A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
Some people pick up refrigerator magnets or shot glasses or HPV during their travels. I collect pencils of the world. I used to have a lot more, but I’ve thinned the ranks. The collection is housed in a large cylindrical glass vase I keep on my desk, and I’d like to avoid expanding to a […]
The knife is the king, and the big fork is the queen. Each spouse has a sidekick—the spoon (a duke) for the king, the salad fork (a lady-in-waiting) for the queen. Those are the roles I assigned the flatware whenever I’d find myself at a restaurant as a child. I would put the royal quartet […]
My husband, Frank, and I recently took a guided bike tour of Boston. Somebody gave us a gift certificate for the experience when we were leaving New York. The second I mounted my ride, I told the wiry woman leading the tour that the seat felt too high, but she thought it looked fine and […]
August 6 was this site’s second birthday. As in the first post and the first anniversary post, I’m marking the date by trying the Virgilian lottery, a form of fortune-telling where you open Virgil’s works at random and point. Whatever passage your finger lands on supposedly foretells your future. I don’t own copies of all […]
The dermatologist I went to as a teenager used to call me “Moose.” He had an avuncular manner and always wore a visor with two inset magnifying eyepieces so that he could get a good look at his patients’ hideously clogged pores. I think “Moose” was supposed to set me at ease or maybe make […]
I’m currently on my second passport. I got my first one in 2004 in order to travel to Italy with my family. I still remember the photo inside because I looked wild-eyed and slightly deranged—sort of like Jack Nicholson in The Shining when he uses an ax to chop his way through that bathroom door and […]
Among the treasures I unearthed while packing and unpacking my belongings for my recent move from New York City to Boston: a lapel pin bearing the likeness of Mary Tyler Moore; a handwritten love poem addressed to me by a college classmate who contends that I am “silly on the phone” before praising my “manly […]
Listen, I have about a million things I need to do before I move to Boston in—oh my Lord—four days, so let’s make this snappy, okay? You should know how these posts go by now. I’ll give you a rough outline and you can fill in the rest in your imagination. Let’s see . . […]
My parents divorced when I was an adult. After they divided their assets, my mom sold the house in order to move someplace not filled with painful memories. One night, I was helping her pack up her scrapbooking room. Okay, well, my then-boyfriend/now-husband, Frank, was helping her pack up her scrapbooking room. I was mostly […]
The five years my husband, Frank, and I have lived in New York have been turbulent ones for the world, what with the Trump presidency and the pandemic. Not to mention the rise and fall of Quibi. Lest the universe get the idea that we can’t take a hint, we have decided to move. Frank […]
Indirect Objects 