I was 40 at the time and that bit of cruelty was surprising only because she pulled it out in public; usually she saves her most biting commentary for one-on-one. It was nowhere near the most hurtful thing she’s ever said or done. In fact, I was rather glad that my gracious and kind sister-in-law heard it, so she…

Read the headline as “Germanphobes”, wondered if a ball pit would help be stop banging my head against the table trying to remember genders or figure out where exactly to put the verb.

Just over a month after I lost my ovaries, uterus, and cervix to cancer, my mother announced at family Christmas dinner that I had been selfish by not having children earlier, and so that was what happened. People are often shitty to those with cancer. The generation before mine, you didn’t talk about it at all,…

One of the first McMansions crowded onto a tiny urban lot in my neighborhood is owned by a guy who puts terrible loose canvases of “artwork” on his porch (just propped up on the wall, no frame) and had a truly gruesome metal sculpture on the lawn for years. Prominently visible through his front windows is bad, bad,…

Earlier this week I was binge-watching Gypsy on Netflix and (small spoiler alert) there was a scene with Naomi Watts and her girlfriend where Naomi was in a white tank. It gave me a brief rumble of the old Shane feels... and then this news appears.

Quark is super easy to make, too (google-able), for those of us who want to make German recipes but live in quark-deprived ‘murica!

Guns are showing up at lots Trump-era protests. I’m in Michigan, where open carry is legal and militias aren’t always the most radical of the fringe, and there have been protests this year where both sides showed up armed. It’s probably just a matter of time before this turns very nasty.

Yep! We used to be NRA members, hoping to add to the numbers who believe in regulations and required education in a society where guns are pervasive. Their repulsive responses to mass shootings meant that we didn’t renew, and the continued lunacy has turned us into active opponents.

The market is lousy, because Mr. Unfollowed already has that job locked down. He’s on the spectrum, though with decades of mainstream coping, works in tech, and though he’s a manager now, he had established enough of a reputation as the “brilliant grump who won’t come to social events or many meetings, but will save…

My husband has always been told that his great-grandmother was Ojibwe (Chippewa). Both his grandfather (the woman’s son) and father (her grandson) said this, and she died before my husband was born. The regional tribes require at least 1/8th Native ancestry to join and my father-in-law considered applying before he…

Mr. Unfollowed has been proposing that any law enforcement officer that shoots his gun — for any reason and with any outcome — should immediately and permanently be fired. “If it’s not a situation where you would risk your job, you sure as hell shouldn’t be risking someone’s life.” After some devil’s advocate arguing…

I live in one of those places, where middle school boys began a “Build that wall!” chant at lunch. Within days there were meetings for parents and school staff to discuss the incident and a plan going forward. In our mostly blue and very white small city, many people assumed that it was just tween boys being…

It’s been my contention for a long time that everyone is actually named Chris. EVERYONE. Sure, you might think that you’re a Sidi or Raquel or Tyler or Manuel or Ironhorse or Kenji or Myesha or Ali or Eli, but you’re a Chris.

My dog is a different breed but same coloration, and OMG the same facial expressions. Example above: her “the couch wasn’t soft enough so I fixed it for you” face.

A couple months ago, a high school classmate of mine screamed at me on Facebook for being “part of the resistance” and not giving Trump a chance. She went on to rave that she’s Republican and she and her husband both work for the government, and it’s our responsibility to support the President. Of course I disagreed…

My, he sure got around to commenting on that quickly.

If we were, at least you and I could split the work!

Tangent but opportunity to vent: In 2001 I was on a first date — a confident, successful, and very heavy woman with a smart, attractive man at my side — when the trailer for Shallow Hal appeared on the screen. A couple minutes of people almost gagging at the idea of a (heavy, sloppy) guy falling for a fat girl,…

... and seek out a better tool if the internet isn’t meeting your needs (not wants, needs). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using the internet as a tool for amusement, distraction, self-expression, inspiration, or social connection. Problems start when there aren’t other tools in your bag anymore.

This is a huge issue in our household; thank you for expressing it so clearly. My refusal to nag means that over the past 11 years of marriage, I’ve picked up more and more of the chores. Now I’m busier with work and some renegotiation needs to take place, but I’m finding that the reality is that my backlog of tasks…