We’re back with another set of nosy questions so we can get to know one another even better — copy and paste these to the comments and share your answers! I absolutely love reading them.
01. What name will you give yourself (or have you given yourself) if you are lucky enough to be a grandparent? (Mimi? Gram?) Why?
02. What is the proper way to to dress a hot dog?
03. A book, movie, or album you feel “medium” about that everyone else loved. (Hot take…)
04. If you could only have one cheese for the rest of your life, what would it be?
05. The best shower you ever had.
06. Where would you enthusiastically encourage me to visit next?
07. If you had to best represent yourself through three books, what would they be?
I’ll go first.
08. I routinely forget…
09. I routinely remember…
10. Something I love about this life stage:
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I’ll go first:
01. What name will you give yourself (or have you given yourself) if you are lucky enough to be a grandparent? (Mimi? Gram?) Why? Probably something like Nana or Mimi — easy to say, cute, maternal. My mom goes by Mimi; her mom went by Mia. So maybe an “M” name.
02. What is the proper way to to dress a hot dog? Mustard and onion! (Chicago core.)
03. A book, movie, or album you feel “medium” about that everyone else loved. (Hot take…) The Correspondent — and feel nervous writing that / when people bring the book up since so many of my Magpies and my close friends rave about it. I thought the prose and premise were lovely, and Evans is such a talented writer. It is a triumph to make an epistolary novel work, and hers does. I would absolutely pick up another book by her. But I found it so difficult to get beyond the way she wrote the child’s death in it — it felt to me like misery lit. I think she could have achieved similar results with a less traumatic death scene. I felt so wounded by this book! (More thoughts on this here.)
04. If you could only have one cheese for the rest of your life, what would it be? An aged Gouda — the kind flecked with salt crystals. You can eat it on its own, serve it on a sandwich, even probably crumble it onto pasta as a sub for parm.
05. The best shower you ever had. The first shower after my c-sections. Life giving.
06. Where would you enthusiastically encourage me to visit next? San Sebastian. A transformative experience for me — the food! My God! It was an awakening. I ate everything.
087. If you had to best represent yourself through three books, what would they be? Little Women, Mary Oliver’s Owls and Other Fantasies, and Patchett’s The Dutch House. A nest of sisterhood, authorship, the natural world, family ties, a big old house that means more than a house should, elegiac prose.
08. I routinely forget…People’s names. It’s atrocious. I find myself so focused on navigating the introductory conversation, on making them feel comfortable, on finding common ground, that the name goes in one ear and out the other. I also have a really bad habit of inventing names for people, which only compounds the problem. (Occupational hazard of being a writer for a living.) There is this one very nice father at one of one of our children’s schools and Landon and I both think the world of him — but insist he was misnamed; he should be something like Skip or Bud versus his given name. This has caused us such a great amount of trouble because now we see him and want to call him by the name we’ve invented for him, and then we waver in indecision (“wait, what IS his real name?”) The absolute worst. Oy!
09. I routinely remember…I feel like half my waking thoughts are memories — everything from silly exchanges with Elizabeth in high school to the sound of Tilly’s paws tick-tacking to the front door to the first time I watched Robert Redford wash Meryl Streep’s hair in “Out of Africa” (you just can’t forget it). I think often about my mother telling me “don’t say that about my best friend” when I was young and had said something unkind about myself. I think about Landon spelling love notes to me in the palm of my hand while his friends were in the back seat. I think about holding my babies in my arms for the first time, and rocking them to sleep in their nurseries. I think about their need for me in a million specific ways. I think about perfect golden nights in Chicago, beneath the twinkle lights in our back patio, and my own room at the Ritz Paris, courtesy of my parents, when I was eighteen and knew nothing about anything. I think daily about mistakes I have made, and risks I have taken, and certain lines of prose that make me cringe or feel good about myself. All of it has led me to the right here and right now, has prepared me for exactly this moment. It has all rehearsed me for this current version of myself. And so I remember to be kind to my younger selves; they’ve drawn me here.
10. Something I love about this life stage: The feeling of being settled, of being where I’m meant to be and not looking for the next phase. I wildly underestimated the calm I would feel.
Your turn!
Post-Scripts.
+Icebreakers from seasons past here and here. Such a treat to read.
+How do you support a friend going through a tough time?
+A place for our thoughts on Wuthering Heights (the movie).
Shopping Break.
+This terry cover up has been flying the past few days (just marked down) — so many of you ordered this. It’s such a great length, and I adore the seashell detailing. Reminder you can use code YOUROCK or YOURULE for an extra 20% off. While you’re there, throw one of these best-selling tees in the bag. You’ll live in it!
+Throw these striped lounge pants and the matching pullover into your lake or beach getaway bag. Perfect for a chilly morning walk or campfire evening, or for switching into after a long day on the water!
+I layer this station necklace with other pieces pretty much daily. I’ll swap out the pendant or the extra layers but this is always the base. Total MVP. Also looks fabulous on its own — delicate, sweet, against bare skin!
+Predicting that this $128 crisp but romantic white blouse will be a perennial staple at Faherty moving forward. An instant classic and wardrobe staple!
+The new Romy basket tote is SO CHIC! LOVE!
+This ME+EM is stunning. The pattern, the silhouette, the details!
+Xirena’s gauze pieces are insanely soft, plush, and well-cut. These shorts are perfect for beach/pool/summer hang. Come in several great colors.
+Speaking of standout bottoms: these new striped wonders from La Ligne!
+LOVE the look of a polo/henley sweatshirt — this one is on my radar in that faded hydrangea blue. Just imagine layered with white shorts or paired with statement pants.
+Boden new arrivals I’m loving: this striped skirt, this carnation stem maxi.
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