Last Christmas stands out as one of the worst of my life. Perhaps more even than the year when my father had just died, because at least then we were around family. But last year Rand’s grandmother had just died, and we were alone, and there wasn’t an end to that loneliness in sight.
Dear Friends, As you know, Rand and I are social creatures. We thrive on seeing the people we love, on following the winding paths of your lives, on quietly building a history of private jokes and shared experiences together. We aren’t simply growing old with each other, we are growing old with all of you,…
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being on Dan Moyle’s podcast, The Storytellers Network. I’m always a bit hesitant to go on podcasts. I love chatting with people, but my relationship with the spoken word isn’t quite what it is with the written one. I tend to ramble unless I have a…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a married man in possession of a house will one day find himself in a shouting match with his spouse about something trivial like throw pillows. All of this will likely happen at IKEA. If that man has refused to go to IKEA, because he has justly concluded…
Last week, I wrote about what happened when I tried making the cinnamon roll recipe from Mario Batali’s sexual misconduct apology letter. The inclusion of the recipe – in a letter apologizing for sexual harassment – was so ill-advised that it made the time my uncle brought a camcorder to a funeral seem like a good idea. But…
My immigrant parents, while bestowing upon me the gift of worldliness, with their accents and many passports and the ease with which they code-switched, yelling at one another in English, German, Italian, and Russian, left a glaring omission in my childhood: there was no Americana. It was not that America itself was absent from my…
When things go badly, I often look back and retrace the steps that were taken – by me, by my loved ones, by the electorate of Wisconsin, to see where things went awry. I do this with tragedies small and large, historical and current day, tracing the path back to what life was like before…
When I was a senior in high school Titanic came out in theaters and it seemed that every single one of my classmates was losing their minds and their virginities over it. As they rushed to see the film in horny mobs, I stayed back, wary of anything that was too popular (and yes, that included the guy…
I want to continue talking about the food in Spain, mainly because I’ve gone insane since coming home and have decided to stop eating carbohydrates. Or, at least, I think I have. I’m not entirely clear what carbohydrates are. I figured it was just bread and pasta and all the other foods that make life…
