It occurred to me yesterday that I hadn't made a dancing video in awhile. Years, in fact. (The last one we made was in our old house, wearing full Risky Business attire, but I can't show it to you because YouTube took it down. Because apparently you can't just use Bob Seger tunes willy-nilly. Shame.)
That clearly had to be fixed.
Our old (old, old) living room, 2009.
Several lifetimes ago (by my count), I wrote my first of what turned out to be hundreds of posts that loosely fall into the "Diary" category - the missives about parenting, about anxiety, about divorce that I've posted here over the years. This first one, though, was about something a little different. A little more...tactile.
It was about my living room. The living room that I shared with Kendrick (and Lucy, and then later on Virgil and our infant son) when we lived on the Upper East Side. It was a wild, messy mix of hand-me-downs from my parents, pieces we'd found discarded on the street and fixed up with varying degrees of success, and the occasional element of inexplicable drama (chalkboard fridge! graffiti-covered chest of drawers! insane bird wallpaper!).
I have a newsletter! Ten years after someone first told me I should have one! Ten years during which I was told "you need to have a newsletter" approximately 1,354 times (per year).
Look at me, STANDING ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF THE DIGITAL MEDIA INDUSTRY.
Totally casual magazine-reading outfit (dress by Cleobella)
On Friday afternoon, I arrived at Francesca's house for a little kid-free staycation only to find her triumphantly reducing some apricots to make a pork chop sauce. "I just invented this dish!" she declared. "It's SO DELICIOUS!"
We exclaimed over and over about the particular combination of flavors - how unexpected! how delightful! - and snapped a couple of pics, because clearly I would need to post about this unexpectedly delightful new dish.
So, shocker: It turns out that doing a press tour for a book about anxiety results in QUITE the intense interviews. For my first two books, people asked me about...you know, like, Tips For What To Wear When Pregnant. For this one? "Tell me your deepest childhood traumas and most profoundly held fears."
So...that.
You can listen to my interview on The Mental Illness Happy Hour here; the interview part starts at around 1:10.
A couple of years ago, when The Big Fat Activity Book for Pregnant People came out, I had one of the best interview experiences of my life with Ellie Knaus of Atomic Moms - and so obviously I had to come back while doing press for the new book. In this episode we talk perfectionistic tendencies, anxiety attacks, massive life transitions, and single mom life. Oh, and we swap tales of hitting our absolute most humiliating rock bottoms before we became “recovering actors” (Ellie's term, which I have now adopted as my own).
Oh AND I have real-time, major Life Realizations in this one. Like, on the air, while talking to Ellie. You can hear them. I also get weepy. It's a good time.
My house, all staged and ready to be sold.
Here's a fun little career development as of late: I've started doing digital marketing and strategy for realtors. Mostly what that means is that I help them develop their digital channels - SEO optimize their websites, establish their social aesthetic, etc etc - but in the cases of clients that are local, I've also been helping with the actual, physical, staging-of-spaces in advance of photographing them and putting them on the market.
Before I begin, let me say that my participation in this insanely adorable endeavor was purely as a sous chef; these creatures are my friend Erin's creation from top to bottom. But even though I cannot take credit for them, they clearly need to be blogged about.
They are cupcakes. Made in ice cream cones. With unicorn horns. AND EYELASHES.
I mean.
Whenever I write for sites other than this one right here - and especially when the topics are less "Ten Things To Wear For Summer!" and more "Here Are My Greatest Fears As A Woman/Parent/Human" - it feels like I'm sending little bits of my body out into the universe for people to do with as they will.
It is scary. I do it anyway, because over the years I've discovered that doing anything else isn't really an option for me.
On Tuesday, three new articles of mine went live, coinciding with the launch of The Big Activity Book for Anxious People, and they're...personal. Pieces of me, and so on.
It's book release day! And I have been awake since 4:30AM doing radio interviews, so this is the most glamorous photograph I could manage. (It's fortunate that the schedule is all radio interviews, because someone is looking ROUGH over here.)
I think it's safe to say the last stretch of my life has been a busy one, and I am capital-E Exhausted. But I'm also sitting here with my jaw firmly planted on the ground, because I literally cannot believe the outpouring of love happening for our little book. THANK YOU for all those posts, messages, DMs, and emails - they mean more to me than words can say, and I am a person who does not often find herself at a loss in that department.
In celebration of the launch, I'm doing a huge giveaway over on Instagram. Three winners will receive a signed copy of the book, plus:
