News you can use
News you can use
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I have never been a gardener. This makes me feel like a misfit in my family. My mother is a wonderful gardener. She had an enormous vegetable garden in the suburbs before it became fashionable to do so. Her mother was also an avid gardener. She escaped the demands of 11 children by spending time with her flowers. There are photos of my grandma in her garden and she looks as if she is having a wonderful time, but I figure any activity that would allow you to escape the demands...
The dogs are missing me. My husband, Peter, predicted this after we moved. “All the dogs will miss you!” he said. “They are going to be looking for the Treat Lady. Don’t you think that’s sad?” I did not. First of all, I didn’t believe it. Just because I passed out treats for a couple of years to the dogs didn’t mean they would expect to see me again. Just because they remembered me when they saw me didn’t mean I would ever cross their minds if they didn’t see me. But yesterday...
Years ago, I had trouble with my septic system. If you’ve ever had that kind of trouble, you know what kind of trouble it can be. I was living in my old farmhouse out in the middle of the woods and had no idea where the sewage went until it suddenly went nowhere. That’s when I called the septic guy. The house (and presumably the septic tank) was 100 years old, and I had never had occasion to get overly curious about where the septic tank was or exactly how it worked — until...
I’m not sure when a house becomes a home, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. My husband, Peter, and I have moved into the new place. All our stuff is here, but that doesn’t mean we know where anything is. “Have you seen the strainer?” “Which strainer?” “You know, the fine one.” “No.” We have about two dozen conversations like this every day. We got rid of a lot of stuff and now it’s hard to remember what we kept. Then I unpacked by myself, so Peter had to go on a scaveng...
It was a good party. Of course you would expect me to say that, since it was our going-away party and I am bound to be biased. But there were six dogs and plenty of food and lots of laughter and some tears and even a little barking and if that doesn’t qualify as a good party, I don’t know what does. Jake, the mixed-breed pup who showed up first, was pretty chill when the entire family of border collies showed up — all on leashes and looking like they owned the place. The b...
My husband, Peter, is looking around our empty living room. “I’ll always have good memories of this place.” “I will too,” I assure him. We are packing up the last of our possessions and heading across the country in a few days. We won’t be coming back. This is the home Peter bought as a single person, when he retired a bit early. He wasn’t sure how much he could afford, but he bought this condo in the town where his sister, Lori, lived, sight unseen. Lori drove by the house...
Tanner wasn’t waiting for me at the fence yesterday. Dakota and Tanner, my two oldest dogs, are always waiting for me at the chain-link fence. Dakota can’t hear and doesn’t see well, so she stays close to the fence in the afternoon when I walk by in order to collect her treat. Tanner really can’t see or hear at all, so he keeps close to Dakota. Yesterday he wasn’t there. The thing about giving out dog treats is that, even though I have a relationship with all these dogs, I d...
A cousin of mine reportedly said, “I can’t imagine living in a house where other people have lived!” I don’t know if she really said this, as I heard the story secondhand. But it stuck in my mind because every home I’ve owned has been lived in by other people, and a few people have died in them as well. So far, this has not bothered me in the least. I’m used to living in the homes of dead people. The first house I bought was owned by a woman named Ruby. She was still living th...
“Do you have time for this?” my husband, Peter, asked. Peter almost never questions what I’m doing unless I’m doing something particularly stupid. Yesterday, I had a meeting on Zoom. I figured I could finish my work, take my walk early, then run downtown and get my errands done all in time for my meeting. “Sure!” I assured him. Peter looked skeptical. “Maybe I’ll skip the stop at the hardware store,” I added, to pacify him. But the hardware store was right on the way, as I...
I just learned that my ex-husband has remarried. I learned this as we learn about all important life milestones these days: on Facebook. There were photos taken in the Caribbean. My ex-husband and his new bride were walking barefoot on the beach. She was carrying her shoes and their feet were wet and probably the most surprising thing to me was how sincerely I wished them well. It is common practice to offer our best wishes when we are actually wishing nothing of the kind....
The old wooden folding table belonged to my grandma. I don’t remember her ever using it. After she moved out of her house and into a retirement home, my sister inherited the table, but she didn’t use it much, either. The table has four wooden folding chairs that tuck beneath it and the whole thing rolls on casters. My husband, Peter, and I are moving to be closer to family and we don’t have a serviceable table for our new place. “Bring the folding table when you come,” I told...
Everyone knows that I am attached to my desk. I would argue I have good reason. My desk is an extension of myself. Whereas other people are attached to their phones, I frequently lose track of mine. (Just writing this made me wonder where it was. Don’t worry; I found it.) My desk is my home inside my home. I hear about people working from their couch or from their kitchen table or even from their bed and I cannot imagine it. My desk is always tidy. I always have fresh f...
Tanner and Dakota are waiting for me. They’re standing at the corner of their chain-link fence, watching the sidewalk. They know I’m coming, even if they don’t know exactly when, even if they can’t see the sidewalk very well and can’t hear at all. Tanner and Dakota are my two oldest dog customers, dogs I give treats to nearly every day. My husband, Peter, has decided against paying the big bucks for high-priced dog treats full of questionable ingredients. He bought himself a d...
It is a well-known fact that we are allowed to chew out the people we care about. Most recently, this came to mind when I gave my old friend, Andrew, a serious tongue-lashing. Andrew is a lifelong bachelor, and a committed curmudgeon. He is better than most curmudgeons at being curmudgeonly because he started young. Andrew showed signs of being a grumpy old man when he was still in his 30s. But Andrew is no longer in his 30s, and this is what brought us to our recent conflict....
I finished my bath and saw that the rust-orange towel had molted all over my body. I was covered with tufts of orange fur. It was not a good look, and it felt worse than it looked. Worse yet, it gave me a taste of what the next two months would be like. My husband, Peter, is a man of many systems, and I have learned to appreciate this over the six years we have been married. He has a particular way to do nearly everything, from making coffee, to washing the dishes, to...
The tree was lying on its side when I got to it. It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part. The next day, it was lying on its side again. I examined it more closely. It had been...
It’s amazing that anyone shares a bed. I know there are plenty of married and cohabiting couples who have separate beds, or even separate bedrooms, and I can see the logic in avoiding the snoring, the thrashing, the different sleep schedules, and the need to negotiate the complicated issue of bedding. But since marrying and moving into Peter’s house, we have shared a bed, and it is not a large one. So far, we have negotiated a peaceful settlement. This is because Peter has...
March is winding down and my sister-in-law, Lori, is going with it. There is too much food and too many flowers because that is what we do when someone is dying, when we don’t know what else to do as, gradually, the unthinkable becomes accepted and even ordinary. We make more food and bring more flowers. But there is too little time. There is always too little time. Lori is spending most of the time she has left sleeping, which means she is not in pain but also that no one c...
Throughout the past year, my husband, Peter, and I have been seeing no one except Peter’s sister, Lori, and her husband. Lori has Stage 4 cancer and has had a tough fight. She’s been on oxygen all this time. The decision of how careful we needed to be was easy. If we were going to see Lori, we had to be extremely careful. And as a reward, once a week we have heard Lori’s laughter. I’ve been writing fiction for the first time in my life. No one told me in advance that writing...
It’s our anniversary, and Peter and I will be celebrating, like everyone has this past year, the best we are able. We have not yet won the vaccine lottery. I recently received a note from the health department that basically said, “Don’t get your hopes up.” Newspaper columnists are not, apparently, considered essential workers and, of course, I am not. Meanwhile, we continue to visit my sister-in-law, Lori, whose health remains precarious. So our anniversary celebra...
I’ve never been a fan of March. March is supposedly spring, but we all know it’s not. In much of the country, more snow falls in March than any other month. But it doesn’t have the courtesy to stay. March snow falls, makes us shovel it, then turns into a sloppy mess in three days. It becomes slush, mixed with mud. The sky stays gray. And all the ... things (you know what I mean), things that were buried in previous snowfalls ... all those things come to light. Whatever they...
I know I am not the only one having travel fantasies. My husband, Peter, and I were not planning to do a lot of traveling in the past year. That was our plan, and we certainly made good on it. We didn’t realize at the time that “not a lot of traveling” would mean a bi-weekly trip to the grocery store. Like a lot of folks, we’ve been tracking how many months we’re getting on a gallon of gas. Now, however, traveling is sounding better all the time. My parents are also making tra...
I remember, a long time ago, when I used to have a social life. My husband, Peter, and I have been visiting his sister, Lori, once a week while she battles cancer. She was in yesterday for another radiation treatment, and we are waiting to hear if she will be feeling well enough for a visit this weekend. And so we stay home, as we have since March of last year. Lately, we have taken to picking up our groceries at the curb. I was skeptical. I’d never had another person c...
I am not exactly a connoisseur of contemporary culture. I haven’t seen the latest series on Netflix or anything else. I don’t follow Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram. But somehow, a TikTok phenomenon came to my attention that I found too delightful to ignore. Sea shanties are all the rage among Generation Z. “Sea shanties?” I thought. “That can’t be right.” But I checked it out and, yes, teens and young 20-somethings are singing sea shanties on TikTok, and listeners add...
My husband, Peter, is taking no chances. I knew this about him before I married him. Peter has a plan for everything and a plan in case the first plan doesn’t pan out. My father would call this “belt and suspenders” planning. Peter’s been walking around in a belt and suspenders ever since I’ve known him. Peter’s planning has made surviving the pandemic a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. We never run out of anything. That might sound impossible, but it’s almost...
