I was on my way to prison. And I was panicked that they wouldn’t let me in. How could I have let this happen?

I was late, as usual, and lost, as usual. For over an hour, I had been getting on one off-ramp and on another, driving more and more frantically, and more recklessly. This was in the ancient days before cell phones. No GPS. No ETA. Paper maps if you can imagine such a thing.

It was 9:40 in the morning. If I didn’t get to the Terminal Island Federal Correctional prison by 10:00, I wouldn’t be let…

First, it’s worth knowing that my therapist “Laura” is one of the gentlest, kindest people I’ve ever known. As in, she has a Zen master calm about her. Given the story that I’m about to tell, also know that she isn’t normally so rude. She is a beautiful and elegant woman who wears exquisite, expensive shoes and great clothes, which shouldn’t matter in a therapist. But I find a well-dressed therapist to be reassuring and aspirational.

The fact that Laura’s such a composed and dignified person made what she said to me in therapy that much more shocking. Actually, the…

“Excuse me, this tastes like death.” I am holding up a bag of maca powder to show the very nice woman at Trader Joe’s customer service counter. I’d bought the maca powder a week before. It was an impulse buy, me hoping that this would be the thing that would turn everything around, just maybe. But when I got home and ate a spoonful, I gagged. It was one of the foulest things I’d ever tasted.

Trader Joe’s is just about the best place on Earth and among its infinite attributes, if you don’t like a purchase, they will take…

Years ago, I judged people who had affairs. Of course, I did. Adulterers are weak-willed, cruel, selfish, deserving of all the scorn and shame piled upon them. What sort of person betrays a spouse and risks tearing apart a family? I’m that sort of person.

From the outside, having an affair looks tawdry and scandalous. From the inside, you feel reborn. Life is suddenly sparkling with possibility. A superhuman energy courses through you. Thrilling, yes, but also as terrifying as any midnight walk in an alleyway or rollercoaster ride during which you are sure you’ll be flung to your death…

Tonight, I will put onion slices on my feet.

An herbal woman on Instagram recommends it. Go to sleep with onion slices inside your socks, she said. Cotton is best. You will wake up less toxic. You will have a spring in your step. She went so far as to suggest that if you do this on a regular basis, your life will be transformed. You will be healthier and happier.

“Guess what I’m doing tonight?” I ask my teenage daughter Cloe. “You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.”

“Yoga?”

“Nope.” It’s pointless making her guess. My daughter is…

Oh, I’ll tell you what’s worse. Having your friends seat you next to their cat at the dinner table.

I can’t do this. Stay sitting with all of these laughing couples. So I go to my room and lie in bed.

Don’t be sad. Don’t be sad. Don’t be sad.

Come up with a better mantra, Leslie, a positive one.

OK. How about, I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I love myself is a stretch.

“I’m having a mid-life affair with myself,” I once told Lauren, my therapist, when I found myself single after more than two…

Don’t judge until you wind up single and alone.

At this moment, I have a chicken in my closet. It’s not like there’s a cow in the kitchen or a goat in the bathroom. Just saying, for context. Alice B. Toklas is perched on the ledge of an old chair.

Alice was for years our best chicken until we got three new chicks at the beginning of the pandemic. Then little Charlie Parker became our best chicken.

Alice’s best-chicken qualities: She is fearless and does whatever she wants. She’s also a loner and for most of her life found herself at the bottom of the pecking order. (How do…

Two years ago, I found what I thought was a wasp’s nest in the backyard. I asked my friend Solveig to come to look at it since Solveig is just the person to ask about a wasp nest or a plant or bug. This nest was a cone, not a basket, and woven with sprigs and lichen and spider webs. “That’s not a wasp nest,” Solveig said. “That’s a Bushtit nest! You’re so lucky to have a Bushtit nest!”

You heard that right. Bushtit. Get it over with and laugh your head off. Someone went and named a bird a…