The most hotly anticipated match of this year’s French Open, the Carlos Alcaraz/Jannik Sinner semifinal, was even at one set apiece this morning when I set off for an IKEA date that couldn’t be broken. “I wish you were literate and had opposable thumbs,” I told Muriel before bidding her farewell. “Then you could text […]

“You have the dresser of a murderous transvestite,” a friend told me a couple years ago, and while I knew why he said ‘transvestite’ (we’d just discussed one), I was less clear on the ‘homicidal’ part; maybe it was a nod to our love of Brian De Palma and Angie Dickinson, or maybe it was

Though I have little time tonight for kvetching or clowning around, I’m checking in to remind you of the importance of lucky sock preparedness. By which I mean, if you own a pair of lucky socks — and of course I do — you also have a duty to make sure they’re always clean and

From the time I woke up this morning I had every intention of writing something light and airy tonight, a palate cleanser after yesterday’s speech therapy recap. And then this evening was disrupted by ‘Niles,’ who was triggered by a seemingly benign action of Muriel’s in a pattern so familiar by now that you can

We’ll get to physical therapy in a minute, but first: this weekend I got a shiny new toy, a label-maker. It’s the second I’ve owned; the first was a birthday gift when I was eight or nine. It was red and black with an alphabet wheel and you’d squeeze its handle with every selection to

If you ever watched Reba, you can take it from here — and please don’t forget the “Hey-hey!” from the second-season funkification of its theme.* Moving along, I’m playing it safe today and writing this while fully awake, following a mishap last night in which I sleepily hit ‘publish’ on an unedited post with an

Do I sound like an asshole when I criticize my siblings’ handling of their marital (and quasi-marital) problems? My own marriage has enough issues to fill a newsstand, which one could argue is disqualifying, but I’m not sure if that pencils out when there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage. We know that because

During these last couple weeks of not feeling as mentally sluggish as usual, I had pretty bad dystonia. Today it was my brain that felt clenched instead of my hand, foot or jaw, and I wasn’t able to produce anything of consequence here or with the lighthouse. I don’t write much about oromandibular dystonia because

As Tom’s drama commenced yesterday, and again today when a marathon phone call from the (wo)man of the hour kept going and going, I was reminded of Deana Carter: “Did I reenable my notifications for this?” Having heard from the horse’s mouth the reasons for this breakup, I fully support it and hope they don’t

Did I unleash an ancient curse on my siblings when I wrote a post called “You Can Have It All” last December? The timelines absolve me of any responsibility but I feel implicated nevertheless.* It was only a couple months after first mentioning my sisters’ envy of my life, and mine of theirs, that Youngest