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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,

“It shouldn’t make sense,” Crankensten said, staring quizzically at what I’d just shown her. Finally, with a bemused head shake, she concluded “But it does.” She was referring to this beautiful work of art I’d created years ago to illustrate the differences between IBD and IBS, which couldn’t be more disparate despite the frequency with

05.21.25: By this time tomorrow I should be completely caught up on laundry, for what feels like the first time in months but has probably been more like five weeks. I’m also inching closer to declaring victory in the kitchen and upstairs bathrooms, which will be followed by deep cleaning the bedrooms. Since my ‘on’

It’s lonely sometimes cohabitating with someone whose favorite music is mostly depraved old murder ballads and whimsical Celtic folk that sounds like an Irish Spring commercial. This afternoon, as Crankenstein restlessly roamed the kitchen in search of sustenance, I yanked a box from the freezer and asked “Want to try Aunt Patti’s mac ‘n cheese?”

As I fought my way through another day that felt, physically and mentally, like being trapped underwater, my thoughts kept returning to one thing: I miss being able to write. Not that I’ve lost the ability, obviously — I’m doing it right now — but it requires a greater effort than ever before. The slowdown

We use our home printer so infrequently that I don’t recall the last time its ink cartridge was replaced, so I’ve felt no sense of urgency over the past few months when my computer issued vague warnings about future OS updates being incompatible with it. Tonight, when another reminder popped up, I decided to read

The stranger my sleep’s gotten and the more active I’ve become during it, the harder it is to trust my perceptions immediately upon waking. If I consider how often, even 12 years ago, my ex sighed “I’ve been right here, there wasn’t a noise!” when I was startled awake by loud sounds I was absolutely

This won’t be edited (if you can call it that) until Tuesday morning. “If everyone else around you is an asshole…” Crankenstein often says, paraphrasing an aphorism that serves as an elegant solution to what Leonard Cohen might’ve called a popular problem: “If everyone else is always the problem, maybe the problem isn’t everyone else.”

“Something’s wrong,” I told Crankenstein this evening, after Muriel joined us on the couch and leaned against me. A half-hour earlier, when I’d gone upstairs to shower, she seemed fine. But there was an unmistakable disturbance in the force — i.e., her joie de vivre — by the time I returned. “What?” Crankenstein asked, glancing