Things That Rock

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Seven for Sunday

Thank goodness for Elisabeth: her F.I.G. Collective project is not only keeping my brain primed to find things to be grateful for this month, but getting me to blog when I feel completely sapped of post ideas.

Here are seven things I’ve been especially thankful for over the past week.

Sunday, February 15: Carla has the day off tomorrow (for President’s Day), so the three of us plus my parents left town for a mini ski getaway. We had great snow, great weather, and a lot of fun. I adore skiing, and I am so grateful to be able to do something I love, with the people I love.

The morning started out foggy but the snow was perfect and no one was there!

Monday, February 16: The grocery store still has a TON of beautiful Valentine’s Day floral arrangements – and they’re all half off! I snapped up this cute little planter.

Tuesday, February 17: Even though we hire a cat sitter to come take care of the kitty twice a day while we’re out of town, he acts as though we have abandoned him for years to fend for himself. He demonstrates his relief at our return through days of intense and unending purrs and Velcro-ing himself to our sides, and I’m not going lie: I love it.

Who knew purring could be so accusatory?

Wednesday, February 18: Guess what arrived in the mail today?!?! What a thrill to be able to experience Nicole’s writing in book form, and to have my own copy of her first novel for my home library.

Thursday, February 19: I had my annual physical with my doctor today. I am grateful that all my labs are normal. I am also grateful that my doctor listens to me and that she was happy to refill prescriptions and submit orders for my first ever colonoscopy. Am I looking forward to this procedure? Hell no. But I have a family history of colon cancer and I am grateful that I’ll be able to get some insights into my intestinal health.

I really would like to decline, but I am NOT GOING TO.

Friday, February 20: For the first time in A WEEK, I sleep through the entire night without waking up. I have been seeing many of the wee hours of the morning lately, and when I’m in a spate of poor sleep it’s easy to feel like it will always be that way. I’m so thankful that I am still capable of sleeping six hours in a row.

Saturday, February 21: Today is the bat mitzvah of a family friend, and it was such a joy to witness her confidence and satisfaction as she led the service in Hebrew. I’ve known this kiddo for more than half a decade now, and as I watched her recite the Torah portion of the service, I could see her little second-grade face superimposed over the face of the beautiful young woman she’s become. Being able to watch Carla grow up and into herself is, of course, such a gift, but I am surprised by how moving it is to watch her friends grow up alongside her. The entire day was joyful and celebratory and I am so thankful to have been part of it.

The cat is wondering why I am using him as a prop.

That’s all I’ve got for you today, Internet. Snow is falling quietly, the cat is waiting for me to play with him, my family is still asleep. I hope you found many things that filled your heart with gratitude and joy this week, and that the week ahead is similarly full.

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Five Good Things Friday (Including a Giveaway!)

This year is sure off to a batshit crazy start, isn’t it. I hope you’re holding up okay, that you’re out there fighting the good fight, that you and your loved ones are warm and safe. If you need, as I do, a break from the endless cycle of WHAT IS GOING ON, you have come to the right place as I have a few good things to share with you.

Good Thing #1: NICOLE’S BOOK IS OUT!!!!! Listen, I am pretty sure that everyone in our cozy blogland community is aware of this by now, but if you are somehow not aware or if you don’t yet know and love Nicole, here is the quick and dirty: Nicole wrote a beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking, hopeful book called Inhale, Exhale and it is now out in the world for all of us to enjoy.

I would love to send someone a copy of Nicole’s novel. That someone could be you, or it could be someone you think would love Nicole’s singular brand of wry humor and warm wisdom (which, honestly, is everyone). Just leave a comment letting me know you’re interested by next Friday, January 30, at midnight Pacific time and I will randomly choose a winner. (I’ll email the winner for details about where to send the book.)

The giveaway is now closed.

Good Thing #2: Winter Wonders Wow, literally everything good pales in comparison to Good Thing #1, so I am jumping straight into a Good Thing that many people dislike. (Including my poor husband.) We are deep into winter, and I am LOVING IT. We have so much snow! We’ve already had one snow day and a cold day and we may have another cold day today and another snow day Monday! Listen, my child has most definitely NOT been in school enough so far in 2026, but if she’s going to miss school, I’m glad it’s for snow and not for illness (that is not an invitation for illness to find us; TOUCHING ALL THE WOOD). I do not mind the cold (although I am of course deeply grateful that I have warm clothes and a warm home, without which I might feel very different), and I love the snow. It feels like magic, the way it transforms the world into something gleaming and soft. I know cold climates are not for everyone, but I adore winter and I’m trying to enjoy every frosty moment.

Good Thing #3: Freezer / Pantry Meal I am working my way through all the goodies I’ve stashed in my freezer over the past eleventy hundred months, and yesterday I was able to whip up a batch of my favorite chipotle chicken tortilla soup with items I already had. I even had a Ziploc full of diced onion, poblano, and jalapeno waiting for me in the freezer! The only thing I had to buy fresh was cilantro. And now I have a huge Tupperware full of delicious soup to get me through these wintry days. (Yes, I also made another batch of cucumber salad. It is so good.)

Good Thing #4: One Fewer Couch For over two years now, we have had an old leather couch standing awkwardly in our piano room. It didn’t go with the space, it had a huge tear in one cushion, all the other cushions were worn past salvaging. And yet there it stayed. Well. The couch is no more! My husband and I finally arranged for the trash collectors to pick it up, and we moved it to the curb earlier this week and it is GONE. All that snow sure came in handy; it was surprisingly easy to slide the couch along the snow-covered lawn.

Good Thing #5: Cat Grandpa My family and I recently left town for a long weekend, leaving the cat at home. We hired a cat sitter to come feed him twice a day (he eats wet food for breakfast and dinner and has access to dry food [and water] all day long). But I was worried that my lovely Lenny cat would be lonely with such big stretches of his day unpeopled. So my father kindly drove 30+ minutes each way to hang out with the cat, every single day we were gone. He also sent me (and Carla) videos and photos of our kitty, because he knew we’d be missing him. Kindest of all, when the weather prevented the cat sitter from getting to our kitty one evening, and Carla sent a rogue text begging her grandfather to step in, my dad immediately got into his car, prepared to make the long drive a second time that day. I assured him that Lenny had access to plenty of fresh water and dry food, so he didn’t need to brave the snow and the dark. But he was at our house first thing the next morning to make sure the cat knew he hadn’t been abandoned. Is that not the sweetest?

Okay Internet, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you have some good things in your life lately, or at least that good things are on the horizon. Sending you love and warmth and cat purrs.

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Five for Friday

Happy Halloween! I know it’s not for everyone, but I adore Halloween. The costumes, the candy, the decorations. It’s all fun. 

Oddly (for me), I haven’t done much more than decorate. Okay, I haven’t done anything more than decorate. And even then, Carla did most of the decorating herself. I haven’t bought any candy, I haven’t made any Halloween treats (although there’s still time for baking!), and we didn’t even buy a pumpkin! The only jack-o-lantern around here is my ceramic one.

Why must you insist on photographing me with these strange objects, woman?!
  • Carla has been really into Halloween this year, and has been leaning into the scary side of it.We’ve been listening to some “scary” audiobooks in the car, which is so fun. Pleasingly, some of my favorite books from when I was a kid hold up pretty well. We’ve listened to as many Zilpha Keatley Snyder books as are available at my library: The Egypt Game, The Witches of Worm, and The Headless Cupid. I love how these books have a slightly supernatural element to them without being overly frightening. As a parent, I also appreciate how insightful they are about kid psychology. Carla loved them. We own the other Stanley mysteries, so hopefully we’ll get to those once we’ve finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is not particularly scary at all and might even be kind of boring. We’ve been reading it for a long time and it’s kind of a slog. But in my memory it was so good! After we exhausted the Snyder audiobooks, we turned to The Dollhouse Murders, which remains an excellent novel and is, unfortunately, the only Betty Ren Wright audiobook my library carries. I see that Audible has Christina’s Ghost in its catalog, but none of Wright’s other wonderfully creepy novels. I get it, they’re old. But they are SO GOOD.  Right now, we’re listening to Doll Bones by Holly Black, another Newbury Honor Winner. It’s pretty good so far.
  • Our seasonal media hasn’t stopped at books; we’ve been watching some scary movies, too. My husband and I watched the first Scream movie with Carla. I think it holds up okay, for a 90s film. It wasn’t as scary as I remember, and Carla was unfazed. Then we watched The Sixth Sense, which I hadn’t seen since I first watched in back in the early aughts. It was much slower than I remember, and Carla didn’t seem quite as shocked by the big twist as I remember being. I suppose movies have gotten a lot twistier in the intervening decades. We tried to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I remember was a lot of fun. But wow. It is SO BAD. My husband and I have also been watching some scary movies instead of our normal nightly TV show. We’ve seen Weapons, which was excellent, and The VVitch, which was also good but in a much less horror-movie kind of way. I liked Weapons because it was kind of a mystery story disguised as a horror movie. It did have some truly graphic violence though, the kind where I had to look at my husband watching the movie instead of looking at it myself. This weekend, we plan to watch Bring Her Back. 
  • Lenny / Leo finds Halloween to be quite perplexing. But he’s rolling with it. There are a lot of fun new things to sniff and bite and knock over.
Despite appearances, no pumpkins were harmed in the taking of this photo.
  • Will this be the last year of trick-or-treating? According to Carla, she is going to be dressing up and trick-or-treating for many years to come. But some of her friends have already indicated that they aren’t dressing up next year.  I don’t mind either way. If she decides not to trick-or-treat next year, we could invite a couple of friends over to watch scary movies and hand out candy. Of course, I’m happy for my kiddo to be a kid as long as she wants to, so dressing up and trick-or-treating sounds fine to me. I have no memory of when I stopped trick-or-treating. Maybe it was in middle school? I do remember that in middle school, I started to have friends over to watch scary movies. Perhaps this wasn’t just around Halloween, though; it seems like every sleepover I went to involved some sort of horror flick. I was big into witchy stuff – I had a Ouija board that I loved and pulled out at sleepovers as often as possible. We played games like Bloody Mary and Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board and told each other scary stories. Being scared – while knowing you were ultimately safe and secure – was such a delicious feeling. 
  • If you dressed up for Halloween, what was your favorite costume? My mom handmade me a Halloween costume every year – how she managed that, between working full time and raising two kids, is beyond me; I am a strictly Store Bought Costume kind of mom – and my all-time favorite was a fortune teller costume. My mom found this gorgeous crimson paisley material and made me a long, full skirt. I think she made me a sleeveless top out of some sort of gold gauzy material, and a belt out of some sort of gold fringe. I felt mysterious and beautiful in that outfit and I think I had her repurpose it a few years in a row. Carla has been a ton of fun things for Halloween over the years, but I think my favorite was when she was two. She loved the Super Grover segments on Sesame Street, and she specifically requested to be Super Grover for Halloween. She was adorable. 

    As I mentioned, I have not bought a single piece of Halloween candy this year. I did ask that Carla try to snag me a Snickers or a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she’s out trick-or-treating. (I would also love a Milky Way Midnight or a Skor / Heath bar, but those are few and far between.) What kind of candy will you be hoping for tonight?

    That’s right pumpkin heads. BEWARE OF CAT.