I am so many things but sloppy and unprofessional, I am not. I’m the one who gets gold stars and thrives on praise and has, occasionally, been criticized for being so professional it can seem “cold” or “harsh” or whatever business-appropriate word is used instead of “bitchy.”

I already knew I was working for a micromanager but bullet-gate pushed me over the edge. Fortunately, I already had a fair amount of experience ceding control and not getting positive feedback since I’ve been a stepmom for over a decade — when someone tells you KFC has better mashed potatoes even though you are confident whoever is heating them up couldn’t tell a rustic mash from a pomme purée, you get a reality check quickly.

At work, the stakes can vary — sure, it’s just bullets and your self-esteem one day, but the next it’s being told the only time someone can meet is on a Sunday at 2 PM. Or that the only way a meeting can be handled is by doing a day trip to Dallas: three people, eleven hours of travel each, close to three thousand dollars, for a one-hour meeting that a tech failure forced remote anyway.

My husband’s ex ran all the same plays. We once needed a critical form signed, and she kept changing the terms: first it was adjusting custody weekends, then buying another kid a hamster to “make them feel better,” then just outright cash. Which — as I’m writing this — I realize is less “shifting standards” than extortion, but you get the gist.

Jeff’s ex loved to play these games and ultimately everyone suffered for it: holding out on agreeing to a vacation when she had no alternate plans or refusing to sign forms or make things official with the Friend of the Court. We once advanced her alimony/child support outside of the computer system as a favor and she agreed in writing to let them know and then refused to do so for so long that the state placed a hold that prevented Jeff from getting a passport (which prevented us from taking a real honeymoon). I don’t think she knew about the passport repercussions but I do think she took some pleasure in inconveniencing us.

I’ve always preferred to sit in the driver’s seat, and the constant loss of control both at work and at home wears me down. But if I’m truly honest, part of the pattern is me. I’m the one who, the second I’m dealing with a controlling person, starts auditioning for approval — still convinced there’s something I can do to finally earn my clearly deserved gold star.

I’ve turned to my own small acts of resistance. Not to change the micromanagers and narcissists and controlling people in my life — I’ve mostly accepted I can’t — but to stop competing for approval that was never coming. And today, on Bastille Day, I’m celebrating my own quiet revolution.

I can leave the bullets exactly as they were.

I can adjust my availability on work platforms so I can’t be reached outside of business hours.

I can ask about the extortion hamster often just to realize the kid didn’t even want a hamster and is now stuck with one.

Honestly, I can buy my own gold stars.

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It’s kind of fascinating that while the standard dog names have stayed relatively constant and cut from a similar cloth (largely because simple names are easy for most dogs to learn — except, of course, my dog Sam who still doesn’t know his name at 12), human names have evolved dramatically as parents seek more unique names to set their kids apart. If you really want the full range, I highly recommend the tragedeigh subreddit where people share the most bizarre name choices. For example, someone shared a text thread with a friend who said she was naming her son Equador and didn’t know about Ecuador the country, she just thought “it fits the vibe.”

Our names carry weight which I, as someone named Karen, think about often. Most of the time I think about how a name could invite teasing or mockery — but names that are adjectives or carry real meaning are doing something different. Those names arrive with a promise. We might assume someone named Grace has some grace or see a Valor as brave. We extend Sincere the benefit of the doubt before he opens his mouth.

We absolutely should not.

This season of “Love Island USA” is wrapping up soon and, to be fair, it hasn’t lived up to the bar set by “Love Island UK” and, specifically, Lorenzo (a.k.a. the blend of JFK, Jr and Carlos Sainz, Jr I didn’t know I needed on this planet). However, watching 23-year-olds wearing bikinis all day and explaining where New Hampshire is to people somehow makes summer feel like summer. Early on, we were treated to the coupling of Melanie and Sincere who bonded over being Eagles fans and “being family oriented” and Rita’s water ice.

Sincere established himself as one of the core guys in the villa, had a brotherly relationship with a couple of the girls, and told us that “acts of service” was his love language and it’s important to him to be “vulnerable.” He spoke about being raised by a single mother and grandmother and being the oldest of five children and he seemed… sincere.

I’ll spare the play-by-play but his actions were anything but that and when he had the opportunity to flirt with other women, he did. Using the same moves, he taught other women their names in sign language and used the same pet names and absolutely led every woman he sat with to think he was still “exploring,” while telling Melanie she was special. He had most of the villa fooled but then everyone sat in uncomfortable silence while production made them watch footage of him being so insincere. Everyone was shocked, but his name had been doing his PR for him with others extending the benefit of the doubt for something he hadn’t earned.

If I sound bitter, as someone named Karen, I am. Sincere gets to start every exchange with a point on the scoreboard and I start in the hole. Most of the time, I’m confident my side part bob I’ve been sporting since 2nd grade and self-deprecating sense of humor deflects the “Karen” label, but on the occasion when I do have an issue, I question the best way to handle to avoid the “entitled white woman demanding to speak to the manager” vibe. Naturally, I regularly regret not doubling down on Kari as a nickname.

Recently, we had a special family dinner planned. We were on vacation and had three days together as just the five of us (something that hasn’t happened in years) and wanted to toast both Jeff for Father’s Day and Youngest for graduating college. We booked a reservation at the most expensive restaurant in a very expensive place where you take a boat ride and it’s very special and kind of magical and while you’re paying way too much for all of it, it’s almost always worth it. I’ve had a chance to go every other year or so and celebrate some big milestones and have always taken the boat ride back at sunset with a smile on my face.

This time, however, the boat ride was canceled due to weather. Not a problem, no one wanted to be on a boat in the rain. I confirmed twice that they’d be able to accommodate a vegan, only to arrive and learn the waiter had no knowledge of the request and repeatedly confused vegan and vegetarian. We asked for tap water but ended up forced into $15 bottled water, which we drank quickly because we went an entire course with empty glasses and no one asking if we needed anything to drink.

Some kind of leak sprang near the door that we were seated next to and rain started pouring down. It was bad enough that two different restaurant employees came by to take pictures of the leak and only one noticed it was splashing on me and into my purse so I had to put a coat on and dry my wallet with my napkin. That one said “I hope you’re not getting wet,” and I replied “actually I am” and then he just walked away and never came back.

I ended the evening wet and pretty disappointed that we had wasted $1000. When the Resy feedback form came, I shared the experience and said I assumed if they didn’t know how to accommodate a vegan meal they would have told me so when I checked and that overall the evening felt like we were inconveniencing them and not like we had a reservation for a special celebration.

No reply. Which I suppose was consistent with the experience we had in person.

Unlike Sincere, I start most exchanges on my back foot. I experience it here on Substack where the minute someone doesn’t like something I write the comments go “and of course your name’s Karen.” I can’t fix or change a cultural movement.

I’m behind on Love Island so I’m not sure how Sincere is faring, but I’m sure he’s continuing to be “vulnerable” and “take accountability” and if he does leave with a relationship, it will last as long as his influencer brand deals do. And in a few years, he’ll once again be able to coast on his name for his reputation and not his behavior over six filmed weeks in Fiji.

Meanwhile, I will continue to debate whether I speak up at all. The Resy form going into the void isn’t really an oversight. “Karen complained” is cheaper and easier to swallow than “we’re sorry.”

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Yesterday while playing with our kids, there was a moment when Middle should have frozen me — I was winning by the most and there was no point in freezing anyone else — and he chose to freeze his dad.

When asked why, he had no real answer, but I realized it’s because I’m the scary one. Jeff is the nice one and the familiar one and their real dad and I’m the intimidating one whether it’s said or not.

I don’t remember when I was first called intimidating. I know a friend’s babysitter mentioned it (and my friend decided to tell me) when I was in 8th or 9th grade but I’m sure it came up earlier. It absolutely came up in high school where, courtesy of going to an all-girls’ school, I was rejected for the winter formal by one boy from the boys’ school for being both tall AND intimidating. It’s certainly come up in several workplaces.

Occasionally, people choose other words or descriptors that are intimidating-coded. Most often “intense” but sometimes “tightly wound.” The combo of being tall, having a “severe” face (per my mother, who also told me when I wore my hair back I looked like a “scary German real estate agent” – one of many times my mother introduced a comparison to something I doubted she’d ever encountered personally). A work mentor told me to wear navy over black and knits over suits to try and seem more approachable. Finding out in my late 20s I have some natural curl in my hair was a gift: curly-haired me is way less intimidating than severe-German-real-estate-agent me.

The thing is that describing someone as “intimidating,” is never actually describing them, it’s describing someone else’s experience of them but delivering it as a problem they need to fix or a character flaw. It’s a projection that’s dressed up as an observation. It tells you nothing about the person being described and everything about the person doing the describing. “Too tall” is the tell since height is not a personality trait; tall people take up more visual space and visual space can be a proxy for overall presence.

I’ve had “intimidating” be used as an attempted compliment — as in “you’re so smart and assertive, it’s very intimidating to people.” The word gets deployed at women specifically in contexts where the same behavior in a man would get labeled “confident” or “direct.”

It’s come up enough I wonder whether it’s innate or changeable at all; should I be trying to be less “intimidating?” I know I can’t be all the time; I certainly can’t imagine surviving as a day camp counselor if the children were fleeing from my presence. So it must be situational, which then begs the question: why is the burden on me to carry? Why do I have to change who I am, what I wear, how I do my hair, to make someone else feel differently?

My thumb actually stopped scrolling on Instagram when I came across an inspirational quote graphic that read “Am I intimidating or are you intimidated?” This quote was shared with no attribution and then when I tried to find an originator, I came up dry but did appreciate the Gemini summary at the top of the page saying “As an AI, I am incapable of feeling intimidated. My primary job is to process information and assist you.”

I saw thousands of women loving it and sharing it with various emojis like 💯 and 🙌 . As cheesy as it was, I felt something shift. Thirty-plus years of other people’s discomfort, and it had never once occurred to me that it wasn’t mine to manage.

Maybe it’s theirs to carry. Maybe the question was never about me at all.

Going back to Flip 7, Middle chose to freeze his father because freezing me carried more risk. I won that game.

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“Do you use your mouth a lot?” the dentist asked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Like would you say you talk more than most people?”

“Without a doubt.” As I’m saying this, I’m realizing the dentist’s office is really one of the very few places where I talk very little but no one else who has met me more than once would even need to ask.

Gum graft recovery supposedly involved 48 hours of no talking, and 3-6 weeks of modified diet with a focus on soft foods. Both of these are actual torture for me since so much of life revolves around food, cooking, and eating, with a strong textural preference for “crunchy” over “denture-safe.” The result was weeks of me complaining nonstop (mostly to Jeff but also anyone who asked how I was). I found myself negotiating with ChatGPT trying to sell it on why I could put crushed Gavottes on top of my ice cream provided I directed to the back of my mouth to chew only for ChatGPT to say “don’t let a wafer cookie be the thing that complicates a smooth recovery.”

That’s actually the thing with lightweight medical drama: you find yourself negotiating what’s possible because nothing’s going to kill you, it’s just going to be annoying, costly in terms of money, costly in terms of time, potentially costly in terms of dignity.

As someone who probably was made for the Victorian era in terms of health and fortitude, I faint easily. I’ve fainted getting a pedicure, during and after multiple meals, on an airplane, at a conference, out of surprise when I fell down the stairs, while just sitting waiting for a work call to start, and getting my blood drawn. When you have “the common faints” (the actual term an actual cardiologist who is not related to me used), there is no treatment or workaround. The official medical guidance from the same cardiologist was “if you think you’re going to faint, sit down.” Just an annoyance.

There are some tricks: I can use vagal syncope as justification for a heavy hand with salt. I can calm down before any blood draw by repeating out loud “I am a grown up and this is just a needle” (something I have done now for well over a decade and not fainted once since starting). Again, if any medical “condition” is managed by reciting a mantra or sitting down, I’m not in any kind of delusional state about the severity, but when life already has enough basic stressors, one more thing is just one thing too many.

Not to mention, knowing nothing is that serious yourself doesn’t change the impact on those around you. A former coworker/dear friend, Rachel, has now been with me TWICE when I’ve fainted at dinner and she’s the one holding ice on my neck and making sure I get home and explaining to people there’s no need to call an ambulance. Last week when I fainted at a restaurant, I’m doubled over and green while instructing Jeff “make sure they know I’m not drunk, just a loser.” As mostly non-serious as my common faints are, it’s still scary to pass out in a public place.

I know how this sounds. My mother managed stage IV cancer for nine years, so I’m not confused about where soft food and fainting at dinner rank against actual disease. But knowing the ranking doesn’t change what it feels like when you’re already stretched thin and one more thing lands on the pile. My mother, of all people, would have gotten that. She’d have called fainting at a restaurant mortifying and meant it, without it costing her anything to also be the one with the real diagnosis.

Ten days before Thanksgiving last year, I threw my back out putting a laundry basket on the ground — because that’s just what life is like in your 40s — and was immediately in a panic. Thanksgiving is my Super Bowl (see above re: food, cooking, and eating) and now I couldn’t really cook. I found myself super committed to rehabbing with just that one goal in mind: what did I need to do to make sure I’d be able to make my 16-separate-recipe / four-days-to-prepare meal? All the annoyance while lying on my back with my legs at a 90-degree angle had a single goal: I wasn’t rehabbing to reduce pain but rather to improve oven access.

Great news: I made it. Sixteen recipes, four days, a back that still complained about it but did the job anyway, and the ability to ask Jeff for help during peak oven traffic time. That’s the thing about inconveniences: they have edges. You can see the other side of them, which is its own kind of permission to be annoyed and dramatic on the way there. I’d like to think nobody at that table knew what it took to get the turkey out of the oven, except that since I talk so much that it’s led to gum recession, I was certainly not quiet on this topic.

While I’m sure I was supposed to learn a powerful lesson about gratitude for mobility and health when I have it, I mostly learned when/how to put a laundry basket down safely.

I’m still a baby about pain. I still talk myself through blood draws like a hostage negotiator working my own case. But I’ve stopped thinking of the narrating and the doing as two different things. The narrating might just be how I do it.

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For decades, I’ve been worried about rats in plumbing. Rats who are smart enough and wily enough to live in sewers and crawl up pipes. Rats with blueprints of modern housing who’ve figured out the infrastructure and decided to use it against us. My husband thinks this is insane and does the same condescending laugh when I bring up rats in toilets that he does when I confuse “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” or Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard (the latter largely for comedic effect and not because I truly thought “Stairway to Heaven” and “Pour Some Sugar On Me” came from the same minds — although full disclosure, I did just google “did Led Zeppelin write Stairway to Heaven?” to be sure).

He is wrong to laugh, and I am regularly able to produce articles from reputable sources (as well as the “Daily Mail”) confirming that this is not only possible but has happened to real people who also did not deserve it. My friend’s plumber confirmed: under the correct circumstances (specifically a crack in the sewer line plus heavy rain plus the absence or dislodgment of a backflow valve), then it absolutely can happen.

The thing about rats, though, is that some people love them. On purpose and by choice. Rat people are a whole category — people who looked at the full menu of domesticated animals and said, actually, I’ll have the rat. I get the logic, sort of. Rats are smart, demonstrably smart, in ways that other common pets are not. When Youngest was lobbying for a pet some years ago, the rat was her opening offer, citing their intelligence as the primary argument. I did not find this as persuasive as the shorter lifespan but I understood the case.

Ferret people are a related genus. If you know someone who owns a ferret, you already know this, because they’ve told you. Ferret ownership is not a private matter, it’s a visible and/or vocal personality trait. I don’t fully understand ferret people either, but I have a grudging respect for anyone who has identified what they want and committed to it, as well as deep personal empathy for anyone (human or otherwise) with a long torso.

The thing that bothers me is not the rat people or the ferret people. It’s the rest of us who have spent decades assigning animals jobs they never agreed to, and then acting surprised when they fail to perform (there’s a tangent to be made about my kids and chores here too but I promised myself I’d stay on topic today).

The goldfish teaches early responsibility and low level home decor. The hamster teaches the circle of life as well as an understanding that nocturnal activity from those around you negatively impacts sleep. I have learned a lot of life lessons about betta fish — seven of which lasted a combined total of three years when I was in my 30s and who are now forbidden in our home by Jeff who had to play Dr. Kevorkian more than once to a $4 fish with dropsy. And the hermit crab, at least in southeastern Pennsylvania in the late eighties and early nineties, was the starter pet. Starter for what, exactly, was never clear.

A hermit crab is not a pet. A hermit crab is a dinosaur bug that smells bad and has minimal needs. It does not bond with you. It does not respond to its name. It doesn’t even have the brain structure to understand language. It will not comfort you when you’re sad or learn to do anything on command.1 Apparently over time they may recognize your shape and smell which is theoretically better than nothing but not by much.

If you take it out of its little cage, it will crawl on your hand and you will spend the entire time hoping it doesn’t pinch you, which is the complete opposite of what a pet is supposed to make you feel. The only genuinely fun part of hermit crab ownership was picking out the different shells — because theoretically it would move to a bigger one as it grew — and choosing the color of the gravel.

And yet, I brought my hermit crab(s) on family trips. And I had enough friends with hermit crabs for us to stage races of our “pets” that didn’t know any commands. I remember a group of us gathering with our hermit crabs at an elementary school friend Emily’s house to have some kind of hermit crab “derby” in Emily’s garden shed. Only for Emily’s mom to come in and step on one of them. I don’t know if it was mine or Emily’s. It doesn’t matter and it says a lot that I can’t remember. That hermit crab came to battle and lost the war.

I’ve been thinking about whether this was specific to our generation or whether it’s still happening — whether somewhere out there a parent is currently buying a hermit crab at a pet shop and telling themselves it’s educational. My suspicion is that millennials mostly got this out of our systems and then overcorrected dramatically. We went from $0.99 hermit crabs that died mysteriously and taught us nothing to spending four figures on orthopedic dog beds and specialty grooming and silk-lined dog sweaters to reduce matting. We didn’t stop using animals as delivery systems for our emotional needs. We just moved to bigger, nicer shells.

Perhaps the rodent people are, in retrospect, the most honest pet owners. They’re not pretending to be learning a lesson or craving emotional support. They wanted rats and they got rats. And, frankly, they’re probably more upset about rats drowning in toilets than I am. As someone who has a toy poodle currently medicated for anxiety, and suffers from light paranoia, I’m definitely not sleeping better at night.

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It did not go well. I was terrible. At one point, I hit a ball into another family’s bay (which the set up is literally designed to make near impossible), and then the low point was when Jeff offered some unsolicited and wildly original tips like “keep your eye on the ball” and “relax.” My attitude directly correlated to the final scores and when we left, Middle said something like “that would have been more fun if you’d been having a good time, Karen.”

Yes, it would have.

That’s the thing about sports: I am not good at them and yet, I still care when I lose. And it translates outside of the rare times I have dabbled in athleticism. I am not able to be a casual sports fan because if I care a little, I care SO MUCH.

All of this came back in my mind recently with the 20th anniversary of “Friday Night Lights” and while I’m eternally grateful to the show for teaching me more about football than I ever learned from my high school friend’s instructional powerpoint, and the world is eternally grateful for the introduction of Tim Riggins, I do think it got me way too invested in the story lines in sports. My assumption was that any high drama/high stakes moment would end in, if not a happy way, then a way that served a larger narrative: that my investment of time and loyalty in any team would be rewarded.

While I was never really a local sports fan — and distinctly remember going to an Eagles-Giants game with that same high school friend where it was so cold that I started mentally rooting for the Giants so that there wouldn’t be a tie because I wanted to go home — I never felt that way about the Dillon Panthers or other on-screen athletes. I remember the Titans, I know there’s no crying in baseball, and I learned tall girls can find love in basketball and with their hot next door neighbors.

Once we leave scripted scenarios, if I have any opinion on the sport/team/player, it’s just too much. When a game gets close, I have to turn it off. Jeff claims that’s when everyone else starts watching and is what defines a “good game,” but I literally can’t handle it. I get stressed, I end up online looking for spoilers but it’s live so that’s not even possible. Those little tickers that show the statistical chances of winning in real time aren’t helpful when it’s close and I’m having panic attacks.

I think real sports fans have made peace with some level of suffering and casual fans don’t care enough to suffer… and I’m in a purgatory that’s entirely the result of my own psychosis. I am invested, I need resolution, and often I don’t like that resolution.

Netflix and HBO’s commitment to sports docuseries has made this so much worse because suddenly I do get a bunch of narrative that helps me invest. “Drive to Survive” got me all in on F1 and I fell for Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton and was introduced to an actual live villain in Christian Horner (a.k.a. Mr. Ginger Spice). Then suddenly, I’m trying to keep up with the 2021 World Championships while doing a remote holiday baking class and am getting physically ill realizing that Max Verstappen was going to win. I never made those raspberry pinwheel cookies again because of the PTSD.

A year or two later, a friend suggested I do an F1 Fantasy League with her and I had to drop out after three races: I could lose the Fantasy League and stick with Lewis or I could bet on Red Bull and do well points wise. Neither was a fate I could consider: but is that fandom or just obsessive loyalty to a constructed narrative?

The cycling equivalent of “Drive to Survive” got me obsessed with the Tour de France but then all of these riders are overcoming multiple broken bones and punctured lungs and maybe still doping. It’s incredibly impressive but I can’t handle that much stress when I should just be enjoying the scenic French countryside and not even knowing who Wout Van Aert is and being upset about whether he was robbed of a stage win.

I fell in love with this (beautifully written) essay about Caitlin Clark and it totally got me into women’s college basketball and the WNBA (although it didn’t take much since Monica Wright-McCall paved the way). Unfortunately, now every game she plays is a referendum on whether she’s living up to the hype or disappointing everyone, and there’s a verdict attached outside of the score based on how she acts or what clips are taken out of context. She’s either proving something or failing to prove something and the noise has added a layer of complexity and competition on top of everything else.

I’m going to skip over Olympic figure skating for the most part since I already covered that in depth and it’s not relevant for 3.8 more years but just as I’m waiting for a heroic win in Ice Dance for Chock and Bates, I find out the French judge literally rigged it and I’m sitting there, in real time, knowing everything I know and having no place to take my anger. Sitting: correct and alone. I didn’t just lose that day, I was ROBBED and no amount of context-setting with Jeff ever got him to a place of fully understanding my feelings.

Although, obviously, I didn’t lose. Because I was just watching… which is exactly the issue: I am not a sports person. I am just an intense and competitive person seeking an outlet.

We are about a week away from the start of the World Cup where I will, comme toujours, root for France. The US men’s team isn’t going anywhere and I am obviously the kind of person who will correct you on your pronunciation of crêpe — where that kind of person is a college French major — so it’s a natural fit.

Unfortunately, I only pay attention to men’s soccer once every four years so just as I’m checking back in on Kylian Mbappé, I’m learning that he’s recovering from injury, that recovery went slower than expected because the team MRIed the wrong leg(?), he might not be as good, he’s causing discord on Real Madrid, and it’s just exhausting and the World Cup hasn’t even started. Yet, intensity addict that I am, I’m down the rabbit hole trying to make sure I know what’s up for his first game on June 16.

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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. 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 so is wildly out of date but the only reference we have.

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.

I’m okay not being in the “inner circle.” 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, Ivan, 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.

Related Posts:

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!