There’s a lot of noise out here right now, as everyone screams silently from wherever they’re holed up. Sweetheart and I are holed up at home and beyond grateful. Our jobs haven’t been dramatically affected. Having previously weathered extended periods of under- and unemployment, we fully understand and appreciate how lucky we are. The last … Continue reading Pandemic musings from a virtual reference librarian
Category: clutter
For the next few weeks, welcome to my travel blog. When I turned 50, I threw a girls-only sleep-over party. Dinner and breakfast were both co-ed affairs, with invitees welcome to show up for either or both. It was a glorious event, held at a friend’s mansion-turned-law-office. (You can see photos here.) Judy (who flew … Continue reading How to turn 60 & go to Europe: be my sister’s sister
Life has never been better. Or more frustrating. Every morning, I wake up with a list of things to do and hardly any of them get done. Some of that is laziness. Some is fear, some is inertia. This house is in the neighborhood, but it carols at us, not the other way around. Also, … Continue reading Speak the truth & sing the songs: ups and downs of everyday life, Government shutdowns & Christmas carols
Five years ago, my pal Molly and her husband Richard flew in from New York to visit her parents, "Mel" (z"l) and "Sally." It was their first visit after M&S moved into "Old People Harvard," the independent and assisted-living community where Mom had been living for two years. It was a great gift to Mom … Continue reading Accidental landlording & purposeful librarianship: a dispatch from the busy zone with a reminder to VOTE TUESDAY!
In 2007, I was on national television and in the New York Times for being one of the first “old” people on Facebook. On April 10th, I posted this on my Facebook feed: “I was going to just leave quietly, but it feels disrespectful to so many of you who I care about. I joined … Continue reading Hitting the ‘delete’ button on Facebook: a Dispatch from the quiet zone
This holiday season, my sister got me a pair of socks that sprung a hole the first time I wore them and a pen my brother-in-law brought back from a trip to China whose individual components waged a civil war in my coat pocket. (The pieces are still in there.) She also got me a … Continue reading Reductio ad Essentialis:Diet time at The Landfill I Call Home
Yesterday Sweetheart's brother Tommy came over to help him do some excavating. I'm not sure what they got done, because I was busy fighting with myself over letting go of useless things I wanted to keep. Also, realizing that I was doing my own excavating while listening to Garbage made me feel a bit more cheerful. Cheerful, … Continue reading Repo Week – Day 5: I Can Dream, Can’t I?
Yesterday I reached the place where you decide that starting from scratch would be easier. Which was quickly followed by advice from the voice in my head. “You should have just burned the house down.” Then I thought about the logistics, and of saving my musical instruments (the dog and cat were already outside with … Continue reading Repo Week-Day 4: Burning Down the House would be easier
It doesn’t look different, but I’ve hauled about six bags of stuff out of the room, and am at a part where the sorting is getting hard. Or to paraphrase The Kinks, "I'm in a state of confusion." I want to get the floor emptied and the compact discs boxed and put with the rest … Continue reading Repo Week-Day 3: “State of Confusion”
Before the real meat of this post, a quick update on the bees. As of last week, I can report that they are schlepping pollen to their hive. I expect to find baby bees when we open it later this week. Meanwhile, here are a couple of close-ups of my girls with full pollen baskets. One of the … Continue reading Welcome to Repo Week!: Adventures in Room-by-Room Reclamation, with a slight pollinary diversion
the sentence factory 