A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
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 . . […]
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, […]
I recently canceled my Netflix subscription. I had stopped using it. Oh sure, I’d browse the selections now and then, but I hadn’t been a regular viewer since Orange Is the New Black was still in production. And I didn’t even finish watching that one. I thought the season where the prisoners took over the […]
I think my dog, Lucy, is allergic to Massachusetts. She developed a skin problem not long after we moved here last June. On three separate occasions since then she has had rashes—twice on her belly and once on her business. In case you are unfamiliar with the medical definition of “business” in this context, allow […]
Here’s something the Belgrade-born poet Charles Simic wrote in the 1990s about when he was a young immigrant in Chicago in the 1950s: Here I am on the midnight el riding to work or coming back after a long day. It’s winter. It’s bitter cold. Every time the door opens, we shiver, our teeth […]
Listen, I have about a million things I need to do before I move to Boston in—oh my Lord—four days, so let’s make this snappy, okay? You should know how these posts go by now. I’ll give you a rough outline and you can fill in the rest in your imagination. Let’s see . . […]
One of my last travel-writing assignments before the pandemic involved visiting a cemetery. If I had known we were on the precipice of a protracted period of death and disease, I would have advocated for a subject that was less morbid and on the nose. Then again, what locale wouldn’t have seemed poignant in retrospect? […]
Back when we still lived in Chicago, my husband, Frank, came home from a street market one day with a stack of square ceramic coasters bearing ghostly photo collages depicting sites of regional interest. There’s a coaster each for the North Side’s Andersonville area, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Goodman Theatre, Evanston’s Northwestern University (my […]
My husband, Frank, and I let our dog, Lucy, sleep on the bed with us at night. She prefers to stay on top of the covers, curling up in one of the valleys created in the topography of the bedspread by the humans lying underneath. I like the warm weight of her cuddling except when […]
The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum once argued that Breaking Bad is a TV show you crave and dread at the same time. As it happens, I feel a similar way about The New Yorker. It contains the best magazine writing there is, but the articles are long and a new issue comes out approximately every 11 minutes. […]
Indirect Objects 