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.
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?
1. For the month of September, I have been waking up at 5:41 and getting out of bed at 6:00. This past week, I’ve been pushing it back a teeny bit; my alarm goes off at 5:21 and I get out of bed at 5:45. The cat has been extremely accommodating in terms of hopping into bed and purring loudly at me at about 4:20. My question is, how freaking early do I need to get up to be able to DO things?
Things I’d like to do: Lie in bed for 15 minutes to do the Wordle and Connections and possibly read a blog or two. Make some tea. Take care of the cat. Unload the dishwasher. Write a blog post. Spend 10 minutes watching cat videos with Carla. Get dressed. Eat something. Get out the door on time (7:15). In an ideal world, I would also be able to exercise and shower before we leave for school, but that seems much too ambitious. It’s still something I’d LIKE to do, though.
Things I have been able to do: Lie in bed to do my word games. Make tea. Take care of the cat. Spend 5-10 minutes watching cat videos with Carla. Get dressed. Eat something (sometimes). We haven’t been out the door on time since the first week of school. Admittedly, this isn’t always my issue. But lately I have been scrambling to be moderately presentable and still be 15 minutes late.
Possibly I can squeak back my out-of-bed time to 5:00; but even then, I don’t know if I’d be able to get in a blog post. Definitely not exercise, too. If you exercise before work or school, HOW????
One of the reasons I want to work exercise into my morning routine is because it’s often the first thing I jettison if the day doesn’t proceed as planned. For the past two days, I didn’t exercise as planned because my days got thrown out of whack. It’s not the end of the world, or anything; I don’t set exercise goals, so I can’t fail, take that perfectionism – and I did at least manage a decent walk on Wednesday – but it’s frustrating when I’m trying to prioritise exercise for my mental, physical, and future health. (The British/Canadian spelling was accidental but I’m keeping it. I think Ses are much prettier than Zs.) Plus, “exercise” is a catch-all term that includes showering, putting on clothing an actual reasonable person might wear, and possibly even doing my hair and/or makeup. Even if I do a shorter workout, and even if I take a ten-minute shower, and even if I throw my wet hair up in a claw clip instead of drying it, the Exercise Plus Shower Plus Getting Ready routine takes about an hour. I have no earthly idea where I’d get a whole extra hour in the morning. I can’t go to bed earlier than nine; Carla’s bedtime is 8:30 and I read to her for thirty minutes. And if I went to bed promptly at nine, I would never see my husband, which is an unacceptable tradeoff for exercise. Listen, I know I don’t really have anything to complain about here. My schedule is very flexible, for the most part. I guess I just keep on working in a workout where I can, sometimes sacrificing it to the whims of life.
2. I had a baking success and a baking flop this week. The flop was the apple honey cake I made in a nod to Rosh Hashanah. It looked lovely – although I had expected the apple-covered portion to be much darker and more caramelized; not sure why, the photo on the recipe page is not dark and caramelized – and it was fine. But it wasn’t my favorite. The crumb was too big; I think it compares in crumb size, if not exact texture, to cornbread (although my husband disagrees). And the cake had, to my tongue, no flavor. Also, the apples weren’t caramelized enough. The other thing I baked were brownies. Since I was making them for a loved one who’d just had surgery, and since this person is trying to avoid excess sugar and carbs, I decided to try a sugar-free (ish), flourless brownie. The brownies are flavored with dark chocolate, dates, and vanilla, and get their fluffiness from eggs and baking soda. I was skeptical, since I really am not a fan of dates. But they turned out SO well. They are fluffy and soft, rich and chocolatey, and perfectly satisfying. The only real difference I noted between these brownies and “regular brownies” is that they have a slight coconutty flavor (because they are made with coconut oil). Carla loved them; the person I intended them for loved them; I loved them. My husband’s reaction was “these are weird.” Next time, I might try them with butter instead of coconut oil, although I didn’t mind the coconut essence. I am definitely making them again. I like how I didn’t have to chop up the dates; I just let my food processor do all the work.
3. After your extremely helpful comments last week, Carla and I (and the cat) tackled her bedroom on Tuesday. We got rid of so much stuff. My strategy was to tell her that I would clean her room for her, she just had to tell me what to do. She had complete control over what stayed and what went into the donation pile (or the trash). I was so ready to get a handle on the mess that I only faltered once, when I saw a beautiful sweater I bought her just last year in the donation bag. But she’s the one who has to wear the clothes. If she’s not going to wear it, it shouldn’t be in her closet. We also got rid of tons of old socks and underthings that are way too small, and I placed a big order for replacements. Even though I said I would do all the work, Carla ended up doing a ton of stuff herself. She organized all her dresser drawers, for instance. AND she did all of her own laundry. She even said it was fun. While I don’t expect that will last, I feel so much relief that her laundry is now HER problem. Her clothing selection is much more manageable and her room looks so much better.
Oh hello there, you can’t seriously think this drawer would be better suited to T-shirts, can you?
4. This weekend, a friend I haven’t seen for years is bringing her daughters to stay with us. I am so excited to see her! And her children, whom I anticipate I will hardly recognize, it’s been so long. One thing I’m trying very hard to do is to resist the little voice in my head that keeps saying, “She’s going to think you got so fat.” My friend, though it should not matter in the least except in terms of the pride I feel for her, is a tiny person to begin with. But she’s also extremely fit – like, she literally has two World records in the fitness arena. My little inner voice, which apparently ignores what a nice and non-judgy person my friend is, thinks she will judge me for being large and soft.
Here are my coping thoughts: When I went to my twentieth college reunion a few years ago, I was shocked by how OLD some of my classmates seemed. Some of them were balding, or had grey hair, or looked like – gasp! – middle-aged moms. It was especially shocking to see these aging people next to my dear friends, who looked exactly the same as they’d looked twenty years before. Obviously, it wasn’t that my close friends remained unchanged while people I didn’t know well had aged poorly. It was that my love imbued the people dear to me with youth and beauty that transcends time. I experienced this phenomenon more recently, when I got to see a college friend perform with his college band. The bar was packed with a bunch of half-drunk middle-aged farts. But my friend and his band were exactly as they were back in college. Love is transformative in so many ways, and I think it can allow you to see your people in their best light. The way I look at my husband, a distinguished, respected physician who brings hope and relief to so many patients, and see only the cute charming finance major I met nearly a quarter century ago. Anyway, I am trying with all my heart to believe that my fit friend is going to arrive and see past my frumpy, overweight, perimenopausal self to her dear friend of many years.
5. I have two recent purchases to recommend. One is a fidget toy. Carla apparently saw that a classmate had one, and she wanted one, too. So I caved and got it for her. It’s not silent, per se, but it’s very quiet – just makes a soft shuck when it changes shape. And it is very cool; the shape shifting is mesmerizing. Even the cat likes it. Speaking of the cat, we bought him yet another cat toy. (The poor cat is once again hiding under the bed; it’s been a traumatic week, and he does not do well with loud sounds. This time, the loud sound was me putting ice cubes in the dryer to de-wrinkle my duvet cover. He has never scratched me before, but I have three large gashes to commemorate this particular trauma.) Anyway: this toy is perfect for him. It has a little butterfly dangler on the top, it has a couple of balls on a track that he can push around, and it has a little fringey thing who pokes his fringey face out of hidey holes at random around the circumference of the base. This toy is electronic (uses batteries or a charger) and it has several settings. With one, just the fringey guy hides and appears. Another setting turns the butterfly dangler on, so that it spins, stops, and spins the opposite way. Another setting has both things happen either at once or one after another, I haven’t figured it out yet. It will turn itself off after a few minutes if the cat ignores it for awhile, and then it turns back on as soon as he touches it. Leo LOVES this thing. I put it up on top of a cabinet when he’s not using it (so he doesn’t get bored with it – cats get bored so easily) and he will walk over to the cabinet and look longingly at it and meow until I fetch it down for him.
Keeping this butterfly thing AND the little fringey guy in line is a very serious endeavor.
