My husband had this terrifying maniac of a friend years ago. Lloyd. Lloyd accidentally got married one day, when the girl he was sleeping with turned his post-coital hyperbole into a short lived and deranged reality. Their marriage was brief and unhappy. When Lloyd was mad at his wife, he’d get up in the…
I wonder what I look like to that nicely put together pharmacist lady. She’s a graceful 45, long tidy braid, white coat. I give her the script for a fairly impressive dose of Klonopin. My skin is clammy with perfect circular drops of sweat pricking my upper lip, and lazier fat drops streaming down from my…
I Friended a sweet woman on Facebook who had gone to school with me in our tiny two-room schoolhouse. She’s a teacher now. “He inspired me to go into teaching.” I knew who she was talking about, and found it hard to believe. “How?” I asked. “Because I didn’t think teachers should be like…
Everything is changing. My house and yard are clean, so I feel happier every day. They are clean because I can pay someone to make them that way. I can pay someone because my writing is selling, as soon as I can type it. And the more my writing sells the more opportunities come…
I wrote this once before, a long time ago. I took it down. I’m ready to rewrite it now. It’s long, but it has to be. Settle in. When I ask my seven year old how much she remembers about grandma, who died when she was four, she always tries to please me with memories.…
I used to joke with my husband that when I reached a certain level of success in my writing, I wanted help with the housecleaning. Because I have tried for 15 years now, to keep a house. To keep the dirty dishes pile low enough in the sink to allow access to the water…
This morning, a producer from BBC Radio 4 emailed me to ask if I wanted to talk on her international immensely popular radio station about a topic I wrote 400 words on, in an article about a year ago. I’d be given an hour to prepare to debate a person who’d written an entire book on…
I remember looking at the clock on the dashboard, and seeing that it was exactly 9:38 in the morning. And I was proud. I’d made it 33 minutes into the trip without wanting to pill-up. My two best friends here in town have my daughter over for sleepovers and play dates often. I seldom reciprocate, because…
I’m just an utter turd waffle sometimes Yesterday I literally accosted a woman, who did not know me, with details of her own private life that I’d learned through gossip. One of my friends had a book release yesterday, and I attended with an extremely foggy brain but a pridefully constructed “literary” outfit. And I…
First there was the bed. I picked it out of a catalog and had no idea. It suffers giganticism, but instead of bones and swollen flesh, it was blocks of solid wood and memory foam. The top of the mattress came to my bustline. I’m only 5 foot 2, sure…but that’s still pretty damn high.…
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