Stephany Writes

Categories: Life

Monthly Recap | January 2024

The first month of 2024 is behind us, and while January can be a difficult one for so many, it was a pretty good one for me. It was a month of settling into this new year and trying to enjoy myself. I’m pretty happy with the month overall! Let’s take a look back.

BOOKS

In January, I read 9 books. My favorite was Cover Story by Susan Rigetti (review to come) and my least favorite was This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens. Some other stats:

  • 78% fiction, 22% nonfiction
  • 6 print, 3 audiobooks
  • 3.9 average star rating
  • 44% diverse

Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory (print, owned) ★★★★☆ | The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (print, owned) ★★★☆☆ | White Feminism by Koa Beck (audiobook, Spotify) ★★★★☆ | This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens (print, library) ★★★☆☆ | The Honest Enneagram by Sarajane Case (print, owned) ★★★★☆ | Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale (audiobook, library) ★★★★☆ | Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake (print, owned) ★★★★★ | Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (print, owned) ★★★★☆ | Cover Story by Susan Rigetti (audiobook, library) ★★★★★

MEDIA

  • Only Murders in the Building, season 3 (TV) – I love this show. I loved it even more with the addition of Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd.
  • The Traitors, season 2 (TV) – I already talked about my love for this show in my latest Currently post. It’s sensational.
  • The Floor (TV) – I don’t know why I decided to watch this game show hosted by Rob Lowe, but I did and I’m hooked.
  • Sweet Bobby (podcast) – I listened to the majority of this true crime podcast series on my way home from Tennessee. It’s insane.
  • 9/12 (podcast) – I’ve had this podcast series saved for months and months. Dan Taberski has to be one of my all-time favorite journalists.
  • Pantsuit Politics (podcast) – I started listening to this left-leaning political podcast this month and it’s fantastic.
  • The Friendship Paradox – This month, we released two episodes! We talked about how we podcast and our hobbies.
  • Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS (music) – I loved this album so much. It’s so fun to sing along to!

PURCHASES

  • A new iPhone case – I’ve bought three iPhone cases from this particular Etsy shop and I’ve been so pleased with all of them. I like a slim case with a colorful pattern and these are perfect!
  • Valentine’s decorations – I’m not someone who decorates for random holidays but now that I have a cute ledge by my door where I can add seasonal decor, I can’t help myself. I bought two little signs from TJ Maxx and a bouquet of (fake) red roses, and they add a touch of seasonal delight to my home.
  • New bathroom rugs – I talked about these rugs in a TGIF post, but have to admit again how much happiness they have brought me.
  • A new doormat – I usually replace my doormat every year because it’s fun to find something new. This one from Target makes me really happy!

MOMENTS

It’s hard to believe that I was still in Tennessee on my vacation in January, but I was! We kicked off 2024 with a visit to Ober Gatlinburg and snow tubing.

We left Tennessee on January 2nd and the state was most definitely showing off in its wintery glory as we sped through the Smoky Mountains on our way home.

Let’s talk about one of the most delightful moments of January: Meeting Jenny! She came to my fair city with her family and we were able to match our schedules up to meet for coffee on a Friday afternoon. We sat there for over two hours talking about life and books and blogging and football and all sorts of other stuff! I am always nervous before a blogger meet-up (what if we have nothing to say to each other???) but, of course, I needn’t have worried. It was like catching up with a dear friend!

Our book club experience in January was a PowerPoint night! You can see all of the fun topics we came up with! At first, I had no idea what topic I was going to present on, but soon settled on “The 10 Hottest Coaches in the NFL.” As you can see, that’s not the topic I ended up choosing. I had such a fun time thinking of the reality TV futures for my friends!

It was so much fun to sit down with our dear friend Mikaela and record a podcast about what it’s like being an enneagram 1. She was so vulnerable and honest with us, and I think it’s going to be an episode that touches a lot of people. I can’t wait for it to be released tomorrow!

I tried sushi for the first time! Well, the second time—my official first time was on a cruise many years ago, but I barely ate it, so it doesn’t really count. Bri wanted to introduce me to sushi the right way so she took me to a Thai restaurant where she ordered sushi with fried shrimp. And y’all! It was so good! I have been missing out. I don’t know how I feel about raw fish when it comes to sushi, but I’m excited to keep experimenting with cooked options going forward.

I got my nose pierced, which is something I’ve wanted for a long time. I always thought my nose was too big for my face, and I never wanted to draw attention to it with a piercing, but damn if I didn’t want a piercing anyway. And now I’m in a place where I don’t care if my nose is too big… if I want a piercing, I should get a piercing! So I did. I love it and can’t wait to change out the stud for a hoop in a few months!

I finally have a cozy reading chair! I told the story about getting this chair into my bedroom on Friday. I’ve had many different reading sessions in this chair since then and it makes me so happy!

Categories: Life

The Story of the Cozy Reading Chair

As many of you know, I’ve been on the hunt for a cozy chair for the corner of my bedroom for almost 6 months now. I wanted a place where I could curl up with my books and read with the cats snoozing near me.

I’ve been searching Facebook Marketplace and stores that offer chairs for sale in Surfside Beach, SC for a while now to find this chair. I was willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for a chair from Wayfair or Amazon, but I was hoping I could pay a third of those prices for something gently used. Every now and then, I’d find a chair that looked like it was in good condition and the asking price was reasonable. But something was always holding me back (mainly, how I was going to transport the chair and get it up my three flights of stairs—yes, I could rope my brother into helping me and he would do it for me, absolutely, but he’s busy and I hate bugging him for things like this). But sometimes the color was too bright or bold. Or it didn’t have an ottoman. Or it didn’t look as cozy as I wanted.

On Monday afternoon while I was eating lunch, I was reading Kyria’s post about her adventures of selling on FB Marketplace, which prompted me to pull up the app again and see if any new Four Hands Chairs had been listed recently. And then I saw it: A beautiful armchair in a neutral pattern with an ottoman, and the asking price was just $75.

So, I asked if it was available. (It was.) I called my mom to see if she was free to help me go get this chair. (She was.) I messaged the seller and said I could come by that evening. (Good.)

I measured the trunk of my car to see if I could fit the chair. I have a Kia Soul and unfortunately, she was just a bit too small for the chair. Thankfully, my mom has a Kia Sportage, so her trunk space is bigger than mine and we took off for the seller’s home. The chair almost didn’t fit in her car—we had to remove the legs (thankfully, they just twisted right off) and then sit it up in a particular way to get it to fit. Whew, crisis averted.

We stopped by a restaurant on our way home for dinner and then it was off to my apartment to bring the chair home!

I hope you haven’t forgotten about the three flights of stairs. I sure haven’t. I don’t have an elevator, so there was nothing else to do: We had to take the stairs.

It was not fun, friends. My mom and I struggled and I’m surprised we did not have simultaneous heart attacks on the stairs. Our heart rates were UP, is what I’m saying, and we had to take lots of breaks. Once we finally got the chair inside the apartment, we both collapsed on the couch so we could catch our breath and get our heart rates down to a normal level. I guess we’re not ready to take on The Amazing Race, huh? (My mom and I love the show and it would be so fun to race with her, but I always joke that I’d become the most hated person on reality TV. I don’t handle myself well in stressful situations, especially when it’s my mom and I can be snappy with her. People would love my mom for the way she puts up with me, but I’m not ready to be a reviled reality TV show person.)

Anyway, back to the chair. Once it was inside the apartment, we were so relieved! It’s here! But we set it down in the living room so we could collapse on the couch and needed to move it into the bedroom. But no biggie. This would be the easy part of the evening, right?

LOL, no.

First, the chair almost didn’t fit through the opening between my living room and the small hallway between my bedroom and bathroom. Somehow, though, I was able to shove it through with enough force. And then we realized the chair is absolutely, 100% too wide for my narrow doorframe. (This damn apartment and its damn narrow doorways!) We tried everything. We flipped it around every which way to see if there was one side that was less narrow, but nothing was working.

So, I figured it was the bedroom door that was the problem. At first, I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll call maintenance to have them remove the door and help me bring in the chair.” But then I was like, “Wait, it’s just a bunch of screws. I can do that!” So that’s what I did. I removed my entire door from my bedroom so I could bring the chair inside.

But y’all. THE CHAIR STILL WOULDN’T FIT.

I was in panic mode at this point. This is my beloved reading chair that is supposed to be nestled in the corner of my bedroom! I have a whole aesthetic I’m going for here! I don’t know where I could put this chair in my living room because it’s already pretty full with my big sectional and desk. Maybe I could put it in the corner of my living room, in front of the patio door? I never use the patio (because again, these damn narrow doors and not being able to even fit patio furniture through it). I could make it work. It wouldn’t be my original aesthetic, but it would still be a reading nook. EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE.

I decided to try one more time to get the chair inside my bedroom. I started by picking up the back of the chair and pushing it inside my bedroom. That was the easy part. Then, I angled the bottom of the chair to see if I could fit one side of the chair inside, which would allow me to easily pull the rest of the chair inside. And it worked! Somehow my Tetris-level skills got this chair inside my bedroom and my cozy reading nook plans did not have to be altered.

Because the chair came with an ottoman (which is what I wanted), it’s a little too big to be angled in the corner like I wanted. (If I did that, I’d have to step over the ottoman every time I wanted to get to the furthest corner of my bedroom, and this is where my dresser is and where I usually climb into bed.) I am thinking about rearranging my bedroom so everything fits perfectly, but for now, I have the chair tucked up against a wall.

Of course, the chair is mainly being used by the cats right now. I find them curled up on it about 90% of the time—Ellie likes the chair and Lila prefers the ottoman, although last night I found them curled up together, which was ridiculously cute. Sometimes, they let me use it when I ask nicely. 😉

Categories: Life

10 Things I Loved in November

1) NaBloPoMo 2023

I am so glad I decided to participate in NaBloPoMo for the third straight year (and, of course, thanks to San for being our fearless leader once again). I had a lot of fun this month and I tried to take the pressure off to read and respond to every single blog post. I was really delighted with the response I got to my Week in the Life posts. I have so much fun writing those posts and I’m glad to know that you guys enjoy reading them. They’ll be back in 2024, don’t you worry!

2) Continuing to recover from LASIK

It’s been 6 weeks since I had LASIK and my vision continues to improve. A few weeks after I had the procedure, I was still waking up and immediately reaching for my glasses to put them on… only to realize I didn’t need them anymore! What a fun way to wake up! I’m dealing with a bit of dry eye, but nothing too concerning. I try to do artificial tears a few times a day, which helps. I continue to sleep without my ceiling fan, which is a pain, but hopefully at my appointment in February, I’ll get the all-clear to sleep with the fan again. All in all, things are good on the eyeball front!

3) Pet portraits

I am so glad I finally had these portraits done, and they turned out so well!

Ignore my drywall holes. They need to be patched and I’ve been way too lazy to do so.

Here’s what I did:

  • First, I bought the portrait commission on Etsy and sent the artist a few pictures of my pet. She responded in less than 48 hours with the portrait. She allows for unlimited changes to the portrait, but I loved each one from the start!
  • Second, I bought 11×14 black frames from Amazon to hang the portraits.
  • Third, I sent the files to my local Fed-Ex store for printing. I had the portraits printed on heavy cardstock paper and they all came out really great!
  • Fourth, I framed the portraits (I had to trim them a bit) and hung them up on my wall.

The portrait commission was $9 per portrait, the printing was $9 for all three portraits, and the frames were $8 each. So, all in all, the portraits were $20 each from commission to frame, which is not a bad deal at all!

4) Decorating for Christmas

I used to be someone who waited until after Thanksgiving to start decorating for Christmas, but ever since the pandemic, I’ve been all about decorating early. It’s just nice to have more than a month of holiday cheeriness in my apartment! (I’m also someone who is ready for all my Christmas decorations to go away by December 31st, ha.) I slowly decorate, too, so I would just put stuff up here and there and by the time Thanksgiving week came around, the apartment was fully decked out.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not putting up my Christmas tree this year since I’m leaving for our cabin vacation the day after Christmas. It’s a little sad not to have a glowing tree in my apartment this year, but I’ll admit that I didn’t hate skipping that blasted fluffing process.

5) A helpful appointment with my psychiatrist

It was serendipity that I had a psychiatrist appointment right as I was starting to feel a depressive episode creep in. We talked through some of the symptoms I was experiencing and developed a plan to help me stem the tide. I’m feeling better now than I did then, and I think that’s mostly because I was able to talk with someone about what I was experiencing and didn’t let it fester in my head for days or weeks.

6) Thanksgiving

I had a lovely Thanksgiving this year with my family. My cousin hosted us and made a delicious meal. I was mostly there to snuggle her cats, but also made sure to talk to the actual humans there, too. My uncle hung in for a while, but eventually exhaustion got the better of him. I’m glad he was able to be with us for a bit of time, though.

7) A birthday eve celebration

My mom and I had a fun day for my birthday eve, as we both were not working. We started with breakfast and then took a trip to two different stores to look for Christmas decor. I was also able to find a few things for my Secret SANta partner, which was exciting! Afterward, we played mini-golf. It was a very competitive game and I was trailing my mom by one point when we were on our last hole… and I ended up beating her by a point! A birthday miracle, indeed. It was a fun day with my mom and I’m glad we got to enjoy the day together!

8) Day of Stephany

I’ve already detailed my Day of Stephany on the blog, so I won’t rehash it all here. It was a good day and I went to bed feeling very satisfied.

9) November book club

We had book club this month at my favorite local pizza place where we enjoyed Greek salad, cheesy bread, and delicious pizza! And we had a really good discussion about our book this month (Like a House on Fire by Lauren McBrayer, which everyone gave 4 or 5 stars). There was a lot to discuss: female friendship, sexuality, marriage, infidelity, etc. I’m glad the book was such a hit since it was one I suggested!

10) Spotify Wrapped for the podcast

My heart was so full when Bri shared our Spotify Wrapped for the podcast with me. It was cool to realize we have listeners in multiple countries (even Australia and Ireland!) and that our podcast has seen some growth over the last year, even though I didn’t really feel like that happened. There is a lot of growth I’m hoping to see in 2024, and this infographic just made me all the more inspired to make that happen.

Tell me a highlight of November for you!

Categories: Life

The Finish Line

NaBloPoMo-rs: We did it! It’s the last day of November. (And everyone who has been trying to keep up with all of our posts: You can breathe a sigh of relief. We won’t be clogging up your feeds every single day… until next November, that is.)

This was a weird year of NaBloPoMo for me, as I kinda flew by the seat of my pants for most of this month. At least for me—I live and die by my editorial calendar and usually have a few months of blog topics planned in advance. For the last two years I’ve done NaBloPoMo, I’ve planned out every single day and followed that plan perfectly. This time around, I planned out probably half of my month and left the rest of the month open for whatever topics came to me during the month.

And, funnily enough, that non-plan worked out perfectly as every day that I came to this blog to write a post, I had something in mind. It might have been something that came to me during a Google search (Picking Out a 2023 Advent Calendar), or perhaps another blogger gave me an idea (In Which I Lose All My Readers by Talking About Car Organization), or maybe I hit a special blogging milestone midway through the month (2,000 Blog Posts Later), or sometimes it was just a post about something I was going through in the moment (Depression Toolkit).

This doesn’t mean I’m giving up my editorial calendar. LOL, no. I need that structure in my life. It helps me publish three blog posts a week because I know exactly what I need to write about. But, perhaps, I could stand to be a little more flexible with how I structure my editorial calendar—and I can definitely continue this flexibility into next year’s NaBloPoMo.

I was very apprehensive to do this challenge again this year. It’s a lot of work writing a blog post every day! And to keep up with other people’s blogs. And to somehow maintain my other hobbies and friendships and family and work life. But I knew I would have FOMO if I didn’t do it, which isn’t always the best reason to do a challenge like this, but I’m glad I decided to do it. It was fun, I got to connect with so many people, and I wrote posts I’m really proud of.

And now? Now, it’s back to my regular three-posts-a-week schedule, which my typing fingers are really glad about. 😉

Categories: Life

Thirty-Six

It’s my birthday! Today, I turn 36 years old.

Birthdays are a time for many things, in my view. They are a time to celebrate the gift of getting older because it truly is a gift. They are a time to reflect on my life (what went well this year? what was hard about this year?). They are a time to think about the future and the kind of person I want to be in five, ten, fifteen years. And they are a time to be grateful for this life I have because it truly is a good one.

I’m in the second-half of my thirties now and what a wild ride it has been. I started off this decade by celebrating with friends at a small house party and then, a little over two years later, the pandemic happened. Life came to a halt for a full year, and it wasn’t until this year that things finally started to feel like they did pre-pandemic. That’s not to say Covid is over, of course, because it never will be. But to me, I treat Covid like I treat the flu. I get my vaccines, I stay home if I’m feeling ill, but I don’t wear masks anymore and I don’t think about Covid all that much.

It was a hard year for my mental health. I remember being at the dentist in early January and the dental hygienist asking me at the end of the appointment if I had any summer plans. I spiraled, you guys. While I forced a smile for the hygienist and offered a breezy, “Oh, not sure yet!”, inside, I was paralyzed with fear. Summer plans? What if my life looked completely different by the summer because something terrible happened to myself or my family? How could I even begin to look forward to summertime when I was just trying to make it through January with my sanity intact?

That episode prompted an appointment with my medical doctor because it was time to take a look at my medication levels. I was hoping to either make a change to my Lexapro dose or get a referral to a psychiatrist, but instead, that appointment devolved into the doctor giving me a lecture on losing weight. I left that appointment frustrated but immediately booked an appointment with a psychiatrist through Zocdoc. My psychiatrist is amazing. She is kind and compassionate. She reminds me that this anxiety I’m experiencing isn’t something I have to live with. With her guidance, I increased my Lexapro dose from 20 mg to 30 mg, which did incredible things to stabilize my anxiety levels almost immediately.

My psychiatrist has instilled in me this idea that improving my mental health involves more than just medication, although she knows how important it is. It’s also about getting sunshine on my eyeballs, moving my body, eating foods that improve gut health, and talk therapy.  All of this together brings about a much improved mental state where I’m not spiraling just because someone asked me about my summer plans.

One of the brightest spots of my year was my dating life. For five months, I dated a very wonderful woman who ticked all of the boxes for me. She was a huge reader like me, she was kind and compassionate, she was dedicated to social justice causes. We got to do the most delightfully bookish things, like going on bookstore dates and going to coffee shops to read together. It felt like the ideal partnership.

The relationship ended, though, because as much as I enjoyed spending time with her and even though she ticked off all of the right boxes, the connection I craved just wasn’t there. I needed more and I knew, deep in my soul, that I wasn’t going to be able to get that from her. It was heartbreaking to end the relationship, but I know it was the right call and I haven’t regretted it a single day since. (I have regretted losing a friend, though. That part sucks.)

But there was so much good that came from this relationship: Most importantly, I was able to finally come out to everyone in my life. It’s not as if I was hiding my queer identity from people, but I have trouble opening up to people IRL. There were even close friends who didn’t know! I wanted to tell them. I knew they would be happy for me. But vulnerability is difficult for me (IRL, definitely not on this blog, ha) and I didn’t want the attention. But I did it. I told friends, I told Instagram, I told family. It was scary, but there wasn’t a single negative response to coming out. I am so grateful for that! Part of the reason it took me so long to come out is because I was so terrified of this news changing the way people saw me and changing my relationships. But it has only made them stronger and it has allowed me to live my most authentic life.

To the girl who would see cute girl couples together and feel so jealous of them and so sad she would never experience that for herself, look at you now. You get to be you and date the people you want to date. What a gift!

Last year, I wrote this on my annual birthday post: I need to start a journey toward healthy living, but I’m scared. Every time I have tried to do so, I’ve been unhappy.

Enter: My dietician. I am so glad I decided to seek out the services of a dietician so I can learn how to fuel my body in a way that feels satisfying and enjoyable. It’s not about losing weight, but rather about understanding what nourishes my body and how to eat intuitively. My dietician is a supportive, welcoming, kind human who just wants me to have a good relationship with food and to eat in a way that will support the goals I have for myself, like lowering my risk for heart disease.

My dietician has helped me better understand the way my body works. During our first meeting, we talked about what fears I have about changing my eating habits and I told her, very bluntly, that I just don’t think I have what it takes to eat healthy for a sustained period of time. I’m just not built to do that. Once things start to feel hard, I quit. I stop eating well. I order takeout more or get a big bag of pizza rolls to have for dinner every night.

What I’ve learned from these sessions with my dietician is not that I don’t have what it takes or that healthy living is an impossible task… but rather, I just need my food to be exciting. For example, for a long time, I was having a mid-morning snack of string cheese and nuts but suddenly, I stopped wanting those nuts. They grossed me out. And usually, that’s when I start to beat myself up. “I’m just not cut out for this. Eating healthy is too hard!” But when I brought this quandary to my dietician, she reminded me that all it means is that we need to figure out a different snack, something that would be exciting and delicious for me to eat.

That’s the true benefit I have found from seeing a dietician. It’s not necessarily learning the best foods to eat to properly nourish my body (although that has been very helpful!)… it’s about the psyche around food and the stories we tell ourselves when things feel tough. My dietician has all of the faith in me and that has translated to me feeling better about myself and the way I approach eating.

This year was one for the memory books, too. The amazing Bri somehow scored tickets to Taylor Swift’s Tampa show and our seats were insane. She puts on an amazing show and I was forever changed by the experience. I took a cruise on my birthday where I got to ride in a hot air balloon, jump off a cliff in Jamaica, and tube down a river. I explored Charleston with my mom during her birthday weekend. I got my third tattoo, took a knife skills class, and learned how to French braid my own hair. I went to my first-ever Pride parade, earned a nice raise at work, and fell in love with Barbie. And, oh yeah, I GOT LASIK! That’s not something I expected to happen this year, but I would like to thank my parents for giving me super thick corneas that made traditional LASIK an easy procedure. (Also, shout-out to CareCredit for helping me finance the cost.)

It’s been a year filled with ups and downs, but when I look back on the year and when I reflect on the person I am today, at 36 years old, I am really satisfied with who I am and this life I have built. The next year will be a difficult one, as it will likely involve saying goodbye to my uncle (which feels so surreal to even type) and supporting my cousin through all that comes with that. But hopefully, it will also be a year filled with love, optimism, and beautiful memories.