What's IN/OUT this week

Happy Fourth, Haters! I can’t wait to spend this sweaty weekend wearing flowy, button-up shirts and matching shorts. I want to dress like a beautiful grandfather or maybe a handsome toddler. Whatever the case, I will probably need an afternoon nap.

IN: Bringing a retro dessert to the party. I have promised my friends a strawberry pretzel salad this weekend, and at some point this summer I’ll also make an Atlantic Beach Pie. These old-school dishes are such crowd-pleasers. The crusts are just crushed-up pretzels or crackers, and the filling usually includes a shortcut like sweetened condensed milk. The beauty of a retro dessert is that your grandmother was too zooted on diet pills to cook something low and slow. The kids needed sugar stat and Betty could blow through half a pack of Winston 100’s while waiting for her hair and the Jell-O to set. OUT: Feeling stressed that it seems summer is halfway over. I get July Anxiety each year, which is when I panic that I’ve hardly made a dent in my summer fun list. Upgrade to paid so that I can quit one of my other jobs and live my dreams!

IN: Street art. Someone in my neighborhood keeps tagging these wacky ghosts on dumpsters and other surfaces. I love them so much! I also love this pasted art (angry drag cat?) made with USPS stickers that I found on a light pole near my apartment (both pictured below). People are endlessly creative and I love that I get to bop about the city like a little Ms. Pac-Man trying to spot graffiti ghosts. Someone call the Louvre!!! OUT: This muggy-ass weather — for the sake of my dog. I haven’t been able to take Dottie on our usual long walks or runs lately. She acts like she can do it but that 10-inch tongue flopping out the side of her mouth is telling me otherwise.

IN: Bobby pins. While we’re on the topic of the weather, I am accepting that the only option for my hair right now is curls in every direction. Rather than try and blow it out, we’re giving the hairdryer a rest, letting it air dry, and just pinning it back/up to get it off of my neck. Sometimes it even looks chic-adjacent. OUT: Yearning for straight hair. I’m going to stop short of using the word trauma, but when I was a young, impressionable girl, there was an article in YM magazine (RIP) that has haunted me for years. The young writer — who had amazing Keri Russell ringlets — wrote that considerably more guys asked her on dates… after she straightened her hair. After that brutal curl-shaming, I have been burdened with the assumption that people want to wake up next to sleek, silken tresses — and definitely not next to the roadkill Ronald McDonald wig that appears on my pillow each morning.

IN: Chilled natural wines, my brothers. I may struggle to embrace my hair, but I will gently nurture my white millennial woman when it comes to booze. I just found a new summer favorite and it has the cutest hot dog label and is local-ish (Michigan). OUT: Leggings at yoga class. Speaking of being a white millennial woman (did you know that a group of five or more of us is called a “Nordstrom Rack?”), I am struggling to do yoga in leggings on these hot days. I understand that some people are wearing shorts. I tried that once, but I felt like I was peering into Waldorf and Statler’s faces every time I caught sight of my knees in a forward fold. Loose, moveable pants recommendations, please!!

Tell me what you hated this week!