If you saw the title of this post and immediately heard Barbra Streisand’s bit-by-bits and piece-by-pieces, you should know that’s also what I thought of while gently assembling the potato truck earlier to verify everything fit.* The alignment is imperfect since it was photographed sans chassis (and glue), but I’d say it looks pretty nice […]
Putting It Together Read More »
Since I’m short on time tonight, let’s resolve last week’s cliffhanger about the bubble-wrapped items that arrived in a box marked ‘fragile.’ Most of those bundles have been opened and as you can see, turning this into a not entirely horrible approximation of the potato truck from “Angels in Chains” will take quite an effort
Baby, You Can Drive My Car Read More »
Today, for the second time in a week, I was ‘on’ more often than not, so Crankenstein suggested we open a LEGO kit and get crackin’.* The one we selected has too many tiny delicate parts for me to construct it solo, but together we assembled two of its six bags of parts — comprising
LEGOs, Libraries and ‘Lukewarm’ Read More »
It’ll be a long night here, as Crankenstein requested we watch part two of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I couldn’t tell you its running time (naturally, she’s partial to the extended edition), but even if it was only 90 minutes it would feel like six hours, just as part one did
The Ships Are Leaving for Valinor Read More »
At today’s rheumatology checkup, which I nearly missed due to misplaced certainty that it was scheduled for early next Tuesday morning, the doctor asked how I’ve been doing.* I confessed that my left SI joint was bothering the hell out of me but declined a steroid injection, telling her I probably caused the problem myself
Don’t Cry for Me Argentina Read More »
Debt is bondage, and not the fun kind, so I’ve always despised it. Most of my adult life was spent assiduously avoiding it, even when that meant making choices that seemed unpalatable to my peers, like using Tracfones that couldn’t browse the Internet or brown-bagging lunch every day for years on end. Lucinda Williams, the
Money Changes Everything: Part I Read More »
“Who’s JoAnn Willette?” Crankenstein asked about an hour ago, glancing at my laptop screen. “Connie Lubbock,” I started to answer, then caught myself — that name wouldn’t ring a bell, either. Despite its religious setting, she never watched Just the Ten of Us as a kid, but it was one of the shows Felix and
With a title like this I should probably write something sweeping and poignant about current challenges and how little of myself I sometimes recognize in my own existence. But I think that would be premature and needlessly dramatic, because some of what’s been nagging at me lately could be due to medication problems caused by
There are professional lectures of Crankenstein’s I could deliver in my sleep, so often has she rehearsed them with me. My responsibilities range from timing her to critiquing her performance or double-checking the slides for errors, and I usually try to anticipate the questions — from the inane to the adversarial — she might field
It seems appropriate that Mother’s Day coincided with the anniversary of Muriel’s adoption this year, seeing as she’s probably the closest Crankenstein and I will ever get to having a child. One of the first things I learned about her, even before the shelter’s coordinator put me in touch with her foster mom, was that