Noted: My one true enemy

It's not who you think. Also: The chic Target skirt you need.

Hey-ho Midlifers!

This week, I finally identified my one true enemy in life: My bedskirt. It’s one of those elasticized deals that clings, in theory, to the perimeter of my bed but in reality, it spends most of its time riding up and under my mattress.

I was so pleased when I found it on Amazon, thinking that I’d outwitted the bedding gods by circumventing that dumb full-sized bedskirt, that never seems to fit the bed just right, despite being the circumscribed size. “King” and “Queen” marked on the label always seems to be more of a suggestion than gurarantee of fit.

My sister had warned me against the purchase, saying, “They never work.” But I thought she was just being a know-it-all. Turns out, she knows stuff.

Mine is so cute though. White with little pompoms dangling from the bottom. The carpet in my room is a kind of ocean teal and is speckled with white polka dots and together with my cream and white bedding, I thought it all gave a clean, beachy vibe.

But this week, as I put clean sheets on my bed, I found myself wrestling with the skirt, which kept riding under the mattress as I tried tucking in the flat sheet. At one point, one of the corners of the bedskirt disappeared under the mattress and I screamed at it while a few pompoms stared back at me.

Then I started to laugh. I mean, what a maniac.

This erratic behavior may or may not have been connected to the starvation diet I put myself on this week (if you do it look for the promo code to save $50). I paid a little over $150 for a box of powdered soups, packets of olives and some very dry crackers and snack bars to sustain me for five days at about 800 calories/day. I brought a packet of soup to work for lunch this week and my (much younger) coworkers were baffled. When we were laughing about it later, they explained to another colleague what my lunch that day looked like, and he said, “What are you, an astronaut?” Yes, me blasting off into the darkness of bloated midlife.

In other news, I had my daughters home last weekend to celebrate their soon-to-be-sister-in-law. She’s marrying their brother (my son — lol I’m making this so complicated) this spring and on Sunday about 50-ish women gathered together for a bridal-slash-baby shower, because her sister is also having a baby this spring. How fun, a two-for-one ladyfest.

There’s never enough time for visits with my girls. Last weekend was all rush-rush. We’d made that delicious dinner I told you about for our Friday night and then spent Saturday doing our typical big-box-store bonding. Are we the only ones who love taking laps around Costco and Target together? Pointing out all of the things to each other?

We got foot massages on Saturday night at some strip mall situation that has a sushi/hibachi place next store where we ate dinner and then we walked down to the Whole Foods at the end and bought a bunch of TikTok-trendy ice cream sandwiches. We brought them home and sliced each one into three and sampled while we got on our laptops and started to make reservations for our trip this spring to Paris. Gah.

On Sunday we had the lovely shower and our contribution were the pretty floral arrangements my sister helped us make from flowers we bought at Wegman’s. At the shower, we talked so much my throat hurt when my older daughter and I headed home to watch the Superbowl and pretend we understood football. My younger daughter had already headed back to Philly and would later join the rest of the city rioting out in the streets. LOL Eagles fans.

My older daughter Ubered to the airport on Monday morning and it was sad to say good bye but I took myself and the dog for a walk and made phone calls to debrief on the shower with my bestie and then the groom-to-be. It was such a leisurely morning that I didn’t sign onto work until a little after 9:00 only to discover that some monster had scheduled an important call at that hour that I was missing. I ran upstairs and threw a sweater on and tried to fix my hair and then awkwardly joined the Zoom call about 10 minutes late. And that’s how my week started and that pace pretty much continued until Friday as we careened into this beautiful long weekend.

This weekend, I’m going to wash my sheets again and I really hope I don’t have to do battle with the damn bedskirt, but I know that’s wishful thinking. That jerk is always trying to fight with me. But unlike other times in my life, lately I don’t NEED to have everything perfect. If the bedskirt insists on hiking itself up around a corner of the boxspring, that’s fine.

When I walked into my bedroom this week and saw the little pompoms trailing vertically up and under the mattress, I just smiled. I mean, sometimes I still want to scream, depending on the day. But mostly, I’m glad to have clean sheets and a made bed. Daughters who want to come home and spend time with me. Never ending trips to Costco and Target. A new daughter to welcome into our family. A trip to Paris to plan for in the spring. Slices of ice cream sandwiches waiting for me on a plate. How lucky am I?

sunday shares: read + watch + cook + buy

Target for the win (again)

TBH I was concerned as the shower approached and I hadn’t really found anything I wanted to wear. TB really H, I hadn’t really been looking. I ran out to the fancy local strip mall the weekend before and there was nothing. Everyone — Anthropologie, JCrew, Banana — was going hard for spring. I had a few dress options I was considering. But then at Target while taking a lap with the girls, I spotted a great faux leather skirt. I paired it with an oversized black cashmere turtleneck I owned, picked up a pair of opaque tights and wore my favorite Madewell booties.

You can’t see the booties or tights bc Substack is being difficult (Enemy #2?) but trust me, they’re cute.

Speaking of Target

Target’s shoe section was low key on fire. One of my girls grabbed cowboy boots (we do need to prepare for our Cowboy Carter experience this summer) and my older daughter got really nice brown suede booties. And I grabbed these fancy looking sandals and silver flip flops.

loverlygrey

A post shared by @loverlygrey

Also, I liked some of the Target outfit combos this fashion blogger shared (Here’s the LTK link and fyi I just put the red cardigan in my shopping cart and these pants are tempting me).

Great shower or wedding gift idea

Both of my daughters have been crafting hard this winter. The older one is knitting hats and scarves like it’s her job and the younger one has taken to beading. Fish charms to dangle off our purses and Christmas ornaments as gifts. For the wedding/baby shower, she created all sorts of ornaments to give as gifts, including this fellow for my son’s bride-to-be whose maiden name is Fox.

She also gave them this monogrammed blanket, which I think is a lovely baby or wedding gift and it’s a quality brand at an excellent price point.

She got the idea from this TikTok.

@lo.murMy favorite gift to give!! #weddinggiftideas #babyshowergift #giftideas #matouk #fyp #momsoftiktok #monogram #pregnant

Tiktok failed to load.

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The fine print

I’m leaning hard into Severance this week. I started listening to the podcast that Adam Scott and Ben Stiller host, and it’s super fun if you like all the nerdy details. I learned about it from a coworkers who’s an amazing artist and designed a cool Severance poster filled with all the show’s breadcrumbs that Mark S. liked on Instagram.

We had our Q1 company meeting at the bottom of Lumen’s stairs this week.

If I wasn’t starving myself, I would be eating bags of these treats, which are my favorite flavor combo. And this week I subscribed to 3 new (to me) Substacks that I think you’ll love (Window Seat, Jessie Loves, Sarah Blondin).

Thanks for reading!

As always, thank you for taking the time to read this post. I’m truly so glad you’re here. If you like what you’re reading, please consider sharing this newsletter. (And if you have the time to like it or even better — comment — that would mean a lot to me!)