This is the life hacks of all life hacks — I hate it when people give unsolicited advice. For instance, yesterday an old friend walked into my house for the first time, and told me to get rid of all my books because they made the place looked cluttered. “You really like books, huh?” she said, staring at a small…

I’m lonely but I’m also not — Wikipedia explains that Schrödinger’s Cat “is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.”…

I’m still in love with you and always will be — Happy birthday, Los Angeles. You turned 241 on September 4, 2022, but no one said anything. The city government wrote something for your last birthday when you turned 240, but this year it seems they just gave up. Your own government ghosted you. This makes me sad, and frankly a…

With a flood of conflicting messages and metaphors, how do you know? — Apparently, I am not healthy. I am overweight, and while my A1C has never crossed the threshold into pre-diabetes, it has definitely flirted with the idea. My cholesterol is sometimes okay, sometimes not. I have high blood pressure (which may be genetic) and hypothyroidism (which is definitely genetic, thanks Mom)…

We’ve accepted that we’re stuck with each other. — In January, I wrote a confessional that I had adopted the wrong dog. Fish (not his real name) landed at my house eleven days after my beloved apricot shepherd died, because I couldn’t responsibly manage my grief. I saw a video of him trying to curl up in a plastic…

I almost slugged my mother in a hospital basement, and for an instant it seemed perfectly normal. — A few weeks ago, in the run up to getting my mother into the same assisted living facility where my father is, I took her to the doctor for paperwork, blood work, and all the other hoops you have to jump through to get someone into an assisted living facility…

Do we really want to live in a country where people in power are held accountable? — Putting aside whether I’m a fan of Trump — because I am so not! — the raid on his home this week is so unfair. Do we really want to live in a country where we hold elected officials accountable? Or rich people? No sir, I don’t think so. Think…

My aging parents have hijacked the simple pleasures. — It’s been a rough few weeks, shoved into a rough few years. I know everyone else has experienced the same dumpster fire world for years, and I know that wanting to throw myself off a cliff after two years of taking care of my elderly parents is overly dramatic, privileged…

It’s a win/win for both Mom and the family, but some friends aren’t so sure. — Tomorrow, a Ukrainian refugee family is going to move in with my 82-year-old mother. The story of how we got to this point is long and complicated. There’s a Ukrainian mother, a graphic designer by trade, and her two young children who made it to the Mexican border, and eventually…