I left my “traditional” job a year ago this week: it was a bad fit for a host of reasons and I have no regrets. While I initially thought I’d take a little time, write a little more, and go back into corporate, I started to think more and more seriously about going out on my own.

Some things made the decision easier: I interviewed for several jobs that sounded terrible! One where, over the course of three interviews, I realized I was being hired to lay off 40% of a team and then “boost morale.” One where they contacted me with no job description and made me deliver a presentation with minimal context while I had Covid because it would be “too hard to reschedule” (no clue what I said because when I hung up, I realized I had a fever of 102.7 and spent the next two days in bed). One where I realized it was definitely not the right job for me about 5 minutes into the interview and then after 15 minutes, we lost power in a storm which I took as an actual sign from God to move on.

Those experiences were more than enough to give me the perspective I needed. And truthfully, building my own thing carried instant appeal: if one of my biggest complaints in past environments had been working for or with challenging and/or incompetent people, I was about to exclusively work for and with the best and most competent person I knew: myself.

But over time, I’ve learned that even I am annoying.

This may not come as a surprise to some of the friends and family members and former colleagues who read this, but I was shocked.

If I represent 100% of my employee base, then 100% of my organization likes to overschedule me, doesn’t maintain clear boundaries after hours, and never wants to do the work that I hate to do. Worse, I can’t delegate that hated work to anyone else because I am the only person to both assign and execute the work. It’s like being in a group project where you are simultaneously the organizer, the overachiever, and the dud who doesn’t contribute.

I’ve always gotten a lot of joy from working with others, which is maybe why I’m still surprised that, for all the control I have over my work and my schedule, so much of what I need to do runs through people who aren’t me. There’s a lot of “oh I have to introduce you to Gretchen,” and then I email but after two or three follow-ups, I just move on, and I never meet Gretchen, and maybe that doesn’t matter, but maybe it would have been helpful. I’ll never know.

Or someone will say “let’s connect next week” and then I send times because I know I’m more flexible, but then they don’t reply. I’m constantly walking the line between being persistent and annoying, feeling like the former on my most empowered days and like the latter on all the days I’m full of doubt and googling “positive affirmations for when people ignore you” and reading the first handful out loud like a doctor prescribed them.

The other side is being proud of work, or needing to workshop, or wanting to celebrate. I’m the only person with all the context on my business so trying to share with others requires a lot of background that often sends me down rabbit holes of frustration and annoyance. I spent six weeks completely rebuilding the methodology and the documentation of a large part of my work and I ultimately created a 50-page operating manual that I’m so proud of. And that milestone that would have been a major KPI in a past department and gotten listed as a monthly or quarterly “highlight” just goes in my personal journal as a “win.”

While I operate as a company of one, poor Jeff has been conscripted to be the unpaid intern in my LLC with such exciting responsibilities as looking at everything I write or make and telling me it’s amazing and then having to say “no it really is” when I accuse him of lying just to make me feel good.

In established corporate roles, I was able to assess progress and success by looking externally. Now I have to look internally for indicators that I made the right call. I do find them every single week but they’re far less dramatic. The same goes for celebrating: I may not have a Slack channel to post an update to but when I was able to tell Jeff about the client I was so excited to close, we decided it was time to pop champagne I’d been saving for an undefined “big win.”

The toast doesn’t fix it all. I can pick the good champagne flutes, but by the third sip I realized that there’s one job I can’t fill nor can I outsource. I can make Jeff toast the win (he’s happy to, although, to be fair, he’s just happy to toast anything) and I can make him read a 50-page operating manual. But I can’t vent to Jeff about my annoying coworkers anymore because that’s just me (although, again to be fair, he probably has his fair share of complaints about me).

Signs make it easier to gauge whether you’re making the right choice: a power outage in a bad interview, a well-timed lightning strike, some piece of biblical stage direction confirming I’d chosen right. More often, it’s the little things: champagne flutes I “borrowed” from my parents a decade ago, work moving forward, a poodle snoring in what should be my seat. And it’s a treat to toast my favorite coworker — the one who does everything the way I would do it, will never let me down on the group project, and is getting a little less annoying every day I work with her.

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I just learned from a friend living in Germany about their kindergarten graduation ceremony where kids jump out of a window while everyone sings a happy German song. Apparently it’s a ground-floor window and they jump onto a mat (which is, ironically, considered safe for German kindergartners but was considered quite dangerous when it happened on my eighth-grade field trip and we swapped ground-floor motel rooms). There’s also a more adventurous variation where teachers grab kids’ limbs and swing them out the door, throwing them onto a mat.

I love the concept metaphorically and literally, but also in contrast to whatever is going on with American graduations, which, I think we need to all agree, have gotten both longer and worse. Having never been to a German kindergarten, I have never seen a Fenstersprung. I know nothing about it beyond one friend’s secondhand account that was roughly: a song, an open window, kids jumping out of one thing and into whatever’s next. Yet I have already decided it beats every graduation I’ve ever sat through, which says way less about the window than it does about the sticky folding chair I was sitting in.

A graduation is a big production with two real jobs: letting a community honor students’ achievements and letting those students celebrate and grieve the end of a meaningful shared experience. I have attended many for brothers, kids, and beloved family members. And I have yet to attend one that, for all its effort, achieved either — let alone both. Is what’s missing some light stunt work in the form of a window jump?

After the drama of parking and tickets and getting there early to “save” seats, assuming you’re situated and have a chance to look at the program, the first words you see are: “out of respect to all of the graduates, please hold your applause until everyone’s name has been called.” This is reiterated once or twice early on in the ceremony, and yet, once Aaron Adams’ name is read, his family erupts with all the joy and passion of people who are so proud of their kid, so happy to be done with tuition payments, and so grateful they can easily go to the bathroom or get a snack thanks to the ease of an early-in-the-alphabet last name.

But guess what? The next two families don’t hear their kids’ names at all since the Adams family is still cheering.

Some larger schools have given up on alphabetical order and your kid just hands a slip of paper to someone on the way up and the administrator in charge of keeping some level of order inevitably butchers the pronunciation. Although, since every other family is trying to outdo the Adams family, you can’t even hear it. Usually, there’s a level of competition in volume that goes through the Ss, but once you’ve gotten through all the Smiths and Stevensons, people really run out of steam and the Ts through Zs experience a smaller crowd that’s over it. (If that sounds like the bitterness of a T through Z, it’s by design: my maiden name started with a U and even I was over it by the time they got to me).

I’m a rule follower and there’s nothing I hate more than a rule that is both unenforceable and a buzzkill. Some families tone it down (I was able to get my dad to leave the cowbells behind for my high school graduation although I occasionally regret that), but for the most part, very few people are willing to risk their kid being the one who crosses the stage to silence. How bizarre that the institution doubles down on the most offensive kind of rule: one that criminalizes joy and doesn’t even work.

I could understand if all that individual joy is suppressed in service of a meaningful collective experience.

Except that’s not the case either.

I don’t remember the outside speaker for my high school graduation at all and I only remember the class speaker because it was me. My top memory of my graduation from college was the hot weather forcing us to unzip our black sun-absorbing robes and I didn’t have enough sunscreen on underneath and ended up with a “pearl burn” from my necklace. I know Thomas Friedman spoke eloquently about world peace or something.

Oldest’s high school commencement speaker spent the entire time celebrating the school’s girls’ basketball team for making the state semi-finals — an important achievement that was probably more relevant at one of the fifteen athletic assemblies and ceremonies scheduled throughout the year.

Often, when you look at the program, it requires a decoder ring to understand what kid won what honor and how that is manifested in the tassels and flair they’re accessorizing their $120 rented gown with. Ironically, 99% of people traveled in to celebrate the kid, whose moment lasts 0.25 seconds and can’t be heard or seen particularly well.

The best graduation speaker I’ve heard was Yo-Yo Ma, who “spoke” at my brother’s college graduation. He walked up to the microphone, said he’d asked all of his friends and not one of them could remember their own graduation speaker, so he figured we’d rather hear him play than listen to him talk. Then he played Bach for 20 minutes.

Yo-Yo has an edge because I practically know Bach’s cello suites by heart, but I mostly remember it being unseasonably chilly in Massachusetts in June, me wearing a fleece, and for those 20 minutes, I wasn’t thinking about being cold or when the ceremony would be over.

Add it up. The speakers, the flown-in celebrity, the questionable sound system, the hours, and the money are supposed to honor the kid and the class and mark the magnitude of what they just accomplished. Instead it just fills the time and drains the room of the one feeling it was built to create, when something more memorable could be achieved with so much less: a window and a mat, a man and a cello.

We are, of course, going the other way. We now hand out tiny caps and gowns after preschool, kindergarten, fifth grade, or really every ordinary year a kid manages to survive. The participation trophy has morphed into a survival milestone, except that when every year is proclaimed a milestone, none of them really are. Youngest graduated from college this past May and didn’t want to walk, so she didn’t, and I didn’t fight her on it since it was the right call for her. But I’d be lying if I said some small, stubborn part of me didn’t want the folding chair and the bad PA system and her name read out loud, just once.

Here’s what I actually want, sitting in whatever room has been selected for both its capacity and its poor air circulation: I want every kid there to be seen and celebrated; I want them and their families to have one moment they’ll keep.

And then I want to leave.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Which is why I keep coming back to the window: the moment worth keeping is the one where everybody finally admits that the shared thing is over, and a decent send-off should let you feel that ending for one honest second.

And I think it would be more fun — and, dare I say, a little cathartic — for everyone involved to watch a row of teachers grab each kid by the arms and legs, swing once, and pitch them out the door onto the mat.

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Like many of my generation, I was profoundly influenced by 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth. We became “leak detectives” to save water, cut the rings that came on soda to save the turtles, and learned that proper recycling required checking the number on the bottom of every plastic container. Today, we have a trash bin, a recycling bin, and faith that sorting magic is happening somewhere downstream.

The only time when recycling gets more complicated is when we go to Nantucket. Since it’s an incredibly beautiful resort destination and I’m freeloading on housing, I have minimal complaints; 30 miles out to sea,1 proper waste management genuinely matters. At the dump, we have to get everything in the right disposal unit (non-recyclable/non-compostable trash, compostable trash, glass, plastic, aluminum, and cardboard), all while navigating the people enforcing proper disposal and tourists who are confused and seagulls who love trash in general and all the smells of public waste. While it’s not my favorite activity, I will say that nothing makes you more aware of your own waste and makes you rethink consumerist habits like a visit to the dump.

We keep five clearly designated bins/bags in the kitchen and sort when we throw things out (aligned with the One-Touch Rule of time management). When we’re there, Jeff and I swing by the dump twice a week, it takes under five minutes each time, and then we go to my favorite bakery. Maybe it’s simply the Pavlovian response I’ve trained in myself, but I don’t mind the dump at all and the ham and cheese croissant on the other side is always worth it.

Last week, when we went out to lunch and my dad announced his car would be headed to the dump after lunch, I knew there’d be no croissant reward and voluntold Jeff to ride with him.

Except that when we were leaving, Jeff wasn’t feeling well and asked if I’d switch spots. I said sure, because I’m a good person and I had no idea what I was agreeing to.

I hopped in the car and my father said “I’m surprised you switched since I don’t recall you ever volunteering to go to the dump before.” I reminded him that many things about me had changed since I was 19 and got out of the car thinking I’d take the bottles or the cans or something.

It was upon arriving at the dump eight minutes later that I discovered, to my surprise, confusion, and displeasure, that my father didn’t believe in pre-sorting the trash and had led others in my family to also think that sorting trash was some kind of Herculean feat — one my chore-averse and easily confused adult children somehow manage every single vacation. I was handed a bag with everything mixed together and told that the “best way” to handle things was just to walk individual pieces to their larger disposal bins.

First of all, no.

Second of all, ew.

I wrapped up sorting my bag quickly, didn’t offer to help with others, and ran to the car for a wet wipe. While I Purell-ed myself, I watched my father tilt at windblown tissues and empty food containers with all the conviction of Don Quixote. One gust of wind had exposed a flaw in his “best way.”

In the car, on the way home, and once home, I tried to make my father, man of science, understand that I was right. But he doubled down and kept arguing — which I should have expected because I got much of my stubbornness from him.

Except that this time, I wasn’t trying to explain to him why it was a double standard that in the ninth grade, my brother got to go see Guns N’ Roses with friends while I needed a chaperone to go to Lilith Fair. This time, I was definitively right.

In Cheaper by the Dozen, the children are horrified when their father uses their own tonsillectomies as an excuse for a time-and-motion study but perhaps I could do something similar: labeled bins, dotted travel path, a heat map of wasted motion. Or even a full step count map with sorting at home vs. sorting at the dump clearly defined and delineated.

None of that would matter because he wouldn’t read it. I’ve been cast as the spoiled kid who didn’t want to go to the dump in the first place (admittedly not that far off from the truth) and is just complaining. I know I’m someone who cares deeply about doing things the right way and is incredibly triggered by anyone arguing otherwise.

So I reminded myself: my father is a lovely and generous man, 99.99% of germs on my hands had been killed by the folks at GOJO Industries, and, most importantly, I wasn’t the one chasing trash around a parking lot.

But then Jeff told me the other car stopped for ice cream while I had trash hands.

And I hated everyone all over again.

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Except that’s never it and suddenly two to three days before said child returns, we learn that they have no bed sheets because they set last year’s on fire or “have no idea” what even happened to their towels or rug or lamp. Shoes that I had said looked like they were on their last wear in May, and I’d been assured that was the style, need to be replaced urgently.

And so once again, we find ourselves at the mercy of Prime shipping or stuck at a shoe store with a child with weirdly sized feet and very particular taste (always a recipe for a pleasant and efficient trip). Whether a real phobia or one grounded in the neuroses of my mother, I was trained that you ALWAYS wash new clothes or sheets or towels before wear/use because you never know what germs are on them from the manufacturer or store or shipping. And even though “please wash these sheets” is said the minute new sheets are procured, I find myself, without fail, on the night before a departure either washing the sheets myself or having an existential crisis over whether I’m a bad parent for letting my kid get some kind of skin infection as the fallout from poor hygiene.

This year was always going to be different: for the first time in exactly 10 years, we are not sending a kid off to college. We’ve closed that chapter physically, metaphorically, and financially.

Instead, in a couple of weeks, Youngest will be heading off on a new adventure: a residential volunteer program on a farm that could not be a better match. This program comes with a number of requirements similar to the college return, though — including multiple doctor/dentist visits and forms that need to be signed off on, a TB test that I will not mock since reading John Green’s book Everything Is Tuberculosis, and an all-new packing list full of what’s needed for life on a farm.

Having learned from past mistakes, I started my nagging early — like as soon as I was made aware of the forms and appointments I said “Okay, you need to call and get appointments early, you never know how long the wait is.” And the response I got was absolutely insane: “Yeah, I already did.”

Shocked, but I knew I still had a purpose.

“Okay, don’t forget to put all appointments on the family calendar so we know when we have to take you.”

“Yeah, I did.”

Shocked and awed.

“Great, and we’ll have to look at your packing list and figure out where you need to go since I don’t know anything about farm equipment.”

“Yeah, I’m making a list of what I need and what store has it and doing some research on farm boots.”

What. Was. Actually. Happening?

So naturally, since that point, I have had “Youngest farm supply shopping — where?” and “Make sure Youngest submits all forms by 8/3 deadline” on my list for the occasional nudge. I know my role, I know my responsibilities (I’ve held them since I married into this blended family) and I’m the holder of all the open tabs for the family. Historically, Middle and Youngest have needed A LOT of reminders to do things, and even with those reminders, we still have an under 50% success rate on making needed appointments and getting ahead of deadlines.

Shopping trips are always where it falls apart due to the challenge of finding anything that works taste-wise with anything that fits properly — shoes tend to be the Moby Dick of every list because somehow the women in Jeff’s family all inherited very tiny feet, something I, at 5’9” with giant boat feet, can’t begin to understand.

Youngest did do the research and discovered a store called “Boot Barn,” an establishment that I’ve never had a need to visit before and likely never will again. And then she coordinated with Jeff to take her, so I was once again unnecessary. Last week, they went and bought everything she needed. Jeff is convinced I would actually really love Boot Barn for all my country-western needs (sadly with the Cowboy Carter tour behind us, I’m not sure when that’ll come up again, but good to know).

Basically everything is off the list. The doctor’s office owes Youngest one thing, but that’s on them. We texted yesterday morning to remind her that everything was due and that she might want to send early and let them know about the delay on some forms, and we were told she’d already called the doctor to pester them AND already submitted all the forms with the suggested caveat.

I want so desperately to be proud or grateful or relieved. Months ago I was panicked there’d be no plan and I would be using a crowbar to remove this kid from my house. And today I’m literally useless. All my pending items on the list crossed off and no new ones to add at this moment.

Even her sheets are washed and ready to go. And as for washing farm gear… I don’t even know how to do it. Do my mom’s rules about packaged sheets from random factories apply to work boots from Boot Barn? When I brought that up, I found out Boot Barn had already given detailed boot care and cleaning instructions, and Youngest was all over that too. The neurosis my mother handed me has spent thirty-some years looking for a place to land, and it finally lands on a kid who doesn’t need it; the clerk at Boot Barn knows more about farm boots than I picked up in all my Little House on the Prairie rereads.

Which, of course, has prompted only one thought in my mind: has she been playing us the whole time? Why did so many other activities require so much project management and/or hovering (or just didn’t happen at all)? Was weaponized incompetence the MO all these years? And now that she’s really excited to get going, have all those hidden industrious skills finally surfaced?

Maybe she just wants the life waiting for her on the other side of all that paperwork.

So now my list has one remaining item: “determine whether Youngest’s entire adolescence was a ruse.”

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Watching

I have discovered nothing more delightful on television than “The Other Bennet Sister” which is on Britbox. I know, I know, you don’t want another subscription and, frankly, neither do I, but you can watch the whole thing in the free trial week and you’ll be so grateful. The premise is that Mary Bennet, depressing middle sister and mediocre pianist / vocalist from “Pride and Prejudice,” goes to London to become a governess. Somehow, this show manages to respect Jane Austen and bring so much humor and humanity to the spinoff I didn’t know I needed. It is a fabulous comedy and rewarding drama. No word on a second season, but they are going to do a Christmas special and what a gift that will be.

Post World Cup, I was looking for my inspirational sports content and ChatGPT pointed me to “All or Nothing: Arsenal” (on Prime) which takes us behind the scenes while Mikel Arteta, the manager of Arsenal, works to rebuild the team in the 2021-2022 season. It’s an incredible view of inspiring leadership in action: I don’t think it’s possible to watch and not fall in love with Arteta (although I suppose non-Arsenal fans will find a way). Here’s one of his locker room talks and it’s not even in my top two:

On the list of things I’ve told Jeff are an absolute “no go” for me to watch are talking animals, spaceships, and anything over two hours and 20 minutes (and that extra 20 minutes past the two hour mark is me being incredibly generous). So I am shocking myself at recommending either of these next two movies and also apologize to Christopher Nolan for the company he’s keeping.

First, “The Sheep Detectives:” essentially a shepherd is murdered and his flock (voiced by the likes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bryan Cranston and Sir Patrick Stewart) help solve the crime but I can’t stress enough how much better it is than it needed to be. The premise has “solid airplane movie” written all over it but the execution is beyond charming.

Next, “The Odyssey.” I almost didn’t go see it since I didn’t realize it was three hours. And I get it, it’s a long trip, needs a long movie, but I still think it could have been cut to two and a half. And then I almost didn’t get out of the car when I realized Jeff was hoping I’d stay awake for a three-hour movie in an all-Pepsi theater. However, the movie was exceptional. The acting was superb with such standout performances from John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, and Robert Pattinson that they almost overshadowed just how incredible Matt Damon was. I really was blown away and even without Coke Zero stayed both awake and captivated the whole time. I truly don’t know how it could have been better (unless it had been cut to even, like, two hours and 40 minutes).

I debated including this at all since I really think, talking sheep aside, I mostly shared high-quality cultural pieces but the YouTube algorithm recently introduced me to Trip Hazard, a dog dancer who has performed at Crufts and on “Britain’s Got Talent” and I think sandwiching “The Odyssey” between talking sheep and a dog dancing to Mary Poppins seems on brand for me. Please note: there’s a world of Trip Hazard performances that await you — I was particularly impressed with his Aladdin routine where he rubbed the lamp with his paws to make the genie appear.

Listening To

For the last two months, I basically only listen to one podcast: “My Therapist Ghosted Me” which features Irish comedian (and former “Taskmaster” contestant) Joanne McNally and Irish TV presenter/general celebrity, Vogue Williams, shoot the shit twice a week. I don’t even know how to describe it beyond saying it’s just a genuinely great hang. Warning: tough listen if you struggle with Irish accents — and Jeff made me play it at 0.9x just to keep up. Incidentally, Joanne is coming to Philly to do stand-up at the end of October and Jeff, even on my birthday, will not agree to go with me because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to understand her. If you’re keeping score, that means that I will see a three-hour movie without Coke Zero for Jeff but he will not listen to an amazing comedian I love for 90 minutes with booze for me.

Reading

David Sedaris came out with a new book, “The Land and Its People,” which I adored (comme toujours) but it also meant we were treated to his press tour including this NYT article going behind the scenes on his art collection. We also listened to Andrew Sean Greer’s new novel “Villa Coco” as an audiobook and loved it for a drive. Fun fact: the audiobook narrator, Edoardo Ballerini, also voices some sleep stories in the Calm app so it’s a very soothing read and he does a great job with accents. The book is about a recent college graduate / archivist who takes a job for a year working for an unspecified Baronessa at a villa in Italy and everyone is a character who could have their own book. The story is quick and clever and a great escapist summer read.

Two other articles of note to help us all better understand Gen Z. First, “The New Yorker” covered “Love Island” and did a fantastic job of making it sound like something worth your time (although this season has ultimately been kind of meh in both the US and UK). I just appreciate any time there’s a highbrow/lowbrow culture (reminds me of the glory days of the NY Mag Approval Matrix).

The NYT had this, ultimately depressing, article about Gen Z and their collective lack of ambition. To be clear, it’s not so much a Gen Z hit piece as a meditation on how thoughts on work have changed. One thing that stood out to me and Jeff: “Eight out of 10 students who graduated from high school in 2022 don’t expect work to be an important part of their life, nor for their job to be particularly interesting.”

Making

Most of what I’m making of late is driven by forty-something protein goals and whatever comes in our CSA box (hello beets and zucchini!). We continue to get home run after home run out of Molly Baz’s recipe club (which, at this point, is far and away the best recipe subscription I pay for) but would call out the Green Bolognese and Chicken Piccata as mega-winners. You may not think you want bolognese in the summer but this one is minty and oddly kind of light? And you may not think you need another piccata recipe at all but this was the best we’ve made with cherry tomatoes and chile peppers.

I think we’re officially out of green garlic season, but definitely bookmark this Green Garlic Toast for next spring. I would also highly recommend using up your zucchini with Smitten Kitchen’s Zucchini Butter Pasta (which I serve with garlicky breadcrumbs and roasted cherry tomatoes stolen from a cavatelli I had at The Proprietors a few years ago).

Using and Loving

Added this section because I figured I’d share some of my favorite things in general that have no other home but I need to evangelize. First, Snipd is an AI podcast app my brother recommended and it’s so fabulous. While it’s fine to use to just listen to two Irish women talk about random UK scandals, it’s best deployed when listening to lengthy podcasts where you want the takeaways but not to listen to Tim Ferriss for three hours (time you could spend watching “The Odyssey!”) The app both lets you snip and transcribes key bits and pulls out what others have transcribed for you to save and share. It also has a “DJ” feature that will skip through a long episode and just play the most important parts and provide some context or bridging in between allowing you to get 20 minutes of meaty content out of a 90-minute show.

Perhaps a little too squarely in the stereotypical elder millennial consumer target camp but the Republic of Tea’s Dubai Chocolate tea is a treat. Steep for seven minutes and add a little sugar and a splash of half-and-half and it’s the most delightful and calming and indulgent end to your day.

Lastly, Rachael introduced me to the Town AI assistant and I initially thought: I don’t need another tool, this looks overpriced and the fact that it gives you an actual character/assistant to work with is weird. But, I was wrong. It’s the best AI assistant I’ve worked with. The routines it suggests, the responses it drafts, the meeting briefs it prepares (all automatically) are amazing. And instead of using one of the boring preset assistants, I had it create Bechamel for me – the poodle with a clipboard.

I know, I know, we don’t need more AI tools but genuinely the quality and responsiveness of this is making a huge difference especially when Claude is starting to wear on me as seen in Claude’s recent working status:

I end this trip around the sun so grateful that you are reading this and have liked / subscribed / commented / been interested in my cascading failures.

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So when our oldest was sharing some of the options available on a dating app in Portland, I found myself repeatedly saying “I’m asking from a place of curiosity and not judgment.” Because, what else does one say in response to a picture of an individual wearing a jester’s hat and playing a recorder that they proactively shared with people to find a romantic partner (or multiple in this new polyamorous world?) However, there’s a piece that I don’t say out loud: at home, the not-judging gets announced. Everywhere else, it doesn’t.

With a “Ted Lasso” rewatch underway in advance of season four coming out next month, I was reminded by Ted that Walt Whitman said “be curious, not judgmental.” Although, diligent and dedicated Substacker that I am, I did google to confirm the quote and learned that Walt Whitman never said that. Thank goodness I asked.

I am, by nature, incredibly curious. I am, in fact, far more curious than judgmental because I truly want to know everything. Last year I went on a whole deep dive to confirm what the name of my color of L.L. Bean Deluxe backpack used in 1997 was. When my friends were split between forest and spruce, I contacted L.L. Bean directly. The answer was spruce and I legitimately think I would have lost sleep had I not known the truth.

Arguably, being curious is why I’m good at my job: most of the time, asking questions forces someone to reconsider their approach without needing to say “the way you’re currently doing this is terrible.”

In my personal life, I announce the lack of judgment. I say it out loud, to my kids, to Jeff, to whoever’s in the room: I’m not judging, I’m just asking. The announcement is the point since I want credit for my considerable restraint.

In my professional life, I do the opposite. Recently a client and I had been circling the same thing for weeks — I kept trying to ask the questions that would get us there, and we kept sidestepping it. Then I landed the knockout punch: “is it possible you were doing this job purely for the money and trying to justify staying there with other rationale?” The answer: yes.

I never announced any of it. I said nothing, let my face go neutral, and asked the question anyway — because the second a client can tell I’m judging, they defend instead of answer. That’s the whole strategy: conceal the judgment, on purpose, the same way I’d conceal a hand of cards. It’s the same move as talking to my kids, just minus the disclaimer.

At home, though, I don’t remotely have that level of restraint. My mother’s phrase I repeat most often is “look with your eyes and not your mouth” — which started as her answer to “where’s my [insert random object/form/pair of glasses here]?” but by the time I was raising my own kids, it had grown into shorthand for “try it yourself before you outsource the effort to me.” So much for being far more curious than judgmental; it turns out that only holds when the curiosity is mine. The second someone else is the curious one, I skip the question and go straight to the ruling.

Like when Jeff and I were out and a kid at home texted us: “which light switch turns on the outside light?” Clearly flipping all three switches on/off would have answered that question way faster than a text would have, but we were still seen as such authorities that it was asked. That was an example of someone being curious and me offering nothing but judgment in return. I texted back: “God helps those who help themselves.”

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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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