All I do is write, and I write so much that I never have time to write. This is my primary complaint about my life, and I know, that makes it a pretty damn good life. But in becoming a professional, full-time writer, I spend so much time writing that I have no time or energy for personal writing.    The result? This blog has become so neglected that I can no longer call myself a blogger; these days, I'm lucky if I can even squeak out a verbose Instagram caption. But everyone seems to have a Substack now, and I want one, too. They're new and shiny, like blogs felt back in 2008 ..read more

A very long writers' strike, followed by a very long actors' strike, meant a very long while without any new TV shows. Agonizing, I know! When there was nothing new to watch, I turned to some older content, and now that things are starting to come back, I'm thrilled to be catching up on all things new.   I've dived right back into the entire Dick Wolf universe (all three Law & Order shows, plus Chicago Med and Chicago PD), the return of The Rookie, and the current season of The Bachelor (which is great). But I've added some new things to the mix, too! Here's what ..read more

Honestly, these recaps probably aren't really for anyone but me at this point because, like... who's reading these? But still, they feel valuable to me — so valuable, in fact, that I'm finally completing this post at the end of January 2024, having failed to finish formatting it sooner, and I'm backdating it to December 2023, just for posterity's sake. Usually I break down my year-end recaps by month, but this time around, I went down a slightly different path. It's turned out to not be my favorite format, and I probably won't use it again, but rather than rewriting this one, I'm j ..read more

How was your Thanksgiving? We spent it in Hilton Head, S.C., with my extended family. My aunt and uncle own a vacation rental home there that we have been fortunate to use for the holiday each year. It's always nice to spend time with them... and just as nice to get home and usher in the winter holiday season. This post is a riff on "Three Things Thursday," a series that Stephany does sometimes, where she picks 10 categories and shares three things that fit into each of them for her right now. It's a fun way to share recommendations, random thoughts, and some life tidbits, though I've inste ..read more

Did you ever read the book Dark Matter by Blake Crouch? I loved most of it, but I hated the ending so much that I gave it a very low rating on Goodreads and still complain about it to this day. But that's not the point! The point is the concept of the multiverse, of alternate universes and lives and stories and versions of us.  Maybe Matt Haig's The Midnight Library is a better example, in which a woman who tries to die by suicide first experiences all the other possible variations on her life, had she made slightly different choices along the way. All the Sliding Doors  ..read more

   The first time I ever got acupuncture, I was living in New Hampshire and experiencing significant back pain. I also happened to have more disposable income than ever before, thanks to the military paying my rent (miss that). I booked an acupuncture appointment on a whim, and I was surprised to find that it was the first thing that ever truly helped relieve the chronic back pain that I’ve dealt with on and off since being diagnosed with scoliosis as a preteen.    I eventually left New Hampshire and started paying my own rent, and truth be told, I forgot all about acupunc ..read more

If we were catching up over coffee, I'd probably still be drinking an iced coffee, even though it's finally gotten chilly. I thiiink I might be one of those people who drinks iced coffee year-round now?   If we were catching up over coffee, I probably wouldn't seem as outgoing or chipper as I usually do. I would only go into it if you asked, though, and even then, with caution. I recently deleted my social media apps for a bit because the Israel/Gaza war has been weighing so heavily on me. Things feel really bad right now, and I'm scared, and it's affecting literally everything.   ..read more

   I started to make a list of things that are making me happy, generally, and then I realized just how much of it was media-related. Listen, I know there's more to life than movies and TV and podcasts and books, but they're the things that tend to lift my spirits most — or at least the things that are easiest to identify sometimes.   Hope you can find a recommendation or two in here. And I'd love to hear some of your faves, too!    Barbie I finally saw the all-pink film phenomenon whose marketing campaign so relentlessly and cheerfully tortured us all, and it wa ..read more

   I've shared this news on Instagram and Facebook, but I might as well share it here, too, even if it feels a little weird, for some reason, to do so. Mike and I recently publicly shared that we're going through the adoption process. We started it last summer, soon after it became clear that we probably wouldn’t be able to have biological kids. I still grieve my 2020 miscarriage, and receiving my infertility diagnosis was devastating. (I've written about it only in passing here and here). But we knew we wanted to become parents.  Because of the makeup of our own familie ..read more

    I haven't posted a books recap since March because I guess I am sort of not really a blogger anymore these days? Ugh, I hate that for me. But I'm always trying to get back into it and not disappear entirely, so here's what I've been reading for the last few months. As you'll see, I've been particularly into one genre in which alllll the books have extremely similar covers, oops.  The Black Queen by Jumata EmillNova is murdered the day before she's supposed to be crowned the school's first Black homecoming queen... and everyone assumes her enemy, the rich, bratty, racist Tin ..read more