Currently browsing

veal chop

Chasing a Veal Chop

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 …

OF NEWNESS AND PATINA

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.

HOARDING WATER LIKE CHICKEN SOUP

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 …

NOISY SEASON RANT

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 …

GUILTY PLEASURE OF EATING SANS FORK

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 …

WORRIED ABOUT ENTHUSIASM!!!!!

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 …

HOW ANNOYING AM I? PART II

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 …

RESTAURANT RANT

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, …

LETTER FROM BEIJING

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 …

Kindle & Me <3

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 …

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

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 …

I’VE MET MY MATCH

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, …

LIFE GOES STRONG

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 …

WHEELING

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 …