The 📖📺🎧🔪🛍️ List

"People say I'm jealous but my kink is karma."

Reporting to you live from our “apartment” where I’m wearing my noise-cancelling headphones (that are an actual fucking godsend right now) while a crew of contractors lay down our new flooring. They’ve been going since 8:30am and won’t be done until 7:30pm tonight and are coming back tomorrow, but thank G I will be in Tulsa by the time they show up. I feel so terrible for our dogs. Bowie doesn’t care too much, but Cece is a shaky little leaf and hates her life. If I didn’t need to be home today packing for my little weekend getaway, I would’ve taken them somewhere. Poor babies.

On that note (kinda but not really), I have a declaration to make:

I am done trying to cook in this godforsaken studio apartment.

Even “prepping” food in here is miserable. I love Grossy Pelosi (hi, Dan) and his summer-with-no-kitchen grilling capabilities, but Dan is a cook. This is his life. It comes naturally to him. We are confined to ONE room right now. That’s it. That’s all we get. You try cutting onions and chopping cilantro two feet from your bed and tell me if you don’t wanna KY. And I can’t prep outside because the heat index makes it feel like 110º, so basically I’m done. We’ll be dining out, ordering in, or driving through for the rest of this renovation and I’m not happy about it and I cannot express how much I miss cooking and eating my own creations, but that’s just the situation we’re in right now.

As Zac has to remind me every day, “Every day is one day closer to this being over.” He’s not wrong.

I’M IN A GREAT MOOD TODAY!!!

All that said, I fear I won’t have any new recipes to share with y’all until I get my kitchen back, so bear with me while I scrounge for content to go into the “MAKING 🔪” section of The Weekly List.

READING 📖

I’m almost done with The Women. In fact, by the time you read this, I will probably have finished it. I have many thoughts to share and will save them for next week’s letter so I can give a full review. For now, though, lemme just say that this is my first Kristin Hannah novel, and the popularity of this particular book reminded me of something I literally got tattooed on my wrist — that I don’t usually love what most people love and instead of feeling like an outsider or “wrong” because of it, I should embrace it.

I also want to take the opportunity to say that the years 1968 and 2024 are eerily similar. This book takes place during the Vietnam War and, well… our world is feeling just as chaotic and corrupt, and I don’t like it.

WATCHING 📺

Alone season 10 just dropped on Netflix, and we dove right in. The concept and contestants always blow my mind, and I find it so interesting to see how much they know and how they fight the elements. I will say, though, that I’ve realized I really cannot handle any type of animal violence. While I’m a proud omnivore, I cannot witness the killing or harm of animals. I get so queasy and upset and anxious. Hand to God, I almost couldn’t watch episode four of HOTD because of the Dragon fight scene. Animal violence is so upsetting!!! But Alone is good. Watch it on Netflix.

With the new Twister(s) coming out this weekend, we decided to watch the OG Twister from 1996. The graphics and awesomeness of the tornadoes still holds up, but listening to the dialogue as a 37yo woman as opposed to a 9yo girl was wildly different. The script is pretty horrible, and the fact that his fiance hangs around as long as she does while he chases storms with his almost ex-wife and keeps shoving her off on his storm chasing crew is beyond me. Also, y’all probably caught this on my IG last weekend, but it’s incredible how much older people used to look back then. Helen Hunt was 33 in that movie, and Bill Paxton was 41.

Zac and I are 36 and 41 in this picture and neither of us dye our hair or get any kind of Botox. Just saying.

ANYWAY, I will absolutely be seeing the new one and if there isn’t a flying cow, I’ll scream.

MAKING 🔪

You may or may not have caught my reel this week featuring Nightingale Ice Cream sandwiches.

emmasthing

A post shared by @emmasthing

Guys, you know I don’t do ads or collabs often. It has to be a really special brand that I legitimately love to even consider it. So when Nightingale reached out, I was skeptical but was willing to at least try the product to see what I thought. I’m not bs’ing you… these ice cream sandwiches are incredible especially considering they’re packaged and available in grocery stores. The flavors are SO strong, the ice cream is truly premium, and the cookie flavors are so freaking good. They sent me so many, and Zac and I had the best time trying a new flavor every night for a week. They just dropped in Texas HEB and Central Market locations, but if you can’t find them in a retailer near you, you can order from thenightingalestore.com and get 15% off with code emma-15 throughout August!

Taking a sharp left turn, I feel like I’m not getting nearly enough veggies right now. Fruit, yes. Fruit has basically become my main source of food. But veggies are a different story. I realized that a big issue for me is storing them properly so they don’t get gross before I can get to them, so I found this list breaking down how to store everything, printed it out, and hung it on the fridge. Please feel free to do the same!

SHOPPING 🛍️

I love a comfy, fun tee and this one by Free People is exactly that. I spotted it at a local store here in Dallas and had to have it. I got a medium (yes, even pregnant) and it’s super oversized, so it’ll work PP, too!

I am currently living in this maternity bodysuit from Amazon. If I didn’t visibly sweat through everything I own, I’d get a color other than black. Alas…

How cute is this two-piece set from Target?! I love it so much and find it very flattering.

I also got a non-maternity bodysuit from Target this week that’s suuuuuuuuper cute, a few non-maternity v-neck tees that are $8.50 and light as air, and some non-maternity sports bras because you can never have enough sports bras when you’re pregnant with H’s.

Last but not least, I know I’ve mentioned them before, but I really am obsessed with my satin pillowcases by Bedsure off Amazon. Whether you have curly hair or not, sleeping with a satin or silk pillowcase is a game changer in terms of protecting your tossing and turning from frizz, split ends, and more. I can’t sleep without mine!

❤️ If you liked or loved this letter, hit that little heart at the bottom to show some love. A little love goes a looooong way around here ❤️

That’s all for this Friday! If you want to stay up to date on the goings-on of our big renovation, consider upgrading to a paid subscription so you can watch me slowly lose my mind over the next several weeks…

— EGM