'The perfect rhyme for heavier things'

The twenty-second one

The day after the election, I woke up feeling pretty good.

Not because my candidate had won, because she hadn't, but because I felt a sense of goodness surrounding me. It was a stark contrast to 2016, when I left work early, cried on the subway all the way home to the Bronx, and felt like a dark cloud hung over me for days.

What changed? Where I’ve anchored my hope.

In the days following the election, I watched my loved ones react in different ways. Some were celebrating the results, others were discouraged and disappointed. And I had to figure out how to show up for both sides—how to be there for the people I care about, no matter where they stood. How do I offer compassion to those now under that same dark cloud I felt in 2016?

I thought back to what I needed back then—what would have helped me navigate that heavy emotional landscape. I realized I wanted to be heard—not just heard, but truly listened to. So, in the weeks since, I’ve spent time doing just that. I’ve listened as friends and family poured out their hearts, expressed their fears for the country, and shared their worries about life in general. I’ve simply been present, offering comfort while they process their feelings.

And in between those heavy moments, I’ve also found small pockets of joy that remind me there's still goodness in the world:

• FaceTiming with my friends

• Browsing houses on Zillow just for fun.

• Watching Despicable Me 4 with my daughter.

• Seeing the Christmas tree in my office lobby.

• Watching the Ravens beat the Bengals.

The past few days, I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts on the election and put them into words, but it hasn’t been easy. In fact, I’ve drafted a few notes reflecting on my experiences with family and friends post-election, and how I’m managing to keep my peace through it all. But as I read through what I wrote, I realized it had already been said by countless others—better writers, sharing stories with more depth and fresh perspectives. I told myself that if I don’t have anything new to add to the conversation, I won’t waste my time or yours by publishing something just to meet the moment.

So, instead, I decided to share something else, something fun. This is a post I drafted over the summer but never got around to sharing. I hope it brings a little lightheartedness to whatever you may be carrying into the week ahead. Enjoy!

close your eyes and picture this…

It's August, and you're in elementary school. You have no problem waking up early because your schedule is blissfully empty. School is still out, and you're holding on tightly to the last days of summer break. You're first to the kitchen, so you have dibs on however much milk is left. You pull out your favorite bowl, make yourself a perfect bowl of cereal, and eat it right there in the kitchen. Maybe you even go back to sleep afterward. Ahhh, good times.

There is such a thing as the perfect bowl of cereal, and I'm here to share the secret. Over the years, I've probably had more than a thousand bowls of cereal—wild, right?! With all this experience, I figured it was time to reveal what it takes to create the perfect bowl.

Let's dive in.

🥣 Step 1: You gotta have the right cereal

Yes, the cereal itself is one of the most important factors. Without it, I’d have nothing to write about, and we’d all just be drinking bowls of milk. Growing up, my mom always bought generic cereal. How did we know it was generic? Because it came in a large plastic bag, no box. As a single mom of four, buying giant bagged cereal over small boxed cereal was the right move. Thinking back on it, I don’t think we ever even tasted the boxed cereal. If we did, it was probably at someone else’s house, and by then we had become so accustomed to the bagged cereal that the boxed cereal tasted strange. Instead of Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch, we had Tootie Fruities and Berry Colossal Crunch—and to be honest, they were way better! Every morning, I’d make a giant bowl of cereal and bask in the delight of it while I ate.

When I became an adult, I heavily invested in cereal and started buying the boxed varieties. It took a while to get used to the taste, but once I did, there was no stopping me. Over the years, my favorite cereals have shifted, but there are five that are always in rotation for me:

1. Apple Jacks

2. Raisin Bran Crunch

3. Cinnamon Toast Crunch

4. Fruity Pebbles

5. Frosted Flakes.

Lately, I’ve been on an Apple Jacks kick, but I have to do a better job at hiding the box because when I give my daughter a few, she goes wild—it's definitely a sugar rush for her.

Ok so once you select your cereal, whether generic or not, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

🥛 Step 2: The Milk—for the love of God, the milk

My husband drinks almond milk, so we drink almond milk. But I grew up in a dairy-milk family. My mom would buy that big gallon of milk with the red cap, and we’d go through it like juice! We loved our milk, and luckily, none of us were lactose intolerant.

Now, when it comes to the milk-to-cereal ratio, I can't get into specifics because it’s way too subjective. Some people like a lot of milk, some like a little, and some keep pouring milk while they eat which is so weird to me. To build my perfect bowl of cereal, it really hinges on the type of milk. Recently, I had a bowl of cereal with dairy milk, and it was a completely different experience. I didn’t think it’d be that different, but it definitely was.

I believe cereal was made for dairy milk. Whatever recipe or concoction they put together to make cereal, there’s something in it that pairs perfectly with dairy. The desert needs the rain, joy needs pain, and cereal needs dairy milk.

The main difference between cereal with almond milk and cereal with dairy milk is not just the taste but, more importantly, the temperature. For some reason, I’ve found that almond milk doesn’t get as cold as regular dairy milk. I’ve tried different fridges, changed my fridge temperature settings, and everything, but almond milk just doesn’t get cold cold. Isn’t that strange? There has to be something I’m doing wrong because I can’t figure out why this would be. I told my husband about it, and he didn’t believe me, which is fine, but he refused to do a taste test, which was frustrating.

Cereal needs milk, but it needs cold, ice-cold milk. Cereal with lukewarm or even just cold milk doesn’t hit the same—it just doesn’t. I take those mini cereal bowls to work in the morning for breakfast, and I get to use my preferred milk, which is Fairlife ultra-filtered milk. It’s so good and so much better than what I have at home. Don’t get me wrong, cereal with almond milk gets the job done, but when you want that perfect bowl, dairy milk is your best bet.

🥄 Step 3: The Spoon. Period.

This is something people often ignore or neglect to consider. You might be thinking, "A spoon is a spoon." But you're wrong, big wrong! Sure, in theory, a spoon is a spoon, and all spoons do the same basic job. However, I believe there is a right spoon and a lot of wrong spoons when it comes to eating cereal.

I asked ChatGPT to list out all the types of spoons, and I got a plethora of options: sugar spoon, salad spoon, gravy spoon, and many more. So yes, the spoon matters. The typical spoon used for eating cereal is the tablespoon—which makes sense. But not all tablespoons are created equal! Regardless of their proper names, the kind of spoon you want for the perfect bowl of cereal is a deep-pitted spoon—one with a deeper, more concave bowl that’s often rounder. The reason I prefer this kind of spoon is that it holds more without spilling, allowing you to scoop both cereal and milk in one perfect bite.

When you're on the go and eating cereal outside your home, like I do at work, you really have to be careful with what spoon you use. Typically, when I’ve bought the to-go cup cereal at 7-Eleven or Duane Reade, they give me a little plastic utensil, and it's a hit or miss. Sometimes they have those flat, long-pitted spoons (which are basically forks) that allow you to scoop only a few pieces of cereal and a smidge of milk at a time. Other times, you hit the jackpot and get those deep-pitted, soup-like spoons, and you're in heaven. The risk is too high for me, so I've started bringing my spoons from home to work. Sure, I’ve left a couple behind, but it’s worth it. Sometimes the kitchen at work has the best spoons, so be sure to do some reconnaissance beforehand to find which spoons the office has and maybe do a few trial runs.

Now, you have your preferred cereal (try the bagged cereal, I’m telling you!), milk at the right temperature, and the ideal spoon. You’re ready to sit down and eat your perfect bowl of cereal. Enjoy!