Stephany Writes

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 42)

The high of my week was getting my Warby Parker home try-on glasses in the mail! It’s been so much fun wearing them around throughout the week as I try to figure out which pair I like the best. (The glasses just have plain glass in them, so I wear my contacts in order to wear the glasses around.) I was able to eliminate two options immediately, and I’m now trying to decide between the other three. Here are the options:

I thought I was going to go with the pair in the first picture because both my mom and a friend liked them the best when I asked for their opinions. They fit my face well and aren’t too big. But then when I sent the pictures to another friend, she told me that that pair doesn’t do much for my face and liked the other two better. So then I asked Instagram and the clear winner was the pair in the second picture. I like those a lot, but I worry they’re too big for my face. Tell me, friends, which pair do you like the best?

The low of my week was struggling during my spin workouts. Things just felt harder than normal and I’m not sure why. A part of me wonders if I’m in a phase of my cycle where my energy levels and output are a bit lower than normal. Something to pay attention to! I’ve just been telling myself that moving my body is the goal, even if it means setting my bike to a lower resistance level and cruising at a lower speed.

A blog post I enjoyed was When Possible, Choose Beautiful Things by Elisabeth Frost. I loved this blog post because it gave me a different perspective about my desire to have beautiful things in my home. For example, I love buying books and sometimes, it’s less about having my favorite books on my shelves to return to again and again and more about the aesthetic. I love having a home filled with bursting bookshelves. The aesthetic pleases me so much and brings me great joy, but sometimes I feel a little silly about my love of buying books. Or when I choose to buy an item for my kitchen and spend a little more money to get a style that is more aesthetically pleasing. The plain, understated style would work just fine but I want the pretty version because it would make me happier. I’ve always felt silly about this, but Elisabeth gave me a new perspective that had me thinking about this love of beautiful things in a new way.

When I invested in electric toothbrushes for our family I made a small splurge, spending an additional $9.99 to get the pink version for myself. It’s a subtle colour, but really does make me happy every time I use my toothbrush (and, as a bonus, it helps me avoid using my husband’s toothbrush by accident). Two years later, that $9.99 has bought me a disproportionate amount of daily happiness. Even the knowledge that I spent extra money helps elevate the experience, in essence saying: “You were worth it.”

A podcast episode I enjoyed was Soldiering On and Our Five Rules for Reading on Currently Reading. Ooh, this was a fun episode where Meredith and Kaytee laid out their personal rules for reading. They were very clear that their rules for reading may not be YOUR rules for reading; reading is very personal after all! It was fun to listen to what they put on their list and to think about what my own rules for reading are. Future blog post idea? You know it!

For my workouts, I completed two spin classes and two long walks. I took classes with my favorite instructors, Cody Rigsby and Leanne Hainsby. And I’m enjoying taking my walks a little after sunrise—between 7:30-8:00—before it gets too hot. Soon, even taking a walk at that time will be miserable! Florida summers FTW.

The best money I spent was $0 on more government-funded COVID tests! Did you know that you can order 8 more COVID tests? I wasn’t aware until someone mentioned it on Instagram and you better believe, I ordered them as quickly as possible. I’m going to have a nice big stack at my disposal!

My plans this weekend include a hair appointment this afternoon (will I be brave enough to chop off a significant length?!), a writing date with Mikaela on Saturday morning and game night with the fam on Saturday night, and a 5K walk in a local park on Sunday morning. A busy, fun weekend it shall be!

What was the highlight of your week?

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 41)

The high of my week was book club where we all got to take turns snuggling baby Eleni! We met at Bri’s house and I was so happy that Mikaela was able to come with the baby. We all got to have our moment with her—she’s such a teeny tiny little gal (just 7 lbs at four weeks old)—and it was such a delight. Aside from all of the baby snuggles, we also taste-tested six different frozen pizzas (Screamin’ Sicilian and DiGiornio’s Rising Crust came out heads and shoulder above Red Baron Classic, Tombstone Original, and Totino’s Party Pizza). I am definitely going to start getting the Screamin’ Sicilian for my frozen pizza stash. It was excellent! (And yes, we did talk about the book, haha. We read The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. Two people gave it 3 stars, one person gave it 4 stars, and the rest of us gave it 5 stars.)

The low of my week was going through some emotional turmoil, stemming from a really difficult therapy session. I think I forgot how much therapy can excavate old wounds that I thought were long healed and force me to look long and hard at all the ways I am letting those old wounds continue to affect the way I live my life. Maybe I’ll write a blog post about this soon, as there is so much to dig into and process, and it may be really cathartic for me to do so. Suffice it to say that I am feeling very tender and emotional, crying frequently (and I am not a crier by nature), and I think this is just something I have to go through in order to truly break free from some of my more toxic thought patterns and behaviors. But it still sucks and I hate it and I just want all of this emotional turmoil to be over with.

A blog post I enjoyed was Redefine the color nude by The Anti-Racism Daily. It’s embarrassing that when I received The ARD’s daily article yesterday, I realized I had never considered how harmful and white-centering the term “nude” is when referencing it as a color. After all, the color nude means something vastly different depending on your skin color and yet, most “nude” colors are for white skin tones.

“From dresses and underwear to bandages and cosmetics, descriptions of “nude-colored” or “flesh-colored” cater to those with fair skin. Even as moves to diversify commercially-used products grow, they fail to address how discriminatory design practices prioritize and center white bodies, making Black and Brown people an afterthought.” 

A podcast episode I enjoyed was Cait Flanders: Purposeful Healing & Romancing Yourself on The Pop-Up Pod. Nothing like listening to a podcast episode on a Thursday morning and crying! This episode really spoke to me on so many levels, from Cait’s experience in romantic relationships, to setting boundaries with her mom that led to an estrangement, to learning how to let go of her people-pleasing tendencies that were impacting her relationships (romantic and not). It was as if Cait was pulling out the words from my soul and eloquently describing them in this podcast episode. It was exactly what I needed and the episode was such a healing one for me.

For my workouts, I completed a 30-minute strength workout on Monday (20-minute full body class with Rad Lopez and a 10-minute crushing arms and shoulders class with Daniel McKenna), a long walk outside on Tuesday, a 30-minute Cody Rigsby ride on Thursday, and a 30-minute Leanne Hainsby ride this morning.

The best money I spent was on a cruise deposit! Oops? I don’t know what made me log onto Royal Caribbean’s website and start poking around at cruises. But I did and they were running an incredible sale, and my mom was all, “Book it!” So I booked a birthday cruise. We don’t leave until November (the day before my birthday!) so we have a long, long time to go, but I am so stinkin’ excited. I used to cruise yearly before the pandemic (my last cruise was December 2019) and I have missed cruise life so, so much. I can’t wait to be back on a ship in 219 days! (But who’s counting?)

My plans this weekend include a massage this afternoon (yay!), spending Saturday afternoon with Bri to work on our creative project, game night with the fam on Saturday evening, and going for a 5K walk in a local park on Sunday morning. And Sunday is also Eloise’s 4th birthday! We will celebrate with a dish of wet food with a special topper and some prezzies. The cats never get wet food (they free-feed with dry food) so this is a special treat for them. 🙂

What was the high of your week?

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

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?

Categories: Recurring Series

TGIF (v. 38)

The high of my week was having dinner with Mikaela and Olive on Wednesday night (aka, Olive’s birthday!) We went to a Mexican restaurant and they sang happy birthday to her with maracas. It was really cute! And just special to have this time with Olive on her birthday. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with Olive, since she was quarantined pretty heavily during her cancer treatment, and I’m glad I can finally actually get to know this special girl!

The low of my week was finding out the antibiotic cream my doctor wants me to use for the rash under my nose will cost me $107! Ack. Thankfully, I have an HSA, so I won’t feel the hit to my wallet, but dang. I hate being on a high-deductible plan for my health insurance, but I really love having an HSA. Except I’m not really saving much since I’m spending so much on copays at the doctor’s office. Meh.

A funny Tik-Tok I saw this week was this hilarious “if libraries were like delis” skit. Ahh, Internet people can be the greatest sometimes.

A podcast episode I enjoyed was Strange Bedfellows’ episode on “A Scot in the Dark” by Sarah MacLean, mostly because they had Tanner’s wife, Jaime, on and I always love the way the dynamic changes when she joins the podcast! It was such a fun listen.

I’m currently reading four different books, again. I’m still slowly making my way through Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes du Mez. It’s good but hasn’t been life-changing for me so far. I’m also reading Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, which I am finding so valuable. There is so much about disability rights that I don’t even think about, like deaf people in prison not having an interpreter. (That seems like such a human rights violation!) I just started A Gentleman Never Keeps Score, a queer romance by Cat Sebastian. And, finally, I’m still making my way through A Better Man by Louise Penny (just two hours left to listen to!)

The best money I spent was $100 on Christmas presents! Woohoo—finally got my Christmas shopping started. I don’t buy Christmas presents for a ton of people (my extended family doesn’t exchange gifts, and that is such a blessing, lol), just my mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephews, my stepdad, and some friends. It feels good to get it started, though!

My plans this weekend include dinner and/or a reading date with a friend tonight. Tomorrow, I have a writing date with Mikaela and then in the late afternoon, it’s time for one of my most-anticipated events of the year: RUNNING OF THE WIENERS! AHHHHH! They didn’t have this event last year for obvious reasons, and I can’t wait to see how Chip and Lucy do in their races. Mostly, though, I’m excited to be surrounded by dachshunds for a few hours tomorrow. MY FAVE. And Sunday will be a low-key day of watching football with the fam!

What was the high of your week?