November 2023 – Life Off Headset

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: Being Thankful and Straight on to Christmas

The kids love any occasion to make a sign. Notice the handprint turkeys!

In a lot of ways, while Hallowe’en feels to me like the start of the end of the year, Thanksgiving kicks off the the true, inevitable, unstoppable slide. I mean I can’t stop time either way, but Hallowe’en feels full no on of possibilities and plans while Thanksgiving fills me with “Oh shit! I’m not going to be ready!” I’m working full time until mid December, but there are things that can’t be put off until then – Christmas cards, tickets for events we want to attend, Christmas shopping, the tree. I mean I guess we could delay the tree until I’m done my current spate of shows and recitals, but then it would only be up for ten days, and where’s the joy in that? I think the Husband has a plan, though. I came home from work on Sunday night to this:

A couple years ago, I decided that we needed to up our exterior Christmas light game and so we got this from Home Depot. It makes me ridiculously happy, even though it might be though of as just this side of tacky. There are a variety of slides that the projector can display, so after Christmas, we can switch to just snowflakes and enjoy the festive lights into the New Year. (It also comes with a Hallowe’en slide, but I don’t know that we’ve ever used that.)

Thanksgiving itself was quiet and cozy. I was up late the night before baking pies. In the morning, the 11 year old made waffles, and let me sleep until 8:30am before telling me I needed to come down for waffles. We then watched the Macy’s Day Parade while the Husband and kids made sausage balls – this is one of our Thanksgiving traditions. Followed by watching the dog show, also tradition here. I went for a run around noon, then came home and popped the turkey in the oven. One of my friends, in town to work on the show with me, came over for Thanksgiving Dinner. She essentially played with the kids for 5 hours while I got everything ready. What an absolutely wonderful friend she is!

Thanksgiving dinner. Missing is the Rainbow Jello and the rolls. And of course the pies.

For dinner we had:
-Turkey – buttermilk brined and spatchcocked. I had spatchcocked a chicken before, never a turkey. The main appeal was that the recipe said a spatchcocked turkey would cook in 80-100 mins. Yes please. I actually took it out at 90 mins and it was a little dry .
-Stuffing, made separately. The sausage dressing from A Year of Miracles. I’m not usually a stuffing person, and particularly since I was spatchcocking the turkey, hadn’t originally planned it on the menu. But then I wanted to make something from Ella Risbridger’s cookbook, and there was a recipe for sausage stuffing with apples and chestnuts and I immediately wanted to try it. I’m not sorry at all.
-Grilled zucchini with gremolata, also from The Year of Miracles. This was a last minute add as well. I didn’t think there were enough green things on the menu and I had some zucchini in the fridge.
-Green beans – the Husband’s specialty. He steams them then sautes them with garlic and soy sauce. So tasty.
-cranberry sauce – the cooked kind. Pretty basic recipe with some fresh ginger added.
-Rainbow Jello aka Ribbon Salad. The 11 year old made this from a recipe card from my late Mother-in-Law’s recipe box. Also another thing we have every holiday dinner. Also the only thing the two little kids wanted to eat. I used the Rainbow Jello to bribe them to eat the other things.

-gravy made from dippings
-German Potato Salad – my friend brought this. When we were at her house this summer, she made this for us and it was so good that I requested it for Thanksgiving dinner
-cranberry relish – my friend also brought this. I’d never had cranberry relish before, and I really liked it, especially sprinkled with pecans.
-rolls. Last year I didn’t have rolls and we all agreed that was a mistake. This year we had the Pillsbury crescent rolls and Hawaiian rolls.
-Apple Pie – when I made it the night before, I couldn’t tell if the bottom cooked through. Last year’s pie had a bit of a soggy bottom, so I was a little paranoid that I’d repeated the mistakes. So the next morning, I covered the pie in foil and popped it back in the oven for 20 minutes. Not sure if that was the reason, but the crust was in much better shape this year. I use the apple recipe from Serious Eats and the crust recipe from King Arthur’s Flour Baking Companion.
-Pumpkin pie. I use the recipe from Tartine, with an extra egg yolk added. (I’m glad I noted that in the blog because I always think I’m going to remember and I never do.) Only, I didn’t have pumpkin. I don’t know where I think a pumpkin was going to magically appear from, but I didn’t have pumpkin. But… I did have a plethora of butternut squash from the Hungry Harvest box. So I roasted that up, and in a fit of panic that it wasn’t going to be enough, threw in a sweet potato as well. The verdict from the Husband, “It’s good, but it’s not pumpkin pie.” So for those of you who think that pumpkin has no taste and pumpkin pie is merely a vessel for sugar, cream and pumpkin pie spice … well, I guess you’re wrong. The pumpkin does matter.

It was a lovely day. We watched some dog show, then ate some (lots) of food. Then after dinner, we played Codenames – which was kind of hilarious becasue the 6 year old insists on being the Codemaster and he’s … well, he’s six. There was a minor meltdown when his team (consisting of him, the 4 year old, and the Husband) kept losing to my team (me, my friend, and the 11 year old). “You NEVER give me a chance to win!!!!” he yelled.

“Um…” I said, trying not to laugh, “every time you play is a chance to win, honey.”

That did not go over well. So we declared it was time for pie, and that seemed to mollify him.

After my friend went home, we put on our pjs and watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, though I don’t guarantee that I stayed awake. We were all full and exhausted and agreed to leave the dishes for the next day.

(Also – update on our broken dishwasher. It does need replacing because it is old and all its parts don’t really talk to each other anymore. But the repair guy said that if we turn the machine off at the breaker and back on again, it will re-set itself and we can run it. So I did not have to handwash Thanksgiving after all. Frugal me thinks, “Great! The dishwasher still is going strong! We’ll get another ten years out of it!” But the Husband thinks that having to turn it on and off at the breaker is not an ideal solution, so we have taken advantage of the Black Friday sales and ordered a new one.)

The day after Thanksgiving, the Husband took the kids away on an overnight. I so wish I could have gone with them – they went to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. We hadn’t been to this museum in several years. We used to go several times a year – combining it with a trip to Longwood Gardens. But the 11 year old sort of aged out of it before the other two kids were really into it and then 2020 happened. Anyhow, the Husband decided that this weekend was a good time to go back with the kids so he took them on an a great little trip: Please Touch, then Hotel (with pool!, which I take it was a key component of any hotel stay) and hotel breakfast bar (also important.) The Please Touch Museum apparently was a great hit, and parts of it had been redone since we last went. We were a little unsure whether the 11 year old would be an active participant in a visit to the children’s museum, but she apparently really had a good time too.

Then the next day, the Husband took the kids to the Brandywine Museum. Back in September, when he went to the Minnesota State Fair, he and his friends had also gone to the Walker Art Museum. Well, it turns out it was cheaper for all of them to go if he bought a membership, so he did. And it turns out the Walker is part of the North American Reciprocal Museums Association so that his Walker membership gets us into many many many other museums too. One of which is the Brandywine Museum. I had suggested that it would be a good museum to take the kids to because they had their Holiday Trains up, but also they had an exhibit of art from children’s books and a dollhouse, which is always a draw for the oldest. I think children’s book illustrations are a hugely underrated slice of the art world and there should be more art exhibits devoted to that. I’m kind of sad I didn’t get to go along because it sounds like it was a really nice exhibit. The Husband did send some pictures, though:

This is a picture from Sophie Blackall’s most recent book Farmhouse. Can’t wait to read it! I wish I could have seen it in real life.

The Husband reported that the kids seemed to enjoy the art and that the museum had a reading nook set up so you could read all the books featured in the exhibit. He also said that he wrote down the names of almost all the books that were showcased – I’m excited to check them out from the library.

I’m determined to make the most of our reciprocal museum membership in the next 10 months. There are so many art and history museums that we could visit. There is a Duck Decoy museum in Havre de Grace, MD, which is probably about 90 minutes from us!

As for me, I had rehearsal from 12:00p-7:00p Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so I wasn’t home to enjoy the quiet house. Friday, I carpooled with my friend to work, and we went to Trader Joe’s after work, so that kind of felt like a fun friend date. There are a lot of things I love getting at Trader Joe’s (Everything Bagel Seasoning! Pound Plus Dark Chocolate! Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups! Nuts! Dried Fruit! Rice cracker snack mx!). I don’t go very often, however, because I can’t do all my shopping there, and it’s a little out of the way. So it always feels like a treat to go.

Saturday I got to bike to work, which is always exhilarating. When I first stepped out of the house in the morning, though, the sun was shining warmly so even though it was 45 degrees out side, I decided I didn’t need my windbreaker or gloves. About a half mile into my ride, I realized that was a mistake. I was very cold. I leaned into the brisk weather and tried to savor the chill and made it to work. I did, however, walk the bike up that last hill – I wasn’t going to make it up that hill.

Fun things this week:

-In the Fall of 2020, deep in the thick of being home with kids all the time, I decided to do something I’d always wanted to do and signed up for an art class the local community college. I’d always wanted to take a class, but it never worked out with my work schedule. Well, during the pandemic, all the classes moved to be online, and I was unemployed, so I figured it would be a good time to take a class. It turns out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done. (You can see posts with pictures of my work here.) Having that weekly drawing assignment gave me something to do that wasn’t changing diapers or feeding the family or supervising online learning and there was a sweet group of people to interact with every week. Anyhow, at the end of the second class I took, the instructor suggested I submit a drawing to be included in the course catalogue. This was two years ago, and I didn’t think anything of it, knowing that they must get many submissions and my picture was no where as polished at the stuff usually featured in the catalogue. Last week, the latest course catalogue came to our door, and to my surprise, I opened it up, and there was my picture!

It’s not quite like being published or anything, but it tickles me to have a picture of my art out there.

-The six year olds’ classroom had a “Classgiving” potluck. The week before sign ups were sent out for each child to contribute a dish if they wished. I asked the six year old what he wanted to bring. “A turkey,” he said.

Whoa what? No. Try again.

“Rainbow Jello!” That sounds more reasonable. Except when I looked at the food sign ups, it was like six or seven different kinds of baked goods. This was supposed to be the kids’ lunch on the last day of school before the break, and I was a little wary of adding yet another sugary dish to the mix. So we thought about it for a few days. This was the dilemma – do I send what the kid wants to send, or do I send something that will balance the rest of what is on the sign up? Given that it was meant to be a lunch potluck, I was leaning towards the latter. “What about your dad’s sausage balls?” I suggested, thinking a protein option might be a good thing to add. He heaved a sigh, “Okay…”

Which was a win for me on two counts: 1) savory protein (albeit wrapped in carbs), and 2) the Husband got to make them. He’s such a trooper.

On the day of the Classgiving party, parents were allowed to join, so I dutifully went to his classroom, even though I find these things terribly awkward as I am not good at small talk with other parents. Participating in classroom activities solidly falls into the “Will make my kid happy” category for me. When I got there the kids were watching Inspector Gadget and the six year old barely registered my presence. Oh well.

Oh the best part, though – after all my over thinking the potluck sign up of carbs and sugar – I didn’t have to worry that lunch would be unbalanced … someone brought in a paella. Like in a pan, beautifully presented with asparagus and peppers and chicken. It was awesome. It’s now one of my goals for 2024 to make a paella. Also, as I was leaving someone brought in this delicious looking meat stew with couscous. Only by that point the kids were so full of baked goods that I’m sure they didn’t give the meat stew a second glance. Sad. Oh well, I’m sure the other parents got to enjoy it.

-Also highly recommend this poem, by Clint Smith, which I heard on an episode of On Being from earlier this month. It’s entitled “Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep.” Here are the first few lines, but you must click the link and read (or listen) to the whole thing:

Praise the couch that welcomes you back into its embrace
as it does every night around this time. Praise the loose
cereal that crunches beneath your weight, the whole‐grain
golden dust that now shimmers on the backside of your pants.
Praise the cushion, the one in the middle that sinks like a lifeboat
leaking air, and the ottoman covered in crayon stains that you
have now accepted as aesthetic.

Clint Smith’s poem “Dance Party” is also pretty great too. Smith perfectly captures the energy sapping joy of caring for other beings.

-One of the nice things about working on Sunday is that there is a Sunday farmer’s market next to work. So I stopped by before rehearsal to pick up some apples and vegetables (arugula, cucumber, onions, and carrots) as well as lunch (a berry smoothie and chicken empanadas). On my way out, I passed a stall that had a sign that said, “Pickled mushrooms! Try one! It will change your life!” Well, who am I to turn that down, so I did. They were pretty tasty, maybe not life-changingly tasty, but very tasty all the same. The pickled mushroom stand was one that specialized in fermented food and before I knew it, I was walking away with their kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut and, yes, a jar of pickled mushrooms. The ironic thing is that morning the Husband and I had just cleared out the fridge, getting rid of all manner of science experiments and eating up other things, including a bucket of pickles. I was a little abashed to fill that pickle vacuum so soon, but I’ve always been a sucker for fermented food…

Oksana’s Produce Farm. Why make space in the fridge if you can’t fill it with more pickles???

Outfit of the week: Last week was also the first day of rehearsal for the holiday show I’m working on. For the past few years, I almost always wear the same thing for the first day of rehearsal. The outfit is a little more polished than what I usually wear because I like to look relatively put together the first time I meet the singers and the conductor and director. Wearing this outfit is a bit like putting a a uniform- it gets me in the right mindset to start rehearsals.

The grey dress is actually a nursing dress from Latched Mama. If you look closely, there are slits in the side for nursing access. I bought it when the 4 year old was born and it turns out it is such a versatile dress that I wear it all the time even though I’m not nursing anymore. And it has pockets!! The jacket is Eileen Fisher which I picked up at Nordstrom Rack five or six years ago. I like how it looks a little vintage-y and I love the colour. It’s also a jacket that can elevate any outfit. I’ve worn it with sweats and a t-shirt and ended up looking cooler than I have any business looking. The boots need a serious polish, but I also have had them for ages and even had them re-soled a few years ago. They have a wingtip look and feel fancy but are really comfy. The tights are Uniqlo HeatTech because it suddenly got cold last week. And the scarf is super cool – the little circles are actually the digits of pi, written in a spiral. My sister in law got the scarf for me from a company that specializes in STEM based prints. I always get lots of compliments on that scarf. The hat is from my other sister in law (I think it has appeared before in other posts.)

Grateful for:
-Thanksgiving and friends and food and family. Not just on this one day, but all the days.

-Finding my gloves! Several years ago, the Husband gave me some lovely red gloves for Christmas. They were warm, leather Isotoners, and they had touch fingertips so I could use my phone while wearing them. But last year I couldn’t find them. I was distraught. They were not inexpensive so I was hesitant to replace them. Well, this week, I lost my raincoat (sad!), so I had to grab a spare coat from our closet one rainy day. It was a windbreaker that had belonged to my late mother-in-law, which we had kept just for this kind of back up need. Well, I put it on and reached into the lump in the pocket and there were my red gloves!! I was even better than that feeling you get when you find a $20 bill in your pocket!

– Leftovers! One of the most wonderful things about Thanksgiving is having leftovers for easy lunches for days afterwards.

Looking forward to:
-Errands getting done. because I don’t have to be at work until 11:30 most days, I have booked morning appointments this week for driver’s license renewal (mine), and then on my free day, I’ve booked a passport renewal (the 11 year old), and a pediatric dentist visit (the 4 year old.) Boy will it feel good to get some of the stuff off my plate. (spoiler alert – the 4 year old has a stomach bug so the license renewal has to be rescheduled since I have to stay home with her. Let’s hope the rest of the things will happen, though.)

-The two older kids’ piano recital. It’s the six year old’s first piano recital. He will be playing Jolly Old St. Nicholas. As you do when you’ve only been taking lessons for four months. The 11 year old is playing a more complicated piece called Sleighride. She’s been working really hard. At first her teacher was going to make some cuts to the piece because she hadn’t been really practicing and the whole piece wasn’t going to be ready, but then 11 year old buckled down and learned the whole piece. I’m going to be honest – piano, specifically practicing piano, has been a huge struggle. I vacillate between not caring and caring very (too) much.

– Christmas books! I love reading holiday and winter theme picture books in December. I used to make it an Advent calendar type event and wrap them all individually to read one per night. But that was a lot of work, and one year the Grinch was due back at the library, but it was still wrapped so I didn’t know which book it was and that was annoying. So now I just bring them home in a big reusable shopping bag and leave them out and we just grab what we want.

What We Ate: It feels like we ate out more than usual last week. Partly the lead busyness around Thanksgiving, also partly me working until 8pm most nights and the Husband and I not sitting down to meal plan. I don’t love eating out all the time, but I guess it’s just that season for us right now.
Monday: Bahn mi sandwiches (take-out)

Tuesday: Tofu stir fry with noodles (the Husband cooked)

Wednesday: We had tacos out after the six year old and Husband got haircuts. I had shrimp ceviche and a really tasty fish taco from Fish Taco, a local chain.

Thursday: Thanksgiving – see above.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday – leftovers from Thanksgiving. The Husband hot the kids pizza on their road trip. Sunday was dumplings and broccoli.

I don’t really see myself getting back into the dinner cooking groove anytime soon, which makes me a little sad. I miss having that time to putter in the kitchen and then producing something nourishing for everyone to eat. I had thought that I might be able to do more morning meal prep with my later morning starts, but to meal prep, I have to meal plan, and I haven’t had a lot of time for that lately either. I’m instead focusing on having good basics – fruits, veggies, eggs, kimchi, cheese – in the fridge so that even if I’m not cooking, there are options for solid snack meals for me. The Husband actually does really well for getting everyone fed. Honestly, the kids like his cooking more than mine.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! How is the rest of the year looking? Is it frenetic or calm? Or somewhere in between?

(bi) Weekly recap +what we ate: Closing and catching up.

We closed the show last night. It’s been some very long days since opening. Usually the pace slows down, but with this show we had a second cast to prepare and also a children’s version to put up (more on that below.). But in between, I had plumber visits (the upstairs bathroom faucet wouldn’t turn off, the downstairs toilet ran), and school runs, and dentist appointments (the long delayed dentist appointment that I wrote about earlier. Turns out the six year old has so many cavities he needs to be sedated to have them taken care of. So that is yet another dentist appointment in my future. Only because of the sedation, we need to find a day when someone can stay home with the six year old afterwards, so that’s another piece of the scheduling puzzle.

Fun things:
-The 11 year old’s school play. It was a play about aliens masquerading as students and the drama group presented the play in the school cafeteria. The 11 year old did great! She remembered all her lines, prompted a fellow colleague with a loud whisper when he forgot his lines, and generally seemed to have a good time. Seeing a bunch of middle schoolers present a play in their cafeteria with just one single lighting instrument and everyone wearing their own clothes is such a contrast to the work I do where sets cost millions of dollars and there are so many complicated details. Watching these students, I’m reminded that theatre is storytelling, and for all the spectacle of opera or Broadway, storytelling is at it’s core a very simple thing.

-Fall Trip to Longwood Gardens. On my day off one recent Sunday, we went to Longwood Gardens. The chrysanthemum exhibit was still going on, and the holiday train display just went up. The day was perfect for being outside – sunny and crisp and almost warm.

The kids and I do this rainbow photo project whenever we go to Longwood Gardens where we try to find something every colour of the rainbow. Blue is always tricks and we usually end up taking a picture of the sky. Even still, I love how many different nuances of colour there is to be found at Longwood. Here’s this trip’s rainbow photo collage:

After our trip to Longwood Gardens, we drove back home and met up with a friend who was in town for work. He was someone the Husband met contradancing twenty-some years ago, but who since had moved to the other side of the country. We talked a lot about what a wonderful contra-dance community there was in DC, and how he hasn’t found anything like it in his new city. We talked about how COVID must have hit the contradance community hard. It so funny how contradancing is something that we use to do once or even twice a week, yet we haven’t gone in five or six years. I’ve been listening to contra dance music when I run lately, and it’s really taken me back to a younger me, to a time when we would dance til 11pm, when the music was live and hot and pounding and flowing. I’m sort of sad, too, that we don’t go dancing anymore, but maybe this is just not the season and we will find our way back one day.

-Scone-apalooza! For the children’s show we did (more on that below), we had to be at the theatre at 9am, so I brought in scones. I stayed up later than I should have the night before to make scones, but I love baking and hadn’t done it for a while. Baking is definitely one of my flow activities. By the time I got done all the scones, it was almost 2am. I made blueberry scones (America’s Test Kitchen Recipe), chocolate walnut scones (from The Irish Pantry cookbook) and I also wanted to make a savory scone so I made cheddar ham scones (King Arthur’s Baking Cheddar Scones with ham added.) I accidentally put twice the amount of garlic powder in the cheddar and ham scones, so they were particularly tasty.

Scones for miles. From back to front: Chocolate Walnut, Blueberry, and Ham and Cheddar.

– Ground plans. One of the fun this that that after we finish each show, I get to bring the ground plans home for this kids to use as scrap paper. When they were little, we would draw body outlines on the paper, but now they have gotten too big for that. Once during the pandemic, my mother covered a whole page with a drawing of a neighborhood that she designed for the kids.

The not fun:
-Sick kids. Not sure what it was, but 2 out of 3 kids were home vomiting last week and missed a couple days of school. And then there was one day when I wasn’t feeling well and I really felt like I was going to collapse while calling the show. Luckily I didn’t, but I did spend most of the show sitting down, which is something I rarely do.
-More really long hours and a sleep deficit. Not having downtime after a show opens is really hard. With rehearsals continuing for various show-related things and prepping for the next show, I’m not getting the days free that I’m used to after a show opens. I’m feeling behind on life and self things. I did start to make appointments to get life admin tasks done – renewing drivers licenses and passports. And we did schedule a plumber visit for the one day id week that I could work from home so now we can use the sink in the upstairs bathroom again. The house seems like a constant state of mess; I want to figure out better systems for that. I’m looking forward to December when I can re-set life a little bit.

Something I contemplated this week:
There is a lot of construction going on in the lot behind where I work. It’s actually been quite fun to see the construction vehicles work and machines moving. The other day, I looked up and snapped this picture:

And as I was looking at the men and machine work, I thought with a little bit of awe, “It’s all just wood and nails. Look at that building going up – it’s wood, so much wood. I thought it would be more complicated than that, and maybe it will be, but this stage is just wood.” Seeing buildings under construction, particularly with all their framing exposed, I always marvel at how fragile and basic a building can be.

Grateful for:
-windows. I spend a lot of time working in dark buildings with no windows, no way to see what the world is outside. It can feel a little insular. (It’s funny, on our company intranet site, there is a “virtual window” – a camera on the roof that shows employees what it’s like outside. Can’t decide if this is a cute idea or just kind of sad.). The other day, I woke up, got out of bed and pulled up the blinds and in streamed sunshine and I could look outside and see trees and streets and brightness and day. It was amazing. So I’m grateful for windows and being able to see outside when there are many days when I don’t get to actually go outside.

– the enthusiasm of children and the chance to give them something to be enthusiastic about. We did shortened version of our show for 1500 school kids this week. It was a whirlwind to rehearse – we performed excerpts of our show and in between we talked about the different things that go into making an opera – costumes, scenery, lights, stage hands, stage managers, supertitles, etc. The students were loud and rambunctious and very entertained. I hope that maybe in that crowd is at least one kid who grows up to be a singer, or a conductor, or an actor, or a theatre technician. And at least more than one kid who grows up to be someone who gives money to support the work of singers, conductors, actors, theatre technicians, etc.

-Not having to be at work at 9am most days. The above mentioned school show was at 11am, which mean I had to be at the theatre at 9am, something that I do maybe three or four times a year. And let me tell you, every time I get to go to work at 9am, I am very grateful that I don’t have to do it every day. First of all, the traffic between 8:00a – 9:00am is terrible. My non-peak commute to the theatre takes 35 minutes. Between 8:00am and 9:00am, it takes 50-60 mins. And people just seemed more stress at that time, less likely to let you in, more likely to behave irrationally. (Or maybe the driving is less predictable because there are more drivers out there?). Also a 9am start means that I have to find someone to take the kids to the bus in the morning. Luckily the Husband often can shift his schedule or the family we carpool with will switch shifts with me, but the school schedule is not made to accommodate parents who have to be at work at 9am. (Though I guess that is what before care is for…) And then just the general rush of having to leave 45 minutes earlier – it takes all the breath and space out of my morning. So all in all, I’m grateful that I don’t have to be at work at 9am most days.

-rehearsal pants. On the last day of the show, I went to our rehearsal office to do a couple hours work for the upcoming show before heading to the theatre for the final performance. As I was wrapping up to head to the theatre, I realized that I had forgotten my backstage running black clothes at home. I don’t usually wear a lot of black unless I’m working backstage, so I hadn’t put on my running blacks in the morning. wump wump. I didn’t have time to go home to get my black clothes. What to do? I had a black t-shirt on, but I was wearing a bright red skirt what wasn’t quite appropriate for backstage. Then I remembered that in our office was a pair of black rehearsal pants. (“Rehearsal” clothes are what we call clothes that we use in rehearsal instead of the “real” clothes or costumes. Like, say, if a singer wanted to wear a skirt in rehearsal that mimicked the fullness and length of her costume, we would get her a rehearsal skirt because the real dress probably would not be available to use.) The show we had been performing had a scene where the leading man gets dressed and so we had a pair of nylon pants that we used in rehearsal for him. So when I got to the theatre, I tried those on. I don’t think I’m the same size as our tenor, but thankfully the pants had a drawstring waistband and then I cuffed them in my best 90s tween manner. I think it was the cuffing that gave the pants a stylishly current jogger vibe and made it not so ridiculous that I was wearing men’s exercise pants backstage. Not that anyone truly cares what I’m wearing – we’re standing around in the dark, after all – but I am very grateful for rehearsal pants.

Looking forward to:
-Thanksgiving! I have to work the day before and the day after Thanksgiving, so we are having Thanksgiving at home, with maybe an opera friend or two joining us. I’ve figured out roughly the menu and written down the action plan for the next couple of days. The Husband did the grocery shopping over the weekend, so we should be set. (Though the dishwasher broke… again. So there’s that… I’m not looking forward to the dishes.) Here’s the plan for the week:
Monday (yesterday): I spatchcocked and brined the Turkey. When I put the turkey in the InstantPot pot, the turkey didn’t fit and I was confused because I had used the same container last year. Then I remembered that last year I only did a turkey breast. So I’m contemplating either getting a roasting bag or just flipping the turkey every so often.
Tuesday: Go to the 6 year old’s class Thanksgiving cerebration. Work from 11:30a – 8pm, come home. Make pie dough and cranberry sauce and cranberry relish. (The kids have a 1/2 day of school, but the Husband is covering that.)
Wednesday: Kids are off school, but I work 9:30a – 4:00pm. Come home – make pies, steam green beans. The 11 year old hopefully would have made the rainbow Jello during her day off.
Wednesday: Macy’s Day Parade and Sausage ball making. Cook Turkey, finish off the green beans. I’m contemplating making stuffing. TBD.
I’m so glad I wrote notes to myself last year on things to remember for this year. One of the main notes was thatt year I decided I didn’t have the energy to make rolls, then on the day we all missed having rolls. So we bought rolls this year.

– Holiday movies! Last year, I watched a lot of Holiday movies and I’m super excited to plunge in again. The 2023 holiday movies don’t look as diverse or interesting as last year but there are a few that I’m putting on my definitely watch list, and a few from last year that I missed. (Someone highly recommended to me Mistletoe and Menorahs…). I am kind of sad that there isn’t an Asian Holiday movie; last year there were two. The 11 year old has requested as her Holiday Fun List item is an all day Hallmark Holiday Movie marathon. Doesn’t that sound like the most indulgent cozy thing?

-The holiday opera that I’m working on. It’s kind of a whirlwind quick process, but I love this show, having done it twice before. It’s a beautiful piece, fun and festive and full of heart.

– I think I’m going to take an art class this winter when my work load lightens up a little bit. I haven’t signed up for it yet, but perhaps putting it into the universe will make it so.

What We Ate:
Since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t responsible for dinner the majority of the past two weeks, here’s what I do remember making:
Coconut Rice with shrimp – This was a ridiculously easy recipe I found in the free magazine they hand out at the Giant. It involved cooking rice in a can of coconut milk, adding frozen veggies for the last 5 mins or so (I did frozen edamame and corn) and adding shrimp for the last 3 mins and then letting the whole thing sit covered for another 5 mins to let the shrimp cook. It was super fast and tasty – on the table in less than 30 mins and that’s with having to take time to defrost the shrimp under running water. I would eat again.

Butternut squash soup. I had a surfeit of butternut squash in our Hungry Harvest box, so one morning, before I went to work, I sauteed some onions and garlic in the Instant Pot, added some red curry paste, sauteed some more. Then I peeled and cubed one butternut squash and added it to the pot with one quart of vegetable stock. I set the IP for high pressure, 20 mins and left for work. I texted the husband: “Dinner’s in the IP. Add one can of coconut milk and puree.” Super simple and tasty. Vegan

Brussel Sprout Fried Rice. This is the recipe from Meera Sodha’s East. I love this recipe. Some days the kids love it, some days they don’t. This was one of the “don’t” days. Oh well, more for me!

Then there was the one day where we just had breakfast all day long. The Husband made the kids eggs for breakfast. Then at lunch, I didn’t know what to give them and I needed it to be fast, so I made breakfast sandwiches. Then for dinner, we clearly were exhausted, because that was the night we all just ate cereal for dinner. A Triple Breakfast Day!!! #lifegoals.

–

Books read- August, September, and October 2023

September and October were not great months for reading- I started many books, but many had to be returned before I could finish them. So it’s felt very scattered. I have many books started, many narrative threads open, but very few concluded.

I also have a ridiculous number of books out from the library. One day I had to clear them out of the living room and so I stacked them in my bedroom and they made a pile two feet high. Very aspirational. Our library now lets you check books back in yourself, so sometimes I will check an overdue book back in just to check it back out again and put it back on by TBR pile. That pile needs some realistic taming, for sure.

Anyhow, on to the books:

A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey – A novel about estranged siblings, a family ripped asunder and slowly stitching itself back together. This is a novel for people who like novels about family drama. It’s not a book that was terribly memorable for me; it was the first book I read in August and I had to go back and look up a plot description to remind myself what this book was about. I think it was on a library book club list. I’m just not a fan of books about people who wallow in their problems and can’t just talk to people to fix those problems. The main character often conveniently either a) accidentally left her cell phone at home, or b) talked herself out of communicating with other people. There was a nice cat in the novel, though.

My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby – I had listened to Cosby’s Razorblade Tears earlier this year and was really enthralled by it, even though crime/thriller isn’t a genre I’m usually drawn to. My Darkest Prayer is one of Cosby’s first attempts at a novel and it certainly isn’t as polished or tightly crafted as Razorblade Tears. The story centers around a Nathan Waymaker, a former Marine who now works for an undertaker. When a beloved preacher dies, Waymaker is hired by the preacher’s parishioners to find out what really happened. Though Cosby is heavy on the metaphors and some of the plotlines don’t resolve as neatly as I want, I thought this book really gripping and am eager to read more of his books.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Sharon Messenger – I read this as part of my “book club” with my 11 year old. She loooooves this series. I thought it was fine. It’s about a girl who discovers that she is really an elf and is then spirited away to another world to go to school and learn to use her powers. I don’t really go for stories of magical children and since this book was the first of a very long series, I felt like there was a lot of set up and not a whole lot of plot. My daughter assures me the series gets better as it goes along and there is a pretty juicy love triangle that evolves.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett – This book was recommended on the website Ask A Manager. I don’t always like the books that are recommended there – they tend towards rich family dramas – but this one had a lot of my literary cat nips – it’s an epistolatory murder mystery novel set against the backdrop of a community theatre. I thought this novel was a lot of fun. Though the mystery itself was rather disappointing, the style was breezy and clever, which I enjoyed. I hear there is a sequel, which is definitely going on my list.

Admission by Jean Hanff Koreltz – One of my favorite novels I’ve read this year. Portia Nathan is a Princeton admissions officer who starts to really question the ethics of her job when she makes a school visit to an ultra-alternative high school. As the things that she’s built her life on slowly unravel, she is forced to face choices that she made herself as a young college student. I loved so much about this book – Portia is such a complex, brave, and capable protagonist, all the characters are so full of life, and the book, while hilarious in parts, asks some really hard questions about the whole admissions process and who “deserves” an Ivy League education and what exactly is “achievement”. As someone who has very mixed feelings about my own Ivy League education and my own place on that campus, this book really spoke to all the insecurities that Princeton fostered, and still fosters, in me. Also – it is so very well written. Like this stellar bit of writing:

“And besides, there wasn’t much to be proud of in the scene she currently set: woman alone, in the middle of her bed, in the middle of the day, in the middle of her life.” – I mean that perfectly captures the days of malaise I feel when life is just overwhelming and I feel like I haven’t lived up to my life’s potentials.

And this quote quite sums up a lot of my feelings while at college:
“Inside every one of her fellow students, she understood now, was a person who didn’t live up to his or her own expectations, a person too fat, too slow, whose hair wouldn’t hold a curl, who had no gift for languages, who lacked the gene for math. They were convinced they were not all they’d been cracked up to be: the track star, classicist, valedictorian, perennial leading lady, campus fixer, or teacher’s favorite. The driven ones she’d known in college feared they weren’t driven enough, and the slackers were sure they’d find out how deficient they were if the ever did apply themselves.” Yep – I was definitely one of those slackers that was afraid to find out they weren’t smart. I really loved this book. Also – there is a movie somewhat based on this book starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. That pairing alone is enough to get me to watch the movie. It’s a cute movie, but nothing at all like the book, except for broad plot points.

Unwind by Neil Shusterman – A dystopian YA novel about a world in which, as a compromise on the abortion issue, life is considered sacred until the age of 13, after which parents are allowed to have their kids be “unwound”, sending their kids to government institutions to have their body parts harvested and transplanted to other people. I can’t remember where I first heard about this book, but I thought it might make a good mother daughter “book club” book. This book centers around a trio of teenagers who have been sent to be unwound, but escape on the way there. It’s pretty dark. The more YA novels I read, the more I’m realizing that parents don’t really come off very well in these books – which I guess is understandable of the genre read by people who are of an age to push back against the grown ups in their world. This book was really intense – I stayed up late to finish it because I just had to know how things turned out. The 11 year old really liked it too, said it was one of her favorite books she read this year.

Sadie by Courtney Summers, read by Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Gabra Zackman, and a full cast – I thought this book would make an interesting audiobook because it is supposed to be partly told in the form of a podcast. It tells the story of Sadie, a teenager who has gone missing after her sister is found dead, and the podcaster who is trying to find her. To be honest, women in peril stories aren’t really my thing, and the amount of cruelty and abuse in this book just made for unpleasant listening. Also, even though the novel is supposed to be told in the form of a podcast, I found the actual podcast segments kind of stilted.

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks, read by Renier Cortes, Hannah Church, Anthony Lopez, Alfred Vines, Xenia Willacey, Jamie Lincoln Smith, Henriette Zoutomou, Maria Liatis, Suehyla El-Attar, Eliana Marianes, Brad Sanders, Christopher Hampton – Continuing on my YA streak, this novel tells the story of three students at Urban Promise Prep School in DC who come under suspicion when their strict, no-nonsense principal is murdered. I thought this book was an interesting spin on the prep school mystery genre. Unlike most prep school novels, these kids are not white, do not come from families of money or privilege. They are kids who have to hustle and work hard to have dreams for their future, and I thought that Brooks really was able to convey how high the stakes were for these kids to prove themselves. I don’t always love full cast audio books – they always seem disjointed to me, but I thought that approach worked really well for this book – the multiple points of view as key to how each characted was slowly revealed and preconceptions were unravelled.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson – I picked up this novel as I was browsing the library because on one of the first pages, it had a list of “rules” for mystery novels, and there was a note in the top right corner that said, “Fold this corner over” so that the reader could refer back to this list throughout the novel. That kind of self-referential humour always gets me. This novel is one of those “Family stuck in a ski lodge with their secrets” kind of mystery and proved to be a lot of fun – I laughed out loud a few times. I do wish I had read it more quickly – the actual reveal of the murderer and motive was a little unsatisfying to me because I read the book over such a long period of time that I couldn’t remember the details enough to piece together the solution to the mystery. This is one of those mystery novels where the clues are right there so it would have been more fun if I could have kept track of details better.

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li– This book is set in Rockville, a suburb of DC near where I live and where the best Chinese food in the county is. The novel tells the story of relationships of the staff and owners of The Beijing Duck House. There are many narrative threads in this novel – family conflicts, romantic relationships, career ambitions, as well as the intense drama of trying to just get through the mundane things in life. Overall, I was kind of “meh” about this book. I thought the writing was very good, particularly the description of life in a restaurant and the details way Li describes food. Ultimately, though I think because the book is so sprawling with so many characters, I didn’t feel like the plotlines gelled cohesively for me. The whole thing felt quite episodic and lacked momentum.

The Change by Kirsten Miller – If you like books about angry middle aged women taking charge of things and confronting the casual misogyny of life, here is a book for you. This novel tells the story of three women in their 40s and 50s who, upon discovering the body of a dead teenage girl in their Long Island oceanfront community, decide to take matters into their own hands when the police dismiss the case as just another drug addicted sex-worker. Also – all three women have strange and magical powers – which, I’m not usually into strange and magical powers, but when coupled with menopausal rage, it is kind of fun. I mean this passage:
So much fury had built up inside Jo. But at last she’d identified the true enemy. She’d been waging war with herself since she was fourteen year old. But the problem wasn’t her body. The problem was the companies that sold shitty sanitary pads. Otherwise reasonable adult who believed tampons stole a girls’ virginity. Doctors who didn’t bother to solve common problems. Birth control that could kill you. Boys who were told that they couldn’t control themselves. A society that couldn’t handle the fact that roughly half of all humans mensurate at some point in their lives.
This book is angry and funny and suspenseful and sweet all at the same time. I guess one could say the men in this novel are kind of undeveloped, but I don’t imagine that they are any more undeveloped than women have been in media for years. This book was highly enjoyable for me. I stayed up until 2am to finish it.

Currently on my metaphorical bedside table:
Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes. I really liked Garbes’ book Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy – highly recommend as an alternative to Emily Oster’s Expecting Better. Essential Labor, written during the pandemic, seeks to look at the history of caregiving and how it is so central yet so undervalued.

All the Right Notes by Dominic Lim – Romance novel about a piano player/composer who has dreams of Broadway and the boy he met in high school, who is now a famous Hollywood star. I’m a sucker for novels set in the theatre or music worlds. Also romance novels with Asian leads. I started some other books this month, but I’m finding that when I’m in a super busy period at work, I need light happy books to read.

I Should Have Honor by Khalida Brohi (audiobook)- Brohi is a Pakastani activist who as a teenager, prompted by the honor killing of her cousin, started to speak out against honor crimes and advocate for the education and empowerment of women in Pakistan. This memoir was written in 2018. I’m only half way through and while I find the subject matter important, the memoir itself is a little dry.

The Takedown by Lily Chu (audiobook, narrated by Phillipa Soo) – Chu wrote The Stand-In which I really enjoyed, so when looking for an audiobook to listen to as I made scones one night, I started this one. It’s much the same humor and tone.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Halloween and Opening Night

Another show opened! Yay. That feeling of relief and achievement and being able to get back to the rest of life.

Through the brilliance of opera scheduling, we had Halloween night off from rehearsals and performances. I took the kids over to a friend’s house to trick or treat since our own street is pretty quiet. The Husband stayed home to pass out candy, though I don’t think we had anyone come to our door. He’d been solo parenting in the evening for over a week now and thoroughly deserved a night to himself.

I only got one picture of the kids in their Hallowe’en Costumes:

Back in August, I had told all the kids that if they wanted me to make their costumes, the designs had to be in by the end of September since I would be in tech the week before Hallowe’en and unavailable for costume construction. The oldest wanted to be “The Taylor Swift House.” Which was not a reference I understood. To which her response was, “Why can’t you just Google it yourself!?!?!” There was probably an eye roll in there as well. At any rate, I’m sure I could have Googled it, but I wasn’t going to put effort into it if she wasn’t going to, so I left her to her own devices. Then a couple days before Hallowe’en – she woke me up on morning waving a piece of paper, saying, “I’ve designed a house!” She decided just to be a house. Of course it was the weekend before Hallowe’en, and not on my to do list. The Husband went out and bought her two pieces of plastic sheeting and a bunch of markers and she made the costume herself. I wish I got a picture of the back because the rooms she drew were amazingly detailed. I did attach the straps for her, though if I were to do it again, I would not use hot glue. The hot glue did not hold and half way through the evening, the straps came off and she just held the costume up for the remainder of the evening.

The 6 year old wanted to be a builder. I was initially going to make him a cardboard truck to be part of his costume, but then I saw Kiwi Co. makes kits where you can make an excavator arm – a working excavator arm – and attach it to a box. Well, that was much cooler than anything I could make on my own, so I ordered the kit. The morning of our first orchestra tech rehearsal, I got up at 6am to put together this cardboard excavator arm with the “help” of the children before going into work. You know when you roll into work at 10:30am and everyone else looks like they just got out of bed and are saying how tired they are and how early they had to get up to get to the theatre by 10:30am, and you don’t want to say anything because there is no competitive suffering in opera, but really you were up at 6am making a freaking cardboard excavator so they can all shove it, but you don’t really say that… ? Just me? Never mind. Anyhow, the excavator arm was every bit as cool as I had hoped.

The 4 year old made it easy and just pulled the astronaut suit from the dress up clothes and called it a day. It was brilliant because she could also wear the NASA bomber jacket that my father had given the 6 year old, and was toasty warm all evening. Or would have been except at one point she declared that she was hot and took it off.

It actually turned out quite chilly on Thanksgiving. This after a weekend of 75/80 degree weather. I think the cold discouraged people from staying out very long. By the time 8pm rolled around, the streets were pretty empty. We went back to my friend’s house, where we had some turkey chili and minestrone soup for dinner and the kids traded candy. Then I took the kids home and we watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with the Husband while we sorted the candy. By “we” I really meant “me.” The little kids didn’t quite understand the joy of candy sorting. An added bonus of the candy sorting was that I used it as an opportunity to combine the two little kids’ candy and then let them pick 30 pieces to eat and there was no jealous cries of “That’s my candy!” The rest of their candy, I put in a bag and set aside. By which I mean, I set aside so I can eat it myself. I feel like I can probably get away with taking all my kids’ candy for another year or so before they wise up and realize that I’m doing that. Case in point, the 11 year old who would not let me near her candy and sorted her piles on the other side of the room.

One thing I love is that the 11 year old always gives her 100 Grands to the Husband. In fact, if she ever is given the option to choose candy from a bowl and there is a 100 Grand, she will almost always choose that one, “For daddy,” she says.

The day after Hallowe’en was a day off of school for the two kids in public school. I think it was just a fluke of scheduling; it was an end of quarter grading day for the teachers. Fluke though it might have been, it was kind of brilliant. The kids could stay up late the night before and sleep in the next day. Only they couldn’t sleep in because the day after Hallowe’en was a Wednesday and the kids have back to back piano lessons starting at 7:15am on Wednesday. Gotta admit that was a tough lesson to get them to. If i had had more foresight, I probably would have cancelled for the week, but I am very much a slave to scheduled routines and didn’t even think about cancelling. But after that, the kids got to lounge around the house the rest of the day while the Husband worked from home and I went to rehearsal.

After rehearsal on that Wednesday, I took the 11 year old to participate in a study at the nearby University. When she was a couple months old, I saw a flyer for the University’s Child Development Center saying they needed babies and children to participate in studies. I wasn’t working at the time, so I thought it would be fun to do, and for the first few years of our kids’ lives we participated in three or four studies a year. Some of them paid, some of them didn’t but I always thought it fascinating to go to them. I think one of my favorite studies is the one from Gallaudet University which centered around a robot they were making that could communicate with deaf people – they wanted both hearing and hearing impaired babies to interact with the robot. When the youngest was four months old, I signed up for a study that involved putting her in an MRI machine – that one was kind of a disaster because we had to go during her bedtime so they could swaddle her and cover her ears to go into the machine while asleep, but she kept waking up once in the MRI machine and so we eventually gave up on that one. Anyhow, when people ask for things to do with one’s baby, I always suggest participating in research studies as a fun way to get out of the house.

The 11 year old had been feeling left out because her younger siblings were always being asked to be in studies, but she wasn’t. I don’t know if it’s because there are fewer people researching preteens? Or just in our area? So when an opportunity for a study for children 8-12, I signed up the eleven year old to go. It was a study about mother child interactions and anxiety and involved filling out a survey prior to the lab visit and then the lab visit where we wore eye trackers while participating in simulated conversations based on topics the researchers prompted. The study visit took 90 minutes and at the end we were $50 richer and the 11 year old got some sparkly gel pens. Afterwards I took her out for BBQ, which was nice because I’ve been feeling like we haven’t been getting a lot of mother-daughter time.

Random musings:

I just spent $80 on pads and hair ties for myself and my daughters. Now I know that pads and hair ties are not solely the domain of women/girls, but given that the majority of people who menstruate and/or have long hair seem to be female, I feel like I was just hit with some kind of penalty for being female and having daughters. I guess, men get their hair cut more so have to pay that expense more often? But in truth, my Husband’s hair cut costs about a quarter on mine, so it doesn’t seem to even out at all.

Also- Daylight Saving Time after Opening Night seems like a good idea. I got to feel like I slept in on Sunday morning. I had all sorts of thoughts as to what I would want to do with my gained hour. It involved aspirations of reading, and journaling and yoga. Yeah nope. In reality it just involved sleep. of course I didn’t get home until nearly 2am after the opening night party, so sleep would seem to be the best use of my gained hour.

I came home one day to find this in our yard:

A new tree! Earlier this year the county had taken down a tree in front of our house because it was not quite alive and also because it posed a hazard to the electrical lines above. I guess they have now replaced the tree. I’m not even sure what kind of tree it is, but it’s kind of exciting to have a new tree, to think about how big it will get. To wonder if it too will one day be cut down because it is growing into the power lines, or if by then all the powerlines will be underground…

More Fall Fashion:
I’ve posted before on how much I love dressing for fall, so I thought I’d do another mini fall fashion post. One day, I put on this outfit:

The 11 year old took this picture and was very specific that my hand had to be on the doorknob.

The outfit is a grey plaid flannel button down from Uniqlo, a dress from Wool&, black leggings, the “not for Amsterdam” blue boots, and a knit hat that was a present from my sister in law. The Wool& dress I bought this year and it quickly became one of my most worn garments – I’ve worn it at least twice a week since April. It’s not a terribly interesting dress, but it layers well and can be worn in many different combinations. Anyhow, I put on this outfit and the six year old said, “You look like a teenager.” Not at all sure what that means.

So I added my favorite and ubiquitous Uniqlo puffer vest:

And the six year old said, “Now you look like a mom!” Hmmm…. When I first got my puffer vest six or seven years ago, I did kind of feel like I was falling into a suburban mom cliche, but… but but… it is such a practical piece of clothing – keeps me warm without being bulky, and I can throw it on over anything. I might look like a mom cliche, but at least I’m not cold.

(On an incidental note – you see all that wood paneling? That is in our foyer. This wood paneling is 85% of my living room window treatment dilemma. I would love to have natural woven or bamboo blinds in the living room. But the living room is directly off of this foyer and I just can’t picture whether or not having bamboo blinds will clash with all that wood paneling in the foyer. Like whether or not the vintage/mid century vibe of the foyer needs to dictate the window treatment of the living room and whether bamboo blinds are too beachy for the vibe our foyer gives off…. this is something I’ve been pondering for over a year now. Opinions welcome.)

Grateful for:
– The Assistant Stage Managers, who are my eyes on stage and backstage when I’m too busy calling cues to look up, and the Assistant Director who, for me, is the real soul of this show. Getting to opening always is the work of many and having good ASMs and a great AD to share an office with is foundational to me getting where the show needs to go.

-The Husband, as always, for holding down the fort. For making dinner, picking up the kids, putting them to bed, laundry, keeping the house clean… all of it. Tech week is always a lot of hours away from home, but this fall, seems harder than normal. I think I’m still trying to balance some new responsibilities at work with the parts of the job I’ve always done and I haven’t quite figured out how to spread my time yet so I’m at work a lot more and I’m bringing home work to do a lot more than I used to. It’s been rough. There will never be a tech week where I’m not grateful for the Husband, but this tech period, I feel like has been particularly demanding.

– Bike store by work. Two weeks ago, I had ridden my bike to work and ended up leaving it there because it was dark when I got off work and I don’t have lights for the bike. Well, I finally went back to pick it up on my day off last week only to find the front tire had gotten flat. This was super discouraging because I had decided not to go running that morning because I knew I was going to be biking home later that day. The I remembered that there was a bike shop four or five blocks from work, so I wheeled my sad limpy bike there. Only to find a note on the door, “We’re moving!” and it listed a new address along with their re-opening date which, luckily, was the day before. So I wheeled my sad limpy bike down four more blocks to the bike store. I feel very ignorant about bikes – I want to be able to do my own maintenance, but I never got around to learning how to do it. At any rate, the technician at the bike store put my bike up on the rack and took the inner tube out, checked it for holes, found a hole on a seam, which indicated that it was just a bad innertube, but the still checked the tire for pointy bits anyway, then replaced the innertube while answering questions about training wheels, and I was soon on my way home. It was the best $25 I spent all week.

– County Rec Program. I signed up the 6 year old and 4 year old for a new session of skating lessons and while I did, I thought how awesome it is that they can take 6 weeks of skating lessons + a card for 6 admissions to open skate, all for $114. The expense of kids activities can really build up, so I’m grateful that we have access to really great, relatively low cost, activities through the county program. Our tax dollars at work, I guess.

-Guavas in the mail. My parents sent us a box of guavas from the tree in their yard. I love guavas – the rest of the family not so much. I guess they don’t appreciate the crunchy, sweet, and tropical taste. Yippeee, more for me! There were a few days when I realized that we were low on fruit in the house, but because we had these guavas, I could pack the apples for my kids and take the guavas myself and we would get through another couple of days without a grocery run.

Looking forward to:

– planning meals and cooking again. I haven’t made dinner in a long long long time. I got this cookbook from the library and I’m really excited about the recipes in it:

Hetty Lui McKinnon wrote To Asia With Love, which is another cookbook I’ve loved this year. This book is already overdue, but I’m hoping to sneak a few recipes out before the Library starts banging on my door asking for it back. There is a mushroom ragout that looks amazing, and a butternut squash lasagna that uses butternut squash in place of noodles. Which is fortunate because my Hungry Harvest box came with 4 butternut squashes this week.

– evenings not at the theatre. Evenings and bedtime is a slog, but I miss that routine and being able to snuggle at night.

-The 11 year old’s school play. She’s been working so hard learning her lines; I’m excited to see the lines in context. (This actually just happened – it was fun!)

What we ate: once again, I couldn’t say.

There was some kind of tofu/noodle/ thai-ish stir fry. The leftovers of which I accidentally three out because I thought it was the leftover Thai food that made me sick and had me vomiting at work one day. But it wasn’t and now I’m sad I didn’t get to eat any of my Husband’s yummy cooking.

There was an eat down the freezer meal- a handful of this, a handful of that to finish off some nearly empty packages in the freezer. From the Husband’s account it was something like six dumplings and a handful of tater tots.

There was a pizza and movie night, but I’m not at all sure what they watched.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: tech week!

Saturday was a day off after three looong days in the theatre. It’s been an exhausting week. Luckily the rehearsal schedule lightens up a little bit after this, but I’m behind on putting the cues into my score, so I’ll have to spend several hours on that when we’re not on stage or in a lighting session.

view from my station out front. I have many buttons to push.

Being out and about on the day off was something of a shock. I feel as if I started prepping for this show in summer and yesterday, I went outside and had to blink twice because it is fall. Trees blazing with colour and light. Leaves barely clinging on to branches, their cohorts carpeting the ground. Yet also it’s unseasonably warm this week – in the 70s and 80s. Our choreographer, who is from England, asked me the other day if this warm temperature was normal, and I started to say, “No, it’s not normal,” but then I stopped because I can’t remember what is “normal” weather anymore. I mean I certainly don’t remember it being 80 degrees the week before Hallowe’en, but I don’t think we’ve had a truly cold Hallowe’en in ages. Not the cool nights that I remember growing up, of layers and sweatpants under Hallowe’en costumes.

Some Fun Things This Week:
-Soup Swap At Work! This was absolutely an awesome idea. Four of us brought soup – we had butternut squash soup, cream of mushroom, matzoh ball soup, and I made kale and sausage soup. Someone brought bread, and I picked up apples from the Farmer’s market that morning. Since there were so many soup options, we decided to serve ourselves soup in mugs so that we could each try all of the options without filling up on big bowls of any one soup. Then we started mixing the soups and putting the matzoh balls in different soups. We had lots of leftovers. Definitely goes on our “Let’s do it again” list for work.

-The 11 year old went on a two night overnight trip with her school. I didn’t know this beforehand, but every sixth grader has the opportunity to go on an overnight trip, called Outdoor Education. It’s not really camping because everyone stays in a cabin, but they do spend the day in the wood – suburban woods, but still, outside among trees – and roast marshmallows at night. She apparently had a great time, which surprised me a little because she has always rejected the idea of sleepaway camp. Anyhow, the first day she was gone, I got home form work at midnight and saw that she had left her lunch on the living room floor and I got so sad because day 1 lunch was the one meal that was not provided. And I proceeded to worry about her for the next two days. (Would I have been this upset about it if it hadn’t been tech week, and I had gotten a full night’s sleep? Maybe not.) When she came home, I asked her about it, and she said that she just got a PB&J from the cafeteria and it was fine. I’m so proud of her for figuring it out. Also – I completely forgot to pay the Outdoor Ed fee because the online system was down. I don’t know … the whole thing was somehow utterly mentally exhausting for me. The important thing, though… she had a good time and no one had to pick her up at midnight from the camp because she wanted to come home.

-This fun jigsaw puzzle that one of my co-workers brought in for our office. We may have stayed later than prudent to finish it one night…

What a perfect puzzle for a bunch of theatre nerds!

Some genius things this week:
1) My favorite farm stand is my go to source for apples this time of year. The guy at the register once told me that they have about thirty varieties of apples over the course of Fall. I love trying all the different varieties of apples, but I could never keep straight what I was bringing home. Well, recently, they’ve started putting out paper bags for customers to buy apples. Brilliant! I can write the names of the apples on the bag. I feel like I’ve just been able to up my apple tasting game.

Just one small section of the apples available

2) The use of technology so casually and easily in rehearsal continues to amaze me. I mean when I first started working at this company, we were still faxing things back and forth. In fact there are some ways we notate things on paperwork because it was the only way that it would be clear when the fax came through on the other end. I used to have to make really complicated drawings on paperwork using Word or Paint or what not to show the crew how things should be set up. (My friend could make the most amazing line drawings in Word. They were truly works of art.) But now, I can just take a picture and add it to the paperwork.

The other easy use of our phones/cameras these days is to make study videos of parts of rehearsal so that the director can review them at night and come in with new ideas the next day. It used to be if we wanted to make study videos, we would have to get a camera and a tripod. But now, everyone has a phone with a camera and lots of memory and it’s so easy just to use that. The other week we were making lots of study videos and I had to hold the camera and it got tedious – my arms got tired and shaky. I thought, “How amazing is this technology, and yet, how much are we not set up to use it like this in rehearsal the way we need?” I went looking for a way to rig something to hold the camera up so I wouldn’t have to do it. I ended up finding two book ends and just wedging the phone between them, but it still wasn’t perfect because the bookends kept sliding apart.

Then the fight choreographer started prowling around the room, as if on a mission. And he came back with two rubber bands and a pencil and set this up for me:

The combination of high tech and low tech made me giggle.

What didn’t go so well this week – as usual, home life suffers during tech week. I barely see the Husband or the kids and when I do, it’s very functional. Pack lunches, brush teeth, empty backpacks, fold laundry (just half a load)… Next tech week, I want to find ways to be more… human with my family. Not sure what that means yet… find moments of connection and not just function?

Tech week treats – For me, tech week is a combination of meticulously planned healthy meals and also unlimited snacking. Two indulgences in this latter category which I discovered this week, one sweet and one savory:

Nerds Gummy Clusters! Where have you been all my life? I like have a variety of flavor and texture combinations in my candy and these are the perfect blend of sweet and sour and crunchy and chewy. Apparently there’s Nerd rope too? That might be a little much for me – I like that I can just pop one or two of these in my mouth at a time.

And then buffalo wing pretzels. Buffalo wings are one of my favorite things – and these pretzels – crunchy, tangy, spicy – are like having wings without all the bones and stringy bits.

Grateful for (tech week edition):

– post its notes and removable stickers. This is how I mark up my book. Post Its and removable stickers in all colors so I can color code all the things. On the wall of the theatre there are stage manager prompt books from the 70s and 80s and it’s all pencil and ruler lines and impeccably neat handwriting. I think I did learn to use ruler and lines when i first started marking up a score, but now I use post its, 0.9 lead mechanical pencils, and Frixion pens.

– sunshine and warm weather. Being in a dark theatre for 12-14 hours a day, the few moments of sunshine that I was able to steal are divine. (There was one day where I worked straight through two meal breaks and did not see the sun at all and that made me sad.) I managed to carve out at least 10 minutes, sometimes 30, every day to walk outside and soak up the sun.

– my lunchbox. I have a special lunch box for tech that is the size of a small cooler. It’s huge. But it has to be so that I can pack all my food. I have a huge aversion to being hungry, so I always make sure I pack a lot of food to get me through tech. There is a cafeteria at work, and restaurants in walking distance, but I like the security of knowing what all I have planned to eat that day. The first few days are usually 12+ hours at the theatre so I pack lunch and dinner and two or three substantial snacks as well as a snack to eat on the way home. It all fits in my lunch box, along with an ice pack or two. (One of my co-workers has a tech meal planning spreadsheet – stage managers love a good spreadsheet.) Thank you lunch box for keeping me from having to think about what I’m going to eat. The fewer decisions I have to make once I’m at the theatre, the better.

-Sleep and Showers. Full disclosure – I’m not a “shower every day” person. I think I shower every two or three days. This is how bad it is – I lose count. But I have to say, after working a really rough rehearsal, getting home from work after midnight and waking up 5-6 hours later to do the breakfast/lunch/kids/school bus thing and then being at the theatre by 10am, I just feel groggy and dragging. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. On those mornings, a shower does wonders for me. It makes me feel like it’s a new day, I’ve washed off all the baggage and criticism of the night before and am ready to face whatever is thrown at me. I am grateful for the chance to shower and start fresh.

Looking forward to:

-opening night. Actually final dress rehearsal. I know that opening night is supposed to be the big night, but for me it’s really about the final dress rehearsal. In opera, the final dress rehearsal usually has an invited audience and sometimes it’s the first time we get to run the show all the way through, including bows. (Side bar on Bows … there is never time to stage bows and usually it’s just crammed in at the end of rehearsals, in the five minutes between when the orchestra is released and when the stage crew gets to go home. And some shows… “staging bows” falls by the wayside and the stage management team is handed a sheet of paper on final dress with the bow order and we are supposed to just make it happen. Bows always seem so simple, but there is still a little bit to it – you have to tell the singers which side of stage to enter from, which side to go to after the bow, what the order is, how many bows, where to stand at the end of bow so they don’t get hit by the curtain coming in…. Final dress is the first time we really get to run bows and it is ALWAYS awkward.) Anyhow, I’m looking forward to final dress and getting all the elements lined up line up properly. It’s where I really feel like I’ve gotten the show to the finish line. Opening night is the victory lap.

-Hallowe’en. (okay, Hallowe’en was last night, but I drafted this earlier in the week and didn’t get a chance to post. It happened. More of a recap later). Last year, I was working on Hallowe’en, but this year, the schedule worked out that I’m off. Of course, Hallowe’en falls during tech week, which meant that I was up at 6am assembling one kid’s costume before going to the theatre, and hot gluing another kid’s costume ten minutes before we were out the door. Thankfully the third kid just wants something from our dress up bin. I hadn’t planned on carving pumpkins this year because of the tech schedule, but at the last minute, our neighbors invited us over for a pumpkin carving party so we had jack o’lanterns after all. usually we design our own jack o’lanterns, but the neighbors had some cool stencils and the kids really liked them, so I carved then ones they wanted. I thought they turned out really well.

-sleep. Because it’s been tech and 14 hour days at the theatre and still having to get up in time to pack lunches and get the kids to school. The Husband has been great and telling the kids to let me sleep in until 7am.

What We Ate – I have nothing for this. The Husband, as always during tech week, held down the fort, and he made dinner all week. I was gone every night so I didn’t even get to eat any of his yummy cookings. I think there was broccoli and pasta one night, there was an eggs night. Of course, pizza and a movie. He did make a pickle pizza, which I had leftovers of, and it was very tasty. I ate mostly leftovers, except for the one day when I was at the theatre on Farmer’s Market day and I got, in addition to Kimchi, an eggplant parmesan sandwich.

As for family movie night – I heard they watched Ghostbusters. I’m a little jealous they didn’t wait for me, but it is very seasonally appropriate.