The holidays are upon us and regardless of how, or if, you celebrate, we all have feelings around this time of year. If nothing else, it’ll soon—SOON!—be the Winter Solstice, which means days will start getting longer. If you live closer to the 45th...
Last week we travelled to Kenosha for Thanksgiving. Lake effect snow off of lake Michigan turned the roads treacherous west of Kalamazoo. Thinking we were clever, we followed the GPS advice of taking an alternate route. Turns out, 200 other drivers d...
When I was a kid, I was not particularly athletic. I was born chubby (ten pounds, six ounces) and stayed chubby for quite a while. I was a bit of a pudge. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but when one of the kids in the neighborhood nicknames...
Ten days ago I came home to find that one of our dogs had bitten the other. I didn’t even know what was wrong at first except that Mikey (the dog) was in pain and couldn’t put any weight on his front leg. It was a Sunday evening and the problem with...
We were latchkey kids starting in 1970, when our mom returned to the workforce and we walked home from school on our own. It was a quiet, safe suburb. The biggest risk was in cutting across the lawn of an older neighbor who hated kids stepping on the...
I’m playing in a pickleball tournament this weekend and I’m in that phase where I think I might win, and I also think I might get my ass handed to me eight times over. It’s like Schrödinger’s thought experiment about the cat in a box. Is the cat aliv...
The past two weeks have been chaotic with house guests, dog sitting, and diarrhea. I don’t regret any of it but there’s certainly a calming bit of gratitude when it’s over and a familiar routine returns. One of the dogs we watched has a condition tha...
When I got my cancer diagnosis and opted for surgery, I entertained thoughts that this could be it. My optimistic self thought, “This will be a bumpy ride.” But my pessimistic self understood that any surgery has risks. Joan Rivers, for example. That...
When I was nine, the city built an ice rink and I wanted to learn to skate. My father bought us some cheap skates and I walked up there every day after school so I could fall on my ass. I clung to the railing on the wall and pulled myself along, inev...
I have a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT in today’s Picayune about my future. But first, a bit of background. Thanks to my cancer and surgery, I’ve had way too much time to think of existential issues lately. There are the practical things, like how it hurts to p...