Happy Friday, friends! Rob and I are headed to Food Truck Friday tonight (again--we go almost every week!) before a busy weekend at home: barre, a wine tasting, the South End Hops Festival, a going-away party for a friend, and hopefully some time at the dog park on Sunday. Until then, here are some links I've been gathering for you. Enjoy!

To Read:

• When Close Friends Live Far Away (A Request). This piece meant so much to me. It made me think about how whenever I'm in town with my friend Tina, getting Thai takeout or just walking around the grocery store picking up stuff to make dinner often feels like the most special use of our time together. Normal stuff that we miss out on by living in two different cities.
• What I've Learned About Heterosexual Female Desire From Decades of Reading. This is hilarious.

To Watch/Listen to:

• This is an older episode, but such an amazing one: Falling, on Radiolab. It actually made me cry a little.
• Macey Goes to The White House! I'm seriously obsessed with this cute, smart, and funny little girl.
• Love these Andrew McMahon videos that Jenna sent me the other day. Cecilia and the Sattelite is one of my favorites.

Wish List:

• I think these shoes are super cute.
• This looks like a great jumpsuit for only $35! Old Navy has a ton of awesome stuff out right now--one of my neighbors was wearing the cutest maxi skirt from there the other day.
• The perfect wrap dress.
• I just bought a couple new things to wear to barre, but I still have my eye on these grey leggings.

Other Stuff:

• This chocolate iced mocha with ice cream looks like an amazing thing to do with coffee.
• We've been getting our apartment cleaned once a month lately and it's sort of the best. This is our referral link if you want to schedule a cleaning and get $25 off. 
• Are any of you guys using Point yet? It's pretty cool.

--

What are you up to this weekend?

Photo by Sarah Gatrell for Freckled Italian--a sneak peek at next month's La Crema collaboration!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that my next life goal is to do a split.

I have never been very flexible--in life, maybe, but definitely not physically. I have been a runner for as long as I can remember, and for me that was a very low-maintenance identity. You put on your shoes and you went, and I never made the time to stretch before or after. I still drag myself out of bed in the mornings for a quick run, but there's a lot more to me these days.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to stretch lately--to find yourself doing new things when you thought you knew who you were already. A runner then a CrossFitter then a not much of anything-er, suddenly finding herself at the barre six times a week, daydreaming about split stretches and standing up on tiptoes.

"The whole of life becomes an act of letting go," Yann Martel wrote in Life of Pi.

But maybe life is more of a stretch than anything else.

While I have still not figured out how to drop music into Audacity (or create an RSS feed so you guys can download these episodes on iTunes...baby steps), Jenna and I have managed to put out five episodes of our podcast and for that, I couldn't be more proud.

We've covered a wide range of topics, from random facts about ourselves to our workout history plus a chat about barre and what makeup we wear every day (including what we'd use if we were only allowed one product). We had an in-depth discussion about the latest season of GIRLS (and hope to do a similar episode with other shows, too) and, in my favorite episode so far, talked about making and keeping friendships as an adult.

If you have any topics you'd like us to cover, let me know and we'll add it to the list! I was so intimidated to start podcasting a few months ago but now it's one of my absolute favorite things.

Episodes: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5