September 17, 2026 by suzanne day by day

Vanity Project(s)

I have a dressy event tomorrow, and I’ve been spending way too much time and money planning for it. It’s not like anyone cares what I look like, I realize this. And yet I still have been spending way too much time and money. Partly, the What to Wear frenzy is a manifestation of social anxiety; if only I wear the perfect dress and have the perfect hair and find the perfect accessories, I will not feel nervous or awkward! Conversation will flow effortlessly and I will not end up casting about for non-boring topics while the silence drags on interminably! I will say the exact right thing and speak neither too much nor too little and know intuitively just how much eye contact is enough! People will think I am charming and friendly instead of weird and gawky! Partly, I have lost a little weight this year, and none of my dressy clothes fit. Although I never have dressy clothes that fit, it seems like. Somehow, I nonetheless have a closet full of dresses.

My new dress is navy and I love it. It’s ankle length and it’s more body hugging than I usually wear. That makes it sound like it’s tight, which it most definitely is not. It’s just not the A-line/fit-and-flare silhouette I always gravitate toward. I originally wanted to go with gold accessories, but I tried on some gold jewelry with it and the combination read very old. Not sure if it was the gold and navy combo (doubtful; gold and navy together seem classic and chic), or the fact that the dress has kind of high-ish neckline, or if it was the combo on me, but it was not good. Silver, somehow, looked MUCH better. Younger. Fresher. Let’s be frank: I can use all the youth additive factors that I can get.

When I chose the dress and discovered that silver looked better than gold, I cheered myself with the fact that I already own silver shoes. Shoes with heels that are, alas, much too high and spindly for my post plantar fasciitis feet. I ended up buying new silver shoes with a kitten heel that make me feel much more secure. I also bought a silver clutch; I have been wanting an evening bag for years. Every time I go to a dressy occasion, I lament my lack of evening bags. Now I have one. Of course, now that I own the heels and the bag, I am realizing that I should have skipped the silver and gone with burgundy. Oh well. Too late now. Maybe I will have another occasion to wear this dress and I can seek out burgundy accessories for that. Maybe I will also have time to become the type of person who feels comfortable buying this evening bag, which I want quite badly without wanting in any way to pay the asking price. In the meantime, I am placating myself with some burgundy nail polish.

I realized last weekend that my hair needs a touch up. Seems like I need to color it more and more frequently these days, which is spendy. Usually, I get the updates done at a salon. It’s not that I can’t, technically, color my own hair; I gamely dyed my own hair during the pandemic, but I hated it so very much. The whole process is messy and I suck at applying the color and my hair always winds up with uneven darker chunks because I suck at it. Plus, it’s not like the at-home dye kit is FREE. If I’m going to pay for hair dye, I would rather also pay someone to apply it for me. Literally the only thing I enjoyed about coloring my own hair was the little envelope of conditioner that came with the dye kit. It made my hair SO soft.

Anyway, since my next hair appointment is not until after the dressy event, I purchased a touch-up kit with plans to cover my greys. Alas, I have been at Sports or School Things every night and with various service people or houseguests every day, so I have not managed to cover a damn thing. I have a few spare minutes this afternoon, and I floated the idea of coloring my hair today past my husband. In the kindest way possible, he said, “Absolutely not.” I mean… I suppose going with known grey roots is preferable to dealing with the potentially horrifying results of a last-minute dye job. The smart thing to do is return the kit and get my money back. But… I do love the conditioner.

Speaking of hair dye: Carla has been making some wistful comments recently about highlighting her hair. A bunch of her friends have gotten highlights, and it does look lovely. Unfortunately for Carla, I am a Mean Mom and I refuse to pay for her to color her hair. (See also: Starbucks and a cell phone.) First of all, she has gorgeous dark blonde hair with natural highlights. Second of all, highlights seem like they require intervention from an Experienced Hair Stylist, for which a) Carla has no time and b) I don’t want to pay. Third, as I know from experience, once you start dying it is very, very hard to stop. Seems like the perfect thing she can save up for.

While we’re on the topic of hair, I need all your Anti-Frizz advice please. I have developed a pretty effective regimen, involving three separate hair products and drying/straightening my hair with the ridiculously expensive tool my husband got me a few years ago. I have not achieved the glass hair of my dreams, but I’m mostly happy with it. Still, sometimes the humidity overrides the products.

Carla, unfortunately, does not have the time to straighten her hair. And she has not had the same luck with the products. (To be fair, this may be, how can I say this tactfully?, user error and not the fault of the products.)

What do you use to tame the frizz????

Oh! I have a hair related recommendation! I suspect this handy little tool is probably one of those things that y’all have been using already; I am often late to the trends party. My daughter got one for her birthday on the recommendation of a friend and I recently tried it on my own hair and I looooovvvvveeee it. I do worry that my hair will get caught and I’ll have to cut my way out of the damn thing, but it doesn’t seem to be possible. I have definitely gotten a little tangled (due to hubris; I tried to put more hair into the slot than could possibly fit), and extraction was simple, with no damage or hair loss.

I used to curl my hair every day, for many, many years. This tool makes the whole process leaps and bounds simpler, and the results are fabulous, AND there’s a little button that allows you to curl in opposite directions, so that all curls go away from or toward your face – an effect I was never able to achieve with a curling iron for reasons I still don’t understand. Because I like it so much, and because Carla does not love the idea of me keeping it in MY bathroom, I think I need to get a separate one for myself.

I think I’ll curl my hair for the dressy event.

September 10, 2026 by suzanne day by day

Fumes

In the car this morning, I kept trying to think of things that would fit in a “running on” category: fumes, empty, Dunkin’, sentences… although the last one is really “run on” while the first two seem pretty specifically “running on.” I’m not super clear on the semantics of the Dunkin’ jingle. Anyway, I may have a bit of a Connections addiction. Oooh! Adrenaline!

Running on fumes is stuck in my brain because that’s all I’ve got in the tank at the moment. To switch metaphors: my social battery is drained. And I cannot see when I’ll have time to recharge it.

I feel like I JUST WROTE ABOUT THIS, “this” being my currently intense feeling of over-scheduled overwhelm. You’ve heard it already. You’ve likely LIVED IT already. It’s nothing new, we’re all dealing with All The Things, and yet, this is what’s on my mind so I’m going to vent about it.

And yes, I DO feel like a cliche, and I do feel mildly ridiculous because I only have the one child and the one husband and the zero full-time jobs, and I also still feel like I need a solid stretch of people-free time or I am going to lose my mind.

This morning I cancelled a get-together with a close friend because I just couldn’t. And I’m feeling guilty, even though she was not only completely understanding, but also praised me for being honest about what I needed (she is a really good friend), because I feel Time With Friends should be a top priority, and apparently it isn’t.

Or maybe it is a top priority, it’s just… trumped by other priorities? I don’t know. Priorities kind of suck, because by their very nature you are putting some things ahead of other things and the things that are lower on the list are bound to get their feelings hurt.

You know what? I think part of my issue is that one of things that has moved above “Time With Friends” on the list is something that I don’t even enjoy. And yet, it’s inextricable from one of my very uppermost priorities, which is My Kid.

My kid, as you know from all my whining of late, is in a fall sport. It is important to me that I attend her games.

Here I feel compelled to make a little pit stop in Toleranceville, whose town motto is Just Because It’s Important to Me Doesn’t Mean It Needs to Be Important to You.

It is important to me to attend Carla’s games. It is also important to me, for Reasons, that we attend the games of her teammates. (Long, complicated, and boring story short: There are three separate teams, which means that, on any given day, there could be three separate games.)

These things are important to me, and therefore we are making them work. But it sucks. It sucks because sometimes Carla and I are stuck at a middle school sporting venue for up to three hours at a time. It sucks because Carla – as I previously mentioned – has a shitload of homework this year. It sucks because my butt and back hate the bleachers, and I keep forgetting to bring my cushy stadium seat with me from the car.

It also sucks because I am sometimes socializing with other parents for two to three hours at a time. The other parents are lovely, and we cheer each other’s kids on, and chat about schoolwork and friendship drama and hair products.

But this is too much socializing. I am not cut out for this volume of socializing!

My preferred level of socializing: One to two hours a week of chit-chat with a friend in person, maybe another thirty to sixty minutes of chatting via phone with another friend. In the course of an ideal week, I might also enjoy spending time with my parents for an hour or two. Maybe I could swing two social events in one week, if they were separated by a buffer of several days.

That’s a total of about five hours of social interaction (not counting time with my husband and daughter).

Let’s look at the reality, starting a week ago today:

One hour and forty-five minutes of school meetings
Four hours of hosting an impromptu pool party featuring five children and one adult
Five hours of sports events
Six and a half hours of one-on-one conversation
Seven hours of social commitments

That’s more than an entire day’s worth of interacting with other people.

I realize that for a lot of people, twenty-four hours of interpersonal communication doesn’t sound like a lot. If you work full time outside the home, for instance, spending forty hours a week with other people is standard. (I honestly cannot fathom how I ever worked in an office.) But in my case, this past week, I’ve experienced nearly 500% more social time than my ideal. And I’m looking down the barrel of three more hours of sports-mom social time this afternoon.

I would like to hole up in a dark, silent room with my cat and a pile of books until January, please and thank you.

Since that’s not feasible, I have been looking at the calendar with an eye to trimming things back. But this is where things get messy. While the prevailing advice seems to be along the lines of “put on your own oxygen mask first” and “don’t be afraid to say no” and “treat self-care as non-negotiable,” it’s not quite as easy to implement as it sounds.

In the next two weeks alone, we have a fancy event, to which we RSVPed a long time ago; please trust me when I say that we cannot back out without serious consequences. We have family commitments – including house guests staying for a few days – and a birthday celebration that feel important to stick with. I have a physical therapy follow-up and a hair appointment and an appointment with the sleep specialist – all of which are varying levels of Necessary, and all of which take a lot of social energy. Carla, of course, has ongoing sporting events and an upcoming musical performance. There are various school events that I need to attend, and please believe me that I am shirking PLENTY of them and only planning to attend the really necessary ones. When I look at this normal if lengthy list of upcoming events, all I can see are the hours and hours and hours of energy I will need to summon for listening and responding and acting like a reasonable human.

There are a bunch of things that need to be on the calendar that aren’t yet, because I am dreading adding MORE to the schedule: a meeting to discuss the end-of-lease procedure for my car, an appointment with someone about a potential allergy, a follow-up appointment with a doctor, a meeting with our contractor about our roof replacement, a phone call with the garage door installer, a conversation about next steps to address the fucking pool leak. There are relationship maintenance things that keep getting relegated to “later,” like a catch-up phone call with my childhood best friend, a dinner with friends we need to reciprocate, the long-discussed-but-never-materialized-drinks with neighbors. And literally ALL of my creative pursuits have been suspended for now – unless you count the latest drivel I’ve posted, which, well, it’s something, I guess.

I feel like some things are easier to cancel or reschedule than others. I feel like some people are more understanding than others. And yet it feels bad and wrong and taking-advantage-of to, essentially, de-prioritize those events and people simply because it’s easier to do so.

The friend I bailed on this morning: I knew she would understand. But I cherish our friendship and I want to prioritize our time together. Plus, even the most understanding friend is bound to feel hurt and inferior and unwanted if she keeps getting cut. However… if I’m completely depleted from all these other commitments, I can’t give 100% to her anyway, which isn’t fair. Is it better to postpone our time together until I can focus on her? Shouldn’t I be trying to edit out the things that are less crucial over the longterm – like sitting in the bleachers for three hours a night??? Except that feels important for reasons that I cannot fully articulate, reasons related to sportsmanship and being a team player and supporting others and showing my kid that sometimes you do the thing you feel is right even if it’s not the easy thing. Reasons that other parents have clearly deemed less important to them than things like eating dinner together or focusing on homework first or getting to bed at a reasonable time. And, to be clear, I get why other parents are emphasizing the things they are! Those things are also important! Don’t make me take us back to Toleranceville!

My writing – I feel especially guilty about putting that on the backburner. I am well aware of the advice to treat your creative work like a job and no matter what, get your butt in the chair and be consistent, and I am doing none of those things. Does that mean it’s really not as important to me as I’d like to think it is? Does that mean I’m prioritizing the wrong things? Or does it mean that I’m an inveterate people pleaser, and sacrificing the things that affect only me instead of the things that affect other people feels more doable than trying to put myself first?

I’m not expecting you to resolve this for me. (The obvious answer is Don’t go to three hours of sports, but that is not the route I am choosing, even if you think I am being insane.) I’m not expecting me to resolve it for me. I think I just have to power through until the end of the sports season, and hope that whatever comes next is less socially demanding. Maybe I need to buy myself this, as a heads up for anyone I encounter.

September 9, 2026 by suzanne day by day

Weigh-In Wednesday: Waving at Babies

My husband and daughter are absolutely mortified by my habit of interacting with babies and small children in public.

My position: Reacting enthusiastically to our youngest members of society is a key part of the social contract.

Their position: It’s weird and creepy.

To be very, extremely, crystal clear: I’m not approaching strange children. I’m talking about being in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, and a baby in the shopping cart a few yards away waves or babbles at me. Or standing in line at the bank or the airport, and a toddler makes eye contact and smiles.

I will 100% always smile or wave back.

On occasion, I have been known to talk to a baby. Like, if they proffer a toy they are holding, I might say, “Oh, that’s a beautiful duck.” Or if they say, “Hi!” or “Bye!” I will respond in kind. I stop short of asking children their names.

I do respect distance; I’m not getting up in a stranger’s personal space, no matter how small that person is. I’m not going to tickle a bare foot or pat a child on the head. That is a bridge too far. But waving and smiling and even playing peek-a-boo all seem reasonable to me.

Trying to think back to when Carla was small, I think it would have hurt my feelings if she tried to participate in social behavior with a stranger and they ignored her. I thought she was darling, and I was proud that she felt confident enough to interact with other humans, and I would have loved it if adults had responded to her bids for engagement. I did not (and do not) love it when strangers ask Carla her name, or where she lives or goes to school, although these are good opportunities for us to discuss what kind of information is okay to share with strangers and how to respond politely and truthfully without giving away too many personal details. (Also, most of the time, these questions seem very innocent and friendly, with no ill intent from the asker.)

I do understand that the calculus of what’s appropriate or not might be different for men than it is for middle-aged women. Although I still think, like, making silly faces at a baby over the back of an airplane seat is a totally acceptable way to interact with a young human.

However, I am willing to acknowledge that I may have wildly misunderstood the assignment. So I would like to know what you think.