How I Spent My Summer
*Best of Summer 2026*
I used to have a job that went full scale bananas in the summertime. Very seasonal and summer was the hay-making season, so I was always busy, always working late, and alway mad that the summer slipped by while I hardly had a chance to breathe, let alone enjoy it. I had that job for 12 years and that’s a lot of summers to see blink by.
And yet, I’ve always considered my super power to be that I can find fun in between hopping on a zoom call and loading the dishwasher, you know? I’m a gal who keeps a partially packed beach bag in her trunk at all times. I worship at the altar of sandwiches for dinner on the beach as the sun goes down. Pitbull radio is queued up on my Spotify. There is always a bottle of tequila in my freezer. And so I made it work for a really long time, but this summer! This wonderful summer! I moved into a new role where the workload is more seasonally balanced and I get to do it from home and more specifically, from a patio table on my deck, and had one of the best summers. It might just be the even-keeled cortisol levels but I’m attributing it to having a healthy tan and being outside all summer.
I really hemmed and hawed back in February when I had a new job opportunity drop in my lap and it all would have been easier if I could have seen how the summer would go, but that’s just life. Sometimes you have to dive blindly and trust that even if the water turns out murky, you can swim. I got really lucky that the water is good and clear and warm and now I just get to paddle around in it. I’ll forever remember 2026 for the summer that I learned to take a risk. Sometimes it works out.
Let’s discuss.
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1. Barcelona
Memorial Day always feels like the unofficial start of summer even though it’s usually nice, but not really summer hot where I live. I spent the week before Memorial Day in Barcelona, traveling home over the holiday weekend and arriving late at night to a full house of family and the smell of a bonfire still in the air. And so, Barcelona feels like the kick-off to my summer in the best way.
I wrote all about my Week in Barcelona here, but the general take away is my desired personality is European summer girl. She drinks cava. She wears linen. She eats tapas. She doesn’t rush meals, she lingers at a table while the candles burn down.
Barcelona things I’m still thinking about
The filthiest (compliment) dirty martini of my life, complete with an anchovy stuffed olive.
Waking up early every morning, drinking instant coffee in bed, and heading out for a looooong walk before work.
Sitting outside a cafe and drinking a latte that was incredible and probably tasted even better because it only cost $4.
Everyone in linen and Adidas sneakers and looking so so so chic.
Getting obsessed with The Morning Show on my flights to and from. I don’t have AppleTV so I’ve never watched it again and it feels uniquely specific to this trip.
This was also my first international trip and I had to get a passport for this jaunt, so it will always feel a little special, presuming that it’s not my last!
2. The Beach Days
Ohhhh there were a lot of them. I live luxuriously about 10 minutes from Lake Michigan and so most nights, a walk is in order. We’re do we walk? To the beach of course. Usually grab an ice cream cone on the way. Blue Moon is my go-to flavor. But I also spend a lot of time at an inland lake even closer to home. One with a playground and water that warms up early in the season and has no undertow. My personal “slams laptop shut” is a daily snap of the screen promptly at 5pm, bag already packed in my trunk, and getting thee (and thoust children) to the beach by 5:12. I want to eat a beach sammy and chips every day for dinner. I want to live on sweaty cans of Spindrift, especially the new cherry flavor. I want to read my book while the kids make friends with all the other kids that are always here and eventually I become friends with those kids’ moms and by the end of August, we’re sitting on each other’s towels sharing a bottle of wine in paper cups on Friday nights. Now that’s summer.
3. Summer Snacks
One of the best things about living in a summer tourist hot-spot is all the good food it attracts. We have a great taco+tequila place with a rooftop bar overlooking the bay. There’s also this nice distillery with a huge lawn and Adirondacks that also look out over the bay, but from the other side. They make funky drinks with interesting flavor combinations and my only regret is that I can really only have one drink if I’m going to drive myself home, so I like to perch up and really nurse that drink and sit out on the lawn for as long as I possibly can. My family loves a local Asian taco food truck that has weird hours and is only open in the summer, but is a freaking legendary place and everyone knows those tacos are sprinkled with drugs or wizardry or something because they’re so so good. And the Jewish deli that is just steps from the boat launch? Boat sammies on a Saturday baby. Every Saturday.
Summer MVPs:
Soft serve with a healthy amount of sprinkles. I’m truly so vanilla.
The roast beef sandwich with horseradish mayo from our local deli.
A Bloody Mary with an entire fish dropped into it on my anniversary. Love when a drink basically becomes an appetizer.
A giant pavlova with Nutella and strawberries that I ate, walking in the rain, through Barcelona. They gave me two forks, but you know that second one was unnecessary.
4. The Books I Read
The book I couldn't put down:
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
Whoa. This book surprised me with how much I love it. I’m sure Reese a lovely person, but her book club picks are usually outside of my taste and when I saw her stamp on a copy someone gave me, I put off reading it for weeks. This was a Pretty Woman level big mistake. Huge!
We start with Elle, married to Peter who is an angel of a man, the morning after she impulsively sleeps with her childhood best friend, Jonas. What follows is a series of flashbacks that show us their history is more complicated than it seems. They must grapple with what could have been and decide what will be moving forward.
There is SA that startled me because I wasn’t expecting it. Not exactly graphic but troubling nonetheless.
A few good beach reads:
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Trendy last summer so it is finally more readily available at the library. This book is positively effervescent for being about a woman who goes to a hotel to die, by eating tuna flavored cat medicine. Like girl, you were never really serious about that plan, were you? She is the lone outsider guest at a hotel rented out for week long wedding celebrations. The bride in unbelievable in that I don’t think people actually behave like this, but it made for fun reading.
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
A wholesome coming of age story about 14 year old Mary Jane and her summer job as a nanny to a family that is as different from her own as they could possibly get. The setting is 1970’s Baltimore and it’s just a pleasure to read.
The book I'd recommend to everyone:
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Wow wow wow. My MIL gave me this book and told me it featured an octopus as a narrating character and I must have raised my eyebrows to my hairline because wut? But trust me here, it’s really great.
Aside from the octopus, our other narrator is an elderly woman who works as a cleaning lady at an aquarium. She develops a kind of friendship with the octopus who frequently escapes his tank and goes for evening jaunts and is more perceptive than anyone realizes. She is still dealing with the grief of losing her 18 y/o son many years ago in a mysterious accident and somehow, it is the octopus that leads her to the answers.
5. A Little Trip to Sault Ste. Marie
Ever heard of it? Ever been? It’s a very random destination if you’re not navigating the Great Lakes and our trip there was impulsive, but lined up nicely with my birthday.
So the Soo, as the initiated call it, is a small town perched on the edge of Michigan’s upper peninsula and is best known for a series of lochs that allow giant freighters to traverse between Lake Superior and Lake Huron before presumably cruising onward towards the ocean. Aside from that, there’s a lot of bars, really good beaches, and an excellent place to get crepes.
Anyhoo, we wound up there as a meeting spot for my husband and his brother. They were heading out on a week long trip on their motorcycles around the lakes and my SIL and I decided to tag along for a weekend. We went for a cruise through the lochs, saw Canada, and imbibed. It was the best way to turn 38!
6. A Few Things I Bought & Loved
Clear pencil cases for travel toiletries. $3 to keep everything visible, organized and TSA is happy.
So unsexy but this microfiber cloth for cleaning stainless steel with only water is actually life changing.
I wore these press on nails all summer. Usually get a good 2 weeks out of them and as a relapsed nail biter, I need them to protect my real nails from mindless gnawing (sorry - gross!).
Recess, especially the raspberry rose.
This $4 hand soap scented like tomato vines.
Merit volume mascara + Rhode pocket balm. Literally the only two products I wore all summer. A little pseudo burn and big black lashes.
7. The Little Things That Made Summer
My favorite things about any season are the weird niche things that somehow, usually randomly, fade away. Kind of like how, a few years ago, my summer drink was a coconut Lacroix mixed with coconut rum. It was my go-to until it suddenly wasn’t and now, whenever I have one, it’s tastes exactly like July 2023.
I’m keeping a small list of things that feel intrinsically summer 2026, but of course, I won’t really know what stuck around or became a memory for a year or two. It’s fun to surmise in the meantime!
12 packs of Surfsides.
Skittles water flavor packages.
Watching Fleishman is in Trouble.
Being at the dentist once a week all summer. It’s a long story.
Jelly flip-flops.
Kacey Musgraves, Middle of Nowhere.
The coleslaw salad I made over and over again with imitation crab, greek yogurt, soy sauce and sriracha.
8. What I'm Taking Into Fall
And so that’s that, right? A wrap on summer.
But September is January with better weather, and I’m feeling all those hankerings to start fresh. There’s still an entire 1/3rd of the year left - plenty of time to get cracking on whatever goals we set at the beginning. I love summer so much but I absolutely find myself falling out of a routine, indulging my whims, and having ice cream for dinner more than I would ever admit to. By September, I’m ready to tighten things up again. Nothing too restrictive or anything. I just want to feel organized and sort of responsible.
A few things I'm taking into fall:
The mindset that stopping one bad habit can do more than starting five good ones.
The iced banana bread latte from Starbucks. Yum.
Burgundy nails. A little basic but with good reason - it’s just the right color for dark academia fall.
Probably Kacey Musgraves tbh. But also sliding into deep and dark Cinnamon Girl and Season of the Witch Lana.
How’d you spend your summer?
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