October Scribbles

Grocery shopping. Louvre heist. Apple and chive salad.

Scribble(s)

I’ve been looking for more friction in my life. Which sounds like a crazy thing to say from a person whose days are packed with work, volunteering, and coordinating a household with three active kids. Except so much of my days are spent at home. I work from home. I’m here in the evenings (when I’m not running children around). I’m here on the weekends (also when not running children around). I’m home a lot. And I love home! Home is great! I accept the label “homebody” with nothing short of pride!

And yet: I’m home a lot. They make it so easy. I can get everything delivered to my door from groceries to dinner to clothes to a new iPhone. A universe exists in which I could hole up in my house and never, ever need to leave.

That’s not a universe I’m super interested in. And I’ve realized just how much I do at home…from home…by using a device inside my home.

So: the friction. I’ve been looking for places to get out of my house, out of my devices, out of my own dang head.

I’m doing my grocery shopping in person again. I’m as shocked as anyone else. I’ve been an evangelist for grocery pick-up since 2018, when it first started around here, when I could drop the twins off at preschool and take Nolan along for the ride.¹ I haven’t gone grocery shopping—an actual full week’s worth of grocery shopping—since then. (Except for a minor stint in the spring of 2020, when everyone else discovered grocery pickup and the timeslots were overrun for days at a time. It was rough out there.)

It’s been…delightful. I chatted with some neighbors in the store last week. I often have a kid or two who tag along to help me find things. We treat ourselves to a cake pop or breakfast sandwich (them) and some kind of caffeinated beverage (me) to nibble or sip as we wander the aisles.

And yes, sometimes it’s annoying. You have to say “excuse me” and wait your turn and feel annoyed when someone parks their shopping cart in front of the eggs for three minutes. Sometimes I forget an ingredient 6 aisles back and we have to turn around. That’s part of the friction, part of being a human in the world. It’s also something that’s been missing in my life for much of the past five years.

I’m still going to use grocery pick-up sometimes. And I’m still going to order things online, and sometimes we’ll still get food delivered. I’m not going full Luddite here. But I’d like to try seeing how these modern-day services add to my life, instead of taking away from it.²

Around the Internet

• I Tried to Toughen Up My Son. Things Didn’t Go as Planned: “I thought about this moment a lot, as I continued to puzzle over what, exactly, I wanted to teach Saul. On the one hand, punching a bully who’s pointing two guns at you is pretty badass. On the other hand, it’s immensely stupid. Roosevelt had a baby daughter back home, and he was willing to risk leaving her fatherless, just to save face at some dumb saloon. But — but — it worked. The bully was vanquished, Roosevelt won everyone’s respect, and that respect gave him a rock-solid sense of his own worth and potential. I wondered: Was it possible to carry oneself with the confidence of Theodore Roosevelt without being willing to kick someone’s ass?”

• A classic children’s book series has me questioning my parenting: This is maybe the greatest piece about The Babysitter’s Club that I have ever read.

• The life-changing magic of mediocrity: “There is nothing wrong with creating systems and employing strategies to make one’s life easier as a mother. Most of us need all the help we can get! But doing less is also a strategy. Today’s culture of intensive mothering tricks us all into the illusion that busyness is goodness, that in order to give our children supportive, loving, warm upbringings, we must supersede all reasonable expectations, that we must become all manner of experts.”

• The Better Question: “For the entirety of my motherhood, time has felt elusive and finicky, like there was never enough of it…I have been racing against the clock for over a decade, always clawing for more, more, more. More seconds. More minutes. More hours. MORE TIME. As if a giant hourglass sand timer sat taunting me in the middle of the house, reminding me how little I had left on any given day.”

• Heisting is for Louvres: The ultimate meme-roundup for the Louvre heist. 💎

Eating

• Apple, Cheese, and Chive Salad: One of our favorite local restaurants, Bar Lurcat, closed its doors last month. (RIP 😞) They did, however, share the exact recipe for their most iconic dish, which happens to be extremely simple. Eat it as a side, eat it as a snack, make it for your lunch. So simple, yet so good.

• Mac + Cheese: This is my forever and always baked macaroni and cheese recipe. Two out of three kids actually cheer when it’s on the menu. (We’re working on that third kid.) Pair it with the apple salad above for a *chef’s kiss* meal.

• Pumpkin Crumb Cake: This cake adds to my belief that baked goods with crunchy tops > baked goods without crunchy tops.³ I’ve made it twice in two weeks, and it has disappeared from the pan on the counter within a day or two each time.

Fun Things

I maybe ordered an entire new outfit form Vuori (R) and Tyson, who never, ever comments on spending, was like, "Why did you spend $$$ at Vuori?" And I was all, "Because I don't have anything brown and I really wanted brown and it turned into a whole thing please let me live my life." And then yesterday I wore this exact outfit and he unknowingly said, "That's a really great outfit." And I was all I KNOW. And the moral of the story is that I win this round.

• Half-Zip Pullover: I was on the hunt for a pullover, and Gap had EXACTLY what I was looking for: covers the butt, a collar that’s not too stiff, and a pocket. This + leggings and sneakers for an easy fall outfit win.

• Kids PJ Jogger Set: Back to Gap⁴ for the only PJs my (sometimes) clothes-sensitive kid will actually wear to bed. I stocked up on a few sets of these.

• Amika The Closer:⁵ I see a noticeable difference in my hair when I use a small dollop of this on my ends before blow-drying, followed by another dollop through the middle and ends after styling. It seems a little pricey for the size of the bottle, but it really does last me a while.

• Halo Essential Wideleg Pant: Brown is EVERYWHERE again⁶ and I decided I needed some in my life. I tried these pants on in person (more friction!) and fell in love with the shade of brown. (But had to order online because short inseams = very rarely carried in any store. Boo!) These are very comfy for lounging around the house and are also the perfect athleisure fit for sitting on the sidelines or running errands.

1. Grocery pick-up arrived a solid two years too late for me, though. What I wouldn’t have given to NOT be grocery shopping in person with three kids under three. 🫠

2. I’d already been thinking about all this and then read this piece: Get out of the house. I think it’s something a whole heck of a lot of us are feeling.

3. I did not add the glaze (which made my cake much less aesthetic), but I’m sure it’s a delicious addition.

4. Gap has been killing the game the past couple of years. Huge fan. Their 100% cotton sweaters are everything.

5. Friendly reminder that any Amazon links are affiliate links!

6. Pro tip from an interior designer: interiors follow fashion. Brown will be EVERYWHERE within the next 2-5 years. Get ready.