Humor
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Orange Is the New Purple
When I decided to color my hair, it was not because I suddenly had a desire to be a blonde bombshell or a foxy redhead. As a fifty-something-year-old, I would need more than a bottle of hair dye to transform into a bombshell or a fox. I suspect it would have taken full-body liposuction and a stupendously gifted fairy godmother. Fortunately, ...Read more
Jerry Zezima: Look who's walking
My heart surgeon told me to take a hike, so I bought a pedometer. Then he told me that my surgery was canceled and I didn’t have to take a hike. But I already had the pedometer.
So I took a hike.
It was a walk in the park — or, actually, around the neighborhood — compared to the excessive ambulation I would have to do each day while ...Read more
Putting My Foot Down
For all the obsessing I've done about my body parts, the one area that has always escaped the harsh glare of my overcritical eye is my feet. Certainly they are not perfect feet, and Manolo Blahnik would never beat down my door to have me model his shoes. But as feet go, they are fairly unassuming; I would even go so far as to say cute. I ...Read more
A Requiem for Debris
The mattresses. They're so sad.
I keep sharing this thought with people who scrunch up their brows. When there is so much to be sad about, why the ennui about an abandoned bed?
Because it's not natural to see mattresses piled along the road, three, four, five at a time. A mattress is a sanctuary, a piece of personal polymer where our bodies ...Read more
Jerry Zezima: A pain in the grass
According to an old saying, which can probably be attributed to my neighbors, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
But now that my neighbors have installed a new fence, and a landscaper has worked turf magic on my once-barren property, I can happily say that the grass is green on my side, too.
For the past several years,...Read more
When Napportunity Knocks
"When's dinner?" my husband asked me when he got home as I stood in the kitchen stirring a sauce.
"Pretty soon," I replied.
"Do you mind if I close my eyes for a minute?" he requested, putting down his bag and taking off his jacket.
I nodded. When most people say they're going to close their eyes for a minute, they actually mean more like ...Read more
Jerry Zezima: Weather or not
I was born during a blizzard, I am all wet even during droughts and, perhaps a contributing factor to global warming, I am full of hot air.
This alone would qualify me to be a television weather expert.
But I have made it official by buying a rain gauge and an outdoor thermometer and hygrometer. I also have the world’s most impressive ...Read more
After Two Ferocious Storms, Making Peace with Florida
Driving across Florida in the middle of the night after a hurricane, that's one way to make peace with your God. Or start to try.
My husband and I look up from our evacuation hotel in West Palm Beach after the storm and know, in a deep, bone-and-soul kind of way, that we can't stay one minute longer. We have to cut a line through this state ...Read more
Apple of My Eye
My husband is a Honeycrisp snob.
If you're not familiar with this, Honeycrisp is a kind of apple, and according to him, it is a superior apple. All other apples are lesser apples. He will not eat a Fuji, Gala or Pink Lady. Only Honeycrisp will do. My son will also only eat Honeycrisp apples. So, I guess in this case, the apple really doesn't ...Read more
Can We Continue To Live on the Edge of Disaster?
Are you OK?
How did you fare?
Storm victims woke pelting impossible questions into the ether, texting, posting, gathering debris and fishing furniture from toxic waters. Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 behemoth, plowed into Florida's Big Bend last week. The storm's impacts amounted to what experts in the lead-up kept calling...Read more
Jerry Zezima: The Cardiac Kid
If there is one thing that will make your heart pound faster than finding out you need cardiac surgery, it’s finding out, mere hours before the operation, that you don’t.
Thus did my supposedly faulty ticker skip several beats when my cardiovascular surgeon called me the day before surgery was scheduled and said, “I have good news and bad...Read more
The King of Cling
Not that I'm obsessive or anything, but years ago when my kids were little, I would carry entire kiddie wardrobes around with me so that when my kids got dirty, I could strip them down on the spot and change their clothes.
Of course, this started to become pretty embarrassing for the kids by the time they hit 20, so I stopped.
It also meant ...Read more
Jerry Zezima: Testing my patience
When you’re scheduled to have heart surgery, nothing tests your heart more than pre-surgical testing.
I have had more tests than I ever had in school. Fortunately, I have passed them all, which is more than I can say for the tests I took during my ignominious academic career, when I regularly made the dishonor roll.
My worst subject was math...Read more
Attack of the Frozen Forehead
Recently I noticed that the shallow lines on my forehead had started to morph into wandering rivers. Since I wear my hair very short, there wasn't really any way to cover them up, and I complained to my husband that I was starting to look old.
"How old do you think you look?" he asked.
"Around 60," I replied.
"You are around 60," he said.
...Read more
Why do we fall for fall?
Yes, it’s that glorious season that so many pumpkin-spice addicts claim to be their favorite. I must admit that, I, too, succumb each year to the autumnal charms of fall, except for my seemingly never-ending battle with leaves, or, as I like to call them – tree dandruff.
So what is it that ironically draws us to a season that marks the ...Read more
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