Category Archives: South Coasting

Pimp my ride

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Mercury Grand Marquis, courtesy Wikipedia.

Mercury Grand Marquis, courtesy Wikipedia.

In my quest not to become the typical minivan mom, I’ve become my grandfather instead. Somewhere between the two-door, bottom-of-the-line, “I can’t give it up because it still runs” college car and slapping a “my kid’s smarter than your kid” sticker on a station wagon, I skipped a generation and started driving a big, safe, six-passenger, slab of American steel.

Just like my grandpa did.

Just like most grandpas still do.

It wasn’t exactly a planned thing. It’s not like I woke up one day, got tired of zipping into tiny parking spaces and zipping out of the gas station for less than 30 bucks, and decided I wanted to captain a boat. Even in the wildest of my “Thelma and Louise” driving down the highway and not looking back fantasies, I have never really pictured myself driving off into the sunset behind the wheel of a Mercury Grand Marquis.

A green Jag or a red Mustang convertible, maybe, but a Mercury?

It all started when Teena, my 1990 Toyota Tercel, failed her smog check. It was finally time to go shopping for a new car.

Now, I know men complain about women and shopping all the time, but let me make something clear here: I don’t like to shop, I like to BUY. My husband, Zak, he’s the shopper in the family. He’ll think about replacing his golf hat for about year, look around for six months, research hats on the Internet for another month, discuss hats with his friends for another month, low bid for a few hats on EBay and Craig’s List, and then twiddle his thumbs for another couple of months before he finally gets around to buying something.

I, on the other hand, think the best kind of shopping is serendipitous, where you just stumble on something you can’t believe you ever lived without. Those QVC and Amazon reminder emails were made for people like me. And if I happened to spot a golf hat on sale, while cruising to lunch in the mall, I’d buy it in five different colors and two different sizes because I’d vaguely remember some boring conversations about Zak wanting a new hat.

So, given our two different purchasing styles, it’s no big surprise that when we went looking for a new car at a big tent sale at Earl Warren a couple of weeks ago, Zak was going to browse, but I was coming to buy.

My first priority in choosing a car was, of course, color, followed by the important practical considerations such a placement of cup holders, and a light up makeup mirror on the passenger side.

“But what kind of a vehicle are you looking for?” asked the already-exasperated salesman.

“Green,” answered my seven-year-old.

“Affordable,” said my husband.

“Ignore them both,” I instructed the poor man. “I want a convertible.”

We test drove the one convertible that was in our price range and quickly realized that it wasn’t really in our height range–Zak’s tall, skinny neck would be breaking through the canvas once we put the top up, and Koss’s four foot, four inch frame would be bursting out of the back seat in another couple of inches.

Then we drove a few other fun, fast cars that my inner teenager loved and my outer mom reluctantly agreed were completely impractical.

Koss pushed to try out the minivan with the built in DVD player. “But I hate minivans, ” I said. Not that I’d ever driven one.

I decided to give it a try. After all, it couldn’t hurt me too much to dip my toe into the carpool lane, could it?

Stepford Wives nightmares ran through my head as I turned the key in the minivan’s ignition. I tried to imagine myself pulling in and out of school in a minivan twice a day, just like millions of other moms in millions of other minivans. Maybe I could put a big skull tattoo on the side, or paint flames on it. That way at least I’d be able to find it in the parking lot next to all of the other minivans.

I started to feel nauseous. It’s just not right. It’s just not me. And that’s when I spotted the gleam of gold in the corner of the lot. Okay, it was the length of a football field, so it was kind of hard to miss. The leather seats called out to me, along with the six-CD-changer, the lumbar support, the little beep when you’re 50 miles away from needing gas, and the digital compass in the rearview mirror that automatically adjusts to darkness at night.

When I test-drove that baby, not only did she feel solid and smell pretty, but the other drivers got out of my way. Other drivers are the only things that have prevented me from enjoying driving for the past 20-odd years. I was sold.

“It’s not like we have to buy something today,” said my husband, naively. As if I was going to spend another weekend car shopping. I was done and the Mercury won.

We decided to name her Sunny.

Now if they could just make those parking spaces at school as wide as the ones at Bingo, I’d really be cruising.

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound.

Purse-u-ing the perfect purse

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Photo by Linnaea Mallette, publicdomainpictures.net.

Photo by Linnaea Mallette, publicdomainpictures.net.

I’ve been searching for the perfect purse for about 30 years and I’ve finally come to a conclusion: there is no such thing. If you’ve ever tried to dance, as I did recently, with your everyday purse hanging from your shoulder because you can’t fit your digital camera and reporter’s notebook into your party purse, you know what I mean.

The perfect purse has got to be able to hold everything you need, yet still look stylish and feel light.

I think I’ve almost mastered the hold everything part.

My friend Ramey used to joke that anything you ever needed could be found in my purse. Can opener? Check. Band-Aid? Check. Sweatshirt? Check. Tire iron? Check. … Just kidding, I got rid of that years ago!

But I do think I’m a shoo-in to dominate on Survivor, the Purse Frontier, where contestants have to live off the contents of their handbags. After all, I am the reigning champion of “The Purse Game,” a baby shower thriller where you score points for matching a list of items with things in your handbag. I’ve got a whole closet full of jelly-bean-filled-baby-bottle-prizes, but I know my big score is coming soon, which is why I keep finding innovative new items to store in my purse, like that glittery pink Swiss army knife keychain that once said “princess” and now says “prin,” or those handy-dandy dissolvable Listerine mouthwash strips.

Since my son was little, he’s thought my purse was like Mary Poppins’ magic bag, filled with toys and treats and things to keep him relatively clean and quiet. Now that Koss is 7, my purse has become the receptacle of choice for his treasures, not just mine. I’m dumbfounded when I hear other moms talking about emptying their son’s pockets before doing laundry. My kid doesn’t want to look “bulky” and besides, I am Koss’s pockets — or at least my purse is — which is one of the reasons why we had to institute the “you can only take one small rock/shell/glass treasure home from the beach” rule.

When my husband tries to hand me his sunglasses, his wallet, or a frog he just found, that’s where I draw the line. My purse is heavy enough already.

I feel a little bit guilty when they make special requests, (“Mom, do you have a purple glitter crayon and some string cheese?” “Honey, do you have our 1992 tax returns and that New Yorker I’ve been wanting to read?”) then are utterly shocked when I’m not packing their little hearts’ desires.

I wish I could carry around the refrigerator and the filing cabinet with me but my purse is getting a little heavy. Besides, where would the shoe rack go?

In fact it’s so heavy that it’s leaving a permanent mark on my right shoulder. I wonder if there’s a way to make that look stylish, like the next hot thing after piercing and tattooing.

Unfortunately, as you can see from a recent inventory — wallet, keys sunglasses, cell phone, Band-aids, Kleenex, lip balm, lipstick, dental floss, floss sticks, paperback book, magic 8-ball, post-its, Tylenol, pens, notebook, camera, water, hair pick, mints and two changes of clothing — there’s absolutely nothing I could do without.

Believe me, I’ve tried. I have a closet full of nearly new (and now woefully out of style) handbags that aren’t big enough to fit all of life’s essentials. I once got stuck overnight in the Newark Airport with nothing to read and a terrible gift shop selection. There are 5,873 squares on the roof of the United Airlines terminal and I will never again leave home without extra reading material. As for the bottle of water, well, I was once stuck in the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.

With the exception of last weekend, I do try to lighten things up a bit when I go out at night. That’s when the party purses come out. But these can be tricky too. Some of those adorable little Judith Leiber rhinestone numbers won’t even hold a credit card and a lipstick, let alone car keys. If you need to bring sunglasses, you’re really up a creek. I think what I really need is a purse-onal assistant to schlep my bag, like all the movie stars have when they walk the red carpet.

Yes, that’s what’s missing in my life.

But I wouldn’t want an assistant digging through my bag. Who knows what embarrassing things she might find there. There are only so many places to hide a body. As the Illinois State Supreme Court found, “a woman’s purse occupies a peculiar status and is a possession in which a woman expects supreme privacy.”

And in the interest of full disclosure, the handbag inventory I provided here isn’t quite complete.

Now, for the three straight men and my father who made it all the way through this column — you win! I have your prize right here. … Just a sec … I know it’s in here somewhere…

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound.

Mag on the Rag

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fourweekslogoPunny magazine debuts for the hormonally challenged

There’s nothing like an unexpected visit from “Aunt Flo” to make a woman roar, snarl, growl, and howl. And howl I did–with laughter–when I heard about the new online women’s lifestyle publication, Four Weeks Magazine, which bills itself as “the first magazine tailored to each week of a woman’s monthly cycle.”

Yes, that’s right. I’m not talking bicycle or motorcycle or rinse cycle–I mean “that” cycle. Reading through the press release, my cramps and chocolate cravings began almost immediately. I had to find out more about this new rag (www.fourweeksmag.com).

Is it just another bloody online magazine? I thought Divorce Magazine (www.divorcemag.com) and Modern Drunkard (www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com) were gimmicky, but Four Weeks takes the old “if it bleeds, it leads” adage to a new level. It’s actually four mini magazines for each of the four weeks of a woman’s monthly hormone cycle and “the distinct moods that her hormones have her feeling during those weeks.” Week 1 is “fun and familiar;” week 2, “exciting and exotic;” week 3, “cautious and caring;” and week 4, “indulgent and introspective.”

But what about “pimply-faced and pissed off?” And what happens if you happen to have a 5-week cycle? Would you be stuck without anything to read? Maybe that’s where “bloated and bitchy” kicks in.

Four Week’s founder and editor Gabrielle Lichterman is the former managing editor of Playgirl magazine, the author of “28 Days: What Your Cycle Reveals about Your Love Life, Moods, and Potential” and a member of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research. Who knew? All of the grief that woman get from men for traipsing into public restaurants like we were boarding Noah’s Ark, and we could have just told our guys we were going to a “society meeting.”

Talk about giving Martha and Oprah a run for their money. This chick is also the founder of her own science, Hormonology, “the science of predicting your day and planning your life according to one’s own hormone cycle.” Not to be catty, but does this mean we can blame Condi Rice’s hormones for the situation in the Middle East?

Grrr…

According to Lichterman, “Women can gain an advantage by planning their life around their hormonal influences. For example, it makes sense to plan high-energy activities during the week a woman’s hormones make her energy and endurance peak and to plan mellow activities during the week a woman’s hormones make her feel sedate and tired.”

So all of that hard work that women have done the past century to prove that we’re rational creatures not ruled by hormones goes up in smoke? I asked my husband what he thought about all this, and he said, “Yes, dear. You’re smart and pretty.” Okay, maybe not everything’s gone up in smoke.

Now nobody wants a Rorschach Inkblot on their white organza bridal gown, but Lichterman has taken wedding planning to a whole new level and produced “a hormonal guide to picking the perfect wedding date,” with week 4 flagged as a “Bridezilla warning!” week because “descending hormones produce a rise in noradrenaline, a chemical that triggers anger and irritation. At the same time, decreasing estrogen is making it hard to put a positive spin on anything.”

As if one’s mood swings could be so easily predictable, I snarled.

I’d like to go with the flow, but do you think it’s possible that your hormones could get so out of whack that you begin to feel like you live your whole life in week four? It sure would excuse…I mean, explain, a lot.

And if I, or my evil twin sister, were to be living in a perpetual week 4 hormonal hell, what should I be reading? Certainly not news headlines. Instead, the shopping section of Four Weeks offers a story on “Killer Candy Bowls.” No, not my mom’s childhood tales of Halloween razor blades in the Milky Ways (perhaps she was in week 4 and just really needed the chocolate caramely nougat)–these are actually really cool looking bowls made out of recycled plastic candy wrappers by Nepalese artisans and sold fair trade by a non-profit organization that provides health care services in rural Nepal and Vietnam. Where’s the comedy in that?

This magazine might actually be kind of useful. There’s an article on “How your guy’s hormone cycle can bring you closer,” which features nifty tidbits like: “When a man watches a romantic movie, it raises the level of his progesterone by more than 10 percent, making him mellow and more nurturing.” So it’s not just because he thinks he might get lucky.

The food section has an article on “The surprising ways candy can be good for your health.” Is it just my hormones, or am I actually starting to like this woman? Unlike the typical women’s magazines, which recommend either healthy diets and exercise or plastic surgery and expensive baubles, this article prescribes eating caramels for stress, licorice for bloating, peppermints for coughing and congestion, and my personal favorite, chocolate for cancer.

It’s hard to growl too much about that. Meow.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound

MONOPOLY Goes Modern

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Would you like fries with that labradoodle?

Mr. MonopolyIf I were dead, I’d be rolling over in my grave right now. But since I’m not, I’ll have to settle on rolling my eyes along with every kid who ever suffered through a rainy day MONOPOLY marathon, which is basically every kid and ex-kid in America.

Love it or hate it–and I feel a little bit of both whenever I play–MONOPOLY is a sacred part of our culture. Everybody plays. You play because your little sister bugs you till you say yes. You play because you can’t go outside because it’s raining or they’re spraying Naled. You play because it’s Christmas vacation, you’ve already tortured your little sister, and you don’t have anything else to do. You play because you don’t want to play strip poker with grandma. You play because there’s nothing else your family can agree to do together.

And now, it pains me to say this, MONOPOLY–the most popular board game in history, with more than 250 million copies sold–has gone commercial.

I know it seems an ironic complaint to make about a game that glorifies capitalism and has aggressively licensed versions from Armyopoly to X-Menopoly. I think we still have a version of Santa Barbopoly around here somewhere.

But despite these transgressions, one part of the game remained sacred: the tokens. You may abhor the game, or make up your own rules to make it go faster, but everyone has a favorite MONOPOLY token, and it never feels quite right when you’re forced to play with your second favorite.

Parker Brothers, the game’s manufacturer, has even done a nationwide analysis and found that certain personality traits are associated with certain MONOPOLY tokens. You’ve got your wheelbarrows, who are always prepared to take in loads of easily maneuverable money; your canons who are constantly aiming to make a big noise; your race cars, who drive hard deals in their negotiations; your shoes, who trod their way patiently around the board; and your top hats, who simply want to own it all.

Not only do we get attached to our game tokens, they’re also educational. The only iron–and for that matter, the only thimble–my son has ever seen is the one in his MONOPOLY game. And now, or rather “Here & Now” which is the name of the new edition, they’ve gone corporate.

Instead of traveling along the board as a battleship, you can now trudge along as a Motorola RAZR cell phone, McDonald’s fries, Starbucks coffee, a Toyota Prius or a New Balance sneaker. The trendy labradoodle is the least commercial of the new tokens, which also include an unbranded laptop computer and passenger jet.

I could understand the branding better if Parker Brothers was suffering through hard times. Toys aren’t the big sell they once were and board games are in danger of going the way of the Pteranodons. Kids are now electronic game experts in preschool and two-dimensional toys have a tough time competing for attention when there’s a super-surround-sound-mega-amazing Game Boy in the room. Or so I’m told. My poor deprived child, as he constantly reminds me, has to play with books and balls and art supplies most of the time, so he’d probably be glad to play something that actually came with instructions.

But believe it or not, this commercialization of MONOPOLY has nothing to do with sponsor money. McDonald’s, Starbucks, and the others did not pay for product placement fees. Yes, you read that right: they got the brands on there for free. They are simply there to represent a sign of the ubiquitous branding of American life. According to the company, MONOPOLY: Here & Now Edition was designed to answer the question: “What would the most popular board game of all time look like if it were invented today instead of in 1935?”

In addition to giving the old shoe the boot in favor of a New Balance running sneaker and trading in the terrier for a labradoodle, there are new properties with inflated prices (landing on Times Square with a hotel will cost $20 million), larger currency denominations, airports replacing railroads and more modern utilities like internet service replacing the old water works. I guess you can always buy your Evian online.

The Chance and Community Chest cards have also been updated. Instead of winning $10 in a beauty contest, you can now win $100,000 in a reality TV show, and when you go to jail, it’s for identity theft and insider trading. Oh, and when you pass GO, you collect $2 million dollars. Not bad for a few hours work.

 

 

 

Matt Collins, Vice President of Marketing for Parker Brothers, says, “For the past 70 years, millions of Americans have tasted the thrill of ‘owning it all’ by playing MONOPOLY. The new MONOPOLY: Here & Now Edition allows aspiring real estate tycoons to enjoy an elevated game play experience that more closely matches today’s America.”

So $2 million for passing GO matches today’s America? I hope my editor reads this. I’m gonna ask for a raise.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound

A Sugarcoated Lesson on Navigating the News

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Image: Jon S, Flickr.com

Image: Jon S, Flickr.com

Certain Santa Barbarians, who shall remain nameless for fear of lawsuits, seem to be having a humongous amount of difficulty understanding what constitutes the difference between a news story, an opinion piece and a column. So, as a public service for the seven of you who don’t have the benefit of high school journalism experience, I offer this column as an attempt to help clarify the differences.

Not to put the seven of you on the spot or anything, but this very morning I explained the difference between fiction and nonfiction to my second grade reading group, and they got it in about three seconds. I also apologize in advance for the complexity and sophistication of my examples, but not every story can be about animals.

News–Candy Kidnapper Strikes Again

Chief Johnny B. Good addressed a crowd of reporters at a press conference yesterday about the recent rash of candy thefts at local schools. “The good news is that children are eating less candy. Without all that sugar zipping through their brains they are able to concentrate better on their schoolwork, which will ultimately bring in more taxes to increase our salaries. The bad news is that there appears to be a serial candy thief in our community, and we won’t be able to catch him until we have higher salaries.”

According to data presented by Good, since September 1 a total of 103 pounds of candy have been stolen from local schools, including: 19 Abba Zabbas; 13 Big Hunks; 11 Mars Bars; 59 Snickers Bars; 52 Rolo Rolls; 27 bags of plain M & Ms; 11 $100,000 Bars; 39 Oh Henry’s; 17 Butterfingers, and one still-fresh Twinkie which had been stapled to the wall of a 5th grade classroom at Harding School since 1978.

Other schools reporting candy thefts include Montecito Union, Monte Vista, Laguna Blanca and Garfield Elementary School, which has been closed for more than 30 years.

Anti-cavity activist and Dentist Wally Wonka, said, “Whoever the candy thief is, he should not be hunted down by the police, but rather he should be applauded for his valiant efforts to improve the dental health of the children in our community.”

Chief Good said there are no leads or suspects in the case yet, and encourages anyone with information to contact the police at 555.1234.

Opinion–Kudos for Kidnapper

Faster than an eating contest, more powerful than a ten-ton Big Mac, there’s an alarming problem facing our nation’s children and it’s called obesity. We have met the enemy, and then we et the enemy.

Sure we can force kids to take P.E. class instead of running around on a football field with all those silly instruments. And yes, we can also regulate the percentage of fat in the cafeteria’s chicken nuggets that no one ever eats anyway. But there’s a better way to fight this epidemic, and the Candy Kidnapper has found it.

As any parent knows, the only way to control kids these days is through fear. Make them so scared of the notorious Candy Kidnapper that not a single Skittle will ever again pass their lips.

We’ve tried facts–more than 30 percent of American children are considered overweight–and they’ve had absolutely no impact. We’ve tried force, like no dessert until you eat all of your vegetables, and they fed them to the dog when we weren’t looking. Now it’s time to try fear.

Column–A Sweet Confession

It all started with that teensy tiny Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup peeking out of that sweet little kindergartener’s Dora the Explorer lunch box. It was going to melt before lunchtime anyway, and then she would have had chocolate all over her pink polka dotted dress.

We certainly didn’t want that.

So I took it.

It was the best Reese’s I’ve ever had, and believe me; I’ve had a lot of Reese’s. Taking candy from that kid was like taking candy from a baby, only a slightly bigger baby.

That peanut butter cup was my gateway drug; once I got a taste I couldn’t stop myself. But the police got it wrong, I never took a Mars Bar: I hate coconut. And there’s no way it was 103 pounds. It was 97 pounds, at the most.

Nothing tastes better than stolen candy. You know what I mean. It’s Halloween and as a parent you’re forced to “inspect” your child’s loot for the good stuff, leaving them only the sour fruity crud to fight over.

If these kids weren’t so darn gullible they would still have their treats. Kindergarteners will fall for “Look, over there,” and even “share” their candy with you if you ask in a high squeaky voice.

Yeah, it’s a bit sinister, but it sure goes down sweet.

So the next time you read one of those rabble rousing newspaper stories, make sure you get your facts–and your fiction–straight.

Class, are there any questions? You can email Leslie at Email email

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound

Science Goddess, Hear me Roar!

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Image courtesy Wikipedia, creative commons.

Image courtesy Wikipedia, creative commons.

An introduction to the Leslie Science System

Quite frankly I’ve been confused about conventional science since elementary school, where I learned in English class that “i” goes before “e” except after “c,” and then it was time to open up our scIEnce textbooks.

I tried to participate in my junior high science fair, with what I thought was a brilliant and much-needed scientific investigation into which jokes are most likely to make my classmates laugh so hard they pee their pants in class or spurt milk out their noses in the cafeteria.

Believe it or not, my teachers quickly killed that line of scientific inquiry.

Darwin, babe, I feel your pain.

From that day on, I became more of a liberal arts kind of girl. Physics, schmysics–the only relationship I had with Newton was through his fig cookies, which in the Leslie Science System actually qualify as health food. Any food that substitutes bowel cleansing fruit filling for chocolate does not qualify as a cookie.

While not everyone buys into it yet–hey, relativity wasn’t an easy sell for Einstein either–the Leslie Science System has served me well over the years. Particularly when it comes to dealing with my husband, who is one of those oddball people who believes in using logic to win arguments. I say there’s nothing wrong with choosing the cutest doctor to deliver your baby, since you’ll be spending so much time together. Or voting for a particular political candidate because you think that Jon Stewart will have a lot of fun mocking him for the next four years.

The Leslie Science System is also great for procedural explanations. I’ve used it to explain to my husband the proper way to light a birthday cake’s candles (Leslie math: your age plus “one to grow on”) or to clarify why it costs $500 every time I go to Costco (Leslie’s law: for every item you put on your Costco list, you will stumble on seven other items you can’t live without).

It’s the same kind of highly evolved logic that comes into play when you buy new sheets for your bed, and then have to replace the carpet and the dressers and the curtains and the husband because the new sheets made them look shabby.

It is also the same kind of advanced thinking required to understand the intricacies of preparing to go on a diet (eat a lot for at least two weeks before, so that the first few pounds will come off easily and encourage you to stay on your diet).

It’s really quite simple once you understand the system. It’s science, Leslie style.

Still, man, given the slow speed in which the world embraces new scientific methods such as the Leslie Science System, I was quite surprised when I was recently asked to write two children’s science books. Perhaps this would be my opportunity to revolutionize the world of children’s books. Perhaps people were finally coming around to my way of thinking.

Imagine my surprise when my editor told me I had to do actual research on spiders and volcanoes and include actual facts in my stories.

“You mean I can’t just make stuff up, I mean use the Leslie Science System, like I do in my column? I really think it’s catching on,” I told him.

“Sure you can,” said my editor. “But I won’t pay for it.”

So I bit the bullet, wrote the books, and cashed the checks. Now you can buy the books at www.lesliedinaberg.com. Just click on “read” for more information. After all, as my fellow unappreciated-during-his-lifetime scientist Einstein said, “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine…” and strange as it may seem, Leslie really did publish two science books this summer. . Email email

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 15. 2006.

Happy Birthday to Me

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Photo courtesy George Hodan, PublicDomainPictures.net.

Photo courtesy George Hodan, PublicDomainPictures.net.

When I was born they had to use forceps, which screwed up my face. Family lore has it that dad’s first words upon seeing his firstborn were (to my mom): “It’s okay honey, we’ll buy her pretty clothes and develop her personality.”

My husband gets a big kick out of that one. Until I remind him that now it’s his turn to buy me pretty clothes, and maybe a diamond trinket or two.

Like that’s ever going to happen.

He has lowered the bar on my expectations down so low that I’m thrilled if he remembers to make dinner reservations, and positively orgasmic if he deigns to call a babysitter. So maybe he learned something at Harvard.

The one thing he doesn’t have to be subtly reminded about is the all-important cake. The chocolate cake. We settled that issue early on in our relationship.

I was young and naïve and googly-eyed in love at the time, and tickled to death when my future husband took me out for a lovely birthday dinner. My favorite friends were all there, the food was great, the drinks were plentiful, and he had even bought me the perfect pair of earrings I had slyly hinted might flatter my lobes.

After a rough, first year start—“not every girl dreams of a boyfriend who will give her a $3.99 birthday gift from K-Bee Toys,” I explained, gently—it seemed like Zak was finally starting to “get” me.

It was that night that I started to think our relationship might not just be a phase (which my sister still thinks), that he might actually be “the one.”

Then he took me home, and the trouble began. There was no cake. No cake! Not just no chocolate cake, which would have been a near-fatal error in itself, not an ill-advised angel food concoction or an unfortunate cheesecake. Not even a pineapple upside down cake!

I was about ready to turn Zak upside down when he offered the pitiful excuse, “But we just had crème brulee at the restaurant. With a candle.”  And what on earth did that have to do with my missing birthday cake?

He truly didn’t get it.

In my family, birthdays are a big deal. They last at least a month, with both family and friend versions of the celebration. In recent years we’ve widened the spectrum a bit to include the family with and without kids celebrations, and the friends with and without kids celebrations, which should pretty much fill my calendar until Thanksgiving.

Cake is mandatory, but candles are optional. However, as my husband learned the hard way (“it’s just a flesh wound, darling”), the proper way to count out birthday candles is your age plus “one to grow on.” This is science, and his family is clearly medieval.

And by the way, I saw a really cute purse on sale downtown. I think it would look great with my personality.

Leslie will be accepting birthday wishes—and cake—for the next several months at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 8, 2006.

 

 

A Tale of Two Trips

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Family travel by Traveloscopy, courtesy Flickr.com.

Family travel by Traveloscopy, courtesy Flickr.com.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of childhood, it was the age of parenthood, it was the epoch of excitement, it was the epoch of dullness, it was the season of laughter, it was the season of bickering.

It was August, and it was family vacation time.

It is not often that a 30-12-year-old woman has the opportunity to vacation separately with her family of origin (mom, dad, and 30-10-year-old sister) and her family of record (husband and 7-year-old son)–and certainly not within the course of a week.

There are reasons that these double family vacations haven’t really caught on. Most people have a lot more common sense than I do.

This kind of travel time warp doubleheader is definitely not for the faint of heart, stomach or ear.

Traveling with Zak and Koss (my husband and son, or my “roomies”) is always an adventure into the great unknown. Each new phase of our son’s maturity comes without warning, so we never know how he’s going to behave from vacation to vacation. One summer he was napping through five-hour car trips and the next it was, “Are we there yet?” “I’m hungry,” “Can I get a toy?” and “Are we there yet?” every two seconds.

On the other hand, traveling with my parents and sis (my “homies”) is an adventure into the well-trodden paths of the past. My whole life flashed before me many times during the week, and not just in deja vu over the ultra-competitive card games and battles over the shower schedule. When my dad is behind the wheel, you take your life into your hands. Other people dream of snakes on a plane, but the only scarier thing I can imagine besides dad driving in the rain, in the dark, on unfamiliar Colorado mountain roads, is his reaction to having my sister and mom point out that he just drove over the median strip and wouldn’t he rather let one of them drive instead?

Unlike the rest of my homies, I have no illusions about my driving skills, although I do often wonder whether to attribute them to nature or nurture. My dad deserves credit for teaching me to use the brakes on an empty freeway, and my mom (otherwise known as “GPS Joannie”) gives my dad at least a 33-mile heads up every time he is within a half an hour of the next required turn. With this gene pool to draw on, it’s hard for me to believe that my husband doesn’t appreciate my navigational skills when we travel down unfamiliar highways.

Should I be insulted that on our recent trip up the coast–take Highway One for a million, zillion, windy, narrow miles, then look for the signs to Monterey–Zak trusted the map to our second grader, rather than rely on the Dinaberg sense of direction? Not only did Koss get us to our hotel without a single wrong turn, he managed to avoid all cries of “Are we there yet?” by plugging himself into DVDs, books (“Snakes in a Car,” anyone?), and inexplicably, the soundtrack from “Rent,” while skillfully shunning exposure to any of that pesky scenery that his dad and I find so appealing.

Despite our differing levels of enthrallment with the Pacific Ocean, for the rest of our trip, my roomies and I were in perfect sync on almost everything. This was the first vacation I can remember where we were able to choose our restaurants without the added consideration of what kind of toy came with the kid’s meal. I could lose sight of my son for more than a second without feeling the symptoms of a heart attack, and wishing I had the nerve to use one of those kid leashes. Sure I was still the parent, but my roomies and I could be buddies too, equally sharing in the coolness of the aquarium’s jellyfish and our amusement at the sea lions that “wrestled” right under our noses at one waterfront restaurant.

Traveling with my homies, on the other hand, brought out my inner teenager. I couldn’t help but bristle a little when, for each and every outing (including going downstairs to the hotel gym) my mom made sure I had a sweater and a room key. And while we didn’t have to sneak the champagne at this particular family wedding, mom did hand me my place card, decide when it was time to leave, and remind me to make sure to go pee and say thanks to my host and hostess.

On the other hand, traveling with my homies allowed me to bask in the magic of uninterrupted sleep in the morning and uninterrupted reading time in the afternoon. I had almost forgotten what a pleasure it was to read a single book in the course of a day, and not be responsible for anyone else’s teeth, clothes or bedtime story. While I spend plenty of time with my homies year round, it was nice to be able to have the luxury of long, adult conversations about art, politics, and family. OK, so it was People Magazine versus Us, Hilary Clinton’s hair, and how funny it was to see Grandma Evie dancing to “My Hump,” … but nobody interrupted us to ask for dessert or needing help with the TV remote. Except my dad, that is.

It’s funny how going on vacation with your parents can make you feel both old and young at the same time. Come to think of it, so can spending time with your kids.

Is Leslie the only one crazy enough to try a roomie/homie doubleheader? Let her know at email

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 1, 2006.

Harvard Schmarvard

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Harvard University, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

Harvard University, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

I used to think that people who had degrees from Harvard had arrived into the elite upper echelon of higher education. Like most people who have seen Love Story, and Good Will Hunting, I pictured Harvard guys a certain way. Preppy, sophisticated, erudite and of course, rich.

Then I met my husband.

It’s not that the guy isn’t witty or smart–I married him, didn’t I? It’s just that he isn’t exactly any of those other things that I had previously associated with a Harvard education. People have a surprised reaction whenever they find out where Zak went to school. It is probably because he looks like more of a UC Santa Cruz kind of guy, or one of those kids in that new movie, Accepted, who invents their own college when they can’t get in anywhere else. People are either appalled, like my cousin Todd, who coughed up an entire six pack when he found out Zak went to Harvard; or impressed, like my friend Sienna, who immediately suggested she take us out to an expensive dinner so she could start sucking up to get her four-year-old son in.

I was actually impressed by Zak’s Harvard pedigree when we first met. That is until I realized that despite his English degree, he’s better schooled in the works of Stephen King than he is in those of F. Scott Fitzgerald. And that he would never deign to actually use any of those seven figure college connections to, oh say, try to get a frickin’ job.

Needless to say, we’ve developed a friendly collegiate rivalry over the years, though it’s not really much of a competition. My alma mater, UCLA, continues to stack up basketball and football championships while Harvard alumni rule the lesser worlds of politics and Nobel prizes. Clearly I come from the superior school.

Did I mention that with only a minor in English and a major in frat boys, I’ve read more classic literature than my husband, Mr. English Degree from Harvard, ever did? Or that MY college loans have been paid off for more than a decade? And that there’s never been an American president who went to UCLA?

Despite the clear superiority I feel in being a Bruin, I have to admit I took a little bit of pleasure in this week’s Time Magazine cover story, titled “Who Needs Harvard?” Especially when the next day’s news logged a defeat for Harvard in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, which rates Princeton over its Ivy League rival. That UCLA was ranked number 26 didn’t faze me a bit, as my husband gently pointed out. We Bruins know better than to put our faith in things like college rankings, unless they are from the NCAA.

While the U.S. News and World Report rankings take things like endowments into account, there’s more to a great college experience than sitting in a beautiful library. What about sitting in a library full of beautiful people? UCLA’s close proximity to Hollywood and Southern California’s year-round sunshine make for an exceptionally photogenic student body. Score one for UCLA.

Then there’s our superior five squirrel rating. According to the annual rankings published by Academic Squirrels of California and Beyond (www.gottshall.com/squirrels/campsq.htm) which uses the simple algorithm that the quality of an institution is directly related to the number of squirrels on its campus, the size, girth and health of UCLA’s squirrel population is second only to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. And that’s only because those squirrels have had 156 years of federal government protection. And they got extra squirrel points for having Rocky and Bullwinkle as their mascots. Harvard ranks a lowly three on the squirrel-o-meter because squirrels, like everything else, tend to freeze their nuts in those unpleasant east coast winters.

Score two more for UCLA, for furry friends and weather.

Then there’s the school pride factor. While proud Bruin alumni line up alongside busloads of tourists to purchase the latest in bear wear fashions, you’ll never spot a real Harvard grad in a Harvard sweatshirt. It’s like they are too cool to admit it or something. When I went with Zak to his 10-year college reunion, they gave us crimson hats that said “HR class of 1987,” like it was a secret code or something! What could possibly be so great about a school that people don’t want to admit they went to?

Finally, though, it all comes down to mascots. UCLA has the bruin. A bear. How cool is that? Harvard has crimson. A color. A color you have to have a degree from Harvard to identify. Crimson is the color a Harvard student’s nose turns when he’s out in the snow trying to cheer on his sorry excuse for a football team.

Harvard Schmarvard, indeed.

When Leslie’s not out in the sunshine, cheering on the Bruins, she can be reached at email

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on August 25, 2006.

Why Do Men Have Nipples

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Why do Men Have Nipples? BookWhy? Because it’s an awfully catchy title.

The screaming titles in the window of Barnes & Noble caught my eye: “Why Do Men Have Nipples?” and its sequel, “Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?” by humorist Mark Leyner and Dr. Billy Goldberg. Sure, “Dr. Billy” sounds like he should be playing with a plastic stethoscope, but I could forgive him his name if the books actually delivered the answers to these mysterious questions. After all, the obstetrician that delivered my son was Dr. Howie Mandel, and I’ve almost gotten over that one.

Did these books really have the answers to these long-pondered questions that had been taking up my valuable brain space for almost as long as, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” I decided to investigate.

Since the books are subtitled, respectively, “Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini” (nipples) and “More Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour” (sleep), I decided to pour myself a glass of wine and ponder the imponderable in my quest for factoid fun.

The merlot seemed like a good choice, given my history of falling asleep after my third glass of just about anything resembling a martini and the fact that we had no whiskey in the house. Does anyone actually know how to make a whiskey sour anymore? It sounds like something Dudley Moore drank in “10.”

Like most college graduates, I had already spent countless drunken hours contemplating the mystery of why men have nipples, and unless I had missed a memo, knew that that answer was an unsatisfying, “nobody really knows.”

Just to be sure, I double-checked. According to the authors, while only females have mammary glands, we all start out in a similar way in the embryo. The embryo follows a female template until about six weeks, when the male sex chromosome kicks in. At that point males have already developed nipples.

It takes men six weeks to develop nipples, but at 40 years old, my husband still has to be reminded how to wipe the sink down properly after shaving and put the seat down after peeing? I’ve got a few ideas for Dr. Billy’s next title, like “Why Are Men Such Babies When They Get Sick?” and “Why Can’t Men Write Down a Phone Message When There are Notepads All Over the House?” and “Why Did You Say You Were Listening to Me When Clearly You Weren’t?”

Actually, Dr. Billy has an answer for that last one. He says it’s not that men listen less than women. Get this, it’s that they listen “differently.” This sounds suspiciously like not keeping score in T- Ball and pretending the kids won’t know the difference. However, according to Dr. Billy, “Men use one side of their brain whereas women use both sides. And when men hear women’s voices they hear those voices in different areas of the brain than women — they hear women’s voices in the same area of the brain they use to process complex musical sounds — so you can extrapolate the women’s voices are more complex. … And more difficult for us to listen to.”

So women use our whole brain to listen and men only use half a brain when they listen to women. And why did that chicken cross the road? Maybe he wasn’t listening when his wife asked for directions.

When she’s not pondering life’s eternal questions, Leslie can be reached at email

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on August 18, 2006.