Postcard from My Life

Dan and me last Monday in The Sunshine State. We flew down for five nights to attend the wedding of Florida Orange, our goddaughter. We stayed in Homestead, where the wedding took place. The drive to Miami was about 40 minutes. Photo by Punch.

I can't believe I haven't blogged since November.

On the other side of our Florida trip, I wanted to jot a few notes. We returned last Wednesday.

We packed not just our suitcases, with swimsuits, sunscreen, and wedding clothes, but also our complicated and wrinkly-crinkly personalities, of course. Dan booked on Travelocity and instead of the two lovely, chilled, carefully decorated and kitchen- and laundry-equipped Airbnb homes we splurged on the last two years (the first was steps from the beach), this was the Travelodge by Wyndham Florida City Homestead Everglades motel with a free hot breakfast. (Even so, it was about $1,000 total for five nights and every room was full, many with foreign tourists.) We also had to get plane tickets for three of us, etc. and not overspend. (Fig flew JetBlue and has rewards.)

We did relax, even though we shared one room with two queen beds. I tried to prepare myself mentally ahead of time for that togetherness. (Figgy spent three out of five nights with the bride in Boynton Beach.) We were busy a lot. A rental car means everything. We explored Key Largo a little; drove to South Beach, Miami and enjoyed the gorgeous blue water and the beauty of the breeze; attended the rehearsal dinner and the wedding. Three of Dan's four brothers and two of my sisters-in-law flew down from Maine, and it was fun catching up among palm trees, also with the parents and brothers of the bride!

Figgy, 28, and Punch, on the cusp of 17, at the wedding. 

Torrential rain in the botanic garden outside, so Punch put on a sweatshirt.

My sister-in-law Martha texted this, saying Figgy's look 

reminded her of  the Portrait of Madame X painting 

by John Singer Sargent, 1884. 

I checked out the Robert Is Here tropical fruit stand, colorful and fun. It was under "Things to Do" on the couple's Knot website. I got a fresh mango smoothie with Splenda and had them add raw kale. That was healthy but the green hue not nearly as nice as pure sunny mango would have been on a rainy Florida day. I drove 15 minutes to a Sprouts supermarket, which I hadn't been able to find at home.  They carry the California brand Sweet Laurel's baking mixes (healthy, no refined sugar, also vegan for Fig). They only had the scone mix, but I scooped it up and tucked the pretty pink box in my carry-on.

Punchy did some good things. Florida Orange and Figgy invited her to hang with them and sleep over one night, so she took the train from the Miami Airport to Boynton Beach, responsibly and safely. Dan got her on the train and FLO and Fig met her on the other end. She also went back and forth to the Travelodge pool, sporting her sunglasses and a nice black swimsuit I got her. 

That afternoon in South Beach was pricey, as New York City would be for out-of-towners who don't know the place well. But we had the most enormous slices of pizza I have ever seen, just positively giant. We watched volleyball games with the sea as a backdrop. Driving back to Homestead, Punch and I drifted off into peaceful late afternoon naps after breathing in that beach air. That was a gift.

FLO and Eric tie the knot. Sweet couple. 

They crushed on each other back when; Eric is a friend of FLO's older bro.

Figgy and FLO before.

Figgy and FLO day after wedding.

Dan and FLO.

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I stopped blogging because I wanted to dig in more to writing for pay, and I have. I wanted to stop spending day after day focused on a teenager's life, fielding calls from the high school, swinging at a curve ball with a ping-pong paddle. My efforts seemed fruitless. I was and am a caring witness but no one is equipped to fully fix things, not the trained staffers at a huge public school, though they tried, and surely not Dan or me. Punchy's out-of-district school placement since last March has helped greatly. I have six hours without phone calls and worries, without requests to come get her. She is in a safer place. We also consider her over-one-year relationship with her supportive boyfriend (blog name Great Smile Deep Thinker) helpful.

Still, even with the uninterrupted time, it's a bit of a crawl to make meaningful money. Publications like Brain & Life (about living with neurological diagnoses, from Alzheimer's disease to Parkinson's) pay five times as much as my lifestyle writing--which is called content production now, for the website of the golden Seven Sisters* magazine I will always hold close to my heart. But after 100+ years, that magazine has cut back from 12 issues a year to six. It's sad. Advertisers want instant clicks and purchases. They can't wait around for glossy print ads to grab a reader's purse strings. Everything is #rightnow.

I'm happy to say I've enjoyed all of the assignments. New skills. Anyway, here are three of my most recent articles:

• 12 Best Laundry Detergents of 2024, According to Cleaning Pros Good Housekeeping website
• Young Romeo & Juliet, Neurodiverse Production Brain & Life website and print magazine (subscriptions are free, and bilingual)
• Behind The Design: 5 Creative Questions With Sarah Sherman Samuel aspire design and home website

I'm broadening my horizons and it's great to be working closely again with one of my GH colleagues. 

But a funny thing happened.....just as writing about fashion eventually pumped up my style wanting and spending, even writing about CLEANING PRODUCTS has affected my buying of those. 

It's always been the case, the whole point of lifestyle writing featuring products is to make people want to get stuff. Turns out this can also work with the writer. 

I've now purchased Diptyque (pronounced DIP-TEAK) made-in-Paris wood and leather polish; Dreft baby laundry detergent in the pink bottle (I had a $3 coupon and after all, wrote "The rest of the family will also like the beloved 'Baby Fresh' scent that Dreft delivers," which I have found to be true when I could finally nab a bottle at my store) and reconnected with Caldrea, a brand I met on a Hudson Valley weekend 10 years back but hadn't encountered since. I also bought Safely detergent in a pretty colored jug at Whole Foods on Madison Avenue one Saturday when I had the car in NYC. 

These four purchases racked up a lot of spending but I think it's productive spending, as in cleaning our old wood and making the laundry smell lovely if I can. As Moey's mother, Muriel, wisely told me when I was a newlywed, getting a cleaning product that smells good helps you do the chore.

Good night to you.

*Seven Sisters can refer to a climbing hybrid rose, a cluster of stars or the group of women's (or formerly women's) colleges in the eastern U.S. having high academic and social prestige. It includes Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley. 

For the magazine world, I like this Wikipedia definition:

The Seven Sisters is a group of magazines that has traditionally been aimed at married women who are homemakers with husbands and children, rather than single and working women.^[1] The name is derived from the Greek myth of the "seven sisters", also known as the Pleiades. A major force in 20th century American publishing, only three of the magazines are still published as physical magazines:

• Better Homes and Gardens (1922–)
• Family Circle (1932–2019)
• Good Housekeeping (1885–)
• Ladies' Home Journal (1883–2016)
• McCall's (1873–2002)
• Redbook (1903–2019)
• Woman's Day (1937–)

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(magazines) for more details.