I don’t sing. I barely hum. My go-to karaoke song is “Build Me Up Buttercup,” and that’s because I basically yell it like an idiot.

But many, many mothers told me, “You will sing constantly to your baby.”

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I was skeptical I would. And the reason is simple: for someone who doesn’t easily embarrass, I am mortified at the idea of someone hearing me sing.

When I was in seventh grade, I went to summer camp with my school friends. I can’t remember where, and I can’t remember if it was religious or not, but I can remember the bunk rooms. There were two gigantic rooms joined by a bathroom, but otherwise separate. Your bunk group was your camp group. Two factions. No mixing.

All my school friends got put in bunk one. I was alone in bunk two with a group of girls I didn’t know. I was devastated at first, but I’m a social chameleon and survivor, and I made friends quickly.

To my surprise, after about three hours of severance from my possy, I felt liberated. I got to reinvent myself a little bit. Try on different personalities. Test out being a super girly girl, bug girl, religious girl. I don’t know. Middle school shit. I was growing up, on the cusp of puberty, etc., etc. These people don’t know me and I don’t know them, why not change the hat and see if one fits better?

So on one of the last nights, my room was chatting after lights out. We all lay in our bunks, heads on pillows, uninhibited and free in the dark. Trust had been built. Bonds had been forged in the singular way summer camp can do.

In the warmth of that confidence, I did something I had never done before in front of another human.

I sang.

Like REALLY sang.

I belted. Unabashedly went for it. I remember thinking, This is my moment. I am about to be discovered.

And yes, it’s just a group of middle school girls, but this is where it all starts. I’ll join the choir. Get the solos. And within the year, get noticed by a talent agent.

It’s important to note that I didn’t go for a friendly ballad with notes that most people can hit. I sang “Fallen” by Alicia Keys. I think at one point I even grinded my voice for effect.

This was during peak American Idol. Every week, I’d watch people sing this song over and over again, waiting for their praise or demise. I’d pray for an empty house. And in the times I was alone, I would walk around practicing my song.

I thought I was good. No, I knew I was.

I just hadn’t built the courage to share with anyone my talent. So now, here I was, finally revealing it.

I finished my song and waited. A long silence followed.

I covered my face in anticipation, but really it was giddy glee. They were stunned into silence, maybe even tears. Applause at any minute.

Finally, from one of THE cool girls in the bunk below me:

“Were you joking?”

Her voice was serious, and there was a brief moment where I wasn’t sure which direction this could go in.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good, because that was really weird.” WEIRD?! WEIRD?! She didn’t even laugh. It was about the worst feedback I could have gotten.

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The chatting resumed. I did not participate. I had my answer: I was a horrible singer. Nope, actually, I was a WEIRD singer. I would never suffer this humiliation again.

If you cringed or laughed during that story, you’ll be relieved to know I laughed my way through writing this. And that pledging a sorority at my small liberal arts college cured me of my nearly decade-long hiatus from singing out loud, and that I sing to Sonny no less than twenty times a day whether another adult can hear me or not.

Sonny does occasionally put his hand gently over my mouth to get me to stop (something he does not do to Brian), but nevertheless, I persist.

Surely singing isn’t my life’s calling or what fulfills me. Although, it is objectively fun whether you are good or not.

And I now gladly adopt the Cat Stevens way:

“If you want to sing out, sing out.”

Life is better if you sing out loud.

Something else, however, has felt like a calling for as long as I can remember. Something I’m drawn to and want to do whether I make a single dollar from it or not.

Of course, it’s writing (you’re reading my blog after all).

Despite this awareness, and even pursuing a creative writing degree, it took me until the age of thirty-four, pregnant with Sonny, to sit down and promise myself: You’re going to do this. You’re going to finish this book whether you get published or not.

That silent promise and commitment to myself pushed me to sign up for a beta-reader matchup group through a writing podcast I listen to. For the first time ever, I shared the first chapters of my book.

And I felt the same tension in that bunk room as I waited a week for their feedback. Terror, but also giddy excitement. Did I have the fantasy that they would all gush and weep over my perfect prose? Sure. But I know now that good things take time, and that I truly was looking to get better, not for my talent to be discovered.

The outcome was different from camp. Instead of cold rejection, I was met with something better: community and a total acceptance of my weird. (We are fantasy writers after all).

What came from these three brilliant women was celebration, kindness, and extremely helpful feedback.

Over the year, these three women have grown to become friends, trusted critique partners, reliable cheerleaders, and unashamed book nerds.

All to say, I’m going for it. I am metaphorically belting Alicia Keys. I am full of vulnerability and cringe as I wait. And I am buzzing with excitement every time I make progress. Every revision. Every new set of eyes. Every time I share new chapters for the first time.

There is just something that happens when you put yourself out there creatively. Things begin to move and the feeling is liberating.

So this week’s post, I hope you get two things out of this.

First: the encouragement to just start doing the thing. And if you’ve already leapt off the cliff, keep going.

Second: gratitude for the people who sometimes provide the net when you leap.

Not only are these people crucial in finishing anything hard, but things just start to happen when creativity transfers from inside your head to out in the world, even if it’s underbaked, not ready, and ‘needs work.’ Just start and share and be grateful for the people who are there to receive it, who are tender when you need it, honest when you need it, encouraging when you need it, and so on. They have been a source of some of my greatest growth as I continue to try and make the thing.

To finish the Cat Stevens quote,

“If you want to sing out, sing out,
And if you want to be free, be free.”

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Books

Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

This nonfiction book is a scientific exploration of forests with a surprising amount of heart. Beyond my love for trees, this was genuinely fascinating to read and learn about the complexities of how trees communicate, feel, and live. I didn’t expect to be so moved by this book, and yet why wouldn’t I be? A thoughtful, emotional and scientific exploration of nature…. Of course, it was profound.

Yellowface by R.F Kuang

This has been on the list for a while and I still don’t quite understand what’s happening in this mindwarp of a book. It’s about a writer, trying to make it in the traditional publishing world. She is white and ends up stealing the unpublished manuscript of her recently deceased Asian friend. It’s so meta, I found myself hating so much of what happens in this book but unable to tear myself away. As well as being unable to separate the fiction from R.F Kuang herself, but I think that was intentional on her part. It reads like a thriller and horror for the literary world. I still don’t know how to talk about this book, other than R.F Kuang is a genius.

Strangers by Belle Burden

Like another memoir down the list, I found this book to be a peek behind the curtain of the ultra wealthy and refreshingly honest. She’s writing from a place of privilege, the upper class of the East Coast, but her story of divorce and rediscovery of herself is carefully told. It’s full of relatable bite size pieces of how she lost and found herself. I think we are often told that we don’t deserve to tell stories if it could be worse, if we have things to be grateful for. Or that our heartache or struggle is not valid because (fill in the blank). And a common thread I’m finding in both the memoirs that I’ve read this summer is that suffering or pain is just that. And that there is something worthwhile in people trying to tell their stories. Especially, women.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

I’m trying to read fiction and fantasy that deals with time every few books, and this was recommended to me by a friend that never misses with her recommendations. It also happened to be my first Stephen King book. I’m not much of a horror reader, but I was assured this isn’t horror. The time travel rules in this book is air tight, rare for that trope. I also get the whole Stephen King thing. He’s a master. The premise is about a high school teacher who travels back in time to stop the J.F.K assassination. Highly recommended.

God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Loved this book. A thriller about a missing kid set in a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Multiple POV. It has the elements of the elite and wealthy, the mystery and propulsion of a thriller, with the character complexity and sentences of literary fiction. It reminded me of Notes on an Execution. Couldn’t put it down.

Famesick by Lena Dunham

I’ve always been a Lena Dunham fan (especially in the days when Girls on HBO was airing), but admit I didn’t keep up with her work after the show ended. Her memoir is heartbreaking, brutally honest about herself and other people, nuanced and very self aware that she is telling just one side of a story. Honestly, beyond the juicy Hollywood gossip stuff, this book captured something about fame, women’s health, and struggle in a way that I felt was extremely important. In short, the book made me think about how the world lacks compassion, and how I’d like to be one of those people that gives people the benefit of the doubt and believes people when they show their struggle.

Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet

A modern Little Women retelling where Beth March is murdered. This was so good. Building off love of the March sisters from the original, but completely new and creative with its retelling. I couldn’t put this book down and absolutely loved it.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

I don’t know how I feel about this book, but I think that’s the point. I went to a discussion and book release with the author, with Hannah and Grace. I am a big fan of Caro, especially her podcast, Diabolical Lies. Debuts are hard, and people cannot stop reading and talking about this book and I think that in itself is incredible. If you want to talk about this book, please reach out. More than anything, I’ve loved the conversations that have come from this.

Weyward by Emilia Hart

This book came highly recommended from a handful of people and didn’t disappoint. Nature-focused with witchcraft magical elements, it follows three different women in three separate timelines. I loved all three stories and how they wove together.

Watches

This is a Gardening show with Zach Galifianakis on Netflix

It’s hilarious, light, delightful and garden focused. Fans of gardening or Zach Galifianakis will love this

House of Dragon on HBO

I know some book readers have beef, but for me, I just love this world. I love the complexity of some of these characters and find the spectacle outrageous. The first half of the season in particular is incredible.

Ted Lasso on Apple TV

I recently saw on socials, someone said that Ted Lasso is the Bluey for adults and I couldn’t agree more. Season 4 just started and I am so happy to have this weekly chocolate chip cookie of a show.

Lioness on Paramount

Honestly, I know it’s off brand a bit, but I love an espionage and military story. The show runner (also creator of Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown and Landman) knows how to make every episode is nonstop thrill ride. Season three just kicked off.

Miscellaneous

Mecari

In an effort to minimize buying new clothes, a friend told me about this site that for resellers. A lot like Poshmark, but I think it’s better. I found a brand of shirt that I have been looking at, normally a $120, that I got for $40 new. I also have ordered Nike workout shorts, Outdoor Voices skorts, and a SKIMS shirt. So far, so good!

100 Oaks Farm

Our friends have slowly but surely built up a regenerative farm in Geneva, and this Spring they began selling meat and eggs. We have had over 200 eggs, a pork box, multiple chickens, and plan on trying lamb and beef this fall. Pick ups are easy and the boxes are freezer ready, lasting 4-8+ months. Everything you need to know is on their website, and you will not find higher quality food. Of all my obsessions this summer, this has got to be my tops. Number one fan!

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After a month and a half break, I’m back. Sorry for the abrupt disappearance, I had to prioritize my health for a few weeks. But without further delay, your random weekly story, musing, meander, list, overshare, or recipe returns.

And to Sonny’s delight (if he could read), we’re starting with firetrucks.

Actually, five of them. All five that belonged to a small town in Wisconsin, parked on a bridge, waiting to rescue us from a flood.

We emerged from the darkness at nearly one in the morning.

Sixteen early-twenty-somethings, smelling of Bacardi Limon and weed, drenched and freezing, escorted by two locals (still unsure what their exact qualifications were) out of the floodplain and onto the road, where a school bus carted us off to a motel.

We were disheveled.

We were rescued.

We made the paper.

At twenty-three, I thought it would be a good idea to canoe-camp down the Kickapoo River.

What could go wrong?

I had done the trip once before. The river meandered through the cliffs and hills of Wisconsin, but it was calm and shallow.

I sent emails, garnered support, perfumed enthusiasm, and, to my surprise, over fifteen friends agreed to follow their fearless leader (me) into the wilderness.

There were a few underbaked considerations: I had no idea who had experience camping, most people had never been canoeing, and the primary modality of this friend group was to party.

Despite giving very little thought to any of this, I assured anyone who brought up concerns (although, to be honest, I don’t remember anyone doing so), “It’ll be fine. It’s easy.”

So off we went.

At the beginning, some thrived, some floundered, but no one drowned, mostly because the river was knee-deep. Eventually, we shackled all seven canoes together with a rope, meaning all the work of paddling and steering fell to the poor three guys in the back, one of them being Brian.

Everyone else was happy.

And getting increasingly intoxicated.

No one paid attention to the dark clouds rolling in. No one thought to check the weather.

We only checked the coolers.

So when a downpour forced us to make camp on a slanted beach the size of a dining table, we did.

Morale plummeted.

We pitched a tent in the rain, crammed sixteen bodies into a six-person tent, and failed to start a fire, which forced us to eat wet Ritz crackers and Pop-Tarts for dinner.

Told you it would be fun, folks!

We were wet, cold, and hungry. While quietly sobering up in silence, the river rose slowly and confidently. The rain pattered on.

At some point, someone who knew something said that the area we had camped on was a floodplain. And if the rain continued, there was a good chance the whole thing would be underwater.

This, I doubted.

And yet, this is exactly the type of comment that can launch a group of validly concerned people into full-blown panic.

One of those worried friends was able to get cell service and called 911.

She began shouting into the phone, waking up the few people who had managed to drift off to sleep.

“Hello! Hello! My name is Eva Longoria!” (Name changed to protect privacy.)

“Can you hear me? We are camping on the Kickapoo River and it’s flooding!”

A pause as the operator responded.

“No, I don’t know where we are. Can you triangulate my cell phone?”

At this point, I had scooted close enough to hear the operator, who replied:

“Honey, you’re in the middle of Wisconsin. No, we can’t. Half the town doesn’t even have electricity.”

(The town was also home to an Amish community.)

“There are sixteen of us! Can you send someone? Yes, I think we passed a bridge.”

She hung up.

Still afraid, but now assured, she announced, “Help is coming.”

I was still reluctant.

It’s just a little rain, I thought.

Meanwhile, the river was creeping closer and closer to our tent.

An hour later, we heard shouting, and flashlights beamed into our tent.

Two men had come to rescue us, walking through the floodplain our tent backed up to, through shoulder-high grass.

We abandoned our tents, our gear, our canoes, and trudged single-file into the dark through stinging nettles and rain.

After twenty minutes of walking through poking, itching, foreboding grass, we stopped.

We must be close. Thank God.

“Aw, hell! We’re back at the tents again!” Our hero yelled. “Dale! I’m all turned around.”

We had done a loop. At this point, I’m sure I silently started crying. We were miserable.

The leaders switched.

The man in the back now led, and our turned-around hero, now bringing up the rear, followed.

Forty-five minutes later, we made it to the bridge, where our rescue team and escort awaited.

We ended up at a motel. We got dry. The next day, we returned to get our canoes and gear.

The trip was a disaster.

And still one of my fondest canoe memories.

The people on that first trip—you know who you are—trauma-bonded. The stories became lore.

“We’re back at the tents again!” became a punchline. As is the now ridiculous expectations that 911 can “triangulate a cellphone.”

We returned to that river for seven years.

Eventually, we switched to the Wisconsin River, which has much better camping options and is a little easier logistically.

But all that stopped when Brian and I had our son, Sonny.

Until this year.

Our family and the Sweeneys braved the trip this summer with our toddlers.

The trip looked much different.

I was 100% sober the entire time, had a few more snacks handy, and had a rain contingency preplanned.

The laughable juxtaposition of that first trip and this summer made me reflect on how different I am thirteen years later.

My tolerance for willingly enduring and suffering is much narrower right now.

Type 2 fun, even traveling, is not high on my priority list in this phase of life.

I dedicate more time to preparation than I ever have (I’ve always been a wing-it kind of gal), and my main priority when outside is sun protection rather than locating where the nearest cold cocktail is?

But what has stayed the same?

And why did we even do the trip? I asked myself this once when we launched the canoe and Sonny had an EPIC meltdown. And then again when none of us could sleep in our 90-degree tent.

What has stayed the same is the desire to connect and be in nature.

Yes, even in that first, very party-heavy year, being outside in nature was mostly the point.

Getting away from routine is also the point. Despite how much I cling to my rituals and schedules, especially with a young child, novelty is the fuel of core memories. Of growth. Of perspective.

And my love of water.

Wanting my son to relish the delight of being on the water, looking at the water, being humbled by the whims of water. That’s always been such an ingrained desire within me, and I see it blossoming in Sonny.

So why do we do this?

Why did we do any of this?

It was so much more work with a toddler. It wasn’t exactly easy, despite our planning and experience. (We’ve nailed a lot of the cooking, packing, and must-haves at this point.)

On the way back, Brian and I asked each other this.

Was it fulfilling?

Absolutely.

Are we glad we did it?

Yes.

Was it fun?

We don’t know.

So to answer the why, all I have is this: Anything I remember from childhood, anything that fills my cup now, has required something of me.

Some exchange. Some work. Some time. Some sacrifice. Some focus. Any one of those things.

And so, we want to transfer that texture of life to Sonny. However we can.

I’m glad the blog is back!

I swear I will explain my absence in due time. And I promise to be consistent each week for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading,

Ash

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(Wisconsin River, 2026)

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I started out this week’s post writing about Sonny’s 2nd Birthday Party. How I sent invites out ten days before. How despite being last minute, my expectations were still high. I am was picturing homemade pastries, gourmet slow cooked food made from scratch, the perfect balance of good old fashioned kid fun, but with focused entertainment so that parents could enjoy themselves too.

But after writing three pages detailing my maximalist-dreamer-big-ideas-little-regard-for-actual-execution brain, I got so bored with the newsletter I didn’t even want to reread it to clean it up.

Who honestly cares?

So I’m reverting to a list of my favorite accidental-planned-extra-stupid or otherwise memorable party happenings that I’ve been a part of or hosted. I know I’ve forgotten some, but here’s a highlight reel:

1. There were sweat stains in the shape of ass marks on my basement walls in high school from people grinding (LOL. Grinding!) at my Sweet 16. At this same party, I convinced my parents to let me rent a wedding tent in the middle of February with no heaters, no lights, and no assembly plan. What a colossal waste of money. We absolutely didn’t use it.

2. For our 200-person kegger, I hired a stilt walker dressed up as Uncle Sam for a 3rd of July party to introduce Brian and Grace to sing the national anthem (Pre-Tr*mp era when it wasn’t so confusing to show patriotism).

3. At Sonny’s first birthday, everyone thought the Bubble Man was smoking a fat blunt, but really he was practicing using smoke inside the bubbles as part of his act. It was actually really neat.

4. At one of my birthday parties, we did PowerPoint projects. I learned, I laughed, I cried, I shoved someone out of the way diving for a piece of candy during a presentation about Lifesavers (thanks, T!).

5. For Grace’s 30th, I spent 15 hours editing a full episode of Survivor with confessionals about Grace from all her closest friends.

   

6. This never happened, but one year I convinced myself I was going to kidnap Brian on his birthday, pack a bag for him, and fly him to Colorado for a surprise ski trip with his closest friends. If you know Brian, you know that this is literally the last thing he would want. Not only would hate if I packed for him on a trip, but I would forget everything except a banana suit and mustache (his ski outfit of course).

7. At our wedding we wrote all 140 guests a handwritten letter that we delivered at dinner, making all those suckers CRY.

8. At another one of my birthday parties, I made everyone wear stupid costumes and we made skits all day. I think the only video that made it into production was the one where Min was dressed in a banana suit and we played blog tag. I really love to cash in my friendship currency on my birthdays to make people do things they really don’t want to do cause they “love me.”

I’m sure there are more, but it’s late, and I am still half convinced I need to learn face painting by this weekend for Sonny’s birthday.

LOTS TO DO.

But underneath it all, I have a philosophy about parties: either keep it extremely simple and bare bones, or be so extra. Sprint past any lines you think exist. Usually, you can set the tone, and people will be liberated by the weird or at ease from the lowkey.

I don’t know how to operate in between.

That has become really difficult since having a child and planning parties for children.

I read a book I highly recommend called The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, and what I learned is that having specific intention matters, and creating a gathering around that intention yields the most magical results.

So as summer kicks off soon, and you do your gatherings, and vacations and summerings, and human-things, I hope you go at it earnestly and unabashedly extra. I hope your gatherings fill your cup, not exhaust you. I hope they don’t look perfect, but feel perfect. I hope they stick in your mind as a core memory. I hope they make the time go fast in the moment, but remain a tent pole you come back to. Those types of memories are worth the extra effort.

Make the environment lend itself to that by your design. Set the tone, set the vibe. It’s fun.

Now excuse me, I need to create dirt mounds in my backyard for a makeshift obstacle course for bikes with a water feature element to tie in the Moana themed party that ends in buried treasure with custom gift baskets for both kids and adults.

Happy MDW, readers!

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The point is that $72 a day can go fast or slow.

When you’re backpacking in the woods, staying in basic cabins, forest preserve huts, or camping out on a farmer’s backyard alone (how I spent Christmas), it can get you far. Most days the only expense I had was the food run that week.

So when I detoured to Hamilton, New Zealand, getting off trail, hitchhiking for hours, then eventually renting a car, it was a big deal. For my budget, schedule, and hiking adventure.

But I had to. I was determined. I had come this far, I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to visit The Shire.

You didn’t misread. Go ahead. Read it again. THE SHIRE. I was going to see fucking Bilbo’s house. I was in New Zealand. I had no choice.

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The town of Hamilton is annoyingly out of the way of the Te Araroa, the 1900-mile trail spanning the length of New Zealand, that I was hiking. It’s right in the middle of the North Island, away from all the mountains and forests. It’s the equivalent of leaving the Apostle Islands in the Midwest to go to Peoria, Illinois. Are you catching my drift? Bumblefuck. But people, come on, I had to see Hobbiton, dent in the budget and all.

I climbed the steps into the bus for the tour, and smiled giddily at the tour introduction playing on the TVs attached to the ceiling of the bus as we bumped along the dirt road. Bare hills spanned across the horizon. The tour guide rambled about random facts I knew about the movie set, (please, everyone knows that all three movies were filmed at once, and the matching tattoos of the “9” in elvish). But I was a happy passenger.

The group of twenty or so filed out of the bus. We had arrived. When I tell you there was literally nothing around, I am telling you there was literally nothing around. The only signs of civilization were the vibrant circular doors embedded into the hillside, quaint gardens, a little stream with a bridge arching over it and a tavern. All recognizable from the movies, but adapted to be actual structures for tourism. It was small, and incredible. We walked as a tour group towards the hobbit houses and at last stopped in front of Bag End, Bilbo’s home, and the infamous gate with the sign, “No admittance except on party business,”

(the only photo evidence I could track down)

I was near the front, and the tour guide dutifully started taking our pictures one by one in front of Bilbo’s door. I took my picture and looked down at the winding road through the hills of Hobbiton leading to the tavern.

It was then that I felt a slight twinge in my stomach. A strange cramp, followed by an abrupt squeezing. I moved off to the side as discreetly as I could. I tried to relieve the pain, praying that it was quiet.

It was not. And what followed was the horrifying sensation of dampness.

I had shit my pants at the shire.

The horror of my situation seeped in, as did my most recent evacuation.

There were no bathrooms. These hobbit holes were basically holes dug into the side of a hill with a colorful door slapped on the front.

I interrupted the tour guide, high pitched and slightly unhinged, “Excuse me where’s the bathroom?”

“The only bathroom is the tavern, but you will have to wait till the end of the tour–”

“THANK YOU.”

I fled, feeling the attempted escape of my crime through my shorts, I cupped my butt cheeks with one hand and proceeded to run-walk-hop down the winding path. Bag End is at the top of the hill, so my entire tour group could watch, as I waddled through the other hobbit gardens, shoving aside other tour groups in front of us, running over the arched stone bridge and into the tavern.

I kept my head down. This was an emergency. I busted through the tavern doors, found the bathroom and proceeded to have the worst bowel movements I had on the trip. And definitely the top three in my life.

Instead of enjoying my $17 pint, I sat in the bathroom for the duration of the tour. Praying for any solution. I could barely move, and if I hadn’t been in so much pain, I probably would have been embarrassed, but alas, I couldn’t care less.

I was alone, unable to convince any trail friends to take the 2-day detour and spend hundreds of dollars, so I knew no one was going to save or even comfort me. The only way was through.

I finally managed to get to the bus, which drove us all back to our parked cars. I got in my rental, googled a hotel (a hotel! I’d been spending $0-$15 a night the entire trip), and I paid $175 for the nearest hotel.

I climbed the stairs, green-faced and shit-stained, showered, threw my shorts out and slept for 18 hours.

Those 48 hours obliterated my budget. But I truly felt I had no choice. I had gotten food poisoning (tip: never order anything from a fast food restaurant that has ‘chili’ in it).

But what I would like to conclude with this week is that I would do it again. I would blow up my budget, blow up my shorts, disrupt my hiking schedule, cry in make-believe tavern and be publicly humiliated just to see this movie set again.

That’s how cool I think Lord of the Rings are. That’s how enchanted I was by the movies. That’s how much I dive headfirst into another person’s world. I can’t believe human minds can invent worlds, stories, characters, languages in J.R.R Tolkien’s case, and just by reading, we get to fall in love with it. It blows my mind.

One of my favorite writing educators always says in her classes that writers start with 26 squiggly marks and turn that into entire worlds and stories.

That’s magic and part of my love for writing, particularly fantasy. And I can’t wait to one day share what I’ve been working on!

Happy Friday,
Ashley

Happy spring, ya’ll.

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Books

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
When I tell you my jaw was on the floor every other page, it is only a slight exaggeration. This is just beautiful writing about four sisters who grew up in New York City. It is very literary fiction, so light on plot and heavy on gorgeous language, and yet I was completely sucked in. I thought about these impossibly chic and interesting sisters often. Think Sally Rooney. I am hesitant to say this and reserve the right to change my mind, but this book might have squeezed itself onto my top ten books of all time.

Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
A folklore fantasy novel that is not for readers who do not want to work for their story. Very unconventional, wildly creative, heartbreaking, and mythic. Think One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Broken Earth series meets The Poppy War. I recently told friends in a bookchat that the actual storytelling is like watching someone do backflips while making pancakes over a camp fire while singing Whitney Houston. Just a lot of balls in the air and the pay off really works,

Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
This book just came out and is a Cinderella retelling told from the perspective of the evil stepmother, and it is so good. It is #motherhood, captivating, and surprising in the best way. I also get in the mood for regency romance at least once a month, and this book fully satisfies that craving.

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
Wow. I waited to read this book until after the fifteen year anniversary of my brother’s passing because it deals heavily with grief, but I did not find it triggering at all. In fact, I found it deeply comforting in a strange way. It is a speculative fiction novel set in a small French valley where to the east the same valley exists twenty years ahead, and to the west, twenty years behind. It is a coming of age story mixed with time travel, regret, and memory, and it is gorgeously written, fascinating, and very contained. If I had to describe this book as weather, I would say a rainy day, but not oppressive, deeply reflective. I really loved it. And I absolutely love when time travel is done well.

Nonfiction Books

Deep Work by Cal Newport

I reread this book once a year, and April was the month this time. I trust Cal Newport’s research and perspective. He manages to stay extremely practical and grounded in brain science and data without sliding into the unhealthy spiral of relentless self improvement. I always feel refreshed and realigned after revisiting the principles of focus.

Joyful Toddlers and Preschoolers by Faith Collins
I was hesitant to even include this cause how-to-parent is really dogmatic, but I read one to two parenting books per month out of curiosity. Parents, do whatever you think is best. I am not someone pretending I have it figured out. I was struggling with some aspects of parenting Sonny as he is fully a toddler now, and I implemented a few suggestions from this book and the results were surprising in a good way. I am just sharing it here if anyone is curious. Take it or leave it.

Atomic Habits by James Clear
Another one I read every year. I did this and Deep Work back to back because my ADHD is ADHDing hard lately. Grief anniversaries and hormone shifts can really dysregulate my dopamine and collapse the tentpole I rely on, so refreshing these principles was extremely helpful.

Miscellaneous

Rujuta Sheth Jumper
I have been wanting to order from this company for a while. They are amazing, but definitely an investment. Per my last post, I only splurge occasionally, and I just fell in love with this jumper. All their products are sustainably sourced, fair trade, zero waste, carbon neutral packaged, and handmade.

Nisolo Huarache Women’s sandal
My second pair of huaraches and my second from the brand Nisolo. I just really like this type of sandal. It can be dressed up or down, and I wear it all the time. This company is also B Corp certified and climate neutral.

Crepe recipe
We have been making this every two days all month to mix up Sonny’s breakfast, but he still gets protein and loves them. Plus, he really enjoys ‘cooking’ with me, pouring the flour, cracking eggs and mixing the ingredients. It is super quick and simple.

2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk, or more as needed
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Watches & Listens

Beef Season 2
The writing in this series is incredible and the cast is amazing. I have been gravitating toward eat the rich stories lately and this show fully satisfies that. It is propulsive and the escalation of each episode is genuinely unhinged in the best way.

Dopamine by Robyn
Her new album Sexistential is everything you could want and more. This track in particular is one of my favorites.

Sonny baby videos
Not available on major streaming platforms, but if you have my number I will happily spam you with my gummy smiling, wild haired, blue eyed, happy dumpling any day. I can’t believe he will be two in a few weeks. To be as cliche as they come, Where has the time gone?

Thanks for reading this week. Next week we exit the practical and everyday and dive into the random and absurd.

Sincerely,
Ashley

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But I will share something I try to do every year that is somewhat related to being a good steward of the world.

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Last year, I tried something I called “10 Things.” I failed. But I think it still made a difference for my mindset and habits.

It’s really simple: when it comes to clothes and shoes, I’m only allowed to buy ten new things. Items that don’t count: socks, underwear, and swimsuits. Anything thrifted, secondhand, gifted, made (note to self: learn to sew), or rented does not count towards my ten things.

What’s crazy is how many objections I came up with:

1. You aren’t a perfect recycler

2. It doesn’t matter, you won’t make an impact

3. You’re a fraud, you drive an SUV

I don’t even know what I was railing against in my own mind. Who cares if I try to buy less stuff? I run into this strange thought pattern a lot. Whenever I attempt any lifestyle choice that’s more sustainable and environmentally motivated, I attack the reasoning as superfluous, flawed, or sanctimonious.

But honestly, I suspect some sinister cultural programming in that, and I reject it. I’m not letting perfect be the enemy of good. Or small be the reason for inaction. I’m just trying to be a more conscious consumer. This self imposed limitation helps me.

Last year, I discovered my weakness was travel. Whenever I was going on a trip, I’d buy something I normally wouldn’t, and it would cascade into more purchases. Case in point: a poorly made workout dress that shrank after one wash and is now basically unwearable.

But overall, this reframed fashion, clothes, and creativity. I started looking for quality and versatile pieces. I thought about how things were made, who was making them, how long they would last, and whether I actually loved them. I also had more money to spend on better made stuff because I was buying so much less. It made me more intentional. Less about trends, more about just being me.

Creatively, I like fashion as an outlet. I also wear socks backwards, have stains on everything despite my best efforts, and even when I nail an outfit, something is always slightly off. I have a friend, Min, who impresses me every single time with her execution, head to toe. That ain’t me, as much as I wish it was. I’ll keep striving.

But I like the creative challenge of not just buying something new to feel fashionable. I like slowing it down. It feels like I’ve stepped out of the vortex of keeping up, without swinging all the way to not caring at all, because I do care, at least 65 percent of the time.

When I see what’s happening to the environment and the complete disregard to protect it, I get overwhelmed. I either swing toward lofty, drastic goals or toward total disengagement and hopelessness. “15 Things” helps me land somewhere in between.

(This year I bumped it to 15 because it feels more realistic and the goal this year is to stick to it).

Do I think buying fewer clothes will save the planet? No.
Do I think small, collective shifts in how we consume matter? Yes. A lot.

So here’s my drop in the bucket.

Thanks for reading,
Ash

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P.S. As of April, I’m at seven purchases, including one pair of shoes and this romper (more on the company that makes this next week).

Tucked between the door and the twisted pine needles sat a woven oval nest, quaint and cohesive. I stared at the shape, feeling the intimacy of the nest and realized a tiny speckled egg lay inside. I closed the door quickly, and from my window, spied through the blinds. Dutifully, the mother bird returned.

What followed was what us ADHDers like to call a hyperfocus. With the exception of keeping Sonny fed and dry diapered, nothing else mattered. I learned everything I could: identification, how nesting works, how to prepare for hatchlings, how to proceed when hatchlings arrive. All within an hour of the nest discovery.

Within days, I had set up a 24/7 live stream with a newly purchased bird cam suspended from a hook on my porch ceiling. Each morning, a new egg would arrive, accumulating to five.

We had survived a hailstorm, a relocation of the nest from our door to our bay windows.

I documented it on social media. I waited for people to ask me “What’s new?” So I could tell them about my egg-laying house finch. I received photos from friends about their discovered nests and bird stories. Spring had charmed us all.

When I was away from the house, I’d tap my house camera icon, checking on my mama finch contentedly warming her eggs. I got to know her companion and his red-breasted plumage. She was speckled, petite, with a grey bark hue, and attended to her nest dotingly. He, I noticed, sang a lot in the morning and brought many twigs and trinkets to reinforce the nest.

Then the storms came. One after the other.

The first storm was violent and foreboding. I watched on the livestream as the mother stayed on her nest as long as she could. The entire wreath swayed and rocked like a sail in a maelstrom, until finally she left, taking cover in a nearby tree. The thunder and lightning rolled through, but in the morning, she was back. I exhaled, counting the days that they would hatch and wondering how I could reinforce and protect the nest.

But the next day, during a windstorm, which felt more as an afterthought than a threat, wind whistled through our yard. I saw the wreath hanging on but a thread of duct tape that we had used to secure to a hook. I screamed for Brian to help. He acted quickly and heroically, as I gave him virtually no context or instructions, just yelled and pointed at the precarious nest. We had survived another attack.

I decided to reapply duct tape to get through the day, before making a trip to the store for more supplies.

I was outside when it happened. The most unassuming breeze, whopped and wallowed and, as if extending fingers, cruelly flipped the nest upside down. I shrieked as all five eggs splattered on my front porch.

Unable to even look at the yolks and miniature hatchling carcasses that littered the porch, I couldn’t help but sob. The only words coming to me were, “oh no oh no oh no oh no,” until finally, as I collected shattered egg shells, my dog Dolly promptly started licking the yolks. At which time I found more words, something like, “Dolly, get the fuck out of here, this is a massacre!”

I was so attached to these would-be hatchlings and their mama. I was in my first spring as a mother, and I connected with this creature’s devotion. I was charmed by her home, and fascinated by her poise. I was becoming every aging millennial cliché at once and suddenly identifying as an enthusiastic birder.

I’m aware it’s silly, and with hindsight, tragically funny, that I was crying at these broken bird eggs. But I had imagined a spring watching them grow. I had been forming plans to help protect them. And a gust of wind had destroyed that dream and potential. Disappoint mixed with grief.

I was also weaning breastfeeding, which can give women the emotional regulation skills of a feral honey badger, but that’s besides the point.

I researched that house finches will sometimes try to lay eggs again. I assembled the wreath, this time with vigor and ingenuity that I thought could withstand the storms, and waited. Days passed with the nest empty. Until one morning, Brian called me over with cautious excitement. The parents were both rebuilding the nest. With a glimmer of hope, I saw them collect dried stocks and leaves from my garden, tufts of hair from deuce and dolly, and, less #aesthetic, some trash from the alley to rebuild the nest.

I was hopeful, until a robin started visiting the nest. Its presence was imposing and ridiculous, as it tried to nestle its large body on top of a nest fit for a bird one third of its size. I shooed the invader away, suddenly viewing robins as the enemy. The house finches never returned.

I saw many birds that spring, maybe some of them were my house finches. But they did not decide on nesting on my porch. How could they?

I understand this is part of nature. I understand that it’s possible I was saved from an even more violent lesson in the laws of nature. But I like that I get wrapped up in things. I like that I hyperfocus and obsess over some tiny delight of spring, viewing something some might call a hindrance as a bit of magic that blessed my front door.

I don’t care that I cried over baby bird eggs and then probably had an egg sandwich the next day for breakfast. I like that I’m extremely sensitive, I like that I feel things deeply. I like that my whims sometimes consume me and my innocent bystanders: Brian and Sonny.

Those are all qualities that a lot of people with ADHD often exhibit. When I started this week’s newsletter, I was either going to skip this week, or talk about executive functioning failures. My house, my life, my history seems like a graveyard of projects attempted and failed because executive functioning skills can be so difficult for me. It’s been a frustrating and disappointing week for reasons I will share eventually, but internally, I have been rallying against myself with harsh and rigid criticism, trying to bully myself into “becoming better,” whatever that means.

I don’t always know what’s going to come out when I sit down to write these weekly newsletters. “Birds” was my single idea slotted for this week. But delightfully, as I wrap this up, when I thought maybe some humorous self-depreciation about my shortcomings would be the direction, I’ve ended with a softened and deeper appreciation for my whimsy, obsessive, and sensitive mind.

Wishing you softness and sweet moments of spring this week.

Thanks for reading,
Ashley

Books

Wild Dark Shores by Charlotte McConaughy
Wow. What a book. I read Migrations by the same author and have fallen in love with her work. This reads like a thriller, when a woman washes up on a mysterious Arctic island where a family is caretaking a research facility. Charlotte’s ability to bridge emotionally complex characters with climate fiction and literary level sentences is incredible. I absolutely loved it.

Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
It’s been a while since I’ve been consumed by a high fantasy world, and this book fully enveloped me. Multiple POVs, an expansive world, dragon magic, witches, political scheming, unexpected heroes, and forbidden romances. If you like high fantasy, this is a must read.

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Set in a small town in Florida, but don’t let that dissuade you. This is another climate fiction book with a touch of speculative fiction, with literary level sentences about a girl born during a hurricane. I gobbled this up because the writing is so rich and atmospheric.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
My first Naomi Novik book and I want more. I don’t understand how she does what she does, but I do understand why she’s considered such a powerhouse in the fantasy genre. This standalone pulls you in in a way I can’t quite explain. Her retelling of the fairytale Rumpelstiltskin has such an undercurrent of momentum, and her unique style with limited dialogue is so interesting to me. I loved this and will be reading more of her work this year. She’s a master.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Late to the party on this, but I really wanted a love triangle book, and holy hell. This is a mystery wrapped in a love triangle, and I found it so compelling. The ending manages to be satisfying, surprising, and tragic. Such a great one.

The Compound by Aisling Rawle
I mean… just look at the tagline. Love Island meets Lord of the Flies. It has been a while since a book truly sucked me in like this. I couldn’t put it down and finished it in two days. The protagonist, Lilly, goes on a game show with hints of a dystopian world and discovers it might be more sinister than she thought. I always find it impressive when books with relatively unlikeable protagonists still manage to pull me in. So entertaining, but also made me deeply reflective on consumerism. Read it.

Products

Primal Pure Natural Deodorant
I’m a pretty stinky gal, and I’ve been on the search for a natural deodorant for a few years now. This is by far the best I’ve come across. I can’t shut up about it. A warning, you will still sweat because it’s natural deodorant, but you won’t smell bad. All the scents are great, but my favorite has been Citrus + Vanilla.

Strawberry almonds at TJs
The light pink, synthetic strawberry taste I most associate with Asian snacks from childhood, but covering almonds. I am absolutely obsessed. I usually have to buy two bags because I somehow eat half a bag on day one.

Movies & Shows

Dinosaurs on Netflix
A nature documentary about dinosaurs narrated by Morgan Freeman. What’s not to like? It’s surprisingly compelling, educational, and fascinating.

Survivor Season 50
I was a die hard Survivor fan thanks to Grace, but I kind of dropped off in the newer seasons. I’m back now because some of my all time favorites are on this season. This is reality TV at its finest, and Jeff Probst is aging like fine wine and continues to solidify himself as one of the greatest TV hosts of all time.

Dynasty: The Murdochs
Do you like Succession? If so, you will love this documentary about the Murdoch family that the show is loosely based on. Some parts are truly shocking, and the whole series is a stark look at how media and American politics are deeply intertwined.

The OA on Netflix
This is old, but so great. So strange. Magical elements wrapped up in a mystery. Not for everyone, but I felt compelled to remind everyone that this exists. The worst decision Netflix has ever made is discontinuing this show after season 2.

Come and See Me in the Good Light
A documentary about the poet Andrea Gibson as she navigates her terminal illness. I am at a loss for words with this human being. This is a must watch. The gifts this person has given to humanity feel like a miracle.

Company Retreat
There are so few shows that actually make me laugh out loud. I consistently cackle. The sequel to Jury Duty, this show finds the most wholesome human on the planet to pull an elaborate prank on. This season, Anthony, a temp worker, helps a hot sauce company on a company retreat. Everyone is an actor except for Anthony, and he has no idea any of this is fake as the situations get stranger and stranger. Everyone must watch this. It is so funny and pure.

Love on the Spectrum Season 4
Brian and I are hooked on this heartwarming dating show. We’ve watched from the beginning and are eager to see some of our favorites on their journey to find love. Brian also has a new favorite bachelor, Logan.

Summer House
I mentioned this last time, but in light of the incredibly disappointing scandal of West and Amanda’s romance, it’s worth repeating. Watching this show through a different lens is a whole other experience now. The good news is that apparently Rihanna, yes the queen, is a huge Bravo fan and is trying to set Ciara and Michael B. Jordan up on a date. If that romance comes out of this scandal, then wow.

Thanks for reading March’s fixations and crushes. Please text, DM, or email me if you want to gush about any of this.

Love,
Ash

Like the summer before my senior year of college.

I liked the idea of working on a flower farm. So I reverse engineered my way into an internship with Cathy Lafrenz’s magical you-pick flower farm, Miss Effie’s. I got my school to fund it. I was going to spend my summer outside, learning from two badass women, Sonya and Cathy, surrounded by flowers and feral cats.

One minor detail: The farm was 22 miles away, and I didn’t have a car.

No problem. I could bike.

The first time I did it, I couldn’t believe I made it there. The second time, I couldn’t believe I made it home. Soon enough, three times a week was no problem.

Forty-four miles a day for three months. Sounds insane now, but I grew to love the commute, except for the last four miles.

I dreaded turning off the paved streets, and onto the hilly farmland dirt roads of Donahue, Iowa. Everything got harder. My tires slipped, my speed dropped, the shoulder disappeared. Every passing car felt too close.

One particularly hot morning, I was biking at a CRUISING five miles per hour (I’m telling you, this was the fastest I could go) when I heard a sharp shriek and then felt something hit my helmet.

I stopped. This was terrifying and confusing because I was completely alone.

Silence. Tired and dehydrated, probably (I usually am), I looked around. Nothing but a trail of dust from my commute.

I continued biking, when it happened again. A flash of red and black. Another hit—harder this time. I screamed, realizing I was being dive bombed by a red-winged black bird.

It followed me from telephone pole to telephone pole, watching its weak victim bike in the sand like an idiot. Actually, I shouldn’t paint the bird as the villain, maybe it was acting out of mercy: trying to put a clearly mortally wounded animal out of misery.

Either way, it would not leave me alone.

I knew that they were territorial, so I was trying to put as much distance between me and the imagined nest. Time to kick it into sport mode; I pushed myself to pedal a whopping seven miles per hour.

It did nothing.

The bird kept swooping. Sometimes grazing my head, sometimes just close enough to remind me it could, toying with me in a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Bird and little-bitch-human.

At some point, I started crying. Fully crying. I got off my bike, ripped off my helmet, and started swinging it in wide windmill circles to ward it off.

And at one point, I actually asked the bird:

“Why are you doing this?” probably between open mouth sobs and sweat plastered hair across my face.

What I would give to see that from a third party perspective: Some twenty something college student, biking farm roads at a speed that you could probably walk faster than, crying and trying to hit a bird with a helmet.

And yet, I made it to work. Where I loved my job.

Because even with the heat, the distance, the bird attacks. This was one of the ideas that worked out like a dream.

Miss Effie’s was the place I fell in love with flowers.

And now, with planting season around the corner, it’s time to order seeds, which means the rest of this is a love letter to my favorite flower: Dahlias.

Let’s start with their looks. Some petals long and feathery, others perfectly geometric, overlapping endlessly. Blooms ranging from teacups to dinner plates in every color you could imagine. Deep green leaves shielding buds of future flowers. The flowers contract daily, in order to expand, growling larger and larger by the day: a beautiful metaphor. If you’v ever seen a hyper speed video of a dahlia, you get it.

They bloom in midsummer and keep going until the first freeze, like they’re stretching the season as long as they can.

In the summer, my love language is giving away bouquets, armfuls of dahlias cut straight from the garden, mixed with whatever else I’ve grown or dried.

But the best part isn’t even the flowers. It’s what’s happening underground. Dahlias grow from tubers, potato-like roots that multiply. Every fall, I dig them up, wash them, divide them, and store them for winter.

One plant becomes two. Two becomes five. And I love to give the extras away. Gifting these little dormant treasures, ready to reveal their magic the following year. That’s why they’re sometimes called the friendship flower.

Seriously, what’s not to love? They are elegant and show-stopping, but aren’t as temperamental as the rose, or high-maintence as the ranunculus, or the one-hit wonder sunflower. One Dahlia plant will produce over twenty flowers in a good season in slow but consistent blooms starting in July. Equal in beauty to the Peony, but that flower blooms just once, in a spectacular welcoming of Summer, but leaves us with the first sign of heat. Every year, I find myself looking for more places to plant dahlias, as my obsession for them deepens.

I liked the idea of being a gardener long before I became one.

And when I finally had the chance, I just started. Some things worked beautifully and far too easily. I am still awed by seeds. These tiny little specs turn into giants, beauty, food, shelter. It amazes me. Other gardening attempts failed completely, never emerging from the ground, destroyed by storms, eaten by bugs, lost in ways that felt disproportionally devastating.

But that’s the whole thing.

Closing the gap between the life you imagine and the life you’re actually living will always be full of wins and losses.

Sometimes it feels like magic. Sometimes it feels like being attacked by a bird in the middle of nowhere.

Either way, happy seed ordering. May your garden give you lots of joy and beauty this year!

P.s- My personal favorite types of dahlias are the Labyrinth, cafe au lait, Belle of Barmera, Moorplace, Linda’s baby, Thomas Edison, and Sylvia Ball (Brian’s favorite). I’ve had great luck ordering tubers from Eden Brothers and Floret Farms.

Insert deep sigh.

This meant giving myself extra time to drive to a 7:00 A.M. MRI for my knee, salting the sidewalk, laying blankets over the couch cushions for the dogs. Just a pile of boring added responsibilities.

But at one point in my life, unexpected snow meant something much different. Maybe it’s the ingrained snow day effect, but it used to feel like a permission slip: no rules today. School’s canceled, work’s not real, cookies for breakfast.

And for one particular snowstorm, it prompted the creation of the indie cinema masterpiece: Mr. Neigel.

This horror film starred Grace Neigel, was art directed and co-written by Hannah Sweeney, and produced and edited by me in the art hub neighborhood of Logan Square, Chicago.

The premise: when Grace, our protagonist, asks a stranger, Mr. Neigel, if he “needs a light,” she unknowingly invites a dangerous predator into the home of three identical triplets: Hannah, Grace, and me.

The harrowing short film took us four hours to conceptualize, film, and edit. Full of fake cigarettes, gruesome death scenes, and questionable creative choices with little regard for plot, reputation, productivity, and end result.

When we finished, Hannah and I dusted our hands off (Grace had gotten bored and left for a concert by then), topped off our drinks, and went to bed happy.

A few weeks later, Hannah got a wild hair and showed Mr. Neigel to her entire extended family at a holiday gathering. (A cautionary tale about surrounding yourself with only “yes” people.) Up to that point, everyone had effused about the creative genius, originality, and humor of our film noir.

What Hannah realized in real time, as Radiohead played over our tandem-triplet-sister walk down the hall, was that this film needed to be locked away, thrown to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.

To this day, I don’t think she could bring herself to click the link if I sent it. It’s that embarrassing. Too bizarre to even pity-laugh at. The prevailing response seems to be: “Are you okay?” or just a simple, “What?”

The last person I sent it to said, “Guch, this is spooky.”
No emojis.

But that, friends, is the point.

I recently read an article, How to Get Your Personality Back, by the Substack The Psychology of Your 20s. It argues that scrolling, distraction, comparison, and boredom have slowly robbed us of our personalities, detaching us from play, creativity, and originality. We’ve traded them for curation, consumption, and presentation. A bit harsh, maybe. But it circled something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

I’ve become more conscious about orienting my life toward making and creating rather than consuming. And because I have a 22-month-old who is constantly losing himself in PLAY, I’m more aware of how much I miss that flow state.

I feel protective of Sonny’s access to play and protective of the environments that allow it, for both of us. Comparison and constant online consumption feel like thieves of that.

Thankfully, I went to college before Instagram. If it had existed, I wonder what it would have done to some of my funniest core memories. Would these unhinged, unfiltered, nonsensible belly laughs have happened?

Would my roommate Jenna Doyle and I have hidden in cardboard boxes in the hallway, scuttling aggressively toward people as they moved into their dorms? Would we have practiced all our bits (none of which are appropriate to include here—I tried, they’ve been redlined) at the bars? Freestyled for hours about NuvaRings over the instrumental YouTube version of Still D.R.E.?

No one filmed. No one went viral. Nothing had to be good or even make sense. Frankly, no one cared. We just were playing

On Monday, as Sonny and I watched the snow fall from the window, I noticed how inconvenienced I felt by it. The constant list of to-dos. The lingering feeling of inadequacy.

But then the snow pulled up the memory of Mr. Neigel, and I wondered:

Is that kind of play done for me?

The answer came quickly, almost eagerly: of course not. Not if I choose for it not to be.

So this week, I hope you get to play uninhibited and free from a desired result. You just get to be.

Wow. You seriously don’t believe me? Okay, well, seems like a you problem.

I am just setting expectations. Some might even say I am setting the table. Because this week’s newsletter is a recipe.

First, I have to admit I am doing exactly what drives me insane about internet recipes; adding words and a story to a friggin’ recipe. Does anyone actually read that? Also, why have we all accepted the insulting amount of pop up ads on food blogs? Anyways, I’m sorry that I am doing to you what I hate. My only peace of mind is that you did not come here looking for a recipe, and yet you’re going to get one.

First, the pitch: This recipe marries the undeniable deliciousness of Asian cuisine, coziness of a midwestern pot roast, the relief of a time efficient recipe (with some preplanning), and the crowd pleasing confidence of approval from all ages, genders, & political affiliations (okay, one joke).

That’s right, it’s a recipe for Beef & Basil Congee, Bitch!

But before I give you the recipe, a question:
Have you ever read Crying at H Mart by Michelle Zauner? It’s an incredible memoir by a brilliant musician, and a poetic love letter to Asian food. Read it. Through memory and food, you get an insightful, honest, and emotional tribute to her mother’s life. It’s captivating, tragic and delicious. This book brought me to a similar place that I arrive at whenever I read a Michael Pollan book: a deep yearning to slow down and cultivate meaning with cooking, nourishing, & healing through food. But where Michael Pollan uses science and observation, Michelle Zauner uses story and catharsis. Both books inspire me to slow down, to make beautiful food. But most of all, to put love, thought, time, and soy sauce into my meals.

If you make it, please email/dm/text me pictures, reviews, thoughts, ect.
Light a candle, romance your life, chew slowly, nourish your body, feed your soul.
I love you!
Ash

(proof I am not a food influencer, but do in fact make this meal often).

The Recipe

Part one: Congee

Congee is rice porridge. You put the beef and basil over the rice, but congee can be made into anything. Intentionally mushy in substance and neutral in flavor. So you can make it savory with broth, eggs, steamed or pickled vegetables. Or make it sweet with honey, dates, fruit, black sesame paste, brown sugar! Whatever you like! It’s incredibly easy on your digestion and often given in Asian cultures when people are sick. When friends are postpartum, I’ve started making big batches of it to freeze or eat that week with whatever pairing they choose.

I pulled parts of this recipe from the book, The First Forty Days by Heng Ou and adapted part of my own pot roast recipe that I’ve been making for years.

Stovetop Congee

Ingredients

• 1 cup short-grain brown rice

• ½ cup white rice

• ½ cup sticky rice (If you can’t find, get sushi rice or jasmine rice)

• 3 cups water (plus extra if needed)
  
  

Steps

1. If you remember, put the white and sticky rice in a bowl of water the night before and cover it. Washes the rice, and makes it nice and fluffy when you cook the next day. If you forgot, it’s okay, just go straight to rinsing.

2. Rinse the rice with water in a medium pot several times until the water looks mostly clear.

3. Add 3 cups of water.

4. Bring it to a gentle boil over medium heat.

5. Lower the heat and partially cover the pot.

6. Simmer for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally so it doesn’t stick.

7. Make sure the water level stays about 1 inch above the rice. Add more water if it gets too low.

8. Cook until the rice breaks down and becomes soft and porridge-like. The finished congee should be thick, creamy, and soupy, not dry

Beef & Basil Part

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons sesame oil

• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped

• 1 medium thinly sliced yellow onion

• Pinch of sea salt
  1 fresh chili pepper, minced (optional)

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• ½ cup soy sauce (or tamari)

• 1 ½ pound chuck roast (I get mine from Whole Foods butcher or local butcher)

• 2 cups of beef broth

• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• ½ cup fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

• Fresh thyme (optional)

• Fresh rosemary (optional)

• Squeeze of fresh lime juice
  
  

Steps

1. Pat the roast dry with paper towels. Moisture prevents browning.

2. Season generously with salt and pepper.

3. Heat a heavy pan (Dutch oven or skillet) over medium high heat with sesame oil.

4. Place the roast in the pan and do not move it for about 3 to 4 minutes until a deep brown crust forms.

5. Turn and brown all sides, including the edges.

6. Remove the roast from pan and put into your slow cooker for 8-10 hours.

7. Add more sesame oil over medium-high heat.

8. Add onion, salt, and chili pepper (optional, I don’t cause of Sonny). Cook about 5 minutes, add garlic to brown and a pinch of sesame seeds.

9. Pour sautéed onion and garlic over roast in slow cooker.

10. Return pot to heat, pour in beef broth, Worcestershire, soy sauce, and sugar for 2 minutes, enough for the broth to scrape up the brown bits from meat and onions.

11. Pour over the roast in the slow cooker, add basil, rosemary and thyme.

12. Cook for 8 hours.

13. (Optional) 1-2 hours before serving, I pull the meat apart (it’s super tender by then and should just fall apart with a fork). During this, I strain out the super fatty bits and the stringy herbs from rosemary and thyme and discard. I put the meat back into the slow cooker in enough broth to mostly cover it. I then pour the remaining broth into a pot and simmer for two hours to make a nice thick gravy. I usually taste and add more soy sauce, salt, or Worcestershire. To thicken the broth quickly, make a cornstarch slurry. Mix one tablespoon of cornstarch with one tablespoon of cold water and stir until the mixture is smooth. Slowly pour the slurry into the simmering broth while stirring continuously.

14. Finish with a squeeze of lime juice, sesame seeds and fresh basil. Serve the beef and sauce over the congee.

Notes on Planning

Typing this list out makes it look like a lot. It’s a fairly simple recipe. I do the rice washing the night before (takes 5 minutes). I wake up before Sonny, sear the meat and cut the vegetables and get everything in the slow cooker (20 minutes).

Cooking the rice takes 1+ hours, but it’s just boiling water and checking on it, not much time. I manage it while working from home or watching Sonny.

The longest part is separating the fat from the meat after it’s cooked, which you can group with just dinner prep and still only takes about 20 minutes.

In all, it does feel doable. Not the simplest, not the most complicated! Either way, good luck and I hope you enjoy!

P.S- My favorite vegetable pairing with this is a classic steamed broccoli and sometimes we add the Trader Joes Sesame sticks on top.

P.S.S- I’ve doubled this recipe for party of 5+ 3 kids and it was great. 3 pounds of chuck is a lot, but it will last a few days and feed a lot of adults.

Is it really worth wet underwear, t-shirts, and gloves?

It’s actually weird that I’m this nervous around Kyle, my best friend’s husband. But I have to do it now, or I might never get the chance. I checked the maps. There’s only one other lake, and it’s unlikely we’ll stop for a swim again.

I clutch Kelly, Kyle’s wife, as we wade back to the shallow shore. She asks Kyle to bring her a towel. Perfect. Thanks, Kelly, for unknowingly being my accomplice.

He plods into the water. Kelly is already shivering. The bundle of clothes I pretended to rinse drips from my hands. Just as Kyle hands Kelly the towel, I drop all my clothing: socks, underwear, t-shirts, and most importantly, gloves. I grab everything quickly except for one glove, which floats like a blotch of ink in the glacial lake.

Kelly reaches for it, and I stop her. “Your towel is about to get wet.”

It wasn’t.

Kyle doesn’t notice the glove. He has to. He turns away, walking back to the beach. Panicked, I start running,high-kneeing like an idiot, chaotically splashing right next to him.

“I’m so cold!” I yell, dropping my glove again. Over my shoulder: “Kyle, will you grab that?”

When I reach my bag, I risk a look. Kyle clutches the glove, handing it to me like a baton. Success.

I can’t help it. I start cackling.

“You’ve just been murdered,” I say.

In our wilderness version of the game Cluedo, I’ve committed the first murder. I take my glove back with one hand, and with the other, hold three fingers in the air, whistling the Hunger Games whistle.

At the signal, the five other members of our group stop. Some were already fully dressed, ready to hike.

My cousin Dillon screams, “Who’s dead?”

Kelly yells, “Guch killed Kyle!” She is unable to contain her glee.

“Damnit. I knew something was weird,” Kyle says. “That’s the last time I do anything nice for you.”

Few victories are as sweet as a successful Cluedo murder. I had been plotting Kyle’s death for days, and finally, the tension was over.

Our party of seven started the game two hours into a ten-day, 100-mile circumnavigation of Mount Rainier in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest.

We had everything we needed on our backs, packed methodically for weight and durability. We left our cars in the parking lot and entered the woods. The familiar feeling of freedom, focus, and fear coalesced around me.

At our first pack drop, two hours in, over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches nestled between ferns, my cousins Dillon and Jackie taught us how to play the greatest group game ever invented: Cluedo.

The objective is simple: be the last one standing.

Each person gets three pieces of paper. On one paper, you write your own name. On the second paper, you write any object you want (will become a weapon), and on the third paper you write a location. Names in one hat, weapons in another, locations in a third. Draw from each and if you pick your own name, reddraw. Otherwise, it’s okay if you pull your own weapon or location.

Since we were on the trail, some locations were in the sun, on the trail, tent, or next to a tree. Some weapons were chapstick, leaf, and a trekking pole.

I selected Kyle Hundman, with a glove, at a lake. I had my target. I had my weapon. Now I just had to wait for the location. Opportunities were few. Execution had to be perfect.

Brian and I had convinced five friends to do the Wonderland Trail with us. After securing permits, months of preparation, and traveling from Chicago and California, our adventure had begun.

What we didn’t know is that it would involve so much murder.

The group: college friends Kelly and Kyle Hundman, my cousins Dillon and Jackie, Jackie’s boyfriend Connor, and Brian and me, the glue. The Hundmans had never met the California cousins, and now here we were, spending 24/7 together, with 30 pounds of gear, food, and water on our backs, trekking up and down mountains “for fun.”

Why not add a competitive, diabolical game of deceit and treachery?

Kyle was a difficult target: socially sharp, academically brilliant. As a kid, he was a math savant. If you said, “Kyle what’s 345x578?” He’d answer in seconds. A human calculator.

When asked if he can still do it, he will tell you, “No, it was just kid brain.” Okay, Kyle. My kid brain thought Volleyball was called Bally-ball. I guess our kids brains we’re different.

Does it matter if he can still do fast math? No. He’s gotta go. And I’m the one to do it.

I was just glad I didn’t get Kelly. She’s cutthroat. Once made my ex-boyfriend cry. To be fair, he deserved it. But she don’t play. And I would have been terrified to kill Kelly.

(In poetic justice, my husband Brian ended up killing Kelly. Who says the DeSimones are soft?)

Over ten days, we ridge-walked above the alpine, laughed at inside jokes, soaked aching muscles in glacial melt rivers, mushroom-hunted, stretched in yoga poses as the sun rose in stripes between Sitka spruce, and sang-shouted our voices hoarse to scare off a black bear.

We were living and dying via Cluedo.

We scored a perfect window of late-August sunshine. Every mountain meadow popped with red, purple, pink, and white wildflowers.

We were happy, we were hiking, we were plotting murders.

If you were murdered, you became a ghost. Ghosts could still kill, but couldn’t win the game. So Kyle, may he rest in peace, could attempt murder, but wouldn’t win.

How to murder:

• Item must be willingly picked up or taken by the target, prompted directly by the “murder.”

• You must be the last person to touch it.

• Items must be visible; no hiding or trojan horses.

• No throwing.

Other rules:

• Establish start and end times. Ours spanned multiple days.

• Items and locations must be ones you’ll actually encounter.

As the game and trip concluded, and I was crowned Queen, I reflected on the magic ingredients. Why is Cluedo the greatest group game? Why was the wonderland trail one of the greatest backpacking trips I’ve been on?

There’s luck involved. No catastrophic weather. No injuries. I didn’t get ice cream as a weapon and “on the long drop” would have been an impossible location. Everyone understood the assignment.

Truthfully, I think most good things require focus and delayed gratification. My fondest memories, my greatest achievements, my best stories have all pulled my focus and demanded exacting attention. On a trail, part of the magic is that you are thinking about 10% of what you normally are in real life. No cell service. No chores. No work. Your list of things to do is four: Get from point A to point B, water, food, rest. That simplicity opens my brain. The slowness unfurls creativity in ways rare outside elongated time outdoors.

Same with Cluedo. Simple objectives: murder and don’t get murdered. The satisfaction of being last standing is immense, but executing your target? Pure joy. Nervous energy sharpens focus. The narrow scope makes all your resources pool into one thing. That’s deeply satisfying.

My second hunch is that delayed gratification compounds interest. What I mean by that is that sticking with something when it’s hard, scary, or exceptionally inconvenient (glove in a lake, food for 10 days on your back), becomes x10 more fulfilling when you manage to pull it off. Struggle can signal that what you’re doing is worthwhile.

Hiking the wonderland trail was hard. The total accumulation elevation gain and loss neared 45,000 feet (that’s a lot of up and down mountains). Cluedo required patience, method, stealth, vulnerability, and was both exhilarating and hilarious.

I still laugh at Brian killing Kelly with chapstick after DAYS of her “borrowing” it. She thought she was safe, but Brian was waiting for her to be at the right place.

When she looked at him in utter betrayal, and said, “I trusted you!”

Brian responded with a simple, “I just had to fatten that little piggy up.”

It’s SO much more satisfying than if he would have killed her right away.

My scope of what focus and delayed gratification means has changed. I am not interested in being out of cell service, away from my 21-month old right now.

And as much as I crave taking a shot of whisky at the first summit (A tradition of Brian and I when we are back in the mountains), I am focused on my fantasy novel. That creative project has required tunnel vision to direct so much brain power to focus on this single thing, over and over again.

And when working on the book isn’t pure creative bliss (which it often can be), but instead a test of endurance, grit and blind faith, I think of delayed gratification. How the struggle is often a good sign that this is worthwhile and to just keep going. You are on the right path, just don’t stop.

So my wish to you this Wednesday morning: go do the thing you want to do. Meet the resistance. Endure through setbacks. Embrace the hard. Chances are, it’ll be a good story, a good memory, or something you’re damn proud of. And for me, it’s that I killed Kyle at a lake with a glove.

Thanks for reading!

Ashley

y

Those who know Riley, Hannah, and Kristina know that I am speaking of Swedish royalty. Abdicating their Scandinavian throne to help the common folk of the Midwest. They will be mortified by this description (Scandinavian humility and all), but the regalness of these women can’t be understated.

Are they actual royalty? No. But as I always say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. On that note, I’ll go on.

Hannah’s dazzling blue eyes once caused a snowstorm in the unprepared desert of Scottsdale, Arizona, midsummer. Riley’s arresting voice once delivered such profound wisdom that the Dalai Lama asked her to mentor him. And Kristina’s siren call once started a stampede of frat parties in Wrigleyville, only to turn them all into enlightened feminists so comfortable with their own masculinity that they got Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face tattooed on their lower backs. This isn’t hyperbole, all of this really happened.

In short: the Mac women are beautiful, kind, cultured, wise, funny, and hot.

Over the course of eight years, I lived with different combinations of one or two of the sisters, and they gifted me their creed in one very specific aspect of hygge.

Before I explain further, a warning: I’m going to be intentionally critical. Not to make anyone feel bad, but to invite reflection. If you can push past a little bruising, you just might end up with the coziest house on the block. People will sigh with visible ease as they walk into your home at night.

I’ve seen so many incredible homemakers create beautiful, inspired, intentional, creative, soothing homes. Whether it’s a Pinterest manifestation, a thrifted treasure trove, or a West Elm wet dream, I’ve been in awe of friends as they turn their houses into homes. It’s wonderful.

But I’m continuously shocked by how often one of the most important aspects of home decor is overlooked.

The occasional TikTok or reel gets sent my way from a friend who knows my fetish, but otherwise it’s widely neglected. Eventually, I realized that what feels obvious to me is only obvious because I was raised under the tutelage of at least one MacDonald woman and absorbed this sensitivity through osmosis.

I’m talking about lighting.
More specifically, lamps.

One of the nicest things anyone has ever said about my home is, “I feel like I’m glued to your dining table.” Some of you who know me well know that I am just shy of actually gluing someone to my furniture. If I like you, if I want to talk to you, I will do everything in my power to make you forget time, forget obligations and morning routines, and stay deep into the night talking about the wonders of the world.

But you don’t need glue when you have the right lamps.

I mean it when I say I’ve seen rooms that are stunning during the day, and the second the sun goes down, they feel like a hospital. When you walk into any of the Mac sisters’ homes, warmth and peace settle into your skin almost instantly. They are kind and thoughtful hosts, but I’ll tell you the real reason why you’re enchanted: they have nailed their lamp game. I strive for that same sense of peace in my own home.

So I’ve made some rules for evening lighting. These are my rules, not the Macs’. They were never so direct in their education, but rest assured, this is the foundation of it.

Diffuse, Diffuse, Diffuse

Put simply, you ideally don’t want to see the lightbulb. This means choosing lampshades that are translucent, not transparent. You want light filtered and spread like a blanket, not a spotlight. Fabric, milk glass and paper are your friends. Clear glass and baskets are your enemies. I have a rule of one clear glass or basket lamp per room (if I must and purely for aesthetics). I know there are a lot of cool glass and basket lamps out there. Don’t fall for them all.

Most lamps read as either masculine or feminine. Balance them. Circles, cones are softer and more feminine. Anything that is a tower, straight lines, and/or phallic is masculine.

Don’t you EVER use the top light/ceiling light

Are you performing open-heart surgery on me? Then do not douse me in overhead light like a criminal or medical patient. The exceptions are practical: when you truly need to see for cooking in the kitchen, playing in the basement, or threading a damn needle. If your lamp game is strong and you must turn on your ceiling light because visibility is essential, fine.

Canned lighting (hint because of the type of bulbs in caned lighting) can be acceptable when needed, ideally with dimmers.

Hanging dining pendants and chandeliers

These can be friends or foes. Ideally, the bulb is shielded by a screen or shade especially if the pendant light is facing down. Downward-facing light can ruin a room’s vibe fast. I’ve seen beautiful opal and milk glass pendants, fabric shades, paper balls that are all great options. If you insist on a visible bulb, that’s fine. Just stick to one per room. Two if it’s a set, but THAT’S IT. I get it. I have fallen in love with some antique scalloped glass pendant lights where you can see the bulb.

Bulb warmth

This is preference. You choose; I lean warm. There is such a thing as too warm. I once went all Edison bulbs. Huge mistake. Too yellow. Most people tend to veer in the opposite direction, choosing bulbs that are too white and sterile. My sweet spot has been the RelaxLED comfortable Soft White lights 60W 800 lumens, 2700K (Brown box, that is QUITE warm, maybe too yellow for some). Try a few bulbs and see what you like. Rule: lower lumens feel warmer.

Directions of light

Balance light that points up with light that points down, and vary heights. Smaller lamps on tables or credenzas, and floor lamps are all wonderful. If a lamp leans over a couch or chair, it casts downward light, so balance it with another lamp that directs light upward. I am a huge fan of the floor lamps made of paper. They are a certain style, but they diffuse light so beautifully and distribute an even abundance of warm light.

If your living room feels like it’s missing something, it probably needs a floor lamp.

Common mistakes

• Too low – I have this problem right now. We’ve gone too dark. Currently noodling my where and my what for my next lamp purchase.

• Too bright — swapping the bulb can fix this instantly.

• White-purply lightbulbs instead of yellow-white

• Glass and baskets - worth repeating. Just ONE per room.

• Choosing practicality over vibes. Grow up and converse in the dark. How dare you claim you need to see in your home at night!

Now, all this is to say: I’m sure your home is lovely. Truly. And who am I to tell you what to do? I would never walk into someone’s house and say, “You need more lamps.” As a guest in someone’s home, I don’t scan to criticize. My sincere hope is to inspire and maybe (fingers crossed) inform. I would love for more people to experience the joy and coziness of good conversation, because lighting makes it possible. Hygge is a magical feeling.

Rooms shape us. Environments shape us. You’ve felt it; in low-lit restaurants where time moves differently, in yoga studios where calm settles in, or in rooms still static with tension after a fight. We can cultivate the atmospheres in our homes in really simple ways: lamps. It’s why I love lamps.

And just as we can shape environments, people can shape us. The MacDonald women have inspired, tickled, and loved me through so many phases of my life. I can never thank them enough for the wisdom, inspiration, jokes, comfort, and insight they’ve shared, all under perfectly curated lamplight.

Happy hygge curating,

Ashley

Shows

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Episode five of six just aired on Sunday and has been celebrated as one of the highest rated episodes in the George R. R. Martin universe (including Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon). If you enjoyed those shows, don’t sleep on this. It’s a completely different flavor of this high fantasy universe, with an emphasis on the common folk. I find it gloriously refreshing and funny, while also being reminiscent of the first six seasons of Game of Thrones. Also, the episodes are 30–40 minutes (sayyyy whatttttt?).

Breakdown podcasts after you watch

• Follow up with the companion podcast for a peek behind the curtain

• A funny, light and thoughtful breakdown and discussion of the episode

• An in depth easter egg/funfact breakdown with my favorite nerd youtubers ever: New Rockstars

Traitors U.S (Season 4)

Nearing the end of this season, but boy could I watch another 20 episodes. In a brilliant mash up of Bravolebrities, Survivor players, Love Island contestants, Big Brother strategists, RuPaul’s Drag Queens, Olympians, actors, Travis Kelce’s mom (no, really), and STEVENNNNNNN from Laguna Beach, they play a juiced up version of Clue, hosted by Alan Cumming. It’s prestige reality TV. It’s hilarious. It’s insane. It’s diabolical. It’s art. I laugh, I cry, I scream.

Summerhouse

Fairly new to the Bravo world, and this has to be my favorite so far. It makes me feel like I’m in college again. I find something genuinely likable about every person. I root for them all and watch them host parties that look like way too much work. The new season just started without the bewitching Paige DeSorbo, and while she is missed, so far the season is holding up.

Books

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

Wow. If you’ve read this, can we talk? I have so many thoughts. It’s truly bizarre and one I’ll think about for a long time. I loved it. A literary speculative novel about a woman romantically and sexually in love with planes. Yes, airplanes. It’s humorous and satirical, but also full of unexpected heart and introspection. I couldn’t put it down and genuinely don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Finished this in January and was in awe of the writing. I found myself rereading lines and completely engulfed in the mystery of the protagonist’s past and her propulsive quest in a dying world. Both haunting and hopeful. Literary speculative fiction with climate elements, but at its core, an emotional survival story.

City of Brass by S.A Chakraborty

Fantasy with a rich, fun magic system and complex political maneuvering, a tasty combo. Took me a minute to get into, but once I was in, I was in, and I’m excited to continue the series.

Short stories

Some fantastic short stories I’ve enjoyed recently. I’ll be brief, but if any of these interest you, email me and I’ll help you track them down.

• “The Prairie Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld - Quietly subversive. Domestic and elements of modern social media

• “! The Metal Bowl” by Miranda July - Freeing, hilarious, strange

• “Off” by Aimee Bender - Voicey, amusing, contemplative

• “Virgins” by Danielle Evans - Textured and brought me back to highschool

• “Safari” by Jennifer Egan - expanding across many people and time. I will read the full collection that this is pulled from of hers

Other

Tarot Cards

I received a beautiful set of Tarot cards with a companion beginners guidebook from Cultiverre. The cards are stunning. So stunning that I gifted another set to my cousin. Tarot cards traditionally work best when gifted.

I blessed the deck and now draw cards almost every day. I use them less prophetically and more as a way to invite perspective, reflection, and yes whatever universe magic decides to stop by (it’s more fun to believe that there are forces at work that we won’t ever fully understand). I’ve done a few text readings for friends and found the experience inspiring and numinous.

Music

LUX by Rosalia

Recommended by my no bullshit, tough as nails neighbor. Not one for exaggeration, she told me it might be one of the most important albums of the decade. This was after a few cocktails at the local watering hole, but it was enough to convince me to listen straight through. Rosalía learned to sing in 13 languages for this album. It’s arresting and beautiful.

I found it hard to limit this list, as there is so much I want to gush about. And if you are currently crushing on any of these things too, please, gush with me.

Have a great week,
Ash

Today is my four year wedding anniversary and I deserve to know the truth. Mystery surrounds this day. The itch I can’t scratch. A cold case with endless leads and no traction.

Four years since Brian and I said our vows under a tropical canopy on the island of Kauai. Four years since we crowd surfed my mother’s walker. Four years since I dumped a water bottle on my head in a dancing fit of exorcism to Toxic by Britney Spears.

Like so many, I have embraced the cliche of my wedding day being one of the best days of my life. But the day has one stain. One impossible detail to ignore. And instead of gushing about my hot, kind husband and our life together, my focus goes to this fact: Somebody pooped their panties at my wedding and we still don’t know who it is.

So, my internet sleuths, my reddit rabbits, my patient friends and family that continue to indulge my internet personality, I have a call to action: Solve. This. Mystery.

I’ll start with the facts and meander into speculation.

My wedding was hot for Kauai winter. We experienced record breaking weather, in which the full week we were there, we didn’t see a drop of rain (rare for this tropical paradise). A delightfully balmy 80 degree week without a cloud in sight.

We also came off the heels of two years of pandemic isolation. People were hungry for vacation, canceled flight vouchers had accumulated, and group gatherings were exotic. People were ready to get after it. I’d like to say we were very loved to have a 150 person destination wedding, but the reality is that people were malnourished in their socializing and traveling, and our wedding was perfect timing to feast.

But I digress, here are the facts of this fateful day:

• The ceremony was at 3:00-3:30 on a secluded acreage at the foot of a mountain range.

• Everything was at this location.

• The cocktail hour was from 3:30-5:00.

• Due to the secludedness of the venue, we had to hire a company to bring in nice porta potties (not air conditioned).

• People used the bathroom before the ceremony. Remember, it was hot.

• People used the bathroom after the ceremony. Remember, they were boozing.

• By the time the reception started at 5:00, there was poopy underwear in one of the two porta potties.

This means that during the cocktail hour, someone entered the scene of the crime. Took their shoes off. Took their pants/dress/skirt off (we have reasons to suspect male). Took their shit-stained underwear off. Left it there and then returned to the reception commando (presumably).

Based on years of collected evidence and eye witness accounts, the underwear in question was traditional boxers. Recollections are foggy, but believed to be white with light blue stripes. Dare I say, a classic Midwestern boy set. We also can’t pin down a time, but they allegedly appeared early on during cocktail hour. And NOT before the ceremony, as the bathrooms were used and no reports of poopy underwear during this time.

Now we veer into speculation. What’s curious is this was not late into the night, where such antics could be excused and even forgiven. This was early. Drinks had just begun to flow. And it was broad daylight. No night mischief had settled into our bones. The vibe, although eventually succumbed to unhinged, was still romantic and classy. Whoever did this wasn’t present during the ceremony meditation delivered by my zen friend, Jake. Or riveted by our officiant, Chu’s masterful leadership and storytelling. They weren’t being serenaded by Grace and Emily’s angelic voices, or moved to tears by Brian’s emotional vows. And they certainly were not wow’ed by my beauty as I walked down the aisle. No, they were holding in sharts, waiting for the moment they could defile my rented toilet.

I’ve outlined my top 4 suspects:

Suspect number 1: We will call him Dale. Got rip-roaring drunk the night before, to the point where he could not drink a drop of alcohol on the wedding day. Could barely eat. Cold sweats. Just an overall recipe for unpredictable bowel movement. Due to his sobriety and general discomfort, he is actually our best eye witness.

Verdict: Cleared by himself: “I honestly wish this was me, but it wasn’t.”

Suspect number 2: We will call her Miss Scarlett. Just an overall agent of chaos. Snuck booze onto the snorkel cruise, puked at the pool party days before in front of Brian’s parents. She’s just the type to shit her pants and still have a great time.

Verdict: Cleared by spouse via text interrogation:

Spouse: Did you leave poopoo panties in a porta potty on Guchs wedding day

Suspect: No

Spouse: No….maybe or hard no? I’m not convinced

Suspect: Hard no. I know for a fact it wasn’t me.

Spouse: Seems very Boston Rob

Suspect: Also I am not a porta potty lady. I peed outside all night. Plus I would tell you and Guchi if I shit my pants and hid them. A good hiding spot isn’t even in a porta potty and that’s coming from someone who has shit their pants and had to hide the evidence before.

Suspect number 3: We will call him Mr. J. Has somewhat of lore around him. He’s a childhood best friend. He has absolutely no chill. He wore a fedora to the wedding. He truly is always going to a suspect if anything out of the ordinary occurs.

Verdict: Has not been sufficiently interrogated. But loves attention so likely would have confessed by now.

Suspect number 4: We will call him Uncle Jimbo. Did not stop dancing the entire night, was sweating profusely, changed his shirt four times. Why did he have four shirts?

Verdict: Has not been questioned, and honestly probably never will be.

Now, there are more suspects, some have been cleared, some haven’t. If you attended the event, please ask your loved ones. Ask your friends. Trust no one.

If you did not, I have outlined the evidence. Do you have questions? What more do you need to continue your investigation? Help me. What kind of questions should I be asking? What threads should I pull?

Over the years, as this mystery continues to blur, people confess what they remember of the night and the poopy panties. But memory is a fickle thing, and as that well runs dry, people text and dm me times that they shit their pants that week (I was shocked at how many people almost did or did). What was in the water? Then, the stories expanded to when they shit their pants in Hawaii ever. And finally, my last wedding anniversary night capped with reading times in people’s lives that they have shit themselves ever. And while I am oddly flattered that I come off as the type of person people feel safe to unload (lol) to, this year, let’s keep it focused.

I don’t want public humiliation. I don’t want a witch hunt (I never want a witch hunt). I want closure. I want justice. I want truth. And I know that’s a lot to ask nowadays. But if you pooped your panties at my wedding, please come forward. And I swear that the only people that will ever know are me, you and Brian.

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I could barely listen to the woman standing in front of me. I fixated on her T-shirt, a chemistry pun printed across the front.

My fists were clenched behind my back. My legs crossed tight. All my focus went into one refrain: Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

I don’t come off as a nervous person. I didn’t then, in high school, and I still don’t now. But despite my bravado, I’ve always had a healthy dose of shame, and in that moment, I was flooded with it. And when I feel any big emotion, I tend to cry whether I want to or not.

The woman looked up at me. And I realized that I was expected to respond, but all I could think was, I have absolutely nothing in common with this person. And now, I was at her mercy.

I opened my dry mouth, and instead, hot tears leaked out. Damn it. A 16-year-old girl crying to her 30-something chemistry teacher. It was humiliating. It was bad enough to be there at all, begging for extra credit to get my D up to a C, to escape academic probation, just so I could play in a soccer game that Saturday. What had my life come to? Or so my teenage brain commiserated.

Today, I can’t think of a single time I’ve used anything I learned (or didn’t) in chemistry. But the shame stuck. Especially if you, like me, consider yourself moderately smart, but still get haunted in moments, hours, and days of self doubt, of the many many many times your intelligence was irrefutably questioned by an objective black and white letter when you were a kid.

I can’t remember this teacher’s name. But I can remember she was kind. I remember she always parted her hair down the middle, twisting each side into a crown that culminated in a bun at the back. I remember she was married to another science teacher and they always had clever halloween costumes. I remember constantly falling asleep in her class, which was always kept at frigid temperatures. And I remember she ran an extremely structured class, with a cadence of lectures on Tuesdays, labs on Thursdays, and quizzes on Fridays. She ran a tight ship. Her expectations were high, but fair. In short, she was a very competent teacher.

She replaced curse words with playful, rated-G substitutes, while I liked pranks and called every inanimate object “bitch.”. “Can you hand me my bitch?” I would say, in reference to my backpack. “It’s next to my bitch,” I would add, in reference to my coat.

My chemistry teacher wore pearls and no makeup, where I had a thick line under my eyes of liquid eyeliner. She wore jeans with tennis shoes and I cut tights to make black chokers for jewelry. Even on a student-teacher level, I inherently knew that we both didn’t understand each other. What’s worse, I just didn’t understand chemistry. So I did the bare minimum. I tried in capricious spurts, but my mind wandered both in class and the few minutes when I attempted to do my homework. The effect was cumulative, and eventually due to my grades, I was about to be disqualified from doing the one thing I was sure I was good at: Soccer.

What I know now that I didn’t know then was that my ADHD was absolutely ADHD-ing, the clinical term I’ve commandeered. In high school, I was truly an A or D student, and that depended entirely on whether I liked my class.

She looked at me, looked at her gradebook, I could see the many many holes from missing assignments circled.

Finally she said, “If you can turn in these three assignments by Wednesday, I can raise your grade.”

My stomach sank. Of course, I appreciated the flexibility. It was both unexpected and gracious. The problem is, I don’t know how to do the homework she’s telling me to do. I raised my eyebrows, or where my eyebrows should be if not for me plucking most of the hair off.

“I don’t know how.” I looked down at her pristine white gym shoes.

“There’s tutors after school from 2:30-4:00 in the science lab that can help you.” She hesitated, “I also can help you during my lunch hour.”

LUNCH? God no. I have to socialize during that time. She doesn’t understand. That’s my break for the day. My recharge. When I build my social clout. When I get to see crushes one, four, and sometimes five—

“I’ll be there,” I said, wiped my face and left.

I’m 35 now. And I still think about the week I spent every free moment doing chemistry homework I should have done the month before in order to play in my soccer game. I still feel ashamed about it. In my worst moments, I use it as evidence why I am not smart enough to achieve (fill in the blank).

My hunch is that most people with ADHD have a story like this. Or maybe just most people. A memory, unfairly used as confirmation of the worst stories we tell ourselves about our capabilities. Well maybe this is my attempt to take it back: to create a valve and drain the shame because in my most grounded mindset, I just see a young teenager who is learning to navigate ADHD for the first time. I didn’t see yet how some environments exacerbate ADHD superpowers or blindspots. Hint: laundry is a blindspot.

So with that reclaiming in mind, I wanted my first post to embrace my ADHD. A Lack of Focus is my personal blog with only one goal: to write consistently.

As I work on my book, I wanted a more frequent, casual and fun way to share some of my writing. I plan on publishing weekly newsletters/blogs/posts (what are we supposed to be calling these things now?) about whatever the obsession of the week for me is. So fortunately or unfortunately for you, those topics can be as widespread as pop culture, mushroom foraging, deep emotional meanders, gardening hacks, fantasy, BOOKS (OMG BOOKS), food, writing craft, my son, my dogs, my friends, the fall of Rome. Welcome to the brain of a high functioning (if I do say so myself) ADHD brain. If you find that disorienting, then don’t subscribe. But also before you exile my thoughts for good, just for a minute, imagine what that’s like to be in my brain. Exhilarating and exhausting, often at once.

Thanks for reading!

-Ashley

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