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.

July 21, 2025 by suzanne day by day

Summer Social Life

At long last, I am listening (with great pleasure) to Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The whole book is fascinating and enjoyable, but one part so far that’s stood out to me was about entertaining. Ina is talking about how she loves to entertain – and she shares a lot of fun “lessons learned” over time, like don’t make individual omelets for every person at the dinner party – and at one point, she mentions that she spends the day after entertaining lying on the couch, exhausted, swearing she will never have another dinner party again. Relatable much??? If even The Ina Garten gets worn out by entertaining, well, that makes me feel a little better about how I feel about having guests.

At the ripe old age of 44, I continue to struggle with the conflicting desire to be social and be solitary. Specifically, I would really, really like to be the type of person who entertains… but entertaining stresses me the eff out.

We have a great house for entertaining. We have a great outdoor space. We have plenty of room for people. What we don’t have is ease and comfort with bringing people together.

My husband and I have family friends who are exactly what I would like to be, in terms of hosts. They seem to always be hosting parties or get-togethers. They do marshmallow roasts and pizza nights and cookie baking parties. They host an annual Christmas celebration. They invite us over frequently, often the day before or day of the event, and I don’t know if we’re an afterthought or if they simply decide in the moment that they’re having people over that evening. When we do go – and we always say yes or no, not maybe – there are typically several other families there as well, who come and go at varying times. There’s always an abundance of food, drink options, children running in and out and around the house. The hosts often cook while we’re there, assembling pizzas, grilling meat, making sauce on the stove while guests chat at them from the other side of their kitchen island. It’s chaotic and noisy and people always seem to have a good time.

I could never. It’s just not in my nature. Spontaneity is not my strong suit in general, but when it comes to having people over to my house… no. And so very MANY people? Just. No.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I made an attempt at semi-spontaneity. We invited friends over for snacks and drinks; they accepted. “Snacks and drinks” is my idea of easy, because – as I have posted before – I fret intensely and at length about what to feed people. We picked up some beer and a bottle of margarita mix. We bought a bunch of fruits and veggies, cheese, crackers, deli meat. I washed all the veggies in advance and then put together a couple of trays with everything on it so that the food would be ready to go when our guests arrived. I did a quick tidy of the house. And then the friends didn’t come over.

It was FINE. We had Snack Dinner, just the three of us, and watched a movie. But it was kind of a letdown. (Maybe “snacks and drinks” doesn’t sound like enough of a plan to be worthwhile?)

This kind of thing happens, I know it does. I’ve read many articles and memes and blog posts about how millennials and successive generations don’t RSVP and opt out of things at the last minute. I also know that things happen; things come up, kids get crabby, the dog tracks poop through the house and suddenly your Saturday is spent deep cleaning the carpet.

We had a similar thing happen last weekend. My husband asked if a friend might want to bring his family over to swim, and the friend said yes. We bought food that would be good to eat by the pool, washed and prepped veggies and fruits, cleaned the pool, etc. And then they didn’t respond when my husband reached out.

This most recent disappointment, I think, was because we tried too hard to be too spontaneous. Saying, “Hey, why don’t you come over this weekend to swim?” is fine, but my husband’s approach was to get in the pool and then text the friend and say, “we’re in the pool, come over” while my approach was to pick a day and time in advance so everyone can PLAN. We ended up doing a hybrid of these things, where he reached out the morning of and said, “we plan on hopping in the pool around X time, so come on over.” The friend got back to my husband several hours after X time, and said, “Oh, hey, we ended up doing something else.” Which is FINE, I get it, but also we sat around all day not knowing if or when they would show up. I think that could have been avoided if we’d had specific plans.

I hope this doesn’t come across as complaining. (Truthfully, I was relieved, in both instances, that the plans didn’t pan out.) I am using these two examples to show how impossible it feels to invite people over. You plan, and it doesn’t work out. You try to be spontaneous, and it doesn’t work out. Or sometimes it DOES work out and there’s a flurry of planning and prepping and cleaning and the stress of having people in my space and do they think my house is clean enough and is the food I made good enough and is everyone having fun and why does every word that comes out of my mouth sound stupid and are they staying too long/long enough etc. etc. etc.

What I think would be WORSE would be to have spontaneous plans and not be prepared. Okay, I wrote that sentence, read it, thought THAT IS RIDICULOUS you cannot be prepared to be spontaneous, deleted it, then put it back. Because that is my problem in a nutshell. I don’t typically have things on hand to be able to be truly spontaneous. Do you? Like, if you were at your kids’ baseball game and you ran into friends, could you say, “Hey, come back with us to our house!” and then have them over without any sort of pre-planning? I don’t think I would have food. I mean, today I do, but that’s because I have all the veggies and deli meat and cheese we bought for our failed spontaneous swim day. That’s not normal. Or, on a normal week, I might have a bag of cut-up cauliflower and a pint of tomatoes and a pint of blueberries… but that doesn’t seem like enough to feed people if they randomly show up at your house.

Jill linked to a post by Katherine Goldstein about “deep casual hosting” that I read with keen interest. The article gives eight tips for how you can entertain while spending more time on connection and less time on preparation. I love that framing. That is, after all, WHY I want to entertain. I want to spend time with dear friends, deepen friendships, and create new relationships. Does a part of me want people to comment, after the fact, about how beautiful my home is or how delicious the meal was? Of course. But when I think about what I really want people to think and feel after they spend time with me, I’d much prefer they say, “Suzanne and Husband make us feel so welcome and comfortable.” One of the most complimentary things I feel about a person is that they are easy to be around, and I don’t think I am particularly easy to be around. Something to strive for.

Goldstein’s most appealing and simultaneously most terrifying suggestion is the one to embrace last minute invitations. The idea is that people will have a more concrete idea of their plans at the last minute, and that the spontaneity of the ask will set a low bar for expectations. Goldstein also mentions a bonus, which is that your friends may feel less intimidated about reciprocating.

A friend I haven’t seen in ages texted me one Thursday saying, “Hey, I know it’s last minute, but are you free this weekend?” We were free on Saturday, and asked her and her spouse to come over. Because it was such a quick ask and because we’d had plans on the Friday night, I felt zero pressure to do anything. We drank wine and chatted and then the guys went and picked up takeout and it was very low-stress and simple and enjoyable. In retrospect, it feels like it worked out because we’d had plans the night before, so the house was cleaner than usual, and because they are already very good friends whom I don’t feel the need to impress. But maybe it worked out because that’s the ideal way to entertain.

The thing is, I don’t know that I can engineer future experiences to happen in the same way, because a) the exact confluence of factors that made it so seamless may never happen again and b) trying to engineer a similar outcome is the same as planning which is the very thing that causes stress.

Yet I keep coming back to that same ridiculous thought: how can I plan to be spontaneous? Surely there are ways to do that. Keeping my house tidy enough that I won’t be embarrassed by guests is one strategy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just neat enough. But what about the food? Goldstein’s tip is to keep it simple; she focuses on making more of what she’s going to cook anyway. What does that MEAN? Does that mean running into a friend at camp and saying, “Hey, come over tomorrow night” and then going out and buying more of the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner, whatever it was going to be? I have no trouble ordering pizza or picking up sandwiches or whatever once in a while, but I also don’t want to do that on the regular. I have some “go-to” meals I feel fairly comfortable serving to guests, but I also get tired of them and don’t want to serve them every time. My freezer is full of ingredients, but that requires work (not to mention creativity) which seems antithetical to “deep casual hosting.” And also I hate cooking in front of people; now THAT’S stressful.

And what about the guests who DO expect a more elevated experience? One friend and his husband are always putting on elaborate dinner parties, where they assign seating and make gourmet food… He’s assured me he doesn’t expect the same thing, but… is that really true? Or what about my parents and my in-laws and their friends, whom we occasionally entertain? Maybe “deep casual hosting” doesn’t have to extend to Every Single Time You Have Someone Over???

As usual, I am wildly overthinking this. There’s nothing to be done, I don’t think, aside from being an entirely different person.