5 things for friday
the adam brody of it all! plus: 4 books i read on vacation, perfect pumpkin gnocchi, the reason i've been sleeping like a baby and more.
happy friday, friends.
before we dive in: this issue is too long for email, so you might want to click out to read in browser or in the substack app, if you have it!
oh, how good it feels to be home! after a week of lumpy pillows and scratchy towels and sticky kitchen cabinets (the magic of house swaps!), i am back in my home and my bed, and so goddamn happy to be here. i’m coming up on 8 years in this little home of mine—which, if you’ve arrived here via substack and have no idea that i have an instagram account chronicling my apartment renovation, you may know little about—and i’m feeling more grateful for it than ever. for the sunlight, which streams through the windows in the mornings and drenches it in sparkles. for my kitchen, which i filled with the world’s largest grocery shop on monday morning, having arrived home stuffed full of pasta and oh so ready for fresh fruit and veg. for my bed, which is soft and fluffy and pretty much the equivalent of sleeping in a cloud. for my bath products and my hair products and the fact that my kitchen knives are sharp enough to slice a carrot with zero issue.
it’s no secret that i’ve had a weird year. a weird year that is, in many ways, self-imposed, but a weird year nonetheless. if i’m being honest, there have been many moments in which i’ve wallowed in the weirdness. felt sorry for myself. felt angry that i “had” to leave my job (which i maintain i did, for my own sanity, for reasons that others might deem silly but felt extremely important to me). felt frustrated that the perfect role has yet to present itself. i’ve grieved the loss of the self i thought i was, the team i once had, the cat who was by my side for 17 years. i’ve spent a lot of time feeling like a failure, a fuckup. like everything has gone wrong when i expected (or at least hoped) it to go right. i’ve felt embarrassment, and shame, and sadness.
what i haven’t felt a lot of is gratitude. i know. i know. i’m rolling my eyes at myself too. because, hello. i was able to quit the thing that no longer served me and know that i would be okay (or, at least, okay-ish). i have two loving and supportive parents, wonderful friends, a beautiful home. i have so much to be grateful for! on the surface, i’ve known this. i know this. but i haven’t felt it deep down in my gut.
but coming home from this trip to italy? coming home from this trip to italy, i felt it. gratitude. gratitude for the way the sounds of the city fade to a low hum as soon as i step into my building’s courtyard. gratitude for the rush of the fountain, and the weird turquoise of my ancient elevator. gratitude for this home i’ve created for myself, little by little, over the last 8 years. gratitude for the softness of my bed and the cleanliness of my kitchen and warm glow of my lamps. gratitude for my well-stocked pantry and my giant fridge and new york city’s excellent, drinkable tap water.
being away from it all reminds me just how good i have it. just how lucky i am that these creature comforts are accessible to me, that i am able to call them mine.
on tuesday night, i attempted to explain this concept to my therapist. i grasped at straws, trying to verbalize why, exactly, it felt so impactful to me. so important.
maybe it’s because i’ve had a rough year. maybe it’s because i’m a brat who can’t sleep on lumpy pillows and feels positively nauseated by a rough, mildewy towel. or maybe it’s the fact that little by little, brick by brick, i’ve spent over a decade building a home and a life for myself that makes me feel safe.
last night, over bahn-mi (for him) and a vermicelli bowl (for me), i told a new person about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. i told him about how i moved here, to new york, as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed college grad who thought she was going to work in advertising and live with her best friends.
a year later, i was both jobless and friendless, having been excised from the group and unable to find an agency job during a recession. in some ways, this period of my life reminds me of that one—a time in which i was adrift, and scared, and unsure of what the future might hold.
i am all of those things now: a little bit adrift, a tiny bit scared, and unsure of what the future might hold. but i am also older, and wiser, and more myself. that night cleaved my life in two. breaking up with one person is brutal, breaking up with your entire friend group at once is unimaginable.
every time i tell this story, i said to him, i cry. and then i looked away, because that time, i hadn’t, but i felt certain that if i held his gaze any longer, i would.
this morning, when i woke up, i felt a strange pit in my stomach. a vulnerability hangover, if you will. i had been too honest. revealed too much. i had showed a relative stranger my underbelly, my biggest wound. i might as well have stripped naked in the restaurant. what had i been thinking?
but then i remembered: while the feelings might be similar, i am different. because brick by brick, i built a life. and as this trip has reminded me—as nearly all my trips remind me—it is a good life. it is not perfect. it is not without hardship, or sadness, or bumps in the road. but it is a good life. i have a home that cradles me. i have friends that will quite literally pick me up when i fall. i have a family who will pull me aside at the holidays and say, this is killing you, it’s time to go. i may have lost people and pets and job opportunities, but i have gained this. a life that i am not only proud of, but that i can say i built (mostly) on my own.
and i’ll be damned if that’s not something to be grateful for.
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and now, as promised, a bevy of recs!
before we dive in: i doubt anyone notices/cares about this but me, but i am continuing to experiment with the visual elements of this newsletter. i love my big feelings logo oh so much (thank you, allie welch!), and may or may not have ordered both a tote bag and a mug emblazoned with it. but for the newsletter itself, i find i’m craving something simpler. admittedly, i’m a writer, not an art director, so…my attempts are imperfect at best. anywho. the content remains the same, but the trappings around it might continue to shift until i find my perfect look.
listen, they had me at taylor swift. i’m a diehard swiftie, which means i’m legally required to consume just about any and every piece of swift-related content the internet serves me. including this one, which was inspired by a recent photo of taylor at the vmas that (apparently) had the reddit world going crazy over the amount of filler she’s had put into her cheeks. i’ll admit: i didn’t really know what filler was until i listened to this podcast episode. nor did i know that once you start getting it, you have to keep getting it, because it effectively dissolves into whatever body part you’ve gotten it in and therefore needs to be replenished on the regs.
as someone who began getting botox in her forehead a couple of years ago, i am both biased and conflicted about injectables. i don’t understand the appeal of filler (why on earth would you want your cheeks to look like apples?!), nor of a lip flip (so odd, despise it, cannot imagine wanting one), but i cannot lie: i love having a smooth-ish forehead. i get a small amount (10 units) every few months, and it makes me feel both prettier and more awake/alive. this conversation made me feel a wee bit guilty about that, but also: the podcasters are in their early 30s, and i’m 38, soo…TALK TO ME WHEN YOU TOO ARE 38, LADIES!
just kidding. sort of. bottom line? it’s a smart and thoughtful listen, and i think i’ll be adding the podcast to my regular lineup.
ps: i also really loved this interview with THE ina garten, this hilarious recap of eric adams’ (nyc’s major) indictment, and this wirecutter vibrator episode (yes!).
is there anything better than reading on the beach? sun on your skin, sand in your toes, waves crashing nearby? i think not, folks! i downloaded a bevy of books onto my kindle ahead of my time in italy, and am thrilled to report i finished them all! one or two i’ve not captured here because i didn’t love them—but these ones! these ones, i recommend.
my murder by katie williams. do you ever read a book and think to yourself, how on earth did this idea materialize in someone’s brain? that’s what i thought when i got to the twist of my murder, a strange and unsettling thriller in which murder victims are brought back to life by a government project. yes, you read that right. if you’re a fan of thrillers but feel like they’ve gotten scarily formulaic, this book is the perfect palate cleanser.
get it on bookshop | get it on amazon
the final act of juliette willoughby by ellery lloyd. sometimes, you just want to read a well-written historical mystery on a beach lounger, you know? and when you do, this one will fit the bill. in 1938, runaway heiress artist juliette willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in paris, alongside her masterpiece self portrait as sphinx. 50 years later, two cambridge art history students stumble across proof that the accidental studio fire wasn’t an accident. and that the painting may not have vanished along with its creator. the final act of juliette willoughby bounces between the 1930s, the 1980s, and present day, weaving together family secrets, love stories, and a rather illuminating education on surrealist art. while i guessed the twist at the end (le sigh), i couldn’t put it down.
get it on bookshop | get it on amazon
bear by julia phillips. i waited for this one to come in from the library (i use the libby app to borrow library books on my kindle!) for months, and i’m glad i did, because it was worth the wait. yes, it is about a bear. but it’s also about grief, and sisters, and feeling stuck in life. it’s short and sweet and perfect, a dreamlike novel that i flew through in just 24 hours. i almost don’t want to give more away than that, but if you want a fuller review, this one from the NYT has all the deets.
get it on bookshop | get it on amazon
blue sisters by coco mellors. HOW ON EARTH HAVE I BEEN SLEEPING ON COCO MELLORS?! full disclosure: i’m 3/4 of the way through this one, but only because i am savoring it. each of the blue sisters is exceptional in their own way. avery is a recovering heroin addict turned straight-laced lawyer. bonnie is a professional boxer who’s turned away from the thing she loves most. lucky is a model attempting to outrun her hard-partying ways. all three are grappling with the loss of the fourth blue sister, nicky, whose unexpected death a year prior has left them adrift and reeling. when their mother tells them she’s selling the new york apartment in which they were raised—and in which nicky died—they’re forced to come home, come together, and confront the secrets they’ve been keeping, both from themselves and from one another.
i read for character development first, and plot second, and mellors is a character writer through and through. her work in this novel is a masterclass, and i’m soaking it up.
get it on bookshop | get it on amazon
ps: if you’re a big reader, follow me on goodreads! i try and rank/save every book i read (and i read about 50-60 a year!)
i, like everyone else, fell in love with nobody wants this on netflix last week. and i’ve been trying to figure out why, exactly, we all went so wild for adam brody’s character, noah roklov. is it because we’re a generation of women who fell in love with seth cohen on the oc? is it because brody has managed to play noah as both kind and sexy (a rather rare thing, if you ask me)? is it because he doesn’t shy away from her insecurities, but rather, embraces them? or is it because a good man is really, truly hard to find? this is the question that’s been hovering at the edge of my vision for the past week. yes, noah roklov is good. yes, he is sexy, emotionally available, and seth cohen-level funny (i have a hunch this is brody’s doing; he’s said before in interviews that he always brings a bit of himself to the characters he plays).
but also, is all of that really so earth-shattering? or rather, should it be? and by that i mean: HOW SAD THAT IT IS.
i imagine i am not alone in saying that i teared up at the scene in noah’s kitchen in which joanne has to turn around to tell him her biggest fear. the way in which she says the terrifying thing: that one day, the man we love will realize we’re too much, and break our heart. the way in which he hovers behind her, close but not threatening, his body language and entire being telling her that it’s all okay, that she is okay, that he is not going to do that. the way he slowly turned her around in that moment…i nearly lost it.
because (and yes, i admit that it is a broad generalization, but a generalization grounded in reality) women have been socialized to believe they are too much. and men have been socialized to believe not just that—but that it is their right to remind us of our “too muchness” at every turn. watching that scene, i thought about all the men i’ve dated—some casually, some not so much—who’ve broken my heart in a million tiny ways. by texting with vehemence and going silent in the middle of a conversation. by telling me i’m sexy, and beautiful, and then disappearing the next day. by balking when i dare to ask what happened, or dare to ask anything at all.
i’m not exaggerating when i say that i fear my too muchness during pretty much every romantic interaction i ever have. did i seem too interested? did i talk too much text too much smile too much or maybe it was not enough?! did i respond too quickly? did i reveal too much of myself? did my insecurities show?
were the roles reversed, these are things i would respect in a partner. openness. vulnerability. consistency. clarity.
but when i attempt to give them away, it tends to backfire.
watching a relationship onscreen that’s the exact opposite of that—seeing proof that somewhere out there, there is a man who won’t run from those moments? it’s bittersweet. it reinforces what we believe, deep down, we deserve. and it reminds us that it isn’t real. not for most of us, anyway. writer erin foster may have gotten a man like that, and written another in his image. but for the rest of us, the bar remains embarrassingly low.
if you’ve watched the show and are single (or i suppose even if you’re not), i’d love to know: what did it bring up for you?
psst! if you like this post, it would mean the world to me if you’d hit the little heart icon, as well as consider sharing it on IG stories or substack notes—so that big feelings can be seen by more people ❤️
it’s the mooooost wonderful tiiiiime of the year. and by that i mean: it’s autumn in new york. coming home to cooler temps was the best gift my city could have given me, and words cannot express just how thrilled i am that the air is crisp and my living room AC unit is back where it belongs: shoved into a corner of my closet. fall is always fleeting, a series of perfect weeks that fade all too quickly into stick season trees and moody grey skies. which means we are contractually obligated to make and eat all of the pumpkin-flavored things while we still can!
and so, i give you a simple dinner recipe inspired by trader joe’s pumpkin gnocchi, which i found in stock at my local tj’s monday evening. the goal here was simple, fast, and filling, and i’m thrilled to say the end result was all of the above.
what you’ll need:
1 package of trader joe’s pumpkin gnocchi (or another brand, if you don’t have a tj’s nearby)
3-4 cloves of garlic, diced (i use the frozen kind from tj’s, but i think fresh would be better!)
fresh sage - you’ll want about 10-12 leaves, roughly chopped
EVOO
1 pat of butter
freshly grated parm (splurge on the good stuff here!)
2-4 tj’s chicken apple sausages (add more if you’re making a meal for more than 1-2 people), sliced
one diced zucchini (optional)
what you’ll do:
set a large saute pan on the stove, and bring a pot of salted water to boil.
add about 1-2 tsp of EVOO to your pan. you want just enough to coat the bottom.
add your diced garlic, and simmer on medium-high until it’s golden, but not crispy!
add your chopped sage leaves, and stir to ensure they’re coated with the garlicky oil mixture. you’re looking for cooked, but not overly crispy here (though you could absolutely crisp a few full leaves for looks + crunch!). if you’re adding the zucchini for some extra veg, add it now, and cook til it’s bright green and softened a bit.
once your sage is looking toasty, add your sliced sausage. do the same thing here: mix around, coat with sage/garlic oil, then turn the heat up a tiny bit to make sure your sausage gets browned a bit.
when your water comes to a rolling boil, add your gnocchi. keep a close eye on them, they should only need about 3 minutes of cooking time! i added 1/2 the package since i was just cooking for me, but add the full one if you’re cooking for more people.
drain your gnocchi using a spider scoop/mini strainer, and add to the saute pan with a tiny bit of pasta water. toss to mix, and then turn heat down medium, and add your pat of butter to bring all the flavors together.
season generously with salt and pepper, and cook for another minute or so. again, keep an eye on them! overcooking = gummy gnocchi, which…nobody wants this!
serve topped with freshly grated parm, a little bit more chopped sage and—if you’re feeling fancy—a squeeze of lemon.
et voila! a fall flavor explosion fit for a queen.
is there a word for a person who really, really loves when things smell good? if not, there should be, so that i can assign it to myself as a core personality trait. there are folks who enjoy things that smell nice. and then there are folks like me, for whom a nice-smelling thing (shampoo, body wash, perfume, candles, linen spray) elicits a sense of serenity and calm. walking into a space where a scented candle (a good one, not a cheap synthetic one!) is burning? bliss. snuggling into freshly-laundered, lightly scented sheets? actual heaven. i am constantly on the hunt for linen sprays—aka, sprays to spritz my sheets with before i get into bed at night—and have long loved anything scented with eucalyptus and/or lavender. so when i got an email that one of my favorite splurge-y home care brands had launched a new line just for sleep, i hit add to cart FAST.
friends. friends! if you are also a sensitive sensory person, let me tell you: this scent is everything. i bought both the detergent (you don’t need much, the bottle above = 15 loads) and the linen spray, and my god, i have been sleeping like an actual angel. i quite literally spritz, snuggle, and exhale one of those long, over-dramatic sighs. like, if i were a cartoon character, i’d wiggle my little cartoon butt around in a happy dance and stars would shoot out from my eyeballs.
the set is currently sold out, but i imagine it’ll be back in stock soon, so i’d suggest getting on the wait list.
ps: remember the pair of perfect curvy jeans i shared a few weeks ago? they arrived, and i’m obsessed with them. if you’ve been thinking about ordering a pair, now is the time!
❤️ and that, friends, is where i leave you. if you like this post, it would mean the world to me if you’d hit the little heart icon, as well as consider sharing it on stories—so that big feelings can be seen by more people ❤️
This essay struck a chord. I am really struggling with my professional life and it sucks, but I also have so many things to be grateful for.
AND I so wish that we didn’t define ourselves so much by our jobs! We are all so much more than that!
Vulnerability hangovers. Oh do I know those well! 🫶🏾