Unmarked boxes, butter bowls add adventure to storage

April 9, 2017

There’s treasure in my garage. Well, there might be. It’s hard to tell. I never finished unpacking when I moved in 20 years ago. When we ran out of room in the house, I shoved the final unopened cardboard boxes into far corners of the garage. They’re still there. These days when we store stuff in the garage, we pack it into stackable storage boxes. I know what’s inside the tubs because I can see through the clear plastic. But the old boxes are brown cardboard sealed with packing tape. And I don’t remember what’s inside. You might ask why didn’t I label them. I did. ...

Reader’s joke file filled to top with chuckles

April 2, 2017

A message was penned on the back of the envelope: “If I was meant to pop out of bed, I would sleep in a toaster.” I opened the 6-by-9-inch packet and shook out a sheaf of papers. The sender, Marcie Danyi of Niles attached a note: “Look what I found in my joke collection.” Now this is the kind of mail I like to receive. I often think invoices from the utility guys, auto mechanics and service folks are joke collections. It turns out they think they’re serious. But these were jokes that were meant to be jokes. I couldn’t wait. The filing on top was a newspaper column by ...

Cake, ice cream smart choices for breakfast

March 26, 2017

Last month, I brought you the extremely important scientific scoop that — despite what Mom claimed glopping oatmeal in your bowl — ice cream is the intelligent choice for breakfast. Ice cream makes your brain run as smoothly as cookies and cream. The revelation raised serious questions among my more nutritionally minded readers. “How can you eat ice cream for breakfast,” they asked, “without chocolate cake?” Well, hang on, health nuts. It turns out you absolutely can have your ice cream for breakfast and eat it — the cake, I mean — too. It makes you smarter, skinnier ...

Go ahead, get lost for peace and adventure

March 19, 2017

“We never get lost anymore,” she said. “Why don’t you ever take me some place where we’re lost?” It’s true. The adventure, the excitement, the romance of getting lost is, well, lost. “This neighborhood doesn’t look familiar,” Terry said. “I must have taken a wrong turn.” Her lip quivered. “I think we’re lost.” “Hold on a sec.” I whipped out my cellphone and swiped open the maps app. A blue arrow popped up on a lighted grid. “Here we are. What’s the name of the site where we’re going?” Terry told me. I tapped it into the search field and ...

Sick days spoiled by upset tummy and queasy brain

March 12, 2017

I called off sick the other day. It was a horrible experience. Plus, I felt lousy. The worst thing about calling off sick when you actually are is feeling far too yucky to enjoy the yearned-for day off. The second-worst thing is that one’s brain tends to be as unreliable as a queasy stomach. These thoughts stumbled through my mind while I slouched like a Play-Doh statue in my easy chair, a blanket across my lap and glass of ginger ale and bottle of ibuprofen at my elbow. “How does the ibuprofen know where to go?” I shook the bottle. “Are there microscopic GPS units that tell ...

Critical spirit shows lack of critical sense

March 5, 2017

Some people get paid to be critics. The rest of us offer the service for free. It’s easy to do, because the less we know about a thing, the more confidently we can lecture someone else how to do it. This is why, for example, the people who know parenting the best are the critics who never had any actual kids. Once, an exhausted mother guzzling a gallon of coffee told a bunch of us about her rough night: “The baby climbed out of the crib and scattered his toys all over the room. I hauled him back to bed. He escaped again, hid in the closet and sang at the top of his lungs. We put ...