Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Pull up a seat at our table, where badass women from all walks of life—fashion, beauty, design, music, philanthropy, art, and more—come together to share honest stories, serve truths, and dig into the realities of modern womanhood.
Johanna Almstead:
Hello everyone and welcome to Eat My Words. Tonight is a girl dinner and we're going to talk about summer. So I'm just going to eat fresh garden deliciousness tonight for my girl dinner. I'm going to have a little fresh watermelon with feta and fresh mint and a little fresh basil chopped on top, and like a tiny little drizzle of olive oil over it. So good. And I have the most delicious romaine and kale from my garden, so I'm just going to make myself a little salad and I'm going to have a big old glass of Armentino and sit on my deck and have a little girl dinner. So let's dig in. We're going to talk about summer.
Summer, summer, summertime in the city. Okay, so summer. My summer has just started. So I know many of you have been summering for a while now because your kids have been out of school for a lot longer, you live in a different place, but I am really just getting started over here. And so I wanted to talk about the idea of summer as a verb. And I know this is controversial because it can sound really douchey and really uptight and really WASPy and very aristocratic, but I like the word, summer, as a verb. To summer. For me, it is a really important time to dial it down and to check in with myself. I think maybe because I'm a summer baby. I was born in the summer. I love the summer. The summer is when I feel the most at ease and the most calm and I just love the beach and I love fresh veggies and I love the sunshine and I love the laziness and the kind of unstructured part of it.
I know that doesn't work for a lot of people, but I wanted to just talk about this idea of how you summer and what it means. And I saw this great thing, forget his name. His name's Jesse Itzler or something. I think that's how you say his name. He's like a big entrepreneur and he talks about this idea of summering hard and that he and his family make all these really fun goals for the summer and do all this crazy stuff. And I kind of love that idea of throwing it all up and knowing that it's a short season and we only get so many summers in our lives. And I just really love this idea of being really intentional about your time and just really recognizing it.
It's funny, I lived in LA for three and a half years in my 20s and I thought I would love it because it's basically summer all the time there. But what I realized was I didn't like it all the time. I want it to be rare. I wanted the change of the seasons. I needed that marker as the passage of time. And I think back on last summer or summers in my head and when I was in LA, it just sort of all blended together because it was just like one big long summer and it didn't feel right. So this summer, I'm back in my house and I'm feeling very grateful for my house and I'm feeling very grateful for my pool that I get to swim in and relax in and my garden. And so I'm trying to be really thoughtful about how I spend my time. So I want to just talk a little bit about what summer means to me. So I made a list because you know I love a list.
For me, summer means reading, so much reading and reading only for pleasure. So I try not to read the business books and the entrepreneur books and all the other stuff in summer. For me, it is only for pleasure. And man, have I been reading like a crazy person. So in a little bit, I'm going to give you guys my list of books that I have read or are on my list to read. I have piles of books everywhere, guys. It's crazy. But for me, it's reading. I love it in the morning. So normally during the school year, I'm flying out of bed at 6:00 AM and starting to deal with the day and doing the lunches and doing the emails and doing all the things. And I really try not to do that in the summer. I try to leave my kids to have a lot of unstructured time, even though they are going to do a bunch of things. But I try to have at least a couple weeks every summer where we really don't have to be up and out.
And so I still wake up really early, but I like to just read in my bed for a little bit. If I'm super lucky, it might be a day that my husband makes me coffee and brings it to me in bed, which is the best day ever. And I just read a little bit. Instead of getting on my phone right away, instead of worrying about the schedule, instead of looking at my calendar first, I just read a book. And that has been really, really good for my soul. The other things that mean summer to me, when I am summering, actively summering, it means that I'm saying yes to more things. I'm saying yes to the crazy requests that my kids have. I'm saying yes to the impromptu dinners. I'm saying yes to the impromptu road trips. I'm saying yes to the things that I know are just pure joy for my kids that maybe during the year I don't have the bandwidth to do. And I'm saying yes to dialing back a little bit of work so that I can have the space and the bandwidth to do those things with my kids.
I know I'm really fortunate that I can do that. I know there's a lot of people who can't, but I do encourage you to find the places. If you get summer Fridays, take advantage of them. If you have PTO, take a little time and just dial it all back and break the cycle, break the routine. For me, I have a pretty intense routine during the school year and I know that everybody else does and I know there's people who really thrive in the routine, but for me, it means breaking the routine and saying yes to things more often.
I also, when I summer, eat a lot of ice cream. I eat so much ice cream. It's ice cream several times a week. And sometimes it's a meal and I'm okay with that. I think it's a balanced meal. There's definitely some maybe protein. If you put Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in your Flurry situation, then that's protein, right? But yeah, indulging in things that I wouldn't normally indulge. I'm also a very seasonal ice cream eater. I do not eat ice cream the rest of the year, which my family thinks is crazy, but for me, it's summer. Summer, summer, summer, ice cream.
It also means staying up late to watch the fireflies or to watch movies or to watch the World Cup lately. It's like allowing myself to do the things that I don't allow myself to do during the year, which is I don't really stay up late during the year unless I'm out. So that's been fun. And saying yes to more veg out days, letting my kids kind of veg a little bit, letting myself veg a little bit. We had a really bonkers month of June that ran straight into the 4th of July and we had friends over and we were hosting a lot and we were cooking a lot and cleaning a lot. And I had the day on the Sunday of that weekend where I did not get out of my pajamas. I stayed in my pajamas all day. And it was glorious. And I read an entire book, which I'm going to tell you guys about when I talk to you guys about my book list.
But I read an entire book. I didn't do anything else. I was supposed to reorganize my kitchen desk. I was supposed to organize my pantry. I was supposed to do all these things and I didn't do it. I read in bed in my pajamas and it was glorious and probably not something I would allow myself to do during the grind of the fall or the spring or the winter. So saying yes to veg out days is really something.
I'm also trying to play more games. I think we talked about this a little bit for my New Year's resolution/things I want to do more of. So on my summer bucket list is to learn finally, learn how to play backgammon. It's on there, guys. And just saying yes to more games, getting playful again, allowing myself to say yes to playing Scattegories with my kids for several hours, saying yes to road trips. Yeah, sure, can drive two hours to some random beach that we've never heard of. Let's do it. And again, I know that not everybody can do this every day, all summer long, but if we can try to just build these moments in, take the weekend and do it on a Saturday and just say yes to something.
I've also been just trying to say yes to unstructured time, just giving myself a bit of ease because it feels like during the rest of the year, my days are literally down to the minute. They are scheduled down to the very minute. And if something goes haywire, it really screws up the whole day. So I'm really trying hard to allow for some unstructured days where I don't feel like my chest is up here and I don't feel like I'm just running against the clock, which is what I feel like a lot of the year. And I guess the big lesson here is what can I take from my summer and summering and bring it into the rest of the year? We'll talk about that in September. We'll see how well I do over the summer.
And the other thing I'm saying yes to is hosting imperfectly. I love to host and I love things to be perfect, but I'm also just trying to say yes to like, "Hey, come on over. We'll order a pizza. Let's just hang out and place Scattegories and sit outside and look at the garden and listen to the birds and toads." We have these crazy frogs. My husband calls them peepers. I don't think that's what they're actually called, but making noise. And we just had these crazy rains and so my creek in the back of my property is just gushing and just sit and listen and have a friend over or two and have a glass of wine and order pizza and chill out.
So those are the things I'm saying yes to and those feel really, really good. I would love for you guys to tell me what you're saying yes to. Tell me how you summer as a verb because I think we need to. I think other countries do it really well. And I don't know if we're good at it here, but I'm trying to get better at it.
Okay. So I want to talk to you guys about some books just because I'm in a reading frenzy right now. Okay. So the book that I read the other day, everyone get a paper and pencil or get your phone if you want to make notes because I've got some good ones. The one that I read cover to cover in one day in my pajamas was The Fine Art of Lying by Alexander Andrews. It was amazing. So good. Gripping kind of mystery, fabulous, so good. I know this is like old news, but if you guys have not read Belle Burden's Strangers, oh my goodness, you must, you must, you must, you must.
Okay. The other things I'm reading, I'm currently reading London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. Holy crap guys. Again, I think I'm a little late. I know there's a lot of buzz. There was a lot of buzz going on around it, but my friend just actually told me about it and then sent it to me because she was like, "You must read this." And I started reading it in the morning one morning, like I was saying, having my nice relaxing mornings and I couldn't put it down. I had to force myself to put it down to get on with my day and actually get work done. But it is gripping and it's a true story and it's bonkers and whoa. Talk about really interesting story. I'm not even going to tell you what it's about because I don't want to mess anything up.
Okay. The other one I just finished, which I'm recommending is The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. Horses, books, women, strong women telling men to fuck off. It is so good. So, so good. So if you haven't read that one. I also just read Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters, which was so groovy. Talks a lot about Berkeley in the 1960s, food. Great. It's all good.
Weirdly and nerdily, I just started reading Cyrano De Bergerac again because why not? I had it on my list. I wanted to read it. And I was just telling friends this the other night that in the introduction, they talk about why Cyrano De Bergerac became such a crazy hit at the time. And it was at a time when France was super divided as a nation. There had been the Franco-German War and then there had been, now I'm forgetting, it was like this trial between... And there was brothers involved in it. Basically had really split the nation of France. And so it was a really divisive time and it was a really violent time and it was really sad time.
And Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand is the writer, but he came out of the gate with this sort of like boisterous, if you haven't read it, go read it. It's really short. It's fun. It's a play. It was like boisterous. And this character was like the everyman. And instead of focusing on the trials and tribulation and turmoil of the time, it kind of had this celebratory feel to it. And it ended up uniting the nation in this beautiful way. And so I'm kind of here for it. I'm here for who's going to be the next Edmond Rostand? Who of our artists out there are going to create the piece that's going to bring this nation back together and get us on a positive way? Maybe it's the World Cup. Maybe it was the Knicks. I don't know, but something feels good. But I kind of love that. So I'm reading that.
I also... Oh guys, if you have not started reading Anna Gavalda, French Leave, it's this tiny little's a little baby novelette. It's tiny. It's only, again, I read it in like a day. 108 pages. Such a romp. So fun, so fun, so fun. I recently discovered Anna Gavalda. I'm like three books in now because she's brilliant. Her tone is hilarious and I really love it. I'm reading all the Anna Gavalda I can this summer because I just think she's great.
Okay. I'm also, because I was sort of on an Alice Waters kick, I'm going to read this one, which I have not read yet, but it's called Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic and Practical, often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution. So love that. And I'm also going to read, and I cannot recommend these yet because I have not read them, but I'm just telling you what I'm reading. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. So you guys, I don't know if you listened to that episode recently that I talked about the Alice Neel book that I... Which was like a coffee table book of her work, but in it, they talk about this memoir. Or I guess it's not a memoir because someone else wrote it about her life and the idea of not fitting into the social norms of the day.
So that's my list. I think that's everything. I have so many books by my bed, but... Oh, I'm also going to finally read Young Mungo because Douglas Stuart is a friend of a friend of mine and I have not read it yet and I really want to read it, but I hear he's brilliant and I've listened to him on a podcast and think he's super-duper smart. So that's where I am guys. I'm going to do a lot of those things.
On that note, we are going to take a break because I'm going to be busy summering, guys. I'm going to summer the fuck out of this life and I'm going to be reading and eating ice cream and being unstructured with my children and playing games and saying yes. So we are going to take a few weeks off. We have so much stuff coming down the pipeline. It is so, so, so exciting. I can't wait to come back in the fall and introduce you to so many new stories, so many new women. We have so much fun stuff. We have so many events coming up down the road. We have so many activations coming up. We have so many new projects coming out. So it's a super exciting time. But in order for me to be able to do any of those things, I need to take a beat and I need to go stare at the ocean for a little bit and eat my body weight and ice cream.
So we're going to take a break. We will be back in a few weeks. We're going to play some amazing reruns for the next few weeks so you guys can catch up on any that you've missed or listen to them again because telling you, man, they don't get old. They age well. Got to be honest. And again, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for supporting our women who have told their stories. That's one of the most beautiful byproducts of this project, I have to say, is watching you all support the women whose stories we tell. It's just been fabulous. So again, let's keep doing that in the fall and read all of the books you can. Go eat all the ice cream you can, eat all the fresh veggies you can, stare at the water, take a walk in a creek, enjoy it, slow it down a little bit.
I am going to go off to my happy place, which is a very happy place that I've been going since I was a kid. I hope you all find your happy place and just take some time, even if it's in your backyard, staring up at the sky or in Central Park or a park near you. Find some nature, slow it down, stay up a little late, read in bed a little longer in the morning or in the night and say yes. Say yes to the opportunities that present themselves because we only have so many summers. So thanks again and I will catch you guys on the next one, which will be in a few weeks.
This Eat My Words podcast was created, produced, and directed by me, Johanna Almstead. Our sound editor is Isabel Robertson and our social media manager is Isabella Boutros.