Stephany Writes

Categories: Life

Birthday Snapshots

I started my birthday with my free Starbucks birthday drink (<– side note: I hate how you are only eligible for this drink on your birthday – it should be available all month long!) I enjoyed some egg bites and my book.

After Starbucks, it was time for a massage! This massage felt soooo good. She really worked on my hips/IT band/glutes, which is what I needed. It really helped!

I took a side trip to TJ Maxx after my massage because I needed some gift tags and wanted to poke around and see if there was anything I could add to my Secret SANta package. It was a successful trip!

A nap is a requirement on my birthday! It’s my favorite activity! Eloise lay on me for this nap, and I promise she’s happier than she looks in this photo.

When I got up for my nap, it was time for a shower and get all Christmassy for my evening activities. I wore a “merry” sweatshirt and my cat Christmas earrings!

MY BABIESSSS. Gosh, I love them so much. They had on sweatshirts since it was a cold day, and I lost my shit at how cute they looked.

In the evening, it was time for Christmastown at Busch Gardens! I’d been to this event a few times, but it had been many years since I’d visited, and honestly, it was a bit underwhelming. They didn’t have nearly as many cool things to do as in years past. Case in point: I noticed that one eatery had gingerbread cookie decorating. How fun! No, not fun. It was at a small kiosk where they basically just shoved a gingerbread cookie, a small container of buttercream frosting, and a small container of sprinkles at you, and then you had to find a place to sit to decorate. There weren’t any tables or chairs near the kiosk to decorate! Get it together, Busch Gardens.

Even though it was underwhelming (and even though my hips were screaming at me by the end of the night from all the walking), it was still fun to be surrounded by all the Christmas decorations and hear Christmas music. And my 17-year-old nephew wasn’t too cool to hang out with us!

At the end of the night, I made myself a warm cup of hot cocoa (with marshmallows, of course) and settled on my couch with a heating pad and my book. My hips were so stiff by the end of the night and the heat definitely helped!

What is a non-negotiable for you on your birthday?

Categories: Life

Some Very Specific Things I’m Thankful For This Year

1) That feeling when I’m sitting on the couch and a cat gets up from where they were sleeping to curl up next to me.

2) Period underwear. What a wonderful invention.

3) The autonomy and flexibility I enjoy at my job.

4) ChatGPT. I know this one is controversial and there are so many issues with AI, but it has made my life so much easier.

5) Being able to afford professional movers. It was expensive, but so worth it.

6) When a cat comes prancing out of a room they’ve been sleeping in for a while and meows at me. Almost like, “Hello, I’m back! Did you miss me?”

7) That first sip of an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. There’s nothing like it!

8) Ibuprofen. Do I take too much Advil? Maybe. But damn, to be able to have near-instant relief from pain at my fingertips is an amazing thing.

9) Hugs from my mom. The most comforting place in the world.

10) When I add a new book to my bookshelf – it’s like bringing a new friend into the family!

11) Mystery coloring books. My favorite thing this year!

12) Shampooing my hair. Bonus points if it’s been more than a few days since I washed my hair. It feels so good!

13) When I get an email that someone has commented on one of my blog posts. It’s so special, even still!

Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. friends! What’s something super specific you’re grateful for today?

Categories: Life

5 Things About Week in the Life

1) A boring week

When I’ve done Week in the Life in the past, I tried to choose a more “interesting” week in my life. This was a way to trick everyone into thinking I had a really exciting social life, when in reality, most weeks are like the one I just documented. This was a slower week than normal, but not too out of the ordinary. And I like it that way! The busy weeks are good, but the quiet weeks energize me.

2) A terrible week of sleep

Oy vey, my sleep was so very bad last week. I’m unsure if my sleep was bad because of my own nighttime habits (i.e., not getting to bed at a decent hour) or starting my period or all of the physical pain I’m in. Or maybe it’s a function of NaBloPoMo and just not getting as much sleep as I normally do because of all the extra blogging I’m doing. It’s probably a combination of all of the above. I’m currently averaging around 6 hours of sleep per night and that is not enough sleep!

3) The unending scroll

It’s not a surprise to me that I spend a lot of time on my phone (my screen time average would disgust most of you), but it was really apparent while I was cataloging my time for this experiment. I love to zone out and scroll! This time of year, I’m scrolling even more as I research Christmas gift ideas for other people. Sometimes, I zone out with Instagram and sometimes, I just want to play Happy Color and half-listen to a podcast. I tend to need a “transition” period like this between activities—it’s hard for me to go straight from working to making dinner. I just want 10 minutes on the couch to dissociate with my phone before I turn my attention to the next thing on my to-do list.

4) San’s photo trick

I can’t believe it took me way too long to realize I could upload photos from my phone right to my Media Library via the WordPress app, and they’d be right there for me to grab and insert into my posts! It wasn’t until the second-to-last day of Week in the Life that I read San’s very helpful post about her favorite apps, and good lord, this is going to save me SO MUCH TIME. At one point, I was emailing myself the photos I wanted to put in my blog posts, but could only email 2-3 photos at a time due to file sizes, so it could take forever to work through all the photos I wanted to upload. Then, I discovered I could use Google Photos on my Chromebook to easily download photos, but that meant I’d have to constantly back up Google Photos on my phone to make sure they were synced on my laptop’s Google Photos. And even then, sometimes I’d download a photo and it wouldn’t save correctly, so then I would still have to email photos to myself. It was an arduous process!

Thank heavens for San. She mentioned using the Jetpack app, but I decided to try it first using the WordPress app that’s already installed on my phone, and voila. Success! I am beside myself with how much time I’m going to save!

5) Nine years of Week in the Life

It’s wild that I have nine whole years of Week in the Life to look back on. (Well, I started the series in 2014, but missed documenting 2018, 2019, and 2021.) Whenever I do this series, I usually pick a year and read that day’s entry after publishing the post. This time around, I chose 2015 since that’s a whole decade ago! It’s wild how much different my life was:

  • Grandma had just died a month ago, so I was still deep in my grief over losing her.
  • I was living in Tampa with Bri! She had just started dating her now-husband.
  • I had Dutch! And oh boy, was he a little monster. I think I had blocked out how many times I used to have to take him out for potty breaks as he got older.
  • I was doing NaNoWriMo. I don’t even know what book I was working on at this point, but there’s a part of me that misses those busy nights of writing as much as possible to hit my word count goal.

Next year will be Year #10. I wonder how I should celebrate!

How is your life different from a decade ago?

Categories: Life

Scenes From the Week

My first peppermint mocha of the season!

Bri and I went to a Buddhist temple on Sunday morning. It was so beautiful! There wasn’t any sort of service; they allow people to come in and view it throughout the week. They were also doing a Thai market, and I was shocked at the number of people sitting outside, eating Thai food, at 9:30 in the morning!

Here is Eloise, laying on the back of my desk, where she gets to enjoy a very wonderful nap in the sun every morning. I think she would love a window perch here, but I will have to figure out how to configure my desk to make it happen.

Here is Lila, snuggled up in her unicorn bed, in my office! I gasped when I turned around from my desk to see her in the bed because it was the first time she napped in my office. So cute!

Brr! We had quite the cold front this week. The “feels like” temperature was in the low 20s! WHAT. This is not the agreement, Florida!

Eloise never used this hammock in our old apartment, but now I see her using it all the time! I wonder if she likes being able to look outside from a great vantage point?

Planning my gallery wall! I think I like this layout. The best thing to remember when doing a gallery wall is: it doesn’t have to be perfect. Mess is part of the magic! Plus, I can always add more prints and canvases to the gallery wall. If one part seems a little bare or lackluster, there’s an easy solution!

Baby’s first EKG! I’ve been having this weird pain whenever I work out – it’s on the side of my left breast and then radiates to the front of my underarm. It’s not severe and goes away when I stop exercising, but it was concerning to me. So I scheduled an appointment with my primary to get it checked out. She ordered an EKG for me to make sure everything looked fine, but was basically flummoxed by what could be happening. (Which is fun!) Since the pain originates in my breast and not my chest, it’s not as concerning as I thought. She was willing to order a stress test or breast ultrasound to make sure nothing was wrong, but right now, I’m just going to take a wait-and-see approach. My blood pressure was normal and my doctor even complimented me on my EKG, which I was not expecting. (Good job, heart!) She kept cautioning me that this was just a “12-second snapshot” and a stress test would give more thorough feedback, but still, I feel much better about the state of my heart than I did earlier this week.

I took 11 photos of Lila lying on the couch in this position. Is that excessive? Look at her soft white belly! Her little toes tucked up against the couch! HER PAWS. Gah. I love her so much.

Have you ever had an EKG? Are you laughing at Florida’s excuse for a cold front?

Categories: Life

September & October in Pictures

Typically, at the beginning of every month, I write a detailed recap post where I talk about everything I read and bought and watched and all that jazz. Since I didn’t write one for September and didn’t feel like recapping two months at once, I’ve decided to just take you through the last two months in pictures. This is mostly an excuse to show you some cute photos of the girls and reveal Chip and Lucy’s Halloween costumes. You’re welcome!

Let’s kick things off with a very cute photo of Lila mid-yawn. I love taking photos of my cats like this because it looks like they’re screaming!

Eloise loved this little castle. Sadly, it had to be torn down during the move (there was no way a cardboard castle was going to survive a move!) Fear not! I already have a different cardboard scratching house ready to be assembled. It’s Christmas-themed, so I’m waiting a few weeks to set it up.

My brother turned the ripe old age of 39 in September. I can’t believe we’re going to be in our 40s soon. Where did the time go?!

(Also, please do not judge my brother for wearing a Nick Bosa jersey. We do not support him, but we do support the 49ers!)

Our September book club fell on Bri’s birthday. Even though Bri doesn’t love celebrating her birthday, we made sure to shower her with lots of love (the same way she does for us on our birthdays!). We had book club at Top Golf and decorated the whole bay with unicorn-themed decorations and balloons and party hats. It was so much fun to surprise Bri and make her wear a birthday sash all night long, hehehe.

Lila continues to enjoy the weirdest sleeping positions; this time, it’s against my iPad. So cozy!

Mikaela and I went to the No Kings protest in October. We had a pretty good turnout in our neck of the woods, which felt really inspiring. It was just nice to be around people who are as angry about the current administration as I am. And while plenty of people gave us the middle finger as they drove by, way more people gave us waves and thumbs-up signs.

It’s a cat in a box! Well, a bin. Eloise loves sitting in any sort of enclosure, so she was very happy when I put this empty bin on one of my kitchen chairs so I could load it up with items to take over to the new place. (This was in mid-October before the move.)

Such a beautiful photo, huh? One day, a few weeks ago, I heard this strange popping sound, and then a few minutes later, my apartment filled with smoke. Scary! I couldn’t see any sort of fire, so I figured it wasn’t a get-out-immediately emergency. I called my apartment complex, and they told me they would send someone out to take a look soon.

I was concerned about how smoky my apartment was, though, and my smoke detector kept going off, which was annoying, so I tried to ventilate the space by keeping my patio door open. I also turned off my AC at the thermostat and breaker box. A few hours later, maintenance came by to take care of the issue. What happened? I don’t know. He mumbled something about this happening at a bunch of apartments recently, so I’m assuming it has something to do with an older HVAC system. Whatever he did ensured I could turn on my AC again, yay!

The Sausage Superheroes! We were hoping to take Chip and Lucy—excuse me, Superman and Supergirl—to the Halloween meetup for the Tampa Bay Weens, but my mom was still recovering from her illness so we had to miss it. Such a bummer, but how cute are they in their costumes?! At least we’ll be all set for Halloween 2026!

Here’s a quick sneak peek of my new apartment. A full apartment tour will be coming once I’m all settled in. 🙂 I’m just loving all of the natural light I get!

What’s the last photo you took on your phone?