Who am I, why am I here … and why have I had so many jobs? — I’m a deep thinker from way back. As a small child, I recall wondering, for example, why my first grade teacher was so unhappy. Her name was Mrs. Sullivan and she didn’t seem to like first-graders. Since then, I’ve discovered that teaching is a profession that can make it difficult…

Look, COVID perfection is not possible — Until I got COVID and spread it, I had a lot of opinions and judgments about Those Idiots Who Spread COVID. Count me COVID Woke and cut down to size. I won’t rehash the entire, tedious chain of events that led me to become an Omicron b.5 superspreader. In short…

I need to get a lot better at killing — I finally did it. I scooped out one of the superworms from its cozy home in a plastic tub, where it had lived a beautiful life nestled inside sawdust, and I took it outside into a blazing sun. I murdered it right there on the back porch. Before the killing…

Brad sprays chemicals and feeds the deer and that’s not all — My neighbor, Brad, is obsessed with his yard and I cannot deny it’s a paradise of flowers, rocks, and sod. I don’t begrudge him his hobby. He’s beautifying the neighborhood, a one-man Lady Bird Johnson! The beauty comes at a steep price, however: the extinction of life on Earth. In…

Goldfish plus junk food plus screaming — My husband has long claimed carnival workers are ex-cons who have no other job options and must travel the highways, crescent wrench in one hand and a switchblade in the other. I disagree. I can think of dozens of much worse jobs. …

‘Keep Sweet’ brutally serves up the reality of cults and the power-mad males who run them — This Netflix documentary didn’t dazzle me in episode one, but it picked up speed like a runaway train. Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey is an extremely disturbing dive into the daily cult life among Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS). We know about cults, but Keep Sweet exposes the playbook for…

I will toss these damn K-cups if you give up your jet, girl! — Dear Taylor Swift, I lost your number but I figure you and your 128 billion fans will read this via Medium and you’ll get the message, so here goes. According to your publicist’s publicist’s assistant, your private jet is often on loan and therefore you cannot be held accountable, dammit…

I go downhill babbling — “You are really letting me down,” I scolded McLovin, my robot vacuum cleaner. According to the app, which still refers to McLovin by their original name, Pat, McLovin’s birthday is May 6th, 2022. That makes him a Taurus: stubborn but gifted with a love for art and beauty. I named…

I’m officially a superspreader — I was in a play and I have Omicron. I can’t be sure but it’s probably variant ba.5, the super contagious one. On Friday night, I spread it around — but I want to tell this story because you may have to face a similar dilemma. I bowed to the…