It’s day 3,000 of the winter of 2014…
I’m trapped in my house, suffering from a knee injury and severe underemployment.

Outside my window is the ever-expanding pile of WHITE. If I look out my window at just the right angle, I can see color – the neighbor’s house, a pine tree, the blue sky – but I know the white is lurking below… The white is everywhere.

Slowly. Going. Crazy.

Last weekend I swear I saw the “White Walkers” heading for the wall. Maybe it was just my neighbors with snow blowers. Can’t be sure, my brain has frostbite.

The best retroactive genius moments are when I invent or discover something that has been around my entire life – something “hiding” in plain sight. I like to think of it as inventing the obvious, or a “DUH-scovery.”

Yesterday a friend of mine put on a light gray dress she had never worn before, got into her car and, not too much longer after that, spilled hot coffee all over herself and the dress. I know this because while we were chatting on the phone last night she was trying to get out the spots that the spot remover had left behind, the last bit of her valiant effort to undo the damage. She apologized for being “obsessed” and said “I know there are much more important things to worry about.” Of course there are more important things to worry about, but if we obsessed over the important things, we would all go mad.

Things I’ve learned the hard way… Never use the palm of your hand to see which stove burner is hot. Never try to iron that crease on the front of your shirttail while wearing the shirt. Two words – STEAM iron. Two more words – interesting scar. People don’t change. Their behavior might change, their motivation might change, but the core remains...

When I was a child, my parents were terrorized by what they referred to as “New Math” which was what my generation was taught in school. They had no idea what “carry the 1” meant. In recent years, we’ve developed another baffling “new math”– age denial math. 30 is the new 20. 20 is still the old 20. 40 is the new 30. 50 is the new 40. 60 is the...