Stephany Writes

Categories: Life

Stream of Consciousness Sunday

I’m writing this post while snuggled under a blanket on the couch, a glass of iced coffee nearby. It’s chilly today (by Florida standards), especially as we’ve had a string of warmer days and I had to turn my AC on again. I love when the temperature inside my apartment is cold enough to warrant turning off my AC! This morning, the temperature inside is 68. I just found Eloise under the quilt on my bed, so maybe it’s a little too chilly for her right now, hehe.

I think I’m becoming someone who doesn’t hate the fall time change any more. This is giving me a bit of an identity crisis because I’ve always hated “falling back.” Sure, that extra hour of sleep is amazing, but I hate it when it’s completely dark at 6 p.m. And I never really got to enjoy the lighter mornings because I was always waking up before the sun, no matter if we were in DST or standard time. But I’m starting to come around to being in standard time. I feel so much more well-rested these days because my body’s internal clock still hasn’t quite adjusted to the new time so while I’m waking up at my normal time, it feels an hour later. And I get to enjoy the lighter mornings, too! It’s actually really nice. All this to say, I understand people who enjoy falling back! I get it!

But I still prefer being in Daylight Saving Time—give me back my 8 p.m. sunsets, please!

I’ve been going back and forth on getting a Covid booster shot. Since I’m overweight, I’m considered high risk so I could get the booster if I wanted it. But I don’t really consider myself high risk for Covid, honestly. And I had such a bad reaction to the second Pfizer shot that I am really worried about going through all of that again for the booster. (And apparently, it’s common to have the same side effects, ugh.) Of course, I’d rather be protected against Covid (and protect anyone around me!) and deal with really bad side effects for a day or two than to get Covid, but it makes me nervous.

This stream-of-consciousness stuff is harder than it looks! I just spent the past 15 minutes flipping back and forth between this tab and other tabs, letting myself get distracted by looking at my savings accounts, Christmas presents to buy, and my email rather than finishing this post. So I guess that’s all I have in my head today. Not very exciting, eh?

What are your thoughts on falling back? Have you or are you getting the Covid booster?

Categories: Life

Stream of Consciousness Sunday

Hey, friends! It’s Sunday and I’ve decided to devote each Sunday this month (well, all but the last Sunday in November, as that’s my birthday!) to a stream-of-consciousness post. The challenge: to write without a specific purpose. I just want to discuss what’s on my mind right here and now. Let’s dive in!

I’m really excited about getting a new car. My current vehicle is a 2005 Scion xB (the car that looks like a toaster!) and it’s served me incredibly well in the many years I’ve had her. She’s never needed a repair of more than a few hundred dollars and she’s got 130,000 miles on her. But many things drive me crazy about her. Like:

  • Filling up my car with gas can be a frustrating experience because there’s something wrong with my gas tank in that the fuel pump will click off before the tank is full. This just happened today when I went to get gas and I had to figure out the right way to tilt the fuel pump to direct the flow of gas in a way that won’t cause the fuel pump to click off. I dream of the day when getting gas isn’t a frustrating experience!
  • My power windows are losing their… power, I guess? They will roll down easily, but getting them back up is not so easy. It usually takes a few minutes of continually pushing the button and the window going up inch by inch. What this means is that I can’t ever use a drive-thru car washing station! You have to put your car window down to pay at the station right before the car wash, but then I can’t trust that my windows will go back up before the water starts! (Yes, I could just get out of my car to pay, but that’s annoying.)
  • I don’t have Bluetooth. To listen to my podcasts on my phone, the volume has to be at the highest setting and I have to put my phone in a cupholder to amplify the sound. Pretty janky.
  • Using my trunk takes two hands these days because a mechanism in the trunk lock is broken, so I have to use one hand underneath the bottom of the trunk to lift it up while my other hand is lodged under the handle of the trunk to push the lock to open it. Sounds complicated? That’s because it is. I never use my trunk anymore because it’s too annoying.

Those are just some of the annoyances I have with my current car. I’m just ready for a new car and I know it’s the right time to make this purchase. A lot of the things I want with a new car are just stuff that comes standard in cars these days, like Bluetooth, a backup camera, a power liftgate, etc. I’m not looking for the flashiest car—truly anything will be an upgrade to what I have right now.

I’ve also never had a new car. I never thought I could have a new car. Growing up poor, we had our fair share of embarrassingly ugly and decrepit cars. There was the car that a friend said she thought was going to fall apart every time I got in it. There was the gray station wagon with two huge dents on its right side. There was the time my mom drove a church van for a while—that was fun. There was the little Ford that had rope holding its hood closed. There was the car that would take forever to back out of a parking space because of how many times it would stall when in reverse.

So I’m excited about the chance to have a new car. And I’m also really grateful that I can. I’m grateful that I have the means to make this happen for me, that I will be able to put down a sizable down payment, that I won’t have to worry about affording a car payment. I don’t take that for granted at all.

Categories: Life

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!

Categories: Life

Monthly Recap | September 2021

READING

I read 9 books in September, which seems to be my sweet spot these days. I’m at 98 books read for the year, so I’ll hit 100 in early October. We’ll see if I can make it to 125 by the end of the year. It’s doable, especially since I have lots of time off coming up in November and December! My favorite book this month was Caste (and was my only 5-star book of the month!) and my least favorite was A Place for Us.

  • One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston (print, owned, Book of the Month) ★★★☆☆
  • The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood (print, library) ★★★☆☆
  • The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (print, owned, Book of the Month) ★★★★☆
  • Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (audiobook, library) ★★★★☆
  • Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur (e-book, library) ★★★☆☆
  • I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal (audiobook, library) ★★★☆☆
  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (print, owned, Book of the Month) ★★★★★
  • A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza (e-book, owned, Amazon) ★★★☆☆
  • Rising Star by Susannah Nix (e-book, owned, Amazon) ★★★★☆

WATCHING

  • Booksmart – I watched my first movie of the year this month! Ha. And it was a phenomenal one. I loved, loved, loved this movie and I have a hankering to rewatch it soon, which is something I never do with movies. It was hilarious and heartfelt and led by two amazing actresses.
  • Nailed It – A new season of Nailed It landed on Netflix just when I needed something light-hearted to watch. Nicole Byer has my heart forever.
  • Brooklyn 99 (season 1) – I started rewatching Brooklyn 99 this month because I needed something comforting to watch. Also, their final season just finished up and I want to rewatch the entire series before settling in for that.

LISTENING TO

  • Strange Bedfellows – My beloved Jack and Tanner of The Baby-Sitter’s Club Club podcast have been, shall we say, floundering a bit since they finished reviewing the BSC books. One of the things they did during that floundering period was review the book The Governess Game by Tessa Dare, a historical romance. I was delighted by this episode and all I wanted them to do was continue to review romance novels in their typical hilarious way. And they read my mind! They started Strange Bedfellows, a podcast about two men reading and reviewing romance novels and it is everything I never knew I wanted. They are hilarious (especially the segments where they rewrite the sex scenes in the novels, hehe) and I’m so glad they’ve found a new niche! (I want to note, too, that they aren’t making fun of this genre or anything like that. They are kind and respectful while also being hilarious. The hilarity doesn’t come at the expense of the romance genre.)
  • This Land – This podcast from Crooked Media is hosted by Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of Cherokee Nation. Season 1 was about a Supreme Court decision affecting the treaty rights of Native American tribes. In season 2, she discusses a law called the Indian Children Welfare Act (ICWA), which gives tribes rights over the government for Indian children in foster care, and specifically, how one couple is trying to dismantle ICWA. The podcast is incredible and definitely worth a listen.

BUYING

  • A new living room rug – I am so happy that I bought this new rug! While it could be just a smidge bigger, it still works well for my living room. I love the pattern and the fact that the stripes match my couch perfectly (the pink stripes match my couch pillows, even!) The girls love it, too, and isn’t that the MOST important thing?
  • A new TV – Another home upgrade that I’ve had my eye on for a long, long time. I’m so glad I got a bigger TV! It makes me really happy, especially with football season in high gear.

HIGHLIGHTS

nfl football • my first psl of the season • my return to peloton workouts • a coffee date with amber • celebrating my brother’s 35th birthday • celebrating my nephew’s 13th birthday • trampoline jumping • spending time with my sweet cousin and her equally sweet daughter • reconnecting with old friends • sundays at mom’s • having people to reach out to when life feels immeasurably hard

Categories: Life

Monthly Recap | August 2021

READING

I read 10 books in August, and I’m on track to read around 140 books this year. It won’t be the standout year that last year was, but reading 140 books is still a lot of books to read in a year.

  • The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (print, owned, Tombolo Books) – ★★★★★
  • Foreplayer by Kate Meader (e-book, owned, Amazon) – ★★★★☆
  • A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost (audiobook, library) – ★★★★☆
  • It Takes Two to Tumble by Cat Sebastian (e-book, library) – ★★★☆☆
  • Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano (print, library) – ★★★★☆
  • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas (Serial Reader app) – ★★★★★
  • Handle With Care by Helena Hunting (e-book, owned, Amazon) – ★★★☆☆
  • I See You by Clare Mackintosh (e-book, owned, Amazon) – ★★★★☆
  • The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (e-book, library) – ★★★★☆
  • The Guncle by Steven Rowley (print, library) – ★★★★☆

My favorite book this month was The House in the Cerulean Sea (a month later and I am still thinking about that book and those characters!) and my least favorite was It Takes Two to Tumble.

WATCHING

  • Big Brother – It’s hard to believe the finale is in a few weeks! I love this show so much and get so obsessed with it when it’s on. My favorite houseguest went home last week and I’m not feeling good about the odds of my other favorite making it to finale night. But I’ll hope and pray she does!
  • The Crown, season 4 – I’m only a few episodes into this season, but it introduces Diana as Charles’ love interest. It’s hard to get super invested in their story, though, knowing how toxic their relationship was and how everything ended.
  • Schitt’s Creek, season 6 – I’m oh-so-very-slowly making my way through the last season of Schitt’s Creek because I just don’t want my rewatch to be over.

LISTENING TO

  • Rob Has a Podcast for all of my Big Brother updates and analysis. I usually listen to the the podcast episodes right after they download to my feed (the morning after each TV episode, which are on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays). This season, I’ve also been listening to their live feed recaps. (Big Brother has a live feed where you can watch the houseguests 24/7—I don’t watch the live feeds, but I do love hearing the updates because there is so much strategy and game talk that is missed if you only watch the TV episodes.)
  • Scam Goddess is the newest podcast I’ve added to my feed, and I love it so much! It’s hosted by Laci Mosley and she is hilarious and so much fun to listen to. Every week, she talks about different scams—both big and small—with a comedic guest. It’s truly a delight!
  • Stuff You Should Know released an archived episode last month about animal domestication that was fascinating. They discussed all the ways we’ve bred and changed the genetic makeup of certain animals (like horses and chickens!) to meet our agricultural needs.

BUYING

  • Microfiber hair turban – I was influenced by Suzanne to try these hair turbans out, which is a much easier way to wrap up your hair after a shower than using a towel. I really like them! Using a regular towel has never been very effective, as the towel usually comes undone if I make one sudden movement, so I like that I can sit with my hair in a towel for a long time after my shower. I don’t think it does much to dry my hair (at least, I haven’t noticed a difference), but the convenience factor is key.
  • More face masks – The number of face masks I brought with me to Chicago was kinda ridiculous. I just always wanted to be able to switch out my mask if the one I was wearing started getting smelly. (Smelly face masks are so gross.) Obviously, I switched out my face masks daily but I wanted the option to switch them out multiple times a day if needed. As such, I discovered I needed more face masks! So I bought a pack at Target on a whim and I really like them. They were only $5 for two masks so they aren’t the most protective, but they work in a pinch.
  • Pop-up parchment sheets – This is a supremely boring adult purchase, but it’s brought great joy to my life! I needed more parchment paper and found these cool pop-up parchment sheets. I don’t have to bring out the whole roll of parchment paper, eyeball how much I need, and rip it off the roll. This sits in a kitchen drawer and I just grab the top piece of parchment and it’s always the perfect size. Genius!

HIGHLIGHTS

great seats (and even better company) at a baseball game • a yummy dinner out with sweet friends • making a belated birthday cake • lots and lots of long walks • finishing the count of monte cristo • the younger nephew joining us for game nights • deleting 150+ books off my Goodreads TBR  • four days in Chicago • meeting Kim! • a full week off work • the cats being extra clingy when I returned • a negative covid test • annual fantasy football draft • exploring the museum of fine arts • tapas tuesday with Bri • quality time with my fur-brother and -sister • a reading weekend • dating that feels fun and enjoyable, not stressful and overwhelming

What was the highlight of August for you?