Life Lately

My plan this fall was to re-read through the Harry Potter books. I thought I would do this somewhat slowly, savoring-ly, interspersed with other books and library holds as they came up.

People, this is not how it went. It’s been a solid decade since I last read through the entire series and I forgot just how all-consuming they are. I could not devour the last three books fast enough. (Or I should say from the last third of book five on, because the bulk of book five with Harry yelling at everyone is the only one that gets even a little bit tedious.)

I finished book seven on Wednesday, spending the majority of the day doing just curled up in a corner of the couch, because I forgot just how un-putdownable they are.

At the risk of using the most cliche of cliches, these books are, simply put, magical.

I closed book seven, teary-eyed, the very last sentence sending me over the edge (All was well and maybe now I need a tattoo of those words?) and looked at the clock and was filled with nothing but a sense of what on earth do I do with my life now? I wandered around for the last half hour before the kids arrived home from school like a Hogwarts ghost, unable to do much of anything tangible. I felt an enormous sense of loss, almost grief, at arriving at the end. I’d been so immersed in the HP universe that real-life paled in comparison. I messaged a friend and told her I was absolutely ruined for all other books now. How can I read any other book now? It’s like after a breakup, but instead of a transitional boyfriend, I need a transitional book.

It’s not exactly that I want the books to keep going. No, I would rather end with this feeling than to be several more books in and think, well, that should have ended three books ago.

I’ve started listening to the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast, am re-watching The Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II, and have even ventured into Harry Potter TikTok. I need these things to help bring me down from this adrenaline high, but mostly, to keep the magic alive. I’m strongly tempted to immediately read book seven again. (For the record, book four is my favorite, but seven is an incredibly close second.)

All that to say, I wrote on Instagram last weekend that I’ve basically turned into a Harry Potter fan account now. You’ve been warned. It was one of my most-liked posts ever so I know I’m not the only one with HP fever. Please come alongside me in my affliction and talk to me about all things to do with the wizarding world.

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Action Item

A friend of mine got in touch with me about collecting items for Afghan refugees who are being resettled here in Minnesota. They expect to be working with up to 500 families over the next several months and the need is enormous. If you’d like to donate, you can view their Amazon Wish List or send me a donation via Venmo @Shannon-Williams-291. I will put any money that comes in towards the highest priority needs.

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Around the Internet

• I don’t even know how to sum this one up. On being a woman and the ways we are trapped and running with wolves.

• What We Ask of Mothers

• I love the Ellyn Satter idea of mealtime “division of labor” between parents and kids, and also resonate strongly with this piece.

• “As schools have reopened this fall, and unemployment has run out, many of us are now trying to find a way back to work. And I wonder how many other mothers are feeling the same way I am: afraid to go back to jobs that left little room for anything else, but also afraid that if we don’t get back on track, we’ll never catch up.”

• In case you’ve noticed all the book blob covers going around, too.

• “I don't have a problem with kids working to earn things. But that's not how this ever shakes out. When opportunities are only frictionless for kids from families with money, those kids are the only ones who get opportunity. The kids who get the opportunity are overwhelmingly white and middle to upper-class. This isn't a problem of work. It's a problem of systemic inequality.”

• And here’s one of those Harry Potter TikToks that amused me more than it probably should. :)

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Eating

• I’ve been making these pumpkin cream cheese muffins as mini-muffins and YUM. I get three-dozen+ from this recipe when I make them as minis.

• I mean, this newsletter just made me want to eat buckets of popcorn. I’ve been big into making my own kettle corn but this made me want to up my savory seasonings game. For kettle corn: heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a large, heavy-bottom pot. Add 1/2 cup popcorn kernels and somewhere between 1/4-1/2 cup sugar (depending on how sweet you want it). Shake the pot around, removing from heat when there are 2-3 seconds between pops. Pour in a bowl and sprinkle with sea salt. This makes enough for a family-sized serving; cut in 1/2 for 1-2 people.

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Fun Things

• This is an enormous fun thing, but we finally got a sectional from Joybird for our basement and I LOVE it. I’ve been eyeing Joybird pieces for literal years and couldn’t be happier. All the reviews were right: it’s comfortable and my new favorite thing in our whole entire house. (Pro tip: We paid far less than the current list price, so wait for a sale if you’re in the market for anything.)

• If a sofa isn’t in your needs or budget can I recommend to you this mug? I will be drinking out of it for the foreseeable future as my own private little protest against the fact that paid family leave has been completely removed from the domestic policy package.

• Caden and Brooklyn have been really into playing Rummikub lately. I remember Tyson and me having some epic matches before the kids came along. We might need to revive those again. Highly recommend. (Affiliate link.)

• Fall farms and pumpkin patches forever.

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It’s almost November and the colors have peaked, sweaters are in a near-daily rotation, and pumpkin and apple treats are still going strong. All is 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

Taking a page from Pantsuit Politics’ Instagram page, (who apparently take this practice from Emily P. Freeman, so I’m just another link in the chain at this point), to list the things I learned in June:

• If you have the option for your kid to be bussed to an activity instead of driving them, you should do it. Every time. It will be worth all the dollars.

• I can’t keep up with anything lately and feel like I’m failing at everything. There are too many small children around and also we’re coming out of a pandemic which I’m sure has something (read: almost everything) to do with it, but I don’t have time to unpack that now (see: I can’t keep up with anything). I feel like I’m behind in every area of my life and also things feel like they take between 2-5 times longer than I think they should. The kids should be nicer and the kitchen should be cleaner and I want to get back to doing yoga and I want new furniture for almost every room of my house and maybe the kids would be nicer if I set a better example instead of snapping at them. However, if my little corner of the internet has anything to say about it, apparently that’s how everyone is feeling lately. So maybe that’s just how life is, at least for right now. Solidarity.

• I think number one on this list might have a decent amount to do with number two on this list, since I have spent approximately all of June in my minivan. So. There’s that. Maybe I would have more time to do all the things if I weren’t driving around the entire Twin Cities every single day.

• Driving hours in the car by myself with a bunch of podcasts and good music (read: Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo) is my new favorite form of self-care.

• Grilling anything and throwing chips and a sliced melon on the table is a good enough meal when it’s one million degrees out. We can just pretend the kids ate a fair share of the fruit instead of gorging themselves on chips and processed white buns from a package. It’s fine.

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Action Item

The disaster in Surfside, Florida and the unprecedented heatwave in the Northwest are both on my mind this week. CNN has a great round-up of organizations to support, if you’re able, who are on the ground in the Miami area. Bustle has a list of organizations to support in the Pacific Northwest, as well as general links to organizations who are advocating for climate change solutions. We had our own unheard-of heatwave here in Minnesota in late May/early June, and unfortunately, these climate events are only going to continue. Less unprecedented, much, much more commonplace.

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Around the Internet

• This thread is an entire sermon in ten slides.

• Because I can always have to link to at least one Anne Helen Peterson piece, and this one is everything.

• “Families desperately need help. In other countries, they get it. In the United States, they get empty homilies about the importance of family.”

• An important read about female athletes, especially as we move forward into the Olympics.

• I feel this piece in a very deep way.

• Have you heard of FaceTune? This read was both fascinating and gag-inducing. “Cosmetic surgeons who spoke to HuffPost said they now regularly have patients come in with photos of themselves that have been so heavily Facetuned they would be anatomically impossible to replicate.”

• “A residency is typically designed to give the artist the space to create. In the art world that translates, almost always, to being alone, she explained. ‘It felt quite offensive that somehow you are more creative away from your family than with them,’ she said.”

• In case you haven't seen the “Dear Intern” thread yet. It will make you feel ten types of encouraged with the world.

• I’m in a (usually) happy marriage, but damn if I don’t wish I had someone to break up with so I could blast this perfect mash-up.

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Eating

• These harissa meatballs with whipped feta. Though—UNPOPULAR OPINION ALERT—I don’t actually care for the whipped feta. I make the meatballs and bell peppers, omit the zucchini, and serve it all with homemade pita chips, hummus, sliced cucumbers, and kalamata olives.

• These cheesesteaks but add more bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, and cheese, and buy prepackaged shaved steak from the store so it all comes together ridiculously fast. And deliciously.

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Fun Things

• Back in April, I told you to get a For Days Take Back Bag. Now I’m telling you to buy this relaxing romper because it looks like I put effort into getting dressed but feels like I’m wearing pajamas, which is my exact goal with every outfit.

• The tagline of this product is “the (cashmere) sweatpants of lipstick” and I co-sign that 100%. I’m always on the look for a product that glides on like a chapstick but deposits a little bit of color; something I can use whether I’m in the drop-off line or date night. Ultralip is that thing. I bought it in Lucite but will definitely be back for more.

• This tank. I’ve dressed it up with black shorts and all the way down with athletic shorts and a ponytail. The exaggerated shoulder/extra fabric under the armpit means you don’t have to worry about flashing your bra. It runs large—I tuck it all the way in or it’s a lot of fabric for me. Recommend sizing down if that’s an option for you.

• Okay, I’d seen this Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen going around my corners of the internet and finally tried it out. It’s not shiny or greasy but glides on smooth and matte as the perfect makeup primer. I’m a believer.

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Another thing I learned this month is that June doesn’t quite feel like summer yet. The kids spend the first two weeks wrapping up school. Caden had an activity that’s started at 8 am (!!!) the last few weeks. (See: if there’s a bus option it will be worth all your $$$.) Baseball has largely taken over our evenings. All of these activities have walked us right up to a point where we’ll be traveling for a few days at a time here and there, where it feels like I’m either packing for or unpacking from a trip. And, you might be saying, what do you mean it doesn’t feel like summer? Baseball! What’s more summer than that?

I know. And these things aren’t bad. I’m so glad we’re able to do them this year. And also: it doesn’t feel like summer to me until we’ve had a chance to lay low, sleep in, and do a whole lot of nothing around the house for days at a time.

Those days are coming. I just wrote up our July calendar and am admiring all the blank spots on the calendar. The same blank spots I will then probably curse around the second week of August. Because: balance!

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

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I found myself shaking at lunch.

The door of our washing machine broke that morning—it had been wonky for awhile, it was only a matter of time—and I texted a neighbor to see if I could effectively take over theirs for the day, what with my four loads of laundry on the docket. I was trying to do laundry before we traveled to Iowa to see Tyson’s brother and his family for the first time in fourteen months, to meet our three-month-old niece for the very first time. I save up our laundry before a trip because then it’s easier to just toss everything in suitcases and not have to worry about laundry when we return home. But the washing machine broke. 

Anyway, the shaking. The washing machine was the breaking point, the proverbial straw breaking the poor camel’s back. You know how it goes, when you collapse over a spilled bowl of Cheerios or a smear of toothpaste or dropping a contact lens, but it’s not about the Cheerios or the toothpaste or the contact, they’re just the thing behind the thing?

I found myself trembling at lunch because the washing machine, this silly yet essential thing, broke and upended my entire day. And even though I only had to haul the laundry across the street and a few houses down it threw off my entire rhythm. I spent the morning trying to catch up on writing and emails, but was mostly thrown off by going back and forth to the neighbors and having conversations with Tyson about the annoying, broken washing machine. And our house then was a disaster, it truly was, every single room was full of things that didn’t belong or simply needed to be put away. So I spent the morning adulting and figuring things out and bemoaning the general state of our house and then I ran around picking Nolan up from preschool and getting our grocery order and swapping out loads of laundry at the neighbor’s and reprimanding Nolan when I found him on my laptop which is NOT AT ALL ALLOWED when I discovered it was 1:00 and I hadn’t eaten so I sat down to eat something.

Anyway, I was trembling at lunch.

But it wasn’t just the washing machine. It’s that that week of all weeks was the week leading up to spring break, and then it WAS spring break, and my body? She remembers what happened at this time last year.

The kids had an entire week off for spring break plus the following Monday (because for some reason spring break is one week plus one day now) and that Monday, too, almost pushed me over the edge. Because in my brain spring break was over, yet they were still home, and I was almost convinced they wouldn’t go back to school, just like last year, when spring break was extended for a week and then the world turned upside down which resulted in them being home for the better part of 40-something weeks.

So my body decided to communicate all this to me. It communicated this to me through the shaking and the nights where it feels impossible to sleep and the other nights where it feels impossible to get up in the morning. It communicated all this to me through a scattered brain and the feeling that everything I’ve been doing lately has been like trudging through mud, where everything takes 2-10 times longer than I think it should. My body is carrying the trauma (Oof that feels like a loaded word and yet what else to call it?) of the past year, of this time last year, and it let all out this month, an attempt to alert me that “Hey! We’re not okay over here!” when my brain would rather stuff things down all “La la la everything is fine!”

It’s both completely irrational and also not at all.

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Take Action

Gun control, gun control, gun control. We Americans were tragically reminded this month of the need for reasonable gun control measures, including background checks, waiting periods, and a ban on military-grade weapons. Really, I’d settle for anything at this point.

• Consider a donation to an organization such as Moms Demand Action.

• Contact your representatives in Congress, particularly your Senators and any Republican representatives, to demand that gun legislation be brought to the floor. (The House passed two bills to strengthen gun laws earlier this month.)

• Remember to center the victims in the shootings, not the shooter. I appreciated the New York Times’ coverage of the lives lost in Atlanta and in Boulder.

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Around the Internet

• “That all adds up to a picture where having schools open is pretty clearly safer than having indoor dining open, since you can’t eat with a mask on. In a world where they’re still giving people snacks on airplanes, letting Ted Cruz jet off for a weekend in Cancún, etc., having schools closed represents an irrational social response to the pandemic.”

• Sooooooooooo excited for this. LMM forever.

• Give me allllll the think pieces about the Meghan Markle/Prince Harry/Oprah interview. This one stood out to me.

• “You’re probably going to feel exhausted when you want to feel exhilarated, panicked when you thought you’d feel safe, combative when all you want is to feel soothed. Your social skills have atrophied and you’re probably going to get in some big fights that will seem like they’re about nothing but are actually about everything. You’re going to crave some of the parts of quarantine life you swore you never would. You’re probably going to over-plan and over-schedule and feel an alarming and unexpected need for solitude and have to pull back and re-evaluate.”

• The title of this piece says it all: “Pandemic Moms: Long Days, Short Fuses”

• On motherhood and the Beanie Baby boom.

• “Among all this trauma — Spears’s, mine, that of many women who grew up in the ’90s and early aughts — I can see why a viewer would find relief in concluding that Spears was always in complete control. But it is absurd to discuss her image from that time as though there was not an apparatus behind it, as though she existed in a vacuum where she was figuring out her sexuality on her own terms, rather than in an economy where young women’s sexuality is rapidly commodified until they are old enough to be discarded.”

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Eating

• One of my favorite spring pastas. (I use the whole box of pasta because who wants a leftover 1/4 box of pasta? Also, I use an exorbitant amount of basil instead of mint because I can’t stand mint: you do you.)

• We make homemade pizza almost every Saturday night and this is my go-to pizza dough recipe. I make it in the morning, let it rise in Ziploc bags in the refrigerator, and it’s ready to go by dinnertime.

• This feels like some sort of mid-century throwback, what with the cake mix and the Jell-O and all, but it’s THE BEST light, bright, lemon cake. Everyone raves about it. I have to give a nod to those 50’s housewives with their new-fangled processed foods because they knew that ish is delicious. I’ll be making it for Easter—it’s even better topped with raspberries or sliced strawberries which as far as I’m concerned balances out the processed food part.

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Fun Things

• This salt cellar makes me feel super fancy. I ditched my salt and pepper shakers and now keep a pepper grinder and this next to the stove, with Kosher salt in one half and regular table salt in the other.

• We finished our basement bathroom and I’m in love. <3

• I’ve tried to get the kids into podcasts before, but none of them clicked before we began listening to Wow in the World. Now, I often hear them listening in their bedrooms on their own Echo Dots while they doodle or play with toys and it makes for the best quiet time ever.

• A couple more shout-outs to Target for this perfect spring tee and these shoes, which keep my ankles warm like a boot but are comfy like a sneaker and make it look like I tried when really I didn’t at all. 10/10 highly recommend.

• Okay, because Target is my BFF I’ve got one more for you: these roller skates are the kids’ new jam.

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We’re on the verge of April, on the verge of Easter. I don’t know what my body will continue to try to tell me in the coming month. Hopefully, there will be less trembling. Or maybe that’s the wrong thing to hope for; maybe instead I should hope that I continue to pay attention to it.

I wrote last year, on the eve of Easter, that it made sense to me that Easter was the first holiday we as Christians would be celebrating in the pandemic, a holiday that involves, as Glennon Doyle says, “first the pain, then the waiting, then the rising”, and that this time last year we were waiting for our very own rising. I’m not sure many of us knew just how long that wait would be.

Yet here we are, with many of us vaccinated and many, many more of us ready and waiting to get those shots in our arms when we can. A year (Has it only been a year?) later and what a hope, what a rising there will be. Trembling bodies, hearts, minds, and all.