Rules for a Very Good & Sexy Week | wk of 2025.06.23
DJs may be my new personality trait (yikes), food poisoning, Goldie Boutilier, Euro Summer 2026
Hi Chickies,
As repentance for my unexplained two week hiatus, I started drafting this really early and will maybe meet my Monday modeadline for the first time in… months. If not ever.
The first week I skipped because I was working in person in the office all week and just couldn’t pull anything together that week except for work. I wasn’t meal prepping, I wasn’t working out, my outfits were not fun. I was just putting on a suit and saying a prayer to whatever higher power is taking my calls these days. The second week I skipped, last week, was because I had just gotten off the red eye from Vegas Monday morning and then was just thoroughly exhausted all week.
I’m the least Vegas-y person to exist and I went for an even more off-brand reason, which was to see John Summit (a DJ for the uninitiated, which was me four months ago when my friends asked me to go on this trip). This was my first time in Vegas and while I had a great time, I feel absolutely no reason to do it again. It feels like college in that way: loved it, never would go back. We went to insane clubs, danced until 5 am, had amazing pregames while we all got ready (the best part), and had many laughs. The whole squad was funny and no one was the problem participant. Remarkable. If you’ve been on a bachelorette trip, you know what I’m talking about.
No one is getting married, we all just went to Vegas for fun. I’m the only one out of the seven girls who went who is in a relationship. As I said to my therapist and then to my friend who is a therapist who went on the trip, I’m trying to make sure I do things with my single friends or my friends who have not entered a homebody phase of life that are more their speed. They are always down for my wine bar with expensive Lunchables plans, so it’s only fair that I should to be around, on occasion, for drunk cigs and DJs that I’ve never heard of. Inside me there are two wolves. I feel good, I had the kind of fun that I just don’t have so much of anymore. I don’t know if the reason is my job, or being in a relationship, or living with my boyfriend, or that we got a dog who needs to be walked and played with and loved, but I’m not “out-out” all that often. I don’t go out somewhere where there’s dancing, or DJs. I like to go sit and talk. That’s my favorite night out. But, as silly as it sounds, after this trip, I feel like I should at least try to do an “out-out” night once every quarter, if not once a month. It pushes me out of my comfort zone, gets me to do something off-beat, shakes things up. It also makes me feel young and unserious, something that’s kind of lacking in my life. I live in a neighborhood that’s a little too Uppa Baby stroller/Hill House nap dress coded, if you get the vibes. I work in a field of very serious people, who also take themselves very seriously. I talk a big game as a lawyer about the importance of not only having lawyer friends, but that also goes for not only doing lawyer-friend type of things with your non-lawyer friends. So trying to take some of my own advice. Don’t worry, you won’t catch me on a club promoter’s text chain, but here and there, I might make an appearance at a regular bar, not a bar with more than one orange wine.
And because I miss doing this, here’s a selfie of me writing this edition of the mag. I think I’m going to bring this back. Featured: my assistant/daughter, Betty Boop. The glow is dogmotherhood aka Supergoop Glowscreen. She looks so small here. Everyone is always like “oh a pitbull that must be a big dog” and like… yeah bigger than a Frenchie but she’s much smaller than a collie or a golden retriever or a husky. She’s a true medium sized dog. These people have no sense of scale.
Also she is glued to my side, nannying me while I get over some food poisoning. She’s either getting clingier or knows something is wrong. Pitbulls also have lots of stomach problems so I like to think she’s empathizing. She’s always been a velcro pup though. No one come for me re giving her separation anxiety, she’s totally good in her crate when we leave her at home.
Ok, onto…
You know the deal: I saw this quote on Pinterest, “bad days are also a part of a very good and sexy life.”
The quote reminds me that there are always going to be bad days even when I have the best intentions. I set out my best intentions for my week each week in the rules. They’re guidelines for what I think will make my life feel very good & sexy, while keeping in mind that there may be bad days or bad moments which don’t fit neatly into the rules. And yet, my life (and your life), remains very good and sexy.
One week or two weeks out of the gym will not ruin your fitness progress. I need to stamp this on my mirror this week. I got a boo-boo and then food poisoning this past weekend (I’m fine). That is keeping me out of the gym while it heals and it had me feeling down. I got the boo-boo as I was getting close to Vegas, close to spending hours in a swimsuit. The idea of not working out at all the entire week before felt so counterintuitive, especially because I’d been working out and eating cleaner for months specifically for this trip. But my boo-boo is still healing and much like I couldn’t magic up visible abs in three weeks, I also can’t disappear all progress I’ve made by just taking three weeks away from the gym. It’s most important that I heal entirely and don’t irritate my body. Everything else comes after that.
Homemade breakfast and lunch all week. Vegetarian weekday breakfast and lunch grind is sooooo back baby. For breakfast, I’m still a smoothie girlie. I’ve been doing frozen banana, frozen date, frozen kale, Orgain pea protein, chia seeds, and matcha for a while. We’re slightlyyyy mixing things up this week: frozen banana, frozen blueberries, frozen kale, frozen broccoli, Orgain pea protein, and chia seeds. I love having a vegetable heavy smoothie because it’s the easiest way for me to eat raw veggies. I don’t love uncooked broccoli, but frozen and mixed with protein powder and fruits, I won’t notice. For lunch, I’m making TJ’s Sriracha-marinated tofu over their herbs and greens mix, and roasted brussel sprouts with a Poppi and an in-season fruit on the side. I’m thinking either cherries or strawberries. Probably cherries, that feels so summery to me. I never buy them out of season. I also keep a Tony’s Chocolonely bar in the fridge at work and break off a few pieces as a sweet treat after lunch. Daily sweet treats are what keep me sane/keep me from having aforementioned visible abs.
Finish the job. My dad used to say this to me and my brothers when we were kids. He’d say it when we did typical kid/teen versions of “doing our chores”: we’d rake all the leaves but not put them in the bags, they’d just sit in a pile on the lawn; we’d clear the table but put all the dishes in the sink rather than unload and reload the dishwasher; we’d run our clothes through the laundry but not fold them. I need someone to tell me to finish the job on many aspects of my personal life. I have a half finished personal project that has been nagging me for ages. I have a partially vacuumed apartment, half my floor has clothes on it, you’re getting the picture. My life is half-baked. We’ll bake it this week.
Mix it tf up. Like I said, a DJ set in Vegas is probably the last place you should go looking for me. But every once in a while, kinda makes sense. I love a routine, really, but I think sometimes I can get so obsessed with the pristine feeling I get from perfectly following my routine that I won’t LIVE. We are living! In the spirit of that, and to prove to myself that the mixing it up spirit is not all about going “out-out” I am doing something *different* but not something DJ/alcohol related: we’re going to the traveling Shakespeare in the Park show in Prospect Park, Much Ado About Nothing.
Personal style rule of the week is finding a way to get rid of claw clips. I like an occasional claw clip, but I fear that they kind of make me look like a UGC content creator IRL Sim, yknow? Like sad beige as an accessory is a claw clip. Sorry, I said what I said. It’s a cute look on occasion but that is not *the* look. I miss doing my hair purposefully. I used to blow my hair out every few days! Need to get back to that. A signature hair look I feel is an essential part of cultivating your personal style. And unfortunately for us all, the claw clip is not going to be our signature look.
Books/essays, not Instagram. I know the “I quit social media” thing is really annoying, especially when it is proclaimed on social media like I’m doing here. However, reintroducing Instagram/TikTok on my phone has become a slippery slope. When I’m using Instagram/TikTok on a daily basis, I also watch more TV, and the two sort of feed into each other. For example, I watched all of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (SLOMW, pronounced Slahm-Wah in my mind), which led to me watching a million TikToks of the MomTok girlies from the show, which then led me to obsessively lurking on SLOMW Reddit. I only lurk on Reddit, I don’t post, but Reddit is like my new Wikipedia for rabbit holes. I can spend hours learning about how Demi’s husband asked Jessi’s husband for a $10,000 loan. And as a result of all that, I have been “reading” the same book for the last MONTH. When there’s no social media on my phone, I do my Duolingo and I read a LOT. I must get back there.
Try to be better about Substack notes. I know I just said above no Instagram and Substack notes isn’t any better BUT I do feel like I want to expand the mag and bring more people into the Miss Me Mag world. Substack notes is bite sized writing to me. Some of my favorite writers here use them so well, it’s inspired me. I think there’s a way for them to feel like soulless Tw**ts and a way for them to feel like fun bite-sized morsels of personality-driven fun. For examples of the latter, see
‘s usage of Substack notes.
The girls are popping off about… Euro summer next summer. We had such a good time in Vegas that we are eager to relive it on a grander scale in Ibiza/Ibitha next year. I don’t even love EDM that much but the girlies do so new personality trait is dropping I guess.
Cowboy Gangster Politician by Goldie Boutilier
With all the EDM being thrust upon me, I needed to get back to my roots as a sad indie singer songwriter loving girlie. I’m dragging some of my friends to the All Things Go music festival in Forest Hills in September and was listening to a playlist of all the artists and Goldie stood out. What a nice modern homage to Stevie Nicks.
Side note: At one point, I thought about trying to get everyone to call me Stevie because Stevie Nicks’ first name is really Stephanie but I (a) thought it was so embarrassing to try to start a nickname for myself and (b) thought it didn’t really suit me after all. I’ve been a Steph since college because there were too many Stephanie’s in my sorority. None of my friends from college onward call me Stephanie.
Ily a milli,
Steph
Thanks for reading Miss Me Magazine, a labor of love written by one girl on the New York City subway, to and from her day job as an attorney. If you had fun with us this week, get the party delivered to your inbox every week by subscribing—it’s free! If you already subscribe, thank you, you’re a real one. If you want to be my absolute favorite person in the whole wide world, share this with a friend, restack it on Substack, link to it in your Instagram story, print it out and send it via carrier pigeon. Growing the mag to 1000 subscribers is one of my biggest goals for 2025. It means the world to me when you subscribe or share because you become a part of that goal too. A colleague at the Miss Me Magazine editorial office, if you will.