Summoning Summer 2021
Revel in casual glamour with Guest Editors Kaitlyn & Brenda!
Hi! We’re Kaitlyn and Brenda, two longtime internet citizens! We met each other (and Dame Sophie!) eons ago on a message board, and a beautiful friendship was born. Our original community has morphed from message board, to Yahoo group, to Google group, to Facebook/What’sApp/text since the early aughts, but at heart, it’s a group of Bossy Dames, or your big sister who wants to give advice. This tweet best sums up our relationship, although we have been lucky enough to meet in person several times.
Kaitlyn is a fundraiser in Connecticut, who has made reading a central part of her identity. Brenda has gone even one step further and made bookselling her profession, in Arkansas. We both were recently vaccinated and our re-entry has looked a little different from each other.
Kaitlyn: I was fully vaccinated on May 14 and we jumped with two feet into post-vax life in this household on Saturday...by hosting a Paw Patrol themed birthday party for my 5 year old. :) We did follow that up by having a taco bar party on our deck later that night to kick off sailing season - my husband sails every Wednesday in the summer on a friend’s boat.
Brenda: I am so ready for summer. Our kids have done virtual school all year, and that plus two full time working professional parents in the house has been a doozy! Sunday was the first day for us that felt like the Before Times. We live in a small town and often our best weekends are spent with impromptu friends we may happen to run into. Saw a friend at an outdoor party on Saturday and we made plans to get our families together for a Sunday morning hike and bike ride. Then our kids asked if we could have lunch together and we all hung out at one house and invited other friends from the neighborhood whom we’ve barely seen in a year. It was SO NICE. As I said on Sunday, Messy House friends are the best friends and it’s been ages since we had ANY house friends.
Kaitlyn: Yes! Our Sunday also truly felt more like regular life - Chris’s best friend and his wife, who live in Brooklyn, came out for a barbecue and just as they arrived a huge storm blew in. But, we were able to move the burgers and dogs lunch inside! For the past 15 months, anytime weather has disrupted plans to get together with people outside, this controlling extrovert has not dealt well.
Brenda: Oh Kaitlyn. The extroverts have not been ok. My husband is an extrovert and he’d been saying he was doing just fine in his Covid Cave, but he was, no exaggeration, on the American Airlines website while we waited in line for our First Pfizer.
Kaitlyn: So tell me about flying - you went to Miami, right?
Brenda: It was weird, but good. The airports were more crowded than I expected, but everyone was masked up appropriately. And I was so very excited to be reading on an airplane again. (And on a beach. My two favorite places to read!) I just wanted a direct flight to a beach and Miami fit the bill! The food was great and we could eat outside pretty much everywhere.
Kaitlyn: Ah bliss! I’m excited to share with the Dames readership three essential components of our post-vax summer: books, fashion, drinks.
Let’s get into some new-to-you favorites
Brenda’s 2021 books to look forward to, because can you really be a Dame if you don’t have a neverending TBR list?
- Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead - sweeping history that starts with a sinking ocean liner and ends with a missing plane. Characters that feel so real I had to look up Marian to see if she was based on a real person. The rare dual timeline narrative where I was happy no matter which timeline I was reading.
- People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry - often authors have a slump after a big hit but no slumps for Emily Henry. I loved Beach Read last summer and how it was romantic and funny but also dealt with grief and real life. This is no different. Fittingly, I read it on my first post-COVID airplane trip (YESSS!) and it was just what I wanted.
- Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny - this is my sleeper (see what I did there?) recommendation for the year. Laugh-out-loud funny and touching and way better than it needed to be. A sweet but not saccharine reminder that life happens when we aren't looking.
- The Husbands by Chandler Baker - Did you read The Whisper Network? (If not, you should. As a former attorney, it was very recognizable to me.) This is The Whisper Network but for the home instead of work. It's a wild fun ride and who doesn't want to imagine a world where husbands do a lot more around the house . . . . (releases 8/3)
- The Rehearsals by Annette Christie - I read a lot of RomComs. This is my favorite of the year. It's got a time loop, a fun setting, and I found myself not sure what I wanted to happen! This one is more than romance but also about the true tough work a relationship with another person and ourselves really takes. (releases 7/13)
- But You Seemed So Happy by Kimberly Harrington - the one nonfiction on my list. The author is getting a divorce but this book doesn't bash marriage but actually tell the truth of how hard it is and the mid-life marriage malaise that seldom gets talked about. It's honest and sad and very, very funny. Didn't see that coming. (releases 10/5; this title isn’t yet available on bookshop.org so we’ve linked above to Harrington’s author page)
Kaitlyn’s best of 2020 because maybe you’ve been hit by a reading slump and want to know what you missed:
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Clare Lombardo - Complicated relationships between family members are my jam and this book focused on a family with happily married parents, but the relationships between their 4 daughters are fraught. It was beautifully written and I loved it a lot.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid - This book was hilarious - sharply drawn characters and as someone who lived in Philly with a small baby, I appreciated the specificity of the location. Also, it doesn’t leave you hanging as to where the characters end up.
Well Met by Jen DeLuca - Like Brenda, I read a lot of romance, and I liked the clever set up of this one - Emily reluctantly plays chaperone to her niece at the town’s summerlong RenFaire and finds herself interested in Simon, who takes the whole thing way too seriously. I enjoyed the toggling between what’s happening at the Faire and in real life and that it was as much a journey of discovery for Emily as a romance.
You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson - Do you want a YA book centered on a black, queer overacheiver? Then come sit by me. I LOVED this one and it included so much of what I am drawn to in YA: the grappling with difficult feelings as friends grow older, the figuring out that things don't *always* have to be the same, and the love story at its heart.
Your routine reminder that any body you take to a beach is by definition a beach body
Brenda: The worst things to buy are jeans, bras, and bathing suits. This is particularly true in the Era of Internet Shopping. I mean, it's great to shop while I also do work emails, watch the Good Place, and eat truffled popcorn from a giant Sam's Club bag BUT I am really very bad at returning things I buy on the Internets and you have to buy at least several sizes of any of these items. So, I am here to tell you about my recent bathing suit successes:
- This J.Crew suit. It has big Preppy Mom at the Club Pool Energy and I am fine with that. The ruching is flattering, it stays up even without the strap, it fits TTS, and comes in different patterns and even solid colors. And it fully covers your booty.
- This Target Leopard Print bikini. I was shopping with my kids and my son yelled "that's you, Mommy!" when he saw a woman in an ad wearing this bikini. And it wasn't ACTUALLY me but her body and look was a lot like mine and she looked hella cute and sexy in this suit so LO AND BEHOLD size inclusive advertising works and I had this suit shipped to my house. Size up because it's juniors and this does NOT fully cover your booty and that is a-ok with me.
- Summersalt has been serving up targeted Instagram ads to me for a while and I finally succumbed. My husband and I were going to Miami for our anniversary and first post-COVID, post-vaccination vacay and I wanted something a little sexier and bought the Perfect Wrap. Again, size inclusive advertising worked! It's a little short in the torso so I bought one size up but it's sexy and comfortable.
Kaitlyn: Additional bathing suit rec: I bought this NipTuck Suit a couple of years ago at Marshall’s and a) it’s held up beautifully despite being my most worn suit of the past few years and b) I have seen this suit EVERYWHERE on ALL KINDS OF BODIES and it looks great every time. Several ladies at my swim club have it, and I most recently saw it in a hotel pool at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. Comes in a variety of prints, but I’m partial to the stripes because I AM, at heart, Preppy Mom at the Club. This one is also great for those with larger cup sizes. Their extended sizes section is lacking at the moment, but it’s very much worth keeping an eye on!
Brenda once shared with me a piece of advice that I’ve kept close to my heart for years: dresses are the easiest way to look put together without any effort. One (item of clothing) and done! It’s even easier in the summer when you don’t generally have to worry about if your favorite tights are clean. These are the ones I’m relying on this summer to keep me cool and comfortable:
I bought 4 of these t-shirt dresses from Old Navy last summer, when I hit a wall of hating every single thing in my closet. Easy, bright, and they held up remarkably well - since it’s recently hit 80 degrees on the East Coast, I dug these out and they are in great shape.
In February 2019, I signed up for a style pass from StitchFix and then proceeded to wear the same pair of sweatpants from Lou and Grey for the next year. I think StitchFix has made it super easy to do returns from home, since I just stick the package back in my mailbox. As a petite woman, I like the Wisp brand for maxi dresses, which are my favorite for dinners out (remember those?), afternoons on the deck with friends and the occasional work Zoom call.
I am always a fan of Loft, with the caveat that you should NEVER buy anything full price from them because they have constant sales, and am eyeing basically everything in their dress section as possibilities for this summer.
Noted non-alcoholic beverage enthusiast Pikachu has the right idea
Like many Dames, we both have cut way back on drinking alcohol over the past year. But what do you turn to when it is “rosé all day” weather? We have some ideas.
Ginger beer is the fastest way to take a non-alcoholic drink from childlike to sophisticated. Kaitlyn’s three favorite brands are Fever Tree, Q, and Goslings, which is a classic. Ginger beer, seltzer, and a slice of lime is a great drink for anytime, but particularly while cooking dinner.
Seedlip is a non-alcoholic spirit company that has three flavors. Kaitlyn is fond of the Grove 42 - an orange-forward flavor that pairs well with seltzer, tonic, or other mixers. When you’re exclusively drinking non-alcoholic beverages, it can be hard to find the variety of flavors that you get in cocktails, wine, and beer. This has been a nice addition to our drinks library.
Spindrift is often too much flavor in my bubbly water for Brenda (I know, y’all) but they have lemonade flavors that are delightful and refreshing and perfect for the end of the day. (I especially recommend the strawberry one.)
Finally, if you have a Trader Joe’s near you, don’t sleep on their drinks. Kaitlyn likes the Jalapeno Limeade for pairing with Mexican food - it has quite a kick. Their Italian sodas are great for a summer barbecue (I like the Blood Orange) and I’m also a fan of the more “artisanal” flavors like Lemon Elderflower, which come in smaller cans.
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