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A nice change of scenery The old wooden folding table belonged to my grandma. I don’t remember her ever using it. After she moved out of her house and into a retirement home, my sister inherited the table, but she didn’t use it much either. The table has four wooden folding chairs that tuck beneath it and the whole thing rolls on casters. My husband, Peter, and I are moving to be closer to family and we don’t have a serviceable table for our new place. “Bring the folding table when you come,” I told my sister. “We’ll use it until we find a new table!”

The fanciest desk in the world Carrie Classon Contributing columnist Everyone knows that I am attached to my desk. I would argue I have good reason. My desk is an extension of myself. Whereas other people are attached to their phones, I frequently lose track of mine. (Just writing this made me wonder where it was. Don’t worry; I found it.) My desk is my home inside my home. I hear about people working from their couch or from their kitchen table or even from their bed and I cannot imagine it. My desk is always tidy. I always have fresh flowers sitting on it — even if it’s just a rose f...

Wonder if they’ll miss me? Tanner and Dakota are waiting for me. They’re standing at the corner of their chain-link fence, watching the sidewalk. They know I’m coming, even if they don’t know exactly when, even if they can’t see the sidewalk very well and can’t hear at all. Tanner and Dakota are my two oldest dog customers, dogs I give treats to nearly every day. My husband, Peter, has decided against paying the big bucks for high-priced dog treats full of questionable ingredients. He bought himself a dog-bone-shaped cookie cutter, did some research on the internet, and now he bak...

Still nagging the curmudgeon Carrie Classon Contributing columnist It is a well-known fact that we are allowed to chew out the people we care about. Most recently, this came to mind when I gave my old friend, Andrew, a serious tongue-lashing. Andrew is a lifelong bachelor, and a committed curmudgeon. He is better than most curmudgeons at being curmudgeonly because he started young. Andrew showed signs of being a grumpy old man when he was still in his 30s. But Andrew is no longer in his 30s, and this is what brought us to our recent conflict. Andrew is not taking care of himself. He would ar...

New systems for a new life I finished my bath and saw that the rust-orange towel had molted all over my body. I was covered with tufts of orange fur. It was not a good look, and it felt worse than it looked. Worse yet, it gave me a taste of what the next two months would be like. My husband, Peter, is a man of many systems, and I have learned to appreciate this over the six years we have been married. He has a particular way to do nearly everything, from making coffee, to washing the dishes, to ordering food stuffs. I have found, by and large, it is best just to stay out of the way and things...