ArcaMax

Although some people are uncomfortable going out to a restaurant by themselves, I am perfectly fine with dining alone. Honestly, with the level of pandemonium we used to have in our house, I was always happy to have a quiet meal by myself every once in a while. I don't ask myself to get up and get some more water, I don't typically spill food ...Read more

About five years ago I started having a problem with airplanes. It wasn't a fear of flying or a fear of the plane food or a fear that the person in front of me would recline so much that I would be forced to look up his nose for the duration of the flight.

No, the problem was my feet.

For some reason, suddenly, my body decided that feet and ...Read more

"What's in the bag?" I asked my mother as she got into the car. She had just come out of the hair salon and apparently had been talked into buying some hair products.

"New shampoo," she said with some excitement. "My old shampoo was terrible. It really dried out my hair."

"What brand were you using?" I asked. She thought for a moment. She ...Read more

"What do you want for dinner?" I asked my husband.

"How about fish?" he replied.

I shook my head. "I had fish for lunch. How about steak?"

"I'm sick of steak," he said. "How about chicken?"

I nodded. "Chicken it is."

My husband went outside to light the grill while I jumped in the car to go get the food. I had planned to run into the ...Read more

I saw it out of the corner of my eye as it darted from under the entertainment unit in the family room, around the corner and into the kitchen. Of course, I wasn't really sure if it was anything more than a dust bunny. However, it's pretty unusual to see a dust bunny with a clear agenda, and this one seemed like it definitely had a destination...Read more

When I used to live in the city, I would use my lunch break from work to shop one-day sample sales. This had the dual advantage of keeping me slim (no lunch) and getting cool clothes at a bargain. Of course, there were no dressing rooms at these things, and I live in fear of the day a hidden-camera tape surfaces on the internet of me ripping ...Read more

As I perused the latest fashion magazine, I noticed something about the models.

They all had big eyebrows. Big, perfect eyebrows. Big, sculpted, perfectly groomed and arched eyebrows.

And I did not.

Not that I'm comparing myself to a model, because that would be impossible on just so many levels. I could not make myself 6 feet tall, 115 ...Read more

When it comes to desserts, there are three kinds of people: sugary-dessert people, fruit-dessert people and no-dessert people. I'm a sugary-dessert person, and like most sugary-dessert people, I don't get the other kinds of dessert people at all. I can almost understand no-dessert people. But fruit-dessert people? Fruit as a dessert seems like...Read more

"Hello, hello," I said when I saw my husband's number come up on my phone.

Nothing.

"Hellllloooooooooo?" I said louder.

"Can I have a tall decaf skim mocha Frappuccino?" I heard my husband say. It sounded like he wasn't talking directly into his phone but rather from a galaxy far, far away.

"HELLLLOOOOOO!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. ...Read more

Back in my early days of suburbia, I received one or two catalogs in the mail, and that was about it. However, catalogs, I soon learned, are like rabbits: They tend to multiply if left unattended. At first I looked forward to the occasional Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma catalogs. Not that I was buying, because we were young and house poor. ...Read more

Being the deep, substantial person that I am, I was kind of hoping that following my knee replacement surgery, my at-home physical therapist would resemble someone like Jason Momoa. Unfortunately, it seemed all the buff therapists had already been assigned, because I ended up with one who looked more like Ant-Man than Aquaman.

Still, I didn't...Read more

"I think it's time we retired this oven," I said to my husband as I displayed a sheet of blackened sweet potato fries. "Even the dog won't eat these."

"Sure he will," he said, tossing some fries on the floor. The dog immediately sucked them down.

"Not my point," I said.

We had known our oven was on its last burners for quite some time. But ...Read more

It was one of those days where everything was taking a ridiculously long time. There was a line at the dry cleaners. A line at the supermarket. A line at the gas station. I was starting to think that everyone in the world had the same to-do list that I did; they were just one to-do ahead of me the whole day.

I finally made it to the last ...Read more