An Open Letter to the Lady on My Street With The Doberman
Hi! I’m your neighbor from a few blocks down the street, but I don’t think you know me by name. I’m the one who flees into my house whenever you and your large black Doberman Pinscher with the...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to People Who Write to Celebrity Magazines
Hey girlfriend! Hard as it is to believe, the highlight of getting a pedicure at my local nail salon is not when they poke me with metal instruments and condemn my bulging varicose veins in Vietnamese....
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Annie Leibovitz Coffee Table Book, Pilgrimage
Dear Pillie: Let me start by saying, you are GORGEOUS. You’re 245 pages of heavy stock, hardbound photographic magic, without question the most stunning thing in my living room. When I heard Neal...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Post Op Tranny on My LA Flight
Dear Sir/Madam:When you came tottering down the aisle of a half-empty plane on your 5 inch heels Tuesday, I was not surprised that you sat down next to me; I figured that was as far as you could walk...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the African Tribal Statue in My New Neighbor’s Picture Window
Hello. I come in peace. I hope you enjoy the traditional suburban offering of chocolate chip cookies that I left with this letter on the sidewalk in front of your residence; I figured you’d be able to...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to Grandma’s Harp
Dear Harpy: There you sit, in the corner of my dining room, a one hundred year old beauty in a state of Miss Haversham disrepair. Your sinuous curves, outlined to great advantage with thin scrolls of...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Handybook App
Dear Handybook App: Hi, how are you? See, that first sentence is what we humans like to call, “being friendly.” Sure, it’s got a tinge of insincerity – I mean, if you’re buggy, if you’re running slow,...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Restoration Hardware Returns Department
Dear Restoration Hardware: I wanted to let you know that I mistakenly received an item I did not order from your catalog, and wondered if you could send someone by my house to pick it up. It is a...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Selfie-Stick Wielding Tourists on Alcatraz
Dear Adorable Young Couple: Last Sunday our paths crossed on a rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay: specifically, Alcatraz, the federal-prison-turned-federal-park that sits, foreboding yet...
View ArticleThings My Neighbor Has Given Away on Nextdoor
Two Sad Orchids Yay for the digital age and how easy it is to connect with our neighbors without ever leaving our homes and putting a face and name together! I speak, of course, of Nextdoor, the...
View ArticleAce Driver’s Ed with Aceable
This post is sponsored by Aceable. Maybe it’s because I’m the passenger and not the driving student now, but it seems to me that almost everything about learning to drive in 2016 is less convenient and...
View ArticleCommencing the Next Phase
At my eldest daughter’s high school graduation on Tuesday night, a friend who reads the blog said, “Every day I think ‘today’s the day she’ll blog about graduation’ but you haven’t yet.” I haven’t...
View Article“There Was a Fire Here” Mixtape
Risa Nye and I met on the anthology reading circuit almost a decade ago, when I had an essay in “Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex, and Work in our 40s” and she was promoting “Writin’ on Empty: Parents...
View ArticleA Lot of A Lot
Raise your hand if you feel the same way. Here’s the worst part of the annus horribilis that is 2016: what’s happening in the wider world is the least of my worries right now. My parents are facing...
View ArticleVanity Bites
When I was a kid, I had a rogue tooth. It was determined to hide behind the tooth next to it, and throughout the ‘70s I underwent a series of orthodontic procedures that came straight from the Medieval...
View ArticleBaby Therapy
Our new across-the-street neighbors came over for a visit a couple of weeks ago, the night before I was due to take a redeye back East to visit my parents and help out with some medical issues they are...
View ArticleIn Memoriam: My Dad
My beloved dad passed away on July 20 after a brief and sudden illness. Here is his obituary if you’d like to learn more about him. This is what I read at his funeral on July 25. Leaning on him in 1972...
View ArticleWhat’s Helping Right Now
I have been home from my dad’s funeral for almost a week and am still a little numb. It feels like I am wrapped up in cotton padding, going through all the regular motions but having to put a little...
View ArticleTurn Down the Music and Read: Let’s Go Crazy
It wasn’t until I was all the way back in Oakland at the end of July that the fog lifted enough for me to realize: the two books I bought to read at my dad’s bedside this summer were stories about...
View ArticleDorm Room Decor
This post is sponsored by Minted.com. The time has finally come: our firstborn goes to college next week, 2,735 miles away from home. We are excited for her. The school she’s attending in the Keystone...
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