ByKathleen Cooper

Kathleen Cooper is a writer from Virginia. Her work has appeared in The Toast, The Airship, The Washington Post, and Medium. When she isn't rooting for the California Golden Bears, she designs textile art, reads cookbooks in bed, and wrangles two cats, a golden retriever, and her husband.

  1. I didn’t know I needed a service dog, but I did.

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  2. If Ted Cruz were your husband, you’d start to see cans of soup turn up in unlikely places, like those ubiquitous garden gnomes. You’d spy a stranger in the crowd holding up a can of Chipotle Chicken and Corn Chowder, and you’d startle, and then think, “Those are NOT traditional chowder flavors!” When you’d get in an elevator, there would be a can of soup in the corner.

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  3. What is it about tea that is so wonderful, so calming? It is a delightful elixir, sweetly fragrant, older than coffee and more subtle. It’s not especially difficult to make a good cup of tea. So why is it almost impossible to get one here?

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  4. Kathleen Cooper's previous work for The Toast can be found here. It’s a shame that we don’t often celebrate the creators of small pleasures. Creators of Big Things -- like cars, light bulbs, and antibiotics -- understandably receive a great deal of attention, but when it comes to the small events in history, we seem to suffer from collective amnesia. The origins of the first birthday party are lost in the mists of time.

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  5. Visionary philosopher Brillat-Savarin said “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” Most of us would agree that a wonderful culinary invention would make us happier than knowing Pluto’s planetary status. What if it were the invention of a new cookie? Now we’re talking happiness. One such great invention:  The Toll House Cookie™. Most cookie lovers will agree that the invention of

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  6. According to Herodotus, when Greek soldiers met the Scythians in battle, they were amazed to see Scythian women on horseback fighting alongside the men, all wearing pants and decorated armor. When they went back to Greece they immortalized those Scythian women for posterity as the legendary Amazons in their poetry and art. Painting them looking both chic and fierce, their pictures of the Amazons are some of the earliest Western artworks showing women

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  7. I The harsh sterile lights of the hospital are so bright after our mad dash through the summer night. The nurse comes out and takes us to a room and says that the Doctor will be in shortly. I didn’t know then that that is a very bad sign. “Your grandmother has died of a heart attack,” the doctor says. II We wait in the waiting room. The surgeon comes out. There is no request…

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  8. The author was inspired by #NYTwomensobits.

    Clementine Churchill’s husband, Winston, son of the famous American socialite Jennie Jerome, has died at 91. Sir Winston was an accomplished amateur painter and famous for his tea-cakes.

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    Rosalind Franklin’s lab partner, James Watson, has passed away at 98. For many years a scientist, his true calling was home cooking and he was said to make a wonderful…

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