A celiac's stories from the dermatologist, allergist, and (yay) the gynecologist. Coming at you in the aftermath of a panic-spiral during which there was much Googling and worst-case-scenario-ing of everything that can go wrong with my body. Hi, it’s me—your friendly neighborhood celiac. To date, I’ve only met one other person with celiac disease (other than my dad (Thanks, Dad, for passing on the faulty genes. Love you.)). She was a fellow American I met by chance at a gluten-free perogi...
4 months ago • 9 min read
Plus artful delights from a weekend in Cannes et Le Cannet Last week I took a few days off to go visit a friend in Cannes. On my train ride back home to Toulouse, I spent my time chatting with the guy in the coffee cart (Sure, I have an anglophone's accent, but if you tell me I sound like Jane Birkin when I speak French, I'll take it!), staring wistfully out the window at the languid, blue-green landscape, and reading the latest issue of L’Express from back to front. Why back to front? I...
4 months ago • 5 min read
“Everyone lives by selling something,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, whom Wikipedia calls “a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer.” But did Stevenson (who died in 1894, by the way) know that the Instagram girlies and the Twitter bros would be selling their asses and their biceps (excuse me—their green juices and their protein shakes) from morning ‘til night with no respite in sight? I’m going to guess probably not. All hypocritical finger-pointing aside (I, too, am a flawed...
5 months ago • 6 min read
WTF, right? Have we stumbled back to Tumblr and all its side bangs, smudged eyeliner, and adolescent woes of 2012? Not quite. We’re far closer to thirty than we or our not-so-subtle gray hairs would like to admit with our feet firmly planted on the ground and our heads grazing but no longer lost high up in the clouds. Say it with me: Life is sad and then you die. This is the saying that will set you free. (And I’m an optimist! If you can believe it.) Hear me out: Life is full of sadness....
5 months ago • 4 min read
Living With 3 Strangers from Craigslist Was Actually Really Great There’s value in meeting people who aren’t like you or your friends. “My roommates? Oh, I live with three guys I met on Craigslist.” The guy I was talking to at the bar raised his eyebrows in what I could tell was a last-minute effort to appear casual and conceal his, I don’t know, shock (?) at what he’d just heard. This happened pretty often. Three of my closest friends are two strange men I met on Craigslist. (The third is...
5 months ago • 6 min read
Hey there, Let me ask you something. When was the last time you took yourself out to dinner? Or went on a weekend getaway by yourself? Or just went to the movies alone? (OK, I know nobody goes to the movies anymore … ) If so (or if not), would you consider yourself a loner? And is that a good thing? Being a loner gets a bad rap Quite unfairly, in my opinion. When you Google the word “loner,” the first thing that comes up is the Oxford English Dictionary, which says loners are people who...
5 months ago • 3 min read