Perforation Problems

My great grandparents’ house in Wabash, Indiana was full of antiques. Some antiques lived there, like the sleigh bells hanging from the back door that jangled whenever you stepped too heavily on the old floors. Some were waiting to be fixed by my Grandpa T—latches repaired, paint stripped, wood stained—so they could go to their antique shop on Canal Street.   The entire house felt like a treasure trove to a little girl, with something new to be discovered in every crook and cranny. Baskets hanging from the ceiling, glass grapes on the 1800s Hoosier cabinet, huge blue and tan crocks on the porch with various old yardsticks and canes and other wooden riffraff piled in. The steep stairs going up to the bedrooms always had things piled on them—old postcards, books, frames. And in the guest room, where I often slept, there was a giant four-poster bed with a lace coverlet that felt like it had been delivered straight from the past. Somehow I got the impression someone had died in i...

In Columbus we rented a house on Heathmoor Drive from a female firefighter. I remember a blue beaded curtain in a doorway, a phone on the wall with one-button contact to 911 (I got in trouble twice by hitting this), a backyard with an electric pole in it that backed up to my best friend Missy's house. We buried her hermit crab under the fence that separated our yards. This was the house where Matt and I wrote notes to welcome our new baby brother and set them in his crib for him to find when he came home from the hospital. In the basement, my dad built a balance beam for me, and Missy and I made doll houses out of cardboard boxes and constructed tiny rugs with glue and yarn. Matt and I turned the area under the stairs into a dressing room for our elaborate musical productions set to our Disney Channel cassette tape. Our big numbered was centered around the  Talespin theme song . We got our dog Max while we lived here—he was my Uncle Jerry's dog and for some reason Jerry cou...

Splitting time between Indy and Cincy has made being home feel especially luxurious. Our Cincinnati apartment is small, but fine for our purposes—it's in a good location, it has high ceilings and wood floors, appliances are new, we have our own external door so in some ways it doesn't even feel like an apartment building at all, etc etc. But home...every week when I pull in the driveway, open the door, and put my bags down, it's like, well, coming home. I open the back door to let in the breeze, I check all my plants, I plop down on the couch, and I'm just...happy. Everybody should have a place they feel that way about.

We knew it was going to rain but we set out anyway, driving my little electric car down the mountain, relishing the way the mpge shot all the way to 250 as we swooped and coasted. We hadn't brought the dog because he'd been limping after our hike yesterday, so it was just the two of us. Maybe we wouldn't have gone out, but it was Michael’s birthday and our last day at the cabin, and it seemed like we shouldn't spend the day like we had the six before. The GPS took us to the wrong end of the state park, so we made a big loop before finding the visitors center. And then just as we parked - the downpour. Gone was the sun, the blue sky. We sat there in the car, raindrops pelting the windows around us, and waited. All the scenic overlooks on the hiking path looked out on a valley hidden by fog. We laughed and took pictures of white blur after white blur, joking about how we'd show everyone the magnificent views, the beautiful Hudson and Mohawk valleys. At one poin...

Time gets distorted on road trips. One minute I think it's going incredibly, achingly, wretchedly slow, and then I realize we've been in the car for 8 hours already and in retrospect it seems like somehow it's gone...not fast, but not as torturously slow as it should. We still have 4 hours. I'm not sure I can even call this a road trip, because road trips have the connotation of being fun. Stopping to see giant balls of yarn or Cheese Palaces, eating ice cream at unique little town ice cream parlors, all that jazz. We're just in the car to get where we're going. That's not a road trip, that's just travel. The only elements of fun in this involve the occasional good podcast or music choice. "I would eat some ice cream," I say, looking at Michael next to me in the driver's seat. "Would you?" "Wouldn't some ice cream make this drive better?" "Would it? Or would it make it worse?" "I don't ...

Packing is always an existential dilemma for me. What if I bring the wrong thing? What if I'm too hot? Too cold? What if my shorts are too short and make everyone notice all my cellulite? What if my shorts are too long and I look uncool? What if we end up going somewhere unexpected and I don't have the right thing to wear and then I feel out of place? What if what I'm wearing makes me feel awkward and then my confidence suffers and then I start doing weird things and feeling like a loser? Meanwhile Michael throws three pairs of shorts, a bunch of t-shirts, and his swimsuit in a bag and calls it a day. I tried to pack early tonight but couldn't finish because there's one more load of laundry to do. We're leaving for a week at Michael's parents' cabin in upstate New York on Saturday, and as always happens before vacations, no matter how ahead of the game I think I am, I'm suddenly overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done before we leave. T...

I just spent the last two hours making homemade peanut butter & pumpkin dog biscuits for Clyde and the other doggies that will be at the cabin next week for the 4th of July (I must call them doggies or puppies, not dogs, because that's just how it is). I did this despite the fact that Clyde has infuriated me twice in the last two weeks by getting in fights with a raccoon in our backyard. Do you know what a raccoon sounds like in the wild? It's not Meeko in Disney's Pocahontas. This was no twittering or cheerful chirping. This is a Satanic snarling and growling, interspersed with the occasional high-pitched scream—sounds that are especially disturbing 1) when you hear them mixed in with branches cracking and your dog's whining and barking  2) when you're hearing them from somewhere above you while you stomp around in the dark woods in your pajamas, trying to find your possibly-injured dog by the light of the flashlight on your phone. Clyde is fine. Mad at me ...