September 2025 – Life Off Headset

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Summer recap

Last weekend we had a birthday party for the youngest child (who is now six!). We let her decide what she wanted for a party and it was a low key affair – four kids and siblings, playing in the park, cookie decorating, lots of snacks. Cupcakes from Giant. I liked that we kept the party small so I felt like I could talk to the other parents. We ordered pretzels and picked up way too much food from Costco. The cookie decorating was a hit. WE ordered unfrosted cookies from our favorite bakery, and I got to finally visit the cake decorating store near us to pick up supplies.

Speaking of cake decorating store. It was amazing! More sprinkles than you knew what to do with. A whole wall of cookie cutters. I found citric acid, which I had been looking for for a while. And all sort of random cake and cookie and candy supplies that I didn’t even know existed, but seemed essential.

So many sprinkles!!! We also bought a pack of candy eyes. Those were a hit.

After the birhtday party, the 5 (now 6) year old and I had tap lessons where we learned shuffle step. Afterwards, we popped up to work where the costume shop at work was having a costume sale. Every few years, they sell off costumes that we are no longer using and it’s always a big hit with the Renaissance Festival crowd and pre-Halloween costume seekers. I didn’t buy anything, but it was fun to see all the costumes that people were trying on and how excited they all were for everything. Then I came home and our neighbor’s kids were over hanging out so the kids all had fun together while I did the online portion of the first aid course that I am going to take. It was almost three hours long, and to be honest, the section on what to do when you see someone bleeding was hard for me to sit through. So much gushing fake blood. I am really squeamish about injuries.

Sunday we had agility class for the 5 year old, and in the space of 90 minutes I had the worst moment of the weekend and the best moment of the weekend. First the worst was trying to get to agility class. There is an annual half marathon that shuts down the parkway that I take to get to the gym and the detour take you six miles out of your way to get to that side of town. Only the signage at the road closure was terrible – there were no signs telling you where to cross the closed parkway or how to get to the other side of town. I tried three or four different roads and they were all closed. So frustrating! Finally I asked the police officers who were monitoring the road closures and they told me how far up I would have to go. We ended up being 30 minutes late to class, and I was so very very very frustrated. Next year, I’ll just take the beltway to Agility Class when the marathon happens.

The highlight of the weekend, however, was on the way home from agility class. I’ve noticed there is a house that once in a while has a sign out front that says, “Honey for Sale” and I’ve always wanted to stop, but it’s on a busy road with no good place to pull over. Well the sign was out and we had just finished a jar of honey so I just pulled into the driveway. And there were two tables with jars of honey on them and a bunch of beehives lining the perimeter of the yard. And then a nice man came out of the house and started talking to us about honey and all the different kinds of honey that he had and and he gave us samples and he told us that he has hives all over the county – in exchange for letting him keep hives on their property, he gives people one jar of honey per hive. I learned so much about honey and bees in the fifteen minutes that we were there. He also said that the worst thing you can do if bees are bugging you is to violently swat at them, and the best thing you can do is to bend over and tuck your head down since bees are attracted to shiny things up high – namely your eyes. We came away with a jar of spring honey.

Some other things from the week that was:
-It was kind of a funky week for me – I felt a little restless. I can’t tell if it was because things had settled down or if it was because things felt unsettled. I kind of found myself in an interstitial space where all the big things had been checked off my list so theoretically I was in a resting place. But are there ever any true resting places in life? Or is that just where you are until something comes to knock you off your feet again? I just found that couldn’t relax because I thought surely something else must becoming down the way and I have to be prepared.

-I got to have lunch with the Husband – we went to a delicious Mexican place next to his work – they have the tastiest tortas. Afterwards we went to the cookie and cake decorating store and then I stopped at the smoothie place and got a papaya smoothie and a mangonada.

-Undercover Quinoa Crisps are back at Costco!!!!! Okay these are Milk Chocolate, which I don’t like as much as dark chocolate, but still… pretty exciting. I bought two bag and now think I maybe should have bought more. I was so distraught when they stopped carrying them earlier this year.

-We didn’t buy anything at the costume sale, but there was a child’s dress from a production of The Ballad of Baby Doe that the 5 year old tried on:

How cute is she? I didn’t buy the dress, though.

-Started a new jigsaw puzzle at work. Is there anything more satisfying than the “snap” of the first time you put two pieces together when doing a puzzle.

Summer Recap –I didn’t have time to write monthly recaps for June, July, and August, but I figured now that summer is officially over, I could roll it all into one big “The Summer that Was” post. The summer I thought I was going to have at the beginning of June was not at all the summer I ended up having. In June, I had no work booked and was envisioning three months of adventures with the kids – going to the pool, camping, hiking, county fair, cooking projects… See the whole aspirational menu of summer activities here, where I wrote about having an intentional summer.

Welp, I ended up being called in last minute to fill in for a colleague and working from mid July to mid-August. Suddenly all the time I had planned for adventures was no longer open. But you know what? Looking back on my “menu of summer activities” I find that I did actually do a lot of the the things on the list. Here are some things to remember about my summer:

Summer 2025 Highlights:
-The end of the school year! The youngest child’s last day of daycare. We are DONE paying for daycare. (Fun fact – even with three kids we have never had to pay for more than one kid in daycare at a time. The first and second kids are five years apart so the first was in kindergarten by the time the second went to day care. Then the two younger kids never went to daycare together because there was COVID and no one went to daycare for almost two years, and by then the second kid was in kindergarten. I feel very very lucky. I mean we still spent the money somehow, but at least not all at the same time.)

-South Africa Trip with the 13 year old. Probably the biggest highlight. More recaps of this are coming, I promise!

-The two younger kids going to Taiwan culture camp with my mother. They had a FANTASTIC time, came back obsessed with K-Pop Demon Hunters, and have said they want to go back next year.

-“Make a summer playlist” was on my fun list, but we just listened to the soundtrack to K-Pop Demon Hunters on endless repeat, so I feel like that was the soundtrack of our summer. And our fall. And our winter.

-Lots of time at the pool. Summer swim team meant being at the pool five days a week most weeks. So many people commented on how tan I was this summer. It wasn’t because I was on a beach vacation, that’s for sure. But… one thing that did get checked off the summer list was that the two younger kids finally figured out how to swim, and the youngest even learned to dive. And I also learned to dive. So that was pretty cool. And as always, I loved watching the 13 year old swim.

-Eating lots of peaches. Twice I scored a crate of peaches for super cheap so we ate lots of peaches. I made three cobblers, peach paletas, and canned eight jars.

-Kitchen adventures: we made paletas (watermelon ones and peach ones), tang hulu, and a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. (My go to recipe is the copy cat Mrs. Field’s recipe with oatmeal in it. The recipe says to blend all the oatmeal into flour, but I leave half of it unblended for a hardier texture.)

-We went to the movie theatre for the Kpop Demon Hunters sing a long. Also saw Jane Austen Wrecked my Life – a movie matinee date with a friend. It feels so indulgent to see the first showing of the day and have the theatre all to ourselves.

-Went to visit our friend out in Southern Maryland twice and got to enjoy her pool, good food, and vibrant company.

-One voice recital (13 year old) and two piano recitals (8 and 13 year olds).

-Going to New York City and meeting up with my sister in law and her family. We saw the Transit Museum (highly recommend) and had some ridiculously over the top desserts at Grace’s cafe in Koreatown.

-Went to the opera with the 13 year old.

-Went to the theatre with the 13 year old. chaperoning theatre camp field trip and saw a beautiful wordless production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was magical what people can express without uttering a word.

-The eight year old got a new bike and we had some good biking time with him, including biking to the farmer’s market. The 5 (now 6) year old hasn’t figured out how to ride a bike yet, but we’re still working on that.

-My summer job. It was one of my least favorite operas to work on in the rep (Carmen – you can read my guest post on Engie’s blog if you want to know why), but this time proved not so bad. I chalk this up to the director keeping things simple since we had very little rehearsal time, and everyone – the stage managers, the cast, the crew, the administration – being delightful and collaborative to work with. But even still, it was so so so so so darn hot the night we performed. And the theatre is outside.

-A glorious weekend at home alone while the Husband took the kids to Indianan on his own. It wasn’t totally on my own because I had to work, but at least the house was quiet. Maybe too quiet.

-The 13 year old and the 8 year old auditioned for the chorus of the Holiday opera that I’m working on. There was a large turn out this year, so I’m not sure they will be offered a slot, but I think it was a good experience for them to audition.

-Lenten book club where we discussed Mary and Martha.

-We got a new shoe rack and it’s been life-changing for our foyer.

-Visit from my cousin.

-going Contra dancing as a family.

-Discovering some new fun family games: Happy Salmon and Dixit.

-Everyone going back to school. We went to two Back To School Nights and got to see the classrooms and meet the teachers. It’s been a pretty chill school year so far. And that new closer bus stop has been amazing.

Summer Lowlights or just “meh” Some not fun things this summer (keeping it real, you know. I mean I don’t have a lot to complain about, but there were some things that were just… UGH.)

-Traffic commute to my summer job. That one time it took ninety minutes to get to work because a mushroom truck overturned. That other time it took me over TWO HOURS to get to work, via side streets, through parts of the DC area I only knew from maps. All that grossness. Periodically in a manual car, but more often than not, the Husband let me drive the van.

-Lots of things at work that I can’t really write about, but let me say… it’s making me real sad.

– The continued dismantling of America and the division that our great and fearless leader is perpetuating.

-mosquitoes.

-The 24 hours when my blog was down. But then thankfully fixed by … not sure whom. It could have been an AI chat bot for all I know. But anyhow, I was feeling a lot of despair during those 24 hours.

-I didn’t get a chance to go camping. I think this is the first year in a while that I haven’t taken the kids camping and I really missed being out in the mountains and trees. I guess I could do some fall camping, but work is starting to ramp up.

-That day where we tried to find a dresser for the 13 year old and it ended up with everyone hungry and tired and unable to think straight or look at any more furniture again for a very long time. (She still doesn’t have a dresser. I try not to look in her closet…)

-A tricky situation with our tenants that is now resolved in a friendly way, but did cause a bit of existential angst.

-I did not do ANY decluttering. Actually the Husband might have done some one weekend when I was working, but I didn’t really tackle much this summer. It’s kind of a bummer because the clutter areas tend to stress me out.

Things I learned:
-Pools are splashy places.
– how to say, “I see where you’re coming from…” when disagreeing with someone.
-Label the quick change booths. Label everything.This I learned from one of the other Assistant Stage Managers I work with. He was doing a show with a lot of quick costume changes and there were many quick change booths set up backstage. In opera if there is less than ten minutes to change a costume, we usually do the change backstage rather than have artists go back to the dressing rooms. (A true “quick change” in the opera world is five minutes. In theatre, five minutes is luxurious. For them true quick change is less than one minute.). Now just because the term “Stage Right Quick Change Booth” seems self explanatory, when you have just sung a big number onstage and then need to haul ass offstage and change costume in 2 minutes – well you don’t always remember what “Stage Right Quick Change Booth” means. Also if you’re a make-up artist coming backstage to give someone a scar in the Stage Right Change Booth, you don’t necessarily know which side is Stage Right or Stage Left right off the bat. So my colleague started putting signs on all the booths backstage along with who is changing in them. I thought this was brilliant!! Such a simple thing, but also hugely helpful in eliminating confusion backstage.

Welp that was summer 2025. Not the summer I had planned, but still a fun summer all around anyway. Onward to Fall!

Grateful For:

-The pretzel guy. For the now-6 year old’s birthday party, we wanted to order pretzels from The DC Pretzel Company. They are a go to for us for parties because their pretzels are vegan and delicious. Well, when I went on to the site to order… wump wump. Our date was unavailable. Cue panic. What are we going to do? So I emailed the owner. (Who, incidentally, is a federal worker who makes pretzels just on the weekends … actually I’m not sure if he’s still a federal worker…) He replied and said they weren’t taking orders for that day because they were baking pretzels for a local charity galas. BUT if I told him what I needed, maybe they could work something out. So I told him I needed 24 pretzels to be picked up any time before 9:45am on Saturday. And he said, “We can make that work. Can you pick them up at 9am?” YES! Yes, we can. I’m so grateful for Mr. Pretzel man for accommodating us. The pretzels are always the hit of any party we have.

-Umbrellas and rain boots and rain coats. When one remembers to bring them along.

-One extra hour to finish a book. I had a Libby hold that was due back so I was madly trying to finish reading it. I don’t know if this was a new feature, but when I got close to the time the book was due, I got this notice on my Libby app:

Well, I only had twenty more minutes left to read (according to that part of Libby that tracks your reading pace) so I clicked yes please and hunkered down and finished the book.

-Sunny weather for the 5 (now 6) year old’s birthday party. It had been raining all week and I was nervous that we’d have to move the party to our house – which would have been fine because there weren’t that many kids – but it’s much nicer when the kids can run and jump outside and not on my furniture. But luckily the day of the party was cloudy but dry. It actually started to rain the minute I pulled the car out of the parking lot as we were leaving.

-That two of my favorite friends and I were able to get together for Happy Hour. These are my two favorite bus stop friends – we used to chat all the time after the bus picked up, but now one friend has returned to work in the office and the other’s kid rides their bike to school, the bus stop is a little bit sadder for me. But we’ve been getting together every other month or so for happy hour (really by that I mean we have dinner at a favorite neighborhood bar) and it’s been really great to catch up.

-peanut butter and vanilla ice cream. My new favorite thing to do when I finish a jar of peanut butter now is to put vanilla ice cream in it and use the ice cream to eat up the last remaining bits of peanut butter in the jar. Makes me feel like I’m being thrifty.

eating every last drop of peanut butter.

-notepads on which to make lists. I’m very grateful someone invented lists.

Looking Forward To

-Jury Duty. I have that coming up in two weeks. I’m equally excited to be chosen as not chosen to be on a jury.

-Skating lessons. We’ve signed the 8 and 6 year old up for a mini skating session once the rink re-opens. I’m looking forward to being on the ice again too.

-A supertitle gig coming up. It’s a program of opera arias and duets and I think there will be some amazing singing.

-October! It’s right around the corner.

What We Ate:

Monday: Coconut Curry Chickpeas with Pumpkin and Lime, from the New York Times. I was looking for a cozy vegan meal and we also had a can of pumpkin to use up. This was very tasty. Vegan.

Tuesday: Chicken Orzo Soup from Dinner Illustrated. The kids have been wanting chicken noodles soup lately, so this fit the bill.

Wednesday: Tofu Bahn Mi from Dinner Illustrated. This was the 13 year old’s night to make dinner. It was very tasty.

I’m so proud of her that I took a picture of her meal!

Thursday: The Husband cooked dinner and I’m not sure what they ate – very likely eggs.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Worth It. Have you seen Worth It? It’s a show where in every episode the hosts try three versions of one food – one that is $ (affordable), one that is $$ (mid), and one that is $$$$$$$$$$ (Luxury). (One episode was :$1 taco vs. $47 taco. They’ve also done donuts, buffets, hamburgers, pizza…) Each episode is like 15 minutes long and the food always looks so good. I have to say, the really expensive food always looks jaw dropping, but I never feel like it’s worth it. But then again, I very rarely find the food I eat in restaurants completely worth it. The food isn’t really any tastier than what I can make at home. I think what makes eating out worth it for me is not having to cook or clean up myself, and also the company I have while eating out. Anyhow, it’s a fun little bit of tv if you’re looking for something short to watch.

Saturday: Dumplings and green beans and ate the decorated cookies, and watched Sneakers, in honor of Robert Redford’s passing. I love Sneakers so much! It’s such a great movie – suspenseful, smart, funny, and with a nice variety of characters. Also really appreciate that they didn’t pair Robert Redford with some twenty something in this film.

Sunday: Tortellini with either red sauce or pesto, steamed green beans, and Caesar Salad out of the bag. We’ve had tortellini and red sauce or pesto two weeks in a row now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes our Sunday night meal. There is something in me that thinks Sunday night meals need to be elaborate and celebratory. But also, it’s nice to do something low key before we go back into the week.

And look another weekend is coming up. I have to work both days this weekend, but I do get to take break and do “shuffle step” at my tap class. Hope you close out September with grace and style.

Are you ready for Fall? Any memories from summer you’re still holding on to? Do you have a go to chocolate chip cookie recipe? What makes a meal in a restaurant feel “worth it” to you?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Thinking about what I do.

Last week was kind of a quiet week, but still had some nice moments. My cousin was in town and I had a good time hanging out with her. We didn’t do anything touristy, just folded her into the usual household chaos. On Tuesday she drove the 5 year old to school so I was able to bike to school with the 8 year old. After we met my cousin at the school, she put both my bike and the 8 year old’s bike in her car and we went to a yoga class. My cousin is really good at finding fitness classes wherever she goes – she’s a bit of a digital nomad and is always travelling – she goes to Barcelona next. She found a nearby yoga studio that had a free first class offer so we signed up for a yoga core class. I was a little leery about that “core” part going in, but the class turned out to be super gentle. Maybe too gentle? But it was very relaxing.

Last week was also Back To School Night for the elementary school kids. I used to always skip Back to School Night when the oldest was in elementary school. her school was 30 minutes away and to trek up there didn’t feel worth it to me. I will say, I prefer the middle school back to school night to the elementary school one. In middle school we get to go class to class – it’s a little like human Frogger. In elementary school, the teacher gets 45 minutes, and we all sit there. I feel simultaneously bombarded with information and at the same time unaware of what my kids’ classes will be like. But still, it was nice seeing the kid’s classroom.

The weekend that followed was a very full weekend for us, but all good things. Saturday we had voice lessons for the 13 year old, a kids’ birthday party to go to, a soccer game for the 8 year old, and 5 year old and I had our first tap class, then I went to work and the Husband took the two big kids to church in the afternoon. Writing it all out, it seems like a lot, but I feel like everything flowed into one another and the Husband and I took on separate kid events. The birthday party was at a neighbor’s house, so we actually sent the 8 and 5 year old over by themselves so that I could mow the front lawn before heading over myself. I love that we are at the age of drop off birthday parties. I do like talking to other parents, but it sometimes feels as if we are constantly going to birthday parties, so it’s nice when we can just drop and go on with our lives for a little bit.

For sure tap class was a highlight. Tap class was LOUD, first of all. I should have expected that, but I was unprepared for how the room reverberates from movement and sound waves. There is something really fun about being able to make all that noise. I don’t know how much technique we’ll learn – the class is more like one of those Parent and Me music classes where the goal is just to get the kids to move. The instructor taught us a few ways to make noise with our feet and then we danced in circles and then in lines and did lots of twirling and pretending that we were rabbits and jumping across the room. There were a few parents that clearly knew what they were doing, and I felt very self conscious about not knowing what I was doing, but I’m going to try to get over that.

After class, I had to work, covering a chorus music rehearsal – this is where the chorus learns the music, so it’s a pretty hands off rehearsal for me. I mostly go to check attendance and make sure everyone gets the breaks they are owed per union contract. The tap studio is in the same building as the one we rehearse in, so the 5 year old tagged along with me to work, rather than me having to rush her home and then come back. Having her at work was kind of fun. She helped me call break warnings to the chorus: “Two minutes left in the break!” She was surprisingly loud. I had to do some paperwork while the chorus was learning their music, so the five year old did some collage projects with old magazines and had some hot chocolate that we had in the office.

Once I got off work, we headed over to our friends’ house. These were the same friends who had the birthday party earlier. I had felt bad leaving the party early to go to tap class, but our friends said to come over in the evening after work – they had rented a bounce house for the party and it wasn’t going to get picked up until 7pm, so the party was going to continue. The Husband met me there, and he had picked up dinner at a fried chicken and BBQ place. One annoying thing is that our order was missing things, but the restaurant is so far away it wasn’t worth going back – I’ve written to them to see if we can get our money back, but haven’t heard from them. So irksome. But the food was tasty. We stayed at our friend’s house until it was time to put the kids to bed and then headed home.

Sunday, we went contra dancing in the afternoon. The few dances we’ve been to lately have been at the Civic Center, but this Sunday dance was at the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park, where the Husband and I met. Back before the pandemic there were two contra dances a week at Glen Echo – one of Friday night and one on Sunday night. I think after COVID they went down to just the Friday night dance, but now a monthly Sunday afternoon dance has been added. I really like the Sunday afternoon time slot – we can take the kids and stay for most of the dance without worrying about bedtime or the kids having an exhausted meltdown. If the kids don’t feel like dancing they can go to the playground next to the ballroom and play there while the Husband and I dance. On Sunday, the 13 year old danced maybe four dances and the 5 and 8 year olds did two or three. During the waltz, all three kids made up some kind of dance and twirled each other around the dance floor. I had originally thought we would only stay until 5:00pm, but we ended up staying and dancing all but the last contra dance – it was a lot of fun – the music was hot (I had been skeptical because the band had a flute and a flue is not something I associate with contra dance music), the people were friendly, and the dancing was fast and flowing.

How do you answer “What do you do?” Between parties and the start of school, I feel like I’ve met lots of new people lately. Perhaps this is a very DC type of thing, but the instinct is always to ask (or be asked), “What do you do?” It’s kind of a fraught question these days, to be honest. I just never know if someone is a federal employee who has just lost their job or what. Anyhow, “What do you do?” has been on my mind a lot recently, and I’m reminded of something I heard once (maybe it was a Ted Talk or a podcast, I’m sorry I can’t remember) where this phrase was offered as a way to answer the dreaded questions: “I help X do Y.”

There is something I really love about that framing – it opens up so many possibilities to be descriptive and to really get to the heart of how I spend my time at work. I’ve been thinking of ways to answer “what do you do?” with that phrasing. Some things I’ve come up with something to say instead of saying, “I’m an opera stage manager.”

On a macro level: “I help people tell stories onstage.”

Or on an even bigger picture level: “I help people experience emotions through art.”

On a micro level: “I help singers know when to go out onstage.” “I help a director’s vision for a show come to life” “I help union members get their required break.” “I help technical departments know what’s going on in the rehearsal room.”

Of course, it’s not all about the work I get paid for either…

“I help my kids grow up to not be assholes.” Or at least I try.

There is something slightly self-effacing about this approach, to be sure. Sometime I think, “If I were a man, would I phrase my job as one of assisting rather than of being the main event?” But I also think that by seeing where I fit in the bigger picture of what my organization does, seeing my job as a facilitator of dreams and expression – I think that is a very grounding idea to keep in mind, especially these days. There are definitely days at work when I cling hard to the belief that telling stories onstage, providing a place for people to be immersed in music and escape the real world for a couple hours – that this is worthwhile work. Granted, on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs opera/music/art is hardly the base of the triangle, but don’t you think that in America of 2025 we should be able to aspire to the top of Maslow’s pyramid?

Back to answering “What do you do?” Another way I read lately to approach the question is to say, “You know how [thing that happens]? Well I [whatever part I play in the process]”

So for me, that might be: “You know how when you go to a show and the scenery moves or the lights change colours? Well, I’m the person who tells the stage crew when to make those things happen.” Or “You know when you go see a play and a character pulls a book out of a pocket? Well I’m the one who tells the costume shop which pocket the book comes from and how big the book is.” I like this idea of taking something that might be a common experience for every one and give people a behind the scenes view. I think we all do things – in work, in life – that are out of the public eye, or that might not be interesting to other people in the minutia of detail, but when seen in the context of something people are familiar with, the minutia of our job feels illuminating.

But all that to say – I’ve been trying to avoid asking the dreaded “What do you do?” question when I meet new people. To be honest I’m struggling a little with how to initiate conversations instead. Sometimes I ask where people grew up/ if they are from the area and see where the conversation goes from there.

I’m going to leave you with this bit of found poetry – the 5 year old loves to open up a note on my iPad and draw. Lately she also has realized that if you type in a letter or two, the iPad will automatically suggest a couple words. I mean she can’t read yet, so she is just choosing words at random from the suggested ones. Here is her opus. I can’t help but to think there is something worth embracing there:

Grateful For:
-A surprise half day with the kids and being available to pick up the kids early unexpectedly. On Monday the water main at the elementary school broke and the Principal sent an email at 12:50pm saying that the students would be dismissed at 1:20pm. Luckily my kids took the bus home, because from what I understand, pick up at the school was chaotic. I’m glad I didn’t have to battle the lines of people trying to find the kids they were supposed to pick up. I know a lot of parents just couldn’t pick up their kid with such a late notice for the early closure, so I’m glad I wasn’t working that day. At any rate, I had a bonus half day with the kids thanks to the water main break. We went to the library and then we went to Hmart, where the K-pop Demon Hunters soundtrack was on shuffle repeat much to the delight of the kids who started dancing in the aisle. Good thing HMart wasn’t too crowded at 2:30pm on a Monday.

-Discount bananas. There were bags of ripe bananas at the grocery store being sold for $2.99/ bag, so I grabbed a bag and turned them into banana chocolate chip muffins. I used this recipe from the NY Times and the streusel crumb topping really made this muffin sing. (If you make the recipe, I only used half a cup of sugar and the muffins still came out plenty sweet.)

-That it is still light in the morning. Granted the days are getting shorter, but I’m grateful that it is still light at 6:45am when I get up.

-Bike trails all the way to school.

-The bushes of Sweet Autumn Clematis that I walk by on the way to the bus stop. The smell so sweet, a nice pick me up reminder to breathe. Also grateful for the Seek app that identified the plant for me.

-People who are kind to my kids and make them feel welcome. Two things happened last week that made me grateful for people who accept kids as part of the fabric of life. When I had to have the 5 year old tag along to work, the chorus was all super nice to her. And when she announced the end of the break in her surprisingly loud voice, the chorus gave her a huge round of applause. Then at the contra dance, everyone was really kind to the kids. The two little kids like to dance as one person, three legged race style – which I’m sure can be annoying because in addition to having an extra body to navigate, the kids don’t always know how to follow the call. But I had a few people come up to us and say how wonderful it was to see kids at the contra dance, so I’m really grateful their presence was accepted and even celebrated. It could have been just as easy for people to be annoyed at the presence of my kids but they weren’t.

-A little bit of rain and the cooler weather that it brought.

-Fresh basil. I fear that summer is coming to a close and our days of fresh basil might be numbered. I will savor it while I can, though.

Looking Forward To:

-The 5 year old’s birthday party. We’re having just a handful of kids to play in the park and decorate cookies. We’ve ordered pretzels and we’ll have croissants and fruit and cake and maybe a charcuterie plate. It’s a morning party, so we’re not ordering pizza – I’m a little afraid I might get flamed for not having pizza. Pizza seems like such a staple of a kids’ party. But the party is from 10a-11:30am, so I thought to do more of a breakfast theme.

-Contra dance in Shepherdstown, WV. The Husband met someone at the Sunday dance who runs the contradance in Shepherdstown, WV and so we’ve decided to go for their dance in October. He’s paired it with an afternoon of hiking because I was lamenting that I haven’t been hiking in quite a while. It seems like an ambitious afternoon/ evening, but I’m excited to try.

-This is far into the future, but I’m looking forward to one day having shade. A few years ago, the county cut down a tree in our that strip of grass in front of our house between the sidewalk and the street. (What is that slice of grass called anyway? Google has soooo many words for it – verge, parkway, right of way, hellstrip??? This seems like a good summary.) And then about a year or so later they planted a tree. A little tiny tree. I look forward to the day that the tree is not so tiny and there is once again shade under which to park my car. Of course I guess that also means bird poop on my car too….

Someday, son, you will grow as tall as that baby tree on

-Just started listening to this – I wanted a nice cozy listen and this is fitting the bill so far:

What We Ate:

Monday – Coq au Vin in the Instant Pot. The 8 year old LOVES this recipe from the Good Housekeeping InstantPot book. The rest of the family could take or leave it. But it makes him so happy so I make it for him two or three times a year.

Tuesday – Crispy tofu tacos with black beans. Recipe from NY Times Cooking. These were very delicious. I made extra beans and had bean and cheese burritos for lunch the rest of the week. Vegan. (except the kids slathered their tacos in sour cream.)

Wednesday – Pasta with sauteed zucchini and spinach. This was Back To School Night and we had meant to order pizza because the neighbor’s kids were going to come over and the 13 year old was going to watch them while the parents went to back to school night. But at the last minute they didn’t have to come over so I decided not to spend money on pizza and made a catch all pasta with veggies that were leftover in the fridge. It was quite tasty.

Thursday – The 13 year old’s day to cook. She made cod baked in foil and roasted potatoes.

Friday – pizza (take out) and movie night. I think the family watched the Lego movie. Again.

Saturday – Fried Chicken Carryout at our neighbor’s house.

Sunday – tortellini with marinara sauce and fresh pesto. Steamed green beans on the side. Easy and filling supper to throw together after getting home from the dance.

I seem to be a bit behind in posting again what with the weekend so close and all. Oh well. Hopefully I’ll have another South AFrica Post for you all next week. In the mean time, hope you have a great weekend!

What do you say when someone asks “What do you do?” Finish the sentence: “I help _____ do ____.” What would you do with a bag of overripe bananas? What do you call the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street????

South Africa 2025 – Part 1, Days 1-3. Flights, London, Johannesburg

So Yes, I did go to South Africa earlier this summer, and “Write South Africa Trip Recaps” has been on my to do list since then, but for whatever reason I’ve been finding it hard to get it all down. Well last week, my sister in law sent me a picture:

She FINALLY got the postcard that I sent her. It took two months. And she’s in Amsterdam, so who knows when the post cards to America will arrive…. But I think her text gave me a bit of a kick in the butt to not wait for motivation (and fittingly because I was pondering the subject of motivation earlier this year) , and just sit and write South Africa recaps. So here we go…

TLDR: South Africa is an amazing country – it’s history is both prehistoric and very recent, which makes it feel very different from any other country that I’ve visited. We saw a lot of beautiful, wonderful things, and we saw a lot of really heart breaking, hard things. Wherever we went, though, our guides were willing to talk to us honestly and openly. My advice for anyone going to South Africa, is to do so in a way that allows you to connect with South Africans, to hear their stories about their past and about their thoughts and dreams for the future. Also – all that means that these recaps won’t be full of beautiful scenery (thought there was definitely some of that). But I’m not a travel blogger, so I don’t imagine you all are here for gorgeous pictures….

First off- why South Africa? Our trip to South AFrica was organized by EF Tours, a company that does educational travel for middle and high school students, both domestic and international. The 14 year old’s English teacher has been a trip leader for EF tours for several years now, having taken students to Italy, Vietnam, Japan, and Brazil. The past couple of trips that I had seen flyers for had been to places that either we had already been to, or which I could see us going to on our own. For whatever reason, South Africa was a place that felt daunting to plan a trip to on our own. So when I saw that the summer 2025 trip was to South Africa, I really wanted to go. Truth, I probably wanted to go more than the 13 year old.

EF takes care of everything – flights, accommodations, tour guides, transportation, most meals. We just sign up, give them our money, pack our bags and passport and show up at the airport. The last time I did a travel tour was twenty years ago, when I went with my mother to Egypt and Turkey. Or maybe it was two separate tours? I don’t remember – my mother has a friend who is a travel agent/tour guide, and her friend often takes friends on tours as guinea pigs to work out the kinks before she makes the tours available for her business. Turkey and Egypt were two of those test tours. Anyhow, multi day tours aren’t necessarily something that I usually gravitate towards – I think it’s a cost and flexibility thing for me. I will say, though, this EF tours was really well run. Each day was PACKED. I might have liked to travel at a more savoring pace, but I did appreciate how much we covered in one week and how little mental energy it took.

Our flight left at 10pm on a Monday evening. It would be a day and a half of travel, including a long layover in London. The Husband and the 5 year old dropped us off at the airport. Touchingly, the 5 year old was really upset we were leaving – she cried in the car the whole way to the airport. But the Husband took her to McDonalds on the way home and apparently she stopped crying. Hah.

The flights were all very smooth. On the flight to London Heathrow, I slept some, I watched some tv, read. Luckily I was in an aisle seat, so I could get up and stretch and go to the bathroom whenever I wanted. For some reason, the 13 year old was sitting a few rows behind me and didn’t want to switch seats to sit closer to me even though the seat next to me was empty. We arrived at Heathrow in the late morning and had a nine hour layover, so we took the Heathrow Express into London, getting off at Paddington Station. I highly recommend the Heathrow Express – we were in London in about 20 minutes. We were all much too exhausted to really do anything, and plus we had all our carryon luggage with us, so we walked to Hyde Park where we could rest our feet. The 13 year old and I found a nice place to sit under a tree; I bought us an iced chai and a vegetarian sausage roll at a cafe in the park and we just soaked up the sun and shade and people watched and sketched in our sketch books.

Sketch of the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park

For lunch our group wandered back towards Paddington Station and we all found lunch on our own. I got fish and chips from Micky’s Fish and Chips – one of those tiny counter service and two table places that you read about in rom com books. They really exist folk! The fish and chips did not come wrapped in newspaper, like I was lead to believe from the movies, but the portions were HUGE! I felt bad because I bought two of the smallest size and we only ended up eating one. We sat in a park that had Paddington statues and ate our fish and chips. I sketched some of the buildings across from the park. Even though we weren’t doing any “touristy” things, the few hours we spent in London were still exciting, with that buzz of being in a foreign country.

After we finished out lunch and rested in the park, we met back up with out group and headed back to Heathrow airport for the next leg of our flight- a twelve hour flight to Johannesburg. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, I watched movies and slept and read a little and tried to get up and stretch once in a while. We arrived in Johannesburg at 7:00 am- it was a long day and half of traveling, but our adventures were just beginning!

Day 1: Arrival in Johannesburg. We were met at the airport by our tour guide and he got us on our bus. There were two other school groups in our tour – one from North Carolina and one from Bethesda, MD, which is actually near us. Both the groups were from high schools, and interestingly were all girls. (There were two boys in our group) We were taken immediately on a tour of Soweto, a township in Johannesburg that is southwest of central Johannesburg. Soweto was formed in the 1930s when the government, looking to segregate the population of South Africa, created “Black” townships and moved a lot of Black people there.

This first day we learned a lot about the history of Apartheid and the fight for equality in South Africa. The topics were very sobering and it might have been a little too heavy for us all just having got off an overnight international flight, but I’m glad to have seen all the spots we visited.

The bus took us through Soweto, and we had a local guide, Mama Queen, who told us about the history of Soweto. Even today, parts of residential Soweto have no electricity or running water. Mama Queen said that after the end of Apartheid, the new government said housing was a basic human right, but the government has not been able to deliver on that.

Our first stop in Soweto was the Hector Peterson Museum. Peterson was a 12 year old boy who was killed in the Soweto uprisings in 1976, when students gathered to protest the use of Afrikaans as the primary language in schools. Outside the museum there is a statue in tribute to Hector Peterson and inside the museum were many first person accounts if the Soweto uprisings. The accounts were from both sides of the conflict, and it really made me think about how deeply entrenched and systematic racism is. In the middle of the museum was a courtyard scattered with bricks, each brick with the name of someone who died in the uprising.

This Memorial features the famous picture of Hector Peterson’s dead body being carried to the hospital by 18 year old Mbuyisa Makhubo. Makhubo ended up fleeing South Africa and no one really know where he ended up

Courtyard with the names of people who dies in the Soweto Uprisings on 1976.

We next visited Nelson Mandela’s house in Orlando. Before the trip had just finished Mandela’s memoir Long Walk to Freedom, and he writes often about this simple house where he lived before he went to jail. It was the first house that he ever purchases, and it was here that his children were born. The compact house is full of pictures, awards, commendations, and framed letters honoring Mandela. There were only three rooms in the house and thinking about how Mandela lived here in this tiny space while being a lawyer, while fighting for South African equality was certainly humbling.

Not his real bed, but a reproduction. Also this small house only had three rooms – two bedrooms and a kitchen/common room.

under this tree, Mandela buried the umbilical cords of his children, per tradition.

We then had lunch at a nearby restaurant – the lunch was buffet style, which the 13 year old loved because she loves a buffet. There was soup, stews, rice dishes, yams, cake, salad. There were even chicken feet, which made me happy. I love eating chicken feet at dim sum, and seeing such a niche food in a foreign country tickled me. We were sitting in the outdoor portion of the restaurants and buskers frequently came by to serenade us, their music loud and rhythmic.

Following lunch we went to the Apartheid Museum, a place of many hard truths. There were so many things that stuck with me from this museum – the entry way where each person was given a ticket that said “White” or “Non-White”, and had to go through the correct door; the walls of pass books (during Apartheid Black people had to carry pass books with them all the time or risk being jailed); There was one exhibit which featured full sized pictures of people viewed from the back, an exercise in realizing that it wasn’t always easy to see the color of someone’s skin, moreover that exhibit was used to describe how people could be “reclassified” on a whim; the interview footage with Mandela; the interview footage with the white leaders who talked about their duty to be the guardians of the Black people – I thought the degree to which they didn’t view Black or Coloured people as equal humans so fascinating – they truly believed that white people were genetically superior and that they were doing God’s work by keeping Black’s separate. All in all we only spent ninety minutes at the Apartheid Museum, but I could have spent half a day there. There was an entire exhibit on Mandela and another one that about reconciliation that I only got to skim.

There were no pictures allowed inside the museum, so these are from the outside and the entry way.

Each pillar represents one of the seven principal of the South African Constitution: **Democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility, respect and freedom**

After the Apartheid Museum we were taken to our hotel where we had a buffet dinner before turning in for the night. (Buffet was kind of a food theme of the trip, which I think is common and makes a lot of sense for tour groups.)

Day Two: Day Two was another history filled day. We started the day with a visit to the Cradle of Humankind, a Unesco World Heritage site where many fossils of ancestral humans were found. We didn’t actually see any remains or archeological sites, but rather visited the museum/ visitor’s on the site. To be honest, the museum was a little run down, with paint chipping and a couple of the interactive exhibits not working. The information, however, was fascinating. I especially liked the hallway that had the timeline of earth on it. The hallway stretched on and on, but the portion where humans were on earth was maybe two feet of space. Apparently we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction. So the world has built up and become extinct five times already. That all gave me a sense of perspective. Surrounding the Cradle of Humanity museum are walking trails – I wish we had had time to go on a walk on these trails because the scenery was beautiful.

After leaving the Cradle of Humanity, we stopped at a mall for lunch on our own. The 13 year old and I picked up some poke bowls and dumplings and boba – always fun to find boba tea in a foreign country! While waiting for our food, I went to pick up a charging cable because I had discovered that I had left mine at home. While I was there I also got a new screen protector for my phone – the store had a fancy machine that custom cut the screen. protectors. I thought that was pretty cool. It was kind of fun to do something so ordinary, like buying a screen protector, in a foreign country.

Our next stop after lunch was Constitution Hill, where South Africa’s Constitutional Court is located. Also on the site is the Old Fort, Number Four Prison, Women’s Prison and Hospital, all of which now is a Museum. The prison was known as the “Robben Island of Johannesburg” because in addition to common law criminals, a lot of political dissidents were imprisoned there, including Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela was once held in the Hospital. Number Four was where the Black prisoners were held. Touring the museum was very sobering – we got to see the rooms where people were packed past capacity, the courtyard where they ate their meager food, the latrines next to those courtyard, which meant that often bodily waste flowed around their feet while eating. We saw the cells where people were held in solitary confinement. The tour guide told us about the harrowing and traumatizing experiences inflicted on the prisoner by both the prison wardens and other prisoners.

One of the prison cells in which thirty prisoners were crammed.

The Prison yard. The red roof is where prisoners would eat, squatting on the ground. All the way in the back leads to solitary confinement. You can actually go into those cells and see what they were like. The thought of having to live in solitary … well it is a form of torture.

I was struck by the exhibit of blanket sculptures. When the prison was occupied, on Sundays there would be a contest among prisoners to build elaborate blanket sculptures, the prize for the winner would be an additional crust of bread. The exhibit featured blanket sculptures which the museum had made by former prisoners of Number Four. I had always associated blanket sculptures with fancy hotels or cruise ships, but seeing the elaborate creations that these prisoner made, made me think about how our desire to create things of beauty and complexity persisted even in prison.

The next building we saw on Constitution Hill was the Constitutional Court Building, which was opened in 2004. One thing striking about the building was the entry way – tall, and decorated with carvings to represent the principles of the South African Constitution, the doors are the way everyone enters and exits the building, prisoners, judges, lawyers, the public. The guide said that there are no back entrances to the building because the court was built with the idea that everyone is equal so everyone must use the same doors. (I find it a bit of a fire and security hazard that there are NO other doors – perhaps there are no other public entrances?). Inside, we were told a little bit about the history of present day South Africa. South Africa has 12 official languages, and the guide pointed out to us the room where all the interpreters sit. The bricks in the main court were taken from parts of the prison that were torn down, as a reminder of South Africa’s past.

“Constitutional Court” written in 11 of the 12 official languages. The 12th official language is South African Sign Language.

Detail of a section of the intricately carved door.

The main court room. The interpreters sit behind the glass on the fight.

After we left Constitution Hill, the bus dropped us off at a Mall – Mandela Square. I guess they figured a bunch of teens and tweens would really love to spend a spare hour shopping. The mall had many of the same stores you see in America, a lot of them were the high end things. There was also a library and a theatre in Mandela Square, but those were closed so we I didn’t get to go in. The 13 year old and I aren’t huge shoppers, but we do always like to check out grocery stores when we travel; grocery stores are such a great peek ar what a country is like. We bought a bunch of snacks and blueberries too because by this point I was feeling a severe lack of fresh fruit in my life. The blueberries were so sweet and crisp. The 13 year old and I ended up always buying more blueberries whenever we got a chance for the rest of the trip.

This juxtaposition of these two restaurants made me laugh

Some images from things we saw at Checkers, a grocery/ home store – it felt kind of like a Super Walmart:

Then the bus returned us to the hotel and we had dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. For dessert, I had my first experience with Malva pudding – a South African sponge cake that often has cream poured over it. It has a springy moist texture and is not too sweet. We would come to eat many pieces of Malva pudding in the weeks to come. I am clearly not a food or travel blogger or I would have taken perfectly lit pictures of the Malva pudding so you could almost taste it. But you’ll just have to take my word that it was delicious. Plus, it’s a very humble looking cake, and perhaps not very photogenic.

We returned to our rooms to pack and turn in for the night because the next day we were going to check out of our hotel and head for our next adventure: Kruger National Park and a Safari Lodge!

So that’s part one of South Africa adventures!
Have you ever taken advantage of a layover to see a bonus city? Do you visit grocery stores when traveling? Do you like visiting historic sites when you travel?

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: New things we are trying

Last week was a shorter school week because of the Labor Day holiday. It was also my last week on a reduced contract at work, so it was pretty light work-wise, though there were several union negotiation meetings to attend and lots of other adulting to do. All in all, though, it was a pretty low key week. I got to get some nice cooler weather runs in, the kids went to school, they came home, we had one soccer practice, I got to go on a pirate boat cruise on the Potomac, but other than that, not to much going on, and the weekend was similar. On Saturday, we had a 9:30am soccer game for the 8 year old, auditions for the 8 and 13 year old. After the auditions, we celebrated by sitting outside and eating the frozen treats that the Husband had bought at the nearby food coop. We were originally going to go out to get chais and horchatas from a local coffee shop, but the ice cream was a cheaper option and just as festive.

Saturday evening we went to visit my friend in Southern Maryland, where the kids had a chance for one last swim in a pool. It was probably a little on the chilly side for the pool, but the kids’ didn’t mind. I floated on an tube for maybe thirty minutes – it was the kind of weather where you wanted to either be in the pool or out, but it was too cold to be constantly switching. My friend is someone I know from work, so it’s always nice when we can hang out oustisde of work. She just rebuilt her deck by herself, and it’s amazing.

Sunday my cousin came for a visit and we just hung out around the house. We watched the US Open Men’s Final. I’ve never really watched tennis before, and I don’t know the rules, or whom to root for, but I do enjoy watching that ball go back and forth and back and forth. Also, I was unfamiliar with the tradition of the Grand Slam winners and losers making speeches at the trophy ceremony and afterwards became fascinated with this tradition. It seems so bonkers to me that the players play their hearts out for three hours, experience crushing defeat or thrilling victory, and then immediately after are expected to coherently speak to millions of people? And for a lot of them, English isn’t even their first language. Despite all that, the Grand Slam trophy speeches seem like an appropriately elegant part of a sport that I do think is very glamorous.

New Things For This School Year:
September always brings some shifts to schedules, routines, and habits what with the new school year starting and kids going to new schools, new grades, new activities. I once made a chart, and from now until the 5 year old goes to high school in nine years, we‘ll have only two years where September does not bring a new school for someone. The other seven years will always have a transition to a new school for at least one kid. So September always seems like a natural time to think about systems and routines and try something new. Here are some things we’re trying this fall:

A new shoe rack/ foyer/ landing strip set up – Our foyer is a mess of shoes and backpacks and tote bags and what not. We were constantly tripping over things in walkways or kicking things down the stairs, losing keys and single shoes and IDs and bills. We started looking for solutions for a more efficient drop zone, where we could keep the shoes and back packs in a more organized way but also have place for incoming mail and our keys and ids. The Husband found a really cool shoe rack on Etsy and we had our handyman stain it to match our front door. The rack has transformed our foyer. (So far. It’s only been two weeks…)

Backpacks are on the coat tree on the right. My messy drop bin is out of sight on the left.

Flow improvements:
-Everyone has a shelf for their most used shoes, so they are no longer sprawled across the entry way. We will still use the boot mats for boots, and shoes that aren’t worn regularly stay in the coat closet, but everything else goes on the shoe rack. There are 4 shelves for shoes and space underneath, so everyone’s shoes seem to fit while taking up a smaller footprint. yay for vertical storage.
-Moving the paper recycle bin next to the shoe rack so that the junk mail goes right into the bin and the important mail goes into the mail bin.
-Having the mail bin and the key bin to the top level of the shoe rack. These used to live on a bench, and it was always kind of awkward to get to them.
-A charging station. We are using one of the top cubbies as a charging station. So now, my phone has a “home” when I’m at home. I’m hoping this will lead to less scrolling and less losing of my phone. We’re trying to convince the 13 year old that her phone also needs to charge there, but I don’t know if we’re going to win that one. (That’s a whole other story…)
-backpacks moved from bins to a coat tree, corralling them in a smaller space. We used to have three plastic storage bins in the living room and they became a dumping ground for backpacks and anything else that didn’t have a home. Once a week, the kids would go through their bins and re-set. I love me a good catch all bin, but it was getting out of control. Now the kids’ activity bags and helmets go in their room and just school backpacks are the the foyer hung on the coat tree. We might need to investigate a different coat tree because the current one is a little tall for the kids’ to reach easily. (The 13 year old keeps her backpack in her room.) I still have my little red bin for my tote bags – I’m trying to figure out if there is a more elegant solution for my stuff – I like to be able to dump my things when I walk in the door because often I’m coming in so late and that tends to lead to a bit of clutter. Still pondering here.
All in all, our new foyer/land strip has made life a little less frustrating lately.

Fewer Activities for the Kids/ More evenings at home as a family – This is the activity run down for this fall:

13 year old – basketball workouts (1x a week, plus this year the coach wants people to practice on their own at least ten minutes a day. The 13 year old has been doing this as she waits for the two little to get off their bus), piano lessons, voice lessons, Religious Ed, Swim clinic (starts next month)

8 year old – soccer (1 practice, 1 game a week. He’s still playing the less competitive rec league.), piano.

5 year old – tap classes, Agility classes (this is like ninja warrior courses.)

This is a lot fewer activities than we usually do. One thing that we dropped for the fall is skating for the 5 and 8 year old because the rink is still under repair. We will likely add skating back in November when the rink re-opens. We also aren’t doing after school programming classes or sewing (for the 8 year old) or gymnastics (for the 5 year old) this fall. The 13 year old is auditioning for the school play, so that might be another activity back on the plate, although rehearsals are right after school, so it’s pretty hands off for us. The 13 year old and the 8 year old both auditioned for the children’s chorus of the Holiday opera I’m working on, so we’re waiting for those results, though those rehearsals don’t start until November.

Being light on activities is a bit of a shift for us. Usually I try to sign up the kids for activities when my work load is lighter because then we have two parents on hand to split driving and home duties. But this fall, we decided to try something different and keep the schedule a little lighter. Each kid still has one active activity and one artistic activity, though. I feel bad because skating, programming, sewing and gymnastics are things that the kids really love to do. I’m reminding myself that these activities all have short sessions and rolling enrollment, so we can sign them up for sessions later in the year too. Taking the fall off from an activity isn’t going to stunt their development in that interest or put them “behind”. Whatever that means. I do think it gets trickier when kids get older and start to get more serious about interests and require more commitment, but for now I think the stakes are not as high for the 5 year old and the 8 year old, and we don’t have to keep up with anything. Plus the kids love activities, but they also love just hanging out at home, reading books, playing outside, and getting into trouble.

I have to say, the pulling back on activities has actually been quite lovely. We’re not constantly rushing around on weekday evenings to eat dinner and get someone somewhere. We all have been cleaning up after dinner together, and then having family reading time, or family game time. Same thing on weekend – we have time to hang out together and kind of just do… well, I was going to say “nothing”, but reading books and noodling on the piano and playing board games and going on evening walks and having dance parties while doing the dishes and putting away laundry in a timely manner – these are all something.

Another thing that I think benefits from the lighter activity schedule is something that came up at Back to School Night – The coordinator of the French Immersion program said is that our kids really need time to decompress after school because they’re brains are working overtime being in a non-English school environment. I’m sure all kids need that space after school, but I guess I hadn’t really thought of the added burden of being in an immersion environment before. Anyhow, I’m really enjoying the less frenetic paces of our afternoons and evenings. I don’t know how long we will keep it up, but it does make for a nice soft start for the school year.

I’m going to give a shout out to our new favorite game, Dixit. It’s kind of like a combination of the Dictionary Game and Code Names – there are picture cards and one person says a word or phrase to describe one of their cards, then everyone puts in a card that might also be described by that word or phrase and everyone else has to guess which is the original card. Dixit works really well for our family because you don’t have to be able to read to play it. I also took a page out of Lauren’s book and instituted a rule that the winner cleans up after the game. I don’t know if it’s the rule or if the kids are getting better at not winning, but there have been fewer meltdowns when we have family game night now.

The 13 year old making dinner once a week – We’ve put the 13 year old in charge of making dinner once a week. She’s made dinner a few times, but not regularly. She’s able to make Mac and cheese (out of a box), breakfast sandwiches, pasta and meat balls, and oven fried chicken. I thought this was a good time for her to start expanding her skills by being regularly responsible for dinner, from planning to putting things on the grocery list to cooking. Last week, she made roasted salmon with potatoes and chimichurri sauce, and steamed green beans. I was in the kitchen talking her through every step of the way, but almost all the hands on stuff she did herself. I have this dream that eventually each child can be responsible for one night and then the Husband and I will only be responsible for 3 dinners a week (the fourth night is pizza and movie night.)

Labelling the Sheets – I keep the spare sheets in the bedrooms – ie each room has the sheets on the bed and one spare set in the closet. BUT they were kind of just on a shelf, in a jumbled mess. In the little kids’ room, especially, it was annoying because the 5 year old sleeps in the twin top bunk and the 8 year old sleeps in the full bottom bed. So when someone wets the bed at 2am, there is a lot of night time cursing and muttering as I pull out wrong sheet set after wrong sheet set. Well, I was determined to fix this and on our last trip to Ikea, I found these zip up storage bags. Now, each size of sheets has it’s own storage bag, AND I got out the label maker and labelled the bags. I love my label maker.

The new closer bus stop- I know this is the third week in a row I’ve mentioned the new bus stop, but it’s been such amazing shift for our routine. The 13 year old gets to shoot some hoops while waiting for the bus, the kids can have 15-30 minutes to play before coming home, and I get to walk down to meet them. Also it’s the first stop of the bus, so less likely to be delayed.

Well, those are some things that are making life a little less chaotic right now. Of course, I don’t know how things will be when I go back into rehearsal, but that is about a month away…

Grateful For:
-Little Free Libraries. There are a couple of Little Free Libraries that we pass by regularly that have some really desirable books. I’ve been amassing a collection. It might be a bit of a problem….

-That the kids are old enough to sort of clean the kitchen after dinner.

-That I learned how to touch type. I was painfully watching my kids hunt and peck the other day, and I had two thoughts – 1) how can the school them all Chromebooks and not teach them to touch type? And 2) I’m sure glad I can touch type so that I can type efficiently and without looking at my hands.

-Beautiful blue skies and fluffy clouds.

-leftovers for an easy dinner, plus more in the freezer for the future when life gets busy again.

-Bodies of water – the Potomac, the Chesapeake Bay, pools. There is something so relaxing about being on the water.

Looking Forward To:

-New glasses. I’d gotten glasses earlier this year and I was having a lot of trouble reading with them. They are progressives, but my last pair was too, so I couldn’t understand why everything I tried to read was blurry. I made and appointment for a re-check and the optomitrist determined that the part of the lenses that I am supposed to read through was too low. So a new pair of glasses are coming in a few weeks! I also ordered a new pair of sunglasses while I was there since my last pair is five years old and the lenses are quite scratched. I’m looking forward to being able to read text clearly again.

-Another new thing coming my way – a new laptop. If you remember my laptop died during tech week of my last show. The Husband has ordered me a new one and I’m excited to set it up and get to work. The old laptop top was at least five or six years old, which seems like it should last longer than that…?

-Tap dancing lessons!!!! I am so super excited for this one. The parent child tap lessons I signed up for start this week. I ordered a pair of tap shoes and they just arrived and I immediately tried them on and tapped around the house. I had zero clue what I was doing, but there is something so very satisfying about that tap tap tap sound.

-Starting the high school choice process with the 13 year old. Where we live, 8th graders can lottery into any one of 5 high schools in our general area and September/October is when all the schools have open houses and you can see what different programs are offered. If you home school is your first choice, you automatically get in. Though I just found out, if you don’t submit a form, you don’t necessarily get into your home school. I can’t even think about what the spreadsheets and what nots are for determining results. So okay, I’m not “looking forward” to this in the “can’t wait, I’m so excited!!!!” kind of way. It’s more like, “I have no idea what this process is like and I am eager for more information.” This is another reason I’m glad we pulled back on activities this Fall – there is at least one open house a week for the next four weeks.

-Chorus rehearsals. Work is slowly starting back up and the first big things I have to do are run chorus music rehearsals. These are the rehearsals where the chorus learns their music. It means I’ll be working evenings again, which is kind of a bummer, but I’m looking forward to seeing many familiar faces again.

What we ate– After a super busy summer, I’m really loving being able to dive into cooking dinner again, and having the time to sit and eat together as a family. (Another plus of less busy evenings.) Although now that I look at the week, I didn’t actually cook dinner all that much….

Tuesday: Pulled pork and coleslaw tacos. The pulled pork and coleslaw was leftover from the Husband’s smoking endeavor the day before.

Wednesday: I had pizza on a pirate ship. The rest of the family had breakfast sandwiches.

Thursday: Roasted Salmon and potatoes with chimichurri sauce and steamed green beans. This was the 13 year old’s night of cooking.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee. Because the 8 year old has soccer practice on Friday nights, we might go back to watching episodes of tv rather than a whole movie on Friday nights. Or maybe we’ll just watch shorter movies? TBD.

Saturday: Dinner at our friend’s house- she had a huge food spread – falafel and sausage and veggies and fruit. I brought two peach cobblers – a cardamon cobbler and a ginger buttermilk cobbler.

Sunday: Curry shrimp with peppers and cabbage, served with rice. This was a quick thrown together dinner from the cookbook Make This Tonight that I had borrowed from the library then lost and so I paid for it, but then we found the cook book in, of all places, the toy room closet (I’m a little salty about that – it’s a bit of a black hole) and so just decided to keep it. The recipes are pretty simple and straightforward, which is good for weeknight cooking. This curry shrimp was basically toss shrimp in curry powder, sauté peppers and onions (I added the cabbage myself), throw in shrimp and cook until they are done. Add more curry powder. Eat with rice.

Hope everyone had a lovely week – I feel like I’m posting a little later in the week than normal and the weekend is already here! The weekend is kind of packed for us, but all good things, I hope.

Any changes to systems or routines lately? Have you ever tap danced? What is your entry way/ landing strip like? Does your house have a black hole? What should the 13 year old learn to make next for dinner? Anyone else enjoy watching tennis speeches?

Books Read, August 2024

I really enjoyed reading in August, and managed to read more than I do most months. Lately, I’m trying to have dedicated reading time. Yes, I still always have a book (or four) on Libby to pull out when I’m standing in line or waiting for something, but I’ve realized that for me, reading breeds reading; the more uninterrupted reading time I have, the more I enjoy books. And in turn, the more I enjoy reading books, the more I want to read books and the more likely I’ll reach for a book when I have pockets of time.

Not getting interrupted allows me to get into the flow of the story and remember details. There are books that are good adventures, propulsive plots of which I don’t have to remember all the details – these often make good audiobooks for me and I can tune in or out but still get the gist of the story. But a books that a rich in detail and character, books that I like to savor and think about – these books for me benefit from having uninterrupted reading time. I’ve read a few books this year that I’ve really liked, and I think I would have liked them even better if I had gotten to read them in more concentrated chunks, if I had been allowed to sink into them more. Not necessarily in one sitting – I don’t by any means read that fast – but maybe twenty or thirty minutes at a time.

When I only get to read here and there, in the grocery line, or waiting for pick up, or when I’m constantly interrupted by sibling squabbles – I find I don’t connect with what I’m reading as much. I think some of it is an attention span thing- I just get out of practice of concentrating for longer than a few minutes at a time. Maybe, also, I don’t let myself get too invested because I know I will only get to read a small chunk? Perhaps it’s like with any hobby – doing it in an unhurried manner, giving an activity your time and attention allows savoring and makes it more fulfilling. Investing in something you enjoy means not just investing money but also investing time. Anyhow, I’m trying to invest more of my time to uninterrupted reading so that reading may beget more reading. Because books are really awesome.

Anyhow, on to August Books:

Swept Away by Beth O’Leary read by Conor Swindells and Rebekah Hinds: This novel tells about a one night stand on a house boat that becomes a twelve day stand when the boat is swept out to sea. I really enjoyed this book – the characters were smart, with just enough baggage to be interesting, but no so much that it weighed down the story. I enjoyed following the perils and adventures as Zeke and Lexi worked together to survive with dwindling food, no cell service, and no power. There is also a seagull that figures prominently. There is some typical romance novel third act silliness, but not silly enough to bother me. The audiobook narrators were fantastic and full of personality.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good – This novel by a British Columbia author of Cree and French Canadian heritage tells the interconnected stories of five teenagers who struggle to rebuild their lives after leaving an Indian residential school in British Columbia. I thought these were important stories to tell and that each character has an interesting arc – the stories are heartbreaking and at the same time filled with little triumphs. However, I didn’t enjoy the writing. I thought the prose was very stolid and plain, almost stilted, and the structure of the book was a little confusing at times, jumping back in forth in the timeline. I couldn’t tell if these things were signs of a specific writing technique or a lack of writing technique, but I wanted the writing to sing a bit more than it did.

Knockout by Sarah MacLean – this is the third book in the Hell’s Belle’s series, about a quartet of women out to bring down the scum of high society. I think it’s my favorite so far. Lady Imogen Loveless is an explosives expert. Tommy Peck is a brilliant detective. Of course their paths intersect. I really liked these two protagonists – Imogen was just a bit daffy, but not enough to be annoying, and she was brilliantly smart. Tommy’s working class background is a nice departure in a genre that is often full of dukes and aristocrats. But I will say, when you have a book series centered around a group of very strong willed, independent, ass-kicking women, their heros all kind of start feeling the same. As much as I enjoyed the chemistry and antics of Imogen and Tommy, Tommy had the same “I’m exasperated by your antics and am going to try to come to your rescue all the time,” air that all the other men in the series had so far. But then again, romance novels often thrive on familiar tropes. The writing, as always, is reliably solid and witty and I can’t wait for the fourth book to come out.

The Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki – The Husband recommended this novel – it’s set in the part of Southern California where I grew up and where my parents now live. And a donut store features prominently. I thought this book was fantastic. The plot features so many threads that you wouldn’t think it would work, but it does. There’s the trans teenager running away from home, with just her cheap violin and her wits and courage. There’s the brilliant violin teacher who made a deal with the devil. There are the refugees from another galaxy who run a donut store as it is the key to returning home. There is the potter who is running the family’s violin repair store, a store that has been in their family for generations. There are tangerines. I thought this was a beautiful book, and I want to read it again to sink into all the details – the book is feel good, cozy, smart but also doesn’t shy away from pain and difficult situations. Also when I figured out where the titles came from I gasped in wonder – the writing is pretty beautiful, each word or phrase or image so precise and well suited. Also – Bartok’s sonata for solo violin plays a big part in the book, which the music nerd in me just loved. Science fiction isn’t really a genre I read a lot of, but this one was so grounded in things that I know and love, and the writing was so good, that it felt really accessible to me.

One of my favorite passages was this one, when Lan (the alien captain) and Shizuka (the violin teacher) meet at an Olive Garden:
Lan ate one, [bread stick] then the other. She looked at Shizuka in horror.
“Oh no! I ate your bread stick, too.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll bring more.”
“Really?”
Shisuka tilted her head. “Lan, haven’t you traveled the galaxy? I mean, surely you’ve been to much nice places than an Olive Garden in Cerritos.”
Cerritos is a very Asian, very bland, very functional suburban area in Southern California, near where I grew up. This comment made me laugh.

Or this one, the potter training her son on how to mend a violin:
“Andrew, careful means watch what you are doing. Careful does not mean be indecisive.”

I need to embrace that more.

The Beast Takes a Bride by Julie Anne Long – The latest in her Palace of Rogues series that takes place in a boarding house along the Thames. I didn’t love this book as much as My Season of Scandal, but I did like it a lot. This is a second chance romance between two people who are married, but have been separated for five years because of things that happened on the night they got married. The story of how Alexandra and her husband Magnus get back together is classic Julie Anne Long- well-written angst and longing with an incandescent resolution. That part of the story I really loved. I have a few quibbles though – first of all, the story starts with Alexandra in jail which lent a certain humor and quirkiness to her character that is never really explored. She turns out to be a little dull, which is actually kind of the point of her character, but I wanted her to be a little less dull. Also most of the story is told from her POV, so Magnus remains in large part a mystery, and I kind of miss getting to understand his transformation from the inside out the way that we see Alexandra’s. Also while I love the antics of the Grand Palace on the Thames, it really threw the pacing off in this story. The parts that didn’t feature the main romantic couple were all well written and funny, but I think in past books, the antics meshed more seamlessly with the main love story, and in this one they didn’t. Having said all that though, I thought the story of Alexandra and Magnus was really well crafted and the conflict was thoughtfully laid out. The cover, though, doesn’t really have a lot to do with the book. I think her covers are getting worse and worse as the series goes on.

Tru Biz by Sara Novic – I thought that this novel set in a boarding school for Deaf teenagers was pretty great. First of all, the plot is interespersed with chapters that explain parts of Deaf history and culture. As someone who is unfamiliar with any of that context, it was so eye opening. The sections that talked about the nuances of sign language were fascinating. Also Alexander Graham Bell had so much more going on than just inventing the telephone. The actual story itself was absorbing too – the story tells the story of two students at the school, and the head mistress of the school. Their stories seem very separate at first, but then come together as plot like things happen. There is some very risky teen behavior going on, and some grown up problems involving the complicated world of running a deaf school, and things like cochlear implants. I thought the ending felt a little unresolved, but in the notes at the end, the author says that she left the end a little open because she wanted these characters, these Deaf characters, to live on in the reader’s mind, so that the reader doesn’t just leave them in the book, but takes them, and Deaf culture, out into the world. I really loved that thought and it makes me see unresolved endings in a whole new light.

On my proverbial Night Stand

Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg – still working my way through this biography of Winnie and Nelson Mandela. There is some seriously messed up shit going on that certainly didn’t make it into Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.

Hum in You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais – A ten year old girl and Xhosa widow’s lives come together in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprisings.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett – Curmudgeonly academic goes to a remote Northern Island to research faeries. Breezy and ironic in tone, but moving at a slow pace. Or maybe I’m just reading it at a slow pace?

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, read by Ray Porter – I don’t pretend to understand the science bits, but the human bits are really wonderful.

How was your reading life last month? Are you able to find satisfaction in reading in fits and starts, or do you find you need longer uninterrupted time for reading?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to School, Labor Day Weekend, and Moments not Mine

Beautiful skies and trees at the botanical gardens.

Hello from the other aide of Labor Day Weekend. We’ve turned the calendar to September and I feel like we now begin the new year in earnest- it’s a new school year and a new opera season. New activities beginning!

Sunday felt like the perfect end-of-summer day. We slept in – just late enough to feel luxurious, but not so late as to feel indolent. Which for us is 7:30/8am. Then I decided that I wanted to have special breakfast, so I made waffles. I usually make the buttermilk waffles from King Arthur Flour Baking Companion, only this time the 5 year old wanted me to put rainbow sprinkles in them, and I also made a blueberry waffle. I’d never put add ins in my waffles before, so I didn’t know how it would turn out – they turned out great.

After breakfast, we went to the farmer’s market. I biked with the 8 year old while the Husband and the other two kids took the metro. I was really impressed by the 8 year old – the bike ride is the same one I take to work. It’s about five miles and there is a big hill at the end. I often have to walk my bike up that hill, but the 8 year old put his bike in a low gear and kept pedaling up the hill. He did rest once, but then kept going. I’m loving how much he’s loving his bike. One vent, though, is that right before the big hill, is a stop light so ideally you get a green light and can accelerate through the light on a higher gear and get some momentum up the hill. Only you know those Lime Bikes? They’re those bike share e-bikes that you can find randomly around. Well, someone had left a Lime Bike in the middle of the sidewalk on the other side of the stop light. So we had to stop and any momentum we got coming out of the stop light was lost. I got SO MAD. I might have not too gently pushed the Lime Bike over and dragged it off the sidewalk. Sooooo annoying.

Anyhow, despite that we got to the Farmer’s Market where we bought vegetables (peppers, cucumbers, spinach, potatoes) and peaches and nectarines. There was not a huge peach sale this time, so we did not come home with a $25 crate of peaches. After the market, we all took the metro home. The ride was a little odd because we ran into the 13 year old’s math teacher, which it’s always a little awkward seeing one’s teachers out in the wild.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out in the backyard. The Husband was finally setting up the smoker that he had gotten a few months ago. Setting up the smoker involved cooking two pounds of bacon. “What are we going to do with two lbs of bacon?” I asked the Husband.

Apparently we were just going to eat it. The Husband doesn’t eat bacon, but the other four of us – we polished off that two lbs in less than an hour. It was tasty. No regrets there. Yet.

It was such a nice chill afternoon in the backyard. We planned the 5 year old’s upcoming birthday party. We talked to the 8 year old about some upcoming activity plans. I played a bit of soccer with the 8 year old backyard. I finished a book and flipped through the first few pages of a few options for my next read. I think if you had told me that I was going to spend three hours in my backyard reading and “life-ing”, I would have kind of thought, “What a waste of time. Shouldn’t I go organize my desk or something like that?” But you know what? It was just perfect. I guess this is what people do with weekends when they don’t have to rush off to activities or work.

Oh and then after that, we had a family cuddle session on the 13 year old’s bed. She had put “Family hug” on the calendar during the previous day’s family meeting. The Husband pointed out that we could hug for longer if we were on a bed, so we all piled into her bed and had an hour of cuddle time. Well I guess the Husband, the 13 year old, and I cuddled. The 5 year old and the 8 year old climbed all over us. It wasn’t relaxing, per se, but it was nice bonding time. Then I got up, and made dinner.

After dinner, I took the two little kids to the pool for one final raft night. Our pool closes on Labor Day, and since we had plans for Monday, if we wanted to get one last swim in, Sunday was the day. The pool was a little chilly, but we soon got used to it. Plus we had our inflatable rings, so we just floated along and enjoyed the sky and clouds.

The 8 year old took this picture at the pool because he said the sky was beautiful.

When I look back on Sunday, I think, “I would never have planned a day like that. But it was perfect.”

Which was nice because to be honest, the day before was kind of a disaster. We tried to go find a dresser for the 13 year old, driving all the way to Virginia because that is where the folks on Reddit say the best furniture stores in teh area are. Virginia is terrible to drive to/drive in. We looked at lots of furniture but couldn’t decide on what to get. Turns out we have a fundamental difference in overall vision for the 13 year old’s room, basically the disagreement is piece meal furniture vs. bedroom set. (And the 13 year old didn’t really care which way to go.) Most of our furniture in the house was obtained piecemeal, and one of us thought that maybe if we were going to buy one thing for the 13 year old’s room, we should buy a whole set since she didn’t really have a bed and was sleeping on a futon mattress. We spent thirty minutes in the furniture store disagreeing about set vs. piecemeal and finally left without buying anything.

We then tried to go to the really cool and tasty Vietnamese shopping center for lunch, but the parking lot was kind of a madhouse so we abandoned that. People in the van got hungry, then cranky so we ended up at a Laotian restaurant, though that required driving through more confusing traffic patterns. The GPS said it was 0.5 miles away. It was only a short distance away in miles, but it was miles in frustration. So all in all, not a great excursion. (But the food was really good – the crispy tofu lettuce wraps were divine.) I think we are scarred and likely won’t be going deep into the Virginia suburbs again for a long long long long time. (Apologies to any Virginia readers. I’m sure you feel the same way about driving in Maryland.)

All to say, after that disaster of a half day on Saturday, Sunday was everything I needed a long weekend day to be.

Labor Day Monday was our annual trip to the Renaissance Festival. The weather was gorgeous – the past couple of years it has been unbearably hot on Labor Day weekend, which makes the Ren Faire a little bit harder to navigate. But this year, the weather was high 70s, sunny with a breeze, and downright cool in the shade. That might account for the high volume of people going. The traffic was terrible. It usually takes us 40-50 minutes to get to the Faire. This year it took us 90 minutes. I’ve never seen it that bad. So we didn’t get through the gates until nearly 11:00am. (Our friends who were meeting us there took three hours to get there and they only live two miles from us.) I was probably the only one worried about not getting to the Faire right when it opened. The kids were happy in a slow moving van as long as they could put on KPop Demon Hunters and Broadway Show Tunes and sing along at the top of their lungs. I might have joined in.

Once we got to Revel Grove itself, we had a great time. The Ren Faire is such a multi-faceted event. You have all the shows and entertainment, you have the shopping, the eating, there’s the pirate ship playground, and games, and you also have the fun pageantry and people watching. It’s kind of like being in the middle of a parade, what with all the costumes that people were wearing. My favorite costumes I saw this year were the two people dressed up as Galinda and Elphaba, and also a stately older lady in this beautiful golden brocade gown with a headdress that had protruding spikes, as if she were the sun. It was pretty spectacular. The 13 year old’s favorite costume was the guy we saw dressed as Waldo from “Where’s Waldo”.

We saw all the familiar shows, including a 20 minute Macbeth. We saw the jousting. We ate turkey legs and other fried food. We let the kids play at the playground. The kids went through the maze and shot toy crossbows. The 5 year old was finally old enough to do the climbing wall, which she climbed with such ease. Next year she will have to do the “Medium hard” wall, I think. We listened to bagpipes and drums, the music so loud and rhythmic that you could feel the benches vibrate and the music under your skin. Going to the Ren Faire feels so familiar – I feel like we have a good routine and pace for how we tackle the day. I almost worry that we are in a Rem Faire rut, and I think next year we should go see at least a few new to us Acts and maybe try some new foods. I’ve started keeping a list of foods that go over like a lead balloon – so far on the list are the fried green beans (meh, so very much meh) and the apple dumplings (waaay too messy to eat while standing up or taking in a show.)

Leading up to Labor Day, though, was the first week of school. Monday was a “Transition Day” for kindergarteners (also 6th and 9th graders), so the older two kids were off school. After walking the 5 year old to school, we went to the Botanical Gardens and met up with some friends for a walk. In the afternoon, the 13 year old then had a voice lesson via Zoom, and we went to the 8 year old’s open house. The 13 year old did not have an open house. I guess at a certain point, they just expect you to show up at school and figure it out.

Then on Tuesday, everyone went back to school. Yay! I am so excited for the new school year, the new teachers, the new friends, and new routines. Everyone seemed to have a good first week of school. The 5 year old is excited to go every day, though she says they sit a lot. The 8 year old seems to like his teacher and the 13 year old – well, I think she likes the independence that she has at school.

Obligatory First Day of School picture. I don’t do first day signs though I love the idea. The 13 year old leaves for school an hour and half before the other two so I was lucky just to have everyone dressed to be in a first day picture together.

Fun fact – the 5 year old wore the same dress that her big sister wore to her first day of kindergarten. We even sort of recreated the picture from eight years ago:

I was thinking recently about how life with little kids seemed/ seems interminable for me. I look at the 5 year old and, also to some extent the 8 year old and think, “How are you still so young? It seems as if you’ve been little forever.” I wouldn’t wish the years away, but it does seem as if we’ve been in the “parenting littles” phase for such. a. long. time.

But, at the opposite end, with the 13 year old, time is flying. I am so acutely aware of (and completely unprepared for) the fact that she will go to high school next year; that two year (and change) from now she will be learning how to drive; that the years we have with her at home are fewer and fewer. We now have more years behind us than in front of us with her at home. (Unless she lives at home for college, which is actually a very real possibility. But that’s a future thing…)

Time passes simultaneously quickly and slowly when I look at my children. Sometimes it feels as if I’m living on two different timelines, parallel yet not quite concurrent. I was thinking that this slight dissonance is because as kids grow older, I’m getting fewer and fewer pieces of them. When kids are little, they are all ours – there is so much of them, a surfeit of responsibility, care, attention. When they are first born, they are with us 24/7. And even in the early years, they are either at school/daycare or with a parent. We take them to school, we feed them their meals, we take them to activities, even participating in those activities with them. Time with them moves slowly because there is so much of it.

But as they grow older and need us less and less, they also give us less and less. The 13 year old still wants time to cuddle and watch New Girl, but these days she also wants time alone. And coupled with all the time she spends at school, at basketball, at various lessons and activities, most of which she gets herself to and from – well, my time with her is just pockets. There is less of it – which is why, I think time with her goes much faster; there is just so little of it on a day to day basis. There’s a sense of time scarcity with the 13 year old that I don’t have with the younger kids. It’s not just that the years are fewer, but also that the moments are fewer. And on top that, the moments are no longer mine.

So here’s to savoring those moments I do get to share with her, and also letting her have her own moments as she becomes her own person.

Grateful For:

– Summer evenings with just the right amount of chill and light to remind me to savor the moments before winter is upon us.

-The Lenten Book Group and my friend who invited me to join two years ago. We had a meeting last week where we talked about Mary and Martha, and the Good Samaritan. I’ve always, to be quite honest, been bothered by the story of Mary and Martha. (Cliff Notes: Jesus comes to teach at Martha’s house and her sister Mary sits at his feet and listens while Martha works to prepare the house, serve the food, etc. Martha gets resentful and asks Jesus to make Mary help her, but Jesus says that what Mary is doing is important too.) We had a great discussion about actions being the manifestation of love, but also how sometimes just putting things down and listening is important too.

-School bus drivers, teachers, principals, and school administrators. Bless them all.

-A new bus route. We have switched the two elementary school kids to a different afternoon bus route that drops the kids by 4:15pm to a stop that is next to a park and walking distance from home. This bus was always an option, but in past years it didn’t drop off until close to 5pm. They’ve streamlined the bus routes this year, and while some parents are upset, it works out better for us. I’ll miss our friends at the old bus stop, but this new stop is so much better for life – the kids get off the bus sooner, and I can even can go to the playground for 20 minutes and still get home in time to make dinner. Also, the 13 year old can go down to the bus stop and shoot baskets while waiting for the kids and then walk them home. Anything we can do to minimize time in the car is a plus for me.

-Metro workers. On the train home from the Farmer’s Market, a man on our train car collapsed out of his seat. I went over to see if he needed help and he seemed a little incoherent, which was a little concerning. We had to get off at the next stop, so I told the Metro conductor, and I think he called for help because a police car and fire truck pulled up as we were leaving the station. I’m so grateful that there are people to help in those situations because I really felt out of my depths.

– The plethora of Ethiopian markets nearby where I can readily get injera. I had some time to kill between errands one day and realized I was in walking distance of two Ethiopian stores, so I stopped by one to pick up some injera. I love the stuff and can eat a whole package by myself. I hear it’s complicated to make, so I’m am grateful I don’t have to make it myself.

-This belt bag that I got as a hand me down from my cousin. I never thought I’d be a belt bag person, but it perfectly fits my phone, wallet, keys, and sunglasses, which makes it so handy when I’m out on my bike or am just running a quick errand, or to stuff in the swim bag. Hand me downs for the win!

Looking forward to:
-going to our friend’s house out in Southern Maryland. She’s closing her pool for the season soon and invited us up for one last swim. I’ll be making that peach cobbler again.

-Lunch and happy hours with friends. I tend to fill my social calendar up when I’m not working because my evenings and weekends get very packed when I am working. So I have lots of meet ups scheduled in the next couple of weeks.

-Riding bikes to school. This is a “Looking forward to” that is at least a year out. The 8 year old and I rode our bikes to his 3rd grade open house. It took just 15 minutes to get to school (though it took 8 minutes to find a bike rack and lock up the bikes…), and there is a trail almost all the way there. There is one major road to cross, but it has a traffic light there and lots of other foot traffic, so it’s not dangerous. I would feel pretty safe letting the kids ride their bikes the 2.3 miles to school. Right now, the limiting factor is the 5 year old doesn’t ride a bike yet, but once she figures it out, I can totally see the two of them biking to school together, and myself going with them sometimes. Their school is actually half way to my work, so it would be a convenient family commute.

-Back to School Night for the Elementary school kids. The middle school BTSN was last week (on the third day of school!) and that one was a lot of fun – we got to follow our 13 year old’s schedule and go from class to class. Being able to walk her paths gave me a lot of insight into how chaotic her days are.

-Fall cooking projects: I’ve decided that I’m going to try to make dosa from scratch this fall. Also I never got around to making Japanese milk bread and that is still on my list. And the 8 year old wants to make tang hulu (Sugar coated strawberries) since he missed out when we made it earlier this summer. I’m kind of leaning into the idea of having some good homemade snacks for when the kids get home from school.

-Reading this book:

Set near Johannesburg, it’s one of the books I had picked up to read while in South Africa, but I ended up not bringing it on the trip. This novel tells the story of a 10 year old white girl and a Xhosa widow whose lives intersect in a tragic way.

What We Ate:

Monday: Tomato and Zucchini Tart and Cucumber Avocado Salad. Really leaning into the summer produce for this meal. The Tart was super simple – pre-made pastry dough, covered with a mixture of cream cheese and mustard blended together, and covered with sliced tomato and zucchini. The cucumber avocado salad, was inspired by Julie, though not the exact of the one she posted.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! Shrimp and chicken tacos, made on the grill. I had a jar of green salsa of indeterminate origins so I used that to marinate the chicken. The family devoured this. I made 1 lb of shrimp and 2 lbs of chicken and it was all inhaled. I felt bad because we had a friend coming for dinner and she was running late so I fed the kids first and our friend only got two tacos because that’s all that was left. Oh, and for dessert I made peach cobbler, recipe from the NY Times. I’ve never made a peach cobbler before – friends! cobbler is SO fast and easy! And delicious! Will make again. (And I’m going to – see above about visiting our friend in southern Maryland.)

Wednesday: Dinner at Ikea as we went on our mission for a dresser for the 13 year old. The mission was a fail. But the meatballs were tasty.

Thursday: Meera Sodha’s Green Pasta – Trying to use up all the basil in our yard. I really like this pasta – you blend blanched spinach, basil, parsley, lemon juice, silken tofu and nutritional yeast into a creamy savory sauce for pasta. Then you top it with this olive/lemon/olive oil mixture. Well I did – the rest of family doesn’t care for olives. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza (carry out) and Dodge Ball. The 13 year old originally wanted to watch Forest Gump, but then realized it’s actually kind of a downer of a movie plus it’s kind of long, so she picked Dodge Ball instead. Which… I have to say, some of it is still hilarious (“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!”), but a lot of it is sexist, homo-phobic, body-shaming frat boy humor that hasn’t aged well for me. The kids liked it, but I gave a lot of disclaimers as we went along.

Saturday: The little kids and I went to a birthday party where there was pizza, snacks, and a cookie cake. The Husband and 13 year old went out for cheesesteaks. I was still hungry when I came home so I had angel hair pasta with the leftover olive oil/lemon/olive mixture from Thursday night.

Sunday: Sweet and sour eggplant with garlic chips, served with rice. Recipe from NY Times Cooking. Easy stir fry with the sweetest, silkiest Japanese Eggplant from the farmer’s market. I also added green beans and carrots since I realized that recipes that say “2-4 servings” won’t feed our family. Vegan.

Monday: Smoked pork sandwiches with Coleslaw. The Husband’s first smoking project was a delicious success. I’m not sure if he will become one of those guys who tries to smoke everything and spends all weekend with his smoker. From what he described to me, smoking meat is a combination of leisurely hands off and attending to the temperature of the smoker as if it were a colicky baby.

Hope you all have a lovely start to September.

What parts of life seem interminable to you? What parts seem to go quickly? Are you team furniture set or team piecemeal furniture? Any fun cooking projects lately? Have you ever made dosa from scratch? Any favorite movies from your youth that haven’t aged well for you?