Merle the Pearl is officially a Bradford! In only his third appearance on Eight is Enough, the minor league pitcher and major league heartthrob tied the knot with Susan so hastily that we can only assume he was saving himself for marriage.* (The official reason was that mere girlfriends aren’t allowed to travel with the […]

At the last stoplight as we neared the medical campus, I asked my driver a question. Alexander was a big bear of a man in gray slacks and a navy polo shirt, with a messy salt and pepper beard too short to be considered unkempt. It matched his moderately unruly hair, which was bushy in

My expectations for September are low: tomorrow marks the start of an intensive four-week speech therapy course; PT continues; I’ll return to the dentist’s chair for installation of a permanent crown; and the DDS is sending me for exams to confirm I’m as decrepit as my wife and doctors say. In anticipation of all the

Walking home from the dentist’s office mid-morning, a temporary crown atop my molar, I considered listening to a library audiobook but opened iTunes instead. The Bryan Ferry album that played during my last stroll around the neighborhood automatically appeared, so I hit play on “Slave to Love” and smiled (to the extent that’s possible with

However she ultimately arrives at her decision, the woman handling my SSDI reconsideration is at least pretending to give it more thought than the first guy. Not long after Crankenstein submitted her questionnaire about my symptoms and our life together, I received an email from my lawyer: “You’ve been scheduled for consultative exams. It’s important

Good news, everyone: I’m not pregnant! During yesterday’s gripefest about urine sample requests, I forgot to clarify the obvious: we aren’t asked to do it for sport, it’s to establish we aren’t pregnant prior to sedation and surgery.* (Scopes are technically considered surgical procedures even though no one’s going to say “I had surgery” about

The most exasperating part of every scope is the urine sample. Male readers, cherish your freedom from this legal formality, for it is not easy to comply with these mercenary urinary demands when you’ve been starved of fluids for a half-day or longer. “I’m a monogamous lesbian,” I once told a nurse at a Catholic

As a homemaker in the ’80s and ’90s, my mom watched a lot of daytime television while tethered to the house. Most mornings started with The Today Show, which wasn’t yet the bloated monstrosity it became, and when that was over it was time for Donahue.* “Caller, are you there?” Phil Donahue asked viewers who

It’s been three weeks since I last mentioned Eight is Enough, but I haven’t abandoned the Bradfords: no, I’m still trapped in its Auntie V-less third season, which never seems to end. This evening I finished episode 19, with nine more still to go. Twenty-eight 50-minute episodes in a single season is impressive by any

Crankenstein and I were on opposite ends of the sofa at 6:45 this evening, Muriel between us, when we heard the mailman push something through the slot near the door. Once Muriel had completed her customary growling and stern warning barks, I got up to grab it — our daily USPS Informed Delivery email had