Recurring Series

Five for Friday (v. 75)

1) BOOSTED

I got my Covid booster last Friday, and I’m happy to report that I didn’t have any side effects, aside from a sore arm. Woohoo! While I didn’t experience any symptoms after my first Covid shot, I seemed to get every single side effect from the second shot. I was really nervous the same thing was going to happen with the booster, which is why I got it right before a weekend when I didn’t have any plans. Throughout the day on Saturday, I kept thinking, “I’m so glad I feel good!” I was truly expecting I would spend the entire weekend feeling crummy. I started taking Tylenol right after getting the shot, and who knows if that was the magic sauce to feeling good, but at the very least, it didn’t hurt!

2) A Fun Holiday Weekend

Most of my weekend plans were tentative (see above), so I was so grateful to be feeling good and able to have a big holiday weekend with my mom! We hit up Bath & Body Works since it was $10 candle day (woop!) and then went to a Christmas tree lot to pick out a real tree for my mom’s home. We found a beautiful one pretty easily! My stepdad handled getting the tree situated in the stand (the worst part!) and my mom and I handled stringing the lights. The dogs were really excited about the tree (Lucy mainly liked eating the pine needles that kept falling, haha.)

On Sunday, my mom and I had a shopping extravaganza! We hit up Petsmart, Homegoods, TJ Maxx, and Target for presents and holiday decor. And now… I think I’m finished with all of my Christmas shopping??? Maybe?! It feels crazy to be finished so early in December, but I’m glad I can stop stressing about holiday gift-giving and just enjoy the magic of the Christmas season.

3) December Happenings

I have so many exciting holiday events coming up this month! This time of year just makes me so, so happy. Here’s what’s going down:

Saturday, December 11th: Photos with Santa with the dogs! I would bring the cats, but Lila would hate me forever. I think Chip and Lucy will be much less traumatized, hehe. Later on, I’m meeting up with a few coworkers for a small holiday get-together. We’re going to decorate gingerbread houses!
Monday, December 13th: Last year, my brother told us about a neighborhood that basically exists for its Christmas light display. Every home in this neighborhood is decked out, Griswold-style. We had to go! So we did and we were just completely stunned and enamored by it. On Monday, we’re going to grab dinner together and then drive through this fantastic display. I can’t wait!
Thursday, December 17th: My work holiday party! We’re shutting down at 3 pm so we can all get together on Zoom to celebrate together. There is a rumor that our company may be sending us food and booze to celebrate in style.
Sunday, December 19th: A holiday get-together with book club! Briana, the cutest human to ever exist, is organizing this, which she is calling “Holiday Brunch with Books.” We’ve been instructed to bring a wrapped book that we can exchange, blind-date style! I cannot wait for this!
Tuesday, December 21st: Our annual cookie decorating extravaganza! Every year, my mom hosts me, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my nephews to make and decorate sugar cookies. We always make way too many cookies and have the best time (mostly laughing at our terrible decorating skillz). It’s one of my favorite holiday traditions.
December 24th: My stepdad, my mom, and I started this tradition of going to a fancy steakhouse for dinner every Christmas Eve. This year, my stepdad stayed up late to get us reservations at Bern’s, a Tampa landmark that has won a slew of awards, as soon as they opened up Christmas Eve reservations. I am so excited! I’ve only been to Bern’s once before (reservations are notoriously difficult!) and I cannot wait to repeat the experience. (That dessert room, tho.)
December 25th: Christmas Day! I will be going over to my mom’s house sometime in the late morning/early afternoon. My brother and his family usually come in the afternoon and we open presents, eat a big dinner, and hang out. We don’t really do a big family gathering on Christmas Day, which is something I’m really grateful for. I like that we have a low-key Christmas!

Look at all that fun coming up for me! What a full, blessed life I have. I do not take any of this for granted. <3

4) Best of 2021

My favorite thing to do every December is to look back on the year with a series of “Best of…” posts. It seems like I just keep adding more posts to this series, so much so that I decided to start this series earlier in December than usual! (I usually wait until after Christmas.) Here are the posts you can expect from Best of 2021:

My favorite podcasts of the year
My 2021 blogging stats/favorite posts
An end-of-year survey (here’s a link to my 2020 survey, if you want to fill it out yourself!)
A month-by-month recap of the year
A review of my 2021 goals
My favorite reads of the year (in superlative form!)
My 2021 reading stats

5) Daily Activity December

On a whim, I decided to challenge myself to do 30 minutes of activity every day in December. One of the reasons I started this challenge is to better enjoy this beautiful time of year in Florida. It’s hot, of course, but much more manageable than the summertime temps. (80 degrees vs 110 degrees with 50% humidity…) Plus, sunshine and activity help me sleep better at night. My plan is to go for a 30-minute walk every day and do a 20-minute Peloton spin workout every few days. I have my own personal issues with daily exercise/workout challenges, which is why I’m using the term “daily activity.” (I’m not doing this to “earn my holiday treats!” or “keep off the holiday pounds!” No. If you use this verbiage, please stop. It’s fatphobic and honestly, pure nonsense.) I just want to move my body in a way that feels good to me (walking is my favorite form of exercise) and try to build a habit of getting outside and enjoying the beautiful weather once a day, even on my busiest days.

What’s a fun holiday event you’re looking forward to?

Categories: Recurring Series

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

“Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” is a blog series I do very, very infrequently, ha. The last time I did it was in 2019—the pre-pandemic days! Yowza.

Yesterday

Yesterday, I turned 34! Here’s how I celebrated:

I got my birthday drink from Starbucks (a venti peppermint mocha). I really wish Starbucks didn’t make you get your free birthday drink exactly on your birthday (why not the day afterward?), but alas, they do. I brought my drink home and sipped it while finishing up the book You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey.
I enjoyed a solid Dolphins win. My boys are on a four-game winning streak, and they made my birthday extra special by having a great win against the Panthers yesterday. I was really proud of the way they played!
I ate many slices of Publix birthday cake. Publix makes the best birthday cake, hands down, so when my mom asked me what I wanted for Sunday dessert (we always have a special dessert for our Football Sundays!), I wasted no time telling her exactly what I wanted: Publix chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Yum, yum!
I truly felt the love from family and friends. Receiving so many sweet birthday wishes really did this “words of affirmation” girl’s heart good. I was also really grateful for the comments on the post I published yesterday, as it was a bit of a vulnerable one for me. Thank you for accepting me as I am. <3

Today

Today, I am having my “Day of Stephany”! Here’s what it will entail:

McDonald’s breakfast. Do not judge me. I love McDonald’s breakfast more than anything on the planet, and I am planning on getting a delicious sausage McMuffin with a hash brown. Yuuuuuum!
A relaxation massage. The massage therapist I normally go to is always incredibly busy (I normally have to book months in advance) and I didn’t schedule this massage in time to get an appointment with her. So I am going to someone different for this massage and I hope I like her!
A pedicure with Mikaela. I’m so excited that Mikaela has today off and we’ll be meeting up after my massage for pedicures! It will be nice to catch up, since we weren’t able to have a writing date this weekend. And I am sooooo looking forward to a pedicure. I haven’t had one in months.
A long nap. After my busy morning of pampering, I’m planning on coming home and taking a long nap in my cozy bed. “Day of Stephany” must include a nap, duh!
Dinner with my family. Tonight, I’m having dinner with my family at Carrabba’s (a chain Italian restaurant). Carrabba’s is just my favorite and I’m looking forward to eating my body weight in carbs.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I return to work after 10 days off. Wah! It shall be a busy day, but I’m going to try to set myself up for success by:

Getting up early and working out. I will be tempted to sleep in until the last possible second, but I think forcing myself to do a tough Peloton workout will be what my brain needs tomorrow morning.
Taking a shower and putting on real clothes. Again, this is just to put myself in the right headspace to tackle a long to-do list after 10 days away from work. I don’t always do this, but I always feel a bit more prepared to take on the day when I do.
Implementing the Pomodoro method. I love the Pomodoro productivity method, as I do my best work when I can take frequent breaks. The Pomodoro method, for those that aren’t aware, is a technique in which you work for 25 minutes and then take a 5-minute break. You do that three times and then, after the fourth 25-minute working block, you can take a 15-minute break. (I use this website to track my working blocks.) Whenever I really need to focus on getting stuff done, I use the Pomodoro method, and I think it will come in handy tomorrow.

What is something you did yesterday, will do (or did!) today, and will do tomorrow?

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 40)

The highs of my week were too many to count! So let’s make a list:

Buying a new car. I love her so much!
A sweet email from a blog reader who wanted to tell me how much my blog meant to her and to give me a blog appreciation gift. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have such amazing readers—I love you all dearly!
Decorating my apartment for Christmas. How I love reading by a Christmas tree and seeing all of my beloved decorations sitting around my apartment.
A wonderful Thanksgiving with my family. My cousin did an amazing job and I left with a full belly and happy heart.
A three-game winning streak for my Dolphins! This season has been a struggle, to say the least, and it’s been pretty great to have a bunch of wins under our belt after thinking we’d become the laughingstock of the league.
A whole week off work. It has been so nice to sleep in every day and relax!

The low of my week was nothing in particular! I am trying really hard not to think about work and everything that awaits me next week. It’s going to be a busy march to the end of the year.

A Reel that made me laugh was this one from Lisa Gilroy. It really makes you wonder why they named it that!

A podcast episode I enjoyed was The Flannon Isles Mystery from Stuff You Should Know. I love when these guys recap an unsolved mystery—add in a lighthouse and a mysterious disappearance of lighthouse keepers, and you’ve got me riveted!

I’m currently reading Cuff Me by Lauren Layne, which is a contemporary romance (with a really embarrassing name for the title!) and You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar.

The best money I spent was on my car! Of course it was. Have I mentioned how happy I am to have a new car?

My plans this weekend include a writing date with Mikaela and a pre-birthday dinner with Amber on Saturday night. And Sunday is my birthday! Yayyyyy!

What are you currently reading?

Categories: Recurring Series

A Weekend in Pictures: A Christmas Tree, a New Car & Dog Snuggles

I kicked off my weekend by dragging all of my Christmas decorations out of storage so I could transform my apartment into a holiday wonderland! It was fun to put up the tree (the above photo was taken right after I got all the pieces connected and plugged it in; it still needed to be fluffed and the crooked top half needed to be fixed, haha). I love how automatically cozy a home looks once the Christmas tree is up. <3

I ordered in Dominos on Friday evening and watched the latest episode of The Bachelorette. A rockin’ Friday evening, can’t you tell?!

Saturday kicked off with a long walk around my apartment complex. I listened to my audiobook for some of this walk and my fantasy football podcast for the second half.

After my walk and a shower, I met up with Mikaela at Starbucks for our writing date. I planned on working on some articles for work, but I just wasn’t feeling it so I switched to reading blogs and working on a post for next week. I was much happier with that decision!

And then, well, you all know what happened after my writing date! I picked my mom up and we drove to the Kia dealership to test-drive a Soul. Four hours later, I drove away in a brand-new car! Eeks!

I definitely wanted to drive around in my snazzy new car, so Mom and I drove over to Robert’s Christmas Wonderland for our annual visit. We usually go sometime in December and I think we were a bit too early as there wasn’t a ton to look at. It was slim pickins! But we had fun strolling around and I ended up leaving with a new decoration and tree topper. Yay!

I went out to dinner with my mom and stepdad on Saturday night (of course, I drove. I want to drive everywhere now, which is a major departure for me, haha). We went to Bonefish Grill and had a lovely meal together! (I forgot to take any pictures of our meals, so you get a surreptitious shot of their wine selection, lol.)

I did a little Christmas shopping (for my home) on Sunday morning. I picked my mom up and we headed to TJ Maxx and Target to check out their decorations. I bought some new Christmassy dish towels, a new Christmas decoration, cat-themed wrapping paper, and a toy for Chip and Lucy at TJ Maxx. At Target, I picked up some lights for my patio, more garland (I’m obsessed with garland), and gel clings! It was a successful outing for sure.

After our Christmas shopping, we made a pit stop at the Kia dealership. I realized late on Saturday night that I had forgotten to clean out this secret compartment in my car where I kept my key card (which opens the gate at my apartment complex) and library card. Thankfully, the sales guy who helped me out yesterday was working and he got it for me easily! Whew. A key card replacement is $50 and I did not want to eat that cost.

After our busy morning, it was time to relax for the rest of Sunday. I lounged on my mom’s couch, snuggled with the dogs, and played on my phone for most of the day. It was just what I needed! What a weekend, eh? Thankfully, I have the whole week off work (+ the Monday of next week) and I can’t wait to sleep in every day, catch up on reading, and get some stuff done around my apartment (like finishing decorating, hanging up my outside lights, and installing a set of floating shelves in my dining room). I also signed up to bring cookies and deviled eggs to my family’s Thanksgiving meal, so I will need to do that on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. It shall be a busy week!

How was your weekend?

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 39)

The high of my week was learning about my benefits for 2022! Working for a large, global company has some advantages, like the fact that we have a big human resources team that is devoted to finding ways to make their employees happy. Two of the benefits I’m most excited about are student loan assistance ($100 per month, straight to my loans!) and getting 36 FREE therapy sessions using a specific app. FREE THERAPY. OMG. I’ve been wanting to go back to therapy for a long time now, but since I’m on a high-deductible health insurance plan, each visit was going to be a pretty hefty expense. And now I can go weekly for, like, 9 months for FREE. Whaaaat.

The low of my week was making a mistake at work. I was working on a project (a redesign of a client’s website) and we were ready to send the new website to the client for their review and realized pages were missing—pages I was supposed to have written. It just completely fell off my radar to do that so I had to furiously write five website pages this week and add them to the site. Ugh. I hate making mistakes! I spent a good, long time beating myself up about it but my boss reminded me that I’m human and have a lot on my plate. And really, I didn’t set the project back at all and was able to get everything done in record time. But it still put me in a funk for a little bit!

A blog post I loved was The Last Time… by Runners Fly. She wrote a thoughtful post about how everything we do, we will someday do for the last time. But we never think about that and, as such, we can get caught up in the annoyances and get distracted by other things going on in our lives. But what if we took a moment to think about doing something for the last time? How more appreciative we may become! I really loved this post because, for me, I do think about doing things for the last time; it’s an anxiety trigger for me. There are times when I end a phone call with my mom and I go into a panic that that was the last time I will ever speak to her. (I end every call with “I love you” because I always want those words to be the last ones she hears from me.) It’s hard for me to appreciate these little moments I get with my mom because I’m just thinking about how scary this world will become when she’s no longer in it. (I may have dependency issues when it comes to my mom. Maaaaaaybe.) Anyway, I really want to get to a place where I can think of things I’m doing for the last time with fondness and not anxiety, but it’s a work in progress. This is probably a good exercise for me to start doing so I can train my brain to think more positively about stuff like this.

David suggests taking simple, mundane moments and behaving as if you’re doing them for the last time. Not in a depressing way, as in “If I get in a terrible car accident I’ll never be able to mow the lawn again!” but more of an exercise to become aware of how precious these activities really are. I did it the other day when I drove my daughter home from school.

A podcast episode I enjoyed was The Great Helga Hype on Decoder Ring. Such a fascinating episode about art and relationships and mystery. It’s all about an artist named Andrew Wyeth and this series of paintings he did about a woman named Helga. But who is Helga? What is her relationship to Andrew? What does Andrew’s wife think about this? FASCINATING.

I’m currently reading a lot of books, like always. I am still working through Jesus and John Wayne, but I think I should finish it up this weekend. I’m also halfway through Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall on audio. It’s so good. Yesterday, I started two new books: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson and The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite (a queer romance).

The best money I spent was $9 on an incline scratching pad for the girls. I’ve only seen Ellie using it so far, but she’s usually my early adopter. I think the incline helps her get a really good scratch because she uses it ferociously. It probably feels really good!

My plans this weekend include hanging out at home tonight (maybe I’ll set up my Christmas tree?!). Tomorrow, I have a writing date with Mikaela in the morning and then a day date with my mom in the afternoon. We’re going to test drive a Kia Soul and then go to our local Christmas shop to look at their decorations. (I’ve always wanted a big, beautiful wreath for my front door and I think this year is the year I finally make that happen). And Sunday is football with the fam, of course!

What was the highlight of your week?