Friday Five: 5/16/25

Blue and white stripes, sour things, the platonic ideal of a salad, and Tina Fey

Photo credit for bottom right salad: Jenn Eats Good

Hello, happy Friday! Have you heard the phrase “May-cember”? It’s the concept that May, when the academic year winds down, is as crazy and overwhelming—at least for parents of school-aged kids—as that other notoriously busy month, December. I am deep in it right now! It mainly involves a lot of driving and a lot of crafts. In the last week alone, I have stuck so many cut-out letters onto cardboard (door decorating for Teacher Appreciation Week! Making posters for the school talent show! Driving around and fixing all those posters at 7am before school starts after a freak bout of rain knocked all the letters off!) that I could legitimately now add this as a skill on my LinkedIn profile and a bunch of other moms would endorse me for it. Holly is great at deciding which situations require a glue stick and which require glue dots. Impressed with her guillotine work!

Here is my literary-themed door. I really committed to the bit and used tiny little alphabet stickers to write each child’s name on the spines of the books. Did I use a color photocopier to photocopy a bunch of second grade classics? Heck yeah, I did.

Anyway, it’s Friday, I have no gluing or sticking to complete, and I’m in the mood for a little light consumerism, so let’s get into the Friday Five: four things I’m loving and one that just isn’t doing it for me. (You can read past Friday Fives here, here, here, here, and here. Reminder that I get no kickback for recommending these things because I have literally no idea how to do that and am too lazy to figure it out.)

1. First up: I’m a basic B, so sue me.

   

   Sorry not sorry, I love a Stanley. I’ve had a white one for a few years and use it constantly; it just floats about the house with me, like a big-girl sippy cup, ensuring that I am always hydrated. When I saw these new striped versions, particularly this blue-and-white striped one, which is more my jam than anything has ever been my jam before, I hinted strongly to both my children for, like, a month that it would make a great Mother’s Day present. And the message got through! They gave me this on Sunday and I have been using it ever since, while somehow also using my white one, which means I am doubly hydrated! As well as keeping my water icy cold forever, it just makes me so happy to look at it. Am I sitting at my desk ordering more glue sticks or am I lying under a cabana in St. Tropez? Who can tell?!

2. I like sour things and I cannot lie….

Okay, I don’t know what sort of sorcery this is, or where these have been all my life, but I am obsessed with them. They’re little packets of powdered lime—like, the actual lime, all crushed up, no sugar or filler or anything—and they taste amazing. It’s honestly hard to believe it’s not fresh lime! I add them to water, I add them to my occasional “treat” diet coke (you know you’re getting older when the diet coke is a treat), but my favorite use case for them is to sprinkle them on grapes and then eat an entire bowl standing at the kitchen counter. Why does that taste so good? I don’t know! People who rhapsodize about this particular combo say it’s even better if you freeze the grapes too, but I am generally impatient and don’t want to wait that long, and I think the non-frozen version is just as good. Turns out there are other fruits this company pulverizes and stuffs into packets too, so I have just ordered the grapefruit ones!

3. White Lotus who?

There are so many good shows right now! My husband and I just finished The Pitt, which was excellent, even if it is basically just ER 2.0—listen, as an ER superfan, I am never going to complain about more Noah Wyle—and we are deep into Your Friends & Neighbors, which is fun and clever. Then there’s The Studio—hilarious, but also I will watch anything Seth Rogen does because he was once very nice to me in the Facebook campus ice cream parlor while I was heavily pregnant, oh wait I wrote about that here—and, of course, season 4 of the bitingly funny Hacks.

But the one I’ve enjoyed the most recently is The Four Seasons, an eight-episode Netflix show that follows three mid-life couples who’ve known each other since college on four different vacations—one in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and one in winter. The first episode I was a little eh on, but by the last one, I was ALL IN. I laughed! I cried! I used Google Lens to find this particular dress Tina Fey is wearing!

It is $932, oh dear.

You will probably like this show if you have friends you’ve known for decades; if you have ever been on vacation with another couple; if you met your partner in college and/or in the ‘90s; if you feel like you are getting older and less cool by the minute (perhaps, for instance, your naughty little Friday night treat is now a diet coke with a powdered lime packet?); if you like laughing; if you like feeling your feelings; or if you adore Tina Fey. While you really only need to say yes to one of the above, I can confidently say yes to all of them, and so I loved this show. I was only slightly distracted by Steve Carrell’s teeth, which I think are….new?

4. Help, I can’t stop making this incredible salad.

Photo credit: Jenn Eats Good

Okay, this is the Green Veggie Lemony Orzo Salad from Jenn Lueke’s Substack, Jenn Eats Good, and I have made it legitimately five times in the last month. It is basically my perfect food: fresh, healthy, filling, nutritious, keeps well, lemon-heavy, dill-heavy, easy to throw together, amazing. I make a big batch and then portion it out into smaller containers, and we just use it throughout the week—a quick lunch, an easy side—which makes me feel pleasingly in control of my life. The first time I made it, I followed the recipe exactly, but in later versions I winged it a bit more, and it still came out perfectly every time. I’ve made batches without the asparagus (I didn’t miss it); I’ve made batches using Israeli couscous instead of orzo and scallions instead of a shallot; and I’ve made batches that I added, on impulse, a handful of shelled pistachios to. They’ve all been good! I could happily eat this for the rest of my life.

And now, I’m sorry, it’s time for the dud:

Okay, what has happened to this mascara?! It used to be great! I used Thrive Causemetics Tubing Mascara religiously a few years ago, because it was the only one that did anything for my sad, stubby little eyelashes, but I bought it again a few months ago and it was awful! It did nothing! It smudged the second I put it on! Did they change the formula or something? Is there a lesson here? Is it “all good things come to an end?” This is a lesson I can learn in other areas of my life, is it not? I mean, jeez man, you didn’t have to come for my mascara.