Life Lately

I started writing this section mid-month.

Then President Biden took office and I deleted everything I’d written here.

There’s been a shift—can you feel it?—in the very air we breathe.

It would have been a switch no matter what, but then January 6th happened and we, as a nation, held our collective breath. The inauguration was a balm to our weary souls. And I don’t want to minimize anything here, but please let me fangirl for a moment on my favorite inauguration moments.

• Michelle Obama. We are not worthy.

• Amanda Gorman. We should all be reciting her poem in liturgy every single morning.

• J.Lo slipping “let’s get loud” into America the Beautiful.

• Lady Gaga’s Hunger Games realness.

• Ella Emhoff’s coat is everything I want in a coat.

• Joe Biden’s speech was perfect.

• Swearing in Madam Vice President. Just…yes.

• Give me all the Bernie memes. God bless the internet.

Okay, thank you for indulging me. I’m afraid my “Around the Internet” section is going to be rather a ping-ponging of emotions. But isn’t that what we’ve lived, not just in the past year, but in the past few weeks? We were starved for the beauty, the dignity, and the pageantry of a presidential inauguration. To think it had been stormed by a mob wearing tactical gear and toting weapons, and it was transformed exactly two weeks later through the magic of bunting and flags and capital-F Fashion for all the world to see.

Joe Biden spoke, over and over again, of unity. Donald Trump’s inaugural address, in his own words, spoke of “American carnage.” So stop telling me Trump didn’t stoke the fires of rage in this country. Stop telling me he isn’t responsible for what unfolded at our Capitol on January 6th. Stop telling me the sky is magenta when we look out our windows and see it is a clear, bright blue. As Trevor Noah said, “Miss me with that bullshit.”

Phew. Ping-ponging, I know. I also know this: that I have been waking up this last week with an ease that’s been missing the past four-plus years.

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Take Action

This is a time where I’m regretting including a “take action” section. Oof, less action, more hibernation, please.

Though hibernation, in some sense, is the point right now. We’re entering a new phase of the pandemic where variations have sprung up and we’re still catching up with what, exactly, that means. On the other half of the split-screen, people are getting vaccinated and it will never not make me happy.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I am so freaking over it. I can see and feel the weariness around me. I want to have friends inside my house. I want to leave my kids with a babysitter and go eat in an actual, real-live restaurant. I want to be able to say “yes” when the kids ask for the 483rd time, “Can we go to Great Wolf Lodge/the indoor playground/to visit our cousins?” But we’re also so freaking close. So, take this as your reminder to set the example. Please wear your mask. Please keep your outings short and only to the essentials. And please don’t socialize with people for extended periods of time in indoor spaces.

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Around the Internet

• Ezra Klein called this “an extraordinary first draft of history” and there are really no other words to describe it.

• “In short, January 6 not only could have been much worse—it was much worse than was initially apparent. Sometimes real-time coverage of news events leans toward the sensational and overstates what happened. But because reporters were unprepared for the violence, and because of the fog of war (and tear gas), the horror of this event has emerged slowly. Many people were able to see the stakes on January 6, but it was much harder to see how close a larger catastrophe was to occurring, much less how much harm was actually done.”

• What To Tell Your Child Who Has Found You In The Kitchen With A Glass of Water Suspended Between Counter and Mouth As You Watch Live Footage of the News

• Dave Ramsey has always given me the creeps. This is all exactly zero percent surprising to me.

• Because you know I can’t let it go without talking more about the fashion.

• “When we live in temporary permanence, it doesn’t make sense to buy a rocking chair or a bedside bassinet or deck out a nursery. It doesn’t make sense to spring for the fancy convertible car seat or to give the walls a fresh coat of paint. There’s the always-present possibility we’ll be leaving soon. Why waste the money now when we can use it in the U.S.? But as time marches forward and the calendar flips to another month and then another, we find ourselves wishing for that rocking chair, blaming the baby’s lack of sleep on its absence. It may seem like a silly thing to grieve over, but it highlights the things we’ve had to give up over the last four years.”

• “That it is possible for Joe Biden and his team to release a plan this straightforward is the most damning indictment of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response imaginable.”

• “If we don’t get control of this—if we don’t reestablish an ethic of respect for facts—nothing else will be solved.”

• About a kitchen table and so much more.

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Eating

• This curry is everything I want in a curry. I’ve made it twice in two weeks. It’s fantastic and while you might need to double it to have leftovers, it’s even better the next day. My foodie kid literally licked his plate clean and the other two sauce-averse children even dared to try the chicken. 10/10 highly recommend.

• I made these tacos the other night and Tyson said, “Each bite is a perfect bite of taco.” If that’s not enough of a recommendation, I don’t know what is. (Note: not sure if my head of cauliflower was small or I just prefer a different cauliflower-to-beans ratio, but I only used about half a can of black beans.)

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Fun Things

• After several years of trying to get into a home yoga routine that works for me, I’ve found my groove with the Down Dog app. In the past few weeks, I’ve only missed a handful of days. I previously tried to scroll YouTube to find just what I wanted in terms of class, length, sequence type, etc., which was frustrating 9/10 times. I can choose all of the above with a few simple clicks in the app. I can choose a 15-minute class set to spiritual music with a full flow and focus on my lower back in less than 10 seconds.

• I got the Olive and June manicure set for my birthday and it’s worth every ounce of hype. It’s all packaged up in a fabulous box and it makes me so happy.

• This sweatsuit was my birthday gift to myself and it also makes me so very happy. In fact, I just did 10 minutes of yoga while wearing the sweatsuit after giving myself a manicure earlier today so I’ve basically just hit the trifecta of fun things bliss.

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On a personal note, the kids went back to school. Like, back-back. (Our district is still distance learning except for Pre-K—2nd grade, who went back full-time on the 19th.) And despite recently writing about routines and rhythms, I’ve yet to find mine. I keep telling myself we’re only a week or so in; of course, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. Just like I didn’t know what we were doing with hybrid and I never did find my groove with distance learning…it takes time.

Hear this: I’m thrilled for them to be back. My extroverted, please-fill-my-inexhaustible-socialization-bucket-up Nolan is a different person lately. Caden and Brooklyn are no longer trying to learn through screens for five-plus hours a day. AND ALSO: it’s weird. It’s weird because this has emphatically NOT been our life since March 12th of last year. It’s weird because I have some time and space to breathe each week but my body and brain are still operating in scarcity mode as far as Time Without the Kids is concerned. It’s weird because I don’t know how tightly I can hold on to this new schedule.

It’s weird because we’re on the brink of a new month and to think of everything this last month contained: insurrection, an inauguration, Bernie memes, turning 34, and also now GameStop, I guess? It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re a single month into 2021. Here’s to being on the brink of a new month and all the weirdness it will hold.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any horror or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
(Follow the links below or click through to bookshop.org to find all books referenced in this post and past Read, Watched, Listened posts. And here’s your friendly reminder that these are affiliate links!)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
While I thought it ran a little long, it drew me right back into the Hunger Games universe. I couldn’t put it down.

Homegoing
Oof. What a novel. I’m not sure I’ve read such an ambitious novel before, in terms of time period (400+ years!). I mean, I love multi-generational family dramas and this was ALL the generations. Yaa Gyasi brings history to life in this book in the most beautiful, raw, haunting ways.

Transcendent Kingdom
Though unintentional (hello, library holds), reading Yaa Gyasi’s novels back-to-back felt fitting. This story was less ambitious than Homegoing in terms of timeline, but no less challenging in the themes it tackled: religion, science, and family. Her writing is lovely and there’s a reason you’re seeing these two works on everyone’s “best” lists.

Bright Precious Thing
Meh. It was fine. I loved reading about Gail Caldwell’s experience with second-wave feminism and her references to the #metoo movement. Overall, it was underwhelming and felt like an unfinished book to me.

Ella Enchanted
This was a comfort re-re-re-re-re-read. It was my favorite book in sixth grade. It held up. I love it so much.

The Bluest Eye
I’ve read some Toni Morrison over the years but can’t remember ever reading this one before. It was haunting. I had to race to get through it so I could stop thinking about it constantly. It’s…tough, and was often jarring to swing back-and-forth between its child protagonists and its adult themes.

Everything is Spiritual: Who We Are and What Were Doing Here
Okay, I’ll admit that the cadence of Rob Bell’s writing can often grate on me, and yet there’s still something about him that’s so freaking endearing. This one is part faith, part metaphysics, part science lesson. I read somewhere that this book was the most ROB BELL you could get and I think that’s the absolute best way to sum it up.

Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
I’ll be clear about my bias: I will read any and everything Anne Helen Peterson writes. This book lays bare the struggles so many of us (read: all of us) have felt as Millennials. She was just preaching to me, the choir, here, and I’m confident that part of the reason I loved this so much is simply that I seemed to find myself and my generation on every single page. Still, I think this is an important book, and I am so impressed at the way she is able to distill her research down into something so inherently readable.

A Woman is No Man
Another haunting read. Etaf Rum places us in the immigrant Arab community and brings to life several generations of women in one family. It got repetitive to me; though since the main character lives such a monotonous existence I can see how that also makes sense.

The Best American Food Writing 2020
I look forward to this anthology every single year. I love it so much. This year several themes stuck out to me, more than in the previous years: 1. What even is authenticity in food and does it matter? 2. Food used as a (quite literal) weapon 3. Gentrification. A few favorite essays were the ones about crab rangoon, baby food, and the one about ice cream. If you’re interested in food writing at all, this is a must-read. (This is also the third year this volume has been released, and FYI I would rank them: 1. 2018 2. 2020 3. 2019)

Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
I have such conflicting thoughts on this book. On the one hand, it felt completely self-absorbed. On the other hand, it’s Christie Tate’s memoir about therapy so what in the world did I expect? Also, some of the therapy strategies felt…terrible? Like, do not try this at home. But then again, they seemed to work, so what exactly is my problem? I got kind of tired of Christie as a person, who made the same mistakes over and over again in her love life (which, her professional life was just freaking fine as a prestigious lawyer, so also get over yourself?). But also, obviously that’s why she was going to therapy in the first place, so, duh. I have to admit, the last few chapters were extremely satisfactory. I guess I’d give it 3.5 stars; it was compelling enough to continue reading but I just could not make up my mind on this book.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
As if I needed another reason to be annoyed and angry with evangelical culture… * insert annoyed side-eye emoji here * This is a MUST-READ, as far as I’m concerned, for anyone who’s interested at all in politics, and especially if you’re interested in the intersection of faith and politics. I was literally reading this book as the events of January 6th unfolded and it was like I held a textbook to describe what was happening on my TV screen in my own freaking hands.

HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style
Elizabeth Holmes, of Instagram's “so many thoughts” fame, put together this GORGEOUS book on the royal styles of Queen Elizabeth, Diana, Kate Middleton, and Meghan Markle. I cannot overstate how gorgeous the photos in this book are. I implore you to purchase the hardcover copy because there’s no freaking way the digital version translates that well. It’s magazine-like in quality and tone (in a very, very good way), and a wonderful form of escapism for anyone interested in fashion.

The Undocumented Americans
What a book. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio details her own experience as an illegal immigrant as well as the stories around her. Every chapter was almost more painful to read than that last; the ones about 9/11 and Flint, Michigan will haunt me for a long time. If we’re talking must-reads then this is one for every white American for us to even begin to have an iota of comprehension of the crises illegal immigrants face every single day.

The Chicken Sisters
I was excited for this one—I loved the premise of a generational feud and two sisters with opposing chicken restaurants being featured on a reality show. It largely fell flat for me; it got long and repetitive. The ending was satisfying but predictable. I stuck it out but this was maaayyyybe a 3-star book for me.

RE-READS: The entire Hunger Games trilogy. Hat tip to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes for kicking that off.

WATCHED
Athlete A
Oof. We put off watching this one because I knew it would hit me in all the feels. And it did. But this documentary, about the festering disease that is/was US Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and the organizations that propped him up, was so well done. All of those girls/women are freaking heroes.

The Speed Cubers
A documentary about speedcubing that’s not really about speedcubing. Didn’t think I’d need the tissues for this one; I was wrong.

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction
these are always fantastic, and we’ve recently watched the Lizzo, Kim Kardashian West, and Dave Chappelle episodes. DO NOT SLEEP on the Dave Chappelle episode. It’s fantastic.

Dave Chappelle: Equanimity
Which brought us to diving into Dave Chappelle’s Netflix specials. Listen, I don’t always love Chappelle. I just don’t need graphic descriptions of sex; I do not think it’s funny and I think he’s so much smarter than that. That said, my favorite so far has been Equanimity, and while you need to watch the whole thing, it’s the last 10-15 minutes that are incredibly poignant.

LISTENED
These episodes of The Daily are must-listens after the horrors we witnessed on January 6th: An Assault on the Capitol, How They Stormed Congress

Also, Pantsuit Politics, always here to save (read: help me process) the day: An Attempted American Coup

To strike an entirely different tone, I loved the 2021 Predictions episode of The Popcast.

And I don’t always list music here, but after writing this piece I’ve been listening to the Spotify playlist I created to accompany it on repeat.

Boston

It began in middle school, as far as I can remember. When I listened to songs about breaking away and it stirred something inside of me.

Sarah Evans sang about talking to the scarecrow. The Dixie Chicks were ready to run. Then they sang about wide open spaces with room to make big mistakes.

Even though I grew up in the suburbs; there were no scarecrows around for me to converse with. Still, there was something about escaping, about soaring away like the blackbird, about a young girl’s dreams no longer hollow, that resonated deep within me. It feels deeply American, I think, and maybe that’s where this feeling comes from; that I must come by it honestly through my roots, deep into my very bones.

I remember playing The Chicks’ albums over and over with friends as we rode the bus for field trips, each trying to share headphones, long before earbuds were a thing, listening to one of our Discmans that would skip a beat when the bus hit a bump. I don’t know what my friends’ thoughts were on the songs, maybe they just liked country music. I did, too, but it’s the lyrics that did it for me.

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It’s in college where the running-away feeling grows most vivid. And I’d run away for college, a little bit at least, moving three-and-a-half hours and one state further south. I moved there to get into the school’s esteemed interior design program, a program you wouldn’t have expected from a school surrounded by Iowa’s cornfields. I didn’t get into the interior design program the first time around, but I resolved to try again. So sophomore year, I waited in somewhat of a limbo, taking whatever courses I could to get me through to the end of the year and into the summer, when I would find out again if I’d been accepted. In the meantime, I was minoring in history and figured that was my backup plan, to turn that minor into a major though I had absolutely no idea what that would mean for a real-world job. (Maybe I’d work in a museum?)

That was the year Augustana released “Boston.” It hit that same “let’s-pack-it-all-up-and-run-away” feeling deep in my bones.

She said I think I’m goin’ to Boston
I think I'll start a new life
I think I'll start it over
Where no one knows my name

Whatever happened, whichever turn my life took, I was convinced Boston was the answer. Literally. Just the year before I’d packed up and moved to a school where I didn’t know anyone. I’d done it once, surely I could do it all again upon graduation? I would move out East after graduation, I was sure of it. Just the idea of Boston sounded dramatic, it sounded sexy, it felt posh yet familiar all at once.  This was my plan.

And then.

I didn’t foresee meeting Tyson on Memorial Day weekend after sophomore year. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. All I’m ready to do is have some fun. What’s all this talk about love? Instead of me, it was those single girl dreams that did the flying away.

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I graduated a few years later with that interior design degree + history minor (so something worked out), got married, and moved to a brand new state all within a matter of months. In place of Boston, I ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, where Tyson was working on his PhD. It was still a city, a brand new one, where no one knew my name. (Well, except Tyson.)

And It was with Tyson that I ended up exploring Boston for the first time. We’d been married a little over a year when he had a conference there. As soon as I heard he was traveling to the city that had lodged itself in my brain I knew I had to tag along. We strolled around on a mild January day along the Freedom Trail and through Faneuil Hall Marketplace. We ate chowder and lobster. In the days to follow, I hopped on public transit and explored the city myself. I met up with a friend who introduced me to the glory of cannoli; I didn’t have near enough time to wander through the Museum of Fine Arts

Some cities are fun to visit. Chicago is this for me. Visiting Chicago is one thing; I’ve been there at least a half-dozen times. And it’s fine. But I have no desire to live there.

Then there are other cities. Like Madison. We grew to love it there. Eventually, plenty of people knew our names. Though we ultimately left Madison behind, a piece of my heart still resides there. And like Boston. I have to admit, even just on that short visit: it felt like it could have been home.

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I realize the irony of this, writing it from where I live now, only 25 minutes from where I grew up. I did my undergrad in Iowa and we spent the loveliest five years in Madison and now here I am, a decade out from college, a full five years of being planted in the same place. Of course, I’m romanticizing Boston. It really did feel, during our visit, like I could live there. But who knows, if Tyson hadn’t shown up, what would have happened. I graduated college deep into a recession. Who's to say it would have worked out, that I would have actually had the chance to move out there, that Boston would have been all that I’d built it up to be in my head?

Still, I’d be lying if I said I put those running away feelings behind me. The opening chords of “Boston” still pull out that feeling in me, they still make me feel as though I could pack it all up and leave it all behind and head out east. Where no one knows my name. It sounds more charming than haunting to me.

I originally played these songs as a girl, then with dreams of the East Coast dancing in my head, as I drove back and forth from the Twin Cities to school. Later, I still played these same songs, but now I drove from Iowa to Madison to visit Tyson, during the year before we got married. I didn’t dream so much of leaving anymore. But I burned these tracks onto CDs, the tail end of the mix CD era. I’m not sure, but I might have the original CDs stashed away somewhere. The songs still meant something to me even if I wasn’t planning to fly away quite as far as I’d once imagined.

It’s not a mix CD, but I did put together a Spotify playlist. It’s a little moody and a little emo and a little folksy and a little country and a little cheesy and a little lyric-heavy. Mostly, they’re the songs I lean into when I’m feeling my most wistful Enneagram 4-y. It’s a bit of a mish-mosh but these are the songs I think of when that flying away feeling takes hold of me. They’re all, in some way, about searching for something. As The Chicks asked, who doesn’t know what I’m talking’ about?

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Playlist".

Creating Rituals Instead of Resolutions

Am I the only one who feels as though setting resolutions feels a little too much right now?

To be honest, I feel that every year. Resolutions and choosing a word and all that “new year, new me” talk has never lit a fire under me. But this year especially.

The new year arriving in January has always felt a little off to me. Especially if you’re a parent to little kids; we still have the same routines, same nap schedules, and same mealtimes to adhere to. The kids return to the same grades with the same teachers after winter break. Also? We live in Minnesota. It’s hard to feel like anything has changed with an almost unbroken wall of white outside our windows and a temperature that will hover around freezing for at least the next two months.

Then, of course, there’s this year, where things feel the same most of all. When we’re closing in on nearly a year of working from home, schooling from home, social distancing, wearing masks, and hibernating from other people. In some ways, we’ve been living the concept of “winter” for months now.

This year, it’s enough for me to remember how to get us all out of the house at one time. I’ll need a crash course in packing lunches five days a week when in-person school begins again. It’s enough, without resolutions, for me to continue to keep things going: to meet deadlines, to shovel the driveway, to cook regular meals. It’s enough to continue to stay in touch with people in creative ways, whether through social distancing at the park or virtual happy hours over Zoom. It’s enough to enforce screen time limits on not only the kids, but also myself.

No, this year, of all the years, calls for a softer and gentler approach. 

Forget resolutions. Let’s set some rituals. 

To go all English teacher nerd on you, a ritual is defined as “any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.” Yes, please. I love routines anyway, so please let me plan out my weeks and days with “regularly performed patterns of behavior in a set manner” and I will live my best life. While a ritual could be mundane enough to be boring (teeth brushing comes to mind), I think instituting rituals into certain parts of our week can be life-giving instead of draining. And this year, more than most, I think we could use things to liven up our days, to give us something to look forward to, and to break up the monotony of our weeks.

Read more about setting rituals over on Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Life Lately

Really, I already wrote the best way to sum up “life lately”. Lately meaning all of 2020. When I started it I wasn’t sure that I was actually going to share it. Then I finished it and thought, I might have written this for me but in so many ways it’s all of our story. It’s long: you’ve been warned. But if you get what can only be called nostalgic at the end of the year, and if it feels stronger this year than others, then it’s for you.

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Take Action

Let’s wrap up the last few days before January 4th by resting. Before we’re really back to work, before the kids are back to school and any activities they might have left, before returning to whatever semblance of “real life” we have these days. I haven’t rested near as much as I’ve meant to. (That could be the title of my memoir. #EnneagramOne) I read a book for an hour during a blizzard and it was delightful. On Christmas Day, we never took off our pajamas, and spent the day building LEGO and playing Apples to Apples Jr. and eating pizza. It was the best. Let’s take care and give ourselves more of that before 2021 begins for real.

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Around the Internet

• Pour yourself a cup of tea, light a candle, and sit with the NYT Year in Photos. It feels holy. I was unprepared and began scrolling, and sat for what felt like a while before I realized I was only in April. Take your time. Breathe it all in. Feel what you need to feel. Exhale.

• “It’s just a photo, after all, but it’s so, so much more than that. Presents are more than presents, meals are more than meals, decorations are more than decorations. They become so through labor, so much of it invisible, and so much of it performed by women.”

• If I wrote a manifesto about Christmas cookies, this would be it.

• “I must let him escape into his room, behind the door still adorned with the cactus drawing he made for art class eight months ago when he was still a child.”

• “Feel consumed by the thought of how many are hurting in how many ways. Donate to schools. Get books to kids who need them. Order local takeout even though you have 2 weeks worth of pasta. Recognize you cannot save everyone. Remember you can only do what you can.”

• “I’ve made hundreds of dishes for hundreds of meals. And I am so bored. I am so tired. In theory, I love to cook. But I am so, so sick of cooking.”

• It’s about a Christmas tree but it’s not about the Christmas tree.

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Eating

• I’ve discovered rugelach. And then I ate 12 in a single day. It’s all fine. Even though the recipe calls them “Unfussy Rugelach” I still find them, well, fussy. But it’s worth it. I try to make them a bit less fussy by simplifying the fillings: I like to make half the dough with Nutella spread inside and the other half spread with raspberry jam and raisins or dried cranberries. Eat 2 or 12 while you drink a cup of tea.

• I’ve also discovered my local grocery store sells what’s marketed as shaved beef for Philly cheesesteaks. I haven’t been using it for cheesesteaks, but stir-fries. Between not having to slice up the beef and the fact that it’s so thin it cooks in only a minute or two, dinner comes together in less than twenty minutes. Usually, I’m waiting on the rice to cook. Beef with snow peas and sesame beef and broccoli have been two favorites.

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Fun Things

• Take a peek at my Favorites of 2020 post to see my round-up of 2020 fun things. Clothes, things for the kids, books I read, things I wrote…if I loved it this year, it’s on that list. Except for the new Taylor Swift album, which you should absolutely be listening to. My preferred way to listen is to play Lover followed by Folklore followed by Evermore which is * chef’s kiss * (It’s also something I’ve done approximately 1.5 times because: children.)

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The only way I can think to close this out for the year is with the last paragraph of my 2020 summary post:

But in December, we also put up Christmas decorations and it felt like hope. We may have gone overboard on the gifts this year but wrapping those up felt like hope, too. We began to administer vaccines and that felt so hopeful our collective hearts might burst. And we looked forward to 2021. Though we knew the calendar flipping over wouldn’t magically change everything, still, we pinned our hopes on that number, that year. Knowing, hoping, feeling in our bones that it would be sooner, rather than later, that we could emerge into a new and better normal.

Battered, bruised, and frayed around the edges, but we made it. See you on the other side of 2020.