recap: march 2025

a day late bc i was at a conference SORRY

March was a fairly quiet month here in the Hughes house. After the busyness of February, it was nice to get some unassuming weeks at home. We did sneak one trip in right at the start, though, a joint girls/guys trip to Auburn where I hung out with one of my Auburn roommates and Drew hung out with his. My friend is in a season of grief and transition and making life choices, so it was nice to do some of the things we did in college as a break from everything else. We thrifted, ate ice cream on campus, watched a Jane Austen movie, and squeezed in plenty of good conversation.

we also went to the gym, something I’ve not done much of as evidenced by my trail runners. to be clear, I have not done much trail running either, just hiking.

In Auburn, we spent so much time outside. This was true in college, but it was equally true on our girls’ weekend. The weather was beautiful and we took full advantage, going on walks or just sitting outside and talking. It brought back to me how much I love the outdoors. You may recall that we lost a key tree in our backyard at the beginning of this year, and I think I may have subconsciously avoided the backyard during my period of mourning. We also had approximately one (1) place to sit in the backyard, a bench that was tolerable for eating dinner at the table but less so for sitting and reading for long periods of time.

Inspired, we started planning our dream backyard destination. Since we live in a rental, we didn’t want to invest money in things that couldn’t go with us when we inevitably move, so we bought some flower boxes, some string lights, a fire pit, and some new patio furniture (not pictured yet).

our string lights! peep Drew trying to move my mom’s extremely heavy ladder. we broke out 2 ladders and a stepladder for this one.

Unfortunately our enjoyment of the new fire pit is on pause due to the statewide burn ban (just lifted!) and the not so healthy AQI resulting from the fires up near Table Rock (mostly contained now!). My brother reminded me that wildfires are good for the woods, particularly right now when there’s so much deadfall from Hurricane Helene. But seeing the sky turn an eerie orange always feels apocalyptic.

smoke from the fires drifting east over 385

doing

We also…

• Stopped by to see Drew’s family on the way down to Auburn and ate some banging Mellow Mushroom.

• Enjoyed a birthday dinner for my dad, including my brother’s account of his 4-week coast-to-coast road trip.

• Had 3 existential crises about having kids, working, and buying a house (how do people afford it all??)

• Single-handedly willed the Auburn Tigers into the Final 4. All I want for Christmas is for them to win it all.

reading

It’s me, once again not reading many books this month because I’m tackling a monster. This time it’s the final book in the first arc (whatever that means) of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives.

Because this massive book (1300 pages!!) is preceded by four other massive books that I read between 2-4 years ago, I had approximately zero idea what was going on. So I did what any self-disrespecting fantasy reader would do — I read the chapter-by-chapter summaries.

Y’all. It was the worst. For one thing, the chapter-by-chapter summaries are incredibly dry. For another, they would tell me “these two characters had a conversation about this incredibly important element of the story” and then tell me nothing about the conversation. But it was necessary. I tried to skip reading the last book’s summary, but I decided I needed it because I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to know already and what I wasn’t.

I also read Emily Henry’s latest and was surprised by how much I liked it.¹ She normally has pretty good characters, but these were some of my favorites. In high school I thought tragedies were supper annoying because if everyone just communicated, no one would be dead!! And while I stand by this, I’ve also grown up enough (read: been married long enough) to understand that this is a tad unrealistic.

Funny Story is by no means a tragedy, but it does carry some of those same miscommunication tropes. Henry gave her characters enough of a backstory, particularly a complicated family backstory, to make those miscommunications understandable and even relatable. I enjoyed it because it felt more real than other rom-coms, but it didn’t give you the everyone-should-commit-suicide vibes of a lot of the contemporary fiction I read that’s supposed to feel real.²

listening

I’m still reconstructing my Spotify after deleting my Facebook account,³ but it’s been fun to think about all the different genres of music I listen to. Lately it’s been a lot of old-ish folk-ish music (John Denver, James Taylor, Neil Young). Like the type of songs the old guy playing guitar covers at the restaurant is probably singing. But I’ve been mixing in some more modern stuff too, like Matt Maeson, Mumford & Sons, and John Mayer. Feel free to give it a spin.

quoting

“The rise of D.I.Y. health doesn’t just reflect distrust of our institutions. It’s also a natural response to the way Covid made us all personally vulnerable—a search for ways to establish bodily autonomy, not just against the vaccine pushers but also against the disease itself.” - thought this was a really interesting and really human take from David Wallace-Wells in this NYT article (paywalled)

“Birdwatching … is a gateway to this deeper joy. At its essence, it is an act of presence — a deliberate stepping out of the stream of digital despair and into the living world, where kingfishers dive into crystal streams and sparrows flit among the branches. When we watch birds, we momentarily exit the human-constructed theater of perpetual crisis and enter a parallel world, one governed by principles my grandmother would recognize: the search for sustenance, the cycle of seasons, and the quiet persistence of being.” - Bill Davidson in this lovely Substack article

“If we fail to love our work, it becomes another form of individual shame.” - Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe, which I haven’t finished yet but have found really interesting

“Defeat my serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind
The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart of joy."
- "Victory in Defeat" by Edwin Markham

1. yes it does have sex scenes but they’re easy to skip

2. if u read this book u will understand what I mean

3. long story short - don’t link ur facebook account to ur spotify account