Category: In Which We Set Ourselves Up for Mockery

Whenever a friend suffers a death in the family, I tell them, “You think it’s bad now, you should feel it six months from now. It’s really hard then.” I say that because I am so thoughtful. And since I am the expert since Dad died twenty years ago. And I’m sure my friends find…

I got up this morning and heard on the television there was to be a 9/11 special report, with reporters at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pensylvania. “Huh,” I thought, “Why are they in Pensylvania?” Just for a second.

Here is the recipe for my famous chopped salad. Buy this stuff: Chop it up. It even seems like you can get Pearl Mozzarella anywhere now, but better women than I could chop up Mozzarella. And that big white thing behind the avacados is Jicama. Technically, it should all be chopped the same size as…

Okay, Dots, big and small, raise your hands if you DID sit there smugly and say “she’s repressing her feelings about her Mom’s death.” That was when I said, “No, I’m crazy. I am not myself. I just said someone hurt my feelings. For two solid days. I’m not like that.” And then YOU said,…

Remember when I said I didn’t wanna up my meds? Well, since then I’ve cried at the dentist again, got my feelings hurt at work, and cried about that, and cried about that all day today including the forty minutes I spent in the bathroom while having lunch with Friend #3. My emotions are out…

I think all they would have to do is put this excerpt on the back cover, and they would just hand Michael Chabon the Pulitzer for fiction. Again. A man (Hertz) and his son (John Bear Berko) are talking after a long estrangement. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ‘”Don’t take that tone with me, John Bear,” the old man…

Two Things I Love About My Country The Constitution. I love the constitution like Barbara Jordan does, and if anyone hasn’t heard how much she loves the Constitution, search for that on YouTube. I love it even with its flaws. I love the ACLU. I love the Nazis hiking through Skokie. Oh, I even love…

Previously seen on The Troubles, Gary works too much and I bitch too much and eventually we hate each other. Gary uses the D word. After much crying, I got up the next morning and looked up “Lawyers, Divorce” in the Yellow Pages. Then it struck me that I was skipping a step: that marriage…

One week ago, on our 23rd anniversary, Gary and I were both looking up at the ceiling, and apropos of nothing, he held my hand and said, “I’m sorry I spent so much time at work when we were first married and having … troubles.” The Troubles began in 1989. We had been married for…

I had a bad day. I made a string of stupid mistakes at work. Not stupid ha-ha, even, just stupid. I have poison ivy. Gary bellowed at me this morning because while I was doing some solo landscaping I piled some dirt in the middle of a mud puddle we haven’t been able to get…