The Fabulous Life of Stefanie

October first is here, so I think it is safe to say that the summer of 2020 has come to an end. The leaves are changing colors, sweatshirts are making their way out of drawers, pumpkin is being consumed in every way possible and Halloween costumes are a regular topic of dinner conversation. For us, our children are also back in school, but for all of us, a pandemic rages on, leaving sickness and sorrow in its path. A mixed bag, if there ever was one. I love, love, love the fall in New England, but it continues to be hard to enjoy it, or anything, to the fullest in a world full of so much anxiety, the unknown, constantly in the back of my mind. We had a really lovely summer. It makes me feel guilty to say, and I am fully aware that this summer's joy was not there for many others. Working from home gave us a flexibility we have never had as a family, we could meet our work obligations from anywhere, so we did. Cape Cod, Maine, New Hampshire - New England was our oyster and our bubble...

 The pandemic has changed a lot of the things about our home lives, both for better and for worse, but having more time to cook and less need for rushing to eat has definitely been a benefit.  When things shut down and grocery shopping started to feel like the Hunger Games, I took the hit in the wallet and started going to Whole Foods, which was like a tropical paradise of foods (and alcohol!) and resulted in some pretty fancy eats. We are back shopping at our local Stoppies now, but part of me is hankering to get my fancy leggings on and take a loop through Whole Foods again soon. Like a lot of people, we tried some new recipes, ate our feelings more than a few times and ordered a lot of take out to support the local economy, but here are some things that have now become the new norm. Eating salads. I like salads, but it wasn't until a couple of months passed without eating one that I realized my body would probably appreciate having them regularly again. Slogging a home...

We moved into our home 6 years ago this summer; one two year old and one in the oven (that we discovered the day of our closing). We got lucky and into our place before the housing prices became really, really, really insane, but we still paid a lot per square foot for the 1,000 of them we became proud owners of.  But alas, great location, the best neighbors ever, and three bedrooms for our family = the perfect place for us. We chose a condo, the first floor of a triple decker, for our forever home. We love the city and want to be here forever, and since we are such a busy family, spending over a half a million for a single family home seemed like a big waste of money and square footage.  Both Matt and I work outside the house, the girls go to school right down the street and are busy with dance, soccer, martial arts, choir, theater, track and all the friends we can find at any of the three parks within walking distance. We have the zoo, the aquarium, museums, the beach, rest...

I had a lot of ideas about how our quarantine was going to go and while some of it was true (fun family time! new recipes! not getting ourselves or our loved ones killed by being selfish!) there were definitely a lot of false hopes (reading more! drinking like a normal person! blogging!). But hey, we are still here, masked, hand washed and taking little baby steps back into outside of the house activities.  Just a few things going on over in our neck of the woods: I am very very very very glad that school is over. While our teachers and school did an amazing job going virtual, the little heartbreaks of things they were missing would really lay me out flat sometimes. Field trips, end of the year activities, recitals - everytime one came up in a social media memory feed it was like a wave of grief over me. These kids are so damn resilient and did the best they could in a Zoom world and I am just glad we can count those last few months as history. We are so incredibly fortunate to h...

Welllllll, I guess this is what I get for never getting around to writing that blog about the Disney Cruise we went on, because we are going straight from talking about sober January to um, a very different situation in...what month is it again? Let's get to it. Mondays in quarantine tend to be hard for me; not that I was a big fan of them before, but something about being stuck at home to work, school, parent, exercise, eat (you know all those things we used to do outside the home) just makes Mondays suck extra. While Friday is like a celebration of another week down, maybe another week closer to being on the other side of this, here comes Monday feeling like a daunting reminder that we are still very deep in this.  I have so many thoughts, so many feelings and so many emotions, and coming here to write things down is going to be a part of my routine again, because someday I want to look back at this and be proud of how we handled things, happy about being through it and th...

Being a person that likes to do weird things for fun - running 26.2 miles, vacuuming, having children - I thought it might be a great idea to give up my beloved booze for the entire month of January. Thankfully, this is a thing other people do, so a few of my favorite drinking buddies and my very own husband joined me on the wagon. For everyone that thought I was nuts, or everyone that did not think it was worth making a big deal out of because they don't heart Tito's the way I do, I thought I would share some takeaways: I saved money. Not visiting my local liquor store or buying take-home beer from breweries was a pretty solid plus to our weekly budget, but the biggest difference was not drinking when out to eat. Even just a couple of beers between the two of us racks up the bill, so I was pleasantly surprised every time we went out for dinner. I made sure to tip all our servers extra for the month, too, after reading an article about how terrible January can be for servic...