How to Put Your Mind at Rest Each Night

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Lift the seat cushion from the green brocade couch where your family's been lounging, hold them vertically, shake 3 times and replace. Repeat with the back cushions. Smooth the matching throw pillows and place each at a slight angle toward each other. There’s a place for everything. Eyeball the identical end tables and lamps on either side of the sofa. Make sure each lamp is centered. Empty and wipe the etched bronze ashtray and place it at the corner of the table on the left side of the couch close enough for your wife to reach. Center the piano bench beneath the keys. Chaos lurks in disorder. Unravelling can be measured in millimeters. Arrange your children’s’ pictures on the stereo console so that the high school graduation photos of your daughter and son are minutely angled and flanking the portrait of your three year old daughter. Pause for a moment wondering at the incongruity of it. Move on to the television console in front of the window. Slide the felt bottomed marble reproduction of the Pieta you brought back from Italy toward the back left corner. Move it again, a fraction of an inch closer to you. She is disconcerting, this sorrowful virgin. How can she be appeased? Position the statue so that she has full view of the room. Everything in its place. Click the switch of the lamp on the TV twice toward you so that it turns from the highest to lowest setting. A soft glow in the darkness, a guard against the void. Walk soundlessly across the carpet until you reach the familiar squeak of the bottom step of the stairway. Extend your right hand forward and grip the bannister so that you can pull yourself forward. Stop and turn back to the living room. You’ve conquered another night.

- Teresa Giordano writes non-fiction television programs on topics ranging from earwigs to forensic anthropology, to the southwest border, to bad-ass presidents. She’s also crafted dialogue for some of those reality TV stars you think are being spontaneous. She’s published fiction in Devilfish Review, Pyschopomp, and in an echapbook titled Strange Encounters. She’s published non-fiction in The Weeklings. 

Everyday Cloth Napkins

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He was the handsome product of an excessive upbringing, immodestly garish by sensible Midwest standards. His business casual wardrobe was unmistakably prep schooled, and always buttoned down. He was a classic. As classics sometimes do, he was unable to adapt gracefully to some generally accepted conveniences of our modern lives. Namely, paper napkins.

Over time, he learned to tolerate them as a necessary evil, reluctantly procured with fast food perhaps.

If you are also among the genetically classist and/or enjoy mild to moderate OCD, the cloth napkining lifestyle is practical and easy to implement.

Everyday cloth napkins must be cotton, and of a woven variety that is wrinkle-free post-clothesdryer. While color and pattern are a matter of preference, anything too endearing is bound to get hoarded away for a dinner that will never happen. I prefer classic-size darker neutrals. Oversized napkins are annoying and basically less charming tea towels.

Keep your napkins in an accessible kitchen drawer or countertop basket. Two sets of eight are plenty for most people, and unsoiled napkins can be set aside for personal reuse. Rotating them into like colored laundry is a good habit to ensure you always have several clean.

Solo meals frequently eaten in alternative spaces can be made exponentially more enjoyable with a cloth napkin. On the sofa, use one to carry then hold a hot soup bowl, or insulate a cup of ice cream. Guests may question the "need" for such extravagances while eating pizza off your coffee table. Shrug them off knowing you won't be forced to look at or clean up their defiled tacky paper wads.

image by the author

image by the author