There was a day last week which, on paper, looked to be almost leisurely. Rehearsal didn’t start until 11pm, so I had the morning to catch up on things, and I had scheduled the kids’ passport appointments to get them out of the way before I headed in to work.
But… it didn’t turn out that way.
For one, I had been up late the night before filling out the passport forms – my own fault for procrastinating. But it did mean that I didn’t get much sleep.
Then the jar of bean soup that I had pulled from the freezer to thaw in the fridge cracked as I was getting it out to pack for lunch. The bottom of the mason jar just fell clean off and there was a flood of bean soup everywhere, even in the little crevices of the refrigerator door. Curses and clean up followed. I was a little sad because the bean soup had been in the freezer for over two years and I was excited to finally eat it in a show of frugality. Oh well. But this was an added level of mess I didn’t need in the midst of packing everyone else’s lunches and breakfasts.
It was also the morning that our County summer camp registration opened and at 8:25a, I was glued to my computer waiting for the system to open at 8:30a. The camp slots go quickly, so this is the kind of thing that goes in my calendar and I set the alarm for. Luckily I was able to get the ten year old into the same camp as her friend from last summer, but the whole registration experience made me realize that there are some inherent equity issues with this system. I mean, 8:30am is an absolutely terrible time for camp registration to open. I was lucky that my mom walked the kids to school that morning, but if a working parent has to do school drop off or what not, they might not be able to log on right at 8:30am. It’s like you need childcare to sign up for childcare. Also – internet.
Anyhow, after that was done, I had an hour to get dressed, eat some breakfast, pay a couple bills, and make dinner in the InstantPot for the family to have when they got home since I had to work late. I actually felt pretty good about that hour. But of course, pride goeth….
9:30am, I had the two little kids in the car on the way to our passport appointment. I pull up twenty minutes early, get out to pay the meter and realize I had left my wallet at home, having taken it out to pay for summer camp. So I get the kids back in the car, drive back home, hit terrible traffic on the way home due to a malfunctioning traffic light, try not to panic, get home, find my wallet after some searching – I had left it in the bathroom of all places – arrive back at the post office only five minutes late for the passport appointment. I get to the passport window, pull out my wallet … and can’t find my ID. I realized that I had taken it out of my wallet the night before to make a scan of it to submit with out papers. I can’t freakin’ believe it.
Well, as long as I was there, I asked the postal worker taking passport applications to look at the baby’s passport photo just to make sure it would pass muster. And it doesn’t. Apparently, the baby giving her skeptical side-eye, was not looking straight into the camera enough. I felt like yelling, “Do you know how hard it is to get a two year old to stand still for a picture, let alone stand and look straight into a camera?!?!” Or maybe it’s just my two year old.
So I guess the appointment wasn’t all wasted, because now I know that her picture would have been rejected and I would have had to come back again anyway.
By the time we left the post office, it was only 10:30am. I was pretty much drained for the day.
This is life though, right? I don’t have a job that I can just take a personal day to do these things. And things do still have to get done. I mean there is plenty that doesn’t need doing, but even still, sometimes the scheduled list just seems packed. (A friend and I joked that next year we should get together on camp registration day and have breakfast and mimosas.) On the other hand, I do have lots of time between gigs that I can probably be better about planning when some things (ahem passport appointments) get done so that it causes the least amount of friction and stress.
And truth to tell, even though I felt depleted at 10:30am on that day, by the time I got to work there was something refreshing about putting on a different hat and solving different problems and shelving the disaster of a morning. Not that my job doesn’t have it’s challenges… But I go to work and listen to people with gorgeous voices sing Mozart. It’s not terrible. And no one whines at me or cries because I won’t let them put their egg in their cup of milk. It’s certainly easier to get fifty choristers onstage with the right prop than it is to put three kids to bed.
I had a text exchange before I started this gig with a friend. She wrote:
How are things with you? Is the job still on or do you have a break now.
The five year old is in a phase where he only wants to wear “soft pants”, meaning sweatpants or fleece pants. Jean, khakis, cords… these are all considered “hard pants” and not as desirable to wear.
This week, we’ve started rehearsal and I’ve put on hard pants again. I can’t remember the last time I wore my jeans. They feel stiff and constricting, pulling me in and making me stand up straighter. But maybe this is what they always felt like and I just can’t remember.
I suppose I’ve also put my metaphorical hard pants on as well, re-learning how to do my job and interact with people. I’ve definitely stumbled a few times and dropped things that used to be second nature to me. (I forgot to introduce the music staff to the singers at the music rehearsals. It’s a nice formality and no one died, but I’ve written a note to myself to remember for next time.) Part of me is so excited to be in rehearsal again, listening to singers and music and doing my part to bring things to stage. And another part of me keeps wondering if I’m getting things right. I mean it’s not the cliched brain surgery, and no one’s life is in my hands, but there are certainly a lot of moving parts and people to manage.
So how did I do on my “maintaining humanity” goals this first week of rehearsal?
Sleep – pretty good. I think I went to bed t 12:30am one night but all other nights I was in bed by midnight. Which is huge for me. Of course, there was the one night that the Husband fell asleep in the five year old’s bed during bedtime books (the man is definitely working above and beyond in the “unpaid labor” department these days). So the five year old decided to sleep in our bed. And some time around 1am, the Husband came to bed and then around 3am the baby also found her way to our bed. So… not a great night for sleep even though I was in bed for a good number of hours. Outside Time and Exercise: I did manage to go on a 20-30 minute walk on each of my lunch breaks. And I did wake up early enough to do a 20 minute yoga podcast, though one time it was interrupted by the kids so it was more like 15 minutes. Plan/Journal/Read – not exactly daily habit, but managed to do this three times this week. I almost forgot about the five year old’s appointment for his second COVID shot – we were about to walk to school when I remembered. Oops. Meal Plan/ Healthy snacks – Well, it was Valentines Day week, so there was an explosion of chocolate in the office, which I didn’t even try to resist. One colleague brought in these dark chocolate Reese Peanut Cup thins, which were really really good. But I also managed to bring in healthy snacks – fruit, veggies, and string cheese. As for meal planning, the Husband and I split dinners and it turned out pretty well balanced eating week. The InstantPot was definitely the week’s dinner MVP. Water – did better on this than last week! Communication – Not great this week. I had to work later than I had anticipated most nights, so I missed dinner more than I had planned and wasn’t great about keeping the Husband updated as to when I would be home. It’s definitely a work in progress. Will continue to try to be better about this.
Some good moments:
Shot and a lollipop.
The five year old did indeed get his second COVID vaccine shot! Hooray! I also managed to get a parking ticket while at the pediatrician’s office because the appointment went long and I am the Luddite who still actually uses coins in meters as opposed to pays with the app. So funny story, though, is that there were two tickets on my car when I returned, and as I went to read them, a wind came and blew the one ticket away – just snatched it and carried it off, leaving me holding the yellow envelope. I had visions of never being able to pay the ticket and the fee just building and building… I called the Husband in a panic and he said, “Just call the number on the envelope!” Which of course was the solution. Turns out my tags were expired. Like by a year. January 2021. Cue more panic and bemoaning the difficulties of adulting.
Okay, turns out I hadn’t forgotten to renew the registration. I had just forgotten to put the sticker on my plate. I got home later and dug through the mail bin and found the registration and sticker. This sticker has been sitting in the mail bin for. a. year. Yeah… major adulting fail. Expensive adulting fail. But hey, at least the COVID shot was free.
-One of the great joys about going on a walk on my lunch break is that I work in a really fun a quirky neighborhood. Some highlights this week:
A random swing on an urban tree next to a parking lot. One day I sat on the swing and ate my lunch. The sky was so blue and it was thirty degrees outside. There was something really soothing about lunch on a swing on a winter’s afternoon.
View of sky and swing.
This cheerful, colourful house – bright yellow against the blue sky.
One windy windy day as I walked by a music store, I heard music. I looked up and there were windchimes buffeted in the gales, making music. I stopped to listen and savour, even as the same chilling wind that made music with the windchimes bit into my skin.
Wind and sun and music.
– One night (actually the aforementioned night of EVERYONE in our bed), I realized that the book I was reading (Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle – a very very good read), was due the next day, and since it was a Libby ebook, I couldn’t renew it. To add to that, it’s a pretty popular book right now so it took forever to get it off the wait list. The app said I had two hours left to read and twelve hours left in the borrowing period. So after I came home from work, put the kids to bed, and ate some dinner, I put on my pjs and climbed into bed with the book, determined to finish it. It felt so indulgent to just sit in bed an read. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Sure, I often read before I go to bed, but that’s often only 15 minutes or so. This was almost two hours. I tried not to feel guilty about the dishes not done or the laundry not folded. Maybe I’ll get to the point when I’ll be able to sit in bed and read the evening away and not feel guilty. Well, that might be what vacation is for.
In the end, I didn’t finish the book that night, but I woke up the next morning and finished reading it just in the nick of time for the book to disappear back into the Libby ether. The kids maybe had to fend for themselves for breakfast. But that’s what cereal is for.
-I’ve been taking part in the Wordle craze – it’s been a great brain break. I can tell when I’ve had a long day when I don’t remember if I’ve done the day’s puzzle or not, and it turns out I have. This week’s puzzle had a couple that definitely challenged me:
Both these involved random guessing and maybe some Googling. I don’t necessarily think of that as cheating. Actually, as I inch closer to that sixth try, I tell myself, “Well, at least, if I break my streak, I’ll have learned a new word.” So this week, I learned two new words!
For the record, an agora is an open space used for gatherings and markets. Pupal is the adjective version of pupa.
-The baby had managed to lose her mittens again. The other day, we were getting ready to go outside and she said, “Mittens!” Then she ran downstairs and came back with two mismatched socks that she had clearly pulled from the mismatched sock bin and stuck her hands in them. How adorably innovative!
make-do mittens.
-Valentines Day! I don’t usually go all out for the kids’ Valentines day at school, but it’s been such a weird 23 months that I felt like I wanted to do something special. So for the ten year old, we ordered some fun animal post its for her to hand out. For the five year old, I ordered pop bracelets and made little valentines that said “You Make My Heat Pop!” I sat with him and we thought up of a nice thing to say for each of his classmates and wrote it on the card. I was really touched and impressed that he could think of something specific for each of his classmates. Though for one kid, he said, “I like E—- because he is not funny.” Which apparently caused some consternation on the part of E’s mother.
-Book props. In our show there is a book that we use as a prop. I love book props; they are usually supposed to look plain and period and you never know where they come from or what might be in them. It generally doesn’t matter what’s in them as long as they are the right size and look appropriately of the time. I like flipping through them; often they’re something dry yet flowery from many years past. The prop book in our show is from 1913, written by a man named James Whitcomb Riley who was a poet and writer and also responsible for creating Orphan Annie and the inspiration for Raggedy Anne. apparently he was quite popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What I found particularly interesting about this book was that most of the pages of this book are still unopened. I was originally going to say “uncut” but then I went down an internet rabbit hole and discovered that “unopened” is the correct phrase for this book with its pages still joined together at the edges. It’s There is something a little sad to me about a book that’s over 100 years old, and still unread. I did enjoy, however, getting to indulge in some poetry reading during a slow moment in rehearsal.
What We Ate: Saturday: I wasn’t home in time, but the Husband made dumplings and green beans and saved some for me to eat when I got home.
Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday! In honour of the teams, the Husband made Cincinnati Chili and Orange Julius. Friends brought veggies and other snacks.
Monday: The Husband made Stuffed Pepper Soup. It was supposed to be a casserole, but didn’t quite turn out that way. Really tasty nonethless.
Tuesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry eaten with rice.
Wednesday: Pasta and meatballs in InstantPot. Made ahead in the morning so that there would be dinner ready when everyone got home. I really love making spaghetti and meatballs in the IP. It’s a little soggier than making everything separate, but so much easier to cook and clean up; everything just goes into the pot – sauce, noodles, meatballs on top – cook high pressure for 8 minutes. All done. I was pretty happy with the meatballs too – I didn’t have enough meat, so I threw about a cup of mushrooms in the food processor and then added that to the meat – it turned out really well!
Thursday: Black Bean Soup in InstantPot. Another make-ahead meal since I wasn’t going to be home in time for dinner. It turned out a little thick so the Husband put it in wraps and the family at it as burritos.
Friday: Pizza and Aladdin. The Husband made pizza. I made it home in time to eat leftovers, though I missed the actual movie.
Wintering by Katherine May (5h 33m) – I first heard about Katherine May last year in a really beautiful episode of On Being . I was deep in the misery of distance learning and having little kids at home and it was hard, but something May said really stuck with me. He own son was having difficulty in school and she was faced with the choice to keep him in school, or to take him out and try to find a different path. She said: “And I felt very, very strongly that although I’d never intended to be a homeschooler and that I really didn’t want to — I wanted my time — that I knew that if I didn’t take him out of school at that moment, when he was in such extreme distress, that I would be teaching him a very, very bad lesson for his future, which is that your suffering is not relevant and that you must just put your head down and carry on and tamp down your feelings.“ And what really struck me was this idea that how we treat our children, how we value their experiences in the world, can in some ways teach them more about self awareness than all the words we can string together. One of the central ideas in Wintering is about allowing yourself times of rest and quiet so you can really focus on what your mind and heart and feelings want to tell you that you need. I think it’s a good reminder. I highlighted so many quotes in this book, but a few of my favorites: “Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
“I’m beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it, but I do think it’s instructive. After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt”
“The starkness of winter can reveal colours we would otherwise miss.” – I love this reminder so much. When I go hiking in the summer, everything jumps out at me and I don’t have to look to hard for colours. But in the winter, every tiny flash of evergreen, and every tiny berry pops against the grey of bare trees.
“… we are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time they grow again.”
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo read by Elizabeth Acevedo and Melania-Luisa Marte – This YA novel in verse tells the story of two girls, one living in New York, one in the Dominican Republic, who discover that they are sisters in the wake of their father’s death. I thought how the book handles themes of loss so poignantly. At a grief group, where people talk about loss, one of the girls says, “If we lost, did God win?” Such a thoughtful yet painful thing to ponder.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottleib (hard copy) – Gottleib, a licensed therapist, has written a book that is part memoir, part self help book. Through telling about her own experience going to therapy following a break-up, as well as recounting her experiences with her patients, Gottleib provides an insightful view from the therapist’s chair. I’ve been to therapy before, and I found it fascinating to read what goes on in the mind and craft of a therapist. Or at least this particular therapist. I particularly liked how she distinguishes between counselling and therapy for her patients. The former is when they want advice, the latter is for when they want self-understanding – I think getting to a point where you are looking for the latter rather than the former can be a very brave thing to do. A lot of wise thoughts, but here are a few: “Uncertainty, I’m starting to realize, doesn’t mean the loss of hope – it means there’s possibility.” “Every decision [humans] make is based on two things: fear and love.” “Just because she sends you guilt, doesn’t mean you have to accept delivery.” A realization about her break-up: “… I was reluctant to give light and space to the triumph, still spending more time thinking about how I’d failed rather than how I’d freed myself.”
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood – I got this book as party of my book group’s secret Santa. I liked it in general, though the ending did throw me for a loop because I felt like the story was finally gathering momentum and then suddenly it was the last page. There is a certain obscure quality to a lot of Atwood’s novels where sometimes I feel like I have to work pretty hard to peer through cobwebs to see what the twisty turny story really is. I was pretty amused by all the references to “nose cones” and I thought that Atwoods’ future actually feels pretty close. “Crake had nose cones for them too, the latest model, not just to filter microbes but to skim out particulate.” I laughed ironically when I read this line as I was in the midst of trying to find KN95 masks for everyone during this phase of the pandemic.
A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore – this was a delightful and fun romance novel. It is the next in a series about a group of suffragettes in Oxford. In this book, the heroine Lucie has bought a newspaper in order to further her agenda, but her childhood friend/rival seemingly is trying to thwart her attempts. Like Dunmore’s previous book, the dialogue was sharp and snappy and there was just the right amount of groveling in the end to make my heart swoon. It’s also refreshing how Dunmore challenges a lot of the character and plot conventions in historical romance. I’m excited for the next book in the series to come off my holds shelf at the library.
This was my first week back at work. Prep week, where we get things ready on our end for rehearsals to start. It was a little bit of a struggle because there were some childcare issues so the Husband and I had to split our time watching the baby for the first three days. Oh my goodness, huge hugs and props to all the working parents who juggled kids at home whole working… it’s all kind of a mess, and continues to be, I know.
I did make it back into the office. My desk was pretty much as I left it 23 months ago, including the above pictured joke pad that one of my colleagues left me. The last time we worked on a show together, we would read a silly joke page after every rehearsal day, one of those things we did so we would remember to laugh at least once a day. The pictures of my kids were still pinned to my cubicle walls, though they were all two years younger, the baby only five months old when we were all sent home from work. My pencils and post-its were where I had left them in March 2020, the binder of the show I never opened sat next to the groundplans for the shows that opened but never finished their run. My hot water kettle, waiting to be filled with water and be set to work burbling hot water for my afternoon tea. It was almost like stepping back and picking things up right where we left them, only we are now all wearing masks and a new sense of fragility and gratitude.
Working in theatre is not a normal 9a-5p job, and over the past months I’ve thought a lot about how I can do better at balancing the inconsistent hours with some consistency in the things that make make me feel human and not like a worker bee. The hours can be long and odd, and there is this notion that people should make sacrifices for their art, but I think that saying art is about humanity is pointless if I’m sacrificing my own humanity to help create it.
I’ve made a list of things that I want to make sure I find time for even when things get busy. – Sleep. I’m a huge revenge bedtime procrastinator. Lately, though, I’m finding that maybe because I’m getting older or maybe because of the rhythm and demands of pandemic life, I really feel it when I only get 4-5 hours of sleep several nights in a row. One night of 4 hours might be okay, but more than that, and I crash hard on the subsequent nights. So yeah, asleep by midnight is my goal. – Time outside. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make the 1000 hours outside goat of 2.75 hours outside every day, but I do want to find at least 30 mins a day to be outside. Hopefully I can still walk the kids to the bus stop and school, so that’s at least 40 mins. But the days when that doesn’t work out, I can take time at lunch. Last week on my lunch break, I sat outside to eat lunch and then took a walk around the block, which I thought worked out well. –Communication with family/ the Husband. I think the person who feels the most pressure from my awkward hours is the Husband who is at home with the kids every single night. A lot of our stress comes from the evening hours being inconsistent – some weeks I’m home two nights a week, some weeks I’m home for dinner, some not…. I want to make sure I communicate with him ahead of time the expectations for that evenings and weekends. Also we need to set time to sit down and look at the calendar so that things don’t fall through the cracks. (hello, upcoming tax season!) And then remembering to call home on my dinner breaks to check in since the Husband is often asleep when I get home from the evening rehearsals. – Meal plan and stock up on healthy snacks. We haven’t been great about meal planning the past few weeks, and I want to be more deliberate about it – particularly meal planning dinner with the Husband so that the burden of dinner doesn’t fall completely on him. Whenever possible, prep dinner before I leave for work so that dinner is simple when he gets home. Also having healthy snacks in the office for when the hours get long. – Exercise – even if it’s 15 minutes of yoga in the morning, I want to have a more consistent plan. I also want to see if I can get a short run (not that I do anything but short runs) in when I have long breaks between rehearsals. –Drink water – I realized last week that because I have to wear a mask all day, I’m not drinking as much water as I normally do. So I just need to remember. Maybe I can make it some kind of automatic behavioral thing… –Making time to journal/write/plan/read. Activities to clear my head and help me keep things in perspective. Sometimes I can lose track of the world happening outside of the rehearsal room or the theatre
So that’s the aspirational plan to stay human.
This episode of the Happiness Lab about anger popped up in my feed Wednesday evening as I was making dinner. Somewhat ironically… I had had a tough ten minutes involving noodles and grocery resentment. The moment resulted in me throwing my favorite kitchen spoon in frustration and anger. And my favorite kitchen spoon broke. It was not a great moment and now my favorite kitchen spoon is irretrievably shattered. Something about the directions on the noodle being only in Japanese and then them turning into a gelatinous clump in the pot and dinner being jeopardized (of course my mind spun and catastrophized) and not being able to go to the store and choose my own noodles and n0 one coming to help me (though I don’t know rationally what anyone could have done to save the clumpy noodles)… anyhow. Not my finest moment of zen and calm, I am somewhat ashamed to say.
And you know what, it all turned out fine. I rinsed the noodles, pulled them apart by hand and they were delicious. I apologized to the Husband for yelling and looked sadly at the broken spoon. The Husband, very sweetly was already trying to find a replacement, but I’ve been trying to find a replacement for ages and have been unsuccessful. And this is actually the second time I’ve smashed a kitchen utensil in anger. So there is that.
Afterwards I was listening to that Happiness episode on anger, and something they said stood out for me – on the podcast, the therapist/expert Faith Harper said that holding in your anger is like pushing down a beach ball under water; eventually it will pop up and hit you in the face. So the trick is being able to take a step back and figure out what your anger is telling you because emotion is your body and brain trying to tell you something. I’m going to sit with that for a while. Because I think often I try to rationalize away my anger, and really the emotion can be more useful if it is accepted than if it is dismissed.
Two quotes from Harper that I really want to remember when I need to be forgiving of myself and of other people:
“You’re not responsible for your first thought. You’re responsible for your second thought and your first behavior.”
“We’re not perfect… I don’t know that we get better so much as we get better at it… Nobody has this down; we are all works in process”
Some hodge-podge bits from the week:
This lost doll at the playground, waiting for her owner. Kind of creepy, kind of whimsical:
It was the Husband’s birthday this past week. He has said he didn’t want a cake, or any celebratory dessert. But I couldn’t just let his birthday go by like that. So I made him a key lime pie. It’s one of his favorite desserts and it’s so super easy and only takes about 45 minutes to make. The ten year old made a slideshow presentation for him where she asked me and her siblings our favorite things about him and then compiled them into slides. It was so super cute and thoughtful and made me laugh.
Birthday slideshow and pie!
I found myself downtown one day last week, and decided to pick up Chinese take-out from this place where we used to eat all the time when we were young urban city dwellers. The kung pao chicken is the Husband’s favorite, so much so that we ordered a tray of it for our rehearsal dinner even though we had moved into the suburbs by then. Much to our surprise, the owner himself drove the food all the way up to us in wintery rush hour traffic.
Anyhow, as I was waiting for our food to be ready, I wandered down to the used bookstore down the block. It’s the kind of place that has carts of books out front for $4/each. I found this book among the piles and it immediately took me back to my childhood:
It’s one of those books put forth by National Geographic in the 80s. We had a copy of this book when I was growing up, and I loved looking at the glossy yet raw pictures of life in the various parts of China. Even though in the book, Taiwan was included as part of China, I never felt any kind of kinship with the Asian faces in the pages; it all seemed so different and exotic. There was something odd, too, about my parents, who have always been staunchly pro-Taiwanese Independence, having a book that celebrated China.
For some reason the first line of the introduction have always stuck with me: “When I was a child my mother warned me, as I dug a large hole in our backyard flower garden, that if I kept on digging I would end up in China.” As a child, this idea was fascinating- digging a hole to emerge in a place so different from where I was… it seemed not like the introduction to a coffee table book, but rather the beginning of an adventure story.
And this week- the first glimpse of Spring. Is it too early? Will they make it? Stay tuned to find out….
hyacinths peeking.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Grilled veggies and pork chops using a bulgogi marinade. There is something really fun about grilling in 30 degree weather. I was always a charcoal grill person, until I got at gas grill and realized how much easier it was.
Sunday: Leftovers.
Monday: Chicken Katsu and Cabbage Salad from Dinner Illustrated
Tuesday: Breakfast Sandwiches
Wednesday: Orange Tofu and Sugar Snap Pea Stir Fry.
Thursday: The family had tortellini and red sauce and salad. When i got home from work I had half a pack of olives, croutons, and the leftover tofu from Wednesday. Eaten standing up in the kitchen while trying to urge the kids to get ready for bed.
Friday: Pizza and Frozen. It was the baby’s turn to pick the movie so we lined up all the animated dvds that we had and let her choose one. I think she picked Frozen because she loves snowmen.
The light as we walk to the bus stop this week has been especially gorgeous, all soft and golden, bathing everything with a special glow. Well, at least when it wasn’t raining. It seems like this is the time of year when the light is beautiful at the moments when I most need it. The sun’s warm rays touch the baby’s hair, as I rush down the street, turning her dark locks a burnished auburn. I’m worried about missing the bus, I’m worried that I yelled at the kids too much to get them out the door, I’m worried about forgetting something back at the house, I’m worried that the ten year old who runs ahead might forget to look for traffic before crossing the street. All these things. And then I see the sun kiss everything and turn it all gold and I remember to breathe and see beautiful things.
And then in the evening, as I’m trying to rush the kids home to pull dinner out of thin air, the sun, only this time coming from the opposite directions, once again tells me that I don’t need to rush quite yet. I can take the time to walk slowly and talk to my kid who I sometimes feel is is growing too quickly and maturing too slowly for my liking. After three weeks of driving to school, she says to me on our walk home, “I’d forgotten how nice it is to walk home in the fresh air!”
I know the way the light falls is just how the earth spins and tilts, but it seems like there is some cosmic plan here. Why else would the world look so beautiful just when I don’t feel like I have the time to slow down and not miss it? I mean now, when it is so cold outside and the dirty slush soaks through my poor choice of footwear? When all I want to do is be back inside my house, something is telling me that, “No, actually, what you need is fresh air. There is plenty out here if only you will pause and look and breathe.”
Of course I know that in a few weeks, the sun will hit that special horizon spot at a different point in my day. It will be there slanting through the kitchen window as I make breakfast, lunch and prep dinner. Morning activities that once felt practically nocturnal when carried out in the pre-dawn darkness will now feel very much part of the day. Maybe then, I’ll feel like the sunlight is saying, “This food that you are preparing is important. Take time to realize that!” Then in the evening, the light will come through the living room and stab us in the eye as we sit down for dinner and say grace, lighting up the one moment in the day where all five of us sit down, hands folded and quiet.
And then come summer, the inviting light will be there late into the evening, beckoning the kids to come out and play even though it is well past bedtime. And in the morning it will stream through their windows as they laze in bed, blankets pulled over their heads, exhausted from staying up late the night before.
I guess the sunlight will always peek through the trees and over rooftops twice a day. The rays will come through the kitchen window in the morning and flood the living room in the afternoon. It’s a predictable yet moving moment. Moving in the sense of changing from day to day, but also, I think in the sense of sentiment. These moving beams serve as a nice reminder, highlighting different moments of my day. As the year progresses and time marches on, the light reminds my distracted self not to take these moments for granted, even if it isn’t part of some larger cosmic message.
It’s my last week before I start work again, so I feel like the week has been a combination of trying to tie up loose ends and trying to stop and savor unfettered time. Well, somewhat fettered to the demands of a toddler.
I’m excited/ nervous to be going back to work and excited to be working on a show again. I know I worked on opera last summer, but something about going back to my home company where I’ve been for almost fifteen years feels different. It feels like things are back on track somehow. Hopefully we’ll all remember how to function.
The weather towards the end of the week was going to be rainy, so I tried to get in some good outdoor time in early in the week.
On Sunday the two little kids and I went on another of the hikes led by a naturalists at one of our Nature Centers. It was certainly cold – mid 20s. I thought that the hike would be cancelled for the cold, but when it wasn’t, I put the kids in their warm underwear and bundled them up. (Or rather, I threw their winter gear in a bag and took that too the car. This is my latest mom hack – since the kids can’t wear their puffy coat in the car anyway, I just keep coats, hats and gloves in a large bag and take that bag back and forth to the car. Seems easier to keep track of everything that way.)
We were the only family to show up for the hike. Apparently there were originally ten families signed up, but they all dropped out one by one. I was skeptical as to how long we would make it, given the cold weather, but our hike guide brought hand warmers and kept things moving and interesting and we managed to stay out for an hour and a half. We saw lots of geese and wrens and ducks, threw rocks on the frozen lakes, explored the chimney remnants from and old house, and collected pine cones and sycamore seed balls. Afterwards, the naturalist made us hot chocolate which we enjoyed in the nature center while watching the bald eagle cam live feed from Georgia.
Winter hike and then warm up.
Monday the baby and I went for a walk along the C&O Canal. The morning light over the Potomac was beautiful, and we sat on some rocks watching the ice flow down the river, the air periodically punctured by the loud cracking of ice breaking down below. There was scant snow on the ground, but there were some really beautiful ice patterns to be seen. The baby was a little grumpy at first, but then we wandered down to the banks of the river and she got to take part in one of her favorite things – throwing rocks in the river.
Winter walk along the Potomac.
I also thought this was fascinating: I stumbled over what at first seemed like a thick cord of roots, but then upon closer examination saw that it was a cable, the brown rust of it melding perfectly into the dirt. I wonder what it was from!
The ten year old had Tuesday off school. I had promised that she could go skating with her friend, but when her friend couldn’t make it, we went any way. At first I was just going to watch, but the person at the skate counter told me that kids 2 and under could skate for free, so I asked the baby if she wanted to try, and she said yes. So baby’s first skate! I realize that I should have had her in a helmet and gloves… mental note for next time. I was sure she was going to hate it, but she’s already said she wants to go again.
Skating sisters!
Tuesday afternoon and evening I also had a supertitle gig for a vocal recital. On the dinner break between the rehearsal and the performance, I met up with a friend for a walk. It also was Lunar New Year, and the Kennedy Center had a beautiful light display up to celebrate. My friend and I wandered outside to see the lanterns at such a perfect moment when the sun was starting to set, making the sky all swirly pink. The contrast between Mother Nature’s and Man’s lighting display was breathtaking.
flowers and sunsets.
Ocean of light.
The recital itself was lovely. There was one piece in Russian, which was an interesting challenge. Thank goodness for Google. As I was preparing the supertitle slides, I saw that the second half of the recital was a new song cycle based on the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of my favorite poets. The poems that the composer used were new to me, and I loved one in particular – “If Still Your Orchard Bears“. It talks about the timeless nature of regret and pain, how all people must endure it. An excerpt:
Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadow of the trees, – Thing that you could not spare And live or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there, A man no longer what he was Nor yet the thing he’d planned.
I had a realization on Friday that this would be my last time on my own with a baby without childcare for a while… maybe ever? My mother comes next week to help watch her and then she might be in daycare come summer. It’s all very bittersweet, but I feel really lucky to have had this time with her. Of all the kids, I’ve spent the most time at home with this third one, thanks to the pandemic. Even though I was back at work five days after she was born, she was only six months old when the pandemic hit and we’ve been joined at the hip since, give or take seven weeks last summer and a few nights since then.
This week was particularly exhausting with her. I think it was partly that the weather was really rainy so we couldn’t spend as much time outside as possible, also partly that I had two days with two kids at home and I’ve forgotten how constant having more than one kid at home is. And also I’ve been trying to get some last minute things done before I start back at work, so I’ve had to split my attention more than usual.
One day, the baby kept asking to paint, so I set her up with paper and paints and a paintbrush at the kitchen table and figured I could set up my computer at the other end of the table and get the bills paid. Not so much. I think it took two hours to pay the bills; usually it takes fifteen minutes.
I was listening to this episode of Death, Sex, and Money titled “A Season to Savor” where Anna Sales talks about the importance of taking time to savor things. Savoring was one of the assignments in the “Science of Well Being” course that I took online last year, but I think I had somewhat drifted from doing it intentionally. There is a line in my habit tracker for “savoring”, but lately it’s been things I’ve remembered savoring rather than things I’ve been intentionally savoring. I think I would like to plan more intentional things to savor. But anyhow, things I have savored this week: – The ice flowing on the Potomac River. -Baroque music. I’ve been listening to the radio in the car lately rather than just putting on a podcast. There is something about the serendipity of radio music – being delighted and surprised by what is playing. One day this week, I got in the car and turned the key in the ignition and I was greeted by the sound of a transcription for solo piano of a Bach Partita. It made me so happy. Hearing the Bach reminded me of how, there is a member of the music staff at work who would play Bach in the mornings on the piano in the rehearsal rooms. I would come in to set up for rehearsals and there he would be playing with the grace and precision that I love about baroque music. It was always the most perfect start to my days. – The quiet moment right after I’ve struggled to get all three kids out of the house with their stuff, put them in the car, buckled them in, and shut the door. Standing outside the car with the door closed, you can’t hear anyone cry because their sibling is kicking them or scream that they don’t have their car stuffie or whine about having to go to school. With the door closed, I can take a moment to close my eyes and take a deep breath and enjoy the silence. Then I feel ready to open the driver side door and get back into the cacophony. -A song recital. I know it was work, but Strauss wrote some really great music. -Working a song recital. The flow of following the music and bringing up titles at the right moment. – The baby. In all her messy, mischievous, glory. Even though she tried to down a container of powdered sugar as if it were a tankard of beer. Definitely took some moments to savor our adventures, just the two of us. This wasn’t how I thought the first two and a half years of her life were going to go, but it’s been really great, actually.
What We Ate: Another unplanned pantry meal week, but I think we actually did pretty well.
Saturday: Pizza and Paddington 2. We had double pizza and movie night this week. We had forgotten to defrost pizza dough the Friday before so the traditional pizza/movie night was… less than satisfactory. So we had a re-do. Paddington 2 was delightful.
Sunday: Leftovers – kitchen sink fried rice.
Monday: Farmhouse Barley Soup from Vegan for Everyone from America’s Test Kitchen. Only we were out of barley so I used farro instead.
Tuesday: I was working, so I picked up a sandwich at the café next to work. The Husband made dumplings and noodles for the kids since it was Lunar New Year.
Wednesday: Vegan Gnocchi Soup. This recipe to use up a package of gnocchi that has been sitting in the fridge since the last time I made this recipe.
Thursday: Sweet Potato and Black Bean tacos from Dinner Illustrated.
Friday: Pizza and Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song.
My middle child turned five last weekend. What the what?!?
But… that also meant that he was eligible for his first COVID vaccine shot. Hooray! We had it done at the pediatrician’s office when he got his annual check up.
This Hamilton fan is not throwing away his shot!
He wanted a “rainbow cake”. We made him a cake from my mother in law’s recipe box and spent the week prior, sorting a Costco size tub of m&ms by colour so that we could make a rainbow on his cake. They don’t make purple m&ms which I explained to my son, and he seemed fine with it.
Rainbow cake!
It’s hard to believe that this sweet, funny, thoughtful little guy is five and will be going to kindergarten this fall.
This week was another four day week for the ten year old because Monday was off. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said she wanted to go to the Rec Center and play ping pong so we did. I always get a kick out of playing ping pong at the rec center because the ten year old and I are not terribly good at it, and there are always a couple of senior citizens on the tables next to us who are really good and just killing it. While the ten year old and I are running all over the place to bat the ball, the seniors plant themselves in one place and their arms go back and forth unerringly accurate and very rarely missing a ball. There is a metronomic click to their playing that is so clean and soothing.
Mid week the temperatures were in the low 40s so I was determined to find another selfie stand and check off some more of the 1000 hours. I found the selfie stand on a hike by a pond near one of the nature centers. We took our picture then set off on one of the many surrounding trails.
Soaring selfie
The trail we took led us to a lake that was mostly frozen. The baby loved throwing sticks and rocks into the lake, though she was a little mystified as to why the rocks just bounced and didn’t go splash. The she got annoyed and tried to order me to go out on the ice and retrieve her rocks so she could try again. I refused. There was a bit of a tantrum, then I distracted her with a nice fallen tree to climb.
Winter forest and lake hike.
Towards the end of the week, we went for a walk at the Botanical Gardens. I hadn’t been there in a while, certainly not yet this winter. I feel so grateful that these gardens are here and I can see them through all seasons. I loved this sign below: “Bulbs planted/ Please stay on walk.” I’ve been reading Katherine May’s Wintering, and I’m coming to embrace the idea of things (and people) needing time to lay in wait and prepare for the next thing, undisturbed. I feel like we need signs for ourselves to tell people when they need to give us space for our bulbs to prepare for Spring.
Bizarre, though probably entirely natural thing this week: I had a moment driving home one day this week when I looked down the road and there was a patch of sky that was this dark fluid patch, swirling above the telephone lines. I was so intrigued that I drove down the road to see what it was. It was birds, hundreds and hundreds of little birds moving en masse, swooping into the air and then landing on the telephone wires. All lined up on that wire, the birds looked for all the world like a page out of some Philip Glass score – uniform stemless quarter notes. I’d never seen so many birds grouped together like that, swirling up then down, making such a chirping racket. Eventually, they seemed to collectively decide it was time to move on and the whole lot off them took off like a cloud of black dots and few down the road. Having seen Hitchcock’s The Birds, there is something terrifying to me about a large group of birds. At the same time, the part of me that finds large group choreography mesmerizing, was just awe-struck by these birds and the aerial dance they were performing.
There’s a symphony in that….
And they’re off!
I’ve been flirting with various “challenges” this month. The 64 Million Artists January Challenge has been fun. Though I haven’t been great about doing every day, or posting the results, I’ve bookmarked a lot of the challenges to do later when I have more time. Having a creative prompt every day was a great way to pause and think about things outside of my tunnel.
I also did a “Less Phone More Life” challenge, where for a week I was sent strategies to spend, as it says, less time on my phone. It is not lost on me that there is something ironic about a online based challenge to spend less time on your phone. In the end, I did indeed spend about 25% less time on my phone from the week before – I was at about 3.5 hrs a day on average, down from 5.75 hours a day. The two big tips that I found helpful was moving all the apps off my home screen and turning off, or rather batching, my notifications. I’ve definitely found ways to work around these phone time roadblocks, but when it’s four steps to open my text messages instead of one, I’m more conscious of what I’m doing.
Two other takeaways from my “Less Phone” challenge: 1) Even though my daily average was down 25% over the week, I didn’t feel like I spent any less time on my phone. I felt like I still used my phone a lot – I read books, had very long text conversations with my mom’s group, surfed the internet, participated in online commenting forums, researched things, payed bills, used the GPS… These things didn’t change. I think the difference, that 25% is the time that I used to spend mindlessly on the phone. those pockets of phone time that I can’t remember afterwards. Like when I just pull out the phone when I’m between tasks, or “check creep” from checking the weather. Speaking of “check creep”- since I batched my notifications, I wasn’t checking my phone every time a new message came in, and I discovered that the weather was indeed the new gateway app to mindless scrolling. I’m not sure I’m concerned about this enough to find alternative weather sources, though. 2) My other big takeaway was realizing that the way I communicated via text, I was likely creating a sense of urgency for other people to check their phones too; not only was I contributing to my own constant phone usage, but I was also part of the problem for other people . Not that I’m responsible for the behavior of others, but when I send a message via text, I think it just feels more urgent and demands a response. Sometimes at work, this is just how we communicate because we can’t always step away to answer the phone or we’re involved in a very quiet situation and the person across the room can’t get up to ask a question. Texting among my stage management team becomes a form of dialogue. But texting doesn’t always have to have that sense of immediacy. I’m not sure what I can do to foster a more relaxed response instinct, but I realized that just responding to a notification is for me a gateway to phone use, in the same way activating a conversation creates a gateway for the message recipient. Not to foist my screen time aspirations on others, but I don’t really want to contribute to a culture where attention getting requires immediate action. So I’ve been thinking that on a large scale, phone use is not just the result of how we react to inputs; we also need to be aware of our outputs and how they might affect other people.
Another challenge I set for myself was to write one positive thing about each person in my family every day. I was realizing that some days I get mired in the things that my kids (and okay, the Husband) do that drive me nuts and want to scream, and I was forgetting to see them for the wonderful people they really are, particularly with my oldest. This column from Carolyn Hax last December hit particularly close to home – the letter writer asks for help dealing with the fact that they are finding it harder to show affection for their snarky teenager whereas their younger child is still a lot of fun. I feel this acutely some days – those days when the baby is delightful, but the ten year old is mouthy and obstinate. Okay, the baby is obstinate all the time too, but I don’t really expect her to know better so I find it less energy sapping. I’ve come to the realization that I’m a much better baby parent than big kid parent. Which is unfortunate because the big kids are the ones that are around much longer and need the most support.
Anyhow Hax’s advises the letter writer to really look for and appreciate the person their kid is becoming. “The surly stuff isn’t everything,” she write, “There’s an interesting person developing in there. The cute-caterpillar stage was always going to be temporary. Make it your mission right now to be the person who sees the first vague outlines of the butterfly, and delights in them.”
When I read the column, I realized that I was finding it really hard to see the forest my kids were for the trees that I wanted them to be. So I took an empty notebook and decided that every day I was going to write one positive sentence about each kid. It’s been a good exercise for me, especially seeing what positive things I find tread a line between my expectations and their character. Like “Helped get her sister dressed for the day.” vs. “Said something nice to a classmate who was feeling sad.” I’m realizing I need to uncouple my ideals from who my kids are or I’ll never be able to see the latter.
What We Ate – for whatever reason I didn’t meal plan this week, so it was a lot of meals from our pantry/fridge. Which wasn’t terrible, but I find it more mentally stressful than I would like.
Saturday: Hotdogs, bagged Caesar Salad. The five year old’s birthday dinner request.
Sunday: Leftovers and birthday cake.
Monday: Pork Tostadas from Mexico: The Cookbook, that the Husband borrowed from the library. The ten year old more or less cooked dinner with much supervision.
Tuesday: Green Bean and Tofu Stir Fry.
Wednesday: Tortellini (from frozen) with red sauce. One of our standard desperation dinners.
Thursday: Cheese soufflé, roasted potatoes and Irish soda bread. We weren’t really great about meal planning this week, and I thought this wasn’t bad for a “What’s in the pantry?” meal. I originally was just going to make a frittata, but then saw a recipe for soufflé in the Moosewood cookbook and thought, “Why not?” Soufflé has a certain mystique about it for me – I always think of that scene in the movie Sabrina where Audrey Hepburn fails at making a soufflé for her French cooking class. “A woman happily in love, she burns the soufflé,” a wise fellow student says to her, “A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.” At any rate – it turns out it wasn’t difficult and my soufflé rose beautifully. It’s a good way to stretch six eggs to feed eight people, but I can’t say that I liked it better than a quiche or a frittata.
Friday: Pizza and Looney Tunes, Snoopy and Hello, Jack. It was the newly five year old’s turn to pick the move.
