Sonya Redi lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with a puppy she is pretty sure is more popular than her. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hobart, and Girls Get Busy. She is also a writer for Screen Slate.
A helpful trick can be to picture feminine words (pumpkin latte, duvet cover) as butterflies. Soft, delicate, hard to catch, and useless except near flowers. Masculine words are more like knives.