Every moment of my day, I’m chasing that smile, I’m reaching for a giggle. Her comfort is my daily mission. And, despite the fragmented sleep, I’ve found a bottomless pit of energy; I don’t know where it keeps coming from.

As I’m writing this, I’m crying. For no reason at all. This happens. And it’s true — my heart is swollen, bursting at the seams with fondness and joy and overwhelming bliss. I’ve become a tundra of happy tears, disbelief, gratitude, and boundless indescribable love.

Celine Amara is here! She’s 4 months old and I’m 4 months a mother. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know my journey to motherhood was…..quite involved. Being on the other side now, I almost want to kick myself for all the build up and anticipation because frankly, I’m loving it here. Life is good.

I’ve been avoiding writing because there’s just so much to process. Maintaining my presence and avoiding reflection have been the name of my game. While I’m my same ol’ self living in an alternate universe, I’m simultaneously a completely different human being living in the same four walls with a new roommate. There’s been an ego death, some physical trauma, and a new bombshell has entered the villa. Where does one even begin?

My last few weeks of pregnancy, childbirth, and my current postpartum existence have been some of the most lifeing ass moments of my life. I have lots and lots and lots of thoughts and feelings that I will try my darndest to put into words.

Let’s start with the end times of pregnancy…

We don’t talk enough about how ghetto the last month of pregnancy is. I found myself praying for contractions. Literally — palm to palm, on bended knee, asking the Lord to strike me down with She-Hulk level menstrual cramps because I am over this shit Dear God. I went from trembling with fear over the thought of giving birth to becoming the crazy curb-walking bandit around my neighborhood trying to tilt this baby out of my pelvis.

I lost feeling in my left hand every time I slept… My vision was affected by visual auras impairing me from watching my stories… My lower back forced me into a permanent child’s pose... I didn’t know one’s pelvis could hurt so much... Oh, the hemorrhoids... It’s crazy to imagine just how uncomfortable one must feel in their body to gleefully anticipate the trauma of childbirth to come and save you.

Due dates are the first evil. It’s the illest set-up for disappointment masked as a cheery flag of celebration on your shared calendar. Due dates are completely nebulous and you know this in theory. You know this your entire pregnancy in fact. You know only 5% of women actually give birth on their due date. But still, you’re hopeful you’re one of the rare breed. That date gets seared into your mind, body, and soul; it becomes the most important date you’ve ever known. Then, you watch the day come and you watch the day go. You look down at your pregnant belly and she’s staring back at you through the layers of fat and brine, as she gives you another stiff kick in your bladder.

I come from a family of witches who all dream vividly at night. They have a tea brew for every ailment and a prophecy to share from last night’s slumber. As instructed in my final days, I started drinking thyme tea seeped 15 minutes deep, twice a day to no avail. The baby was dreamt to be arriving one week early. I sat on the doorstep waiting for baby girl to pull up. By nightfall, I shuffled my ass inside and climbed into bed for another night of insomnia. The hardest pill to swallow was realizing this baby is coming whenever she bloody wants.

Nevertheless, I persevered to escape this trap of a pregnant body and summon babygirl Earth-side. I ate 3-6 dates a day starting at 35 weeks. Eating a date is like eating a gumdrop of sugar wrapped in a molasses soaked wrapper of honey. It’s so god damn sweet, it’s painful. Dates may help ripen the cervix, shorten the first stage of labor, and reduce the need for pitocin or labor induction, they say. Heavy emphasis on may. I woke up every morning to raspberry leaf tea served hot with a sprinkling of Miralax to stave off the incessant constipation. I guzzled raspberry leaf tea on ice all day because we gotta ripen that cervix, remember? I’d go on walks for 15 minutes and return feeling like a watermelon was gonna fall out of my ass. I lived on all fours in cat-cow and bounced on the labor ball so much, you couldn’t tell me these child bearing hips weren’t ready. The Braxton Hicks contractions (or as Nate called them “The Toni Braxtons”) were relentless; my belly felt as hard as a bowling ball most of the day. I longed for a Burger King Original Chicken Sandwich with zesty sauce and a side of cantaloupe. But I also felt perpetually full at all times; to be full and yet hungry was a paradox I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I’d proudly gone 9 months without stretch marks forming and at the final hour, when I didn’t think my stomach could grow any bigger, my skin made room and accommodated.

I started to get the night scaries every night before bed. Sleep had become so cumbersome, so vexing. The arrangement of pillows, a stomach sleeper relegated to her back and side only, the getting up to pee several times in the night, the getting up period, the praying just one of these times the baby would come tumbling out into the toilet, the listening to my husband’s quiet, calm breaths as he entered yet another dream sequence. Meanwhile, I’m just laying on my back staring up at the ceiling rubbing my tummy, beckoning her to come the hell on.

My due date came and went. The nursery was staged and ready. My screentime had reached epic proportions, as I just sat around and waited and waited…

But I wasn’t just waiting. Aunties and friends from sea to shining sea also laid waiting. I found the one downside to having a massive village — you’re the vessel bringing them their baby and everyone, I mean everyone, needs a status update. It comes from the bestest of places, but I was wholly unprepared for the barrage of texts and phone calls day in and day out asking if she’d yet arrived. Then dealing with the subsequent pity replies “Omg she’s late!” “I’m so sorry I bet you’re so over this!” reminding you of what’s already been torturing you.

By the end, your own self-absorption becomes exhausting. I was bored of talking about myself and my pregnancy, tired of the anticipation, tired of my waddle.

I was assigned an induction date much to my confused chagrin — I wanted her here pronto, but also wanted her to come on her own time. I wanted to be released from this prison by any means necessary and, if wading through the trenches of childbirth was my ticket out, please Dear God, I’m about ready to jump the turnstile. The mindfuck of feeling like your body’s been possessed and you’re just a bystander watching it morph and grow and warp into something you didn’t think possible— it’s the trauma of pregnancy I need to recover from before I even think of a second kid, Auntie.

Four whole months later and still I don’t think any of the challenging days I’ve faced since her arrival have compared to the final days of pregnancy. While I trudged through another day sans Celine, I thought often about other women as pregnant as I was, on the subway headed to work, in the refugee camp, at the border, the women doing this solo, the women with no prenatal care, all the women just casually being the superheroes of humanity on a random Tuesday.

While being pregnant was extremely difficult to say the least, and the end times were horrific, my survival reminded me of my power. No matter how down and out a woman may be, that power to sustain your life and the life of your child for nearly a year through immense physical, emotional, and mental discomfort? You can never tell me I’m not that bitch. That same power carried me through a 30-hour labor where I’ve never been more impressed with myself. And the sublime moment when they put her on your chest — every hour of lost sleep, every tinge of back pain, every bout of nausea really wasn’t that bad after all.

But that’s a story for next time…

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Love Island UK All Stars S3 (2026 | Peacock)

Love Island UK is pure Love Island. Whatever the fuck we watched last season with Huda and the glory of Nicolandria WAS peak entertainment, but it also was NOT Love Island. Love Island is about bantering, flirting, courtship, making connections when your homegirl is connecting with the same dude and navigating those awkward dynamics. Love Island UK is also superior to Love Island USA for the accents alone. Their arguments and banter are that much more entertaining simply because they’re so much more fun to listen to (see below). Fantastic season and an absolute breeze to binge. Also, the post-show drama has been very meaty...

The Drama (2026 | In Theatres)

When Nate and I went to see Project: Hail Mary in theatres we said tearfully “This is probably our last movie outing for a while...” Welp, a week later (and still today), baby girl is still sitting peacefully in my gut, so we did manage to squeeze in another theatre run to see our girl Zendaya in The Drama. Reviews have been mixed and my own review of this film is mixed. If you don’t already know, there is a majorly shocking plot twist that sets off the subsequent cascading events of the film, as our leads Emma and Charlie lead up to their wedding day. The twist certainly GOT me. Think of the question “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I couldn’t even imagine Zendaya’s answer would be what it was. Nevertheless, once we move past the shock of the twist, so many of the surrounding characters and how they moved thereafter became so unlikeable and unfathomable; I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the end of the movie and slightly annoyed at how the writer and filmmaker allowed the story to pan out. Still worth a watch, as it is entertaining and definitely gets you into good conversation with your movie buddy.

Temptation Island (2001 - | Netflix)

Who knew Temptation Island has been on TV since 2001? First on Fox, then on USA, and now recently on Netflix where the whole world can watch. I haven’t missed a season since season 4 shockingly. There’s something new in the water since it’s come to Netflix and I’m not really a fan. Being on Netflix means bigger budgets and more raunch and provocation, which a show of this premise really needs. However, the couples are getting younger and younger -- I don’t want to watch a 22 year old and her 24 year old boyfriend “navigate their relationship issues.” Also, back in the day, couples used to be 4, 5, upwards of 10 years together. This season saw two couples that I think were only together for a year?!?! WTF am I watching? It was entertaining and an easy breezy watch nonetheless and Mark Wahlberg the host TRULY is the star.

Abbott Elementary (2021 - | ABC, Hulu, HBO Max)

I’m shamefully so late to watching Abbott. I really have no excuse for not watching it; I think as the seasons piled on, I just told myself it was going to be too overwhelming to start. I was a huge fan of Quinta Brunson during her Buzzfeed days; I remember watching her YouTube “Why I Left Buzzfeed” with baited breath. To think Quinta is 36 (same age as me) and was studying at Temple in Philly the same time I was at Penn, is wild. I look up to her as a creator and writer and her success as a black woman in media is so frickin inspiring. Abbott is laugh out loud funny; the show is seriously HILARIOUS. It also makes me miss Philly and reminisce over my days working in education and that year in college I volunteered at West Philadelphia High School...

LuLaRich (2021 | Amazon Prime)

LuLaRich is a docu-series telling the insane legend of the pyramid scheme cult that sold heinous Lisa Frank-ass printed leggings to middle America white women. The founders of said cult scheme are IN the documentary looking delu-lu as all hell and being our shameless unreliable narrators; if you loved Chimp Crazy for the same reason, you’ll enjoy LuLaRich. It’s also made by the same documentarian who did Fyre Fraud, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, American Murder: Gabby Petito, and a host of other very popular, well-reviewed documentaries.

True Crime Docs: Predator of Seville; The Life and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson; Trust Me: The False Prophet (2026 | Netflix)

I’m a true crime girlie and Netflix is my haven. All three have been released in the last 2-3 weeks and all are very well done. I personally live for a Mormon FLDS polygamy unmasking true-crime doc. Furthermore, Trust Me: The False Prophet is a great follow-up to Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (2022 | Netflix) which I HIGHLY recommend watching beforehand for some foundational history on these kooky folks.

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993 | Disney+, Hulu, Netflix)

I hadn’t seen Mrs. Doubtfire in YEARS and Nate had oddly never seen it. I dunno what possessed us to put it on one night, but it was just as good as I remembered. Robin Williams was really a comedy mastermind -- his physical comedy, his voices and impressions, he was in a league of his own talent. If you’re looking for something feel-good and family-friendly that’ll whisk you back in time to an elementary school slumber party, throw on Mrs. Doubtfire.

Aladdin (1992 | Disney+)

So we continued our Robin Williams kick and got us some good laughs with the Genie in Aladdin. Personally, I miss hand-drawn animation. Did you know the last major hand-drawn Disney release was The Princess and the Frog in 2009?! SHAME! I love me some Pixar and CGI, how-some-ever, ain’t nothing like the hand-drawn animations we grew up on in the 90s. Apparently, Disney is making a comeback and reinvesting in hand-drawn studios. Until then, I will put on a Disney princess movie any time, any day.

Midsommar (2019 - | For purchase, Amazon Prime)

I’m a huge horror movie fan, if I haven’t pummeled you over the head with this fact already. I just finished reading the screenplay for Hereditary -- one of my all-time favorites -- and it reminded me I was overdue for my annual watch of Midsommar. A horror movie told almost entirely in daylight? Midsommar is something special -- it’s disturbing AF and Florence Pugh’s performance of overwhelming grief is absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a movie worth at least two watches because no matter what you think you’re going into during your first watch, you WILL finish it feeling very “WTF did I just watch?” Upon rewatch, there’s a legion of us who GET IT and can appreciate Ari Aster’s masterpiece within.

Real Housewives of Rhode Island (2026 | Peacock)

Fantastic television. Real Housewives is BACK! This season is perfectly cast -- these women are ACTUALLY friends and their drama cannot be scripted or forced. We’ve got a polyamorous relationship (a few in fact!), a husband full-on blatantly cheating and getting caught and his delu-lu wife defending him, Ashley I. from Bachelor Nation airing out all her husband’s financial dirty laundry, there’s a Dolores lookalike. It’s honestly 1000/10, no notes, and we’re only 3 episodes in?!

What have y’all been watching lately? Drop YOUR recs below!

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How some ever, baby girl’s bedroom is my new favorite room in the house. Honestly, it’s the only room in our house that feels fully complete. “Complete” by my definition means artwork is up on the walls and aside from one piece of art in our living room, our entire house is still very much a work in progress.

We converted Nate’s office into the nursery and Nate’s desk and office chotskies have been banished to the second half of our bedroom. Nate’s office was painted a moody navy blue, which at first glance, for a baby girl’s nursery, I thought NOPE! But then, the more I got to Pinteresting and the more Nate talked me out of painting the walls, I decided, if anyone could freak this navy blue room into the perfect sanctuary for a little girl, it’s ya homegirl.

The blue is dark, so I first had to decide what accent colors I wanted to bring into the space and, or course, find the perfect rug. My decorating method is to usually start with the rug and build the room around it. Hundreds of hours later after scowering the interwebs, I finally found this West Elm rug and then got to building out the nursery! See it in all its glory below:

Shoutout to our family and friends who helped us pull this room together with all their generous gifts. See links for almost everything in our nursery on Shop.My and I highlighted some of my favorite purchases below:

• Artwork - I’ve been following Portuguese multimedia artist Luisa Azevedo for several years now on Instagram. One of her first pieces I fell in love with, I saved to my IG collection and secretly told myself “this is the art I want for my baby’s nursery one day.” True story. And here we are! Her art brings just the right amount of imagination, whimsy, and nature into the nursery. It’s the star of the show in my eyes.

• Frames - I shamefully got all the art frames on Amazon. I really wanted different textures and colors. The pink suede are my personal favorite.

• Curtains - Curtains have no business costing this much. Could I have found more affordable ones? Yes. Did I fall in love with these pinstripe ruffle edges and from that point on nothing could compare? Also, yes.

• Curtain pullbacks - Etsy is really one of my true loves. If I had the budget, I’d furnish my entire home via Etsy. These ceramic curtain pulls backs are just quality. The Etsy shop also carries lots of cool ceramics (door knobs, hooks, candle holders) and is worth checking out.

  

• Recliner - So many people told me a sound rocker/recliner is the most important piece of furniture in your nursery. We got our kitchen island stools from Chita Living and have been very happy with them. So we went back to Chita for our recliner, which swivels, rocks, reclines, has lumbar support and neck support, can charge your phone, it does it all. I believe it was sold out on their website when we bought ours, so we purchased ours from Amazon.

• Toy chest - I didn’t want a traditional big rectangular box toy chest. So I got to scowering Etsy and came across these wicker toy chests. They’re handmade in Morrocco from natural palm leafs and you can add color customizations and name personalizations, along with sturdy leather handles. It was a splurge item we threw on our baby registry and lo and behold, shoutout to my cousin who gifted it to us.

• IKEA storage - IKEA is still the GOAT of affordable and efficient closet organization and storage units. I’ve been a fan of cubicle storage shelves pretty much since my first dorm room in college. Our nursery comes with one small cedar closet with one rod for hanging clothes, so we added this unit for added storage. I’m very happy with how heavy-duty it feels compared to other cubicle units I’ve gotten in the past from Amazon or Wayfair.

• Quince swimsuits - Quince has been longtime sponsors of 2 Black Girls, 1 Rose and I’m a huge fan of their clothes, homeware, bedding, literally anything. The baby swimsuits are also so cute, I couldn’t resist buying these two. Babygirl is set for the pool and beach this summer!

• Sheepskin rug - Our area rug doesn’t extend to our changing table nook so I knew we needed another small rug to keep our toes warm for those late night diaper changes. The sheepskin rugs on Amazon are very hit or miss so I invested in a higher quality one from Joss & Main in the perfect shade of sage to match our crib.

  

• Dresser knobs - I’m not big into antique furniture but my in-laws are big antiquers. Nate has had our dresser/changing table in his family for decades. We had to invest some money into refurbishing it a bit. I honestly wanted to paint it and redo the whole thing but got viciously fought back by my husband, SO we opted to at least change the knobs to something a lil more sleek and modern. Anthropolgie has a great homewares section, by the way.

• Crib - The crib market is a racket. So many to choose from and such a range of prices. This crib was very affordable and converts into a toddler bed, so homegirl will be sleeping in this thang for years. Also, you can’t beat this sage color.

What are your favorite nursery items? Any baby registry items you swear by? Drop them in the comments!

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I Love LA (2025 | HBO Max)

I ripped through this show in a day. It’s very LA, very GenZ, and basically a satire of the vapid world of influencing and social media. Rachel Sennott, of the same NYU Tisch School-comedy cohort as Ayo Edebiri (who plays a wacky British-lite pop star in the show) created, wrote, and stars as a lowly talent agent who reconnects with and starts managing the social media career of her wild child cool girl bestie played by Odessa A’zion. I want to shave Odessa’s hair and make a wig for myself; I am obsessed with her hair cut, as we all are. Sidenote: beyond her recent Marty Supreme fame, Odessa was very good in Grand Army — the one season NYC Euphoria.

Homicide: NY and Homicide: LA (2024-2026 | Netflix)

I’m a true crime girlie so I also ripped through both seasons of Homicide in like two days. It’s a 5 part docu-series from Dick Wolf, the creator of Law and Order. I lived in Harlem 11 years and never knew there was an East Harlem serial killer back in the 90s. Season 1 in LA also kicks off with the Phil Spector case, which I kinda knew about in theory but now I am well-versed.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026 | Netflix)

Big Peaky Blinders fan here. The show wrapped up with a somewhat open ending that did require either another season or a movie. Welp, the movie is here and I was not a huge fan to be honest. The usual gang is all dead, there’s a new band of characters I didn’t really care about plus a solemn Tommy Shelby. I found the whole thing a bit underwhelming.

Beef (2023 | Netflix)

It shamefully took me over 2 years to finally watch Beef. The announcement of season 2 is honestly what prompted me. The show opens super strong — a road rage beef between Ali Wong (who doesn’t love Ali Wong?!) and Steven Yeun (who I loved in Minari) takes some comedically ridiculous twists and turns. However, the latter half of the series kind of lost me at points. 10 episodes felt like way too many and there’s a major tonally shift in the end where it began to feel like a totally different show. Nonetheless, OVERALL, still a solid watch. I’m looking forward to season 2, although disappointed they didn’t keep with an all-Asian cast; season 2 is already giving White Lotus vibes.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (2024- | Hulu)

I avoided watching this show after people told me the swinging scandal was blown out of proportion; that alone annoyed me. But no one truly expressed to me how GHETTO these white chicks are! I have been ripping through these episodes with ease. In one hour, so much happens! They go on a girls trip every two episodes. Someone is always whipping out a “truth box” and choosing violence every time, someone is always pregnant or getting divorced, someone is always cheating on their husband, someone is always fighting to be the “leader” of #MomTok and usurping Taylor Frankie Paul who could care less about leadership and also always has some tremendous mess going on in her life of 3 kids/2 baby daddies and on-again off-again toxic domestic violence filled relationship. I’m mad I’m so late to the game and didn’t give this show a chance initially but now I AM HOOKED!

Project Hail Mary (2026 | In Theatres)

Nate and I treated ourselves to a lil date night movie night last week, probably the last movie we’ll see in theatres for a lil bit. I had zero interest or intention in seeing this Ryan Gosling sci-fi about another man trapped alone in space. However, Van Lathan on the Higher Learning Podcast talked me into it. The movie’s performed shockingly well at the box office — I guess fans of the book turned out in droves? I dunno because the marketing for the film has seemed pretty regular degular to me. More interesting, Ryan Gosling reminds us he’s still a Hollywood leading man. He leads the entire movie almost dolo, giving us emotion AND the funnies. The movie is 2.5 hours long, but I was honestly locked in beginning to end so I ain’t really mad at it.

The Pitt (2025 - | HBO Max)

In high school, I once stayed up all night watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy from my DVD box set and then went to school the next morning having not slept a wink. I used to LOVE a medical drama; throw House in there too. The Pitt had been getting so much hoopla and critical acclaim that Nate and I had to see what the fuss was all about and we swiftly bulldozed our way through season 1. People who CHOOSE to become emergency room physicians are such fascinating specimens. You’re working in a high-pressure, fast paced, life or death situation for 12 hours a day and somehow going home to live a normal life. Mind-boggling. The Pitt is as good as they say, particularly season 1. If you didn’t already know, each episode covers one hour of a work shift with the full season being one full shift. Very cool.

I’m always looking for recommendations to add to my overflowing watch list. I’ll have plenty of time to spare these next few months. Let me know what you’ve watched and recently LOVED in the comments below!

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I’ve come a LONGGGGGGG way since debating the merits of becoming a mother. The paralyzing fears of pregnancy and childbirth that once plagued me feel so far beyond me now; I wonder what the hell the fuss was all about. I wasn’t bedridden with sickness during the first trimester — so I survived. Thank you Jesus for looking out! And while childbirth is still unknown for the next few days, I’m strangely begging for it at this point.

Being pregnant has been a trip. A mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social trip. I have so many scattered thoughts about this bodily, human, all-encompassing experience I’ve been locked into for the past 10 months and I’ll attempt to share some of them here.

To be excited, or not to be excited?

I struggled with the word “excited.” To say “I’m so excited I’m pregnant” felt hilariously false. I’d rather say “We’re excited!” when people asked and hide myself under the cloak of Nate’s genuine elation.

The day I found out, my new GYN called with the news. I casually took a pregnancy test at my appointment and she casually called to tell me it came back positive. I thought “Alright, here we go…” After, months upon months of ruminating over the physical, emotional, mental, and social ramifications of having a child, the anticipation had ended and reality slapped me in the face: Bitch, you pregnant.

Almost immediately, symptoms hit and I was in it; staving off nausea became my job. “Excited” was not the word I’d wake up to everyday; it was more like dread. “Morning sickness” was a misnomer I had prepared for, but daylong nausea seemed so unbelievable until it reared its ugly head. I’ll never look at Saltine crackers the same.

Things started to change around week 10, when we started telling our friends and family. Seeing my Grandma shout hallelujahs and praise God, watching my parents yelp and scream, watching permasmiles smear across my friends’ faces... The village was hype and ready. Their excitement nudged me to feel somewhat warm and fuzzy, in spite of the nausea knocking me back.

I started feeling her the day after Thanksgiving. What felt like gas initially became more definitive and recognizable as a full ass human growing inside my body. The nausea was no longer in vain. Her presence was made.

I was excited.

She’s since made her presence very known — popping up in my dreams and the dreams of my sister, husband, and Mom. I had one dream: Nate and I came home from the hospital with a lil bundle of joy to a full house of our people ready to meet her. She leapt out of her swaddle in my arms and this lil newborn started dancing, doing back handsprings, and putting on a show for the people. This fiery Aries is en route and she’s ready to turn up, just in time for hot girl summer.

With each backflip, head butt into my bladder, bout of constipation, I grow more and more excited to, frankly, evict her from my body. Your lease is up babygirl! But also, I am finally excited to meet this lil human. The best parts of me, the best parts of Nate all juiced together into a brand new human being. I wonder about her eyes, her skin tone, her hair texture. A biracial baby is a complete crapshoot — what on Earth will she look like? Will she be a rebel like her mom, a rule follower like her dad? Will she be an artist? Will she be athletic? Will she, like me, have a natural proclivity for the morbid? Horror movie buddy, here she comes?! Will she…will she…will she…

She’s arriving at the beginning of spring after the winter of all winters we just endured. I’m excited to sit out on the back deck surrounded by the trees, their leaves whistling and me watching the wonder in her eyes as she looks up at these giants. The wind blowing so hard, she struggles to flutter her lil eyes open. I daydream of this moment everyday. The moment’s almost here and I can’t wait.

“Just you wait!”

She called to schedule the carpet runner installation for our stairs. She asked how I was feeling these days, remembering I was super pregnant and doing the kind sales lady thing. I gave my usual stock answer — that I was pretty tired, energy dwindling, but trudging along. With swiftness and certainty, she replied “Well, get used to it! From here on out, you’ll ALWAYS be tired, that tiredness doesn’t go away!”

Justine and I call these folks the Just You Waits.

“Just you wait…your titties will never look the same again!”

“Just you wait…sleep? Ha! Get it now while you can!”

“Just you wait…you can kiss your alone time goodbye!”

Everyone rushes you to get pregnant, singing about the joys of parenthood and the upgrade to your life. Then you get pregnant and those very same people can’t wait to tell you how awful parenthood is and about all the terror to come. You thought pregnancy was rough? Just you wait…!

It’s been fascinating and annoying to learn just how many Just You Waits exist…they’re everywhere….waiting to offer you their unsolicited commentary on all the ways your life as you know it is fundamentally over.

I’ve come to learn you have to have your wits about you moving through pregnancy because these false prophets are plentiful.

We’d spent the last hour or so catching up and talking solely about their kids and parenthood as if nothing else in their world seemed to matter any longer. As the conversation continued, my boredom crept into pity at their dissolved identities. Nate brought up our weekly date nights… “Just you wait! Those ain’t happening anymore! I can’t even remember the last time we’ve been out!” I realized in that moment, they were martyrs. Parenthood was supposed to be hard, all-consuming, sacrificial, selfless. I held myself back from rattling off all the members of our village already preregistered for date night babysitting duties.

The Just You Waits live in scarcity. Their sleep is fucked, their village is teeny tiny, they can’t remember the last time they felt like themselves. Parenthood has changed every thing and their well-intentioned warnings are the sirens of preparation so you don’t catch a stray the way they did. The thing is — most of their prophesies are false and I already know this without stepping one toe into parenthood yet. Everyone’s setup looks different, everyone’s village is different, everyone’s postpartum is different, everyone’s support looks different. Not to brag, but I feel very blessed about my setup, village, and support and I trust I’ll be okay. I don’t need to just wait for anything awful to come my way. It’ll surely come and we’ll handle it just fine. But thanks for the heads up, I guess.

Overpreparing vs winging it

I’m a Type A person and no one lets me forget it. I’m often the butt of jokes of how anal I am, how over prepared I can be, how I’m anxious and often doing too much. I am a control freak. This I know about myself. But there’s often method to my madness and my control makes me feel safe, so what’s it to you?

I read countless books in preparation for pregnancy. I listened to podcasts. I wrote. I self-reflected in therapy. I spoke with any women who’d tell me their birth story.

Once I became pregnant, I read even more books. I listened to even more podcasts. I’ve got pins for days on Pinterest, IG, and TikTok. I’ve taken a breastfeeding class and a labor rehearsal class. I’m currently reading “Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success” in preparation for replicating my sister-in-law’s success with creating the only kid I know who’s consistently slept 12+ hours a night their entire life. Over the past 10 months, people have looked at me and told me all the time “You’re doing too much….Your maternal instincts will kick in… You’ll know what to do...”

So we’re just supposed to wing it?

As an INFJ, I run on intuition and feeling and I trust those virtues will serve me well in motherhood alongside my anal retentiveness. But you tell me being a Mother is the hardest job in the world. You give me 10 months to prepare for said job. Then you tell me: “Don’t prepare! The answers will just come to you…” How does that make any fucking sense?

Knowledge throughout this pregnancy has empowered me. It’s helped me feel a semblance of control during a period of alien invasion of my body and a total loss of control. My fears and anxieties around childbirth have actually quelled the more birth horror stories I’ve read or listened to. The fear of never sleeping again has pretty much died upon reading about sleep training. The mystification of breastfeeding has subsided slightly with one breastfeeding class. The resources, people, and information exists but choosing to just “trust my motherly instincts and hope my baby sleeps through the night” is complete bullocks.

Relinquishing control will be my biggest challenge of motherhood. My birth chart reading made that explicitly clear to me. There’s so much unknown and so many challenges to come, I won’t be able to control them all. Nonetheless, I trust being Type A and overstudied for the exam will get me my A+.

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Nevermind “bikini ready.” I told myself at the start of the year, my focus for Q1 was to get my body “pregnancy ready.” Here was that thought pattern: if I lose some pounds (say a cool 15-20), then my pre-pregnancy body would get down to a permissible weight for me to then pile the pounds back on with pregnancy weight. How about that mental gymnastics?

Oh and also, I haven’t lost a pound.

My therapist pointed out that I had redirected my energy instead to getting emotionally and mentally prepared for pregnancy — something had to give. I read Lucy Jones’s Matrescence in Q1 and while I can still grab my belly à la Honey Boo Boo, at least I can now confidently say I’m ready for this motherhood thing.

As I look down at my body, a smooth 25 pounds over my desired weight, I have no options left but to choose acceptance. The clock has stuck midnight and it’s time to pile more pounds onto a body I already feel is too fat. My left brain is fighting me for more time — “Just give yourself a few more months and you’ll drop the weight.” My right brain asks with great measure “Why torture yourself? First trimester pregnancy might be torture enough…”

I’ve been struggling with my body for as long as I can remember.

Struggling · with · my · body

verb: to live in an obsessive state of hatred, disgust, abuse, neglect, turmoil.

A few weeks back, I stayed up late one night, flipping through my journal from 10 years ago. There I was — consumed with what I ate, scolding myself for not working out, nitpicking what my body looked like. My decades long imprisonment in this toxic mental loop stared back at me. How boring.

I can’t remember ever truly liking my body, if I’m honest. Even at one of my thinnest — my 2010-2012 era back and forth to Sydney, Australia — I remember thinking then that I was fat. Nevermind everyone around me complimenting my thinness. I remember coming home after my first semester in college to rave reviews of how thin I was. While most gain the freshmen fifteen, my social anxiety crippled my appetite and I lost nearly fifteen pounds. I was in my own psychological torture in the privacy of my dorm room but at least I was now skinny.

I live in a state of self-talk coaxing me to eat better today, berating me for binging yesterday, imploring me to go to the gym in the morning. There’s always something I’m not doing and there’s always a sustained level of guilt and self-disappointment that is now my calibrated normal. Me and my body have been in this hate-hate relationship for well over two decades. Me and food, for about as long.

With food, I overeat. I eat to maximum fullness and succumb to the guilt later. Therapy taught me that (surprise, surprise) I’ve discovered a comfort in this feeling of fullness. What brought me safety in my lonely college dorm room at 18 or my dark basement apartment at 25, still brings me a sense of familiarity and stability now at 35. My therapy induced self-awareness is freeing but also brings along a new weight of responsibility. Might it have been easier to live in ignorant bliss, just me and my oreo milkshake?

Every year, we choose a Word of the Year — an intention set to guide your year since New Years Resolutions never work. I’ve come to realize that for the past umpteen years, just about every word I’ve chosen has been in lowkey service to me and my body finally working things out. There was CARE in 2024, CONTROL in 2022, DISCIPLINE in 2018…. And on December 31 of every year, I experience the same feeling of let down boiling down to one question: Did I master eating at a calorie deficit and working out consistently or nah?

At the beach, I’m looking around at perfect bodies. Brazilian booties, flat tummies, toned backs. These are the women with great genes, the ones ordering the chopped salad over the cheeseburger and fries. They have the discipline, they’ve won. If only I could X, if only I could Y. I could win this battle. The thing is, I know those women are in mental wars of their own playing defense to their minds and bodies. Nevermind, the woman who gave up eating cake years ago. Is she winning? I’m constantly thinking about food — what I’m eating next, guilt over what I just ate. But I have a sneaky suspicion we all kind of are, even the girl with the great arms.

I know I’m not alone in always feeling like my body is betraying me. Most women suffer with some contention with their bodies. There’s always someone telling us we’re fat. The girl at the beach with her great arms, the girl with abs in the row ahead of you in boxing class, your ruthless aunt in town from Jamaica, your friend ordering the salad and appetizer as her meal at dinner. The body positivity phase got us to believe our worth despite our fat. Now the age of Ozempic reveals just how much we were all lying; our deeply ingrained fatphobia is laid bare.

Q1 has come and gone so acceptance it is. My word for 2025 was RECONNECT. Reconnecting with my body was the intention, of course. Me and my body have been at odds since the dawn of time. Me the protagonist and she my antagonist. I’ve actually never regarded us as one. Just two sisters entangled in a lifelong beef… What could harmony feel like? This body survived COVID, this body tested negative after our super-spreader wedding, this body has only suffered with mono in 7th grade, appendicitis in college, and seasonally with allergies. This body is admirably resilient albeit a lil chubby.

My friend and I — both lifelong enemies of our bodies — were discussing pregnancy recently and we found a silver lining. For the first time in our lives, our bodies would be largely out of our control. We could sit back for once and watch it do it’s thing, mostly free of obsessing over its look and weight and attempting to tame the untamable. A rare moment in time to simply care less. I never thought pregnancy could peak my interest, but I am intrigued to be on the other side with a new body and a license to start over from scratch. To hopefully start from a place of reverence instead.

Writing this essay has been a nag. I told my therapist recently, I’m bored of talking about my body issues. My resolve on this topic feels very “It is what it is.” But let me tell you — to be in this state of blah acceptance is the freest I’ve felt in a while.

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I’ve been dragging my feet to get this newsletter out. I suck at “influencing.” Taking pretty pictures, documenting journeys, smiling and tagging links… when we first moved in, I envisioned capturing the entire home decorating journey bit by bit. Then I got to living my life…

But, I can share a few tiny nuggets about my personal home decorating journey thus far:

1. Anyone who knows me knows I love Pinterest. Pinterest held my hand as I wedding planned without a wedding planner and now, it is serving as my interior decorating colleague. Their collage feature was extremely useful in laying out the vibes for our living room, primary bedroom, and guest bedroom. I also had absolutely no idea what direction I wanted to go in for our guest bedroom until I found this one image on Pinterest that gave me all the answers.

   

   

   

   

   

   

2. When given a blank room, where do you even start? I personally start with the rug. I start there and then build everything else around it. This is just my process and honestly I may need a new one because I will literally scour Wayfair and Overstock for hours flipping through literally thousands of rugs before finding the “right one.”

3. Shoutout to Facebook Marketplace and Thumbtack. We used both to find carpenters to build us custom pieces. We got some decent dupe Pottery Barn nightstands built — 2 for the price of 1. And, we’re currently working with a guy from Thumbtack to build us custom floating shelves for our living room for a literal quarter of the price we were quoted by a brick and mortar shop.

   

Over the course of the last six months, we’ve bought a lot of new stuff. Shopping for a house we own has felt so different from shopping for an apartment we rent. Every piece feels final, feels like an investment in a long future. Thus, decorating this house is taking its sweet ol’ time because I’m taking my sweet ass time finding all the perfect pieces; my perfectionism is in high gear.

I’m super proud of what we’ve built so far and would love to share some of the best gems we’ve found:

Best bedroom purchases

• Organic Airy Gauze Duvet Cover from Quince - Our sleep has been upgraded 10 fold since moving. The king size bed and the silence of the suburbs have been the biggest contributing factors. However, this duvet cover is also highly responsible. It is so incredibly soft and airy. I am always cold, Nate is always hot and this duvet services us both impeccably. (Shameless plug: You can also shop at Quince using our 2 Black Girls, 1 Rose promo URL: http://www.quince.com/2bg1r)

• Casaluna Chunky Knit Bed Blanket from Target - We use this blanket primarily for aesthetics at the edge of our bed. But once, when I was sick, I wrapped myself three times over in this enormous king size blanket and nustled into the corner of the couch to rot and I could literally feel the healing powers of the knit working its magic. If cozy were a blanket…

Best kitchen purchases

• Glass Spice Jars with Bamboo Lids from Amazon - I have a thing for organized spices. This kit comes with everything you need — the jars, a funnel to transport your spices, and 492 pre-printed labels in three different fonts. Jerk seasoning was one of the labels y’all.

• White Wine and Red Wine Glass Sets from CB2 - I don’t really appreciate wine, but I do appreciate a good wine glass. A skinny lil stem? Ah, you look like such a classy bitch.

Best coffee table books

• A24 Screenplay Books - As a movie nerd, there was no better gift to add to my Christmas list. A24 makes some of the best movies every year — Oscar winners Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All At Once, horror classics Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Witch. Imagine, those films once began as words on paper! We keep two in our living room and rotate a third onto the guest bedroom nightstand so our guests have some late night reading material.

Most economical customization

• IKEA closet planner - A walk-in closet has also always been a dream of mine. My closet here came with one metal bar to hang clothes and nothing else. I searched high and low on the interwebs for closet designers all charging an arm, a leg, and my left breast to build a custom walk-in closet. Finally, I happened upon Ikea’s Boaxel open storage system and planning tool. I designed my closet free of charge on their website and purchased all the corresponding parts for under $300.

Best shag rug

• Safavieh Hudson Shag Area Rug from Target - Our house is all hardwood floors, which meant needing to find lots of rugs to add warmth and softness to the space. In our bedroom, we’re slowly building out a cozy reading nook that requires a plush cloud beneath our toes. This shag rug is so heavenly, we shamelessly bought the exact same one for our guest bedroom so our guests could also experience its magic.

Most helpful home designing tool

• Spoak - Our living room couch was a massive investment. The first time we saw the couch laid out in our living room could not be the day the couch was delivered — that felt far too risky. I needed a tool that would allow me to visualize the space with all the proper dimensions and ensure the couch would fit. As we were purchasing a modular couch, we also wanted to play around with the configuration in the space. Spoak let me feel like a real live interior designer. I used the tool to lay out our living room, primary bedroom, and my future podcasting studio. It was well worth paying for the basic package for three months.

Most luxurious item

• Aesop Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash - A $43 hand soap is ridiculous hence why I put it on our housewarming registry. Sidenote: shoutout to our housewarming registry! I felt zero shame in putting one together. People usually want to give a housewarming gift, so why not tell them exactly what you need/want?

Best throw blankets

• Anthropologie Throw Blankets - Three of the four blankets on our couch are from Anthropolgie and each of them are the softest, prettiest things ever. (Blanket #1 we got in the color moss, their faux fur blanket comes in an assortment of colors, as do their fringed blankets).

Best DIY project

• Limewash Paint - Nate and I limewash painted both our primary and guest bedrooms. I will warn you — it was a labor of love, not at all for the faint. Painting the ceiling will forever haunt me, but the finished product is sublime. Our bedroom is the color cachi and our guest bedroom is the color marinia. This YouTube video guided our process.

(Oddly) Our most complimented item

• Buydeem Retro Stainless Steel Toaster - Almost everyone who has come to visit mentions our toaster. A pop of color never hurt nobody.

What are your favorite home decor hacks? Coziest blankets? Items you swear by? Drop them in the comments!

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Less TV and more movies, is what I’m telling myself lately.

But every year is also the year I declare I’m going to “get back to reading.” My bookcase is stacked with books I never get to and I just keep buying more. I have that Japanese disorder, tsundoku, where you’re addicted to buying books but never reading them. To become a reader again, I’d obviously need to lay down thy remote. But on the other hand, how will I ever get through my watch list?

My last essay on movies was in June and since then, reality TV and true crime has mostly been holding me down through my days of parsing through Anthropologie.com’s entire inventory. But in between the fluff, I did watch a couple things worthy of adding to your never-ending watch list…

Peaky Blinders (2013-2022 | Netflix)

It’s the British, WWI to WWII era Sopranos starring Cillian Murphy and his cheekbones. I love to watch how the sausage is made, witnessing how an international criminal enterprise got their start as a rough and tumble Birmingham street gang. There’s lots of family drama and surprisingly strong female characters across the tight 36 episode / 6 season series. Also, Tom Hardy plays a pretty iconic character with a very memorable voice, as has become his thing. Nate and I spoke in British accents almost exclusively in our household during the weeks we were steeped in Peaky Blinders; after the show ended, I truly missed the characters.

Blink Twice (2024 | Amazon Prime)

This is Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut starring her ex-boo Channing Tatum as a billionaire tech bro who flies women out to his private island where weird shit ensues. It’s a film about the abuse of power and the creepiness of men told from the POV of vulnerable (predominantly) women of color who realize WTF is happening and then exact revenge to take their power back. It’s a very entertaining watch that’s not at all preachy from a film people have called “the feminist Get Out.” If you enjoyed Promising Young Woman, you’ll like Blink Twice.

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023 | Amazon Prime)

The first son of the United States falls in love with the Prince of England and a secret affair begins! If you need to escape your troubles, turn this incredibly amusing, super formulaic, fan fiction-esque romcom on immediately! Red, White & Royal Blue was adapted from a very popular LGBTQ+ romance novel of the same name and brought to screen by Matthew López, who I just learned wrote The Inheritance, widely heralded as "the most important and most honored American play of the century.” Every scene in Red, White & Royal Blue is cheery and lush, the main actors are both gorgeous, it’s just super cute and super fun.

Based on a True Story (2023 - | Peacock)

I’m not typically one for half-hour comedies but one night, whatever I was watching on Peacock ended and this show starting playing automatically. I was distracted on my laptop and half paying attention, but by the end of the episode, I was totally locked in. The premise is ridiculous: based in LA when a serial killer is on the loose, a pregnant Ava and her husband Nathan discover who the killer is and then blackmail him into co-hosting a podcast about his “work” in an effort to capitalize on America’s obsession with true crime. Obviously nothing goes as planned — cue dark comedy and thrills. The fact that Ava is pregnant with their first child amidst all of this mess plays for a very comical backdrop. And, as a true crime podcast girlie myself, I was honestly tickled by the unrealistic idea of listening to a podcast where the killer himself is the host — sick, I know.

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022 - | Amazon Prime)

Coming of age is one of my top favorite genres hands down. If you live for a cutesy teen drama like me, you’ll love this series. Based on a novel trilogy of the same name, The Summer I Turned Pretty documents summer romance, amidst a glow-up and a love triangle between Isabel “Belly” Conklin and two brothers. Imagine spending your summers as a teenager on Martha’s Vineyard or in the Hamptons and experiencing all your firsts — first love, first kiss, first time getting drunk. One minute you’re the annoying little sister, the next summer you grow out of your awkward phase and it’s all eyes on you. This lil teen love triangle really got me in my feels and the lead actress is Asian which I just love to see.

Nosferatu (2024 | In Theatres, Amazon Prime)

This was easily my most anticipated film of the last like five years 🙃 I am a huge horror movie fan and believe filmmaker Robert Eggers to be one of the masters of this genre. His first three films — The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman — are all masterpieces in my book. Nosferatu is a remake of a 1920s silent German Expressionist vampire film — a pioneering film studied by all cinema studies students. No one could do a Nosferatu remake justice besides Eggers. He created a suffocating atmosphere of dread, evil, and doom that choked you from the second the movie opened. Bill Skarsgård is literally unrecognizable as the grotesque Count Orlock. His voice was as much sinister as it was eerily entrancing; it sounded almost as if he was sitting directly behind me in the theatre, hypnotizing me with my permission. Lily-Rose Depp gave a commanding performance proving herself to be a nepo-baby with serious telent; the physicality of her performance was not only incredibly impressive but she managed to capture the intensity of the psychological and physical torment her character was enduring. Nosferatu wildly exceeded my expectations. It’s horror on a completely different stratosphere — Eggers is just in his own category at this point. His commitment to authenticity captured in dialogue, costume, setting, and all of the little details is what makes his films so scarily good.

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (2023 | Amazon Prime)

I’ve seen just about every documentary about a cult or a Christian evangelical fundamentalist group. Let me tell you — Shiny Happy People was a pretty damn good one. It exposed the shit out of the Duggar family, best known for starring on the long-running TLC reality series 19 Kids and Counting. The series also digs deep into the nasty ass eldest son’s conviction for child pornography and his history of molesting multiple underage girls, including four of his sisters. Naturally, the family and all their 50-11 kids belong to a fundamentalist church where abuse runs rampant, the women have no rights, and its controversial leader Bill Gothard remains unjailed. One of the most compelling parts of the documentary features a thorough examination into Generation Joshua, a fundamentalist youth organization encouraging youth participation in civics and politics, and showing just how these motherfuckers are infiltrating our current government.

Anora (2024 | In Theatres, Amazon Prime)

Sean Baker’s films are typically about the lives of marginalized people, especially immigrants and sex workers. His latest Anora, I’m sure you’ve heard about as it won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and just received six Oscar nominations. A 23-year-old sex worker in Brooklyn meets and eventually marriages the son of a Russian oligarch. However, the fairytale is quickly threatened when the oligarch and his wife set out to NYC to get the marriage annulled. The movie is set in Brighton Beach, a Russian-American neighborhood of Brooklyn, which I’d personally never seen on-screen and appreciated this version of NYC as a main character in the film. While the movie is a solid 25 minutes too long, it is a wild, chaotic, entertaining ride from start to finish. If you liked the Safdie brothers’ films Good Time or Uncut Gems for their fast pace and mayhem, you’ll definitely appreciate Anora.

Social Studies (2024 | Hulu)

During the pandemic, my husband and I were running a nonprofit supporting a group of 20 inner-city students through high school. We witnessed first-hand their growing addictions to their phones and how a device that had become their sole connection to the world also became a menacing catalyst to their deteriorating mental health. Social Studies is a docu-series filmed in Los Angeles over the course of a school year post-pandemic where a diverse group of teenagers gave filmmakers unprecedented access to their social media accounts and phone activities. The result: an engrossing window into how the generation who grew up with social media their entire lives is dealing — dealing with racism, hypersexuality, cyberbullying, and more. I’ll just say it became Euphoria REAL quick. The kids are not okay…

I’m always looking for recommendations to add to my overflowing watch list. Let me know what you’ve watched and recently LOVED in the comments below!

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For 11 years, I lived on the same block in the same building and God forbid I ran out of sugar, I’d be assed out. Meanwhile, it took Nate no time at all when he moved in with me in Harlem to become besties with the old lady on the stoop four buildings down — someone I’d avoided eye contact with for years. When she and Nate became bosom buddies, I shamefully started gracing her with a sheepish smile on my walks to and from the subway. Out of punishment, she’d greet me with a mean side eye.

I’m not exactly a friendly person. I mean, I’m friendly when you get to know me but I’m not chit chatting up the front desk girl at the gym, inquiring how her weekend went. I’m focused on getting from point A to point B and keeping interactions in between to a minimum. My self-protective bubble of just me, my earbuds, and my true crime podcast as I’m picking out avocados at Trader Joe’s — ah, sweet solitude.

But now, I wave to my neighbors. We’re the new, young couple in the neighborhood with all eyes are on us, I presume. My husband is a golden retriever who chats up the neighbors while shoveling snow or taking out the trash. Did you meet his wife the (black) Grinch? I don’t need that reputation. So. I wave and say good morning and smile. I guess it is the absolute least I could do.

Just don’t excuse my friendliness as an invitation for friendship. I’ve been on Team No New Friends for a little while now.

When it came time to decide on our wedding parties, I had 10 bridesmaids on my short list. As a proud introvert and socially anxious girlie for all my life, I caught myself off guard. I’d routinely accused one of my outgoing besties of “collecting people.” Every time we caught up, she’d have a new story about her new friend at the yoga studio or the goings-on in her legions of group chats. Her life sounded exhausting, as much as she was energized. I chocked it up to her extroversion and thought “to each their own!” Then as I stared down a list of 10 bridesmaids, I realized, shit, I got mad people. I collect people too. Or do they collect me? How does this work?

In 2017, I first went to therapy — ironically enough — to deal with loneliness. My diary grew tired of my complaints about feeling unseen and unheard among my friends. I counseled folks through breakups and listened to endless workplace dramas over happy hour, but felt no one cared about my side of life or could relate to my perpetual singleness. This was partially untrue, as I had to learn the value of being forthcoming and allowing people a chance to be a friend to me, before victimizing myself.

Fast forward nearly 8 years later and every weekend this month is booked solid. I’m currently arranging weekday work-from-home hangouts in March. The abundance of deep friendships and community I’ve built since my therapy days is a blessing, albeit at times overwhelming.

The problem in your 30s is there’s no time. Time is the most valuable currency nowadays. Finding time? You might as well be digging for buried treasure. And oh, the treasure doesn’t exist. One day, you realize you simply don’t have enough time to keep up with all the friends and people you’ve collected as you bobbed through life. The struggle to make space for everyone leads to me playing a game of Tetris with my calendar — I fit an hour here to catch up on Facetime, book a brunch this Saturday, invite someone over for dinner next Wednesday.

You find yourself power ranking your friends, deciding who’s worthy of a weekend brunch, who gets a voice note, who gets a simple text. A homegirl with whom you share core memories, traveled with, ran around the city snooking for love with — you look up and suddenly she’s been demoted to a fleeting text message exchange every few months or the occasional Instagram Story emoji reaction. With the passing and lack of time and the lifeing of life, some friendships simply start to wither away.

The other day, I noticed it was a distant but dear friend’s birthday. I opened up Whatsapp to send her a happy birthday message when I discovered I had drafted a message reply to her months ago but never got around to finishing it or pressing SEND. I pondered if I should even bother sending her this birthday message. What was even the point? To keep hammering away at this clearly decaying relationship? I daydreamed… Years in the future, she’ll come to visit NYC and we’ll meet up for a night out at a bar catching up on all of life. Maybe we’ll drink too much just like the old days and spend the night reminiscing. Maybe we’ll have a fun dinner out with our husbands who’ll meet for the first time and together we’ll rift about the trials and tribulations of our aging parents and raising pre-teens. We’ll laugh and we’ll cry and we’ll laugh some more and we’ll create a new memory, some 15 years in the making. Our goodbye will be sad and tearful, unknowing when or if we’ll see each other again. But also, we’d be awash with gratitude that our connection was unmovable and we maintained the glimmers of pureness from when we were young, wild, and free. In another 10 years, we’ll cross paths again — our hair a bit more grey, but with more life to unravel over drinks on a rainy day in some city. Such will be our friendship. No matter how little we see each other or talk, I’ll always refer to her as a dear friend when telling a story about that time I lived abroad.

I didn’t send the birthday message.

There’s no time. I wish I could clone myself or multiply the number of weekends in a month and have time for everyone. But somewhere in all of this, this introvert does need space to enjoy the quiet luxury of being left alone. And, I should probably hang out with my husband every once in a while too.

So I’m sorry, lady at the boxing gym who complimented me on my coat with the beckoning small talk on the tip of her tongue. I’m sure you’re lovely but girl, keep it pushing.

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SIDE NOTE: Suburban living has been treating me well. I’m in my slow mornings and long nights sipping tea on the couch era.

I’ve been knee deep in home building, knee deep in Pinterest.com and errand runs to Home Depot. I’ve whipped out the slow cooker, I’ve (shamefully) become Amazon’s most valued customer, I’ve decorated window sills.

I love it here.

Months ago, in response to my essay On Leaving New York, there were some requests for intel on our home buying process. I attempted to write an essay about the process and nearly bored myself to death. If you have any specific questions about the process, please don’t be shy to message me directly. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to sharing some home decorating insights shortly, which is far more interesting to me anywho.

For the last two months, Nate and I have been house hunting. After nearly 11 years in NYC — four of which were spent living and working on top of each other in our one-bedroom apt in Harlem, we’re trading in the 24-hour bodegas and our beloved MTA, for a front porch, walk-in closet, and neighbors who live across the street rather than down the stairs.

I never imagined I’d ever want to leave New York. While I’ve always spoken about having kids and raising them in the burbs, leaving New York was always an event of the distant future. But alas, that day has actually arrived and I’m surprisingly ready to get the hell up out of here. Three weeks ago, we put an offer on a house and it was accepted. The clock is tick tick ticking down to September 16 when someone — who’s obviously lost their god damn mind — will hand over a pair of keys to me and Nate.

There’s nothing better than waking up on a Saturday in New York City with no plans to speak of and just venturing out for a day in the jungle. Who knows what you’ll see, who you’ll meet, or what you’ll eat. New York is the center of the universe. It’s “the city” and you know what I’m talking about. I will complain incessantly about the rats, Eric Adams, and the 2 train being a hot fucking mess, but I will always maintain that New York City is the baddest bitch of them all.

I always knew I’d end up here.

I’d argue, my relationship with New York began back in 1972 when my parents met at a party during Thanksgiving break. My mom showed up with another guy, my dad asked her to dance. And soon, they fell in love in the same city I would later find my Nate. My mom spent much of her 20s living in an apartment just around the corner from where I’ve been living in Harlem. She tells stories of befriending all the addicts who littered her block at the time, in awe of their magical abilities to never hit the ground as they hovered and wobbled when the euphoria of the crack hit their veins.

Some of my earliest memories of the city surround summers in the Bronx — the sticky plastic of my grandparents’ couch, snacking on a bag of BBQ pork rinds from the corner bodega, the quick slide of a dollar bill from my grandpa when the ice cream trunk echoed blocks away, Fathers Day waiting in the parking lot at a seafood joint in City Island. Why do all my memories revolve around food?

Growing up on a midtown direct train line in Jersey, my parents treated New York City like a big ol’ playground. We saw The Rockettes and Macy’s Christmas windows every holiday season, spent weekends at The Met with my dad staring at Ugolino and His Sons, followed by dumplings at Peking Duck House in Chinatown and haggling vendors for “Fendi” with my mom. My family celebrated Y2K like maniacs in Times Square — we’re devotees.

After college in Philadelphia, I did a stint in Sydney, Australia and upon my return, there was no question where I was moving next. Cities have always felt safe to me — the safety in being surrounded by people constantly, the endless possibilities of food and activities, the spoils of 24-hour convenience, my introversion respected in a city where everyone minds their business. The people, the diversity, the cultures and New York’s distinct culture. I can eat anything I want at any hour I want. I could go on a bad date and never see that dude ever again. I could fall in love at a NYE party at the penthouse of a Fortune 500 CEO. I can hop on a train and be at the beach, hop on another train and be transported to Korea. The people watching here is elite. Did I mention the food scene? I can complain all winter long but then be greeted by the most lush nights of a New York City summer. In deciding where to look for a house in New Jersey, first up on our list of dealbreakers — proximity to a train station. While we no longer want to live IN the city, I sleep easier knowing I can access it at any time, you know, in case of emergencies.

New York has been mostly good to me. The rats are a different story… But lately, the hustle and bustle has felt more oppressive than alluring. I’m out of breath trying to keep up with the pace. I find myself craving slow mornings and even slower days and nights. For there to be less temptation and FOMO, less obligation to be everywhere for everyone. To some extent, I’m escaping. Escaping everyone’s grasp and running over the river where my distance and “Sorry I can’t make it” will be understood enough. I’m craving an office with a door to escape Nate’s Zoom calls, and a window beckoning birds chirping instead of police sirens and ambulances racing to and fro. I’m craving space — to have a true respite where I can watch RuPaul’s Drag Race in peace. I’m craving trees and a plot of grass I can call my own that doesn’t belong to the Department of Parks and Rec. I feel a gravitational pull to be near my parents. To witness their aging in real time day by day from just a 20 minute drive away.

I’m trading #weoutside for domestic life squarely inside. Hosting dinner parties, painting kitchen cabinets, shopping for throw pillows at Home Goods. Homemaking is what they call it. I’ll happily host Sunday dinner, we’ve got your plans for NYE. Need a weekend respite from the city? We’ll have a guest room with your name on it. Our house is your house — ‘The Headquarters’ as some of our friends have already coined it. I’m bout to be living my best suburban life.

A new pace.

Almost three years ago, I went to happy hour with a friend who had just started trying to get pregnant with her husband. With my ovaries in a deep, deep slumber at the time, I asked her how she knew she was ready. She said simply “I’m ready for a new pace.” She described being so focused on her career for so long and so wrapped up in her own self-work that she was ready to think about something other than just herself. Her reflections have always reverberated in my brain. While I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel ready to get pregnant and be a mom, I’m starting to understand the whole being sick and tired of yourself thing.

House hunting these last two months have been a trip — mentally, I’ve been in the year 2040 with two teenagers and aging parents. While touring a house, I’d be spatially mapping out two 16-year-olds moving around the space with us. Would it feel tight or spacious? Would the nursery go upstairs or downstairs? Can the neighbors hear our music from the deck? If one of our parents has to move in, how far is a guest room from the bathroom?

Nate and I opted on a certain order of things — house before baby. We were avoiding the treachery of moving whilst pregnant or carrying a stroller up and down the steps to the 2/3 train. So we’ve been living and planning on hypotheticals and unknowns. Our savings account soon to be wiped clean based on plans that God will inevitably laugh at.

For now, we will be twiddling our thumbs in a four-bedroom house complete with a proper dining room and a backyard. Pinterest is my new bestie as we transform this house into a home piece by piece. But I’ve left myself wide open for the attacks from the Aunties — “That’s alot of house… What a great house to grow into… What y’all gonna do with all that space…?”

We’ve only got just a few paragraphs left in this chapter. Please, Auntie, let me enjoy the ending.

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I remember sobbing my way through the final pages of the novel Call Me By Your Name before rushing to get dressed and head downtown by my lonesome to watch the film adaptation of what had easily just become one of my all-time favorite books.

I walked out of the theatre and I was pissed.

I was stuck on the fact that the movie was not narrated — what made the novel so special was Elio’s stream of consciousness narration that richly painted his experience of first love. How could they mess that up? Adaptations are tough, I thought. That kid with the floppy hair did an alright job, the music — oh the music, the sumptuous scenery of Northern Italy in summertime, their chemistry… I decided to see it in theatres for a second time. Maybe I missed something…

This time, I walked out with only one word on my mind. Masterpiece.

What Timothée Chalamet captured in the subtleties of his facial expressions, what Italian director Luca Guadagnino found in the tiniest of fleeting moments — all that mixed with Guadagnino’s perfectly curated soundtrack summarizing the tension and angst of young love. He brought the page to real life and for that, I am in awe of Luca Guadagnino’s brain.

I’m slowly working my way through his filmography, having already watched and enjoyed A Bigger Splash and Suspiria. This week, I’m covering his latest collaboration with the one and only Zendaya, as well as another angsty reunion with Mr. Chalamet.

Challengers (2024 | In Theatres, Amazon Prime)

Leaving the theatre after watching Challengers, I was nearly panting out of breath as if I had just finished playing a tennis match myself. The film takes you on a tiring psychological roller coaster ride through the twisted, 13-year-long love triangle with three young tennis phenoms at the helm.

The infamous trailer for Challengers centers on the moment It girl Zendaya sits between two lil white boys both kissing on her neck; she then leans back, serving strong succubus vibes as this woman on a mission breaths into her sexual power while something naughty happens off-screen. Oh, but that was just the beginning…

Baby face but all grown up, Zendaya is entracing in her role as Tashi Duncan, young tennis superstar turned master of manipulation. Over a 13-year-timeframe, we follow a complicated entanglement between Tashi, her world-famous grand slam champion husband Art whom she now coaches, and his former best friend/Tashi’s ex-boyfriend Patrick, now a low-circuit tennis player.

Critics consistently describe Challengers as an intense “ride” that starts at the end of the story and toggles back and forth in time, each flashback revealing more context to the complex relationship dynamics playing out among the three leads whose on-screen chemistry will have you clutching your pearls. The volleying back and forth in time, the volleying back and forth in power, the love triangle plays out much like a game of tennis and with each scene you’re the ball getting whacked back and forth over the net.

Zendaya obviously shines. Her ethereal beauty isn’t distracting as she convinced us already with Euphoria. Rather, she plays the villainous type quite well. From jump street, Tashi is ruthless and conniving and proves to be the ultimate game player. What happens when you treat life like a game? When you play with other people’s emotions? Welp, Tashi reveals all when she sets their decade-long game in motion, positioning herself as the prize and feeding off of the desperation and competition between these two best friends. Tashi is one of those pretty people who has always gotten what she wanted, knows it, and plays into it. I’ve always been the girl in the shadows, not attracting much attention. To have this girl’s face and be fawned after all my life? I guess you might as well bring yourself some entertainment.

What’s made very clear — all three characters in Challengers suck. Their behavior is vile, their relationships are toxic. But it’s oh so fun to watch people make bad choices and fuck up their lives. Anyone watch Vanderpump Rules?

While Challengers is fast-paced and sexy — much due to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Atticus Ross’s pulsating score of loud, Berlin techno music — it has alot to say about the delicacy of relationships. How friendships can hang in the crosshairs. How selfishness manifests in relationships. How power dynamics rear their ugly head in a marriage.

When Tashi becomes Art’s wife and coach, you can only imagine this power shift is not in Art’s favor. Tashi thinks her husband is a pussy and that’s never good. Working with your spouse isn’t easy; there’s some method to the madness of “never do business with family or friends.” Been there, currently doing that, so I can say it takes tremendous intention and respect. Seeing this husband and wife duo exhibiting nothing of the sort with a pinch of ego and pride in the mix, you’re watching a delicious train wreck conducted under the beautiful eye of Luca Guadagnino

They say blood is thicker than water and Art (played by Tony Award-nominated actor Mike Faist) and Patrick (played by Prince Charles in The Crown) prove that proverb masterfully as we see two best friends from nursery school dissolve their friendship over getting some ass. Their dynamic is definitely one to watch as they have a dangerous lack of boundaries for friends and some thick subtext bubbling beneath the surface. To fight over a girl seems entertaining at best but to dissolve friendships because of it, seems very high school girl. Men can be catty bitches too is what I walked away with.

The movie is framed by a penultimate tennis match between Art and Patrick, where the special effects kept me — a tennis idiot — absolutely enthralled from start to finish. Guadagnino delivers a highly-stylized, ambiguous ending that’ll sure to have fan fiction writers working overtime on Tumblr.

Final Verdict: A romantic thriller starring beautiful Zendaya? Sounds like a good time to me. Similar movies you’d also enjoy: Match Point, Closer, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I’d also be remiss to not mention Josh O’Connor’s performance in God’s Own Country — talk about thick, sexual tension. Whew chile.

Bones And All (2022 | Amazon Prime)

Part-horror, part-romance, part coming of age road movie, Bones and All is about young cannibals finding love, reconciling their pasts, and searching for peace with who they are. Based on the 2015 novel by Camille DeAngelis, the film leaves you feeling equal parts disgusted with and deep empathy for the young leads who resemble adolescent junkies struggling with their addiction while living on the fringes of society with nobody and nothing guiding them but the hunger they feel enslaved to.

I loved Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich’s world-building — this is the most about cannibals and how they operate that I’ve ever seen in a film. We learn that cannibals can sniff each other out and, in this cruel, lonely world, they are searching for and find each other often. We learn that flesh eating runs in the family and that doesn’t quite bring a sense of peace or kinship as one might hope. Their strong sense of smell is unrelenting, always lingering no matter if they’re full or hungry. And, that uncontrollable hunger can lead one to eat themselves, eat another cannibal, or achieve the ultimate euphoric satiation by consuming a victim in its totality — bones and all.

The film opens with a smack in the face — Wake up! This is a movie about cannibals, no one said it’d be easy to watch. It’s 1988 and we meet shy, innocent-seeming, new girl Maren (played by Taylor Russell, most recently known as that girl in the wooden corset at this year’s Met Gala) trying to fit in with some classmates at a sleepover she’s snuck out to. Her beastly intentions are quickly revealed when she, with fixed purpose, bites down on a classmate’s finger and has to be pulled off of her before eating the finger whole. The moment comes seemingly out of nowhere, only hinted at by Maren’s subtle deep inhale mid-conversation, taking in her victim’s delicious smell before her decision to indulge. While we think of cannibals as subhuman creatures, in this movie they’re just like you and me. Guadagnino doesn’t create a fantasyland of superhuman strength or powers, but rather keeps their depiction hyper-realistic and that much more successfully terrifying.

We learn that flesh eating is just what Maren does and as quickly as she feeds into her temptuous desires, she forces her single father to relocate them overnight, something they’ve done many times before. Shortly after her 18th birthday, Maren’s father abandons her, snapping Maren out of a protected daze and kickstarting a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. She is left to piece together a plan and life for herself and heading to Minnesota to find the missing mother whom she does not remember is the only direction she has.

Being a cannibal is a hard and lonely life and the impossibility of maintaining relationships feels unavoidable. When Maren meets Sully, a wayward, creepy old cannibal who sniffs her out — he offers the chance at companionship and mentorship, but at what cost? By the time Maren meets Lee (played by Timothée Chalamet), we too are desperate for some companionship and are sure a tragic end is inevitable for these star-crossed lovers.

Lee and Maren operate much like drug addicts; they’re the flesh eating Harry and Marion from Requiem for a Dream. As quickly as you want to turn your nose up in disgust at them, you remember that they, like addicts, are people with families and histories and traumas that have led them here. It’s unclear if the filmmakers intended to say something about how we regard and treat social outcasts, but the film does force you to recognize that Lee and Maren are deserving of some tenderness and sympathy regardless of how ghastly their choices are.

Living in New York City, everyday we come face to face with drug addicts, the mentally ill and abused, and the lost souls of the streets. We fear these people, judge them harshly, and are typically reserved with our sympathy and compassion for them. Bones and All reminds us of their humanity and the complexities behind their choices. As Maren struggles to love Lee and accept “we are what we are,” you too struggle to define what does it mean to be a “good” addict and if that’s even possible. While Lee is intriguing, the closer he gets to Maren and the more vulnerable he becomes, you also discover an immense sadness resulting from an even more mysterious past. Everyone has a story and it’s our job to remember that or we’re no less monsters than they are.

Maren and Lee’s connection sets off a road trip across the dusty, empty middle America. They are the flesh eating Bonnie and Clyde, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet if blood and guts were their thing. Their meandering from state to state rambles on in the 2h11m movie, much like the never ending cycle of addiction. The possibility of trouble is always around the corner and so too is the isolation and loneliness of being cast out of society for their own protection and the protection of their loved ones. Lee’s cryptic past is revealed to be darker than you suspect, but you strangely find solace in knowing his vulnerability gives permission for Maren’s own darkness to find a bit of respite. These two young lovers can only find love with each other it seems, but can monsters truly live happily ever after?

Lee and Maren are more than lovers. At times, they actually feel like siblings and chosen family. Their romantic chemistry comes through strongest during ferocious makeouts where they appear so consumed by their love that they almost consume each other’s faces. There’s a moment where Lee seemingly betrays Maren but her non-reaction reveals the looseness of their boundaries as lovers in favor of procuring food. Are there no rules to their relationship or is their entanglement not one we can ascribe to social constructs? Maren’s lack of judgment almost makes us straitlaced heteros feel imprisoned by our own judgements — a slight envy we should have for queer people and social outcasts’ freedom to march to the beat of their own drums.

The ending of Bones and All is haunting, Shakespearean, and unmistakably romantic. Just as you’re feeling hopeful, these tired, broken baby cannibals face an inescapable and surprising finale that’ll leave you physically gagging and replay in your mind long after the credits. In your heartbreak, you almost wish you could tell Maren and Lee that life won’t always be this hard, but we all know that’s a lie.

Final Verdict: If you can stomach gore, love Timothée Chalamet, or need something dark and romantic, give it a go. If this plot at all interests you, I also recommend the following films: Natural Born Killers, Raw, and American Honey.

What’d you think of Challengers? Are you still thinking about that ending to Bones And All ? What Guadagnino film is your favorite? Let me know in the comments!

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It’s officially summer. Saturday, June 1, I went dancing. Sunday, June 2, we rode bikes and laid out in Central Park. It’s Operation ‘We Outside 2024’ and I plan to bathe in the sunlight each and every day. Anyways, here are some gems from my recent late night Internet deep dives…

1. READ: “There I Almost Am: On envy and twinship” by Jean Garnett - I’d never sat and thought much about what it must be like to be a twin. The envy, the competition, the constant comparison. It’s one of the most unique human relationships and I had zero understanding of what at all that lived experience could be like before reading this essay. An eye-opening read.

2. FOLLOW: @rapsodia_w - Atmospheric home decor content at its finest.

3. READ: Dear Sugar, How is a person to decide if he or she wants to have a child? - So remember that essay I wrote about my views on impending motherhood? If that essay spoke to you at all, this “Dear Sugar,” advice column will also do the trick. I used to be absolutely obsessed with the Dear Sugars podcast. Writers Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond are just so damn wise. Strayed’s response to this big ass life question gave me that much more peace.

4. EAT: Duzan in Astoria, Queens - A Palestinian gift from God. The most flavor-packed meal I’ve had in a long time. I could eat a variation of this every damn day.

   

5. LAUGH: @kierra_lewis sobbing while reading Harry Potter - I don’t know why this video makes me laugh so much. Her tears are so big and she hilariously seems so genuine in her sadness over these fictional ass characters.

6. LISTEN: This is Actually Happening podcast - This podcast is my latest addiction. My brother, sister and I have become equally obsessed and trade episodes each week. The descriptor is enough said: What if you were trafficked into a cult...or were mauled by a grizzly bear...or were stabbed 27 times by a serial killer - what would you do? This is Actually Happening brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them.

7. WATCH: Couples Therapy: Season 4 - A new season of the greatest show on television is back. For the first time ever, we’ll see Dr. Orna tackle a polyamorous relationship! Couples Therapy should be required viewing for all humans — I am being so serious. Stream this newest season on Amazon Prime; episode 1 is free on YouTube. See below.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think, what you want me to write about, what you want me to watch. Or just drop me a line and say hey!

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If this edition of The Nite Owl spoke to you, feel free to pass it along to others :)

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One topic we did not speak on at all is Aziz Ansari, #MeToo, and his pseudo-cancellation. If you’re interested in what went down with him, I recommend listening to this NPR episode.

Let me know all your thoughts about Master of None Season 2! And what do you want us all to watch for future Monthly Midnight Watches? Let me know in the comments!

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Master of None is one of my favorites because Aziz Ansari captured yearning so masterfully. I spent the better part of my 20s single AF and yearning — yearning for some respite from my loneliness, yearning for a friend who didn’t feel the same, yearning for someone to recognize my awesomeness. I remember resonating hard body with Dev’s yearning for a glimmer of possibility from Francesca and finding solace in feeling seen through this character.

Rewatching the finale this go round, my interpretation of the end flip-flopped and I’m excited to dissect it to bits in an upcoming podcast episode with Nate.

Until then, tell me all your thoughts! I’m curious:

• Dev moved to Italy and his ex moved to Japan after their breakup. Where in the world would you move if you could?

• When we first met Francesca, did you think she’d be as important of a character as she became?

• Have you ever been to the wedding on an ex? (Poor Arnold!) Please, give us the tea…

• What are you still lying about to your parents about doing? Are you Muslim eating pork like Dev?

• Worst first dating story? Dev and the girl with the racist cookie jar is still so WILD!

• What was Aziz Ansari trying to say with the “New York, I Love You” episode with the deaf girl and immigrant cab drivers?

• How adorable are Dev’s parents (also Aziz’s parents in real life) and how terrible was their acting?

• Why is the “Thanksgiving” episode so fucking good?

• Did Francesca use Dev?

• What’s your interpretation of the ending?

See you in the comments!

My screentime hovers around 6 hours/day; while most of that is in service of my job, much of that time is also spent responding to texts, keeping up with my group chats, and obviously doomscrolling. My eyes are burning by the end of the day and that book I’ve been trying to get through for months remains on page 27.

I snap out of a trance and look over at Nate sitting next to me on the couch and snickering to himself while watching some video. We’re just two married folk sat next to each other in silence; we didn’t need 40 years of marriage and a lack of conversation to get us to this point — just these two shiny devices. Has it been 5 minutes or 50 minutes? Time is a construct. We tell ourselves, “It’s been a long day, let me just catch up on my messages, let me just watch this video real quick, let me just…” An indeterminate amount of time later, we’re lost in the boundless abyss of the Internet. My phone gets to see my smiling face, receive my laughter, gain my focus, not my husband.

The Social Dilemma laid it all out there — how exactly we’ve become addicted. It’s by design and I am not immune; I’m aware and disturbed and addicted just the same. I’m on Zillow endlessly looking at homes we can’t afford, I’m pinning hairstyles on Pinterest my 4C hair will never achieve, I’m saving recipes on Instagram I’ll never cook, I’m collecting date night ideas and yoga stretches and ideas and projects that’ll never come to fruition. Before bed, I’m watching Sasha Colby dance to “PURE/HONEY” for the 18th time, as if I don’t have my family prayer call at 8am. During prayer call, I’m checking my email and responding to texts from last night. I go on TikTok — which I only downloaded for work purposes — to look up a restaurant for date night. Next thing you know, I’m 10 videos deep into the analysis of JoJo Siwa’s rebrand. How I got there and when, between looking up Mediterranean restaurants in West Village, is beyond me. Hearing folks try to convince themselves they’re in control of their TikTok usage feels like I’m listening to an addict declare they’re going ‘California sober’— you hear their logic, you support them in said logic, but you’re also side eyeing the entire thing. We used to soothe ourselves with cartoons and a good book or journaling, now I’m watching a woman remodel her kitchen and soon after, I’m pressing submit on my Amazon cart for new dish towels. I feel myself getting got everytime, but I can’t seem to shake the dopamine running through my veins.

When did I go from uploading photo albums, tagging my friends, and writing funny captions, volleying back and forth in the comments with inside jokes, to posting OOTDs? Seemingly overnight, social media has morphed from a sphere where we used to connect with old friends and build community over shared memories to a place where we’re still kinda doing those things but now it feels like an afterthought. We used to actually connect in the golden era of Facebook, MySpace, and Snapchat. Now, when I go on Facebook or Instagram, I’m immediately attacked by new features and sponsored posts. TikTok is basically just QVC and, saddest of them all, Twitter is dead. We’re no longer the owners of social media, we’re just getting owned. Capitalism wins again and the purity of what used to be fun and about connection has become diluted.

I hate feeling like I’m competing with a device for your attention. I’m at the point of triggered where Nate and I will be deep in conversation and he’ll pick up his phone to simply check the time and I’ll full-on snap. The sheer trigger that this device is interrupting my story has me ready to square up. My co-host and I once collabed with fellow podcasters, one of whom was online shopping on their phone as we recorded. My mom has gotten deep into audiobooks and will perpetually have one earpod in as she’s going about the house — I’m talking to myself for a hot minute before she or I realize. My dad and I plan a movie night and within the hour, he’s on his phone peeking up at the movie in steady increments. Is no activity pure anymore? My friend is telling a story and can’t remember the name of the blah blah blah; she grabs her phone to look it up. Can we not have a conversation, watch a movie, or get lost in our memories without the phone somehow barging in? Who cares what time it is? Who cares about that actor’s name in that movie we can’t remember? The instantaneous answers we’ve become accustomed to thanks to Google has made us unable to live in mystery. We tell ourselves “Ah, this small insignificant task on my phone is mindless.” We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re now masters of multitasking, while missing the nuances of the movie plot. And believe me, I’m no saint – I was sat next to my dad Pinteresting my dream home as we watched The Graduate.

Caribbean Moms and Aunties love sending around videos of Internet foolishness. Remedies for sore throats, Caribbean people doing dumb shit, Google slideshows to classical music reminding me that Jesus loves me. I chewed my Mom out once for sending me those videos and told her to stop because three other Aunts were sending me the same ones. Today, I have multiple group texts in iMessage and on Instagram with friends sending around sometimes funny, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes infuriating videos of other Internet foolishness. Swap out my Aunts’ Whatsapp message for my friends’ group texts — what is even the difference? I guess, I’m more interested in a video my friends might send me versus another five-minute long Lord’s Prayer written in flowers from my Grandma, but I still find it hard to keep up with all this content I did not ask for. In our doomscroll, we find gems and want to share them with each other – look at us trying to connect! But, multiply that by five different group texts and now I have a backlog of more nonsense to consume.

Speaking of texting, I will respond to you when I feel it’s necessary. This false obligation to answer our text messages ASAP — I rebuke it. I sometimes go days before I respond to people. I assess your importance and respond accordingly, leaving you pinned on my iMessage until it’s your turn — that’s my brutal truth. I feel grabbed at from every angle and our overcommunication is sometimes draining. I’ve trained my family into realizing if they call or text me, chances are they’re going to voicemail or will get a response maybe in a few hours. When I turned off my alerts and notifications a few years back, it was to suppress that jump I did as soon as my phone dinged. I haven’t looked back since and at least feel in control of my accessibility even if it makes others frustrated by my elusiveness.

I’ve been reconciling my relationship to my phone and social media a lot lately because I realized overnight I became a “content creator.” One minute we’re watching The Bachelor and barking about these crazy white people, the next we’re purchasing $800 cameras and revamping our video quality because the world of audio storytelling has now become a visual one. In the old days, we recorded an episode and tweeted about it. We owe our overnight success to Monday night live tweeting and the buzz circling around #BachelorNation about these two black girls talking their shit. Our digital street team of OG listeners did the work of spreading the word while filled with pride of being early adopters. Now, the labor of self-promotion has become indeed laborious.

Those luddites who don’t partake in social media live in a world of ignorant bliss I no longer have access to; instead, I’m in deep. We’ve amassed 36K on Instagram due to funny videos, memes, and us being us. I remember the day we joined TikTok — I was especially resistant. On top of podcasting, we were making original content on TikTok and hoping it would entice folks to check out our podcast. Our follower counts grew steadily, our download numbers and paid subscribers at a much slower pace. Hearing out in the wild “Oh my god, are you that girl from Instagram?” infuriated us. No girl, I’m that bitch with the podcast. Did you check it out or did that damn IG reel satiate you enough?

We’re enslaved to an algorithm we cannot understand. We recently had a video hit a million views on IG and we have no idea why and we made zero point zero zero dollars from it. I feel all types of ways about these platforms and yet I’ve built a business off of it. I speak critically  about social media and yet here I am creating content to keep people hooked and make a sale. The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me; I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a pickle…

On date night, I’m thinking to myself “This would make great content.” The algorithm loves an interracial couple, this swanky restaurant is giving, NYC is looking cute tonight. In my head, I’m building the reel, knowing I can give the people what they want. But instead, I choose not to. My personal Instagram is still on private in my last-ditch effort to keep something sacred. Am I allowed boundaries or is my whole life up for consumption?

I’m not opposed to being sold to on social media. Hell, most of my Christmas presents last year were recommendations from my favorite influencers and those eerily accurate IG ads – saved me a lot of holiday stress, not gonna lie. I think where I struggle is now being the one doing the selling and the fear that one day I’ll wake up and be peddling flat tummy tea because I set zero boundaries. All creators say they want to make content that feels authentic. I’m no different and if I’m going to “sell out” let me at least peddle some shit I’m proud of.

Nate and I rented an Airbnb in PA once — we called it our cabin in the woods. On one of the days, we did a 24-hour digital detox at Tricia Hersey’s request. No phones and no screens for a full 24-hours. The look of utter fear in Nate’s eyes when I first suggested the detox was pure comedy. It was rough — the amount of reaches for my phone to be met with the air; my addiction never felt more crystal clear. We haven’t done a detox like that since. Now, however, when we go to bed, we leave our phones out in the kitchen rather than on our nightstands. Instead of waking up and immediately grabbing our phones, we now wake up, walk out to the kitchen, and then grab our phones. It’s a joke. I have been reading more before bed however and I did crochet a blanket last year and am currently working on my next. My mom is crocheting her umpteenth baby blanket for this phantom grandchild of hers and my dad is using YouTube to learn Spanish before their trip to Barcelona. On Monday nights and on date nights, Nate and I make an effort to be unplugged. We’re trying…

I want to feel connected to the people around me. I want the air of mystery to return. I want to make each other laugh rather than that random on the Internet. I want to read my book on the subway and not stare at my phone attempting to will the cell service to work 50 feet below ground. I want these things and yet my phone has me in a mean chokehold. I’ve chosen the profession I’ve chosen and have no control over the way of the industry. Do we just lay down our swords and surrender or do I purchase a flip phone? Do I shrug and say “It is what it is” or do I actually do a digital detox every weekend? Is that even possible? Already my brain is convincing me it’s not… Am I even making sense anymore or am I just seething with self-righteousness?

Excuse me as I go post this essay on my IG Story…

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If your internal struggle to reconcile your phone addiction is also plaguing you, these two articles helped me feel seen:

READ: “First-Gen Social Media Users Have Nowhere to Go” (Wired)

READ: “Everyone’s a sellout now” (Vox)

Progress Update: April/May Monthly Midnight Watch - Master of None (Season 2)!

Aziz Ansari is adorable. He looks like a cartoon baby. Watching his misadventures through millennial dating in a pre-pandemic NYC is so heartwarmingly nostalgic.

Nate and I breezed through season 1 and just finished season 2 last night. I felt validated every time Nate let out a laugh. Validated that Dev and Arnold’s goofy jingles are in fact so stupid they’re funny. Validated that I married the right man.

We’ll record our episode in the coming days. You can still watch Master of None (Season 2) on Netflix and the Discussion Thread, to share your thoughts, is coming soon.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you’re thinking or just drop me a line and say hey!

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On the bright side, dating in NYC, at times, felt like an adventure through my own personal rom-com. If I reflect back with more romance and less angst, I see myself as a main character hungry for love in the city of dreams, trotting from a dimly-lit speakeasy in West Village to a sticky dive bar on MacDougal Street. I met a guy at the gates of Smorgasburg Food Festival, where we walked and talked and ate delicious food from around the world. I’ve gone for pastries and coffee at the famous Hungarian Pastry Shop in Upper West Side. I’ve made out sitting on the Highline overlooking the Hudson. I’ve watched freestyle hip-hop improv comedy, I’ve gotten drinks on rooftops overlooking the Empire State Building. I dated and dated all over the city, until I found Nate — our second date was strolling through the Columbus Circle Christmas Markets before stopping in a hole in the wall ramen spot. Our next date was at an intimate New Years party hosted in a hip menswear boutique in Soho, followed by our next date at a jazz lounge overlooking Central Park. It sucked while the hunt was hot, but at least the backdrop of the greatest city on Earth was pretty cute.

After the devastation that was One Day, I need something sweet, comfy, and familiar. Just as we’re venturing from our couches and back outside into the endless possibilities awaiting us in springtime, I want to be dazzled by the romance of NYC and grab back onto the nostalgia of budding love in one of my last months living in my favorite city. For the April Monthly Midnight Watch episode, I’ll be discussing a NYC love story with my NYC lover, my husband Nate.

Our April pick: Master of None (Season 2).

This is one of my all-time favorite seasons of any television show. Comedian Aziz Ansari created one of the the most heartwarming, lighthearted, perfect shows about being a millennial navigating love and growing up in the big city. I highly recommend watching Season 1 (there’s 10 thirty-minute episodes), but if you don’t have the time, this Top 10 Best Moments of Season 1 video can also suffice. Season 2 of Master of None is the first season’s elevated, more confident, more mature older sibling that stands on it’s own and you can get away with diving straight in here.

Here’s a bit about Master of None…

Comic Aziz Ansari and writer Alan Yang are the creators of this Netflix-original comedy, which is loosely based on Ansari's real-life experiences. The series follows the life of Dev Shah, a 30-year-old actor living in New York City. The show explores various aspects of Dev's personal and professional life as he navigates relationships, career aspirations, and cultural identity.

Throughout the first season, Dev grapples with the challenges of being a first-generation Indian-American, balancing his traditional upbringing with his desire for independence and fulfillment. We explore Dev’s love life, friendships, family dynamics, and career struggles, often with a comedic and introspective tone.

In the second season, Dev travels to Italy to learn how to make pasta, providing a fresh backdrop for the character's growth and introspection. The episodes set in Italy showcase Dev's experiences immersing himself in a new culture, grappling with language barriers, and forming new connections. Back in New York City, Dev continues to pursue his acting career, navigate romantic relationships, and confront the challenges of adulthood. The season features a mix of standalone episodes and ongoing storylines, each offering insights into Dev's life and the complexities of modern life.

In season 1, we see Dev dealing with condom-breaking sex, deciding if he wants to have kids or not, being the child of immigrant parents, chasing his dreams as a struggling South Asian actor, reconciling his adult relationship with his grandparents, moving in with a lover, and more — all done with sharp humor, earnestness, and a thoughtful exploration of modern love and adulting.

In season 2, New York City continues its role as a main character and Aziz Ansari as an unexpected leading man. You’re rooting for Dev, you’re laughing with him and at him, and you’ll resonate with his “it’s hard to grow up and figure out what you want” confusion. I was devastatingly single when I first watched this show and then rewatched it over and over and over. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve treated myself with Master of None and I’m excited to watch with first-timer Nate.

Find the series:

You can watch Master of None on Netflix.

Watch the series:

Let’s plan to watch the series by April 26.

Discuss the series:

A Discussion Thread will open up on April 26 for us to discuss and chat! As always, I’ll kick off the thread with a few guiding questions.

Then, I’ll publish a special podcast episode with Nate where we’ll dissect the series inside and out. I would love to gather any questions you have or suggestions for the discussion. As you watch, you can send in your questions by simply replying to any of these Nite Owl emails.

So excited!!

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I highly recommend listening on 1.25 or 1.5 speed because Eloise and I got to chatting! Yup, we went episode by episode.

TIMESTAMPS

Intro: 00:00 - 30:00

Episodes 1 - 3: 30:00 - 51:17

Episodes 4 - 6: 51:18 - 1:15:30 (From Greece to Ian)

Episodes 7 - 9: 1:15:30 - 1:34:50 (From friendship breakup to Sylvie’s home visit)

Episodes 10 - 12: 1:34:55 - 1:56:28 (From Tilly’s wedding to Paris)

Episodes 13 - End: 1:56:29 - 2:11:40

What are your thoughts on One Day? What do you want us all to watch for future Monthly Midnight Watches? Let me know in the comments!

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I’m pretty nondiscriminatory when it comes to watching movies, I’ll watch mostly anything. I know many people who will completely write-off a movie before watching even a second of it, declaring they just know they’ll hate it or that “it’s not for me”. What sci-fi movie from Christmases past scarred you so deeply that now Dune 2 is out of the question? I’m of the optimistic belief that you can at least be entertained by anything. First step — surrender to the couch or movie theatre armchair. Next step — mute whatever angst you’ve concocted against said film or genre. Last step — give yourself permission to go against your better judgement and get lost in the story, admire the music, really examine the visuals, side eye the characters or fall in love with them. I go into every movie with zero expectations. I sit down and I watch. I’m in no rush, I usually just want to see what the hype is all about.

Anyways, I’ve been watching ALOT of shit lately. Firstly, it’s Bachelor and Love Is Blind season so work has had me very busy. This past month, I was also chasing down the Best Picture nominations, was blown away by a new cinematic masterpiece in theatres, and caught up on some classic DeNiro and Scorsese.

Dune: Part Two (2024 | In Theatres)

I didn’t see the first Dune in theatres. I watched it from the comfort of our living room couch for the first time a couple weeks ago and honestly, I fell asleep. I was doing a decent job keeping track of all the characters, the houses, the planets, the “spice” thing, Timothée Chalamet’s hair, Oscar Isaac’s hair, the lack of Zendaya. It was a giant new universe — I may have missed a few details but I got the gist. As you can probably guess, I also didn’t see the original 1984 Dune or read the books; hell, I didn’t even bother to review the Wikipedia page before sitting for the movie. I really put no respect on this movie at all. I was just excited for Zendaya and my high school crush Timothée.

Going into Dune: Part Two though, I was kinda hype. My brother, my personal TikTok correspondent, reported that the buzz on Dune-Tok was crazy — people were walking out of the theatre saying it was the best sci-fi movie they’d ever seen. I had been closely watching the film’s worldwide press tour and keeping track of Zendaya’s outfits, obviously, and that alone had me ready and excited. Could Dune: Part Two even dare to live up to her Mugler archival robot suit? Was Zendaya doing the absolute most or was the movie actually worthy of this level of extra? We got IMAX tickets and sat one row too close but whatever — we strapped in with our expectations high in the sky and were ready to be blown away.

And that, my friends, I was.

Dune: Part Two was a cinematic feast for the eyes. Visually stunning, staggering, thrilling, ravishing — I need a new thesaurus. I do not use the term ‘magnificent’ too often — but that shit was motherfucking MAGNIFICENT. If there’s any commentary everyone seems to agree on, it’s that. The sandworm riding scene? Bruh. My eyes, yet alone my brain, couldn’t believe what I was watching. I didn’t breathe for 7 minutes. I finally let out a sigh and looked towards Nate and my sister-in-law who, like me, were both beaming with shock and awe after witnessing one of the most gnarly things we’d all ever seen with our two eyes on a movie screen. The entire time watching, I thought: “Wow. Technology.” While James Cameron’s Avatar brought us the hyper-realistic but still obviously fictional planet of Pandora, Villeneuve’s Dune suffocates us (in the best way possible) with sensory overload on the desert planet of Arrakis, begging myself to fetch a scarf to cover my eyes and nose from all the sand.

I wrote about Villeneuve’s other films Sicario and fellow sci-fi movie Arrival in a previous newsletter. Who knew I was such a Villeneuve fan? I sure as shit didn’t. I previously said sci-fi wasn’t my usual go to, but apparently a Villeneuve sci-fi is. I learned, the French-Canadian director is an avid storyboarder. To world-build and to construct a universe first in your mind, then to visualize it through drawing on paper, then to construct the screenplay around your storyboard — I’m fascinated by his imagination and his vision. I wonder what he dreams about at night. A dream is only a dream until you decide to make it real, they say. So you mean to tell me, what we watched was what he dreamt up in his brain one day while sitting on the toilet?

The music was perfect. As perfect as the music was in The Lion King, which was also scored by film composer Hans Zimmer. I’m a big movie score person. As I write this, the soundtrack to Phantom Thread is playing in my headphones. The music in Dune: Part Two felt epic and transcendent and magically captured the sounds and colors of the perilous desert landscape flawlessly. I’m not someone who minds a three-hour movie; for me, there was no valley, the entirety of the movie was a peak. Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, a villain in the black-and-white Harkonnen world, was sinister and serving apocalyptic skinhead; I was also happy to hear he’d finally rid himself of the Elvis accent. Stylistically, this movie is just so fucking cool.

Timothée Chalamet gave the most impressive performance. First of all, he’s 28 but at times gives pre-pubescent 18-year-old. By the end of the film, he’s a messiah and his transformation from doubtful teenager to mf Jesus — the slow burn of his growing power and confidence — convinced the hell out of me. The scenes of him addressing his legion of followers, scarf blowing in the wind as they cheered for their prophet had me internally screaming “Hail Paul” and ready to join the movement. Now, Zendaya was giving us badass sand warrior princess. Her and Timothée’s love story was pretty to look at, but their chemistry left much to be desired. I felt more heartbreaking angst between Timothée and Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.

Nevertheless, I plan to see Dune: Part Two in theatres a second time. I must witness this movie once more on a giant screen before it’s shrunk down to mere inches. I’ve seen alot of film masterpieces in my day. I don’t think masterpiece is even an overused term, there are in fact many. Dune: Part Two is one of them and that’s all folks.

Final Verdict: Go watch something awesome. Your eyes won’t be disappointed.

Random Musings on the Best Picture Nominees

So the Oscars have come and gone. Oppenheimer won Best Picture to no surprise at all, whether we wanted it to or not. This year, I’ve seen 8 of the 10 nominees so far and have some thoughts...

1. Oppenheimer

   I appreciated the history lesson because I barely remembered what the Manhattan Project was. The film reminds us of the lack of humanity among us humans and made me pessimistic all over again. Although, I was locked in from minute 1 until the very end, I was also morbidly waiting and waiting for THE explosion and to be visually stunned out of my seat; unfortunately, I think Dune: Part Two left me more shook. Of Christopher Nolan’s filmography, The Dark Knight still sits in the top seat for me.

2. Barbie

   Ken was the star of the movie Barbie. That’s kind of a biiiiiiiig problem. Entertaining but otherwise wholly disappointing for a host of aggregating reasons.

3. Poor Things

   This was my personal best picture of 2023. Poor Things is bizarre, fantastical, otherworldly, and wildly original. The feminists hated it; the storyline is definitely borderline problematic. Nonetheless, this feminist loved it — loved the story, loved Emma Stone’s performance, loved the costume and production design, loved watching something so weird and eccentric and also so beautiful. A million years ago, I watched film director Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth, one of his first feature films and one of the most wildly absurd and deeply memorable movies I’ve never forgotten. Poor Things was cool to see what that director now, with a budget and access to A-list actors, could create.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

   Find all my thoughts in my 11.3.23 newsletter.

5. Anatomy of a Fall

   I love true crime and watch alot of it. Dateline, 20/20, SVU, anything on the Investigation Discovery channel — be it Homicide Hunter or Southern Fried Homicide — I will eat it right up. Anatomy of a Fall was largely a court room drama about a husband and father’s mysterious fall and the wife and marriage on trial. Kinda interesting premise, very subtle angst of “Did she? or Didn’t she?” but definitely not enough twists and turns to think of this as any more interesting than a story I’ve watched already on Snapped.

6. The Holdovers

   The movie is now embroiled in a wild plagarism scandal. To whoever ultimately wrote this movie, well done! I thoroughly enjoyed The Holdovers. Nate and I watched it with some friends on a cold Sunday afternoon, all knuzzled up on the couch drinking tea and that setting couldn’t have been anymore perfect for this cozy, nostalgic, warm and fuzzy film. It’s also really cool how the film was stylized — using a particular film stock, camera lens, and color grading — to look and feel like it was made in the 1970s.

   

7. Past Lives

   Find all my thoughts in my 11.3.23 newsletter.

8. American Fiction

   I need to watch this one again. I walked away feeling kinda meh and underwhelmed and for some reason, I think that’s my fault.

We’re planning to watch Zone of Internet as soon as it dips below $19.99 on streaming. As far as Bradley Cooper’s Maestro goes, I’ll get around to it one day.

Goodfellas (1990 | Hulu)

Goodfellas is one of those foundational movies you study as a film studies student. There’s so much to study — the movie is a master class in acting, directing, and the mob movie genre. As the kids say, it’s “iconic.”

I rewatched Goodfellas for the first time in years and forgot just how many scenes, lines, and moments are in fact iconic or, as the dictionary states, widely considered to epitomize an era, culture, community, or place. Goodfellas is the crime drama of the 1990s. For 2.5 hours, you’re an Italian-American fly on the wall who’s tantalized by the flashiness and exciting anarchy of mob life among the hooligans of Jersey’s Finest Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci, both born to play wise guys. Oh, and Robert DeNiro’s there too to round things out.

To appreciate Goodfellas is to watch Goodfellas. I rather show you, than tell you. Here are three of my favorite scenes:

Here is Martin Scorsese just showing off with this very famous, three-minute long, one-take shot that cemented him as one of the GOATs.

This scene shows precisely why Joe Pesci won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Watching this scene initially, I thought I was either watching the greatest acting of all time from that cute lil old lady or the scene had to be improvised; the characters felt too real. After a quick Google search, I learned the lil old lady is Scorsese’s real life mother actually and the scene was in fact predominantly improvised.

Final Verdict: Whatever is at the top of your movie list, replace it with Goodfellas. If you’ve seen it already, I’m sure you’re due for a rewatch.

What was your Best Picture of 2023? Have you seen Dune: Part Two? What’s your favorite scene in Goodfellas? Let me know in the comments!

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Sometimes Nate and I speak in British accents for like……several hours. It’s really fun and makes me wish I had a cool accent and not my nondescript, very boring New Jersey-but-not-at all-New Jersey accent. Nate has a weird Eastern Pennsyltucky accent. They put weird inflections on the most random of moments, but usually when asking a question. It's very sing songy in a weird, Irish Trinidanian kinda way. Anyways, here are some gems from my recent late night Internet deep dives…

1. BUY: EO Liquid Hand Soap - I love citrusy scents. This hand soap is dumb expensive, but if you like bright, uplifting lemony smells, it’s the best of the best. Treat yo self.

2. WATCH: The Hill Bombing Skateboarders of San Francisco (documentary short) - I recently spent 48 hours in San Fran on a work trip. SF is a wild city — smack dab next to tent cities and streets that look like the sun don’t shine there are magical, gigantic Victorian townhomes amid the unique, rolling hills of the city streets. While there, I was reminded of this beautiful doc I once watched about the skateboarders who skate those city streets, risking their lives for the thrill, among many other complex reasons.

3. LISTEN: “Destiny” by Zero 7 - I watched Blue Crush on that flight to San Fran and my inner 12-year-old aspiring surfer girl was living. The Blue Crush soundtrack is so good — Lenny Kravitz, N.E.R.D, Damien Marley, P.O.D. I forgot how much I used to bump this Sia song when I was in middle school.

4. LAUGH: , I feel confident there’s a string of unanswered iMessages already screenshot and sitting in Julia’s camera roll waiting for a drop.

   

5. FOLLOW: @balitecture on Instagram - Apparently, you can build a three-bedroom villa in Bali for just $349K. Since discovering this, I’ve been pestering Nate with questions about retirement and why oh why we’re looking for a house in New Jersey…

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think, what you want me to write about, what you want me to watch. Or just drop me a line and say hey!

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For a second there, these two had completely kind taken over my life. I’ve watched the series now twice and twice dissected it with Nate, I’ve recorded the forthcoming podcast episode with my friend Eloise where we talked about it some more for a few hours, I dove deep into the Internet rabbit hole reading every thinkpiece about the show and listening to podcast interviews with Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod, I’ve bopped to the soundtrack on my way to boxing class, I’ve smiled to myself while brushing my teeth and thinking about that kiss on the steps. Obsessed, enraptured, overtaken — ah, these two. Emma and Dexter. What a pair. I low-key miss them. What’s Dexter up to right now? I hope he’s well.

One Day is an all-time favorite. It’s one of the GOAT for me personally. Maybe I’m still swept up in magic of it all, maybe I’m still rocked by how this show made me feel, how no other show has ever made me feel. My heart literally hurt while watching at points. My literal heart was in pain watching fictional characters. This series was an experience of feelings, a cacophony of feels. Thanks to the internet, we can process these complicated feelings for these imaginary characters and their beautiful, beautiful love story and a story about life altogether :)

I could talk about this show endlessly. That episode will drop ASAP!

Until then, tell me all your thoughts. I’m curious:

• (For the book readers) How did the series do for you?

• Tell me about your Dexter or Emma. I’m convinced everyone has one and we all were thinking about SOMEONE while watching this series…

• Which episodes are your favorite?

• What was it about Emma during that first night that did it for Dexter?

• Did you wonder “what happened during Christmas?” the entire time watching, like I did?

• Was Dexter secretly pining for Emma all along in the early days?

• Did Dexter’s loneliness and isolation stand out to you?

• Is a friendship breakup as hard if not harder than a relationship breakup?

• What was Emma doing with Ian? What was Dexter doing with Sylvie?

• Were you emotionally well or unwell after the maze and all the reveals and kiss?

• Did you see it coming with Sylvie and Callum?

• Could episode 12 be any more perfect?

• July 12, 2002. Did you see it coming?

• How’d you fare through episode 14?

• What’d you make of that final moment with Ian and Dexter?

• Is the ending kiss and montage the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?

See you in the comments!

Well, now I have time for cute.

For the February Monthly Midnight Watch episode, I’ll be joined by said friend who recommended this month’s series — one of my dear pals from high school, Eloise — for an easy breezy convo about a cute rom-com-dram that is sure to have us in tears by the end.*

*No spoilers, I just feel it in my bones that a good cry is imminent.

Our February pick: One Day.

So I’m currently eight episodes in; there’s 14 total and they’re each like 28 minutes long, so we can do this people! I rewatched the first five episodes with Nate because I wanted to gift myself the experience of rewatching them. It’s that good y’all…

Here’s a bit about One Day…

One Day is a British television series based on the 2009 novel of the same name by David Nicholas, as well as the 2011 film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturges.

It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. They both know that the next day, after college graduation, they must go their separate ways. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. As the years go by, Dex and Em begin to lead separate lives very different from the people they once dreamed they'd become. And yet, unable to let go of that special something that grabbed onto them that first night, an extraordinary relationship develops between the two.

One Day tells the story of the relationship between Emma and Dexter, through snapshots of their relationship on one single day — July 15 — over the course of 20 years. Each episode finds Dex and Em one year older, as their circumstances change wildly, and people enter and exit their lives. But as the years go on, Emma and Dexter keep mattering to each other.

The series stars that guy from White Lotus season 2 who looks like every British backpacker who tries to ruin your life while traveling abroad in your early 20s. If you’ve ever been young, wild and free or graduated, broke and confused AND you also happened to have fallen in love with one of your best friends in the midst of things, this one’s for you.

Find the series:

You can watch One Day on Netflix.

Watch the series:

Let’s plan to watch the series by March 8. I’ll be surprised if it takes anyone more than a weekend if I’m honest…

Discuss the series:

A Discussion Thread will open up on March 8 for us to discuss and chat! As always, I’ll kick off the thread with a few guiding questions.

Then, I’ll publish a special podcast episode with Eloise where we’ll dissect the series inside and out. I would love to gather any questions you have or suggestions for the discussion. As you watch, you can send in your questions by simply replying to any of these Nite Owl emails.

Yayyy!!

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While Small Axe was at times a tough watch, I’m grateful for the watch. The joy of seeing a slice of my history told on screen, is yet another reminder why representation matters.

What are your thoughts on Small Axe! What do you want us all to watch for future Monthly Midnight Watches? Let me know in the comments!

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