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FEATURES Dear Annie: I am 24 and have four small children under age 10. My mother was in a car accident last fall that left her paralyzed from the chest down, and she now lives with us. With hardly any help from my older sister, I struggle every day trying to take care of everyone's needs. Mom screams at me and makes the smallest of things seem like the end of the world. I don't want to see her in a nursing home, but I cannot do this 24/7. I'm losing my mind and my life. My kids don't want to be around me, and my oldest son's grades are declining. Do I keep going, hoping things will get better? Or do I break the news to my mom that I love her dearly but can't take care of her? — A. Dear A.: You sound like a wonder- ful, caring daughter, but Mom is prob- ably depressed and angry, and is taking it out on you. There are limits to what you can reasonably do for her without sacrificing the well-being of your chil- dren. Please don't feel guilty. Your mother needs more help than you can give her. She not only requires round- the-clock physical care, but also would benefit from counseling to deal with her other issues and come to terms with her current situation. by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar Please look into home-health care Annie's Mailbox options, including a full-time caregiver (perhaps your sister would contribute to the cost), as well as nearby nursing homes. Most do an excellent job, and you can visit Mom every day, not only to cheer her up, but also to check on her care. Then please get some coun- seling for yourself in order to get through this, because we doubt Mom is going to make it easy. never assume there is an inheritance to receive. Plan your retirement accord- ing to what you can manage on your own. You can, however, discuss your parents' plans for their future care, ask- ing whether they have a health care power of attorney, a will, any wishes for their funeral, etc. These are impor- tant things that ought to be arranged while your parents are capable of doing so. However, if they resist dis- cussing end-of-life issues, please leave it alone. year-old parents whether they will leave any inheritance for my siblings and me? I'm not looking to spend it. But getting an answer will help with our future retirement planning. Of course, as with most families, there are all kinds of additional ''wonderful'' dynamics at work that complicate ask- ing. What is your stance on this? — Wondering Dear Wondering: Children should Dear Annie: Is it OK to ask my 80- sexual dysfunction at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. You correctly identify low testosterone as an important cause of loss of desire. Dear Annie: I teach treatment of Tuesday, April 17, 2012 – Daily News 5A Taking care of mom and kids However, I have found in many cases that the cause is simple boredom with a wife's participation. Men and women both require an average of 12 minutes of foreplay to reach full arousal. A wife who takes turns providing pleasure should find her partner more eager for sex. Men respond to action far more than words. When there is an expectation of pro- longed mutual pleasuring, it creates a lovely aura of arousal long before the clothes come off. Please remind women that a man is aroused by the sight of his wife's naked body not because she's a super- model, but because her body is only shown to him. Mood lighting can help. A semi-closed dressing gown or the sight of her in one of his not-quite- long-enough shirts can be a powerful visual stimulant to a man who sees offering sex as the most powerful statement of love and caring. You do great good by helping women understand that men will never behave or understand them the way a girlfriend does. We men really are dif- ferent and often are unable to express our needs clearly. — D.B. M.D. Loma Linda, Calif. Annie's Mailbox is written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, longtime editors of the Ann Landers column. Please email your questions to anniesmailboxcomcast.net, or write to: Annie's Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. Sunday is HBO's new ladies night BY DIANE WERTS Newsday (MCT) Times were different then, when the "Sex and the City" girls were mas- ters of the HBO universe. All things seemed possi- ble. Money and jobs were free-flowing. You could work at home, writing columns about piffle, and afford Jimmy Choo shoes! Life was good! Principled optimist Josiah Bartlet was president of the Unit- ed States, and winning four best-drama Emmys! OK, so "The West Wing" and its idealized POTUS weren't on HBO, they aired on NBC. But times really were different then — NBC was practically HBO Lite! Now — flash forward a decade to today's society, economy and public mood. Few things seem possible. Money and jobs are hard to come by. Cut- backs, downsizing, the game keeps changing. Life's a joke. And so's pol- itics, with its poison polar- ization and ugly expedien- cy. Never have so many voters wished so desper- ately to choose None of the Above. Today's HBO universe gets all of that. This month, the pay cabler debuts two half-hour dramedies that resonate as fresh, sometimes freaky windows onto the world as we know it (but actual- ly might rather not). "Girls" arrives Sunday night at 10 with a cast of four good-time chicks a la "SATC." But these unglamorous Brooklyn 20-somethings aren't hav- ing sex in the city with such abandon. Fresh off their all-about-me child- hood/college idylls, they've been kicked hard into an adult world where, wham, nobody cares about their needs. Nor do the girls have much of a clue about their own iden- tity or direction. Crafted by 25-year-old series star- writer-director-producer Lena Dunham (the bar- gain-budget indie flick "Tiny Furniture"), "Girls" is a raw, naked (often liter- ally), improv-style slice of life where humor and humiliation emerge in equal quantity. Its unrefined documen- tary feel also marks next Sunday's new "Veep" the farce in which "Seinfeld" icon Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays ex-senator turned Vice-President Selina Meyer. Just one rung under The Leader of the Free World, Selina finds herself hustled through her days by a whirl of aides dithering less over public strategy than politi- cal signals. Which frozen yogurt flavor for a photo op? What would Jamaican rum say? 2008 — just as "Blood" creator Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") was juicing up his swamp soap into a gaudy must-see of vam- pire blood and conspicu- ous sex. Last year, HBO introduced "Game of Thrones," another appar- ent "genre" hour with its fantasy-world politics, yet another across-the-board smash whose storytelling helped sell George R.R. Martin's saga to the main- stream. The minutiae of the moment consumes both protagonists, ever distract- ed by daily process as big- picture goals recede into the distance. Their opera- tional cues come from Oprah and 24/7 cable TV news, second-guessing every action or utterance to death, utterly fixated on things that don't really mean anything, until they come to define everything. The shows capture "where we are culturally regarding women and pol- itics and sexual politics and relationships," says HBO Entertainment presi- dent Sue Naegle, put in charge of the premium cabler's original program- ming four years ago, when lots of long-run series were ending, with little of sizzle to replace them. Martin Scorsese's "Board- walk Empire" was on the way as the latest splashy period piece, but what could truly define Nae- gle's HBO in the way that, a decade earlier, "Sex and the City" and "The Sopra- nos" had? Pop-culture buzz was percolating instead over at premium rival Showtime, suddenly charging hard with "Dex- ter," "Weeds" and "Nurse Jackie." Fortunately, Naegle had helped put together the creative team for "True Blood" as a United Talent Agency partner before moving to HBO in Albertson Training Center COMPLETE AUTO REPAIR Daycare EMS Approved Pediatric CPR/First Aid Industrial OSHA Approved CPR/First Aid Public Adult CPR & First Aid Wilderness First Aid Babysitting Safety Youth Water Safety Daily and affordable classes: AHA/HCP or Pro-CPR 530-527-4997 80 Gurnsey Ave. - Red Bluff, CA 96080 (Behind Guy Rents) margescpr@juno.com recommened 30K, 60K, 90K SERVICES AT LOWER PRICES All makes and models. We perform dealer Smog Check starting at$ Pass or FREE retest 527-9841 • 195 S. Main St. (most cars and pick-ups) 2595 + cert. Half-hours were some- thing else. With reliable "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on long hiatus, HBO tried "Bored to Death," "Hung," "Eastbound and Down" _ nice, but no cigar; nothing to speak to/for a generation as "Sex and the City" and just- ending "Entourage" had. Naegle was looking for something where "there's a bravery in the comedy, and there's a purity in the vision, which to me is a trademark of HBO at its best." She wanted "that feeling of singular vision." excess. Its guileless atti- tudes and natural feel seem to spring from of- the-moment auteur Dun- ham as spontaneously as sweat, which her scripts certainly make her charac- ter, Hannah, do. "I am busy, trying to become who I am," Hannah pro- claims, as both a boast and a whimper, when her par- ents cut off the money supporting her two years post-college as an aimless "intern." Hannah's room- mate has a job and a boyfriend, yet is no less adrift, currently agitated that her boyfriend is "so nice to me, it makes me feel angry. ... His touch now feels like a weird uncle putting his hand on my knee." Hannah botch- es job interviews with date-rape jokes, seeks awkward sex with her not- boyfriend, and babbles to her gynecologist that if she had AIDS, at least nobody would be pushing her to find a job. Sighs the gyno, "You could not pay Which "Girls" brings in me enough to be 24 again." "Girls" rambles and rolls, yet gobsmacks viewers with blunt turns of both phrase and activi- ty. "It's the feelings, it's the honesty," says Naegle, who couldn't grab Dun- ham fast enough to part- ner her with executive producer Judd Apatow, king of the (guy) slacker universe. Naegle thinks the show nails "trying to figure out your id. When I watched this as a 42-year- old woman, I felt like I understood that experi- ence. These people felt like me at that age, allow- ing myself to make mis- takes, alternately harshly judging what I did and being permissive myself about finding my way." to "Veep," too, and not just by Louis-Dreyfus' title figurehead. Series creator- director Armando Iannuc- ci (2009 movie "In the Loop") portrays Selina as the befuddled locus around which the show's various young aides revolve, incessantly thumbing their smart- phones, jockeying for secrets, status and better jobs, hopefully not with "one of the most respected perverts in the Senate." Are there any ideals in this office? Would it matter if there were? There's way-finding in And where does that lead us? This feels like the tack to which HBO has turned, after years of depicting people who've been around the block, trying to maintain what they have or figure out what it means. These two new shows aren't about kids, but the characters don't act like adults, either. They're from that new and nameless post- college group so often today living at home, on their parents' medical insurance. How do they move from here? What shape is their world going to take? own future by portraying ours. HBO is now forging its K W I K K U T S Family Hair Salon $200 REGULAR HAIRCUT off with coupon Not good with other offers 1064 South Main St., Red Bluff • 529-3540 Reg. $13.95 Expires 4/30/12 Take control of alcohol before it takes control of you DEAR DOCTOR K: I am a 42-year-old man who drinks alcohol pretty much every day. Although I don't feel "out of con- trol" from the amount I drink, I know it's more than the recommended amount. How can I nip this in the bud before it goes too far? drinking: DEAR READER: If you have just one drink a day, there's evidence that this actually may be healthy. More than two drinks a day for men under 65, more than one a day for men over 65, or more than one a day for a woman of any age can raise the risk of alcohol-related dis- eases. One alcohol-related disease is addiction to alcohol. Alcohol addicts — true alcoholics — need alcohol to function every day, and can experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms if they don't have something to drink. So if your daily alcohol Dr. K by Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D. Make a list of the reasons to curtail your drinking, such as feeling healthier, sleeping better or improv- ing your relationships. — Set a drinking goal. Set a limit on how much you will drink. Keep your drinking below the rec- ommended guidelines. This means no more than one standard drink per day for women, as well as men ages 65 and — Put it in writing. intake is potentially unhealthy, it is something to be concerned about. Most people who overindulge with alcohol are not true alcoholics. However, a growing num- ber of people drink more than they should. Even though they have not yet reached the point of need- ing alcohol to function, they are on a slippery slope. That's why address- ing your overindulgence sooner rather than later is a good idea. Like you, most people who are concerned they may be drinking too much want to cut down rather than quit altogether. For some, cutting down is possible. But others even- tually find that they need to stop completely — that's easier for them than cutting down. For them, drinking a little alcohol seems to breed a desire to drink more. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggests the following steps to help people cut back on their older. And no more than two standard drinks per day for men under 65. — Keep a diary of your drinking. For three to four weeks, keep track of every time you have a drink. Include information about what and how much you drink. Compare this to your goal. If you're hav- ing trouble sticking to your goal, discuss it with your doctor or another health professional. — Don't keep alcohol in your house. Particularly if you have set a goal of drinking no alcohol, hav- ing none at home can help limit your drinking. — Choose alcohol-free days. Decide not to drink a day or two each week. You may want to abstain for a week or a month to see how you feel physical- ly and emotionally with- out alcohol in your life. One resource you might find helpful is the new book "Almost Alco- holic" by my Harvard Medical School col- leagues Robert Doyle, M.D., and Joseph Nowin- ski, Ph.D. You can find out more about it at my website, www.AskDoc- torK.com. Dr. Komaroff is a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. Go to his website to send questions and get additional information. Friday, April 20. The sponsored cruise is only open to registered participants. Participants must display their issued placard to be on the closed route. The Redding Police Depart- ment will begin closing the cruise route to all other traffic about 6 p.m., completing the route closure by 6:30 p.m. The route will be re-opened to the public at 8 p.m. Kool April Nites cruise The Kool April Nites Cruise is 6:30-8 p.m. on The cruise route is west on Cypress Avenue; north on Hilltop Drive; east on Dana Drive; and south on Churn Creek Rd. Cypress Avenue will be closed for only westbound traffic from Churn Creek Road to Hilltop Drive. Hilltop Drive will be closed to all traffic from Cypress Avenue to Dana Drive. Dana Drive will be closed to all traffic from Hilltop Drive to Churn Creek Road. Churn Creek Road will be closed to all traffic from Dana Drive to Cypress Avenue. Eastbound Cypress Avenue will be open for general traffic throughout the cruise. Traffic is expected to be extremely heavy in the area of the cruise throughout the day on Friday. Spectators are advised to arrive early to find a loca- tion to watch the cruise. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic will be restricted from crossing or entering the cruise route from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The Kool April Nites Cruise is a family event. The Redding Police Department will strictly enforce the laws prohibiting possession of alco- holic beverages in public and public intoxication throughout the day. Spectators are encouraged to cross the cruise route only at intersections staffed by Police Department personnel. Rent a unit & get 1/2 OFFMonth Each NEED SPACE? Have we got a deal for you! for up to 1 year. Some restrictions apply. GOOD for 8x10 & 10x24 Units We offer a $25 check for referrals upon rental. 64 Mulberry Ave., Red Bluff • 527-1755 website: www.americanselfstorage.biz AMERICAN SELF-STORAGE ★★ ★