Hi, I'm Nina Iordanova and this is the 36th edition of Something Good, a newsletter filtered through my 🧠, 🖐, and ❤️. Coming your way every two weeks, I hope you find something good here.
Sometimes I look at Gemma and think wow, I have a little life that I’m responsible for. It’s covered in fur and stares at me from the couch, eats 4 cups of kibbles per day and loves salmon more than the entire world. If you smell its head, it smells like over-boiled eggs. If you smell its breath, you die.
And it just lives with me.
At night, it wants to curl up on my couch with its huge paws tucked under its chin. It stares out the window until bedtime comes and I put it in its crate, where it promptly falls asleep.
We’ve got a nice little routine now, solid enough where I can leave her for half the day to go work, then go to a pilates class in the evening. She’s got friends at the dog park, she’s transitioned to a new food, and she’s slowly starting to show signs of obeying commands. None of it is huge, which in itself is nice. Just small, noticeable steps of her becoming a part of my life.
Then we also have these photos, taken one shower’s length of time apart…
I paused (stopped?) my singing lessons about 6 weeks ago. It started when I got sick and had that crazy cough, then went to Tbilisi, Georgia for a company retreat for 10 days, then mostly got rid of the cough but didn’t miss the singing.
I’m not sure if I got discouraged because I wasn’t having fun, not seeing the progress I wanted, or if I’m just happy to have two nights a week back to myself. Niloo’s been having a lot of fun at improv class and writing class and it makes me want to do something more social than singing lessons.
I’ve started going to pilates at a tiny studio by my house called Have A Nice Day Pilates and I’m excited to start doing stuff with my body again. I’ve had a lot of excuses for not being active (winter, Gemma, nothing close by, wrist injury) and finally decided to just figure it out. So here we are!
The class was all women which I LOVE. It reminds me of a studio called Misfit Pilates that Niloo and I used to go to in the early days of our startup. It was almost always only women and there were lots of unshaved legs and armpits and tattoos and it was frigging AWESOME. Just felt like an easy welcoming space.
I think going to that studio and seeing how beautiful the women were (maybe more so??) even though they weren’t perfectly waxed and shaved changed a lot of my feelings about body hair maintenance. It took a few classes to get used to it as a normal thing, but I haven’t looked back since lol.
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My brother is getting married on Friday (aka yesterday by the time you get this!!) and I already started crying when I wrote the card, so it will be mandatory to invest in some waterproof mascara for the actual ceremony. Since I cannot tell you anything about the wedding (because it hasn’t happened yet!!), here is another thing that hasn’t happened: this dress. Almost bought it to wear but decided it was too over the top.
Still have some regrets about leaving it. If you live in Canada, just know that The Bay is the greatest place on earth and is a black hole that manifests both your greatest fears (shirts made of polyester) and your secret desires (a huge yellow organza dress).
Love love love,
✨
Warmly yours,
Nina
Thanks for reading and I'll see you in two weeks! 👋