Plot Points #58 💌
Election Day, midi dresses, villains, and celebrating 16 years of marriage
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Happy All Saints Day, friends! 🍂
Today marks 16 years of marriage for me and my husband, Pierce. SIXTEEN. If our marriage was a person then she would be getting her driver’s license right about now, but it feels like these two fresh-out-of-college children were just saying, “I do” about five minutes ago:
We don’t know everything there is to know about marriage or parenthood, but we’re right in the thick of that sweet spot, the generous middle years where we've earned some stripes and are all the better for it. It’s such a beautiful season and I’m so grateful to have a good man by my side to help raise our family and grow in fruitfulness together. What a gift.
“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
—G.K. Chesterton—
While my mom and sister take the kids for the weekend (thanks guys!), we’re going to have a staycation and relax here in town. I have a list of coffee shops, bookstores, and restaurants we might pop in to visit because we’re still very much getting to know this area. One night, instead of going out, we’re going to make a fancy dinner at home together from one of our cookbook recipes. Perhaps we’ll finally drink some of the wine we bought at the Biltmore years ago! It’s gonna get wild. Either way, being with my favorite person while we savor all the good things this life has to offer is guaranteed to be a fun time.
I hope you all have a beautiful first weekend of November! Thanks for spending some of your day with me.
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Esoteric: (adj.) understood by a small, select group of people.
Point #1: “Is the candidate someone who behaves the way you teach your children to behave?”
Sharon McMahon is coming in hot with some fantastic advice for undecided voters. I also really appreciated her breakdown of how election results are tallied and what happens on Election Day behind the scenes and in the news room. We need more insight from unbiased, neutral sources like her wherever we can get it.
Point #2: Substack is becoming another social media and all that that entails, but I still have hope.
This post from is such a good reminder about why we need breaks from being online, especially as mothers. I quit social media two years ago and it’s still hard not to log in just to “check on things.” But after losing my phone for three days this week—and feeling blissfully peaceful in the interim!—Becca’s words here remind me just how antithetical constant tech usage is to motherhood.
Point #3: Use the pretty things!
They’re not only for fancy occasions. They’re for making life beautiful.
Point #4: You can find me in a floral midi at least three times a week.
They will never go out of style, and even if they do, I don’t care. Long live the midi dress!
Receipts from a No-Buy Year 🧾
The only thing I purchased for myself this week was a new pair of prescription glasses, for which we used our HSA account. (Never had one of those until now and we are never going back!) The other pair was about ten years old and Theo accidentally stepped on them last Thursday 🥴. It’s taking some getting used to wearing them all the time, per my doctor’s instructions, but I think they’re so cute!
Glasses: You can’t ask me that. It’s a HIPAA violation.
Oh, yeah, and I got Starbucks once. Still trying to make it at home more, but haven’t mastered it yet. I think baristas put magic in their drinks or something.
Coffee: $5.88
Weekly Total: $5.88
Reading in The Nook 📚
The stack of half-read library books is still looming large on my nightstand, but I did finish Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. What a fun read! I love the idea of a romance between a morally gray villain and the woman he’s hired to be his assistant. The snark! The charm! The slowwwww, sweet burn! Satisfying from to end to end. It was a fitting read for the week of Halloween and I’m looking forward to the next in the series.
What are you reading right now? 👇🏻
“Wild is the music
of the autumnal winds
against the faded woods.”
—William Wordsworth—
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