Scrubbing.

Friday Missive: September 19, 2025

Dear Diary,

Today was a long and grueling day. My shoulder feels like it’s going to fall off. Many annoying things happened. We can only hope that tomorrow will arrive in gentler spirits.

Speaking of gentler spirits, I would like to dedicate this newsletter, every recent photo of my house, and my week more generally to the Ultimate Mom Duo Lesley & Nora. The collective Mom Energy in our house and our lives this week was top tier— they got so many house tasks done, said so many nice supportive things, and got us wayyy closer to being able to move in so quickly! I’ll never get over how lucky I am to have added another amazing mother into my life, when I already had my own amazing mother! I feel like I’m hoarding them!

“it’s starting to look much more house-y” - Isaac

This week I was reminded that everything will take longer than you think it will, and if you planned on going to the hardware store once or twice, you’ll actually end up going three or four times. We’re reaching the crunch time phase of home renovations, and the pace is really picking up. In the past week (with a lot of painting help from The Moms) we’ve prepped and painted all the common areas and the main bedroom, finished plumbing in the shower, dealt with the nasty black foam floor in the kitchen, dry fit and cut all the bathroom floor tile, set all the bathroom floor tile, and grouted all the bathroom floor tile. Unfortunately I was in charge of the grouting, and made a critical error that I am trying hard not to turn into an “I am useless and should never be trusted with anything again” spiral. Don’t worry though, I didn’t ruin it. Just turned it from a 4 hour project into a… longer project. Also scrubbed my shoulder into oblivion, but nothing ibuprofen can’t fix, right?

Why the moving time crunch? Well, harvest started yesterday. Our goal was to be in before harvest started, which we obviously did not achieve, but we’re still hoping to be moved before things get too busy.

Heading into (my first ever) harvest season is an interesting blend of anticipation, trepidation, and uncertainty for me, even without the specter of moving. I suspect in years future I will really enjoy this season, because it theoretically involves a lot of things I like (being busy, nice weather, intense projects, driving). This year though, the experience is mostly everybody and their mother (but not you, Nora, and I really appreciate it) saying “ooh are you ready for harvest?” “oh, first harvest, are you ready?” and me saying “yeah I’m really looking forward to it :)” while internally screaming OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT READY BECAUSE I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE HOW COULD I POSSIBLY BE PREPARED??

Suffice to say, the amount that people have asked me about it is stressing me out. What do they know that I don’t know? Or maybe they just think I’m really clueless? Or really wimpy? Or is this about to be way harder and more stressful than I’m expecting? Luckily I don’t really have time to think about it, because I have a sloppy grout situation to salvage! Let’s put all that stress into scrubbing, ladies!

Anyways.

I made a promise to myself that I would stop politeness-policing my own writing and go back to being a little more ~unhinged~ when the vibes demand it. Finding your writing voice is a journey, you know? And potentially unfortunately for you, you’re on this journey with me.

To make up for the fact that the vibes are weird this week, I’d like to end this with a few happy thoughts. Did you ever ready the book “Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go to Sleep?” It’s a delightful little book that will probably make me cry when I read it to my own children. Anyways, here are my happy things:

• It’s chilly enough at night now that Zuko has been coming to sleep with me in the mornings. He’ll curl up by my stomach and just purr for like the two hours before I get up.

• New Aly & AJ EP

• Our county sent us a letter saying that our homestead exemption has been automatically added onto our taxes, which is fantastic because I thought I was going to have to go down to the courthouse with all of our documents and do that in person. I’ve never been so excited to get a tax-related letter in the mail.

• Got to facetime with Lauren last week and give her a tour of our house. It was fun to show it to someone who hasn’t been looking at it nonstop for the last month, and also always great to see a friend’s face not just hear their voice.

• Isaac woke me up this morning to show me the moon, which was sitting low in the sky with a really bright planet right next to her. It was very cool because it was just getting light so you could see the whole moon, even though just the bottom crescent was truly illuminated. It was well worth being woken up for.

That is all from me. Time to go scrub. Sending you almost all of my best (saving some for the scrubbing). As always, thanks so much for being here.

xoxo,