Hey Facebook Fam!

Big news! I’ve decided to live in a van down by the river! 🚐🌊🙌

You’re probably saying to yourself, “Wow, why didn’t I think of ditching my job and my home and my family to live in a van down by the river?”

Well, I’ve been following a lot of #RVlife posts on the IG and I couldn’t stop thinking about how great it would be to live in a van down by the river!

And then I watched that movie Nomadland with Frannie McDormand, and maybe I took the scene about pooping into a bucket the…

Open Letters

Dear Rocky,

First of all, I’d like to apologize for thinking you were a groundhog. But it’s dark in my basement, and you’ve taken up residence in an old coal chute in a hundred-year-old house, so cut me some slack. I’ve got a lot going on, not least of which is ancient electrical wiring, snakes in my bedroom, and now a feral tub of lard who contributes nothing towards the heating bill.

Somehow you came in from the outside (I’m still trying to Nancy Drew that one), chewed through the drywall compound and screening that covered the hole in the…

Dearest Mother —

I write to you from doggy jail, a Hellish place from which all hope has fled. The conditions here are unspeakable. My bedding is but a scrap of fabric thrown carelessly to the floor by the Warden (that would be you).

My cell contains no couch. No recliner. No second couch. No comfy pillows upon which to drool and fart. No Queen-size Sealy Posturepedic to lie across diagonally so that no one else has room to sleep except for one inch of mattress right at the edge.

And worst of all (I beg that you steel yourself…

or Why Everything That Is Good For You Sucks

I remember the old days when only hippies did yoga. People who looked like they smelled bad and had dirty feet. Swamis and whatnot. Kooks, weirdos. John Lennon. Ralph Nader, probably (I have not researched this). People who drove VW Bugs, and not the hip, cute VW Bugs that are out there now. These were Bugs that always had at least one fender scraping the tire.

I’m not sure we’ve actually progressed that far, the only difference being that now the hippies wear Lululemon and Jo Malone perfume. …

Hey, everybody! I’m Tyler W’s mommy!

I hate to break into your Zoom class, but I’m having a teeny tiny emergency right now. I’m in labor! Who knows what labor is? Wow, Amanda, that’s right. You should probably think about becoming an OB/GYN. Oh, you have seven brothers and sisters. Well, that explains it.

I have to admit that I wasn’t totally prepared yet for this to happen. For one thing, we’re having the bathroom remodeled, so the bathtub is sitting outside in the driveway where the contractor left it. I think I saw a raccoon in it yesterday.

Tyler’s…

It’s almost impossible for me to make it through a conversation without dropping at least (at least) one F-bomb. Criminal law isn’t a field for people with delicate sensibilities. I usually sound like either a sailor on shore leave or a brothel madam in a gold mining camp.

But sometimes I have to act right and talk to normal people who aren’t on parole. How can I express all the rage and hostility that boils within me without using language that makes parents dive for their kids yelling, “EARMUFFS!” like Vince Vaughn in Old School?

Sure, the “What the Hell?”…

Humor

Now that our favorite geek and computer overlord is headed to splitsville, let’s look at some of the pick-up lines he’s practicing in the mirror every night while he tries on different sweaters.

“Want to come up and see my motherboard?”

“I’ve got something bigger than a terabyte, if you know what I mean.”

“You’d look great in nothing but my V-neck/dress shirt combo.”

“I’m the founder of Microsoft. Can I crash at your place tonight?”

“Forget paradise. I’ve got two tickets to Davos.”

“Do you like raisins? ’Cause I’m raisin’ money to lower infant mortality.”

“Do you know what…

It never turns out well when I go to the fancy grocery store across town. Dick Goddard, a famous local weather personality, almost ran me down there once in his giant SUV. He was much smaller in real life than he was on TV. All I saw was his tiny shriveled head above the steering wheel as he bore down on me.

I forgave him because he liked dogs.

Every time I step through the doors of the fancy, rich people’s grocery store, I expect alarms to go off and burly men to appear out of nowhere. “That’s a nice…