The 📖📺🎧🔪🛍️ List

Summer renos, trashy dating shows, delicious chicken burgers, and a love letter to the Kindle

Happy Friday! We did it. We made it another week. It is already very warm in Dallas, and I’m mentally preparing myself for the hell that July and August bring every year. The great news is that we had all of our windows replaced this past winter (they were incredibly old and literally did nothing in the way of keeping air in or out), and we’ve already noticed a huge difference this summer with how much cooler the house is staying.

The 😬 news is that we’re getting ready to do a full kitchen renovation + a few other minor things over the course of the summer, and I’m very nervous for my mental health as I grow bigger, the days grow hotter, and our house is taken over by plastic sheets, dust, tools, and contractors. I will be covering the renovation extensively in my paid letters, so if you’re a home improvement junkie, it’s time to climb the wall and watch me slowly lose my mind over the next 8 weeks or so.

Okay, let’s get into this week’s list of things I watched, read, listened to, made, and bought.

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READING 📖

So this isn’t as much about what I’m reading but rather how I’m reading. If you know me, you know I have been vehemently against audio books and e-books for forever. Although you wouldn’t know it now, I am a bookworm at heart and grew up reading incessantly. The feeling of a book in your hand and the smell of bookstores in general are some of the greatest smallest pleasures in life, IMO. I’ve stubbornly berated Kindles and anything of the sort for years… until this past week.

You see, Zac is not only a light sleeper but a bad sleeper, and I’m honestly not that much better. We require total darkness, 1-2 white noise machines, a certain temperature, and absolutely no distractions whatsoever. Therefore, my little reading light is sort of a nuisance and sheds too much light to use respectively in honor of Zac. But I need to read before bed. I simply can’t just go to bed — my brain doesn’t work like that. So last week, I remembered that Zac had bought himself a Kindle in 2022 and used it 1-2 times before stuffing it in a drawer (@ Zac, I love you but this is very you). I asked him if I could maybe try it out, plugged that sucker in, fired her up, and my entire life changed within a day.

I hate myself for loving this Kindle, but boy do I love it. It’s the Kindle Oasis from 2022 (no longer made, so I’m linking to more updated options), and has incredible long-lasting battery power, a fully adjustable screen so you can make it as bright and warm as you want, DARK MODE for nighttime reading… it’s just amazing. I’ve also been told numerous times now that it will serve me well during nighttime feedings when our little one is here. So here I am in 2024 — a mom-to-be who swore she’d never touch an electronic reading device, now cradling my Kindle every night in bed like a newborn.

Because of this damn thing, I’ve picked up where I left off with The House of the Spirits and am blazing through it. I’ve read 100 pages in a few days because it’s such a delight reading on the Kindle in bed at night. And don’t worry — I will be downloading Libby ASAP so I can rent library books and send them straight to my Kindle. YIPPEE! Oh, also — Zac got this case for it back in 2022 and it has both a hand strap and a little kickstand. Perfection.

WATCHING 📺

I’m almost done with season 16 of Top Chef. The thing is, although I’ve never watched any of it, I’ve watched so many other Food Network shows, so I recognize almost every award-winning chef and remember whether or not their title includes “Top Chef Winner.” I’m just too familiar with the Food Network star universe. Therefore, the winner of each season isn’t a huge surprise for me, but there are still surprises nonetheless.

Zac insisted we watch the first 20 minutes of “Perfect Match” on Netflix, which is a Love is Blind-adjacent dating show. Past “single stars” from other Netflix dating shows are put in the skimpiest bikinis and fully unbuttoned button-down shirts, served copious amounts of alcohol, and encouraged to fuck all summer-long. What? You know that’s the thrust (pun intended) of the show. He thought it’d be fun to subject ourselves to the very first episode, and we barely made it 20 minutes. It’s just the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen, and I mean that literally — these people are actually dumb. You’d have to be to continue doing these “dating shows.” Everyone is gross and narcissistic with bad gums, bad tattoos, and bad morals. I can’t handle it. Also, this bikini top trend is NOT cute and I implore you to not buy into it:

If you’re into stand-up, we watched a hilarious comedy special from Brian Simpson on Netflix. His energy is reminiscent of Chappelle, and his long-form jokes hit. It was super entertaining. Watch it on Netflix.

MAKING 🔪

Jessie B. Bernhardt

of the

Dinner & A Drink

Substack struck again this week with her Jerk-Inspired Chicken Wings with MANGO RANCH. These were so easy to make and freaking delicious. Between the two of us (a 6’3” man and pregnant lady), only five wings remained.

Last night (Thursday), I tried another

Caroline Chambers

recipe: Chicken Chili Verde Burgers. HO-LEE SHIT. Guys, these are insane. INSANE. This is one of those recipes where I eat it and think, “How? Like how do these people come up with this stuff?!” Also, I do not like corn but discovered that if you smother it in butter, salt, lime juice, and cilantro, I love it. If you aren’t a paying subscriber of Caroline’s

What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking

Substack, you need to be. It’s money VERY well spent for an endless list of amazing recipes.

SHOPPING 🛍️

You’ve probably seen advertisements for the Zevo flying bug traps and wondered, “But do they really work?” I’m here to tell you, YES. We have two and the amount of fruit flies, gnats, flies, and little moths these things attract is amazing. They are absolutely worth your attention and you need to get some for your home, period. I will warn you, though, that if it’s very quiet, you can hear the flies scream out while they die and it’s a bit disturbing.

I need chapstick laying in wait throughout the house at all times. Therefore, I got this 4-pack of mini Laneige lip masks and have literally set them in areas I frequent most in the house: our “junk” area off the kitchen, on a side table in the den, at my desk, and I threw the last one in my handbag. The scents in this little collection are so good, too: mango, peach, sweet candy, and berry.

Zac had a Dyson vacuum B.E. (Before Emma) that got really smelly (???) and gross, so I decided it was finally time to upgrade to the Dyson Gen5detect, and holy suck. This thing is powerful as hell, has an on/off button (our old one had a trigger you had to hold down the entire time you vacuumed), and a gorgeous (washable) HEPA filter to avoid getting smelly and weird. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth every penny if you see the value in vacuuming and have shedding dogs.

Lastly, I’m on the hunt for swimsuits and cover-ups for this summer’s two beach trips we have planned. I found two cover-ups at Target yesterday: this black maxi crochet dress, and this open-sided number that I am obsessed with! They are not maternity — I just got an XL in both to ensure they can accommodate my belly. As for maternity swimsuits, that’s a whole other ball game that has involved a lot of returns, which I’ll be covering in next month’s TIBAR.

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That’s all for this week! Have a great weekend, celebrate the father figures in your life if they deserve it, and I’ll talk to you guys next week.

XOX,

EGM