Connecting the Dots: October

Moments of connection, lots of tv shows, and at home lattes

One of my recent film scans from a recent trip to the “enchantical gardens” as my daughter calls it.

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Happy Halloween!

In case you’re wondering, my daughter has chosen to be Madeline for Halloween this year, which I’m not upset by because I’m all about repurposing costumes we already have. (She is also dressing up as Belle for school and Sleeping Beauty for dance in dress up dresses she already has.) She requested Luke and I dress up as Mulan and Shang because she is newly obsessed with Mulan, but I explained it would make absolutely no sense if she wasn’t also dressed up as someone in the Mulan universe. Her suggestion?

For my mom to dress up as the grandma.

I think I’ll stick with a nice Halloween themed sweatshirt and call it a day.

I love Halloween in our neighborhood because it reminds me so much of my neighborhood growing up. Neighbors come out in droves. One house, where an elderly couple lives, works all month setting up an elaborate maze in their front yard and always hands out full sized candy bars for those who make it all the way through. Another house hands out wine to the adults. We host a small get together of our own, inviting grandparents and a few friends and our next door neighbors over for chili before embarking on our trick-or-treat adventures.

In a world that feels increasingly disconnected from harmonious real life interactions, Halloween in our neighborhood reminds me that good ole’ fashioned neighborhood fun still exists.

Another way my faith in humanity and the importance of real life interactions was restored this month was through my in-person meetup with my online writing group.

I’ve been a member of Exhale for almost three years. After taking a creative hiatus post fostering/moving/having a baby, when I was ready to jump back into creativity and craving a community to bolster me, Exhale was the lifeline I needed. Made up of hundreds of women from all over the world, I have connected with pockets of women through cohorts and groups within the larger Exhale community. It has brought me my writing mastermind (at least 3/4 of its members) which has been more instrumental to my writing than anything else I’ve ever done.

So when the opportunity arose to meet some of these women in person, I jumped at the chance.

Of course, I made sure the other members of my mastermind were also going so I’d at least really know two other people going (#toldyouiwasanintrovert) but for the most part, I jumped in whole heartedly.

After booking the trip back in March, when the trip finally rolled around in early October, I couldn’t believe it was finally here. I was a mix of excitement and nerves.

I hopped off the plane at LAX BNA with a dream and my cardigan and made my way to baggage claim to meet Jess, a member of my mastermind who I had met plenty of times on Zoom, but never in person. Seeing and hugging her for the first time was simultaneously surreal and totally natural.

We made our way to our AirBnb where our other member, Kristina, came out to the parking lot to meet us. Hugging her felt the same way. I couldn’t believe we were finally meeting for the first time while also feeling like we had done this before.

The rest of the weekend was made up of many more moments meeting women who I had only ever known behind a screen. Some of them I had met through Zoom, some I had never really interacted with before. We spent our time in workshops, exploring Nashville, singing along to The Life of a Showgirl in the theater, and sitting around living rooms and libraries laughing and crying.

It’s hard to accurately describe how I felt flying home on that Sunday afternoon. Exhausted from nonstop activity. Talked out, as I lost my voice midway through the trip thanks to an oncoming cold and fighting for my life to talk to the girl next to me while live music played. Creatively inspired. Thankful for the opportunity to connect with others and pour into my own creativity.

It’s taken me a month to try and put words to the experience but mostly, I’m thankful for the women I met and connected with who inspire me to keep writing and keep pushing myself. Without Exhale, without my mastermind, I don’t know that I’d still be writing here on Substack, so for that, I am eternally grateful.

In addition to all the in-person goodness October brought, I still found time to read/watch/fangirl over some things, so as we do at the end of every month, let’s dive into what I’ve loved this month.

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Reading Roundup

• Bad Mormon by Heather Gay

  • Format: Audiobook

  • Rating:⭐️⭐️.5

  • Would it really be a reading month if I didn’t read something by a Bravoleb? October was no different. I have been on the waitlist for this book since this summer. I accidentally rejected the hold the first time it came through and had to get back in line, which was a real bummer, but just served to make me even more excited to dive in once it finally came through. I really enjoyed learning more about Heather’s early life and point of view. It was fascinating to get a deeper look into Mormonism, too. For an outsider looking in, it would probably seem like Mormons and Christians are similar, if not the same. But this book really paints the picture of how works based Mormonism is, not to mention the whole adding-to-the-Bible of it all. I found it all really interesting. As the book went on, however, Heather’s overuse of figurative language was a loootttt (one of those things that once you notice, you can’t un-notice) and the story fell apart a little bit. Since she doesn’t have as much distance from her divorce and that time of her life, it wasn’t as flushed out as the earlier part of her story. Overall, I’m glad I read and it set the stage for me to be ready for her upcoming show on Bravo, Surviving Mormonism premiering on November 11th.

• How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

  • Format: Audiobook

  • Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

  • The premise of this book was so interesting—a woman, Frances, has her fortune read as a teenager, which predicts her murder and she spends the rest of her life trying to prevent it from coming true, only to end up murdered sixty years later. This story bounces between past and present day from Frances’s point of view and Annie’s, her great niece who has been called to Frances’s estate to solve the murder and inherit her fortune—both her wealth and possibly her fate. I wanted to love this book so badly and I wonder if I would have liked it more had I read it verses listening. But there were so many characters that it was impossible to keep track of them all. I couldn’t totally follow the plot and found myself with more questions than answers at the end. It was a fun experience, though. I only wish I could have followed it more closely.

• A Bit Much by Lyndsay Rush

• Format: Physical book

• Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

  • Lyndsay was one of our workshop leaders on the retreat, so I was delighted to pick up her book of poems to bring with me to have her sign. I was more delighted, though, to read through her book of poems and feel so seen not only by her content, but by her writing style. My favorite kinds of writing are the pieces that seamlessly weave together humor and heart and Lyndsay does just that. She makes poetry accessible while still keeping its essence. During our workshop, Lyndsay led us through an exercise of writing headline poems, which she’s known for doing here on Substack. She gave us three headlines to choose from and walked us through how to write a poem of our own. Here is mine from the headline, “Not On My Watch: Kentucky Nurse Saves Drunk Raccoon By Giving It CPR”

    

Entertainment Honorable Mentions

• The Life of a Showgirl

  • I haven’t heard anyone else talk about this, so you may have missed the fact that Taylor Swift released a new album at the beginning of the month.

    I kid.

    Everyone and their mother has an opinion about this album, so I’m not here to add another think piece to the mix. I’m just a girl who enjoys Taylor’s music, who loves being part of the zeitgeist, and who believes not everything has to be that deep. One of my FAVORITE things is when a new song or album releases when I am on a trip and I can forever associate the music with that trip. So the fact that this came out while I was in Nashville was so fun. I’ll always remember ordering Eldest Daughter hats with Jess and Kristina and having TLOAS being the soundtrack of our retreat.

• The Real Housewives of Potomac

  • Speaking of associating entertainment with a certain time of your life, I will forever associate RHOP with being pregnant with my daughter. I binge watched the series the summer I was pregnant and it will always hold a special place in my heart for that reason. Its 10th season premiered this month and like so many Bravo shows, it is mired in scandal. The season opened with “The Grande Dame”, Karen Huger, being released from prison after serving six months of a two year sentence for a DUI conviction (her 4th offense….). Then, less than a week after the premiere, Dr. Wendy Osefo was arrested for multiple charges of insurance fraud and making false statements to a police officer after allegedly faking a home break in. If that doesn’t make you want to tune into the season, I don’t know what will.

• The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City

  • I don’t know how I didn’t mention this in my September round up, but this season of RHOSLC is absolute perfection. No stranger to its own run-ins with the law, we are returning to form this season. We have Lisa hosting luncheons with poster boards of lawsuits blown up around the room. We have Braunwyn whose mother and husband clearly hate her. (It’s actually very sad.) We have Angie and Mary fighting about farts. We have Whitney trying and failing to pull off the most unhinged shade of red hair I’ve ever seen. We have Britani bringing a stuffed unicorn with a recording of her boyfriend, Jared Osmond of The Osmond Family fame, telling her “goodnight baby, you are loved” while she’s on a yacht trip. And we have Heather, self producing her little heart out and being as messy as ever. It is chef’s kiss perfection.

• Nobody Wants This on Netflix

  • I’m not sure I’ve ever binged a season of a tv show faster than I binged season two of Nobody Wants This. Due to some poor decisions on my end last weekend (sleeping in too late + too much coffee), I found myself wide awake at 11:00 pm on Saturday night and knowing sleep wouldn’t come for awhile, I decided to go ahead and start this season. Ya’ll. It’s SO good. I enjoyed the first season but something about this season was so endearing. It felt real yet ridiculous. It was funny and heartfelt. Justine Lupe’s hair was as fabulous as ever. Leighton Meester made a cameo. Noah’s brother, Sasha, is so lovable. It was all around just a delight and I cannot recommend it enough.

• AKA Charlie Sheen on Netflix

  • This was an airplane show for me to and from Nashville. I heard this two-part documentary talked about on a podcast and their conversation surrounding it made me want to watch. I knew next to nothing about Charlie Sheen besides the basics—famous father, Two and a Half Men star, married to Denise Richards at one point (all roads lead to Bravo), winning!, drugs. To be honest, I had no idea he had gotten sober in the past few years. This was the perfect plane show, as each episode was roughly an hour and a half. It was interesting enough to keep my attention but forgettable enough that I completely forgot about it until I was almost done writing this post. Whoops.

Gadgets and Gizmos Aplenty

• At-home iced lattes

  • This year, I have become disenchanted with Starbucks. Once a loyal PSL enthusiast, I now find them oily and stomachache inducing. Which is a real bummer because there is nothing I love more than a lil treat during the day, and what better treat than a fun coffee? My sister has been on an at-home latte kick and when I met up with her and her friends for breakfast earlier this month, I asked her to share her secrets with me. She talked me through her process and I decided to try my hand one more time. I have a Nespresso machine (that my SIL randomly gave me for free last year!!) collecting dust on my counter so I had no reason not to at least try to make my own. I also ordered these glasses because as everyone knows, half of the allure of coffee is its vessel. By following my sister’s instructions (and adding my own spin) and using my new glasses, I am now an at-home latte evangelist and have passed up offers for Starbucks several times. These instructions are for a Nespresso, but I imagine you would have just as much luck with any sort of espresso machine.

    • Add your syrup to the bottom of the glass. I have been using maple syrup or Trader Joe’s maple butter. I also bought bourbon vanilla bean paste that I can’t wait to try! Adjust this to your liking. I don’t like super sweet coffees, however, I’ve found I need to use more syrup than I think to get the flavor I like. When I order coffee out, I always ask for half sweetness (for reference).

    • Add flaky sea salt 🤤

    • Brew your espresso into the cup (I like the Melozio pods, I also have the decaf version)

    • Pour your milk of choice into your espresso glass (I use half-and-half) and stir to mix.

    • Pour mixture into a shaker full of ice and shake, shake, shake.

    • Add ice to your espresso glass.

    • Pour latte back into to the glass.

    • Enjoy!

In Case You Missed It

I can officially add “award winning writer” to my resume! I placed 3rd in the WOW: Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay contest with my essay, Dear IVF, I Quit. I’m still pinching myself over this honor.

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Alrighty, that’s all I have for October. I hope that whether you celebrate or abstain from Halloween, whether you have an online community or not, that you find ways to incorporate life-giving, in-person connection this month. I also hope you’ll try your hand at the at-home latte and if you haven’t already, that you give one of the absolutely incredible seasons of The Real Housewives a try 😉.

XOXO,

Gossip Girl Kelsey