If they’re of interest to us, we’ve seen them already, the daily articles that speak to this crisis I’m living. Just in case you weren’t paying attention though, this pandemic is having an effect on parents.

Especially mothers.

Especially single mothers.

Especially single mothers who are also students or professionals.

My child has thankfully reached an age where holing up in her room is something she wants to do and although I’ve never been that type of parent, it’s come to this:

I’ve supplied her with enough screens that the secret police will never not know what’s happening in here…

It’s been a while since I’ve been on Medium, but weird things happened. Those three-year-old articles stopped paying for my membership and I got busy elsewhere (keep reading). Simultaneously I gained a lot more followers. So, I thought it might be time to just drop an update. Or maybe a listicle. Those are still a thing, right?

Are they?

I don’t know. I literally haven’t been around, though it seems like little has changed — I still haven’t figured out how to rid my Medium homepage of “how I made money six things that digital nomad blah blah blah.” …

We’re #1 in the #2 Business.

This is the slogan of the local people who’ve helped us deal with our year-long plumbing saga recently. It’s on the business card of the guy who unabashedly handed it to me while standing in my driveway assessing our shitty situation. After handing me his card he put some rubber gloves on, got down in the hole where we’d dug out the “solids” opening to our septic tank, and began unscrewing the bolts on top.

These guys, they’re desensitized. I am curious and I’ve raised a small human. I consider myself to have a strong stomach because of this (after…

My daughter was emotional as I read her a Dr. Seuss* story before bed.

“That’s not very nice!” she said tearfully.

The Star Belly Sneeches had found something about themselves that made them feel “better than” and were being awful about it, and my daughter clearly understood something about this already.

In their endless quest to be “better than”, some flaunted their starry bellies. Those who did not have star bellies sought to be more like the others. They wanted to be invited to parties. Someone else saw an opportunity to capitalize on that desire, so after a few rounds…

I lived through 911, watching it all unfold from my rooftop in Brooklyn. I moved through the next few weeks in a haze, breathing in the smoke and ashes of buildings and humans as it landed on our windowsills just across the river.

I don’t remember this much tragedy as a child. I will be 45 soon, and the only tragedies I really remember happened in my own home. My mother lived through the race riots in Detroit. Me? …

I’ve read at least three articles on Medium recently about people defending their right not to have children, why we should stop breeding, how much we lose by having children, etc.

This latest piece by Wudan Yan is what really inspired me to take this further, however. I get it — the world is in major shift. Everything people have been taught is in upheaval.

Frankly, though, I’m terrified that a “scientist and environmental journalist” has enough faith in the human race to think making the choice not to have children is an intelligent and beneficial thing for the planet…

I arrived in Portland, Oregon, in early September. While it was humid where I’d come from, nothing compared me for the wetness of Portland, even in its “dry” moments. Greenery popped out of sidewalk cracks, and in Portland, it wasn’t some sort of symbolic determination of life despite odds like it was back in New York.

Here, green stuff poured from every surface, as if the city had carved itself out a spot in the plant life, as if the two had reached an agreement to cohabitate.

Spiders were everywhere. Overnight, plump and speckled garden spiders would weave webs across…

Here’s the shocker, perhaps: I had no idea who Anthony Bourdain was. It was post-death that I spent hours on the internet going “goddamn it!” while I watched Youtube video after Youtube video of a guy who, as it turned out, I probably would have really loved (and you may wonder, how in the world did someone live life without knowing who Anthony Bourdain was? I can’t name a single Rihanna song, either, if that helps make any more sense out of things).

Kate Spade, sure, I knew who Kate Spade was. Although I have a distinct fondness for bags…