March 2026 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Sick Week MVPs

The first blossom sightings of the year! I think these are red buds.

After leaving readers on a bit of a cliffhanger last week when I posted from the waiting room of Urgent Care, I’m sure everyone was eager for the verdict. drumroll please…. the result of tests was…. Influenza B. I fully admit that I did not get a flu shot this year, so maybe I’m to blame, but…. the 14 year old also got diagnosed with influenza over the weekend, and she did get a flu shot – which she is a little salty about. But I hear that it’s been a particularly bad year for Influenza B. Well, I guess it’s been a good year for influenza, but a bad year for the rest of us who get it…

All that to say, all last week I was in a cycle of debilitating tiredness, taking the kids to school, coming home and sleeping all day, then feeling better mid afternoon and going to work in the evening. Then coming home, going to bed, and feeling like crap again in the morning and the cycle began again. I am the worst patient. Luckily I had Thursday and Friday off work and was able to fully rest. I did drag myself out of bed for a ninety minute meeting on Teams on Thursday, but otherwise stayed under the covers. I cancelled Happy Hour plans I had, and I cancelled plans to meet up at the trampoline park with my friends when the kids were off school. Which was a bummer, but rest and hydration seemed to be the priorities of the day.

I don’t remember the last time I was laid up for so many days, and it’s made me feel like the month has disappeared. Between tech week (twice! for two different shows) and a sick week, I blinked and woosh… next week will be April. I feel like before I got sick or went into tech, we were still deeply in winter. And now I’ve emerged and there are blossoms on trees and the hyacinths are blooming and fragrant along our front walk. Oh well. I do believe my body likes to tell me when I need to slow down and it was clearly telling me that I needed to slow down now.

On top of rest and water, there are a few things that got me through last week. These are my sick week MVPs:

-Hot Lemonade. When I’m sick I like having hot liquids. This is one of my favorite things to drink- lemon juice mixed with hot water and a drizzle of honey stirred in. The tart lemon is bracing and helps clear the gunk from my throat, the touch of honey helps things go down.

-Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice. My cold drink of choice when I’m sick. Like hot lemonade, it balances tart and sweet.

-Cool green grapes. I don’t have much of an appetite when I’m sick, but I did eat a lot of green grapes, their chilled flesh soothing my throat as I swallowed. I had bought some enormous grapes from Hmart the week before and they were perfect for a sick day. I swear each grape was the size of a marble shooter.

-Kleenex.

-Musical Cast Albums. I’m not the kind of person that can sleep for 48 hours straight. At some point I’ll move into that “tired but not sleepy” phase and then I’ll start feeling restless and bored. This is the danger zone for me. When I get restless and bored, I will get out of bed and look for things to do, and that will tire me out and I’ll be back at square one. So the trick is finding low key ways to help me through restless and bored. I know some people like to watch movies when they are sick, but I have such bad eye-sight that I would need to keep my glasses on to watch movies. When I’m sick, I like to leave my glasses off, so watching movies isn’t an option. So instead of watching movies, I listen to Broadway musicals as a low spoons way to rest without being too bored. This time around I listened to Side Show, Bridges of Madison County, and Caroline or Change, all of which were new to me.

-Audiobooks. Similar to listening to musicals, I like audiobooks when I’m sick because I can be slightly entertained while laying in bed. This time around I listening to the Alexis Hall novel Looking For Group. To be honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to the story – it was centered around Drew, who spends his time playing MMORPG – which for those who, like me, don’t know what that is, it stands for “Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game.” The book starts with a glossary of terms and I was immediately lost. I liked the witty sentences, I liked the snarky and funny characters. I loved Will Watt’s low dulcet oh so expressive tones. I could not tell you what happened in the book.

-Hot water bottle. I have an old fashioned rubber hot water bottle, purchased in a thrift store of a Colorado mountain town for $2. It keeps my bed warm and I love it.

-Cozy blankets. I love nothing more than being buried under a pile of blankets.

-The hot water boiler. Still my favorite purchase so far this year. Hot water at the push of a button.

-The Husband. Okay, he is the REAL MVP of my sick week. The Husband kept things running. He cooked dinner. He cleaned up after dinner. He took the kids to see the high school production of In the Heights (I’m sorry I missed that one – they all reported it was very very good.) He kept an eye on them when they were off school and I couldn’t get out of bed. He watched the first games of March Madness with them. He took the little kids to skating lessons, and then on a bike ride. He took the oldest kid to the doctor’s. He picked up my prescription. He gardened. He folded laundry. He got the kids to fold laundry. I mean the list goes on and on and on. Last week Stephany had a post where she pondered how people recover from sickness with kids around. Well, my answer is… I don’t, and I’m very grateful for the Husband that I don’t have to.

Anyhow, I’m slowly feeling more normal again. I’ve been able to go outside for some walks and enjoy the spring sunshine. I did a couple 15-20 minute gentle yoga videos. I took a hot shower. It’s funny how those things – sunshine, stretching, and showers – can all help me feel like a human after being sick. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% back to normal now, but I’m mostly there.

I usually write my weekly gratitude list at this point in the post, but all my weekly gratitudes this week would be all the sick week MVPs that I listed above, so check!

Looking Forward To:
-Peak bloom! Peak bloom! Peak Bloom! Peak Cherry Blossom Bloom is right around the corner. We are currently in stage 5 of 6. The earliest prediction is for peak bloom to arrive this weekend. Next week is Spring Break, so I think the kids and I will go downtown to walk among the cherry blossoms one day.

– Middle School STEM Night. The 14 year old and her friend did an experiment that involved baking lots of cup cakes. I’ve never been to STEM Night before, so I figured this might be a good year to go.

-March Madness has begun. We look forward to watching the Men’s and Women’s games. I’m not rooting for any particular team this year – neither team from the Husband’s alma mater made the bracket and the women’s team from my alma mater was, but they didn’t make it past the first round. In general, I like to root for whomever is losing because I love a good come from behind story.

-Spring soccer season for the 9 year old.

– Doing normal things like cooking dinner and picking up my bedroom. I’ve really missed doing these domestic things while I was sick. Not sure why. I hate picking up my bedroom normally but now I can’t wait to do it.

-Just started this book:

It’s an Age of Innocence re-telling set in present day Jewish society in London. I was inspired to pick it up because I’d never seen an Age of Innocence re-telling and given that I had just read the Wharton novel for Cool Blogger’s Book Club, it was fresh on my mind.
Also – side note, when I went to google for this book, another book with the same titles popped up. That book is about two orphans isolated in a Newfoundland cove. That one also sounds really interesting. I love the idea of reading two books with the same title.

What We Ate: Damned if I know. I think there was freezer soup one night. Pizza on Friday as always. The rest – I have no clue. The family was fed and that’s all that matters.

Well, that’s it for now. This week looks bright and sunny. I close another show on Sunday and then there’s Spring Break. We aren’t going anywhere, but we’ll have some local adventures, and maybe just some time to rest. And finish my taxes. And have some ham for Easter. I need to think about Easter menu. I see everyone having amazing travel adventures, and I have to be honest I do feel a little jealous. We don’t have any travel plans in the future. I think after a big travel year last year (Taiwan/Malaysia, South Africa, and Taiwan again), the idea of getting on a plane again seemed… like a lot. So we’ll be here for Spring Break – and, you know what, that’s not terrible. I’m going to lean into having some good family time with my kids while they are off school and before I plunge back into another busy season at work.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech week recovery

You know when you draft a post and then life hits you and you don’t post it and the post sits in your drafts folder? Well this is that post…. i had meant to publish it three days ago, but then I’ve been in bed with something the past few days. And now I’m sitting in urgent care so I can figure out what this something is. So why not go ahead and publish, while watching HGTV in the waiting room….

What was that bonkers weather we had here in the DC area last week? The first part of the week was so warm – in the 80s – I thought it was already summer. Then Thursday – SNOW! I thought we had moved past that. And it’s been chilly ever since. Crisp and clear and sunny, but still chilly. And Monday, the kids were released two hours early from school because of an impending tornado. That never happened.

Anyhow, it’s been a bit of a “recover from tech week” week. I had Monday off from work, and that really messed with my mind a little bit. Plus the time change – by mid week I had lost all sense of what day of the week it was. I felt like I just couldn’t catch up, and small things kept going wrong.

This week’s annoyances:
– I broke the interior handle on the driver side of my car. I don’t know what happened. I pulled the handle and it just got stuck. The exterior handle still works. So now I have to either get someone to let me out of the car, climb out another door (which – that parking brake makes that really painful) or I roll down the window, stick my hand out to open the door from the outside, then roll the window back up … all before I can turn off the car. It’s kind of annoying. It’s also kind of funny.

-I waited too late to sign up the 14 year old for a camp she really wanted to do and now it’s wait list only. I feel really terrible about this one. BUT also – the website kept saying that registration was still open, and it’s only when you click over to start the registration that the window that says “Waitlist only” popped up. I feel like this information should be on the website itself.

-Some unbloggable work things where people had big feelings, and I also had big feelings, but I can’t talk about them without throwing other people under the bus.

-My uncle (my dad’s younger brother) passed away. He lived in Taiwan, so I didn’t see him a whole lot, but my father was very close to him.

-I was late to bus pick up.

-General feeling of tiredness, myself and the kids. We had planned to go contra dancing last week but just couldn’t rally. There was one day when I just felt really run down and went to bed after dinner. The 9 year old got sent home from school one day because he was running a fever, and then proceeded to sleep until the next morning. I think we all just need a week of rest and cuddles.

Okay – so I guess lots of tiny things that made the week feel … ugh. Let’s not even mention news on the international/ national front. That is really hard to wrap my head around. BUT… maybe my malaise on the domestic front is just par for the course after tech week. Everything- the physical tasks and also the mental and emotional stuff- that I had been putting off while I worked on my show, just comes to the fore after opening.

I was having a conversation with a fellow stage manager, and she was saying that the third day after she comes home from a gig after being out of town, she is suddenly hit with a wave of restlessness and that “off” feeling where nothing is in the right place and her husband has let the house fall apart. And she said that after years and years of going away and coming home, she has realized that this is just the rhythm of coming off a gig. And she can now mentally tell herself, “Life isn’t falling apart- it’s just the emotional pattern of coming home.” So either she makes herself clean on day two, or on day three she reminds herself to give everyone grace. I know I’ve been working on shows and getting through tech week for twenty years, and yet I still have trouble managing the post tech mental and emotional and physical and household fall out. There has to be better strategies?

The highlight of our weekend was going to see a play – The Sea Between the Oceans. This is the Theatre for Young Artist (TYA) show that the Kennedy Center’s education department commissioned and produced. Sadly, it might be the last TYA show that the KC Education Department produces for a good long while, given current circumstances. This play was soooooo good! It tells the story of a 10 year old boy who goes to visit his favorite author to try to get her to finish the last book in her series. The play slips between the story being told in the book series (to do with pirates and adventures on the high seas) and the the story of the boy and the author. It was an hour and a half of adventure, sword fights, family drama, found family, and the power of books. I might have had a few moist eye moments. I was so inspired by the play that at bedtimes that evening we spent thirty minutes reading aloud, something which we hadn’t done for a while.

I need to take a minute to shout out TYA shows. TYA is a certain category of theatre contract that is devoted to, obviously, young audiences. While those involved aren’t paid as much as a non-TYA show, the hours of rehearsal are limited so that people can still find other work around the rehearsal hours. But even still, the shows are given the same I’m really embarrassed that I had never seen a TYA show at the Kennedy Center before because this one was so so so good and such a brilliant entry point for kids to experience the magic of theatre.

Sunday I took the 6 year old to agility class then went to work. I ran a show (the last performance of the run), had tater tots for dinner with my team as a last hurrah, watched a little bit of tech for the show after mine then went home and watched the last ninety minutes of the Oscars.

I’ve seen exactly zero of the best picture nominees, so that held little interest for me. What I was there for was KPop Demon Hunters which was up for Best Animated Film and Best Song. I loved this quote by the Maggie Kang, the co- director and writer, accepting the Best Animated Film award:

“Thank you to the academy and to all the fans who got us here. And for those of you who look like me, I’m so sorry that it took us so long to see us in a movie like this. But it is here, and that means that the next generations don’t have to go long.”

Growing up there wasn’t a lot of Asian representation in mainstream media, so I still get so very very excited when I see Asian faces on screens these days.

Grateful For:
-Evenings at home. I only had to work one evening the past week, so I got to be home for dinner and evening and bedtime routines. One evening we played Parcheesi – we hadn’t had a game night as a family in a long time. I have mixed feelings about Parcheesi – there is the opportunity to be a real asshole in the game and some people in the family took that opportunity. I guess they would think of setting up immovable blockades that grind the game to a halt as being “strategic” but it was highly annoying.

-weather nice enough to run outside. I haven’t’ been running outside since last fall. I’ve done a few treadmill runs, but I generally don’t enjoy those. It was wonderful to be out in the sunshine, shuffling along as my slow runner’s pace. Also grateful for the time to run outside.

-That the two little kids packed their own lunches. There was one morning when I was so exhausted that I slept in a little bit. When I got downstairs at 7:45am, I found that the 9 year old and the 6 year old had packed their own lunches. Yes there was mayonnaise all over the counter, but … small price to pay for not having to pack the lunches myself.

-Dogs on paths. While waiting for the 14 year old’s voice lesson the other day, I discovered there is a trail three block from her teacher’s house, so I went for a woodsy ramble. It was nice to be outside and among trees. But the delightful thing is that almost everyone who I passed on the trail had a dog. Sometimes two or three or four. It was such a joy to see the dogs running about.

(Side note – the dogs were all off leash even though the sign at the start of the path said all dogs should be on a leash, no longer than 4 feet. So I did think it was strange that almost every dog I saw was off leash. Dog owners – is this a thing? Or is it just the unspoken rule about this trail? I do wonder if the demographics of that part of town is part of the disregard for the sign? At any rate, I did love seeing all the dogs.)

-It’s Cadbury Mini Egg Season!!!! This is my favorite candy season. I haven’t been to the store in weeks, so I didn’t clock it until the Husband bought me three bags.

-A quiet living room. There were a couple moments this week when I had the living room to myself because the kids had gone to school, and the Husband was quietly working downstairs. A quiet living room, a cozy chair, a cup of tea, and a good book that slowly slides into a nap. It was nice.

-Theatre for Young Audiences.

Looking Forward To:
-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends. We didn’t have on last month, so I’m glad we made time this month. (i had to cancel this because I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday- bummer)

– Day off school. I think my friend and I are going to take our kids to the trampoline park. My friend is the one who just came back from overseas and her son says that one thing he’s missed the most about America was the trampoline parks. (This is TBD, depending on what happens at Urgent care)

-Getting back into a morning routine. After last week of being really tired and sleeping in, even on the weekdays, I want to get back to my morning routine: read, journal, make the bed, and yoga before I need to get into lunches, breakfasts, and cajoling children.

-Spring. Summer. The glimpse of warmer weather that we got this week made me eager for warmer weather and no more cold snow. The hyacinths are starting to bloom along our front walk.

-Reading this book:

I finished a lot of books this week, including The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which I loved, and this is the sequel.

What We Ate:

Monday: Ethiopian- misir wat, tikil gomen. I had bought injera over the weekend, which inspired this meal.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday

Wednesday: Can’t remember. I think the husband cooked something delicious and I went to bed right after because I wasn’t feeling well.

Thursday: Vegetable Tortilla Soup. From NY Times Cooking.

Friday: Pizza and – not sure what the family watched. I was working this evening.

Saturday: We went out to eat after the theatre. I had corned beef and cabbage.

Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce and green beans. Sunday classic.

Books Read January and February 2026

I haven’t done a book recap since the year started, so here is what I’ve read the first two months of 2026.

Automatic Noodle by Anna Lee Newitz – This science fiction novella tells about a group of deactivated robots in a post war future San Francisco who open a noodle shop in an abandoned kitchen. I mean how could I resist hand pulled noodles? This book was quirky and charming, exploring – as books about robots are wont to do – ideas of what it means to be human and challenging ideas of ownership. It’s a book about community and overcoming algorithms. It’s a pretty quick comfort read.

You’re the Problem, It’s You by Emma Alban, read by Chris Devon and Will Watt– This queer Victorian romance is an enemies to lovers story of two men who hate each other, but are constantly thrown in each other’s paths because of various society and family events. I thought it was very ordinary, and a touch longer than it needed to be. Plus enemies to lovers is one of my least favorite tropes in romance. On the other hand, it’s narrated by my audio book boyfriend Will Watt, and when the plot got over long, I just leaned into his mellifluous tones.

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung – This historical fiction novel set in China in 1948, follows Hai Ang the daughter of a prominent family who, along with her mother and younger sisters, are left behind when the rest of their family flees when the Communists come to their village. After Hai is tortured in place of her prosperous family, her mother takes her and her sisters and they being a grueling journey to find the rest of their family. The story is based somewhat on Chung’s family history. I picked up this book to read when I was in Taiwan because the events in this story led to a massive influx of Chinese people into Taiwan – it’s a period of time that my parents lived through as well. I thought this book was gripping – I kept wanting to know what happened and what Hai and her mother would survive each of the challenges put before them. Once they reached Taiwan, though, I thought the story lost a a little momentum. The main heart of this story for me, was Hai’s mother and how she was inextricably tied to this deeply patriarchal society.

The Names by Florence Knapp– I really liked the speculative premise behind this novel- a child is born, his mother must decide what to name him. The story diverges into three paths, each based on which name is chosen. I thought this book was gripping; I stayed up til 4am reading because I needed to know how it ended and what happened to each character. I loved how the storylines intersects through the different realities. Warning, though, domestic violence is a pretty manor plot point, and that was hard for me and kept me from loving the book.

Hum if You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais. I picked up this book last summer because it’s set in South Africa and I was getting ready for our trip there. I didn’t actually get around to reading it until I got back, though. This book is set in 1976 where, in the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings, Beauty Mbali searches for her missing teenage daughter and 9 year old Robin is taken to live with her aunt after her parents are murdered. Circumstances bring Beauty and Robin together and in the shadow of Apartheid they grapple with grief, racism, and loss. I thought this book was really great up til the last quarter of it when it kind of became a slightly ridiculous adventure/espionage story. Overall, though, I found this book to be a real page turner.

Good Spirits by B.K. Borison, read by Karissa Vacker and Will Watt. Another audiobook read by my audiobook boyfriend Will Watt. But aside from Will Watt, this also has another thing that is catnip to me: it’s a spin on Christmas Carol. Ghost of Christmas Past Nolan has been assigned to haunt Harriet York, though neither can figure out why as Harriet is lovely, kind, nice (to the point of being a door mat) with no skeletons in her closet. I really enjoyed this story and how Nolan and Harriet’s relationship unfolded – I was really rooting for both of them and the “ghost loves human” romance had just the right amount of conflict and angst. The ending felt a little unresolved, but that didn’t bother me that much. It’s kind of like a cozy Hallmark Holiday movie with a bit more spice and plot.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This narrative non-fiction read is about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, explored through the lens of the disappearance of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten. The “Memory” part of the subtitle is, I would argue, the focus of the story that Keefe is telling here – how the trauma of war affects those who live through it for the rest of their lives. This is one of those non-fiction books that I read and I can understand how people become radicals, even while asking myself if I would do the same if I were in their place. I really enjoyed the book – it was fascinating and heartbreaking all at once- the kind of book where I could marvel at the details and ingenuity of both sides of the conflict while at the same time being incredibly moved by the tragedy of the situation. Really excellent read.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden, read by Michael Crouch and January LaVoy – I found this book on a list of Audie award winners (audiobook award) and was prompted to pick it up because it starts in Nova Scotia, and that is kind of cat nip for me. It is set during WWI – field nurse Laura Ivan has returned home to Halifax following an injury on the front. She finds out that her brother Freddie has gone missing, presumed dead, but she believes that he is still alive so she accepts a nursing job that will take her back to the front, Belgium to be specific, so that she can look for her brother. In a parallel storyline, the reader follows Freddie who has woken up after an explosion, trapped in a pillbox (I had to Google that) with a German Soldier. As Freddie and Laura’s storylines converge, we encounter wartime plots, people desperate for answers and connection, and a mysterious Innkeeper who plays the violin. There is a bit of a supernatural story here, but one that is so embedded in the minds of people traumatized by war that it doesn’t seem supernatural at all. I loved this book – it took me a little bit of time to really get into this book, but eventually, the story sucked me right in; there is emotional heft in the choices that each character has to make, the characters are brave but not stupid, and the mystery unspools at just the right pace, allowing the reader to piece things together. The writing is lyrical and precise- there were so many sentences where I was blown away by the way Arden strung words together. The author’s note at the end, I thought had a really interesting take on how WWI was a very steampunk era where the old and new collided. I loved this book so much that after I finished the audiobook, I got the physical book from the library. This was my first “heart” in my reading journal for 2026.

Big Bad Wool by Leonie Swann translated by Amy Bojang – This is a sequel to Three Bags Full, a mystery novel in which a flock of sheep hilariously solve mysteries. (Which – I’m am very excited to discover – is about to be a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson – talk about catnip!) In Big Bad Wool, the sheep are at it again. I’ve got to be honest, the mystery part of this novel was completely over my head and at times tedious. I am here for the sheep – they are hilarious, witty, curious, and their observations about human foibles had me laughing out loud many times.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Read for Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club. This was a re-read for me; I had read it maybe twenty five years ago, around when the movie came out. I really loved this book – I loved how immersive the language is and how I felt like I just had to sink into Wharton’s prose world in order to have an idea of what was going on. It’s not a book that tries to hit you over the head right away. So much goes unsaid or is assumed that I think there is much room for interpretations as to what each character is really like or what motivates them. A friend told me that Wharton wrote books about interior design and that makes so much sense because I really felt like she was so precise about the physical world that her characters live in, and that was in stark contrast to how little she said about their true interior world. I mean the novel is from Archer’s POV, but he lacks self awareness and that precision that is present in his exterior world, and this makes his interior musing unreliable. Anyhow, I think this kind of open for interpretation nature of Archer made for some lively debate every week on Engie’s posts. This book checked off one box for my 2026 Classics Reading Challenge.

On my proverbial night stand:
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City Trilogy) by Sarah J. Maas – still plugging away at this book. I just got to the part that had my 14 year old bawling inconsolably. (I’ve never bawled at a book myself, but this was a real doozy and I get why she was inconsolable.)

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K.J. Charles – on audio. Almost done – I have twenty minutes left. I’m really enjoying this one.

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams – also almost done this one. It’s really well written, sweet and sexy and also a great mother/daughter dynamic.

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba – I was reading this as a book set in Africa for my Classics Reading Challenge, but then I realized it was first published in 1979 and the challenge is for books written before 1975. Oh well, I’m going to count it anyway.

How’s your 2026 Reading life so far?

Weekly recap+ what we ate: Good-bye, February! Hello, March!

Another show opened! It has been a hard hard week for me, but the show opened and it looks really stunning. And the audience is super excited to be there; the feeling of good will is palpable.

We’re over a week into March, but I wanted to do a February recap, now that I’m on the other side of tech. I keep wanting to put tech week into this recap, but that was technically March, so it will go into the next recap.

February Highlights:
-New York City Trip with the 14 year old. Seeing Two Strangers (Carry a cake across New York), eating good food, people watching.

-Doing titles for a voice recital that was lovely and featured an elegantly charming set of Post WWI French cafe songs.

– Watching the Olympics. The stunning figure skating pairs long program. The heartbreaking Men’s hockey final. The mad dash of ski Mountaineering. The zen of curling. The colourful opening ceremonies. The opera-filled closing ceremonies.

-Super Bowl Sunday, which was combined with the Husband’s birthday. Seeing lots of friends, eating food, and celebrating. The game itself – couldn’t tell you what happened there. We had the Olympics playing upstairs while the game was downstairs, so I kept floating between events.

-Our Zojirushi hot water boiler. Best new addition to our household. Hot water instantaneously.

-Some warm days – going outside without being all bundled up.

-The 9 year old getting his first library card.

-Two more snow days. One I wasn’t working so I hung out with the kids. The other I had to work, so we paid the 14 year old to watch her siblings. It is kind of amazing not to have to worry about what to do with the kids on a snow day when both the Husband and I have to work.

-Lunar New Year – pineapple cakes, pomelos, and an excuse to get together and eat dim sum with friends.

-Lunch with a friend from college.

-A chill mid-afternoon hangout with two other families. There were sword fights and K-pop dance routines and grown up conversations.

-The 6 year old’s kindergarten performance of Arf!

-Happy Hour with the stage management team at a new-to-me restaurant with $1 oysters during happy hour. I love oysters.

-Watching the 14 year old play basketball.

-Elisabeth’s FIG Club, which encouraged us all to find joy in moments of gratitude during February – such a delight to read everyone’s FIGS.

-Starting rehearsals for a new show. The feeling of homecoming as we finally got down to rehearsal after six weeks (or really, a year) of turmoil at work. Gathering to do work that is familiar to us despite all the changes. I keep hearing the phrase “Flying the plane while building it,” and it did feel like that often. But, you know… when we understand the fundamentals of what needs to be done, the rest is just logistics and figure-out-able.

-Also there’s a banjo in our show. It makes me so happy.

-Favorite meals cooked at home: Ethiopian food (shiro wat, yellow lentils, and fried potatoes, eaten with injera), and Shrimp tacos.

February Lowlights

-Starting to develop some lower back pain. I’ve always been pretty healthy and pain free, so this kind of chronic pain is really annoying. I can usually make it feel better by stretching, but getting out of bed in the morning is an effort for sure.

-Not exercising. I did my yoga daily but didn’t run except for 15 minutes on the treadmill at the rec center before the 14 year old’s basketball game. The lack of exercise actually has a lot to do with the weather, so hopefully I’ll do better now that the weather is getting warmer.

-Some confusion about the 14 year old’s path in high school, forms that we supposed to be filled out that weren’t. This was VERY stressful.

-Our office at work is very very very cold. Which is usually fine, but it was a cold month. It has something to do with the fact that the thermostat is located in the hallway and regulates a few different offices.

-A bunch of adulting fails including getting a ticket for expired plates. (This is now fixed.)

-Having to work a lot of evenings.

– Pretty sad news about plans for a cultural institution that had been my home for the past twenty years. It’s pretty shitty and devastating for so many people.

Yearly Goals – not great on some fronts, but it was a very work intense month:
-Taking the stairs – I don’t specifically track this, but I think I did okay on this. I did have to take the elevator at work for a while because my id badge was deactivated and that was the only way to access the stairwell from the lobby.

-Creativity: I only painted one picture (It was a birthday card, and I still haven’t sent it); I wrote 3 haikus. I spent some time on the piano – we ordered the easy piano version of music from K-Pop Demon Hunters, so that was fun.

-Did not do any crossword puzzles because our Washington Post subscription expired and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it.

-Museums = 0/10. Hikes = 0/12

-3 vegan dinners. (Goal is 5/month)

-Exercise Goals: Strength training 6x (Goal was 8x/month). Yoga daily – CHECK!

-Family Goals: Game Nights =0 (though we do sometimes have an ongoing chess game going on); Date Nights =0; Call my parents once a week = 3 times, so close;

-Not a lot of time outside – only 17.5 hours in February. That’s less than 30 mins a day.

Quote of the month:
One of the singers I worked with this month was a collegiate wrestler before he decided to become an opera singer. I asked him if there was anything from wrestling that he still applied to life and he said that learning to step up to the mat no matter the circumstances taught him the importance of showing up, and being persistent and doing what you have to do. Then he said:
“I always say: I never lost a match; I just ran out of time.” I love the grit and determination behind this idea – the sense that you can lose a match but still have the stamina and fortitude to be on a winning path.

Looking Forward to in March:
-More sunlight in our days and Spring!

– Running supertitles for the next opera. The most exciting part of this is that I get paid the union stagehand rate to run titles.

-No school day for the kids on 3/20. No plans yet but I have the day off, so maybe we’ll do something special.

-Getting my tax information to our tax guy.

-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.

-March Madness.

-Spring Break starts at the end of the month. No plans currently; I probably have to work some that week.

-Cherry Blossoms!!!! Peak Bloom is predicted for as early as March 31st, though most media outlets are predicting the first week of April. We shall see….

-Not being in rehearsal all the time, so I will be able to do all the things I’ve been putting off, such as:

Bake things
Make dinner
Put the kids to bed
Clean out the kids’ clothes and prep for Spring
Run (this is more about the weather than my work schedule, though)
Game nights
Taking walks in the warmer weather
Paint, play piano, journal
Go to the grocery store
read books

Grateful for this Week:
-The stagehands, wardrobe crew, and wig and make-up crew – for making our show look so good and run so smoothly. And the assistant stage managers. The theatre where we are working has very limited room backstage and the ASMs are working miracles of organization and timing to get everyone onstage when they need to be, wearing the right clothes, with the right prop in hand. In one meeting, I gave them a shout out, saying “They are running New York City in the space the size of a postage stamp back there.”

-Cue lights! What are cue lights? They are lights that are hung around backstage that I use to indicate when a cue should happen. I turn on the light when the crew should be in “Standby” and turn the light off for “Go”. Most of the crew is on headset so they can hear me give the cues, but the cue light is also a good back up. Anyhow – when we first did a walk through of the theatre, we were told that they had ONE cue light. Well, this would have to go into the orchestra pit so I can indicate to them when to tune, meaning the crew wasn’t going to have any lights. BUT… the house crew at the theatre surprised us by purchasing a whole new cue light system! Hooray! It has SIX cue lights. (I only need five for this show.)

-My friend home from abroad. She and her family were in the Middle East (they work in the foreign service). They were sent home last week, given all the things going on. “Things” being the U.S. bombing Iran. I’m grateful that she’s home.

-That I didn’t lose my book. I had brought a book to read when I took the 14 year old to her voice lesson. And afterwards we went to a newly open cafe for sweet treat and to run lines. (It was opening weekend for the cafe and they were giving out free pastries!) Anyhow, I got home and realized my book was missing. I was in a bit of a panic because it’s a library book. But I texted the voice teacher and turns out I had left it at her house. Thank goodness.

-Panera Sip Club. Panera was running this deal where you could get 3 months of Sip Club for $3/month. Usually it’s $14/month. For $3/month, you could get all the coffee/tea/fountain sodas/lemonade/ice tea that you wanted. I think technically it’s limited to one every two hours. It’s not something that I would usually sign up for, but there is a Panera across the street from the theatre – it is in the Student Center (we’re performing on an University campus), and open until 11pm. And it’s tech, when I usually have more caffeine than normal to function/ pick me up during a long day. So I signed up and getting my cold Sip Club beverage is a nice excuse to get out of the building.

-Speaking of which – I’m grateful for getting to work on a University campus. I’m finding there’s something really special about university campuses – the students rushing here and there in non-homogeneous crowds: the squares with places to sit, even though we’re in the middle of the city; the sheer number of coffee shops and fast restaurants; the statues that greet you every few blocks. There’s just a youthful, hopeful air that I find energizing.

-Getting to drive home with my work BFF. We have a tradition of commuting together on opening night so that she can drink at the party and I can drive her home. It’s kind of our version of a friend date to run errands – we drive home and chat and catch up because even though we work down the hall from each other, the past few weeks have been intense and we’ve mostly been talking about work logistics when we cross paths.

-The snack box at work, which someone keeps stocked with chocolate, cookies, and other sweet and savory snacks.

-Freezer soup, for being a quick and easy thing to take for dinner.

-Kids being quiet. I took the 14 year old to school one day and when I came home it was eerily quiet in the house. I peeked through the two little kids’ door know and saw:

Yes, the door knob is missing. We removed it when the youngest was two because she kept locking herself in the room by accident and we didn’t have a key.

What We Ate: The Husband made dinner every night, since I wasn’t home in the evenings all week. I ate mostly leftovers at work.

Monday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos. This is the most requested type of Taco for Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Dumplings and green beans

Thursday: Zucchini Boats.

Friday: Pizza! I was actually home this night. The Husband made a pickle pizza and we ordered two pizzas from one of our favorite pizza places. We watched Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior. I don’t know how this movie came across my radar – it was released in 2006 on Disney Channel, but I only heard about it this year. How is that possible? Asian representation was so non-existent at the time, I feel like it must have gotten a lot of buzz in the community, no? (To be fair, I didn’t have a tv in the early 2000s and this was before you could stream everything.) Anyway, the movie was pretty much everything you would expect from a Disney movie, with some hilarious martial arts sequences thrown in. I don’t know that I would watch this more than once, but it was a fun and charming movie.

Saturday: Indian take out.

Sunday: Leftover Indian take out, tortellini with red sauce, and green beans.

Well, that’s the week that was. And the month that was. Here the weather is almost summer like, all sunshine and warm rays. Not sure how long it will last, but I’m going to try to soak it up this week.

FIGS Week #4

Between rehearsal and having to make slides for a supertitle gig today, this past week has had very little margin for breath or things outside of work and parenting. I had planned to write a February recap post, but it didn’t fit in the schedule this week. So maybe next week. Or maybe not since this is tech week.

BUT, it is the last week of collecting FIGS for Elisabeth, so I wanted to at least write about this weeks’ gratitudes.

One of my biggest FIG this week was this recital that I did supertitles for Sunday night.- so many things brought me joy and made me feel so lucky that I get to do this gig

The recital program itself was one of my favorite recitals I’ve ever worked on. The entire program was in English – Copland’s Old American Songs, a set of songs based on poetry of Langston Hughes, a set of songs set to Shakespeare, and one of my favorite song cycles – Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel, based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. English art song is my jam. I know that’s super nerdy, but there you go. I love that stuff, the elegance, the restraint, the tuneful melodies, the ways the words and music all make sense to me.

One thing that makes working on surtitles for an all English program so wonderful is that yes, I’m working on music, but I’m also working with poetry – like I literally get to read poetry for my job. How cool is that? I think my favorite line from this recital program was from Shakespeare’s Fear No More the Heat of the Sun:
Golden lad and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.

or this one from Langston Hughes’ poem Song to a Dark Virgin:
Would that I were a flame,
but one sharp, leaping flame
to annihilate thy body,
Thou dark one.

“annihilate they body,” I mean that phrase gives me goosebumps!

Or R.L. Stevenson’s poem, Whither Must I Wander, the first stanza of which:

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather:
Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree,
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door –
Dear days of old with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

I think this poem would speak to anyone who has ever left home and returned to find it no longer the same.

Other FIGgy things from this gig:
-I got to take the Metro to work. This is a new venue for us, and it is two blocks from the Metro. I could have driven, but I avoid driving in downtown DC if I can help it. I got to take Metro, read my book, and not be stressed out by traffic.

-The venue itself had beautiful acoustics – the singer’s voice rang clearly and warmly thought the hall. I got to operate the surtitles from the back of the auditorium so I could hear everything live. Usually on this gig, I am stuck in a booth somewhere and the sound is coming through a speaker.

-The singer and pianist did such a great job. The baritone has one of those beautiful velvet baritone voices that you just want to crawl into. I left the recital feeling really uplifted by the music and the singing. Isn’t Music amazing?

-The two encores – one was a song called “Going Home” which, if you are familiar with the Largo from Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, is adapted from that tune. The song is, as you can tell from the title, full of nostalgia and weary wistfulness. The second encore was an aria from The Ballad of Baby Doe, which is an opera that is very rarely done, but which has a lot of significance for me personally and professionally, so it was lovely to hear a snippet of it. Usually by the time the encore rolls around, I’ve packed my bags and am ready to leave. This time, however, I stayed and was enraptured.

-Technology. So back in the day, before internet and what not, surtitles were done via slides – like those slides you put in a carousel and each opera took a whole stack of carousels. I was thinking that they probably didn’t do titles for recitals back then because it’s really expensive to do so many slides for a one off event. And I was thinking about all the technology that makes this job possible that wasn’t around twenty or thirty years ago. For example -being able to have the artist email me a pdf of the music, instead of having find a physical copy of the score and then photocopying it; PowerPoint – much sleeker than a whole bunch of carousels, but also super easy to make fixes or text alterations on the fly; Apple Music, so I can listen to the music ahead of time when trying to set cues; Forescore – the app I use to mark my scores, saving me the cost of having to print all those scores. I can’t imagine how/if anyone could do this job before these technologies that I might now take for granted.

-After the recital, as I was leaving I ran into an old colleague of mine. I didn’t think he would recognize me because it’s been over ten years since we worked together and he was much more senior than me in the company. But he recognized me and said hello and we chatted for a bit.

-People who come to voice recitals in general. As the audience was leaving, I heard one guy say to the woman that was with him, “How did you like your first art song recital?” She murmured something in response. and he said, “Yeah, people who come to voice recitals are a super specific subset of music lovers.” So I’m glad that enough people come to these voice recitals that the organization has been presenting recitals for 35 years.

It was a good gig. I was walking home from the Metro, I just felt an overwhelming sense gratitude that, even though I had to spend my day off from the opera working another job, I was pretty lucky that this other job brought me a lot of satisfaction and joy.

Okay – other FIG from the week, though –

-Elisabeth for organizing FIG-gy February and for collecting everyone’s FIGS. For everyine who shared FIGS. how lovely to share FIGS- your figs are my figs!

-The Metro doors opening again. Monday was another snow day. I’ve lost count, but it’s been enough snow days that school has been extended a whole week. Anyhow, since I didn’t have to drive the kids to work, I took the Metro to work. Just as I was getting off the elevator to the train platform, I saw the doors to the train start to close, and they shut just as I reached them. I resigned myself to waiting eight minutes for the next train. Then… the doors opened again! I looked down the platform and I saw the conductor leaning out of the window. He must have seen me and the other guy next to me and decided to let us on the train. I got on the train and got to work on time.

-a clean stack of freshly laundered underwear, just in time for tech week!

-The 13 year old walking down to the bus stop to pick up her younger siblings on an early release day, and then taking them to the park for an hour before bringing them home.

-Sleeping. I am really bad at going to sleep at a decent hour, but once I’m in bed, I don’t have any problems falling asleep. Sleep feels so good. I don’t know why I’m always avoiding it.

-Finding the pouch of my favorite pens that I thought I had misplaced.

-Sligo Creek. This is the creek that is near our house, alongside which is the trail/walking path. The other day, I was realizing that this creek is probably what led people to settle and built up a town in this area, and even before that, I’m sure Native Americans lived along it as well. I’m grateful that today the Creek, gives us a place for the kids to throw rocks and sticks and leaves in the water and watch them float away; it’s a place for ducks to swim, which we saw this week; it’s a place for us to take in nature despite our very urban lives.

The water is actually really disgusting, but still grateful for it all the same.

-The Husband doing all the things. Including filling the hot water boiler and cooking dinner all week. And for buying me a scone while he was out running errands.

-group chat with friends.

-The Kindergarten Concert, and being able to go. Thursday night was the Kindergarten music concert. The theme was dogs and each class sang two songs about dogs. The kids all dressed up like dogs with floppy construction paper ears. It was super cute. The 6 year old’s class sand BINGO was his Name, in French. And the whole thing was short – maybe only 30 minutes. I’m grateful that the concert was at 6:00pm so I could go over on my dinner break at work. It’s so hard to show up for things when I work the evenings, so I’m glad I could show up for this. Also grateful for elementary school music teachers.

-I came home one night to find this on the counter:

Yes, someone wrote “Kompost” on a covered tray of brownies…

-A sassy six year old. This exchange – exasperating at the time, but made me laugh afterwards: (For reference “Well, I want a pony and I can’t have one” is our standard response to our kids when they are being demanding and just need to wait.)
6 year old: I want hugs and kisses!
Me: Well, I want a pony!
6 year old: Go to a farm and get one!

(To be clear, I wasn’t being a cold-hearted mom and denying my kid hugs and kisses at bedtime – I had something on the stove and needed her to wait. )

-Laughing a lot at work. There are parts of this rehearsal process that have been challenging, but even still the process has been a lot of joy thanks to the rest of the stage management team. The other day, at our end of day meeting, one of them said, “I don’t remember laughing so much during a rehearsal process, and most of it has been in this stage management office.” I think we all just have the same sense of humour and the ridiculous things in rehearsal makes us laugh rather than enrages us. I mean the hours suck and the pay is crap, so if we aren’t having fun, why do what we do?

-Another work FIG- the prop crew for moving a bunch of things for us from one room to another. The room we were rehearsing in had to be used for something else, so after rehearsal one night we had to pack up all our props and furniture and move to another room in the building – it was past 10pm and we were tired, so I asked the prop head who was coming in to set the room for the next thing in the morning if he could move the last of our stuff and they did!

-When the eight year old declared, “I love nature!” as we were walking to school.

-A book that is just sucking me in.

Okay – that’s a wrap on official FIGS, but you know I’ll keep being grateful for things every day and every week.

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