The fruit in my kitchen looks nothing like a Cézanne. It’s different. Bruised a bit, with a couple of rogue produce stickers and a suspicious soft spot on the bottom lemon. My avocados are too ripe or hard as rocks, but the apples and bananas are delicious. It’s just fruit. Cézanne’s peaches are always stunning.…
How much more life will I live before it’s time to change the head on my electric toothbrush again? Time is visceral these days. I’m parsing out my life in an effort to make a day, a month, a year meaningful. Life-affirming. I like to think things are not just slipping by for me. No.…
Yesterday, I fell on my face. For real. This isn’t some lavish metaphor. I walked Jack, helping him navigate his usual sense that the other dogs were out to kill me or destroy the world, when a rogue Boxer came out of nowhere behind us. The rest of the memory speeds up from here. Jack…
I watched a show on Netflix that took place in Philadelphia. The woman was on a bus, and she pulled the cord to alert the driver to her stop. I remember doing that, knowing that. I didn’t take the bus a lot growing up. I don’t ride the bus now, but I know about the…
I woke early this morning. I am puppy sitting for my oldest’s new addition, so it was cold blue, silent early. I used to be a night person. Those were the hours everyone was asleep, and I could be with myself, my thoughts. Early morning was never my jam, but I moved in with a…
Some people believe that pornography should be removed from the shelves. I’m assuming they have issues with nudity, or they don’t want their kids to see naked women, or they like pornography a lot and think if it is banished from the land, they’ll be able to control themselves. I would like to think it’s…
Roses are blooming in my front yard— dozens of them. I have never had a rosebush, much less a whole yard full. My experience with roses stops at a vase. And while they are lovely, when we first moved in, I decided I was not a rose person. I know that’s ridiculous, but sometimes I…
Jack and I are trying to walk twice a day. His trainer says he needs two sixty-minute sessions to deal with his anxiety over living in a new city or a city at all. The vast expanse of the desert is all Jack has ever known, so he is learning there are other people, dogs,…
Our peach, plum, and apricot trees survived their second summer. The green of their leaves is battling it out with the encroaching brown, and the cutter moths have done some damage, but the trees have officially made it. They are growing, alive, and in a few weeks, they will thrive, insects and triple-digit temperatures at bay.…
