“He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.” Erin Morgenstern,The Starless Sea
The Starless Sea is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. I love everything about it. The storyline is intricate and the characters are well-developed. It is full of mystery and surprise, and it doesn’t shy away from darker emotions.
Most of all, though, it resonates with me through little moments like this one. There is almost a holiness to the language, conjuring images and sensations that stir my soul.
I’m having a hard time putting this reflection into words. It’s something like church, though. I am a rarity among my friends in that I do actually attend church, and I find the sacred there. The care and love of a community. The big picture.
One of my favorite aspects of my faith, however, is that the divine isn’t confined to a building or a specific group of people. It’s in a million little things, like wind chimes and cloud formations. Kindness. A really good cup of coffee. A dish of water set out for the birds.
This quote reminds me of moments that make up a whole life.
When we were young, and Mom and Dad were both working, we did the three-meals-a-day thing. Mornings started early, so we would typically eat a bowl of cereal or toast – something that could be prepared quickly. Once they both retired and could get up whenever they wanted, their eating schedule quickly morphed into what it is today – two meals a day and snacking whenever they feel peckish.
I also go by this routine most days. I get up too early to eat a real breakfast during the week, as eating too early tends to nauseate me. So does eating a regular meal too late in the day. It’s a delicate balancing act and the main reason I’m a big fan of snacking throughout the day rather than eating a lot all at once. Lunch is usually my biggest meal during the work week, though, and it often consists of warming up leftovers or eating somewhere on or around campus.
Weekday dinners are typically salads, sandwiches, or snacks. Popcorn and a glass of wine, a handful of nuts and crackers with a piece of fruit – anything that’s quick, easy, and on the lighter side. The other night I had a carrot cake cupcake (sans icing because it was super sweet and cream cheese is not a friend to the lactose-averse) and a mug filled with dry Cheerios. Not my finest culinary moment, but sometimes you just do whatever gets the job done.
When I am working and going to various meetings during the week, it doesn’t make sense to add cooking to the to-do list on those days. But I do like to cook. That’s what Saturday and Sunday are for, which is one of many reasons that I guard my weekends so carefully. A good weekend at home yields food for the whole week to come.
Saturday mornings start with a hearty breakfast (after I have nursed my first cup of coffee or two and eased into the day…maybe started a load of laundry or read for an hour…). Sometimes there are multiple courses. I would make a great hobbit. Lunch is typically a big-batch meal. I eat one portion and divide the rest into containers that I can just grab for lunch as I head out the door the following week. If it’s a recipe that especially makes a lot (like 7-8 servings) I package half of them up and freeze them for a later date. This comes in handy when I have busy weekends when the cooking doesn’t happen. Supper on Saturday is often spent with friends, but if I’m at home I’ll cook another meal that I know will leave me with more leftovers (this is often when I make soup) so that I can enjoy a little variety during the week.
On Sundays, I usually eat breakfast for lunch after church. It’s my favorite meal to make and I’m hardly ever home to do it at the traditional time, so I take full advantage of my days off. If it happens to be a time of the year when it’s not 10,473 degrees outside, I may bake something in the afternoon. Sunday supper is usually eaten early (around 4-4:30) so that it has plenty of time to digest before I try to go to sleep. Because Sunday is comfort food night. For me this usually means carbs. Big bowl of pasta and sauce, creamy risotto, pizza. If I haven’t had my fill of breakfast yet, I’ll eat biscuits and gravy or oatmeal, or I’ll bust out the waffle iron for a real treat. It’s my favorite meal of the week.
When I make waffles, I always make extras, because I know I will want more at a slightly later date (i.e., the next night). Here is my current go-to recipe, which serves 3 people (or me, 3-4 times).
Dry ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 hearty pinch of salt
Coconut flakes (technically optional, but I don’t understand why you would want to leave them out)
Wet ingredients:
1 stick (i.e., 8 tablespoons or ½ cup) of butter (unsalted, or if you only have salted, leave salt out of dry ingredients), melted and cooled, plus a little more for the waffle iron
1 tablespoon sugar (not technically a wet ingredient, but it just works better if you mix it with the butter early on)
1 ¾ cup unsweetened coconut milk (you can use the full-fat canned coconut milk if that’s what you have – and you really should try it in this recipe at least once – but I usually have the less intense stuff in the carton on hand, so that’s what I use most often)
Pour those two bowls together and stir/whisk thoroughly.
Brush waffle iron with butter.
Pour batter into iron, releasing when it stops steaming. Repeat until you’re out of batter.
Serve with your topping(s) of choice.
I like my waffles on the crispy side, but if you want more fluff, try adding up to ¼ cup more coconut milk, adding an egg to the wet ingredients, or whipping the batter a little longer right before pouring it into the iron.
Inspired by Joy the Baker, I have been making summer bucket lists for a few years. Summer is my least favorite season, which can feel isolating when it seems like it’s everyone else’s favorite. Sometimes I even trick myself into thinking this year will be different. My April and May self will see all the fun events planned for June and get excited. But when summer actually hits, I want to just curl up in a blanket and binge-watch something familiar (I’m currently rewatching Lucifer and Merlin).
I suspect I have a little SAD going on, as this time of the year seems to be when I most need to ramp up good mental health habits. So the summer bucket list is partly self-care and partly a reminder that there’s something to look forward to.
Experiment with making summertime treats. Specifically, I have been obsessed with icebox pies lately. Some of them are recipes on their own; some are ice cream recipes I just freeze in a pie crust. I’ve got a long list to test and see which ones are my favorites, but here are a few to give you an idea of how delicious I intend my summer to be:
Coffee
Lemonade (also trying one with limeade)
Cherry (and blueberry and peach, etc.) cheesecake
Maple whiskey
Banana cream
Tres leches
Have a two-day writing retreat at home. I am planning for this to be July 4 and 5, but I haven’t decided which project(s) I’m working on yet. I do know that I want to introduce the paid subscriber portion of my Substack by the end of the year, so I do need to edit some pieces to get them ready for the paying public. More on all of this later.
Have at least one reading retreat at home. If nothing else, I’ll be participating in Dewey’s Reverse readathon in July, but I’m open to more decadent reading days/weekends.
Take a mid-year financial health assessment – not necessarily for the blog (although I may post highlights) but just for my information. I feel like I’ve made considerable progress, but I want to actually crunch the numbers.
Look for joy or luck or magic and document it (journal, Instagram, etc.). Take the lessons I’ve learned from past years’ themes and apply them.
A medium-to-big life change is coming up soon, and I want to leave space for it. But I also don’t want to forget to take care of myself this summer so that I can keep overwhelm at a minimum.
A fitting start to my resolution recap is a quote from Luvvie Ajayi Jones’s newsletter.
“The goals we set aren’t sacred oaths.”
My 2022 resolutions were perfectly reasonable at the time that I set them. Things happen, though, and sometimes those things cause a big enough disruption (good or bad – still a disruption) that previous intentions either no longer represent what we want or simply aren’t feasible. So we adjust, and we extend compassion to ourselves (the very hardest of all compassions for me to muster).
For better or worse, here’s the year in review.
Read 150 books – I read a lot this year, but not exactly what I planned to read. I finished the majority of the books chosen for in-person book clubs, but I didn’t read a lot of the online club selections. I made a pretty big dent in Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge, the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, Girlxoxo’s Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge, and the 52 Book Club’s Reading Challenge, but I didn’t finish any of them. However, I discovered some new series and authors that I love, and still met my goal of 150 books. According to Goodreads, in those 150 books, I read 44,892 pages, which put my average book length at 299 pages. Most of all, I had fun, so I am calling it a success!
Write 5 short stories – I think I wrote zero short stories this year. I may have finished one for a What Now? submission, but I don’t recall specifics, so probably not. On the plus side, I have definitely written more words of fiction than in other recent years, so at least I’m getting back into the habit.
Finish expanded rough drafts of Feast and Epic Meal Planning – Welp. Hmm. Nope. This did not happen. I did make an impressive (read: intense) to-do list for each project to keep me on track. I’m pretty sure doing that just overwhelmed me, though, especially as life (read: work) itself got more overwhelming.
Earn $7500 with copywriting job – This also did not happen (see above re: overwhelmed at work). I have a couple of new teams that pay more per word, though, so it’s starting to become easier to work back up to the paycheck I need. This leaves me hopeful.
Build a consistent practice of an average of 30 minutes/day of movement – I’m so proud of myself. I’ve been really consistent with this. It’s mostly just been walking with a few dance breaks scattered in, but my doctor assures me that it counts (take that, overachiever brain). The main difference I’ve noticed that it has made is having fewer aches/stiff muscles, especially when I get up in the morning.
So, two out of five. Not what I’d hoped for, but still progress. I learned some things, and I’m (working on) being satisfied with that.
Did you make resolutions this year? What did you learn from them?
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts, but there are several fun things I want to share.
To Listen:
Usually, I’d rather chew my arm off than listen to someone ramble and “um” at me for long periods of time (i.e., most podcasts) (short periods of time are fine – it’s really the prolonged, coulda-been-ten-years-shorter-without-the-fillers monologues that get to me), but the Talkville Podcast in which Michael Rosenbaum and Tom Welling (and various guests) are watching episodes of “Smallville” and giving commentary on them is really entertaining. It will be more entertaining if you were in this particular fandom when the show aired, but I suspect others enjoy it, too.
BILATERAL STIMULATION. So soothing. So engaging. Use headphones for the full (i.e., bilateral) effect.
Tiger D – my friend Sarah’s show on Kuzu on Tuesday nights. You can listen (tonight!) from 8-10 (CST) on kuzu.fm. I’m typically book-clubbing or working during most of it, but I occasionally catch it on the drive home or if I have a rare night off when no articles are due the next day.
To Watch:
In addition to rewatching “Smallville” with Lex and Clark, I’m also rewatching “Alias.” I think I’m at the part where I stopped watching the first time, because so far, nothing in Season 4 is familiar. I still heart Marshall the most.
“The Good Doctor” is good overall. I will watch anything with Richard Schiff in it, so there’s that. I’m not very far in at this point, but it’s interesting enough to keep watching.
And I’m not technically into this yet, as I have not started it. But I trust Maggie’s judgment, and she loves “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” So I may start watching that soon.
To Eat:
It is gourd season. I am in the mood for squashes, and there is a significant pumpkin presence on this month’s meal plan. Specifically, Joy the Baker’s pumpkin muffins and some kind of pumpkin/cannellini bean soup. Maybe also pasta with pumpkin sauce. We’ll see.
It’s also roasted veggie season. Most sheet pan dinner recipes contain some sort of meat, but I just don’t know how they find the room on the sheet pan with all the bounty of fall produce. A pile of roasted veggies (a warm salad, if you will) makes a quick, delicious meal with plenty of leftovers. And it’s a nice balance to the cheese-on-everything I tend to eat otherwise.
Breakfast for dinner has been happening at least four times a week lately. It’s just so easy. I lean toward savory breakfast foods, so we’re talking egg and cheese burritos, frittatas, fried eggs over roasted tomatoes and rice, and toasted egg sandwiches. Happy.
To Do:
NaNoWriMo! I have a new character and a new story, and I like both so much I may turn this into a series. I hope to get most of the first draft of the first book done this month.
Quiet, quiet, quiet evenings. I remember now what a regular writing practice does for my schedule and my mental health. This has been good for me in so many ways.
I love costumes. I usually dress up as food (e.g., one year for Halloween, I was a strawberry milkshake), but this year, I am the Mad Hatter. It’s so much fun. The spool sash took forever but is definitely my favorite part of the outfit. One of my coworkers squeals, “You’re so cute!” every time she walks by. I enjoy that.
I can be fairly sensitive and serious, but any chance I get to insert a little whimsy into my life, I jump at it. I love opportunities to be creative, and I notice that I do better mentally when I make an effort to seek them out. To that end, I track creative tasks as part of my ongoing goal-setting for the year. This year, I have eight categories I’m tracking, and while I have specific goals for each (see parentheses below), I try to work most of them in as often as possible:
Writing – My writing job and blogging basically track themselves, so I limit this category to other projects, such as poetry, fiction, and newsletter or journal submissions (at least four times a week).
Needlework – Most of this is knitting, but I also have been playing around with embroidery and cross stitch (at least twice a week).
Piano – I have been working through a book of sonatas, trying to keep my sight-reading skills fresh, but I’m also (slowly) composing a piece. It’s the first song I have written since I busted out “Texas Is the Place for Me” for a piano recital when I was in junior high, but unlike that little gem, this one is strictly instrumental (at least twice a week).
Art journal – I have a lush-themed art journal for the year as well as an ongoing scrapbook sort of thing. I also include coloring in this because most of those pages serve as page backdrops or cover art for my various art journals (at least three times a week).
Cooking/baking – Is cooking creative? It is the way I do it. Also, have you seen Pie Lady Books? But even if it’s not that elaborate, I like playing around with ingredients and seeing how it turns out (at least once a week, but usually more, especially if I have several free days/evenings).
Collaboration – Creative tasks are even more fun with other people. Choir practice and jam sessions are typically how this pans out, but the occasional studio or art party counts, too (at least once but often twice a week).
Performance – I usually sing with the choir in service on Sunday mornings, but I’ve been dipping my toe into being on other stages for the last couple of years. I have a performance coming up in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned if you’re local (at least four times a month).
Miscellaneous – Dang, I love a craft project. I like figuring out how to build or make things, especially if I can use them to decorate or accessorize. At any point in time, I likely have three or four projects in process, and the only reason there aren’t more is that I am limited on space (at least twice a week).
Speaking of goal tracking, I would be remiss if I did not wrap up this month of writing about creating a lush life without revealing the specific things I have been trying to put into practice on a regular basis this year. I didn’t set a specific goal number for them; I’m mostly just logging them for informational purposes. There are five main categories that I use to track lush living:
Cozy – Big surprise there, I know. This category is super broad. Any day that includes sufficient cozy elements (this category is also super vague) gets a check mark. Mostly, this is an opportunity to reflect at the end of each day on whether I have made time for myself to relax.
Pleasure/self-care – Closely related to cozy (and sometimes they do overlap), this category is more for specific self-care actions like facials and getting my hair done and foot soaks.
Socializing – If left to my own devices, I will hermit away and hardly ever leave the house. But several things I’ve talked about this month involve actually connecting with other people, so I give myself a little shout-out in my goal chart when I do something social.
Journaling – Sometimes this seems like too much navel-gazing (particularly this month when I’m also journaling daily-ish online), but it is vital to my mental health. I’m so much more grounded when I take a little time every day to write my thoughts out. My journals bounce between total stream of consciousness and well-organized, multi-tiered arguments. It’s a wild ride. I may have to appoint someone to burn them when I die.
Adulting – For lack of a better term. I tend to procrastinate unpleasant tasks until I am desperate to get them done. This is unnecessarily stressful and counterproductive when it comes to living a lush life. In addition to putting the week’s to-do list in my planner, I give myself credit for each task in my chart, and it’s working so well that I’m going to keep doing it next year.
And that’s the end. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this series of posts on creating a lush life as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. Hopefully, you found the occasional nugget that can help you make your life a little lusher, too.
Aw, Advent candles and pockets. Ignore the ash on the table.
Advent is soon! I’m considering Celtic Advent this year, because the four-ish weeks never seem long enough.
Cozy is the main reason I like Advent and Christmas. The lights, presence, pleasure (coffee, tea, wine, cake, etc.), communal/equality, gratitude, comfort, togetherness, shelter/home of it. I get why this season is hard for a lot of people, especially those who live here and don’t celebrate Christmas, especially if they work or have worked in retail where they play the most annoying Christmas songs ad nauseum for months on end. And in some ways, it’s hard for me, too. But a spot of melancholy hardly ever keeps me from enjoying something.
I do feel compelled to keep a lot of my joy about the season under the radar (except here and now on the internet, of course) so that I don’t become part of the intense way that others try to shove the holiday down everyone’s throat (looking at you, Starbucks cup zealots). Luckily, I’m usually so caught up in preparing for services at church and other fun things I enjoy this time of year that I miss a lot of that, especially during Advent. Because of the way it falls around work schedules and family gatherings, the twelve days of Christmas partly become a transitional time of letting go and tucking in to prepare for the new year. It’s the time of the year that I’m most likely to enjoy getting by on as little as possible and appreciating what I have.
I don’t know if it’s the start of the church year or (some of) the seasonal music or the (mythical) sweater weather, but the season is very cozy to me. Some of my traditions include going to the farm, reading night the night before I leave (I often buy new pajamas and book specifically for the evening), and coming home to rest. Then there’s the best week of the year (Christmas to New Year’s Day) with goal-setting and shopping and catching up with friends but not really planning anything. I used to plan a lot before the week but I’ve found that it’s even more relaxing if the weeks leading up to it are calm, too.
I tend to celebrate seasons more than holidays, so I don’t know that I have specific traditions for certain days. What are some of yours?
If spring and summer are water months, the fall and winter are for fires.
Well, outside fires. I’m clearly in the hygge minority when I say that I don’t like fireplaces. They’re smelly and dirty and are more likely to make me sniffly than cozy. If I ever find a house that doesn’t have one, I will know it’s the house for me. I’m pretty resigned to never finding that, though, because it seems that all the newer houses have them. Apparently, it’s a big selling point. In Texas. Where it often reaches the upper 60s and 70s even in the dead of winter.
Anyway.
I do appreciate the glow and warmth of a communal fire when the air is crisp. I’m lucky enough to have several friends with fire pits in their backyards who generously invite me over to enjoy them. A warm blaze, a little cozy beverage, and camaraderie. Happy.
In addition to actually being able to walk from my car to my office without ending up a sweaty mess, there are many things I love about fall and winter. Boots. Sweaters. Soup. Cider. I enjoy baking in the winter, so I often have biscuits, scones, cookies, and cake lying around. Occasionally I get industrious and even make a pie.
I like warm beverages all year long, but they feel especially soothing when it’s cool outside. My go-to adult beverage is typically wine, but I also tend to keep Southern Comfort and peach schnapps around (don’t scoff until you try it – mix equal parts and enjoy) during the winter. I often drink it cold, but it’s better warm. Add apple cider or cranberry juice if you really must. Downright medicinal.
Shorter days make it easier for me to slow down and relax. I occasionally experience a little seasonal depression, but it doesn’t happen every year. Perhaps that’s because I actually rest in the cooler months. I typically sleep better in the winter than at any other time of the year.
I’m excited that we’re entering the time of the year that I find the coziest.
When I think of the things I like about spring and summer, it’s a short list, and it’s mostly food. The fresh produce in Texas during summer, y’all? Amazing. I mean, it’s good all year, really, because we don’t have proper seasons. But that first bite of ripe peach in late June/early July almost makes me forgive it for being 14,000 degrees outside.
During childhood, summer meant swimming lessons and the occasional church camp. Mostly it meant more time to read and being locked outside to “enjoy the sunlight, dammit.” We have a big backyard at the farm, so there were often games set up for the family or whoever else moseyed on by to play. I still have a scar from running into the horseshoe post while playing frisbee. My favorite game we played was croquet. Spoiler alert for my 50th birthday coming up in a few years – I may have a Wonderland party, complete with an ongoing game of croquet. That seems like a fitting way to end half a century and kick off the spring.
Summertime is synonymous with play to me. I never quite shook the summer vacation vibe, even though I no longer work in a job where I have summers off (or at least with a lighter workload). I’m more spontaneous during the summer. I’m more likely to say yes when people say, “Hey, if you’re not doing anything tonight, join us for ___!” Unless it’s outside. Because WHY. What about Texas outside in the summer is fun at all?
For the last few years, I’ve posted a summer bucket list that is often full of fun things that I want to remember to enjoy, like farmers’ markets, swimming, fresh flowers, and snow cones. My food staples are typically fruit, salad, and sandwiches because it’s too hot to cook. I make several batches of sun tea, and I usually have a signature potion or two that I particularly like that season (this past summer was a toss-up between hibiscus and fresh mint).
I’m also more likely to adopt a signature cocktail over the summer. Some of my summer favorites include:
Cucumber spritzer – cucumber vodka, Sprite, lime (or, if you have a well-stocked bar and don’t keep soda in the house, sub tonic water and simple syrup for the Sprite)
Summer hygge is capturing that perfect lazy afternoon by the pool with a good book and an umbrella drink. Days like that almost trick me into forgetting the weather.
(Disclosure – some of the links in this post get me some sort of bonus if you sign up. No pressure – just seemed right to let you know.)
I’m not sure when I went from viewing shopping as a nice outing to absolutely despising it. But I’m fully entrenched in avoiding it at all costs these days. I have eaten some of the weirdest concoctions for dinner just to put off going to the grocery store another day. Shoe shopping, one of my former favorite pastimes, is nothing but a chore. And trying on clothes? Forget it. I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing if something will fit so I can just grab it and go.
The only type of shopping I still like is browsing a bookstore, and unless I have a few hours to look around, I usually need the motivation of picking up an online order or meeting a favorite author who’s signing their books to get me there.
But luckily, services such as automated shipments and subscriptions exist. They make my life so much better.
I am part of three book clubs – Literati, Fantastic Strangelings, and Happy Endings – that ship me each month’s selection. All the paper goods I used – toilet paper, facial tissues, the occasional roll of paper towels – are on timed shipments. So are most of my toiletries and cleaning supplies. I order coffee and tea online (or pick up supplements at church). I don’t remember the last time I went inside the liquor store, because as it turns out, they will all bring my order right to my car, as will the grocery store (when they manage to get the order right).
I’m looking for a reliable way to have all my pantry staples routinely sent to my doorstep. Do you have a service you like? Leave it in the comments. Pretty please.
Part of having a lush life is finding ways to make tedious chores easier (or outsource them altogether). Subscriptions take so many errands off my to-do list, and I love that.
M. Suzanne Terry 