Stay with me, okay? It’s June, and you don’t have to use the oven today. You can actually just pour a heaping bowl of cereal, add your milk of choice, and call it done. You can literally call it dinner. No pots. No pans. No stove adding heat to your already-miserably-hot kitchen. You don’t even have to eat the “healthy” cereal—you know, the kind with extra protein and extra fiber, the kind that tastes like sad cardboard. You know what doesn’t taste like sad cardboard? Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.
Other things you can call dinner: an entire bag of salty potato chips with french onion dip (maybe add a side of fresh peaches for a pop of color?), or perhaps a Costco hot dog with a scoop of potato salad and an ice cold Diet Coke (did you know Costco finally course-corrected and made the switch from Pepsi? #hallelujah), or even a DIY charcuterie board that looks less like something you’d find on Pinterest and more like something an unsupervised five-year-old threw together.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: it’s June, and you don’t have to meal plan all the time.
You don’t have to hit 10,000 steps a day, either. On the days your weather app predicts a stifling 106 degrees, you can actually just sit inside your air-conditioned house and tell your Oura ring that you are the boss of your own life.
I don’t want to offend anyone, but you don’t have to grow zinnias1, or zucchini, or tomatoes. I mean, you can if you want to. I’m just saying: you and your garden are totally allowed to sit this one out. Related—I’m not sure everyone knows this, but you can actually buy sourdough bread at the grocery store. I’m not saying it’s better (it’s definitely not!); I’m just saying, it’s available.
Did you know you can delete Instagram for the whole summer? Brick your phone for eight hours a day? Sit in your own backyard for one hour every morning listening to the birds chirp while jotting down an evolving plot for a dystopian YA novel you may or may not write?
It’s June, and nobody will fault you for wandering around the thrift store and buying (perfectly-cereal-sized) bowls with tiny lemons painted inside them.
Please take this one with a grain of salt: did you know you can actually not use AI this summer? It’s true! You can use your own little brain to decide what to make for dinner!2 You can ask your gym rat friend to help you make a workout plan! This might really blow your mind, but you can write entire essays with clunky metaphors and occasional typos and send them out into the internet universe to co-exist among machine slop and maybe even (hopefully?) touch a human heart.
This is a wild one, but you can actually get a mid-day ice cream cone with your kids and not feel guilty or weird about it, or wonder what it’s going to do to the dimples on your thighs. You can simply lick that mint chocolate chip to your heart’s content, take up space, and show your daughter what it’s like to fight the patriarchy one bite at a time.
Did you know you can take a nap on Sunday afternoons? Watch a movie on Tuesday nights? Put yourself to bed early anytime you’d like? Also worth noting: you are allowed to skip all of those self-improvement podcasts, and please, for the love, unsubscribe from all those emails you don’t have time to read.
And here, the biggest one of all: It’s June, and you don’t have to write every day. You don’t have to track word counts or bubble charts or keep a perfect morning pages streak alive. You don’t have to package every ounce of your life into neat little poems for the algorithm.
As my friend Adrienne likes to say, you can actually just “live the material” this summer.
You can actually just … live.
*This post was directly inspired by Caroline Langerman’s piece, It’s June and You Don’t Have To Bake A Cake
I made these ham and cheese sliders Easter weekend, and have been making them almost every Sunday ever since. So good! So easy!
Shameless plug: the Coffee + Crumbs summer collection is live! Go read it here. (Confession: I had a totally different essay planned, but after months of working on it and still hating it, I wrote something new and kind of silly in 20 minutes. See: it’s June, and you don’t have to take your writing so seriously all the time.)
Tara Sun is the real deal, and I was so grateful to be a guest on her podcast this month. We talk about friendship in busy seasons, imperfect hospitality, and the importance of leaning in when the world tells us to lean away from one another.
My friend Molly predicted this would be our “show of the summer“—and she’s not wrong. I loved the book! Also loving NSFW (which is, to be clear, also not suitable for watching around children 😬).
I snagged a secondhand version of this Free People matching set on Facebook marketplace for $20 and love it so much, I’m contemplating grabbing another one in a different color. Generally speaking, bike shorts (these are my all-time favorite!) + an oversized shirt is my summer uniform of choice.
I keep seeing ads for these “tanning loungers“ that people are allegedly putting on their lawns and filling with two inches of water. Has anyone tried this??? As someone who does not own a pool—but loves to tan in the backyard with a good book—I am v. intrigued. (Note: this is the color combo I actually want, but it’s currently sold out on their website. Reminds me of Palm Springs.)
After spending WAY WAY WAY too much money on Starbucks the first week of summer break, I finally picked up some vanilla iced coffee from Trader Joe’s and am now making myself a post-lunch treat for far less. These tumblers are cute, if you, too, are trying to step up your at-home iced coffee routine.
Speaking of Trader Joe’s, IT IS OFFICIALLY BRAZIL NUT SZN. Run, do not walk!!! I buy this stuff in bulk so I can smell like vacation all year-round. Layer the body oil on top of the body butter and thank me later.
Ahem. To the exactly three men who read my Substack, please skip ahead. To any other ladies who prefer to wear a real bra as infrequently as possible during the summer months, please consider this my yearly PSA: I love love love this bralette, and these nipple covers.
Other things I love to wear in the summer: these super soft horseshoe overalls (currently 50% off!), these lightweight barrel pants (also 50% off), and this Bella Midi dress (60% off!).
I’ve been looking for ages and finally found the perfect white t-shirt.
In an effort to romanticize my life, a few times a week I pop these eye patches in the refrigerator as a little spa add-on to my morning writing sessions. Pairs well with a standard yellow legal pad.
Calling all film shooters! Last time I needed film in a pinch, I ordered some on Amazon, and recently realized I paid $50 MORE than Film Supply Club. 🫠 Won’t be making that mistake again. Related: friendly reminder that I made an awesome photo guide for mothers and it’s only $15.
I’ve been a drugstore shampoo girl my whole life, but recently had the opportunity to try Olaplex and let me just say: whoa I get the hype. Holy cow. My hair has NEVER felt cleaner. I rock dry shampoo + a hat 80% of the summer because I’m too lazy to deal with sweaty bangs, and this is an amazing clarifying shampoo for when you have a ton of build-up (i.e. three days’ worth of dry shampoo). It’s not cheap but a little goes a long way!
I wasn’t kidding about the cereal for dinner, but these recipes are also on my list to try this summer: Mexican street corn pasta salad, protein breakfast biscuits, and this lemon asparagus chicken and rice bake.
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately, but I loved Lady Tremaine and The Familiar Stranger. I’m also currently reading A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. Related: I’m not really into parenting books, but here are two I plan to read ASAP: this one on tech, and this one on resilience.
That’s all I’ve got. What are you reading? Wearing? Cooking? Watching? Tell me everything!
Quick disclaimer: My Substack is always free to read! I use affiliate links in posts like these, which occasionally give me a teeny tiny kickback if you buy something. Rest assured: I only recommend stuff I genuinely love.
Zinnias have been the joy of my life the past few summers, but this year I have planted two rounds and nothing is germinating. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!!!!
Would ChatGPT ever suggest cereal? I’m not sure. I’ve still never used it.
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