Happy 2020, blog readers! I hope everyone had a Happy New Year. Let’s review a few highlights of my life since my last What I’m Into in November:
We had a nice Christmas at home with both sets of parents.
I was a bridesmaid in Ashley’s wedding on New Year’s Eve! I don’t have any pictures from the wedding, but these are from her bachelorette party, which I co-hosted a few days before. She was a beautiful bride and I’m very happy for her happiness.
Taylor’s dad and my dad both retired. (Originally they were going to retire on the same day!)
We had a birthday/retirement party for my dad in early January. My sister and fam came for their holiday visit then, instead of during the actual holidays when I was consumed with bridesmaid stuff and moving.
Taylor and I moved into our new home! Moving just a few blocks ended up taking two full days, two moving companies, and a lot of help from family. The whole first day was rainy – we’re still cleaning up mud, dirt, and leaves that got dragged in. I do not want to move again for a long, long time, possibly ever. More on the new house in a minute.
Reading
Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything by Anne Bogel (3 stars) – A pleasantly written overview of the best-known personality typing systems.
The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good by Elizabeth L. Cline (4 stars) I read Cline’s fast-fashion exposé, Overdressed, in 2014 and have never been the same. This follow-up is full of tips for making greener, more ethical choices about our clothing. Secondhand clothes are central to her philosophy, which is exciting for me, having gotten most of my clothes from thrift stores all my life.
Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle by Katie Coyle (4 stars) The sequel to Vivian Apple at the End of the World finds Vivian and Harp taking shelter with a group of anti-Church of America rebels, but with plenty of questions and vengeance to enact, they refuse to sit on the sidelines. As much as I love these books, I admire and appreciate the restraint of keeping it a duology!
Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace by Christie Purifoy (5 stars) Don’t let the women’s-Bible-study cover fool you: this is a thoughtful, multifaceted reflection on trees (you’ll learn a lot!), the meaning of home, and finding our place in the world. It was satisfying to read this at the start of my Year of Peace, right after moving into a new home.
Extracted by R.R. Haywood (2 stars) A free Kindle First Reads selection, this was already loaded on my Kindle Fire on a day when I had no wifi, so I gave it a go. The plot follows three heroic people “extracted” out of time at the moment of their deaths, and transported to a safe place where they can… train in combat to take out the person who invented the time machine? The concept had just enough potential to keep me reading, but the book felt like a submission from a college creative writing class. It could have been a lot better with a good editor.
Listening
Some podcast episodes I really enjoyed over the last couple of months (note, most are pretty old):
– The Dream S2 E5: Birthing a Bad Dream. If you’ve never listened to this podcast, START NOW. The first season was about MLMs and now she’s tackling the wellness industry.
– Ice Talk episode 17: I, Tonya with Paul Wylie and Christine Brennan. As a teenager I was obsessed with the Tonya/Nancy situation and Brennan’s subsequent book Inside Edge. This podcast prompted me to find a used copy of the book (back in the day, I borrowed it from the library repeatedly).
– Millenneagram episode 6: It’s Not Happening Now with Mara Wilson (a must-listen for all Enneagram Sixes)
– Forever 35 episode 27: Uniform Factor with Rachel Wilkerson Miller. I’m a fan of REWM, and not just because we share a middle/maiden name!
– The Life After episode 3: Jennifer Knapp
Watching
As someone who has always loved Little Women and read it at least 20 times, I could not be happier with Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation. The story feels so fresh and relevant. Florence Pugh steals the show as Amy (just as Amy would want), and her monologue about marriage as a business transaction is still ringing in my ears. Give this movie all the awards.
January elliptical viewing: Booksmart, all of Reese Witherspoon’s Shine On (which I started over Christmas), and currently, Cheer. At home, Taylor and I are finally on season 2 of The Leftovers. I’m very into it, but it’s too unsettling to watch more than two episodes at a time.
At Home
Our new house is a Foursquare built in 1917. It has a historical marker next to the front door, and lots of interesting details (like chandeliers in almost every room). It took me about two weeks to start realizing that I live in such a beautiful home, and it’s still sinking in! I also feel like Taylor and I have spent our entire marriage so far dealing with boxes of stuff (because we have), and we’re not done. While Taylor makes huge strides on the unpacking, I keep chipping away at what’s left. I didn’t leave the house much in January other than for work, church, and basketball games.
Our last house’s best feature was the large, open front porch. The new house also has a beautiful and unique porch, but it’s enclosed.
My favorite room might be the upstairs sunroom that serves as my “closet.” This built-in wardrobe is only part of it.
I’ve dreamed of a wall of built-in bookshelves my entire life!
Eating
I was sick this month, and at the worst point, the only thing that helped me feel better was Starbucks honey citrus mint tea, aka the Medicine Ball. I eventually googled a recipe and bought ingredients to make my own at home. Teavana tea bags are expensive, but man are they worth it.
Beauty
My face generated a few skin monsters in response to the moving stress. While unpacking, I came across a travel size Paula’s Choice BHA 9 spot treatment that I’d ordered with some other samples. It literally reduced redness and severity overnight. Now I’m applying it to the scars and it’s still making a visible difference. Needless to say, I got a full size.
I just got the new Revlon Photoready Prime Plus Mattifying & Pore Reducing primer. It’s good, but it’s not blowing my mind or anything. I don’t use primer every day. The previous iteration of Revlon Photoready is what I’ve had on hand for a while.
Wellness
The first week back after the holidays, at least 25 people on my floor at work got the flu in rapid succession. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some had had the shot, and some hadn’t. About a week later, I (along with everyone else who didn’t get the flu) came down with Something Else. It took me out for a week – I worked some of the time, but couldn’t exercise or do much of anything. The cough is still hanging on.
Bri McKoy mentioned the Pray as You Go app in her roundup of 2019 favorite things. I downloaded it this month. Each “episode” is 10-15 minutes long and consists of music, a calm British voice reading the daily gospel reading, and a few gentle prompts toward prayer and reflection relating to the passage. I LOVE IT. I can listen before bed, while I’m getting ready, or in the car. It’s been years since I managed to have any consistent spiritual practice, but this is on its way to being a game changer for me.
I wore a Garmin every day for two years, partly because my company’s health insurance requires you to log all your steps/exercise in order to get a “discount.” I am now privileged to be on Taylor’s insurance and don’t have to do that anymore, so I took a break over Christmas. I was surprised by how free and calm I felt without the constant notifications, reminders, and nagging sense of failure. Then I put new batteries in my nice Fossil watches that I hadn’t worn in about a decade. It’s a small change (and I still wear the Garmin to exercise), but it’s had a big impact.
Random Happiness
The lemon tree from our wedding has been through a lot. When we brought it inside in October, it dropped all its buds, only to bloom again in December. I pollinated the flowers by hand with a Q-tip, and lots of tiny lemons were on the way. Then we moved. Not only did all the lemons drop off again, the leaves also started yellowing, falling off, and generally looking terrible. I treated the tree with neem oil spray, citrus tree fertilizer, and prayer. Nothing changed. Last weekend, I went to the local nursery where we bought the tree and had an emotional discussion with a very kind plant expert, who said I’m doing everything right and the tree is not dying. It might lose all its leaves, but with continued treatment, it’ll put out new healthy ones. I thought we could all benefit from this story of hope.
On a much lighter note, the IT department at work finally updated my name! It only took six months.
Our new backyard has a little garden path around a big magnolia tree. When Debra was here for the weekend, I told her I loved the fact that you can take a turn around the yard, so she decided we must. We went arm-in-arm and talked about Mr. Collins.
Your Monthly Rufus
Rufus is absolutely loving the new house. Space to run, stairs to climb, lots of new places to hop up and roll around. He also loves all our new furniture.
He also got a belated Christmas present, a catnip-stuffed fish that flops around like a real fish. I was suckered by an Instagram ad with videos of cats going crazy for it. The novelty has worn off a little, but Rufus’s first reaction was priceless.
On the Blog
I wrote briefly about my 2020 word, Peace.
Good Reads
♥ What Surprised Me Most About Living Together
♥ If you love books, do not cut them in half
♥ 4 Reasons Your White Walls Look BAD (helpful to me as we consider paint colors)
♥ Here’s how exercise reduces anxiety and makes you feel more connected
♥ The Oscars, Greta Gerwig and Why Little Women Is Still More Relevant than Ever
♥ Sin and the Rules of the Market
♥ The Case for Cohousing: Where Responsibilities Are Shared and Life Is A Little Less Lonely
A Closing Word
As a Basketball Person and, you know, a human, I was moved by the loss of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna on January 26. I think his vitality and closeness to my own age made it an extra-sharp reminder that tomorrow is not promised. Here was an iconic man just starting a new impactful chapter of his life, and a young girl with a very bright future. It’s hard to feel that it was “their time.” I’m thinking a lot about what kind of legacy, and what things undone, I would leave behind if I suddenly left this earth. I’m also praying for Kobe’s wife, Vanessa, because I know from (lesser) experience that nothing is worse than being the reason everyone is hugging their loved ones a little tighter. Still… hug your loved ones a little tighter, and be good to each other.
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