Things I’ve been loving lately

Early winter addition ❄️☃️🌨️

Hello from snowy Minnesota! I hope all of you are doing well and staying cozy and calm as we head into the holiday season. I have been working on three or four different essays/posts for you this week and I couldn’t choose which to send out, but I decided in honor of my 50th newsletter (!!!) I would celebrate with a fun list of things I’ve been loving lately. I’ve heard from a lot of readers that these posts are fun to read. They’re also fun to write, so win-win!

Speaking of readers…my Substack community has started blowing up! 198 of you subscribe to this newsletter at the time of this writing, and I am so excited about that! It is exciting for me to find a broader audience for my writing, and I’m really glad you’re here. Thank you!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to continue organizing this newsletter in the future as far as free versus paid posts goes, and I’m still noodling on that. I’ve been spending most of my writing time working on a new novel, and I want to protect that space while also continuing to grow this Substack. I feel passionate that writers should be paid for their work, but I also appreciate being able to access some of my favorite Substacks without a paid subscription. I’m going to try to find a middle path with this, offering most of my content for free, as I have been, but amping up my perks for paid subscribers. I will have some updates on this for you in the new year. Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, I am SO thrilled to have you here. In a world where so much is vying for our attention literally all the time, I appreciate the time you spend with my words more than you know.

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Things I’ve been loving lately:

1. Chocolate covered graham crackers from Kowalski’s. There are the bomb. I especially love the chocolate peanut butter ones, but since Gummy Bear has a peanut allergy, we’ve pivoted to plain milk chocolate and they are also delightful. They’re so good in fact, that when my husband held up a box of these against a very flashy box of rainbow-sprinkled, frosted sugar cookies, Gummy Bear chose the chocolate grahams. Not especially exciting looking, but by far the most delicious.

   

2. Mr. and Mrs. Smith starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. This show single-handedly got me through my colonoscopy prep.¹ I had actually decided to watch a bunch of other shows but nothing captured me quite like this, and believe me, when you’re going on hour 18 of no solid food and you’re stuck on the toilet, you want to be captured. The only annoying thing was that every time a character came on screen, this thought flashed through my head: “I bet they haven’t had a colonoscopy. I bet they have! Has Donald Glover had a colonoscopy? Probably not. Well, you never know.”

   

3. WICKED. As a reward for getting through my colonoscopy, I went to see Wicked with my mom. I had heard only great things about this movie and it completely lived up to my very high expectations. I never wanted it to end and I can’t wait to see it again.

   

4. Sharing my writing haunt with my toddler. When my writing/childcare plans fell through, I decided to take my two-year-old to the fancy coffee shop where I write. I let him pick out a pastry for approximately $62 and we sat and read books together and watched biggie busses drive by, and he walked around to everyone’s tables to show them his mini monster truck. He’s two, so there was a bit of him running around and getting in others’ ways, and he did shout very exuberantly (read: loudly) a couple of times, but he got only smiles from the other patrons. I could have been bummed that I didn’t get my writing time this week, but I didn’t! Instead I had a lovely afternoon treat with my son. I always love hanging out with him, but it felt special to bring him somewhere “fancy” to read our books.

   

5. Re-reading Anne of Green Gables. I was worried that this book wouldn’t live up to the nostalgia as I read it many times as a young person and loved it, but I am so happy to report that this book is even more delightful than I remember. I have been laughing out loud, have been teary-eyed, and have been inspired to engage more with the natural world and my imagination. I can’t wait to read this book out loud to Gummy Bear someday. Anne is a role model for us all.

   

6. Mrs. Meyer’s Iowa Pine scented liquid hand soap. This is so pine-y and so Christmassy, that it makes washing your hands a festive experience. Everyone comments on it. I’m planning to stock up on it once the after-holiday sales hit Target and use it all year round. After all, pine trees are evergreen, aren’t they? Ha ha.

   

7. My Substack community! I have had so many comments and restacks on Notes (a feature on the app) and more and more people are reading my past essays and commenting on them every day. The connections I’ve been making with other writers and readers here feels genuine and generous. I’m really happy to engage in this positive space—thank you for sharing in it with me.

   

8. Making these sugar cookie bars by Cloudy Kitchen. I call them my Sugar Plum Fairy Bars and I always make them around Christmas because they’re basically your holiday sugar cookie but on steroids. Melt-in-your-mouth chewy cookie topped with half an inch of fluffy buttercream—the maker of this recipe wasn’t messing around. They’re perfect. I love them. I hope you like them, too!

   

9. Discovering new Broadway musicals. I recently read a Reddit thread where people listed their favorite musicals that they hadn’t expected to like. I hadn’t heard of most of these, and I realized that I haven’t tuned into my musical theater self in a while. I decided to download a bunch of musicals and listen to them here and there. For some reason, I started with Chess, which follows two rival chess players (one American, one from the USSR) during the Cold War. I was interested to listen to this score because it was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA. When I hit play, the first song positively clanged like a choral gong, sounded vaguely Russian, and was quite serious in tone. Huh, I thought. ABBA, I don’t hear it. Then, like a burst of lightning, fervent, bouncy synth appeared and a singer belted out some rock-opera and I was giggling and giggling, so surprised and overjoyed. This experience reminded me that you cannot often feel the sensation of surprise if you are not trying new things—even small new things.

   

10. Re-reading Catherine Rickett’s The Mother Artist in preparation for my brand new Loft class that launches this winter. I’m also going to teach an online version of this course starting in March. Registration is now open and you can sign up here. I’m so excited about this class because it is exactly what I would have wanted and have craved since becoming a new mom. Anyone who identifies as a mom in any way is welcome to join! Here is the class description:

    This multi-genre course is for anyone who identifies as a mother and a writer, and anyone who sometimes feels the tension between those roles. It's designed to give mother writers a place to write and to engage in a community of artistic support.

    The bulk of each class will be time to write––something difficult to come by for a mother––and will be book-ended by discussions and opportunities to share work. Each class session will begin with a brief in-class reading and discussion.

    Class texts include excerpts from The Mother Artist by Catherine Ricketts, poems by Maggie Smith, Jenny Zheng, and Dorothea Lasky, podcast excerpts from Bjork's Sonic Sounds, and images by visual mother artists such as Alice Neel, Senga Nengudi, and Carmen Winant.

    After each discussion, students will receive writing prompts and have time to write to the prompt or work on their own projects. The last part of class will be an informal opportunity for students to share their work out loud and receive verbal feedback and encouragement from the teaching artist and fellow students.

    There will be no "homework." As the mother of a toddler herself, this Loft teaching artist aims to make this class as accessible, productive, and supportive as possible.

    What have you been loving lately? Please tell us in the comments! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. Take good care!

    With love from my kitchen table,

    Kaia

1. I’ve been getting routine colonoscopies since I was 26 because of a family history of colon cancer. I am in the all clear and very thankful for this life-saving procedure.