I was going to read but then I made all the gazpacho and embraced a crazy hobby

instead... which leaves me with a super cool clean closet and a full freezer but only part way through a goofily glorious new read

Is it back-to-school? I think it’s back-to-school. I blame September for the fact that I, a person who reads tons of books all the time, it’s practically my whole personality, instead read very little. Admittedly I’m savoring and giggling over my current read (Apprentice to the Villain; think The Princess Bride but make it feminist and wildly intricate and start with Assistant to the Villain first) but STILL.

What happened?

Well, there’s the whole my book is now a TV series thing. That took some time. Plus three of my four kids went back to various schools and that took… all the time. There is no time left, sorry, it’s all in a black hole of back-to-school and I don’t know how we get it back.

Then my garden went crazycakes bonkers and I was forced at tomato-point to fill my freezer with delicious gazpacho. I make a variant of the NYT’s Perfect Gazpacho and it’s no paywall for September so I strongly urge you to make some, blend the heck out of it, do NOT whatever you do bother to peel and seed the tomatoes (what kind of time do these people have, I just told you there is no time) or strain it… omg why do we have to make things so COMPLICATED and if you have a blender use that because the food processor is messy (perhaps we need interns in our kitchens? to wash things? how do I get one of those) and then eat it poured over a bowl of diced watermelon. I know it sounds weird. Trust me.

And then—still not reading—I might have developed a bizarre hobby that might have taken a leeeeetle bit of a lot of time before it actually started to save me time and it DID, I just packed for a weeklong trip in less than an hour because… I digitized my wardrobe in Indyx and then all I had to do to pack was pick things and look at them and think about them and cull and decide some more but they were just pictures of the things, not the actual things spread all over the bedroom.

It saved a lot of time, but that was AFTER I either found or took pictures of most of my clothes and put them in the app, which also involved cleaning out my entire closet and decluttering and oh okay FINE maybe it’s my fault I didn’t read very much. It was bizarrely satisfying and now I find it quite delightful to play around in my digital closet and as I said, packing was a breeze and perhaps more relevantly, I thought maybe I needed a new sweater for the trip but then I looked at all my sweaters before I went in J. Crew and know what?

I really do not.

I only have to go on 1.2 million trips before the time saved totally evens out, so there’s that.

Okay, before I go—here’s what I’m GOING TO READ. I’ve got two long plane trips ahead, and I packed Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London, which is out in October (of course) and loaded my Kindle with Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors, The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl (I love Margaret Renkl but I’m a little afraid the “back yard year” referenced in the subtitle is 2020 and… I don’t need to read about that no matter how good it is, once was enough, but maybe I’m wrong? I only thought of that after I already bought it) The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberley, Austin Siegemund-Broka who wrote The Breakup Tour which I could not have loved more, and Wear It Well: Reclaim Your Closet and Rediscover the Joy of Getting Dressed by Allison Bornstein and okay I’m trying to figure out my personal style and sort my clothes and buy fewer better things are you implying there is something wrong with that?

Ok, that’s it for me. What are YOU reading? Or are you also cleaning out your closet?