Making the Time
Mini road trips, Marianne Faithfull, a rose matcha latte recipe, essays on body-horror, a gutsy mother/daughter doc and Japanese sweet potatoes are a few things making my heart sing.
My husband is about to travel a bunch for work so this past weekend we took a little family trip to Ojai which is an hour and a half north of L.A. I grew up in Los Angeles and while I’ll always have an affinity for stucco strip malls and liquor stores leftover from the 60s, I get an almost sick pleasure from being anywhere small-town or suburban. The wholesomeness of these types of places is comforting to me.
Ojai has almost everything you’d need for a long weekend on it’s main street. We took Louis to my husband’s favorite surf beach, walked to breakfast and dinner every day and I got to sit in the hot tub uninterrupted for ten minutes. It’s also stupid beautiful. If you’re driving in certain residential neighborhoods, you run the risk of making a wrong turn and ending up in an orange grove which is fun. L.A. used to be all orange groves in the early 1900s and I like imagining what that must have been like. All in all, short road trips (I repeat SHORT) with an almost two year old are what dreams are made of.
Emily Sundberg wrote in her newsletter on Monday to, “Spend your time reading and watching things that you’ll still be glad you read and watched a year from now.” This simple advice was aptly timed because while I love withering away to Southern Charm post-bedtime as much as the next person, I’ve been making a real effort recently to do and watch and read things that inspire me or just make me feel good like I used to do with more regularity before I became a mom.
It took me awhile to feel like I had the capacity for this again and while this is surely not ground-breaking news, when I actively seek out pleasures (writing! film! recipes! interesting people!) that inspire me in some way instead of scrolling, I feel like I have it all. Like, I have an amazing kid and a roof over my head and I’m writing and I’m enriching myself?! Imagine!
The problem, of course, is finding the time or really, the energy. The problem is always finding the time and energy when you’re a mom with young kids. Ultimately, my goal is to pick up a book or put on the movie I’ve had bookmarked forever when I feel the urge to reach for my phone and conk out as soon as I close my son’s door at the end of the day. It’s a work in progress. Conking out happens most nights. But it’s amazing the way I feel when I prioritize this part of myself and take care to, you know, take care beyond a bubble bath (even though making time for bubble baths is great, too).
That said, today I’m sharing 5 things that fed me this month, the criteria being that it either made my day to day brighter (or easier) or I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I encountered it. I’m toying with making this a monthly series, partly to keep myself accountable, so please let me know if recommendations like this are something you’d be interested in having more of!
I came across the soundbite below from a 1968 interview with Marianne Faithfull and was immediately intrigued. After being asked what to do on those days you don’t feel like getting out of bed, a then 22 year old Faithfull says, “Well then you’ve got to go back to sleep and dream and go into another world. You see, there are lots of worlds! I mean, people just think this is the only one there is. If this world is hanging you up, go off into another one” (She says this around the 17:50 mark.)
It was the swinging sixties and this quote definitely reflects the LSD induced mind-expansion so many were looking for during that time. But, there’s something so hopeful about it. I think she’s right - there are lots of worlds, so many of which can be found just through a perspective-shift. It’s also why anyone creates, right? To access another world or another way of seeing the world.
The way she says it, she’s filled with such girlishness and a kind of youth-defining optimism. By this time she had a three year old son, was a fixture of the London music scene and was two years into her relationship with Mick Jagger. Soon after this interview, her life would take a turn for the worst for a long time. I ended up watching the whole thing and her presence and the way she holds her own given some of the dated brashness of the interviewer is pretty amazing.
I’m all for making my life easier during the week, especially when it comes to food. I used to be a major meal-prepper pre-baby. I’d spend hours in the kitchen on a Sunday. Now, not so much. I really like Shira Barlow’s method of cutting up a cauliflower to roast for dinner or putting on a pot of quinoa when you’re making lunch - prepping stuff when you are ALREADY in the kitchen as opposed to making an afternoon out of it. I’ve been obsessed with her Japanese sweet potato method and have been making them almost weekly. They’re completely hands off and come out of the oven so sweet and delicious with a consistency almost like custard.
I found this short doc from The New Yorker, The Feeling of Being Close to You: How to Forgive Your Mother, completely by accident, but I’m glad I did. In the film, director Ash Goa Hua explores her estranged relationship with her mother over the phone against a backdrop of home movies from her childhood. It’s such an intimate and personal work that I found to be really powerful. Since, obviously, I am both a mother and a daughter, it was interesting to be able to toe the line between both perspectives.
I looked the director up afterwards and saw she had another short film debut at Sundance earlier this year. I’m interested to see where she goes!
I stopped drinking coffee years ago because it makes me insane (I’m a sensitive flower when it comes to caffeine), but I can handle matcha. I don’t really subscribe to one method anymore, instead I make it according to whatever I feel like having that day.
I know that spring’s arrived when my neighborhood suddenly smells like jasmine, so this morning I decided to make my Rose Matcha Latte in her honor. It’s so easy (you just need a blender) and it makes me feel like I’m frolicking in tall grass even when I have a cute toddler screaming at me.
Rose Matcha Latte
1 cup homemade cashew milk (recipe for that is below)
1 tsp matcha
1/2 tsp rose powder (I like this one)
Splash of whatever sweetener you like (I like date syrup or 1 date)
Collagen (optional)
Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend. Pour over ice and feel yourself becoming a new woman/man/person.
Cashew Milk
1/2 cup cashews
2 cups filtered water
Pinch salt
1 date (optional)
Blend all ingredients in a high-speed blender and you have cashew milk! I don’t strain mine because you don’t have to with cashews and I like mine a little thick plus it’s an extra step I’d prefer not to do, but you totally can if you like!
It feels a little uncouth posting an article that’s not on Substack on Substack BUT I thought Rachel Tashjian’s piece on the red carpet gowns at this year’s Oscars being a form of body horror in the Ozempic era was brilliant. Considering my last post, clearly, this theme is on my mind. Tashjian is the fashion critic at The Washington Post which means you have to be a subscriber to read the article. Truth be told though, I subscribed just to be able to read her stories every week.
That’s all for now! If you feel like sharing, I’d love to know what you’ve been doing to feed yourself in the comments!
C
Yes to this! Seeking joy and inspiration feels so hard these days. I ended up trying the sweet potato recipe and it was excellent :) thanks for sharing!