Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

The following is an excerpt from Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
by Ted Kerasote
Published by Harcourt, Inc.
July 2007;$25.00US; 978-0-15-101270-1
Copyright © 2007 Ted Kerasote

Chapter 1

From the Wild

He came out of the night, appearing suddenly in my headlights, a big, golden dog, panting, his front paws tapping the ground in an anxious little dance. Behind him, tall cottonwoods in their April bloom. Behind the grove, the San Juan River, moving quickly, dark and swollen with spring melt.

It was nearly midnight, and we were looking for a place to throw down our sleeping bags before starting our river trip in the morning. Next to me in the cab of the pickup sat Benj Sinclair, at his feet a midden of road-food wrappers smeared with the scent of corn dogs, onion rings, and burritos. Round-cheeked, Buddha-bellied, thirty-nine years old, Benj had spent his early years in the Peace Corps, in West Africa, and had developed a stomach that could digest anything. Behind him in the jump seat was Kim Reynolds, an Outward Bound instructor from Colorado known for her grace in a kayak and her long braid of brunette hair, which held the faint odor of a healthy, thirty-two-year-old woman who had sweated in the desert and hadn’t used deodorant. Like Benj and me, she had eaten a dinner of pizza in Moab, Utah, a hundred miles up the road where we’d met her. Like us, she gave off the scents of garlic, onions, tomato sauce, basil, oregano, and anchovies.

In the car that pulled up next to us were Pam Weiss and Bennett Austin. They had driven from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Moab in their own car, helped us rig the raft and shop for supplies, joined us for pizza, and, like us, wore neither perfume nor cologne. Pam was thirty-six, an Olympic ski racer, and Bennett, twenty-five, was trying to keep up with her. They had recently fallen in love and exuded a mixture of endorphins and pheromones.

People almost never describe other people in these terms -- noting first their smells -- for we’re primarily visual creatures and rely on our eyes for information. By contrast, the only really important sense-key for the big, golden dog, doing his little dance in the headlights, was our olfactory signatures, wafting to him as we opened the doors.

It was for this reason -- smell -- that I think he trotted directly to my door, leaned his head forward cautiously, and sniffed at my bare thigh. What mix of aromas went up his long snout at that very first moment of our meeting? What atavistic memories, what possibilities were triggered in his canine worldview as he untangled the mysteries of my sweat?

The big dog -- now appearing reddish in the interior light of the truck and without a collar -- took another reflective breath and studied me with excited consideration. Might it have been what I ate, and the subtle residue it left in my pores, that made him so interested in me? It was the only thing I could see (note my human use of “see” even while describing an olfactory
phenomenon) that differentiated me from my friends. Like them, I skied, biked, and climbed, and was single. I had just turned forty-one, a compact man with chestnut hair and bright brown eyes. But when I ate meat, it was that of wild animals, not domestic ones -- mostly elk and antelope along with the occasional grouse, duck, goose, and trout mixed in.

Was it their metabolized essence that intrigued him -- some whiff of what our Paleolithic ancestors had shared? Smell is our oldest sense. It was the olfactory tissue at the top of our primeval nerve cords that evolved into our cerebral hemispheres, where thought is lodged. Perhaps the dog -- a being who lived by his nose -- knew a lot more about our connection than I could possibly imagine.

His deep brown eyes looked at me with luminous appreciation and said, “You need a dog, and I’m it.”

Unsettled by his uncanny read of me -- I had been looking for a dog for over a year -- I gave him a cordial pat and replied, “Good dog.”

His tail beat steadily, and he didn’t move, his eyes still saying, “You need a dog.”

As we got out of the cars and began to unpack our gear, I lost track of him. There was his head, now a tail, there a rufous flank moving among bare legs and sandals.

I threw my pad and bag down on the sand under a cottonwood, slipped into its silky warmth, turned over, and found him digging a nest by my side. Industriously, he scooped out the sand with his front paws, casting it between his hind legs before turning, turning, turning, and settling to face me. In the starlight, I could see one brow go up, the other down.

Of course, “brows” isn’t really the correct term, since dogs sweat only through their paws and have no need of brows to keep perspiration out of their eyes, as we do. Yet, certain breeds of dogs have darker hair over their eyes, what might be called “brow markings,” and he had them.

The Hidatsa, a Native American tribe of the northern Great Plains, believe that these sorts of dogs, whom they call “Four-Eyes,” are especially gentle and have magical powers. Stanley Coren, the astute canine psychologist from the University of British Columbia, has also noted that these “four-eyed” dogs obtained their reputation for psychic powers “because their expressions were easier to read than those of other dogs. The contrasting-colored spots make the movements of the muscles over the eye much more visible.”

In the starlight, the dog lying next to me raised one brow while lowering the other, implying curiosity mixed with concern over whether I’d let him stay.

“Night,” I said, giving him a pat. Then I closed my eyes.

When I opened them in the morning, he was still curled in his nest, looking directly at me.

“Hey,” I said.

Up went one brow, down went the other.

“I am yours,” his eyes said.

I let out a breath, unprepared for how his sweet, faintly hound-dog face -- going from happiness to concern -- left a cut under my heart. I had been looking at litters of Samoyeds, balls of white fur with bright black mischievous eyes. The perfect breed for a winter person like myself, I thought. But I couldn’t quite make myself bring one home. I had also seriously considered Labrador Retrievers, taken by their exuberant personalities and knowing that such a robust, energetic dog could easily share my life in the outdoors as well as be the bird dog I believed I wanted. But no Lab pup had given me that undeniable heart tug that said, “We are a team.”

The right brow of the dog lying by me went down as he held my eye. His left brow went up, implying, “You delayed with good reason.”

“Maybe,” I said, feeling my desire for a pedigree dog giving way. “Maybe,” I said once more to the dog whose eyes coasted across mine, returned, and lingered. He did have the looks of a reddish yellow Lab, I thought, at least from certain angles.

At the sound of my voice, he levered his head under my arm and brought his nose close to mine. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to lick me in that effusive gesture that many dogs use with someone they perceive as dominant to them, whether it be a person or another dog -- a relic, some believe, of young wolves soliciting food from their parents and other adult wolves. The adults, not having hands to carry provisions, bring back meat in their stomachs. The pups lick their mouths, and the adults regurgitate the partly digested meat. Pups who eventually become alphas abandon subordinate licking. Lower-ranking wolves continue to display the behavior to higher-ranking wolves, as do a great many domestic dogs to people. This dog’s self-possession gave me pause. Was he not licking me because he considered us peers? Or did my body language -- both of us being at the same level -- allow him to feel somewhat of an equal? He circumspectly smelled my breath, and I, in turn, smelled his. His smelled sweet.

Whatever he smelled on mine, he liked it. “I am yours,” his eyes said again.

Disconcerted by his certainty about me, I got up and moved off. I didn’t want to abandon my plans for finding a pup who was only six to eight weeks old and whom I could shape to my liking. The dog read my energy and didn’t follow me. Instead, he went to the others, greeting them with a wagging tail and wide laughs of his toothy mouth. “Good morning, good morning, did you sleep well?” he seemed to be saying.

But as I organized my gear, I couldn’t keep my eyes from him. Despite his ribs showing, he appeared fit and strong, and looked like he had been living outside for quite a while, his hair matted with sprigs of grass and twigs. He was maybe fifty-five pounds, not filled out yet, his fox-colored fur hanging in loose folds, waiting for the adult dog that would be. He had a ridge of darker fur along his spine, short golden plumes on the backs of his legs, and a tuxedo-like bib of raised fur on his chest -- just an outline of it -- scattered with white flecks. His ears were soft and flannel-like, and hung slightly below the point of his jaw. His nose was lustrous black, he had equally shiny lips, and his teeth gleamed. His tail was large and powerful.

Copyright © 2007 Ted Kerasote

History Lesson for Girls

The following is an excerpt from History Lesson for Girls
By Aurelie Sheehan
Published by Penguin; June 2007;$14.00US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-14-311190-0
Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan

Chapter One

One Day I saw them, our dream horses, and on that day I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. There they were, Appaloosas and roans and bays, and I thought I saw, squinting into the last bit of sunlight, a gray. All the horses moved together, a makeshift herd -- maybe they'd heard my car, or maybe it was a chill, the first winter breeze, almost imperceptible on a summer day. So many years later and now here they were in front of me. The horses trembled, shifted, and then became calm and separated out again, twelve or twenty of them, more than enough for the Alison and Kate Horse Training Company.

She saved me. That's the first thing you should know about Kate. It was the year we moved to Weston, the year my parents went haywire, the year my back started curving out of control as if it were the life of the party. She was five feet seven and had long brown hair bleached by the sun, and her father was an Egyptian emperor. Was he for real? Real enough for a small suburban dynasty. Real enough to pass on a legacy.

I think of Kate all the time. I think of her like I've got this little silver Egyptian cat in my pocket, a little silver talisman that won't go away. I think of her, and then I think of him, too, Tut Hamilton, sham shaman in suburbia. I can't forget him, any more than I can forget her.

The thing is, she saved me that year, and then it was my turn. That's what friendship is. That's how to make history.

I was thirteen when my parents and I moved to the fancy town of Weston from maligned and honorable Norwalk, two towns over. We were ready for anything, ready for the good things to start happening, and the first thing that went wrong was the blue room.

Mom wanted her studio to be blue, despite the fact that most painters prefer a room absent of color, a blank wall, a clean palette. She'd had a vision, you see, a dream of a blue room.

My father offered to paint the room for her, but she would choose the color, of course. She and I went to the paint store together.

"These men -- they're painting the world, creating color wheels, color contrasts, color inspirations -- without any real conception, no awareness at all, of what they're doing. They could be artists -- but no, no -- instead of using these glorious choices -- all the glory, all the opportunity, Alison -- they just sit around drinking coffee out of a thermos and painting houses
tan, tan, and tan again. How dreary . . . "

She continued talking as we got out of our Corolla (it also happened to be tan) and walked the short distance from the parking lot to the shopping center. I did hope she'd stop, or at least lower her voice, before we got to the store. She had a way of causing a commotion, despite her size. She was a tiny, fragile person, swathed in scarves and perfumes and charms.

Men of uncertain age and weight looked our way as we came in: Scheherazade and the too tall, too bony, too elbowy stalk, in a back brace, beside her.

My mother breezed by their troubling, huntery expressions, and we settled in before the paint chips. I'd just turned thirteen, my back was curved, and my parents were curved, too -- bohemians in Connecticut, the Land of Plenty. Either all the colors looked good to me or none of them did. Somehow it seemed that this, like everything else, could go either way.

Mom, however, was confident. She hummed with satisfaction, picking out various small, hopeful cards from the rack, cocking her head, pursing her lips -- rejecting one, then the other, until she came to her blue.

Today they've gotten hold of Weston and thrown up these monstrous vault homes, decorated with pillars and neo-this-and-that architectural details, but in 1975 the lovely colonials were what stood out, the historic touch. Some even had plaques near the doorways saying things like Paul Revere Slept Here in 1782 or In 1801, Here Stood Weston's First Mill. The split-levels such as ours, built in the aesthetically challenged sixties, were scattered like tawdry cousins among these statelier, storied homes. Still, moving to 12 Ramble Lane was a big step up for us, and my parents had attached hopes to the house, obvious as the taped-up notes left behind by the house's former owners ("Use 5-watt bulb MAX!" "Filter hose needs to be checked 2X year!"). Mom had torn down their notes impatiently the first day we moved in, replacing them with a sign of her own. Purple felt with silver letters, it hung on the door of her soon-to-be-blue room, her first real studio: "Artist at Work." She could turn it to face in or out, indicating whether she was "open" or "closed" -- a novel idea in a mother. Dad's office was in the basement (he had another at the university), but most of all he seemed keen on a certain green hillock in the backyard, where he could sit cross-legged and rumble with a middle-aged Om.

We were all dressed up now, decked out in zesty Marimekko. And although the first two weeks in Weston passed in a kind of misty, glorious disappointment, most of all we felt lucky to be there, in a town of lilacs and curving roads and studio doors that shut and hillocks and a barn.

Dad stood on the ladder. He'd painted all the edges first, near the ceiling and floors and windows and corners, and then he'd taken out the roller and started in on wide swaths of Prussian Wildflower.

"A bit dark, isn't it?"

"Well, it's what your mother wants. It'll lighten up as it dries, too, Allie Oop."

This cheerfulness was disconcerting. He'd been duped into thinking he could please my mother.

"It looks different from the little card."

"Goddammit," Dad said. A slop of paint had fallen to the floor.

The fact of the matter is, both my parents were fish out of water in Weston. Mom with her dreams of being a painter and Dad with his day job and his poetry books, including the award-winning one, all lined up on the mantel. They were attempting to piece together a life with art at its center and also (not that I was fully aware of this at the time) making choices based on what might be good for me, their daughter. Art geeks, adversaries, people who drove old cars: They weren't part of the PTA crowd, and they weren't swingers, either. Mainly they were simply my parents, and it was extraordinarily embarrassing, but seemed pretty natural, that they were so weird.

"Look, you can't tell anything from the card," he said. "Take a rag to that spot, would you, please?"

"Why do they have the cards, then?"

"To beguile the willing, Alison."

"Why would they do that? They would never do that."

"You don't think so? Think about the visceral and dark depths of the workingman's resentment, darling, and you might have another idea."

The son of Irish immigrants and bardic descendant of many a workingman, my father looked like he was a half second away from falling off the rickety old ladder -- either him or the tray of Prussian Wildflower.

"Do we have any more 7-Up?"

Dad concentrated on his next swab of the roller. His somewhat long and unkempt beard, a poet's beard, bobbed precariously close to the wall.

"Dad?"

He grunted. He smoothed the roller down, then over, making a reverse blue cloud in a white sky. "Try the garage."

Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan, used with permission from the publisher.

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of the short story collection Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant and the novel The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. The director of the creative writing program at the University of Arizona, she has received a Pushcart Prize, a Camargo Fellowship, and the Jack Kerouac Literary Award. She lives in Tucson with her husband and daughter. For more information, please visit www.aureliesheehan.com

The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.

The excerpt below is from The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Book Description from Amazon.com: In the spirit of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, a reality check for new moms. I want to walk out of Target and leave Blair there, wailing.... Nice people work at Target. Surely someone would take her home and care for her and buy her pretty things. So begins Vicki Glembocki's brutally honest yet hilarious memoir of her agonizing transition into motherhood. Why agonizing? Because no one told her how tough it would be. Finally, Glembocki lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the certainty that you're doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you've become--a mother. Unlike any other book on motherhood, Glembocki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence, proving that "maternal bliss" is not innate, but learned. Funny and wise, she connects with new moms on a shockingly intimate level, letting them know that they are not alone.

Excerpt From The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Two weeks later, I push the stroller down a street I've never been on before. This is the first walk the baby and I are taking together. There is probably a line in the baby book my mother gave me, the one that's still in its plastic box in one of the many piles on our dining room table, where I'm supposed to document this moment-First Walk In Stroller. Taking this walk is supposed to be relaxing. The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood said so-"Get out and get fresh air…it does wonders for your spirit." My spirit is supposed to be inhaling the warm, late-March air, feeling invigorated while I maternally point out the many things the baby is seeing for the first time. The buds on the maple trees. The trail from an airplane. The tabby cat sunning itself on the back stoop of the white house we just passed. But I am not. Because the baby is crying.

I push faster.

She keeps crying.

I hum The Alphabet Song.

She keeps crying.

I shift the angle of the canopy, in case the sun's shining in her eyes.

She keeps crying.

I reach down the back of her neck, under the cotton blanket she's swaddled in, under her lavender one-piece body suit with the yellow butterfly on it so I can finger the tag, in case there's a plastic, price-tag holder sticking out of it. Or an open safety pin. Or a pickax. There's nothing.

She keeps crying.

No matter what I do, she keeps crying.

What I should do is turn the stroller around. I should not be in public. I should go home. But I can't go home. Because, a block away, there is a Laundromat, and in that Laundromat are the quilt from our bed and the afghan from our couch, tumbling in an industrial dryer, a task that was on my "List of Things To Do Before The Baby Comes" because the quilt and afghan-too large for our washer and dryer-had fused with zillions of sharp, blonde, burrowing dog hairs, discarded by Levi, our 80-pound Lab, hairs that I was certain would break free, lodge in the baby's throat, and choke her. I need to finish this job. I have two hours between each nursing so there's time to finish this job. I feel along the sides of the baby's swaddle to make sure her fingers aren't bent the wrong way. I tuck the blanket under her feet, in case her feet are cold.

She keeps crying.

What am I doing wrong?

I pull out my cell phone and dial Thad's office line.

"I can't do this," I say, before he even says "hello."

"What happened?" he asks. I hear the wheels on his office chair roll across the floor and his door close. I tell him about the afghan and the Laundromat and the crying. About how I can't stop the crying.

"Is she hungry?"

"No."

"Is she wet?"

"No."

"Maybe you just tried to do too much, sweetie. Maybe you should just go home," he says in his new mellow tone, the one he's been using in the middle of the night for the past two weeks, every time I nudge him awake and declare that I'm certain the baby is dead.

"She's not dead," he always says, calm and patient, just like he was when I woke him up with the same worry roughly 13 seconds before.

"How do you know that?" I always ask.

"I know."

"How do you know?" And Thad flips the covers onto me, staggers over to the Pack 'n Play at the foot of our bed, and leans over so his cheek is next to Blair's tiny mouth, waiting until he feels a few bursts of warm air.

"She's not dead," he whispers, climbing back into bed. I always lie there for a few seconds. Then I get up and check myself, resting my hand lightly on Blair's chest, swaddled so tight I wonder if the receiving blanket is the only thing holding her fragile body together, until I feel it rise, up and down, up and down.

Now, though, in the light of day, his soothing "everything's okay" tenor makes me clamp my teeth together, as if he didn't just suggest I go home, but instead told me to do the very opposite, to suck it up, to finish the damn bedspreads and then make a meatloaf.

You can purchase The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally. at Amazon.com!

The Coming China Wars

The excerpt below is from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio: Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review.
http://www.peternavarro.com/
http://www.comingchinawars.com/

Assassins in Toyland
by Peter Navarro

Apparently when you tickle Elmo he's not laughing, he's having a seizure. --Jay Leno

In an attempt to assure the world's children that millions of Chinese-made toys currently being recalled for containing toxic lead paint and tiny choking hazards can no longer hurt them, high-level Chinese officials announced Tuesday that millions of playthings are being rounded up and immediately put to death . . . According to the Xinhua News Agency, in the past three days alone, factory owners roused an estimated 365,000 Barbie dolls from their dream homes in a violent series of raids. During these raids, the Barbies were separated from their Kens, stripped naked, and had their heads shaved. They were then taken to an undisclosed area, leaned against the wall and shot by a firing squad as toy soldiers were forced to watch. --The Onion

These satirical treatments of China's toy recall crisis from America's top banana, Jay Leno, and parody newspaper, The Onion, provide at least some comic relief from a situation that has been extremely troubling, particularly to parents with young children. Although most people are already well aware of many of the details of this crisis, it is worth at least briefly recapping the extent to which America's toys have been turned into instruments of death by unscrupulous
Chinese manufacturers. Here's just a brief scorecard of the kinds of toys that have been recalled from the shelves by the likes of Toys "R" Us, Target, and Wal-Mart:

• 3.8 million Magnetix magnetic building sets that can kill by perforating the intestines if the magnets are swallowed

• 1.5 million Fisher-Price lead-contaminated toys, including popular Sesame Street characters such as Giggle Grabber Soccer Elmo, Chef Dora, Rev & Go Cookie Monster, Ernie and Bert, and Oscar the Grouch

• 1.5 million Thomas & Friends lead-painted wooden trains, and 1 million Hasbro "Easy-Bake" ovens that can trap children's fingers in the Oven and burn them

• 253,000 of Mattel's die-cast cars modeled after "Sarge" in the cartoon movie Cars, and 90,000 units of Mattel's GeoTrax locomotive line

• 31,000 "Skippy" plastic fish that can break and slash a child's hands, and 15,000 Laugh and Learn Kitchen Toys posing a choking hazard

For concerned parents and grandparents shopping for toys, it is critical to point out that whereas well-known brand companies such as Mattel and Toys "R" Us have had their fair share of had headlines, the bigger problem is often with those ultra-cheap, "no brand" toys that wind up at deep-discount stores. It is precisely in stores such as these that a variety of Halloween toys have been found to represent far more tricks than treats. Here's just a small sampling:

• 142,000 purple witch buckets, 63,000 green Frankenstein cups, and 55,000 candy-filled skull pails posing a lead hazard

• 120,000 "Creepy Cape" costumes capable of bursting into flames, and 97,000 Mr. Potato Head "Make a Monster Pumpkin" sets deemed a choking hazard

It is precisely these kinds of statistics that raise this overarching question: How can China's toymakers turn something as innocent and pure as children's toys into a profanity of poisons and choking hazards?

Baby Signing 1-2-3

When my son was born, I knew nothing about baby signing. The older he got, the more I started seeing topics on the internet about the benefits of baby signing. As mothers, we want our children to be the smartest, most intelligent child on the block. However, I thought I had cheated him out of this language skill because I didn't start him as soon as I could have. Then I was introduced to Baby Signing 1-2-3 by Nancy Cadjan, and to my surprise, it really doesn't matter when you begin baby signing because children of all ages will benefit from the use of ASL (American Sign Language).

Baby Signing 1-2-3 is arranged in a very comprehensive way. The first part of the book addresses your child's developmental stages and the appropriate signing that can be used during that time. For those with children who develop at a slower pace either mentally or physically, an entire chapter is designed on how to modify the signing used during that child's individual development. The actual signs used during the developmental stages are contained in the second half of the book, and those same words are bolded in the text in the chapters from the first half of the book. This design makes it incredibly easy to reference the stage you are in with your child.

Since my son is four now, the stages of development aren't the most important parts of the book for our situation, but he can still learn signs in the order in which he would have if I had introduced ASL to him as an infant. Much like our children's own speech development and their capacity to understand, learning the signs he would have learned from stage one still applies. Words like mommy, daddy, milk and more are great starters even for the older child. The best thing is we can learn more signs at a quicker pace now that he is older.

Baby Signing 1-2-3 has been a great tool for my both my son and myself, and we've both enjoyed sitting down and learning signs together. He actually picks up the book and asks for me to help him learn. The added benefit is that once our next child is born, both my older son and I will be able to help baby learn ASL at a much younger age with the great help of Baby Signing 1-2-3. I highly recommend Baby Signing 1-2-3 for any individuals who are new to ASL and want to teach themselves and their children this life long, beneficial communication tool.

Emotionally Healthy Twins

Mom to twins? Me too! Well, at least in utero. I still have some time before my twins are born, and I am already hearing phrases that make my ears ring in pain. It's amazing how the moment you become pregnant with more than one child, others seem to lose a sense of couth (if they ever had it to begin with) and say things like "better you than me," "are they natural?" or "double the trouble." The list goes on, and if you are a mom to twins, it is certain you've heard even more offensive or hurtful words. It all goes back to the stigma attached to twins. The stigma of always being a twin, being compared to someone else, having to always share the spotlight with a sibling that just happened to be born on the same day. I suppose if you aren't a twin yourself, you may not think about these things until you become a mom to twins. To go even further, parenting and raising twins to not feel that stigma could be the challenge of a lifetime.

Goodbye stigma; hello to Joan A. Friedman, Ph.D. Friedman is a twin, is a mother to twins, and is author of an amazingly insightful book, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children. This book covers parenting from pregnancy into adulthood, and couldn't have come at a better time for me!

Over the past year I've listened to my best friend talk about her twins. From their birth she's made a conscious decision to never compare the two - but it's easier said than done. It just seems to happen naturally. However, her goal falls in line with the first chapter in Friedman's book, being a mom to two unique children, identified by their own individual likes, dislikes and personalities. Two children not identified as "the quiet one" or the "more active one." These kinds of comparisons begin in utero and can follow each child into adulthood. Combating the comparisons is immediately addressed in Friedman's book. Even though the world around us glorifies twins by making them seem more intriguing or appealing (think Double Mint commercials), we as parents can and will silence the glorification and focus on each child individually, making sure they grow into emotionally healthy adults.

Emotionally Healthy Twins is arranged in a way for parents with twins of any age to simply pick up and start reading and learning ways to help each twin feel unique and separate. For me personally, and for my husband, this book is providing strategies to view our children as two individual children long before they are born. We've already learned to use phrases like "the babies" instead of "the twins" to ensure the separate and unique ideal we will want to follow after they are born. It is easy little changes in the way we are thinking that will make huge differences for them in the future.

As for those with older twin children, relative guidance is given to parents with children in their preschool years, elementary school years, preteen and teen years, and young adulthood. Each age and stage brings new situations to the table, from friends in school and those rebellious years, to forming meaningful and emotionally healthy relationships with people and potential spouses in young adulthood. Emotionally Healthy Twins really hits on all the basic, yet pertinent stages of raising a child who is happy with themselves and happy with their relationship to and with their twin.

So whether you've just found out you will be having twins, or have twins already into their teen years, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children has something to offer moms and dads alike. Even if you haven't overcome the stigma, there are ways to move from it and Friedman offers the tools you'll need to raise two unique children who share the same birth date.

You can learn more about this book at Amazon.com or http://www.emotionallyhealthytwins.com/.

I Heart My In-Laws

A practical, laugh-out-loud guide to adopting your man's family -- from your first date to your firstborn

Girlfriends, fiancées, and wives, rejoice! Here, at last, is THE guidebook for practical advice about in-laws. A road map. A beacon of hope and light then, for the fiftieth time, you've told your in-laws what you do at your high-tech company and that your name is Christy, not Crispy.

Mirroring the natural progression of a relationship and incorporating interviews from women just like you, this hilarious, savvy guide will help you survive holidays, weddings, new babies, and the day your in-laws retire to the house next door because "it's a great real estate investment."

Discover a wide array of sanity-retention techniques and tips on scoring major points with each and every in-law. Learn how to sweet-talk his sister, mollify his mother, and defuse potentially explosive situations -- like when your pumpkin pie gives Nana a bad case of hives.

Offering handy translation charts with curse words in Irish and compliments in Portuguese, a list of gifts and how to interpret their hidden meanings, tips for reclaiming the holidays one Labor Day at a time, and your very own In-Law Vacation Playbook, I Heart My In-Laws embodies the old saying, "It's funny because it's true."

Author Dina Koutas Poch holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is a writer and filmmaker living in New York City with her husband. Her in-laws live in Connecticut.

For more information, please visit http://www.dinakoutaspoch.com/.

The following is an excerpt from I Heart My In-Laws
Falling in Love with His Family -- One Passive-Aggressive, Over-Indulgent, Grandkid-Craving,
Streisand-Loving, Bible-Thumping In-Law at a Time
By Dina Koutas Poch
Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC
June 2007;$15.00US/$18.95CAN; 978-0-8050-8279-1
Copyright © 2007 Dina Koutas Poch

Regional Guide to In-Laws

There are seven territories of in-law personalities in this great country of ours. Each has its own unique flavor.

1. West Coast In-Laws

(California, Oregon, Washington)

Three words: Burning Man Festival. Your in-laws live where Manifest Destiny carried them. They come from a long line of gold hunters -- those in search of a truer, richer way of life. Every single Napa Valley wine they uncork, or Starbucks coffee they brew; or macrobiotic muffin they bake, they judge you for not living the way they do. "Oh, West Coast people are more laid back." Really? They're ultra-aggressive about lifestyle choices and the 40-hour workweek! How do you deal with your West Coast in-laws?

• Compliment their tan. Their sunglasses. Their shapely mountain-bike sculpted legs. They'll eat it up (those egotists!). And coo when they mention how they fly seaplanes to their island house, and how the orca whales and "pristine wilderness" are their backyard. Blah, blah, blah. Make sure to note how very fresh the air is, even if it's making your allergies act up.
• Read up on renewable energy resources: wind power, solar energy, and corn-powered cars. Tell them that you're already on the waiting list for one (a waiting list made of recycled paper, no less).

How to dress: In flannel and Tevas with thick socks.

What not to do: Smoke cigarettes. Joints, however, are cool.

2. Rocky Mountain In-Laws

(Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Utah)

Your rugged in-laws know a thing or two about machinery. They can plow. They can drive a tractor. They can dig a deep hole with a backhoe (and I'm talking about Aunt Trudy on dialysis here). They can also wrangle sheep on a mountain without the help of a gay lover (no matter what that movie said). How do you impress in-laws that live in winter for nine months a year and are known to wrestle bears for sport?

• If your weenie job as an economics professor hasn't prepared you for life with these in-laws, buying a picture book about tractors and trucks -- something a five-year-old boy would drool over -- will help. At least you'll know your trenchers from your dozers and your grapple log skidders from your pipe layers.
• Pick an alpine sport: ice climbing, fly-fishing, kayaking, mountain climbing, trekking, snowshoeing, skiing, or mountain biking, and excel at it. It doesn't matter if you live in Florida, you need to train so you can join your in-laws in death-defying "leisure sports" at high altitude (with no bleeping oxygen!).

How to dress: In jeans and a warm jacket, because you'll be outside shoveling hay.

What not to do: Mention how your gay brother in Boston just got married and a drag queen performed the ceremony.

3. Southwestern In-Laws

(New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada)

There are two kinds of ex-hippie in-laws in the Southwest: those with boatloads of money and those with a jar of pennies. Figure out which one your in-law is. The former has a perfect golf swing, and the latter reliably has peyote.

When your Southwest in-laws hug you, they practically blind -- the sun glints off their turquoise jewelry and belt buckles, sending signals miles into the sky. (Duh, that's how the aliens found Roswell.)

Your in-laws are into spirituality with a capital S. Every inch of wall space is covered with pottery depictions of Kokopelli and watercolor drawings of pueblos and adobe homes in rust and muted orange hues. They subsist on roasted green chilies and yerba mate. They also don't age. Is it the desert? The dry heat? Each time you see them, they're younger. In fact, they're twenty-five years old right now. It's terrifying.

How do you ingratiate yourself with southwestern in-laws?

• Go hot-air ballooning with your in-laws! Everyone in the Southwest does it. How else do
  you pass the time in l00-degree heat? Remember, hot-air balloons aren't just for Dorothy & Co. They're for you, your in-laws, and nineteenth-century explorers.
• Vegas, baby! Anyone? Slot machines? Showgirls? People-watching? Shark tank at Mandalay Bay? (These are rhetorical questions. You don't have to answer them.) But you may want to propose them to your in-laws, when they bust out the tarot cards -- again. Hey, why don't you use those tarot cards to predict some winning hands of blackjack? As they say in the movies, it's just crazy enough to work, boss.

How to dress: A brightly patterned sundress and a necklace made of the largest beads known to man.

What not to do: Say you prefer modern art.

4. Texan In-Laws

Your Texan in-laws are smug about one thing: being Texan. We know you were once a republic! And everything's bigger! Six flags, the Alamo, that 72-ounce steak, and especially the hats. Fine! Texas is big, "American," flashy, and the center of the world.

If your Texan in-laws aren't gorgeously well-manicured people from Houston or Dallas, or cultured Austinites, they're ranchers and they don't give a damn about you, "the en-vi-ro-mentalists," and "the gov'nment." After all, the rest of the world is just not Texas.

Of course, you'll meet a second cousin-in-law that uses her panty hose to strain motor oil, but the rest of the family isn't too proud of her. So how do you deal with the Texan in-laws?

• Accept that a lot of people you'll meet in the Lone Star State will have nicknames like Joe-Bob, Billy-Bob, Jim-Bob, Little John, Big John, etc. You'll be expected to know about their souped-up truck and new gun rack in intimate detail.
• Respect the laws of the Barcalounger. Your Texan in-laws don't have normal chairs; they need something with a footrest. Succumb to the relaxation factor of holding conversations while horizontal.

How to dress: A "Don't Mess with Texas" T-shirt with a Stetson hat, only because your in-laws gave them to you upon your arrival.

What not to do: Forget to send good wishes to your in-laws on Texan holidays like Texas Independence Day, the start of Deer Hunting Season, the Opening Day of high school football practice, and the day the new model year of Ford F-150s hits the market.

5. Southern In-Laws

(Arkansas, Louisiana to Florida, and up to Kentucky and Virginia)

Your in-laws love NASCAR. If they don't, their neighbors do. Your southern in-laws are either "refined city folk" or "simple country folk," and they'll want you to know the difference.

Your southern in-laws are suspicious of you. It's not just you -- it's anyone outside their state. Your in-laws have never been "North," and by that, they mean Delaware. It's not that they don't want to go, just why would they? People have been in their town for generations. It's home, which is why you should move there. When you're south of the Mason-Dixon Line, do as those who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line . . .

• Learn the key players in "the Confederacy." How many times have you met a southerner named Jefferson Davis? Billions? Every street, building, and public school is named after these folks: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Alexander Stephens, P. T. Beauregard, or Nathan Bedford Forrest. But please never, ever mention the Destroyer-of-the-South, Yankee General Sherman. He's still on their "list," 150 years later.
• Talk the talk. Know southern sport rivalries and which side you're on with the Tar Heels vs. Blue Devils, LSU vs. Ole Miss, and Tennessee Volunteers vs. Kentucky Wildcats.

How to dress: Something bright and feminine from your mother's closet.

What not to do: Don't call it the "Civil War." It's the "War of Northern Aggression."

6. Northeast Corridor In-Laws

(Ohio, Pennsylvania, and up through Maine)

If you or anyone you're related to went to a fancy school, now's the time to mention it. New Englanders love to think "they know better" and that "they are smarter" and that they "vote correctly." They can push up their dark-framed glasses and snub you with their "Plymouth
Rock" crap.

The crowded cities and suburbs of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, New York, and Boston mean one thing -- your in-laws are the diversity in America. They smother you with affection because a hundred other relatives live down the street.

• Join the rat race. You must keep up with the Joneses -- the family that you can see from the bay window in your in-laws' kitchen. Last week, the competition was about the house gutters. They won. This week it's about you. Who has the sweetest daughter-in-law?
• Your northern in-laws have summer homes in non-warm places like Nantucket. What's the point?
  

How to dress: Like you just fell out of the J. Crew catalog.

What not to do: Mention that you didn't vote in the last election.

7. Midwest In-Laws

(Indiana to Missouri, up to North Dakota and Michigan)

If a giant, two-headed reptilian monster was heading toward your in-laws' subdivision, they would smile and wave. Your in-laws are that friendly and nice. Sometimes it's creepy. Like the time they offered a teenager a ride back to his college campus -- it looked an awful lot like kidnapping.

Between the ice fishing, apple-pie baking, and dining at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery (which they nicknamed Pukins), your big-boned in-laws spend a lot of time driving (8 hours is short haul), using terms like "who gives a flying fig," and asking "how ya doing?" followed by "okey,
dokey!" So how do you get ahead with them?

• Dig into dishes that involve massive amounts of melted cheese. Your in-laws will prepare cheesy potatoes, cheesy broccoli, cheesy asparagus, and fried cheese curds -- which sounds awful, but c'mon, let's admit it, a little melted cheese makes everything better.
• "Live simply, so that others can simply live." If your in-laws aren't city dwellers, they're farmers and they know how to birth a cow, mend a horse, or feed a pig. If you know zilch about farms, don't fret. Praise the good bugs -- ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, and honeybees -- and chastise the potentially bad bugs -- flea hoppers, lygus bugs, aphids, and mealy bugs. Impress your in-laws by differentiating good stinkbugs (they're green) from bad ones (they're brown).

How to dress: Something with an elastic waistband.

What not to do: Take shortcuts. Using life's conveniences (leaf blower vs. rake, microwave vs. Crock-Pot, etc.) only means you're not working hard enough!

Copyright © 2007 Dina Koutas Poch