Last night, I went with my sister to a Pat Benatar concert and cried through most of it. I was only 4 when Pat Benatar released her first album in 1979. At some point, either MTV or my sister, Jennie, introduced me to this firecracker and her thrilling voice. Jennie had all of her records, […]
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A Thousand Daily Losses and a Lesson in Letting Go
I am falling apart. The disintegration starts internally, with synapses and cells I suppose. But eventually the phenomenon must manifest physically, visibly, externally. To all but me it’s an ineffectual alarm, quiet and cumulative. My hair is falling out. My ponytail is half as thick, and it’s still thinning. When I run my fingers through […]
I Can’t Find the Words
I hear Jeff come briskly down the hall, not long after he’d gotten up and left me burrowed in the bed. I tense. I know that tempo. It’s more dramatic on workdays, when he has on his boots; this morning, he’s wearing soft soles. Jeff wouldn’t march back to our bedroom with such haste and […]
What Boobies Have Taught Me About Milking the Most Out of Life
Last month I checked off a prodigious bucket-list item: I saw a blue-footed booby in his natural habitat. He was minding a chick so implausibly fluffy it looked like a Jim Henson creation. As a child, I’d seen a display of taxidermy birds behind glass at a natural history museum. Among them was a blue-footed […]
The Long Goodbye
I’ve intended to write about my cat Wilkie for a long time. He died in October 2016, and I’ve not been able to do it until now. It’s hard to eulogize an animal. Even one as unique as blue-eyed, ring-tailed Wilkie. For as much as they add to our lives, pets don’t have the makings […]
There will be no Christmas miracle: The Poinsettia Project bombs
Though I’ve managed to keep last year’s poinsettia alive all year, in true Grinch fashion it has elected to remain green and deprive me of my Christmas miracle. It’s not hard to keep poinsettias alive year-round as humble green houseplants, but it takes some doing to make them turn red again in time for the […]
Bargaining with the Green Fairy
Two things happened this month and one of them might be life-changing. First, I am 10 days in to Go Sober for October. (It’s a UK thing.) Second, Dunn-Edwards, the paint company, came out with its 2018 Color of the Year. It’s the latter that might be life-changing. The Color of the Year is called […]
How to Attract Kindred Clients
What if you looked at your spouse across the kitchen table every morning and thought, “He’s not my soulmate but he’s steady and he pays the bills so he’ll do.” I’m guessing that wouldn’t happen because you wouldn’t settle for a spouse who doesn’t fire you up. So why do you look across your desk […]