I got my first vaccine shot on Easter Sunday, prompting all sorts of blasphemous jokes about being resurrected from lockdown, though it’ll be another five weeks (three to my next shot, and another two after that) before all those little antibodies build up. I felt fine in the aftermath, and still do now, though this…
It’s funny, the things that finally set you off. Like, I’ve always presumed that I was a relatively hinged person, but here I am, utterly unhinged. For some of you, this will be unsurprising. Some of you will be thinking, “Geraldine, YOU WERE NEVER HINGED. YOU HAVE FEWER HINGES THAN A SLIDING DOOR.” And I…
My husband turned 40 at the beginning of July. I wanted a Bacchanalian celebration, cake and lights and streamers and swarms of people, forgetting entirely that this milestone wasn’t about me. The realization would hit me eventually, before too much planning had occurred: he didn’t want a big to-do. Nor did he want, he insisted,…
The problem with any writer who happens to experience that rare, fleeting phenomenon known as “external validation” is that for a few moments, we go a little mad. Which is to say: we start believing our own hype. And for a writer, truly, what greater madness is there than believing in yourself? Don’t get me…
Hello, hi, yes, I would like to speak to the manager please? No, I don’t think that this is something you could help me with … okay. Okay, fine. Yes, so I’ve been shopping here for several years, and it’s always been a really positive experience. But yesterday I was walking down the freezer aisle…
I had not worn the socks in years when I fished them out of the back of the drawer. They had survived the journey to college and six subsequent moves. They were one of the few relics of my past that had not been destroyed in the recent fire that consumed my mother’s home. They…
Dear Friends, As you know, Rand and I are social creatures. We thrive on seeing the people we love, on following the winding paths of your lives, on quietly building a history of private jokes and shared experiences together. We aren’t simply growing old with each other, we are growing old with all of you,…
I don’t know when the idea for this year’s Halloween costume originated. Rand and I have been talking about it for years. It’s the sort of thing that stays simmering on the back burner for so long that you almost have to wonder if it’ll ever come to fruition, or if the idea will simply…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a married man in possession of a house will one day find himself in a shouting match with his spouse about something trivial like throw pillows. All of this will likely happen at IKEA. If that man has refused to go to IKEA, because he has justly concluded…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
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