May Edit: Birthdays, Beauty Buys, and Pressing Pause
New recipes, hyperfixation songs, and other dopamine sources
May is always a busy month for me because I'm busy being extra about my birthday. It's even more so now that I'm married, because I go further over the top trying to influence my husband to be more extra about his birthday, which is just a few days after mine.
This month was an interesting balance of getting small dopamine hits from wearing increasingly bright color combinations and cashing in points for beauty products that excite my brain's reward circuit, and forcing myself to press pause on my to-do list a few times for mental health reasons, even when I have a list of more "productive" things I feel I should be doing at all times.
With that long sentence said, it was a full month. Here's some of what I filled it with!
Matcha and I have been locked in for a little while (I got laughed at for ordering the "grass lattes" in college), but I took an unintentionally long hiatus from making it at home. Coffee is just faster. I brought a few cans back from Japan in February, but it wasn't until May that I finally slowed down and started making matcha lattes at home again.
I tried a new primer, and it gives me such a nice, soft glow on makeup days.
I took a trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico for my birthday. My friends and I spent a day (yes, AM to PM) at Candado Beach Club, where I remembered that the cabana life is the life for me.
I felt myself getting sick, but I successfully thwarted it with a combination of Wellness Formula (the 6-capsule dose!), Propolis Throat Spray, and Cymbiotika Liposomal Glutathione and Liposomal Vitamin C. I felt very accomplished.
I accidentally let my Nuuly pause run out, so I rented this fun pool bar dress and cake print ruffle pants (among other things) for my birthday trip and dinner back home.
I asked for Bright Peach, a dupe of Tom Ford's $400 Bitter Peach fragrance, for my birthday. It lasts so well for a dupe, but didn't smell as bright and fruity as I remembered. I went to Sephora to smell the real thing, and it smells exactly like it, though. Layering it with Jo Malone's Nectarine Blossom & Honey gave me more of the scent I was going for. A win!
Unfortunately, Glossier's new Lip Glaze is good (I got Melty).
For Memorial Day/my husband's birthday, I tried out a few new recipes, including grilled honey mustard chicken and peach salad, BBQ shrimp, and salted lemon cream pie from Alison Roman's cookbook, Sweet Enough.
My snack obsessions were Outshine mango with tajÃn popsicles and cinnamon roll Goldfish (they're like graham crackers—not cheese).
I didn't eat a single bad bite in Puerto Rico, but my favorite meals were at Deaverdura, Princesa, and Santaella.
For my actual birthday, my husband and I went to Casa Balam in Decatur, a "modern Mexican" restaurant that turned out to be really good.
My favorite book of the month was How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, which is about a woman in her mid-50s who loses the job she has held for decades but is eager to share her life story with a job counselor. Through these conversations and ongoing months of unemployment, she makes some long-needed realizations about herself.
I also really liked My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a weird little book about a young woman who "should" be happy, but would rather take a cocktail of drugs she gets from "one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature" that will help her sleep for a year.
A family member reminded me that I can access magazines through Libby with my library card, so I've subscribed to a few favorites (The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Condé Nast Traveler, etc.) to read for free!
I did a good bit of my writing and other computer work while listening to Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings' album, Naturally (The Instrumentals). It was a nice, upbeat change to my usual lo-fi playlists.
On the non-instrumental front, I had a female power ballads playlist phase.
I listened to a lot of my indie girls, too: Jensen McRae, Katie Gavin, The Japanese House, and Rachel Chinouriri (who I'll see live in June!). They've been the perfect spring vibe.
My top two hyperfixation songs were "hunting days" by Khatumu and "Best Guess" by Lucy Dacus. It's still a battle not to play them 20x a day, and I'm dangerously close to wearing out both songs. (I'm one of those people...)
Jia Tolentino was on the Worklife podcast for a great episode about the dangers of identity capitalism. I read her essay collection, Trick Mirror, a few years ago, and she's such a sharp cultural critic.
I read The Let Them Theory in May, too, which I didn't think was worth mentioning, but this If Books Could Kill podcast episode about it is worth a listen. The hosts pretty much sum up my thoughts on the book.
This "5 Practices to Find More Joy" podcast episode with Dr. Judith Joseph exceeded my expectations. It was so refreshing and practical.
I love watching Salary Transparent Street's social media videos. They also have a podcast where they recently broke down a report about which jobs are most at risk (and safest) from AI replacement and automation.
This is a niche recommendation that only the Christians (and/or exvangelicals) among us will care about, but it was too good not to include. It's a podcast replay of a conference talk on the benefits of deconstruction by New Testament scholar Scot McKnight. I was introduced to him during a very different time in my life and faith, and it was encouraging to hear him speak positively about the "deconstruction" process and challenge some of the most annoying misconceptions about it.
28 slightly rude notes on writing – I loved these, especially #7: "All emotions are useful for writing except for bitterness."
One thought for May: It's okay – Another list of thoughts, but these are of the gentle, refreshing, gracious variety. It's a "take what you need" type of piece, and I bet there's something in it for everyone.
How Fish Fries Became a Staple of Black Southern Culture – A brief and lovely ode to the fish fry, its meaning, and its history.
Good conversations I had last week – Tembe Denton-Hurst has an excellent newsletter, and this dispatch on a few things she's been discussing with her friends was particularly interesting. I might take inspiration for a simple list post of my own one day. My league of yappers and I have many great conversations about thought-provoking things that usually evolve into full essays on this blog.
This is a new section I'm testing out (a less chronically online friend requested a section with social media posts I created that month that she often misses but wants to see), but I posted very little in May.
A little Bookstagram spotlight for the only bookstore I visited in Puerto Rico and the book I bought
Photos of me wearing the aforementioned cake pants on my birthday, and a promo for the birthday essay I shared on this blog
I posted most of what we did and ate in Puerto Rico in a "San Juan" highlight on my personal Instagram
How I really shouldn't have volunteered to do my own B12 shots at home / This colorful set from Dash and Dot / Why everything keeps closing in my old neighborhood / Baggu's new pink lobster print / This depressing AI-related Thread that I really wanted to be satire / The Kibbe body type test and whether it can be both helpful and wildly limited / Should I (reluctantly) move this blog to Substack, killing its individuality but expanding its reach? / The Taco Bell app / The college students who can't write essays anymore / What I want to grill next
Thanks for reading!
