My happy place has meatballs

I am overdue for a visit to my happy place. I try to go once every few months, just for the rush of energy to welcome in a new season and all the lovely seasony things that go with it. Some may scoff, but my friends all know that when I check in on Facebook …

Richard Simmons has nothing on me

I’m extra cranky tonight. I'm on a two-week diet and all I want is the bag of jellybeans I have hidden for when this damn diet is over. I suppose it doesn’t make much sense that I hid them, since I know exactly where they are. I guess I trust myself to have that knowledge, …

My Take on Kung-Fu Fighting

A piercing siren jolted me from my slumber. A warm tingling of fear seized over my body. What the hell is that? Air raid siren? Flood siren? No, it’s the burglar alarm. My part-human, part-boxer dog Inga stood up and ran to my bed, tilting her head and staring me down until I would get …

The Origins of the “Glee” Test

Following several months of rejecting dozens of online dates for their failure to meet my 78-point dating checklist, my friends convinced me I needed to lower my standards and try something new. I agreed to meet a guy with a shaved head. Now, I don’t mean that in the scary biker way. This guy was a mortgage broker, and …

My childhood as a Cuban refugee boy

After a brief phase when my mother had complete control over my appearance without any resistance, I demonstrated why I should not have been granted autonomy. Like most young girls born in the early '70s, I went through the phase of the Dorothy Hamill figure skater bowl cut. At around 7 years old, Princess Diana’s …

The Mouth of Truth

The Mouth of Truth (La Bocca della Verità) resides in the portico of the basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome. As with most people, I first learned of this sculpture from the movie “Roman Holiday” starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. A young Gregory Peck fed into my attraction for freakishly tall, dark …

I’m more of a doctor than Phil

I detest going to the doctor, partly because I don’t like strangers touching me. Mainly I just believe if you always think you are sick and run to the doctor, you are going to manifest some illness. (Or you just like being touched by strangers.) I’m pretty lucky in that I’m a generally healthy person …

“The Bachelor” is good for the soul

Whenever I find myself getting depressed about being alone, I try to remind myself that it could always be worse—I could be a contestant on “The Bachelor.” I realize this exercise does require the suspension of reality for a moment. First off, there are never contestants over the age of “32” (at least parts of …

Kiwis are kinky birds

I dove headfirst into the online dating pool before my divorce was even final. Being someone who never learned how to swim, this was probably not a smart move. I was still traumatized from nearly drowning in my aunt's pool when I was seven. Despite my life-long PTSD which prevented me from getting into any …

Escape from Gilligan’s Island

12/31/99. A day that will live in infamy. The dawn of the new millennium. Or in my case, the night terror-inducing biggest mistake of my life. Because hindsight has the advantage of sobriety (in most cases), it should have been a huge red flag to me that everyone was in a panic about “Y2K” at the …