Last week was a lot of catchup. After spending much of the previous week out of town, I spent most of this week getting my life back together—cleaning the house, reviving our garden, getting back into our routine, meal prepping. Over the weekend, I was able to enjoy the fruits of the week’s labor, with a long hike on Saturday (with packs—Jonah and I are training for a big backpacking trip later this summer!) and a game night with friends on Sunday. This week, we’re doubling-down on our fireplace mantle renovations and some big gardening projects, so there’s never a dull moment! Here are a few things I loved last week:
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris is one of the best books I’ve read this year—a toxic workplace drama that reads like ‘Get Out’ meets a Gillian Flynn thriller (the same editor, Lindsay Sagnette, worked on both). As the only Black woman working at the predominantly white publishing company Wagner (Harris also worked as an editor at Penguin Random House), Nella is constantly navigating not only her job, but also the company’s box-checking, half-hearted “diversity initiatives,” microaggressions, and the pressure to be “twice as good, for half as much.” When another Black woman, Hazel, is hired, Nella is thrilled, until Hazel’s help becomes increasingly two-faced and it becomes clear that there’s far more at stake than being the favorite. The end took me by surprise!
Kevin Can F**k Himself is exactly what I thought Wanda Vision would be before I realized, SIX episodes in, that it was part of the Marvel Universe and I had no idea what was going on… but I digress! Kevin Can F**k Himself is not an easy watch, but it brilliantly uses the medium of family sitcoms to call attention to misogyny in pop culture (the title is a nod to CBS’s sitcom “Kevin Can Wait”). The start of the episode could be the set of Everybody Loves Raymond until Allison (Annie Murphy) exits the living and enters the “real world.” Devoid of studio lights, her husband’s jokes about an anniversary-rager and his stodgy boss collide with the family’s very real challenges. Watch an episode, then cleanse your palette with the below…
In honor of Ted Lasso Season 2 coming back this week, Jonah and I made his shortbread (how could we not after Rebecca’s reaction/addiction to them?). Thanks to internet sleuth, David Smith, who followed the clues Apple dropped, we know that the shortbread is the first part of Melissa Clark’s Bittersweet Brownie Shortbread. Let’s just say, this won’t be our final biscuit with the boss.
1. How remote work impacts your promotion chances. (Unsurprising spoiler: The more you’re in office, the higher your chances of promotion… but here’s a tool for building happier remote work culture!)
2. Dead startups (lookin’ at you Juicero and Theranos), reimagined as toys.
3. Go make Vallery Lomas‘s apricot upside-down cake and thank me later! (NYT)
4. An excerpt from Sally Rooney’s upcoming book.
5. Unpacking the Nap Dress: “The evocation of the nap summons the idea of leisure and restfulness, if not the actuality (Diamond points out that the dress’s name is a ‘misnomer’ and you’re not actually meant to nap in it).”
6. Linked in the article above and equally interesting: The Hair.
7. Still haven’t seen ‘Zola,’ but dying to!
8. For those wondering how the story ends… I updated my Weekday Wardrobe from last week with Friday’s ‘fit!
