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.

In the wild, I’d be dead. Some predator that looked to me like a friendly dog would turn out to be a hungry lion. My distance vision has been limited since I was in grade school, making life without prescription eye wear just one messy blur. But, with easy access to strong specs, I go about my business like I can actually see. At 40, I began to notice that...

Every morning, I get into the shower and when I step under the water for the first time, I think “you’re so lucky, so incredibly lucky.” I have clean, hot water – all I want, whenever I want. I can splash like a bird in more water than some people see in a year. I live indoors and I have heat and air conditioning and plenty of food. I’m lucky. So stinkin’...

I don’t play games. Everyone knows this. I don’t like competition. There’s enough of that out in the world, why would I want to intentionally have more? But, something in the tense black eyebrows of the angry red bird beckoned me, “join us and fight the good fight!” I was bored and somewhat hostile, so I began to launch birds at those smug, grinning pigs...

It seemed like a harmless and soothing thought: “by the time I’m thirty, I’m gonna have my shit together…” When I was 20, I went to a baby shower hosted by the sister of the mom-to-be. At the time, I was unsettled and angry. My career goal of greenhouse management had been ripped out from under me by severe allergies to all the chemicals used in greenhouses...