January 2024 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Snow, snow, snow, and show!

This past week was pretty mild, but what a snowy, snowy week we hadthe week previous! I have to say, after having absolutely no snow last year, it was a bit of a shock to have so much snow last week. Of course, still not as much snow as in other parts of the country, but certainly what qualifies for a lot of snow here – maybe 3-5 inches.

The quick version:
-Monday was MLK Day, so no school for the kids. I did have to work, so the Husband was home with them.
-Tuesday: Snow Day!!! Schools were closed, and the building where we rehearsed was on a delay. Also, annoyingly, County summer camp sign ups opened at 6:30a am. So at 8am, I was on the phone with work re-scheduling rehearsal while at the same time on my computer trying to register the six year old for summer camp slots. The Husband worked from home.
-Wednesday: another snow day! Although the 4 year old’s preschool was open. Let me tell you – she loves it when she’s the only one who gets to go to school. Again, the Husband worked from home.
-Thursday: Everyone got to go to school. HOOORAY!!!!
-Friday: Snow day! Again. I had to be in at work around 2pm, so I took the morning shift with the kids and the Husband went in to work. He came home around 12:30pm.

So yup – a grand total of ONE day in school for the older two kids.

In amongst all this – I opened a show and closed a show. I would say I also teched a show, but the process was so quick, I would barely count it as “tech” – just one day of rehearsal onstage. The show was a program of three newly commissioned 20 minute operas. It’s something we do every year and I love participating. There is such excitement about presenting premieres of new works written by young composers and librettist. One piece in particular was so quirky and fun – it takes place in a world after humans are extinct and the characters are microplastics and a tardigrade. I had to google tardigrade and now I feel that much smarter for knowing what a tardigrade is. (If you, like me, didn’t know, it’s a small microscopic creature that can live in extreme conditions and survive anything. They look like little bears. Apparently there’s an Aquanots episode about them.)

So putting up a show combined with a snow week was kind of … a lot. But at least I got to go to work. The Husband’s three day weekend stretched into a five day weekend, and he should get a medal for being home with the kids for all that time.

Things that worked this tech period:
– prioritizing life and work things. I didn’t have an assistant for this show, so I had to really focus on what was important to getting the show up. There was one moment in particular that stood out for me when I declined a meeting invite. It was just a 20-30 minute meeting, and normally I would think, “It’s thirty minutes, I can squeeze that in.” But I decided that, no, actually I’m stage managing a show without an assistant – I need those 20-30 minutes for myself or I won’t get my paperwork done and I will be stressed out – the meeting can wait. It was a bit of a lightbulb for me, to be honest – to be able to say, “That isn’t a good time for me, can we re-schedule?” I have no bones declining meeting when I have to be somewhere else – ie. “I’m only available until 3:30p because I need to pick up the kids.” But somehow, saying, “I can’t do that because I need to finish my paperwork” I don’t know – that had never occurred to me.
– Not worrying about things being pretty. Look, like most stage managers, I love nice paperwork – I love charts and diagrams and running times all lined up. But you know, ultimately getting the information out correctly is the most important thing. So yeah, there was some paperwork that had a mistake and I decided that I’m just going to correct that with a Sharpie rather than try to open the document on my computer and change it. Why waste the paper or my time?
-Packing food, particularly leftovers. I always pack food, but it’s especially helpful because this theatre is farther away from the staff canteen than the other theatre I worked at. I think three out of four days last week, I had leftovers in a tortilla for dinner. Perfect thing to eat efficiently.
-Four Color Frixion Pen. Frixion Pens are one of the best new inventions for stage mangers. Well, at least this stage manager. My favorite is a four colour Frixion pen in black, green, red, and blue. All those colours in one barrel so I can colour code cues in my book without having to pull out another pen. And also the ability to erase cues when things change. Amazing.
-Riding to work with my work bestie. When I’m in tech, my social life suffers and I miss seeing friends. Which is why I love that one of my good friend works with me and we get to ride to work together and talk about life and work and all the things at Trader Joe’s that I miss buying.
– Realizing I’m the stage manager. I have always been more of a self-effacing type of stage manager. It’s not necessarily a good thing. But twice last week, people have said to me, “You get to decide; you’re the stage manager.” Whoa what??? Right. I get to tell people that I want them at a meeting. And, this was the big moment – I get to decide that it’s okay that I wore my snow boots all day because if it’s between taking the time to change into my black shoes and not getting that one last thing done, versus just keeping the damn snow boots on but getting the thing done – I’m going to keep my snow boots on. And the world didn’t end. I mean I don’t think it’s an open invitation to be cavalier and dress unprofessionally, but … in the scheme of things – it’s okay to keep the snow boots on.
-Taking time to go sledding. Last year I bought a sled. Then it didn’t snow. Bummer. So I was very determined to take the kids sledding this year when the snow hit. You know, if it was a choice between taking the kids sledding and making the paperwork pretty – I chose sledding. On Tuesday, I told the kids that if they wanted to go sledding, we had to leave the house by 9:30am and we managed to do it. We drove to the local elementary school where there is a nice hill and went sledding for 45 minutes.
(Funny side note story -while sledding, we ran into a kid that the 12 year old knows from school, and he said snow days at after care were the best – the aftercare company was still providing care that day because the buildings were still open – because you got to play dominos and then after lunch, the after care folks would take all the kids to the hill and give them each a pizza box to go sledding. Doesn’t that just sound like the height of childhood memories?)

So we only have one sled – the other thing is a plastic tub that we use as a water table during the summer. It works great!

Then on Friday, the same thing. I told the kids that if they wanted to go sledding, I would take them, but we had to be ready to go by 9:30am, and again, they were! And honestly, I would have been really disappointed if we hadn’t gone. This time, we also took our neighbor’s kid with us. (I firmly believe in being a village and if I don’t have to be at work until 2pm then why not take an extra kid with us so her parent can have a few hours to work? Plus the kids always love having other kids around and they other family takes our kids sometimes in the evenings too.) I took a few runs down this hill this time in the sled which was really fun, and I thought ahead and brought a Thermos of hot chocolate with us, a lovely treat once we got done sledding.

Looking back on that list, what struck me is that a lot of what made the week go well on my end is that I made very mindful choices about what was important to keeping me going and everything else could be subpar or just dropped. There is a culture in stage management (and theatre, and really, I’m sure a lot of other industries) of pushing yourself and letting work drain every last drop that you have to give. It doesn’t need to be that way. I need to do things in a way that leave me mental margin, so that when the important things come up, I have the bandwidth to deal with that. Even things like taking my kids sledding – being able to step out of the job and concentrate on, “What can I do to make memories with my kids?” – it puts me in a better mood at work because I know that if nothing else, we had 45 minutes of joy that morning. I feel more like there is a bit more balance to me. It relieves a bit of the mental load of wondering if my kids’ are having a good day and the guilt of not being home at bedtime – because you know what? They at least had a good morning and I feel like there’s a bit o (I do still have a lot of guilt and struggle over the fact that the Husband does 95% of the parenting when I’m working and I know it’s a lot to put on his plate… I need to work on how to achieve balance when there is no balance.)

Hopefully writing those “things that worked” will help me remember them next time I’m in tech. Which won’t be until May. That’s a little wild for me to realize that I don’t have a show to work on for a long stretch.

Fun Family Activity – We went to a concert by Elena Moon Park. Park is a musician who reimagines folk songs and children’s songs from around the world, mostly from East Asia – yay Asian representation! I had heard her at an outdoor concert two years ago and I really loved her music so when I had a chance to hear her again, I was really excited to hear her again and take the kids. During the concert, the kids were kind of clingy and they didn’t participate in any of the clapping games or hand gesture-y parts, and I was worried that they weren’t liking it. But afterwards, they were singing bits of the concert, so I guess they did enjoy it after all.

Other nice things this week:
-The six year old reading Dogman to his little sister.

– Dropping the 12 year old and her friend at voice lessons and then going for a walk and re-discovering the Glass Forest. The Glass Forest is a really neat little bit of forest where someone has hung bits of glass and metal and what not from the trees to make a series of sculptures. When you walk through it, the wind knocks the metal and glass together and it’s like walking in a windchime. It’s a little creepy, a little magical. I was on a walk while the 12 year old was at her voice lesson and I happened upon the Glass Forest. I had come here years ago, on some kind of mission to find hidden gems of DC. This definitely fit the bill of “hidden gems” but I had forgotten about it in the years since, so it was a nice surprise to find it again.

-Okay, I feel super pretentious recounting this, but it was such a sweet moment – after sledding on Friday, as we were enjoying our hot chocolate and taking in the snowy views, the six year old says, “Mommy, it looks like a Robert Frost poem!” Lest you think the six year old is some kind of genius budding English scholar – he knows exactly one Robert Frost poem. We have an illustrated version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” – and the cover did indeed look like the scene before us:

-And this made me laugh – The Husband and I stayed up late to watch the football game one night. And the 12 year old tried to convince us to let her stay up too. The reason? it was not because she was a huge footballs fan. No – it was the Kansas City game and she wanted to see if she could catch a glimpse of Taylor Swift. We sent her to bed, though I did take a picture of the tv when they showed Swift during one moment.

Current woes – Homework. The first grader has started coming home with homework and he is very reluctant to do it. I alternate between threatening/pleading/cajoling/bribing/etc. him to do it, and just saying “F*ck it! It’s first grade. If he doesn’t want to do it, why should I spend energy getting him to do it?” Then I have a tiny panic spiral about how I’m not setting him up for success and I go back to threatening/pleading/cajoling/bribing/etc. This is not where I want to spend my energy. So truth – it usually only gets done 50% of the time.

I’ve grown very hands off with the 12 year old’s homework. This is not some bold parenting choice. This is just lack of energy. At any rate, she has told me that many of her teachers don’t believe in homework (Great! They should meet the 1st grader’s teacher!). So it is entirely possible that she doesn’t have any homework. I for sure only very rarely see her do homework, and her grades keep coming back solidly average, so I guess she is doing what she is supposed to be doing, whether or not it is homework. As someone whose parents were very involved in my academic progress, I’m feeling a little bit like I ought to care a little bit more.

Grateful For:
-The Husband having the flexibility to handle all the snow days.

-All the super talented people I work with. I know I say this every time, but I work with amazingly competent and supportive people. Everyone knew that I was working without an assistant and there were so many offers of, “What can I do for you?” I guess this is another thing that made last week good – when people offered to help, I let them. I let someone else check the sign in sheets, I let someone else buy me a Coke to get through one long day. I let someone else start rehearsal when I couldn’t make it quite in time after dropping the 4 year old at school following a delayed opening. There is no room to be a martyr here and I’m glad I don’t have to be.

-How beautiful everything looks blanketed in snow. I know living in snowy weather is not always easy or ideal, but it sure is pretty, and I always feel lucky that I get to see it. There is nothing like being cozy inside with a cup of hot tea (or cocoa) while watching the world being buried in snow and silence.

-And also -grateful for snow plows and snow shovels so I can get safely to work. And an all wheel drive vehicle.

-The twelve year old’s friends for coming to celebrate her birthday. We had six kids over to belatedly celebrate the twelve year old’s birthday, with three of them spending the night. The next morning we had waffles and bacon and fruit and then a group of them went to see the new Mean Girls movie. It was a pretty hands off affair for us. We helped them make pizzas, then gave them the run of the basement. I did go downstairs and turn off the tv at 12:30am to a bit of minor protesting. Afterwards, the twelve year old said to me, “Thanks for turning the tv off. I’m really tired and I would be even more tired if you had let me stay up all night.” Wow. That’s a nice bit of self awareness there. Anyhow, I’m glad that her friends came over and that she had a good birthday party.

Looking Forward To:
-I signed up for a slot at Career Day at the 12 year old’s school. I went back and forth on whether or not to sign up – I think I have a pretty fun job, but it’s also a very seasonal job (for me – there are people who do this full time), and I don’t know if non-full time employment is really what Career Day is about? Oh well. I’m nervous – what am I going to talk about for thirty minutes??? But it’s good to do new things, particularly things that scare you a little bit.

-Lighter work load and time to focus on house things. The two big projects are to figure out what to do about my car and moving forward with getting window treatments for the living room. Both projects carry a lot of mental and emotional stress. There’s also little projects like cleaning out the pantry and linen closet. And I really want to label the spice jars on our spice rack. Who knows if I will get that all done, but good to have aspirations.

-Listening to more of this audiobook – narrated by Julia Whelan. Julia Whelan is an amazing audiobook narrator. This book itself has some questionable plot holes and devices that normally would not appeal to me, but Whelan does such a great job that I’ve been sucked in. I can’t tell whether I would like this book if I read it vs. listened to the audiobook.

What We Ate:
Saturday: Parmesan Mint Pasta. The Husband cooked because I was at work. The kids had requested mac and cheese (from the box), and the Husband said this looked more interesting and made it instead. Surprisingly tasty even though it was cold when I ate it after getting home from work.

Sunday: Scavenge. Sundays we usually try to eat down the fridge. I think there was frozen tortellini with red sauce for the kids. Not for dinner, but at lunch I had salt and vinegar stir fried potatoes, to which I added julienned golden beets. A friend had given me a bag of beets from her produce box because she didn’t like beets, so I was looking for ways to eat them. I actually ate some of them raw too – the beauty of golden beets is that they don’t stain your hands deep purple-red.

Monday: Funny story. Before I left for work, I told the Husband that there was tofu in the fridge and he should use it up. Later that day, he texted me asking if the tofu was in a red lidded container. I said, no the tofu is shrink wrapped, still in it’s own packaging.
<I put that in the dinner. > he replied. <It melted.>
Then, I realized what was in that red container.
<That was feta> I texted him.
<Lol!> he writes back. <It is still feta. L said hmmmm that’s smooth, dad!>
So I guess for Monday, they had kung pao feta for dinner. With noodles.

Tuesday: Tofu stir fry. For reals this time.

Wednesday: I made vegan gnocchi soup, a recipe that I’ve made many times because the family loves it. I actually made all of it before I went to work, except the gnocchi and coconut milk – the Husband added that before he served it.

Thursday: I’m not sure what the family had for dinner. I had a ktichen sink sandwich – pickles, hard boiled eggs, cucumbers, avocados, mustard. It was quite messy to eat and now that I think of it – I could have just mashed all that into egg salad and it would have been less messy.

Friday: I had leftover curry eaten in a tortilla wrap at work. The family had waffles.

Saturday: Pizza, make your own as this was the sleepover night. And there was lots of soda and chips involved. But also carrots, cucumbers, and apple slices.

Sunday: Again – scavenge for dinner. The kids had hard boiled eggs and half and avocado each. I’m sure there were other veggies and fruits in there too. I had kimchi friend rice and golden beets pan fried on the griddle. I feel like this is my go to Sunday scavenge dinner – kimchi fried rice and whatever other veggies are in the fridge.

Christmas Movies 2023 – Hallmark and such.

I will say, I think they are getting more inventive and less predictable with these movie posters.

A snowy weekend! What better time to recap my 2023 Hallmark Holiday movie binge. As I was out shoveling the front walk yesterday, I thought, “This is one part of winter that never makes it into the Hallmark movies- the backbreaking tedium of shoveling the front walk over and over and over again. Why do I never see anyone shoveling the front walk in a Hallmark movie?” Well probably because the movies are all filmed in July and no one can convincingly shovel snow in July in Vancouver. Also on that note – where are the piles next to door of wet boots and winter coats and hats and mittens?!?!?!

The New York Times had a really fun article (gift link) about Christmas rom coms in which their reporters analyzed 424 Hallmark and Lifetime movies to see how formulaic they really were. No surprises here. We all know the answer is “extremely formulaic.” But really, the article is full of fun tidbits – like did you know that the most popular name for a Hallmark/Lifetime female lead is Emma and male lead is Jack? If you’ve never watched a Hallmark holiday movie, just read this article and you’ll be covered. But then you wouldn’t get to see all the cozy sweaters and fake snow for yourself! Also the comments on this article are GOLD.

Here are two of my favorites:
“My wife and I both enjoy these movies, but she has one of the most interesting aspects of it: how many coats can each actress wear given they arrived in their small town with a small carry-on bag. It’s hilarious. Usually 7 to 9 coats. Don’t get us wrong. We love the coats. It’s just hilarious to watch.” I WONDER THIS TOOOO!!!!

“Good research. One datapoint you seemed to have missed is those most popular male lead actors are exclusively Canadian. All of them. Sometimes in an effort to find the most “all American” person you can, you end up with a Canadian.” HAHAHAHAH

Before we get to the Hallmark – our non-Hallmark Holiday viewings this year:
-Spirited, which I think has now become a family “must see”. And the kids play the soundtrack on repeat for much of December.
-Noelle, our first time watching this Anna Kendrick movie about Santa’s daughter who leaves the North Pole in attempt to right some wrongs. I thought this was fun, girl power version of Elf.
-Elf. Classic which we watch every year. Though, to be honest, this was the first time I didn’t fall asleep before the end and whoa… it was so interesting to see the ending with Santa in New York and all that – I’d never seen that bit.
-The Man Who Invented Christmas – about Charles Dickens and writing A Christmas Carol. Surprisingly funny.
– It’s a Wonderful Life. Another of our must see classics.
-Meet Me in St. Louis. Ditto.
The family also watched Candy Cane Lane, the new Eddie Murphy movie, but I was at work that night. Apparently it was fine.

On to the Hallmark stuff. As I was drafting this, I realized I saw twenty movies this year, too many this year to go into one post – so this is post #1 of Hallmark movies.

Ice sculpture Christmas (2015): An aspiring chef teams up with a childhood acquaintance to enter an ice sculpture contest.
My catnip: This was recommended by Elisabeth and I love movies about super niche things like ice sculpting.
My take: This movie had the formula down pat – all the right rom com beats at all the right times. It’s definitely a product of early Hallmark movies in it’s blindingly white casting.
The ridiculous: Okay, any time there’s a movie where two people first meet as kids and then recognize each other years later is going to get an eye roll from me.
My favorite bits: The lady who plays the head chef, Chef Gloria, was pretty great, I thought.

A Timeless Christmas (2020) – 1903 business man travels forward in time to present day, is confused, causes confusion, and meets a lady who is in charge of the historical preservation of his estate.
My catnip: Time travel romance.
My take: I thought this one was fine – not the best time travel movie; the period parts looked a little… unconvincing.
The ridiculous: Well, time travel…
My favorite bit: This is a bit of a spoiler, but there’s actually a poignant part when the business man is angry at his 1903 fiancée for eventually marrying someone else, and then realizes that she found a man to love an have a family with after all and that he couldn’t begrudge her that. It was super sweet.

Mistletoe and Menorahs (2019) – Recommended to my by a Jewish friend as a pretty good Hannukah-ish movie. Christmas celebrating girl (is she Christian? Unclear…) needs to learn about Hannukah to impress her boss and get a big raise. Jewish boy needs to learn about Christmas to impress his girlfriend’s father.
My catnip: anything that expands the diversity of the Hallmark/Lifetime Holiday movie scope.
My take: This was cute. The leads were engaging – I especially liked the male lead because he wasn’t as slick and perfect as a typical Hallmark romantic lead.
The ridiculous: I don’t know, but letting the non-Jewish girl light the menorah at a company holiday party seems… well let’s just say I don’t imagine that’s really something I see happening. I could be wrong, though.
Favorite part: making latkes. It definitely made me want to try to make latkes.

Laughing All the Way (2023) – Comedy club faces closure if they can’t raise money so they decide to put on a variety show/gala. One of their employees, an aspiring comedian, gets a now-famous comedian who got his start at the club to headline.
My catnip: Let’s put on a show!
My take: Okay, this might be horrible of me because I did genuinely think this was a cute charming movie, but… the lead was played by the same actor who played the Jewish guy in Mistletoe and Menorahs, which I had just watched the day before. And I just kept thinking, “He doesn’t celebrate Christmas!!!” I feel like that was kind of an unreasonable reaction, but there you go…
The ridiculous: The big show is going to be presented on Christmas eve. Who goes to shows on Christmas eve? Also – it’s a comedy club, but the jokes aren’t funny.
My favorite bit: The chemistry between the two leads was adorable.

A Paris Christmas Waltz (2023): Lady quits her job to become an amateur ballroom dancer and goes to Paris with her Pro-dancer partner. Romance ensues.
My catnip: Ballroom dancing, stars of the musical theatre stage (Matthew Morrison of Glee, but also of The Light in the Piazza which I listened to constantly this summer on my commute), European locale
My take: This one was pretty bad, to be honest – the pacing and plotting was clunky, and the acting was pretty wooden – like you know how some actors just seem like they know they’re in a cliched cheesy rom-com? This was one of those movies. There was one moment when Matthew Morrison started singing and dancing with so much charm and heart, and I thought things would get better, but then they didn’t.
The ridiculous: I don’t know a lot about ballroom dancing, but some of her rehearsal outfits didn’t look practical.
My favorite bit: the aforementioned singing and dancing by Matthew Morrison.

A Biltmore Christmas (2023) – aspiring screenwriter is tasked with re-writing a classic 1950s holiday movie. While doing research she is transported back in time to the filming of the original film and encounters one of the film’s stars.
My catnip: time travel, period piece, Star Trek alumni (Jonathan Frakes from The Next Generation!!!!)
My take: I LOOOOVED this movie. I think this is right up there with last year’s Ghost of Christmas Always as my favorite Hallmark movie. Okay, where to begin – time travel movies always have that nice note of impossible yearning, which I love, the settings and costume were beautiful, the leads had so much chemistry, and the plotting and pacing were so well done. And I so very much want to see the real version of “His Merry Wife”, the film that is getting remade.
The ridiculous: Well, again, it’s a time travel movie, so there’s that. Also – I always think with these movies when a person from the past ends up in present day – “How is he going to get a social security number?”
My favorite bit: The opening, which is played as a trailer for His Merry wife. And of course the end. I might have gone a little misty-eyed at the end.

Christmas in Notting Hill (2023) – American woman goes to England to visit her sister and meets soccer super star who is in the midst of a career crisis. Well, the American is also in the midst of a career crisis too.
My cat nip: foreign local, men with accents, stars of 1990s television (Sarah Ramos from Parenthood – does anyone remember what a lovely show that was?)
My take: This was fine, but there was no real conflict in the relationship. The American and the English soccer star liked each other from the beginning and there was nothing really standing in the way of them, so there was a real lack of tension in this movie. On the other hand, if you’re looking for all the standard cozy Hallmark Christmas tropes, this movie has them in spades. I would say this is a great movie for having on in the background to infuse the air with Christmas spirit.
The ridiculous: Soccer star’s mom makes a living selling swag with her son’s face on it. Seems a little unethical?
My favorite bits: okay, to be honest, I watched this really late at night and might have fallen asleep through parts of it. The two leads are charming, though.

Holiday Hotline (2023) – After a career crisis, British chef goes to Chicago for a break and ends up working at a holiday turkey hotline. She fields a call from a single dad trying to recreate his late wife’s Christmas turkey for his daughter. Simultaneously, she keeps running into a friend of her neighbor and sparks fly. Guess what? It’s not really a spoiler to say that the single dad and the neighbor’s friend are the same guy!
My cat nip: Single fathers, cute British accents, pseudo- Shop Around the Corner vibes, niche activity (Holiday cooking hotlines!)
My take: I thought this one was really cute, maybe my second favorite holiday movie this past year. I’ve always loved listening to the radio program Turkey Confidential and it makes a great premise for a meet cute rom com. I liked the way the story unfolded, predictably, but also with some nuance.
The ridiculous: Okay, some of the questions that callers called in with about their turkeys were hilarious and I hope no one ever asked in real life.
My favorite bits: The way that the movie handled the “hotline” scenes were, I thought, really well done. It wasn’t just a split screen effect – it was something cozier and quite skillful.

Christmas Island (2023) -Career driven private pilot is forced to land her clients – Los Angeles based toy manufacturers and their kids – at small Nova Scotia Island when she hits severe weather. She verbally spars with the air traffic controller, but then gets to know him in real life when she and her clients are stranded for several days.
My Catnip: A Hallmark movie set in Canada! Also Andrew Walker is one of my favorite Hallmark actors – I’ll watch any holiday movie he’s in. Also Rachel Skarsten, who plays the pilot was in The Royal Nanny last year, and I liked her too.
My take: The Nova Scotia location was kind of refreshing in a Hallmark movie, and I liked the storylines of how the various members of the family find their way to something fulfilling.
The ridiculous: No one seemed terribly Canadian in this movie. I can’t quite put my finger on what made me say this, since I’m sure there were a lot of Canadians in the movie. (Both the leads are Canadian.) But there was nary a ketchup chip in sight!
My favorite bit: The part with the Christmas Eve tribute to loved ones that had been lost, featuring a Christmas tree made from lobster traps. I might have shed a tear.

Mystic Christmas (2023) – Globe-trotting animal behavioral specialist goes to work for her best friend at her marine animal rehab center in Mystic, CT. She reunites with a one night stand/best friend’s brother, a homebody if there ever was one.
My catnip: Stars of musical theatre (Patti Murin, who plays the best friend, starred in Frozen the Musical.)
My take: This movie was pretty enjoyable, though low on external conflict, having, instead a lot of existential soul searching while enjoying Christmas settings. I liked that there were several different minor plotlines, to help keep things moving along. And the seals were pretty cute.
The ridiculous: What is it in the world of Hallmark that people have big exciting job offers that always start the day after Christmas? I get that not everyone runs on the same calendar as I do, but… it seems a little unbelievably inconvenient.
My favorite bit: There is one scene in which Patti Murin wears the most amazingly snuggly sweater. I loved that sweater. Also there is a book flood in the movie. Seems very hip and trendy, but it was fun to see a series of scenes where they go to the book store, buy books and then sit around and read. I don’t know what it was about the sound design, but the sound of those pages turning was just so perfectly cozy. Weird thing to love?

Well, that’s half the Hallmark/Lifetime movies I watched during 2023 holiday season! I’ll be back with a recap of the rest of them next week!

I know we’re over halfway though January, but did you enjoy any Hallmark rom coms this year?

Weekly recap + What We ate – First weeks of 2024!

Two weeks down, 50 more to go until next year.

The first week of January was a pretty chill week – the kids went back to school, I started working on a new show. My mother was here, but then she got sick so we did not see as much of her as we would have liked.

And then this past week has been a rainy rainy one here. Maybe snow this weekend? The week has not gone as I thought it would – a lot of rain and water, including some water in the basement of my parents’ rental property, derailing some plans. We went over with towels and tools, to clean up the water and see if we could see where the water was coming from. The basement had flooded a couple weeks ago, and at that time we thought the water was coming from a clogged outside drain. We cleared the drain, pulled up the flooring and the carpet. Then the rains came again and we were wrong about the source of water, clearly. So more phone calls, more clean up. We were at Home Depot at 9:30pm buying a wet dry vac. Along with six or seven other people. But we are fortunate in that we have the time and money to deal with these problems. I read somewhere that if you have the money to deal with a problem, it is not a problem. I try to remember that.

And now I’m battling a cough and congestion, which is making me super dried out and negatively affecting my sleep. On the one hand, I’ve been so exhausted that I’ve gone to be before midnight most nights (which is early for me!), but on the other hand, I’ve been woken up by frequent bouts of coughing and a super dry mouth so even though I’ve been getting more sleep than I normally do, it hasn’t been really great sleep. But perhaps this is a good sign to myself that I can go to bed before midnight if I want to. It’s that thing bout priorities, right?

The schools closed early on Tuesday because of the rainy weather. The communication from the schools hit our inboxes at 8:30am, just as we were getting ready to head for the bus. Luckily the first part of the week was pretty flexible for me, so I was able to pick up the kids. I had intended to work from home after pick up, but my friend called and said that the voice teacher our kids saw had openings in the early afternoon, so we could move our evening lesson to the afternoon if that was better for us weather wise. So spent the afternoon shuttling the two girls to voice lessons. A bright spot was that we stopped for Boba on the way home, and I’ve discovered the joy of hot boba tea! As in Boba in hot tea. Brilliant and warm and cozy! Boba tea has always been a cold drink for warm weather so I never thought about having it hot.

The weekend before was a nice mix of kids’ activates and house projects.. We had the 11 year old’s first basketball game, then we decided to go get dumplings for lunch from our favorite dumpling house. The restaurant has been undergoing some renovations and the newest addition was a boba counter! Woot. They had a really tasty Mango Pomelo Sago Smoothie which was a nice blend of fruity beverage and and a variety of chewy toppings, with a bit of sour bite from the pomelo. The 11 year old ordered it but didn’t really care for it, so I got to enjoy it. Yay!

Since it was a rainy rainy day, I decided to spend some time purging our book collection. We have a linen closet that we filled with books since we have a linen closet in our bathroom and didn’t actually need another linen closet in the house. We jokingly call it our library. I’ve been determined to pare down our bookshelves, so I took everything out of the library and went through each and every book. It was hard! Ultimately, I only came up with one small box of books to be taken to the donation pile. I had had grand thoughts of bags and bags of books, but came well short. I made a pile of books that I still have yet to read, some of which I’ve been carrying around for almost 20 years. Making my way through some of these books is one of my goals this year. I managed to confine all my books to one shelf of our “library”, stacked three deep. (I do also have a small pile of books up in my room, in addition to the stack of books from the library by my chair in the living room. )

The TBR pile. I think I’m going to start with My Name is Lucy Barton and East of Eden.

The book project took all weekend, while at the same time the Husband took down Christmas. Between the books everywhere and the storage boxes for the Christmas stuff, one had to tread carefully around the house.

Sunday we continued our book and de-Christmasing project, but we also had agility class for the 4 year old and then skating for the 4 and 6 year old. Since skating lessons also come with passes to open skate, we stayed after lessons to do some extra skating. I bought a book of skating passes for myself too so that I could go skating with the kids. It’s fun now that both kids can skate very independently – I can actually feel like I’m getting some active movement in when I skate with them since I don’t have a child clinging to me on the ice.

I might have overbooked us for kids’ activities for this first quarter, but since I’m light on work and can drive carpool, it seemed like a good opportunity to sign kids up for things that they wanted to do but which would be logistically hard for us to do when I’m working evenings and weekends. On the docket:
11 year old – piano, voice lessons (she’s been asking for a while so we started these last month), basket ball (rec league and skill development work out – she’s playing basketball 3-4 times a week right now.), swimming, and religious ed classes.
6 year old- piano, skating lessons, religious ed classes. He mentioned wanting to do coding class, and those are offered as an after school activity so we might do that. Also sewing classes next month. (I asked him what he wanted to learn to do and he said he wanted to learn to sew!)
4 year old – agility class, skating, and trampoline classes. The trampoline classes are mid afternoon, so I’m taking advantage of my lighter work schedule to get her to these. I have such mixed feelings about enrolling her in full on gymnastics – probably my own baggage from having done it before – I think she would be very good and enjoy it, but I have a lot of trepidation about gymnastics as a toxic environment and also it being a dangerous activity. Probably something I need to unpack for myself….
And then also for the grown ups – I’ve enrolled in watercolor classes and the Husband signed up for a semester of teaching ESL. I’m really excited that we’re both taking time to pursue something outside of the daily grind of kids and work. The rest of the year is looking to be really full for me work-wise, so I want to take this time to lean into the “life” part of work/life.

Also – speaking of activities – Summer camp registration has started and it is majorly stressing me out! I have a tentative work offer so I know when we need to have coverage. The summer camp provided by our after care was already full when I checked in the first week of January. That would have been the easy option since the 6 year old has lots of friends there and it’s not too expensive. So I guess we’ll be quilting together summer care for him – that’ll probably be a project for next week. The oldest will probably have a combination of theatre camp, basketball camp, and doing nothing around the house.

Random new skill learned. I figured out how to do a fishtail braid! Even though the fishtail braid had been explained to me before, I never could quite do it. A few weeks ago, the 11 year old borrowed a book on braids from the library and wanted me to do some of the braids from the book in her hair. So I gave the fishtail another try, and I think I got it! I love how tiny detailed it looks. It does take more time than a regular three strand braid, though. Yay for learning new things.

Two Podcasts at the right time for me:

This episode of Radical Candor: “Podcast Season 5, Episode 27: “Your ‘Nice’ Workplace Culture is Fraught With False Harmony” I’m newly in a position at work where it is now part of my job to have feedback sessions, and as someone who strives to provide a kind work environment, I want to be positive in feedback sessions – but is that useful? Where is the line between feedback on how one does something vs. micromanaging someone else’s style? This episode talks about how being nice can be counterproductive and even toxic, and it was good food for thought for me when thinking of how I want the culture of our stage management team to work.

This episode from The Puberty Podcast: Consequences and Discipline with Tina Payne Bryson. I’ve been struggling with how I react to the 11 year old (well, now 12 year old)’s moments of … well, tween-ness. I thought this episode was really great for reminding me that part of my work as a parent is to help my kids figure out how to “life”. Payne Bryson points out that the word discipline comes from the Latin word for “learning”. One thing I really love about the Puberty Podcast is that it gives me actual things to say, and one great phrase from this episode is: “I know that you know that X needs to happen. What’s your plan?” I love that the phrase allows the kid to realize that you know they can think for themselves. It’s a great episode.

Grateful for:
–The Return of my Rain coat. Back in November, I got home after the last performance of my fall show and realized that I had left my rain coat at the theatre. I was so frustrated! I had finally splurged and purchased a good quality raincoat and now I had gone and lost it. All December I had a replacement raincoat in my online shopping cart, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend another $130 on a raincoat, when I had been so stupid as to have lost my original one. Luckily I had a windbreaker that I could use, but it wasn’t long like my raincoat and it didn’t fit as well. Anyhow, my first day back at work after the new year, I walked into my office and there, outside my office was my raincoat! I guess the costume crew had found it when they were loading out of the theatre so they sent it back to the costume shop/rehearsal studio. Amazing! I felt so lucky – I got my coat back just in time for the rains to start.

–Past me for putting my keys in a safe place. I always put my office keys in the same pocket of my purse. I hadn’t been to my office in almost three weeks, and as I was walking up to the door, I reached into that pocket and pulled out my keys. It’s such a small thing, but I’m really glad that past me is so consistent about putting keys in the same spot so I can find them even after two weeks of not being in the office.

–Hand me down baby clothes. The Husband has a coworker who just adopted a baby so I gathered some baby clothes we still had laying around, and bundled them up to pass along. I have to e honest – I’ve been having a hard time getting rid of the baby clothes. We aren’t having any more kids, but I have so many cozy, sweet memories associated with the baby clothes that it’s been hard for me to let go. Anyhow, as I was pulling together clothes to give to my Husband’s coworker, I remembered how most of the clothes that we had when our kids were infants were hand me downs from friends and acquaintances. How lucky we were! It made me a little wistful to pass along the baby clothes, but I’m glad another little baby will get to wear them.

–The 11 year old, who is now 12! Speaking of baby clothes… This week we celebrated another birthday – it’s hard to believe that we have been parents for 12 years. We celebrated by going to Indian Food and, as is tradition in our family, she got to choose a breakfast cereal (she chose Kellogg’s Smart Start). She’ll have a sleepover party next weekend, since I was working this weekend and didn’t think it fair to have the Husband solo parent a sleepover with 5 tweens. I’m so grateful for this big-hearted, kind, observant, sympathetic, creative person who loves to read, draw, play with her siblings, and make messes in the kitchen. She teaches me so much about patience and listening. I had made a cake for her, but I was lazy so I just oil and floured the pan, rather than lining with parchment as I usually do. So when I tried to turn the cake out of the pan, half of it stuck and it fell apart. Bummer. And then I had to go to work and didn’t have time to deal with it or try to patch it back with frosting. We ended up just eating it with whipped cream when we got home from the Indian restaurant, which was probably just as well since none of us likes frosting that much.

the newly 12 year old and her sad cake! Why is she wearing maternity ward blanket around her neck??

Looking Forward To:
– We’ve booked plane tickets to visit my brother in California for Spring Break! We haven’t been to California since pre-pandemic. I always feel bad that my brother comes to visit us at least once every 18 months or so. Of course he only has one kid, so it’s cheaper for him to come to us, but still…

-Speaking of travel – I finally sent off my passport for renewal. Yay. Looking forward to getting that. I really hope my grandfather in Taiwan stays healthy until I get my passport back.

-Getting through birthday season. I always think I should plan something social for January, but then I realize that two kids have birthdays so we have to plan those, and that is enough planning for me. We haven’t really figured out the logistics of the 6 year old’s party, so that might actually happen in February. He wanted a Chuck E. Cheese party again, but upon further probing, we realized that he just wants to play the games – the actual birthday yay! part with the person in the mouse costume actually freaks him out. So I think we’ll just take a couple friends to Chuck E. Cheese to play games and then take the out to our favorite dumpling for lunch. I think the idea is have him plan his perfect day and take some friends along too.

-Tech and performances of my current show. Another short project, but even still, short projects require a lot of the same amount of work as longer projects. But… balls get dropped (in life and in work.) Some might re-frame these dropped balls as prioritizing… It certainly is an exercise in that. Anyhow, on the docket for my free day to prep for tech week:
*boil eggs (so I have easy protein on hand)
*plan my outfits for the week
*meal plan – figure out which days I can prep dinner before I go to work and which the Husband can cook. Also think through what I can bring for dinner.
*re-schedule the 4 year old’s tumbling class
*stock up on fruits and veggies so I have healthy things to eat
*baking for quick breakfast options to grab on harried mornings.

What We Ate:
Monday (New Year’s Day): Pizza (take out) and Holiday Road (cute Hallmark movie.)

Tuesday: Chili, which the Husband made.

Wednesday: Broccoli Spoon Salad, (mostly) from the New York Times. This was a great salad – farro (the original recipe was for quinoa, but we had farro in the pantry), broccoli, pecans, apples, and cheddar. The original recipe also called for dried cranberries, but I didn’t have those. Mix up a Dijon mustard vinaigrette to go over it. I think they call it a spoon salad because it has all the good stuff you can eat it with a spoon, and it doesn’t have lettuce which requires a fork. Super easy and tasty recipe.

Thursday: Leftover Chili from Tuesday.

Friday: Lentil Soup – from the Good Housekeeping Instant Pot cook book. A quick and easy recipe before basketball practice. The family was definitley mixed on this recipe, but I told the kids that lentils were really good for your body and good for the environment and they decided that was an okay reason to eat it.

Saturday: Pizza (Take out) and Sing. I had forgotten what a good movie Sing was. Such a good movie!

Sunday: Leftover day. I had Brussel sprouts sauteed with kimchi. We had been gifted a huge stalk of Brussel sprouts last month and hadn’t touched it. Those things laaaaaaast, though. This week I started sautéing Brussel sprouts for breakfast because I was determined to finish the stalk. I think the rest of the family had leftover pizza from the night before.

Monday: Miso Mushroom Ragout from Hetty Liu McKinnon’s Tenderheart cookbook. Tasty, but it doesn’t actually make that much sauce so I added a bunch of extra mushrooms.

Tuesday: Roasted Salmon, Cesar Salad (from a bag), and Israeli couscous salad. This dinner came together surprisingly quickly given that the salmon was still mostly frozen when we started. The couscous salad was really tasty – full of feta cheese cucumbers, parsley.

Wednesday: White beans in the Instant Pot (New York Times recipe), served with toast and gochujang Brussel Sprouts (again from Tenderheart) with rice. The Brussel Sprouts used up the last of the stalk. I kept some brussel sprouts without the spicy glaze for the kids. Their loss – it was really good. toast and rice seems redundant, but the 6 year old wanted to rice to go with his Brussel Sprouts, so there you go.

Thursday: Indian food take-out.

Friday: pizza (take out) and Stargate SG-1. The oldest came back pretty late from basketball and there wasn’t time for a full movie, so I looked up good tv shows to watch with kids and Stargate SG-1 came up. The kids have been really into the Mandalorian, so I thought another sci-fi show might be up their alley. I though the story telling was really good, but the show is definitely dated. At one point, the oldest turned to me and said, “Why are there so many white people on this show?” And there’s all sorts of sexist stuff going on. I’m mildly interested in seeing the rest of the series (and there are something like 10 seasons), I don’t quite feel that invested quite yet.

Saturday: Parmesan mint pasta – a Mark Bittman recipe from the NYTimes.

(I wrote most of the above t this morning, but didn’t publish before having to run kids to all their activities. The day ended up being sunny on one horizon and grey on another, with rain in the forecast. I had planned to go for a run while the kids were at skating lessons and decided to chance it, even though it seemed like we were minutes from rain. I hadn’t run in a while and I didn’t know if I would be able to fit in a run this week since I would be at the theatre, so I wanted to get one in. I dropped the kids at skating then took off outside. I got a few steps into my run and I heard rather than felt something start pelting down and I thought, somewhat peevishly “Oh man, my one chance to run and it’s going to rain on me!” But then I realized – it wasn’t raining, it was snowing! Big fluffy flakes. “I can run in snow!” I thought. Snow isn’t as wet as rain – it floats down and kind of just dissipates, as opposed to rain that just drenches and gets into my bones. So I just kept running and breathed the cold, fresh air and watched the flakes come down fast and sideways. It was actually pretty cold – in the mid 40s – so I didn’t run too long – just 20 mins with a 5 minute walk. Nonetheless, I’m so glad I decided to stick it out. It turns out there’s a lovely trail next to the skating arena, so fitting in a run while the kids skate might not be a bad way to get my run in.

Hope everyone is staying cozy and safe!

Books Read November and December 2023

I feel like for being so busy in November and December, I got more reading done than I thought I would. Thank you, audiobooks and commuting! I finished the year having read 51 books – which is fewer than last year, but I also had a lot less time off from work this year than last year. The past two months have been mostly lighter books.

Thank You for Listening written and narrated by Julia Whelan – Novel about an audiobook narrator finding her way in life. I loved this book. I had debated between reading it and listening to it on audio, and Engie had such good things to say about the audio that I went with that version and do not regret that choice. I want more books read by Julia Whelan now. And the book itself was also pretty great – I laughed out loud many times while listening. I see this book billed as a Romance, and while there is a great love story, I think there is so much more going on in this book for Sewanee, the protagonist, than just finding love. The book abounds with complex and loving relationships, the details about life as an audiobook narrator are fascinating to me, the Italian audio engineer is indelible in my mind. This book was just so satisfying.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – It took me two years, but I finally finished this book. I had first heard of Robin Wall Kimmerer when she was a guest on the podcast On Being. This is a pretty dense book. Not dense as in thick and tome-like, but dense in that every essay in this book required so much concentration from me. I would finish one essay and then feel like I couldn’t really digest another one. So I would say this is a book to be read slowly, one essay at a time. (Or go find her interview on On Being, if you don’t feel up for reading this book…) There are so many threads in this book, but a lot it ties back to the idea of nature and the natural world and learning from a world that gives and gives. And how humans take and take, but we don’t remember to listen to the earth or to give back to it. This book really impacted how I talk about nature to my children, though. I mean, I don’t think I used to talk about nature too much to my kids, but after reading this book, I’ve come to feel that it is important to point out the beauty and brilliance and benefits of nature to my kids so that they also foster an appreciation for the natural worlds and don’t take it for granted.
Some quotes I highlighted:
“Maybe we’ve all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We’ve accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed buy never satisfy. It is the Windigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger when it is belonging that we crave.”
Yes, do I really need more things? I wrote in my notes, after reading this passage, “Now I feel guilty about wanting that dress.” I don’t think the point is to make people feel guilty for their consumerism, but rather for them to think about what “need” really means and what “wants” really are.

“If all the word is a commodity how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.” – from the essay The Gift of Strawberries – a reminder to not take the earth for granted and to treat natural resources as a gift. There is a lot of railing against capitalism in this book. As is probably to be expected.

“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion – until we teach the not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object. […] If an a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” What do we teach our children about the world we live in?

I Should Have Honor written and read by Khalida Brohi – Brohi is a Pakistani activist who advocates for women’s rights and speaks out against honor killings in Pakistan. Her message and mission is an important one and there are parts of her book that were so sad and horrifying. I think, though, I kind of wanted less of her personal story and more about the history and impetus for honor killings. Granted this is her memoir, so the book is of course mostly about her journey – and it is really an incredibly brave one – but I think I wanted more of an insight into the country and culture she was from.

All The Right Notes by Dominic Lim – This book was about Quinto a piano player and composer in New York whose music teacher father wants him to come home to put on a show to raise money for his high school music program. And his father wants Quinto to convince Emmett Aoki, a famous movie star and his child hood friend/crush, to perform. Reconnecting with Emmett sends Quinto’s world into a tailspin. I’m always intrigued by romance novels (well, really any novel) set in the theatre world and with Asian characters. Not all books get theatre life right (or right compared the my reality, which is, admittedly just one perspective), so sometimes I just find them annoying, but I like to read them anyway. I thought this book was fine. The writing is funny in parts, awkward in others. The description of Filipino food made me want to look it all up and then order some. Overall though, the book wasn’t terribly memorable for me.

The Chiffon Trenches written and read by Andre Leon Tally – Tally was a fashion journalist and Anna Wintour’s right hand man at Vogue. Reading this in conjunction with Braiding Sweetgrass was interesting, because fashion is such a material industry. This book is full of juicy inside stories of the fashion world. Tally’s descriptions of clothes were so vivid and several times I looked images up because I just had to to see for myself the ensembles of which he wrote. This book made me want to be stylish, yet also made me realize how even though fashion can be a lot of fun and a great form of self expression, at the same time it must be a huge mental load to be so put together. There is a lot of this book that feels completely not relevant to my life, but I enjoyed hearing about nonetheless. There are also a lot of sad and vulnerable moments in this memoir. Tally, who passed away in early 2023, says a lot about being a Black man in a predominantly white industry, and makes many points that I had never thought about before.

The Takedown by Lily Chu, read by Phillipa Soo – I really enjoyed Chu’s book The Stand-In, and I’m a sucker for audiobooks narrated by Hamilton cast members, so of course I picked this book up. The novel centers around Dee Kwan a (borderline toxically) positive person who works in diversity consulting. She gets assigned to work a case at a major fashion house and hijinks and drama and self awareness ensue. I thought this was a charming book. There are some awesome – yet complicated – female friendships, some thoughtful handling of issues of race, a nice guy that is a little too perfect, and a chinchilla. I thought the ending was a little too pat, but there’s your romance happily ever after for you. Chu’s books are labelled as romance, but I feel like the romance is the least interesting parts of her books, to be honest. This book was an interesting listen to follow The Chiffon Trenches.

And Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy -Another Engie recommendation, which I picked up after I read Killers of a Certain Age and wanted more stories of women who are no longer in the first (or second or third) bloom of youth. These series of short stories of an 88 year old Swedish woman who lives alone and likes it that way, to the extent that she’s willing to do anything to keep things going the way she wants. It’s a little dark and very funny. It’s a good palate cleanser read, I think – short, smart, and unlike anything else I’ve been reading. I already have the sequel in my TBR pile.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes – This book is a collection of essays that looks at caregiving in America and how this essential act is greatly undervalued, probably because it is considered the domain of women. She has one really great essay that points out how our society values inventors and not maintenance workers – and what are caregivers but the maintenance workers of people’s bodies? I really liked Garbes’ previous book Like a Mother, which looked at pregnancy and childbirth today. Essential Labor, I felt, was a more personal book. I think I wanted something a little more scholarly, though, and with a little more focus. While there are so many thoughtful and interesting points in this book and a lot of personal narrative, Garbes also recaps a lot of other people’s writings and part of me just wanted to read all the articles listed in her bibliography rather than just her interpretation of them.

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon – This novel was in the New York Times’ list of favorite romance novels of 2023, and sounded interesting. Chandler, a ghost writer, feeling slightly disillusioned about her career has a one night stand with a cute guy. The next day, she is hired to ghost write the memoir of a former teen heartthrob who turns out to be… one night stand guy. This book features one of the funniest and most honest bad sex scenes I’ve ever read – Chandler and Finn’s one night stand is incredibly disappointing for her, and you know what? It’s probably one of the most true to life things I’ve ever read in a romance novel. Sex is always amazing in romance novels, but is it always that in real life? Anyhow, I expected the rest of the book to be about how Chandler and Finn grow to like each other as they work on the book, but it turns out to be so much more (and so much more open door) than just working on the book. There are a lot of details I liked about the book – I particularly appreciated how Chandler and Finn bonded over being Jewish because you don’t often find those cultural details as such a casual key characteristic in romance novels. I thought this was a fun read all in all – not terribly memorable on a whole but some really great moments. I’m a little burnt out on first person narrative contemporary romance novels, though. Why doesn’t anyone write romance novels in the omniscient voice?

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie – I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, but hadn’t read this one yet. I think I saw this on a list of really good Agatha Christie novels that people don’t generally talk about. This was a Poirot mystery set in Mesopotamia, so all the expected cringe-y colonial undertones are there. The mystery itself was quite clever. I try not to guess “whodunnit” when I read mystery novels because I think it takes the fun out of the big reveal for me. I am probably in the minority here, but I actually prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot mysteries. Poirot can be a little smug for my tastes. Nonetheless a nice comfort read for the end of the year.

Well that wraps up 2023 reading. I’ll have a post with my favorite books and reading experiences from the year later on. I hope.

On my proverbial bedside table:

Wild Genius on the Moors – Still reading about the Brontës. Everyone is dead almost. Charlotte doesn’t like to leave home.

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis – Amber is competing on a reality show for a chance to go to Mars. Boyfriend Kevin is back home in Vancouver, trying to live life. So far, funny and wry.

Untangled by Lisa Damour – it has the very cringe-y subtitle of “Guiding Teenage Girls through The Seven Transitions into Adulthood.” The content is better than that subtitle.

The Monsters We Defy (audiobook) by Lisa Penelope read by Shayna Small -Part heist novel, part historical fantasy, set in the Washington DC’s Black Broadway of 1925. This is proving very entertaining.

Mad, Bad, And Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed – Mother Daughter Book club read. Muslim American Teenager in Paris for the Summer on a mission to solve a historical question with a very cute descendant of Alexander Dumas in tow.

Christmas 2023 + the rest of December

Happy New Year!

Here we are in a brand new year. I wrote a check for the kids’ piano lessons this morning, and wrote 2024 for the first time. It always seems special writing that first check of the year, and remembering to write in the right year.

Everyone is back in school and back at work (except me – I go back to work at the end of the week), and I feel like I finally have time and room and capacity to think and be and not just do. The Husband had a therapist once who always reminded him that we are human beings not human doings. There has been a lot of doing these past few weeks. Five people at home on vacation makes for a lot of meals and dishes and laundry and picking up, I’m finding. And the pockets of time I did find, I just felt so scattered – I couldn’t sustain concentrate on things like writing here or reading books for more than a page at a time. So there was some aimless drifting and puttering and a lot of Hallmark movies. And baking and cooking – making food always seems like a nice activity to pull me out of being idle, yet not being too mentally taxing. And scrolling. And random internet surfing. It seems like whenever I sat down to write, I’d get distracted by some internet errand – holiday gifts still to research and procure, plans to make, other people’s news… All in all I’ve been feeling a kind of mental malaise and not quite sure how to kick it. So I’m just going to start with the run down of how the rest of December and our holiday went.

Fun and Festive Things, Pre-Christmas:
Our first Snow delay! This was mid December – There was a smattering of snow on the ground and we woke up to a two hour delay at school. The 4 year old and the 6 year old wanted to play in the scant snow, so I bundled them up and sent them in the backyard where they played for about an hour or so. Of course the snow was gone by the afternoon – it seemed hardly worth a two hour delay, but it was nice to have a change up to the routine.

Tuba Christmas! I feel like we didn’t do our usual full slate of holiday activities this year, but even so Tuba Christmas is a must for us. We go every year. It is pretty much the same concert every year – hundreds of tuba (and euphoniums and baritones), playing Christmas carols, audience sing a long, “Santa Wants a Tuba for Christmas”, the kids going up onstage to sing “Jingle Bells”. Even the patter between songs is always the same. This year, hilariously, the MC gave the wrong introduction to one carol. Which made us laugh and laugh because it’s been the same MC for as long as I can remember. It was an excellent lesson in making a mistake in front of a thousand people and being able to laugh at oneself.

Celebrating our anniversary. The Husband and I celebrated our anniversary by taking the train into DC to have dinner at the restaurant where we had our wedding dinner. On the way down, we stopped by Union Station where our friend’s string quartet was playing holiday music. It was a fun mix of seasonal tunes and pop hits. She later told me that at one point they noticed that no one was stopping to listen, so she suggested they start playing Beetles and Taylor Swift. And the crowds started gathering. I guess there is something about playing Christmas songs in December that people take for granted, but a string quartet playing Love Story – well that’s special.
After listening to our friend play, we walked to the restaurant and enjoyed much to much indulgent food. And… when the waiter found out that it was our anniversary and that we had had our wedding dinner at that restaurant, he comped up our dessert. What a nice surprise! We finished up the evening by walking through the holiday market – enjoying the cold and the holiday crafts and lights before we got on the train and went home.

We made and decorated cookies. I wasn’t really feeling this, but I rallied and decided to just make two kinds of cookies – sugar cookies for decorating and molasses cookies because those are my favorite. The kids really wanted to decorate cookies and were asking, so I’m glad I managed to do this. I used the leftover royal icing mix from the 4 year old’s birthday which helps simplify the process a lot. I tried a new sugar cookie recipe and it wasn’t great – the cookies ended up spreading too much when they baked and were rather shapeless. I’ll have to research a try a different recipe next year.

Not seeing Christmas Lights. We did not go to any of the many option for seeing Christmas lights, but we did take a a walk after dinner one night and looked at the lights in our neighborhood. There is one house that goes all out for Christmas that is always fun to see.

Work Things – I’m off work until January 4th. Since closing my last show, I worked two vocal recitals (one as stage manager, one doing the super titles). After a fall of opera, a voice recital is a nice balm on my work soul. No chorus of thousands to wrangle, no sets, no costumes, no props. Just a singer, a pianist, and some really great music.

Not so Festive Things:
-Life. Life. Life. Between two kids, I spent six hours at the dentist in the past two weeks. They now have enough crowns between the two of them for a small monarchy. Sigh. At least I got some reading done and they got to watch TV. The dentist has tvs on the ceiling. The four year old watched two straight hours of Bluey while the dentist worked on her teeth.
-General holiday shopping fatigue. I feel this every year. I need to find a less stressful/tiring method of Christmas shopping.

Christmas Day: We had a quiet Christmas at home. I think that is how everyone prefers it, especially the 11 year old. Whenever we float the idea of travelling for Christmas, she is always vehemently opposed. And I get it – there is something nice about waking up in one’s own bed, with the Christmas tree.

Christmas even my mother arrived. We went for a walk at the Botantical Gardens becuase they have a train display, but whe we got there, we found that it was closed because – either because it was Chrstmas Eve or because it was Sunday, not sure which. We spent an hour wandering around anyway, just enjoying the bare beauty of the garden in winter. Then we went home, and got ready for Church. Our Church was having a living Nativity for the first time, so we went a little early to see that. There were donkeys and oxen and a little tiny baby, all bundled up in the manger. Our church has a children’s procession on Christmas Eve, where all the children lead the opening procession, and it was really sweet to see the four year old walking with her hands in prayer position, more docile than I’ve ever seen her. After church, we came home and had chicken curry for dinner then watched the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special before sending the kids to bed. After that, I was up late on cooking (as I usually am) – I made meatballs, rainbow jello, and prepped the cinnamon buns.

Christmas Day we slept in a little bit, waking up around 8:00am. I had to proof the cinnamon buns in the oven. I had hoped that they could do a slow cool rise in the sun room, but that proved to be too cool and they didn’t rise much, so I had to put them in the oven to proof for another hour before I baked them. The kids did stockings first thing, then we talked to the Husband’s sister and family who were in the Netherlands. Then we had cinnamon buns. Then, finally, we did presents around 10pm. I’m surprised the kids were patient to wait that long.

After presents things took a leisurely pace. I picked up wrapping paper, read some, watched the kids play with their presents. At some point, I thought it might be nice to start dinner, so I did that and that took the rest of the day.

The Christmas Day Menu:
-Seafood Paella as the main dish. Ever since a family brought a paella to the 6 year old’s class for their Thanksgiving celebration, I’ve wanted to try to make one. So I decided that it would be Christmas dinner. There are about a gazillion paella recipes online and I couldn’t choose. On Christmas Day, I was texting with my friend in Jordan – her husband was in the foreign service and they had been in Barcelona for a stint – I was lamenting that I didn’t know where to start for my paella recipe and she texted me a recipe from a paella cookbook. The recipe was simple and my friend’s husband said it was pretty flexible and I could use all the seafood that I had bought – calamari, shrimp, scallops and cod. Yay. It turns out paella is simpler to make than I had thought – and it is kind of festive and feeds a lot of people. This won’t be my last time making it!
-Meatballs from a Tapas cookbook we had. I wanted something meaty to complement the paella. Everything I googled said paella is supposed to be it’s own meal, but I don’t know – there is something incimplete about just having a rice dish for dinner, so I made meatballs to go with.
-Rainbow Jello. As always. Though I made it this time since none of the kids were up for making it.
-Orange salad. Something bright and slightly acidic to balance the paella. Most Orange salads call for fennel, but I’m the only one in the family that likes fennel, so I just made this dressing and tossed it over sliced oranges with kalamata olives on the side.
-Green Beans. The Husband steamed and then sauteed some green beans for something a little green.
-Tomato Garlic bread, also from the Tapas Cookbook. Basically toasted bread with garlic olive oil and rub tomato on it.

After dinner, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life and then went to bed. All in all, a nice day.

The week after Christmas had lots of adventures – here’s the highlight reel:

–Taking the two girls and a friend to ClimbZone and then out for Korean food afterwards. I even got to climb too! It is very exhausting. One of my goals for family fun this year is to book a session at the climbing gym for the whole family. After ClimbZone, we went to this Korean place that makes their own noodles and it was fascinating to watch the whole process of pulling and stretching the dough into long strings. I was unfamiliar with a lot of the food and ended up mixing the noodles with the sauce for the shrimp. oops.

–An overnight trip to Lancaster, PA where we visited the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:

And we went on a quest for licorice. I had gotten a few bags of Klepper and Klepper salty licorice when we were in Amsterdam, and, as the package says, it is the best licorice ever.

I was very sad when I finished the licorice that I brought home, so I lookonline and the closest place to us to find it is at a candy store in Lancaster, PA called Sweetish, which specializes in candy from Sweden. So when the Husband suggested a trip to the Railroad museum near Lancaster, I immediately suggested we stop by Sweetish as well. The store was amazing. Bins and bins of salty licorice, in addition to Klepper and Klepper. And all sorts of other candy as well. We walked away with a small fortune in candy – In addition to salt licorice of many varieties I also got a smoked licorice. (Of course the two kids who had crowns were not allowed any gummy candy, so they had lots of lollipops. Funny enough, the dentist told them that they could have as much ice cream as they wanted. They just had to remember to brush.).

We stayed in a hotel that night and had some pool time and the next morning we went to Longwood Gardens. The Christmas displays were still up, and even though we didn’t stay to see everything lit up after sundown, we still got a good dose of the holiday display. It was a drizzly, misty day, which has a beauty of its own, I think. A totally precious moment was when the 4 year old started getting tired, so we all took turns carrying her, even the 11 year old. What a good big sister she is!

–Theatre trips. I took my mother to see Fiddler on the Roof as a Christmas present. It was a beautiful production, really well done. The director had framed the show as a story told by a group of immigrants in an Ellis Island-type waiting room. So the different people arriving to America took on the roles of the various characters in Anatevka. I love seeing diversity onstage and I thought this was a reall thoughtful way to have coour conscious, but not colour blind casting. This framework, I thought, also really brought the idea of leaving home front and center in a way that I didn’t usually think of. I mean I knew that Tevye and his family leave Anatevka at the end of the musical, but so much of the beginning of the musical is about the homes and traditions they have established that to think about the beginning of the show through the lens of the end was certainly sobering. Also sobering was the presence of security guards and bag checks throughout the theatre. I feel a little abashed that I go to see a show about a Jewish village and take safety for granted, but there are many people who don’t. Of course going to a show is a bit of escapism, but there was also something very timely about this particular show at this particular time.

The next day, the whole family went to see A Year with Frog and Toad, which was a delightful. I laughed so hard throughout the show. The six year old, who looooves Frog and Toad, kept telling me when things were different from the book. At the end the show, he said, “In the book, they don’t explain how the clock gets broken. And now I know!” Because the breaking of the clock is a major plot point in the musical. Highly recommend this show! We’ve been listening and singing along to the soundtrack ever since. It’s ostensibly a kids’ show, but there were certainly many moments that I identified with. I will admit, Frog and Toad aren’t my favorite books, but there is something incredibly astute about them.

Bike ride – A friend passed along bike that his kids had outgrown and one of them was just right for the 4 year old, so we took them out for a bike ride one day. During the pandemic, they closed off one of the major parkways during the weekends and it continues to be closed to cars on weekends and holidays, making for a perfect place to practice riding bikes. We met up wit some friends and biked down to a playground. The Husband has always been anti-training wheels, but I feel like at this point, the 4 year old just wants to keep up with her siblings so giving her training wheels is the best tactic. I’m sure she will outgrow them soon – goals for 2024?

Hallmark Movie Marathon – we did not have an all day movie marathon, but we did do an entire afternoon where we watched two Hallmark movies back to back. I paired this with a decluttering activity and went through all the 11 year olds’ clothes and got rid of the stuff that didn’t fit and made of list of things that she needed. Apparently she has a gazillion t-shirts and only four pairs of pants. (Also – this was my dilemma at one point – is what does a pre-teen wear for a “nice” outfit??? She has fancy recital dresses and t-shirts and hoodies, but nothing in between that she could wear to the theatre or to a nice dinner. We need to figure this one out…) I’ve watched many many Hallmark movies this year… recap coming!

Trip Downtown to visit the U.S. Botanic Gardens and Trains: Every year the trains have a different theme and this year the theme was pollinators – they had all these models of pollinators, constructed from plant and vegetations. Also – we found a great new restaurant. Food now on the National Mall is always hit or miss, so I’m always on the look out for good food options and we found this place called Rice Bar that has customizable noodle and rice bowls. It was really tasty and had lots of vegetables, which is rare for food places down on the Mall. I was really excited to find this place.

New Years: The 11 year old likes to stay up to watch the ball drop, so we did, though the Husband was in bed by 11:30pm and the two little kids were asleep on the couch before midnight as well. Earlier in the day, the Husband made an apple crisp in a cast iron skillet – a super simple recipe, which we proceeded to eat out of the skillet – 5 forks and dig in! On New Years Day, we did some more cleaning and then went for a hike at Great Falls. It was a little rainy and a little chilly, but once we got going, everyone had a great time. The kids invented this game where they were each rulers of rock kingdoms and would gather for summits to discuss world issues. Seeing all three kids play together always feels so special since they are all at such different ages.

So that’s the rundown of the last bit of December into the New Year. I’m sure there are lots of moments I didn’t remember. I had sort of also fallen off the journaling wagon in all the holiday happenings. Something that I want to make sure to made time for again.

Grateful For:
– My mother being here. The kids enjoy having so much grandma time.

-Zoom – so we can talk to family far and wide. We don’t live near any family and we are very bad at keeping in touch. Zoom allows us to be a little less bad at it.

-All the good and love and peace of the holiday season. Health and family and friends.

-The Husband scraping the frost off my car in the morning.

Looking Forward To:
– Filling my planner and new pens. I have several blank planners for 2024 that I’m looking forward to filling. I use the Hobonichi Weeks Mega as my every day planner. Last year I used the Hobonichi Techo Cousin as a journal/habit tracker. I ordered both another Cousin but also the Jibun Techo Lite for journal/tracking this year. Not sure which I’ll use. I like having the pages for each day that the Cousin has, but truthfully, I don’t use every day, so it kind of seems like a waste of a planner. I also ordered a fountain pen sampler from Jetpens. I love the scratchy resistance of the Preppy Fountain Pen that came in my pen sampler last year, so I thought I’d try more fountain pens. Jet Pens only has a black ink fountain pen sampler, and I prefer blue ink, but even still, I’m excited to try them out.

-The 11 year old’s basketball season is starting, so I’m looking forward to cheering her on.

-A few light months of work. I’m taking advantage of not having to be at rehearsal or at the theatre in the evenings to take on some life fun things – for everyone in the family. I’ve encouraged the Husband to sign up for some volunteer work, I’m adding some activities for the kids, and I’m looking into a class for myself too. I feel like while I’m able to be home to drive carpool or watch the kids while the Husband does something for himself, we should take advantage of the time. My job puts such limits on what we can do as a family sometimes that I feel bad, so I’m eager to lean into life things rather than work things for a few months.

-and of course, all the things that 2024 might bring and that I might plan for the year.

What We Ate:
Well, again, since I did really poorly at tracking and journalling this month, I don’t really remember what we ate, but here’s a few memorable dishes:

-Tourtiere for New Year’s Eve Dinner. I’ve made this Canadian meat pie before, and it’s a super cozy meal, which I feel was what the day called for. I used the recipe from the King Arthur’s Baking cook book.

-Egg Curry. One of our new hit recipes from 2023 and a perfect pantry meal. I threw in some kabocha squash as well.

-Congee. I often end up having to throw out leftover rice because I’m never inspired to do anything with it. This time, I decided to make congee with it. I had a loose recipe to start, but then I just started adding whatever I had around – leftover chicken wings from a get together with friends, a bit of that kabocha squash, the last stalks of celery, some jujube berries. It made such a cozy meal. I find kitchen sink meals so satisfying – something about being able to use up the last bit of something in the fridge just makes food taste better to me.

-Chicken Curry in the Instant Pot from Melissa Clark’s Dinner in and Instant. Perfect make ahead meal for Christmas Eve.

-And there was lots of pizza. I think we had at least two or three pizza and movie nights in the past few weeks.