Nearly two weeks ago, I treated myself to some new lavender-scented body lotion. It was rich and creamy, made by “artisans” using “pure goat milk.”

It gave me the worst rash I’ve ever had in my life, with the possible exception of that time when I was a kid, and my friend Amy Wyant and I took a bubble bath using dish soap. (Terrific bubbles; definitely not worth it.)

So today, I visited a new dermatologist in my new town. And afterward, I was asked to leave a review of my experience.

When I did so, I caught myself making an error that’s easy to make, so I thought I’d turn this whole itchy fiasco into something educational. Take a look:

When you read that first sentence above, you can understand it, but it’s not quite right. Take a closer look, and you see why. Here’s what it actually means:

Dr. Caufield was attentive, Dr. Caufield was kind, and Dr. Caufield was answered all my questions.

Whoopsie. So I rewrote it:

I’m only using two adjectives to describe Dr. Caufield: attentive and kind. So I don’t have enough for a series. 

I turned the sentence into two independent clauses joined by the coordinating conjunction and. Now everything is clear.

Except … one thing is not yet clear, alas. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pick up a prescription.

Today is my (and my husband’s) 29th wedding anniversary. So I thought I’d tell you the story of how we got engaged. 

Bob (the now-husband) and I were living in Boston and had just seen the movie Rambling Rose in the theater. It was dark outside and we were crossing Dartmouth Street in front of Copley Plaza (as seen in the photograph) when Bob suddenly asked, “Would you marry me?”

We were literally in the middle of the street, right about where that arrow is pointing in the photo.

Now, if you know me, what happened next will not surprise you. But it may appall you.

“Would I marry you?” I asked.

You see, would can be conditional. It can convey a hypothetical situation. I didn’t know if Bob meant “Would you marry me if I were the last man on earth?” or “Would you marry me if I were Robert Duvall and you were Diane Ladd?” I didn’t want to answer the wrong question.

So I asked for clarification. And despite the perfect opportunity (and a pretty good incentive, now that I think about it) to back out, Bob rephrased his question and explained that he was, indeed, asking me to marry him.

We were now on the other side of Dartmouth Street (hello, Rubicon). And the the question had been clearly articulated. It was my turn to answer.

​I didn’t say yes. I just looked at Bob and nodded my head. I knew better than to try to use any words.

How’s that for a salacious headline? Salacious is a great word that means something like raunchy or obscene. Read to the end if you want to learn about its etymology. (And of course you do.)

Testicle, Sara. Get to the testicle.

But wait! First I need you to know that the photo above is not a testicle. It’s merely a fruit that my mother described as “testicular” in appearance: a fig. I’m comfortable writing a salacious headline, but I draw the line at showing a photo of a testicle.

OK. Onward. To the testis, singular.

Wait, though. Can I just interrupt this story to tell you about one of the more embarrassing moments of my life? I was in high school, and I was trying to ask a teacher—in front of a full classroom—whether he’d be returning our graded tests that day. To put a playful spin on things, I used a diminutive of the word “tests.” Yes: I asked about “our testies.” Out loud. 💀

So, back to Ralph’s testicle. Remember how I told you that I stole two puppies when I was a kid? Ralph and Floyd were their names, and they lived as “outside dogs,” meaning that they were filthy and ill-mannered and not allowed in our living space. They generally ran around, dug into the lawn in pursuit of moles, and hosted ticks of various sizes. 

They were little terrier mongrels. Ralph was mostly black; Floyd, the color of a used cigarette filter. They were probably in the ten-to-twelve-pound range and had no trouble escaping our backyard and running loose—it happened all the time. They weren’t the only dogs roaming the neighborhood, either, so it was no great surprise that they sometimes got into fights with other dogs.

Did I mention that this was the 1970s? Things were different then.

Anyway, one day, I noticed that Ralph had sustained a heinous-looking injury in his nether region.

(Interestingly, when I looked up the term “nether region,” Wikipedia informed me that yes, it does mean “Euphemism or slang for the buttocks, groin and genitals of human body, separately or collectively.” But it also means “Hell, the Underworld, or any place of darkness or eternal suffering.” Take from that what you will.)

When I saw Ralph’s bloody boo-boo, I reported it to my parents so they could do whatever grownups did to take care of such things.

And it was not until decades later that I realized that what they did to address this situation was absolutely insane.

I wasn’t present for the any of the conversations between my parents and the veterinarian back then, so I can't tell you who decided what tack to take or what the rationale was.

But I do know the following, because my sister corroborated it.

After Ralph sustained an injury between his hind legs and he was taken to the vet…

...he came home with some black stitches and...

ONE REMAINING TESTICLE.

Yes, a man with a veterinary degree decided to anesthetize my peripatetic, fertile little mutt and remove only ONE of his puppy-propagating sperm sacs. (I detest the word “sac,” but I will employ it here, where it is so perfectly accurate.)

What the actual furry, four-legged fornication?

Did people understand reproduction back then? Did they believe it was a mortal sin to remove a male’s virility? Was superstition involved? Laziness? Alcohol? I so wish I could ask my parents, but alas, they’re no longer available.

If you have any insight into the animal-control practices in Oklahoma City at the end of the Ford administration, please share. Otherwise, you can just let the absurdity of this tale wash over you like I did when it occurred to me a few years back.

Spay and neuter your pets, people. Completely.

OK, I promised the backstory on salacious. It comes from the Latin salax, meaning “lustful,” which comes from salire, “to leap.” As the wonderful Online Etymology Dictionary explains, salacious probably came from this concept: “‘fond of leaping,’ as in a male animal leaping on a female in sexual advances.”

Freddy didn't start out as a dog. When we picked him up from Farfel's Farm & Rescue on July 16, 2020, he was nothing but a quivering, biting diarrhea-producer. (You can read about those early days, when his name was Nolan, here.)

He would barely come out of his crate. He would barely eat. Every toileting excursion (with a leash because we had no enclosed yard at the time) was either harrowing or exhausting—usually both. He would spin around and try to escape his harness. He would fearfully listen to every noise as if it were an approaching lion or bomb squad. He always kept his tail tucked firmly between his legs and would shrink away if you tried to touch him.

This went on for a long, long time. When Freddy finally dared to emerge from his crate, he wouldn't walk more than a few feet. He was terrified of hard floors, so he stayed on the carpet. Carpet that he soiled more times than I can count.

After something like a week, we saw his tail start to go up. After about a month, he was bold enough to go into our kitchen. The first time we heard him bark, we were utterly shocked.

Slowly, slowly, over the months, he continued to improve. He learned to sniff around the kitchen floor to find all the bits of food that seem to fall there. He learned the joys of a belly rub. He began to tolerate walks. Eventually, I was able to pick him up.

In March of 2021, we moved to a house with a fenced-in backyard, and that made a tremendous difference. Freddy started to explore. He began playing with the squirrels who love to taunt him. He ate things he shouldn't. He rolled around in substances he thought smelled beautiful. He got baths. 

Last month, he survived a night of boarding when we went out of town. He went to the vet and got immunizations without incident. And about a week ago, he got his final dose of Prozac, which he'd been on since the early days.

There remained just one more hurdle.

Both the condo we used to live in and the house we're in now have more than one story. But Freddy had never once made it up or down an entire flight of stairs.

Until this past Sunday, July 11, 2021, that is. On that day, my husband and I sat on the basement stairs together and encouraged Freddy to come down a few steps. Oh, but he wanted to. But he wouldn't. He couldn't. Until later that night, when I was in the basement doing laundry, and I noticed that I had surprise company: a little thirteen-pound terrier mutt who had conquered his final limitation.

​Congratulations, Freddy! You were worth the wait.

Look, it was a long time ago. It was a decision made with my heart, not my head. And Lisa Perez didn't deserve them.

Here's what I remember.

I must have been something like six years old. Lisa Perez, who was about my age, had two adorable new puppies with her in front of her house—a black one and a beige one. Were the puppies in a box? Was Lisa holding them? I'm not sure. What I recall is that she claimed to have found them, and she told me in a sort of braggy way, "My mom says if I don't find who they belong to, I get to keep them."

Oh, no. That could not happen.

Lisa Perez shouldn't simply get to keep two tiny, out-of-the-blue, windfall puppies. And her mother probably hadn't actually given her permission, anyway. Lisa was a known teller of falsehoods. She had once pointed at some velvety moss growing on a rock and assured me it was gravity.

So, within a matter of seconds, I took action.

I started running down the street toward my house while calling, "Here, puppies! Here, puppies!"

And they ran after me! Clearly, they sensed who would make a better owner.

I don't know what ensued between the Perez parents and my own, if anything. All I know is that my Great Dog Robbery was successful, and I got to keep that pair of scruffy little curs.

My much older brothers named them Ralph and Floyd. But I often continued to refer to them as simply "puppies."​

​My career as a criminal was short, but it served me well.

Pandemic: bad.

Having to put down your beloved dog during a pandemic: extra bad.

Actually, I didn't have to do it myself—thank goodness. The wonderful, compassionate folks at Pets & Pals Veterinary Hospital in Lafayette, Colorado, have stayed open during this outbreak, and they handled the euthanasia. (Thank you, thank you, thank you.)

Below is a piece I wrote for my husband's dog photography website many years ago. I'll leave it here as a tribute to Little Guy, my funny, handsome, and tremendously comforting friend. ❤️

When I was a kid, I had the opposite of claustrophobia. I'd call it claustrophilia, but I don't want to pathologize it. I just enjoyed tucking myself into little hideouts and cozy spots: cabinets, closets, an oversized drawer... even the top of the refrigerator, for a spell. (Maybe I don't want to scrutinize this behavior too much.)

Anyway, this proclivity has carried over to my professional life today. I've discovered that my favorite copywriting challenges are those where space is limited. A billboard that people need to take in while driving 70 miles an hour. A thirty-second radio spot. A digital ad that's half the size of a credit card. The back of a frozen entree. Subject lines. Headlines. Taglines. Tweets.

Related: For the past few years, I've been creating little language lessons about grammar, spelling, punctuation, etymology, etc. (See a sampling below.) Each of these social media posts measures only 1080 x 1080 pixels. That's not a lot of room to explain when you should use "loath" instead of "loathe," or how to avoid committing a comma splice. But that restriction is a big part of why I love creating these things. They're like Rubik's cubes. The challenge: How much memorable information can I fit into the square without it feeling like a Dr. Bronner's label?

Now, If you're one of the millions of people who freelance, you've likely heard the mantra that to succeed, you need to "niche down." (Don't ask me to say that out loud—whichever way you pronounce it, you're sure to annoy somebody.) The more specific your expertise, say all the career coaches, the better. You're supposed to specialize in some industry "vertical": dentistry, landscaping, badminton... something.

But I don't want to. I love promoting all sorts of products and services: beer and banks and boarding schools. If I particularly love the work a client does (like Invest in Girls, say), then that's just icing on the cake. (Oh—I've gotten to write lots about cake. And icing.)

So I think that rather than niching down in the usual sense, I'd like to focus on small spaces. I'll take a pass on the long white papers and ebooks. Bring on the ads. The emails. The out-of-home. I want to work on posters and postcards and packaging. Give me a small space, and I will do big things.℠ 

That's the name of a 1935 song I've listened to a zillion times—sometimes as a recording by Fats Waller or Louis Armstrong, but most often, belted out by my father, who (as I've mentioned before) adored that sort of music.

Unlike the protagonist of the song, however, I'm not inspired by romance. My goal is sanity. Or perspective, anyway.

See, I've noticed that, depending on circumstances, I can regard the world in drastically different ways.

When I'm approaching the deadline a large writing project, I can be filled with dread, self-doubt, and self-recrimination (for procrastinating). But then, at some point in the writing process, I find myself thinking, "Say! This is really good! I actually love this!" See the discrepancy there? Persona A: pained, fretting, reluctant victim. Persona B: fortunate, fulfilled, happy professional.

Similarly, when circumstances in my life get troublesome, I catastrophize. I am preternaturally talented at this. I can envision loved ones in prison or dead; I can enumerate all the ways my health might fail. It's not that I truly believe the worst is going to happen, exactly; but I sure can picture it. I have a terrific imagination, which can also be a terrible imagination. Eventually however, when my circumstances improve, I can recognize how silly I've been. I'm flooded not only with relief, but optimism. I admonish The Worrier in me and my whole outlook brightens.

So here's what I'm thinking. Why don't I write myself a letter?

When I'm feeling like a self-possessed copywriting pro, why don't I write a letter to the neurotic, tortured incompetent who will certainly show up at some point? I might set down assurances like, "I know you're nervous. But I promise you with absolute certainty: You are going to be fine, and this project is going to turn out great. Just keep on writing. Every word you type will get you closer to a finished result that you love. Go on."

Similarly, at one of those moments when my temporary troubles abate and I see my way out of doom-filled concern into sunshiny rationality, I should write my former (and future) fretting self: "Just cut it out, worrywart. First, it doesn't do you any good. Second, what you're envisioning is truly preposterous."

If I write to myself, I could help myself.

Come to think of it, though, maybe I don't need to write a literal letter. I believe this blog post will do the trick nicely.

Yours sincerely,

​Sara

I just returned from a full seven days in Seattle—my first time visiting. I was attending CreativePro Week, a fantabulous conference I highly recommend for graphic designers. (Next year's will be held in Austin.)

Here are a few things I loved about it.

• Within my first fifteen minutes at the conference, I ran into one of my favorite former colleagues from Publix Super Markets, Inc., dynamite designer and lovely human Neal Mitchell. As you can see, we were a good distance from the office we used to work in together. Small world and all that.

​

• I gave an Ignite talk (20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds over 5 minutes) about the history of "lorem ipsum" placeholder text and many other topics having to do with English, etymology, printing, and the like. I learned SO MUCH preparing this talk. Did you know, for example, that the man who gave Timex its name, according to his son, liked to read Time magazine and used a lot of Kleenex, so he put the two names together? (This is a slide from my presentation.)

That photo is a pretty good representation of my trip: just lovely. I'm so glad I went, and I'm looking forward to CreativePro Week 2020!

My father loved music and did a lot of singing. Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong—that sort of thing. He'd sing "Flat-Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)," "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do," and on and on. I mean, there were a lot of songs, and he knew all the lyrics.

One song he sang frequently reflected his outlook, I believe: "​Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," penned by Johnny Mercer, pictured above. You can easily find the complete lyrics online (or just listen to the song), but here's the crux:

You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mr. In-Between

You got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
And have faith, or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

I absorbed this lesson pretty deeply as a kid. It's how I generally made my way through life as a young person—latching onto the affirmative. Also e-lim-i-nating the negative, which is sometimes less snazzily called "denial." When faced with less-than-ideal situations, I was pretty adept at pretending they didn't exist.

I suspect that's part of the reason l became a copywriter. I can play up whatever is good about a product and downplay anything that might be not-so-good. It comes naturally to me.

When I hear about a problem, the first words out of my mouth are often "At least..." followed by some silver lining or another. "At least she'll still have one leg," I might say, upon hearing of someone's amputation. "At least I learned a lesson," I might comfort myself after losing money due to some numbskulled mistake.

This trait can get preposterous if you're not careful. As demonstrated unforgettably in Monty Python's Life of Brian:​