Hello!! Here are a few things I’ve been into/spending time on/thinking about lately.

1. The internet. This podcast episode isn't really about Dubai chocolate at all, but it is about the internet and what it’s become.

I've been thinking about the internet a lot lately. Missing it while immersed in it, but not in a way I really enjoy anymore. So I was intrigued when I came across the Internet Phone Book. I was sad to see that they were sold out, but when they did another run (or found more copies?) I ordered one. Then a couple weeks later got an email that they were stuck in Europe due to the whole tariff mess. Then I guess books and magazines were exempt, and it arrived a few weeks ago. It's got some essays and a directory of what the internet used to be. The premise is that that old version internet is still out there. I'm hoping a little exploration beyond the walled gardens of data miners can help me feel a little more inspired again, both personally and professionally.

More on the theme of internet, this blog post by Dave Rupert got me. “Still reasons to make a website, I think.“

2. ‘Tis the season to moisturize. This is the official hand lotion of our household. I buy many tubes of it every year. It feels somehow both moisturizing without being slimy and slightly occlusive without being sticky.

3. Basque cheesecake! Has this gotten trendy or has my algorithm just decided I needed to make one? In this case, it was correct. I was just addled enough while planning our Thanksgiving weekend to decide to make one for a Friendsgiving the same day we got back into town from a few days away. Good thing it’s easy and we now live approximately four minutes from a grocery store. I will be making another and another and another. This is the recipe I used, but unless I have another large event to bring it to, I’ll make the smaller Smitten Kitchen recipe next time.

4. Pretty sure I’ve mentioned this here in years past, but I was delighted to see that the Unravel Your Year workbook has been posted! I’ve been doing this since at least 2013, and it’s become such an anchor to this season.

5. Bees. I got bees. While bees were a far-off-someday interest of mine for years, I began to feel a sense of urgency about them last fall and winter. And if I'm to be completely honest, my bee obsession was probably a bit of a cope. I really started reading and learning more about them after a brief workshop in mid-October 2024, and as the election approached I started requesting many reference books from the library. We were gonna collectively return like a dog to its vomit, so I was going to immerse myself in learning about a somewhat alien, matriarchal eusocial species.

It was also sort of around that time that I learned that what we'd decided would be my last embryo transfer ever was (for a lot of reasons, unexpectedly) successful. Maybe someday I'll write more about ambivalence and the yearslong decision making process that brought us there and the timing of it all, but for now, I'll just say this was terrifying to the point of denial. Aside from the requisite intramuscular injections that need to continue until week ten or twelve of pregnancy, I have a history of fairly rare delivery and postpartum complications that seem bent on trying to end me (and here, I nearly feel compelled to minimize what happened and contemplate all the ways it could have been worse, but also IT WAS BAD), and the fact that I'd now be at higher risk for two different complications I'd already experienced, or a secret third thing, gobbled up a lot of my mental and emotional energy during late 2024 and the first half of 2025. So I learned about bees instead of dwelling (maybe melodramatically, but also maybe reasonably) on my own possible demise and, to a lesser extent, the third kid of it all: the possibility that we'd already had two of the most delightful children and the third would be a miserable baby who'd grow into a miserable adult who no one liked to be around and Chad and I had just ruined all our lives.

Miraculously?? none of this came to pass. Despite a maybe 20 minute foray into the land of will they or won't they (be whisked off to the OR — after attempting to contort myself into different positions while slowly passing out, we both rallied with some epi, an oxygen mask, and an order for "orange juice! STAT!"), it was a fairly uneventful, if long for a third baby, delivery and recovery. There was a closely watched mild birth injury, but it has resolved.

It's wild to feel the difference between what a normal uncomplicated birth and recovery are like and... whatever it was that happened with my first two. I did spend the following six weeks sitting around too scared and suspicious to so much as even look at my blood pressure cuff, but then I was free. We lived, bitch.

Also, this third baby? An absolute dream. A total charmer. The kind of baby you think all babies are before you actually have one. I'm aware that this could all change at any time, but for now? A delight.

Anyway. this email was not supposed to include an abridged birth story. Apologies.

Turns out I have kind of a lot to say about birth and mortality and bees, more to come on all this perhaps.

Stay cozy,

Lisa

Quote credit: Sufjan Stevens