Happy Thanksgiving. Stay the F*ck Home.

Ah, Thanksgiving! A holiday we celebrate by playing a game with our families that I like to call “And that’s how you’ve decided to live your life then?” Like Pictionary, you just keep at it until someone cries. Or – hear me out – you could just stay home for the holidays, closing the curtains […]

I Do Not Have The Emotional Bandwidth For A Coup Right Now.

Dear GOP, Look, here’s the thing: I’ve got a lot going on right now. I mean, not technically. Technically, I walk around the house nursing a stash of Halloween candy while occasionally changing from “day pajamas” to “night pajamas” (the sartorial differences are subtle but significant). Today I cried while watching a tiktok video, a […]

My Grief Chyron Is Really Long Right Now.

Grief is weird when the world is normal. Everyone just goes about with their day, walking around, and sometimes the sun even has to audacity to shine, and when you are grieving, all of it feels like an insult. I told Rand once that I wished that human beings had chyrons – those little scrolling […]

I Had Mail.

Six months into an interminable lockdown, I find myself missing the long dead. The throughline feels like a logical one – it’s a pandemic. Of course I’m thinking about death. Death and the post office. That took me slightly by surprise, even in a year where nothing has been what I’d imagined. I didn’t think […]

Just Wear a Goddamn Mask Already.

Last week, my kitchen sink collapsed. It fell from the bolts that held it, as though in protest, as though it, too, had had enough of the endless dishes and cooking. I managed to catch the edge of it, sharp even through my yellow latex gloves, and held it up with my fingers and the […]

Seeing Through The Fog.

I’ve been staring at my computer a lot. If I do manage to type something, I will usually delete or loathe it by the day’s end. Writer’s block doesn’t really cover what I’m feeling, because it’s not really a block. A block implies something complete and impenetrable, and this isn’t. Someone recently said that writer’s […]

It’s Okay if You Can’t Right Now

I woke up this morning, our sixth week of sheltering-in-place, or maybe our seventh (I’ve lost count) and the days have started to run together in a way they never have before. I thought time only worked like that in memory. When I think of the summer after high school or Christmas breaks when I […]

This Too Will Pass.

Social isolation has sort of felt like a break-up – a sensation that, after nearly 20 years with my husband, returns to me like a hazy, rotten memory. “Oh, this,” I think, as I pull myself out of bed, forgetting what day it is, and mash an OREO into my maw. “I remember this. It […]

A Seattle Germaphobe in the Time of Coronavirus

My city feels strangely still right now. I normally hear the sounds from the elementary school nearby, or people walking their dogs, the swish of cars driving by on the street. But it’s oddly quiet at the moment, the only sound the squawking from a few irritable crows whose life mission is to make sure […]

Anti-Valentine’s Day And Ugghhh We’re Cute

People are always surprised when I tell them Rand and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. I mean, we used to. But dear lord, it was always so, so much, and it always felt a little weird and uncomfortable and forced, even if it lead to some of my favorite photos, ever: Our first Valentine’s […]

Why Aren’t You Blogging, and Other Hard Questions

Every now and then I get a well-meaning email or Facebook message from a reader. I’ve noticed, they will write, and I can practically feel the gentle trepidation as they do so, that you seem to have fallen off the planet and are living the life of a hermit.  And not even a *good* hermit? Like, you […]

I Write About Mice But Actually Anxiety.

It’s funny, the things that finally set you off. Like, I’ve always presumed that I was a relatively hinged person, but here I am, utterly unhinged. For some of you, this will be unsurprising. Some of you will be thinking, “Geraldine, YOU WERE NEVER HINGED. YOU HAVE FEWER HINGES THAN A SLIDING DOOR.” And I […]

Are Men Abused Online More Than Women?

(TW: this post discusses online abuse and includes screencaps and discussion of graphic, misogynistic, homophobic, and generally just horrifying language.) I’ve been studying online harassment for a while now. I find myself a case study more often than I would like, and when I present on the topic, my slides are often screencaps of abusive […]

40 Things For His 40th Birthday

My husband turned 40 at the beginning of July. I wanted a Bacchanalian celebration, cake and lights and streamers and swarms of people, forgetting entirely that this milestone wasn’t about me. The realization would hit me eventually, before too much planning had occurred: he didn’t want a big to-do. Nor did he want, he insisted, […]