Last year my sister told me she was getting into Japanese “v-streams” (I think these are basically amateaur mini-travel videos about Japan). I was surprised and heartened by this. Surprised because I don’t think my sister was ever interested in Japan travel or culture before (maybe “Hello Kitty”?…wait, I think that was just me) and…

The Summer of 2023 is going to be my “Wet Waterfall Summer”! Er, how about…”Wild Waterfall Summer”…or “Whimsical Waterfall Summer”? “Woozy Waterfall Summer”? Hold on now, do I need to have a theme for my summer? Of course not, but I glanced at a New York Times opinion piece a while ago that was about…

Chad: “We need flowers for the service tomorrow, so let’s use your bouquet* from our wedding.” Me: “Great idea, although the flowers are pretty faded…then again, so are we.”  Ah, classic Chamy comedic gold. And since the service was inspired by our wedding anniversary, it seemed fitting that we and the flowers were faded.  But…

“We’re made for each other.” Really? I think this saying is supposed to be romantic, but it doesn’t feel meaningful or desirable to me. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum–if you feel this saying represents your relationship or is something you aspire to, who am I to be snarky about that? But to me…

Our dog, StanLee, did something silly and cute yesterday and I immediately thought, “Oh, I can message my sister, Jenn, about this–she’ll enjoy this little StanLee story.”  But I can’t message Jenn because she died on April 22, a little over a year after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Jenn was sixty-three years old,…

Parchment paper was thwarting my efforts to achieve personal growth.  Or rather, I was thwarted by my failure to successfully procure parchment paper.  I didn’t really know what parchment paper was, but I needed it for the online vision board class I was going to take. Technically, Chad was taking the class–I enrolled him in…

When I was a kid, I used to be afraid to use the toilet if there was lightning.  Luckily, that fear left me years ago, but I remembered it recently because of a connection to “Belles,” the play I was just in. “Belles” is the story of six grown sisters trying to connect via phone…

I spend too much time on my smartphone–just ask StanLee. Time spent using my phone is time  I should be petting him. It’s also time when I’m not terribly productive, or not paying attention to what’s going on around me. Or time when I’m trying to avoid being bored, which sounds good like a good…

Target cashier: Is that a tory?Me: What?Target cashier: Your purseMe: No…I don’t know what that is.Target cashier: They’re expensive.Me (inner monologue): If I was the type of person to be into expensive purses, would I be shopping at Target? And no, this isn’t a “tory” purse but it IS a Doctor Who purse but I…

“Make sense of this.”  I received this directive at the Walker when I recently visited it on my birthday.  Yes! That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I was trying to do: Make sense of my birthday.  Okay, this command wasn’t given specifically or exclusively to me, and it wasn’t actually about my birthday,…