"Stop it, buttface," I said.

"Stop what?" my brother said innocently. "I'm not doing nothin'."

"Not doing anything," I corrected.

A wedge of light sliced through the dark and my mother stood silhouetted in the doorway. "Go to sleep now," she chided, "Or Santa won't come."

It was an effective threat. At the time, I believed in Santa almost as much as I believed in Jesus; to my mind, they were all part of the same Christmas story, Santa having been present at the birth of the savior along with exactly four shepherds, three wise men, two sheep, and one glittery blonde angel who hovered right at the pitched roof of the perfectly clean manger which sat on the top of the television-stereo console in the den.

By the end of Christmas Day, the holy crèche would be hidden away in my parents' bedroom closet, saved from my irreverent uncles and aunt, who were Jewish and delighted in the blasphemous abuse of my tenaciously Southern Baptist mother's holiday decorations. In later years, they would take to burning elves on the barbeque and launching plastic angels from ceiling fans - but by that time my mother enjoyed the annual decoration demolition almost as much as they did, protesting lamely from behind her video camera.

But for now, I knew Santa was coming, and I imagined I could see his sparkling sleigh across the moon outside the small slide windows near the ceiling of my bedroom. My brother had finally gone to sleep, one leg twitching outside the covers. I curled up on my side, hoping sleep would come and fast-forward me to morning. Then I tried my ballerina position: on my back with one arm curved over my head and my right foot hitched up flat against the side of my knee. Even thought it was becoming obvious that I was going to be zaftig, as my Aunt Harriet put it, I dreamed of being a ballet dancer and would continue to do so until the next school year when fell I in love with dinosaurs and realized that archeology was my true calling.

Eventually my bladder decided that since I was awake anyway, I should empty it. As I made my way to the bathroom, I heard my father's voice, then laughter, then what sounded like my mother, scolding my dad. They were all downstairs in the den, where I knew our Christmas tree -- with its rotating disco-ball star on top -- was waiting for Santa to come and unload piles of presents for me, my brother, and all of my cousins who had already had Hannukah but still got a presents so they wouldn't feel left out.

I also knew that Santa wouldn't come if the grown-ups were down there. Forgetting about the need to pee, I gingerly crept down the stairs. The laughter grew louder. I stepped on to the last stair and crouched down, ruffled nightgown wrapped tightly around my legs. My heart was fluttering as I peered around the staircase into our den.

The room was cloudy and blue with cigarette smoke, and the disco-star tree topper threw multi-colored spots of light against the wood-paneled walls. The television blared with a news show about Christmas celebrations 'round the world, where Santa had come because the earth had turned night to morning already. In a sea of bagged bows, ripped boxes and wrapping paper rolls sat my father and his brothers, arguing about the best way to put together a Barbie Dream House. My Barbie Dream House.

"What the hell are ya doing, Bobby?" My dad yelled, grabbing the directions from my uncle's hand. "The roof doesn't go on until you got all the walls up. Gimme dat!" My dad still had quite a bit of the Lower East Side in his speech; the neighborhood kids teased my little brother when he would call us in on the nights he was home. "Mahk-O!" my dad would yell. "Michele an Mahk-o! Time to come home!"

My Aunt Harriet sat on the earth-toned couch, eating some goodies my mom had brought down from the kitchen. "Oh my gawd, Shelby," she said as she bit into a crumbling sausage ball, my mother's specialty. "These things are ice cold. You can't throw them in the oven for a few minutes?" My aunt loved to drive my teased-hair shiksa mother crazy complaining about her food.

"You want them hot, you can take them upstairs and throw them in the oven yourself," smiled my mother. "I've got to get these socks wrapped." We always got socks and underwear for Christmas and even though she dutifully wrapped them every year so they'd look nice under the tree, she didn't even try to pretend they were from Santa.

Meanwhile, my Aunt's husband Ira looked like he was about to cry. Screwdriver in hand, he sat on the brick fireplace stoop with a bicycle frame leaned up against his knee. Bolts, screws, a chopper-style handlebar and a green metallic banana seat were strewn on the floor around him, an overwhelming battalion of parts that had him rubbing his shiny forehead in despair.

Over by the tree, my father's gangly, big-toothed youngest brother and his second wife sat slap-happily wrapping six identical presents for each of us kids.

"Goddammit, Carl," said my Uncle Bobby as he watched. "Did you really get 'em all boxing gloves? They're gonna beat the hell outta each other!"

"If we're lucky," smiled my Uncle Carl, wiping some stray ashes off his lap. "I figured we could put some money on Mitchy and Michele, since they're the biggest. Maybe double the payout if there's blood." His wife gave him a half-hearted swat on the arm. Later that day, my cousin Mitchell would indeed emerge victorious in the middle of a makeshift boxing ring made out of wrapping paper rolls and ribbon. He would still spend most of the day pouting, however, because the bike he got fell apart when he tried to ride it.

Back on the staircase, I put a hand over my mouth, swallowing a laugh and a little cry. I took deep slow breaths so I wouldn't give myself away, and started to back my way up the stairs.

Santa was here, and I couldn't let him catch me spying.

To the person who funded this study: Consider this my application for several hundred thousand dollars to investigate if there's any correlation between eating a whole Little Ceasar's $5 Pizza Pizza and being forced to lay down on the bed to zip my jeans. Or if you prefer, I will take the cash and thoroughly research the question of whether or not prayer is really necessary to improve the mood of a middle-aged woman who gets to have sex in Bali with Javier Bardem. My theory is that if said woman did pray, that's what she was asking for anyway. Thank you.

Countless dollars could have been saved for such a study if the researchers in question listened to something besides NPR; the fact is that country music has been documenting the relationship between alcohol consumption and coyote ugly hook-ups for decades. Willie Nelson, that grizzled sage of country music, once warbled poetically that he "Went Home With a 10, and Woke Up With a 2", while Mickey Gilley once commented thoughtfully on the phenomenon of how "All The Girls Get Prettier At Closin' Time". More recently, Neal McCoy very emphatically declared that "Billy's Got His Beer Goggles On" (wherein said test subject dances with bar stools). The marriages and progeny that often result from these events provide subject matter for the rest of the songs you hear on country radio, making "beer goggles" a necessary tool for artistic expression.

While it may initially seem that the brief relationships that result from this level of inebriation are viewed as a negative outcome, the fact is that for many people (myself included), such occurrences are a more positive experience. Sexual partners who would normally be unavailable to us become attainable, providing us with fantasy and / or blackmail material for the rest of our lives.

So...can anybody tell me where Javier Bardem is having cocktails these days? He's needed for an important scientific experiment...

Will we ever be able to discuss bladder weakness with the door open, in an audible volume? Depends...

OK - now that I've dispensed with the requisite soggy undergarment humor, let me impart a bit of wisdom gleaned from the past 18 months as a part-time caregiver to my elderly, wheelchair-bound mother-in-law and the daughter of a woman whose urinary frequency exceeds the rate at which Lindsay Lohan has court appearances: Take care of your bladder.

The old saying for seniors is that you should never pass up an opportunity to go to the bathroom; in my mother-in-law's case, this applies whether or not there's actually a facility in which to go, as I will illustrate with this re-enactment from last year when she stayed with my husband and me for a month:

Me: "Honey...your mom's gotta pee. Your turn."
My Honey: "Huh? What time is it?"
Me: "Time to take your mother to the bathroom."
My Honey: "Zzzzzzz..."
Me: "Hey! Wake up! Your mom needs to go!"
Mother-in-law: "Never mind..."

Sadly, this problem has now become the determining factor in where she lives, where she can go, and who she can go with; it turns out her bladder is an unrepentant night owl. Momma's got a squeeze box, alright - and while it's playin' all night, it ain't on her chest.

My mother, on the other hand, is nothing if not practical about her indelicate condition. As a southern woman it takes her no less than two hours - with final pee - to prepare to go anywhere, including the mailbox (actually, especially the mailbox, as the likelihood of seeing someone from the caucasian-and-stucco retirement community where she lives is greatest there). My father is so well trained that he knows it's time to get the car keys when the toilet flushes. The second time.

Yes, there are various heavily advertised medications designed to relieve this issue (bouncy balloons and metal-pipe stick figures anyone?), but the side effects made them impossible for these ladies to tolerate. Which brings me to this: We're clever enough to develop a way to make Hugh Hefner a viable sexual partner (I didn't say desirable - a perfect storm of low IQs and high financial resources are required for that) but we can't fix a leaky human faucet. Kegels and cranberry juice are our only defense. Why is that?

Pardon the sexism, but honestly, I think it might be because for the moment most scientists are men - and like my husband, they're not the ones who gotta get up and take mom to the bathroom.

Again.

Experts in caveman psychology (how they got the cavemen to cooperate, I don't know) love to tell their exasperated girlfriends that they can't commit because males are biologically programmed to spread their seed in as many flowerpots as possible. Magazines like Maxim and Men's Health are contractually obligated to run this myth story every decade, alongside an educational illustration of the starlet-of-the-month eating a popsicle in a plaid mini-skirt.

Another bit of pseudo-science now accepted as fact is the idea that, when it comes to sex, men are primarily stimulated by visuals. Females, however, tend to become aroused aurally (a word whose homonym I could use with equal accuracy, but I won't because I don't want to upset my mother). In real life, this means that men chase bikini models and women chase good karaoke singers - and you need only to hang out in a Chinese restaurant bar on a Friday night to know this theory has some truth to it. A paunchy, middle-aged car salesman in a cheap cabana shirt who does a passable version of the white-man anthem "Takin' Care of Business" will be surrounded by women well out of his league, while Susan Boyle will still be buying her own drinks at midnight. This premise also applies whenever you see skinny, greasy rock stars who never call their moms with their tongue down the throat of a homecoming queen.

So this latest bit of anthropological insight would have us believe, based on the above, that if a woman wants to get married and stay married, she must look good and stay looking good. Otherwise your man will likely become dissatisfied and start dragging the weekly kill to a skinny Cro-Magnon who, because she's not raising his spawn and hunting and gathering herself, has the time to do a full-body shave and put on a saber-tooth necklace. Lucky for men, women still appear to be just as accepting of ear hair, flat butts and short-bus fashion sense as they were when Larry King was being raised by wooly mammoths.

Look at it this way, guys: The next time the woman in your life spends the rent on cosmetics or takes two hours to get her hair just right, she's doing it for the sake of your relationship. So be quiet and read a magazine. Who knows? You might just discover the latest scientific evidence that you can increase your lifespan by collecting power tools you'll never use.

"It's incredible," the sisters will tell you. "But wherever we are, there's a kitchen appliance that makes perfect margaritas!"

The Traveling Blender never fails to churn out a communion of fruity, intoxicating goodness - lime, strawberry, or the special late-night version favored by the Sisterhood: the "No more mixer, let's just throw the rest of the tequila and ice in there and call it good" flavor.

There are always rituals when the Sisterhood meets. First is the much anticipated Clothing and Accessory Exchange, a rite which involves an offering of apparel and jewelry that each member has deemed too awful to ever be seen in again, but which will look amazing on one of her beloved Sisters.

After the exertion of the first ritual, there is another margarita communion, accompanied by the holy inhalation of chips, salsa and chocolate chip cookies, as the Sisterhood believes the body is a temple that must be filled to capacity at every given opportunity.

This is followed by the all-important Playing of the Chick Flick. A little-known secret about the Playing is that the Sisterhood never actually watches said flick. The movie is simply a device for enabling the most venerated tradition of the Sisterhood: Embarrassing Drunken Confessions (EDCs).

"That happened to me one time," a sister will tearfully say when a female character in the Chick Flick has had her heart figuratively ripped from her body and impaled on a fence. At this point, the Chick Flick is muted, and the Host Sister acknowledges that the EDCs have begun. EDCs can vary wildly in subject; common themes are "Men Versus Pizza," "Why My (Relative/Co-Worker) Can Kiss My Ass", and my personal favorite, "No Really, I'm Over It, Really."

While EDCs can be exhausting and tend to deplete the stock of intoxicants, all Sisters understand that this cleansing is essential, and eventually leads to the uninhibited closing ceremony: Dancing to Salt-N-Pepa in the Kitchen.

Because after all...being with the Sisterhood is as good as a shoop any day.

1) Oprah is cold and controlling. Ya think? The woman runs a multi-billion-dollar empire and she's controlling? She made it to the very top of the nasty media world as a fat black woman and you think she might be cold? Surprise, surprise. What's sad to me is that we would judge her for that. Were Oprah a man, not only would her success be less amazing, but she'd be given a pass for these particular personality flaws that were arguably necessary for her to achieve what she has.

2) Oprah once ordered two pecan pies from room service and *shudder* ATE THEM BOTH!! And what, Kitty Kelley? The earth tilted on its axis from Oprah's subsequent weight gain? As I've mentioned many times before in this blog, I'm a food addict, and if indeed Oprah suffers from the same problem (which I personally think she does) eating two pies in a sitting ain't no thang. I have, after a particularly bad day, personally inhaled a whole pizza and chased it with a cheesecake. Talk to any non-billionaire food junkie and you'll hear stories of food abuse that make Oprah's two pies look like a freakin' SNACK.

3) Oprah had an affair with the King of Milquetoast, John Tesh. The only thing I can fault her for here is bad taste, and even that charge is dubious because I have a cousin who also briefly dated John Tesh (hey, college is all about making bad decisions, right?). My guess is that Oprah dated him because of a serious insomnia issue, and anyone who has listened to Tesh's radio show for five minutes can tell you he's a miracle cure for that malady.

I'm no Oprah apologist - I find the show maudlin and self-conscious, especially the last few seasons. Occasionally, there's something or someone of interest on the program, but Oprah's self-involvement and mediocre interview skills often make the show difficult to get through. That said, I also have great admiration and respect for Oprah and what she's accomplished. As a large woman who has worked most of her life in broadcast media, I can tell you that being labeled as controlling, eating two pies in a night, and dating the human equivalent of tapioca are small sins for a talented person to commit when they're trying to get ahead in that business.

Well I'm here to tell ya, that ain't news, Katie Couric. The Obesity Holy Grail, when it is found, will likely be an empty bag of Cheetos stuffed into the cushions of an old sofa next to a TV remote. I know this because I myself have been in possession of at least 138 of these particular (baked) grails in the past six months.

Most people who have struggled with obesity are Knights of the Fat Table, valiantly going forth in our stylish Lane Bryant sweaters and stretch denim to fight off the immortal Food Addiction Dragon every single day of our lives. Just like for our brothers and sisters who struggle to slay the winged Red Bull and Vodka Dragon, the dangerously jittery Meth Dragon, or the crazy One-Armed Gambling Dragon, it is a never-ending fight, but with a difference: Those of us bound to take on the Food Addiction Dragon must make a pet of our enemy at least once or twice a day. In other words, we gotta eat.

The fact that the rest of the world is just now acknowledging the sweaty, please-don't-make-me-walk-uphill battle of the Knights of the Fat Table is a laughable to say the least. For decades we've been lured astray by the siren Little Debbie, been defeated by the ubiquitous one-eyed Krispy Kreme Demons, and had our ship sunk in the Sea of Dominos. We've cried out for help, only to be told to call on the god Will Power, who, alas, was seriously injured when he attempted to aid Tiger Woods and is now resting comfortably on a beach in Barbados. More recent studies have shown that one of our best warriors, Sir Exercise, has been a traitor all along, making even the most brave knight a slave to hunger. There are those who say the secret to killing the Food Addiction Dragon lies down the twelve-step path, however some of us lack the proper shoes for that journey.

But the Knights of the Fat Table will rally their rag-tag, fugitive forces every Monday morning, only to be vanquished again the same afternoon. Maybe it is some small consolation that the rest of the world has now taken note of our struggle; maybe now there will be at least a nod of understanding when we inhale french fries like sweet mountain air or run our finger lovingly across the plate to gather pie crumbs. Or maybe they'll still roll their eyes and wonder why we don't just put down the fork, push away from the table, or go take a walk.

That's ok. We'll battle on, and maybe one day, when we've figured out what demon from hell unleashes the dragon against us, we can slay it for good and feast on its chicken-fried heart.

Here's a little background: As I've mentioned before, the typical gender stereotypes are somewhat reversed in my house -- he's the ultra-supportive, sensitive homebody who remembers birthdays and anniversaries, hangs up his wet towels, likes to cook, and loves to shop. I'm funny and throw my underwear on the floor, which as you can see, makes it an equal partnership.

Actually, I know many women are reading this and thinking I hit the spouse lottery. It's true except for the fact that, if indeed I won any kind of real lottery, the money would be completely blown within a year on radio-controlled airplane parts and the latest weight loss miracle, as my sweet husband has a passion for both. The miniscule utility room in our house contains a washer, dryer, 350 boxes of unused Medifast meals, 14 bottles of Acai berry liquid metabolism supplement, a case of Wu-Yi weight-loss tea, and 32 propellers in various sizes. And a jar of garlic salt.

I, however, prefer to spend our money on more substantial things, such as a weekend drinking with my girlfriends at the coast. I'm sure those memories will be worth a fortune as soon as they come back to me.

So yesterday, I was headed into the guest room and almost tripped over two brand new red plastic gas cans. I knew they were recent purchases because unlike the FOUR OTHER GAS CANS we have in the back yard, these had a green lever on the spout.

"Hey honey?" I called. "Where did these come from?"

My loving husband stepped into the room. "I bought 'em yesterday. They were on sale," he said proudly.

"But...we already have FOUR OTHER GAS CANS," I sweetly pointed out.

"Why do you always do that?" he said.

"Do what?" I asked carefully. Apparently, I'd just stepped into a minefield cleverly disguised as a mundane domestic conversation.

"THAT," he spat. "Always question everything I do!"

"I don't question everything you do, hon, but since we already have several serviceable gas cans outside, I think it's reasonable for me to ask why you bought more," I said with a smile. I thought that maybe by treading lightly I could avoid the twenty-minute countdown of my greatest marital hits faults. Guys reading this are laughing about now--they know it was already too late.

"Because it made me happy, that's why!" He yelled, storming out of the room.

Fifteen minutes later, I was still sitting on the bed with my mouth open, trying to draw a figurative line between the purchase of gas cans and personal happiness and wishing there were some doughnuts in the house. Lucky for me, my husband is the peacemaker, and came back to explain. "You always spill gas on the mower and the edger when you're filling it," he said. "These gas cans have a lever that lets you cut the flow so you don't spill. See?" He picked one up to demonstrate.

"So why didn't you say that in the first place?" I asked.

"Because just once, I'd like it if you trusted my decisions about stuff without questioning them all the time," he said. "I didn't ask why you spent $200 in booze and chicken fingers in Lincoln City last weekend, and these were only $4.99."

And it's a good thing he didn't, because I don't remember why -- but I do know it made me happy.