanging out with his girl cousins, and was completely comfortable being assigned to an all girl group (plus one male counselor) at Nature Camp. I don’t think the boys who live in “Testosterone Central” would be-except maybe the oldest one, who’s got a whole other level of testosterone kicking in.

I asked Koss about whether he felt he behaved differently with all boys or all girls. “When I’m with the boys I definitely feel more aggressive with them,” he said. “I try to be funnier with the girls.”

That’s when I realized that I didn’t have to be too worried about him one way or the other. He already knows exactly how to behave with both boys and with girls. If he can make the girls laugh and then go tackle the boys-and as long as he knows the right ones to cry in front of-he’s going to be just fine.

Share your MOB (mother of boys) tips with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on August 7, 2009.

Fig Leaf Schmig Leaf

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by by photostock, freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by by photostock, freedigitalphotos.net

Summertime means bare feet and bare arms, but does it mean bare buns?

A recent New York Times article by Julie Scelfo about parents’ clashing sensibilities concerning nudity among young children (cleverly titled “When Do They Need a Fig Leaf?”) got me thinking about how much times have changed.

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, there seemed to be naked children everywhere and nobody gave it a second thought. I remember when I was about five, my Grandma Etta crocheted me an orange and pink bikini, and I couldn’t wait to wear it in the ocean at East Beach. Of course, being made of stretchy yarn, the suit was down to my ankles by the time I caught my first wave. I kicked it off and stayed in the water the rest of the afternoon. I doubt my mom even noticed, given how prevalent naked kids were on the beach in those days.

Today it would be a different story. For example, a friend of ours recently returned from river rafting with a bunch of other families, and among the notable memories of the trip were the four and five-year-old girls who spent most of their vacation naked.

The fact that this was commented on at all tells us how far we’ve come. As Scelfo wrote, “For many parents, allowing a child to run around naked at home is perfectly natural, an expression of physical freedom that represents the essence of childhood, especially in the summer. But for others, unclad bodies are an affront to civility, a source of discomfort and a potentially dangerous attraction for pedophiles. These clashing sensibilities can create conflict, even when the nudity in question takes place at home.”

My son never particularly liked running around naked, so this wasn’t an issue at our house. But I’ve heard other mothers express concern, especially about their daughters’ eagerness to drop their drawers at the drop of a hat. There’s such a fine line between wanting to be protective against perverts and wanting kids to feel comfortable with their bodies. I do believe that parents who are overly paranoid about nudity are setting their children up to feel ashamed of their own bodies. Then there’s also the social factor. As a matter of common courtesy, you don’t want to make other adults-or even other children-feel uncomfortable if your kid’s running around in the buff.

So where do you draw the line in the summer sand?

Is it at a certain age? (Three? Four? When they start elementary school? When they start puberty? My husband says 27, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong.) Every family is different and that’s okay. Ultimately, I think it’s okay to teach kids that they need to take situational peculiarities into consideration when it comes to their state of dress, or undress.

Sometimes different situations call for different outfits-and that includes birthday suits.

Which side of the fig leaf do you stand? Email Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 24, 2009.

Yogurt Culture

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Rakratchada Torsap, freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by Rakratchada Torsap, freedigitalphotos.net

I’ve been spending a lot of time in yogurt stores lately. You can’t cross the street without bumping into a new one, so they’re kind of hard to avoid. In fact, the last time I was at Yogurt House in the Yogurt City pavilion, construction workers were putting up the walls for a brand new Yogurt Pantry inside. I tried to go home to avoid it, but they were busy installing a Yogurt Heaven between my kitchen and the living room.

They’re scaring all the cupcake stores away.

I hear they’re even chasing Starbucks out in some towns, though thankfully, not in ours-at least not yet. But it only takes a short stroll down State Street to see froyo fans of all fashions digging their pink and green plastic spoons deep into quadruple latte sized paper cups. Clearly frozen yogurt has regained its cool.

“The Restaurant Guy” John Dickson attributes the yogurt store invasion to the huge success of Pinkberry, a tarter and tangier version of the frozen treat, which first came to California in 2005 and opened in Santa Barbara in January.

There’s no doubt that the popularity of tart, healthier tasting yogurt has spurred some new business, but I have some theories of my own about this new yogurt culture.

Theory 1: People like frozen yogurt because it’s a treat masquerading as health food.

Yogurt stores throw around buzz words like “organic” and “probiotic” and “active cultures,” but let’s face it, the real selling points for most of us are the toppings, which give us the chance to eat Captain Crunch, Heath Bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and still feel like we’re being virtuous.

Conclusion: Or maybe that’s just me.

Theory 2: It’s all about self-service.

While not all of these new stores let customers serve themselves, a lot of them do. There’s something decadent about being able to fill your cup to your heart’s content with flavor combinations you would never order over the counter.

Conclusion: Peanut butter, root beer, and cheesecake anyone?

Theory 3: You can tell a lot about someone by watching them fill up a cup of frozen yogurt.

My nine-year-old son likes to add things like gummy worms and Froot Loops to his yogurt; really anything that leaves candy colored streaks in his chocolate flavored yogurt is yummy in his book and disgusting in mine. He also likes to stir it to milkshake consistency, at which point he decides it tastes bad and he wants a new one.

Conclusion: Little boys like to make a mess, and if they can gross their moms out at the same time it’s even better.

Little girls tend to pick their topping and yogurt combinations by color. They like to combine multiple flavors with a variety of toppings, especially sprinkles, M & M’s and jimmies.

Conclusion: Little girls like to accessorize.

I’ve noticed that teenage boys also fail to note the delicate differences between fruity sweets (which are a waste of calories to me) and actual sweets. They like to layer the yogurt and the toppings parfait style, and are not at all concerned with food faux pas like mixing Irish Mint yogurt with Nerds, Cappuccino with Kiwi Lime Sauce or even Cookies and Cream with Ketchup.

Conclusion: Teenage boys will eat anything.

Teenage girls tend to be yogurt purists. They know what they want, since they frequent yogurt stores almost as frequently as they text. In general, they stick with fruity flavors like mango or strawberry topped by actual fruit or granola, or go for the gusto with Cheesecake yogurt and brownie bites or Chocolate Decadence and Carmel sauce.

Conclusion: Teenage girls know everything, so of course they know exactly what they want.

Their moms are the same way. It seems there’s no middle ground when it comes to frozen yogurt, it’s either healthy or diabetic coma inducing.

Conclusion: Moms are good decision makers.

Hmm … should we go to Yogurtland or Yo Yum Yum this afternoon? Clearly this frozen yogurt trend is not going to be melting anytime soon.

Share your favorite yogurt combinations with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 17, 2009.

The meaning of marriage

Posted on by
Reply
© Lissdoc | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Lissdoc | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

I’m ambivalent about marriage in many ways.

I’m not a religious person, so the church stuff isn’t meaningful to me. Zak and I lived together for almost six years before we got married, and most things didn’t change after we tied the knot. He got fat, and I started denying him sex-otherwise, status quo.

Granted, we had two sets of china and enough barware to serve 50 different drinks to 50 people, but certainly our feelings for each other or our level of commitment were not really different on March 13th 1994 than they were on March 12th. We loved each other; we wanted to spend our lives together. We had a great party, said some nice things, shed a few tears and then we still loved each other, and still wanted to spend our lives together.

The thing that did change when we got married was how other people treated us. Zak’s parents were much warmer to me. My sister finally admitted that the relationship wasn’t “just a phase.” I immediately became “Aunt Leslie” to the nieces and nephews I had already spent years growing to love.

Some of our friends also treated us differently once we were married. A few of my high school girl friends insisted on addressing mail to “Mrs. Klobucher,” even though I never changed my name, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t trying to invite my mother-in-law to their baby shower.

The bank treated us differently too, and so did the government. It seemed almost everyone had an investment in marriage, although it meant different things to different people. My friend Susan said she felt “ten thousand times more secure in her relationship” after walking down the aisle. Joe said getting married made him feel “like a grownup,” and Tammy said it felt a lot like joining a sorority, “till death do us part.”

Older generations have a very different view of marriage. Greg said getting married made him feel like he “had this huge burden of responsibility for his wife,” while Connie said, “I felt like I was leaving my parents and joining a new family.”

Marriage can mean a myriad of things to individuals and couples, but it’s clearly hypocritical to pretend that it’s a sacred part of our society as a whole. Just look at the state of our unions in the last month, with Mark Sanford’s Argentine disappearing act eclipsing Jon and Kate’s primetime split and Sandra Tsing Loh’s marital implosion on the pages of The Atlantic.

The government’s definition of marriage is a legal union. That’s the one and only part of marriage that seems pretty simple and straightforward to me. Being able to marry who you want to seems like a basic human right, along with matching china and a great big party with all of your friends and family looking on.

It’s up to each of us to interpret what marriage means to us as individuals and couples. Men and women, women and women or men and men, all of us should have that right. Even though none of my gay friends got married when they had the opportunity-most of them felt more commitment than an actual marriage would confer, and they wanted to stay skinny and keep having sex-we all knew that they at least deserved the choice.

Tell Leslie what marriage means to you at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 10, 2009.

Greeting the Grunion

Posted on by
Reply

I couldn’t help but giggle as I watched the silvery fish wiggle into the sand to lay their eggs. These mesmerizing creatures are only found along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California where they lay their eggs on sandy beaches just a few months out of the year.

Growing up in Santa Barbara, my parents took us “Grunion Hunting” at East Beach. I remember the thrill of being up and out on the sand hours beyond my usual bedtime. My sister and I would catch the Grunion in our hands and then throw them back to sea, not really understanding anything about the fish except that they were our tickets to dance around barefoot in the moonlight.

It had been decades since I’d thought about Grunion-until I wrote a story for Seasons Magazine about Santa Barbara Channel Keeper, a local nonprofit that works to protect and restore the Santa Barbara Channel and watersheds.

One of Channel Keeper’s programs, in coordination with Pepperdine University, is “Grunion Greeters,” where volunteers monitor Grunion behavior on local beaches during spawning season. As soon I heard about this I called my Dad, and we volunteered to be “Citizen Scientists,” the title the program generously bestows upon participants.

After one night’s training at UCSB, I was presented with my “Citizen Scientist” tiara and a spawning schedule in a surprisingly moving ceremony. Okay, maybe I really just got a free bag and a pen, but they called us all “scientists,” which is a crowning achievement I would love to report to my college physics professor, if he were still speaking to me, and if I actually took physics in college.

So science isn’t really my academic forte, but citizen science is fun. Unlike many fish, Grunion spawn completely out of the water, so you can actually watch them lay their eggs in the sand, which looks a little like the “Shake Your Booty” dance my son used to do in preschool.

Koss did a delighted version of the “Funky Chicken” along with some excited yelps the first time he saw the Grunion, and I was right back in my own childhood mode. We were lucky to spot Grunion right away during our scheduled monitoring time, 11:20 p.m. While the Grunion can be spotted shortly after high tide on specific nights, our trainers warned us that we wouldn’t always be able to see them-although sometimes the beaches are covered with thousands of Grunion dancing on the sand. The popularity of Grunion runs in some places means that some nights there are more people lining the beaches than Grunion in the run.

That definitely wasn’t the case at Leadbetter Beach, where we did our monitoring last week. We only ran into a few other people-some more interested in human spawning than animal mating behavior-along with a couple who had happened upon some Grunion the night before and were there for an encore, and some tourists who were enchanted by these strange silvery fish. “Whoa, Dude, that was awesome. What were those things,” they asked.

“Professor” Dad and I explained that they were Grunion there to spawn. Providing human or animal predators didn’t intervene, the eggs would remain buried in the sand for their incubation time of approximately two weeks. Then the larvae would hatch and the eggs would be washed out by high waves during tides before the new and full moons.

“Radical man. And to think we just happened upon them during one of the few nights of the year they’re in Santa Barbara. Totally awesome,” was their response.

It is totally awesome, and totally fun. The last expected Grunion runs of the season are at local beaches next week, on July 8 (Wednesday) at 10:40 p.m. and July 9 (Thursday) at 11:10 p.m. I can’t wait.

=

Some tips for Grunion Greeters:

Nature doesn’t always follow our schedule. The scheduled times are for high tide when the runs may begin, but keep in mind that they typically occur within a two-hour period and plan accordingly.

Bring a flashlight but use it sparingly, as less light means more of a chance that the Grunion will spawn.

It can get cold at night, so wear layers and shoes that can get wet.

If you decide to catch the Grunion (Grunion Greeters discourages this) you may only use your bare hands; no nets, hooks or gear are allowed.

For more information on this program visit www.Grunion.org.

Share your Grunion adventures with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 4, 2009.

Lousy with Lice

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Marin, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by Marin, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Eww! That’s all I’ve been saying all month. Eww! Until a month ago I had no idea that a tiny little bug could cause so much pain and suffering. Then I got that horrible phone call from school. My head starts to itch just thinking about this.

My son—he has less than three inches of hair; hadn’t had a sleepover in ages; barely brushes his own hair, let alone shares a hairbrush; does swim team three times a week; and takes such long showers that he may single-handedly be responsible for the drought in California-had somehow contracted lice.

I got the message while I was sitting in a drive-through car wash, picking up the voicemail that his school health clerk had left almost five hours earlier. I knew my husband hadn’t picked up Koss from school because he was on his way out of town for his infamous annual “caveman weekend.”

My mother-in-law was scheduled to pick up Koss from school about two hours earlier, but I hadn’t heard anything from her. I frantically dialed her number as-I kid you not-I watched two gigantic circular brushes come to a screeching halt on my windshield. I rolled down my window and a foamy pink ashy substance started coming inside my car. It smelled like a sweaty blend of smoke, strawberries and stress. Eww!

“It’s a power outage,” yelled a guy from one of the 13 cars in line behind me. Who knew that I’d be in the middle of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when I got the lice call? The realization that I was stuck in the car wash hit me just as I got my mother-in-law on the phone.

“We’re fine. Koss had been waiting in the office for a few hours when I got to school. They said that he has lice,” she said in her always-cheery voice. This nice reassurance from a woman who didn’t tell any of her adult children she was even in the hospital until a few days after she had hip replacement surgery was, frankly, not all that reassuring.

Neither was waiting for all of the cars behind me to back up before I could do a less-than-graceful 67-point turn to get my now golden-pinkish boat of a Mercury Marquis out of the car wash.

A quick stop at the drug store to pick up lice shampoo made my head hurt even more. Product names like Pronto, RID, LiceMD and Nix shouted at me from the shelves. They all looked like they should have a skull and crossbones warning label on them. I grabbed a few bottles and headed for home.

Grandma seemed calm enough when I get there, but she bolted as quickly as possible. Koss also seemed un-phased as he told me he read a whole book while waiting for someone to pick him up in the office.

I barely let him finish dinner before I doused his head with the inaugural lice treatment and then began what would be the first of 351 loads of laundry. After the 200th load I began to think that top sheets are overrated, as are hand towels, and really, wouldn’t it be easier to pull up the carpet than to vacuum it for the 32nd time? I was exhausted and I’d only been home for an hour.

I sprayed all of the surfaces that couldn’t be vacuumed or laundered with a toxic spray that smelled so bad it must have been killing something besides the nerve endings in my nose. Then I carefully examined every single strand of hair on my son’s head. I didn’t see a single louse, but there were lots of nits, which I painstakingly picked out with my fingers. Eww! I’m a monkey! This took an entire season of Eureka on the DVR.

I was certain his head was pristine when we checked in at the office the next day. Unfortunately the florescent lighting revealed a few more nits and the school secretary explained that they have a no nits policy. Oh joy! Off we went for a delightful day of nitpicking. Armed with wooden barbecue skewers, a fine-toothed metal comb, magnifying glass and disinfectant wipes, I examined every strand of my son’s head again and again until I started to name the individual hairs. “Hey, Curly. What’s up?” I wonder what they put in those shampoos?

Finally, someone turned me on to the “magic lice shampoo” from Caldwell’s Pharmacy that is nontoxic, can be used every day, and smells like peppermint, rather than motor oil. It costs a small fortune and we went through three bottles, but it was worth every penny.

We watched an entire season of Chuck and several Food Network Challenges as I picked through Koss’s freshly shorn head for what remained of these stubborn creatures. Finally, we were done!-until I checked my own hair. Eww! A welcome home present for my husband, who finally returned from his “stunted boy weekend.” Surprise. Lice to see you, honey. I’ll be the one with her head in the vat of lye.

Good times. My head itches just thinking about them.

Four weeks later, and I finally stopped checking for nits every time I looked in the mirror. Then we got a call from a friend who we were supposed to have dinner with, and he said his kid had lice. Did we still want to go out with them? I laughed until I cried, and then I sobbed a little more. Eww!

Share your lousy adventures with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 26, 2009.

My Two Dads

Posted on by
Reply
Image by nongpimmy

Image by nongpimmy

On the surface I married a man who is nothing like my father.

Dad is a sports guy, through and through. One of his most defining-and endearing-characteristics is his love of the games. Any games, really, other than baseball, which he barely tolerated when my son played Little League.

Though it’s hard to imagine looking at him today-in fact, it makes for great slapstick in my head-my dad was once a gymnast. He even wrote his masters thesis on the Loop Dismount off the Side Horse, though by then he had bulked up considerably and was doing more tackling than tumbling. He played football at UCLA and it was a football coaching job at Santa Barbara City College that brought us to town. He was also Athletic Director there for what felt like decades. It seemed like he never missed a game. He still helps out with the women’s golf team, although I think it’s more for the free time on the links than anything else. Dad is definitely a sports guy. Even in retirement, he spends much of his time obsessively studying whatever’s on ESPN, checking his Fantasy Football league updates, and rooting for the Lakers.

It’s not that Zak is not athletic. He’s actually very graceful. He played water polo for a while, but couldn’t understand why the other guys took it so seriously. And now he swims masters to keep in shape. But the athletic fields were never his true calling. The only blocking he did in high school was on stage, and even then he was more motivated by access to cute senior girls than he was by curtain calls. In college he joined the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, where his fishnet clad high kicks took him to off-off-Broadway and Bermuda.

If I ever want to make my dad squirm, all I have to do is pull out the Newsweek photo of my husband in drag. Come to think of it, Zak’s own father wasn’t particularly comfortable with that picture either.

Zak is long and lean, while my dad is round and cuddly. My husband will nurse a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Heath Bar Coffee Crunch for at least a week, if we let him. He likes nothing better than to morsel a bite or two out at a time as a late night treat, smoothing out the ice cream’s edges so it looks like it’s fresh from the factory.

As a kid I remember my dad also liked to smooth out his ice cream, but his style was different than Zak’s. He bought gallons rather than pints, and instead of a bite or two each night; dad would eat all except a bite or two in one sitting. Then, he’d smooth the miniscule remnants up into the plastic window of the lid, so that it looked like an entire gallon of ice cream remained untouched-until you picked it up and it was light as air. Truth be told, I’ve never been sure if he did this to hide the evidence that he ate all the ice cream, or because he was too lazy to throw the container away.

Dad’s a plugger and a plodder who plows his way through just about everything he does. If slow and steady wins the race then my dad would win every time. When he jogs it looks like walking to the rest of us, and when he hurries, it looks like a relaxed pace, but he gets the job done eventually, and he’s nothing if not consistent.

Zak, on the other hand, spends ridiculous amounts of time trying to think of the most efficient ways to do just about everything. Consequently, even if it appears to only take him five minutes to complete a task, it may have taken ridiculous amounts of time to do just about anything.

They both drive me up the wall with irritation, and make me laugh so hard I cry.

On the surface they couldn’t be more different, but inside they’ve both got hearts as big as oceans. They both love to play, have fun and be with their families. And my son and I both know that deep inside where it counts we’ve got the best two dads in the world.

Leslie wishes her dad, her son’s dad and all the dads Happy Father’s Day. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 19, 2009.

Romance heats up

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s not just the approach of summer playing tricks on your mind-bulging biceps and busting bodices are gracing the covers of paperbacks everywhere you look, from aisles at drug stores to the book store shelves.

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

But the venerable publisher has lots of company. According to Romance Writers of America, romance fiction was responsible for $1.375 billion in book sales last year. That’s more than a quarter of all books sold and 51 million readers.

That’s a lot of crumpled sheets and hearts skipping beats.

While sales of books in other categories are declining in this down economy, romance novels are thriving. It’s no surprise that people want to escape when business is bleak and reality is even bleaker.

Love may not conquer all, but it sure conquers at the cash register. Business is booming.

According to the Associated Press, Kensington has seen a five percent increase in sales of mass market paperback romances for its current fiscal year, while Harlequin reported forth quarter earnings up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier. Nielsen BookScan data for May had romance book sales up nearly 2.4 percent compared with the same time last year, while sales of self-help, travel, and mystery books all showed declines for the same period.

An Associated Press Ipsos Poll found that of those who read books in 2007, one in five read romance novels. Not only that, new technology is bringing new steam to the genre. While the vast majority of readers may still prefer to curl up with an actual book (I prefer mine in a warm tub with lots of bubbles and candlelight), romance publishers are also reaching readers with electronic book formats that can be read on a variety of devices from cell phones to computers to Kindles, and services such as Daily Lit, which allows readers to read their romances through e-mail and RSS feeds.

For about a $45 investment you can even give your loved one the gift of a personalized romance novel. For example, at www.booksbyyou.com you can customize your 160 to 200-page novel with more than 26 personalized names, features and places. You can even get your pets into the story, with book titles such as “Vampire Kisses,” “Western Rendezvous,” and “Medieval Passion” to choose from. The website www.torridromance.com lets you put yourself into titles like “Allure of the Cowboy,” Beauty and the Bodyguard,” “Knights of Passion,” “Strangers in Paris” and “Taming the Tycoon.” They even have a special “buy three, get one free deal” for these books, in case you want to share your romantic adventures with your friends.

Sounds like a pretty good business-and a happy ending for somebody in today’s economy.

My husband suggested that rather than reading romance novels or writing about romance novels, I write a romance novel myself. Hmmm … perhaps a fantasy about a woman who spends 20 years with a poor but loving man and then discovers he’s really a prince, which makes her a princess, and they go off to live in a castle in the style to which she would like to become accustomed to.

My heart’s beating faster just thinking about it.

Or better yet, a woman who spends decades toiling in the newspaper business before she heaves her bosom into fiction and finds fame and fortune as a romance novelist. Stay tuned.

Share your romantic favorites with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 12, 2009.

My fling with Fling

Posted on by
Reply

flingMy son started giggling when he saw the pink candy bar in the checkout line at Vons. “Mom, that looks like something you would like,” he chuckled, as he pointed to the new “Fling” chocolate bar, a hot pink-drenched confection that looks so girly it could have stepped right off the shelf of Barbie’s Dream House.

When I told him we needed to try it, he giggled even harder, and turned a little red in the face. This candy bar screams “girl cooties” even louder than the tampons my husband thinks he deserves a medal for buying.

I don’t know when Mars began using five-year-old girls as graphic designers-I’m surprised its shiny pink and silver packaging isn’t wrapped with a feather boa. And I don’t know when Mars started using frat boys in its marketing department- they must have been working round the clock to come up with the tag line “Naughty, but not that naughty” as the motto for this 85-calorie trifle. It’s positioned as a simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of a workday, with ads that winkingly allude to a different kind of simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of the workday.

The television commercials seem to depict strangers having sex in a dressing room (they’re actually in adjacent dressing rooms and the woman is only eating chocolate), while the print ads urge you to “Pleasure yourself” with “Fling’s slender fingers.”

So much for slyly winking innuendo-they want you to pleasure yourself with slender chocolate fingers! You don’t have to have a dirty mind to go THERE with that one.

Other “Fling” ads urge you to: “Have a ‘Fling’ in private, or wave it all around town; in the office, the bedroom, or the great outdoors.” Nothing ambiguous there.

Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Sexual euphemisms are now available at the grocery store-at least in California where the product is being test marketed-in convenient chocolate form.

Not only is this candy sexy, it shimmers. According to the website (www.flingchocolate.com, not www.fling.com, which is a risque dating site which I accidentally went to in the course of writing this column, and which forced me to figure out how to erase my browser history so my son and husband wouldn’t freak out when they next went on-line): “You are not seeing things. The Milk Chocolate flavor has a pink shimmer, the Dark Chocolate has a gold shimmer, and the Hazelnut has an orange shimmer. We like variety.”

Clearly this candy bar from Mars is aiming for women from Venus. What I don’t really understand is why. Maybe the fact that “Fling” is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in 20 years is the real explanation for the stereotypical “Marketing to Women 101” campaign. They’ve covered all of the cliched bases: skinny, sparkly, naughty but nice and most of all, pink.

Surely M & M’s and Snickers’ new little sister is looking for trouble with her flirty little wrapper, not-so-subtle wordplay, and marketing of herself to just half of the population. I personally shoulder (or should I say “thigh”) more than my fair share of the chocolate bar economy. As such, I’ve always thought the woman in the Dove commercial who’s satisfied with just one piece of chocolate was faking it. But even I can’t eat enough “Flings” to keep this new product on the shelves.

When she’s not nibbling on chocolate, Leslie can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 29, 2009.

The Attention Recession

Posted on by
Reply
Photo Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Photo Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Lately I’ve had the uncomfortable sensation that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, moving things around, connecting circuits and memories and synapses in ways they weren’t connected before. It’s not that I’m losing my mind exactly—though we do obsess about green tea, crossword puzzles, and red wine in our house, since Alzheimer’s runs in the family-but my mind is changing and I’m not thinking the way I used to think.

Getting completely immersed in a book or even a long magazine article used to be the most natural thing in the world for me. I’d spend hours happily adrift in a sea of prose. Now my concentration goes overboard after just a few pages. I get anxious and start looking for something else to do. And let’s face it, there’s always something else to do.

I blame it in part on the Web. I don’t want to diss it too much, since it supplies a large part of my income, and has made finding sources for stories a breeze, but it’s a huge time and attention vacuum. Even when I’m not working, I’m scanning Facebook and Twitter, reading and writing e-mails, fixing pictures in Photoshop, perusing headlines, watching videos or downloading podcasts.

Then there’s parenthood, an enemy of concentration if ever there was one. Since I became a mom I haven’t stopped multitasking. Even when I’m sleeping I’ve got one ear cocked to make sure my child is still breathing. And when my son is away from me, the other ear is always perched at attention in case the phone rings. It could be the emergency room, or the school principal, or another parent calling to warn me about some horrible disease going through the school.

Yes, parenthood is awful for concentration, but great for the imagination, and that constant fear that something awful will happen now that you’ve got a great big piece of your heart walking around in the world without you.

“I call this concentration thing ‘Adult onset ADD,’ said my friend Angie. “It probably started with child number one, but has progressed rapidly since. Task completion is often difficult. Getting ready for the day involves not just the bathroom and closet, like in the old days. It generally includes the kitchen for breakfast and lunch making, homework signing, etc.; laundry room (gotta get a load going); home office to get the computer booted up for the day; and a ride to school for the ‘drop and run away quickly so I volunteer for anything’ of child number three. Most days I remember to take off my bunny slippers, but it’s a little embarrassing to get to the bagel shop and realize they’re still on. Hopefully I’ve remembered my bra.”

“We all forgot what it was like to finish a sentence, let alone a conversation, once we started bringing kids to social gatherings,” said my friend Tanya, handing me a glass of wine, which probably doesn’t help with my concentration, but does help with my mood.

My friend Janet sent me a text. “It starts with pregnancy and ‘Baby Brain.’ I believed everyone who said it was hormones and that it would get better when the baby was born. Wrong! Then we blamed it on ‘sleep deprivation.’ Then, when my child was a toddler, I figured it was because I was overwhelmed with watching her, Secret Service-style, every minute. But watch out, menopause is the worst,” she warned.

I’d lost my focus by that time.

Rather than blame the kid, I could blame it on technology. What it seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for focused concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the technology distributes it-as a swiftly moving stream of particles.

Or maybe my survival instinct kicked in when I read her menopause comment and it won’t allow my brain to go there yet.

I’ll have to think about that later when I have more time and I can concentrate.

When Leslie’s not struggling with adult onset whatchamacalit, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 15, 2009.