• Who am I? And who are they?

    This is not an existential question. And I don’t have amnesia. But I’m definitely not who I thought I was. For decades I’ve been operating under the mistaken belief that I am a unique, one-of-a-kind dame. I was dead wrong. There are hundreds and hundreds of us, all with the same name on our driver’s…

  • Receipts are not our friends.

    There are just so many. People keep handing me receipts, even when my hands are full of other stuff. Tell you what, if you want to give me something, make it a twenty, not a receipt. And put it in the bag, please. The other day I had errands to run: the grocery store, veterinarian,…

  • Please. Don’t come any closer.

    Here it is, a hot, sunny morning heralding the arrival of August. There’s a full month ahead of dog days and warm nights, of heat lightning and shimmering highways, of ice cream cones and lemonade. It’s a sweet, lazy time. But I’m not stoopid, I know what’s coming. And so do you. At the end…

  • Befuddled? Use the Elevator Code.

    Life is fairly teeming with embarrassing, uncomfortable situations. Those of us who are utterly bereft of social graces, and I know I’m not the only one, need a handbook for these unwelcome occasions. There has to be a more graceful response than blushing a brilliant red from collarbone to hairline. So, until there’s a proper…

  • Wait, who sucks?

    An investigation. This weekend found me in a live chat with “jagdeep”, a technical support rep from QuarkXpress, a pricey software company. My Quark application would no longer open, crashing each time I tried. “Jagdeep”  informed me that QuarkXpress no longer offered support for my six-year old version of their very own product. He suggested…