It may surprise you to learn there is no epic content calendar for this little Substack (especially those who worked with me in past roles where I was MILITANT about calendaring), but rather there are ideas that have been percolating and I write what I think is appropriate for the moment, relevant to others, and what I can bring some energy to type.

All of which is to say: I can’t write about my family right now, but I can share the tension I feel in this moment, and maybe that’s actually more universal?

In my childhood home, there was a framed print of some birds, plants, and the words: “Wings to fly and roots to come home to.” This absolutely set the tone in our family and, minus my mother not being a huge fan of sleep away camp or boarding school, I think my brothers and I all felt we were encouraged to go on adventures and knew we were always welcome back home.

That dynamic is so different in a stepfamily, especially since I didn’t get to plant from seed and instead arrived in time for some departures from the nest. Our family’s roots formed under different conditions, in a transplanted pot, if you will. (I will note that I am not a plant person and this metaphor is already pushing me past my comfort zone, but I’m committed to it now.)

I’ve done my best to tend roots in different soil, at different growth stages — which is not criticism, it’s just reality. It’s a structural gap that can’t be recreated. And because of when I arrived, I’ve been more visible in encouraging flying, which may have given my kids the impression that I lack range. I’m the pusher: schools, programs, advice, follow-ups on job applications that turn out to have never been submitted. Just like Tina Fey’s character in “Mean Girls” — and obviously, like that character, not as a drug dealer.

With all three kids in different parts of their 20s, and different parts of the country, we’re now navigating very different dynamics too. Youngest graduated from college last week and is seeking something to do with a little less energy and urgency than I’d like to see. Right now, she absolutely thinks all I care about is her flying away. But the truth is I just want her to have a place to go, a little orientation, a migration destination, if you will. Once she knows where she’s going, I’d like to make sure she feels her roots more strongly.

Oldest is in the middle of a big life transition with changes on many fronts ahead and getting updates over text and from hundreds of miles away is heartbreaking. She was pushed to fly a little farther than she might have been ready when she was younger and now all we really want is to have her home, feeling restored in those roots.

One of the quiet sadnesses I carry is that my kids have no frame of reference for what strong roots feel like. Their original family — their natural baseline — was damaged before I arrived, or perhaps was never quite seeded properly in the first place. They can’t measure what we have against a healthy version of what came before; neither the looseness they feel nor the one I feel is imagined. We’re all just doing our best with a transplanted pot and hoping the roots take.

Last month at a memorial in my hometown, I found myself standing in a room full of people who had known and loved me and my family for decades. I realized I was looking at my own roots — the visible, deep kind — and felt simultaneously lucky and bereft on behalf of my kids, who have never had a room like that to stand in. That’s not something I can change at this point. It’s something I tend around.

Fixer that I am, accepting how little I can control at this point is a tough pill to swallow. The bonds: can they still deepen once everyone’s left the nest, or is that a lost cause? How do you tell one kid to come home while telling another it’s time to go? And the one that keeps me up at night: how do you keep things moving when you’re the only one pushing, when getting your husband to push the tiniest bit requires hours1 of conversation you don’t always have energy for?

The poster made everything sound easy: wings and roots, birds and plants, very clean. What “home” means in a stepfamily — especially with adult children, especially when you’re the one who arrived late and has been playing catch-up ever since — is not clean. It’s complicated and ongoing and occasionally exhausting and hopefully worth it, even when I’m not sure the people I’m doing it for know that’s what’s happening.

I can’t control when they come home or when they leave. I was never going to control where their wings took them. But the roots we’ve planted together are real, and they’re the only ones my kids have. That has to be enough; not because it’s a satisfying conclusion but because there is no alternative for any of us.

Next month all three of them are coming home for Father’s Day. For the first time in a couple of years, it’ll just be the five of us. We offered the invitation with no guilting, no feet dragging, no pushback and everyone genuinely wants to be there.

The roots held.

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My friend had heard about a Matisse exhibition happening between the Met and the Frick (it closes Friday but if you can go before then, you should!) and while we waited in line, I continued catching her up on our high school reunion. Suddenly the 60 or 70ish year old woman in front of us in line turns around and goes “Baldwin? In Bryn Mawr? I went there!”

I transferred to Baldwin for eight grade and high school for a host of reasons, some academic and some personal, but I never once regretted it. I regret losing touch with some of the friends I left behind — years of passive updates on social media have made me think I had a lot in common with them beyond sitting at the same lunch table for slightly nerdy girls in 7th grade. I certainly regretted the hours I spent on the school bus — although my dad did note that that school bus was really the only ROI he got on his school taxes so he was glad I got some use out of it.

To be clear, it was more than “some” use, my most conservative calculator estimates came to 1500+ hours over five years.

I truly felt it was worth it. I had wonderful teachers, I made great friends, and I had opportunities for leadership and participation I never had prior. My ninth grade English teacher was the first person who told me I could write (after having solidified my standing as a mathlete in my other school) and pushed me to enter contests and improve my skills.

So, last weekend, with the chance to return after 25 years, you’d think I would have done so with great enthusiasm.

I had enthusiasm for certain parts: driving through the gates and seeing the weeping cherry trees line the path pulls on all my nostalgia strings. Seeing the main building which was designed by Frank Furness in 1890 to be a railroad hotel makes me so happy (please don’t let “The Gilded Age” make you think that all great architects of the era were building Beaux Arts mansions and show some respect to a more industrial Victorian Gothic vibe). Noticing the many facility improvements that have happened in the intervening years is lightly disorienting while still comforting that things are being well cared for.

I actually wear my class ring on days I need to buckle down. Our school motto was disce verum laborem or “learn true labor.” Doesn’t that sound really motivating for a bunch of privileged teenage girls? On hard days, something about the weight of that ring on my finger serves as a reminder that is helpful to see when I’m typing and feel when I’m madly gesticulating. And the green on my finger when I take it off is also a motivator to work harder to continue to afford better jewelry.

I am a believer in what that place did for me and I think often about who I would have been if I’d stayed at my public school, where I was being bullied, and just plodded through. But I also know I was a strong presence at Baldwin: confident both by nature and affirmed by leadership positions. I’ve had to sit with the possibility that some people experienced me as something harder than that (someone last week said “I’m not sure if you bullied me or if I was just scared of everyone”). The school gives you that, too: the confidence to take up space, and then eventually the reckoning with how much space you were taking.

I am such a believer that I stayed involved after graduating in various alumnae positions which was very fulfilling until it stopped. Most of it was the result of being in charge of organizing regional events during Covid (Zoom happy hours are not my love language) and a lot of it was the result of not feeling appreciated for volunteer efforts that took up tremendous amounts of time that could have been spent elsewhere. Always one with a dramatic flair (perhaps cultivated in my star turn as Helga Queen of the Trolls in our middle school play “East of the Sun, West of the Moon?”), I actually vowed to never volunteer anywhere again. Helga doesn’t put up with shit.

All of which is to say: I walked into that reunion carrying something more complicated than pure nostalgia. And I was the weird one in the room, because everyone else was carrying 25-year-old baggage and mine is five years old. So there I was, listening to people work through dynamics from 1999, and I kept thinking: surely we’re past the Head of Middle School taking away all of our privileges for bad behavior on the 8th grade field trip?

Here’s the thing I’ve been turning over since: we’re not past it, and that’s not actually irrational. What we’re operating on isn’t history but rather, equity.

History is just time: the years, traditions, shared experiences, and the simple fact of having been in the same place at the same time. Relational equity is what you built with it — the showing up, the being counted on, the trust that accumulates quietly without anyone making a thing of it. They’re not the same, even if people confuse them constantly.

My best friend from high school has built so much equity with me over 25 years that her runway is essentially unlimited (not that she’d ever test it). And my relationship with the school itself was the inversion: decades of history, real love, and then a few years that drained the account faster than I’d built it.

The reunion room was full of people whose equity ledgers had frozen in place the last time they were in that Frank Furness building. I extended warmth instinctively to the people I’d been close to. I was still a little guarded around the ones who’d made me feel small. Not because of anything that happened last weekend, but because of what was already on the books.

And then there was the friend I hadn’t been close to in years. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to see her at our old stomping grounds with so many memories. It was easier than I expected — not because enough time had passed, but because enough equity had. The falling out made a withdrawal but it didn’t close the account. We picked up the way you can only pick up with someone when there’s still something there to draw on.

That moment is what made the next one hit differently. I sat in our old cafeteria — at the perimenopause table, inexplicably located in the section with no working ceiling fans, although don’t worry I got the windows open — and realized I was sitting in judgment of my peers for not being over their grievances with the school, while I was quietly nursing one of my own. They couldn’t let go of what the school couldn’t give them as teenagers. I couldn’t let go of some bumpiness during Covid with a person who didn’t even work there anymore.

The hypocrisy landed hard enough that I vowed to reengage. We’re not given too many chances to give back to the places that shaped us. I don’t want to miss that one.

The joy of being a predominantly indoorsy person who is happiest on a couch is that fun stories, indulgent food, and even cozy blankets have no season. So it’s May, the world is still crazy and here’s what I’ve been using to entertain myself of late:

Watching

A lot of my favorite things are new seasons of known entities or older programs I’m just now getting to but I won’t let that stop me. For a good time, I have to recommend “Last One Laughing UK” on Amazon Prime. Two seasons but only six 30 minute episodes in each where British comedians try to NOT laugh for a period of time. The result is me laughing harder than usual and a lot of fun hijinks. Also for actual laugh out loud moments, the new season of “Deadloch” (an Australian parody of the typical police murder mystery show also on Prime) is absolutely wonderful and we’ve been enjoying “Shrinking” (Apple TV) which includes laugh AND cry moments.

“Taskmaster” (YouTube) is back and this season features Kumail Nanjiani and just the happiest crew of people ever. “The Pitt” (HBO RIP Max) is back with a decidedly unhappy crew of people but that’s to be expected when you’re stuck in the ER in Pittsburgh. For traditional mysteries, Jeff and I went back to our Britbox subscription for “Endeavour” and “Vera.” We also enjoyed “Stumble,” (Peacock) the parody of “Cheer” that felt very “30 Rock” and “Ponies” (Peacock) which got a little too intense for me despite the general light tone of the show because being a female spy in Soviet Russia was pretty intense.

On the reality front, Bravo nailed it with the new cast on “Ladies of London,” and while you might be rolling your eyes in judgment, please note that The New York Times did a fabulous profile of Martha because she, frankly, is the only culture I want to talk about. Fine, they also covered “Summer House” which I’m not going to touch on although am assuming the reunion will be “must see.” Lastly “Real Housewives of Rhode Island” is absurd in a light and positive way. Everyone’s having affairs, everyone looks the same, everyone has an accent, and one woman brings crackers everywhere and doesn’t drive because “[she] ran over a woman.”

Listening To

Whatever Owen Cutts suggests on “Old Music Friday” on Instagram/his radio show. Through his recommendations, I’ve become obsessed with David Ruffin’s “I’ve Got a Need for You,” learned the full story about The Chords’ “Sh-Boom,” and fell in love with the original 1982 recording of the Joubert Singers’ “Stand on the Word.”

Apparently “No Such Thing As a Fish” has been around since the dawn of podcast times BUT it’s new to me and I love it. British quiz show researchers share fun facts they’ve learned and discuss them and while an episode is an hour, it’s easily done in 15-minute chapters. Half the time I immediately share what I learned with the next person I talk to. For example, did you know in the time it takes to listen to the Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), the International Space Station travels 500 miles, then 500 more? Or that Churchill looks grumpy on the £5 note because the photographer who took the picture had just removed his cigar? Think about how much more entertaining you’ll be if you listen.

Also, I started a podcast! And since I’m all about efficiency, it’s short and sweet, which felt like the least I could do. You can listen to “Okay, Actually” wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Captivate, Spotify) but I wanted a place to talk about the things I spend more time on professionally: how do we do the right things better? How can we waste less time on things that don’t matter? If you listen and enjoy, please do give it five stars — apparently early ratings/reviews matter more for the algorithm which feels arbitrary but here we are.

Reading

I will read anything Patrick Radden Keefe writes: in a book, in The New Yorker, elsewhere if I know about it. His latest book, “London Falling” is a total page turner and a fascinating tale for the age we live in. Basically a London teenager’s body turns up in the Thames and his parents try to figure out what happened to him, only to discover he was living a double life where he told people he was an oligarch’s son.

And on the other end of the fraud spectrum is Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the “daredevil” French archaeologist who helped save countless priceless Egyptian artifacts between World War II (and potentially being a spy for the Resistance?) and the need to move the Temples of Luxor to avoid flooding. “Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction” tells her story in an inspiring and exciting way that gives really healthy perspective on what it means to make an impact.

I started “Theo of Golden” with a lot of eye rolls — it’s saccharine in ways I normally can’t abide. And, to be honest, wouldn’t have finished if Jeff didn’t make me, but I am ultimately glad I did. The book is about a charismatic and mysterious stranger who comes to a small town in the south and shows how he interacts with people, finds community, and attempts to make a difference. It is cheesy but it’s lovely and I cried through the last 40 pages or so.

Making

Without young kids at home and loving to cook, I recognize I am in a different position than many as I have both time and ability to make pretty much whatever I want (that caveat is for you, Sarah). Although even when I had more constraints, I have never been a 30-minute meals kind of cook. However, there have been some quick and easy recipes of late that are worth a highlight. Namely, the NYT’s Chicken Pesto Meatballs (delicious AND we’re about to end up with so much pesto once our CSA starts up), the NYT’s Creamy Tortellini Soup (kind of a Zuppa Toscana but with cheese tortellini instead of potato), and Alison Roman’s Pasta with Sausage, Brown Butter, and Broccoli Rabe (am pretty sure this is my favorite pasta at the moment thanks to really crisping up all the sausage in the browning butter).

If you want to get kind of fancy, Ina’s Chicken with Morels is one of the more indulgent things I’ve ever made at home (but ignore the comments because all these people seem to not know how to reduce a sauce and wildly misrepresent how much you end up with — some of them are talking about having enough leftover to make soup and I didn’t have enough leftover to fill a thimble).

While I haven’t made it yet, I’m on the hunt for the perfect Brazilian carrot cake. There’s a recipe in Ham El-Waylly’s new cookbook but it has no orange and I want something orange-y enough that I can make it for Youngest who requested a chocolate orange cake. If it’s good, you’ll see the recipe next time around (so get excited for 3-4 months from now!)

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Moving here, I told Jeff I was going to engage in the neighborhood. In New York, I obviously never knew my neighbors even if the whole Monica/Rachel and Chandler/Joey dynamic had led me to think we’d be best friends. Same in DC where any interest in getting to know people in the building was shut down when I found a note left on the dryer that said “Dear Laundry Girl” from someone with the email address “orbitingmars@yahoo” or hotmail or one of those. Someone hitting on you via index card after potentially having gone through your clothes really changes your feelings about interacting with strangers.

When we were in Michigan, in the first place we lived, everyone was either an international ice dancer (because we were within walking distance of the rink) or a divorced dad — always very very easy to tell those two populations apart. Later, we bought a home in a really lovely community but no one was very friendly. Our elderly neighbors on one side, Mary and John, were supposedly very nice but they died less than a year into us living there (natural causes).

On the other side, I was always very confused about their son because he seemed to be Benjamin Button. I thought when I first met them he was like 6 or 7 but then when I saw him later he looked more like 4. The next year when they had no son and a daughter, I realized it was a different family. The new family explained the house was used as corporate housing by their automotive supplier employer and actually there would have been four different families who lived there by the time I noticed. I’m not sure if it’s just Michigan weather keeping people inside for much of the winter or that no one had pets so they were never walking them. Obviously the other explanation is that I didn’t care that much and didn’t put enough effort into building neighbor relationships.

When we moved here, I thought with it being a new community, I’d be able to make friends easily. However, most people here are either young families with children not yet school-aged or empty nesters. There are three other Karens and I’m the youngest by at least 15 years. While it seemed welcoming at the start, there’s very obviously an “in crowd” led by a small group who wield a few key powers: namely planning the block party and updating the “neighborhood directory” spreadsheet which they will not make a Google sheet for reasons I’m assuming are tied to their MacArthur-esque need for control.

Two years ago, they sent out a call for volunteers to join the block party planning committee and I raised my hand only for them to tell me they’d decided not to have a committee. Then on the day of the block party, we had to all applaud the committee for their great work. Two of the other Karens were on it.

I’m okay not being in the “inner circle” (which, ironically, is also where all these people live, while we are on the outer edge which is better for views and property value but not popularity). It is, however, a stark contrast from my own experience growing up. My neighborhood as a child was a small one where all the kids met on one corner to walk to school together. Where multiple backyards had “cut throughs” to get to other people’s houses. Where we had numerous traditions including Easter Egg Hunts and Christmas Caroling parties — the latter of which never made much sense to me since if you, as a neighborhood, go caroling in your neighborhood, no one is home to receive said carols… but the point was to be together and for the adults to drink mulled wine.

Our dog, Houston, was easily the most popular member of our family and on weekends would leave our house and trot around the neighborhood; at least two people who didn’t have dogs kept treats for him. In contrast, Dmitry, in my current neighborhood, takes pictures of dogs he sees off the leash, even if the owner is standing with them and posts them passive aggressively to WhatsApp alongside the screenshot of the HOA guidelines saying dogs must be leashed at all times. There’s also one woman who was incensed at dog poop on her driveway and said if she’d caught it on her ring camera, she would “hunt down whoever’s dog did this and rub their face in it” only for someone to explain to her that it was a fox.

Quite the chasm between experiences and it can’t all be because of technology.

I’ve been thinking about the sense of belonging fostered by that neighborhood so much lately after losing a true pillar of the community who passed away recently — to be clear, “pillar of the community” is sometimes thrown around but could not be more accurate in describing him. It’s very hard to explain the sense of loss you feel when you lack the appropriate vocabulary to label the person, especially now that “neighbor” doesn’t carry with it the endearment it did when I lived in my small Quaker town. I even realize that last sentence lacks the specificity needed to make my point but I truly don’t know the right word and all attempts (e.g. “almost an uncle,” “second family,” “framily,” etc) fall flat.

We moved once in my childhood, from one side of the Smiths to the other (actually, I’m realizing right now, we moved from the inner circle to the outer edge) and the closeness was never just physical proximity; truly there has never been a moment I’ve spent with them or in their home when I didn’t feel I was with family. It’s really hard not to mention Halloween: their house was that house. The one everyone wanted to go to and even if they didn’t live nearby changed their trick or treating route to accommodate. It was the house with the decorations and sound effects and, yes, full-sized candy bars. It was just scary enough to keep teenagers entertained but not make little kids too upset.

A highlight was a box where you could pet their dead dog “Fluffy,” and when you reached your hand in, you were supposedly touching raw meat. Something I never questioned until I started writing this and was like… there’s no way a lawyer invited hundreds of children to touch raw meat in the 90s pre-hand sanitizer era.

It’s probably not worth comparing to my current neighborhood where people announced they were setting up card tables on the driveway so kids didn’t have to come to the door at all. While Jeff is generally forbidden from participating in the WhatsApp group because of the crazies, I did let him post that we would be happy to give candy to any kids who came to the door “old school style.”

What I didn’t understand when I was trick-or-treating, or cutting through backyards, or walking to school in a group, was that those things don’t just happen. Someone builds them; someone decides that a box with raw meat in it is worth the effort, that the caroling party is the point even if no one’s home to hear it, that a dog named Houston deserves a treat (or a Pepperidge Farm cookie) from someone who doesn’t even own a dog.

The families in my old neighborhood built that over years of showing up for each other at all of those events. And in the years since we haven’t lived nearby, the showing up continues including regular drinks in DC, full families flying to Mexico and Japan for weddings, bridal and baby showers, and more recently flying in, no matter what, for memorials.

I’m not sure I’ll ever have that. Partly it’s this neighborhood with its card tables and its WhatsApp surveillance and its “inner circle.” But honestly it’s also that the way most people build those relationships — through kids in school together, through soccer practice waiting, through the particular intimacy of other people watching your children grow up — was never available to me and that time has now passed. With kids past their school years, the on-ramp I didn’t know I’d need had already closed.

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In the workplace, I have always loved and valued employees who demonstrate curiosity — there’s really nothing more fun than getting to manage someone who not only does a great job but asks the right questions to do it even better. Although — and this is probably a whole other essay — I am 100% confident that we overuse the response “great question” and it’s leading to a lot of mediocre question-askers thinking they’re Columbo.

And while I respect those who raise their hands and ask questions tremendously, honestly even the ones asking mediocre questions, there are times where I do wonder if sometimes asking questions and/or requiring further explanation is just an act of compliance-resistance wearing the costume of intellectual curiosity.

In one role, I led a team of truly brilliant, largely early-in-career, talent who worked hard and certainly could have been paid more at an institution doing better financially. All but a couple of those people were hired after offices had been established and accepted a job that clearly stated if you were within a certain radius, it was a mandatory three days a week in the office. And, yet, more than half of the team rarely came in more than once a week.

To be clear, this was not a poorly rolled out RTO mandate, something I’ve also been asked to champion/enforce in a past role, but rather people who accepted jobs with an in-office component and just didn’t come in. I was not within the radius and I’m a huge proponent of working remotely in most cases so I didn’t put much effort into cracking down on this but about once a month it would come up again that an office that should have no empty desks was half empty on a Wednesday.

Incidentally, the fact that the office was too small was a reason why one or two very honest people didn’t come in — they came to me to talk about headaches and distractions and inability to find a space to work that was quiet enough to get the job done. Most others just had a lot of “furniture deliveries” or frequent Covid exposure or appointments/job interviews. Outside of a meeting where it came up again, someone, clearly tapped by the rest of the team as the sacrificial lamb, came to me and said “people want to know if they’ll be fired if they don’t come in.”

Obviously I understand no one wanted to, that coming into an expensive city and having to pay for parking and potentially a not cheap lunch, all so that you can be distracted and get a free protein bar is not something that was popular. And yet, all of these adults accepted a job with this requirement and were now arguing with it and asking me to provide logic for a decision that was already firmly established as policy by the time I joined.

At home, a similar debate comes up a lot around manners where the need to provide rationale for what I thought was accepted societal behavior is required when I make a suggestion or request. I married into a family of all well-behaved and respectful people but some of the things I thought were basics (like greeting people warmly, making small talk, sending thank you notes, most - if not all - table manners, etc) were just not part of the family culture — why write a note if you already said “thank you” in person? Outside of Oldest becoming a world-class thank you note writer, in most cases we either made light progress or I stopped trying/caring.

Etiquette was a foundational part of my childhood conditioning — we were all told we needed to graduate from “Granny’s School” (i.e. have manners of which my mom’s mother would approve). As of the time of my mother’s death, I believe I was the only confirmed graduate in my family since one brother 100% failed out and the other’s graduation status was shaky at best. That desire to graduate “Granny’s School” or just be known as someone with great manners means absolutely nothing to two of my kids today. My attempt to explain that the goal of manners is actually to make sure everyone feels comfortable in all situations fell flat the minute I was suggesting they might need to do something different to accommodate the group.

One of the constant examples is feet on the coffee table. I, personally, think feet on surfaces where food or beverages are placed is gross. Middle, however, has some sort of magnet situation where his feet are physically drawn to the coffee table. I’ve asked that they be removed. He says “I’m comfortable.” I say “I’m not, we eat or drink off that table and you wouldn’t do the same to the dining room table.” He says “I would if there was nowhere else to put my feet up.” I point him to another chair that has an ottoman. He claims to prefer the couch.

Eventually I say, “in my home, we don’t put feet on coffee tables, if you want people to do that in your house, that’s up to you.” It all feels about one step away from “because I said so” but yet I find myself completely confounded by the exchange. Why is there even a discussion, let alone an argument, past “please take your feet off the coffee table?” Somehow I find myself feeling like a fool for asking that someone respect my space and my things all because I can’t come back with a more bulletproof argument.

The moment when I realized the reasons don’t even matter was while out to dinner at what would be our “fancy” meal of a vacation. I really do limit myself to one table manner prompt per meal at most but have never regretted it more than this time when I noted that appropriate etiquette for butter is to each take some from the communal dish and put it straight on your plate rather than to wait for each person to butter their bread. Middle went straight to argument mode pointing out that it was easier for him to just butter his own bread first. My (I thought great and thorough) response was:

1. Everyone gets butter faster if you put it straight on your own plate, so it’s faster for the full table

2. It is accommodating of anyone with bread/gluten allergies who would not be able to share the butter if a knife that had touched bread had already touched it

3. Because of both of the above, it’s also more considerate of others and makes you look more thoughtful in general

None of this was enough to convince Middle who, last time I observed (but due to PTSD from this experience said nothing) still buttered his bread directly. Youngest remembers most of the time and Oldest doesn’t eat butter so the point is moot. All I wanted to share was something that, I thought, would be helpful to my kids as they go out into the world on their own and provided good reasons only for it not to matter.

Most of the time I’ve attributed all of this to a combination of not getting custody of kids until they were teenagers and already had established expectations combined with neurodivergence. And maybe that’s part of it. But I’ve started to wonder how much is generational or temporal — or whether it’s not even that, but just what happens when authority loses enough credibility across enough institutions that everyone, reasonably, stops extending it the benefit of the doubt. Including to people who just want feet off of their coffee table.

Which leaves the rest of us cycling between two responses: the frustrated one (just go to the fucking office you agreed to go to when you took the job) and the slightly more generous one (okay, but why did we let it get here???). I take some comfort in knowing my mother didn’t imprint Emily Post on all her kids either. Clearly I won’t be the one to crack the code.

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Not relevant to any of the post beyond my detective aside, but did want to share this graphic I saw circulating on the interwebs, which lovers of detective stories throughout Europe will appreciate:

I named our new toy poodle Audrey, because, as I told my father, “she’s gray just like Audrey Hepburn’s poodle in ‘Sabrina.’” My father replied “it’s a black and white movie, all the dogs are gray.” Touché.

Audrey was never really my dog. She slept in my room but when I got up, she’d run and wait outside my mother’s door or next to my mother’s bed until the real alpha was up. And I get it because my mother was the one slipping Audrey brie on the side. Audrey managed to ingratiate herself into the family largely because of her kindness to Houston as he aged and what a great traveler she was, perfectly content to go anywhere and be both cute/well-behaved at the time.

When she passed away, I was sad but I also hadn’t lived at home with her full time in about a decade so it didn’t hit the way it might have otherwise. My mom promised her ashes would be scattered with Houston’s at the beach which felt like the perfect place.

Until I found out that was a lie.

Over the last few months, my father has been going through all of our stuff that’s been in long-term storage for over a decade. Some days he’ll share photos I don’t even remember being taken or memories I’d thought had been lost and am so grateful to have a keepsake of.

Going through storage is kind of like opening your own time capsule where you sort of look at these objects and see a mixture of fond memories, things you’d otherwise forgotten, and, frankly, trash.

In some cases, I’ve had major mysteries solved: a ring that my aunt gifted me that I was accused of losing while in New York (but always swore I hadn’t) was found in my jewelry box! A framed photograph of me, at 14 in New Zealand, sitting on the back of what seems to be a bison(?) serves as proof that I have both been outside and in close proximity to large wild animals.

In some cases, things I’d hoped to have found are still missing, and may never have been in storage in the first place, like the original art exhibition catalogs I bought when I was on study abroad in France and my senior year high school blazer. I definitely can’t still read those books and I probably can’t fit into the blazer (nor do I have occasion to wear it) but they’re things I’ve thought about over the years and missed.

And in some cases, I’ve learned that the remains of my beloved dog have been in storage for 15 years and not, as my beloved mother told me, reunited with the land where she had felt happiest in her short life.

Putting things in storage was unintentionally a way of deferring grief, making it hard to reach without a crane. You don’t realize what’s in there until someone pulls it out. I expected my father to unearth several of my mom’s things — photos of her, photos of us — where I could see in her face how much she loved me. As much as I expected it, I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like to see a look I haven’t seen in person in seven and a half years.

If not deferring grief, then perhaps the storage serves as a way of observing hiraeth — the Welsh concept of missing a place or time you can’t return to — and grieving parts of my childhood that I’d forgotten or put on the backburner. We went to Egypt as a family when I was in high school; I was peak emo teenager, pre-depression diagnosis, too depressed to be present (or smiling) for any of it. But the photos tell a different story — one where I was actually there, actually witnessing something extraordinary.

I recently read “Empress of the Nile” and have been captivated by all things Egypt and had regrets about my own trip, knowing I didn’t get the most out of it. But seeing our own photos again reminds me that I was there. I saw Nefertari’s tomb and remember my jaw dropping at the color on the walls. I stood in front of things that survived thousands of years so that even my miserable sixteen-year-old self could have a moment of wonder, whether she knew it or not.

All those things were just in this nebulous category of “stuff in storage” but now they’ve been brought to the surface for us to do something with them. Saying I want any of it is loaded because I did mock my father for years for his hoarding tendencies. Recently I needlepointed him a sign that says “It’s not hoarding if your shit is cool,” but I can say definitively there are no framed photos of me from middle school that are cool, so that’s not applicable here.

I want some of the things. I don’t want most of the things. I don’t know what’s there so I have no idea what I want. And more than that, you can’t just throw it away because it was someone’s life, or even my life, or maybe a version of my life. So most of it goes to my basement. The box moves. The guilt moves with it.

Except for Audrey, who will finally have a chance to be at peace, reunited with my mother and Houston this summer.

Cindi didn’t leave this as a comment on a post where I wrote about my kids, but rather subscribed and sent it as a direct message to me. Pretty much ensuring I couldn’t ignore it.

I immediately wondered what bougie and horribly unempathetic things I’d written to drive Cindi to put so much effort into letting me know she hated me. But my last three posts have been about disliking corned beef and cabbage, arguing with my now ex-therapist about favorite child dynamics, and the old boys’ club in the workplace/on the US men’s hockey team.

Perhaps that last one was the inspiration? Cindi read “Yes, you are the asshole” and took it as a challenge?

When I started this space, my intention wasn’t actually to write exclusively about step-parenting. It was to write as a whole person — someone who happens to be a stepparent, and a wife, and a former executive, and a woman with opinions about the Olympics and her mother’s cooking and her own therapist’s blind spots. The step-parenting books I found were all written for someone trying to understand the kids. I wanted something that just said: you’re not crazy, this is weird, and you’re going to have to figure it out anyway because you’re a grown-up who fell in love with a man who had children already.

What I learned quickly is that no matter how intentionally I write as a whole person, there will always be someone for whom I am only the stepparent. Cindi wasn’t responding to what I wrote. She was responding to what I am, or, more specifically, what she’d already decided I was before she read a word.

There’s also a lot I haven’t written — things that are ultimately the kids’ stories and not mine, things I’m still in the middle of, things I’d need to be fully out of the woods on before I could find the words. Things where I haven’t figured out how to put them out into the world without creating drama in my family. My list of “write this later” topics is long. Consider that your incentive to stay subscribed!

Reaching new people on the internet where you’re just a name/photo means people really only know you for what you put out there. They lack the context on all experiences that have led up to that moment and bring their own baggage to the experience you might be sharing. That’s been a learning experience for me as certain posts I’ve written have gained traction and resulted in comments, direct messages, and other notes calling me names and threatening me. Since launching this site I’ve had three posts go semi-viral and enjoyed everything from people calling me a sociopath to a whore to wishing death upon me (never directly threatening it, just letting me know they’ll be so happy whenever I do die).

Despite having been involved in social media and online communities since the dawn of their respective times, I somehow still am able to be shocked by what someone is willing to say to someone they don’t know in writing online. Given that I worked with the social care team of a major cable company when they had an outage for a couple of minutes during the “Game of Thrones” season finale, you’d think that I would have a pretty healthy understanding of how nasty the internet can get.

Cindi is barely a drop in the bucket in terms of both nastiness and range, but I should have been more prepared for negative comments than I was.

At first, I got defensive. She sent this when my last three posts hadn’t even been about my kids. And I have tremendous empathy for the kids in my family — she doesn’t even have all the context on how much we’ve navigated together and how far we’ve come! I’m not necessarily going to argue with someone about how “bougie” I am, but when I ignore a grammatical rule it’s usually deliberate to allow for my own natural voice and its many, many tangents.

And then I read this and thought “wow, what a pin on the stepmom experience.”

Cindi comes out of nowhere, tells me I have no empathy, tells me I whine about everything, and also tells me I’m not and “never will be, their parent.” In a space that I built where I say it’s about the stepparent experience and how marginalized and unnatural it can feel, I get to be criticized and marginalized by Cindi.

I can move past sociopath. I can move past whore. Those say everything about the person sending them and nothing about me. But Cindi didn’t reach for an insult. She reached for a fact. “You are not, and never will be, their parent.”

She’s not wrong. That’s the whole thing. That has always been the whole thing.

I didn’t write last week. Not because I was too busy or because I ran out of material, but because Cindi’s message sat in me and did exactly what she probably hoped it would — made me wonder whether I had any business writing about any of this at all. Whether this whole space was just elaborate whining from someone without standing to speak.

I’ve decided that’s exactly why I have to keep writing it. Not to prove Cindi wrong, but because the silence is just a different version of the same problem: a woman in this role, making herself smaller, taking up less space, staying in her lane. I’ve been doing a version of that for years in other spaces, and I’m not planning on doing it here.

The world is full of Cindis. I’ll keep blocking them.

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While that never translated to my appearance (beyond a paleness that lacked freckles and was regularly called “pasty” by my aunts) or a chance to join an Irish step team, there was something comforting in doing something deliberate to honor my mom’s family and their roots. I can only imagine she, the daughter of a Kelly and a Kilpatrick, felt even more warmly about it.

Beyond the morning greeting and the pressure to wear green, the primary tradition observed was the making of corned beef and cabbage. I say “making of” because I can’t include “eating of” since I despise corned beef and cabbage. On my list of top hated foods/flavors where bluefish pâté takes the pole position, corned beef is pretty high. Boiled cabbage a bit lower, penalized far more for the smell of it than the taste or texture. In fact, the smell is a huge part of the dread factor. Four hours of corned beef and potatoes and cabbage boiling on the stove has that certain “je ne sais quoi” that to me translates to “middle school locker room.”

Granny, my mom’s mom, introduced me to a variation of colcannon – where we mashed the cabbage, carrots, and potatoes together with a little butter and some “s and p” on the plate. It was the only edible part of the meal for me. Four hours of dread only to end up eating a plate of mashed potatoes doesn’t necessarily bring back the fondest memories and certainly didn’t compare to holidays that included candy. Theoretically, in the Philadelphia area at least, you could say there is a candy component in the form of “Irish Potatoes” but there’s a reason they haven’t made it big and spread outside of the area. Or rather two reasons: taste and appearance.

Add to that the fact that St. Paddy’s Day has been so wildly co-opted by drunken chaos, it’s hard to even know what you’re celebrating. This past weekend, unfortunately, the only way to get to the Philadelphia Orchestra from the restaurant where we had dinner was past a Fadó. I hadn’t recently rethought my definition of hell, but it turns out a Fadó in Center City Philadelphia on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day comes close. Green attire is made easy by Eagles jerseys but I doubt any of the people I saw could find Ireland on a map, even when sober.

I know that falsely claiming heritage as an excuse to celebrate has been around for decades, although surely St. Paddy’s Day and Cinco de Mayo are the two biggest victims of complete bastardization. Having not been near a Fadó after 6 PM in quite some time, I’m not in the best position to judge whether it’s gotten worse or whether my tolerance for tomfoolery has declined — likely some of both.

The accepted standards for cultural appropriation were certainly lower before but there was a 2003 trend that highlighted peak absurdity: Urban Outfitters baby t-shirts that proudly proclaimed “Everyone loves a [insert nationality here] girl” in small letters across the chest of a way too tight shirt inviting people to both stare harder and make an uncomfortable comment leaning into stereotypes. The ultimately discontinued “Everyone loves a Jewish girl” featured shopping bags and dollar signs in the design. Others were less offensive — “Everyone loves an Irish girl” came in green with a smattering of shamrocks, and an unattractive brown “Everyone loves a German girl” with beer steins.

Somewhere between the Eagles jerseys and the shamrock baby tees, I decided I’d rather co-opt with intention. My practice has been to use holidays as an excuse for a theme meal with regionally inspired cuisine. Having no French blood whatsoever hasn’t stopped me from doing an annual Bastille Day celebration. Other celebrations have included: Derby Day, (haggis-free) Burns Night, Greek Orthodox Easter, and throughout the Men’s & Women’s World Cup cooking the cuisine of whichever countries were playing.

With that in mind, I did realize a few years ago that there were ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day beyond my abhorred corned beef. Unlike other shifted traditions that adapted after my mom died, I made the decision while she was alive to make St. Paddy’s my own in a way that didn’t involve the smell of cabbage filling my house for days on end.

Each year I’ve used it as an excuse to revisit other Irish recipes. Colcannon is delicious but with other meats. I still think soda bread is unpleasantly dry but after making multiple recipes can honestly say I’ve given it a good go. I’ve attempted to recreate my grandmother’s lamb stew (close to impossible because the recipe was apparently written on two cards and I’ve only got the second one…)

We’ve done variations on bangers and mash and obviously both shepherd’s and cottage pies. One constant over the years has been Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake which, holidays aside, is my go-to chocolate cake recipe. The recipe was originally in Nigella’s “Feast” cookbook which largely reinforces my overall celebratory premise: that there’s no reason not to cook for all the holidays. This year, we’re doubling down on Guinness and having Guinness Pie as our main and roasted cabbage on the side.

If we’re lucky, life is long and, mostly, ordinary. So it’s still worth celebrating and making each day worth as much as it can be. Now “top of the morning to you” starts accent-free over text with my brothers. My husband cannot, for the life of him, learn the correct response but laughing at him over it is yet another way I’ve found joy.

When in doubt, there’s really good cake.

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As much as I appreciate a psychologist with a Freud-Adler fixation (since that’s about where my knowledge of psych started and stopped so it keeps us on equal footing), I found none of that helpful. I was there to talk about career transitions and the favorite child question seemed wholly irrelevant.

It could have been my fault; perhaps I wasn’t giving enough raw material for him to work with. My parents each held individual relationships with each of us and while we all have very different relationships with them, I don’t think there was favoritism. At my mother’s 70th birthday party, she noted in her toast that she and each of her sisters all believed they were their mother’s favorite — while her own children (the three of us) all said we were the least favorite. That probably sums up the actual dynamic: one of heavy teasing, which I never took well. Even at my wedding, my family stood together to sing a childhood song meant to lightly but lovingly mock me. If gentle teasing was meant to thicken the skin, it didn’t work. On my long list of faults I include: being wildly sensitive, a poor loser, and being particularly sensitive about losing.

My therapist would interject here and say “what would your brothers say if I asked them?” I’m confident they’d say the same while pointing out I was absolutely the most spoiled by several miles. Fair.

Last week I talked about my love of Reddit’s AITA and should note that “golden children” is a whole other beloved topic there and one with which I was unfamiliar prior to hanging out on that subreddit. I definitely had the chance to observe it in friends where it was clear parents favored someone (often a younger brother, interestingly), but it really wasn’t our family’s pathology.

The golden child framework does provide some clarity though. We have (former Prince) Andrew as exhibit A — always considered to be the Queen’s favorite, and the result was a man so protected from consequences that accountability became structurally impossible. Being the favorite didn’t make him beloved by the public, successful in his endeavors, or particularly self-aware. It made him untouchable for way too long, which becomes extra problematic when justice is at stake. It also likely left him unprepared for the day he would be photographed looking slumped and scared in the back of a Range Rover while the King announced he would let “the law take its course.”

While not the largest of sample sets, my takeaway from Andrew and many AITA threads is that at its worst, the “favorite” produces not a loved child but an exempted one. Perhaps that’s where my former therapist was actually headed: underneath the terminology was a real question — was I seen as a child? Did I get what I needed? Did I internalize some kind of rank? A legitimate question, just forced into the wrong framing.

Marrying into a new family with three kids ranging from 8 to 15 brought with it new dynamics and hierarchies. It’s a family that didn’t tease much until I joined it, and then everyone was confused when she who could dish it couldn’t take it — part of my charm. What did disturb me at the start was that Oldest was constantly called “perfect.” It was meant to compliment her general kindness and thoughtful demeanor, but I — ever the youngest child with a light chip on my shoulder — was horrified.

How did everyone, extended family included, not see that this freezes the labeled kid in a role and the rest of the family organizes around her? If one child is regularly called perfect, even with a glimmer in the eye, those who are not called perfect know they are at the very least, a little bit less than. While not intended, that kind of thing is playing favorites.

It’s not purely a vocabulary question, although that’s certainly a big part of it: favorite, golden, liked, loved, seen — none of them are exactly the same thing. You can be fair and equitable with various resources but not be equally drawn to everyone. You can love without liking. Affinity isn’t a choice, but you get to choose what you do with it. The goal isn’t to feel the same about everyone; it can be to ensure that your affinities don’t do damage.

That’s what my therapist kept missing, and what the AITA golden child threads mostly miss too. The question was never whether someone was the favorite but rather what the favorite status was doing — whether it was building someone up or exempting them from the ordinary work of being a person (or basic justice). “Perfect” does the same damage as “golden child,” just with better PR. My family’s teasing, obnoxious as I found (and still find) it, was, at least, egalitarian. Everyone got some. Nobody got a pass. And if you tried to get out of it, you found multiple people singing a song to you asking you to smile — every sullen teenager’s dream.

I’ll also admit it’s hard to be around more than one person and not think about who I like more – had I had the chance to be “The Bachelorette,” it would have been a real short season. The true challenge will always come back to how those thoughts manifest.

Navigating all of it is easier when you have three kids: they may outnumber you but the odds are ultimately in your favor. Derek Jeter got to Cooperstown with a 0.310 regular season batting average so liking even one out of three at a time is pretty impressive.

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There are definitely more common situations and dynamics you continue to see: weddings always bring drama on all sides, stepmothers are always in the wrong, and an odd amount of intolerance around food allergies or preferences. As the subreddit has gained more prominence, there have been some marked shifts — namely the rise of obvious AI-generated posts, the lurking of 12 year olds in the comments pretending to be adults, and, most alarmingly, the conflation of whether something is permitted (by law or societal norms) or you’re an asshole.

For example, a recent post included a guy wondering whether he was the asshole for having a childfree wedding that would likely mean his sister can’t attend because of lack of childcare for her toddler. Buried at the end of the post was that the save the date and earlier conversations never mentioned that it was child-free and so his sister (a single mom) only learned one month before the wedding that her toddler was not welcome at a family event across the country for which she had already bought plane tickets. The comments were full of people saying “it’s your wedding, you make the call” and “she can find a babysitter.”

Those things are true. What is also true is that you, sir, are absolutely the asshole.

I bring this up because I’ve seen a similar pattern in the work environment and the world at large. Most recently, all the uproar around President Trump’s call to the men’s hockey team after they won gold at the Olympics.

It can absolutely be true that they didn’t know that it was being recorded/would be leaked, maybe that they didn’t hear the joke that well or know what they were laughing at, that they were on a high after a huge/life changing win, that they respect their peers on the women’s team, and that they didn’t have bad intentions.

And it can also be true that they were the assholes and should apologize.

That’s really all it would have taken: a timely “we’re so embarrassed that the video makes it look like we were laughing at our peers, that was not our intent. We are extremely sorry and in no way meant to imply the women’s team were not our equals.”

Instead, we got “People are so negative out there and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing.”

The reason the video is upsetting for many is not political and it’s not because they care so strongly about the opinions of a bunch of toothless 20-something multimillionaire men. It’s because we already knew we were being laughed at by men behind our backs and we didn’t always have the proof.

Making the entire conversation around whether it should have been filmed and/or shared, whether it’s just more “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or whether others are allowed to be offended if the women’s hockey team has mostly said publicly a version of “we know the men’s team respects us,” simply obscures the bigger point. That whether an act itself is defensible and whether the person behind it is an asshole are not mutually exclusive and conflating the two is how people avoid accountability.

I didn’t play sports and went to an all girls school so locker room talk isn’t really a thing I dealt with or navigated but my point remains: we already know that subtle sexism is pervasive as well as culturally accepted. When proof is provided that reinforces what we already knew was happening, and getting any kind of thoughtful acknowledgement is like squeezing blood from the stone, it’s hard to ignore.

I don’t have the benefit of a viral video to serve as a receipt but some of my experiences of subtle/not so subtle sexism are as vividly captured as a TikTok in my memory, like:

1. The very senior male executive who liked to make blowjob jokes at the office and HR said “he’s of a different era but we’ll handle it.” “Handle it” meant “drop it.”

2. The company where I argued for a more generous/appropriate parental leave policy and was consequently blamed in front of other leaders every time anyone was out on leave for costing the company time and money. Only for the same leaders who were so critical of the policy to give the whole company a surprise day off after the Super Bowl to “recover” (which cost the same as the equivalent of 6.5 employees taking parental leave).

3. The sales leader who told me executive sponsorship was most successful when you had “the females talk to other females” because it was hard for him to find anything in common with women.

4. The boss who told me that I needed to do more to “get our customers in line” because “82% of them are women and more emotional than rational.” We did not even have accurate data on the percentage of the customer base that was female but I didn’t bring that up because the same boss told me I didn’t understand math. Fair, I did only get a 790 on the Math portion of the SAT.

It’s certainly hard for me to ignore when I’ve personally experienced so many things that were defensible on some level but still wrong, unkind, and yes, asshole-ish.

It’s one thing to actually believe it or feel that way (and who really knows whether a bunch of American hockey players drunk on Mexican beer were really tracking that much of what was being said or implied) but that in sober moments the debate is about whether or not it should have been filmed/captured/shared instead of any of these athletes saying “I’m so sorry that it looks like I was laughing at the women’s team, that was absolutely not my intent.”

I’m not sure that there’s a satisfying conclusion (and an awkward SNL monologue appearance from the Hughes brothers five days later certainly wasn’t it). Those who laughed aren’t going to suddenly understand why it mattered. The people defending locker room talk were already okay with locker room talk. And the next time something like this happens — and there will be a next time — the cycle will continue.

The most appropriate dialogue from all of this came from US Women’s Team captain Hilary Knight (no relation to the illustrator of “Eloise”) who said to the press: “Now I have to sit in front of you and explain someone else’s behavior. It’s not my responsibility.”

“I love you too,” Jeff replied.

It says something about the level of honesty in my marriage that even though I could have just stayed quiet and let my husband think I meant him (and I do love him so much), I opted to correct the record and make sure he knew I was talking to Pepper.

Pepper represents a lot to me: one of the few times I’ve rebelled against my parents’ advice, the primary consolation prize for moving to Michigan, a devoted companion, and someone who could not give less of a shit what I ask her to do. Even when Pepper does listen to commands, she makes it so clear that whether she follows or not is based entirely on her whims and that we should never, for a single moment, question who the alpha is in the house. I have looked right at this little 10 pound monster, repeatedly told her “I am the alpha,” and can see her laughing at me in her eyes.

Even Pepper, without the background of two college Psych classes, knows that she’s the emotional support animal I forced into that role because I didn’t have my own kids. She probably cracked that code during one of the many times I physically cradled her while she growled and indicated she was very much not into the role. Sam, our other dog, doesn’t know his own name so it’s unlikely he’s grasped much else.

We’ve all worked with that person who wildly overstepped boundaries in terms of probing on personal lives but got away with it because everyone would say “oh that’s just Linda.” When the Linda of one of my past lives found out I was marrying someone older with three kids, she called me into her office and said “are you going to have your own kids?” “Maybe but probably not” was my honest reply. “Oh you have to, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t” she helpfully responded.

At the time, I was fuming. I resented her assumptions about the kind of fulfillment I’d have as a stepmom. She didn’t know all of the drama we were dealing with between the kids and their mom. She had no idea how much pressure I felt to just get the three kids I was inheriting through college and out into the world as healthy adults. She didn’t know the toxic dynamics with Jeff’s ex and just how much having a baby of our own would throw her into an even more insane spiral. Neither she nor I had any idea how much more challenging things would get at the time when I personally thought things might start to calm down.

And without knowing any of those things, she was right.

I mean, not to say it at work to someone who has not requested to have that conversation, but she was right about regret.

The regret isn’t abstract or constant — it shows up in specific moments. When Middle missed his flight to meet the family for Christmas, even though I booked all the travel, he called his Dad. Youngest once told me that she used to get away with whatever she wanted but she could tell when her Dad consulted me because he’d start saying no or pushing her out of her comfort zone. That wasn’t shared with gratitude. It was shared as an example of how much change I had forced upon her and the family.

To be fair, I did change things. I just thought I’d get more credit for it.

Most of the time, Jeff and I operate as a team making decisions together, determining how we’re going to approach, what we’re going to say and who’s going to say it. Regardless of who says it though, if what’s said or done is different than what might have happened in their old family unit, I’m held responsible.

That’s a big piece of it: I stepped into a culture that was already set, and there’s no retrofitting yourself into the foundation. And honestly, some of that is on me. I stepped in wanting to matter, which meant I was always going to be visible in a way that made me an easy target. You can’t insert yourself into a foundation and then be surprised when the cracks show up around you (or so has been explained to me by people who understand construction).

I have stepmom friends who did have their own kids and the dynamic is very different. Every single one has, at some point, made a comment to me when discussing their stepkids along the lines of “and I told [husband] we are absolutely not making this mistake with our kid.” They’re verbalizing something I’ve thought about often: just how differently I would raise my child than how my kids have been raised. It’s not just about having a family with far greater knowledge of Broadway soundtracks, although that’s crossed my mind, but also being able to establish norms around behavior and conversation and family dynamics at a higher level.

No, one path isn’t better than the other, but the difference is that on the “have your kids” path, you, at least, have the chance to follow through on those changes instead of just thinking about it.

From this vantage point, and seeing both paths, I don’t know that I would make different choices, but I absolutely miss what I don’t have.

All the self help books and general common sense would say: then focus on what you do have. I have a wonderful husband and three kids who are each taking steps forward in their lives even if some of those steps aren’t quite what I would have done. And I have two aging toy poodles — Pepper, who doesn’t respect me at all, and Sam, who has severe and debilitating anxiety.

The end result is a lot of weight on the shoulders of two ten pound dogs.

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Something about having to hoard candy as a child stuck with me. I have always loved and will always love chocolate, and I have strong opinions about which chocolate and when. I’m not sure what further credibility to offer other than that I literally high fived a man in a CVS in the last week over Cadbury Mini Eggs being available this early in the year — of particular note when I generally try to avoid human contact.

Chocolate was on my mind with Valentine’s Day because you can’t avoid the red Russell Stover hearts anywhere. I actually asked Google how Russell Stover was still in business and the Gemini summary said “Russell Stover remains in business by leveraging its strong brand nostalgia, deeply entrenched holiday traditions, and a strategic 2014 acquisition by Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli.” Or in other words “Russell Stover was bailed out by Lindt but does pretty well a couple of times a year.”

I am generally a chocolate snob but I’m willing to go low brow if the results are tasty. For example, I’ll turn my nose up at a Hershey bar but genuinely enjoy a Hershey kiss atop a peanut butter or gingerbread “blossom.” I’m sure those of you reading this who prefer a single source dark chocolate have already turned on me for my Mini Egg enthusiasm. Sometimes you want something fancy and sometimes you’re a low key Augustus Gloop, not willing to throw yourself in a river per se, but also understanding his motivations.

The point is: I know what I like and I’m not apologizing for it.

Loving chocolate and being action-oriented leads one in a natural direction: baking. I used to bake with my mother until she discovered the benefits of child labor and outsourced a lot of it to me. I baked cookies on her behalf for church events and made shortbread for one of my brothers for some kind of high school family tree project (leaning on our Scottish heritage and finding a recipe in “Joy of Cooking” as opposed to some kind of long-held family tradition).

I boasted about my brownie baking skills at my first job and ended up in a brownie bake-off against my department’s SVP when I was an entry-level employee. I was blissfully unaware of any kind of career implications or opportunities. Instead, it was simply a battle of Ina’s recipe (my choice) vs. the Katherine Hepburn recipe from the NYT. Ina and I naturally won or I likely wouldn’t be telling the story here out of shame, but the real win was that I used the proofreading and compliance department for taste-testing the whole week before and the entire time I worked at that job saw all my work get rushed through for expedited review.

My SVP, to her credit, announced a fudge-making rematch that left me crying on the floor of my apartment and I both lost and vowed to never make anything requiring a candy thermometer again. (FYI, no one come at me in the comments about the “softball method.” Tried that too. Everything fell apart including my attempts at sanity).

Back to the high-low of it all: while I love Ina’s recipe, and recently fell for these fabulous triple chocolate brownies from NYT Cooking, I firmly believe in the power of a Ghirardelli mix brownie. Outside of the convenience, the chew is perfect, the level of chocolate (at least in both the Double Chocolate and Dark Chocolate flavors) sublime, walk the tightrope of dense but fudgy. I honestly think that mix is a masterpiece.

I also like corner pieces best, so I bought an “all edges” brownie pan only for Youngest to inform me that she just likes middle pieces. In one of our moves, I ended up getting rid of that pan since I didn’t see the point in keeping it. Of course, since tastes change from the age of 8 to 18, Youngest is now quite happy with edges and so I feel my whole body tense with anger when I see a pan with more middle than edge left. That’s what I get for relegating my preferences to a Southeastern Michigan Buy Nothing Facebook group.

Years ago, I threw together a batch of Ghirardelli mix brownies and added some peanut butter chips to the mix for a spin on the classic. After everyone finished, Jeff said “hmmm, I feel like most of us like these without peanut butter chips better” and then took a vote among the kids.

I was utterly gobsmacked. I made brownies the way I wanted (the all-edge pan was long gone but peanut butter chips were at least a small consolation) and kindly shared them with the family. I am not a bakery taking specialty orders!

I indicated clear displeasure at that moment via my face, tone, and words, but Jeff and I spoke about it at length later. First, he was unaware that I had won a small department brownie bake-off at a New York ad agency in 2006. Second, he just assumed that I would want to make everyone’s favorite brownies. And sometimes I do. But sometimes, I’m throwing together some brownies from a mix because I want to eat them myself and the only feedback I’m interested in is a “thank you” and for all the center brownies to be gone but the corners left behind.

As a stepmom, I thought baking would be my secret weapon but then ended up with one vegan, one dessert-disliker, and one brownie piece flip-flopper. There’s lots of times when I aim to please them, but sometimes you just have to bake for an audience of one. At least that way you get exactly what you want.

I can practice self-care for myself and leave it on the counter for others should they want them. But the peanut butter chips stay. I’m telling myself that’s modeling self-advocacy for my children.

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Interestingly though, memorizing them doesn’t necessarily mean that I internalized them when it came to my own friendships. It took me years and years to realize that one person in my life had been unkind to me from the very beginning. When I reflected on our early days together, I saw a pattern of using opportunities to tell me about all the people who didn’t like me and creating a dynamic where she was the hero for being willing to spend time with me.

When I’d meet another of her boyfriends, if they weren’t teasing me to my face, she’d tell me behind his back why he didn’t like me. Whenever we reconnected, she had to tell multiple stories in front of me about why I was a loser and she put up with me anyway. Most of our text exchanges involved sharing an update about a mutual connection with mean commentary. Frankly, when I’ve been my least kind, I was with her — I’m not blaming her, I have my own agency, but I find it interesting that I spent so much time with someone who brought out the worst in me.

But here’s the thing: she was also a lot of fun. She was smart and funny and charismatic and we had so many common interests above and beyond our history together. It can be easy when you enjoy someone so much to remember the highlights and forget the jabs. This is why it took me until my early 40s to realize: this person clearly doesn’t like me. Maybe if the definition chosen by my classmate was more specific, I might have seen the signs earlier.

So if, per chance, you are reading this and wondering what some of the signs are that someone is *not* your friend and doesn’t actually like you, I’ve identified these:

• They often identify as the person who is going to be really honest and “tell you like it is” or “put you in your place.”

• They’re chronically and egregiously late → to them, your time doesn’t matter.

• They know what you’re most sensitive about and instead of never bringing that topic up, they mock you for it.

• When you think about spending time with them, there’s a small pit in your stomach or you have to kind of find the energy to handle it → your body knows the truth.

• If my father is reading this, he’ll want me to add here: if people who love you tell you someone is not your friend, they’re probably not.

By way of contrast, when one of my dearest friends got married at a farm and I was standing by her as a bridesmaid, a rogue goat came up way too close and I was not subtle at all about my fear/concern/anxiety. I probably ruined many ceremony photos with just my face and posture. And yet she only brings it up if we’re around livestock. If she only teases me about that moment of complete failure when it’s relevant, why am I okay with someone constantly reminding me that no one wanted to date me in high school? I was a tall mathlete with an assertive personality at an all-girls school, I wasn’t expecting to have teenage boys flocking to me.

Middle age inspires a lot of reflection and list-making and auditing of what works and what doesn’t. You don’t have to be friends with everyone and you don’t have to break up a friendship or have a formal parting of the ways. You can simply allocate your time, thought, and other resources to be most aligned with the people who bring out the best in you.

If that’s not helpful enough, however, here are some great signs of the kinds of friends to keep:

• Your group chat is one of the first places you go with good and bad news

• You’ve actively thought about moving to be closer to one or more of them

• If you haven’t seen them regularly, you could go away for a weekend and not need any activities because you’d talk the whole time

• They remember the milestones that matter to you

• You would drop anything to help them and vice versa

I have been fortunate throughout my life to amass and retain wonderful friends but admit that now, in my 40s, with the combination of not either going to an office or having friends in activities that involve meeting other people, I have to cling tighter to the ones I already have. I’m glad I have though because I have somehow collected an incredible group of smart, funny, kind, helpful, and interesting people who treat me like someone they like.

That’s my new standard: it’s not about history or proximity or inside jokes. Simply asking “do they treat me like someone they like?” is the perfect filter and can save a lot of time and heartache.

My high school classmate figured that out at 17, and it only took me twenty-five years to catch up.

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So I am not and was not a figure skater. Instead, I am a very devoted fan of figure skating and, once every four years, the world cares too.

If you are not closely following the figure skating world, consider this a mini primer to get you HYPED for Milan this coming Friday. (Fun fact: once at a corporate training, I was called out for not “getting hype enough” which, to be fair, is what happens when the topic is harassment training and not Russian doping scandals).

This is heavily biased to just what I think is interesting but you did come to my Substack so hopefully that’s not a surprise.

Men’s Singles

There is really only one thing that matters and one thing to see: Ilia Malinin, who years ago picked the Instagram handle “quadg0d” and we all (or maybe just I) thought it was annoying, is, in fact, the Quad God. He is the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD who can land a quadruple axel (the axel is actually always an additional half revolution so it’s 4.5 rotations hence why it’s a big deal) and also likes to throw in a (now legal) backflip for good measure.

Apparently he is now teasing a quintuple jump that he might debut at the Olympics. I don’t even know if there is a scoring mechanism for quintuple jumps. His artistry isn’t going to blow you away but the showmanship is top notch and getting to watch a generational talent achieve feats no one else on the planet can is absolutely worth your time.

The assumption is that barring some kind of illness or injury, the gold medal is Ilia’s for the taking and the question is by how much. Across 2025 Grand Prix events, Malinin won by an average margin of close to 50 points.

Here’s a mini preview of Ilia — quad axel around 0:53:

Also of note in Men’s Singles is Maxim Naumov who lost both his parents (who also happened to be his coaches) in last year’s January plane crash that devastated the US figure skating community. His last conversation with his father was essentially “how are we going to get you to the Olympics next year?” He skates to Chopin and I cry the whole time.

Worth watching:

• Yuma Kagiyama from Japan who won silver in the 2022 Olympics and has some really strong quad jumps

• Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté from Spain who is a really creative performer

• Petr Gumennik who is from Russia but competing under a neutral flag is one of most competitive technically non-US/non-Japanese skaters

And while he retired, I still regularly rewatch Nathan Chen’s short program from last Olympics which just exuded everything I love in blending artistry and technical brilliance (and a French soundtrack/Vera Wang costume both of which put it over the top):

Ice Dancing

Usually Ice Dancing is listed fourth of the different events but it’s my favorite overall and deserves better billing. Thank goodness I don’t even need to make the full case on why Ice Dancing is the best because Netflix just released a fantastic three-part docuseries called “Glitter & Gold” that sums it all up (but in case you aren’t going to commit three hours to that and want the TL;DR - Ice Dancing features the highest quality ACTUAL skating and is more fun and artistic and without the throws of Pairs, has a lower risk of paralysis).

This year’s Ice Dancing event is going to be extra fun because all of the teams that made the podium at the last Olympics retired. Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the USA have been dominating internationally ever since (and placed 4th in Beijing). Madison is stunningly beautiful to watch and is from the same town we lived in in Michigan. Also she and Evan are married with two toy poodles — so we’re clearly very close to the same person. This is likely their last Olympics and they’re in it to win it having never won an individual medal before. Here’s a favorite past program with Madison as a snake/Evan as the snake charmer:

The docu-series introduces Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier from Canada as their biggest competition and they’ve always been known as the “quirky” team (hard to see why from their rhythm dance outfit in Beijing):

Piper and Paul are fun to watch but I’m not sure they’re really big time competition unless Chock and Bates have a really bad day.

Everyone thought this was in the bag for the USA until last year when… GUILLAUME CIZARON, WHO WON GOLD IN 2022, CAME OUT OF RETIREMENT WITH A NEW PARTNER. Cizaron and Papadakis set a world record for the highest ever score in a rhythm dance with this routine:

Often in Ice Dancing, it’s all about the female partner and the male team member is kind of… just there… but Guillaume is probably the most captivating male ice dancer I’ve ever seen in my life (and more so in the docuseries to be honest). Normally teams are together for a decade plus before winning at the Olympics but Guillaume and his new partner Laurence Fournier-Beaudry have been friends for years and are putting up some top numbers when they nail it.

Also of note: Cizaron/Fournier-Beaudry and Chock/Bates share coaches and work in the same training center and both have had MAJOR issues with costuming causing problems/errors in their work (which doesn’t sound dramatic when I write it but I swear it is — their respective skirts are essentially supporting cast members in the documentary).

My favorite ice dancers ever are Charlie White and Meryl Davis (would be a tie with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir but Charlie and Meryl lived near us in Michigan so we saw them occasionally which made me feel more closely bonded). The scoring was different in their era so there’s a bit more dance and a little less acrobatics but their short program to “My Fair Lady” remains a favorite:

Women’s Singles

Amber Glenn comes into the Olympics as the US National champion and can land a triple axel (3.5 rotations) which is not common in women’s skating – in fact, two of the weaker Japanese skaters do it but none of the other top contenders have triple axels in their programs at all. She has a lot of momentum and is a beautiful skater to watch. And she’s skating to Madonna. I loved her routine at Nationals and also love her devoted police officer father from Texas who tears up during her programs.

Using Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” seems to be creating more than the usual copyright challenges so apologies if this video has disappeared! I will try and replace.

However, I also have a soft spot for Alysa Liu who retired post-Beijing, and came back (but only if her coaches agreed to let it be fully on her terms) and then won the World Championships in 2025. Also, I only recently learned that in Beijing there were major concerns that the Chinese might be spying on her/her family and they had to be provided with extra security? Not sure, but will also say her devoted father is another favorite to watch in the stands (are skating dads the new Michael Phelps’ moms but without Chico’s sponsorships???)

Internationally, there’s major competition from the Japanese skaters especially Kaori Sakamoto who probably has the best raw skating skills in the field overall and is known to do well under pressure. However, she has no quads and no triple axel in her program. Among the “Russians,” the strongest performer is Adeliia Petrosian who can outscore others technically and has had some quad jumps in her rotation (although hasn’t been doing as much with some early 2025 injuries). If either Sakamoto or Petrosian skates clean, they’re considered more likely winners than any of the US skaters.

Italy has a very strong skater, Lara Naki Gutmann, who isn’t a major podium threat but it’s always fun to see an at-home skater with a legitimate shot get support!

Pairs

Honestly, I don’t like Pairs that much and don’t usually watch at all. I was going to watch when I found out Canada had a 42 year old woman who returned to the sport and was legitimately competitive but apparently they just withdrew yesterday due to injury.

Here’s a glimpse of what we could have seen though (and a celebration of a pretty incredible athlete to be able to get back into this kind of shape in her late 30s and be a World Champion at 40) — also worth a look at the Oscar de la Renta costume.

Otherwise, if you like Pairs and weren’t permanently scarred by a made-for-TV movie about Elena Berezhnaya’s horrible injury, you should know that supposedly there hasn’t really been a dominant team this season so anyone could win.

I welcome any figure skating commentary in comments and cannot wait for Friday. The only person in my life who cared at all about figure skating was my mother (who had a soft spot for Yuzuru Hanyu even if the Winnie the Pooh fetish creeped her out) and this will now be my second Olympics without her so thank you for letting me redirect the energy that would have gone into phone calls with her to this post.

Note: because of music and television rights, skating videos tend to go up and down with abandon. If one is missing, I will try to replace!

Truthfully, I don’t know how anyone is supposed to have a balanced/healthy nervous system when we are in a constant state of volatility and chaos societally. As a result, I’m pretty quick to redirect my time away from the crazy and into other worlds where I can see/experience higher levels of function… although when you start saying you’re seeing less chaos in “Celebrity Traitors” than the news, something is deeply wrong.

Here are some of the ways I’ve been distracting myself/staying cozy in January 2026:

Watching

As an elder millennial woman, I’m supposed to tell you “Heated Rivalry” and I actually did watch and really enjoy the first episode but haven’t finished it yet. Jeff’s traveling this week so I guess now’s the time. Instead, I’ve gone back to the one thing you can count on for quality and order: British crime dramas. Loving “Grantchester” which I, for reasons that are lost on me, never watched years ago when I should have. But also “Unforgotten” which is just a permanent reminder that Nicola Walker is a gift to us all. Her partner on the show, Sanjeev Bhaskar, was just on the last season of “Taskmaster” which is in my Hall of Fame for recommendations.

Only three episodes are out so far but “Bookish” from the BBC is a fabulous new period mystery written by (and starring) Mycroft Holmes from “Sherlock.” Also, “Celebrity Traitors UK” on Peacock blends fabulous personalities and national treasures from the UK (I mean… Celia Imrie and Stephen Fry?!) with Claudia Winkleman’s wardrobe and some of the worst performances from Faithfuls in the (short) history of the show (only the lightest of spoilers, I promise).

Reading

“Gourmet Magazine” is back and never have I been more grateful that Conde Nast dropped the ball on renewing its trademarks. There’s a sharper tone to this “Gourmet” that I’m very grateful for and while I heartily recommend reading their manifesto to get the vibe, I can’t stress enough that their first article on Gavin Newsom’s vineyards/restaurants is some of the best non-fiction writing (period) that I’ve read in the 2000s.

“The Gales of November” about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was a page turner and an amazing read. I have a long history of loving books about maritime history (I’m talking to you “The Wager” and “The Heart of the Sea”) but this was a decidedly different take: the dramatic part of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s voyage wasn’t multiple days/weeks/months as it had been in others so this was more a story about the people on the boat and the challenges of Great Lakes voyages: for example, I learned in the first chapter that the waves on the Great Lakes are more dangerous/chaotic than those in the ocean because there’s no salt weighing them down and that was the first of so many misconceptions to be addressed. Fabulous read that will break your heart and make you grateful for any safety you have in your life right now.

Making

It’s been a lot of NYT Cooking time but the most bang for the buck of late came from the Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma (buy real toum if you don’t know how to make it yourself instead of following their faux toum suggestions in the notes that involve just mixing garlic cloves into mayonnaise). This did make us miss Detroit area Middle Eastern food but was such a good/easy meal. Also while there were many cookies made for the holidays, these White Chocolate Macadamia Nut ones were the sleeper hit – not even normally my favorite kind of cookie but browning the butter with milk powder was genius and made a huge difference. They are higher maintenance than you’d expect but it’s all worth it.

Doing

In an attempt to increase my step count especially in the cold winter, I started what I’m calling “Walk & Talk & Walks” which is where I walk slowly while rewatching “The West Wing” and doing some light admin work on the computer. It makes me feel less insane for rewatching a series for the twelfth time.

Also yesterday, for the first time in my life, I began calling my elected officials (5 Calls makes it very easy for you) to share my thoughts on what’s happening right now and how little they’re doing to restore sanity. You can learn more about why calling is one of the better ways to have your voice heard here.

I’m planning on sharing some of my so-called bright spots a few times a year when I have enough good things to share to warrant a post.

As another preview, next week will be my once-every-four-years ramble on what you need to know about figure skating before the Winter Olympics. If you subscribed for my stories about navigating stepkids and in-laws and workplace drama, I promise we’ll be right back to regularly scheduled programming on February 9. Then again, if you like workplace drama, buckle up for the world of ice dancing…

Snickers from some of the English speakers nearby aside, I was saying this totally seriously. In this one moment in my life, I realized that I’d never heard a dog be given commands in any other language besides English and it never occurred to me that “sit,” “come,” and “lay down” weren’t just standard commands for all dogs. The point here is not to expose/immortalize my dumbest comment of the last 20 years or so. Neither is it to start a conversation about my one dog, Sam, who has learned zero words in any language, including his own name, such that the dog trainer refunded our money because “some dogs don’t learn.” Although, now I suppose that I have achieved both goals.

Rather, I think that experience sort of summed up for me what happens when you grow up with one full frame of reference and never realized that an alternative was even out there. When I pictured my family, I assumed I’d raise kids who wanted to cook with me — snapping the ends off of green beans like I did for my mom, or kids who loved musicals and singing along to, frankly anything, or even kids who read and wanted to discuss all my favorite books from growing up (among them “The Little House” series, “Pride and Prejudice,” all Hercule Poirot mysteries, and my beloved “Cheaper by the Dozen” which opens up conversations about historical Nantucket AND efficiency so is a real double whammy).

Up until that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that other kids didn’t necessarily have singalongs in the car with their family or read the whole “Little House” series multiple times (minus “Farmer Boy” which everyone knows is the worst). Like those French sheepdogs, I assumed these were shared experiences. Only once I moved to Michigan did I learn that for many, Bob Seger is the soundtrack of the summer when I assumed we were all listening to Bruce Springsteen.

In normal marriages, you blend traditions over time. But in a blended family, especially one with older children, the stepparent joins a fully formed organism with its own structures, norms, and traditions. You don’t get to blend as much as you get absorbed. And as you’d expect, she who is late to the party doesn’t get to pick the soundtrack. Instead, she has to attend a party where everyone else is happy with Radiohead and she prefers more toe-tapping and less anxiety-provoking. I don’t think Jeff has a single song with a gospel choir backing or a key change on any playlist.

It’s not simply musical taste but how people want to spend their time. I can’t stand horror movies because I can’t imagine not having nightmares later. I’m legitimately scared/grossed out/unable to even sit through them. The same goes for sci-fi. It’s just not my jam — I fell asleep during “Interstellar” and “Bladerunner” — the former in theaters, and the whole drive home listened to Middle go on about how it was the greatest movie he’d ever seen. In that environment, the right response is not “okay, but have you seen ‘Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit?’”

Not necessarily specific to my family, but likely more reflective of the generation overall, is the pendulum swing from time spent reading to time spent playing video games. We didn’t have video games in the house growing up so outside of some rounds of Super Mario Kart my freshman year of college, I have zero experience. And even if you generously gauge success by just keeping your little car on the track, I was still terrible at gaming.

At this point, Middle is fully addicted to video games and to keep the peace, I tried to say “hey, you like your thing, I like my thing,” (my thing being crossword puzzles). He responded by going on full attack explaining to me that crossword puzzles are very “RNG” and not “skill-based” – apparently RNG is short for “random number generator” and he was implying that the NYT crossword was driven by luck vs. skill or player strategy and I don’t know how I responded but I’m positive it was not with the most maturity.

In an attempt to not get stuck in conversations around “Nosferatu” or Steam libraries, I suggested to Jeff that he start a group chat for the kids for those topics. It’s been named “Weirdos” and, I understand, is focused on gaming, cats, scary movies, and noise metal music (which I guess is a thing). Even though the group chat was my idea — and it IS good, they should be close — every reference to it reminds me: I’m not a weirdo. I’m the outsider who suggested the insiders get their own channel.

I’ve had mini successes: “Little Shop of Horrors” was a hit with everyone and Youngest is all in on PBS Masterpiece period dramas (provided they have animals) and everyone has a new appreciation for fine dining.

The truth though is it’s not about being left out, it’s about realizing I never had a chance to influence. I wasn’t there when those tastes formed. I’m over here trying to explain the importance of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” and “Man in the Mirror” (focus on the message and not the artist in the latter) while they grew up having internalized that the most comforting sounds in the world are from Jeff’s favorite playlist that’s just sad women with guitars (or ukuleles).

Like French sheepdogs, we weren’t trained in the same language.

Which is fine. Life moves forward, not backwards. I’m not going to retroactively become the person who introduced them to Springsteen or musicals, and they’re not suddenly going to develop a passion for Agatha Christie. However culture is strange and circular — over Christmas I found out my teenage niece and nephew’s high school swim team has Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” on their hype playlist. So maybe in 15 years, I’ll get a call from Middle saying “hey, at the time, I was really focused on the bad visual effects, but you were right: ‘Hocus Pocus’ really is a powerful contemplation on stereotypical female roles.”

Or maybe not.

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I got promoted to manager six months ago and I’m completely disorganized. I have seven direct reports doing good work, but I can’t keep track of who’s doing what. My boss asks me questions in meetings and I’m desperately scrolling through Slack trying to piece together answers.

I’ve tried notebooks (can never find the info I need), apps (forget to check them), and spreadsheets (too time-consuming). Nothing sticks and everything’s always out of date. The result is I either forget to follow up entirely or I panic and start asking for updates too frequently, which makes me look like a micromanager.

I don’t want to be the boss who’s constantly checking in, but I also can’t keep showing up to meetings unprepared. My team is capable — I just need a system that actually works for keeping track of their projects without making everyone think I’m hovering.

How do I stay organized without driving everyone (including myself) crazy?

— Drowning in Denver

Hi Drowning,

Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you get promoted: your job completely changed, but your brain hasn’t caught up yet — and neither has everyone around you who may still see you in your old role. You’re still trying to know every detail of every project the way you knew your own work before you got promoted. Except now there are seven people’s worth of details, which is why you’re scrolling through Slack in meetings trying to remember who Richardson is while your boss waits for an answer.

This is not about organization; this is about change.

Your job isn’t to do seven people’s jobs. And it’s not to track seven people’s work. Your job is to make sure seven people’s work gets done. While that may sound similar, it’s completely different and the difference is why you feel like you’re failing.

The notebook, apps, and spreadsheet failed because you were trying to be a tracking system for your team on your own. You were shadowing seven people’s jobs, attempting to maintain a parallel version of their project lists, their timelines, their blockers, and their results. You’re not an actor in the play anymore, you’re the director, and to pretend otherwise is a recipe for chaos.

Here’s what actually works: stop tracking their work and start having them report it.

• Set up weekly check-ins with standard questions. 1:1s where everyone comes prepared to tell you: What did you finish? What are you working on? What’s blocked or at risk? What do you need from me? They track their own work while you track patterns, problems, and what needs your attention. Your 1:1 gets canceled/postponed? Ask them to email the update but standardize what information you need from them so everyone gets used to it.

• For high-stakes projects, ask for more. If something’s visible to your boss or time-sensitive, tell the project owner you need updates more frequently via Slack or email until it ships. You’re not micromanaging, handling escalated issues is your responsibility and this is where you should be comfortable getting more involved and asking for more information.

• Keep one “tracking” list: what needs your follow-up and what you’re waiting for. This is not about seven people’s projects but simply what do you really need to stay on top of. Things like: “Check with Robin on Thursday about the Richardson budget” or “Ask Taylor if they got the needed approval.” The stuff only you can do or need to know about.

When your boss asks about Richardson in a meeting, the right answer is probably a version of “We’re on track for next Friday’s deadline, but let me confirm the latest with Robin and get back to you.” You don’t need real-time knowledge of every detail but you do need to know enough to spot patterns and problems and know who to ask for more.

The hard part is getting comfortable not knowing everything. You got promoted because you were good at your job, which meant knowing your work inside and out. Now you have to trust seven people to know their work inside and out while you know just enough to make sure it’s all moving forward.

That trust gets easier with reps. The first time you say “I’ll check with my team and get back to you” you’ll feel like you did something wrong and you should know already. The tenth time, however, when you realize your team always comes through with good information, it feels like real leadership. This kind of behavior change will not only keep you sane, you’ll earn more respect from your team and your boss.

You’ve got this. Stop trying to be seven people’s understudy and start saying “Action!”

Step up, not in,

Karen

About Mess of the Moment

Mess of the Moment is an advice column for people navigating situations that don’t come with a playbook, including blended families, workplace dynamics, complex extended families, and other relationships where the “right answer” isn’t obvious. Got a question? I can’t promise I’ll have the answer, but I can promise I’ve probably stepped in something similar.

Submit your questions anonymously at this link or less anonymously via motm@karendoak.com. Questions may be edited for length and clarity, but the mess stays intact.

The thing is, “the process” is rarely one that allows for really meaningful performance feedback. And often the mandatory HR training sessions focus on clarifying that “meeting expectations means doing a GREAT job because our expectations are so high” — only for you to learn two months later that “meeting expectations” doesn’t qualify for a raise.

“Words of affirmation” is my love language so you’d think that I’d love the performance review process (and, frankly, you’d probably also think I’d avoid posting on the internet where an open comment section doesn’t lend itself to them). However, when I think back to various performance reviews, very few have really made me a better or more informed employee/manager.

Even among my favorite bosses, the most helpful guidance/feedback I received was outside of performance reviews. And having been a manager, I get that too: first, feedback should be a real-time process if you’re interested in seeing changes, and second, I don’t deliver my most insightful and personal work when cranking out nine reviews in three business days (on top of my actual work and meeting load).

In contrast, among my least favorite bosses, the most memorable feedback did come during performance reviews – including my personal favorite “82% of our customers are women and women are more emotional than men so you need to do a better job of getting them in line since you’re a woman too.” Outside of the brazen misogyny, it’s worth noting that we had no available data on what percentage of our customers were men or women so that one killed four birds with one stone when it was simultaneously offensive to our customers, offensive to me, offensive to my entire gender, and also, inaccurate.

I’ve actually found 360 feedback/peer or customer reviews to be highly valuable but often underutilized – especially at smaller companies with less established processes. I still think fondly of a co-worker in my very first job who told her VP that she wanted her direct manager’s feedback kept separately from everything else in her review because she had so little respect for her direct manager’s opinion. That boundary setting queen is now a psychologist.

Unfortunately, opting out of the system/process is not an option (or at least not an option if you’re interested in maintaining employment) so I guess this “survival guide” is more about how to get something out of the performance review process even if that something isn’t additional money, responsibility or respect.

First, you should be tracking your wins.

And if you didn’t last year, you should start now. My grandfather liked to say “you gotta look out for #1 kid, and you know who #1 is?” Correct answer: it’s you. (Side note: this site is turning into a lot of regurgitated advice from my parents/grandparents, but the positive of that is it means my Dad really loves everything I’m writing these days).

The point is that your boss is not actively maintaining a list of every accomplishment you have, and if they were, it would likely be missing the things you keep off their desk. The easiest promotion I ever secured for someone was when they proactively made the case with a PowerPoint showing all the business they’d brought in. Not only did that make it easy for me to advocate to my boss, it made me WANT to fight for them. My justice complex kicks into high gear and I’m like “wait, you’re still operating at X level when you’ve done this much?!?! You deserve more!”

Some of us are in roles where wins don’t feel like wins – once when my mother asked me to explain my job in Customer Success to her I told her “I just apologize to people all day” – so it’s important to be expansive in your definition of a win. I recommend tracking:

• Quantifiable wins – actual data you have on successes whether tied to revenue earned, customers retained, feedback scores, engagement scores, other key metrics

• Qualitative feedback – save quotes/emails from people just saying you’re great with their name/role/why

• Risks Addressed/Critical Output – sometimes you work really hard and you don’t get the win but the result is a new process that can benefit others. Often, I staffed my most talented people on the hardest accounts and there were still great takeaways even if the customer churned because they had to address so many random points of friction in an attempt to save the customer that it helped the organization overall

Start a spreadsheet today. Create spaces to track the above. Put a recurring note on your calendar every 1-2 weeks to track everything. When next year’s self-evaluation comes around, it will write itself. Outside of performance reviews, you’re ready at any moment with data points and testimonials on your own impact which will help you get a new job, an internal promotion, or advance other career goals

Second, you have to play the game to some level.

Being asked to retrofit your accomplishments into some kind of ridiculous company value framework is often an exercise in absurdity. I may bring “Customer Obsession” to my job every day but that’s easy in a customer-facing role and a lot harder for others. Even more challenging are some of the vague corporate values like “Curiosity,” “Heart,” and “Innovation.” The great news though, is that your boss is also likely struggling with the same framework so I think it’s easier to write a cursory intro sentence and just find select accomplishments you wanted to highlight regardless.

Examples:

What you did: “I managed the website redesign project”

Corporate mythology edit: “Demonstrated curiosity by challenging initial assumptions about user needs, leading cross-functional discovery that reshaped our approach to the Q3 website redesign and increased conversion by 15%”

What you did: “I retained many customers previously thought to be at risk by addressing support response times.”

Corporate mythology edit: “Showed heart as an individual and a teammate by committing to reducing support response time and quality leading to 45% of at risk customers renewing”

The other part of playing the game is being comfortable bragging even if you’re not. Channel the guy who is constantly posting on LinkedIn about hustle culture and ask yourself how he’d frame/position your work.

I’m not saying lie or misrepresent, but I do think that sometimes in the day to day, especially if you’re already discouraged about your job/the state of the world/whatever, it’s easy to not want to see small glimmers of success. You may not have finished the puzzle but if you helped get more pieces together, that’s worthy of recognition.

Third, beware of the traps.

At some point, you’re asked to include your areas of opportunity, areas for growth, or — dare I say it — weaknesses. I’ve heard of toxic workplaces where these can be used against you and at the same time, not acknowledging you have room for growth is a red flag too (unless, of course, you’re overdue for a promotion and just noting that your biggest area of opportunity is to take on a new role!”).

My advice is to talk to your manager while you’re drafting and get a pulse check on how they see that question – is it for future development areas or a place to reflect on what hasn’t worked well?

Example: “So for areas of opportunity, I was going to highlight my desire to improve at public speaking, but wasn’t sure if there were other things you’d like me to include or reflect on in the process.”

Unless you had some egregious issue that was worked past, I wouldn’t call out legitimate mistakes unnecessarily and in all cases would frame as “I’m working on X” vs. “I failed at Y.”

Fourth, make this about you.

I think if you’re able to take a moment to really reflect on yourself, your work, your areas of growth, and your vision for the future, you will likely get more out of that exercise than the rest of the review process. This isn’t to say that if you put more into your self-reflection you will get a better review. However, if you really use this time to self-reflect on what you’ve achieved (and celebrate it) and think about what you want next (and plan for it), you’ll at least exit the process with something that’s a net positive to you.

This is also where AI becomes a trap. Sure, it’s tempting to feed your year into ChatGPT and let it spit out a polished self-evaluation. And I’m sure many, if not most, people are doing exactly that. But using AI entirely (versus just punching up some examples into corporate speak) removes your greatest opportunity: the luxury of actually thinking about yourself and your work.

Some questions worth asking, regardless of the corporate framework, are:

• When did you feel most proud this year?

• What projects/programs/people gave you the most energy?

• What projects/programs/people took energy from you?

• If nothing at all changed about your job next year, how would you feel?

• Where are you stuck and why?

• What would make you proud to write about in next year’s review?

Draft this review as a separate document that you cross-link to your win sheet (and if you update it each year and can see the changes, even better!) It can then serve as a master document for you to pull from and put whatever is relevant to the company’s framework into their system.

You are the creator of your own career narrative whether at your current organization or elsewhere so using this time as an excuse to think, reflect, dream, and take meaningful action forward is the only way to make this process truly work for you.

Like my grandfather said, “you’ve got to look out for #1, kid, and do you know who #1 is?”

It’s you.

The experience is actually most like staring at a map at the mall with a bright red “you are here” arrow (here, being, in my house) and nothing but options in all kinds of directions and the metaphorical shopper you’re standing next to kind of mumbles “maybe I’ll go to the food court… or Claire’s” but those two places are in opposite directions and also Claire’s filed for bankruptcy so is that really the right direction to head in? And you also know what they really need is actually at The Gap but they’re focused on food or accessories and you’re like… “no you just need some practical pants… what are you doing???”

Not that I’ve thought about it that much and/or had actual nightmares with that scene playing on repeat while able to actually smell the “butter” from a nearby Auntie Anne’s.

I digress.

It’s not just me and it’s not just my kids (or this kid in particular). I recently had lunch with fellow parents of a college senior who are also watching inertia affect their child in real time: our respective objects at rest stay at rest even when we’d very much like them to be in motion. The line between encouraging and enabling a college senior is a blurry one: you don’t want to enable, you want to gently push. You cannot force action but you also very much do not want a recent college graduate living in your home 2-3 months after graduating with no plan (see: tales of the couch vampire).

Since I’m me, I want so badly to make a check list and give super clear guidance but I know I can’t and, if I did, I know it would only make things worse.

My mother, courtesy of her mother, used to say there were two kinds of people in the world: “do-ers” and “be-ers.” The implication was clear: you want to be a do-er. You don’t want to just “be.” Do-ers take action, they own their destiny, they seize control. Be-ers… I don’t even know. It wasn’t discussed. After all, Nike doesn’t tell you to “just be it.” The point was that I needed to be a do-er and, to this day, I try to be one. In my worst moments, I become a be-er, which only reminds me, again, that the optimum choice is to be a do-er.

Step-parenting is the ultimate reality check for a do-er because you rarely get to “do” anything. You get things done to you. For years, so many decisions in my life were made for me based on Jeff’s ex — ranging from little things like custody swaps because of a change in plans to really large things that had a major impact on my life. Once, she asked for an advance on child support out of the formal court payment system and promised to report it so the court would know. Jeff said yes. She refused to confirm she’d been paid and the whole time we spent proving our case to the state of Michigan, Jeff couldn’t get a passport. My entire honeymoon was postponed 18 months because Jeff did her a favor.

In some ways, she did me a favor by setting the bar low early on and showing me how little control I actually had.

Outside of his dealing with his ex, just being a tertiary parental figure automatically moves you from “do” to “be.” I can see what needs to happen, I can propose ideas or solutions to Jeff, but ultimately he makes the call and/or he has the conversation. This isn’t necessarily a problem to fix or an issue I have, just a fact due to the role in question.

All of my experience step-parenting, however, has been amazing practice for having older kids who are fully out of the house. (Obviously, no complaints about that part, since it is, after all, the goal). But the updates you get are incomplete, the attempts to get more information get left on read, and the interest in your feedback, as helpful as it could be, is nil.

We saw it manifest differently with all three kids. Oldest moved across the country and was extremely self-sufficient so she shared very little in the first place. At some point we stopped putting our Oliver Twist hands out begging for crumbs of info and just accepted whatever was handed to us. Middle only wants help when everything falls apart but not before that point (even if you can see clearly things are headed downhill). And after you help, he counts things as resolved so you’re once again cut out of the loop even if there’s still a ways to go. Youngest has a new idea she’s incredibly passionate about every month or two and they rarely stick but you can’t point that out because “this time it’s different” (and to be fair, sometimes it is!).

These are all pretty age-appropriate/personality-specific ways to handle it so obviously the problem, once again, is me; specifically because I am not good at “being” and it’s very hard for me. I was conditioned that way early on but even if the whole “do-ers” vs. “be-ers” dichotomy hadn’t been explained to me I was still raised by the ultimate “do-er” who, if anything, was overly eager to help. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as my niece starts the college search process and I can just picture my mother trying to be laid back but not being able to help herself from jumping in and giving (likely very good but probably unwanted) guidance.

I know exactly what she looked like in the moments before she leapt in with an (again, often very good but unwanted) idea — almost like she was rocking back and forth holding her own brilliance in before it exploded outward. I know this feeling well because I have it myself and my own lack of poker face has betrayed it many many times.

I even bought one of those self-help books about letting go (you know the ones with the confident declarative title that promises if you just stop trying to control everything, peace will appear on your doorstep). Outside of more than one example of what not to do sounding like a summary of something I’d already done, reading it mostly made me realize I’m so much of a do-er that I bought a book to teach me how to not do things.

For the New Year, I ended up setting goals to “work on my own mindset around control” and “develop appropriately supportive relationships with all kids.” Yes, they are SMART goals (fine, mostly, I just need to figure out how to measure them). But the reality is I have to “do” something even if that action is learning how to… just “be.”

Can I “just be” in my house with a college senior trying to not put on pressure but knowing once she’s back at school, absolutely nothing at all will happen so this is my window? Can I sit back and stay quiet? Is sitting back and staying quiet wisdom or surrender?

I’m not sure but I suppose if I bite my tongue hard enough the rest of this month it’ll be hard to speak when I stop being able to hold it. At some point when you’re trapped at the mall, you just head in one direction and turn around when you realize it’s not right.

Or when you end up by a Bath & Body Works and the smell of Juniper Breeze makes you nauseous.

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Whether genetic or hard-coded from the call and response, I inherited the same aversion. Repeat problems drive me absolutely insane. They’re, at best, a warning sign that something might be broken in the system and, at worst, recurring trauma and proof of inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

This is why I’ve become a bit of a connoisseur of a particular kind of repeat problem: the energy vampire. Not the one-time crisis that drains you but the recurring presence of a person or situation that shows up daily, weekly, or seasonally and siphons off all your energy with the same dynamic, over and over, with no solution in sight.

Over the years, I’ve identified three distinct species:

The Mood Vampire

We just returned from Christmas vacation where I had the chance to interact with the Mood Vampire again: the person whose negativity and frozen miserable face drags everyone down. In this case, it’s Middle who becomes the Mood Vampire whenever their blood sugar is low (but also is rarely hungry) so we usually are navigating this energy vampire into the early afternoon. Come 2 or 3 PM, he’s a delight. Prior to that, he just radiates misery.

It happens every day, it’s completely predictable, and it’s totally unfixable. “Just get him some food” you might say. But even after buying a $16 breakfast sandwich at a fancy resort, he’ll take two bites slowly, not speak to anyone, and complain when two hours later, the sandwich is cold. The Mood Vampire might be temporary but those early moments of interaction (or lack thereof) are brutal.

The Couch Vampire

My college had Winter Study, a January term where we studied fun, non-academic, but extremely useful things like Spanish cooking and humor writing. What I didn’t appreciate was that it was a gift to my parents, who paid tens of thousands of dollars for me to actually be on campus. Youngest, on the other hand, has a seven-to-eight-week winter break.

I love having my kids home for the holidays but once the holidays wrap and we head into the long dark days of winter, the dynamics have historically been tedious. Jeff and I would go back to work and our regular routines and Youngest typically settled into her January routine which involved sitting in one spot on the couch all day either watching something on her phone or playing on her Switch. Technically it wasn’t all day because her day started after lunch. But, like a bear hibernates in a cave and slows down all body functions to conserve energy, that’s what the Couch Vampire practiced right in front of us. In my usual sofa spot.

When Youngest was 15 or 16, on the emotional roller coaster that is adolescence, it felt like negativity emanated from her and I saw any kind of positivity or potential disappear into the couch cushions for 49 days. Worse still, she always set up camp in my spot on the couch, vacating it for dinner but the warm indent served as a reminder of someone else’s wasted hours and the only solution was for school to start again: a repeat problem for which I could do nothing to change things.

This year is Youngest’s last college winter break and supposedly she will be spending the month of January working on her thesis and finding a job so we’ll see if maturation and the circle of life kills this vampire like a wooden stake.

The Vibes Vampire

Often spotted in the workplace, the Vibes Vampire is especially dangerous because what starts as solidarity in a chaotic and frustrating work environment evolves to toxicity that you’re caught up in, perpetuating, and exacerbating. Early on, you’re bonding over your shared misery. Sending a side text after your boss says something completely ludicrous or making eyes during an unnecessary meeting. This kind of commiseration is important to make you feel less alone or crazy in an environment that’s otherwise draining.

Over time, however, you see that whenever you spot signs of improvement, the Vibes Vampire tells you they won’t last. When you offer solutions, they don’t want them, and when you encourage them to speak up, they say there’s no point. You realize that the Vibes Vampire actually feeds off the toxicity. They’re attached to the complaint and that’s what’s giving them energy to survive when you’re feeling more negative and worn down. It’s the same complaint, again and again.

To be fair, often this person is not wrong. But at the same time, they’re usually not helpful. Even if the environment is beyond repair, engaging with them means you carry that perpetual negativity home with you. The very same thing that made you feel supported and not crazy now just makes you feel bad. And, if you’re a hater of repeat problems, it makes you feel guilty for being part of it.

Honestly, I should hate the Vibes Vampire. Same complaint, different day, forever. A repeat problem in human form. And yet I kept responding to their Slacks. Just like I kept thinking Middle might wake up in a good mood or that Youngest might suddenly want to do something active for an afternoon. In all cases, it’s a trap.

When you’re raised to loathe, identify, solve, and move on from repeat problems, being surrounded by people who ARE repeat problems becomes your problem.

Ultimately, I should know better. The question of “What don’t I like? Repeat problems” isn’t instructing me to not be a repeat problem or to solve them for others, but to ignore and not give fuel to those creating them. I can literally identify all of these Vampires in the wild so either I will learn to avoid for whatever period of time the vampires are out (until 2 PM/for seven weeks/until I leave the job) OR I will stop being part of the repeat problem myself. I’m the one who keeps engaging when I know it’s hopeless.

Middle is back in their own world so I don’t have to engage. Youngest promises this winter will be different. And I’m no longer at that job so now I only text ex-coworkers about fun things.

That’s how I’m protecting my energy as I head into the new year.

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