January 2025 – Life Off Headset

Ask Me Anything #2

I’m working my way through the questions that folks were kind enough to submit during NaBloPoMo, but which I never got around to answering.

These questions are from Maria!

What brought you to DC (or are you a native)?
I came to DC in 2003 for a Stage Management internship at my current opera company. After that internship I freelanced around the country for a few years, stage managing for a variety of opera companies. Even still, I had met my husband-to-be by the end of my DC internship, and he lived in DC, so I was pretty persistent about checking in with the opera company in DC to see if there were job openings. And then in 2006, an Assistant Stage Manager position opened up, I applied and was hired. I move here (ish) – I still freelanced a bit around the country at the time, but I’ve pretty much been based here ever since.

Best little known things to see in DC?
Oooh! So many. Some of my favorite off the beaten path things:
–Lincoln’s Cottage – this is the house in NW DC where Lincoln lived during the Civil War. While the house itself is rather bare, I think this is one of the best tour experiences in D.C. The tour guide takes you through the house and part of the tour is asking the participants questions and leading discussions about the decisions that Lincoln had to make as President. This is a great tour for anyone interested in engaging with history. Even though this museum does charges a fee, but I think it’s worth it. Lincoln’s cottage is the #1 thing I recommend to history buffs who have seen all the Museums on the Smithsonian Mall already.
-If you’re visiting Lincoln’s Cottage, I would also suggest visiting the Franciscan Monastery Gardens, about two miles away. This is one of the loveliest and most peaceful places in D.C.
–Frederick Douglass House – The Frederick Douglass National Historic site is a great foil to Lincoln’s cottage. The house itself can only be seen via a guided tour, but the grounds are open to visitors and has a lovely view of DC. There is a very dated film at the visitor’s center, which I found a little cringe-y to watch, but also fascinating. The house is in Anacostia, an area of town that is, honestly, not pretty and touristy like the National Mall and not a lot of people think to visit, but I think visiting can give people a more complete sense of DC.
–The Old Post Office Tower – So everyone wants to go up the Washington Monument when they are here. I’ve been up exactly once, and it is highly recommended if you can make it work. BUT tickets to the Washington Monument are really had to come by. So I offer an alternative: The Old Post Office Tower gives a spectacular view of the city and you don’t need tickets to visit. The line periodically can be long, but there’s a nice display along the way of the history of D.C.
-The Kennedy Center – Okay, so this is not little known place, but my favorite things about it are not well known: 1) they have FREE performances every Wednesday through Saturday at 6pm, and 2) the rooftop has an amazing view. So even if you don’t have tickets to see a show, it makes a nice stop to go up to the top and see the view and then catch a short performance afterwards.
–National Postal Museum – My favorite Smithsonian Museum to visit with the kids, though I don’t think the kids quite love it as much as I do because they really have no concept of how important snail mail is. I love it because a) I think the subject matter is fascinating, b) there are a lot of hands on activities for the kids – like sorting mail! Ride a mail wagon!, c) it’s never crowded, d) It’s right next to a metro stop, so it’s a really easy trip.
–Glenstone Museum – this museum is a bit out in the suburbs, but if you are into contemporary art, sculpture installations, and beautiful grounds, I highly recommend Glenstone Museum. They have a nice restaurant there too, so it’s a nice place to go with friends where you can chat, take a walk, see art, and grab a bite. It’s free, but you have to reserve tickets.

Favorite opera (to watch and to work)?
My favorite opera is The Marriage of Figaro. The story is ridiculous – the men are all kind of insecure jerks – but the music makes you believe that everything will be okay. It’s also an opera I’ve worked on six or seven times so I can watch a production without needing to read the supertitles, and that makes the experience more enjoyable for me.
As for working on – this is hard because so much of what makes an opera my favorite to work on has to do with the people I’m working with. But if all things were equal, some of my favorite things to work on is contemporary opera. There is just such a different energy in the room when you’re working on a new piece. I’ve been lucky to work on a couple world premieres and a couple operas where we are giving the second production and where things are still being re-written and that’s exciting. Also Benjamin Britten. I would love to work on any Benjamin Britten operas that I can.

What was your cloth diaper experience like? (I currently am on my third cloth diapered baby and am curious about your experience!)
I could write a lot about cloth diapers! I was mildly obsessed with them for a long time. I spend countless hours researching cloth diaper options, browsing cloth diaper websites, reading cloth diaper forums online, thinking about my laundry routine, trying out different diapers….

I knew I wanted to try cloth diapering from my very first baby. I was just really intrigued by the idea from an environmental standpoint and also because thought it would save money. (I’m not entirely sold on the cost savings for me…). We actually signed up for a cloth diaper class, but then my oldest was born a few weeks early and I had to send my Husband to the class on his own because I was still in the hospital. There are also a lot of apocryphal benefits to cloth diapers like being gentler on the skin and making potty training easier. I have to say I don’t really have direct evidence of this. I have one kid who toilet trained at 2.5 and one who didn’t figure it out til nearly 4. My kids did still periodically get diaper rash. Also people say cloth diapers are cheaper, and yes, by the third child we had a big enough stash of cloth diapers that we spent very little money on diapers, but the initial outlay is quite substantial.

Like breast vs. formula feeding, and really many things in life, cloth diapers is not an all or nothing endeavor. We did a mix of cloth and disposable diapers. We mostly used prefolds and covers. (Prefolds are rectangular cotton diapers that you fold around the baby and then you put a waterproof diaper cover over top.). At night we either used disposable diapers or pocket diapers. (Pocket diapers are diapers with a fleece or microfiber layer that you stuff with an absorbent inside, so they absorb well but also feel dryer against the baby’s bum because of that microfiber/fleece layer.).

We had one daycare that was okay with cloth diapers and one that did not allow them. We had another kid who used disposable at day care and cloth at night. (The third kid was born during the pandemic and didn’t go to daycare until she was practically toilet trained.) We had one kid who used cloth diapers during the day and disposables at night. We had another kid who used disposable at day care and cloth at night. It was all about what worked for us and the kid at the point in time.

For anyone one considering cloth diapers, I would say two things:
1) you have to be okay with doing a lot of laundry. We did a load of diapers every two or three days.
2) you have to be okay touching poop and with smelling poop. With cloth diapers, you have to rinse the poop off before you wash them. We had a diaper sprayer in our bathroom (still do) for this, but the poop can still go everywhere. My mother used to rinse poopy diapers by swishing the diaper right in the toilet. I found that touching poop was pretty unavoidable.

What I liked about cloth diapers:
1) Less trash. A kid goes through 6-8 diapers a day. That’s a lot of trash.
2) I wasn’t constantly buying disposable diapers. I think every few months I would buy one giant pack of diapers from Costco and that would last us a good long while.
3) Cloth diapers are soooo cute.
3) I never worried about running out of diapers because I knew I could just wash more diapers if I ever ran out.

Things I didn’t love about cloth diapers:
1) They can be fussy. If I didn’t wash them right they sometimes got really smelly or lost absorbancy.
2) the above mentioned laundry and poop.
3) They do tend to leak, in my experience more so than disposable diapers. I didn’t actually care that much about this, but I’m going to be honest, I found that all diapers would leak if you don’t change them frequently.
4) They do make the baby’s butt really big so you have to size up in pants.

Baby #3 with a monkey print cloth diaper. So cute!

Thanks for the questions, Maria! Those were fun things to think about!

If anyone wants to submit questions for me to answer in a future Ask Me Anything post, you can do so at this link.

What brought you to where you live? Or do you live where you grew up? Have you ever had to change a diaper? What’s the best view where you live? Do you like museums for history or for art?

Weekly recap + what we ate: bitter and boring

Ice patterns on the creek, as seen on a winter walk.

It’s been a week, hasn’t it? My mind is spinning. When I think about this week, the word “bitter” comes to mind.

For one, bitter bitter cold. We had two days of delayed start to school because the cold caused morning freezes. Coming off the holiday weekend, it wasn’t the worse way to ease ourselves into the week, but I can say that since I have the luxury of being able to take my morning meetings from home. I’m sure the two hour delays were very disruptive to a lot of people. After two years of mild winters, I actually kind of love this bitterly cold January that we’ve been having. (Winter made my gratitude list last week…). It makes me more eager for spring in a way that I haven’t felt for a while. Who know if I will feel like this in another few weeks, but for now, I’m embracing the bitter cold.

The other bitter thing about the week was the days following inauguration. Well, even inauguration day too, I guess. A bitter pill to swallow. All of it. And getting more terrifying as the days go on. There are so many people who work for the federal government around here – the air is decidedly grim. I have no new words to say about this all. I try not to read the news, and then worry that I’m uninformed. I have learned that ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand – they look like they are when really they are looking after their eggs which they lay in holes in the ground. (Since, you know, ostriches don’t nest in trees.) I feel like there is a metaphor here – I’m not burying my head in the sand, I’m tending to my young…

MLK day, we had a cozy day as planned. I baked scones, we read books, we went on a snowy walk, we watched Modern Family, we had dumplings. We even spent an hour cleaning the toy room, while listening to the inauguration. I tried not to swear out loud too much in front of the kids as I listened to the address, but really, maybe I didn’t need to restrain myself. I debated whether or not to stream the ceremony, but ultimately, politics aside, I thought it was important to witness that process and for the kids to understand how power passed in this country. I don’t think the younger kids completely understood it. But they all know for sure, that I am very disappointed in the results of the election.

I worked from home all week, save for one day when I went in for a 90 minute meeting. I got to ride in and back with my friend so I was actually happy to go in even for a brief time. This is how my friend and I hang out during opera season – carpools and schedule meetings. It’s kind of our version of running Target errands together, I guess. Anyhow, the rest of the week I worked form home. Sometimes when I work from home I forget to eat lunch, so I was really pleased with myself that I threw together this salad. Isn’t it pretty?

It’s chopped up cucumbers, candy cane beets, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and fresh dill. I liked this so much I ate it again the next day, adding half a can of chickpeas for some protein. All the fresh vegetables were wonderful on a winter’s day. Highly recommend!

We’ve also been on an oatmeal kick in our house lately. Something about chilly mornings makes oatmeal seem like the perfect breakfast. The kids eat their oatmeal with milk, frozen blueberries, and copious amounts of brown sugar. I like to have my oatmeal savory, so I’ve been having my oatmeal with sweet potato, a boiled egg, and scallions, all of it toped with a sprinkle of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce. It’s kind of like congee, but made with oatmeal instead of rice.

The oatmeal is *not* as pretty as the salad above, but it is just as tasty.

Thinking about:
I recently read two articles that had me thinking about how underrated the every day pedestrian life was. First there was this article in the Guardian, “I’ve Had the Same Supper for 10 Years.” It’s a profile of Wilf Davies, a sheep farmer in Wales who, as the title says, eats the same thing every day for supper. He’s only left his farm in Whales once, thirty years ago. At one point he says:

“People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks. I could never do it. Walking around the farm fills me with wonder. What makes my life is working outside, only going in if the weather is very bad.”

Then there was this article in the New York Times, “How a Driving Instructor Spends Her Sundays.” The NYTimes’ series “How ____ Spends their Sundays” usually features people who seem to me impossibly cool – local celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes swanning around to brunch and coffee and workouts and dinner parties and Pilates class. This feature, though, this one was different. Shanti Gooljar, gets up at 5 am, and spends the day teaching people how to drive, goes home, has cream of wheat for dinner, watches Yellowstone, and goes to bed by 8:30pm. It’s not glamourous or hip, but it feels oh so real. After her husband died, she says, “my family wanted me to go to Florida — my mom is there, and my brothers and sisters. But I’m at the age where I like the same routine.”

I’m sure there are people who might read about Davies and Gooljar and dismiss their lives as boring and dull, but I was struck in these two articles by how content Davies and Gooljar were. And I know you can’t always get the full story in a newspaper article, but they did seem like they found great satisfaction in the unexceptional rhythms of their days. How different their lives and expectations were from the pressure I feel to fill my days with adventures and excitement. It got me thinking – what I do on an average, say, Thursday – the getting up, packing lunches, carpool, meetings, pick ups, dinners, cleaning up – is that just the tedious parts of existence, what I do to fill and enable the more exciting and exotic parts? Is that the boring part of life?

And then I think of Wilf Davies who sees the world of beauty in a cuckoo’s call or the view from the top of his valley, who sees all of humanity in his sheep. Or how Shanti Gooljar finds so much satisfaction in running her driving school and hiring the right people. And I envy how at peace they seem to be with their lives. Don’t get me wrong – I think there is so much to see and do in this world – and I for one would be sad if I never got to eat roti ever again. Yet at the same time, I wonder if the people who are the most content are the ones who are able to find as much joy and satisfaction in the every day routines and rhythms of life as they are to find it in new and novel experiences. I think there’s great satisfaction to be had in the consistency of pedestrian life – perhaps routine can kind of free your mind to see beauty in the things around you. And perhaps you can’t chase contentment abroad if you cannot find it at home?

Grateful for:

-Fleece Lined pants. I ordered these fleece lined pants form Duluth Trading Company when they were on sale at the beginning of the month, and they have been amazing! I wear them for walks in the cold, for standing outside waiting for the bus, even for hanging out at home because for some reason our thermostat is set at 66 degrees. (It’s a setting leftover from when I was working and there was no one at home during the day… I should shift it, but I always forget until I’m already cold.) These pants are so cozy and warm. What they say about “No bad weather, just bad clothing”, well I feel like these pants perfectly summed that up for me this week.

-The middle kid who turned eight. He is such a cerebral, goofy kid, bringing equal parts joy and frustration to my life. We celebrated with a special birthday dinner on the actual day and then he had a birthday party with a six friends at the duckpin bowling alley. It was a perfect size party, in my opinion. Also – he’s now old enough to stay home by himself legally in Maryland, but when I broached the subject with him, his eyes got really wide and he said, “I think I would be scared.” So I guess that’s not something that will happen soon. But it’s good to know that if I did storm out of the house in anger and left him by himself I would not have CPS knocking at my door.

-Trails for snowy walks. On Saturday, we had to run some errands in the morning before the bowling alley birthday party. We were so efficient that we got our errands done 30 minutes before we were due at the bowling alley. So we decided to stop at a trail on the way for a brief snowy ramble. (“This feels like a hike,” the five year old said. I can’t pull one over her, that’s for sure.) This particular trail is tucked next to the shopping Plaza with a Trader Joe’s, and you wouldn’t guess that it was there. But apparently this little creek gorge was a favorite place of Teddy Roosevelt’s – funny to think this little patch of nature about ten miles from the White House was once considered “getting out of town”. These days, it’s proximity to a major road makes it pretty popular and it’s far from pristine – I imagine it’s where kids go to make out, and there’s often discarded alcohol bottles around. But even still, I think it’s a beautiful little rocky corner of nature and I feel so lucky that it’s just right there.

From the placard at the trail. “Excepting Great Falls it is the most beautiful place around here.”

-For fresh baked cookies. On MLK Day, we wanted to make cookies, and since I had made chocolate/walnut scones, I wanted to make a non-chocolate cookie. I settled on Molasses cookies from the King Artur’s Baking Companion. The dough needed to be chilled overnight, so I didn’t actually make the cookies on MLK Day. The next day, I pulled the dough from the fridge, and instead of whipping up the whole batch of cookies, I just made six cookies and put the batter back in the fridge. And the next day, I just made a few more cookies, as many as we could eat in one go. And so on – the batter lasted all week. Indeed, I am inhaling the aroma right now as I sit typing next to the kitchen. I rather like this bake-as-you-go method of cookie baking – we always have fresh cookies and the house will always smell divine.

-That I live somewhere equipped for snow. Granted our schools had a two hour delay twice last week for the icy conditions, but I’m glad that the streets were clear so the the ice could be treated. I have a colleague who is currently in Houston and his rehearsals were cancelled because it snowed there and the city was not equipped to deal with the snow, shutting many things down.

-That I still get to work from home. So many people are getting summoned back to in person work, some with merely a weekend’s notice. How do the people who make these decisions think that people can accommodate this on such short notice?

Looking forward to:

-Our trip to NYC this week! The hardest thing will be getting the kids up early to get on the 5am metro to Union Station, but after that, I hope things will be pretty simple. (I realized that it probably would have been easier if I had gotten tickets out of the second stop on the train since that’s about a twenty minute drive from home and we could have left the house closer to 6am. Oh well. Next time.) I’ve bookmarked Kinokuniya, a Japanese Manga/Stationary store for us to visit, and it’s also next to the New York Public Library, which might be a fun place to duck into for a few minutes. I know I wrote up above about the joy of a boring life – clearly I don’t want my life to be too boring.

-Dumplings with my friend K, who I haven’t seen since the beginning of December. Looking forward to catching up. (This happened today. Dumplings were delicious and we’ve agreed to be better about scheduling time together – we have our date on the calendar already for March 1st since she’ll be travelling in February.)

– A family adventure day coming up next week. At our weekly family planning meeting, I realized that we had next Saturday completely open – no kids’ activities, I didn’t have to work, there were no plans of any kind. A free Saturday is very rare for us, so we’ve decided to have an adventure. It might be as simple as going on a hike. We might make it as far as going up to Longwood Gardens. Not sure what we’ll do yet, but a free day on the calendar is such a delicious thing.

What we ate:

Monday: Noodles and dumplings – we went out to eat.

Tuesday: Chicken sweet potato Thai inspired curry, recipe from Dinner Illustrated. This was hugely tasty and the kids loved it.

Wednesday: Cabbage Soup. Loosely based on this recipe from the New York Time. I used dill instead of parsley and Italian herbs because there was a comment that made me laugh: “Italian seasoning has no room in Eastern European cabbage soup. Use fresh dill instead.” So I did. Vegan.

Thursday: The 8 year old’s requested birthday dinner: soy sauce/honey chicken wings (my mother’s recipe), steamed broccoli and green beans, sesame brown butter udon noodles.

Friday: Pizzas (the Husband made these himself) and Bad Batch.

Saturday: pasta with yellow squash, mushrooms with tuna and steamed broccoli on the side. This was a kitchen sink kind of meal – basically sautéing whatever sad veggies we had to use up and then tossing it with tomato sauce. I served canned tuna on the side for protein.

Speaking of sad veggies – we have a bunch of sunchokes given to us by a friend and no clue what to do with them. – does anyone have ideas for how to eat sunchokes? (They aren’t actually sad quite yet – they seem to last a long time in the fridge.)

What other cookie batters should we make to keep in the fridge? What is it about your boring life that gives you the most satisfaction? I hope everyone has a heartfelt week, and wishing you warmth however you can find it.

Books Read – December 2024

Last book wrap up for 2024. I have a “Media Consumption Favorites 2024” post coming, but figured I should also recap that last month of reading as well.

First, though, and interesting book-ish post – this article by John Kenney from the Washington Post “It’s a New Year. let’s resolve to rethink what ‘self-help’ means.” The article, coming at the start of a new year, a time for resolutions and bids for improvement, ponders the place of self-help literature in our lives.

John Kenney makes a case that the words that help us grow aren’t just the words in books in the self-help section.
“That is not to say,” he writes, “we don’t need guides, mentors, a bit of direction now and again. I’m just not convinced a book needs the label ‘self-help’ to do that. I find “The Catcher in the Rye” a superb self-help book. It helped me learn empathy and tenderness. Any book by Alice McDermott is a self-help book, helping me to see deeply into the interior life of a strange. Poet Mary Oliver is quite good at self-help.”

And so on Kenney writes, listing examples of how art – books, music, movies, etc. – is sometimes the best form of “self-help” because they help us realize the “self” part of “self-help”.

This article struck me because it paralleled something that I was kicking around in my head regarding podcasts. I was scrolling though my podcast feed a few weeks ago. Feeling like my life was particularly scattered, I was looking for a podcast that might help me put order in my life. I am certainly a “mood” listener of podcasts – I turn to podcasts when I’m looking for information or inspiration or motivation. This is probably why I subscribe to a lot of productivity podcasts – podcasts populated by people who seem to have things figured out – how to wring the most out of life, how to perfectly organize, declutter, schedule, parent, work, manage, and life hack one’s way to a frictionless fulfilling existence.

“This is what I need,” I thought, “inspiration to optimize my life so that I can get it back on track again.”

So I would put one of the productivity podcasts on, hoping to get tips and ideas for how to gather my life back together into some semblance of order. But after a few minutes, I would have to turn the podcast off. Turns out listening to people talk about how they’ve optimized their existence did not inspire me to do the same myself; it merely stressed me out and made me feel like I just wasn’t doing enough. (Ironic that being told “you are enough” makes me feel like I’m not quite enough…) I’m not disparaging self-help/self-improvement podcasts – I think Happier is full of fun and useful tips – I wouldn’t subscribe to so many if I didn’t find value in the advice and words. But for some reason, when life was at it’s most harried, these podcasts weren’t quite right for me.

“But these podcasters are giving me the key to a better life!” I thought to myself.

What I realized, though, is when I’m feeling restless and unmoored and unfocussed, the podcasts that help me are the ones that dig a little deeper than time blocking or outsourcing. It’s the podcasts that contemplate what it’s like to be human that help me through. Podcasts like On Being and House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy. I think what I’m learning is that I can’t life hack my way through life if I don’t know why I’m hacking my way through life. Podcasts like On Being remind me that we have capacities for kindness and thoughtfulness, and for doing good and strong things. They remind me that life is full of humans trying to figure things out, and that I’m one of those humans. I love a good list of life hacks and strategies, but listening to podcasts which roll out the advice when I’m feeling fragile and scattered is putting the cart before the horse. Productivity podcasts speak to the “human doing”, but before I can “do” I must “be.” I need to first remind myself that I’m a vulnerable capable, oh so lucky to be alive human being.

Anyhow on to books I read in December 2024:

You Were Made to Be Mine by Julie Anne Long – This is book 5 of Long’s Palace of Rogues series, a series of historical romance novels set in a boarding house in London called the Grand Palace on the Thames. In this book, former spy Christian Hawkes is sent to retrieve a runway fiancée. Said fiancée, Aurelie Capet has fled to London where she is posing as a genteel widow. I didn’t like this one as much as book 4 (After Dark with the Duke – I really loved that book) – I tend to like my romance novels to lean more towards character driven than plot driven, and this one had a lot of intrigue- still, there was much to recommend it – good writing, hero and heroines who weren’t complete nincompoops and had chemistry in spades, a colourful cast of side characters, and some really angsty swoony dialogue. Julie Anne Long is kind of where it is for me right now in terms of writing tension filled scenes between two people who are attracted to each other. The big caveat for me, though (and spoiler alert here) is that I don’t love it when books use sexual assault as a plot point. Not because I don’t want to acknowledge that truly awful things can and do happen to women (and men), but more that sometimes I think sexual assault is used as a convenient way to inflict trauma and cause misunderstanding, and then I feel as if everything gets resolved in an unbelievingly pat way, particularly in romance novels.

How to Tame a Wild Rogue by Julie Anne Long – book 6 of the Palace of Rogues series. I’ve been on Julie Anne Long binge lately, clearly. This book is about Lorcan St. Leger, a privateer who is stuck in London during a storm. He runs into Daphne Worth trying to climb out a window to escape her employer, and they end up pretending to be married in order to takes the last suite of rooms at the Grand Palace on the Thames. Boom. Forced proximity, fake marriage. All the tropes. Character heavy and just enough plot to keep things moving, but not so much plot that I have to keep track of things. I liked this book so much, for all the reasons I enjoy Julie Anne Long’s books. They are so well written – funny and touching and smart – the characters are really good people, no one is making choices that make me want to throw the book across the room, and I’m always rooting for them to figure out that they love each other. Tension in spades. This one is up there with After Dark with the Duke as my favorite in this series.

Counsel Culture by Kim Hye-Jin, translated by Jamie Chang – This was a book, translated from Korean about a therapist and television personality whose career goes up in flames when she makes a scripted negative comment that leads to devastating consequences. I picked this up while browing the library shelves, looking for a thin book to read. This is kind of a slight book, following the main character as she floats through life in the lonely aftermath of everything. The book was a little meandering for my tastes. It was fine, but lacked momentum. There is, however, an excellent plotline involving feral cats. I also find it intriguing that most of the reviews of this book on goodreads are not in English.

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan – I read this book while in Taiwan because when I travel I like to read books of the places I’m going. This novel by Taiwanese American writer Shawna Yang Ryan follows the Tsai family beginning with the birth of the narrator on the day of the 2/28 massacre of 1947, follows her family as they fled Taipei following her father’s arrest, and details how her father finally returns to them and the aftermath of his return. The story then takes the narrator (who I didn’t realize didn’t have a name until I started writing this.) to Berkeley California where she settles with her husband, but where they cannot escape the reaches of the KMT government. This book felt very personal to me. The 2/28 massacres were an uprising where the people of Taiwan revolted against the occupying KMT government from China. The uprising was violently squashed and martial law was declared. This is the Taiwan that my parents grew up in; my father’s brother was jailed for five year by the KMT. He was fifteen when they arrested him. On our trip to Taiwan, I asked my mother what it was like living under Martial Law and she said, “You had to keep living life. What else could you do? But you never knew when someone was going to be arrested. You’d go to a party and later on find out that the police came for your friends because they were at that party.” Which is all to say, I don’t think I can be objective about this book because it’s the story of my family – Of growing up in an occupied country. Of immigrating across the ocean for better opportunities. Of raising kids in a country so different from the one you grew up in. Of working tirelessly for Taiwan’s independence. Still, I think this is a well written and compelling book. It reads partially like a memoir, partially like a political thriller. If you are interested in Taiwanese history, I would recommend this book.

On My Proverbial Night Stand:
We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida- I saw this book in Taiwan and the premise made me laugh. It’s charming so far

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers – My big (700 pg.) read this winter. It’s moving very quickly, though.

Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman- Not the book I thought i was going to be. I want it to be more crossword puzzle history and less memoir.

The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel- Book set in 17th century London about a grieving widow and the Jewish physician trying to help her. I picked up from the library solely based on the beautiful cover.

What the Dead Know: Learning about Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher – listening to this on audio. It’s riveting. I just try not to listen to it at night.

and with the kids:
Bob by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass- reading it out loud together. Charming and mysterious story about (no so) imaginary friends.

Weekly recap + what we ate: thwarted plans

Last week’s pristine snow has turned soft and slushy, grey with dirt and continued living. Life going on. That’s okay. I hear there is more snow coming this weekend and next week.

I was down at the Mall on Friday (more on that below) and I saw rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of chairs set up for inauguration. I texted my friend/coworker and said “It makes setting up a room for a 65 person chorus rehearsal seem paltry.” The whole Mall was surrounded by temporary gates and to get from the Smithsonian metro stop to the National Gallery of Art was an exercise in finding the doorways. I walked down one football fields’ length of chairs to find worker scrambling at the other end to put the chairs away. I did not envy those workers, having to set up, then take down a mile’s worth of chairs. The whole experience was very much one of those, “Yep, you live in D.C.” type things. Every Inauguration is unique, I’m sure, but this one seems more unique than others. Here comes another era….

It has been a frustrating few days. Plans just… not working. Why do I make plans? Case in point:

1)First scuttled plans: I really really wanted to catch Paris 1974 Impressionist exhibit at the National Gallery of Art before it closed this weekend. (Okay, never mind that in typical fashion, I’ve left it to the last minute. I should have just gone in September when it opened). I had a morning off from work this week, so I thought, “I’ll just pop down to the museum and take and hour or so to see the exhibit.” One of the wonderful things about living in the suburbs of D.C. is that there are so many free museums and so going to see art doesn’t require a special trip; I can just stop in and see something and then be on my way.

Well, it didn’t exactly work out like that – the entire city is getting ready for a National Special Security Event – this is literally what it is called in the email about road closures they sent at work . All the blocks and blocks and blocks around the National Mall were EMERGENCY PARKING only, and have been since the beginning of the week. Typically if you go in the morning it’s actually not difficult to find street parking near the mall, but on Thursday there was no place to park. I probably should have known and just metro-ed to the NGA. I circled for ten minutes then gave up and went to work. On the bright side, I instead called my sister in law and took a walk outside and saw the beautifully frozen Potomac River.

I thought maybe I’d go on Saturday before my show, but when I checked the NGA website it turns out that the museum was closed on Saturday for security reasons. So that left Friday. After a frustrating Friday morning (frustration #2 this week, see below), I finally made it to the museum. (See above’s adventure of walking the Mall three days before Inauguration.) Only when I got to the museum, the line for the Impressionist exhibit was TWO HOURS long. At that point, I thought that maybe I wasn’t meant to this exhibit. So I took a little wander around the permanent collection instead, which is really lovely and I don’t go see it enough. I had forgotten that there were three Vermeers in the permanent collection. What a lovely surprise to be wandering the galleries and then suddenly see these delicate works of beauty and light. So the trip wasn’t a complete wash after all.

2) Second scuttled plan. I had earmarked Friday as the day to finally take my car in for donation. You might recall, I have a 20 year old Subaru Legacy Wagon that was clearly in need of more work than we were going to invest in it anymore. I think it has 190,000 miles on it. I had bought it off my boss eleven years ago when the oldest was born and I had resigned myself to needing a car to do daycare pick ups and drop offs and other emergency errands. (When the oldest was born, the Husband said to me, “We have a kid now. For everyone’s safety and security you need to get a car and a smartphone.”) I am unreasonably attched to theis car – it came from someone really iportant in my ife and has eeen me through so much. But it was time for the car to move on from us. Probably beyond time. I was going to take it to an Automotive Training program at a nearby high school, where they would either fix it up, or use it for parts. Friday morning, cleaned out the car – discovering many hidden things, and throwing out a lot of masks, and boy didn’t that take me back to a time – remember when we just kept packs and packs of masks in the car? The car had been sitting for at least a few months undriven in our driveway, so I turned it on to make sure it would start and then – and this was my big mistake – I turned it off to finish cleaning it out. I really should have driven it around to charge the battery a little bit. When I finished cleaning the car, I tried to start it again and IT WOULDN”T START! And then, I couldn’t shift it out of park or take my key out of the ignition. I spent half an hour trying to get the key out of the ignition and get the car to start. I googled, watched YouTube videos, searched Reddit. My friend even came over to help me jump the car. NOTHING WORKED. ARGH!!!! I finally get the courage up to donate my beloved car and… wump wump. I just felt so. very. defeated.

Anyhow, bright side – the Husband managed to get the car started while I was at the Museum. And we will re-schedule the car donation. Typical of me, I left this til the very last minute so there is now a sense of urgency about getting the car off our hands before it becomes inconvenient in terms of insurance and car registration. The whole thing made me feel so incompetent at adulting.

In other life things –
-I’m done working on shows for a few months. I had my last show for a while this past weekend, and I’m grateful to be on the other side of Fall/Winter opera season. I feel like things have been non-stop since September. The show went well and people were pleased. We performed a series of 20 minute newly commissioned operas. It’s always fun to do new pieces. These ones weren’t particularly tuneful, but there were snippets that lodged in my head anyway. I said to my ASM, “When these new works get stuck in my head, it’s clearly a sign that I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to them!

-Adult Lunchables! I bought these linch containers for our trip to Asia, filing them with snacks for the plane. This past week, there was one day when the contents of our fridge looked dire – not quite enought to pack a full lunch. And I had the idea to pack a snack lunch with these containers. I packed: carrots, candy cane beets, hummus, blueberries, and a soy marinated egg. It was a surprisingly satisfying lunch.

-A good morning – I feel like I’m constantly trying to find the ideal morning routine. I think one of my biggest hurdles is that a good morning routine starts the night before with a consistent bedtime and my bedtime routine is crap. Partly this is working in the evenings so not being home consistently, but also a lot of it is Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. I’m trying to nail down a better evening routine for the nights that I am home. And for the nights that I work, I’m trying to stick to just going straight to bed when I get home. If I’m in bed before midnight then I can be up earlier. A couple times this past week, I was up by 6:15a, had a really great morning rhythm. I wanted to write it down so I can come back to remember how it’s done:
6:10am – wake up.
6:15am – 6:40 – 20 minute yoga (I’ve been loosely following Charlie Follow’s thirty day yoga challenge – I like it because it is gentle – maybe a little too gentle, but I add in an extra down dog if I need to – and also there is no music. On days when I can’t do the whole 20 minutes, I just choose another, or do a few sun salutations.) Yes, this 20 minute yoga takes 25 minutes because… kids. If I have time, I also do 10 minutes of strength.
6:40-7:10 – Read. (Current morning book is The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois)
7:10 – 8:10 – Breakfast/pack lunch. (Sometimes the Husband gets the kids breakfast when they get up at 6:15a. Often times they are hungry again by 7a. Or just bored and want more food.)
8:10-8:30 – putter/pick up/ get the 5 year old out the door (The neighbor takes her to daycare and I take their 2nd grader to the bus)
8:30-8:45 – journal.
8:45 – school bus alarm goes off and we head out the door.
Things to think about:
-I didn’t prep dinner these days, which I sometimes do and that usually takes 20 minutes of the morning.
– When I don’t go to bed before midnight, I usually sleep til 7am and then the morning is just about packing lunches and getting kids out the door. Of course, when I’m up by 6:15am, I am so so so so tired by 9:45pm. It’s a trade off. I can’t be tired at 9;45pm when I’m working an evening rehearsal.
-My two younger kids are early risers. They usually are downstairs the minute they realize the Husband is up (He gets up at 5:30am). I’d would like to figure out how to give him more quiet/ child-free time in the morning because he likes to read in the morning. But the kids also like to cuddle and want breakfast. Maybe I need the kids to be more in charge of their own breakfast?
-I’m really glad we’re at a point in our lives when the kids can all get ready by themselves. I barely see the 13 year old in the morning. She wakes up just in time to shower, grab random food out of the fridge, and then head out the door for school. The two little will get dressed and pack their school bags by themselves. Mostly.
-I wouldn’t mind more time to journal/plan the day. Or doing it earlier. Maybe I should journal/plan earlier in the day and read in the slot right before the school bus alarm goes off?
We’ll see how this morning routine goes. As always, it’s easier to have a routine/rhythm when I’m not working inconsistent hours. It always goes out the window once I’m back in rehearsal. I’m trying to tell myself these next few months are the time to establish a routine until I’m back in rehearsal. But I think I also have to remind myself that having a sporadic routine does not make it any less of a routine – there are cycles to life, you know?

-My mother sent me a box of oranges and lemons from her trees in Southern California. The oranges are sweet and juicy, perfect taste of sunshine on a grey January day.

Grateful for:
– Free Museums: It felt almost guiltily indulgent, to be able to go through the National Gallery of Art slowly, spending five minutes on a single painting, looking a brush strokes, and colours and thinking about the people in the painting and the artist who created them. But such is the wonderful things about living in a city with free museums – you can afford to spend five minutes, or ten, or sixty, on one painting because you can always come back to see the others. Tax dollars at work here (and donors and philanthropists), and for that I’m grateful.
–Winter. I was thinking this week, as I moved through snow and cold and bracingly brisk air – How wonderful it is to live somewhere with four seasons! Yes snow and cold can be tedious and hard to navigate, but there is something extraordinary about nature telling us when it is time for a slower pace and to rest. (Or maybe this is something very ordinary?) There is something about feeling the wind on your face when you step out the door, to remind you that you are lucky to be alive to feel this bitter cold on your skin. I think about how, if you live somewhere where there aren’t four seasons, how you miss out on being forced to adapt and cycle your life routines and patterns.
–My Friend L – I know she makes this list a lot, but I feel so grateful to have a friend who will pick up nuts for me at Costco, or “Kosher Takis” at Trader Joe’s, who will come help me jump my car, and drive me home after work.
–The Husband who actually did manage to jump the car. And who was home with the kids all week while I was in tech.
–Romance novels – I’ve been tearing through Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogues series and I love the books so much (well, maybe not the third one…). I’m glad there are people out there writing these cozy, angsty, escapist reads, perfect for curling up with a cup of tea in chilly weather. They make me so happy.

Looking Forward To:
–Monday off with the kids. Sometimes when we have these days off, I think about taking the kids on an adventure to a museum or something. But going to the Mall on Monday will be… ill advised. We had thought about going up to Baltimore, but with the forecasted snow, we thought it best of we stayed home. So the family brainstormed a list of cozy things to do at home. MLK Day will involve:
-baking (scones AND cookies)
-reading. (the Husband is on Do NOT disturb reading time until 7am)
-sledding
-hot chocolate
-movie
-Soup or dumplings
-board/card games
-30 minutes of cleaning out the toy room (okay, I admit, I put this on the list)
-piano
-laundry. Maybe. Hopefully.
This all seems really aspirational, but if we even do a couple things on the list and don’t yell at each other (too much), I will count the day as a win.

–The middle child’s birthday party. It will be at the duck pin bowling place. Should be lots of fun and low key. I can’t believe the little guy will be eight!

–Hadestown! The kids have a random Wednesday off in a few weeks, and I on an impulse I checked train tickets to New York, and they were surprisingly not too expensive – $120 round trip, half that for the 7 year old. And then I thought, “What can we do there?” and it turns out the last week of January is Broadway Week and certain shows have 2-for-1 tickets. I managed to snag tickets for Hadestown for $80 each. I never do anything so impulsive (I think it says something that booking a day trip two weeks out is impulsive for me….), but I wanted to do something fun, so I did it. I’m not actually familiar with Hadestown, but everyone seems to love it, so we are listening to it in the car and brushing up on our Greek Mythology. I feel like “the fun mom” for once in my life.

–Cool Blogger’s Book Club! L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle is the pick for the latest go round of Engie’s bookclub. I’m so excited. Now I just have to located a copy of the book – there are none available in my library system!

–Just started this audiobook. Grisly, but fascinating. I don’t know that I’ll finish it because I have a bit of a weak stomach, but I can’t stop listening to it.

What We Ate: The Husband was in charge of dinners this week, as I worked most nights.
Monday: Tortellini and red sauce.

Tuesday: The family had dinner out. I had rehearsal in the afternoon then a supertitle job in the evening. I had yogurt for dinner.

Wednesday: Pork chops. I think I had yogurt for dinner again.

Thursday: I had leftover chicken soup from last week. The Husband made tofu zucchini boats at home.

Friday: Pizza and Skeleton Crew. The 13 year old has basketball practice again on Fridays so we are back to having pizza and tv rather than pizza and movie. Skeleton Crew is the latest Star Wars series on Disney plus.

Saturday: I’m not quite sure what the rest of the family ate, to be honest. I worked this evening and ordered from a new to me place called Seoul Spice since folks at work were putting in a group order. Everyone at work raves about this place and it was indeed very tasty. It’s kind of like Korean Chipotle – a bowl with lots of things and then sauce. There was kimchi! Which is always a winner in my book.

Sunday: Our friend came over to watch football and brought chili.

What would you put in your adult lunchable/snack box? I’m obsessed with this idea now! What are your top cozy day activities? Are you bracing for more winter?
Hope you have a restful week!

Weekly recap + what we ate: hello 2025! Snow! Jet lag!

I feel like this past week was truly the first week of 2025 for me since we were still in Asia until the 4th. Coming back was rough – our connection in Seattle was delayed by 2.5 hours, so we were at SEA for seven hours total. Here’s the math – we left our hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 9am local time on Friday January 3rd, which is 8pm on Thursday January 2nd in Maryland. We pulled into the driveway at home at 8:3oam on Saturday January 4th. That’s a freakin’ long time to travel. 36 hours – hotel to taxi to plane to plane to plane to car to home. The world is big, friends. (Although, Earth is the third smallest planet – I can’t imagine what travel would be like on Jupiter…)

When we got home, we unpacked and zombied our way through the rest of the day. I was determined to battle jetlag and keep the kids awake until 8pm, which would be close to their regular bedtime. I lost that battle badly. We did an okay job of staying up on Saturday – there was a brief nap Saturday afternoon and we went to bed around 10pm – I was hoping the late bedtimes would help the kids stay in bed later. Nope. Sunday morning the kids were up at 4am. Sunday afternoon, I tried to keep everyone awake and we were all passed out in the living room by 4pm. I was seriously worried about whether or not the kids would survive school the next day.

But guess what? I didn’t have to worry about that. Because … SNOW DAY!

There was one point the week before, when we were in Kuala Lumpur and it was 90 degrees outside and I said to my Husband, “Let’s remember this feeling because next week we will be COLD.” Sure enough late Sunday night it started to snow and before we went to bed, the schools had declared a snow day. Both the Husband and I were supposed to work on Monday. His work ended up being closed. I worked from home. (Thanks to the Husband who wisely told me to go get my laptop from my office on Sunday night.). Even though I was very much looking forward to sending the kids to school, – after all we were at Day 16 s of togetherness – I saw the snow day as a blessing in that the kids had one more day to get back on schedule.

It was a cozy day of puttering. Is there anything more cozy than a blanket of snow outside and warm tea and wool slippers inside? We shoveled some snow. The neighbors invited the kids over to play in their yard. I did some work, had a few meetings. In mid afternoon, I logged off work and we all went sledding with our neighbors. Sledding was super fun. I was at first a little nervous about the hill they chose because there are several trees on this hill and – well have you ever read Ethan Frome? I read it in high school and (spoiler alert) there is a gruesome accident that involves a sled a tree and the loss of hope and happiness. As one does in an Edith Wharton book. So I wasn’t terribly eager to go sledding on this hill.

But turns out, a hill full of trees is a great opportunity for kids to learn how to steer a sled. We did manage to put a hole in our sled, but I think it still works great. And there were several face plants into the snow and tears. Afterwards, the seven year old notes that “Stumps are worse than trees. If you hit stumps you’ll fly off. If you hit a tree, you’ll just fall over.” But all in all, nothing that couldn’t be solved by hot chocolate afterwards.

Tuesday – another snow day. Crisp and clear. Both the Husband and I worked from home. Around three, I took the kids out for a snowy walk. The house was starting to become a bit of a pit. Kids fell asleep around 4:30pm. We woke them up for dinner, which was kind of a sad lethargic affair.

Wednesday – yet ANOTHER snow day. It was no longer snowing, but I guess there were schools up county that were still treacherously icy, so all the schools remained closed. The kids had piano lessons – fortunately moved to 9:45am rather than the normal 7:15am. Though honestly the kids were already up at 5:30am, so we could have made a 7:15 lesson with bells on. I took the metro into work in the afternoon, since that seemed more relaxed an option than driving. Home in time for dinner. Kids and I passed out at the dinner table at 6:00pm.

The kids finally went to school on Thursday and Friday. THANK GOODNESS.

This weekend we’ve been back into the swing of kids’ activities. Basketball season has started for the oldest kid – she’s playing in the rec league as well as on her middle school team. The little kids have skating lessons, and then there’s agility class for the 5 year old and the 8 year old will be doing a goal tending clinic with his soccer league. It’s also football playoff season and college basketball season, so I think we’ll have a combination of out and about and home on the couch this winter.

Other news: We have a teenager! The oldest turned 13. Every year we get through the new year and I realize that I haven’t done anything to prepare for the oldest child’s birthday. Every year, I vow to do better. I did not do better this year. I did exactly nothing for her birthday. We sang happy birthday, we had a very long family scheduling meeting and then I went to work. The two little kids made her a card and the Husband bought her a cake which we ate later in the evening. On the one hand, I don’t love celebrating my own birthday, so other people’s birthdays don’t always register for me. On the other hand, I need to recognize that birthdays are special to some people and honour that. (Okay, typing that out, I’m realizing that maybe the day that I gave birth and we became parents for the first time should hold more significance for everyone. I know!)

The oldest actually got invited to another kids’ birthday party on her birthday. Our former neighbor’s kid was having a party and they invited our kid along, so she spent the day running errands with the Husband and then our former neighbors picked her up and took her to their kid’s party. When the other family found out it was her birthday too, they bought her a special dessert and then took her to Dave and Busters. How awesome is that?

I can’t believe that we have entered into teenage years! Okay, one thing now, though, I can legally leave all the kids at home. In Maryland, kids have to be 13 in order to stay home with other kids. (They have to 8 to stay home alone). I don’t want to take advantage of the now-13 year old, so I want to think through whether or not she should get paid if we ever do leave her at home with the other two kids.

Grateful For:

-Neighbors to spend snow days and birthdays. It was nice to hang out with our neighbors while sledding this week. They let us take a run down the hill on their toboggan and it was a wild ride. And I’m also grateful for our former neighbors who made sure the 13 year old had a good birthday even though they weren’t originally celebrating her.

-Base layers. I took the metro to work a couple of days last week so that I wouldn’t have to deal with driving in snow and slush. It’s about a ten minute walk on either end. I’m really grateful for wool/silk base layers to keep me warm.

-Hand me down winter coats and snow pants. While we’re on the topic of winter gear – I don’t think I’ve purchased a winter coat or pair of snow pants for the two little kids in four years because I have a friend with twins who passes down her winter coats and snow pants to us once her kids outgrow them.

-That my mom is okay still. My mother lives about 10 miles south of the Eaton fire in the LA Area. She is not concerned about having to evacuate because she isn’t in the mountains, but even still I’m worried. I also have an aunt and two uncles in the same area. I texted my mom to ask her how the air was and she said, “Bad.” The mass of humanity that the fires are affecting is heartbreaking.

Looking forward to:

-Filling out reflection workbooks. I was looking for a more concrete way to reflect on my 2024, and look forward to 2025, and I found two (free!) reflection work books online that looked interesting, so I’ve printed them up and want to work through them. One is Year Compass and one is by Susanna Conway called “Unravel Your Year“.

-A busy week at work – I have a recital that I’m doing titles for, and then a little semi-staged evening of newly commissioned 20 minute operas. It’s going to be a busy week, but I’m working with some great people, so I’m looking forward to being at the theatre.

-And then work downtime for a while – after this week, I don’t have another show to work on until the end of March. I do have to do some work for next opera season and there’s some paperwork I want to update, but it won’t be evenings and weekends. I’m looking forward to two months of working at a quieter pace.

-Library book stack – on the Sunday we got back, in an attempt to get out of the house and keep kids awake, we went to the library where I checked out this stack of books to start my 2025 reading. (Actually The Riddle of the Sphinx and This is So Awkward were renewals that I haven’t finished yet.) I love browsing books and just picking up what looks good:

What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza and This Means War. We’re moving away from animated features for movie night. This 2012 movie stars Reese Witherspoon as a market researcher caught between two rival CIA partners/rivals, played by Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy. It was a lot of fun, perhaps a little risque for the littles – good popcorn entertainment.

Sunday: Sandwiches. I think we were all still really jetlagged and this was what the Husband fed the kids when we realized that even though everyone was falling asleep standing up, we should probably still make an effort to feed them. Thank goodness ehs’ here.

Monday: InstantPot Coq au Vin. Disappointingly more soup than stew, but still tasty. Though I think only 1 of the 3 kids stayed awake long enough to eat this.

Tuesday: Brussel Sprout Nasi Goreng, pan fried tofu on the side. We had a bunch of Brussel sprouts in the fridge from before we left on vacation so I made this -it’s my go to recipe for Brussel sprouts. I love this recipe from Meera Sodha. It’s really tasty and also a great way to get everyone to eat Brussel Sprouts. Vegan.

Wednesday; Coq au vin from Monday, reheated. Not what I originally planned, but quick easy meal on a busy snowy day. I think I’m going to lean into the cook once, eat twice meal this year. Although, we don’t have a microwave, so I need to figure out best methods of reheating food.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches. The Husband made dinner since I didn’t get home from work til 8pm.

Friday: Pizza take out. I worked, came home, and fell asleep before the Husband got back with the pizza.

Saturday: Pizza take out (take two) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the 2005 movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as assassins unknowingly married to each other. I got home when the family was half way through this movie and made the family watch it again from the beginning after we got to the end. I was hoping there would be some kind of plot if I watched it from the beginning. There is not plot. Just a premise. And lots of action sequences. The kids really loved this movie.

2024 – Highlights, Lowlights, and Lessons I Learned

Some reflections of the year that was…

Highlights:
-Family Travel. As a family we went to Berkeley/ San Francisco in the spring, a took a road trip to Maine in the summer, and then flew to Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur for winter break. There was also a camping trip to the Shenandoah National Park for just me and the two little kids. I love cozy times as home, but I also love seeing new things and changing my points of view every so often.

-Watercolour class. In February and March, I took a weekly watercolour class the the local community college. I loved having that creative outlet and learning how to work with watercolours. I feel like watercolours are great because they can be hugely effective if you know what you’re doing, but at the same time even those with no experience can make wonderful color stories with them.

-Some bloggy highlights – Getting to write guest posts for Engie and Elisabeth. What an honor it was to appear on their excellent blogs. Participating-ish in NaBloPoMo. What a lot of writing that was, but also how lovely to meet some new to me bloggers that way.

-New Sign in sheet process at work. For all my years at my company, the process of having people sign in for rehearsals and then calculating their rehearsal hours for payroll always felt fraught and prone to mistakes. This year, several departments collaborated to figure out a new, simpler method for people to sign in to rehearsals. It felt like the first systematic improvement that I’ve worked on in my new position at work. Also along the work front, I got to work on some really great and challenging operas this year.

-Seeing kids thrive in their activities. The activities balance is always a difficult one – I want the kids to have a variety of outlets to explore things that interest them. They are currently at an age where they still want to do everything, as opposed to intensely doing one thing. I kind of love that for them. I’ve been loving seeing how they light up when an activity clicks for them.

-Reconnecting with friends and family. This year we’ve had lots of friends pass through the DC area and we also met up with family and friends while on our travels.

-Trying some new things as a family. As a family this year we went duck pin bowling, contradancing, climbing at the climbing gym, and discovered the joy of the high school and middle school musical, and had many game nights. I love our traditional pizza and movie nights, but I’m also loving finding things we can do as a family that are off the beaten path. I feel like we’re in a sweet spot right now of being able to find activities that everyone can participate in and that everyone is willing to participate in. Even still, the 12 year old often declines coming on family outings, so I’m always on the look out for things that she will participate in which are also appropriate for the littles too.

Some Lowlights
-The youngest child not getting into kindergarten early. This was such a bummer because we really believed that kindergarten was the right step for her, and she misses the cut off by only three weeks. Yes, there is the fact that we are now spending $20, 000 for her to repeat what is essentially pre-K, but we wouldn’t have begrudged the money if we thought she would have benefited from another year at the child care center before kindergarten. As it is, she is doing well and having a good time, but she’s not being challenged the way she would have been in kindergarten.

-The Election. The whole 2024 Election cycle was just bonkers. Like what kind of scripted political thriller are we living in? And then the results of the Presidential Election were just so deflatingly unbelievable. For me, it wasn’t about party – I fully support everyone’s right to their own beliefs and ideologies. Rather it’s that a misogynistic felon who peddles misinformation was seen by the majority of Americans as a qualified person to lead our country. This is not how I want my kids to understand the democratic process.

-October, November, and December were really hard because on top of our regular activities, 3 out of 5 of the people in the family were participating in operas. Being in operas was a highlight, for sure, but the logistics of getting everyone to rehearsals and performances and figuring out meals and all the other life stuff around that was a definite stressor for everyone in the family. I feel like this is one of those things where many things in our life is a simultaneous highlight and lowlight – kid activities, for example – above was listed as a highlight, but the logistics of them was definitely a lowlight.

-No job next summer for me. I’m sure by next July, having the summer off will be a highlight of 2025, But from the 2024 point of view, not being hired for work made me more than a little sad and my self esteem on the point certainly took a hit.

-Screentime struggles with the kids. I really feel like a lot of the parenting battles this year were over screentime. Maybe we’re too strict about it, maybe we’re too lax? I don’t know. I do know I want the kids to spend less time on screens, and part of making that happen is for me to spend less time on screens myself. Feeling like I’m not finding a balance or screentime policy that works for everyone has been hard.

Seven Things that I Learned in 2024:

-How to make bao. Starting the list with one new skill, to remind myself to keep learning how to do new things.

-It takes a village, but you have to seek it out – We’ve been having some challenges at school with one of the kids, so much so that we were thinking of changing schools, but then I talked to the teacher and one of the school administrators and together we came up with a game plan. I think I had always had this idea that school is some kind of black hole – I send my kids in the morning, and then the get spat off the bus at in the afternoon, and whatever happens in the middle is a great unknown. I think this was the year that I realized that no one wants my kid to do poorly in school , no one wants them to be unhappy-the people at their schools actually care, I just have to also care enough to reach out and ask for their help in understanding what is going on because sometimes they need my help to. The response I’ve gotten from school administrators that I’ve contacted this year has been overwhelmingly positive. I say this also knowing that my kids’ issues at school are not systematic or health related or anything that requires medical intervention, and for that I’m thankful.

-Just pick up the phone. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I find email such an inefficient method of getting to the root of what people need. I’m realizing that I work better when I just pick up the phone or walk down the hallway to talk to someone. There were several times when I agonized over how to perfectly work an email about a tricky situation, and then just fixed it much more quickly with a brief conversation. I don’t love the idea of making phone calls, but I usually feel better once I do so.

-Just put away the phone. This is one of those things that I already knew but had a hard time putting into action. I started the Bored and Brilliant Challenge, though life got really busy before I could finish all the challenges. The first challenge was to put the phone away whenever you’re traveling between locations. I don’t know why this simple rule made putting away the phone click for me. Maybe because it’s a simple rule? I realized this year that I feel more balanced and less frazzled if I’m not scrolling or checking email while walking around.

-Talk less. I credit the Puberty Podcast for this lesson. There was one episode where one of the hosts talked about how they sometimes just go into their kids’ room while they are hanging out, and just go lie on their bed and not say anything. And once in a while that presence is all the kid needs. Sometimes conversations evolve, and sometimes not. Sometimes with the kids, the best way to connect with them is to just be in their space So I started to doing – just lying on their bed at random times. And two things became clear: 1) being in a quiet space with my kid is very soothing, 2) they don’t always need or want to hear from me in order to feel connected.

-Touch someone. For years it was kind of a running joke in our family that when we took family photos, the Husband always looked like he was in another part of the universe. Even when he was standing right next to us, for some reason, he just seemed like he had been photoshopped in. Then I was looking at our Christmas card from last year and comparing it with the professional photos that we’d had taken, and an idea struck me. The next time we were trying to snap a group candid shot of the family, I said to the Husband, “Touch someone!”
“What?”
“Touch someone! The picture will look better.”
And it turns out, my hunch was right – having everyone in the picture make physical contact with at least one other person makes the people in the picture seem so much more connected, even when you can’t see the touch point.
So now, whenever we take a group photos, I yell out, “Touch someone!”

-Framing the mundane in life with the amazingness of it. One of my favorite podcast episodes that I listened to this year was an episode of House Calls with the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, where he talked to Astronaut Kyla Barron. If you like conversations about how to stay human and grounded in the chaotic world, I highly recommend this episode. One of the things that Barron said that has stuck with me:
“You have these grand moments of space flight, but really the most beautiful part about it is the day-to-day nothingness of it all. Like that you’re just like going about your life in space. And so I think I try to keep that in mind. Raja [one of her team members], he had this thing where he would say what he was doing and then add “in space” on the end to remind us how cool it was. So we’d be like “fixing the treadmill…in space” and you’re like, “I’m looking for my lost iPad… in space”. And so I think there are a lot of moments like that as a parent where you can just be like stressed, you’re tired and you’re like … “with my baby”. Like that’s really cool, right?

So more and more, when things get hard, I try to remind myself that I get to do these hard things with my amazing kids, or at a huge theatre, or with my super cool spouse. “Dealing with that difficult long day…at the opera.” “Schlepping to swim team practice… with my kids.” “Making dinner… with my family.” Maybe this dips its toe into toxic positivity, but I think it is helpful for me to remember that even when things are hard -and things are allowed to feel hard – it’s amazing just to be here.

What’s one thing you learned in 2024?

Winter Break 2024-2025: Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur

Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s been a little quiet here lately, I know. We are currently on our way home after a week in Taiwan followed by four days in Kuala Lumpur. The trip has been beautiful, exhilarating, exhausting, eye opening, and full of loved ones. I think I realized on this trip, the most important thing is family.

Here are some highlights, in case I don’t get to write recaps.

There was so much food:

Night Markets in Taiwan:

Temples:

Visiting Family:

Amazing hotel breakfasts:

Such well thought out family bathrooms:

Even a few quiet moments:

And in Kuala Lumpur, iconic sights:

Animal sightings:

Islamic Art:

And even more food:

There were definitely times when I thought we made the wrong choice to come this far, to be in a part of the world so different from home. There were tears and arguments and lots of people being hangry. We’d never travelled so far as a family of five, and I have to say I am so proud of how everyone did. It hasn’t been the most comfortable or relaxing trips- I wouldn’t even call it a “vacation”- but it’s certainly been an adventure.

More soon!

I hope you have had a beautiful New Year!