Insecurity

I am having an attack of insecurity. There are (currently) four things I can blame, I think: 1. My husband is on call, and when he is on call we spend less time together and I feel ignored and needy. 2. My primary client, for the first time ever, returned a project to me and asked me to redo it. Not minor edits, but a complete redo because I had so completely missed the mark. 3. I have been ordering cute bikinis from amazon because the summery weather (which has since retreated) has me dreaming of time by the pool, and NOT A ONE has looked remotely reasonable on me and only emphasizes the weird shape of my hips and thighs. 4. My poor kid is homesick for our old house and cannot fall asleep (it is currently 1:11 in the morning egads) and I cannot help her feel better (which I know isn’t always the goal! she should feel her feelings!) or help her fall asleep.

To sum up: I am unlovable, my work performance sucks, I look terrible in a bathing suit and probably in all clothing, and I am a terrible mother.

Should I perhaps be focusing on the fact that my husband is lovely and warm and attentive 6/7 of the time, and that he is not ignoring me but is instead focusing all his energy on the very difficult work of keeping dangerously sick people alive? Should I perhaps be remembering that this client mostly asks for very small edits, if any, and also it seems statistically improbable that I would write exactly what they want every single time and also one miss does not negate all the hits, nor does it preclude me from writing well in the future? Should I perhaps stop pressing my finger into the tender bruise of body imperfection when I have a perfectly good, rear-end covering skirted suit already? Should I perhaps recall the many, many nights when I was a child that I cried myself to sleep over something or other and the many, many nights as a child and an adult when I couldn’t sleep and how none of those nights had anything to do with my parents or their parenting ability?

Should does not equal AM DOING, let me tell you that.  

Insecurity can REALLY spiral if I let it get going, so I have been reading articles titled “Top Ten Things Therapists Recommend You Do When You’re Feeling Insecure!” and “How to Conquer Feelings of Insecurity.” The thing is that I know how to stop feeling insecure. I mean, I am aware of the techniques. But most of them are long-term kinds of things (replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk; focus on your strengths; talk to a therapist) and I am working on those things, but I want a quick fix. Is there a quick fix for feeling insecure?

What I really want is to say something negative about myself and have someone refute it with convincing evidence backed by reliable sources. My husband is not good at providing reassurance of this type; he is impatient with insecurity and seems to operate under the belief that there is no need to tell a person something that they should already know about themselves. (I also worry that, if I am too insecure around him, he will stop wanting to be married to me how’s THAT for insecurity catastrophizing, hmmm?????)

Reassurance is best sought from friends, I find. But it’s too late to call or text any of my analog-world friends, so I am writing to you. This makes it sound like I am demanding compliments, which I am not because that would be embarrassing and stupid. (Also, you aren’t married to me, you don’t know my work writing and you don’t know what I look like in a bikini, so, lovely and brilliant as you are, you cannot possibly make an honest evaluation of any of those things.) What I’m hoping for, I guess, is commiseration and solidarity. I would also accept The Key to Real Confidence, if you have it.

Do you ever feel insecure? If so, what do you do when you feel that way? My negative self-talk is so loud right now, even my strategies for combatting it (talking out loud to myself; pretending my concerns belong to my best friend and saying to myself what I would say to her; referring to myself as honey and acknowledging that my feelings are valid) are inaudible over the din. 

Gah. Being a person is so stupid and exhausting sometimes.

Well, I suppose the next best thing to writing a blog post about it is going to sleep. Sleep helps most things. 

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Five Woes and Five Wows

“Are you loving the new house?!” This is the most common question I get these days, and it’s posed in an excited, expectant way. People are so happy for us! They are so excited to see the new place and hear all about how much we are loving it!

Well. It has been one month since we moved into our new house, and in general I feel like it’s been a huge, expensive, horrible mistake. This is supposed to be our dream house, our forever house, and I am instead feeling like we uprooted our happy, perfectly wonderful life for nothing. No, worse than nothing. We replaced something not-perfect-but-pretty-great with a money-sucking monster that we drastically overpaid for. I have been feeling so negative about the house and so overwhelmed with all the minutiae of moving and so guilty for feeling so disgruntled over something I CHOSE, ON PURPOSE, something I should feel grateful for and appreciative of, that I’ve had neither time nor inclination to blog. 

I also feel guilty for getting so bent out of shape about what are very minor things. I know this! It’s not like we are lacking clean water. We aren’t dealing with family tragedy, we have food and shelter. All the REAL needs are being addressed, and I know – I know – we are super fortunate to have this house at all, and to have savings to apply toward fixing it up. Plus, we had a home inspection and the house is FINE, overall. It just feels like death by a thousand paper cuts, you know? Like I could deal with a corroded shower handle, and deal with replacing it… but then when the grill doesn’t work and the refrigerator leaks every time you open it and the oven makes a horrific rattling noise when it reaches temperature and half the light switches make a sizzly I-am-about-to-shock-you noise when you flip them and the other half seem to operate nothing at all and the garage door suddenly won’t close AT ALL, it feels like everything is falling apart. Plus, everything – EVERYTHING – seems to be at least $3500 to address. Every estimate we get is right around that price point, as though all the service companies in the state got together and decided that this would be the standard starting fee for any and every type of service. $3500 is not nothing! 

This week, I’ve been able to dip my toe back into blog reading, and I do want to get back to blog writing. But it feels like all the negativity is clogging up my writing pipes. I think the only way to move forward is to write it all down. Even though it will sound whiny and self-pitying and unrelatable.

But! If you want to skip all the negativity (and I don’t blame you – there’s enough in the intro paragraphs of this post already), I did force myself, Elisabeth-style, to come up with some things that are bringing me joy and giving me hope that this low phase is indeed temporary. 

Five Woes (and I recognize that I am tremendously lucky to be able to complain about these things)

5. Phone Calls and Appointments. I have made approximately five million phone calls and endured five thousand service appointments in the new house and spent an obscene amount of money. There are things that we chose to do, like installing new floors and asking an electrician to estimate the cost for installing an outlet in the floor of the living room and changing the locks and hiring someone to rein in the overgrown landscaping. There are things we had to do, like replace my daughter’s leaking trim kit in her shower, and install a pressure regulating valve on our water line, and replace the failing pool heater, and fix the garage door that refused to close. There are things that were supposed to be “free” (or covered under our membership plan), like flushing our water heater and getting a clean and check of our furnace, which both uncovered things that need to be taken care of. There are things that are still in the works, like installing a security/fire safety system and getting our air ducts cleaned. There are things I never ever would have wanted to spend money on, like hiring an exterminator to get rid of all the mice in our basement (yuck) or inviting a bat guy to assess and address our bat problem (wtf). I have had to be available between 8:00 and 12:00 pretty much every single day since we moved here, which is annoying and hard to schedule my life around. 

4. Critter Corpses. Mice – five of them, three in traps the exterminator set after we discovered our mouse problem and two in our furnace intake valve, which the very nice HVAC person found and disposed of. Chipmunk – one, drowned in the pool. Frog – one, same fate. Bat – only one (so far) thank everything – in our basement, which the very unflappable plumber discovered and removed when he was installing the new pressure regulator. 

3. Cold or Allergies? I have been sneezing nearly nonstop since we moved here. Early on, the sneezing developed into what seemed like a genuine cold: fever, runny nose, general crankiness. (Covid tests were negative.) But while the cold ended two weeks ago, I am still sniffly and sneezy and my head is stuffy and I feel ever-so-slightly like I need my inhaler. The previous owners had dogs and I really think that I am allergic to this house. We replaced all the flooring on the first and second floors, getting rid of all the threadbare, mismatched carpet… but the carpet in the basement was in great shape, so we just got it cleaned… and I’m afraid that was a mistake and we should have replaced it as well. I’m hoping that cleaning the air ducts will help, but I’m waiting on another estimate before we schedule it.

2. Commute. Our previous house was, on the worst, most-trafficky days, seven minutes away from my daughter’s school, so my daily commute was 28 minutes total (not counting after school activities). Our current commute is nearly four times as long (not counting after school activities), which means I am spending roughly two hours in the car each day. I am listening to a good number of audiobooks, but sheesh. 

1. New Car. This has been the most expensive summer of our lives, so why not add a new car to the mix? My lease is about to end, and being a one-car family is not workable for us. But this is pretty much the worst time (ever????) to buy a new car, as inventory is nonexistent and prices are high. It would be prohibitively expensive to buy out my lease, so we are planning to lease another vehicle… but the current lease deals are also SO EXPENSIVE. (Nearly double the cost for a similar vehicle to what I drive now.) Plus, while my preference would be to lease the exact same car I drive now, there are none of that model available. So we are going with a totally different vehicle and even though it gets great ratings and I enjoyed driving it, I am not great with change. Plus, I am having trouble communicating with the salesperson, who seemed very eager to work with us at first, but now seems to have ghosted me??? And yes, I realize we could just get a smaller, less expensive vehicle so a lot of this woe is our own damn fault.

0. No One Calls Me Back!!!!! You might expect that with so many service appointments, this would be hyperbole… And I suppose it is. But it feels like no one will return my calls. I have filled out so many online estimate requests that go completely unanswered and left so many voicemails that go unreturned. A person from one of the landscaping/snow removal companies I called returned my call FOUR WEEKS after I’d asked for an estimate, and then when I told her we’d gone with someone else (the one person who did get back to me – this is now the bar: respond to me and I will pay you money!), wanted to tell me about all the things that had prevented her from returning my call right away. People who said they would send me estimates have never sent them. The salesperson who was going to lease us our car stopped responding to my texts and didn’t return my voicemails. WHAT IS HAPPENING. I get that there are ongoing staffing issues, but… how are businesses operating???

Five Wows

1. The Pool. Longtime readers may recall that having a pool was one of my wishlist items for my dream house. Since the pandemic, I’ve really come to realize how much we depend on our home to provide space for everything from exercise to entertainment to comfort. Plus, we still lean toward entertaining outdoors. So having a pool was definitely on my list. (“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cruelly gleeful refrain in my brain these days.) This house has nearly everything on the wishlist, including a pool. And, while taking care of a pool and getting it serviced is a massive headache, it is also one of my favorite things about this house because it makes Carla SO HAPPY. Since it’s the end of the pool season, we have been able to find pool toys for cheap and she is loving her inflatable shark and her scuba gear and her treasure chest of jewels to dive for. Fall has been very mild so far, so we are still enjoying pool time and it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself so much. Plus, I have dreams of being the Teen Hangout House when Carla gets older, and I feel like a pool could be very attractive to her friends.  

2. The Commute. Even though I hate driving on the freeway and I feel like I’m at the gas station way too often, I am surprised to find that I otherwise love the commute. Carla is so charming and energetic in the mornings. She is usually quite chatty and I get all sorts of tidbits about what’s going on her brain and at school. We often listen to the Kid Nuz podcast and that opens up all sorts of interesting topics for discussion. After school, she’s more subdued and worn out from the day, so we often listen to classical music or maybe stop at Starbucks on the way to her music lesson. I am loving this focused time with her, with none of the usual distractions of laundry or dinner or my phone. (Plus, as I mentioned before, all this time in the car means I am listening to a ton of audiobooks. I listened to eight of them in September alone, which is a lot for me.)

3. My Parents and My Husband. It seems like something goes wrong every single day at this house. (Yesterday: the gas line started making a weird noise.) I am stressed and worried about money. I feel like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit, with the hysterical seal-laugh and all, but my husband is being so calm and optimistic. He says soothing things like, “We’re just taking care of everything up front so we can enjoy the house for the long run!” and “These are all little things, and we will fix them.” and “We are going to enjoy this house, this is just a rough patch.” It is buoying and gives me strength. My parents, likewise, are being so matter-of-fact about everything. The mouse thing really shook me, I think because I expected to move into this brand-new house and found out it was full of mouse poop and scurrying critters. But my mom reminds me that I grew up in the country and mice are just Part Of Rural Living. She’s very blasé about the bat, too – bats eat mosquitos, after all. My dad inspects or fixes things every time he’s here, and is available by text when I need to ask whether I should call the gas company (yes) or just not worry about the weird squeak click click coming from the meter. He and my husband removed all the awful curtains and reattached the cupboards to my daughter’s vanity. He tested the bathroom fan to see if it is fixable and offers suggestions for how to deal with day-to-day issues and is helping me address the mouse entry points. My parents took Carla on a hike and picnic the other day! They come over to hang out by the pool occasionally! When I need a babysitter, I just ask them and they say yes! It is so nice to have them here. 

4. New Neighbors. One of the hardest parts of leaving our old house was leaving our neighbors (and their dogs). We haven’t met everyone on our street yet, but we have met three of the nearest neighbors, and they all seem super nice. The across-the-street neighbors are SO lovely. They invited us to a backyard dinner (and by the way, they are extraordinary cooks!) and introduced us to a bunch of people who live in the neighborhood. Best of all, they have three children who have been so friendly and welcoming to Carla. She has already been over to their house countless times, has walked their dog, and has invited the kids over to play games at our house. One afternoon, the kids’ parent took all of them plus Carla to the park. I am LOVING THIS. I want kids running in and out of my house. I want Carla to have friends nearby. 

5. All the Trees. This is my backyard. Do you see how one tree is wearing a scarlet sweater???!!!! I look outside and I walk around our yard, clipping some of the beautiful dahlias the previous owners planted, and I feel so peaceful. 

(Until the next serviceperson arrives, or I get an email with the next $3500 proposal for work to be done. Oh look. Here’s the estimate from the bat guy. Do I want more bats, or do I want to pay $3,675 for bat prevention measures?) 

What’s the occasion for your current pity party? Lay it on me.

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Some Gentle Aspirations for 2023

As has become my start-of-year habit, I am going to list out some gentle aspirations that Today Me believes are important to pursue in the new year. I recognize that Today Me and End of December 2023 Me may have different priorities, so I am not forcing anything on either of us. This may sound wishy-washy, and it is. I do like to strive to make improvements in my life, where possible. But sometimes, my best guesses at what will make my life seem better or easier or more fulfilling don’t result in improving anything, in which case they were fun experiments. Sometimes, they become real upgrades in my life, a source of happiness or pride or relief. I wonder which of the following will turn out to be which?

I broke these aspirations into categories, and there are quite a lot of them. That doesn’t daunt me; I’m guessing a few of them will naturally drop off as I complete them or forget about them completely. 

Personal / Self Improvement

• Aspiration: Read 70 books. I read 86 books in 2022 and 74 in 2021, so I think this is doable. I don’t see my reading habits changing a whole lot, although there are of course the unplanned and agonizing reading slumps that happen every now and again. If I only read 50, I will be fine with that. 
• Aspiration: Get a massage. My mother-in-law got me a massage gift certificate for my birthday in 2020 that I have not yet used for, I hope, obvious reasons. But I love a massage and it would be a fun treat to have one this year.
• Aspiration: Give my line-a-day journal another go. I started tackling this aspiration early in the morning of January 1, and immediately made a mistake. I wrote a few little lines about the last day of 2022, but I did so – in pen – on the first day of 2023. Also, I wrote “Saturday” (IN PEN) above the date, and then had to cross it out and write Sunday above it. So I have already made a huge, indelible (totally unimportant in the grand scheme, I realize this) mistake and I am going to have to fight so hard against my impulse to never open the journal again. Maybe I should just buy a new one. My husband thinks I am ridiculous, and suggested I just skip a day and then start again as though I hadn’t made the mistake. So I am trying that. But I can feel the mistake, infecting the entire journal. (He also suggested copying the text into the correct day, then using whiteout on the mistake, and starting fresh, which – just so you understand completely my particular brand of irrational – does not erase the mistake. It just buries it there under white goop.) So we’ll see whether I buy a new one or continue with line-a-day journaling at all or somehow resist all my innate tendencies and forge on with the inalterably ruined journal.
• Aspiration: Read more poetry. I burnt out early on poetry last year, but I still find it holds enormous value in my life. Maybe I just shouldn’t put so much pressure on reading it daily.
• Aspiration: Master two Chopin songs on the piano. I have been working on relearning the Raindrop Prelude, which I could play flawlessly in high school, and my dad has been learning Waltz in A Minor and I love listening to him play it, so I want to learn that one too.
• Aspiration: Buy some cute date-night-appropriate shirts. This means not falling into the trap of finding nothing appealing so instead buying yet another long-sleeved T-shirt/sweatshirt/sweater that is fine for hanging out at home but not great for Feeling Cute and Dressy and then feeling like I did buy the shirts I am looking for when really I didn’t.
• Reach Aspiration: Try to keep a spreadsheet of these goals, for tracking purposes and also purposes of not forgetting them until December 31. 

Health 

• Aspiration: Do a sweets revamp. This is a family goal. The three of us have developed some very bad habits and I really don’t like how they are affecting Carla. She chooses sweets first, always, and I think this is because we always have cookies and candy lying around. A sweets revamp does not mean No Sweets Ever. We can even set a weekly family goal to go get ice cream or buy a candy bar or whatever. On Valentine’s Day and Easter, I will probably lift the restriction for a day or two of unbridled sweets eating. It just means getting them out of our immediate orbit so that they are available when we could be eating other things. Yesterday I collected all of the sweet things I could find and threw them away or put them in a “to donate” bin. (I did leave three – why do we have three???? – unopened bags of chocolate chips in the pantry, but I could choose to donate them at any time.) So that’s Step 1. Now I just need to complete Step 2, which is to keep sweets out of the house for the rest of the year.
• Aspiration: Do what is necessary to make my feet feel as good as they can. The combination that has had the best results in terms of limiting pain has been stretching my feet morning and night, religiously, combined with walking. Not-walking seems to result in more pain than walking. I haven’t figured out the ideal amount of walking yet, but getting at least 10,000 steps seems to help. 
• Aspiration: Spend ten minutes outside every day. This seems outlandish considering I haven’t set foot outside in days, but it’s something I really want to prioritize.
• Aspiration: Buy some winter boots I can walk in.
• Aspiration: Eat more vegetables. I am doing this for myself, and by extension influencing my family to eat more vegetables (the benefit of being the family meal planner, grocery shopper, and chef).
• Aspiration: Figure out a skincare routine that doesn’t make me want to claw my face off. My face is driving me out of my mind. It is simultaneously excruciatingly itchy, to the point that I need to take Benadryl regularly to curb it, and constantly broken out. Every day there is a new pimple or five on my face. At the risk of oversharing (I would never), I am currently on Day 5 of enduring a cystic zit that is so enormous and so painful I feel embarrassed when even my husband looks at me. I DO NOT LIKE THIS. I have an appointment with my dermatologist for early February (sob) and I don’t think I can get anything earlier, and honestly don’t have high hopes that he will help. But I need to figure out some way through this. I am kind of attached to my face.
• Reach Aspiration: If I am reading/writing blog posts, I am walking on the treadmill. I have gotten pretty adept at this, over the break. I’m not sure if I can keep it up (right now, I am typing this while waiting for my tea to brew, and then I don’t want to drink tea while walking on the treadmill because that seems like a disaster waiting to happen), but if I can pair the two activities in my mind, just think how much more of both I will do! 

Connection

• Aspiration: Get a pedicure with Carla. She’s at the age where I think this would feel like a fun treat. Although I’m guessing she’ll enjoy the foot-sanding portion of the pedicure as much as I do. (Carla, however wants to do a mani-pedi, mainly, I think, because she likes the term “mani-pedi.” She is working on not biting her nails this year, so I am hopeful that she will succeed and we will get a mani-pedi together. Or a pedicure and then a mani-pedi some other time!) 
• Aspiration: Put my phone away when Carla and I are together. Why it is so hard to choose chatting with my lovely, fascinating daughter over knowing exactly what’s happening on Twitter/Instagram/Wordle right that second is beyond my powers of comprehension. But the days when she wants me to pay attention to her are surely numbered, and also I want her to remember me as an engaged mother not as someone addicted irrepressibly to her phone, so this is something I really, really want to work on. 
• Aspiration: Find a way to see my grad school friend in-person. We have A Plan, we just need to implement it. 
• Aspiration: Go on ten dates with my husband. During the early days of the pandemic, we got out of the habit. But now we have two great babysitter options and both feel more comfortable about being in restaurants, so there’s nothing stopping us from going out more often.
• Aspiration: Get together with two friends a month. This one makes me nervous, because I have a tendency to feel lonely and isolated and then overschedule myself and then get overwhelmed and become a hermit for several weeks and then feel lonely and isolated etc. etc. etc. But maybe if I plan, in advance, to get together with two friends a month, it will feel more intentional? Also, a couple of friends like to go for walks together so that’s a good way to meet two goals at once. Efficiency in action. 

• Reach Aspiration: Invite neighbors over for coffee/wine/snacks. We have the sweetest, kindest, most generous-with-their-time-and-dogs neighbors. I would love to get know them better, and I think I can (maybe) invite them over, one household at a time, for a few minutes of connection. Maybe. I hope. (I can already feel my socially anxious soul straining away from this idea. And also how do I convey that I would like them to come over without their dogs?)

Work/Finance

• Aspiration: Finish my in-progress manuscripts (and don’t start another one!!!!). I can do this if I put my mind to it. I am good at writing lots of words. I can do this. 
• Aspiration: Revise my completed manuscript. I am so very tired of my completed manuscript. But it needs some revision and A LOT of trimming, so I need to tackle it again. 
• Aspiration: Query 100 agents. This sounds like a ton, but it is fewer than two agents a week. This is doable. 
• Aspiration: Make good use of the writing accountability team a friend and I set up last fall. We met twice, and only once did we write, but the intention is to meet every week and spend a short time walking together in nature and then devote two hours to writing or writing-related projects. If I complete this goal, it will mean I am making good progress toward my other writing goals. 
• Reach Aspiration: Take a class in short story writing. This is a Big Scary Goal, but one I would really like to attempt. Maybe when my writing partner returns from his six months abroad, so we could do it together?

Home/Property

• Aspiration: Repot my plants. A new very cute plant store opened up just down the street and they will repot your plants FOR YOU for FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS apiece. I have resisted repotting my plants, even though they are all on death’s door, because I am so sure I will kill them. Now I can pay to have someone else do it! Someone who knows what they’re doing! This should be an easy goal to accomplish.
• Aspiration: Fix the freaking closet door. We have the materials necessary for fixing the door, because we bought them more than a year ago with the idea that we would use them to fix the door, we just need to FIX THE DOOR.
• Aspiration: Try, again, to find someone to repaint the trim. Why is it so infernally difficult to find a person to do a thing when that person’s job is to do the very thing you want to pay them to do?
• Reach Aspiration: Gallery wall. My eternal dream, always just out of reach.

Well, there you have it. Some gentle aspirations for the year. Looking at these aspirations, all together, I am wondering if my word of the year should be “consistent.” It’s a word I resist, because consistency is not my strong point; perhaps that is an even stronger reason for allowing it to exert whatever influence meditating on one theme for the year will exert.

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2021 Round Up-a-Rama

Here is where I am at the end of 2021: down, down, down.

After a year of prolific reading, I find myself unable to lose myself in a book. My comforting morning ritual of drinking tea has deserted me. Carla is about to embark on another round of remote learning – this time, with unknown duration (could be five days! could be more!). Christmas, instead of being a cheery time of fun gifts and family togetherness, was utterly draining. I have been summoned for jury duty; I was able to postpone it, due to remote learning, which is good, but now I have MONTHS to fret about the logistical nightmare of the whole thing, not to mention the idea of being in the giant jury room with dozens of other humans who may or may not be masked or vaccinated. And I am sunk deeper into a pit of self-doubt and -castigation than I ever have been before.

It’s wishful thinking to imagine that a year that held a lot of great things would end on a high note. And it’s naïve to think that a simple shift of the calendar will resolve any of these things. So here is where I am.

There are good things, too, of course. It was lovely to see my parents over Christmas. My husband’s call schedule was light toward the end, so our Christmas festivities were hardly disrupted. He is on vacation this week, so he and Carla and I have been having a quiet, pleasant time doing quiet, homey things like cleaning the basement, playing video games, and eating junk. We got a TON of holiday cards. (I think our card wall looks much fuller than in previous years, but my husband says he thinks we get this many cards every year.) (We received about 45 cards this year, so maybe next year I will remember to count.) While it seems as though everyone in the world currently has Covid, we have still, somehow, by pure luck, managed to avoid it. (SO FAR.) I am aware of my many blessings, I am. But that does not dispel the disconsolate fog that’s clouding everything at the moment.

Be assured that the remainder of this post will (likely) be less dismal. And, as always, I love to read your year-end recaps, so please let me know if you posted one as well.

(If you’re so inclined, you can read past versions of my responses: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. This yearly recap originated with Linda of All & Sundry.)

As usual, I reserve the right to delete ignore or scoff at any of the questions below.

• What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before?
  • Sent my manuscript out for beta reading.
  • Went on a paleontological dig.
  • Rejoiced as each new member of my family received a vaccine against Covid-19.

• Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

As is my new tradition, I made some very loose aspirations for the year. Out of 19, I accomplished 10, which seems pretty decent, considering some of them were real reaches in terms of potential success.

• Where did you travel this year? (This is my own recasting of a question I could never answer which was How many countries did you visit this year?)

This year, the only time I left the state was to visit my parents. My husband, daughter, and I also took a trip to a city on the opposite end of our state, which was nice but very hot and sticky. We have some travel planned for 2022, but who knows how that will turn out.

• What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021?

I mean, last year’s wish still holds true: A return to some sort of pre-pandemic normalcy, for myself and my country, and across the globe. More time alone with my husband. Dinner in a restaurant. The ability to travel without worrying about infection/infecting.

As long as we’re putting out our wishes, I would also like to have an agent in 2022. I know this is… a big ask. And will require a lot of work on my part. And will still probably not happen. And putting it out here makes me feel stupid and exposed. But it is what I want, more than anything unrelated to the pandemic, and I’m going to TRY.

• What dates from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Moreso than even in 2020, I think, the days and weeks sort of ran together in 2021. Outside of January 6, I can’t remember a single specific date. A few key moments do stand out – like when I got my vaccinations and when Carla got hers – but I couldn’t tell you the dates.

• What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting my manuscript out to beta readers.

• What was your biggest failure?

I am not up to answering this one this year.

• Did you suffer illness or injury?

No, thank goodness. My family and I have been so remarkably lucky during this pandemic.

• What was the best thing you bought?

I’d say it’s a three-way tie between my new towels, our bicycles, and the artificial Christmas tree.

• Whose behavior merited celebration?
• Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
• Where did most of your money go?
• What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I was really excited about going to visit my parents with Carla (and really anxious). I was really excited that Carla got to attend summer camp and that she started third grade on time and made it until January without requiring remote schooling.

• What song(s) will always remind you of 2021?
• Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo
• Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo
• Peaches by Justin Bieber
• Easy on Me by Adele
• Heat Waves by Glass Animals
• Montero (Call Me by Your Name) by Lil Nas X
• Kiss Me More by Doja Cat and Sza
• Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran

• *Compared to this time last year, are you:
  • a) happier or sadder? 
  • b) thinner or fatter? 
  • c) richer or poorer? 
• What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing (evergreen item). Exercising. Reading. Eating vegetables.

• What do you wish you’d done less of?

Feeling sad. Eating my feelings. Wallowing in regret. Doomscrolling. 

• How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas included the three of us, plus my parents and it was everything a Christmas should be. We have such thoughtful and generous friends and family members, and there were SO many gifts under the tree. We ate bacon and baked French toast and berries for breakfast and then my husband went into the hospital, but he was able to come home around two which wasn’t terrible. For dinner, my dad made his traditional spice roast, my mom made her traditional blueberry pie, I made goat cheese garlic mashed potatoes, and we all chipped in to make Caesar salad. Carla flitted from new toy to new toy and the adults watched football and cooked and ate and really, what more could you ask for?

• Did you fall in love in 2021?
• What was your favorite (new) TV program?

Instead of watching TV this year, I mostly chose to read. But that doesn’t mean I was completely cut off from television! My husband and I finally started watching Succession (and have just started Season 3) – we are OBSESSED with it, as everyone predicted. How can so many people be so completely and thoroughly awful? We also started watching Superstore, which is a very fun, 30-minute humorous diversion type of show. I also loved:

• The Queen’s Gambit – Neither my husband nor I can remember if we watched this in 2020 or 2021. As he says, it was a long year. While I know nothing of chess, I did love this series about an orphan chess prodigy whose addictions threaten to keep her from achieving her ambition. It was a show where I kept expecting terrible things to happen to the protagonist… but the people who surrounded her were almost universally good, caring humans who wanted to lift her up and help her succeed.
• Mare of Easttown – This is the show that inspired us to finally get HBO, and it was SO worth it. (Also, Succession.) Such a dark, gritty look at a detective who does everything to solve a case. Kate Winslet was stunning. And the heavy-handedness of the accents was quite amusing.
• Only Murders in the Building – What a heartwarming little mystery series this was. Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin solving a murder in their luxury apartment building was every bit as goofy and fun as you would expect.
• Maniac – A science-fiction series about grief and brokenness that took some very weird but always interesting turns. It reminded me a little bit of Palm Springs, so if you liked that movie I bet you would like this series. (I enjoyed the movie very much.)
• Bodyguard – This was a heart-pounding thriller that stressed me out the way early seasons of 24 used to. It was really good, if you can stand that edge-of-your-seat, something-is-definitely-going-to-explode feeling. Also, it has nothing at all to do with the Whitney Houston film masterpiece of the early ’90s, in case you thought it was a serialized version of the movie as I did.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events – Carla has been listening to the audiobooks of this novel series, so we started watching the TV show as a family. It’s darling and fun, and I adore Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf.

• *Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
• What was the best book you read?

While I haven’t been able to read for most of this past month, which really, really stinks (it’s like being estranged from a dear friend), I had a very good reading year otherwise. In fact, I read 74 books this past year, which is a record for me. And so many of them were so good!!!!! 

• A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne gets my top marks for this year. It was a beautifully crafted, incredibly chilling depiction of a would-be writer who will do absolutely anything to be successful. I loved the way the structure helped funnel the reader toward an ever-deeper, ever-more-sinister understanding of the main character.
• The Great Alone was my first (and, so far, only) Kristin Hannah novel, and I loved it so much. The landscape, the isolation of small-town Alaska, the in-depth exploration of the dysfunction in one family were all so well done. I listened to this while out walking, often with tears streaming down my face.
• Megha Majumdar’s debut A Burning was captivating and horrifying and gave a keen view of the inner-workings of life in Bombay and the lengths people go to achieve their ambitions.
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi was absolutely gorgeous – a series of linked short stories about two strands of a family separated by circumstance and slavery.
• I finally read the second book in the romance duology by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, and The Heir Affair didn’t disappoint. It’s witty and charming, and the relationship and even the faux-royal setting feel real and relatable.
• I loved Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir so much that I ended up listening to the audiobook a second time with my daughter. It was fun and exciting and at turns triumphant and devastating.
• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman started a little slow for me, but turned out to be one of my favorites. The writing style, the juxtaposition of heartbreaking situations and the warmth of strangers, and the humor added up to a deeply satisfying novel.
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro was at once so richly imagined and so startlingly spare in details that it stands out as unique among my reads this year. Themes of ambition and companionship, and the role material “things” have in our lives were explored with the fresh, simplistic-but-insightful eyes of the titular AI. It was gorgeous and left me wanting more.
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman is a book that I found emotionally wracking, but also very hopeful and so well-written/well-characterized that I continue to think of it long after the fact.
• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes was such a satisfying and well-written romance. As a person who typically eschews romance novels, I was surprised by how much I loved this story about a relationship that grows between two people who are broken in very different ways.

You know my favorite genre is mystery/thriller, and I read some GREAT ones this year.  

• Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica was my favorite thriller of the year. Nicely paced with some genuine surprises.

• Sophie Hannah’s Haven’t They Grown (published as Perfect Little Children in the U.S., which doesn’t seem quite as apt a title) was a close second. She comes up with the most bizarre and fascinating premises (in this one, the protagonist sees a former friend and her two children after many years apart – but the children have not aged a day) and I just love how she unravels a mystery and makes the explanation seem both surprising and inevitable.

• The third Cat Kinsella mystery, Shed No Tears, by Caz Frear was another favorite. I just love tough, witty, personally-ethical-yet-morally-compromised Cat Kinsella as a character.

• I also loved Alexandra Andrews’s Who Is Maud Dixon?, which wasn’t particularly surprising but was very dark and satisfying and well written.

• The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz was really enjoyable, too, although again more for the writing and the slow realization of the main character coming to understand his situation.

• I loved Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and, even more, its sequel, The Man Who Died Twice. The septuagenarian detectives and their relationships and struggles were lovely and charming and the books are packed with humor, puzzles, and heartbreak in equal measure. I cannot wait for the third installment.

• What did you want and get?

Part of last year’s answer is true once again: For my family and friends to be safe and healthy this year. So far, so good. We are very, very lucky.

I am also so very glad that the vaccine was approved for kids Carla’s age, so I wanted for all my loved ones to get vaccinated and that has happened. Well. I don’t know that my niece has been vaccinated, but everyone else has.

• What did you want and not get?

Well, last year’s answer still suffices: A refrigerator that doesn’t leak mysteriously and incessantly. New windows. Unity around a workable, scientifically-backed virus containment strategy. 

Things did NOT get back to “normal.” That was not unexpected and yet still deeply, powerfully disappointing. Disheartening. Dispiriting. Gutting.

• What was your favorite film of this year?

Did I watch any movies this year? I can’t remember a single one, except Encanto, which we watched over the Christmas weekend, and which was very charming.

Oh, right – my husband reminded me that we watched Dune, which I was resistant to and ended up really enjoying. (Although I am annoyed that it was only PART of the story.)

• What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
• What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A coordinated, followed-by-everyone plan for enduring the latest stages of the pandemic. Finalizing revisions on my manuscript.

• How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?

As in 2020, my fashion choices were all about comfort. Soft bras, soft pants, soft shorts, no makeup, no shoes. Let’s exchange our pajamas for some Daytime Leggings and then switch back in a few hours. That kind of thing. I did go out more. Not like out out, but out in the world, so I ended up buying a few pairs of new jeans. Two of those pairs are in the supposedly-once-again-fashionable straight leg/bootcut style and I kind of hate them, even though I loved that style when it was previously fashionable and resisted skinny jeans for years.

• What kept you sane?

My husband. Exercise. My terrible, wonderful, unputdownable phone. Books and audiobooks. Carbs. Wine. Reading your blog posts. Long walks. Takeout. Writing here.

• Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

• Who did you miss?

My first and perpetual answer to this question will always be my friend who died. But in 2021, I don’t think I spent a lot of time missing anyone else. As an introvert, the forced isolation of the pandemic wasn’t particularly difficult on me, and I think the increased human interaction we’ve been inching toward this year was perfectly fine. Plus, we got to see both sets of parents AND my sister-in-law and niece, so I didn’t feel separated from my family. We are so very, very lucky.

• Who was the best new person you met?

I cannot think of a single new person I met this past year.

• Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021.

The only current “lesson” that I can come up with – the worst things you think about yourself are true, and other people think them too – is a direct reflection of my current mood, which hopefully is not a reflection of reality. So let’s go with last year’s slightly more uplifting offering:

“Despite everything, there is SO MUCH to be grateful for. Even when the big things are uncertain and scary and sad, there are plenty of tiny, wonderful joys to be counted and held up for inspection and treasured. I have made a point to consider all the blessings in my life this year – sometimes just FORCING myself to be grateful dammit – and I feel more aware of them, and of how full my life is even when it seems otherwise. I hope among all the wreckage of this year that you, too, have found some kernel of gratitude. Not because you SHOULD, but because it helps to have even a small glimmer of light to walk toward when everything seems so unbearably dark.”

• Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“Go easy on me.” – Adele

Happy New Year, Internet. May 2022 bring us all happiness and health.

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Dinners This Week

We are somehow nearly halfway through January and I feel simultaneously as though the month has FLOWN by and also that it has lasted six million years. Much of it – at least the past week – has been extremely dreary and fretful, both for external reasons (what is HAPPENING with our democracy) and internal ones. But even though I am feeling down and worried and unsettled, I feel like my complaints are so small and insignificant that they aren’t worth sharing. There is SO MUCH going on in the world right now, my dumb complaints sound even more out-of-touch than normal. 

Like for instance how my return key does not work unless I press down on it with all my weight. Or how I am FINALLY getting to clean my oven (with the self-clean function) and so my house is filled with the acrid scent of imminent doom and also a soupçon of pizza essence. Or how I had to wait for more than an hour in the gynecologist’s crowded waiting room yesterday which a) I am SURE was the reason my blood pressure reading was much higher than normal and b) is making me Very Anxious about the likely unrelated fact that I have a scratchy throat today. Or how I have been working extra hard on revising my book and the whole thing is stupid and I am wasting my life. I really need to suck it up and stop wallowing.

I hope YOU and your loved ones are doing okay. And, honestly, if you had a small, insignificant gripe to share with me, it would make me feel better. Or not, that’s fine too. If you just want to scroll listlessly through my dinner options, trying valiantly to get up the motivation to think about making Yet Another Meal, that is a-okay with me.

Dinners for the Week of January 12-18

Over the weekend, I tried these Sheet Pan Cuban Chicken and Black Bean Rice Bowls (which Ernie mentioned recently), and they were delicious and a 100% keeper. They got me in a mango mood, so I have a bowl of mangoes ripening on the counter which is one good thing to look forward to, I suppose.

• Sweet and Fiery Pork Tenderloin with Mango Salsa: Speaking of mangoes, this is what we’re eating tonight. I have made it several times in the past and have always found the pork to be a little… weak in flavor. Today, I threw all the ingredients in the crockpot, added a bit of soy sauce and some minced ginger and garlic, and we’ll see if that does anything. 
•  Fish Taco Bowls 
• Fire Fry 
• Chicken Shawarma with Steamed Broccoli
• Tacos: The regular ground beef kind, per Carla’s request. I am going to have her make them, since she has been voicing some disappointment about the meals on offer lately. She seemed pretty pleased at the thought.

I also have some zucchini and asparagus in the crisper, for spur-of-the-moment stir fries or protein-and-a-veggie-side options.

What are you most looking forward to eating this week?

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Keto Update (Sorry) Plus Dinners This Week

I promised I wouldn’t talk about it a lot, and yet here I am, talking about it immediately after I made that promise. Well. Feel free to skip straight to the meals below if you want. Or to skip reading altogether and come back in three months when I will be DONE with this.

It has been one week and two days and I can officially say that I hate the Keto plan. It is miserable. I am miserable. I feel constantly nauseated – a low-level nausea that has persisted since I finally made it past the absolutely dreadful “Keto Flu,” which I would say lasted until Friday and consisted of constant nausea, terrible headache, full-body aches, and brain fog. I hate eating and cooking, which makes me deeply sad because I love eating and cooking. I am irritable and snappy, particularly just in advance of meal times. I am constantly on my phone – looking for recipes, trying to figure out what I can eat and how much, logging my stupid water intake. My brain is absolute mush – I cannot remember ANYTHING, I am clumsy, I am flaky. I am peeing ALL THE TIME because a) you are supposed to drink a lot of water, so I am, and b) because I am constantly thirsty. My jeans are not fitting any better. My joints hurt. I have no extra energy. I get restless legs in the evenings, which – for me – can only be treated with sleep. But then my sleep is fitful or interrupted (I woke up at 3:00 for NO REASON the other morning and then couldn’t fall asleep for ninety minutes). Which, of course, could be related to Current Events (evergreen statement), but I am fine with blaming everything bad on Keto. It is torture. Purely voluntary, I can literally quit at any time, torture.

HOWEVER. I have already shed 6% of my body weight. In one week. I would love, in my WILDEST DREAMS, to lose 20% of my body weight. But I would be happy with 15%. And it seems like I am on my way to achieving that goal if I can just hang in there. A friend, yesterday, told me my face looks thinner. (Before you try to beat him up, please understand that he KNOWS I am doing Keto and prefaced his comment by saying, “I really don’t know if I should say this, because I have a policy of never commenting on people’s bodies, but I know you are putting in a lot of work…” And I said, “Go ahead, say it.”) Anyway, I would prefer that my thighs looked thinner (not that I want anyone to comment on my thighs, literally ever), but face is good, I guess. Well. Good, but not my favorite compliment.

(By the way, if it were just me, I would not mention that I am doing Keto to anyone in real life. It makes me super uncomfortable to give people a reason to look at me, and evaluate my size and shape.) (SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE.)

If the pace of weight-loss continues, then I will count this awful, awful, horribleness a great success. But I reserve the right to stop AT ANY MOMENT because it truly is awful. My poor husband hates it, if possible, even more than I do. And he wants to quit So Badly. I keep wheedling him to power! through!, because I am DEEPLY HOPEFUL that there is some kind of Keto inflection point that we just need to cross… and then it will be fine.

Maybe this is like when you start a new exercise regimen. And it hurts and you hate every minute and you dread dragging yourself out of bed to do the exercise. But then you start seeing results, and it becomes worth it. The pain feels like a challenge. You start to look forward to exercising. Or, at least, it becomes more automatic rather than something you have to gear yourself up for. This is what I hope Keto is like. The novelty wore off and now we’re in the thick of it and we just have to keep our heads down and move forward because RESULTS.

To drag this topic out even further: it is also really hard to talk about Keto around my daughter. I try to be open about what we are doing and, instead of talking about desired weight loss, focus on how we are using this method to recalibrate our eating habits. We’d been eating too much of the foods that you need to eat in moderation, and so we are trying to reset the way we think about portion sizes and food. I am also trying to explain to her that we are adults, and fully grown. She, on the other hand, is a child. And her brain and body are still growing and changing and so she needs a wide variety of ALL foods, even those that we are avoiding. Also, I am trying to keep a close watch on my language: instead of saying, “oh, I can’t eat that brownie,” I will say, “I am not going to eat that brownie” or “I am choosing not to eat that brownie right now.” To make it clear that it’s not TABOO or BAD, just not something I am choosing to eat right now. This is more important when it comes to things like mango and blueberries, which are HEALTHFUL, GOOD FOODS. And yet they are foods that my Keto app tells me get an F. (Bacon gets an A.)

Okay, this is way more than I wanted to type about this hellbeast of a diet. Now, it is time to post about dinners. Which I really don’t want to think about, let alone eat. Anyway, here’s my sad, defeated, TOTALLY VOLUNTARY meal plan for the week:

Dinners for the Week of March 2-March 10

• Peri-Peri Chicken with Roasted Zucchini

Note: Peeps, this is simply a chicken breast marinated in peri-peri sauce. (Which is delicious, if you haven’t tried it.) And then some cut-up zucchini tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper. I am craving nothing but vegetables, and I could not resist the siren song of the zucchini at the grocery store this weekend. They are carb-heavy – two small zucchini eat up 20% of my daily carbs – but I DON’T CARE. I need vegetables. (By the way, if it’s not clear, two small zucchini is not my desired amount of zucchini. I want to eat two LARGE zucchini. But this – my stereotypical-American perspective on what constitutes an appropriate portion size – is part of the problem I am hoping to address with Keto. Maybe two small zucchini is, in fact, a more appropriate amount.)

 

• Taco Salad

Note: I can’t even get it up for taco salad. It just sounds like a lot of chewing.

 

• Crockpot Cheesy Chicken with Bacon

Note: This sounds like fat overload. I wonder if I can squeeze in some sort of salad on the side?

 

• Leftovers

 

• Pork Chops with Keto BBQ Sauce and Roasted Asparagus

Note: There is absolutely no way this will taste like regular BBQ sauce.

 

• Halibut with Lemon Butter Sauce and Steamed Broccoli

Note: If there’s no good looking halibut, I might use cod or sea bass instead. 

 

[Edited to add: OMG I forgot about planning something for dinner Sunday. I am telling you, my brain no longer functions.]

• Game Time Decision or Maybe Rosemary Chicken Salad

Note: Hell, maybe we will throw this diet out the window and go gorge ourselves on chips and beans at our favorite Mexican place.

 

Tell me about all the delicious meals you are eating this week. Especially if there are vegetables involved.

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