A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
One of my sisters is big on tinctures and such. Mention so much as a tickle in your throat and before you know it she’s ordering you to open your mouth so she can squirt some nasty drops of who-knows-what in there. That happened to me last year when I was home for a visit […]
When I was a kid, my parents put up a big bulletin board on one of the walls in my bedroom. It was probably 5 feet wide and 3 feet tall. Or maybe 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall? The thing was huge. I don’t know what prompted this design choice, but I went […]
Anybody know what this thing is supposed to be? My husband, Frank, and I got it shortly after moving to the Boston area. Having installed our new dining table, we figured we should adorn the surface with a vase or bowl or something. So we went to HomeGoods and came back with this . . […]
My second grade teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, insisted that students continue wearing winter coats during recess until the first day of spring, no matter how warm the weather got before then. This was in Arkansas, where winter usually ends in February. By early March we were red-faced and sweating out on the playground, but Mrs. Lawrence […]
Of the approximately 250 units in my apartment building, just two, by my count, get daily newspapers delivered. I think we can agree that doesn’t bode well for the future of print journalism. One of the subscribers is a 70ish guy who lives on my floor. He has wispy white hair and a demeanor of […]
Of the historic homes I toured during family vacations as a child (we really knew how to have a good time), I can remember precisely one thing about each site. According to the Monticello website, Thomas Jefferson had two dumbwaiters installed in the dining room for the purpose of bringing up bottles from the wine […]
A song that really resonated with me toward the end of 2022 was Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December,” probably because one of my testicles almost didn’t. I woke up one morning early in the month with pain emanating from ol’ Lefty. When the issue persisted for a day or so, I went […]
Not long ago, a travel reporter from the Washington Post contacted me about a story she was working on. The topic was tiny lights in hotel rooms—the annoying little beams emitted from TVs, smoke detectors, alarm clocks, air conditioners, and so on. Many hotel guests find this constellation of artificial twinklers unwelcome at, say, 3am. The reporter […]
The last time I was back home in Arkansas for a visit, my two younger sisters got into a long-drawn-out debate over the following passage from the instructions for the Rummikub game: In order to make an initial meld, each player must place tiles on the table in one or more sets that total at […]
The front of the holiday card my husband, Frank, and I sent out this year features two photos of us: one taken on Thanksgiving at my mom’s house, the other in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza during our Egypt vacation. On the other side of the card there’s a picture of our dog, […]
Indirect Objects 