Apartment Tour: Welcome to My Home Office!

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

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This January marked a decade of my working from home! In a world where many, many people now work remotely, it's started to seem like the norm - but for the majority of my time as a work-from-home staffer, it was considered somewhat unusual & potentially only for lazy people. I once even wrote a piece for Thought Catalog (remember what that was super popular?" titled "11 Things That People Who Work From Home Hate Hearing."

Recently, I shared a photo of my office on my Instagram Stories, & my coworker @PaigePlates expressed delight at it, noting that she only ever sees the one little square right behind my head on Zoom calls. I thought I'd share it here so people can see my work-from-home space, where I spend the majority of my time in my home. 
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The Best TV Shows I've Watched During the Pandemic

Saturday, January 23, 2021

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So.... whatcha watchin'? The pandemic, now nearly a year old, has sent me into a tailspin of TV-watching, as, without any out-in-the-world plans to make, I've turned to bingeing whatever seems like it might be good enough to keep me from focusing on the state of the world.

Below is just a bit of the TV I've made my way through in the past year, from a comedy about an Indian-American teenager to the most classic mafia show in American history... & basically everything in between.

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365 Days of Not Being a Mom

Thursday, January 21, 2021

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It's hard to believe that today marks one year since I learned of my miscarriage, since setting into motion the double D&Cs it took to get my body back to normal. But it's not back to normal, is it? I'm not back to normal.
 
In the midst of my miscarriage, I thought, "I will remember every moment of this, & I will write it all down later. I will tell my version of this story for women who can't figure out how to tell their own." It felt too painful in the moment, though, too much emotional energy I didn't have – & I found that when I "recovered," I didn't have it in me anymore to tell that story, to go back, to delve that deep.
 
I remember most vividly those days before the miscarriage, when I knew that nothing was living or growing inside me anymore but hadn't yet undergone the procedure to finalize it. I remember walking through Target & WalMart like a zombie, equal parts trying to ignore the baby sections & drawn to them, like I couldn't help but immerse myself in the midst of the most painful possible place to be. Surrounded by strollers & diaper rash cream & pacifiers & onesies, hands on my lower stomach, I breathed deeply & quietly & told myself, "I am not a mom anymore."
 
There's something weird that happens, mentally, when you learn that you're pregnant, a mental shift from "This body is mine" to "This body is yours" – a moment in which you realize that while you're still yourself, you're also something else, something new, a protective vessel for a burgeoning life. For that one mere month that I knew I was pregnant, everything I did was designed to sustain, support, & grow that life, to ensure that the baby inside me was protected & provided for – to give my child the beginning they deserved.
 
And so, in those in-between moments, when I learned that my body had failed in its role of protector & provider but before I'd gone into surgery to make it "official," I felt more helpless than ever before – like a failure who hadn't even done anything wrong. I'd gone from not-a-mother to mother-to-be to just plain old me again, all in the span of just over a month. And maybe it shouldn't have been long enough to change me, but I did.
 
Before my miscarriage, I was never really sure whether I wanted kids. I thought I wanted to adopt, maybe; I had no real interest in the specifics of being pregnant, didn't want some foreign body taking over my body, distorting & destroying my already-warped view of the flesh in which I life. I never felt the tick of that proverbial biological clock, never felt like I was missing out, never experienced any jealousy or envy over pregnant women or parents.
 
Until I did.
 
For the last 365 days, it has felt as though everyone is getting pregnant & having babies but me – & as much as I hate experiencing that jealousy & envy, as much as it makes me feel like a jerk & a failure & a sore loser (to put it bluntly), I can't seem to help it. Every pregnancy announcement is tinged with pain; there's joy, of course, because I love my friends, & I'm not a monster. But the hurt that comes with it – the "Why her & not me? Why not me, too?" thoughts that accompany it – eat away at me, sending me into a small tailspin every time.
  
I am embarrassed by it, almost, disgusted by it – by how simple & basic & common it all feels, to suddenly feel the desperate urge to be a mother, to experience jealousy & envy toward those who are, to to struggle this much with my feelings about it, which all seem to have changed so quickly & so dramatically. I was always so proud of being a woman who wasn't defined by my status as a parent or lack thereof, & sometimes I'm ashamed to have fallen into the age-old trope of "older woman desperate to have a child."
 
I just keep thinking there's something so cruel about the fact that I spent the entirety of my 20s trying so desperately not to get pregnant, only to find that getting pregnant is actually pretty difficult. There's something deeply & existentially unfair about having been so responsible in my lack of sureness about having a child, & then, upon deciding I'm sure, discovering that perhaps I am too old or my body too broken to have a child after all.
  
In this moment, I am just short of 36 & a half years old; at one time, I thought that by now, I would be the mother of a 5-month-old, but every day that passes leaves me one day older, one day closer to "too "late." I know many women my age & older have kids, that I am not doomed, & that even if I cannot have children of my own, adoption is still an option. I know this isn't over; I know this has, in some ways, barely begun. I know there is more to come. I know now, with certainty, that Mike & I want to be parents, & that we will work to make sure it happens.
  
But in the meantime, I'm just left with the wanting – with the ache of having been there, almost, of feeling like we were on the way toward parenthood. With the pain of having chosen a name & envisioned a future & started to change our life to accommodate someone else's presence within it.
 
In this moment, I'm reminded – yet, again, like I have been nearly every day for the past 365 of them – that I am not yet a mother, & that I do not know when or if I ever will be. That this journey is not going to be easy & clear-cut & straightforward & storybook. That we can't make our bodies do what we want them to do, & that try as we might, we don't have the power to bend the future to our whims.
 
We'll keep trying. We'll keep hoping. And until then, we'll keep grieving, too. 
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The 30-Recipe Project: My First 5 Recipes of the Year

Sunday, January 17, 2021

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Each year, I set a Goodreads goal for myself: How many books am I going to read this year? My 2021 goal is 55 books, up 10 from my 2020 goal. Back in 2018, I set a goal of 80 & read a whopping 101. I decided to take the same approach this year toward cooking & baking. 

As I've shared here before, I've finally learned how to do a little bit of both since the start of the pandemic – & while I'm nowhere near becoming an Ina Garten or a Mary Berry, I have started to enjoy exploring new-to-me recipes & trying my hand at getting things right. I'm setting my cooking goals a little bit lower than my reading goals, though: In 2021, I'd like to try at least 30 new-to-me recipes.

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What Life Looks Like Right Now

Thursday, January 14, 2021

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Sometimes when I don't know what the hell to write about or don't have the brain capacity for a "themed" post, I just do these round-up posts that round up... life lately. What have you been up to? Here's where my brain is these days. 

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An Ode to Washington, D.C., My First Favorite City

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

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I am 8 years old & visiting Washington, D.C., for the first time with my parents. My dad & I are sitting on a bench on the National Mall when a bird poops on his head. I am particularly enamored of public transit & of the Metro's colorful, extremely '90s logo. I write it all down in my diary, where I say that it is my favorite city in the world, as if I've been to others.

I am 14 years old, & my mom & I have taken my exchange student brother, who is from Peru, on a family vacation to Washington, D.C., so that he can see the U.S. capital while he's living here for the year. We visit the Air & Space Museum with my cousin, Patrick, & then we stand at the wrought-iron fence outside the White House, agog, in awe.

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A Few (OK, Many) Words on the Christianization of the Bachelor Franchise

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

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First things first, I was gonna write all this up into a nice packaged piece to submit to Alma, one of my favorite Jewish websites... but somebody else did it first. See "Is The Bachelor Just a Christian Dating Show Now?" by Emily Burack, the smart & insightful gal who beat me to the punch. 

After having a few conversations in a few Bachelor-related Facebook groups (Dear God, I am embarrassing), I realized that I've written enough words in there that I might as well put them into a piece to be shared here. I don't need to send my piece off to a publication if I've got a "publish" button right here! 

SO. Let's get to it.

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What I Read in November & December

Monday, January 4, 2021

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I know, I know, we're in a new year! Let 2020's memory be forgotten! But I couldn't close out the year without rounding up the books I read in the last two months of it. I think I might finally be back on the monthly review-writing bandwagon...

Oh, yeah, & if some of these individual reviews look familiar, it's because you read them in my Favorite Books of 2020 post, published last week. Check it out, if you haven't yet – & let me know what your favorite reads of the year were, too!

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