Archives 2025

More and more folks, when bored, turn to the internet. As a matter of fact, my iPhone has started sending me shocked notifications of how many hours a day I am spending there. My own phone has become judgmental.

Most days, after I spend way too much time trying to get to genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee game (I won’t quit until I get to genius level, which some days results in my staying in pjs until way after lunch) (” Way after” meaning all day).

Other days, on a whim, I look at my Google feed, which contains at least five “listicles” per visit. You know those:

• Seven little known hacks for using Q Tips
• The 20 best gadgets under $20
• Experts compare grocery store spaghetti sauces

You know these. Do you get sick and tired of them? I do. It’s as if Google is now exhausted and has started phoning it in.

I don’t want a hack. I am fine with using Q Tips for what everybody else in the world usually uses Q Tips. And my God. I have no interest in doing anything with a dryer sheet but throwing one in with my wet clothes so that they don’t stick together when twirling around in there.

I think the listicle people stretch these things too far. For instance, who in the world appreciates the suggestion that you should “clean your cabinets daily?” Honestly? Not one person.

And this “hack” suggests that you clean your shower curtain in the washing machine. We all know that. It is not a hack, it’s common sense. Of course, there might be a dim person who sees that and puts their plastic shower curtain in the washer. That person has no business looking for “hacks” in the first place.

Since when is it a “hack” to cut up old tee shirts for dust rags? Come ON.

There are some listicles that give me anxiety. The one that lists the Top Ten Dirtiest Major Metro Areas. I nervously clicked on that one, heaved a sigh of relief when Dayton wasn’t listed. But Cincinnati was. Yikes.

But this is what blew my mind: There is actually a listicle of Top Ten Types of Listicles. A listicle of listicles.

Anyway. Did you know that you can use Q Tips to start a fire? Or, alternately, to clean a gun?

There you go.

Every night after dinner, we watch a tv series. We like mystery procedurals, but we have noticed lately that if there are, say, 8 episodes, the people making the show like viewers to be confused.

The first episode is total chaos. We don’t know who anybody is, how they are connected, and what is happening. That guy, why did he throw a gun out the window? Is the swarthy guy a good guy or a bad guy? Who is that woman? Why do they all smoke? Who is the dead man? Yeah, it looks like he committed suicide, but we know now that he didn’t.

By the third episode, hopefully things are starting to make sense. Like that woman. We learn she is the sister of the swarthy guy, but we still don’t know–are they both good? Is one of them good, but the other is bad? Who had a motive to murder?

Then, by the fourth episode, we get it. We know who the bad guys are, and we know they all had motive. So now the hero can just proceed to solve things. There are shocks, twists and turns, but we go right along and really are surprised at the end that the person we least suspected did it.

Not so with Monsieur Spade. I like Clive Owen, and he is inscrutable and does a very good American accent. But what the hell? There is a mystery child, an orphan girl, a swimming pool, three suspicious men, and none of the plot is apparent. We figured that it was the usual–things would come together. They didn’t.

The series was SO confusing that they had to bring in–out of the blue, I might add, Alfre Woodard. She got out of a car in the last five minutes of the show to gather together all of the cast to EXPLAIN what had happened in the other episodes.

She “explained” what had happened, but not who in the hell she was, or why she was there. As she dismissed each cast member, she told them to leave the room. As if that made sense. Finally, she was left with Clive Owen, who seemed as if he already knew everything, anyway.

But we didn’t. We turned to each other and I asked, “Wait. What happened? Who was the kid? Why was he silent during the whole thing? Why did everybody want him?”

My husband, stunned that the show was over, clicked back. “There must be another episode.” There wasn’t. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“Neither do I. Why was there a crazy monk? Why did all the nuns get killed? (Oh, yeah, there were nuns). Who was the girl’s mother? Who was the girl, and why was she so important? She had nothing to do with anything that took place, did she?”

“I have no idea.” My husband, whom I rely upon to explain everything from tariffs to tv shows, was as stumped as I was. He ran his fingers through his nonexistent hair and said, “Are we just dimwits? Do you think everybody else who watched this knew what was going on?”

I thought back to when I watched The Usual Suspects on tv. It made no sense at ALL. So much so that I rewound the film (back in the old Blockbuster days) and watched it again. Who was Kaiser Souzai? I was lost, and that was four hours I would never get back.

I got pretty defensive. “We are not dimwits! We get some of the Jeopardy answers! I know what ganache is. You can read music. We have college educations! No. I think the people making it realized how confusing it was, and it was too late for a do over, and so somebody called Alfre Woodard’s agent and offered her a big sum to come to the set for a day to explain everything in the final minutes of the last episode.”

He nodded. “It didn’t work.”

When times are tough, and times are definitely tough right now, about the only way to distract ourselves is to read. I think at the moment it seems as if I have read every single book ever published, but I know that isn’t exactly true.

In case you need one, here is a list of books that I have read recently and want to share:

• I just reread Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbit. It is a classic children’s book, but manages to touch on so many current issues.
• Splinters, by Leslie Jamison. A tour de force memoir.
• The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, by Liz Jensen. I have never read a book like this.
• Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam. What it means to be rich, and what it means not to be. That’s all I can say without ruining it.
• The Tell, by Amy Griffith. Another great story, about secrets and what keeping them can do to you.
• Alternate Side, by Anna Quindlen. Any book by Quindlen is excellent.
• Sociopath, by Patric Gagne, PhD. Fascinating.
• Colored Television, by Danzy Senna. Side note: she is the wife of Percival Everett, who wrote the book James. This book is wonderful .
• Good Material, by Dolly Alderton. I want to read all of her books.
• I loved all of  the Spellman series by Lisa Lutz. So funny and entertaining. The opening paragraph to the first Spellman book is one of the best ever.

Here is a suggestion: if you love a book, look up that author on Instagram and follow that person. Send them a DM telling them how much you loved the book. It is such an uplift to a writer.

Review the books you read on Amazon. That really helps that author sell more books.

Oh, and another suggestion:

A woman sent her husband out to pick up a few groceries. But he came home with a duckling instead. Not this particular duckling, above, because as you can see from the little arrows in the photo, it’s another stock photo I copied.

I only read the headline, because I have no attention span any more, due to the fact that social media has reduced my ability to concentrate on any one article to exactly five seconds.

I envy this woman. I would be thrilled if my husband came home with a duck, or any baby animal (barring elephants or kangaroos). I imagine walking around our apartment with a little duckling following at my heels. So cute, so adorable.

I don’t let myself think about the fact that all farm animals poop whenever they feel the urge, no matter if it is on a bed or inside your bedroom slippers. Or how farm animals need space. Or how we would get kicked out of our apartment.

What would I name the duck? The trend these days is to name your pet something human, like “Alan.” So Alan the duck would quack, poo, and follow me around. I would want to train him to be a “lap duck,” because what good is a pet if you can’t set it on your lap and cuddle with it?

Do ducks smell, as in have a distinct farmyard odor? Even if they live on the fifth floor? If so, that might be a deal breaker. I know that chickens do stink, and you wouldn’t want to have one inside the home.

And the feathers. There would be feathers everywhere.

I wonder what that woman did. Did she have a big yard, where the duck could live? Did she call her husband words starting with “F?” Did she imagine sometime in the future roasting said duck?

I know that around Easter, fathers bringing home baby ducks and chickens has been a problem for decades. My bet is that at least 90% of those little fowls never make it to adulthood.

If I had a duck, Alan would have a little pen in the TV room, filled with shavings, a tiny washtub to swim in, and he would be so happy. Until my cat murdered him.

I rarely read beyond the headlines, because in most cases, the headline is enough.

For instance, I ran across this headline while scrolling my news feed.

MAN FOUND WITH LIVE TURTLE IN HIS PANTS BY TSA AT A NEW JERSEY AIRPORT

In this case, the headline is not enough. I, however, read no further, because I imagined the rest. First of all, a dead turtle would be even stranger. Who on earth wants to carry around any sort of dead animal, especially in your pants? A live turtle, though. Different.

So I had the following thoughts about this:

• Maybe this turtle was a support animal. Truly, there have been stranger ones. Honest to God, I was on a flight in which a woman brought a chicken on board. Maybe she was planning to kill and eat it later; I didn’t ask. But they let her do it, and these days, I bet this was her support chicken.
• Had this man been gone a long time, and he wanted to bring his kids back a present from his trip? My dad used to bring me gifts when he traveled. I got a xylophone once. It may have never entered his mind to put a turtle in his pants.
• But why hide the turtle? Oh yeah. I remember reading somewhere that you can get salmonella from turtles. Maybe this man thought that TSA knew this and would confiscate the turtle if he held it up for inspection. The lady with the chicken did this before bird flu was a threat, and she let everybody see her chicken. But turtles have always posed a salmonella threat, so I guess hiding turtles makes sense.
• But what would happen to the turtle when the man took his seat on the plane? Would he squash it to death? Or would he take it out of his pants and show it to his seat mate? Would the seat mate scream?
• Was the turtle stressed? If so, would this turtle pee or poop all over the man? Or worse, do this in the man’s pants?
• Was the man stealing the turtle for some reason? Was this a valuable turtle? Was the man planning to sell the turtle for big bucks when he landed? Who was the buyer? Is there a black market for turtles?
• I did look at the picture of the turtle (not the photo above-that one is a free stock photo). I am no turtle expert, but the turtle from the man’s pants looked like an average turtle to me. Nothing special, no colorful markings, no bumps or knobs on its shell. Maybe it was an endangered turtle. Maybe this man snatched it from a zoo or turtle conservation place?
• As I said, I didn’t read the article, and so I don’t know where the turtle is now. I am not even sure it survived. But I am hopeful that it is lolling in a nice aquarium somewhere, just enjoying the humidity.

Don’t ask me about the headline about a Cheeto shaped like a beloved Pokemon character that was auctioned off for $87,840 dollars. That is a story for another day.

My daughter and my darling grandkids are here. They are leaving today after a whirlwind of activities. I have eaten more pizza in six days than I have in a year. I have walked all over Dayton. Drank a lot of Coke. All of this seems to have produced vivid dreams in which I am besieged by men, all wanting to have *ahem* “relations” with me.

On Monday, Robert Redford (who has not aged well) approached me at a party, looking like the above. I was drinking something chic, like a Cosmo, when he leaned over and asked me to meet him later, in order to discuss filmmaking, which I apparently knew something about. Inhaling his masculine scent of what romance novelists call musk mixed with hints of leather, I demurred.

We went to La Comedia to see Jersey Boys, and it was a terrific show, and the dinner was quite good, especially the mashed potatoes. I went home after and Googled Frankie Valli, and he was very handsome  in that half lidded, Sylvester Stallone way. That night I dreamed that Frankie Valli was taller than I, and that he wanted to slow dance with me. Before things heated up, I had to get up to pee. I went back to sleep and the dream shifted to me being able to do yoga. Go figure.

I often dream of being able to wear strapless gowns. I have never worn strapless anything, due to fatty armpits. In this particular dream, I was at one of those Hollywood parties, and it was black tie. My gown was black with sparkly things all over it, and I had on four inch heels. Reacher was there. He walked over to me, biceps hard as rocks. He touched my lower back with just the slightest pressure, and things got steamy, but I nixed any shenanigans, because under my gown I had on Spanx. I would have been mortified for Alan Ritchson to see them, because they were the longline version. And beneath the Spanx, my strapless bra was white and front closing. End scene.

We also went with the kids to see bull riding at the Nutter Center. There was enough testosterone among those riders to service the entire female population of Chicago, at least. So naturally, I dreamed that I looked good in chaps and a cowboy hat, I was in my thirties, and two of the riders looked me straight in the eye before mounting their bulls. The symbolism.

I used to dream of being single, and men like John Cusack, Idris Elba, and Pierce Brosnan populated my dreams on nights I had injested spicy foods, or in Idris’ case, binged the entire first season of Luther in one day. Funny thing about dreams–they never get to the good parts. Activities dissolve as soon as the action starts, and then the dream shifts, and I find myself suddenly back in my regular life, still young, but married and pushing my now 42 year old daughter in a stroller. Apparently, even in my dreams I can’t let myself be free and wild enough to go through with anything.

I need to smack my superego in the face.

Lots of young people think that if a person is over the age of 60, that person is dementia adjacent. This is not true. Every human on the planet forgets things. Even 10 year olds forget things.

I have an oven that has the “self cleaning” function. I like that function. It makes housekeeping a lot easier. However, using the self cleaning function

• heats up the kitchen, so you have to clean your oven in wintertime
• uses up a lot of energy

Thus, I don’t clean my oven often. As a matter of fact, we have lived in this apartment for five years, and I have cleaned the oven once. But my daughter and our grandchildren are coming next week, so I am doing massive spring cleaning. My husband wonders why having a clean oven is necessary, because who on earth notices the inside of an oven, but I am on a mission to get this place in shape.

So. Night before last, after dinner, I locked the oven door and set it for self clean. The digital dashboard on the stove said that oven cleaning would take 4 hours. I hit start. This was at 8:15.

At 12:15, just as I was dozing off, after doing some late night furniture rearranging and moving various home accessories around for better impact, an intermittent beeping started.

I crossed my fingers that it was just a car in the parking lot, or something out in the hallway, and it would stop shortly. It didn’t. “I bet this is how they torture political prisoners,” I thought.

It went on for more than 5 minutes, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I got up and wandered around, looking for the beep’s origin. It didn’t seem to be in the hall, nor was it coming from the parking lot. I knew this was serious. I figured other tenants were probably upset at the sound and wanted it stopped.

So I went into the tv room, as not to bother my husband (who can sleep through a five alarm fire, so I was being polite for no reason), and I called the emergency service number, and a man who was obviously asleep moments before answered his pager.

I attempted to explain to him the annoying beeping, and as I talked to him, I walked into my living room. The living room is “open plan” with the kitchen. As I was telling the sleepy man what was going on, the beeping seemed louder, and I looked over at the stove.

I had forgotten that the stove beeps to announce to you that the oven is now CLEAN, and you should push the button to shut off the beeping. I pushed that button, the beeping stopped, and I proceeded to  try to apologize to the service man, but something happened to our connection, and we were cut off…

He and the rest of the service team at our building I am sure had a “good laugh” at the stupid, probably demented woman on the fifth floor. I AM NOT THAT SORT OF WOMAN. Would you remember that the oven beeps when it is done self cleaning, if you had only done it once in 5 years? Of course not.

So I had to put in another service request, not an emergency one, of course. In this one, where there is a box that you fill in to describe what you need fixed, I wrote:

I want to apologize for waking up one of your service team members last night at 12:15. My daughter from California is coming, and I wanted to make sure that our apartment is clean, and so for the second time of our tenure, I set the oven to “self clean” mode at 8:15 last night. Since I had only done this once before, I had forgotten the fact that the oven makes a “beeping” sound when the clean cycle is finished. I hadn’t discovered this until I was already on the phone with the service person to report a mysterious beeping that was keeping me awake. I am sure I woke him up with my call. I disabled the beeping myself. I told the service man not to bother coming over. But in the middle of my conversation with him, our call was somehow disconnected. I hope he got right back to sleep. I am so sorry for waking him up for nothing.

This apology sounds totally sane, right?

Things suck right now. All over. I can’t even let myself think about that.

Instead, I need to devote at least an hour a day to fantasize  about what my life should be like right now. The above isn’t a photo of New York City, but it’s as close as my photo library gets. So let’s get this fantasy started:

I live in New York. Probably in the East or West Village, but maybe on Gramercy Park. My apartment, which I can afford, has a working fireplace, a kitchen that is small, small but lovely. It has marble countertops and an ocular window over the sink. The taps are old brass with patina. Of course, I have a small terrace. I fill it with blooms and tomato plants in summer. I have a Siamese cat. His name is Onion.

Or, I have a glass walled apartment in a high rise in the Financial District with a skyline to die for, a gourmet kitchen, and a delightful small terrier pup who goes against character by being calm. Her name is Rabbit.

I have somehow become svelte and single, because husbands cramp your style. I wear leather blazers and thong underpants. I can have biscotti with my coffee in the morning, eat an actual lunch, and have pasta for dinner if I want to. My skin is not crepey.

I work as an editor for a small imprint of a large publishing company, and my writers are all bestsellers, which is how I can afford to own this apartment. My bedroom in the Village is on the third floor, and I see greenery out my windows. OR, I have views of the Statue of Liberty out  of my sparkling floor to ceiling windows in the skyscraper.

For fun, I have David Sedaris and John Oliver over for dinner, and I actually know how to make entrees with truffles. In this fantasy, I love truffles and don’t think they taste like dirt.

On rainy evenings, I curl up with my cat/dog and watch old movies on tv while snacking on caviar, which doesn’t taste disgustingly fishy. I am not lonely.

I am probably lonely, so I redo the fantasy and invite my husband in, so we can watch tv together, and also so he can take the dog out at midnight, or he can scoop the litter box. It works either way.

We take walks all over the city, and we love to sit on a blanket in Central Park and drink lattes, because I don’t have arthritis in my knees. We eat brunch in our favorite bistro on Sundays, leafing leisurely through the New York Times. He has pancakes, and I have whatever I want, even donuts. We chat with our hip friends, who are all poets or stand-up comedians.

I am fulfilled. I have three hobbies: I can knit a sweater, I make hand dipped candles, and I use my calligraphy skills to write little notes to my friends. I am never on Social Media. I have a tattoo of a pencil on my wrist. My skin is not crepey.

Every day is a slow news day.

My skin is not crepey.

Things right now in the world are so overwhelming, it is getting more difficult for me to be bright and entertaining. I am taking a little “vacation” from my columns for a while. Peace and love!

Times are bad right now. Fires, cold, tragedies everywhere.

I look for things to make me feel better.

Lots of folks on social media are telling about how comforting it is to make chicken soup. They list their recipes, which involve a chicken or chicken bones, water, and vegetables. I have tried making chicken soup so many times, even substituting chicken broth for the water, and my soup is always virtually tasteless.

What about making chili? My husband hates my chili; he says it’s too loose. Other comfort foods are roast chicken (mine is either undercooked or too dry), macaroni and cheese (WAY too much trouble with the roux and grating all that cheese), spaghetti and meatballs, which I do well with Rao’s and Trader Joe’s chicken meatballs–but my husband is sick and tired of it. Sick and tired.

Bypassing the comfort food, people recommend staying busy. I have tried that, and this week I touched up the dings in my baseboards, got on a ladder and used Dawn Power Spray to clean the big grease spot above the stove. I Swiffed every damn surface in the house. I binge watched 20 episodes of 48 Hours. This was Monday. Tuesday dawned and I couldn’t come up with anything, and I realized that I should have spaced out the busy things.

Books. Read the books. I made a bad choice and checked out a book about men in the trenches during WWI, and that made me feel worse. Cheerful books seem hard to come by, and for heaven’s sake, I checked out A Little Life, which nearly killed me. The man on the cover should have been a hint, but the title sounded so innocuous…

I like to imagine that during tough times, people sit by the fire with cups of tea, chatting or playing cards. They wear shawls over their shoulders, eat lavender lozenges, and remain calm. I don’t love tea, we live in this apartment with no fireplace, and my husband strongly dislikes games. I do have a shawl. Lavender tastes like cough medicine in my opinion. My husband has never been one to sit down to a nice chat. So there you are. Just me and my shawl.

Here is what I have found to be effective. I go to bed early, ask my cat Hattie to join me, and we scroll Instagram for pictures of Taylor and Travis. This works for me and thousands of women all over the globe.