Last night was the same as every other miserable night since a rendezvous with ZzzQuil in early April: I slept for 2.5 hours, then got up with Muriel and dozed again for about as long. Five hours of fragmented sleep kept me awake enough to join Crankenstein on a shopping excursion to replace her desk

Editing last night’s entry this morning reminded me that lately I’ve been inserting Word B, which comes after Word A, in front of it as well; this turns phrases like “screwed up” into typos like “up screwed up.” It doesn’t happen incessantly but it’s a daily occurrence in text messages, blog posts, or other online

Whatever energy I possessed earlier in the day is long gone after everything I did around the house today, which is funny because it seems — as it often does — that my slow and clumsy efforts barely put a dent in my to-do list. But I remembered to take photos, which usually slips my

Here’s Muriel, our noble, barrel-chested beast, breaking in the new chair. I’m not sure why it looks as though she was dragging the Gorilla Cart behind her like a mule, but clearly she and Crankenstein were up to something while I showered.* This room is big and nearly empty, so it’s a good place to

As those of you who live stateside are probably aware, there were a whole heckuva lot of tornadoes in the South and Midwest last night. Nineteen of those were in my native Missouri, where the death toll stands at 12 as of this writing.* For 7 to 10 days prior, there were increasingly urgent warnings

I spent more than seven hours working on “Same Trailer, Different Park” today and it still isn’t finished. That’s less a testament to its quality, as you’ll ultimately see for yourselves, than further evidence my brain moves more slowly than a Jacques Rivette film. But maybe it’s a useful reminder — for me more than

“She’s tough, very tough,” was how the lawyer described the administrative law judge who would hear our SSA appeal. We couldn’t have drawn anyone tougher, she opined, or harder to read. Most of what she conveyed about her — a reputation for being “testy” with shifty claimants, a dislike of shirts bearing smart-ass or political

This hot mess won’t be edited until later this weekend; it was getting too long as it was so I had to take a hacksaw to some of it. Also: I slept last night! (And was so excited about it today that I bookmarked a Michael Landon telefilm to watch in celebration. One day, I’ll

Our plans are coming together: we’ve just acquired a used stereo receiver, have a refurbished turntable lined up, and now all we need are speakers and my grandfather’s LPs. Crankenstein, who has fond memories of listening to her dad’s vinyl while doing homework in what was formerly his den, asked her parents this weekend if

This won’t be edited until Wednesday morning. Does anybody remember laughter? No? Well, that’s understandable in light of recent events.* But perhaps you recall the single-drawer cart I assembled in the basement back in November, when I wrote: I worked on it for a few hours while listening to a library audiobook about Bernie Madoff,