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Stephany Writes

Categories: Recurring Series

Week in the Life: Monday, November 4

It’s time for Week in the Life! Originally, I was going to wait to do this series until a little further into November but I decided I needed it this week. The week where we will find out what the U.S. will look like for the next four years. So let’s do this!

It’s Monday and my alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. I like to complain about the “fall back” time change, but I do love how it makes it a bit easier to wake up in the mornings since my body thinks it’s an hour later. Once my alarm goes off, I snooze it, tear off my CPAP mask, and turn off the machine. (Only one event per hour last night – woop!) The girls come up on the bed, which I like to pretend is because they want morning cuddles, but most likely it’s because they want breakfast.

I get up around 7:15 a.m., use the bathroom, and then get the girls their breakfast. I start a load of laundry and then I make breakfast. Today, it’s two fried eggs, two pieces of toast, and sausage. And coffee, of course.

I sit down at my kitchen table, open my laptop, and read some blogs while I eat breakfast and drink my coffee. A perfect way to ease into Monday!

I start my morning routine right around 8 a.m., which includes my five-step morning skincare routine, taking meds, filling up my water bottle, and doing tasks associated with my CPAP machine (wiping down my mask and rinsing out my humidifier). I also transfer the clothes into the dryer, start my dishwasher (since I didn’t do it the night before, oops), and do a little tidying around the apartment.

Before sitting down to work, I go outside for my 10 minutes of sunshine! There is this beautiful lake view right outside my apartment but nowhere to sit, wah. I spot a blue heron hanging out by the lake and apparently that’s a symbol of good luck. Hopefully, that bodes well for this week!

Around 9:00, I’m back home and Eloise has a lot of questions for me. (Meows on meows!) I sit down at my desk and turn on my laptop. It’s time to get the workday started!

It’s a fairly easy morning for me. I don’t have any meetings today so I’m able to work on my own to-do list and get things done. I manage our contractor program and that takes up the bulk of my work. We have five contractors (but one of them is managed by someone else, which is super helpful!) and I’m responsible for their assignments, answering their questions, sending their content to clients, and making sure their content gets added to our clients’ websites. I spend the majority of my morning working through some of their tasks, like sending and publishing content. I also work on a report I send to our writers every Monday morning, clear out my inbox, and work on some ad-hoc tasks that came into our queue on Salesforce.

At 11:20, my stomach is a-grumbling so it’s time to stop working for my lunch break! Today, I’m eating this frozen meal that I picked up from Publix yesterday. It looked good so I hope it tastes good! While I nuke it in the microwave, I give the girls their first treats of the day (they each get 9 Temptations) and then work on an Instagram post. I eat lunch and scroll through the Love Is Blind forum on Reddit because I’m a sucker for drama. The frozen meal is actually quite tasty! (My dietician would have wanted me to have something else with this because these meals are pretty low in calories, but I figure I’ll be snacking in the afternoon to make up the deficit.) With the remainder of my lunch break, I play some games on my phone and work on this post.

Once my lunch break is over, I do a two-hour working block. I respond to more emails, work through my contractor to-do list, and write a page of content that was supposed to be done in October. I also start working on this new project I’m doing for our Salesforce content cases. Since there are around 500 of these cases… it’s going to take me a while. Bit by bit, right?

Once my working block is done, it’s time for a break. Yay! I give the girls their mid-afternoon meal and then take a short siesta. I’m tired today and a 30-minute power nap is just what I need. When I wake up, I start scrolling through my personal email and I’m delighted to see Amazon has dropped off a package.

Fun things! I didn’t realize the bottle of color sealer would be so big. I only need it when I’m washing my hair right after dyeing it (the last time I used it, I felt like it worked well to keep my color locked in for a good amount of time). Oh, well! I also bought a cleaning kit for my phone/laptop/Airpods. And the big daddy of them all: a digital keypad for my front door. My next-door neighbor just installed on of these in their home… so why not me?! I’m weighing the pros and cons of asking my apartment complex if I can install this or just doing it anyway and hoping I don’t get in trouble. Hmmmm.

Anyway, it’s soon back to work for my final working block of the day. But first, I need to get my snack pack! Since I am absolutely a child when it comes to food and I honestly have a hard time eating snacks in the afternoon because I find the process of preparing food to be tedious, I decided to buy a set of bento boxes. I filled four of them with nuts, Cheez-Its, dark-chocolate covered pomegranates, and fruit. Now when it’s time for my afternoon working block, I just grab the snack pack out of my fridge and can pick at it throughout the afternoon. Am I a genius? Maybe.

I’m working through my contractor tasks when my mom Facetimes me to ask if the refrigerator I listed on Facebook Marketplace for them has gotten any messages today. (They got a new fridge and are selling their old one.) Annnnd… that’s when I discover that I somehow changed the price of the fridge to $15,000. !!! That’s one expensive fridge! I quickly bring the price back down to a much more reasonable $150 and now it looks like I’m offering an incredible deal on a magical fridge. Hey, maybe this will help get it sold!

Once I get off the phone with my mom, I finish up my workday by sending off a bunch of meeting requests, following up on some Salesforce issues I had submitted tickets about, and answering emails. Oh, and I have a very cute digression for about 20 minutes when I decide I want to change all of my bookmarks to tab groups on Chrome. They look so colorful! I love them! Buuuut… I quickly realize I don’t really like these tab groups and how all these tabs open at one time. I’m not a million-tabs-open-at-a-time kinda gal, so while I’m sure tab groups work wonderfully for some people, it’s bookmarks or bust for me. But I decide to clean up my bookmarks a bit since things we’re looking a little crazy and now I’m very happy with the new, streamlined look.

It’s the little things, you guys.

Around 5:30pm, I close things down for the day. It was a good, productive day and I’m happy about that! Before I get dinner started, I work on this post for a bit and read/comment on a few blogs.

Tonight’s dinner plan was this homemade hamburger helper recipe I found on Skinnytaste’s website. I was excited to make it (and was planning on eating the leftovers for lunch the rest of the week), and was halfway through browning the meat when I looked at the recipe and realized I had forgotten to pick up one key ingredient (chicken broth). Ughhhh. I had to quickly pivot and use the browned meat for homemade nachos! All’s well that ends well.

I eat dinner in front of the TV, finishing up season one of Deal or No Deal Island. It was a good but also frustrating show at times. At some point during one of the episodes (I watched two), Eloise started meowing for attention so I decided it was the perfect time to get out a teaser and play with her! She loves this very cheap teaser the most and even Lila got in on the fun. (Lila’s not huge into teasers, but every now and then she’ll surprise me.) It was a good time all around and it reminded me why I need to play with them more. Afterward, I gave them a handful of Greenies.

Once my show was over, I Facetimed with my mom and we talked about the show (she watched it, too!) and then had a catch-up session for about 30 minutes. Then, I scrolled through the Reddit forum for Deal or No Deal Island to make sure everyone was as incensed about a few of the players as I was and then had to force myself up from the couch to start my nighttime routine.

There’s a lot to do before I go to bed; sometimes, I can get through my nighttime routine in 20 minutes or less but my apartment is a mess, I have clean dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away so I can load in the dirty dishes in my kitchen sink, I have laundry to fold and put away, a multi-step skincare routine to do… whew. I do a little bit at a time and then sit down at my laptop to either read/comment on blogs, edit/add photos to this post, or respond to comments. I have the MNF game playing in the background (muted) and today’s episode of Pod Save America playing on my phone. The episode gives me hope and that feels terrifying. Will this turn out okay? Who knows. But maybe having hope right now isn’t the worst thing.

I finally finish up my nighttime routine around 11 (I was very, very slow tonight, ha) and that’s when the MNF starts to get interesting. Of course it goes into overtime so I have to watch it to the end. The game ends around 11:30 so it’s time for bed! CPAP mask on, lights off, and an ASMR video lulling me to sleep.

Yay or nay on Daylight Saving Time ending?

monday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015. and 2014

Categories: Recurring Series

Five for Friday: Things I Bought This Week

I’ve gone a bit wild in the shopping department lately. There were just some things I needed after life stopped for a few weeks, and of course, I felt the need to engage in some retail therapy. So let’s talk about some of the things I bought, five for Friday style, shall we?

1) Adhesive cat scratcher for furniture

Let me show you what my reading chair looks like:

The culprits? My sweet little girls. They may look innocent, but they have done a great job destroying my reading chair. They have plenty of scratching pads all around the apartment, but I guess nothing feels as good on their claws as this chair. There are a lot of options when it comes to protecting furniture from cat claws, but I opted for something that would still allow them to get a good scritchy-scratch without destroying my chair any further. Let’s hope it works!

2) Advent calendars

Yes, calendars plural and yes, I bought them in October. Last year, all of the advent calendars I had my eye on sold out by mid-November so this year, I wasn’t messing around! I started my research early and was happy to get them in the mail yesterday. They’ll go on a shelf until I’m ready to use them, but I’m so excited to start opening the gifts in December! Here’s what I got:

  • Books Are Magic advent calendar with 25 bookish goodies ($24)
  • W7 Beauty Blast advent calendar with 24 beauty items ($30)

I treated myself to two calendars this year since I wasn’t able to get one last year. I’m excited to dig into these calendars—I’ll definitely report back on whether or not they were worth the price!

3) Car accessories

When Gladys was towed away originally, I was feeling a little frantic about things so I didn’t grab everything out of my car that I wanted. (We were also late meeting the tow truck driver, and I felt terrible that he had been sitting and waiting for us for 20 minutes.) And also, I was hoping everything was going to be okay and Gladys would be repairable. I could have gotten a ride to the dealership to get stuff out of the car afterward, but I just wasn’t in the headspace for that. Anyway, this means there were a few car accessories that I needed to buy for my new car, such as:

  • A new tiny trash can ($9)
  • A mount for my iPhone ($25)
  • A USB cord for my phone ($10 for two)

I also need to buy a new window decal for my car. I had this one on Gladys and I’m tempted to buy it again, but I also have my eyes on a few different options, like this one that combines all of my favorite things in one decal!

4) Floating bookshelves

I’ve had my eye on these floating bookshelves for so long (years!), which is silly when they aren’t even that expensive ($20 for four shelves). I finally purchased them and I’m looking forward to finding a cute way to display all my editions of Anne of Green Gables as well as my Taylor Jenkins Reid collection and maybe some other favorite reads of mine.

5) Ruby

She’s heeeeere! Ruby, my brand-new Kia Soul, arrived on Wednesday and we have had a good time getting acquainted with each other. She’s a red-hot bombshell (her official color is “Mars Orange” so she’s more like an orangey red) and a blast to drive. It also just feels so nice to have a car again after being without one for so long. Would you believe that tomorrow marks one month since Helene? It’s crazy to think about all we’ve been through since September 26th. I’m just happy I was able to get all of this taken care of and can now fully put this last month behind me. (And I really must sing the praises of Geico – they handled my claim quickly and within 10 days of filing, I had money in the bank. One of my mom’s friends also had her car flooded during Helene and she is still waiting for her claim to be handled; she uses a different car insurance company and I am immensely grateful I’m not dealing with the headaches she’s going through.)

Did you buy anything this week?

Categories: Recurring Series

Currently in October

Loving… false fall. Last week, we had a brief period of fall-like temps with highs in the mid-70s, which felt amazing. The cooler weather hasn’t stuck around (highs are back to the mid-80s, womp), but we are enjoying some cooler mornings with temps in the upper 60s. I’ll take it! It’s nice to get a break from the relentless heat and humidity and it makes me very excited for the next few months.

Loathing… losing my fitness. My gym attendance during the last few weeks hasn’t been great for obvious reasons, and when I went to HIIT last Wednesday, I felt like I was going to die. Or, more accurately, I felt like I did when I started taking these HIIT classes. I told my trainer at the end of the class that I felt like I had lost all of my fitness in the last three weeks. To which he replied, “Well, you’ll get it back!” And that was a good reminder. Did I feel weak and exhausted during HIIT last week? Yes. But will I keep going to class so I can regain the fitness I feel I’ve lost? Also yes. It’s okay if it feels hard right now. It’s okay if I need to take more breaks. It’s okay if I finish a HIIT class and feel like I could have pushed myself harder than I did. All in due time.

Reading… two books. On audio, I’m listening to Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice by Elle Cosimano, which is the fourth book in the series. This is my first time listening on audio and the narrator isn’t great, but I’m getting through it. I’m also reading The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce. I read and loved her previous novel, You with a View, earlier this year and this one is hitting the spot, too.

Watching… Love is Blind, season 7. This show is so messy and I love it. I love the ridiculous people they cast, I love watching the one couple that is no-drama and makes it to the altar with no problem, I love all the juicy gossip that comes out about the cast mid-season. This season, we have a deadbeat dad who ghosted his children to be on the show! It’s wild, you guys. WILD.

Listening to… Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD. This podcast series is fascinating. I’m learning so much! It brings together historians and NYC natives to tell the story of policing and the NYPD in particular, starting with its formation and showing how its racist beginnings still reverberate today.

Anticipating… a cruise in December! Eeks. I’m so excited about this. Originally, my mom, my stepdad, and I were going to go to Asheville during the last week of December but, of course, those plans had to be cancelled due to the horrific flooding from Helene. Asheville is going to be dealing with the aftermath for a long time. Still, my mom and I wanted to do something because life has been a LOT lately and we haven’t taken a cruise vacation in at least two years. (This will be my 12th cruise.) We found a quick five-day cruise out of Miami that leaves December 2nd, so we booked it! I’m so excited to get away and enjoy cruise life for a week.

Thinking about… NaBloPoMo. I considered skipping NaBloPoMo this year because it’s a lot of work between writing posts and keeping up with other people’s posts (and I know it gets overwhelming for those of you not participating but following along!). And I still might change my mind, but right now, I’m leaning towards doing NaBloPoMo again. This will be my fourth year doing the challenge and even though I get nervous about keeping up with everything in the days leading up to it, I always have a good time. I already have my schedule all planned out so if I have the ideas, I might as well put them into action, right?

Buying… a new Kia Soul. I went car shopping on Friday. I first went to a Toyota dealership where I test-drove a Rav-4 and loved it. It was so much fun to drive, but unfortunately, once we got back to run the numbers, it was very clear that a new Rav-4 would not be in my budget. I only have $4,000 to put down as my down payment and no car to trade in, so once I learned that my payments would be in the $600 range, it was time to jump ship and head on over to Kia. (I didn’t even consider test-driving anything else, as the other cars were around the same price as the Rav-4 so I knew I would be SOL.) I test-drove another Kia Soul and gah, it felt like coming home. I miss driving my zippy little Soul! So, I put a deposit down on a 2025 Kia Soul that should arrive in the next few days. And here’s the kicker: my car payment is going to be less than it was with Gladys! And maybe I can trade up for the Rav-4 in a few years—with a car to trade in, my payments might be more in my price range. Or maybe I’m just a Soul girl through and through.

Grateful… for normalcy. I am so happy to be back in my normal routine. Working from my desk at home with my three screens. Cuddling the girls before bed. Nights on the couch watching stupid reality TV and coloring. Cooking for myself again. Even cleaning feels exciting (okay, not exciting but I like that I have the bandwidth and time for it again). Getting back into my blogging groove. I missed normal life—and I know I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to enjoy normalcy again when my friends are still living in rental homes and will be there for many, many months while they wait for their actual homes to be restored.

What are you currently anticipating and watching?

Categories: Recurring Series

Five for Friday: More Hurricane Musings

1) A slow return to normalcy

Things are slowly returning to a new place of normalcy after the hurricanes. My mom and my brother were without power for multiple days, but it was finally restored on Monday (for my brother) and Tuesday (for my mom). Hooray! We were under a boil water advisory from Thursday-Monday since 30+ water mains broke during the storm. I was oh-so-happy when that advisory was lifted! We have gas at gas stations again (not every gas station, but enough that the situation doesn’t feel as alarming as it did over the weekend). Places are finally reopening after being without power for so many days, although there are still so many restaurants and businesses that can’t open due to flooding, which just hurts my heart so much. Our grocery store situation continues to be dire with lots of empty shells still. Deliveries stopped for a week (or maybe longer… I’m not sure), so it’ll take some time for the shelves to be replenished. It’s a slow but steady process, this return to normalcy, but we’re getting there.

2) CPAP in a hurricane

I’ve been off CPAP for three weeks now, and I’m not feeling good about it. First, I didn’t take my CPAP machine with me when I stayed with my mom after losing power after Helene. I figured I’d only be there maybe two nights and I’d be okay. Unfortunately, it was almost a full week before I was able to go back home. And then I was able to use CPAP for a few nights before we had to evacuate to Ocala for Milton. I brought my machine with me, but when we went to the grocery store on our first day, I forgot to buy distilled water, which I need for the humidifier. (I’ve used my CPAP machine without water in the humidifier a few times, always on accident, and it is not a pleasant sleeping experience!) I probably should have put more effort into finding distilled water in Ocala, but I had other things on my mind. When we got home from Ocala, that’s when I realized my HUGE mistake: Finding distilled water in any store was impossible. They were fresh out of almost all water, and especially distilled for some reason. I’m hoping to find some today – I think Target might finally have it back in stock.

It’s a weird thing, dealing with a major natural disaster right after getting a piece of medical equipment I’m supposed to use nightly. I wasn’t prepared for what I needed to do to make sure I can continue using my CPAP, and it was a very important lesson to learn. I should have lots and lots of distilled water bottles on hand at all times. Distilled water is being added to my hurricane kit, that’s for sure.

3) A reading slump

I’m in a weird reading mood these days. It’s been so weird that I’m not even abiding by my super-strict TBR list right now. That’s when you know things are serious. I am not a mood reader by choice; I love listing out the next 10ish books I’m going to read and sticking like glue to that list. But I’m allowing myself to be a mood reader right now. Mostly, I’m moving between romances, thrillers, and lighthearted fiction. I’m spending a lot of time in front of my bookshelves, looking at the books I own but have not read and letting my mood dictate what comes next.

But even with the books I am sitting down to read, I feel like I’m not giving them a fair shot. For example, yesterday, I abandoned Colton Gentry’s Third Act, which is a book that people are raving about and I was excited to read. But I was just so bored by it. I didn’t love The Husbands, which feels like an unpopular opinion, and I have a review coming up next week for a thriller from an author I usually love and whose book I just despised. And the book I’m reading now (The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose, which is the follow-up to The Maid) is feeling like a slog. Mehhhh.

I’m trying to read books that fit my mood, but even still, reading hasn’t been that pure fun escape that it normally is. I feel broken because reading is my favorite hobby, but I know it’s just the season of life and things will improve.

4) Updating the hurricane kit

There was a lot I learned about how to be better prepared for hurricane season from the past few weeks. I have a semblance of a hurricane kit, but not one that is as robust as I need it to be. I have flashlights and portable charges and disposable litter boxes for the times I have to evacuate with the cats. But these back-to-back hurricanes taught me that I need a lot more than that. For example:

  • Battery-operated fans – When the power went out for a week, I was able to stay at my mom’s house but I was really worried about the cats. It was very hot that week and my apartment got as hot as 87 degrees. Whew. I want to purchase a few battery-operated fans that I could set up in my room so the cats would have a cool place to sleep.
  • More portable chargers – I only have one portable charger that works really well (I have this one) but I would like to purchase a few more, probably some solar-powered chargers so I wouldn’t need to find charging stations to keep them juiced up.
  • Lanterns – If I ever do need to stay in my apartment when the power is out, it would probably be a great idea to have a few lanterns on hand so I can see what I’m doing at night.
  • Gas can – I should have an extra gas can on hand that I can fill up before a hurricane to give me extra peace of mind if fuel becomes extremely limited like it did with Milton.

The goal is that I will spend the 2025 hurricane offseason buying all of these supplies and not have to use any of them for years. Right?!

5) A new Gladys

Today is car shopping day. I’m trying to muster some enthusiasm for it because hey! At least I can put money down on this new vehicle thanks to the insurance payout. But mostly, I wish I didn’t have to deal with the headache that is buying a new car. I am leaning heavily towards getting another Kia Soul because I loved that car so, so much. But I want to do my due diligence so I’m going to test drive a few other cars: Toyota Rav-4, Toyota Corolla Cross, Mazda CX-5, and Hyundai Tucson. Those cars are higher in price than a Soul by a few thousand dollars, and I am 90% sure I’ll just wind up at the Kia dealership to buy another Soul, but we’ll see. One of these other cars might surprise me!

What was your last five-star read?

Categories: Recurring Series

Five for Friday (v. 107)

1) Anxiety, my best friend

It felt really cathartic to write my post about my most recent anxiety attack. I’m glad I was able to give people a look into what it’s like to have one of these spirals because the more we know about how mental illness affects other people, the more empathetic we become. Plus, there are a few of you who also deal with these spirals and while I don’t wish this on anyone, I’m glad to know I’m not alone. Maybe I can carry that knowledge with me the next time it happens.

I stopped going to therapy earlier this year (or maybe it was the end of last year) because I felt like I had gotten my shit together and I was feeling pretty good about things. However, I’ve been having these anxiety attacks more frequently (this was my second in two months, which is not the norm for me). Someone commented on my blog that I may find it helpful to seek out exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy because it sounds like I may have OCD. (I really wish this person had left their name, but they commented with my name and email address so I had to trash the comment.) While I’m not sure if my mental illness would classify as OCD, I am willing to try anything so I started looking for therapists that specialize in OCD and ERP therapy. The first therapist I emailed wasn’t taking patients, so I’m hoping to spend some time this weekend looking up therapists and sending inquiry emails. Fingers crossed!

2) A scalp psoraisis update

I don’t think I ever updated you guys on how things are going with my scalp psoriasis after I got my steroid injections. I got the injections in mid-June and I could almost immediately notice a difference in my symptoms. The itchiness and pain abated rather quickly and I also noticed less dry skin, although the dry skin never totally went away. I had a follow-up appointment this week with my dermatologist where we discussed the dry skin and decided to do another round of injections on the right side of my scalp since it was feeling a tiny bit more itchy recently. (I have plaques on both sides of my head, right above my ear, but the left side was a bit calmer on the itchiness front.) Those injections are painful, but they work and I’ll take a few seconds of pain over hours and hours of itchiness.

The dry skin and plaques are still bothersome, though, so I’m going to try a new prescription-strength shampoo and also use my liquid treatment (I use calcipotriene) every day. I also have a handful of other treatments that have been prescribed to me that my derm said I can use on an as-needed basis, so I’ll probably try to use those a few times a week to see if all of this together helps with the dry skin.

All in all, I am so glad I went with the steroid injections. My scalp psoriasis was such a big part of my life and now I rarely think about it!

3) A CPAP update

Let’s continue the good news train. Things have really improved in CPAP land. In my CPAP post from last week, I talked about how I was struggling with the mask. It was irritating my nose a lot and it was just very uncomfortable to sleep with. What a difference a week (+ a moisturizer) makes! My sleep clinic shipped me a new mask to try, but I’m still waiting for it to be delivered (bah!). While I’m waiting on that, I’ve slowly become used to my nasal mask. While it bothers me sometimes as I’m trying to get to sleep, it isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. And the moisturizer I talked about on Friday’s post has been a gamechanger. Right before I put on my mask every night, I put a tiny bit of the moisturizer right under my nose and around my cheeks. After the first night, I woke up to no dry skin. Ever since, the dry skin on my septum has cleared up and I am feeling so much better.

Plus, my blood oxygen levels are continuing to improve. On Wednesday night, I even hit 100% at one point during the night! I haven’t seen those numbers above 95% since I started tracking my blood oxygen levels, so that’s exciting. (The average is still around 95% but even that’s better than the 91-92% average I was seeing.)

4) An ode to my HIIT trainer

One of the things I know about myself: I am not going to push myself hard in workouts. I am always going to take the easy way out and do the bare minimum to get the workout done so I can say I did it. Thankfully, my HIIT trainer seems to understand that about me, which is why he takes it upon himself to push me way beyond where I think my limits are. For example, if he sees me doing a workout with easy weights, he’ll kindly take them off my hands to give me much heavier weights. (Like when I was doing deadlifts with a 10-lb kettlebell and he replaced it with a 25-lb kettlebell.) Or when he sees me doing a wall sit and makes that motion with his hand, as if to say, “You can sit much lower than that.”

When I started taking his HIIT classes, he gave me all sorts of modifications and didn’t care if I chose a lower weight. But now that I’ve been going to his class for five months, he knows I can do more and he pushes me to do it. And I really, really appreciate that! It makes me feel powerful when he hands me a heavier weight and strong when he makes me do workouts the way he asks the “elites” to do it. It shows me how far I’ve come since I started these classes and that I am way more capable than I believe I am. While I hope that one day, I can find that extra gear to push myself when I feel like quitting, I am glad I found this trainer who has no problem helping me do that.

5) Weekend plans

I have another pretty low-key weekend ahead of me! I’m not complaining. Low-key weekends are really nice. Today, I have nothing on the agenda so the plan is to eat pizza and watch a couple episodes of Suits. Tomorrow, I have a writing date with Mikaela, some errands to run, and then another night to myself. And Sunday is a gym workout with my mom and then football!

What are your weekend plans?

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Hi, I'm Stephany! (She/her) I'm a 30-something single lady, living in Florida. I am a major bookworm, cat mom, podcast fiend, and aspiring novelist. I identify as an Enneagram 9, an introvert, and a Highly Sensitive Person. On this blog, you will find stories about my life, book reviews, travel experiences, and more. Welcome!

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