Selling Street Sense, Washington’s Homeless Newspaper
Nearly everyone had an avoidance tactic. They turned their heads away or looked straight ahead, as though I were invisible.
Nearly everyone had an avoidance tactic. They turned their heads away or looked straight ahead, as though I were invisible.
That Greta’s son had set parental controls on his mother’s computer gave me more than just a chuckle; it gave me a jolt, reminding me of the parent-child reversals I had been noticing more and more in my own life.
What do you eat on an ordinary day? Maybe I’ll find that mine are not quirks at all and that everyone drinks a pint of tea in a Pyrex measuring cup before bed.
In 1980, while living in China, I insisted on speaking Mandarin when planning a dinner for Alan Dershowitz and other Harvard professors. Oops.
On a Sunday evening in New York I enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Union Square Café with my friend Jessica. I was happy with my pappardelle until two thirds of the way through my meal, at the next table, a waitperson placed in front of a trim young woman …
I regret not only some of my meddling on my children’s behalf, but also having kept a secret.
I have a record of attraction to worn things. Before Kindle, back when I read paperback books, they appealed to me far more after I roughed them up with: dog-ears, notes in the margins and swollen pages from the times I read them in my hot tub.
While shops experience brisker business on weekends, blog traffic slows, at least mine does. So I’m posting this shortie today, hoping for weekend visitors. What I’m about to write is one of those things I wouldn’t give a second thought to, were I not examining myself all the time for …
The other day, I bike downtown to the Newseum to hear a panel discussion by New York Times columnists. I leave home early enough to swing through McPherson Square, D.C.’s Occupy Wall Street venue. My immediate sense is a blast from the past, a hippie and flower child commune ambience. …
When I’m in New York, I like to hang out and write at Jack’s, a coffee place in the West Village with a patina that suggests long afternoons of sipping lattes and tapping on laptops. The overall look is shades of brown, like paper bags and coffee. Jack’s is so …
Beware of asking me to rant. I am liable to start today, five days after autumn began (also National Good Neighbor Day and National Pancake Day), and never stop until Flag Day. If you really want to hear loud and wild talk, ask me about the leaf blowers whose noise …
Why put a cold, hard fork between me and my dinner, when the visceral experience of eating, the intimacy between me and my green beans is so enhanced by pinching the bean between thumb and forefinger and depositing it into my mouth? Yes, I’ve had boyfriends who find this offputting and …
The other day my youngest daughter sent an email to her sisters, her dad (my ex) and me to say she would be receiving a prize for her senior thesis on the day before graduation. She asked who of us would be there in time for the awards event. I wrote …
What if I meet a guy I like? Monday: He gets up. I want to stay in bed but now I can’t fall back to sleep. Or, I get up and he wants to sleep, so I can’t turn on NPR. I make myself French toast and a cappuccino and …
A crowd of gray-haired parents of single adults negotiates with one another along a stretch of Beijing’s Zhongshan Park. These confabs occur on a strip of pavement lined on one side with rainbows of tulips and, on the other side, with the moat of the Forbidden City. A woman, …
There’s a lot to learn during 10 days in New York. I learned I can go far north or south on dedicated bike lanes. And once a day someone grouses at me for wheeling crosstown on the sidewalk, not that I blame them. But I do blame the guy who tried …
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my article, “29 Great Tips for Choosing the Right Picture Frame & For Hanging Artwork and Family Photos” What was I thinking when I ordered the book 1,000 Places To See Before You Die? Here’s what inspired me to look at it. My friend Karen told …
Unrelated announcement: Check out my Home Goes Strong article Thinking About a Valentine Dinner? How About Red, Pink, White . . . & Wine With a Heart? In How Annoying Am I Part I, I outlined how annoying I am to my daughters. After posting that, I observed another annoying pattern …
Call me a curmudgeon, but so many things about restaurants irk me. Noise. I’m not likely to even patronize an esablishment that vibrates with double-digit decibels. Okay, the alliterative appeal forced me to exaggerate. Since 10 decibels=breathing, 15=rustling leaves, 20=whispers and mosquitoes, I could cope with up to 45 decibels, …
Unrelated announcement: Worried about your waistline over the holidays? See some great diet tips in my new Home Goes Strong post: Stock Your Kitchen to Reduce Your Waistline. When traveling, I experience this pull between what I feel like doing and what I think I ought to be doing. In …
Here’s how I came to fall in Kindle love (though, as you may come to understand, I am sympathetic to impatient readers, so if you want to skip ahead, scroll down to where you see Kindle in bold). In addition to a lifelong wish that my stomach were flat, I’ve …
If my daughter says she has to pee, then I have to pee too. And whenever I go to restaurants, I get food envy. No matter what, the other person’s order looks better than mine. Wouldn’t it be great if, similarly, when someone says, “I never worry,” I were to …
Unrelated Announcement: Check out my new post on Home Goes Strong, “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Make Great Chicken Soup” Oh My Lady Gaga, I’ve met my match! Below is part of an email I just received from a dear old friend, whom I don’t see very often, …
On the Top Ten of my Hit Parade of Worries is bedbugs. It started when friends contracted bedbugs in their home and told me they had to lie in bed at night to be hosts, which drew out the critters, so the Hazmat folks could come in their Hazmat suits …
I’d been rooting around for a good mental picture to swap to whenever I get visions of things like having no one to play Scrabble with when I reach my December years. I was searching for a sweet memory of which I have many. The ones that kept leaping to …
Right after posting One Space or Two? I began to worry that readers would roll their eyes, wondering why I thought anyone would want to hear about the minutiae that hopscotches around in my head. It was wasted worry, because the views of my blog doubled that day and plenty of …
When I travel, and even when I don’t, I’m both a schlepper and a non-schlepper. It’s in the worrywart’s nature to schlep. For example, I take seven pens in case six run out of ink. On the other hand, my back hurts when I carry things. To show you how serious …
These Articles are No Longer Available on the Original Website. Please contact me if you are interested in any of the below articles. *Meet Susan Orlins on NBC’s Life Goes Strong* *The Book Every Worrywart Needs To Read* Relationships **Shocked: Riveting New Memoir of a Perfect Mother *Grandmother Stories …
1. I occasionally allow a fan to whir overhead in my bedroom despite a lifelong fear of decapitation by ceiling fan. 2. I eat in restaurants, even though there’s the possibility that a waiter (annoyed by my requests for tastes of wine, glasses of ice, dish of lemons, sauce on the side) …
Friends often say to me something like, “I can’t believe you’re afraid of driving to New York, but you bicycle everywhere.” I don’t worry as much as you’d think a worrywart might about getting hit by a car while biking (uh-oh will this jinx me?). It helps that I wear …