I could never sit cross-legged as a child (I don’t think – okay, I know – they called it ‘criss cross applesauce’ back then, but maybe younger millennials will remember it that way). My hips just don’t want to rotate externally (quoth my pediatrician, about my feet and legs, “Good for a runner, bad for a dancer,” a pronouncement in direct opposition to my natural talents and proclivities (running is terrible and makes my tongue hurt)). Even now, after years… Read more »
Posts By: Claire
Healthcare: Part…moving?
I don’t know how many times I’ve written about healthcare, and let me disclaim: I’m sure the intricacies of American healthcare that I’ve experienced are nothing, in the greater scheme of things. Oh, I’ve been incorrectly charged or double charged and I’ve had terrible experiences with the doctor’s office down the street…and prescriptions…but in general, nothing that took up as much time or money as the people in stories I’ve heard had to spend. However, I would love to know… Read more »
Of an Empty To Do List
I often think to myself, “What would I do if I had no items on my to do list?” And to be clear, I have two of those lists at most times. The weekly one goes on a folded sheet of notebook paper and the daily one goes on a napkin. Not just any napkin–the ones from the pizza place are too hard to write on, but the coffee and bagel store has the perfect napkins for my needs. (let… Read more »
Pony “Express”
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in post offices and they’re all generally frustrating, but they’ve all attained different levels of this quality. Long lines: probably. Grumpy people (customers and/or post officers): most likely. Kafka-esque conversations: Yes please! My Brooklyn post office is…pretty terrible. I go in expecting that there will be long lines and that if I have a question it’s 50-50 whether the teller will know the answer (which is not a critique of the teller/post officer…it… Read more »
Comments
Bless the Olympics Channel for showing GYMNASTICS more than once a year. I was able to watch the Cottbus world cup the day after it happened. Actually, I could have watched it live with NBC commentators, but for whatever reason the rebroadcast had a completely different commentator: an older (sounding) British man who had definitely done his research but also clearly wasn’t a gymnastics commentator per se. He had some interesting things to say… About Flavia Saraiva from Brazil, who… Read more »
Listen Quickly
Overheard in my apartment building: “Wait, you said there are a bunch of centipedes? Or just the one that ate my hand?” “I’m trying to use charisma…I know a tastier person you can eat!” “That’s not what “likely” means!” “What are you talking about? That’s literally the definition of ‘likely’!” Overheard on the subway: One older woman to another older woman:”She’s kind of a femme fatale. Always wears pink, never wears pants…” After listening to them for a few minutes,… Read more »
Booklist, Part 3
Radiation Nation, by Natasha Zaretsky: I read books about radiation at the same rate I read books about diseases and epidemics, which is to say as much as availability will allow me. I read about this one in my college alumni magazine. It’s very smart but unnecessarily jargon-y; it reads like a dissertation rather than narrative nonfiction (I suspect it was, in fact, a dissertation). In short, it was a relief when I realized that “52%” on my Kindle actually… Read more »
1000 Books: Part 4
An update on the health and safety of my paperbacks: although my parents claim that I need to look into planes, trains, and automobiles to ship my books to NYC after Christmas, my woman on the inside reports that her mother “is NOT going to drive that car [the car that effectively owns the storage unit, or engendered it, anyway] in the salt and snow in December!” So…a reprieve? One thing (the only thing? Ha) I managed in my purge… Read more »
1000 Books: Part 3
Some of the books that I never actually owned–I may have been allowed to go to the bookstore every time I had to go to the orthodontist, but I still really raided the library hard–are highly VEXING in how non-specific their titles are. I had been trying to remember for literal years two different series, both about groups of friends (duh, and also, don’t bother trying to consult Google) but finding myself stymied, because how can you search if what… Read more »
1000 Books: Part 2
I’ll never lose my love for the great (and not great) middle-grade fiction series of the 80s and early 90s (and probably mid-90s, too; I was the 13-year-old who might read a Babysitters Club book while eating Pop-tarts after school, then finish my day with Toni Morrison), and I encountered many of them while going through my bins of books. To be honest, I kept most of them. I parted with the books for REALLY young chapter-book readers, like Patricia… Read more »
