1. Spring fever: flowers blooming on my walk to work in the morning, open windows, beach walks, birds screaming their little bird heads off, the overwhelming urge to play outside.

2. This Food52 article about no-waste cooking which I’m a little obsessed with; it reminded me a lot of An Everlasting Meal, another perennial favorite around these parts. Also, really good bread with cream cheese and homemade raspberry jam, shoved in my face while looking at tumblr.

3. Writing new stories and how it feels like having a crush, how it feels like reaching out to grab stars, how it feels like singing. Also: creativity is self-care.

4. New York next week, for adventures.

5. “Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s your superpower.” My feelings about this book are complicated; my feelings about that line are pretty good.

Happy weekend. My friends are in town.

1.  I was all the hell over the place at the beginning of March, New York and DC and a fabulous trip to Tennessee for SE-YA in the ‘Boro where I got to hang out with a gaggle of smart, funny, wonderful readers + writers, and now I am home to relax and read library books and build a plant stand for my living room and cook a chicken and gobble House of Cards like a monster. It’s good for me to do both kinds of things.

2. Listening to audiobooks on my phone on my commute in the morning, which is a rather lovely alternative to wall-to-wall, teeth-gnashing election coverage. Now: The Raven Boys, finally. Next up: All-American Boys. After that: something about girls Jesus H. Christ enough already.

3. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to write stuff nobody would ever see, and I have been doing it, and it is amazing. Like, for the Dopamine boost alone. It probably doesn’t hurt that I am writing a lot of kissing scenes. Personally I find that never hurts.

4. The oldloves tumblr, this article about Crossroads, Ina’s new cookbook being called COOKING FOR JEFFREY are you kidding me.

5. OH HEY, I have a new book coming out! It’s called FIREWORKS and it takes place in 1997 and it’s about friendships and pop stars and broken down apartment complexes and dreaming your own damn dreams and I am so, so excited to share it with the world this coming winter. More soon.

1. A really wonderful trip to Portland, snow and beers and a smoked seafood platter and a creepy salvage shop and a nap and a fireplace and a dive bar and the best pizza of possibly my whole life. I felt very lucky this week.

2. All the Light We Cannot See which is gutting me, slowly, with a fine, slender knife.

3. Shopping for spring capsule, making my March to-do list, it being light outside when I wake up.

4. I talked about When Calls the Heart a little bit here a couple of weeks ago, but clearly not enough because it is my favorite dopey show of the winter. A SCHOOLTEACHER AND A MOUNTIE, ALBERTA, 1910. She is spoiled and bad at womanly arts and also life in general! He is kind of a mansplainer, but in an oddly affable, handsomely rumpled sort of way! Will they fall in love? Eventually share a chaste, tongueless kiss? WHO CAN SAY?

5. Throwing a brunch for Tom’s birthday tomorrow, setting up a Bloody Mary bar, and making this.

HAPPY FRIDAY, there is a dog in my office and a new Quantico promo in the world, if this isn’t nice then I don’t know what is.

1. I am sending two big projects off into the universe this weekend and then I am going to Maine for two days to drink beer and wear Sorel boots like God intended. Quick, low-key, local-ish trips where you don’t feel pressure to do a bunch of things are my absolute favorite and I have been looking forward to this one for weeks and weeks.

2. It’s Valentine’s Day this weekend! I know it’s not cool to like Valentine’s Day, but GUESS WHAT, I have literally never been cool, why start now. Candy! Flowers! Michael Bolton songs! This Expedia commercial which I think is freaking genius!

3. The usual good-things-type suspects: American Crime Story, Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of all Things on audio, and improbably but deliciously, Pioneer Woman’s baked lemon pasta.

4. You guys, MTV is putting a TV show based on 99 DAYS into development! I believe my feelings on television are well-documented (but just in case: I LOVE TELEVISION IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME), so this one feels like a big deal. Plus I feel like I am one step closer to achieving my literal fondest dream of someone writing dirty fanfiction of characters I invented!

5. Speaking of television (a-and dirty fanfiction? What? Who said that?) this is a thing that happened:

Whaaaaaaat. Love you. Bye.

1. Winter really started punching me in the kidneys this week so I am fighting back with my favorite 90s love song Pandora station, many consecutive episodes of When Calls the Heart on Netflix, and plans to get out of town in a couple of weeks when my revision is done. This happens every year around this time, it always surprises me and feels a little bit unfair, and it always passes. That’s the part of it that is good.

2. Catastrophe, which I finally watched on Amazon and which was so much funnier than I thought it would be for some reason, and which also gave me the warm fuzzies in the best possible way. Just great and romantic and also not that big of a commitment (six episodes!) while still feeling very satisfying. Go do it.

3. Deb’s Spaghetti Pie which is delicious and easy and, along with a green salad and a glass of wine, will make you feel sophisticated as all hell even if you are eating it in your pajamas. I would know.

4. I’m reading the fourth Outlander book, Drums of Autumn. Real talk: this book almost didn’t make it on the list this week, and I’m still not sure if it’s the right thing to mention it or not, because this whole series does a lot of really awful, egregious shit when it comes to race and sexuality, and among other purposes Five Good Things is a rec list of sorts and I don’t recommend these books, really? But it would be a lie to say I don’t like the love story and the descriptions of food and the dresses and the adventures, and I think it is important to own the problematic shit you enjoy even when you know and want to do better, and also to recognize my own privilege in finding these 50 page scenes of log cabin building soothing when I know a lot of other people would experience them differently. I don’t know. I would love to talk about this more with you guys, but in the meantime: onto the list it goes.

5. Last night I ate s’mores but instead of graham crackers it was Oreos and instead of a chocolate bar it was melted peanut butter. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

1. GUYS I SAW HAMILTON THIS WEEK. I was worried it wouldn’t live up to the Hamilton in my brain and heart, BUT SPOILER ALERT, IT DID. It is so beautifully staged! That thing with the coats! Daveed Diggs is a gift and we do not deserve him! Also we went to the Meatball Shop after so win win win.

2. You’re the Worst, the second season of which I blew through in a couple of nights and which I really liked! I thought maybe it was going to be too salty/disrespectful of beloved romcom tropes for me to really enjoy it, but that wasn’t my experience at all. It’s funny and weirdly sweet and really dark at times and if you are a person like me who secretly thinks all shows are boring without a romance at the center, this is a good one to try.

3. I read The Goldfinch over the long weekend, which was satisfying. Overall I thought it was 200 pages too long and didn’t have enough interesting female characters but there’s a whole section in the middle there that totally blew my mind and sort of made it worth the 800 page price of admission.  If HBO ever made a 2 night miniseries event of this book I would watch it.

4. I made soup out of leftover Chinese delivery rice last night. I KNOW, I AM A TOP CHEF.

5. I got a message this morning from a stranger wanting me to know that two actors I enjoy both recently got divorces and asking if I think that might mean they’re having sex with each other so I guess I am really knocking this personal branding thing out of the park. (Spoiler alert: yes obviously I think so.)

HAPPY WEEKEND, I don’t know if you’ve heard about this but it is supposed to snow.

1. A whirlwind trip to Cancun that was all kinds of wonderful and relaxing; we swam in the pool and ate shrimp quesadillas and jumped in the waves but my favorite part was drinking beers out of plastic cups with my sister at a Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville in the airport and gabbing away while we waited for our long flights home.

2. This piece from The Cut which I found incredibly reassuring and maybe you will too. Everything is fine!

3. Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which is aiding me mightily in my 2016 quest to listen to music I haven’t already heard.

4. Everything about winter TV. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of articles recently about how to get out of the house during January and not melt into your couch but personally the only thing that makes winter in Boston even remotely bearable to me is the opportunity to eye-guzzle ten hours of television at a stretch without some jerk on the internet trying to make me feel guilty about it. The 100 is coming back! Shonda has that new show about accountants that are also spies, or something! I still have not watched Younger or You’re the Worst! Quantico, light of my life and fire of my loins, is on hiatus until March, but there are at least 4 seasons of the Great British Baking Show I have not shoved into my face yet and I fully intend to rectify that while the rest of you are outside snowshoeing like a bunch of nerds.

5. In a related story, it’s a long weekend and I am going to spend it on the couch in my pajamas, and then next week I’m going to New York to see some new play called Hamilton? 2016, you’re okay so far.

1. 2016 resolutions, the general; 2016 resolutions, the specific, including but certainly not limited to writing something for pure pleasure, listening to full albums by new artists, and letting myself be more of a hermit. I JUST WANT TO BE AT HOME WITH MY HUSBAND was a thing I said a lot, crankily, last year. This year I’m going to try and actually, you know, be there.

2. You Should Have Known, which is creepy and absorbing and wonderful and which I gobbled so voraciously over Christmas break that my sister at one point yelled “TELL KATIE TO STOP SECRETLY READING,” from the backseat of my dad’s car as if it was 1995 all over again.

3. I love the Adele album and I don’t care who knows it. Also, water is wet.

4. The Food Lover’s Cleanse, which I always say I’m going to try and never do, but which is chock full of really nice recipes if you, like me, are trying to mix things up a little bit in the new year. I made scallops for the first time last week! Truthfully my kitchen smelled like fish for two days afterward but it was still nice.

5. 99 DAYS is a NYT e-book bestseller. WHAT. To celebrate I am meeting a deadline and going to Mexico. No seriously. Happy weekend. I love you.

1. In October I started getting up 15 minutes earlier and in November I’ve been getting up 15 minutes earlier than that. It makes for a slow, quiet morning and I like it.

2. My friend Court Stevens who is also the literal best person in publishing has a book out this week. It’s called The Lies About Truth and you should read it.

3. Other things you should read: this Rolling Stone interview with Adele that just made me happy in a million different ways and also taught me some new lessons about being a badass motherfucker.

4. I think I’m going to get a pair of bellbottom jeans for winter capsule. In a related story, the theme of winter capsule is I DO WHAT I WANT.

5. These turkey-shaped tealight holders from CB2 and the two Thanksgiving dinners at which they are going to appear on my table. “Your mom likes whimsical things,” I remember my dad telling me once. I like whimsical things, too.

Happy Friday, loves on mine.