Cleaving and Clinging
I may be the only person in America who has never watched Star Trek, which explains my puzzlement many years ago when I first heard about a Klingon. The term refers to an alien species…
Pulp Fiction
It’s Labor Day, and a ponytailed girl in a tire swing across the street moves back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Piano chords can be heard from the white house next…
Touching Down
Rule number one: Don’t wake someone up with bad news, especially if the news is that you blew perfectly good money on a raffle ticket that didn’t get you a house in Palos Verdes Peninsula,…
The Wisdom of Winning
“Can you be ready to leave in 20 minutes?” This was usually the question my husband asked me, but we had to hurry if we wanted to see the house that would be ours on…
Cabin Service
The wailing three rows ahead of me began a few minutes after my flight to JFK from LAX had reached cruising altitude. Seats emptied out around a woman whose incoherent litany grew louder by the…
The Universe of Hu
A simple trip to visit my daughter in New York City a few weeks ago involved a lot more than booking a ticket and packing a bag. I was grappling with hunger on a crude…
In Search of a Smudge
It’s been a year since my husband and I moved to Los Angeles from New York City. I am flagrantly happy in our new home, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sometimes stricken with longing…
The New Water Cooler
For most of my life I’ve worked out of my home, so I have no direct experience of how privacy operates in a real office, the kind where one is supposed to wear shoes. In…
Training Day
I play the phone message a second time to make sure it’s not a spoof. It’s from Erik Paul, my personal trainer at Gold’s Gym in Venice. The voice and ironic delivery are familiar, but…
Featherbrained
It requires a breezy style or a keen sense of irony to pull off a rubber chicken purse in Manhattan. I have neither and it’s perhaps for this reason that my handbag, purchased at a…
