every dumb (and smart) thing i bought this summer
I’m slowly coming back to myself after a jam-packed summer on tour with Ambition Monster which culminated in a truly crap case of COVID that left me laid up for a week. Despite the fact that my brain was on fire (or maybe because?), I still mustered the energy to “click to purchase” a bunch of stupid shit, including, on the worst day of my fever, that viral face mask that temporarily distorts your face so you resemble both your teenage self and an 80 year-old man who lived hard (review to come for my day job, but TL;DR — not great!)
Beyond the dumb $37 photo-op mask, I’ve also been buying and trying Amazon’s #1 best-selling beauty products for work, mostly because I’m cantankerous and want to prove they are not good. But lo! Two impressed me — Color Wow’s Dream Coat is the best anti-frizz I’ve ever come across (read my review here) and I’m similarly smitten with CeraVe’s night cream which is lightweight and absorbs fast while ringing in at a third of the cost of the bougie stuff I usually slather on my face.
Speaking of bargains, I don’t know that I would have gotten through the ‘vid as peacefully as I did without these $40/100 percent cotton Target sheets which I picked up during that “circle” sale or whatever they call it for $25. Speaking of non-bargains, this Dusen Dusen coverlet is the ideal “sweaty person who is also intermittently cold and therefore impossible to please” weight, ie meant for every lady in menopause I know.
Moving on: Fancying myself as a more focused and serious reader than I am, I took aspirational books into my sick bed, including: the re-issue of Kate Zambreno’s Heroines which I didn’t read but looked at a lot and also fell asleep with on my chest, which is close to reading, right? Similarly, I snuggled up with Miranda July’s All Fours (70 pages in!) and Mary Roach’s Bonk (30 pages in!) but mostly didn’t absorb one word.
As for the rest! of! my! summer! spending! It was plentiful and irresponsible and indulgent, beginning with these gorgeous clogs by Beklina. I’m a naturally clumsy/stumbly person who’s also been known to drink martinis ‘til I’m wobbly and because of these facts am not usually a clog person because I do not have a death wish. HOWEVER there’s something magic about the construction of these that makes them comfortable and completely stable-feeling, even for me. I love them with skirts and shorts and jeans and especially with pretty, feminine dresses. They also come in lavender and a very good chestnut-y brown which, I’m just saying, would be actually flawless for fall.
Because I somehow became the Imelda Marcos of book tours (that is if Imelda Marcos wanted to look like a ceramics teacher from 1979), I also purchased these strappy Tevas I saw on Andrea Linett’s blog that maybe one of the Olsen twins wears? I don’t really care because they are so desperately comfortable and they look cuter than they should with almost everything and I even used them as ocean shoes the one time I got to be in the water this summer because it was Wim Hof cold but more importantly sole-cruel rocky (wah wah).
When I was swimming that one time, I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit from J.Crew which had an especially good selection this year and also a ton of sales (the two I chose rang in at under $50).
In the fog of book-tour wardrobe war (meaning: I’d packed poorly and couldn’t sort out what to wear and felt insecure and mad), I wandered into the Brooklyn Rachel Comey one afternoon and picked up these truly chic and versatile pants. I purchased them before I knew I’d soon be looking for a new home (our landlord is selling our rent-controlled building!). I perhaps would’ve made a different life choice if I’d known this major financial upheaval was forthcoming; still, I don’t regret the investment. I’ve worn them at least 20 times already, dressed up and down. They’re lightweight and easy to hand wash and quick drying and really just my favorite summer travel pants I’ve ever owned.
There’s more of course, much of which I don’t remember: I bought these peanut butter power bars that everyone likes but I think are only OK. I ate them anyway. I tried several styles of Famolare’s sandals and hated them all. I tested 14 different gray-root coverup sprays for a story I’m working on and decided Style Edit’s is the best. I tried a bunch of TikTok-famous “skin tints” and found the teen-favorite Summer Fridays is actually dewy and quite nice. During my one beach day of the summer, I splashed out on aughts-standby Tend Skin for razor burn and guess what? It’s just as reliable as ever — I used an old razor and…no bumps!
ICYMI: The Spread featured me and Ambition Monster and Everything Is Fine in a Q&A this week. It’s among my favorite interviews I’ve done, I got to talk about why I’ll never be a guru, “making it” as a writer plus my origin story with Kim France and a whole lot more.
If you’re in Boston/Cambridge, All She Wrote books is holding a book club event for Ambition Monster on September 22. It’s part of their Sunday morning “Breakfast Club” series and sounds kind of divine.
Speaking of, Glamour recently named Ambition Monster one of “the best bookclub books of 2024” and someone else did too but I lost the link.
Wow. Famolares! What's next to come back - Yo-Yo's??? I might be into that.
I bought those Tevas after seeing the photo of an Olsen wearing them 😳 Excellent purchase though, still going strong years later!