life – Page 4 – Sconnie Molly

The Chocolate Helps.

It’s been shamefully long, I know. There’s no good reason for that other than writer’s block, which I am going to attempt to kick in the ass tomorrow at this workshop. The Art + Lit Lab was where I finally got the confidence to start submitting my writing to real websites and publications, so I’m hoping the same magic will appear tomorrow and get me out of my funk.

I have been writing, a little, but not putting it here because I’m going to attempt to pitch it somewhere, someday, and generally those places like brand new original #content that you haven’t already posted on your blog, even if only 20 people read that blog. Although hey, I have faith that number could increase; I looked back at one of my earlier posts from late 2017 and saw a passing remark I made about having under 100 Twitter followers. I have over 400 now, so you know…*brushes dirt off shoulder* I’m definitely kind of a big deal.

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In other news, I’ve lost 12 pounds since Christmas. This has been virtually all due to my previously mentioned walk-taking obsession. Well, that coupled with healthyish eating, but really, I’m not depriving myself very much. I take 4-6 walks a week, usually by myself but now that it’s getting warmer, V has been more willing to accompany me. Tonight we drove to Baldwin Street, parked, and walked to Maple Bluff and looped around its various boulevards and came back; that was about 5 miles and it was delightful. Sometimes when we go on walks together we just talk, and sometimes we sync up a podcast to listen to simultaneously. Tonight we did a bit of both. Last week we did 3.5 or so miles through and around Shorewood Hills, so this week it seemed right to do its east side counterpart since V had never seen it. They’re both gorgeous of course, but when it comes to daydreaming about being Madison-rich, I think I prefer Shorewood by a hair. Not even because of the neighborhood itself but because of its surrounding environment. Shorewood has Hilldale, Whole Foods, near the west edge of campus; it’s basically bougie heaven. Maple Bluff’s area has…none of that. But they do have views of the Capitol over their side of the lake.

Oh, I’m working now. Just part-time, but hey, I’m glad for it. I’m assisting Sabrina Madison with her various projects and events through the Progress Center for Black Women, which is really exciting to be a part of. It’s definitely a good change from…previous employment.

Getting me through the days:

the Queer Eye guys on Instagram (Bobby, Tan, Antoni, Karamo, & JVN). I worship at the Holy Church of the Fab Five. These boys can do no wrong. They’re constantly cheering eachother on in the IG comments and I will watch/listen to them in anything. To that end…
JVN’s podcast Getting Curious. I think he was doing it before QE took off, but of course I only discovered it recently. He just interviews people about whatever he wants to learn more about, which is like, the dream podcast. When he interviewed Antoni was probably my favorite though and I hope he interviews the other guys at some point too.
discussing #InfinityWar theories with V and whoever else will listen. Look, #nospoilers, it’s just intense AF and there’s a lot to chew on. IF you’re into Marvel movies. If you’re not, this is very much not for you.
the wax melts Michelle sent me a few weeks ago. I haven’t gotten through them all, not even close, but they are a lovely addition to my hygge-themed living room.
Thai food. Been eating a lot of it lately. My aunt and uncle took us to Sala Thai last night and it was incredible.
also food-wise, Dove dark chocolates. I rediscovered a bag of them in a box that still holds most of my old work desk detritus. For years I’ve routinely kept bags of Dove dark chocolate squares at my desk, for obvious reasons. While I don’t have those exact stressors in my life now, I have different ones…and the chocolate helps.

The chocolate helps. And all God’s people said AMEN.

You’re So Vain

What beauty products have stood the test of time for you? Which ones do you squeeze the last drop out of and buy over and over again? What product do you love so much that you evangelize about it to your mom, your best friend, your accountant, your neighbor, the bus driver?

This is, I should say, not in any way a sponsored post, though I’m flattered you thought anyone might pay me to write about something so mundane. This is just another Molly Curiosity thing (maybe I should trademark that…) that I’m taking to the blog instead of posting directly on Facebook as I normally do. You can respond on FB, or Twitter, or here!

For me, it’s the Dove Beauty Bar for Sensitive Skin. I’ve been buying them for so long I can’t remember when I started, but it is a nonnegotiable part of my routine. I try to take it everywhere with me when I travel because I just. Do not. Feel. Clean without it. I get it in giant cases at Costco. And yes, it has to be the bar, not the body wash, because why? I don’t know, that’s just how I like it. Since it’s for “sensitive skin”, whatever that even means anymore, it’s unscented and that makes me sort of trust it more. My skin is a bit on the reactive side so I tend to prefer products without added fragrance when possible.

: I ❤ YOU I ❤ YOU I ❤ YOU

No matter how high-end/fussy the rest of my skincare routine gets (hello Soko Glam, please just create a store credit card and give me the highest possible credit limit) I always, always have to have my Dove bar. Plenty of people even use it on their face, which I absolutely do not (see: Soko Glam), but it seems to work for them. It’s economical and easy and does exactly what it’s supposed to do, nothing more and nothing less. I experiment with shampoo, makeup, vitamins, moisturizers, pretty much everything but what cleans my body in the shower. It’s boring and not very sexy and I couldn’t care less.

So please, share your own beauty loyalties with the class! We can all be vain together.

Ya Gotta Get With My Friends

I had such a beautiful afternoon with my friends today.

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Hanging out on the playground together – and of course, just being at Lynn’s house – brought back a lot of lovely memories. We’ve all been friends for so long – and plenty of others belong in this group but weren’t able to be there today. So many unique relationships and histories. In this photo, the person I’ve known the longest is Tylor (~26 years) and the person I’ve known the shortest is Arika (still a really damn solid ~12 years!). And I feel beyond lucky that my husband is as much a part of this group as anyone else.

I’m just a total sap when it comes to my friends and this is the stuff I anguish over missing if we were to move away. On the plus side – I got a lovely little letter in the mail a few days ago from Michelle, so perhaps that is evidence that the art of keeping in touch via handwritten letters could be kept alive if I did move. You’d write me, wouldn’t you?

Needy AF in addition to being a sap. Super attractive qualities!!

Things that have been keeping me from getting too depressed lately, despite circumstances remaining depressingly the same:

my longer more leisurely walks
the Good Christian Fun and Dear Prudence podcasts
grown-ish on Hulu, because I’m bizarrely fascinated by it even though it’s really weird and not at all subtle; the Youths are sort of a car crash I can’t look away from
thinking about going to India in July
thinking about how much fun Paris was
weekly wifey dinners (or semi-weekly…we do our best)

I should take a day to force myself to do nothing but write and like, go for a walk. But because writers are ace procrastinators (and I like to call myself a Writer now), I’d end up spring cleaning the shit out of this house instead . So win/win, maybe.

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Building/Rebuilding

Hello again and happy International Women’s Day. I hope you celebrated by reading something cool a woman wrote. And if not, well, here you are; I will have to do!

What’s new? Well…we have begun to contemplate moving. This is…emotionally fraught territory for me, for dozens of reasons. I am a Cancer, I don’t love change, I am a homebody who feels a strong sense of attachment to where I’m rooted. Madison is the only adult home I’ve ever had. I’ve had seven addresses in my thirteen years here but every single one of them (save the dorms) felt like home to me, because this city feels like home to me. It is, objectively, a great city for a youngish white woman in government and that’s why I came here. But now I’m not in government anymore and I have to rebuild somehow. My choices are to move, to enter a new field, or both.

All of my friends and family have, at some point, lived somewhere else and I envy that experience. They’ve grown and stretched themselves and lived in ways that I just haven’t. I’ve traveled, and I’m so glad for that, but of course spending less than a week somewhere running from monument to museum isn’t the same as finding an apartment, getting a job, searching for a new doctor, scouting out the best Indian food delivery. Making new friends, joining a gym or finding a few good walking routes, figuring out an alien city. Rebuilding a life, basically. All of that sounds terrifying and exhausting and…maybe fun? Maybe…the kind of challenge I haven’t had enough of?

I don’t make friends terribly easily. I am introverted to a fault. Most of my closest friendships will soon enter their second decade. Those people got to know me, and I them, before #adulting was a thing, when we were the purest and most honest versions of ourselves. We’ve all been several different people in the intervening years, as teenagers and college students and hungry 20somethings and now, in our thirties, I think we’re maybe, hopefully, back to some sense of authenticity. Not that those other selves were *in*authentic…but you know…Growth, building, learning. Images of beautiful smiling fit people hiking a mountain with clichéd hashtags abound.

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You know what I mean.

So what else. In the absence of any formal job title, I have begun thinking of myself as A Writer, if not quite a Real Writer. I don’t do much Writing these days, or even much writing (see: neglect of this blog). I’ve published only one piece (which I will continue plugging until the day I die, or until I manage to publish something better, whichever comes first). Unemployment has not made me a much more productive writer, but it’s really about momentum…the more I do it, the more I’ll do it. So cheers to that.

FOMO is super real: the Paris edition

I thought about trying to write a post entirely in French but I think that would be far too taxing and time-consuming.

We’re in Paris! We love it!

So far, my stray observations from what I’ve seen, heard, smelled, tasted:

I know I should’ve expected it but yo, people smoke waaaaay too much here. Cigarettes I mean.
Don’t hate me but I think macarons are un peu overrated.
Good God do the Parisiennes love to shop, especially for shoes. Here a mall, there a mall, everywhere a mall mall. But of course, architecturally interesting and beautiful malls. I appreciate this about them.
There is so. Much. To see. I thought a week would be a good length of time but we’re already reprioritizing our must-see list to fit it all in. (Granted we did not help ourselves by way oversleeping yesterday and today.)
People really go ape shit over the Mona Lisa.
The métro is a delight.
We keep seeing people walking around just carrying only a baguette or two and it makes us giggle.
The Louvre is epic and it is beautiful and the crowds are really really…something else.

We wanted to see Mont St. Michel and Versailles, but those would both be a whole day thing probably, and there just isn’t time. Wah wah wah.

Off to see Notre Dame and, upon the recommendation of several people who know me well, the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. 🤓 Au revoir!

Today in Homeownership

We got a fair bit of snow over the weekend. V and I stayed on top of the driveway and sidewalk shoveling like the good citizens that we are. But overnight, the city plows kinda effed a big part of that up, as they are wont to do.

We live on a corner lot. So sidewalk ramps are our responsibility. We had, of course, cleared it yesterday when we were doing the rest of the shoveling, but alas – overnight, the plows came, and left a very compact frozen block of snow in their wake. So I spent a good few hours this morning huffing and puffing and clearing that out. I am but one not very strong person. My arms are k i l l i n g me.

But wait, the fun continues.

Over the past few days, V and I noticed an increasingly foul smell in the room we use as an office. After turning the room upside down looking for the culprit, we worried that it could be natural gas, so we did what you’re supposed to do and called MG&E. We evacuated the house, Isis in tow in her little carrier, while a guy inspected and informed us that it was probably a dead mouse. Hurrah!

This morning in the middle of my shoveling extravaganza, we had a pest removal company come by. He drilled a small hole in an expertly chosen area of the ceiling to reveal a little mouse tail, attached to a very dead mouse.

(On the positive side, the pest control guy was super nice and we bonded over being in interracial marriages – he’s Cambodian, married to a Caucasian woman).

So it’s been just a banner day in homeownership, friends. Between all the excitement I have eaten three things thus far, two of which are Super Bowl party leftovers: two (three?) brownie bites, a handful of jalapeno ranch Ruffles, and a clementine. I am now going to go take an unreasonably long, extremely hot bath. It’s only 1:30pm; who knows what fresh horrors – or joys!? – the day may yet bring.

Winter Quiet

It’s been snowing for…awhile now. Over 24 hours. And it’s not letting up yet. I don’t mind this at all, honestly. This is what’s supposed to happen in winter. And I love my cozy living room the most when it’s cold and white outside.

As lame as unemployment generally is, I don’t hate this part: getting to stay home and snuggle up with the cat and a book and a blanket.

Last night when the snow had really started accumulating, around 11, V and I bundled up and stood outside in the driveway for a few minutes to watch. It was so, so quiet, in the way that it only ever is during nighttime snowfall. I love that.

And I love that my California/India man has grown to love this snowy and frigid environment almost as much as I do.

That’s all, really. I just wanted to share some of this peace with you.

Donald Trump Makes Me Not Want To Get Pregnant

My internal clock is all kinds of screwed up. Normally I would be in bed right now, reading a few pages before turning out the lights. Ever since I became unemployed, time has basically no meaning. I go to bed late and get up…sometimes when Shak leaves, sometimes later, sometimes earlier. The days have little to no structure. I try to go for walks and write when the muse strikes (not often enough). I work on keeping the house presentable and cuddle with Isis and read – although we’re eleven days into 2018 and I’ve only finished one book.

Unemployed, yes. For the first time since college and it’s weird as hell. The circumstances, to put it mildly, are not ideal. My highly supportive loved ones have rallied around me and encouraged me to think of this unexpected work hiatus as a chance to get my writing career off the ground. So I’m working on that, in fits and starts.

And today the president called the countries of origin of some (brown) immigrants “shitholes” and apparently somehow people are surprised…? He noted that he would prefer more (white) immigrants from, say, Norway. Today and tonight in particular he seems exceptionally unhinged, but I know I’ll be saying the same thing a week or two weeks from now when the next previously unfathomable thing happens. If there’s anyone on Earth whose stream of consciousness should not be broadcast to the billions, it’s the one who has both the nuclear launch codes and the mental health of a drunken racist dotard. I don’t like blaming his all-around abject terribleness on senility – he doesn’t deserve that kind of a pass – but I think there is a strong case to be made that he is not a well man.

I don’t know if this is normal to do or not – and I’d love to hear from anyone else who has had similar thoughts – but honest to God, the current occupant of the White House is affecting the feelings I have about getting pregnant. I’ve been open about that not being an easy road for us, and it’s kind of a mind fuck to be taking all these extra (expensive) steps to try to get pregnant when I’m simultaneously really freaked out about the world into which I’d be bringing a kid. You’d think that a couple who undergoes fertility treatments would be like, really 1000% sure about the desired outcome. Unvarnished truth be told, it’s a little murky sometimes. Because I don’t know how I feel about ultra-deliberately bringing a child into a world where nuclear war is a more realistic fear than ever and climate change is severely fucking up our environment in ways that are increasingly difficult to work around and oh yeah, brown kids in the US aren’t super safe.

When I get really stressed out about the current state of things, I try to remember some Bible verse (for real) about there being nothing new under the sun. I’ve always found that idea comforting. The world’s been a hot mess forever, but it’s all cyclical, it will not be like this forever, etc.

I swear to God if anyone comments on this blog saying anything to the effect of “just adopt!!” they will be dead to me. I mean maybe we will, I don’t know, but don’t act like it’s just that simple.

I got myself a pint of Halo Top chocolate chip cookie dough and while it’s not unenjoyable, the cookie dough pieces are about the size of a baby ant and that’s a real downer. People hate on Halo Top but I think it’s decent.

That’s my stream of consciousness for tonight. I did spare you my thoughts on the season 5 episode of 90210 I had on while writing this. So you’re welcome for that, and also for this.

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Auld Lang Syne

I have to have a “say goodbye to 2017” post, right?

I’m celebrating the end of this godforsaken year hanging out with my best friends drinking pink moscato and watching #Baahubali and Fast and the Furious 6 (7?) and attempting to play HQ Trivia despite its best efforts to stop us (get your shit together Rogowsky) (just kidding i know it’s not your fault #traptrebek). There’s really nothing I’d rather be doing. I have no desire to squeeze into a sexy dress and go downtown and pay a lot of money to hang out with strangers and dance. Not that I’ll never do that ever again, but this year at least, it is not my speed.

This year. This fucking year. Took a definite curveball toward the end. I got a new job in March. I lost said job in December.

I traveled to Seattle, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Boston.

I took a seminar on freelance writing, which led to my very first published article and I am still so proud of it.

We got a puppy for about 24 hours in May and realized that that was actually not a good idea for us at all (hope you’re happy with your family somewhere, Juno).

My mother in law visited for about 6 weeks in the spring and it was so much fun and I miss her a lot.

I made approximately 30 batches of chocolate chip cookies.

I read 65 books, with a heavy emphasis on memoirs by young feminist women.

I took probably 84 naps, minimum.

I saw performances by John Mulaney (with the husband) the Foo Fighters (with the husband) , Bassem Youssef (with Christina and the husband), Chris Rock (with the husband, Brandon, & Rachel), Ilana Glazer and Phoebe Robinson (with Jen and BJ and the husband). John Mulaney was definitely my favorite but they were all a blast.

I became a vegetarian! I think the official date was January 4, 2017 and I haven’t looked back since. That’s not entirely true. I did have scallops at my birthday dinner in June – partly because there were almost no veg options on the menu and partly because I just really like scallops. And once, I accidentally ordered a burrito from Taco Bell that I thought was meatless but turned out…not to be. Other than that, I’ve done well, and that is no small thing from someone who loves bacon as much as I used to.

I’ve made some new friends, reconnected with a couple old ones, and strengthened ties with ones I have. Most of the people closest to me have known me since middle school, and I prefer it that way. (Sorry Rachel, I would photoshop you in if I knew how!)

Happy 2018, friends. I’m optimistic in spite of everything.

Merry Christmas!

This was a different sort of Christmas for us. On Saturday we held the usual gathering of my mom’s extended family at my grandmother’s house, which is always a nice time seeing my cousins who are scattered throughout the country. On Sunday we celebrated with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law with the traditional feasting on overnight French toast (breakfast) and fondue (dinner). Plus the hilarious treasure hunt that my mom creates every year with her rhyming clues for each of us. I would share the photos that my dad took, but I look incredibly heinous in all of them and vanity shall carry the day, today at least.

So that was the normal part. Today, Christmas Day, Vyshak and I celebrated alone at our own house, which is a first. I think we are both still digesting how we feel about that. I know he misses being with his family; I miss being with them too. As much as we loved having his mom with us for a month or so in spring, it would be great to have her again over the holidays – though I don’t know if she’ll ever agree to visit in the season of subzero temps and snow!

We opened our presents to each other, ate a scrambled eggs and breakfast potatoes brunch, drank a bunch of cranberry mimosas, FaceTimed with family in Fresno, took a nap, baked red velvet cheesecake swirl brownies, had mushroom risotto for dinner, watched some Planet Earth II and have now gone our separate, yet individually delightful ways: PC game for him and reading for me. It was a fun day and I’m glad we had it together, but I think we were both a little lonely for family and friends. We’ll see what next year brings…every Christmas is a little different.

(I really don’t mean to use alliteration as much as I do. I’ll work on that.)