10 Things I Loved in October

1) Beautiful weather. To my delight, Florida started cooling down in October! And by “cooling down,” I mean that we had highs in the low 80s. One morning, I walked out of my apartment and was even a bit chilly! I’ve had the windows open while I work and I really love that I can be outside without sweltering from the heat. Fall!

2) Celebrating Mia’s birthday. My sweet little niece (well, she’s technically my first cousin once removed but that language is so formal!) turned 9 years old this month, and I just do not know where the time has gone. I remember when she was born and now she’s just this super-confident, adorable-as-hell kid. I love her dearly and it was so fun to celebrate her birthday with family and friends.

3) An emergency dental appointment. The only reason I’m marking this as a “love” is that it solved my tooth pain! Remember how I talked about I was having this odd pain whenever I ate, and I thought that maybe a popcorn hull had gotten stuck in my gums? Well, the pain was still there after a week and eating was starting to be an exercise in torture. So I was able to schedule an emergency dental appointment. The dentist couldn’t find anything causing the pain, but he figured it might be some sort of air pocket and that doing a deep clean of that region of my mouth could help. I was due for a dental cleaning anyway, so I was able to get that done at the same appointment. It was a painful appointment because my gums were already feeling a bit sore and digging around in that area didn’t help much. (It took about a week for the soreness from the cleaning to dissipate.) But it solved the issue and now I can eat again without crying! Yay!

4) You Can Sit With Us. I just started listening to this podcast, which is hosted by the wives/partners of The Try Guys. I’ve never seen an episode of The Try Guys, but I was pointed to this podcast from a Reddit thread asking for light-hearted podcasts. It’s exactly that! It’s just four women chit-chatting about life and digging into topics like female friendship, sex, self-care, COVID, and more. It’s not going to change your life by any means, but sometimes, you just want someone light-hearted and fun, and this podcast is exactly that.

5) Lexapro. My dearest little white pill of Lexapro. How it has changed my life over these past few years and specifically, in October. Getting back on my meds was exactly what I needed for my mental health, and now I know that it’s just something my brain needs. I’m so grateful I was able to get a prescription quickly, that it was less than $2 for a 30-day supply, and that my pharmacy was able to fill the script within one day of receiving it.

6) Time off. I scheduled a few random days off in October (a Monday and a Friday) since I had some leftover PTO that I needed to “use or lose” by the end of the year. It was so nice to be able to stretch out my weekend like this! I didn’t make any plans; I let myself sleep in, read as much as I wanted, and have a low-key day at home. It was really great!

7) Amber dates. My friend, Amber, and I got together twice this month and it was much-needed to have some quality time with her. We checked out an Italian spot near her new house and also had a reading date in our favorite park (where an off-leash, super-friendly dog decided to hang out next to us for a while, ha!) Those little adventures were really helpful to me as I was going through my depressive episode.

8) Reorganizing my bathroom. My bathroom closet was really becoming a headache for me, and it was time for a refresh. One of those, remove everything from the closet and reorganize it refreshes. I bought a small lazy Susan to house my first aid supplies and a bunch of miscellaneous products (like nail polish remover, small tissue packets, etc.) I also bought a 3-drawer organizer and I’m using each drawer for a specific purpose: the top drawer for eyeglass wipes, the middle drawer for tampons, and the bottom drawer for nail care products. All of those products were taking up so much space in my bathroom closet because they were all in special packaging. Now they’re all contained! Nothing makes me happier than a super-organized closet, for real.

9) A mom who gets it. Going through depression was hard shit, but it was made a little bit easier thanks to a mom who truly understands. She’s been there, too, and knows how to be there for me in exactly the way I need. She did a lot of listening this month and was constantly checking in on me to see how I was doing. I needed that.

10) Halloween. Halloween was a fun day, even though it was really weird that it was on a Sunday. I got dressed up as a cat, which entailed putting on cat ears and drawing on whiskers, and my mom and I sat out at the end of her driveway to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters. We didn’t get a ton of kiddos (around 30), but that meant by the end of the night, we could tell the kids to take a handful of candy, which I know the older kids were especially happy about, ha. The weather was beautiful, in the 70s with a great breeze, and we had a good time.

Tell me a highlight of October for you!