Tonight, everything in my house is conspiring to push me over the edge. I’ve got one daughter coughing (we’re all perpetually sick at this point), my other daughter (oh yeah, we’ll talk about that) crying, my sleeping husband sleep talking/grunting/coughing (again, we’re sick) and the goddamn Apple Watch dinging at random intervals because the charger is going bad.
I’m not sure if I woke Rick up or if he woke up to the baby, but next thing I know I’m snapping at him, complaining about all of the noises – on top of which, there is now a periodic high-pitched ringing. “That noise,” I say for the fourth time, frustrated that he can’t hear what is very clearly coming from some sort of broken electronics or, you know, something about to catch fire. Eventually I give up, chalking it up to tank-loading-induced hearing loss. He goes back to sleep, and I take a breath. I get the baby settled down and back to bed, peek in to make sure that E is still asleep, and get myself situated back on my pillow. Then, out of curiosity, I Google: “anxiety ringing in ears.” Yep, totally a thing. Sigh. Of course it is. I mentally add it to the list, take another deep breath, and put my podcast back on. I suppose I don’t have to worry about an impending fire from a malfunctioning computer. At least, not tonight.
I love to sleep. Like, I really love to sleep. Once I’m out, I’m generally down for the count* and my mother and husband can both attest that I’m not the kindest riser in the world. I consider waking up and being able to get back in bed and go to sleep (or taking an afternoon nap) to be the height of luxury. This was true pre-parenthood, but is ESPECIALLY the case now. With all of this said, I will generally choose going to bed early over most other activities, but I do love a good late-night putter. As a kid, this manifested as reorganizing my room for no reason at 9 pm (anyone else? just me? OK.) – as an adult, it sometimes looks like deciding that the toilet paper needs to be restocked right. now. or that we’re long overdue for a floor mop.
Now, full disclosure: I originally started drafting this post in July 2021. My nightly reset routine was much more clearly defined and also significantly more manic than I find myself these days. For context, I would get home around 6 o’clock, generally. A quick dinner would be followed by bedtime routine for E and then a little bit of relaxation time before hopping back on my work computer to complete my nightly report. This work initially took me anywhere from 2-3 hours, but I eventually whittled it down to about 45 minutes, depending on how the day had gone. For a while, after finishing the report and sending it off (somewhere between 9 and midnight), I would just collapse into bed. At some point, I realized that this made me feel super shitty.
One night, I took 10 minutes to tidy up the house after I finished my report – start the dishwasher, put away toys that had been left out throughout the day. I went to bed later, but I found myself falling asleep faster and waking up more refreshed. Some nights the tidy (affectionately called “puttering” by my husband, a term he adopted from my mother) was minor – just a few things to tuck away before heading upstairs. Some nights, I blacked out and came to while organizing a cabinet (kidding… maybe). The intensity and amount of puttering could be related to how messy the house was, how good a day I had had, or whether I’d decided coffee at 6 pm was a good idea, but I found myself going through the same routine almost every night, and dearly regretting it when I didn’t.
Fast forward a year plus and I am acutely aware that the success of this process may have had to do with not going to bed immediately on the heels of dealing with a major stressor** every night, but I have found that the general principle still stands. Taking those few extra moments to reset my brain – literally and figuratively shelving things back in their spots – gives me the space that I need to wind down and feel like I won the day, even when the scoreboard says otherwise. These days, I typically find myself putting the same ten pieces of play kitchen bits back in their spots and putting coats back in the closet (seriously, you’d think we were a family of twelve for the number of coats we have). On a grumpy day, I’m just cranky as I put things back where I put them twelve, eighteen, or two hours before. On a better day, I remind myself that I am deeply, entirely thankful for the little girl who made this mess and for the husband who cooked the dinner that we ate off these dishes. In either case, I relish the quiet and the order and (let’s be honest) the control of those few minutes puttering around the house after dark. The reward is worth delaying my precious sleep, just a little bit.
*The exception here being if I wake up from some sort of anxiety dream in the middle of the night. Then I’m toast.
**Ask me about when I had COVID and was logging in to work every night while sweating profusely, having dragged myself out of bed for the first time all day. It was good times.
Happy tears, sad tears, scared tears – she’s cried ’em all, folks!
Four months ago, I worked my last day at the job I’d had for nearly a decade. I had been winding down for about a month, so the day itself was pretty straightforward – I brought in coffee for my shop supervisor, got a lei from a sweet coworker and spent the day making sure I had collected anything I might need — notes from colleagues and clients, random things I had left in my desk, etc. It was also a normal day for the team, so there were normal work things to do: phone calls, escalations, and general housekeeping. We mostly went about our normal business, and I primarily tried to stay out of everyone’s way. I held it together pretty well, only getting a little teary-eyed periodically. Until 5 o’clock rolled around.
At the end of the day, I took myself for a walk around the building before heading over to the brewery where we were slated to have my going-away party. I traced the route that I’d taken nearly every day as I talked on the phone (I’m a walk-and-talker). The sun was about to set, and I turned the corner into the shop through the big (often broken – I won’t miss those calls) roll door. I expected to see most of the technicians still wrapping up their day, but I was met with silence and stillness. As I walked across the room to the command center desks, I raised my hands in a “What’s up?” gesture, chuckling at what my well-trained brain instantly categorized as a loss of productive hours. My shop supervisor smiled at me and said “They’re all waiting for you, Maddy,” and, out of nowhere, I totally lost it. The weight of the last month (and, really, years before that) hit me all at once in that moment and the next thing I knew, I was sobbing into his shoulder.
It took me a minute to pull myself together, and even then, I think I left a part of me behind in that moment. For as much as I have moved on in the last months, I still can’t quite find the words to explain how I felt right then. I remember most of the rest of the evening in vague detail, starting with my general feeling of awkwardness, even at my own party, hugging the edges of the room and growing increasingly overwhelmed as more people from the last ten years arrived to reminisce and express their best wishes. I know I gave some sort of a speech after being presented with the biggest card I’ve ever seen, and that I almost managed to not cry and only said “it has been my honor” maybe three times. I remember getting ready to leave and being suddenly faced with a gauntlet of colleagues and friends to hug and thank. Most vividly I remember the sudden silence and emptiness of walking out into the night with one of my closest friends, of dropping him off at his car and us both crying as we hugged goodbye. Driving away, in that moment, sucked. I have always hated being the one to leave far more than being the one that is left behind.
I say I left a little of myself behind in the moment I broke down in the shop, but I don’t think it was a bad thing. I think that that’s the moment I released a tension that had been building so slowly, for so long, that I almost didn’t know it was there. Despite making the decision to leave, I had zero idea how it massively it would impact me — how deeply the fibers of everything I was at that job were intertwined with who I am as a person and into how I perceived myself. I get teary and choked up thinking back on that day (and the days leading up to it), still, even months removed. I’m immeasurably proud of everything that I achieved, but even more I am proud of the people that I worked with and so very thankful for the friendships that I made.
There is so, so much more to this story — the whys and the exact hows and the nitty gritty of how I have changed significantly as a person in the last two years, but there’s no particular value in digging into it online, at least not now. Suffice to say, I do not regret having spent the time that I did, and I am simultaneously so incredibly excited for all the things that are yet to come. The weekend I decided to give my notice, a tweet from @dr.thema popped on to my Instagram, accompanied by some @emilyonlife brilliance. I’m not including it all here, but it was one of those moments where I felt like I was seeing exactly, exactly what I needed to see. “Sometimes winning looks like quitting… To leave is to live.” Just keep in mind there might be a lot of tears along the way. And yeah, I still get choked up thinking about that last day, but mostly because I’m so proud, and that’s just fine with me.
I will admit, I used to roll my eyes when people complained about their coffee going cold.
“I can never get through a cup of coffee!”
“Omg I would kill for a hot cup of coffee!”
“Ha! I just have one cup that I nurse and re-microwave throughout the day!” (Gross.)
I was impatient with these people. If you’re so frustrated with your cold coffee, just drink it while it’s still hot. Duh! Problem solved. Do not buy a fancy mug that warms it up, don’t post a selfie with a pouty face, just drink your dang coffee!
Well, joke’s on me, because as it turns out it is scientifically proven* that having children increases the heat dissipation of coffee by 200%. All of a sudden, one simply does not have enough hands to hold onto a cup of coffee, and inevitably when the mug does make it almost to your lips, it becomes Very Important Play time or Mommy I Have to Go Potty RIGHT NOW time. I very quickly shifted from being someone who could happily enjoy a cup (or two, or three) of hot coffee in the morning to someone who frequently picks up the mug, takes a sip, sighs, and has to make the decision whether to drink it cold or throw it out. I won’t microwave it; that just makes me sad – mostly because it will get cold again.
So, to all the people that I rolled my eyes at, I’m sorry. Actually, no – if you’re letting your coffee get cold because you drink it too slow and then you’re complaining about it, I’m not sorry. That’s still a you problem. BUT for all of those of you who have gremlins and work crises and dogs that escape right when you pour a hot cup of coffee, etc. – I am truly sorry. I didn’t understand, and now I do.
And yes, my coffee got cold while I wrote this. Dammit.
And cobwebs and crumpled old newspapers and all of those sorts of things.
Okay, forewarning, I am not committing to this being an “I’m baaaaack!” post. It might be, but this also might just be the start of a sporadic string of posts that then result in me going silent for another year-plus. Just want to make sure we’re on the same page, here. Set the right expectations and all that, ya know?
So what happened? Well, I went back to work, is the short answer. While I had thought/hoped/believed that this might continue to be a creative outlet, the fact of the matter was that between work and regular home life, there just wasn’t much left in the tank. Not super healthy, I know, but that’s a whole other thing. The truth is that I have a lot of half-written string-of-consciousness rambles stored in my phone from the last two years, and I just haven’t had the mental bandwidth to complete them. There’s probably definitely something to be said about the fact that I didn’t feel particularly funny or entertaining, and that the world has felt like a pretty scary place lately. That last part hasn’t changed, but as Elyse Myers would say: “Just do it, scared.”
So forgive me in advance (or don’t, it doesn’t really matter) for the shenanigans that are about to come as I (maybe) fill this space again. If it makes me laugh, or brings me catharsis, or even just refocuses my brain away from cycling between news sites for an hour here or there, it will be worth it and I’ll keep going. If not, I’ll just disappear and the crickets will take back over. Sound good? Great. Deal!
Basically a Sally’s Baking Addiction fangirl post.
For the last several weeks, I have not often come to this space to write. When I have, I’ll be honest that I have gotten quickly frustrated and insecure. I didn’t want to write something sad – I much prefer to be funny (at least, I think I’m funny) and I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Instead, I have been feeling deeply the difference between anticipation (I really did Christmas this year, y’all) and apprehension – the looming “deadline” of my maternity leave has made me a bit manic. As I’ve said, I do love my job and honestly, I’m not upset to go back. It’s just (another) huge change, and change is scary. So, every time I sat down to write, I felt like I was just pouring out high anxiety mixed with a bit of depression and it just didn’t feel right. So, instead of writing, I baked.
It started with Thanksgiving and my apple pie. I needed a pie crust recipe that wouldn’t make me cry, and I found Sally’s Baking Addiction. I’m probably way late to the party, since Sally’s blog has been around for about 10 years at this point, but I don’t even care because she’s in my life now and I. Can’t. Be. Stopped. The pie crust was great, and gave me the confidence to keep going. Next, I decided I needed to make some gingerbread cookies. I happily bought myself some molasses and got to work. Again, Sally’s recipes did me right – I was enchanted with my little iced gingerbread figures.
I think that this is where I went off the rails a little. I bought the Nordic Ware baking sheets I’d had my eye on, as well as two new cooling racks and silicone liners to go with them. I was ready to go nuts, and go nuts I did. I made more gingerbread cookies and I made sugar cookies, and handed out as many of them to friends and family as I could. I started re-watching The Great British Bake Off and I decided that I must make focaccia (listen to Paul Hollywood say focaccia a few times and tell me that you don’t also get the urge). Did Sally have a recipe for focaccia? Of courseshe does, and it was delicious.
Around this point, I think that Rick realized the power of suggestion – he casually asked whether I thought I could make some biscotti. Almond, dipped in chocolate, he specified. By now, I was just googling recipes plus “Sally’s Baking” and if a result came up, I figured that meant it was a go. Luckily for Rick, chocolate-dipped almond biscotti is in her repertoire, so it entered mine. I made them on Christmas Eve, and I couldn’t get over the fact that they looked like real biscotti. I will definitely make these again. That week, I also made another massive batch of cookies for the neighbors (and for us). Yes, I became that person. I think it was about this point when I began to realize that I may be ready to go back to work and focus this energy on something with less sugar. I wasn’t done yet, though.
On Christmas morning, I made cranberry orange bread (also delicious) and that night I made spinach soufflé and peppermint torte (not Sally recipes, but still delicious). I would say that at this point I was in a baking frenzy – whipping around the kitchen somewhere between gleefully and frantically. I was very pleased with my success.
Another episode of Bake Off resulted in Rick requesting pretzels. The next day, I made pretzels and spicy cheese sauce, which are up there with my favorite of things I’ve made (ever). They were relatively quick and simple (the baking soda bath is kind of a smelly pain of a process, but worth it) and they are soooo goooood.
To cap it all off, I knew I wanted to make chocolate cupcakes with Fancy Sprinkles for New Year’s. These were surprisingly easy to whip up and, blessedly, the recipe only makes about a dozen cupcakes (and I gave away eight), so we didn’t end up eating our weight in chocolate buttercream. As an aside, the sprinkles were everything I could have hoped, and I bought way too many so I’ll be putting sprinkles on everything I can moving forward.
All of this is to say that I clearly needed an outlet for my pent-up productivity. There are only so many times I can restock the toilet paper in the house and organize the spice cabinet before I just need something more. My newfound love (or should I say addiction – ha ha) for Sally’s recipes and easy-to-follow instructions is serving my stomach well and nursing moms need extra calories, right?
As I have said, time and time again (and will continue to say): I am a sucker for nostalgia. I just can’t help it – anything that has a tradition attached, or a whiff of times past… I get all gloopy and sappy and attached. I have always been like this, but having a child certainly hasn’t diminished the feelings. I struggle with any change to traditions, even when I know that it’s because we’re all growing up, expanding our families, and/or being responsible and safe. The reality of the situation is that I love all of the individual pieces that make up our new traditions, but I always have a nagging sense of nostalgia about anything that has changed – even if it means we get multiple “Christmas mornings.” Of course, this year has been a masterclass for all of us in Navigating Change and Accepting Hard Things, so I knew that going into the holidays was going to be no different.
For years, we (Rick and I) have juggled the multiple-dinner-Thanksgiving situation. Since our parents lived ten minutes apart, this wasn’t difficult early on. In fact, even after we moved into our current house and started hosting for Rick’s family, there was a huge upside to the shuffle: we would eat at our house, leave, and his family would relax for a while and clean up dishes. Thanksgiving dinner without the cleanup? Yes, please. As November approached this year, Rick’s mom broached the idea that perhaps this year, since we have an infant, we would rather split up the gathering to provide less stress and baby wrangling. We loosely planned for a brunch at our house and then dinner at my parents, but I think even then I had a feeling that things were not going to work out that way. Halloween came and went, and we started to see growing indications that things were headed in the wrong direction. About two weeks before Thanksgiving, we made the decision that (unlike a #blessed rustic sign from Homegoods would suggest) we were not going to gather for Thanksgiving at all.
I don’t really want to get into the nitty gritty of the decision-making process here – I’ve rehashed it about a thousand times in my real life. Suffice it to say that the whole thing was hard. In fact, it sucked. For everyone involved, I think. Once the decision was made, though, I felt good. As a (mostly) fastidious rule-follower, I felt encouraged every time I read a recommendation regarding limiting gatherings – I felt like we were doing the right thing for our situation and taking the steps that we needed to. Layer onto all of this that my brother-in-law is an ER nurse and that some unforeseen medical issues resulted in Rick’s grandfather being in a skilled nursing facility and unable to see us, and things wouldn’t have been “normal” in any event.
Thanksgiving Day came and we spent time watching the parade, enjoying the dog show, and paying rent to the the Duwamish. I enjoyed making a pie and some sides, and Rick made an adorable little turkey breast. We made turkey hands with the baby – traditional décor at my house growing up and a tradition I was tickled to be able to carry on. I texted with my mom and my sisters, and we had phone calls with Rick’s family. I have to be honest, it was a pretty lovely day. I insisted that we all get dressed up for dinner, and that we plate food on the table (not just in the cooking vessels) – I was determined to elevate our meal above the everyday, even if it was just the three of us sitting down to dinner. When everything was ready, we turned on some music and turned down the lights a little bit and sat down – and, for the first time all day, I was sad.
The emotion was… not necessarily fleeting, but manageable. I mentioned it later to Rick and he agreed that he felt the same. I think that in that moment, we both recognized a bit of loss. Not an earth-shaking, heart-wrecking Loss-with-a-capital-L, but a quiet acknowledgement of the little losses of tradition and carefreeness that we have admittedly taken for granted. The food was there – the potatoes and ambrosia and even a modified green-bean-casserole. We had cranberry sauce, and there was still turkey (albeit no drumsticks) – there were even two pies ready and waiting for dessert. We were dressed up, the tablecloth was on, and we had candles lit and music playing. All of the ingredients for a traditional Thanksgiving were there, except our families. Our families, who were not across the country, but only a few miles down the road. It was weird, and it felt a little empty.
Then, just as I was about to pick up my fork, baby girl decided she was hungry and was over sitting in the bouncer. I laughed and rolled my eyes and picked her up to nurse. Rick snapped a picture and we carried on, happily helping ourselves to seconds and thirds, not having to worry about leaving the last bite for someone else. After dinner, we had a quick video call with my family – getting to peek into my sister’s kitchen and my parents’ preparations, before putting the baby to bed and cutting ourselves generous slices of pie. We snuggled up on the couch and watched Home Alone and then called it a night. Right about when my parents and younger sister were eating dinner, we were brushing our teeth and climbing into bed.
As I listened to the ever-present “whoosh” of the sound machine, I felt a little guilty – even with the sadness, even with missing the people we love the most, it had been a really good day. I appreciated the slow, relaxed experience of not having to worry about what time people were arriving at the house, or when we had to leave, or even really when the food was going to be done. I appreciated sharing the kitchen with my husband to clean up (which I often don’t, so that in itself was a Thanksgiving miracle) and I hadn’t watched Home Alone in years. I missed our normal traditions, absolutely, but I was proud of us for building some new ones. I have no idea what Thanksgiving 2021 will look like, though I have high hopes and Rick has declared that he’s getting a whole turkey, no matter what. Regardless, I think that my nostalgic heart will always have a little spot for Thanksgiving 2020 – after all, Rick and I may have eaten dinner without our families, but we were not alone: right there next to us was the little girl for whom I am most thankful, that day and always.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are very challenging. They frustrate me. The problem is that I go into the store (or, more recently, the Klesick’s order form) and I want to buy everything. The colors! The smells! The appeal of making something healthy and delicious! The thunder sound effect in the produce section! It’s all just so enticing. Once I get the haul home, however, I have a much harder time keeping up the motivation or, at least, timing said motivation with the optimal ripeness of the food. I say this not only to enlighten those of you who somehow still think I have my shit together, but to demonstrate why I love banana bread and, more specifically, banana bread muffins so much.
You see, banana bread is magic because you can’t make it until the fruit has gone “bad.” You can look at the bananas that you somehow forgot to eat despite them sitting right there on the counter and say, “It’s okay. I meant to do that. Now I can make banana bread!” and pat yourself on the back for being so resourceful. While I do love a good banana bread, I find that I have a very hard time making one that isn’t a little gloppy in the middle, which isn’t very appealing. Making muffins seems to resolve this issue, with the added benefit of being a more “grab and go” option. This is the recipe that I have been using most recently, and I love how simple it is. I had to make a double batch this week when I discovered that my bananas were not only brown but separating from their stems – crying out to be turned into bread – and it still took almost no time at all.
So, next time you find yourself with some browning (or very brown) bananas, give yourself credit for your patience and whip up a batch of banana bread muffins. Then congratulate yourself for refusing to be bullied by fruit, at least for the time being.
Things have been a little heavy around here lately, so I think it’s time for another list that no one asked for!
Once upon a time, I thought maybe I would start a YouTube channel. I didn’t think about it very seriously, or for very long, but I did film one video. (No, you can’t see it.) My topic of choice was product “empties” – one of my very favorite types of beauty-related videos to watch. The essence of an empties video is that someone goes through a saved collection of items (skincare, makeup, etc.) that they’ve completely used up and provides quick mini-reviews and information on each product. I find these both fascinating and useful – I’d much rather hear someone’s thoughts on a product after they’ve used it for weeks than after one attempt. While I quickly determined that I had neither the time nor energy (nor desire to put my face online) to devote to an onscreen project, here I am with a blog and GUESS WHAT, I’m going to write about my empties here instead! Lucky you.
For a long time, I was getting Boxycharm and Ipsy sample boxes/bags every month, which was a fun way to get and test out makeup and skincare items that I probably wouldn’t otherwise purchase. Over time, though, I started to notice that I was giving away most of the items that I got in these bags, both because they weren’t my style and because I was just wearing less makeup. I finally cancelled both subscriptions and found it oddly liberating (and made me $30/month richer). At the same time, I was pregnancy nesting and had vowed to work my way through as many of the sample-sized items that I had amassed as possible – much easier to do when you don’t have new stuff coming in all the time. I’ve been pretty successful, though I definitely still have more sheet masks than I know what to do with.
With all of that said, here are five of the products* that I’ve been able to use up in the last few months:
Urban Decay Quick Fix Hydracharged Complexion Prep Priming Spray (OMG what a name). Would repurchase? Yes, and I have. I’m starting off with probably the least necessary product on the list. I use this spray to set any makeup that I do wear and, honestly, sometimes just because spritzing it on my face feels good. While there is a fragrance, it’s not unpleasant, and the mister makes a fine spray, which is always good. I’m not sure how much of anything it actually does (which for $33 probably isn’t great), but it feels nice and the bottle lasts me a long time. I’m not someone who often needs a setting spray that’s going to “lock in” makeup – on the rare occasion that I do (I did wear makeup to the hospital when I had the baby, which I stand by) I would reach for the Urban Decay All-Nighter spray instead. For daily use, though, that’s a little too much like spraying hairspray on my face, so I’ll stick with the Quick Fix’s gentler approach.
Drunk Elephant Sili Body Lotion.Would repurchase? Meh, maybe. I am terrible at using body lotion (I don’t like to be sticky and I’m terrible at waiting to be fully dry before I get dressed), so I’m not sure that I am convinced that this would be a good investment. I will say, though, that it smells delightfully like almond. More specifically, it smells exactly like the sand dollar cookies from the teddy bear cookbook that I had growing up. Exactly. So, if you want to smell like a delicious almond cookie, this may be the body lotion for you.
Aveeno Positively Radiant Brightening Cleanser.Would repurchase? Yes, eventually. My confession on this one is that I did not actually use it up, BUT I have a good excuse. You see, I am not entirely certain, but I am pretty confident that I have had this same bottle of cleanser since high school. Not the same type of cleanser, but this very same bottle. Maybe college, but I suspect high school. So, you know, ten-ish years. I have packed it up and moved with it multiple times. I’m horrified to say that I probably put it on my face at least once sometime in the last year. I’m lucky my skin didn’t straight-up peel off my face. I finally had to just throw the bottle away. I will totally buy it again. I think it’s a perfectly fine cleanser, nothing wildly special, but I love the way that it smells.
Tatcha The Deep Cleanse Gentle Exfoliating Cleanser.Would repurchase? No, thank you. This was exactly the opposite of the Aveeno and Drunk Elephant products – I hate the smell of this cleanser. Which is great, because Tatcha is very expensive and I don’t need another expensive product in my skincare regime. I think that the heavy scent is from the Japanese rose, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’m not a huge fan of physical exfoliants either, so all around I think this product just wasn’t set up for success. It was a Sephora free gift with purchase, though, so I’m not terribly upset.
belif The True Cream Aqua Bomb. Would repurchase? Again and again and again. I use this every single day, twice a day. It is lightweight and refreshing and is barely fragranced. I turn my shower up way too hot and always end up with my face feeling super tight and angry, and as soon as I get out and put this on, all is right again. I usually try to get it in a gift set (which of course is not on Sephora’s website at the moment) that includes a full-size along with a toner, eye cream, and cleanser. I recently bought the full-size cleanser as well, after going through two or three of the minis. I’ve tried the belif Moisturizing Bomb and the Sleeping Mask and didn’t fall in love with either of them in quite the same way, but the Aqua Bomb is just… perfect. I love it, it’s great, I always have to make sure I have a backup ready so I don’t run out.
So there you have it, a little peek into my figurative medicine cabinet. I’m trying hard to be intentional about the items that I purchase, particularly when it comes to makeup and skincare, because I already have so much – a lot of which rarely gets used. I’m continuing my quest to work through what I can and donate what I haven’t started and know I won’t use, in the hope of one day having clear cabinets once again. After all, a girl can dream, right?
*I used up way more than five products, I just had to put some sort of limit on myself. Also, now I can throw away my bin of empty bottles and whatnot because yes, I did actually keep it for reference.
In which I spend hours transferring files to ensure our embarrassing moments are safe forever.
A few weeks ago, I had dinner with my parents, my sister, brother-in-law and niece. It was the day before Halloween and we decided that we’d have the kids dress up and we’d watch old family videos. What started as a fun, laid-back plan quickly took a turn to Stresstown and resulted in me deciding that digitizing our collection of Hi-8 tapes needed to be reprioritized from “Would be Nice Someday” to “Must Complete ASAP.” After all, you know I love a good project.
First, a bit of background: I LOVE watching our home movies. My parents (and older sister!) did an incredible job of documenting our lives with photos and videos. We have videos of Christmases, yes, but also random Tuesday nights where we’re outside looking at hot air balloons. The tapes are meticulously labeled with dates, timestamps, and amusing descriptions of the contents – “Maddy rolls over and spits up” is one that comes to mind. At one point, in high school, I started the project of going through and making copies of all of the tapes (they look a little something like this) on DVDs for ease of watching, but I quickly got bored and stopped. As a result, we generally just play back the tapes directly from the camcorder.
However, this particular Friday night, I went to hook up the video camera and discovered that the AV hookup my dad had set up previously no longer functioned with the new television. This prompted much discussion, inspection of the new TV, and finally the decision that the massive rear-projection unit (Magnolia Hi-Fi’s finest, as I deemed it) needed to be temporarily relocated from the basement to the living room. It was quite a production, but (most of) the walls emerged unscathed, and there was only minimal swearing. Successful, overall, but not really a sustainable solution. We had a wonderful time watching the old videos (particularly hilarious on the giant screen), and it was clear that we needed a way to continue to watch them in the future without having to worry about how. So, merry Christmas, Dad – I digitized our home videos.
First, I had to assemble my supplies. I knew that I wanted to create both a digital library of the videos as well as replicate the tapes in DVD format. I ended up purchasing the following:
DVDs (not linking because the AmazonBasics ones were trash, more on that later) and disc labels, as well as a label applicator
A CD binder – I originally got jewel cases but realized they would take up too much room
Once I had all of my supplies, the task began. There isn’t really (as far as I can tell) a “shortcut” way to do this transfer. Essentially, you play through the tapes on the camcorder, while recording onto the USB drive via the converter. If you’ve ever made a mixtape from the radio (I just lost anyone under about 30), the same principle applies. If you fast-forward through the tape, the fast-forwarded version is what gets recorded, so it’s a slow process. I typically would set up a tape to start playing in the morning and just check on it periodically. The converter I got had an option to automatically stop recording after a certain amount of time, but since I was never really sure how long the tapes were, I just chose to manually end the recording. Worst-case, I ended up with blank space at the end of the recording – sometimes, if I was worried about the file fitting onto the DVD, I cut it down in Adobe Premiere Rush, sometimes I just left it.
I repeated the recording process over and over again, transferring the files from the USB to the external hard drive every three or four tapes, just to be safe. I watched back bits of the videos on my computer, to verify that the labels on the tapes were correct and to make sure that nothing had gone wrong in the video transfer process. I did find that the converter recorded some fairly choppy video – the instructions say not to worry if it looks like it’s doing this because it will play back fine. I didn’t necessarily find that to be the case, but ultimately it wasn’t worth trying to make it perfect. I chalked it up to some of the tapes being slightly damaged – not surprising, since many of them were 20-30 years old.
Once I had the files digitally safe, I set about making hard copies that could be played without the camcorder. I chose to make DVDs, but I skipped the fancy steps of menus, titles, etc. because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it in a reasonable timeframe. The Microsoft Surface that we have doesn’t have a ton of processing power, and the DVDs that I had weren’t large enough to handle Rush files of any significant length. I copied the files from the hard drive and burned the DVDs, not without a large amount of difficulty. Turns out that the AmazonBasics DVDs that I had purchased were garbage, despite their high star rating. About two out of three times, the disk would fail to burn, resulting in a corrupted and unusable DVD. For a while, I thought it was the drive that I was using, so I replaced it (the one I linked above is the new one, which definitely is higher quality than my first attempt). That seemed to help, but I was still seeing failures about 50% of the time. I thought I had found a workaround by rebooting the computer before every burn attempt, but I think that was mostly a fluke. I had just about run out of DVDs (and patience) when my mom cleaned out a cabinet at her house and found a huge supply of DVDs from back in the day. I successfully burned three in quick succession, with no issues. Furious, I went back and read the reviews of the AmazonBasics disks and found that I was not alone in my struggles. Those DVDs are trash. Sigh.
The “fanciest” part of the project, for me, was the labels. I decided to get a little extra and make consistent Photoshop versions, rather than hand-writing all of the labels. I had great fun designing, printing, peeling and sticking all of the labels. At first, I thought that the label applicator that I had purchased was a huge waste of time and money, but I was just using it wrong. That thing is a game-changer. I want to label ALL the CDs/DVDs. Very satisfying.
Above all else, I cannot properly express how much fun this project was. I am, as we know, a nostalgic lady. I have always loved these home videos, even when I was a kid. I cringe (like, full-body, bury-my-head-in-my-hands cringe) at some of the ones that I made – there are literal tapes just of me testing out the “special effects” on the camera – but ultimately I appreciate that even these are capturing moments in time and preserving them in a way that photos alone cannot. I love getting to see my sister, age 10, hop a fence with my mom and try to ride horses. I giggle at my other sister, age four (ish), quoting Grease – “Tell me about it, stud.” I was surprised and delighted to watch a clip of myself setting up an “interview” and realize that I share a variety of minute expressions and movements with my 5-year-old niece. I am so thankful to have these records of history preserved, and going through the process of backing them up made me even more determined to carry on the tradition. In 30 years, I want to be able to look back on videos of baby E squawking at the ceiling fan and spitting up on me as we play airplane and show her how little she once was. Plus, moustache-sporting Rick dancing to David Bowie needs to be immortalized on video forever, in my opinion.
Hickmans at Home 