The news is out: We've moved to Lakewood. I'm thrilled, really! But I'm also kind of devastated to say goodbye to Tremont, where we'd lived since 2015. It was the first place in Cleveland I called home, & I loved it.
Yes, we'll get used to Lakewood life (Brewella's, here I come!), but for now, I'm sending out a little extra love to all my Tremont faves. Here are the things I'll miss the most — & miss already, to be honest.
I didn't always want to buy a house. In fact, for most of my life, right up until the past two years or so, I specifically did not want to buy a house. I was perfectly content to rent for my entire life, the way people in bigger cities often do. No, I wasn't falling prey to the "You have to own a house to be an adult" thing society tries to foist upon us.
But then we got pregnant. We thought we were starting a family, & while it would've been perfectly fine to have a baby & even a toddler in our duplex apartment, we thought, "Hey, should we look for a house after all?" We started to look... & then we found out we weren't pregnant anymore, & then the pandemic hit, so we stayed put.
All right, let's do it!
I confess I took the easy way out of writing these descriptions of my favorite books of the year, in that I didn't actually write them — not for this post, anyway. Yeah, I just copied & pasted my original write-ups of each of them, sorry. But hey, I did take the time to round them up in the first place, which I didn't totally expect to get around to.
These are listed alphabetically, nothing more to be read into the order of them. But long story short, they're all great, & you should read them. You should also consider telling me your favorite reads of the year in the comments on this post. A girl's gotta build her TBR list!
I'm still hoping to do a "favorite books of the year" post, but I haven't gotten there yet. Suffice it to say that a few of these would (will?) make the list. I might even squeak in a final book or two before the start of 2022, but if so, I'll include those on January's roundup. I'm going to try to go back to monthly write-ups, as these are getting unwieldy again.
It's already snowed in Cleveland twice, but since the calendar declares that winter doesn't technically start until December 21st, I'm assembling my winter bucket list like I haven't already completed some of the things on it. (Spoiler: I have. This list is a bit of a meet-in-the-middle situation.)
I borrowed this idea from Tobia, who put together a fun winter bucket list of her own. Go check hers out... & let me know what's on yours!
It's been two years since my family has been together in the same place.
I know that's not unique these days. So many of us haven't seen our loved ones in so long, except from across the miles, through a laptop screen or on FaceTime. I barely remembered what it was like to be in person with them, indoors, together — to wake up to the sound of my aunt's laugh or my uncle's timbre, the way my mom talks to herself when she's cooking, the way we can never all agree on a movie to watch or a game to play.
But this Thanksgiving, we're all vaccinated, so we gathered again in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where my aunt & uncle own a beach rental property.
TW: chronic illness, infertility, weight
For a long time — since right after my spinal fusion surgery in seventh grade — I did not think of myself as a person with chronic pain. I thought everyone walked around in physical pain most of the time. It was only when I moved to Washington, D.C., after college that I learned that most people didn’t have the pain levels I had, that most people’s bodies didn’t hurt like mine did.
I hadn’t known. I thought it was normal. I knew mine was, perhaps, worse than others, but it never occurred to me that other people had no general pain.
I guess that’s because mine has simply always been there, & I’ve always just dealt with it — like the time my back hurt so badly for two weeks that I had to wear only sports bras & carry a wheeled suitcase to work… at age 23. But I’ve learned how to manage; I’ve always managed. You have to, don’t you? You only get one body, & so you do with it what can. You adapt. You figure out how to function best with what you’re given.
What have you been reading? And do you have any other YA thriller recommendations for me? I've got two more books to read in Holly Jackson's Good Girl's Guide to Murder series, but after that, well, I'm gonna need more in this vein. Hellllp.
I went to Atlanta! It marked my first time traveling by airplane since January of 2020, when I went to Florida with my BFF Rebecca. God, that seems so long ago. I was pregnant then, & there was no hint of a pandemic then. My, how life has changed.
I decided to go to Atlanta because another BFF, Sammi, lives there. She was going through a bit of a hard time, & I impulsively booked an inexpensive Southwest flight to visit her in a few weeks.
When the time came to travel, I started to panic. It had been so long, & the world still isn't safe. I didn't want to be around that many people or wear a mask for that long or risk touching or generally interacting with other humans. I was worried, too, about all of the airplane shenanigans we've seen documented on social media throughout the past year, evidence that so many people seem to have forgotten their human decency since this pandemic began.
