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.…
I am 1985 Allison Reynolds lost on the set of Mean Girls. Let’s preface this rant with the truth that I love my apartment. It houses my favorite office and is located in a gorgeous spot. I have no complaints. But if, as my kids like to say, someone grabbed me by the throat and…
My mom moved us from New York to Arizona the summer I turned eleven. When the plane landed, and 105 degrees of hell hit my face, I vowed to leave the state as soon as I was an adult and could make my own life. I left for college at eighteen and lived in Arizona…
If I were a painter, I would wear a twist of string tied to my ankle long ago by a lover who never promised and left before I ever asked. I would live and work in an echoing flat with iron floor-to-ceiling windows and colorful but cracked tile in the tiny toilet. The window near…
The hamster wheel is not about the hamster. Sure pet stores tout the need for exercise and occupation, but who’s really entertained by the fur friend running in endless circles? The ones who built the cage, I suspect. The wheel is in there, so those on the other side can clap. It’s a bit like…
The last day of 2021 deserves a blog post. Actually, 2021 was a real bitch and deserves nothing, but here goes. Endings are sometimes a party, but they are often tricky. The world lost Betty White today. OG move crossing to the other side on the last day of the year, but also difficult for…
Balconies are interesting spaces. A front yard or a porch are also revealing, but balconies are small pops of individuality amid a sea of windowed vertical boxes. I can’t say I ever noticed what my neighbors were doing when I lived among the streets, but now that I’m in an apartment, I can’t seem to…
A couple of weeks ago, I was exiting the parking garage of my apartment. It was morning, and while I waited to pull forward, I glanced toward the promenade that encircles the marina. It was breezy, the mist seemingly waking up and rolling about too. A woman stood a few feet from me with a…
