I only finished four books this month – well, only four that I’m logging on Goodreads. Julian has been reading a lot to me – first we finished the Cat Kid Comics series and now we are onto the Cat Ninja graphic novel series. So I guess we are obsessed with comic cats? Ooh, I should introduce him to Garfield!

I’m also reading A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the Hunger Games prequel, out loud to Pippa. But since I read that when it first came out, I’m not counting it toward my goal of reading a 100 books in 2023.

These are the four books that do count toward my goal:

I love Liane Moriarty’s work, and this book was no exception. It’s about a family of tennis players and the drama that enfolds when mom disappears. I played tennis as a kid but stopped in my early twenties, and this novel inspired me to sign up for tennis lessons. Lots of satisfying twists and turns and interesting perspectives from a multitude of characters.

I listened to the audiobook for this one and it opened my eyes to the sensation of awe, and I’m already scheming ways to incorporate “awe” into my life with my 24 in ’24 project. It’s a well-written and entertaining read. Or listen. I might need the hardcover so I can study it and take some notes.

Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorites, and I have a soft spot for books that continue the story. This one is the Mary Bennet redemption story that I did not know I needed. I read the paperback, and it was a slow read, taking about three weeks from start to finish. The first 100 pages felt a bit like a homework assignment for an English class, but then I fell in love with Mary and now I’m afraid to reread Pride and Prejudice. Will I be angry at Jane Austen for treating Mary so cruelly? Or will this novel deepen my experience with the original text? I highly recommend this one to all Jane Austen fans.

Last but not least, I read The Lady From the Black Lagoon for my book club. We take turns picking the monthly selection, and this book would never have been on my radar. I’m not a horror fan, and I’ve never seen the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but I LOVED this book. It’s a biography that beautifully blends history, feminism and the author’s own experiences as a producer of horror movies. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, and really enjoyed it.

That’s it for August reading! I’ve read 68 books so far this year, and I’m 2 books ahead of schedule for my 100 book goal. I didn’t devour as many books this month as I usually do, but I loved the ones I did read and that’s what really matters.

in mid-July, I decided to take a 90 day break from refined sugar to see how that affected my PMS and overall health. The refined sugar moratorium has been going well, but I did have a cupcake last week.

Actually, I had two.

We spent the day at home two Sundays ago, because Hurricane Hilary was making Southern California lose its mind. Pippa baked these Oreo cupcakes that she has been wanting to make for months. She baked them from scratch with almost no help from me. All I did was get our ancient oven to the right temperature and take out the cupcakes when they were done.

First, I told her I was not tasting the cupcakes because I’m on a break for sugar. She was disappointed but understood.

Then, I relented and said I’d have a taste. A nibble. After all, she worked so hard on them.

But by the time the cupcakes were ready, I resolved to eat as much as I wanted because if I try to abstain from refined sugar for the rest of my life, I’ll go crazy, binge on all the sugar, and make myself have an epic PMS hangover again. One or two cupcakes were not going to destroy my health.

I had two cupcakes, and they were DELICIOUS. My ten-year-old is becoming quite the accomplished baker!

But that was it. I slept fine that night, and I haven’t craved refined sugar since that indulgence. A friend remarked that I have incredible willpower, but honestly, I don’t. When it comes to refined sugar, I am exercising zero self-control. It’s just that I ate so much refined sugar during our summer trip to Nebraska, and I experienced such horrible PMS, that now stuff turns me off. Yesterday I went to a frozen yogurt shop and there was one No Sugar Added option. I had it and did not pine after the other flavors, because I don’t want to risk any more refined sugar during this menstrual cycle.

So I broke the moratorium, but that’s fine, because this isn’t about meeting some arbitrary standard or deadline. This is about me building a strong, healthy mind-body connection, and last week, that connection told me to have a cupcake. Now it’s telling me to abstain from refined sugar until I get my period and my hormones hit the reset button. Maybe I’ll have refined sugar twice during my next cycle. Or not at all. I’m playing around and paying attention so I can learn what’s best for my body and rebuild my mind-body connection one day at a time.

It’s been over a year since I recorded a podcast episode! Eep! But I’m ba-ack. And although it took several tries, I’m so proud of myself for including the adorable widget so you can play the episode right here if you fancy.

In this episode, I catch you up on the past year of my life. Long story short: I volunteered for too many things, and then my dad had some serious health issues. This led to some epic burnout, so my intentions for the upcoming school year are to (a) volunteer way less and (b) take the time to heal. 

The first book I mentioned during this show is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. It’s one of my absolute favorites.

The second book I mentioned is MY FIRST NOVEL. Yep, I published my novel. You should read it. Confessions Of An Imposter Room Mom, by ME, is available as a paperback and e-book on Amazon and as an e-book in all the usual places.

Thanks for listening! And reading! And for being generally awesome.

This is my sixth year as a mom with kids in elementary school, and I’ve finally mastered Back to School Night.

Step One: Leave the kids and husband at home. (Nathan is a very involved dad but back when Pippa started preschool, we decided Back to School Night does not warrant the hassle of a babysitter. I attend and report back. He feeds the kids’ dinner and pretends to pay attention when I tell him about the curriculum.)

Step Two: Ditch the opening speeches in the auditorium. I attended this the first couple of years and was amazed by how few parents showed up for this segment of Back to School Night. Now I know why. Our auditorium does not have air conditioning, turning it into a sauna in August (no thanks). The principal gives a canned speech about how its going to be an amazing year and please make sure your kids come to school. The PTA President begs parents to volunteer for shit. The Fundraising Parents-in-Chief implore us to donate money. I don’t need to give up a half hour of my life to hear this spiel again.

Step Three: Attend the session with Pippa’s fifth grade teacher and listen to his spiel, nod occasionally, and sneak a peek inside Pippa’s desk. DO NOT ASK THE TEACHER HOW I CAN VOLUNTEER IN THE CLASSROOM.

Step Four: Attend the session with Julian’s second grade teacher and flip through the curriculum packet. Exchange a few jokes with teacher because he already taught Pippa (first and second grade) and we survived distance learning together, so this year is going to be a dream. Look through Julian’s writing journal and marvel at how well he is doing, considering how this time last year, he couldn’t read. DO NOT ASK THE TEACHER HOW I CAN VOLUNTEER IN THE CLASSROOM. Instead, ask if he wants some soccer balls that I have from last year’s misguided AYSO coaching ordeal.

Step Five: When the principal comes on the intercom and announces that Back to School Night is over, get up and leave. Do not engage second grade teacher in unnecessary small talk. He wants to go home. I want to go home. Everyone gets to go home.

Step Six: Eat husband’s leftover buffalo dip while standing up at the kitchen island, like an animal, because it is delicious and you are hungry.

Step Seven: Leave handouts in purse, where they can languish for several weeks, until I rediscover them, crumpled and alarmingly sticky, with at least one raisin stuck to their pages.

The End.

p.s. Next year, Pippa starts middle school, so I’m sure I’ll go back to nerd mode and attend ALL OF THE PRESENTATIONS but this year, I reveled in the glory of being a laidback mom at Back to School Night.

I try to get outside and enjoy the fresh air every day, but there’s a difference between “walking around my neighborhood, which is in the middle of a city” and “a deep dive into nature.” The more often I do the latter, the better I feel.

I want a term for my “intense experiences with nature.” For several years, I have thought of it as a “nature bomb” but I don’t like the violence of that word. There’s nothing violent about communing with the world’s splendor.

There is the term “forest bathing” but I enjoy nature in all her forms: the beach, with her salty air and crashing waves; the desert, with expanses of sand and rock, still teeming with life; a botanical garden, with rows of rose bushes and cacti gardens; and even the farm that my kids love to visit, with fields of strawberries and baby goats. I adore trees and I love to wander in the woods. Heck, I fell in love with my alma mater Dartmouth because it was surrounded by woods, but I don’t want to limit my nature sessions to the forest bathing.

I’ve been playing around with Word Hippo and considering alternate phrases:

• Nature bath: I like the word “bath” because it’s cleansing and it does feel like nature washes the slime of city life away from my soul, but I don’t like this phrase because it seems passive. I don’t just want to soak in a tub of nature. I want to move around, explore, and engage my senses.
• Nature infusion: sort of medicinal, which emphasizes how vital nature is to the soul. But nature is poetic, and I don’t want to reduce it to a clinical practice.
• Soaking: Back to water, but this makes it sound like some fringe sexual practice

Perhaps I do not need a phrase for this practice. Perhaps that’s why so many people feel moved by nature to write poetry: you can’t boil the communing down to a phrase, or even a lyric, but pages and pages to let your wonder unspool and embrace the glory of mountains, sky and trees.

Pithy phrase of not, I want to fill my life with as much nature as possible. That’s why this morning, I headed to the Arboretum to take my morning walk. I saw peacocks, squirrels, turtles, butterflies, and one rabbit hopping into the underbrush. I wore my headphones for awhile, listening to music, but eventually I discarded them so I could listen to the birds, my footsteps on dirt paths, and the wind in the branches. There was still the noise of city life – an occasional helicopter or a gardener armed with a leaf blower – but I felt restored by my time communing with nature.

Here are some ways I hope to include “intense experiences with nature” in my life during the next few months:

• Regular visits to the Arboretum after morning drop-off
• And I’d like to renew my membership at the Huntington Gardens and enjoy some walks there once the weather cools off a bit. (I’m so lucky to live in a city with easy access to so many botanical gardens!)
• My kids are probably going to have soccer practice near Descanso Gardens. Descanso is a bit too far for regular school days but if we are heading that way for soccer practice, perhaps we can fit in an hour of “forest bathing” as well.
• Visits to the beach – hopefully once more when it’s warm enough to boogie board, but I love the beach no matter the weather.
• Hikes into the San Gabriel Mountains, solo and with friends and family.
• A visit to Underwood Family Farm for their fall festival.

Whatever I call it, I’m so grateful for the healing power of nature.

Last Thursday, after a few days of imposing a caffeine curfew, I sucked it up and measured just how much soda I was drinking. The final number: 84 ounces of Coke Zero.

I realize this is a shocking number for many.

Not for me.

I’m only drinking Coke Zero so I can steadily reduce my caffeine intake. (Not sure if Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke have identical caffeine amounts, so this is like an experiment with a control.) Here’s how it’s going:

• Day 1: 84 ounces
• Day 2: 80 ounces
• Day 3: 75 ounces
• Day 4: 74 ounces
• Day 5: 73 ounces
• Day Today: 72 ounces

If I continue to reduce my intake by one ounce a day, I’ll be caffeine-free by Halloween and I’ll skip that whole nasty caffeine withdrawal business. (I’ve seen that movie before and it’s terrifying.)

Between my curfew and gradual Coke Zero reduction, I’m already reaping the rewards of better, deeper sleep. I also feel less edgy. My energy also feels “cleaner” – I’ll have to think of a better way to describe that sensation. It’s currently Day 14 of my cycle, so I’ll be paying attention to see if caffeine reduction improves my PMS. (Spoiler alert: I’m pretty damn sure it will).

My longterm goal is to drastically reduce my soda intake along with eliminating caffeine. I thought I’d just reduce them together, but I have been desperately missing my afternoon soda. I don’t want to lose my progress on the caffeine front because I’m craving an afternoon soda, so this morning I procured caffeine-free Diet Pepsi at the grocery store.

First I eliminated refined sugar from my diet. Now I’m reducing caffeine and working on my nasty soda addiction. I wonder what changes I feel inspired to make next.

Yesterday, Southern California was hit by its first tropical storm in 84 years. Here in Pasadena, we received about 5 inches of rain in 24 hours and a little wind, but the storm was less severe than ones we saw last winter. Still, we heeded all the warnings and “battened the hatches.” On Saturday, Nathan and I moved our pool toys and lighter patio furniture into the garage. Nathan bought extra flashlights and candles, and I got us a cute little generator that can be recharged with solar panels. Did we need any of these provisions? No. But are they good to have in case of any disaster? Absolutely. We do live in earthquake country, and shit happens.

Today is Monday, and school is cancelled. I could get outraged and indignant and rage against the injustice of the universe – I wanted to go to hot yoga! and work on my novel revisions! – but this is life. Shit happens. Again and again and again. Part of being an adult means living gracefully with the unexpected.

A little levity is also very helpful.

Since the kids are home, it’s hard to revise my novel. Too many interruptions and noise (for example, right now, the kids are howling at Mario Kart). Instead, I’m going to knock out as much housework as I can while listening to podcasts. That way, I can do more writing when they return to school tomorrow.

I also can’t go to hot yoga, but I have a weighted hula hoop. I can use that for 20-30 minutes to get in a workout.

It’s easier for me to have a good attitude today because I’ve been rebuilding my buffer, simplifying my life, and healing from burnout. Since I quit the PTA and AYSO, I have more free time, so the loss of one day of school does not feel tragedy. But this time last year? Or a few months ago? I would have been ranting and raving, full of despair and Woe Is Me! Today is a reminder of why I need a buffer: because shit happens, including historic tropical storms.

Right now, I’m taking a deep breath and thanking myself for slowing down and healing from burnout. For not overloading my schedule with more volunteer work than I can handle. For having the energy and bandwidth to handle Southern California’s first tropical storm in 84 years.

Or maybe I’m just delighted to have an excuse to pad around the house in my pajamas on a Monday.

Last weekend, my iPhone advised me that it was out of memory. This was an impressive feat seeing as my iPhone has 128 GB of storage. I immediately deleted unused apps, but this did not relieve much pressure, so I checked my iPhone to see what other culprits I could address.

Of course photos and videos are the biggest culprit. I need to wade through that backlog, but that task actual requires attention and a little thoughtfulness. Dealing with the photos on my phone is on my longterm To Do list, but I was looking for an easy way to free up storage on my iPhone.

Hello, text messages.

I did not realize my old text messages were gobbling up 20.78 GB of storage! I know I send and receive a lot of text messages, but holy shit, it was obviously time to delete some old chains.

I ending up deleting almost every text chain for a fresh start. Then I went into the Recently Deleted folder where conversations lurk until they are permanently deleted, so I could empty that folder and reclaim 20 GB of storage on my phone.

45,698 messages! I had a backlog of nearly 46,000 text messages! @#&%$(#!!! It felt so good to click Delete and send all that digital clutter to the netherworld.

Next up: getting a handle on my digital photos and videos. Please pray for me. A lot.

Man, I love hot yoga — but that wasn’t always the case. I attended my first class about seventeen years ago and had a shitty experience with a judgmental teacher. I went to class with my sister and at the end of class, the teacher praised her profusely and encouraged her to come back. Then she looked at me. I had struggled with the poses and left the room mid-class because I thought I was going to die. She sneered at me and walked away.

I was in my twenties and pretty damn insecure. That bitchy teacher got to me and convinced me that I did not belong in a hot yoga studio. 

Except over the years, I could not escape the nagging feeling that I was supposed to be doing hot yoga. Especially after I moved to Pasadena and regularly drove past my local studio. After I had kids, the nagging idea amplified until it became an inner call that I could not ignore. So in 2019, I started attending classes and was getting my momentum going when 2020 came and you all know how that went. But when restrictions on exercise studios eased up, I returned. Now I consider myself a bona fide hot yogi. 

These are some of the reasons I love hot yoga:

1. I get a full body workout. Cardio, strength training and stretching for every part of my body. 
2. The practice has helped me build and deepen my body-mind connection. (Update: I blogged more about that in this post.)
3. I sweat out the crazy. 
4. And toxins. 
5. The heat and humidity help me get deeper into the stretches.
6. Hot yoga is not a contest – but I am the worst. Kidding aside, yoga is not my wheelhouse! I’ve never been naturally flexible. When I go to hot yoga, I get to be bad at something which is so beneficial for this recovering perfectionist. 
7. In addition to the full body workout, it’s a meditative practice that calms my nerves. 
8. My hot yoga teachers are very encouraging and positive. They have changed my inner monologue, making it gentler and kinder. 
9. My teachers tell us to explore our bodies and see what we can do today. Can we reach the toes? Or not yet? They constantly repeat the phrase “not yet” which has really helped me cultivate a growth mindset. 
10. It makes my body feel so damn good! Before I started hot yoga, I suffered from back and shoulder pain all the time. Now, I experience that pain rarely and when I do, it goes away quickly. 

As much as I love hot yoga, I will never try to convince anyone to try a class because it’s not for everyone. (You have to be a little crazy). But it’s definitely for me! I’m so glad I got over my first negative experience and found a studio that welcomes all bodies, no matter their natural flexibility. 

This is what my morning routine has looked like:

• Wake up sometime after 7 a.m.
• Lounge in bed with my iPhone, playing SimCity or watching TikTok’s or crap like that
• Get the kids ready for camp/school
• Feel depleted by the time I drop them off, nerves frayed
• Finally sit down and journal and ah, I feel better

Yesterday morning, I woke at 7 a.m. to my alarm and then squandered 25 minutes in bed, playing SimCity. By the time I got home from taking Pippa to school and had Julian set up with an ice pack for his sprained ankle, I was cranky and impatient. I sat down to journal and immediately felt calm. Journaling centers me, clears out the mental debris and prepares me for the day. As I journaled yesterday, I realized, Why am I playing SimCity in bed when I could be journaling?

So that’s what I did today – except my morning routine actually started last night. I’ve been bringing my iPhone to bed and playing more SimCity, also sometimes checking email and text messages, social media, etc. You know how it goes. I would usually finally put the iPhone away at 10 p.m. and then, wired and wide awake, read until I could fall asleep, sometime after 10:30 p.m. If I’m up until 10:30 or later, of course I need to sleep past 7!

But mama needs to wake up at 7, and mama wants to feel refreshed, so mama needs a new bedtime. (And ick, I will stop writing about myself in the third person now!)

Last night, instead of bringing my iPhone to bed, I left it in the kitchen. Nathan and I finished watching t.v. at 9:10 p.m., and I was reading in bed by 9:30. At 10, I put my book on the nightstand and fell asleep easily.

I was awake this morning before 7, but let myself doze until my alarm went off. But when the alarm finally chimed, I hopped out of bed, stretched for a moment, and then cozied up on the armchair in our bedroom with my journal. For twenty minutes, I journaled and hallelujah, it felt so good to start my morning this way. When I emerged from my bedroom, I had energy and patience and was delighted to engage with my children while scrambling eggs and making school lunches.

So this is my new routine:

• Finish up with my iPhone by 9 p.m. and banish it to the kitchen
• Be in bed by 9:30
• Set alarm for 7 a.m.
• Read
• Lights off at 10
• Out of bed and journaling by 7 a.m.
• Get the kids ready for school

Then, when I get home, I can exercise or jump into novel revisions instead of needing time to journal and clear my head.

Eventually, I’d like to get back to waking up at 6 a.m. Then, I can journal and do basic chores (unload the dishwasher, make beds, etc.) before I take the kids to school and when I get back from school drop-off, the day will truly be mine. But sleep is the foundation of my mental health, so I’m not going to be a hero. If my body needs to stay in bed until 7 a.m., that’s what I’ll do.