Doing It Sam's Way

This book is written by a friend of mine and could have just as easily been called, "The Diary of a Spanked Housewife." Joanna Miller (a pseudonym, naturally,) has kept a charming five- year diary of her adventures as she and her husband, Sam, meander down the new and often confusing path of Domestic Discipline, trying to deal with a familiar series of problems and questions. Sometimes touching and often hilarious, Jo's Diary follows the daily trials and growing insight of a loving, devoted couple sometimes overwhelmed by three badly behaved kids, speeding tickets, a bald, asthmatic hamster, vacations from hell, annoying in-laws, and exploding turkeys.

"Being spanked," Jo observes in a philosophical moment, "can be a remarkably funny experience, looked at in the proper light, and from an adequate distance—a lot like thirty-eight unmedicated hours in hard labor."

A once successful working artist, now a frustrated soccer-mom working her way inexorably down the ladder of success, Jo agrees, with Sam's help, to try to rein in her tempestuous temper, her exhaustive vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon expletives, and her worst habit—smoking. "On good days, " as Jo describes her smoking habit, "I was like a burning junkyard full of smoldering truck tires."

When Sam comes up with the idea of giving Domestic Discipline a try, Jo agrees (although Jo says "agreed" is probably too generous a word. She prefers "hoodwinked.") Once begun, Jo finds that "Doing It Sam's Way " is rewarding, (in the end), but a little more complicated, and a lot harder on her own rear end than she had been led to believe.