I loved the new musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) from the moment that I saw a YouTube video of one of their songs.

It was this one.

Two Strangers is an old school rom com, that tugs at all the tender places in our Nora Ephron built psyches. The songs are insanely catchy and delightful. My son is equally obsessed with them even though he hasn’t seen the show yet.

Nick and I went to see it right when it opened on Broadway and we left that theatre so damn happy.

And now it has been nominated for eight Tony Awards. 8!!!! Best Musical, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Orchestrations and Best Scenic Design of a Musical.

So well deserved!

And the joy from the cast and crew this week has been inspiring and delight-making in our dumpster fire of a news cycle.

They were also just on the Today Show.

If you’re looking for a new show to see, this is the one. And when it wins those Tonys in June tickets will be impossible to get.

I’m gonna leave you with one more number.

After the train museum we set forth to a working Amish farm called Old Windmill Farm. It’s set up mainly for kids with a short horse drawn cart ride, followed by a tour of the farm where all manner of animals can be petted, fed and held…more than enough to wildly please any child or adult. There are baby chicks, rabbits, goats, calves, a milking cow and to our children’s great interest, barn swallows busily tending to their nests (farmers love them because they eat lots of bugs).

We saw a four day old mini horse foal…the tiniest horse you have ever seen.

Now, I won’t get into a debate about just how “authentic” this farm was or wasn’t, but the kids did have lots of question about what it meant to be Amish and one of the main things we walked away with is that many of the technological aspects of life fit into something of a grey area depending on just how communal the use of the technology is. A gas powered thresher was being pulled by horses and electric heaters were available for the baby chicks. Life is full of grey areas and at least this got us all talking and thinking about what we really need in life and everyone was very polite and willing to answer questions.

Well, a brewery is always a good call for a vacation lunch and Bespoke Brewery served us well for lunch and a playground as well as yet another excellent model train - the Choo Choo barn. Though I really dislike the childish term “choo choo”, the trains were truly excellent and featured an astonishing level of detail in the modeling which amused the kids until the place closed. Once every four minutes a firetruck appeared to put out a fire in an A Frame. There was a circus, a lake with actual fish, a ski slope and an entire Civil War battlefield.

And then we plotted our next move: The Strasburg Railroad. We enjoyed a 30 minute steam train ride through the heart of Amish country which is a surprisingly stunning piece of countryside.

But wait. There’s so much more. The next morning we hit up the Turkey Hill Experience. Yup, Turkey Hill Ice Cream. The majority of the brand’s dairy is from right here in Central PA and their main factory is right outside of Lancaster. There is an entire factory experience for the kids that includes learning about pasteurization, the history of dairy farming and even marketing and product development. You create your own ice cream flavor and then make a commercial for it.

And then you ACTUALLY MAKE THE ICE CREAM.

Jo made a rootbeer, banana potato chip creation. Bea made Mint, Mint, Fruity Pebble Mint.

And then you eat a pint of it before noon.

And then of course, the coup d’grace, everyone’s favorite family theme park, Dutch Wonderland.

Dutch Wonderland, despite the name and the very tenuous and mildly exploitative relationship to the Amish, is a marvelous affair for anyone between the ages of 3 and, say, 10. It’s friendly and relaxed with minimal lines, heaps of rides that little kids love and all the chicken nuggets and ice cream you can eat. Truly 5 stars.

We haven’t even made it to Harrisburg yet, but now we are at the end of the this email. If anyone wants to plan a central PA trip, we highly recommend it and message us if you have any questions.

Onto the greatest hotel my k…

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This isn’t surprising. The news was especially bleak yesterday, so bleak that I debated whether I should even send anything out today, but then I remembered that when the world feels particularly precarious I like to read something kindof silly and escapist that has absolutely nothing to do with a deranged mad man. So…Canadian road trips and wine!

The migraine was fucking horrible, but it also reminded me to maybe slow the heck down a little for a few days. Thankfully I’m heading to Carmel Valley today to be the Writer in Residence at the Northern California Writers Retreat. The timing couldn’t have been better. I clearly need to turn off. I’ll fill you in on all of it when I’m back, but I’m making myself take a break from being here until Monday. Thanks for the reminder migraine!!

I also wanted to share just a little bit of good news. We have been getting fantastic endorsements for The Parisian Heist and I wanted to share this one from the one and only Adriana Trigiana, an author I adore and respect so much.

"Jo Piazza is a dazzling storyteller who adds another winner to her canon of expert novels. Suspense! Mystery! Avarice! The Parisian Heist is a feast. Glamorous locations, international intrigue, a priceless collection of Van Gogh paintings, and an unlikely inheritance, plays against art thieves on the prowl in the 1990s. I couldn't put it down. Vive la Piazza!"

I love her such much!!!

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here.

NOW ONTO CANADA, AND WINE

I had no idea that Canadian wine was a thing, much less really good Canadian wine. I LOVE being surprised. That’s why I’m going to start this leg of our Spring Break road trip with our visit to my new favorite winery: Megalomaniac.

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Parisian Heist just a great review in firstCLUE, a crime fiction outlet started by former Library Journal editors. The reviewer raves:

“What a cocktail of art history, determination, and rich people behaving badly, with all capped by an art heist that will have readers holding their breath.”

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

Some families fly off to a warm, beachy island for Spring Break. Not the Asters. This year we chose to road trip through a veritable squall to the Great White North where it was even colder and windier than in Philadelphia and the Catskills.

It rained most of the time. And when it wasn’t raining it was cold and windy and very blah outside. That said, there is no bad weather, just bad outfit choices so we put the kids in many layers and found our own fun, some of it inside. Some of it dumbly expensive. Some of it involving a margarita.

En route to Niagara we stopped off in Ithaca to see how GORGEous it actually is and visited their top notch Sciencenter which the kids absolutely adored. There was an axolotl, dam building, a massively cool outdoor playground and a scavenger hunt to learn about Old Greeny, the Loch Ness monster of the Finger Lakes (read more about Old Greeny here).

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We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the p…

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Your voice matters. Your phone calls and texts all matter. I know it is easy to feel like they don’t, but I promise they do. Today, Senate Democrats and a group of Republicans blocked a major funding package because it included …

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I’m writing this substack from the passenger seat of the car with only one child in the back. ONE FREAKING CHILD. It is almost like having no children in the car at all. I keep worrying that I’ve forgotten something. Alas, I didn’t leave the other two at the Jon Bon Jovi rest stop on the NJ turnpike (though I think they could hold their own there). My m…

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Freda Salvador, my favorite woman-owned shoe brand does 25% off for this week and I love these, these and these.

Quite Literally Books is doing 20% off all their books and Herland is our December reading pick. I also love the original anti-tradwife novel from 100 years ago, Home-Maker.

We get all of our pots and pans from Caraway and they are doing between 20 and 25% off.

Anthropologie is doing between 20 and 40% off which means my favorite skirt is on sale. And Dr. Martens is doing a big sale too which scratches my constant nineties nostalgia itch.

Hiiiii from London!!! First things first, you definitely get a side eye over here across the pond when people hear an American accent. I wish I had ordered this sweater from Lingua Franca before I left. And hint, hint Nick Aster, I want one to replace my missing She Likes to Win one.

Now let’s talk about how to survive a Wolf Day. Wolf Day is a phrase coined by my friend Regan’s (editor of the fantastic The Carry-On substack and founder of my favorite travel guides, Saltete). She uses it to refer to the day after a flight when you have to stay up until bedtime try to kick jet lag’s ass….the one where you land at like 8 am and can’t check into your damn hotel until 3, and then when you can check in you want to sleep, but you know you shouldn’t. All of this was manageable before kids, but with kids…..well, that’s when you really turn into fucking wolves.

Here’s how Regan describes it:

The term Wolf Day was coined four years ago by my youngest daughter after an overnight flight from New York to Rome. That first travel day is always a real mixed bag of highs and lows. There’s a flood of adrenaline when we land, the pure thrill of being Somewhere Else. And then the crash—the moment the adrenaline drains and bone-deep exhaustion takes over. When you have kids, that crash hits harder. With multiple kids, it doesn’t even happen at the same time, it overlaps like a never-ending series of tiny emotional avalanches. But you have to make it to at least 8:30 p.m. if you want any hope of adjusting to local time, so you drag everyone around to a few sites, dispense a steady stream of sugar, and do your best not to pass out in public.

On this travel day, we sat at a restaurant and three out of the five members of my family were crying (5/5 of us wanted to) and I fake-cheerfully told my kids, yes, this travel day is always bad, but it’s worth it! Then, to distract them from the crippling tired, I said we should give it a name. What should we call it? Sloane, at the time age 5, said “Worst Day,” but since she was wheeze-crying we all heard “Wolf Day” and now it’s the Stephens Family name for the travel day. Wolf may have been wrong, but it certainly fits. We might snarl at each other as the long day stretches on. But giving the day a name reminds us all it’s temporary, and it binds us together in our shared, slightly feral suffering.

Since then Regan and her fam have gotten very good at conquering Wolf Days and I am always in awe of them.

We just had our own Wolfie when we landed in London and this is how we got it done….spoiler, it did involve a lot of howling.

Flying out had been chaos. I don’t know about you but the night and day before any family flight always feels like the first scene in Home Alone with the yelling and the packing and the mad scramble to try to not forget anyone or anything. I always tell myself I wouldn’t forget a whole kid, but never say never.

We ended up flying through Boston to get to London for the holidays because when you’re flying with five people the cheaper flights really add up. And then we were delayed in Boston until midnight. Two kids passed out on me on the plane with four feet in my face and the baby screamed at Nick for about three hours but finally passed out on the floor of the plane.

I need everyone to know that British Airways has a “Festive Season” category of movies and I have truly never felt more seen and I am thankful that I was able to watch Die Hard and the Holiday with all those feet in my face.

So we landed and tried to keep moving as much as possible. Moving is always the goal.

We took the Heathrow Express train into town and then wandered through Paddington Station to find my brother-in-law.

We couldn’t get into our Airbnb for another three hours so we decamped to a pub.

I had a beer, even though that is exactly what you are not supposed to do to combat jet lag, but I don’t entirely believe that.

Also had some fish and chips and let the kids eat as many fries as they wanted. They wanted all of them. They also wanted pizza and chocolate. I said yes.

We stored our bags and then it started pouring rain.

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I love adorable little boutique hotels. I have stayed in MAISON SAINTONGE about five times now both with Nick and by myself. The rooms are small, but so well done and cozy. You feel like you are staying at someone’s chic apartment in the Marais.

I am obsessed with this quilt and these bee curtains. I want both of them for my house.

This is the view from t…

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I’m home, but I barely made it.

Traffic to Charles de Gaulle was an absolute bitch and by the time I reached the airport, bag check was closed. Closed! This was a minor disaster since I had two bags to chec…

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I …

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My original flight from Austin got delayed so long I was going to miss my connection here in Atlanta so Nick Aste…

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There is also a gala involved!

And then I fly straight from there to Paris to finish fact checking and sprinkling Parisian delight all over m…

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Nick and I recorded little mini podcasts along the way, mostly in the moment and often when we were exhausted or a little buzzed. I love a voyeuri…

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Really quick before we get started. I am getting so many messages from you asking how you can best support Everyone is Lying to You if you’ve already read it (THANK YOU). Honestly the best thing to do is tell two new people today to order it so you can talk about it with them. And leave a five star review on Amazon and Go…

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If you have read it and loved it, please leave a review on the Amazon page. (you can do this even if you didn’t get it from Amazon). Reviews help, even though that is dumb. Believe it or not some people hate that this book pops the influencer bubble and have been leaving some nasty one star reviews.

And keep spreading the word. Tell your friends and strangers and that chick reading the latest Freida McFadden next to you on the beach that EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU IS THE BOOK OF THE SUMMER. And keep sending me all your pics. I love them.

I adore road trips…even with my kids.

That’s a joke. I actually really like road trips with my kids these days. Over the years and over many miles logged I have developed my number one non negotiable rule.

This rule holds true whether I’m with the family or on a ladies trip with Glynnis, of which there have been many (one of which is featured in her delightful book No One Tells Your This).

It’s pretty simple and it makes everything more delightful.

You always stop for the weirdness and the unexpected. Every damn time.

En route to the Jersey Shore we made a U Turn for a sign that said “We’ve Got Turtles” and found ourselves at the Wetlands Salt Marsh sanctuary in Stone Harbor.

Now this kind of serendipitous stoppage is not something that comes naturally to Nick Aster who loves getting from point A to point B in an efficient manner. I just keep repeating the mantra, “It’s about the journey, not the destination…” but over the years he had come to accept this as my number one rule and it had led to some absolutely road-side perfection including a very disturbing civil war enactment involving life sized dinosaurs, a gas station where you could pet prairie dogs and most recently a mini horse sanctuary called the Land of Little Horses in Gettysburg, where we saw a unicorn show, groomed mini horses and the kids locked Nick Aster in jail.

Here are some of my other favorite stops.

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Here’s a list of purchasing options, but it’s also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here.

When I travel abroad I become a creepy parenting anthropologist. I watch (stalk) other parents. I chart the actions of their children. I clock the snacks they give them, how they handle a tantrum, whether anyone’s using an iPad. I point out things to Nick Aster (or text him when I’m away) like an unwell person: “Look at that playground. It’s WAY better than ours isn’t it?” or “Did you see that? That five-year-old just ordered grilled octopus and then said thank you to the waiter without being prompted,” “Is that two-year old really wearing tie sneakers? WTF!”

In Europe especially, it all seems better. There are more public parks (often within close proximity to cafes and bars). More child-sized toilets. More restaurants that don’t look at you like you’ve brought in an angry badger when you show up with a toddler.

I remember being in Sicily when my first baby, Charlie, was three months old. I ducked into the bathroom of a little restaurant to change him. A man followed me in, and I immediately tensed up. My brain went full American: this is it, he’s going to murder me and my baby in this bathroom. But instead, he opened a cabinet, pulled out a pillow, fluffed it, and made me a changing table on a windowsill. Then he brought me a glass of red wine. He just wanted me to have a comfortable place to change my baby and something to drink. No big deal. Just a little casual kindness. Nothing transactional. Just the bare minimum of decency.

Plus, the kids often seem calmer, more civilized, less feral.

So I ask myself, over and over: Is parenting easier in other countries?

That’s why I was so excited to talk to Abigail Leonard, whose new book Four Mothers actually answers these questions. She followed four real women across Japan, Finland, Kenya, and the U.S. through their first year of motherhood and asked what’s working? What’s broken? And what, no matter where you are, just really, truly sucks?

Before we get into all that we do indeed have to stop pretending that motherhood in America is just a little hard. That it’s a phase. A season. A thing we can fix with a the right stroller, a weekend away, one of those Infrared masks that makes you look like Hannibal Lecter, Matcha tea, or a very expensive app that tracks our baby’s poops in real time (I used this app once and it was so shitty….pun intended).

Motherhood in America isn’t just hard. It’s rigged.

We have no paid leave. No affordable childcare. No national health system. No protected time to rest. And what we do have is a culture that shames women for needing help, for outsourcing, for not finding this all “magical” as fuck.

What Abby found is that the way caregivers are treated in America is absolutely broken. But so is our culture. And we also aren’t alone in failing mothers in new and inventive ways.

Finland gives you a box of baby supplies, paid leave, universal health care, and a social contract that says, “We actually want you to survive this.” Japan offers postpartum rest and state-run community centers... but also no babysitters, few epidurals, and the deeply held belief that a “good” mother never, ever leaves her child.

Abby did find that across the board, mothers feel like they don’t know what they’re doing all over the world. They question themselves. They worry they’re screwing everything up. The difference is that in some places, a nurse will tell you, “Take care of the mother so she can take care of the baby.” And in others, you Google "why am I crying all the time" and get an ad for waterproof mascara.

Abby’s book doesn’t offer a solution since this isn’t a problem women should have to fix. But it does offer clarity and solidarity and proof that there are a million ways to mother and a million ways that our lives as parents can be improved.

I pulled a bunch of my favorite moments from our conversation. AND I am doing a giveaway of Abby’s book for full subscribers. Just comment MAMA below to enter. (U.S. only sorry Canada, still love you).

Jo: Talk to me about these women you spent a year with and the issues they faced when their babies came out of their bodies.
Abby: It was both universal and completely different, sort of depending on where I was. So I went to Japan, Finland, Kenya, and then I profiled a woman in the US who lives in Utah. This whole project started because I had my own three children in Japan. I moved to Japan when I was six months pregnant with my first, which was sort of a wild leap of faith. So my first year of motherhood was actually in Tokyo. I was navigating both new motherhood and a new culture, a new language, a new way of raising kids.

The woman in Kenya and the woman in the US said pretty much verbatim, in the moments after they had the kid, their response was, 'I cannot believe I am someone's mother.' That totally resonated with me—just that shock of the transition.

The difference between Japan and Finland was really interesting. They both have generous policies, long paid leave, universal daycare, but Finland is more egalitarian. Fathers are really involved. In Japan, it’s still the women doing all the caregiving, even though most women work.

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Get those orders in. I hate asking, but it has to be done because we want to see this book everywhere. If everyone reading this right now orders we will slay this launch. AND you can get a free paid subscription to this newsletter for a year. I am nearly finished with my delightful short story about a dystopian future where all men are born infertile and have to apply for THE REVERSAL when they want to become fathers. It’s so weird and wonderful and it will be FREE on this newsletter to full subscribers next week.

Get your free subscription by submitting your receipt here.

Here’s a list of purchasing options, but it’s also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here.

Forward this to friends and tell them to order because you are gonna want someone to talk to about this book! Love you all.

I am an anxious person. Or rather, I was an anxious person.

Thanks to a highly effective cocktail of Zoloft, regular exercise, and the blessed apathy that kicks in somewhere around age 44, I’ve stopped caring about most things that used to spike my cortisol. I don’t worry what people think of me at dinner parties. I no longer replay awkward conversations in my head. I’ve finally accepted that no one is actually paying attention to me as much as I think they are.

I mean, I do worry about the world burning and the creeping rise of dystopia, but that’s just being a human in 2025.

Daily anxiety, though? I thought I had it beat.

Until I decided to go SCUBA diving for the first time in ten years.

SCUBA used to be one of my favorite things to do while traveling.

When I was an editor for Yahoo Travel I went diving on nearly every trip I took near an ocean, including this one gonzo time off the coast of Albania when an Albanian government official just pulled some tanks out of an old shipping container on the beach and took us down to a gnarly ship wreck.

But then, as often happens, I started breeding. And I didn’t stop for about eight years and time got scarce.

Also not helping matters: the first year we were dating, I gave Nick Aster a SCUBA certification for his birthday. Which, let’s be honest, is a fantastic gift. I’m an amazing partner. He never got certified. Never followed up. Never once touched compressed air.

So it’s not even something we can do together. I bring this up frequently to him, hoping to inspire heaps of shame.

Now here I am in Croatia at the Adriatic Writers Conference with no kids, surrounded by impossibly clear water, feeling a little brave, a little nostalgic, and a little annoyed all over again that Nick still can’t dive. So I decide: screw it. I’m going without him.

I signed up with a lovely local instructor named Neno, who boated us out to a tiny island just off the coast. It was sunny. Peaceful. The kind of day that begs for a fresh start.

And then I put the tank on.

I had completely forgotten how heavy it is. The inflator and deflator—which used to feel like second nature—now looked like the dashboard of a Soviet-era submarine. I stood chest-deep in the water while Neno gave me a gentle refresher, and all of a sudden, I panicked.

Like, full-body, get me out of here panic.

What if I forgot how to breathe? What if I couldn’t manage the buoyancy? What if I drowned? What if I left my children to be raised by Nick, who—to repeat—never got his certification?

I almost bailed. I wanted to thank Neno for the lovely boat ride, say how much I appreciated the tutorial on air valves and buoyancy, and get my hysterical ass back to the mainland.

But instead, I stayed.

I took a deep breath. I said the words I use with my kids when they think they can’t do something hard: You’ve fucking got this. Sometimes I say effing. Sometimes I say fuck. I’m that mother.

In that moment, I had to mother myself.

And let me tell you—it was really fucking hard.

Don’t forget you get a free one year subscription to this newsletter when you order Everyone is Lying to You.

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My seven-year-old dropped this bomb of wisdom on us as we were reminding him that he was having a good time for the tenth time the other day in Bryce National Park. Because the thing is that our kids do like hiking, they just seem to hate the word hiking.

Trying to convince your kids to do something they generally enjoy doing is one of parenting's most absurd battles. At the end of the day, hiking is just walking around together in nature together. That's it. And yet, somehow, getting started on this simple activity requires intense negotiations and bribery.

We’ve done a lot of hiking this week out in Nevada and Utah, from the Valley of Fire State Park outside of Vegas to a snowy rim walk around Bryce Canyon, to a terrifying ridge trail in Zion.

And now that the trip is almost over (more about this wild co-parenting road trip with our friends Steven and Casey to come, including specifics about what to do and where to stay), I’m already nostalgic for it. Because much like childbirth it’s so easy to black out the terrible moments once they’re in the rearview mirror. So we decided to list them here. I am a parent who wants their kids to love nature and the outdoors. It’s one of the things I am trying to instill in them from a young age, but it is not easy.

We had FIVE kids and four adults on this trip so yes, we were outnumbered. Two seven-year-olds, two five-year-olds, and a baby who mostly stayed in a hiking backpack (mostly). We went from 95 degrees to 25 degrees in the same trip.

At the end of it all, it's fucking great. Obviously, they won't love every second, but the question becomes: how can we get them to love enough of the seconds that they'll do it again? Because beneath the complaints and the sunscreen disasters and the constant snack requests, they're forming memories that will stick with them. I hope.

LOWS:

• Spending the entire ridge trail experience yelling "STAY TO THE LEFT!" so nobody tumbles off the edge while simultaneously trying to regulate your own anxiety without transferring it to the kids. That delicate balance of "have fun but don't die" messaging is exhausting.

• Trying to save a baby from falling only to put my hand squarely down on a prickly pear cactus. It’s tiny spines, no larger than pieces of hair, enter my skin and stay in for the next three days despite following many of the Internet’s suggestions for getting them out. I can finally type again.

• Becoming a human Swiss Army Knife while trying to enjoy yourself. I can deliver water, open a bag of crackers, put on a jacket, take off a jacket, tie a shoe and take a deep breath and enjoy the hell out of the present moment all at the same time.

• The baby decided she hated the backpack and Nick Aster halfway through a two mile hike along the rim trail of Bryce Canyon. But she is also total shit at walking so I had to carry her while she demanded I sing a made up song about a unicorn 19 times. Who needs a weighted vest when you have a demanding toddler?

  

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