The old FAMILY ANNUAL REPORT poking fun at all those holiday letters you can’t wait to mock then toss in the fire.

Check it out over here:

http://linda-sands.blogspot.com/

I am a proud American woman. I drive my American-made vehicle to overstocked grocery stores, proudly paying extra for American-grown fruits and vegetables. I give to charities that benefit less fortunate Americans, and I raise my children with the hope they will embrace The American Dream, whatever that may mean to them.

My father chose to live his parents’ dream. By the second baby and the third house, Dad’s company settled him in a small town in central New York, where he served them loyally for 35 years, driving the same morning route, five days a week, lunch bag on the seat beside him.

He parked in the same lot, worked in the same building, greeted the same faces, and every night at five, reversed the process, arriving home to a perfect Manhattan, up with a twist, before dinner at six sharp.

Today’s dad works without loyalty or stability, commutes far too long and reaps few rewards. Mom arranges expensive activities for children who should be fishing and climbing trees, adds to traffic and pollution problems by minivanning them around town while doing business on her cellphone. Kids have bikes for fun, not transportation; day care, not family; computers and video games, not freeze tag and tree forts.

My mom stayed home. We were her full-time job. She cooked, gardened, painted, bowled and volunteered, and still kept us in line. Seems she was always there, especially when we didn’t want her.

Today, those comfortable, predictable steps to Our Dream have been altered. Children no longer say they want to grow up and be like their daddy — the daddy who is out of work, in and out of rehab or going on his fourth marriage.

The steps used to be: high school, college, job, spouse, house, baby, put on a few pounds, swap champagne and dancing for domestic beer and yardwork, buy a boat, vacation at the beach, visit the relatives, drink more, write letters to old friends, send photos, plant a tree in the yard, water and enjoy.

What will we put on paper for the new American baby? Hope for the best? Forget about planning, who are you to believe you will survive your teen years, much less day care?

Look around you. Children are dying — caught in the gunfire of gang wars, crushed under the wheels of a drunk’s vehicle or in the rubble of a terrorist attack, stolen from their beds by crazed criminals, or not so innocently, by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, extreme sports — blame whatever you will, it does not change the outcome.

Face it, the American Dream isn’t what it used to be. We raise our children in gated communities, sharing pools, tennis courts and playgrounds with people just like us. The American business “established in 1985″ carries a certain distinction, as if surviving more than 15 years is a monumental accomplishment.

Where is America’s permanence? To what do we hold true? Our flag? Those dusty things we pulled from the attic, or embarrassed, ran out to buy last September? The national anthem? Many people don’t even know the words. The Pledge of Allegiance? A judge has taken God out of it.

We separated God and state, without his permission. What next? Denounce the dollar bill for claiming, ‘In God We Trust’? Where does it stop?

I understand and accept change, acknowledging its shape on our future. But I can’t help yearning for the past. Not a glorified America, but one with spark and simplicity.

Maybe it’s time to take a step back — to a dream formed when choices were few, pleasures were simple and life was good.

Articles

A Holiday Gift From Your Sole
by Linda Sands

Ask any woman. Shoes are more than mere footwear. They are an expression of love, of want, of desire. They can tell you more about a person’s inner life than any other article of clothing on her body. A good shoe can make your day, get you the job, win you a spouse. Yes, the shoe is more than elemental protection, it is karmic destiny. The soul of my sole will not be denied. Which is why I just had to have one more pair of boots this season—in tan suede, with fringes and sparkly studs. Hey there, cowboy.

I wasn’t supposed to be Christmas shopping for myself. There was a list in my purse for friends, family and colleagues that I had been dutifully checking off for weeks, but sometimes, you just know it when you see it. A quick glance, followed by the slow turn, a gentle caress, a second perusal—then you slip it on and you know you won’t go home without it. It’s the beginning of a lasting affair. You pledge to honor the shoe’s season, bear with blisters or corns, in good weather or bad; you will wear that shoe till leather do you part.

Women wear shoes like men wear cars. The shoe is a substitute for the penis­­of the man a woman has just met or would like to meet. That’s right, a virtual schlong for your tootsy, a one-eyed snake pump, a Johnson for your Murphy, a phallic symbol of the automotive variety, and like its counterpart—it can need expert custom repairs. Unlike penis envy, though, shoe envy is public: There is a great deal of unabashed pointing, stroking, oohing and ahhing, followed by the inevitable, “Where did you get those shoes?”

I’m convinced many shoe styles were named after someone’s ex-love object. Think about it. There are pumps, loafers, mules and clogs; moccasins, oxfords, slip-ons and kilties. Ever dated a jogger? Dumped a wedge? Been seduced by a slingback? Felled by a Birkenstock? Discovered to your grand disappointment that your monk-strap was really a Mary Jane? Those names are not coincidental.

Then there are boots. Sometimes necessary for career or weather, sometimes just to make it look like you mean business. Usually classified by height—ankle, mid-calf, thigh-high—or by the way you get into them: zip-up, pull-on, lace-up. They get their names from what you do in them: combat, hiking, English riding, construction, motorcycle, logger, cowboy. Frankly, that list sounds like a really rough date month. And what on earth is ‘urban sport,’ anyway?

Manufacturers know women seek an alter ego affair from their footwear. Slide into a shoe named Via Spaga, Luigi Parone, or Franco Sarto and you’ll feel immediately transported to lubricious Italy, complete with vino rosso and sloe-eyed gondolier. Show your wild side with shoes from Volatile, Grip, Bastad or Turtle Fur. Join the in-crowd—if you can afford to—with Manolo Blahnik, Edmundo Castillo, Siegerson Morrison, and Kenneth Cole. Or just have fun saying your shoes are by Naked Feet, Mootsie Tootsies, Rocket Dog or—for the wholesome—Okidoke.

Using the internet, shoe shopping has never been easier. Why deal with parking hassles, or inept salesclerks who sneak bites of onion-laced tuna sandwiches while searching tiny backrooms, when you can enjoy unlimited choices and sizes from the bunny-slippered comfort of your own home? You don’t even need to be dressed. Try a little Peg Bundy sexy at fredericks.com, or flaunt your individuality with custom designs at customatix.com. Play witch, gothic freak or hooker at extremecostumes.com. And if you’re one of those concerned about offending a calf, elk, snake or crocodile, buy vegetarian at zappos.com.

Advertisers this holiday season are alert to the female shoe gene. One touts the advantages of shoe shopping as therapy. Another asks, “Don’t you just love surprises?” and my favorite claims, “You can’t ever have enough!” (Apparently, they’ve never phone-surveyed my husband.)

As much as I love shoe shopping, I can’t imagine buying a gift of shoes for my friends. It would be like dating someone’s boyfriend and then declaring he is perfect—for her. But I do see great possibilities in a shoe warehouse gift certificate. There is something absolutely erotic about all those long, neat rows and the smell of new leather. If they softened the lighting, mirrored the ceilings, and hired a few Chippendales to stock shelves, well, I would definitely need a larger closet.

So, whether you are looking for the perfect addition to your holiday outfit—or for the final flourish of surrender when the holiday outfit lies crumpled and forgotten on your new lover’s fireside rug—be assured there is a shoe out there for you. It might be a funky bowling shoe, a tall black sock boot, or fancy shoes so bejeweled and sparkly, you run around town looking for the perfect dress to complement them.

However you choose to decorate your feet this holiday season, be assured, someone will notice. And while friends, family and colleagues are pointing and oohing and aahing, remember, if the shoe really is a substitute for the penis, don’t you deserve the best? After all, you never need the shoes. You simply want them.

My mom used to say I had a “come hither” look that invited trouble. I think it’s more of a “come tell me anything” look that invites stories.

People tell me their most personal problems, thoughts and feelings. They relate stories about their jobs, their neighbors, their Scottish childhoods, and I stand there nodding and wondering why these complete strangers feel compelled to confide in me.

Personal journal pundits claim it’s cathartic to write things down. Just “get it out.” Then burn it. Compose a ten-page, soul-wrenching letter to Mr. Perfect who dumped you in 1989—then throw it away. You’ll be cleared of your unfortunate past, freed from the rusty bonds of rejection, open to life’s possibilities.

That sounds too easy.

What if you had to say it aloud? To a stranger. Or better yet, to a stranger who doesn’t speak your language. I’ve seen it done in the movies. The sad British chap confesses his failures to the toothless Italian grandmother shelling peas in a shadowy doorway. She says nothing as he concludes he’s been a jerk and realizes he should be telling all of this to his hot European lover. He rushes back to his life, leaving the toothless woman with her peas wondering what just happened.

I am the grandmother in the doorway.

Last month, I was in the back room of a day spa getting my lip waxed and the technician starts with a story of a beautiful young blond virgin who comes in requesting a Brazilian bikini wax. I know, it sounds like the beginning of a great joke.

But she wasn’t kidding. The technician said this born-again Christian virgin wanted the radical procedure done for her honeymoon. I’m thinking, how does she even know about Brazilian bikini waxes? Then the waxer said, “Wait. There’s more.” The girl was a “talker.” A look-me-in-the-eye kind of talker. The waxer admitted the whole thing made her uncomfortable. (Apparently it’s difficult to maintain eye contact and chat nonchalantly about the weather while ripping hair from the intimate areas of a kneeling stranger.)

How did she think I felt listening to the story? Especially when she demonstrated the on-all-fours waxing position and how the virgin had said through her legs, “Maybe I should be walking down the aisle to you.”

Later, I wondered if the girl had been taking the technician for a ride. What if she wasn’t a virgin or a bride-to-be at all? What if it had been a practical joke? Maybe the waxer made the whole thing up. There are so many ways to interpret a story and just as many ways to repeat it.

Which of course, I did. Because stories are meant to be told. It starts with a simple tale and like the game of “telephone,” each storyteller adds his own spice, a side dish of that’s-nothing-when-I… and by the time it comes back around—you have an urban legend, or a novel.

Therapists, bartenders, hairdressers, priests, manicurists, even gynecologists are all in the confession profession. As a writer, I listen because it might be important. I listen because I can’t afford not to.

There are stories everywhere. Material for the taking. Usually it’s right in front of me spitting on my chin, like the grandfather at the wine tasting who was seriously contemplating hiring a hitman, the mother of four on a Punta Cana beach who confessed she’d never experienced an orgasm, the crying, cheating redhead in the Waffle House bathroom who should have been telling her husband the stuff she was telling me, and the black man selling magazine subscriptions who sat in my garage in the rain and told me of a life in the country cut short, a city that swallowed him like quicksand.

Why did these storytellers choose me? Was I the first person they came across on the day they needed to purge a memory, divulge that secret, share a quirky story? Or do they sense something that says; she’s a writer. She’ll understand about hitmen and orgasms and cheating and quicksand. Whatever the reason, I now hold a part of them, their stories.

And their secrets aren’t safe with me.

I imagine my day. I’ll drink real coffee, while it’s still warm, wear real clothes with real shoes on my feet. I might actually be able to go to the bathroom with the door shut, and not have to explain to anyone what I am doing in there.

If I were my husband I could eat an entire nutrition-filled grown-up lunch, sitting down. Hello expense account. I could have long-winded uninterrupted conversations with real people who are over three feet tall. These conversations would have a beginning, an end, and actually include some words with two or three syllables.

During this day of swapping, something terribly exciting will happen. I will complete a task. Complete a task! Just the thought of this warms me more than a tray of tequila shooters on Ladies Night Out. Wow. I might stand back and admire that task. I may even accept praise from one of my many intelligent and articulate co-workers as they admire my well-done task. I may even work late. Why rush home? I’ll hold a meeting at Hop’s to discuss important office matters, such as the cost efficiency of paper towels versus cloth for the employee bathroom.

Then, I’ll zip home in my shiny, expensive sports car to my shiny, wonderful family, honk in the driveway, burst through the door and dump my briefcase in the hall. “Honey, I’m home!” I’ll toss my coat near a chair, whip my tie over the railing and twirl my daughter until she is dizzy and bumping into furniture, then rile up the dog, ignore those cries of “Helllp!” from the backyard and head upstairs for an long, uninterrupted, steaming-hot shower.

After my pampering, I will appear downstairs, expecting all to be well, or—yell loudly until it is. Still full from snacks at the bar, I’ll sip my chilled Ketel One martini, pick at my gourmet meal and leave the plate where the dog is sure to find it.

Time for television. My remote. My recliner.

“Kids? Could you go somewhere— Hon, isn’t it their bath time?”

Ah. Peace, quiet, and sports.

“Psst. The dog needs to go out. Yeah, I heard him barking.”

And finally, after my unbelievably long, challenging day, I’m alone with my spouse. I’ll listen half-heartedly to the events of the day—something about a water heater and the mailman’s leg. I’ll nod, offering the occasional sympathetic grunt as I surf through 800 channels thinking, Man! That was nothing compared to my day. They just don’t understand what it takes to be out there, do they?

Then I’ll scratch myself and wink at him. “Come over here and give me some lovin’, Sugar. What do you mean you’re tired and want to go to bed?”

originally published Gwinnett Daily Post humor column, Lifestyle section, October 25, 2003

Here’s my essay, if anyone cares about the girl who placed second.

If George Thorogood Had Sung About Food

I’m not a big fan of eating alone in public.
I can’t even bring myself to hit a drive-thru with no one else in the car. I blame it on Oprah and all those women she has on her show crying about their food obsessions and their weight, the way they’d eat two or three fast food burgers in the exit lane waiting for the light to change, how they’d ordered three meals just for themselves, because no one was there to see. One lady admitted she’d buy a whole box of Krispy Kremes hot from the roller, balance them on the passenger seat, top propped open with her handbag and eat the entire dozen as she drove to work. Just saying that makes me a little sick.

Dining out alone is like combining the irrational food obsession and weight thing with the way I feel when my husband’s sick on a Sunday, leaving me to attend church alone. The ladies cluck and tsk imagining an unsaved man back in our sin-filled house, the single men check for a wedding ring, and young people hope I won’t sit near them, because women who come to church alone usually cry or raise their arms a lot. About the only way around either solo outing is to bury your nose in a book—the Bible at church and anything else at a restaurant, as long as it’s not a self-help book, because then you will probably look suicidal, especially if you order anything other than a Caesar salad and Diet Coke.

I haven’t always been this way. Thanks, Oprah. I couldn’t have been. I survived six weeks on my own backpacking across Europe. Sure, I lost weight, but not because I didn’t eat. I got lost a lot and was too broke to take buses, trains or taxis, so I walked—for hours, for days, for weeks. I felt at ease going into a restaurant and saying, “Just one, please,” raising my pathetic little index finger. Maybe because I didn’t understand enough French, German or Italian to know what anyone was saying about me—about the girl in the corner eating the baked potato, the girl who ordered two beers and then a sandwich, the girl who decided eating Mexican food in Germany was a good idea, the girl with the backpack and the maps who was eating alone.

Not too long ago, I was stood up for lunch. By another girl. This was a first for me. I sat there drinking my water looking around the restaurant, checking my watch, texting people on my cell phone, and telling the waitress, “My friend should be here any minute. She’s a busy reporter, might have gotten caught up a story, or a deadline. I sure hope she wasn’t in a car wreck.” Half an hour later, I hoped she was in a car wreck- or worse. I slipped out of the booth, thanked the waitress and tried to avoid the eyes of the executives sawing their steaks, ordering the cheesecake, padding their expense accounts. I went straight home and ate a bowl of vegetable soup, while reading T.C. Boyle. I thought that if I had that book with me at the restaurant, I might have stayed for lunch, but I also know I would have eaten much less than if I was seated across from my reporter pal.

I have a friend whose husband travels frequently for business. On one long term assignment, he and his co-worker ate in the same pub for six months. He went there solo one night while the other guy stayed with clients. He greeted the waitress by name, bellied up to the bar, had a few beers and a burger. When he got his bill he laughed. The waitress had tagged his ticket: barfly1. His co-worker ate there the next night alone and came back with a receipt labeling him: barfly 2.

So, maybe that’s what I’m really afraid of if I eat out alone. That I might be labeled. That someone might get the wrong impression of me. Never mind that I’m writing this in the front seat of my car in the parking lot of my daughter’s dance studio, where I have just eaten a bowl of salad from home, washed down with a bottle of water I found under the passenger seat.