a short post about periods of transition
plus some october recipe suggestions
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Picture 11 year old me blasting Avril Lavigne’s 2002 album Let Go on CD the summer before 6th grade, while packing up my bedroom to move (with my family, obvs) 3 hours away to another city. I was so pissed off, with a mix of anxiety and powerlessness simmering too.
That’s the first time I remember listening to the album, but it’s certainly not the last - I come back to it during periods of transition. For me, it’s usually not the actual transition that sucks, it’s the discomfort of waiting for the change. I feel more content when it’s actually go-time - there’s reinvention to be done, actions to be taken. When I’m waiting, I’m stuck imagining what things might be like. My brain tries to seek out information, any information, even though there’s really no way to predict what it’ll actually be like.
As you probably know, I’m waiting for this baby to show up. And it’s taking forever (I’ve never been particularly patient).
Here I am, waiting:
The liminal space between not parent and parent is strange and confusing. There are a lot of opinions about what to do/not do, and tons of advice - with varying levels of helpfulness. There’s also lot of time to analyze your (future) self. Coincidentally, my favorite song on the Avril album is Things I’ll Never Say, which features this lyric:
'Cause I'm feeling nervous
Trying to be so perfect
I’m super, super excited to be someone’s mom. But there’s also the self-doubt. My brain tells me I need to know how to/have a plan for handling everything, right now. For instance: parent teacher conferences. I have this image of Rhys having to drag me out after my kid has allegedly said/done something that I approve of but is not school-acceptable. Food allergies: what if she can’t have avocado and thus most kinds of sushi rolls, like me? What if we’re out at a restaurant and there’s some kind of incident and I don’t have a change of clothes? I’ve always struggled to structure routines - how am I going to maintain them for someone else?
Those thoughts are loud, so I’ve been trying to challenge them with some things I know I can provide: a soft place to land, very special birthday cakes, and a willingness to learn + try. I’m trying to spend the rest of the waiting time building confidence in my ability to figure things out, trying to undo the knots of ingrained expectations, and honestly just vibing. Pregnancy is hard. Transition is hard. Teen pop punk helps.
*Also just some praise for Let Go: Avril was only 17 when Let Go was released, and a Rolling Stone readers' poll named it the fourth best album of the 2000s.
some notable/less notable things
Some recipe recs for October weekends that do not contain pumpkin (ranked from least to most fussy):
I love Leah Gardner’s work and maybe you will too.
I’m starting my annual marathon watch of Hallmark-esque Christmas movies. First up: Cupid for Christmas (2021), on Hulu. Rating: 5/10 - surprisingly funny, v-day/xmas fusion, good for background noise (like, for instance, while writing this post), really bad hair on the lead dude, not enough chemistry for my tastes.
Please check out this Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit from the US Campaign For Palestinian Rights - it lists concrete action items we can take right now as Americans to demand that our government immediately stops participating in the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.
Very grateful to Britney Spears for her courage in sharing her abortion story in her new memoir The Woman in Me - it underscores how much more support we need for people making reproductive decisions (whatever those decisions are).
abortion affirmation of the week
Whether you want support or privacy, you deserve it.
baking tip of the week
Always use *very cold* butter for pie crust - I highly recommend some freezer time. We don’t want the butter layers and the flour layers to fuse together because of warm-ish butter - it destroys the flakiness!
my current fave pic of otie
xoxo,
your favorite becca
things that permanently live at the bottom of my posts:
Submit your secrets/sparkly moments here.
If you need help accessing abortion care, click here or here.
Grab a copy of my choose-your-own-adventure cookbook, Baking by Feel, here!