A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
If you ever want to give yourself a flashback to the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic (maybe you’re a masochist, how should I know), I recommend washing your hands while singing the “Happy Birthday” song twice through. Remember that? Sometimes the customs of just a few years ago can feel like they belong to […]
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 […]
Because I sometimes forget to put on sunscreen before I leave the house, I carry a spare bottle in my bag for application on the go. But that usually means I have to smear the cream on my face without the benefit of a mirror and can’t see what a poor job of blending I’ve […]
A supposedly good book that I do not especially like is My Dog Tulip, J.R. Ackerley’s well-regarded 1956 memoir about his beloved German shepherd. If you ask me, way too many pages have to do with trying to get the dog laid. I did, however, find this part moving: … what strained and anxious lives […]
During the summers of my childhood when my parents signed me up for baseball (contrary to my wishes, talents, and fragile sense of self-worth), my triumphs on the field and in the batter’s box were small in number. I was scared of the ball, couldn’t throw, couldn’t hit, and, frankly, didn’t have the firmest grasp […]
This summer I had an issue with my gums. They felt irritated in this one spot in the upper left quadrant of my mouth. I suspected a red chili flake had somehow gotten lodged up there. I went to my dentist about the matter, and he gave me a prescription for a terrible-tasting mouthwash. I […]
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 […]
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 […]
My husband, Frank, and I got married with virtually no fanfare, forethought, or guests at Chicago City Hall on February 7, 2015. Same-sex matrimony had become legal in Illinois the previous year and we had an afternoon free. Cue the Wedding March. We had already been together for more than 8 years by that point […]
Welcome to this blog’s 100th post. In the 99 preceding entries, I have given the show-and-tell treatment to 97 of my belongings. It would have been 99, but I’ve done The Aeneid three times. My original, self-imposed quota for this site when I started it in August 2019 was one post per week. Obviously, if […]
Indirect Objects 