Domestiphobia

I walked through the streets lauded with aplomb. Smiles and shouts of “brava!” and “bravissima!”  echoed across the cobblestone, to the extent that I worried my 6-month-old might let it go to her head.
One woman actually clapped and I laughed, shrugging, claiming “è niente,” it’s nothing, above the protests of my sciatic nerve and that crevasse between my shoulder blades screaming, “It most certainly is something! You’ll pay for this later.”...

I thought sincerely about hyperventilating before realizing that’s only something that people with legit, diagnosed claustrophobia might do.
Those like me, who just don’t like tight spaces (so basically everyone on the planet who doesn’t have legit, diagnosed claustrophobia), don’t hyperventilate. We just get a little panicky while our minds contemplate the worst: what if those doors never...

I didn’t want to say anything about it, but it’s like she knows.
After all the accoutrements, the lavishing of ceiling fixtures, the adorning with paint and the stripping of floors, it’s like she knows, like they always do, it wasn’t all just for her — that behind the vintage painted cabinets we had an ulterior motive...

It’s like there’s an invader in our home.
At least, that’s what the dogs think.
The good news is she’s relatively quiet (so far) and doesn’t take up much space (so far). The bad news is that our expenditures on absorption pads for urine and fecal matter have officially cut into my wine budget and, for the first two weeks, the very...