ISSUE #6: JUNE 2026
Hi. Hello. Welcome Back.
A few weeks ago, something I hadn’t thought about in decades made its way back to me.
Suddenly, I was thinking about all the little things that have quietly stuck around since then.
So I went looking for a few more. Here is what I found…
Still In My Caboodle…
Lip Gloss + Balms, oh my!
MAC Lipglass in Cultured
If you ran into me in 2006, I was wearing this lip gloss. My coworker, Katie, put me onto it, and it became the gloss of that summer and many summers after. After a few years passed, the final tube in my makeup bag cracked, I said goodbye and life moved on.
Until…I found it again a few weeks ago, and not in a cute way. I was frantically dress-shopping for a wedding, defeated in yet another cramped dressing room. On my way out of Nordstrom, the glow of the MAC counter caught my eye and I swear it felt like spotting an old friend across a crowded party.
I told myself “just a peek.” Surely, they’d retired the color after almost twenty years. You already know how this ends. It was on my lips before I finished asking, and something in me went quiet and happy. I bought it.
And I’ve been giddy about it since. I light up remembering it’s tucked in my purse, and I paused writing this very sentence to go put some on. Just like that, the duck face was back. ?
Maybelline Baby Lips, in My Pink
If gloss isn’t your thing, here’s the five-dollar balm I’ve been quietly loyal to since discovering it on the bottom shelf at a Walgreens in college (or possibly high school, timeline’s fuzzy).
The ‘My Pink’ shade is just enough color and shine to add a dash of cuteness. Opt for ‘Cherry Me’ if you want more of a “rouge.”
It’s got a strong “Mom please let me wear lipstick, even though it’s not real lipstick” energy that, at forty-something, still rules.
✦ ✦ ✦
Both of these have been with me for the better part of twenty years now. And putting them on doesn’t just feel good, it feels like a small, happy hello to the person I was when I found them. She was onto something. And I’m glad she had such good taste.
A Special Recipe from Mom
Mom’s Handwritten Recipes
I’m always trying some new recipe I found online. But there is a collection of extra special recipes that live in a small unassuming wooden box in my kitchen.
For a few Christmases, my mom hand-wrote the recipes I grew up on and gave us each a box to keep them in. Not all at once. A few cards one year, a few more the next. Every card says “A Special Recipe from Mom” right across the top. I can still picture the exact pen she used to fill them in.
She wanted us to always have a sample of her handwriting and thought to give us that on the things we’d reach for over and over. Recipes. In her ink, next to us, always.
I made one of her dishes last week. I opened the box and found all the familiar loops and slants from the same hand that signed permission slips and birthday cards, now telling me how many hot dogs to cut.
Yes, hot dogs. I was headed to a friend’s place to watch the USA game and wanted to bring the most aggressively Midwestern thing I could think of, so I pulled out a classic from my childhood, Hot Dog Noodle Casserole.
All this to say, handwriting is worth keeping. Theirs, or yours, on something somebody will actually hold onto. Even if it’s a recipe for hot dog casserole.
Meals from my childhood, straight off Mom’s cards…
Mix Tape of My Youth
Throwback Playlist
There’s nothing like a song to drop you back into a time and place. A few notes in and you’re young again, windows down, going nowhere in particular.
So I made a playlist of the songs that were everywhere back when I was younger, which, not coincidentally, is the same stretch I was wearing that lip gloss and living off Mom’s recipes.
Going back through these early 2000s songs was equal parts hilarious and heart-warming. Some made me laugh out loud that I still knew every word. All of them put me right back somewhere.
It’s a wide mix, pop, country, R&B, the works, because that’s what was coming out of the radio back then. It won’t all be your cup of tea, but that’s half the fun. I just hope you find one in here you forgot you loved or makes you laugh.
A little science, if you’re curious:
That pull toward the music of your youth has a name, the ‘reminiscence bump.’ The songs from when you were about 10 to 30 are the ones you’ll love and remember most for life, with the pull peaking around age 14.
Thanks for being here. Having you along for this weird little adventure is the best part. Seriously.
Just one girl • Just for fun • Probably a little too enthusiastic