Last week, a friend showed up on our doorstep. He was there to go to a birthday dinner with us, the sort of thing that was commonplace two years ago but slipped into the realm of impossibility over the last 14 months, and now, somehow, is possible again. The dinner was on a restaurant patio, […]
I cleaned out my office for the first time in *mumble mumble*, the final act in a string of procrastinations masquerading as chores. With the help of a friend, I hung a painting which spent the last two years lying propped up against the wall of the guest bedroom. I dusted the baseboards, and then […]
I’ve just gotten my second vaccine (the technical term: a full vaxxiccino) and have been reading the CDC’s recommendations for safe summer activities for the fully vaccinated. I’m two weeks ahead of my husband, something I hold over his head because he has better abs than me and is just a better person all around, […]
I got my second vaccination shot this past weekend, spent the day after nursing a sore arm and watching television, in the throes of something not quite like a hangover. The internet told me to expect the worst, as the internet usually does. I anticipated being laid out for 48 hours. Instead I had a […]
Look, I am going to confess something, and as I do, please, please, please do not hurl anything heavy, because odds are, due to the pandemic and the ubiquity of the internet, we will not be in the same room, and it will not hit me. You’re just going to destroy your own computer or […]
I got my first vaccine shot on Easter Sunday, prompting all sorts of blasphemous jokes about being resurrected from lockdown, though it’ll be another five weeks (three to my next shot, and another two after that) before all those little antibodies build up. I felt fine in the aftermath, and still do now, though this […]
CW: This post contains mentions of death/rape threats, some graphic language, descriptions of online abuse, screen caps of verbal abuse, transphobic and hateful comments. If you need a mental palate cleanser after just thinking about that, here’s a pic of Rand cooking. So, last week, or maybe two weeks ago, or three months (does it […]
I hear a lot of people saying – as we approach the year anniversary of this pandemic and lockdown, a year of not knowing what it means to hug those close to us or see people we love, or do any of those previously forgettable but now utterly unimaginable everyday things like sitting at a […]
TW: This post makes brief, passing mention to accounts of rape and assault in some of the books I read. I decided to spend 2020 reading only women authors. It shouldn’t have been a revolutionary act, but somehow, by the end, it started to feel like one. There’s a clear gender bias in publishing (male […]
It’s February. This was the month that Seattle started to shut down, a year ago. It’s the last month that I ate inside a restaurant. We were scheduled to go to Italy that March, just as Covid was starting to take hold there. Those few weeks before we were set to leave were fraught – […]
It is December 31st, the last day of 2020 a year that has been supersaturated with so much shit and grief that it’s almost bordered comedy. I have been to a Zoom wedding and a Zoom baby shower and a Zoom funeral, experiencing the spectrum of human existence in halting pixilation. I try to remember […]
(Above – every holiday with my family ends with people dancing in the kitchen. I don’t know why. This was a few years ago. Yes, there is box wine. And yes, my mother, at left, is a knock-out.) It’s Christmas Eve, and I am at home. I can’t remember the last time this has […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]