A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? Este es mi libro de español. Estoy aprendiendo español en el Centro de Educación de Adultos de Cambridge. Quiero aprender español porque mi esposo es puertorriqueño, y cuando él está enojado conmigo, yo quiero comprender lo que está diciendo. (“Por favor, profesora, ¿qué significa ‘pendejo sucio’?”) Me gusta mucho mi clase de […]
My dog, Lucy, who turned 13 last month, takes two daily medications now—one for her skin allergy, the other for heart disease. The heart one is new. She had an echocardiogram a few weeks ago and the vet determined that the dog’s cardiac condition has worsened since the last check. I don’t think we’ve reached […]
When Nordstrom killed off Trunk Club last year, they sent me a gift basket to thank me for being a loyal customer and, presumably, to nudge me toward shifting my business to whatever personal-shopping service the company had devised as a replacement. I had been a member of Trunk Club since 2015, which meant that […]
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 […]
Indirect Objects 