new year, new me

(this is what you get when you question my blogging habits, ROBBIE)

Robbie has mentioned several times over the past few months that I have given in and let Instagram take the place of my blog. I guess that is kind of true, as my blog had started turning into a travelogue and Rhoda updates, which is not what it started out as fourteen (!!!) years ago. Yes, my bloggerversary came and went again this month without any fanfare. And yet the world keeps turning.

I've been thinking a lot about why I've let this happen. Honestly I've been confused about the purpose of my blog for quite some time now, probably since Rhoda was born. The weird thing about my generation of bloggers is that most of my peers that I have met or kept in touch with through blogging have gone on to bigger and better things, like Instagram or owning a crazy successful small business (and then posting about it exclusively on Instagram). For someone my age, blogs were not the gathering place for young mothers—it was a place to post stuff that you would now post on Twitter or Facebook. And new/young moms my age do things like regular monthly updates about their kids with cute "1 Month!" onesies or stickers and I can't go for that—not for lack of trying, but it's just not my style I guess since I only did that for two random months of Rhoda's life. (But looking at that post makes me wish I had kept up with it because LOOK AT BABY RHODA.) So now that my people are gathering on Instagram, that's where I am most of the time, I guess. Though Instagram is the new place where, if you're not careful, you can quickly spiral into a wormhole of creeping on other people's lives and maybe being jealous of them or wondering what happened to that random acquaintance's marriage or getting super depressed because you keep seeing crazy stories about poor young moms whose kids died in a horrific accident or were born with some life-threatening condition. I know that stuff was all out there before but I just wasn't aware of it because I wasn't as anxious as I am now and I just didn't care about people's kids that much. And now you can really get away with that creeping behavior because it's not like you can look at the IP addresses of people who are creeping on your Instagram page. So now I just don't look at the "explore" tab anymore and I feel a lot more peace in my life. 2016 has been a great fresh start without all that emotional baggage to be lugged around.

Enough about Instagram—LET'S TALK ABOUT ME. But in jumpy, disconnected paragraphs, because I've got a lot of catching up to do.

2016 has been AWESOME so far. I'll be honest—2015 was rough, in hindsight. I was ready to put that year behind me. Socially it wasn't super great for me in many ways, and physically it was also tough. Why is it that the second I turned 30 I started falling apart? My most recent thing is that I have a prescription for physical therapy to help alleviate pain from a herniated disc in my neck, which is also causing arm numbness and chest pain. I think that parenting is trying to kill me.

Now let me tell you about how awesome I'm feeling. The Philly winter has been nothing short of perfect. Sure, we had a couple of severe cold snaps there—but it was also 75 degrees on Christmas Eve and it's supposed to hit 60 today, and the weather between then has just been hovering in the comfortable 40s and 50s. Not mad about that, since the past two winters have introduced the term "polar vortex" into my vocabulary. And we got our token snowstorm and snow day, and now the snow is melted and it's just a happy memory. It's sad that weather plays such a huge role in happiness but you do what you can.

Speaking of weather, this is our last East Coast winter for the time being because Robbie accepted a job offer in Palo Alto after graduation. Whaaaat. So, seeya winter. Come visit me in California and manifest yourself as breezy and 60 degrees.

A goal I've continued for myself in 2016 is to read a book a week (I met my goal last year, boo yah), and so far I'm on track. In 2014 I averaged a book a month, and having more things to talk about with people is just really great. Though I have approximately two friends here who read books on the reg, so that's kind of a bummer. I miss my DC book group. My other goal is to try one new recipe a week, which has been fun so far. Meal planning is probably my least favorite thing about being a homemaker so this has been a stretch experience. There were many nights in 2015 that we had quesadillas for dinner and I'm not proud of that, but I'm not apologizing for it either. I'm just trying to repent. If you want to know what I've been making you can see that on my "I Made This" board on Pinterest. Also, if you want to get out of a recipe rut you should follow Smitten Kitchen on Instagram, because I've yet to make a recipe of hers that I didn't like and most of them aren't that complicated. She posts several seasonally-appropriate recipes from her archives every day and it's pretty much the main place I get ideas for this week's new recipe. Other solid cookbook suggestions: Dinner: A Love Story, The Joy of Cooking, and America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated are favorite in our household rotation. Just in case you are interested in that kind of thing.

I don't think I ever mentioned on my blog that I started sewing in earnest about a year ago. I took a class on sewing with knits and acquired a serger and now I'm the Sergin' General (I love that joke). I am finishing up a class tonight on men's trousers and now Robbie has a new pair of corduroy pants. I'm not sharing this to brag, but to say that I'm happy that I've found a hobby that allows me to make new clothes for myself and Rhoda, and also allows me to binge watch TV shows at the same time.

Enough about me—I'm hungry and I need a nap. Probably really the two real reasons I don't blog anymore, since that's all I really want to do in my spare time anyway.