Life Lately

I’ve seen words in a few different places the past week that in effect have said: You don’t have to say something wholly original and new and surprising in your writing. You just need to further the conversation.

Caden has been writing books since he was four. Back then I stapled together a couple sheets of construction paper. He was in a major Batman phase and most pages were a drawing of Batman and words to the effect of, “Batman sees a bad guy. Baman wins!” Simple, preschool-ish sentences.

Today he fills notebooks with words. He recently had to write a fable and filled up 10 straight pages in his college-ruled notebook with his tiny, spiky handwriting about the origin of fire. I’m guessing the other kids in his 2nd-grade class wrote a page or two. At home, he’s progressed from construction paper and now insists on 8-10 pages of plain white printer paper, carefully folded in half and creased with my bone folder, then stapled along the edge with exactly five staples. (A child of mine being particular. Imagine!)

His stories now are heavily influenced by his Wings of Fire obsession. (Heads up: affiliate link!) We own every. single. book. Graphic novel, regular chapter book, prequel, and all 16 books in the series. He fills pages with his own dragon-inspired stories, fitting illustrations of dragons in the margins. He stays up I don’t know how late working on them. He says he’s working on a series of 15 right now, because of course he is.

Batman. Dragons. He’s not creating anything fresh and wholly original. He’s letting his mind go, influenced by some of his favorite things. He’s not thinking too hard about any of it. He’s too busy furthering the conversation.

Something to think about, isn’t it?

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Around the Internet

• This collection of writing on junk food by Bon Apetit is so much fun.

• “‘There is this fundamental question of when, as a country, we’ll see the humanity in every child,” Parrott said. “Leaving children in deep poverty is an unacceptable thing to do because we don’t trust, or want to punish, their parents.’”

• Just a well-written reminder that sugar “highs” are a myth.

• I’m not crying, you are.

• My new favorite thing is this woman who voices over re-stock videos. Be blessed.

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Eating

• This Skillet Chicken With Mushrooms and Caramelized Onions is next-level delicious. I was skeptical when the reviews said it tasted like French Onion Soup but it DOES. Serve with steamed broccoli or green beans and some pretzel rolls.

• Two Mexican bean dishes for you. First: Pinch of Yum’s Crispy Black Bean Tacos. Crispy tacos are genius in their own right. I don’t make the sauce but just buy it from the store so it’s even easier. Second: NYT Cooking’s Bean and Cheese Burritos. I made them for dinner this week, ate leftovers for lunch two other days, and am already wondering when I can make them again.

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Fun Things

• I’ve been on a Madewell spree (Um, possibly always?) and am currently snuggling in this sweatshirt. It’s very soft and at least the colors feel like spring, since apparently it will never be warm here ever again. RIP sunshine.

• I’m re-watching Mad Men, one of my favorite shows of all time, and decided the occasion merited a new mug. Might I recommend to you a purchase based on a beloved fandom? It’s ridiculous the amount of joy it brings me.

• Sometimes the day’s Wordle isn’t enough for me, and that’s when I check out Letter Boxed. Though it can be depressing when I view the previous day’s answers and discover that letters like COSDYAENR around the square could have been turned into SECONDARY, and what I did was something more like NOD and DONE plus three other words. Oh well.

Life Lately

Yesterday, I sat at the beach while Caden played in the sand at the edge of the water. It was 80+ degrees out, warmer than they’d predicted, and my hair stuck to the back of my neck until I fished a hair tie out of my bag and pulled it into a ponytail. It’s still August, which signals summer to my brain, but also it’s September tomorrow, which screams nothing but fall. Time to transition. Again.

The kids start school next week and I feel all the normal excitement that goes along with a fresh school year—what always feels like more of a new year than January ever does. And also there’s the anxiety that’s become the norm around masking and local case counts and how long before one of my kids is in quarantine?

I’ve been in a flurry of ordering things because it seems like I’ve either been running out or needing all the things all at once. Clothes for kids who have outgrown everything from pants to socks to shoes. Refill tablets of hand soap and house cleaner. Boy brow and yes that is an affiliate link in case you’d like to help feed my addiction to the product that I would bring with me even to a deserted island. Three whole sets of school supplies. A fresh box of contacts. Laundry detergent. Parchment paper and tin foil and plastic wrap. A fresh bottle of elderberry gummies because besides masking, it’s the thing that feels like I’m doing something to help my kids stay healthy. Name labels for the aforementioned school supplies which have somehow been held up in customs for weeks and I am crossing my fingers they arrive before the first day of school. Tea and a new sweater because despite that 80-degree temperature, fall is coming, dammit, and I intend to be prepared.

Everything around me feels in or about in transition. Though thinking back to a year ago, things were largely the same. The start of school was pushed back a week but I was still buying up masks and elderberry and school supplies and Costco orders made up entirely of snacks. (Mental note: place Costco order.) We didn’t know exactly what the school year would bring and we largely still don’t have the answer to that question this year.

I don’t know what else to do except to continue keeping under control what I can, even if it’s just stocking the snack shelf in the pantry and baking first day of school treats and emailing the teachers to see who in their class needs school supplies. Remembering that this, too, is important work, even if it doesn’t always (ever?) feel like quite enough.

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Action Item

I’m not sure how you can feel anything but sick to your stomach after the way things unfolded in Afghanistan this month. TIME magazine has an excellent round-up of ways to support refugees and people still in Afghanistan: from organizations taking donations to contacting your representatives.

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Around the Internet

• Tom Daly knitting is one of my favorite things this summer and R. Eric Thomas is one of my favorite things on the internet, so put them together and it brings me an enormous amount of joy.

• “But I think the real problem is that life is still exhausting because the pandemic was and remains exhausting in so many invisible ways — and we still haven’t given ourselves space to even begin to recover. Instead, we’re just softly boiling over, emptying and evaporating whatever stores of energy and patience and grace remain.”

• We Could Have Changed the World (really the title says it all)

• For those of us who have or are about to send our kids back to school.

• “This is parenting these days, for us and too many people we know. Peak inconsistency. Complete incoherence. Just decision after decision based on a little bit of science, a little bit of outdated guidance, and a little bit of how much time or energy we have to think it through.”

• Did I go down the rabbit hole of ‘Bama Rush in an attempt to understand why all of America was suddenly invested? Yes I did. And then this deep-dive on Greek fashion.

• This feels like it sums up 2021.

• So does this.

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Eating

• Have I told you to make falafel before? Because you should definitely make falafel. And then serve it with pita bread and roasted veggie (team bell peppers over here) and kalamata olives and a healthy scoop of caramelized onion hummus.

• This mushroom pasta stir-fry is delicious. Unfortunately, I can almost never seem to find broccolini around here so I subbed regular broccoli and it was fine (but if you can get your hands on it actual broccolini would be better!).

• I will now evangelize you to the ways of dark chocolate hummus. I will continue to pretend it is the healthiest of healthy snacks because the first ingredient is chickpeas and continue to ignore that the second ingredient is sugar. Mostly because I don’t care. It’s delicious.

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Fun Things

• Currently wearing a late summer/early fall pink and gray ombre mani of my own creation using AW, RP, MG, Wild & Free, and BI from Olive and June and the Gen Z barista told me she loved my nails this morning so #winning.

• This button-up shirt was an impulse buy earlier this summer which will go down as one of my favorite purchases of 2021.

• This tee. The color is more of a gray-washed lavender in person. Love the fit, love the rolled sleeves, love that I foresee wearing it under lots of cardigans come cooler temperatures.

Life Lately

Sarah Bessey wrote this week in her newsletter about the “Kin-dom of God…or what theologians call the ‘Now and Not Yet’ of God’s goodness at this moment in time and space.”

I was thinking about that “Now and Not Yet” part the next day, except I’d bastardized it to “Almost but Not Yet.” Until I looked up her post to refresh my memory because “Almost but Not Yet” didn’t sound quite right.

Then I realized it sounded exactly right. Because my life now feels like nothing but Almost but Not Yet.

We’re almost to summer and a major change in our schedule, but not yet.
Nolan is almost in school full-time, but not yet.
I’m almost to a new stage in life, but not yet.

It’s not exactly the middle, but it’s also not quite the end, and it’s definitely not the beginning. It’s like the end of the middle? Or the beginning of the end? (Well, that sounds terrifying.)

I guess we’re all living in a version of the Almost but Not Yet.

The Almost but Not Yet of vaccinations, or of second vaccinations, or of reaching herd immunity.
The Almost but Not Yet of summer, of warm weather that lasts, of the possibility of taking vacations, of playdates and restaurants and gatherings with our people.
The Almost but Not Yet of taking meaningful action on climate change, on healthcare for all, on paid family leave, on racial justice. (I mean, I hope these are Almosts but Not Yets.)

I suppose a pandemic’s worth of Almost but Not Yets piled on top of launching my youngest into the elementary school world only adds, enormously, to this feeling. It’s a restless kind of feeling. I’m tired of feeling restless. Staying in this Almost place so often feels impossible. I feel it most in the afternoon before it’s time to pick Caden and Brooklyn up from school when there’s not much to do around the house. When the laundry is done and the dishes are clean and there’s not quite enough time to tackle anything meaningful and I’m in this limbo—its own Almost but Not Yet—where a good chunk of the day is done and the after-school marathon of activities and dinner and bedtime is on the horizon, but we’re not quite there. When it’s 3:00 pm and Nolan asks to play another game of Sequence, or for a snack, or to read another book and I could scream at this day, just another in a long string of days.

Everything will be different this summer. And again, in a big way in the fall.

Almost. But not yet.

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Action Item

I’ve been looking for a way to recycle old clothes for years. Especially kids’ clothes—it’s one thing to donate old shirts or jeans that are still in good shape, but what about the ones that are stained or ripped or worn beyond reasonable use? I can’t in good conscience donate those items.

Enter: the For Days Take Back Bag. I ordered the large bag, filled it up (EASILY. There will be more Take Back Bags in my future FOR SURE.), scheduled a USPS pick up, and will receive a $20 credit to their website once they receive it. Easy-peasy.

For Days doesn't take undergarments, but NEVER FEAR because I’ve figured that out for you, too. Please see the Knickey Recycling Program. They take your old undies, bras, tights, and socks and give you a free pair of underwear with your next order as soon as the post office picks up your package. Their underwear are my new favorites-comfortable and they stay in place. Be forewarned that the high rise briefs are prettttyyy high, even for me, a self-proclaimed high-rise enthusiast. I still recommend a couple of pairs of those and a couple of mid-rise hipsters, though my sweet spot seems to be the mid-rise briefs.

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Around the Internet

• The title of this satire piece: As a Republican, I Believe White Men Are Boys, Boys of Color Are Men, and Underage Girls are Consenting Adults says it all and also where’s the lie?

• AHP preaching: “Stick with me here, but what if people weren’t lazy — and instead, for the first time in a long time, were able to say no to exploitative working conditions and poverty-level wages? And what if business owners are scandalized, dismayed, frustrated, or bewildered by this scenario because their pre-pandemic business models were predicated on a steady stream of non-unionized labor with no other options? It’s not the labor force that’s breaking. It’s the economic model.”

• This essay, on names and blackness and parenting, gutted me.

• Another thing that gutted me? This poem.

• I didn’t know I was nostalgic for the flamboyant movie theater carpet we all grew up with, but here we are.

• “You-got-this motherhood, in all its iterations, is, at best, a seriously limited rejoinder to the interconnected problems of patriarchy and capitalism and to the mental health struggles that result from their longstanding collusion.”

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Eating

• These noodles remind me so much of the lo mein my family ordered on a weekly basis from our favorite Chinese restaurant growing up. (RIP Tai Pan.) The texture of these noodles is perfection. (I use four packets of noodles for our family of five, so the box gives us two dinners + some lunch leftovers.) I omit the bean sprouts but add in one diced chicken breast and some snow peas, seared in some oil over very high heat.

• I picked up a box of these chocolate-covered Greek yogurt bars from Costco and they are the best midday treat.

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Fun Things

• I’m loving this Vitamin C serum. Love the bottle, love the price, and love that it’s faded some old acne scars within a matter of weeks.

• I bought this mirror for our living room. Now looking for the perfect little succulent to place on its shelf.

• How cute is this shirt? I feel like spring when I put it on, even when the weather is 38 degrees and cloudy. (Of which we endured far too much this past month.)

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I’m supposed to say, I think, that we should embrace our Almost but Not Yets. It’s just a season! I’ve got this! We’ve got this! Lean into it! Rah-rah-rah.

And I do feel that. At least, to a certain extent I do. But to completely dismiss and try to paper over the Almost but Not Yet limbo feelings doesn’t sit well with me.

I think a lot of the Almost but Not Yet ties into the feeling of languishing which Adam Grant so geniously introduced us all to this month:

It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.

Grant goes on to say that “Psychologists find that one of the best strategies for managing emotions is to name them.” This makes sense to me, even though I might have said one of the best strategies is to sip on a good margarita. I think it’s why my entire Internet bubble seemed to grasp onto the label of “languishing” over the past couple of weeks—a name for that thing we’ve all been feeling!

Honestly, realizing that a lot of what I’ve been feeling lately is being in this place of Almost but Not Yet helps me feel at least a bit more content with where I am now. Not to dismiss where I am, but to name it. This Almost but Not Yet place. We’re all dealing with it, the best we can these days. Feel free to join me. We might be languishing but at least we can name it. And I can mix us up a mean batch of margaritas.

Life Lately

My brain is broken.

At least I thought I was broken but then I read this and felt better. Which actually means I am broken but I’m not the only one. I shared a snippet of that article in my Instagram stories and received a half-dozen messages from friends re-iterating the same thing: “My brain is broken, too.” “I feel this on a deep level.” “This is everything.” And lots of “100” emoji. I mean, I guess that’s comforting.

I mix up words that sound sort of similar but totally aren’t (Like “bacon” for “band-aid”. I…don’t know.) and have a hard time focusing on…anything. I also have no appetite which feels like my body has forgotten even how to eat and have become one of those annoying people who say things like, “I forgot to eat lunch.” And then makes a smoothie as if that’s a replacement for solid food that you chew.

I thought my brain would be better once the kids were in school but it’s not. In fact, it feels worse. It’s actually probably the same as before, it’s just that I have the time and space to try to focus now which only shows me how much I can’t. My brain is so used to interruptions it can’t handle long stretches of undisturbed time. Please hear me when I say that I am SO GLAD the kids are back in school. And also my brain forgot what it’s supposed to do when it has longer than 2.5 minutes to concentrate on any given task.

Maybe it’s like that saying around postpartum bodies, where it takes nine months for your body to stretch and grow a human so you need to give yourself (at least) nine months to get back to some sort of normalcy? We’ve been in this pandemic for nearly a year, so it stands to reason that it will take at least a year for our brains and bodies to get back to their pre-pandemic selves.

Also, we’re still in it. It’s absurd to think my brain would work like capital-b Before when, despite my kids being back in school, we’re still in the thick of a global pandemic. I still need to make sure we have clean masks, school could be disrupted at any time, and our summer plans remain somewhat up in the air.

I’m trying to give myself a break, trying to go against that clanging gong of society that beats a steady cadence of “Produce! Produce! Produce!” I need more—and longer—breaks to accomplish even simple tasks. I’m preaching to myself here when I say maybe that’s not a bad thing.

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Take Action

I was made aware this week by Anti-Racism Daily that there is an anti-trans bill making its way through my own state legislature. This bill seeks to ban those assigned male at birth from participating in girl’s and women’s school athletic programs. I encourage you to read the link above; it does greater justice to the issue than I can here. In fact, there are more than a dozen states with some version of this bill. Using thinly-veiled transphobic language, these bills do enormous harm to transgender youth, a population who is already stigmatized in society. Furthermore, we know how beneficial organized athletics are to all children’s physical health and mental well-being, and even more so for transgender youth. The thought of banning any child from being able to fully participate in school sports is nothing less than shameful.

I emailed my state house representative, urging her to stand against her Republican colleagues who authored this bill and received the most wonderful response. I urge you to do the same—particularly if your state is one of the many on this list. You can find your own state representative here.

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Around the Internet

• I am always and forever a Glennon Doyle stan.

• This whole piece, but this line sums up every parent sending their kid back to school right now: “When she returns to school on March 1, I will be terrified. And thrilled.”

• For anyone else who feels like the news around vaccines and normalcy are grimmer than they need to be.

• “But as we approach the one-year anniversary of remote education in America, I find that I am losing sympathy for the educators’ position and their myopic vision this far along into the pandemic. We can open schools safely, and we have the evidence in hand to prove it.”

• “But phyllo dough, at least the kind I bought, won’t work in this situation. It’s rectangle and you don’t manipulate phyllo dough like you do puff pastry. Phyllo dough is Mediterranean, isn’t it? Figures. You never tell a Mediterranean – especially a woman – what she ought to fit into. I know better, so I pull out a jelly roll pan and place all the sheets on that.”

• This, though.

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Eating

• I made these baked onion rings on Super Bowl Sunday and while they were a little time-consuming, they were also super yummy. A few notes: soak your sliced onions while you prep everything else (a quick soak helps the flour stick better). Also, put your flour and panko ingredients in (separate) plastic bags—then you can toss the onions in and just shake them all up to coat. And last I threw my own spices in, not the spice mix she listed. Roughly a 1/2 teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, salt, and pepper.

• This cupcake recipe is everything. I made them for the kids’ birthdays but now I think I need to make them for no reason whatsoever because they’re that good. Also because I have what I think is scientifically known as a “crapton” of sprinkles left. (And because I can’t not give notes: I used regular whole milk, regular cream cheese, and canola oil.)

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Fun Things

• This headband is my new favorite accessory.

• We’ve been having some epic Uno Flip battles as a family. I don’t consider myself much of a games person but I will play this all day long. Since there’s no reading, (unlike another of our favorite games, Apples to Apples Jr.) even Nolan can join in since it’s mostly matching up colors and numbers/symbols.

• Speaking of those cupcakes above we celebrated some birthdays around here! I can’t let this section pass by without saying we now have two seven-year-olds and a five-year-old in this house. We celebrated COVID-style by visiting an outdoor ice maze, meeting some friends at a nearby sledding hill, and a small birthday drive-by. Since all three birthdays are at the exact same time (only two days apart), my house was still destroyed from making six-dozen cupcakes to pass out and all. the. gifts. they still received. At one point our living room was ankle-deep in assorted wrapping materials and presents. By now I’ve learned that party or not, I need a solid week to put my house back together at the end of February.

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Despite everything, the weather has been saving me. My brain might be broken but at least the sun is out and the snow is melting which all puts a smile on my face. Also, someone spontaneously paid for my breakfast on Wednesday and it made my week. Two weeks ago I was unsure if the subzero temperatures we were experiencing would ever break and now here, on this side, it looks like we could be in store for an early spring. Spring is just exactly what we need right now. And while I’d love to wrap this up with something profound, what I’ve mostly been thinking lately is some version of this:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alyssa Limperis (@alyssalimp)

Doesn’t add up at all.

Life Lately

Has the “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” line from Anne of Green Gables been over-used yet? Because that’s something my heart has been sighing pretty much all day every day. It’s as unoriginal a thought as a (white, suburban woman) person can have, so, unsurprisingly, here we are.

The kids had fall break last week, Nolan for the entire week and Caden and Brooklyn for two days. Thursday and Friday, when they were all home, felt just like falling back into our old, familiar rhythm again. As though this whole Kindergarten thing were nothing more than a momentary blip.

Of course, it was different in that I KNEW it was a blip in time. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in some ways seemed to last forever, but in a good way, in the way that it was hard to dive back into routine and actually need to wake up to my phone alarm again on Monday morning. But unlike so many of the never-ending days of the past five years, I knew there was an end to it all, there was a slight relief to it, that I could count it down on a single hand.

Our weeks have a rhythm, more so than our days. Where most days in the past five years felt more or less the same, it’s our weeks that seem to loop now, instead of individual weekdays. Preschool on Monday, playtime on Tuesdays before I go off to a writing class and rush home to delivery pizza and dance class for all. Wednesdays it’s back to preschool and don’t forget to pick up the groceries. Thursdays are for eating lunch with Caden and Brooklyn at school before volunteering all afternoon, and Fridays equal preschool again and an afternoon movie.

Then, somehow, it’s the weekend. The weeks don’t usually feel quite so long anymore. Especially once I fit in errands (Target at least once, maybe Costco, and do I have any returns to make?), an inevitable appointment of some sort (dentist, chiropractor, optometrist), bringing a meal to a friend, writing, reading, and the cleaning and meal prep/consumption/clean-up of regular household function: the rest of my “free” hours fill up quickly. (Though ask me about that again in a few days if we continue this streak of rain, clouds, and sub-50-degree temps.)

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“When I was a baby,” is Nolan’s current favorite go-to line. Some things are factual. “When I was a baby, I could only crawl,” is more or less accurate. Others not so much.

“When I was a baby I couldn’t say ‘puppy’ so I said ‘po-pa’,” being one.

“When I was a baby I was in a tree and then I fell out of the tree and you were there and then a lion scratched me right here on my cheek,” is another.

Sometimes he even projects into the future. “When I was 10 I drove in a car and then I climbed in a tree. And I lived in my own house and it was pink.”

“But Nolan, you’ve never been 10,” you might say. You would be wrong. He was 10 at some point in the past and you’re a damn fool for thinking he wasn’t.

These statements are absolutely, positively not up for dispute. You just have to nod your head and agree with him or else you’ll realize you’ve enmeshed yourself in a debate with a three-year old void of all reason, facts, or logic, over whether said three-year old ate hot dogs with ketchup when he was a baby or not.

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Some thought-provoking reads from around the Internets:

This article on the privilege of obtaining an elite degree…and the pitfalls.
This one on why it’s not just about the cooking.
This post from Emily P. Freeman.
This beautiful poem from a fellow Exhale creativity member.

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“We have homework,” Caden announced the second week of school. He strode into the house, plopped his backpack on the ground, and rummaged through his folder for the orange math worksheet, “Mrs. Hawes said we HAVE to do it. It needs to be done in pencil and you need to sign it when I’m done and I need to do it right now and I need a pencil.”

He sat expectantly at the counter while I rummaged in the drawer for a pencil. He and Brooklyn sat down and completed their simple worksheets in a minute or two, working seriously the whole time. And that’s more or less how the school year has gone. They’ve adapted to kindergarten like fish to water; I think they would sleep in their classroom if it were allowed.

At back-to-school night, the second or third week of school, they couldn’t contain their enthusiasm. “We’ll show you where everything is!” they told us, giddy with excitement. They showed us around the school, showed us how to go through the lunch line, which table they sat at. They explained the rules and showed us the different classrooms with all the importance of freshmen.

“No sloppy-poppy!” Brooklyn says while she’s coloring. “That’s what Mrs. Hawes says.”

And “There’s no scribbles in elementary school!”

And “Name on your paper - first thing!”

And more. Almost every day they come home with another tidbit of information about their teacher which means that by the end of the year I expect to know Mrs. Hawes more intimately than I know some of my closest friends, despite only seeing her a handful of times myself.

DEAR KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS: THANK YOU. You are doing the Lord’s work. These kids hero-worship you. And I hope they talk about us at school even half as much as they talk about you at home.

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Believe all the five-star reviews. This soup is perfect, even more so with a loaf of crusty, homemade bread. My only quibble with the recipe as it’s written is that it absolutely should be doubled.

I’ve already made this applesauce cake twice this fall. And I’ll probably make it at least once more. All of Deb’s recipes are fantastic but this one has become tradition.

This blueberry oatmeal is my favorite. Topped with a little dark brown sugar and some chia seeds when I can find them in the pantry: yum.

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The more I think about it, the more I realize just how much the weeks continue to blur by. I’ve said yes to some things, things I wouldn’t have said yes to with three kids under five at home. I’m taking a writing class (it’s giving me LIFE), volunteering at school, doing some design work here and there, heading up a committee at church. Somehow the time and space I thought I might have with two kids gone all day and another a few mornings a week has never quite materialized.

Especially as we rush into the end of the year. Halloween blurs right into Thanksgiving and then into Christmas (and did you see how LATE Thanksgiving is this year??) which means my mind is already crammed with all the shopping, meal planning, parties, gifts, etc. (I possibly had a meltdown to Tyson about ALL THE THINGS in the next several months that need to be done in addition to ALL THE REGULAR LIFE THINGS last night. It’s fine.) Basically, I’m living this meme:

Of course, to the kids, Christmas is still a lifetime away. Two months is an eternity in their eyes. Heck, Halloween is in less than a week and that’s unbearable enough. (“Is it Halloween yet? Do we get to wear our costumes today? Is it trick-or-treating tonight? Can we eat candy?” MAKE IT STOP.) I remember, as a kid, just how long the time felt between each break, to get from one holiday to the next. I empathize with them, even as my brain feels scrambled with all the to-dos.

Hang in there, everyone. Buckle up during this last mad rush of the year. Enjoy the colorful leaves if you can, a mug of something warm in the afternoon, and bake up that applesauce cake SOON. This time of year might fly by, but it also doesn’t keep.