A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
The apartment building where I live always thinks it’s on fire. The alarms seem to go off at least once every couple months, sometimes more. And then all the residents have to evacuate yet again and stand around out front until a screaming fire truck arrives and an official confirms that the place is not, […]
These days I really only drink alcohol when I’m out of town. Course, I’m a travel journalist, so my habits hardly qualify me for the Temperance League. And okay, fine, sometimes, even when I’m not out of town, I’ll imbibe at social functions. Fortunately for my liver, I attend as few of those as possible. […]
If the set dresser for the movie of my life had the gall to decorate the coffee table belonging to my celluloid self with the actual books actually sitting on my actual coffee table, I think I’d accuse the production’s art department of homophobia. The books are: A little on the nose, don’t you think? […]
I’ve been attending Pride parades since the early 2000s. That amounts to a quarter century’s worth of June Sundays spent standing around in the hot sun and squinting at go-go boys on floats. To tell you the truth, I have never exactly found the spectacle riveting. I don’t blame the LGBTQ+ community. Time and again […]
I find it jarring when my parents or sisters stop using products I grew up with. What is a family, in the end, but the group of people you share your brand loyalties with? It feels weird when that sacred contract gets broken. At some point after I left home, for example, my mother switched […]
I brought a sweater to a wedding I attended in El Salvador last year. I didn’t plan to wear the thing at the ceremony or reception, of course, but to one of the auxiliary events—a dinner on a beach. I figured the sweater would be appropriate since it’s made of relatively porous material and has […]
Mirror, mirror on the wall,Who has pores that aren’t small? That’s what I think to myself when I peer into the mirror mounted next to the sink in the bathroom. It’s one of those magnifying mirrors that supply a close-up look at your face to aid in personal grooming and to hurt your feelings. The […]
When my husband, Frank, works from home, he sits at a round table in a corner of the bedroom. His computer monitor points right at the bathroom door, so whenever he’s on a video call and I have to pee, I’m supposed to hold it until he’s finished so that his coworkers won’t see me […]
As far as I’m concerned, you can display your books however you like, provided you’re not one of those people who arranges books by color. I hate that. It’s disrespectful to the book and makes you look like the sort of superficial twit who quite literally judges a book by its cover. I’ve divided my […]
When I was a kid, my family referred to the TV remote as “the controls.” As in, Hey, pass me the controls! I wanna watch Family Matters ‘cause it’s 1991 and I gotta learn how to do the Urkel. I’ve never heard anybody else refer to a remote as “the controls.” Course, I’ve never seen […]
Indirect Objects 