Stephany Writes

Categories: Recurring Series

Currently in January

Loving… trying new recipes. I’ve added two new recipes to my arsenal, both from the Budget Bytes blog. I need to get better about cooking more at home because it’s healthier for me and cheaper in the long run, but most of my recipes are tried-and-true favorites that I’m getting a little tired of. So, it was time to look for some new recipes and I came across Budget Bytes. I’ve heard of her before, but haven’t tried her recipes until this month and I am a fan. I made Greek Marinated Chicken and Creamy Pesto Pasta with Chicken and Broccoli, and they were both delicious and made four meals, which is the perfect amount for me (three days of leftovers is just about my limit).

Loathing… my anxiety disorder. Last week was just one of those bad weeks for me, where everything felt overwhelming and I just wanted to stay in bed all week and throw the covers over my head. I couldn’t do that, of course. I have a job to go to and a dog to take care of, but boy, did I want to. I hate when I get into those moods because everything feels so pointless and I feel like I’ll never be happy again. Logically, I know it will pass, but man, it is so hard when you’re in the thick of it to understand that. Thankfully, I feel the gray cloud dissipating and I felt more like myself this weekend.

Reading… Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah. This one has been a slow read for me, and I feel like I should have given up on it because I’m not really enjoying it all that much. But I kept hoping it would get better and Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors, so I hate abandoning her books, but I will be very glad when I finish it.

Watching… season five of Parks and Rec. I always need a light-hearted comedy in my TV rotation and Parks and Rec fits the bill. (Although, it did cut me deep in my soul during an episode where Leslie and Ben are looking at the White House and she says to him, “What do you think? Our home in 2020?” YES PLEASE.) I also just finished the first season of Mad Men over the weekend and I’m excited to dive into season two very soon.

Listening to… the Girl Next Door podcast. I heard about this podcast from Amber and I’ve been wanting to give it a listen. Truthfully, 2017 was the year I added too many heavy podcasts to my feed. This podcast is light-hearted and fun and silly. I started at the beginning, and since they started their podcast back in 2014, I have quite a bit of catching up to do. Give it a listen if you love that podcast subgenre of “girlfriends chatting.”

Anticipating… my haircut on Saturday. I’ve finally decided that I am going to chop my hair. I have been questioning myself about it because I really love my long hair and lessened humidity means my hair has been on its best behavior lately. But I’m also interested in donating my hair to a good cause and enjoying a sassy new ‘do. Here’s what I’m thinking about for the cut – mostly a long bob that’ll hit around my collarbone with bangs. (Although there’s a small part of me that’s dying for this cut.)

Grateful for… my primary care doctor. It took me forever to find a primary care doc, but she is a godsend. I had an appointment with her a few weeks ago to discuss a particularly embarrassing medical condition that I thought I had, and I was not looking forward to the appointment at all. But I’d been having symptoms for months now, and it was at the point where it was affecting my quality of life and I needed to get the advice of a doctor. And what do you know, it went fine. I did not die of embarrassment and my doctor made me feel completely comfortable discussing my symptoms without any awkwardness. I really love this doctor and I am so glad I found her.

Needing… motivation to work out. I haven’t been to the gym in over a week and I don’t really have a good reason for it. Well, aside from having serious anxiety last week and not having the motivation to do much more than drag myself to work every day. Late last year, I contemplated canceling my gym membership because I wasn’t using it as much as I hoped. My apartment complex has a small gym and there are always workouts I can access online. I talked myself out of canceling because I really enjoy being able to take spin classes. But I haven’t taken a spin class since I fractured my ankle because I’m worried it’s a little too high impact (the standing segments especially). I guess the motivation is harder since I’m limited in what I can do while I wait for my ankle to heal, and what I can do feels so minimal in the grand scheme of things. I’m barely breaking a sweat with my workouts. But movement in any form is good for me, and I have to keep remembering that.

What are you currently anticipating and reading?

Also! I wanted to remind you to take my reader survey, if you haven’t already. I’ve gotten some great responses so far and I’m excited to share them soon.

Categories: Recurring Series

Five for Friday (v. 55)

Wow… my last Five for Friday post was in February! That’s hard to believe and yet, the facts don’t lie. But I have a lot to talk about today, so let’s dive in.

1) I ordered my first set of Chatbooks this week. If you’re unfamiliar with Chatbooks, their claim to fame is their Instagram photo books in which they automatically develop photo books of your Instagram photos for you. Each photo book includes 60 photos, so once you have 60 photos ready, they’ll send you an email and you can delete and resize photos as you want. They also do photo books for Facebook photos and your own photo roll and have different types of photo books. But I just did their usual Instagram photo book with the 60 photos. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: photo books of the pictures I’ve taken of Dutch throughout the years. I’ve taken so many photos of my little man and I wanted to have a stack of photo books to flip through whenever I want. So, this week, I downloaded the Chatbooks app and got to work deleting photos until I only had photos of Dutch. It took a long time because that’s six or seven years of photos to sort through! In the end, I was left with five photo books, which means I have at least 300 Instagram photos of my dog on my feed. And let’s not forget the fact that I deleted photos that were grainy or too dark or I didn’t like, sooo, that’s a lot of Dutch. I ordered the hardcover photo books for $15 and I’m getting my first one sometime in early February. (When you start using Chatbooks, you can set it up to get “caught up” on your pictures and receive a bulk set of photo books at one time, or opt for getting 1, 2, or 3 books a month until you’re all caught up. I’m doing one photo book a month.)

2) Every few years, I like to go through my “Want to Read” shelf on Goodreads and delete books I know I have no intention of reading. At the time I started deleting books, I had nearly 900 books on my shelf and I figured I would easily whittle that down to a more reasonable number. I deleted books that had a low overall rating (anything under 3.5 stars), books that had been released more than two years ago and had less than 1,000 reviews, and books that didn’t seem interesting to me anymore and hadn’t been reviewed by any of my friends. In the end, I only managed to delete around 250 books, leaving me with more than 600 books on my shelf. And I’m sure that, in no time at all, my “Want to Read” shelf will be at an unreasonable number once again because that’s just the way it works when you’re a bookworm.

3) As of today, I’m 92 days away from my cruise. My mom and I booked this cruise so far in advance that I haven’t been able to get excited about it (and, real talk, there has been a lot of worrying on my end about paying my half of the deposit, but it’s going to get done). I cannot wait for this cruise, though. It’s what I daydream about during particularly mundane days at work. We haven’t decided what excursions we’ll do because I haven’t researched about them just yet, but there’s this fun zip line and cave tubing excursion in Belize that I have my eyes on. If we make it happen, this will mean we’ve zip lined in four different countries!

4) Pushing publish on The State of My Faith today was incredibly difficult, but writing about my faith journey and where I am today was extremely cathartic to me. Most of the responses I received were positive and even the ones that weren’t came from a place of love and not condemning me at all. (As a sensitive person, I highly appreciate that!) I know faith can be such a tricky subject and a lot of us come to it with a whole lot of baggage and strong opinions. For me, it was important to talk about the way my faith has evolved over the years because I think it’s healthy and normal for that to happen.

5) What do you have planned for this weekend? I am taking it easy tonight to knock out a freelancing project. Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with friends at the Mini Donut Factory and then doing something with my mom: maybe pedicures and furniture “window shopping.” And Sunday will be a laid-back day of writing, running errands, cleaning my apartment, and sneaking in a long afternoon nap. Happy weekend!

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 26)

The high of my week was getting great news from the vet about Dutch’s comprehensive exam. He didn’t have blood work this time, since he got that done back in October and nothing troubling showed up. But he did have an EKG, some other tests, and a spinal x-ray. Everything was A-OK and his spinal x-ray didn’t even show signs of arthritis or his spine deteriorating in any way (I’ve been worried since he’s developed a bit of a hunchback). Homeboy is doing well and I couldn’t be more thrilled, especially after his last vet appointment that was filled with bad news. For now, he’s hanging in there.

The low of my week was finding out my ankle still isn’t fully healed. It’s been about six weeks since my injury and I had a follow-up appointment with my orthopedic on Friday where they took new x-rays to find out if my ankle has healed, and nope. There is still a break. It is slowly fusing back to my ankle, but it’s not fully there yet, which means I’m still on limited activity. I guess I’m stuck with recumbent biking for my workouts for the foreseeable future. I made an appointment for early March to get another x-ray (will mark three months since the injury), so fingers crossed it’s healed then!

I’m currently reading The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. I’ve had this one on my TBR for a while and I’m glad I’m finally getting around to reading it. It got rave reviews from my friends on Goodreads, so I’m hopeful it’ll be a good thriller.

An article I loved was this cover story from Glamour about Tracee Ellis Ross. I adore Tracee on Blackish and have just recently started following her on Instagram and I think I want to be best friends with her. She’s just got this undeniable zest for life that I can’t help but be attracted to.

I have had to really make friends with loneliness. And know the difference between choice-ful solitude and lonely. [I find comfort in] being able to name it, to say I’m feeling lonely, then to have a tribe of people I feel safe enough with to share: This is how I feel.

A podcast episode I enjoyed was Chip in My Brain from This American Life. Oh. My. God. This episode! It is crazy. I really don’t want to say anything about it because it takes a turn about 15-20 minutes into the episode that I was not expecting, and had me dying to discuss it with someone. (Thankfully, a coworker listens to TAL and I hurried over to her cubicle after listening to it on Wednesday to discuss it.) Have you listened? CAN WE DISCUSS? If you haven’t listened, I encourage you to do so.

The best money I spent was $9 on a bulk order of thank-you notes. I feel like a proper adult now that I have blank thank-you notes on hand for the next time I need to send some.

My plans this weekend include nothing too crazy; it should be a low-key weekend. I have a freelance assignment to complete. I have a writing date on Saturday morning. And Sunday is the NFL championship games and I am soooo excited! I am rooting for Minnesota to pull out a win since they’ll make history as the first time the home team was in the Super Bowl. And I’d love to see Jacksonville beat up on the Patriots. (Please, Jags, don’t mess this up. The country is counting on you!)

What was the high point and the low point of your week? And if you haven’t taken my reader survey yet, it’s still available if you want to give me some feedback! It would mean the world to me.

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF – the Christmas Eve Eve Eve Edition

Happy Christmas Eve Eve Eve! 🙂 This will be my last post before Christmas, so I hope everyone has a lovely holiday. I’ll be celebrating with my family. Since most of us have to work the day after Christmas (wah), we’re going to keep it low-key with a small celebration at my mom’s place. I finished my Christmas shopping a while ago and even have all my presents wrapped, so I feel ahead of the game. It should be a lovely Christmassy weekend and I am very much looking forward to it.

Here’s a little TGIF post to guide everyone into the Christmas holiday:

The high of my week was the annual Christmas dinner with my best girls, where we got all fancy and exchanged our Secret Santa gifts. This is our fourth gift-giving exchange and the third time we’ve made a reservation at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant where we all stuffed ourselves silly with cheese and chocolate fondue (although we all agreed that all we really wanted was pot after pot of cheese fondue). It was the best night!

The low of my week was nothing in particular, really! It’s been a fairly good week, aside from some anxiety struggles and slight bouts of loneliness I’ve been experiencing. Those are common for this time of year, so I’m trying to just ride the wave and focus on the good things in my life.

I’m currently reading Hunger by Roxane Gay. I didn’t love – or even like, if I’m being brutally honest – Bad Feminist by her, but I am loving this novel. It’s a vulnerable and gut-wrenching look at what it’s like to grow up in this society as fat. Everything Gay writes is stuff I experience on a daily basis (either from other people or what I tell myself about my fatness.) It’s comforting and eye-opening and it’s making me come to terms with my own fat body.

An article I loved was 28 of the Most Powerful Pieces of Writing By Women in 2017. I am slowly making my way through this list (the article on Dylann Roof was outstanding) that a friend shared with me, and everything I’ve read makes me so grateful for these women and their writing. I encourage everyone to check it out!

A podcast episode I enjoyed was The Defeat of Wright Patman from Slow Burn. I learned about this super interesting podcast from Anna Sale of Death, Sex & Money fame (she called it out in her newsletter). It’s an eight-episode podcast series all about Watergate where the host is trying to answer the question: if we were living through Watergate right now, would we even know it? Obviously, it has links to what we’re currently experiencing with today’s political climate and as someone who knows NOTHING about Watergate (seriously, I had to read through the Wikipedia page on it to learn about it, eeks), I’m finding the podcast series fascinating. Give it a listen!

The best money I spent this week was $25 for my work Secret Santa! Usually, my work throws a White Elephant gift exchange at our annual Christmas party, but our company is getting way too large for us to do it anymore. It would take two or three hours probably! So, instead, there was no gift exchange at the Christmas party and instead, we did a Secret Santa gift exchange at work this week. It was so much fun. The coworker I received is a fellow dachshund mom who loves coffee, so her gift was easy: a cute dachshund mug and a gift card to Starbucks. Boom, done. 🙂

My plans this weekend include all of the Christmassy things! Tonight, I am helping my mom with grocery shopping for Christmas Day (we’re not doing anything extravagant, but it’ll be good to have this done tonight). Tomorrow, I am having breakfast with a friend and then lunch with my grandpa (and that evening, I think it’s time for my annual watching of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!) On Sunday, the whole family is coming together to make Christmas cookies and watch football – yay! I’ll also probably go out to dinner with my mom and stepdad. Christmas morning will be spent at home, although I’ll probably head to my mom’s mid-morning to open presents before my brother and his family comes over in the afternoon. It’s going to be a crazy, but incredibly fun, weekend! Woo!

What was the high and the low of your week?

Categories: Recurring Series

Friday Questions (v.4)

1) What does the first hour of your day usually look like?

If the first hour of my day could be explained in one word, it would be: chaotic. I like to sleep as late as I possibly can before getting up and getting ready for the day, so I don’t have one of those slow and relaxing mornings where I make myself breakfast and a cup of coffee and read for a little before getting ready for the day. Nope! Once I’m up, it’s go time. I have to take Dutch on his first morning walk and then feed him, take a shower and get ready for the day, make coffee (which usually entails turning on the coffeemaker, since I typically prep it the night before), take Dutch on a second walk (which is usually a little longer since he’s more alert), and then trying to get out the door by 7:30. It is what it is, ya know. I could wake up around 5am and have a slower morning, but that extra hourish of sleep is worth it for me, especially since I can’t always count on going to bed at a decent time with Dutch’s nighttime problems.

2) What’s your favorite breakfast?

Can I admit this without being shamed? I’m not much of a breakfast person. It’s just not one of my favorite meals! There are some breakfast foods that I like, but I never crave them and if I never had them again, I think I’d be ok. So, with that said, if I could choose to have any breakfast I want, I’d probably choose chocolate chip pancakes. Every now and then, I get a craving for some chocolate chip pancakes (usually from IHOP, because truly, they make the best chocolate chip pancakes), but that’s about as far as my breakfast tastes go.

3) What’s the thing that you seem to have to keep learning and re-learning?

I wanted my answer to be deep and introspective, but what I kept coming back to is this: I do not love running and I need to stop pretending I do. I was even thinking about trying to become a runner again in 2018! But I have tried over and over and over again to fall in love with running and it is just not for me. I want to love it because so many of my friends do, but there’s nothing about it that makes me happy. I would much rather take a spin class or go for a long walk or take a heart-pumping kickboxing class. Those fuel me and make me happy way more than a run ever has, and I need to accept this about myself and move on.

4) Who are some of your favorite people to follow on social media?

So many, but I’ll refrain from listing everyone! These accounts are perfect if you ever need a pick-me-up after a crappy day:

  • Crusoe, the celebrity dachshund, because he posts the funniest videos (and it doesn’t hurt that he looks exactly like Dutch).
  • Orlando Sorio, mostly for his Instagram Stories, which always make me laugh out loud:
  • Maya and Winston, two dachshund siblings who are so goddamn cute and I watch their Instagram Stories whenever I need a smile.
  • Kristen Bell because she’s honestly the best and now that she’s doing Instagram Stories more frequently, she’s even better.
  • Dogs Being Basic because who doesn’t love a funny dog meme? I know I do.

5) If you could go back and change one thing from your past, what would you change?

I know the common answer here is, “Nothing! It all made me who I am today!” But nah. I’d change some things. The biggest thing I’d change is to be more assertive with the men I dated. I have a tendency to want to make them happy at the expense of my own happiness and to not speak up when I’m uncomfortable. It’s a behavior pattern I’ve noticed in myself and something that is super hard to change, but I’m trying.

Who are your favorite people to follow online? Would you change anything from your past?

Questions taken from the Real Talk Radio podcast.