July 2022 – Life Off Headset

On mending and sharpening

knives in a row. Now sharp and ready for use.

Recently I did two things that I guess I would put in the “frugal” category – I patched some leggings for the ten year old and I took our knives to be sharpened.

The Knives….

I think I last had our knives sharpened maybe five years ago. As knives go, I don’t think we are super fancy. One of our knives is probably about twenty years old. It’s a wood handled Chicago Cutlery 8″ chef’s knife that I bought in Wooster, OH when I was doing summer stock there. It seemed like such a grown up purchase at the time and I’m sure it felt like a lot of money, but in the scheme of knives it’s probably on the cheaper end. Despite that, the knife has been with me through many moves and still is my favorite knife – it’s light and small and fits perfectly in my hand without banging into my wrist. I will admit the blade lists slightly after twenty years, but I’ve learned to adjust. There is something humble and flawed about it that I love.

Our other knife is a Japanese Santoku knife that we bought at a knife shop at a DC market. It is a lovely well balanced knife and feels so solid and dependable in the kitchen. Most times, though, I just reach for the wood handled Chicago Cutlery knife – the Japanese knife often feels too weighty and important for me to be using all the time. Which I know is silly because is there anything more utilitarian than a knife?

Our other knives are a hodge-podge – the serrated bread knife that the Husband brought, which I think might have belonged to his parents, the set of paring knives bought from Bed Bath and Beyond one day in a fit of annoyance at not having any small knives, the small red handled knife that came from my in-laws’ house after they passed…. We don’t really believe in knife sets here, I guess.

One weekend, a notice went out on the neighborhood listserv that the travelling sharpeners would be at the park that Sunday morning. I mean how delightfully old fashioned does that sound? I think we last had our knives sharpened five years ago – the knife shop where we bought our Santoku knife also sharpened knives and they were located near the house of my good friend. So one day while visiting my friend, I brought our knives. The fancy knife shop people kind of looked a little disdainfully at my Chicago Cutlery knife, but they sharpened it any way.

Anyhow, so for five years I haven’t taken the knives to be properly sharpened because there wasn’t a convenient way to do it. When the knives got unbearably dull, I would use the bottom of a mug as a whetstone and get a slightly sharper edge that way. Good in a pinch, but not for the longer term. Well, the Husband always says, “A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp knife.” and I figured five years was enough time to be in a pinch, so when I heard the mobile knife sharpening people were coming to our local park, I jumped at the chance to take our knives. They also do gardening tools too, so the Husband threw his hedge trimmers into the pile and I also put in my good sewing scissors. We walked over to the park where the sharpeners were set up and while they worked, the kids got to play at the playground. Forty-five minutes later we got back our knives (including the serrated one!) and scissors and hedge trimmers, all newly sharp.

I was really excited to try out the results, and I have to say it was magical. Tomatoes cut smoothly! Melons opened effortlessly! Knives glide through meat as if it were butter! The sharpeners even smoothed out the chip in the Santoku knife where I once tried to open a coconut with the heel of the blade. (don’t recommend that method – the tiny knife chip fell into the coconut and that made for a harrowing attempt to eat the coconut flesh. I probably should have just chucked it, but I do love fresh coconut!)

Afterwards, I was thinking about how I should really make more of an effort to get my knives sharpened regularly. It was one of those things where knives get dull so gradually that I had just learned to acclimate to it until one day, I realize that I can’t slice that tomato. Of course sharpening knives costs money, as any skilled effort should – I think our total bill was around $50. But really, I think part of being frugal is taking care of the things you have so that they can continue to serve you. I know it is oft said that the more expensive thing is cheaper in the long run – buying one good knife that lasts thirty years is cheaper than buying a new knife every five years. When considering a cheaper knife, what is the lesser cost? Certainly a cheap knife is not the lesser cost in the long run if it causes injury and has to be replaced frequently. Yet, a mid-range knife, like my Chicago Cutlery knife, grows in value the longer I use it – sharpening it prolongs its life and increases it’s value. And the value, at least for this particular knife, is not just in how useful it is to me, but also in the memories it holds of all the meals and homes it has helped me make in the past twenty years.

The Leggings….

Leggings seem to always get holes in the knees. They can be the expensive ones or the cheap ones, it doesn’t matter. I suppose that is the reality of active children. When my daughter’s leggings (and honestly my own leggings) develop holes, I usually do one of two things – I cut them off at the knees and make them into bike shorts, or I put them in a pile to be mended. To be honest, this pile is rather aspirational. Apart from two years of Home-Ec when I was in Grade Seven and Eight, I don’t have much formal training with sewing. I have a sewing machine and can sew straight stiches (all those masks I sewed in the first year and a half of the pandemic!), but my hand sewing is very trial and error. Mostly error, and rarely pretty. But I still gather things in hopes of mending them.

Lately, however, I’ve been looking for a project to do while watching tv with the Husband. I didn’t feel like starting another knitting or crochet project and the embroidery kits didn’t really hold my interest. So, inspired by this book on mending that I got from the library, I decided to tackle the leggings. I had a pair of size 2T striped leggings that I knew no one was going to wear anymore – the bottom had been ripped out by a child sliding down a hill at the park – and I cut that up to make a patch. Then I threaded a needle and got to work.

Sometimes I wonder if mending a pair of leggings is truly frugal. It took me almost two hours to patch that pair of leggings. Given that I could run to Target and buy a new pair of leggings for less than $10, the economics of my time vs. my money perhaps doesn’t pan out when I decide to patch the leggings myself. I think, though, there is a bigger picture for me. A pair of leggings, patched with old rags while I sit on the couch watching tv, can be worn again. It keeps those ripped leggings out of the trash for another season, and keeps me from having to get in the car to make a Target run, or having yet another package sent to me. I guess when I look at the bigger picture, and ask what is my time worth, I do feel that small steps towards sustainability and the satisfaction of handwork is something that is indeed worth more than $10 to me.

I was worried that the patch was too homely, that having my daughter wear patched clothes was going to be perceived as “not cool.” After all, wearing patched pants is the exact opposite of having new trendy clothes.

So nervously, the next morning, I showed them to her.

“Here,” I said, “I’ve fixed your leggings so you can wear them again.”

She took the leggings and looked at them, running her fingers over my very uneven stitches. Then she looked at me and said, “Mom… it looks so beautiful!”

Patched with love, if not with elegance.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Heat and Time Blocks

The weather has been quite hot here. Here and everywhere else on earth, I gather. Here specifically, is often high 70s/low 80s and already muggy when I get up in the morning and inches up to low 90s mid day, sometime high 90s. For ten years, before the five year old was born, I worked in the Colorado Mountains during the summer. Not only was the weather pretty mild (except for Denver, which could be scorching), the air was dry. I always joked that the reason I kept that gig was to escape the DC summers. Even so, it wasn’t until I stopped going to Colorado and started staying home in the summer that I realized just how hot and humid and stifling summers were here. And from what I gather, it’s been getting worse. This is what I’m grateful for, however:
– it’s not unbearably hot – not like the triple digits in other parts of the world. If I plan a morning outing, I can usually stand to be outside and slowly acclimate to the heat by the time it gets to be high 80s around noon.
– Air Conditioning. I’m reading about other parts of the world that are not used to such heat and where AC is not typically found in a house. I don’t need the house to be chilly, but I do appreciate how the AC can take the humidity out of the air. I like setting the thermostat at 78 when I’m home, though the Husband likes it more like 72. (Incidentally, the podcast 99% Invisible did an episode about Air Conditioning a few years ago, and it is fascinating. Among other things, it presents an argument for how AC is responsible for redrawing the electoral map as climate control allowed for a population boom in Florida.)
-Shade. It’s actually quite lovely in the shade. I think it’s the direct sunlight that makes the heat feel particularly intense. So I’m grateful for trees.
– The periodic breeze, that comes just at the right minute and cools the sweat pouring from my pores.
-The windows in my car that roll down. The AC in my car isn’t great. (The car is almost 20 years old and I’m thankful every day that it still runs as well as it does. ) But there is something so very wonderful about rolling the windows down and cranking the radio. I’m a dork and I crank the classical music station, especially when it is playing fast Baroque music. The wind in my hair and some virtuoso playing Bach is kind of a happy place for me. Which is a good place to find sometimes because actually being in my car is the place I am least happy with the heat. Something about being stuck at a stoplight with the sun beating down through the window on my left side… makes me irritable and angry. But once that light turns green, and the wind goes and the music blasts… I think I can bear it all.
– my insulated water bottle. I actually have several. I fill them with ice and water in the morning and drink cold cold water all day when I’m out and about.
-Being able to join a pool. I’m not sure we would go five times a week if the kids didn’t have swim practice, but since the ten year old has to be there almost every evening, I’ve taken advantage and take all the kids to go a cool off in the late afternoon. I will say, though, it is certainly challenging to go to the pool with two non-swimmers, and I do wish I had another adult with me so that I could swim laps during adult swim.
– Prescription Sunglasses. I was very late to the sunglasses party. I wear glasses in real life and I didn’t want to have those clip-ons, or, worse, the sunglasses that fit over your regular glasses like a huge plastic visor. Sunglasses seemed either kind of dorky, or too cool for me. So I just went without. Until two years ago, I went to get new glasses and the optometrist warned me about some minor retina damage caused by the sun. So I caved and bought sunglasses. Life changing. Why didn’t I realize sooner that it was loads better to be able to see when you drove on a hot summer day? That squinting was not the best option? That everything didn’t have to be painfully bright?

Between swim lessons and swim practice and swim meets, this week felt really busy and pool-centered. With the five year old in 9am swim lessons, by the time I drop him at school after swim lessons, it is already 10:15 and I have only a few hours before I have to do school/camp pick ups and shuttle everyone to the pool for the ten year old’s swim team practice. It kind of forces some element of time blocking into my day, though:
8:15a-9:00a – drive to camp and swim lessons
9:00a – 9:45a – swim lessons
9:45a – 10:15a – drop five year old at school
10:15a – 2:30p – that day’s activity, park, outing, or errand. Also, concurrently, lunch for the toddler, and hopefully a nap
2:30p – 3:00p – prep or make dinner
3:00p- 3:30p – make snack for kids to fuel up before the pool/ clean up kitchen (I tend to leave all the dishes until now, otherwise I feel like I’m constantly doing dishes. I know some people like to clean as they go, but I prefer to batch. Only lately there’s been an ant problem in our kitchen, so I do clean as I go more often.)
3:30p – 3:50p – pack swim bags. Yes it really does take me twenty minutes to hunt down all the swim gear for the two little kids, and make sure nothing is missing. (The ten year old is supposed to pack her swim bag before we leave for camp.)
3:50p – drive to pick up kids from day care and camp and get to the pool by 4:50p.

That 10:15a- 2:30 chunk is variable each day, but it’s where I plan for things to get done. I struggle with this chunk sometimes because after a morning driving carpool, I just want to sit and scroll my phone for a bit, but that bit invariably turns into an hour or so while the toddler yells at me for not playing blocks with her. Objectively I know that I don’t need to be spending that time on my phone, but some days I’m already wiped by 10:00am. I think I just need to be better at planning concrete projects/plans for the day, and then I can not fritter away those four hours.

But speaking of which…. Fun things I did with my mid day chunk this week:

– Took the baby to play in a river. One day was so hot yet I wanted and outdoor adventure since I hadn’t been on one in a while. So I packed a picnic lunch and took the baby to Patapsco State Park after dropping off the five year old. There is a river perfect for splashing in and plenty of shade on its banks, though you have to cross the “Swinging Bridge” to get across. As the trip was a little impulsive, I didn’t pack so well… Next time, I will plan on bringing a bathing suit for the kid(s) and Crocs for me. In my head, the baby was just going to wade into ankle deep water and throw rocks in the river while I sat nearby and read by book. That wasn’t quite how things happened… The baby went into the water a little deeper than I thought she would and managed to soak her dress and her pants. I lay the dress and pants in the sun and they were dry in half an hour. I had worn my hiking shoes and the river bottom was quite rocky so wading in after her in my bare feet was a little painful. Also next time, I will remember to download the books that I borrowed via Libby so that I will have something to read on an lazy summer afternoon. There is no wireless reception in the park, and I had been planning on reading while the toddler played in the river, having forgotten that Libby needs a wireless connection to work since I don’t have the books automatically downloaded. wump wump. Not that it’s a bad thing to be actively engaged with playing with one’s child, and it was still a lovely lazy summer afternoon.

– Lunch with a good friend who had the day off work. It actually started as “Come over and hang out while I clean,” which might not sound like the most riveting time, but in truth, I’m really happy to have friends who aren’t afraid to have me over when their house is messy because I know I don’t have to clean for them when they come over either. And then we went out for lunch, which felt so decadant. We were going to get ice cream too, but we spent so much time lingering and chatting over lunch that we ran out of time.

-Making Empanadas. Empanadas are a great food to have in our freezer for those times when I don’t know what to pack for lunch. I will often make them myself, but they do take a huge amount of work because there are so many steps: filling, dough, make, bake. I usually spread it out over a few days – so filling on one day, dough on another, make on another and bake on another. It is a lot of time, but the convenience on the other end is pretty hard to beat. This time around, the baby helped make the empanadas. She even made one all on her own, when I wasn’t looking. Guess which on it is?

Not so fun (but necessary) things I spent my chunk of time doing:
1) Zoom meeting for union negotiations. Ongoing and kind of fascinating, though the less said the better.
2) researching Primary candidates. We live in a pretty blue county, so other than the big state races, the Primaries are pretty much where we choose who gets to run our County. Fun fact – one of our friends is running for County Council and we were in his campaign photo shoot. It was still a little surprising to see campaign literature coming to our house with our (out of focus) faces. The ten year old says she also saw us on a local tv spot. Kind of fun, but also a little surreal.

This week was also the last swim meet. There are practices and Divisionals coming up still and I think, hope, after that our afternoons will be a little lazier. I’m really proud of how the ten year old is doing on swim team and I do rather enjoy my volunteer job as a timer – it puts my stage manager skills to work. All the same, I will be glad when we aren’t always rushing to be at the pool and can instead arrive at our own pace. There has been precious little of those relaxed summer evenings and, much to my alarm, summer is quickly slipping past – we have just five weeks until school starts again. We have some really fun plans for those five weeks, a little bit of travel and some adventures here at home, but I think I also need to plan some not so busy times, stretches of boredom and maybe picking up a few life skills while we wait for the corner to turn and be in back-to-school season.

What We Ate:

Monday: No cook tomato sauce with pasta – from the recipe magazine handed out at the grocery store. It called for using a food processor and I used the Vitamix instead so I’m not sure the texture was quite right. It was tasty, though.

Tuesday: Instant Pot Creamy Butter Beans and toast. Ages ago, I had bought a bag of dried butter beans (aka lima beans, but if I called them lima beans there would be resistance.) and they’ve been languishing in the cupboard every since. Then last week, I borrowed Bare Minimum Dinners by Jenna Helwig from the library and there was this really simple Butter Bean recipe and I decided that it was time I made use of that bag of beans. It was saucy and tender and delicious.

Wednesday: Chicken Empanadas for poolside.

Thursday: Sandwiches from Filippos, eaten on the lawn of a local music venue while enjoying a concert by musician Elena Moon Park, an “all-ages” musician (or family musician – her music definitely appeals to a wide age range). Her concert featured music drawn from folk traditions of different Asian countries. Hearing music from non-western traditions was so much fun. Even though the roots of the music was from another part of the world, it had an almost bluegrass type spin on it. We had such a great time!

Friday: Pizza and Iron Man 3, which was very entertaining, though I had to look up p;ot summaries later because I didn’t quite grasp all that was going on.

Hope you are staying cool, wherever you are!

Books read February – June 2022

The last time I wrote a “Books read” recap was in February. Since we are halfway through the year, this seems as good a time as any to round up the books that I’ve read so far this year. (Books I particularly loved reading get a *)

February 2022:

Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown, read by Louis Ozawa – This non-fiction book recounts the lives of four Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Three of them enlisted and were deployed to Europe and the fourth was a patriotic resistor who was jailed for being Japanese. While I knew about the Japanese interment camps in America, my knowledge was very general. This book is filled with so many gripping and specific details of the lives of these men and their families and the degree of racism they faced in the wake of Pearl Harbor. I found myself so angry every time these American born Japanese people were told that they weren’t American and had their freedom taken away from them because of fear.

*Harlem Shuffle by Coleson Whitehead – This was such a well written and engaging book. It’s not as heavy as Nickel Boys, but still touches on the same themes of race, class, and getting ahead. This is the third book by Whitehead I’ve read and each books has had such a different style to it; I’m always impressed by how chameleon like yet distinctive Whitehead is as a novelist. And there are parts of the novel where I’m just bowled over by how perfectly his writing can capture something – like in one passage he describes slow moving traffics as “honking molasses”. Another favorite quote:
“The store was a circus during the day but serious and calm late at night, when the real work went down. Time, straight world rules, what his watch said – it was topsy turvy now. The temperament and spirit of these hours, what you stuffed into them, mattered more than where they fell on a clock’s face.”

The Stand In by Lily Chu, read by Phillipa Soo – okay, truth – I picked this up because it was one of those free books on Audible, and because it was read by Phillipa Soo, of Hamilton fame. This was a fun, breezy book. The main character Gracie is a dead ringer for a famous Chinese movie star Wei Fangli and she is approached on day to be the movie star’s stand in at social events, an undertaking that requires being escorted by the very handsome movie star Steve Yao. Between the book being set in Canada (Toronto, to be exact) and the details of Gracie’s Chinese-American mother, this book felt really homey to me. One of my favorite parts of the book is that on the side Gracie is working on creating a planner, which I think such a great detail. And in her planner there is a section for the “Don’t Think. Do.” list – things that just need to be done without over thinking. I think everyone needs to have a “Don’t Think. Do.” list.

March 2022:
If The Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy, narrated by Jen Ponton – A breezy novel about Cindy, a recent fashion school grad, who ends up starring in a Bachelorette type reality show. This book had so many fun descriptions of clothes, particularly shoes since that is where Cindy’s main design interest was.

*What Do You Say? How to Talk to Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home by William Stixrund and Ned Johnson – I found this book really helpful in that the authors provide a lot of scripts for conversations to have with one’s child. So many parenting books I find are very theoretical and have great ideas but don’t really give a lot of practical advice on how to implement the ideas with your kids, and also explains a lot of the neurological reasons why kids act the way they do. I also really liked that they encourage parents/caregivers to talk to their kids about how their brain reacts to things, so that they can better understand their own reactions. Another of my biggest takeaways from this book is the idea that if we intervene too much for our kids, they won’t learn to self regulate. So a lot of their scripts have the parent as a coach, asking questions to help their child figure things out for themselves. “How does that upset you?” is one questions they give for being supportive yet not overbearing. “[R]emember your goal:” they write,” a kid who know when they’re getting out of balance, how to get themselves back, and how to run their own life before they leave home.”

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune – I didn’t love this one as much as I loved The House on the Cerulean Sea. There was an effortless whimsy and charm in the previous book that was missing in this one, as if everyone was aware that this book was about very big themes.

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein – Onwauachi became famous for being on Top Chef and subsequently opened a much anticipated restaurant in DC that ultimately closed rather quickly after opening. I thought this book was a really fascinating look inside the world of fine dining, a world that wasn’t easy for a Black man to navigate and assert himself. There is certainly a fine line between not wanting other people to define you by the colour of your skin, but at the same time wanting to honour your heritage in the food you make. One of his insights, really made me think of the world of stage managment, though:
“Catering is like low-grade war games: hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So I prepare for nearly every eventuality. I’m so organized my systems have systems. A successful kitchen runs on plastic quart containers and paper towels, strips of tape and Sharpies. On the doors of my fridges are taped elaborate spreadsheets breaking down each dish into its component parts and assigning each element to a team member. Now I just have to trust the system.”

*Razor Blade Tears by S.A. Crosby read by Adam Lazarre-White – This was a gritty crime thriller about two men, one white and one Black, who are drawn together by the murder of their sons, a married couple with a toddler daughter. Buddy Lee Jenkins and Ike Randolph, both men who have spent time behind bars themselves are determined to find out who was behind the murder of their sons. The actual mystery of the couples’ death seems secondary to the story of how Buddy Lee and Ike both come to terms with the loss they’ve suffered and their own prejudices against their sons and each other. This book was nail biting and heartbreaking.

Chemistry by Weike Wang. I was very meh about this novel. There was something very unsympathetic about the main character

April 2022

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman full cast audiobook – We listened to this book on our road trip to Tennessee. I had listened to it before and the Husband and I are working our way through the HBO miniseries, so we thought it would be a good road trip book. I don’t know that I will every understand the theoretical aspects of Pullman’s series, but the characters are really well drawn and Pullman does know how to weave a really suspenseful adventure story. I don’t always love full cast audiobooks – they tend to seem disjointed to me somehow.

*The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea – I had heard Urrea’s interview with Krista Tippett on On Being and I thought he said many wise and beautiful things, so I wanted to read some of his books. This non-fiction book tells the story of a group of men who attempt to cross the US Mexico border only to get lost in the desert of southern Arizona. This was such a tragic desperate story, one that really made me think about both the personal aspects as well as the global implications of our current border policies.

Matrix by Lauren Groff– This book was on so many “Best of” lists and I just couldn’t get into it. I did love all the details of life in the Middle Ages, and the sly cheekiness of the main character Marie de France, a seventeen year old deigned unmarriageable and instead made a prioress at an abbey that is floundering. I think the style of the novel, encompassing nearly all of Marie’s entire life, felt like it meandered a little too much for me to fully grasp the weightier things that Marie was tackling.

May 2022

Dial ‘A” for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto– This was another fun rom-com romp of a book. Wedding photographer Meddelin Chan accidentally kids her blind date and her very hands on mother and aunts – who work together putting on weddings- come help, all while trying to pull off the wedding of the year. Breezy, hilarious and written with lots of heart. I especially loved how familiar the main character’s Chinese-Indonesian Aunties felt. I mean the book was ridiculous on so many levels, but it was a good time and I laughed out loud several times.

With the Fire on High written and read by Elizabeth Acevedo – I really liked Acevedo’s Clap When You Land so I wanted to read more of her books. This book tells the story about Emoni Santiago, a high school student and talented chef who is trying to find her way and do what is best for herself, her baby daughter, and her family as well. I loved how Acevedo’s descriptions of food were moments of pure poetry and hearing her read her own words was a treat.

June 2022

*Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley – I guess this is technically a YA novel, though I feel like YA novels these days are more sophisticated and nuanced about the topics they tackle than when I was a teenager. In this novel, the main character Daunis, an Ojibwe teenager, has to face how she can best help her community after she witnesses a violent crime. I really appreciated how this book took place in a Native American community, and Boulley was able to write about it in a way that didn’t feel heavy handed or, conversely, dismissive. For example, she often uses Ojibwe names or terms, but allows the context to help the reader discover the meaning rather than directly translating or explaining things. I really enjoyed this novel – the plot was absorbing and the characters struck the nice balance of flawed yet sympathetic. I was sad when this book was over because I felt really invested in the characters.

*Happy and You Know It by Laura Hankin– I really liked this book a lot. This satirical novel centers around a Manhattan mom’s group and the musician that they hire to play for their babies. In exploring what life is like as a new mom, susceptible to many influences yet at the same time deeply isolated, parts of this novel made me laugh out oud, parts of this novel hit a close to home. While greatly entertaining, this book also made me think about what aspects of motherhood are heroic and what parts are oppressive – and what is perhaps both? My favorite quote: “TrueMommy was the same old patriarchal bullshit dressed up as empowerment, and Amara had fallen for it like a fucking idiot.”

*The Dawn Palace by H.M. Hoover read by Alyssa Bresnahan– I first read this book, a re-imagining of the Medea story, years ago, when I was perhaps twelve or thirteen and it left a huge impression on me. I don’t remember why, but I suddenly got a hankering to read it again, but I could only find an audio copy at my library. Hoover’s novel, written in 1988, is told from Medea’s point of view, recounting how she fell in love with Jason and then abandoned her home to help him fulfill his ambitions. It was my first encounter with the story of Medea, and for the longest time, I didn’t realize that people actually though Medea was the villain of the story. Re-visiting this book after almost thirty years, I found the story just as engaging, but I think I was even more outraged by Jason’s callousness this time around and more aware of what a strong feminist statement it was to make Medea the hero of the story.

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher– I’m a sucker for an epistolary novel and this was was a lot of fun. Breezy, irreverent, and hilarious, this novel tells the story of Professor Jason Fitger’s attempt to hold it together as his life and his department falls apart. The story is told via letters that Fitger writes, most notably recommendation letters in which he perfectly displays the art of damning with faint praise. This was an enjoyable book – slight and crusty with a big heart beneath.

The Menopause Manifesto by Dr. Jen Gunther – Something about rounding the corner of 40 and realizing that even though I’m still breastfeeding, I’m rapidly approaching middle age and all that that means for a female… so I picked up this book in hopes of some insight into what might be in store for me physically in the next ten to fifteen years. I have to say this book was not entirely helpful. Gunther says again and again that the research on menopause is scant and not terribly reliable and then blames the patriarchy for our limited understanding. She points out that in a society that only values women for their ability to breed, menopause essentially makes them irrelevant. That is the “Manifesto” part of the book, and while I agree it is enraging, there is a perhaps more rhetoric than useful information to be found here. My main takeaways: excercise, healthy eating and giving up smoking are the only things proven to alleviate the symptoms of menopause.

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie – A Hercule Poirot novel, this is one of her more straight forward mystery novels, but still charming and intriguing nonetheless. I had an idea of who did it, but not of the how. I have an affection of Agatha Christie novels and like to read one every so often for that blanket of familiarity that a cozy mystery can bring.

A Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews- A sweet romance novella by a new to me author. I love a good romance novel, but there are many out there that are not to my taste. I like it when authors write novellas because then I can get a sense of their style without investing in a whole book. I really enjoyed this novella which tells the story of Lady Sophie Appersett who breaks off her engagement to business Edward Sharpe because she thinks they will not suit, much to Sharpe’s dismay. Sharpe very much wishes to marry Lady Sophie, but isn’t quite sure how to navigate the anodyne rules of polite society. Matthews prose is not too modern and her story was full of lovely period details. There was just enough angst to make my heart ache a little bit, and the characters were smart enough that I did want them to end up together in the end. I’m encouraged to read one of Matthews longer novels.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer week at home

It’s been a nice chill, but full weekend at home. Saturday it rained all day – we had had a pool party birthday party scheduled but that got moved to Sunday because of the rain. I ended up signing up the ten year old for a basketball clinic at the rec center called “Hoops and Scoops” which involved basketball drills and ice cream. It was run by the local police department and Dick’s Sporting Goods donated basketballs. While the Husband took the ten year old to the clinic, I took the five year old to buy new shoes. Then we went back to the rec center to watched the ten year old play and also browse some books at the Library and Used Bookstore attached to the rec center.

Today there were two birthday parties, one of which was at a pool. The five year old was really excited to check out this pool because it has more features than our pool. In fact, we used to take swim lessons at the pool before the pandemic since it was walking distance from our first house. After a pool filled afternoon, I came home to find the Husband has set up the kiddie pool and the toddler was playing in it – we had a relaxing hour of sitting on the back patio watching the kids splash while reading books and eating pretzels. While I love the riches of activities that summer brings, I also love moments of sitting in the sunshine with a book. (I’m currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and it’s is so devastatingly good. I’m not one to cry over a book but this one has me pretty close to tears.)

The other “must do” item on my weekend to do list was to have the kids clean out the car. We are three weeks into summer vacation, and between camp and swim lessons at one pool and swim team at another and playdates for the toddler, I feel like we are even more busy than during the school year. There has been a lot of time spent shuttling kids around in the car, and the expected detritus accumulating – socks and random articles of clothing from kids changing in moving vehicles so as not to be late for swim practice, wrappers from all the snacks because dinner won’t be for a while, random art projects and books and stuffed animals and the “just in case” rain coats, reusable grocery bags, all the nature things that the toddler insists on bringing home, masks… so many masks, receipts. The mess and clutter was getting to me, so inspired by Kae’s blog post on kids’ chores, I decided that since the kids helped me make the mess, they should help clean out the car. It took probably longer than it should have but really only took about an hour and a half, so it’s nice to have that barometer for myself the next time I feel overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning out the car. And even though we didn’t vacuum the car because the rain made running electricity a bad idea, I did have the kids wipe things down with baby wipes and do the crevices with a q-tip soaked in Dawn and vinegar. I have to say, it’s made getting in the car so much less stressful. I’m sure hedonistic adaptation will mean that the calm that my clean car induces will eventually become a baseline rather than a high, but I’m lgoing to try to remember to lean into it for now.

I think he liked sitting in the front seat!

Other things this week:

– Wednesday’s swim meet got rained out spectacularly. How ironic that at 5:30pm we were commenting about the heat and humidity and by 7:00pm, we were drenched and chilled by a dry cool air. They initially did not call off the meet because it was not thundering, but when it was raining so hard we couldn’t see the bottom of the pool, they held for a little while and a few minutes later we were back at it. The second time the heavens opened up, around 8:30p, though, it was decided that we were done for the evening even though there were three events still to race. Watching the clouds start to gather on the horizon, and seeing the rain streaming from those clouds a couple miles away was mesmerizing to me. The ten year old swam two of her three events, and managed to drop a bunch of time on her freestyle, so I was super happy for her about that. She placed second in that race, which was the highest she’s ever placed.

– This article in the New York Times about how some theatres are making systematic and fundamental changes in order to pay their staff a living wage. It hit particularly close this week as we are in the midst of union negotiations, of which I can’t say anything, even though it has been taking up a big chunk of my time and attention these days. Suffice to say, I love my job and I also understand the staggering attrition rate in my field of late. Also – I’m not on the substack bandwagon but I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in the inner workings of theatre – it’s brilliant combination of gossipy and insightful.

– Saturday, the rain let up enough for me to run – which I haven’t done since I was working and my parents were watching the baby. I only managed to run a half mile and walked the other mile, but it’s something and it felt really good to do it. In the evening, we went for a family evening walk and saw some lovely things:

The picture on the right is a kind of wood ear fungus. I normally get a little squeamish around fungus (more so in the wake of reading Mexican Gothic.), but this fungus practically looked like a flower.

– One day this week, I ran errands around town with the toddler and we missed lunch and it was hot, so I (of course) decided to treat myself to a boba tea. I discovered a new to me boba place that also served onigiri, the Japanese rice balls that are filled with a savory (or sweet, but I prefer savory) filling and wrapped in nori. I was really delighted to see they had onigiri because you don’t see it a lot and my attempts to make it have always failed. It was the perfect pit stop for a mid afternoon re-fuel.

– My other food related discovery this week, came via the tv show Younger, which I binged one night when the toddler would not go to bed except then proceeded to climb on my lap as I sat on the couch and she fell asleep. Younger is one of those shows I watch without the Husband – I love the soapy fluffiness about it and the very earnest people – there are no real villains here. Anyhow in one episode a character is asked the secret to her grilled cheese and she says that she uses mayonnaise instead of butter (which I think is a pretty common adaptation), but then… and here’s the best part… she sprinkles a layer of cheese on top of the mayo so that when the sandwich is put on the griddle, the cheese melts and cooks and creates a crispy cheesy crust on the sandwich. OMG. My mind was blown by the simple brilliance of how to improve a simple grilled cheese sandwich and I had to try it. It is pretty tasty. And really nice to look at too:

toddler lunch. Though I may have eaten some of that sandwich.

– A tool I’ve been constantly using lately – Photo editor:

With the kids in separate camps and swimming at separate times, I often don’t get a chance to talk daily after school logistics with the Husband. So I’ve taken to sending him a photo of important information sometimes. Like this week, I had made a smoothie for the 5 year old to have before swim and it was easier just to snap the picture and use the “Edit” feature to notate the picture so the Husband knows 1) where the swim bag is, and 2) where the 5 year old’s snack is. I’ve also taken pictures of marinating meat in the fridge so that know where to find it when he gets home. Picture worth a thousand words, indeed.

What we Ate:

Saturday: Pasta with red sauce and meatballs.

Sunday: can’t remember? Probably leftovers.

Monday: Fourth of July – grilled: Soy Ginger Salmon, Sausage, Corn, Shrimp, and Eggplant on the grill (to go into this salad), Watermelon and popsicles for dessert

Tuesday: Lemongrass Ginger Tofu and Sesame Edamame Udon noodles. The Husband bought me the latest Bad Manners Cookbook and everything I’ve made out of this vegan cookbook has been pretty good. Except the Zucchini Bundt Cake, but that was because I used waaaay too much squash and it ended up being too moist to bake even though it was in the oven for ninety minutes.

Wednesday: Swim meet – Leftover sausages from Monday.

Thursday: Korean Tacos from Dinner Illustrated. The ten year old calls this Buffalo Tacos because it is made with spicy gochujang.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and Snoopy.

Saturday: Meatball Tortellini Soup made in the InstantPot since the meatballs were still frozen. I kind of just made this up, but it turned out really well – Sautéed diced onions and garlic in the Instant Pot, dump in frozen meatballs and brown them slightly, add the leftovers of a carton of chicken broth, a frozen cube of pesto, a can of low salt diced tomatoes, and then enough water to cover. Pressure cook on high for 7 minutes (actually was longer than that because I forgot to put the silicone ring in…. wump wump.) When finished cooking, quick release pressure, stir in frozen tortellini and pressure cook for 2 minutes on high.

Sunday: Leftovers for dinner. There was an article in the Washington Post recently about Fending for Dinner, and the New Yorker article that inspired the Post, which I thought delightful. I often fend for lunch and we usually do it once a week for dinner, this opening of the fridge and making a meal of the contents. We also call it “cleaning out the fridge dinner.” The New Yorker column had some great names for this kind of meal, one of my favorite being the Quebecoise term touski as in “tout ce qui reste” – all the is left.

Weekly (bi-monthly?) recap: Summer so far

Well, we are coming off another long weekend and a positive COVID test for the Husband. Luckily, he isolated in the bedroom and the rest of the family managed to stay negative. I think the strategy was for the Husband to isolate in the bedroom, and for the rest of us to spend as little time at home as possible. The two older kids were in camp and pre-school, and the baby and I found lots of adventures to keep us out and about.

I have to admit, that I don’t mind solo parenting. There is something really freeing about realizing that there are no excuses for not prioritizing the well-being of the people in the family. I could let the house get messy and leave the dishes to be piled in the sink until after the kids went to bed and it was totally a fine to say time with the kids was more important that the dishes. To be sure, kids should probably trump dishes any day, but I think when I know the kids will get attention from another parent, it makes it easier to find the time to do the dishes and pick up the living room and fold the laundry. I will say, lest you think the Husband was a total invalid slug – he actually felt fine a few days after his positive test, and when the kids and I weren’t home, he would emerge to do things like go mow the lawn or pick up the mess I left in the kitchen. But even still, the house was a bit of a sty and I was soooo very tired from having to do housework after the kids went to bed. On the plus side, I finished season three of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Or maybe that is a minus because that was the last season made and I have developed such a crush on Detective Inspector Jack Robinson and, truth be told, on Phyrne Fisher herself. That series was such a perfect slow burn romance. Okay, so another plus of solo parenting is that I get to watch whatever I want.

We did use up a lot of rapid COVID tests during the week. I remember when the county and the federal government first started handing out tests for free, we somehow ended up with ten test kits in our bathroom cabinet. “We’ll never get through this all!” I thought. Hah. Last week I actually had a slight panic that I would run out. I guess a family of five goes through test kits pretty quickly Luckily the county is still handing out test kits and the federal government has made more kits available – these latter arrived in the mail two or three days after I ordered them. Speedy!

At any rate, this fourth of July weekend has been low key. We cleaned out some of the attic, visited the Smithsonian (more on that below) and there was a birthday part and raft night at the pool, when people can bring their inflatables Then on July 4th itself, my friend Kristen came over and we went to the pool and then came home to grill (salmon, shrimp, mushrooms, sausages, corn, and an eggplant salad that I thought was really good). We capped off the evening by looking through old photo albums from college – Kristen and I had been roommates for all four years of college. The ten year old seemed to really get a kick out of this. She looked at pictures of me glowing with youth and said, “Now I understand why dad married you.” Thanks? I think?

It’s been a while since I wrote of our adventures -something about being exhausted from solo parenting and all the weighty world and national events this last half of June has made it difficult to prioritize writing. But at any rate – highlights of Summer so far:

-I did make it to a beach with the two little kids, packing a lunch and snacks and taking them to Calvert Cliffs State Park. It was an easy 1.8 mile hike from the parking lot to the beach, but that did not mean the hike was easy, just the terrain. With the two littles, it took us about 2 hours and lots of M&M breaks to go that 1.8 miles. At the end of the trail, we were rewarded with a sunny sandy shore and temperatures that made it a little too chilly to brave the waters, but perfect for soaking up sunshine, hunting for shark’s teeth and building sand castles. I was particularly excited to use the beach tent that I had bought last year, but which I had never gotten a chance to use yet. We stayed almost all day, and even though I was certain the littles would be tired after the hike back to the parking lot, they played for an hour on the recycled tire playground next to the parking lot. Which was fine by me – I lazed in a recycled tire hammock and read my book as the sun started to set.

-Riding the carousel. The ten year old’s theatre camp is in what was once an amusement park, but is now a park used for various arts and cultural programs. In fact, it’s at the park’s ballroom where the Husband and I met, one summer evening at a contradance. In the park, there is a carousel, originally installed in 1921. It’s $2 to ride and $5 for a day pass. One morning, after dropping the ten year old at camp, I bought the baby and I day passes and we spent several hours riding the carousel, taking pauses to go play at the playground next to it. I think we rode the carousel six times that morning. It was a great morning – the carousel music is courtesy of a Wurlitzer band organ, and hearing the familiar old tunes is one of my favorite parts of riding the carousel. They must have also at some point commissioned new music rolls for the band organ because one morning the band organ played such vintage hits as “The Boxer”, “One Tin Solider”, and “Love Potion No. 9.” There is something charming in hearing these modern hits coming from a band organ with it’s reedy pipes, bass drum, cymbals, and triangles. The simplicity of going around and around to the loud oom pah pahs, the velocity of the carousel creating just enough breeze to cut through the summer heat – this is summer as it is meant to be savored.

– The ten year old’s camp is also about a ten minute drive from a wonderful hike along the Potomac river. One day after camp, I took the baby. The trail winds through a nicely shaded route next to the Potomac, and at one point we came to some rocky out crops, great for a rocky scramble, which the baby is always up for. I am always amazed at her ability to climb rocks, fitting her small fingers in crevices and pulling herself up with the slightest purchase. We had a snack and enjoyed watching the river flow by. Hikes with the baby don’t always go far, but they are nonetheless full of wonder.

– Fizzy water and popsicles. At the beginning of June I took a weekend away with a good friend to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. One of the things we discovered there was flavored balsamic vinegar used as a drink ingredient. I came home with some blackberry ginger balsamic and blood orange vanilla balsamic and the next day went to the store to stock up on fizzy water. Well after a week of that, I remembered that several years ago my brother had gifted me a SodaStream, which I had used little bit but never really got the hang of it so I put it in the attic. Inspired by my balsamic adventures, I pulled the SodaStream out of storage, bought a new Co2 cartridge, and now have fizzy water at the touch of a button. This makes me so happy. Also – summer also means popsicle season. The husband bought a new Mexican cookbook and there is a recipe in it for lime paletas. I have been making those weekly now, though sometimes I, in a fit of frugalness, throw in all the dried and sad citrus that has been languishing in the fruit bowl. So a fun realization is that the paleta base also makes a good lemonade base. And when mixed with fizzy water, makes a delightful summer drink. I feel so clever for getting two uses out of one recipe!

– Pool Time. The ten year old is on the swim team again, so we are spending a lot of time at the pool what with four practices and at least one meet a week. And then on weekends, the kids inevitably want to go to the pool. While the five year old is very cautious in the pool, the baby is fearless. She insists on wearing her brother’s swim vest rather than her more buoyant Puddle Jumper. The swim team parents have to volunteer to work the meets and I’ve been usually assigned to be a timer, which is kind of fun and exciting and my feet have been getting very wet. The ten year old and I have worked out a deal that every time she drops time without being disqualified, she gets and additional dollar for the snack bar. I’ve never really been one for bribing a kid to do well, but I do think that achievements should be celebrated.

– Anticipation. I read this article a couple weeks ago about how anticipation can help a person enjoy life more, and that having something to look forward to can boost one’s mood. The most interesting part of the article for me, though was this: “The flip side of positive anticipation,” the author writes, ” is anticipatory anxiety.” That is to say, a lot of things mix feelings of excitement and anxiety. “The key is acknowledging the happy, positive aspects of what you’re doing along with the nervous feelings,” the article goes on to say. I was thinking about this lately when the Husband and I were trying to plan some travel this summer. There is a lot of stress that goes along with planning a trip that sometimes all I can think about is, “Is it really going to be worth packing the kids in a van for a ten hour road trip?” or “Three kids + two adults + 1 tent = no sleep for anyone.” (except maybe the five year old. he sleeps like a rock.) But, I realize that if I thought about all that could be painful about a trip, I would never take the kids anywhere. So we do have some trips planned and I’m trying to persist in finding things that will be fun and interesting on this trip to get the Husband and I excited about going. I talk to people about our plans, read books, look at maps…. anything to get me to think of the trip as more than just a bundle of challenges and missteps. I’m sure there will be many of those, but surely there will also be some good moments too.

– The Smithsonian. I always feel so lucky that the Smithsonian Museums are just a 30-40 minute metro ride from home and that there are so many wonderful things to see there and it’s all free. It had been several years since I last went to the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival – the past couple of years I’m not sure it was held due to COVID. So when I heard that this festival which celebrates cultural traditions was going to be going full swing again, I decided to take the baby and meet up with my friend Kristen to check it out. This year’s theme was the United Arab Emirates and Earth Optimism. We saw a Bedouin cooking demonstration, watched someone make fishing nets by hand, participated in an art project and relaxed on a majlis – a community sitting place, often for discussing cultural and political issues – set up in the shade of a tree. The art project was particularly interesting – the artist Azza Al Qubaisi gave each person a cross section of a palm stem to decorate, then she will take a picture and assemble them all digitally into a design. It was really neat – the baby’s effort was a little messy and chaotic, but when seen as part of a large whole, it didn’t look that bad. The artist’s goal is to collect 1000 palm sections, which I think was a pretty easy goal.

One weekend, after the Husband was done isolating, we took the metro downtown again, this time to check out an exhibit called Futures, which sought to collect artifacts that recalled how we thought of the future as well as objects that could give us a glimpse of today’s future. There were some really neat exhibits that really made me think about the idea of inclusion – a computer generated voice that was meant to be genderless, and a version of Minecraft that you could play with your eyes. And some machines that would make food production and transportation more efficient. It was all incredibly thought provoking to think about what I would want the future to look like, and what it might actually look like.

archway into Arts and Industry Building.

I also liked that throughout the exhibit there were quotes on the wall about how we can think about the future. My favorite:

And speaking of the unimaginable future – the best thing of all in June:

– The Husband’s positive COVID test coincided with the approval of the vaccine for kids 6 months to 5 years. The baby had been in a Pfizer trial and she had a 2 in 3 chance of getting the real vaccine, the other 1 in 3 being a placebo. The trial was to be unblinded in six months or when the vaccine was approved for her age group, whichever was sooner. Anyhow, the Monday after the vaccine was approved, I was driving the ten year old to camp, when I noticed I missed a call which turned out to be the folks from the study calling to unblind the baby. It took four days for them to call me back, and I was so impatiently on pins and needles to find out. Finally, I was running errands at Target one morning and the study folks called again. This time I was able to answer the phone, having left the ringer on since I first missed the call. Well turns out…. the baby received three doses of the vaccine, so she is now fully vaccinated! Whoo hoo! Until, that is, she needs a booster. I celebrate with a grain of sobriety, since the Husband, who is fully vaccinated managed to get COVID despite everything. But… it’s a layer of protection and I’m so glad that we are all vaccinated to some degree. I did have a feeling that she had the real vaccine because the 24 hours after the third shot, she was a tired, cranky lethargic mess and she usually is the happiest ball of energy. Interestingly, she had no side effects from the first two shots, however. The baby (okay, toddler) will go to pre-school in the fall, and I feel grateful that she will have had three doses of the vaccine. On the other hand, I’m really going to miss going on adventures with her. I’m already mourning the loss of my little buddy.

(Okay, funny toddler side note – For some reason, she thinks that every store is called Target. So whenever I mention buying something, she says, “Go buy from Target?” Even if it’s a car.)