She Does Better

Emilie Burke

My Weekly Grocery List // Spring 2019

// Food, Frugality, Planning

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Meal planning is.. a good idea. It’s one that I’ve floundered on a lot over the last couple of years. The idea of planning out the meals for the whole month, doing the big monthly grocery shop, and then just a weekly (or semi-monthly, even) produce run to supplement is so appealing.

I have loved watching and learning from Brittany’s monthly meal planning for years. I have watched all the videos. I get the system.

The reality, though, is that I do not have the bandwidth to monthly meal plan. I don’t have 30 meals in my brain that I can add to a list.

What our grocery shopping looks like, then, is that every two weeks I go to the store and get everything we need, spending about $150 each time. Three hundred dollars for grocery for two is a lot, but it’s not terrible. Since we value quality food and good ingredients, it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.

In my ideal world, I’d love to have all of my groceries come from three sources:

  • a meat subscription service (like Butcher Box)
  • a CSA or ugly vegetable subscription service (like Hungry Harvest which I loved when I lived in Baltimore)
  • pantry essentials, like rice and flour, delivered to my door (through something like Amazon or Thrive Market)

Unfortunately, this reality isn’t possible today. I think Butcher Box is overpriced, there are no CSAs in our area, and I value the time savings of purchasing pantry essentials through a subscription less than I do the cost savings of buying them myself. I’m optimistic that the market will catch up to my ideal soon, but for now we’ve got to make do.

I recently signed up for a Shipt subscription. For $99 per year, I can place an order through the Shipt app or website. If the order is greater than $35, there are no delivery fees. Comparing this to Kroger ClickList, where I had to pay $6 to have to go pick up my groceries myself, Shipt pays for itself in just 16 orders (somewhere between 6 and 8 months, I’m guessing)- not including the convenience of having the groceries delivered right to my house instead of the 20-30 minutes it would take me to go pick them up!

I have some serious travel time coming. The cool thing about Shipt is that you can place an order anywhere. When I’ll be in SF for 10 days, I can place a Shipt order to my hotel room! Without a kitchen I won’t be cooking Chicken Cordon Bleu, but I can buy lunches that are 1. much cheaper than the alternative (eating out) and 2. better for me (because I can control the ingredients!).

Jury is still out on Shipt, but I’ll be sure to update. For now, I’m pretty into it.

I have a weekly grocery list that I use as a starting point every week. I think of it as a things to check. I don’t buy toilet paper every week, but I do check the toilet paper every week. The goal of this list is to make sure that we never run out of things that are going to force us into the grocery store mid-week. So far, it’s been working well.

Let me know if there’s anything you’d add!

Here is my list:

  • Toilet paper
  • Paper towels
  • Avocados
  • Eggs- at least 2 dozen
  • Peppers
  • Onions
  • Broccoli
  • Spinach
  • Sweet Potato
  • Chicken breasts (Boneless, skinless)
  • Salmon
  • Tortillas
  • Clementines
  • Bananas
  • Berries or Grapes
  • Bread
  • Tofu (Extra firm)

Show Us Your Books // March 2019

// Reading & Books

Reading Time: 3 minutes

When I wrote my March 2019 Goals post recapping my February 2019 progress, I was bummed to admit that For the first time in… two years? I haven’t read two books in a month. Nonetheless, as I write this, my second Show Us Your Books linkup post, I am delighted to be profiling three books again! It just goes to show you that it is all ebbs and flows. Hard books slow you down, but other books you (I) can’t resist!

The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine

Must. Read. I mentioned this last weekend in my Saturday Morning Coffee, but this book is one that we should all read. I heard about it from a Christmas Gift Guide from Christina last year. I’m so glad I impulsed on it.

This book is a phenomenal overview of the hormonal development of the female from conception through menopause. I had no idea how many hormonal processes are developed in the fetus. A mother’s hormones directly affects the different amount of hormone (and thus the variance in the fluctuations) that a female fetus will experience as it develops.

This book should be required reading for anyone who ever knows any female ever.

Juliet’s School of Possibilities by Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam’s latest book is out today and ADD IT TO THE TOP OF YOUR LIST.

Riley is a career-driven millennial, who receives a negative performance review at her consulting firm job, despite making herself available all the time. She attends a work retreat at Juliet’s School of Possibilities on the Jersey Shore, where she meets Martha Stewart-esque Juliet. In the middle of a rainstorm, Juliet shows Riley two possible futures for herself. She gets to choose how she wants to live her life.

LV hit the ball out of the park again. This short business fable marries fiction with a beautiful lesson. Nothing in here is particularly new, if you’re already familiar with Laura Vanderkam’s writings, but it’s presenting in a novel way (pun intended) that makes it a fun read!

ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

After reading the latest book from these guys, I figured I’d give ReWork a read. Reading these books is much more like reading a collection of bound blog posts than reading a book. They’re good ideas, but it’s a lot of ideas and no real depth on any of them.

It was a quick read (one weekend). If you’ve read the latest book, I’d suggest skipping this one. You can see how their ideas have evolved over the last decade, which is cool, but isn’t necessarily worth the extra weekend of reading time.

Up next: Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Previous posts:

Consolidating responsibilities

// Personal, Professional

Reading Time: 3 minutes

How many domains do you own? I recognize that to some subset of the population this feels like a ridiculous thing, but to another population it seems like a totally reasonable thing. I started off this year with nearly 20 domains, and it was too much.

The .dev domains came out last week. I tried really hard to get emilie.dev but I watched myself lose it. 🤦‍♀️ I did get schario.dev and emilieschario.dev. These felt like responsible things to do, though I’m not totally sure I can articulate the case for why.

That, of course, sent me into a crisis about what I was going to do with these domains. In the same way that I don’t like clutter in my physical life, collecting domains for no purpose feels like developing digital clutter. I don’t like “stuff.” Things are fine if they have purposes, but if it isn’t getting used, out the door! Purging is easier if you’re constantly doing it. Every weekend something is leaving the house.

In an effort to Say No more this year, I spent some time looking at and through all the domains I own. I already canceled a few (four, I think), but even that left me wondering what I was going to do with all the ones I still have. I talked it over with my Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, but have continued to think about what was going to be the best course of action.

Managing identity on the web is a weird, new thing. The pressure to “be a brand” is as weird as weird can be. I don’t have the energy to “be” anything. That feels like performing. There’s enough of that going on, and I’m over the idea of performing. I’d much rather do.

I decided that there three things I do and want to keep doing on the internet:

  • I want to keep writing here about whatever I want. I love this space and have come to terms with writing just for me.
  • I want to write about data and work and technical things in a space other than this.
  • I want to occasionally write about my needlework, which I don’t do often enough.

Coming to this decision has made it easier to decide about what’s left. For example, I let go of all my rugby-related domains for my someday, maybe projects. (I haven’t refereed rugby in over a year at this point. As disappointing as that may be, embracing it is freeing.)

If I have all these three places, there’s still not one thing to point people to.

Enter…. emilieschario.com

emilieschario_dot_com

After owning this domain for longer than I care to admit, I finally figured out its purpose. It is my one central hub on the internet. Want to know about Emilie? Just go here, and from there you can pick your own journey.

The special word in the slider in the middle rotates, and I thought that was the perfect detail. It captures the fact that I do a lot of things and have always felt weird about how to complete the sentence “I am a _________.”

This site doesn’t have a blog, doesn’t have any pages, and doesn’t link to social media. I added a recurring task to update the “Now” section every three months to my ToDoist. The links in the navbar point you to their respective sites. (She Does Data doesn’t exist yet, but one step at a time.)

I pointed all my domains (some of my other precious gems include analyticsonthemove.com) to there. The decisions are now made. I don’t have to figure out what to do with it. And that has alleviated some portion of that clutter because now things have purposes. I’ve given them purposes, which means I don’t have to think about what to do with them any more, I don’t have to be responsible for them anymore; they’re done.

I also let go of two email accounts this week. The FOMO was huge- and then it was done. I think deactivating my Facebook and Instagram accounts was definitely a step towards this. It taught me that we can let go of digital things. (I promise you’ll get over the FOMO.)

It’s taken me a bit to realize that the alleviation feeling is coming from a consolidation of responsibilities- in two ways. 1. I no longer have to make a decision about all these things and 2. I no longer have a responsibility to all these different things. I only have the one.

I can’t do it all, but I can decide what I’m going to make time for.

March 2019 Goals

// Goals

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I took a very, very extended weekend, so while this post comes in the middle of the week, it’s just coming at the top of my first weekday for March. Work last week was insane- in a wow, this is hard, but I love my job for these challenges so much way. I’ve been slipping into bad habits around saying yes, and the last two weeks of February I felt myself dipping into true exhaustion. I’m feeling better, but I’m still not feeling creative.

Anyway, let’s dive right into it…

February Goals

  • Read 2 books. Nope. For the first time in… two years? I haven’t read two books in a month. I’ll talk about this a little more when it comes to the habit tracker below, but I think technical books that are slower to read can be de-motivating if they’re also not in my wheelhouse.
  • Honor stitch night, mastermind, and content audit time. I did good about going to my stitch night and staying loyal to my mastermind, but I didn’t work on the content audit at all. I’m going to not have that as a goal for the immediate future and I can reelavuate in a month or so.
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. I CrossFitted 9 times and OTF’ed 2 times for a total of 11 workouts.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. It’s not the post thought it was going to be, but I did write Things I Learned at PyTN 2019.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. I worked on this a little, but not as much as I would have hoped I would have.

February Habit Tracker

No Spend (anything over $1)

I set the goal of 12 no spend days in February and that’s exactly what I did. This is better, for sure. I bought new sneakers and heels that I was needing, as well as a new denim jacket. For the first time in a while, my wardrobe feels like it’s making sense, though I still need better blouses. There were a lot of gifts this month (Valentine’s Day + visitors to Savannah), so not bad.

I had 12 no spend days in February. Let’s see if I can get that to 15 in February.

Gym (at least 20 minutes)

The biggest gap this month was that I totally dropped off the map leading up to conference travel from the eighth to the tenth (I think I took this “I’m going to be gone, so I need to get ahead mindset) and then indulged in all of my weekends.

This wasn’t my best month, for sure, but this month I saw a lot of progress. My trap definition is starting to come back, and OTF this weekend was a pain mostly because I kept popping my armband every time I flexed my bicep. Slowly but surely I’m getting back into a real flow.

Read (at least 1 page)

Looking at this chart makes me very sad because this is probably one of the worst reading months I’ve had in over a year. I don’t mind reading technical things, but this was a hormones-as-technical things book. It being hard made me demotivated to read. The good news is, I already finished the book, so we’re already moving again.

Writing

At a glance, doesn’t it look like my reading and writing are related? I think so, but who knows.

ICYMI: 2019 Goals & My Word of the Year

Pasta-making class from our Valentine’s Day date

March Goals

  • Read 3 books. I need to make up for last month!
  • Honor stitch night and mastermind. I sent my Mr & Mrs ornament in to be finished, but now I have to get my Savannah ornament done in time to be finished before Christmas. The MM group has been growing and we need to double down on it.
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. This is another way of saying workout every other day this month.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. Maybe this will be on the difference between data visualization and data using the OTBurn app as an example, but maybe it’ll be on something else.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. 👉 Project Repo. The first milestone here is shipping the extraction piece.
  • Say NO to three things and write them down. I want to track the things I’m saying NO to.

March Habit Tracker

I use an app called HabitShare (free on iOS) to track some of my habits.

This month I’ll be tracking “No Spend” days, Gym days, Read days, and Writing days. What gets measured gets improved.

  • No Spend (anything over $1). As I mentioned above, my goal is to hit 15 no spend days in February.
  • Gym. From a habit perspective, I’d like to see my “Never miss two days in a row” rule be honored and get 16 workouts in this month.
  • Read (at least 1 page). Just doing my thing.
  • Writing for a blog post, email newsletter, or streaking.app (Not emails, tweets, or issues for work.). Just starting to collect data here.

I have no travel planned for March, which feels really exciting! Do you have goals you’re setting for the month?

iPhone Home Screen // February 2019

// iPhone Home Screen, Productivity

Reading Time: 3 minutes

It only took me 3 tries to spell February correctly in the title. I’ll call that a win.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, this post is part of a new series chronicling the evolution of my iPhone home screen over the year. As part of my year of no, I am actively working to minimize the time I spend on my phone. In the same way, you don’t have cookies in the house when you’re going on a diet, you can just eliminate the apps that are sucking you back into your phone.

The Dock

  • Calendar
  • Messages
  • Overcast
  • Safari

No change here.

The Right Side

WasIs
Day OneRefiningFire
TodoistTodoist
MailMail
YNABHabitShare
HabitShareHeadspace
Zero

Lots of changes here! The most notable change is not just that Day One is gone from the right side, but from the phone entirely. I wasn’t using it. I had purposefully not renewed my subscription. It was just one less thing I needed around.

HabitShare and YNAB did a swap for no particular reason. I wouldn’t read too much into them.

I moved Headspace into this stack hoping that it would cause me to use it, but I haven’t. (I have a suspicion that it may be up on the chopping block soon.) I can be the kind of person who wants to meditate, but if the reality is I’m not and never do, the app is just creating digital clutter for me.

Zero– I use Zero to track my evening fasts. I’ve been trying to implement a 13 hours circadian rhythm fast, leaving me an 11 hours window to eat. I really like that this encourages me to have dinner earlier (finishing by 7 PMideally) so that I can eat breakfast sooner (in this case, 8 AM).

I am certainly not perfect, but I’m trying! I’ll share more about Zero in the future.

The Folders

The folders got shifted around, but otherwise very little change

  • Apple
  • Pictures
  • Finance – I downloaded Robinhood and added it to this folder.
  • Travel – I downloaded the Delta app because of some travel I had and added it to this folder. I’m keeping it because I’ll be traveling on Delta again soon.
  • Lifestyle
  • Fitness
  • Entertainment – I moved the Youtube TV app into this folder from the Home Screen.

Last Month’s New Additions

Last month I had downloaded 3 new apps: Refining Fire, Furbo, and the CrossFit Open app.

I have set Refining Fire to ping me once a day at 11 AM or so. I haven’t really resonated with the quotes it’s been sharing with me, but I do like the sentiment. I may swap this for She Reads Truth or something similar.

Furbo, an app tied to a device that lets you watch your dog when you’re not home, has been great, especially because it’s a party trick. When we’re out to bars, people love it. Bo now knows to respond to the treats it tosses, which makes it even more fun.

The CrossFit Open starts this week! Finally I’ll get to put the app to use!

New Additions

GasBuddy– A friend mentioned this to me as a good way to keep a pulse on gas prices. We live right off 95 in a popular stop, so gas here is much more expensive than it is 5 minutes away. I haven’t used it because my routine involves taking advantage of our Kroger Fuel Points. Definitely on my radar, though.

WW Mobile– I joined Weight Watchers after hovering with the same 15 or so pounders since last March (another post for another time). The WW Mobile app is their program for tracking points.

 Zero– I’m really happy with Zero so far!

Still no second screen of apps!