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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Breakdown's Premiership team of the 2024-25 season
The Fijian Kalaveti Ravouvou has been in scintillating form for Bristol Bears, and lines up at outside-centre in the Breakdown's team of the season. The Fijian Kalaveti Ravouvou has been in scintillating form for Bristol Bears, and lines up at outside-centre in the Breakdown's team of the season. Photograph:Full back Santiago Carreras (Gloucester) Plenty of quality contenders – Sale's Joe Carpenter, Northampton's George Furbank and Bristol's Rich Lane – and I was also tempted to hand Alex Goode a well-deserved retirement gift. But Carreras has been an absolute joy to watch and central to Gloucester's attacking reinvention. For a snapshot check out the try he helped to start and then finished against Sale at Kingsholm in January. The prospect of him linking up with Finn Russell at Bath next season is mouthwatering. Right wing Tommy Freeman (Northampton) A season to remember for a fine player who continues to improve. There are quicker right wingers around – Saracens' Tobias Elliott, Exeter's Paul Brown-Bampoe and Leicester's Adam Radwan have all caught the eye – but none with Freeman's all-round instincts, aerial ability and deceptive strength. Fifteen tries in his past 12 games of the season for club and country is not the worst springboard into this summer's British & Irish Lions tour. Outside-centre Kalaveti Ravouvou (Bristol) The 26-year-old Ravouvou has featured in a variety of positions this season but has to be included somewhere on this team sheet. Eleven tries in 13 Premiership games – he missed the start of the campaign – tells only part of the story. Give him the ball and something special tends to happen, as underlined by his extraordinary back-handed offload to set up Gabriel Ibitoye for a try against Leicester in April. Pips his Bears teammate Benhard Janse Van Rensburg and Bath's sadly injured Ollie Lawrence. Inside-centre Seb Atkinson (Gloucester) England have been looking for young players with the skillset to fill the pivotal 12 jersey and Atkinson, still only 23, has all the necessary attributes. Strong, fit and dextrous he featured in all Gloucester's league games, contributing seven tries, and must be pushing strongly for a first Test cap on tour this summer. Suddenly, with Sale's Rekeiti Ma'asi-White and Bath's Max Ojomoh also in the frame, Steve Borthwick has intriguing options. Left wing Gabriel Ibitoye (Bristol) Yes, he makes the occasional howler. Yes, he sees things differently. But Ibitoye did not finish this season as the league's joint top scorer by accident and, with the Bears preparing to face Bath in Friday's semi-final, he is not finished yet. Almost ridiculously elusive and with an astute eye for a gap, he just needs to tighten up his defence a notch. Ollie Hassell-Collins, Cadan Murley and Arron Reed are all unlucky. Fly-half George Ford (Sale Sharks) Overlooked by the British & Irish Lions but not by everyone else. While the past few seasons have had their frustrations he has been consistently influential for the Sharks this year, particularly when you dig deeper into the stats. Leaving aside the Saracens fixture in September – when he limped off after six minutes – Sale have won all but one of the other 11 league games he started. Food for thought for his former club Leicester this weekend. Scrum-half Tomos Williams (Gloucester) Ben Spencer has enjoyed another fine season for Bath and Alex Mitchell remains a class operator. In common with Carreras, though, it is impossible to overlook the whirring dynamo who has sparked Gloucester's fast and furious attacking rugby. Williams started all but one of the Cherry & Whites' games and his no-look basketball-style scoring pass to Seb Atkinson against Bristol was among the season's defining images. Loosehead prop Francois van Wyk (Bath) Francois who? This is probably a record because Van Wyk has started 13 of his 17 Premiership games this season on the bench. But once he rumbles on to the field as a specialist second-half replacement there is mostly only one outcome: the Bath pack crank things up and the opposition slowly have the life squeezed out of them. Will receive nil publicity outside north-east Somerset before this week's semi-final, but a vital cog in the Bath machine nevertheless. Hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie (Sale Sharks) Could easily have gone for Northampton's Curtis Langdon or Bath's Tom Dunn, neither of whom have taken a backward step all season. Nathan Jibulu, bound for Sale from Harlequins, also looks a serious prospect. But Cowan-Dickie's career revival following a worrying neck injury has been remarkable and his recent form has also helped to drive Sale's late-season challenge. Will fancy denting a few Wallabies on the Lions' tour of Australia. Tighthead prop Thomas du Toit (Bath) The Springbok rock upon which Bath's table-topping season has been based. Every top side needs an immovable object at tighthead and Bath have not lost a league match in which Du Toit has started since the season's opening weekend. Among the nominees for player of the season and must have a decent chance of claiming the top prize on behalf of unsung front-rowers everywhere. Has also helped his teammate Will Stuart raise his game to the next level. Lock Maro Itoje (Saracens) Newly married, captain of the British & Irish Lions and now – drum roll – selected in the Breakdown's team of the season for a second consecutive year. Amid his myriad other commitments he has started 14 league games and has not been substituted by either club or country in any fixture since the end of September. That kind of durability and mental strength continues to set him apart. Lock Ollie Chessum (Leicester) Another potentially valuable Lion-in-waiting. Chessum is becoming as much of a talisman for Leicester as Du Toit is for Bath. The Tigers have lost only one league game this season in which their 24-year-old England forward has featured; if he can stay fit he should have a long and successful Test career. His battle against Sale's bruising forwards will go a long way towards determining Saturday's semi-final. Blindside flanker Ted Hill (Bath) What a vintage season it has been for back-row forwards. Sale's Tom Curry, Saracens' Juan Martín González, Northampton's Alex Coles (how good was he in the Champions Cup final?) and Josh Kemeny are all high-class operators but Hill, regularly overlooked by England, has been consistently outstanding. He can operate in the second row, soar high in the lineout, tackle like a tank and sprint like a back; not since the rampaging Tom Croft has a towering back-rower possessed such devastating pace. Openside flanker Henry Pollock (Northampton) Plenty of alternative options here as well, led by Ben Curry at Sale, Sam Underhill and Guy Pepper at Bath and Will Evans at Harlequins. But Pollock, black headband and all, has gatecrashed the England team, played in a Champions Cup final and made the Lions squad aged 20. Can also operate at No 8, where his pace off the base makes him dangerous, while his turnover ability and penchant for irritating opponents make it impossible for him to be overlooked. No 8 Tom Willis (Saracens) Made a storming start to the season and, despite also representing England and England A, possessed sufficient energy and stamina to feature in 16 of Sarries' 18 league games. Not his fault that Saracens could not quite make the playoffs but at least it gives him a slight respite before England head off on tour to Argentina and the United States. Seven tries for club and country was his best return in a season since 2020-21, when he scored eight for Wasps. Adieu, farewell The list grows ever longer. Ben Youngs, Danny Care, Dan Cole, Mike Brown and, now, Alex Goode, all distinguished England internationals who have announced their retirement from top-level rugby in recent weeks. Add Joe Marler and Anthony Watson, who walked away a few months ago, and it really is the end of an era for the English domestic game. All the above played most of their rugby for one club, never tired of the Premiership grind and, in different ways, were inspiring role models for those seeking to follow in their footsteps. Good luck to each and every one for the next chapter and thanks for the memories. One to watch The United Rugby Championship has also reached the semi-final stage with Leinster playing Glasgow Warriors in Dublin and the Bulls hosting the Sharks in an all-South African clash in Pretoria. The Sharks owe their place to a 6-4 victory in a dramatic penalty shootout when their quarter-final against Munster in Durban finished 24-24 after extra time. It again raised the issue of the best way to decide tied matches, with penalty shootouts in rugby even less satisfying than their football equivalents. Should Sharks have prevailed because they finished higher up the final league table? Or should Munster have been rewarded either for scoring 12 more tries than Sharks in the regular season, or for being the away side? Spectators should surely be served up something more imaginative: perhaps a 'golden try' with both sides reduced to 12 players if the scores are still level after 10 minutes of additional time? There are already calls to introduce a 'golden point' for the forthcoming British & Irish Lions series against Australia, with some underwhelmed by the shared series result in 2017 between the Lions and the All Blacks. Anything but goal kicks should be the organisers' mantra: rugby can do much better. Memory lane The end of the Premiership season sparks memories of great matches of the past and one that immediately springs to mind is the extraordinary comeback by Harlequins against Wasps at Twickenham on the opening day of the season in 2012. As our Michael Aylwin wrote: 'To overturn a 27-point deficit in a little over 20 minutes feels as if it is unprecedented but that is what Harlequins did here. In the 58th minute, the scoreline read 40-13 in Wasps' favour, and how the whipping boys of last season had deserved it, their wings, and Christian Wade in particular, tearing the champions to shreds for the first hour or so … As if a 40-13 deficit were not unlikely enough for the side who won the title against the side who nearly slipped off the back of the Premiership into oblivion, Harlequins somehow eventually achieved the most extraordinary of two-point wins.' Still want more? Bristol Bears clinched a playoff spot by seeing off Harlequins at Ashton Gate. Read Michael Aylwin's report. Advertisement Gloucester sealed a bonus-point win against Northampton but it was not enough for the top four, reports Luke McLaughlin. And British & Irish Lions highlights will be available free-to-air this summer. Read the exclusive story by Matt Hughes. Subscribe To subscribe to the Breakdown, just visit this page and follow the instructions. And sign up for The Recap, the best of our sports writing from the past seven days.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
All aboard for glory? Bath hope their trophy buses are finally on schedule
Trophies. They are like bloody buses. Or at least that is what Bath fans must be hoping. They wait 17 years for one, and along come … We are about to find out how many. One has just been. The Premiership Cup pulled up in March to fairly inconsequential fanfare. But it looks as if another, the Challenge Cup, is waiting just a stop away, before we turn our attention to a third, the Premiership, timetabled for the middle of June – but you know what these bloody buses are like. Advertisement Related: The Breakdown | Rare English double in Europe would be a dream result for Premiership Bath journey to Cardiff on Friday in an attempt to catch the next one. They qualified for the Challenge Cup by being jettisoned from the Champions, but they have fairly blitzed their way to the final, where they will meet Lyon. The last trophy Bath won, before the reserves triumphed in March, is, as it happens, the Challenge Cup, all those 17 years ago, when they beat Worcester in the 2008 final in a downpour at Kingsholm on a Sunday afternoon. That, in turn, was the first piece of silverware the club had won in 10 years, since they became champions of Europe in 1998, at the tail end of an era in which those buses came regularly and on cue. No one can move very far in rugby these days without someone mentioning the phrase 'this club's DNA', but in the case of Bath the double helix is shot through with the legacy of glory. Even if one has to have been born in the 80s to have any chance of remembering it, the echoes of those years when Bath were the champions of everything in English rugby ring throughout the old walls of Aquae Sulis. What must that do to a club, as they wander all but trophy-less in the years to follow. Advertisement Sam Underhill was born a few months after Bath's last English title, in 1996, the year they also won the cup, back when it was rugby's equivalent of the FA Cup, rather than the squad-building exercise during the Six Nations it is now. It was Bath's 10th cup in 13 years, their sixth title in eight, their fourth double. Underhill has endured with the others the barren years, since he joined in 2017, but he senses a shift in the current squad's approach, wrought by Johann van Graan, Bath's South African director of rugby over the past three seasons. Van Graan believes in 'the process', not the result – the bus ride, if you like, over the destination. 'You're not doing things because it's the right moment to do them,' says Underhill. 'You're doing them because it's the right thing to do. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling cycle.' Certainly, any focus on results in the past few decades would have brought Bath little but anguish, all the more so given that pedigree. So maybe this focus on process is all for the better. The season before Van Graan took over, Bath finished bottom of the Premiership, shipping 70 points at home to Saracens in October and losing 64-0 at Gloucester six months later. A nadir, even by recent standards. Since then, the journey has been steadily upwards – mid-table in Van Graan's first season and runners-up last year, his second, when an early red card in the final did its best to corrupt those processes. A good time to put the contingency of outcomes to the back of one's mind. Advertisement When Bath won at Pau in the round of 16, Underhill was sent off himself, early in the second half, by Hollie Davidson. She will be officiating again on Friday, the first woman to referee a European Cup final and the first Scot since Jim Fleming took the whistle in, you guessed it, 1998, when Bath beat Brive to become European champions. Red cards are never far away in rugby these days, but the philosophy of Van Graan inures his players to such accidents of fate. 'I don't put too much stock into how things go,' says Underhill. 'If you worry too much about the outcome, you end up trying to catch smoke. You just chase it, chase it, and the more you try, the further away you get.' For those less focused on process, a casual glance at the English and French tables might suggest a happy outcome for Bath on Friday night. Lyon languish in the lower reaches of the Top 14, after three consecutive defeats; Bath have top spot in the Premiership regular season sewn up already. But such is the Zen at the Rec, hankering after anything so vulgar as results is off limits. And the fans are onside – even those old enough to remember you know when. 'You want to give people good experiences,' says Underhill. 'And that doesn't always mean winning trophies. It goes back to not worrying so much about outcomes. It's not quite as straightforward as the fans will be happy if we win trophies and incredibly upset if we don't. Hopefully, there's a level of appreciation in the process and the people.' Stop looking and you will find it, seems to be the gist of it. Buses never stop when you run after them, as Bath know only too well.
The Irish Sun
03-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Irish Sun
Major motorway closed with drivers left stranded after crash as bank holiday motorists face huge delays
Traffic on the M1 has been forced to stop after a collision between two major junctions. The crash has disrupted all northbound journeys, while emergency services assess the scene. 1 The huge queues have forced some drivers to step out of their cars Credit: Supplied The accident has taken place between Junction 12 (Flitwick) and Junction 13 (Bedford). National Highways East have released an urgent message to drivers while work is done to clear the road. The post reads: "Please be patient while emergency services assess the incident, we'll try and get you moving again soon." Drivers have also been warned to expect delays. Read More on Driving News The accident comes on one of the busiest days to travel in the UK, as 17 million Brits hit the road on the bank holiday weekend. Friday was projected to be the busiest day, with a staggering 3 million journeys. However, Saturday was close behind with 2.9 million drivers expected to be on Britain's motorways. RAC Breakdown spokesperson Alice Simpson said: 'Although the Easter break was just two weeks ago, our figures suggest this weekend will still be hectic on the roads as millions take advantage of another bank holiday. Most read in Motors 'This week's very warm weather may not last right into the weekend, but with lots of daylight hours, there's still plenty of opportunity to get out and about. 'For drivers that have a choice, it's best to avoid Friday evening as that's when leisure traffic will clash with commuter journeys.
Irish Post
26-04-2025
- General
- Irish Post
Author Sharon Guard reflects on fiction, fertility and the untold truths of 1980s Ireland
SOMETIMES you write something and without knowing it you tap into a zeitgeist. More than once I have finished writing, say, a short story, thinking it was original, filled with my own hard-realised truths, only to open a book and be confronted with the experience of a close-to-moment already articulated on the page. This was the case last year. Amidst the excitement and fear of having my debut novel, Assembling Ailish, accepted for publication, I picked up three newly published books and found parallel stories to the one I had written. In common with Assembling Ailish, The Amendments, by Niamh Mulvey, Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney, Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan, all feature young protagonists who fall pregnant in the 1980s. All three stories have different context and outcomes, but all three are stories of lives defined by this event. As a relic of a 1980s Ireland teenagehood myself, it was clear to me a double blue line on a pregnancy test in those days spelt disaster. No outcome desirable, regardless of options or choices available. Assembling Ailish author Sharon Guard (Pic: ConastaPhoto) What became clearer when researching and writing the book, was how largely oblivious I had been at the time to the wider picture: the societal, institutional and political interests at play in my sexuality. In my fertility. I went to a convent school. My memories are of an atmosphere where the nuns were reluctantly coming to terms with modernity and change. Few were left, the older ones relegated to less mainstream subjects such as Latin, and the younger ones strike me now as career women for whom the convent might have been a positive and fulfilling choice. My mother never worked outside the home after she got married. A woman who 'had to work' was a poor reflection on a husband who couldn't earn enough to keep her and their children. Furthermore, her 'right' to stay home was enshrined in articles 41.2.1 and 41.2.2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann. The Marriage Bar on public sector jobs was only lifted in 1973, and the smell of it still tainted the concept of working women. Many of her generation were trapped by biological and financial imperatives into lives which resembled little more than domestic servitude. For many, growing up on a diet of American movies and notions of 'choices', marriage was still a desirable option. In 1985, when I left school, unemployment was trending around 16%. When it came down to the hardcore issue of paying for our perms, the narrative of being 'rescued' by a Richard Gere lookalike was seductive and immeasurably dangerous to our nascent sexual beings. I was lucky. The first time I scored a double blue line I was thirty, had already been married three years, and had buried my mother six months previously. The two events were not unrelated. Motherhood - having one, being one - has always been, for whatever reason – somehow central to my sense of self. I'm not sure this is a healthy thing. The truth is we will never be tied to another human in the same way we are to the woman who birthed us and it is always a complex proposition, in which at least one party doesn't have the option of consent. What struck me most, that first time, was how easy it had been. No complicated moves or scientific interventions, we had decided to be a bit careless and whoa! There it was. The first faint line was confirmed by a second one and a few of days later a third, stronger one. This was good news. But. I sat in my office and stared at the wall, the enormity of the undertaking hit in waves. What if the child wasn't healthy? What if I couldn't cope with the basic day to day demands of caring, the tiredness? What if we couldn't afford childcare, a buggy, a pram, cot, steriliser, nappies, the university fees?! There is nothing like a double blue line to adult you. If I felt this way getting pregnant in the best possible circumstances, how would I have felt in the worst? As a teenager, living at home, not finished my education, a whole life ahead changed? The embodiment of being 'in trouble'. A pregnancy in the 1980s would have slid me through a veil of thin grey mist to a parallel universe which walked alongside. Mother and Baby homes were mainstream in this world, and would be for another decade. Nuns were trading children internationally in illegal adoptions, disposing of bodies in sewers, while the bishops struggled to suffocate a growing tide of victims finding the courage to speak of sexual abuse. If I felt a disquiet in the nuns, it was because they knew they were sitting on a volcano. None of this was clear when the country was asked to vote in the abortion referendum of 1983. Soundbites – as they often do – won out, and the country couldn't bring itself to vote to harm a living being. The justification for ignoring the rights of women: they have sinned. Shame and blame were the tools we - and our mothers - were given to manage our fertility, in lieu of that other rather more nuanced and suspicious duo: health and care. The fact of fertility makes us goddesses and it makes us she-devils. We have the power to gift life. To not gift it. And church and state systems – regardless of location or culture or era - always have complex self-interests to ensure our desire to do this is controlled. Assembling Ailish is published by Poolbeg Press Margaret Attwood famously claims her 1985 novel The Handmaids Tale was inspired by actual history and happenings. A not-so-dystopian vision of a patriarchy manipulating individual lives to ensure its own form of survival. In 1980s Ireland, as we danced with abandon to Like A Virgin, access to contraception was difficult, required a prescription. The sale of condoms was only fully decriminalised in 1993. Between 4,000 and 5,000 women – more likely young girls – made the impossibly difficult decision every year to 'get the boat' to England for an abortion. My character Ailish, was one of these. Her mother, God-fearing Barbara with a history of her own fertility problems, arranged it. If you sit with a group of women of a certain age anywhere in Ireland today, they know, or 'know of' somebody who was in this position. The other stories – the babies who were born in mother-and-baby homes or the like and given for adoption, show up as adults. The brave women, and their families, who kept their babies, and dealt with the consequences of that. Hopefully mostly joyful, but difficult nonetheless. If Assembling Ailish is part of a fictional trend, it is maybe that these stories have simply found their time to be told. With the benefit of distance, they can be put into context. These characters – mine, and those others who currently grace the shelves of our bookshops –can speak for real-life contemporaries in a way that people engage with, through story. For those who cannot tell their stories. Who have maybe never told their stories. Assembling Ailish by Sharon Guard is published by Poolbeg Press See More: Assembling Ailish, Fertility, Ireland, Sharon Guard
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mayim Bialik got her first hot flash on the 'Big Bang Theory' set. Now she's just trying to survive what's left of her 40s.
'I've lived a lot of life,' Mayim Bialik tells me of her unconventional career path from leading the '90s sitcom Blossom to getting a PhD in neuroscience to returning to TV in The Big Bang Theory. 'I was a child actor and then I went to grad school, and then I started acting again. I've had a lot of life, but there is a real childlike kind of wonder to me still.' It's a quality that the 49-year-old doesn't want to lose. That curiosity has led the mom of two — her sons are 16 and 19 — to take on new projects because they spark her interest, not because they fit into any sort of linear plan. She's written books. She's hosted Jeopardy!. She's got her own podcast, Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. 'A sense of play is incredibly important no matter what age you are,' she says in an interview for Yahoo Life's Unapologetically series. 'I recently started taking ballet. It had been 35 years since I had been in a ballet class. … I got the pretty outfit, I got the little skirt. I want it to feel special and feel nice, and this feels like being a kid and trying something new.' Well, not quite a kid. "Imagine how different one's body is at 14 versus 49. The last time I did ballet, I had not hit puberty yet. Like, it's like a very different body trying to jeté away." Of course, it's hard not to feel your age when you're navigating menopause and what Bialik calls 'the next chapter' of work, parenting and dating post-divorce. Here's what she says about life lately — from saying no to cosmetic injections to why she has a hyperbaric chamber in her bedroom. In many ways, I think there's been the most changes in my life in this last decade. I have completed menopause — congratulations to me — so I think that shift is enormous, not just in terms of hormonally, but in terms of conceptually, like what that means and what that new set of challenges is, and what it's like. My 30s were about growing humans that I had decided to bring into the world and growing them past those early phases of their life. That's also when I got divorced and started a whole new phase of life. So my 40s have been kind of that next chapter of romance, the next chapter of career and a different level of parenting. I have one [son] in college and one who's gonna have me remind him that he needs to start thinking about it. They can mostly feed themselves, dress themselves, things like that. But you're also ushering a whole new component of their lives while also experiencing a whole new component of yours. I feel my age. But it's funny 'cause my kids and my partner joke that I sort of feel like a teenager that doesn't have an adult supervising. Like, if left to my own devices, I will eat pizza and potato chips and watch TV. I had my first hot flash on the set of Big Bang Theory during a taping. I was in my early 40s. I'm an early bloomer and I've been one for years now. So I had a very, very interesting set of experiences that led me from doctor to doctor. I'm a home birth person. I had my second son at home, so I've always used midwife care as my primary care, just because I'm sort of that hippie. And the midwife was like, 'Oh, yeah, this is just the next 10 years of your life.' I only had day sweats, I never had night sweats, and I kept waiting, like that was going to be the thing that happens next. I was sort of muscling my way through it. So for me, there was a certain level of managing symptoms, but I didn't go on hormone replacement therapy until much later because there was still a huge stigma around it, you know, 10 years ago. I remember the first time my doctor, you know, suggested it, I was like, Is he crazy? What do you mean, rubbing testosterone cream on the back of your legs? What's that nonsense? And he was kind of ahead of his time. By the time I was put on hormone replacement therapy, I already was done [with menopause], as we say. So I didn't have the benefit of seeing if it would work for hot flashes and all the things that happened. But I did not murder anyone or myself. And I made it through, you know, as best as I could. My weight kind of goes up and down for other reasons. So I didn't necessarily connect it with [menopause]. I have to rely on staying active and moving my body and, you know, kind of doing a basic assessment of nutrition needs. You can constantly compare; it's endless. I am a person who has not engaged in any facial treatments or injections or anything. It's just a personal choice; I just haven't done it. But I think that when you are used to seeing a lot of women, especially my age, who have started plastic surgery and things like that from their 20s, it can be very startling to see a face that doesn't have filler. I remember [Big Bang Theory co-star] Jim Parsons and I would watch our chins because I was the closest in age to Jim. We would watch as collagen started doing its little collapsing dance. That's kind of a thing that I've noticed. But it is really hard. I remember when just filters on photos was something that we talked about, like, 'Oh, you can make yourself look so different.' … I don't really like to compete in those realms. I just try and avoid it. That's also part of why I love doing this podcast … I kind of get to be myself. I get to present as myself and we get to talk to amazing experts who, in many cases, help people do all sorts of other things. I mean, I got sort of a genetically lucky pile of dermis on my face, meaning I don't do much. I do try and let my skin sort of breathe. I don't wear heavy makeup. I have a smattering of products that I've been given over the years. But I'm one of these people who takes forever to use my favorite face cream because I don't want to run out. So yeah, I have a pretty simple routine. I do use and have been using cruelty-free products and vegan products for years. I wish I could say like, I drink 89 ounces of water a day and I exfoliate. But I don't get facials regularly. I get a facial maybe three times a year and usually after I've had to wear makeup for a period to help my skin clear it out. I'm really not a fancy person at all. I have two different autoimmune conditions — and one of them I did get in my menopause years — so that's more for health stuff, it's not necessarily beauty. But it's supposed to be anti-inflammatory. It's literally in my bedroom, in the corner. So yeah, that's pretty out there. I've been divorced for like 12 years and had a minute where I tried dating apps. But I've been in partnership with my podcast partner [Jonathan Cohen]. We've known each other for 13 years, and we've been dating for about five. It's kind of special that we were friends when we were married to other people; our kids were in the same kid circle. So it's kind of a sweet story that we came back together. But it is very different. I had never lived with someone except my ex-husband and [Jonathan and I] still don't cohabitate. But I'm very set in my ways and I think that's something that a lot of people who enter the dating world after being married or [are] in their 30s or in their 40s [relate to]. I really like things a particular way. When I finally said that to my partner in front of our couples therapist, he was so relieved because I was like, 'No, I know I am not a flexible person. I really like the shoes lined up the way that I like it and I like the refrigerator organized and I don't like when things are past their expiration date.' … It's a lot of learning for sure. Gosh, I'm just trying to survive the last of the 40s. I haven't really thought about what the 50s will look like. I saw Eva Longoria's 50th birthday party and I was like, 'Wow, that looks amazing and not at all what I might think my 50th birthday party would look like.' Where I'm at, my 50th might be like watching Family Feud with some friends in my living room and ordering a gluten-free vegan pizza. So I think I have a ways to go and maybe I have something to learn from that more excited attitude [about 50]. So maybe some of that will rub off on me, but I still have a big chunk left of 49. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
