I’m a huge fan of the self-checkout option at grocery stores. True, it minimizes the chance I’m going to interact with someone and get a story out of it—which is basically what I live for in public—but the time I get back by using the self-checkout is often worth the trade-off. The truth is, I’m …
My daughter Josephine turned 10 this July, though based on her recent transformation, she might as well be 16. Without warning, the markers of her identity—the colorful bows in her hair, the sparkly pink t-shirts—ended up in the Goodwill bin. For years, Josephine was obsessed with JoJo Siwa, a ponytailed cherub who rose to fame …
The brutal Virginia heat gave us a respite last week. Instead of the crushing upper 90s we’ve had the majority of the summer, the thermometer tickled the low-80s, and we celebrated by opening the windows and venturing outside. The families in our neighborhood had the same idea, so we found ourselves standing in the cul …
We went back to school shopping today, and honestly, I can think of fewer things I dislike more. It’s not the shopping—I can absolutely get on board with that. I love me an excuse to buy clothes I don’t need—in fact, I revel in the idea that we’ve been conditioned to buy new clothes for …
I got an interesting email this morning from the Alexandria City government, thanking me for applying to their Office of Communications. Unfortunately, the email read, they had decided to go in a different direction and selected another candidate. A very considerate email to send—except for the fact that I’d applied for that position over a …
When you’re on vacation, the temptation is to eat every meal out. You’ve slaved in the kitchen for the last 50 weeks, and dammit, you want someone else to cook your chicken nuggets for you. But as my wife Melinda and I have discovered, feeding a family of five a dozen times at a restaurant …
My old friend Vinny got married last weekend, and though I didn’t go to the wedding, I had the pleasure of experiencing it vicariously through my friends’ Instagram feeds. A lot of the pictures were of those photo booth strips that have the name and date at the bottom. The Petrocelli’s – June 25, 2022, …
Last month, we went up to Melinda’s hometown and saw her cousin Leslie. Leslie and her husband David used to live near us in Virginia, but they had a daughter and a set of twin boys in quick succession and decided it would be much easier to weather the child-rearing storm if they were closer …
This past weekend, Melinda and Robert and I took a mini vacation to Philly. We visited some of my friends from high school, saw my parents, and took Robert to the aquarium in Camden. We got a hotel right in Center City and spent several hours walking around like tourists, taking pictures at the Reading …
Melinda and I have lived in our new house for a year now, but we’re still at the point where we’re making weekly discoveries about it. There are three or four random light switches, as well as a series of motion-sensor exterior lights that don’t seem to have switches at all. For awhile the biggest …
I Don't Belong Here. 