Souvenirs #5

Ina Garten's election night plans, the baby accessory I wish I'd known about, and an essential PSA

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Hello, and happy Friday! And first day of November! And post-Halloween candy hangover! How is everyone feeling about the rapid descent into the last two months of the year?

Here are three photos from my week:

1 / I found this plant growing in one of my patio pots, next to some rosemary. It looked too interesting to be a common weed, so I used the Visual Lookup feature on my iPhone and learned this is likely goosefoot. Do you make use of the lookup feature? It’s become my favorite thing about the Photos app and makes it so fun to identify birds and flowers and all types of things. AI is good for something!

2 / This is the view of the stage mere moments before Ina Garten walked out wearing a purple shirt and colorful scarf and looking and sounding exactly like she does everywhere you’ve ever seen her. I attended the SF stop of her book tour on Monday, and what a delight! She shared she’s throwing an election night party and was thinking of making Belgian waffles—like a fancy breakfast-for-dinner thing—but was also waffling (sorry, had to) and wondered if she should go savory and make braised short ribs over mashed potatoes. The audience voted savory, but honestly? I just want an invite because if anything could stave off election night anxiety, it is Ina’s waffles or short ribs, either one paired with a very large cosmo.

3 / Pre-show, my friend Lindsay and I went to Flour + Water and enjoyed our dinner so much, we were running late to the theatre. With nearly full glasses of sparkling rosé, we improvised with these half-pint containers for Ina Garten roadies (we felt she would approve), which was genius until it wasn’t. Word to the wise: this was not as leakproof as one might hope.

Onto some souvenirs!

Reading:

1 / This incredible analysis of Where the Wild Things Are, from Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s new Substack (HUGE shoutout to

Daci Jaye

for putting it on my radar.) Looking at classic picture books through an art and design lens? YES PLEASE.

2 / On that note, I was so tickled to discover that Glitter Guide founder Taylor Sterling is penning a Substack about the art of picture books. I’m hooked.

3 / Here’s the secret to a hobby-filled life (spoiler: stop spending time on shit you don’t care about)

4 / Comic Sans gets the last laugh. Admission: when editing, I sometimes like to change the font to Comic Sans. It reads totally different than Times or Arial or Garamond, and you see what was once invisible.

5 / Along with football, thinking cheerleading is a no for my kid. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

6 / Crows can hold a grudge for 17 years. And take it from this article…you don’t want to piss them off. (This one is worth reading for the comments alone. OMG, all these reader-supplied bird stories! )

7 / This in-depth story on the mother and baby units treating postpartum psychosis made me tear up.

8 / Parenting really does have a PR problem

9 / On the evolution of online fall vibes

10 / Two great essays from an ex-pat: Why French women don’t sweat and a hilarious checklist for leaving the U.S. post-election.

11 / Below Deck adjacent, but The Cut published a Q&A on what it’s like to work on a super yacht.

Shopping:

1 / A rainbow glitter lava lamp, which makes an excellent present for a kiddo (trust me, mine very much approved.)

2 / These metallic silver Mary Janes, which put a real pep in my step.

3 / More of this face wash, which I first tried to buy at a Sephora near me, only to discover they no longer stock it in-store. When a sales gal tried to recommend similar products, I said, “Thanks, but I’ve been using this for…OH MY GOD it’s been almost 20 years!” and she tittered and wandered away because—as she correctly surmised—no up and coming celebrity skincare brand can mess with that kind of devotion. What can I say? Origins, you made me a customer for life with this formula.

4 / Some pressed flowers, for an art project.

5 / A set of vintage tea cups, to use at my daughter’s birthday tea party (cute on the table; great party favors). The owner of this shop was a delight to work with!

6 / We’re a puzzle-happy house in the best of times, but even more so after Daylight Saving Time ends. (Ahem, more on this at the very end of the letter!) I recently bought this puzzle storage thingy and can’t wait to put it to good use.

Delighting over:

Have you ever seen one of these before?

chipvonh

A post shared by @chipvonh

It’s a baby food pusher, and I don’t understand how this isn’t more of a thing here in the U.S. Moms are marketed all types of shit to feed and bathe and clothe and change our children, but how have we not yet been informed of a fun little tool that you can buy new or vintage or ridiculously fancy that literally makes it easier (and cleaner) for kiddos to push food onto a spoon so they can feed themselves?

New parents: I present to you, the baby food pusher. This seems so legit.

Listening, Watching, Swiping:

1 / This man become extremely good at piano in 2.5 years. (H/T

Haley Nahman

)

2 / Subway Takes out here always serving up the content. This one took me on a journey and this one, featuring Hasan Minaj as he’s betrayed by an entire subway car, made me actually laugh out loud.

3 / Louis the Child’s new dance album is so fun.

4 / Through

Flow State

, discovered Melissa Galosi’s album Acorn, which is a great piano mix to play at work.

5 / A mesmerizing take on cashmere and color from Olympia Gayot.

The Writer’s Block

Links on writing, writers, craft, creativity, and the magic of making things.

1 / Maggie Smith on assembling a manuscript (part II!)

2 / How can you be creative if you have no time?

3 / Rebecca Makkai made things tense.

4 / Copy chief Carl Rosen has been writing a very word-nerdy newsletter about copyediting for New York magazine and it’s so great. Editions here, here, here and here.

5 / Writing a book is like going to grad school.

6 / Memoirists: Narratively announced its 2024 Memoir Prize essay competition.

7 / The best reminder: You never arrive. (Writers, subscribe to this Substack!)

Preaching:

Close friends and colleagues who wish they knew less about me are already in the loop: the following is a hill I will die on. I recognize and hold space for how unhinged I am. Ready?

When the clocks fall back this Sunday, we revert to Standard Time. This means you may commence writing time zones with an “ST” behind them, as in “9 a.m. EST” (or CST or MST or PST).

If you have been writing “ST” behind your time zone all spring and summer…NO! No, no, no. We have been in Daylight Time. (That is, EDT, CDT, MDT, PDT.)

So, come Sunday, write “ST” behind your regional time zone (whether you’re an E, a C, an M or a P). And then, come March 9th, 2025, replace “ST” with “DT” instead. Rinse and repeat until the end of time, or whenever Congress passes that law which cements one or the other as “the time” and we never have to change our clocks again.

If you can’t remember whether we’re in ST or DT, for the love of god, just forget the whole thing and instead write only a “T” (as in ET or CT or MT or PT).

(And if you live in the parts of Arizona that don’t observe Daylight Saving Time at all…hello, we join you in autumnal darkness.)

Also: it’s Daylight Saving Time not Daylight Savings Time.

< —— End PSA —— >