Everydaystranger

Dear Maggie and Mumin,
One year ago today, you came to live with me.
It was fraught. You nearly died. I worried about taking you away from the home you’d known. I worried you’d miss X Partner Unit, that you wouldn’t know how to react to your new Stepfather, that you’d hate being here. [...]

“We need to talk about your behavior!” I shout. “I am so tired of these backhanded comments, I feel our relationship has denigrated to the point where it cannot be rescued, to the point where there is no justification for our feelings!” With that, I administer a slap to the pale flesh of [...]

So on Saturday we have Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving comes on a Saturday in our world, as the world goes on for Thanksgiving Thursday, as Thursday will be spent quietly curled up on the sofa, with me thinking about what it would be like-football (real football!) playing on the TV. We would have woken up [...]

The world outside is a sea of mist and fog, frost dancing on the ground and tickling the leaves around the train ties. For this time of day, the commuter service is quieter than usual. It should be packed with people who don’t know where they’re going and don’t know why they’re going, [...]

Yesterday most of my technical team and I met up in the cold and frosty afternoon to watch a rugby game in Twickenham, a suburb of London. The day dawned utterly frozen and cold, so I decided to try to look “sporty” and donned a few layers, a bright pink hat, and striped gloves [...]

Living in England has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that I can have all the curry options a person could want, plus I have the happiness of complete and total access to a whole world of cheese goodness from England, the continent, and beyond. The problem I’ve found is that if [...]

There’s a layer of frost outside on the grounds turning everything pastel when I’d still been marvelling at the hot lushness of the fall colors, but in truth I’m glad.
I love Winter.
I love the downhill slope into Christmas, the small ledge of Thanksgiving. I have been away from the States for almost 6 years [...]

Dear Very Nice Biopsy Receptionist,
Thank you for ringing me late Tuesday. You can send me the lab bill to:
22 Ass Bleed Continues
c/o Suppositories Not Working Way
Polypsville
UK12 7UK
Hemorrhoidia.
And you can address it to:
Miss Cancer Free.
My friends call me Benign.
-H.

After Ass Bleed, colonoscopies, horrid work situations (that aren’t improving in the slightest), general apathy and depression, the loss of our beautiful home and amorphous Christmas plans, we decided we needed to go away for a weekend. Catch up on sleep, shag a lot, and just try to get away from life for a [...]

From a child through to today, if I have any kind of fever, sedation or anesthetic I hallucinate like it’s going out of style. I never remember these episodes but I understand that it’s greatly entertaining to those around me. Many years ago when I had to have two of my wisdom teeth [...]

Right now my intestines are panting. Seriously. I have them pictured as looking like Paul Sorvino, dressed in gauche velour sweatpants and wearing a headband, panting and bracing himself against a light pole. In his choppy New York accent he pants: I’m working out muscles I never knew I had! I [...]

When I was a little kid I already had the makings of an IBS recipient, and all at the age of still being attracted to dungarees. IBS found me, gripped me, and decided to mark its territory all over me, and all while I was just wanting to grow in adult teeth. Think [...]

Two Wednesdays ago I was in the pub with my work mates, ostensibly trying to shake off the work doldrums and the stress and just relax. Into my second glass of wine, the jokes flowing and the hatred of our jobs melting away under the ale-soaked base of a beer mat, my phone rang. [...]

We are trying to keep from tumbling into a depression the size of Montana.
Yesterday afternoon Angus’ estate agent for his home near Brighton called.
The couple that were bidding on his house have pulled out of the sale. In fact, they’d been secretly bidding on another property for a few weeks now and just didn’t [...]