A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
I used to know a bunch of different ways to play solitaire—stop me if this gets too sad. I learned five or six versions of the card game from a babysitter when I was a kid. I guess she took one look at my ventriloquist’s dummy and thought, Here’s a person who’s going to need something […]
You can’t tell from the photo because the print is sepia for some reason, but the wall we’re standing in front of was royal blue. This was in the apartment of Frank’s friend Sam, who had painted each wall in the place a different bright primary color. I was going to strain for a Skittles […]
Seems like I should have more mementos from the 11 years I was a freelance performing-arts journalist in Chicago. But I have no scrapbook full of saved programs or even a single past issue of the Chicago Reader containing my byline somewhere within the yellowing pages. The theater section of the Reader—which is the city’s alt-weekly—is where […]
I heard once that in order to calculate how much water you should be drinking each day, you take your weight in pounds, then divide the number in half, replace the word “pounds” with “ounces,” and there you are. So, for example, since my weight is about 160 pounds, my daily water intake should be […]
The reasons I’ve heard for why parents in the olden days didn’t want their kids to be left-handed are remarkably similar to the reasons certain parents don’t want their kids to be gay. In both cases, the argument has to do with the benefits of conforming with the majority and/or avoiding wickedness. Since most people […]
I’ve never met a dental hygienist who didn’t have the skeptical yet sorrowful air of someone accustomed to being lied to all the time. The wives of mid-scandal politicians have a similar demeanor. It’s a look that says, I’m obliged to pretend that I believe you, but we both know that you don’t floss every […]
If you go by the numbers alone, I am a Chicagoan, Arkansas born. I left my home state about a month after my 18th birthday and moved to the Chicago area—Evanston to be exact—to attend Northwestern. After graduation, I stayed in Chicago nearly 15 years, bringing my total Chicago time to 18 years and 9 […]
I come from an era before parents limited screen time. In fact, “screen time” wasn’t even a term anybody used when I was a kid, seeing as how smartphones and the internet weren’t around yet. Television, for its part, was widely regarded as garbage yet voraciously consumed. Much like White Claw Hard Seltzer today. Although […]
Christmastime is the season when I subject my friends and family members to light verse. I usually write a cutesy little poem for the holiday card that my husband and I send out. I have been known to inflict my galloping rhymes on holiday get-togethers as well. The text of this year’s card, which is […]
For a while, my husband and I had a subscription to one of those meal-kit services that send you at regular intervals a box containing ingredients and a recipe. The ingredients always seemed to be eggplants and the recipes were clearly written by people who are not familiar with the tiny kitchens in New York […]
Indirect Objects 