1. this song by PHONY, "great white"
hearing two of the unquestionably best tunes i've listened to all year in one week? what did i do to deserve such blessings? (the first one was "disco" by geese). california has been good for PHONY, the solo project of neil from one of my favorite —now-defunct — bands of the past decade, donovan wolfington from new orleans. i was a little unsure for the first, oh, 20 seconds of this one, but that chorus melody just tickled all of the right parts of my brain and the entire song just feels exactly like the end of summer. breezy, light, catchy. it's apparently about an almost-shark attack he experienced while surfing, which makes the lyrics really amusing. i keep checking spotify every day to see if it's there yet because i need to add it to my playlist stat.
2. these dreamy new england videos
i'm a sucker for all things *~new england charm~* and these videos are basically like ASMR for folks like myself. yeah, the narration is a little over-the-top/cheesy/corny at times, but the visuals are gorgeous and i just love living vicariously through people with uber-curated lives. into it.
3. affogato
affogato is seriously the simplest dessert in the world: pour espresso or strong coffee over a scoop of vanilla ice cream. but i don't know that i've ever had it before last week? it's rich and comforting but also somehow sophisticated and i'm going to go make another one right now.
4. this app/website, swimply
a month or so ago, my friend cassidy and i were lamenting that we really wanted to go swimming but didn't really know anyone who had a pool, the hotel pools around here are only available to guests on weekends, community pools are full of gross kids, etc. etc. so i was telling another friend about this predicament and she asked me if i'd heard of swimply. i had not, and it solved the exact need we had! basically, people (in the 'burbs, mostly) rent out their private pools by the hours to city-ish folk. brilliant. show-stopping. amazing. genius. so cassidy, who is always as down for a weird adventure as i am and god bless her for that, drove us up to woburn a couple sundays ago and we floated around for three blissful hours, drinking alcoholic arnold palmers and eating watermelon and oreos and chips and salsa in this gorgeous pool. sure, we had no clue what the living situation was at this home because the host was not around — her very sweet elderly parents greeted us — we met a random woman who rented a room there, and another unidentified younger woman was at the house when we showed up. might have been a boarding house. but so what, who cares? the pool was immaculate and the landscaping was adorable. would swim again. you da MVP, swimply!
5. this ridiculously-named fragrance i bought a few weeks ago
those closest to me know that i am not a shoe girl or even a jewelry girl, but i AM a fragrance and handbag girl. more fragrances than handbags. i was in the market for a new one because i like to switch it up every season or so, and it was driving me insane that i couldn't find anything that felt right and "me." legit, i spent probably two hours in ulta and sephora spraying and sniffing and sighing and it was so dumb. so imagine my annoyance and embarrassment when i finally found one i was crazy about and i looked more closely at the name. the scent is delicious: very woodsy and vanilla-y and sandalwood-y with a little bit of fig and bergamot and amber. and like, i get it, it's kinda sexy! but i pray a stranger on the street never asks me what i'm wearing because i'm just not going to be able to say it out loud with a straight face.
