September 17, 2025 by suzanne day by day

Weigh In Wednesday: Take One, Leave One

I find myself in need of advice on little silly things that are nonetheless driving me crazy. In exchange, I thought I’d share a few little tips that have been helping me out lately.

If you have any hot tips to share, please do so; if you are in need of any advice, ask away. I will chime in if I have something to offer, and I hope your fellow readers will do so as well.

Tiny Tips That Are Making Life Better

Low-Effort Houseplant Watering: I love houseplants – looking at them, owning them, watching for new growth or flowers. And I am also terrible about keeping on top of their watering needs. After several died or nearly died, I finally broke down and bought a pack of plastic watering bulbs so that I could put one in every single plant I own. It’s not foolproof – they do need to be refilled every week or so, depending on the plant. But it is making my plants SO MUCH HAPPIER and my days are no longer punctuated by random stabs of guilt when I realize it’s been several weeks since I last watered my plants.

Morning Time (and Madness) Saver: Mornings have always been tough in my household. They continue to be tough, especially since we have added Primping to our daily routine. And also, school starts earlier this year than it ever has before so we need to be out the door fifteen minutes sooner than we did last year. One thing that has made getting out the door slightly better is to keep a hairbrush, hair ties, and a small makeup kit in my car. That way, Carla can do her hair and makeup while I am driving her to school. Secondary tip: One common frustration around here is that no one can ever find a hairbrush when she needs it. I bought a bunch of small hairbrushes so that Carla can keep one in her backpack, one in her sports bag, and one in her locker.

Easy Sheet Pan Meal Clean Up: I love sheet pan dinners, and I love using a barrier between the food and my cookie sheets so I don’t have to deep clean the cookie sheets every night. (They don’t fit in the dishwasher.) I own reusable silicone sheets, and use them for certain things, but they are too difficult to clean for me to use them every time I make a sheet pan meal. For the longest time, I’ve been using aluminum foil. But I am continually frustrated by food sticking to the damn foil. I tried parchment paper, but found it super annoying because it’s so insubstantial it doesn’t stay in place and it’s difficult to crease. I’d seen tips before for putting a little sprinkle of water or cooking spray on the cookie sheet to hold the parchment in place, but it doesn’t always work and/or it requires me to wash the cookie sheet, which I was trying to avoid by using parchment in the first place. Then I saw someone on Instagram crumple up the sheet of parchment paper before smoothing it out onto the cookie sheet. GAME CHANGER.

Connection Points When Talking Is Hard: The credit for this genius idea belongs with my friend G. She told me that she and her daughter have a special notebook in which they write each other secret notes. “Secret” in that no one else can read their exchanges. I have tried this technique with Carla, who can be quite reticent about sharing her feelings and talking about her worries. It works so well. She is willing to share all sorts of things in writing that she refuses to discuss out loud. Because of this silly little journal we pass back and forth, I feel much more connected to her and what’s going on in her inner world. It’s not even something we write in regularly. Sometimes we’ll go back and forth for a few days, sometimes the journal will sit untouched for months. But so far it’s been the perfect bridge when I sense she’s something is troubling her but she’s reluctant, for whatever reason, to share it, or just when we haven’t had a chance to chat in a while. Oh look – there’s a whole line of journals specific to this purpose. We just use one of the many old journals I have lying around.

Instant Mood Improver: Get a cat. Please note: mood improvement requires close proximity to cat and may disappear once cat is out of sight, which could be quite often, depending on the cat.

Please Advise: Here’s Where You Tell Me What To Do

Do you have any tips for making it simpler to put laundry away? Especially if those tips apply to getting other people in your household to put laundry away? Our current “system” involves me doing laundry, folding or sorting Carla’s clothing, and then asking Carla to put it away. Which results in Carla using my bedroom as a dressing room, because that’s where I fold the laundry. I have started putting the clean/folded laundry in a basket and putting that basket ~~in my bedroom~~ ~~on the landing outside Carla’s room~~ in Carla’s room, but still – the basket remains there, full of clean clothing, growing less folded by the day, until I Make A Fuss. And honestly, the Making A Fuss only results in the laundry ending up on the floor, which makes me incandescent. I have not opened the door to Carla’s closet lately, and do not want to, lest my head implode like a firecracker. I am willing to do Drastic Things. Should I get rid of 75% of her clothing? (I did ask her to go through her wardrobe this summer and remove everything she doesn’t or won’t wear.) Should I buy her another dresser? The child has AMPLE storage, seriously, so much storage, but what we are doing is clearly not working for her and she doesn’t have any ideas (besides I like having all my clothing in a laundry basket / on my floor) for how to make the situation more user friendly for herself. The only thing I am unwilling to do is put her laundry away myself. She’s twelve. She can put her own laundry away. Oh, okay – there is another thing I am unwilling to do: ignore the mess. I have tried that tack and it is not workable for me or for our family.

What are your favorite low-effort houseplants? Especially if they require low light? As I mentioned above, I LOVE plants and would love more. But a) our house has very little direct light and b) the cat will seriously eat any plant, or at least give it a little taste test, so any plants I buy need to be non-toxic. I have moved all the currently toxic plants I own to out-of-cat-reach spaces, but they aren’t necessarily low-light plants and they aren’t doing very well. For instance, the Christmas cactus and the kalanchoe I owned pre-cat have been relocated to the top of my bookshelves, and they are no longer dying of thirst but they are clearly not loving their lighting conditions. I have also purchased a few plants that require “bright, indirect light,” and even those seem a little light-starved. I think I need plants that thrive in less light. But not no light. All the plants have access to natural light. Just not bright light.

How do you keep your fingernails tidy? Okay, confession time: I am a nail picker. I will pick at my nails and the skin around my nails, sometimes until my fingers bleed. I think I developed this gruesome habit as an alternative to nail biting (although I still do that at times, too, ugh ugh ugh), and I am ready to stop. But… I don’t know HOW. It’s a nervous habit, for sure, and I don’t think you can help me get over my social anxiety. But part of the reason it’s such an addictive habit is that my cuticles (is that the right term for the skin on the sides of my nails???) are often dry or peeling or otherwise pick-able. Right now, my pinky finger is all painful and inflamed because of this habit and I Don’t Like It. My questions for you are: a) If you or someone you know has gotten over this gross habit, HOW? And/or b) Is there something I should be doing to enhance my overall nail skin / fingernail / cuticle health? I do tend towards dry skin, and use Working Hands cream like it’s my job. But I get overwhelmed by the abundance of cuticle oils and creams and have no idea which ones WORK. Or if buying a “cuticle remover kit” would do anything at all to help me.

I do not want to end this post on weird giant photos of my fingernails, so here’s where I turn things over to you. What hot tips do you have to share today? Or, at least, the little things that are making your day-to-day easier/better/more enjoyable? And in which areas are you in need of advice?

April 13, 2025 by suzanne day by day

Six for Sunday

The other day, a parenting-advice account I follow on Instagram served me a post about things parents of teenagers have to accept. You know, like, “teens will make dumb decisions” and “you and your teen will experience conflict.” Stuff like that.

One of the things was “you will be driving them all over the place.” Somehow, while agonizing over my miles-long list of concerns about parenting when my husband and I were making the wild decision to procreate, I did not consider the driving. Please chalk this up to complete obliviousness when I myself was a teen, because obviously my parents drove ME all over creation. But I do not feel prepared in any way. The Driving was not on my radar. I had no idea. No. Idea. There is so much driving.

One of my friends has two very active, involved boys. She was telling me the other day that there is one night a week when the kids have simultaneous dropoffs at separate locations. Separate pickups from those activities. Then separate dropoffs at separate locations for the next activities. And then simultaneous pickups. At separate locations. My brain is broken just thinking about it, and she is LIVING IT.

Carla has a friend who is one of five. The kids attend three separate schools. The older four are all in (different) sports. At least one of them is in multiple sports. Is the mom ever NOT in the car? I feel like I am in the car a lot and I only have the one child!

It has been hard for me to grasp the reality of the situation. I am trying to come to terms with the disheartening fact that I am simply Going To Be In The Car. From now until Carla graduates, presumably. Or until she gets a license of her own, which terrifies me beyond reason so let’s not think about that at this time.

But I guess what I want to say to anyone who might be reading this and considering having children: FACTOR IN THE DRIVING.

Obviously, I would not trade Carla for anything in the universe… and yet it would have been nice if any of the parenting or child-planning books I consulted had mentioned the driving.

Okay, that’s a whole post on its own but let’s also have some bullets.

*My irises are stalwartly peeking through the April snowfall.*

Easter Baskets: We are not celebrating Passover this year, because we are lazy and I am a terrible steward of my child’s religious heritage/education. Fortunately, I am still able to order crap from crappy places in order to participate in the completely secular aspect of the next upcoming religious holiday. My husband and I are total opposites when it comes to Easter baskets. He thinks they should contain mainly (only?) candy. I think my child has fully mastered the art of manifesting sugar in her life, and doesn’t need ~~any~~ a lot of additional sugar from us. Listen, I am not necessarily into the glorious excess that I am now accustomed to seeing on social media. (Some of it grosses me out, but at the same time, I understand the impulse.) However, I do like her to have SOMETHING in her Easter basket. This year, I am going for Practical Slash Fun. She needs a little jewelry container she can clip to her backpack, so she can safely stow her earrings and bracelets while she’s Doing Sports. She needs a new pair of sunglasses and carrying case. She has a couple of long bus rides in her near future, so I wanted to get her this bus-friendly folding puzzle. Or maybe this fun questions-and-answers card deck, to play with friends? There is a new Rosanne Parry book out, so I will definitely add that to her Easter Basket. (She adores Rosanne Parry books.) On the completely IMpractical side, no one needs emotional support pickles, but Carla would LOVE THEM. She has also been obsessed with the idea of getting our future cat a bow tie. My big problem is that none of these things fit into a plastic Easter egg, and Carla has expressly requested that we hide Easter eggs this year. Well, there’s always money. Or candy. Or a monster easter egg.

Cupcake Plans: While I’m on the topic of Easter, we might as well discuss cupcakes. My parents have invited us over for dinner and have requested that I bring dessert. Specifically, cupcakes. More specifically, cupcakes with adorable Easter décor. (My mother knows me so well.) My husband and mother enjoy carrot cake, so I’m thinking maybe these? Plus, I love the little coconut birds’ nests with Cadbury eggs. This recipe has less oil and HALF the eggs. Do you have a go-to carrot cake recipe? I cannot believe that I am about to type this (Engie – look away), but the recipe can and in fact should include raisins; my husband has expressly requested golden raisins in the carrot cake. (I cannot abide raisins in any form.) Because I am raisin-averse, and because Carla straight up refuses to eat carrot cake, I will also make a batch of lemon cupcakes with lemon-curd filling. Those are my go-to and Carla loves them, too. (By the way, all the recipes I linked to include frosting recipes, but I will probably make an extra big batch of plain old cream cheese buttercream and use it for both varieties.) To top the lemon cupcakes, I am thinking of trying this adorable chick frosting. If you are worrying that two batches of cupcakes is too much cupcake for a group of five, I plan to send a bunch of them in to my husband’s office on Monday.

Reading Incentives. I don’t know that I’ve ever needed an incentive to read; being able to snuggle up on a couch and escape into a completely different set of circumstances is reward enough. But I think Carla might need a little push. She enjoys reading when she’s doing it, but she doesn’t seek it out. This fills me with anxiety because there are so many good books she’s not reading! And I’m afraid she’s going to miss the window for feeling that they are “age appropriate.” Over the winter holidays, she got started on the Black Stallion series. She devoured the first book, leapt excitedly into the second book, and then once school resumed, she kind of tapered off. Over spring break, we of course went into nearly every bookstore we could find that sold English books, and Carla found multiple books she HAD to have. But… she hasn’t made much progress in any of them since we returned from vacation. I’ve been having fun “restocking” her bookshelves with more age-appropriate books, and there are SO MANY BOOKS I am dying for her to read… but we’ll never get to half of them if she isn’t into it, you know? In the past, my husband and I have tried various methods to spur her into reading, from adding it to her to-do list for the day, to paying her to read books. Maybe I need to give her a financial incentive again? What prompted you to read, when you were a kid? (The Pizza Hut Book It! program was definitely a bonus for me in elementary school. I love pizza. Pizza and books make for a magical combination.) If you have children, what prompted your kids to read? Carla and I have begun listening to audiobooks on our drives to school, which helps a little… but I still want her to do more reading.

Shorts Weather. Even though there is still frost on the ground, I know shorts weather is around the corner. It has me trolling through the internet, looking for shorts that won’t make me hate everyone and everything. (And pretty dresses, natch.) Shorts and I have a fraught relationship. One of the big problems is that I am self-conscious about my legs and prefer to keep them hidden. (Am I seriously considering this “magic” cellulite solution, that has so many reviews about how it makes people feel like their legs are on fire?) (I admit I am partly just curious about whether the on-fire feeling is as severe as people say. But curious enough to set my own legs on fire????) My legs are what they are, and I get too hot in summer to wear jeans or pants all the time, so I return to The Shorts Search once again. I’ve had good luck with Madewell shorts, and these have potential. As long as I’m considering denim, maybe I need a pair of these Levi’s shorts? I am always drawn to Boden’s beautiful colors and fabrics, but the description of most of their shorts includes this little kicker: “slim through waist, hip and hem” which is not the loose flowy style I prefer, so I might have to simply enjoy thinking about their shorts. I keep wanting to try Quince, and these shorts are cute. Ugh. Just thinking about shorts makes me want to avoid them altogether and stick to dresses.

Non-Shorts Signs of Spring. Despite the persistence of snow and mid-thirties temps, we do have a few signs of spring here and there. Daffodils are abundant in my neighborhood. My irises are stretching their little leafy arms up through the earth, testing to see whether they should show their faces. The lilac tree is beginning to bud. All the maples (I think?) in our neighborhood are a blur of pale red. The magnolia tree of one of my friends already bloomed; I was jealous until the frost returned and all the blooms dropped off her tree. There’s a forsythia shrub in the backyard that is producing its own sunshine. I cannot wait for flowers everywhere.