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If I've seemed a little distracted over the past few months - slow to answer emails, maybe posting a little less - allow me to (finally!) present the reason why.

 In search of tattoo inspiration? Wes Lang's work (that's his book on my piano, pictured above) is a good place to start.

 Love this dusty-rose polish for fall (and love the name, P.Y.T.).

 Last night I had a conversation about Donald Trump with my friend, and for real: I need someone to explain to me in human terms why the fact that he's running for president is not a joke. Because it seems like a joke to me, so I'm having trouble taking seriously the (apparently very real) threat that this man could one day have the job of speaking on behalf of my country. (Donald Trump Thinks Vaccines Cause Autism, Which Should Probably Preclude A Person From Becoming President, via Mommyish.)

Everyone talks about the Monterey Aquarium. Or everyone around here, at least. I've been putting off going because the prices are honestly kind of ludicrous - $40 per adult and $25 per child, so you're looking at over a hundred bucks for a family of three - but since we had a few hours to kill in between watching my dad race at Laguna Seca (more on that later) and dinnertime, and since I'm actually kind of okay with ludicrous ticket prices at museums and such because the money goes towards supporting the institution...we went.

It is amazing and worth every cent.

First of all: how did I not know how cute Monterey is? Adorable shops and adorable restaurants and adorable basically everything. We ended up getting an okay sushi lunch from a restaurant on the Marina (the kind of place where you pay for the view rather than the food) and an okay American-style dinner at a restaurant near my dad's hotel, but I saw a lot of extremely enticing spots as we drove around - so if anyone has recommendations for our next visit, would love to hear them.

A few weeks ago, Kendrick e-introduced me to a friend of a friend from business school who had created a startup service geared at new moms, just because he thought I’d think it was interesting. The friend-of-a-friend, Nisreen, and I started chatting via email, and then got lunch when she came to the Bay Area, and when she showed me what she'd been working on I knew I'd want to share it with you guys - and now I finally can, because Bundle Club launches today (big congrats!).

What Bundle Club Is: A membership service for new mothers that helps them get the products that they need for their child when they need them.

How Bundle Club Works: Each month, members pay $25 to receive a carefully curated box of items specifically tailored to their child's developmental stage. It's the same business model as StitchFix (which I've never used personally, but have heard a lot about from friends): you have a few days to look at the products in the box, and then you send back what you don't want and only pay for what you keep, with the monthly membership fee being applied to the purchase (so if, for example,  you purchase $100 worth of items, you only end up paying $75).

The First Rule Of New Mom-Visiting: Bring Pizza

This weekend, we're planning on visiting a couple of friends who live in San Francisco to meet their new baby, and it got me thinking about how different "visiting" is when a very newly hatched person is in residence. Visiting with a second baby is a whole different story, because second-time parents are much less panicky about whether the baby's head will stay on its body when they pick it up and are likely to be really, really excited when someone offers to hold their child for so a second so they can do something other than holding their child, but visiting with a first-timer?

It's tricky. Because there is a LOT of emotion and a LOT of exhaustion going on, and different people deal with emotion and exhaustion in very different ways, so it can be hard to know what, exactly, you're walking into when you go visit a new mom. She may want a break from staring at the baby, or she may really want you to leave as quickly as possible so she can get back to doing what she wants to do (staring at the baby). She may want to show off her newborn, but she may not be in the mood to get partially naked in front of a crowd and not have any idea how that breastfeeding cover works yet. She may be straightforward with you about all this...or she may just act really, really weird.