I got down on my hands and knees in the shower with a toothbrush and some baking soda paste. The web site said if the drain had a musty smell that was mold, but if it was more like a… Read More ›

Humor
Discreet Music (MES edition) | Jan. 24, 18
I’ve lived out here since ’96 and always had a good attitude about the rain, that it’s just November and December which are hard, that by the time you get to January you’re over the hump. Not true! It doesn’t… Read More ›
Discreet Music | January 11, 2018
“Discreet Music” is the name of a Brian Eno album from 1975 and also a new blog series I’m running through January, prompted by a journal-writing theme I started in Germany over the holidays. It’s inspired by the David Sedaris… Read More ›
The intensely masculine act of cooking beef chili
I broke up the beef with the back of a wooden spoon until it was no longer pink and spread it with the fat and spices and aromatics into a weave and stood there in my apron, regarded myself, got… Read More ›
More posts about baths, please
How impossibly dark it gets here in the afternoons sometimes. I lay in the bath with the pork roast brining and thought about the father-daughter Valentine’s dance at the community center, the one coming up that Charlotte seems so excited… Read More ›
Sunday afternoon in the suburbs, Spring
I’ve taken the stowed-away things from our garage and laid them out on the driveway for reckoning. One pile gets donated, the other we get to keep. There’s a laundry basket full of plush toys, the unwanted/extra dolls and stuffed… Read More ›
Lying on life insurance applications
I don’t like to lie, I’m not good at it. But there are times it’s expected, even when they insist you tell the truth, like on life insurance applications. Lying is expected but never out in the open, never outright,… Read More ›
FitBit burned a hole in my head
I got a FitBit for some reason I’m not clear on: my dad suggested it, like when you recommend something to someone to help justify it for yourself, and my wife left hers at a friend’s house who then lost it… Read More ›