Monthly Recap | April 2025

Happy May! I’m going to start this post with some really good news. I had follow-up bloodwork done on Wednesday and received the results yesterday. My A1C is no longer in the diabetic range! (It’s still in the prediabetic range, so I still need to work on lowering it, but we’re trending in the right direction now!) I am so relieved, and this gives me the motivation to continue to work on my eating habits so I can get all of my numbers to a normal range. I talk more in-depth about my bloodwork below, but I wanted to share this very good news upfront.

BOOKS

Reading Stats of April

• Books read: 11
• Number of pages read: 3,842
• Average star rating: 3.9
• Average time to finish a book: 6.9 days
• Format breakdown: 55% print books, 37% audiobooks, 8% e-books
• Genre breakdown: 90% fiction, 10% nonfiction
• # of DNFs: 1 (Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll)
• Audiobook reading: 36 hours, 11 minutes (actual listening time: 20 hours, 40 minutes)

Reading Superlatives of April

• The best book I read in April: I’m That Girl: Living the Power of My Dreams by Jordan Chiles
• The worst book I read in April: Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
• The book I thought I would love more than I did: Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
• The book that lived up to the hype: The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny
• The book with the most unique structure: Confessions by Kanae Minato

Reading List (from favorite to least favorite)

1. I’m That Girl: Living the Power of My Dreams by Jordan Chiles (audiobook, 2025) ★★★★★
2. Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzalez (audiobook, 2022) ★★★★★
3. The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny (audiobook, 2024) ★★★★★
4. The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker (e-book, 2019) ★★★★☆
5. Autoboyography by Christina Lauren (print, 2017) ★★★★☆
6. Confessions by Kanae Minato (audiobook, 2014) ★★★★☆
7. Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen (print, 2022) ★★★★☆
8. We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes (print, 2025) ★★★☆☆
9. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach (print, 2022) ★★★☆☆
10. Icebreaker by Hannah Grace (print, 2022) ★★★☆☆
11. Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney (print, 2025) ★★★☆☆

MEDIA

• Big Brother, season 3 – My mom and I are having a lot of fun watching older seasons of Big Brother. This season has been talked about a lot, and it’s fun to see all of the gameplay in action. Of course, there is still some troubling language (so much fatphobia and some uncomfortable bullying), but that’s the early aughts of reality TV for you!
• The Amazing Race, season 1 – On a whim, I decided to start watching The Amazing Race from the beginning! The first episode of this show aired on September 6, 2001 and the contestants started the race in NYC. It’s wild to see the Twin Towers in the background and to know the episode itself aired a few days before 9/11. What a wild time. The contestants are this season are so mean to each other and it’s kind of hysterical to watch!
• American History Tellers, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI – I am not yet finished with this miniseries on the American History Tellers feed, but it’s been very eye-opening. It’s also wild to compare this time in history (1920s – 1970s) with what’s happening now. Hoover was spying on ordinary Americans and putting a stop to any negative press, and people back then thought he was a god. History seems to be repeating itself with today’s politics, with our president disappearing people who have different viewpoints, trying to keep certain news organizations out of the White House press briefings, and cutting off funding for schools and news organizations that speak negatively about him or his policies. It’s frightening to see the parallels.

MONEY

Favorite purchase of April:

A flight to London – My mom and I booked our flights to London! We’re leaving September 30 and will arrive in London on October 1. We’ll have six full days to explore to our heart’s content.

Most delightful little indulgence of April:

Meat shredder ($6) – I had seen this kitchen tool on a few TikToks and knew I had to have it. All you do is pop the chicken in the device, push down the lid, and then twist it from side to side. Within seconds, you have perfectly shredded chicken. LIFE CHANGING.

Most regrettable purchase of April:

Portable charger ($20) – This charger is fine, but it just doesn’t charge very fast and that’s annoying. It also takes forever for it to recharge itself once the battery is depleted. I’m going to keep it because something is better than nothing, but it’s not a charger I would recommend, unfortunately.

Number of books purchased in April: 4 (*bows*)

• Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (Book of the Month)
• Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi (Book of the Month)
• Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes (Tombolo Books)
• Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Tombolo Books)

Best recommendation:

Book stand ($28) – I love this book stand! Now I can eat lunch and read my book rather than scrolling Reddit forums. It’s a little annoying to turn the pages since you have to slide the page from beneath the right-side clip and then tuck it into the left-side clip, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to read my book at the table without having to physically hold it open. An impulse purchase that I don’t regret for a second!

JOURNAL

• April 1 – Mom and I bought flights to London! We leave 9/30. 🙂
• April 3 – Robert and I had a very spirited debate about Trump. I’m really proud of how I handled myself!
• April 5 – Mom and I did the Fight for Air climb! It was so damn hard. I wanted to quit so many times.
• April 9 – Checked into the VRBO to start my reading retreat. It’s such a cute space.
• April 12 – My first pedicure in probably 8 months. My feet look so pretty!
• April 13 – We had Lynn on our podcast to talk about losing her home to Hurricane Helene. She was fantastic!
• April 15 – Long day. We had an offsite meeting and it went really well! Better than I anticipated. But it was a 13-hour day – oof.
• April 18 – God this new HIIT format for Friday mornings is awful! I thought I was going to die by the end of it.
• April 24 – Bri came over for a girls’ night. We had pizza, chatted, and played Yahtzee. So fun!
• April 30 – Follow-up lab work this morning. I can only hope I did enough to lower my blood sugars.

Previous years: 

• April 30, 2022: We recorded the first episode of our podcast. It was so much fun!
• April 13, 2023: TAYLOR SWIFT!!!!!! What an amazing night. I can’t believe I got to experience it.
• April 24, 2024: My doctor’s office called me: I have severe obstructive sleep apnea. Yikes. This is a lot to process.

OVERVIEW

What went well

• The Fight for Air Climb – My mom and I successfully completed the Fight for Air Climb in early April. It was the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever done, but I am so glad I pushed through (thanks to my mom!) and got it done. And I am 90% sure I’ll never do it again. (I mean, never say never, but I’m very close to saying never ever.)
• A cheesy photoshoot – Our book club experience in April was a cheesy JC Penney photoshoot! We had the best time, and you can see all of the great pictures we got throughout this post. Our photographer had fun with us, too, and even had some pose ideas for us! I don’t know what we’ll do with all of these photos—maybe a hilarious coffee table book?!
• A reading retreat – I spent a few days at a nearby Airbnb while my tub was being refinished, and my sole goal was to read as much as possible. While I didn’t read as much as I had hoped (10 hours over 2.5 days), that was mostly because I was stressed out about my cats, who accompanied me on this staycation. Lila especially was not having a good time, so I cut the trip a bit short so she could be back home in her comfortable environment.
• GOOD BLOOD WORK!! – As I mentioned above, I got bloodwork done and the news is GOOD. My A1C has reduced enough that I don’t think my doctor will want to put me on medication. In other great news, my fasting glucose dropped 30 points and is now in a normal range. And my total cholesterol dropped 30 points and is now normal. And while some of my other cholesterol numbers are still high, all of the numbers reduced significantly. My triglycerides were down 15 points, my LDL was down 30 points, and my non-HDL was down 35 points. !!! The changes I made to my diet are working, and it is such a relief to see those numbers trend in a much better direction from January. My doctor also had me submit a urine sample to make sure I wasn’t experiencing any kidney issues from my elevated blood sugars (one of the earliest signs of diabetes, but also a silent one for the most part). And everything for that test came back normal! I think this will further prove to my doctor that I don’t need to be on medication. This was the news I really, really needed, and while I know it wouldn’t have meant I failed if my A1C didn’t decrease from these changes, it feels good knowing I won’t have to add yet another diagnosis to my repertoire.

What was challenging

• Medical bills – It was a spendy month for medical bills. Between bills for my CPAP equipment and an insurance adjustment for therapy after learning they were under-charging me for the appointments, I spent $500 just on medical bills. That kinda makes me want to throw up. The good news is, I’ve met my deductible, so now I can go to therapy for free. Take that, greedy insurance companies!
• Work challenges – There has been some leadership upheaval at my organization over the past year and with that comes a level of uncertainty for me, where I wonder if I fit into the new leaders’ vision of the organization and if I will have the support/guidance I need. I was feeling a lot of that uncertainty recently, especially with some shifts and changes. Thankfully, the off-site meeting helped solidify my identity within our organization. I was especially gratified when my boss reached out to me to say that our senior VP had reached out to her to say I really stood out at the meeting, and he thinks I am a real asset to our department. That was what I needed to hear!
• Digestive woes – I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty here, but suffice it to say that my digestive tract has been unhappy over the past few weeks and I’ve started to feel like one of those people in a commercial for IBS, where I have to be near a bathroom at all times. I’m not sure what is causing this nonsense, but thank god I have an appointment with my doctor next week!

What was the best book you read in April? What was the most delightful purchase you made?