July 2026 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Mundane things – small kitchen appliances in my life

So the other day at lunch, my co-worker made a comment about how I was eating my meatballs cold.

“I could never eat meatballs cold,” he said to me.

“Well, we don’t have a microwave, so I eat a lot of food cold,” I said.

“YOU DON’T HAVE A MICROWAVE???? WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A MICROWAVE???””

Maybe it’s just here in America, but I get that reaction a lot when I mention that we don’t have a microwave. But the truth of the matter is that the microwave did not convey with our current house and our previous microwave was a built in so we couldn’t bring it with us. And when we got to our new house, once we put the appliances out on the counter, there was no room for a microwave.

What is taking up an entire counter, you ask? Well, I thought maybe it was time for one of those posts about the mundane things in my life – namely small kitchen appliances. So here are the small kitchen appliaancea taking up space where we could have a microwave:

We call this “appliance row” at our house.

From Right to Left:

Vita Mix Blender – This was a present from my father who found it at Costco and decided we needed it. I scoffed at first – who needs a fancy blender??? The answer is I do. I need a fancy blender. Okay, I don’t need a fancy blender, but I do love it. We use it maybe once or twice a week, more often in the summer because we make a lot of smoothies. I use it to make Brazilian cheesy bread. I use to to blend the eggs when I make pancakes. I use it to make sauces. It’s one of those things where it would be a pain to haul out every time I needed it, so it just lives on the counter.

Kitchen Aid Stand mixer – I bought this as a present for the Husband for Christmas one year. But really, it was a present for me um… the family. It is a refurbished one so was less expensive than it could have been. This is also one of those things I didn’t think I wanted until we got one and wow – we can make cookies even if we forget to take the butter out of the fridge to soften.

InstantPot – another one of those things that I didn’t think I wanted until the Husband got me one for Christmas. Okay, here’s what I think of the InstantPot – the food does not taste better than with other methods, and it tends to produce mushy results if you don’t time things right. BUT… I love that it has a timer function so I can prep things in the morning and have the IP start cooking it in time for people to come home. I love that I set it and walk away. I love that I can use it to cook food from frozen for when I forget to defrost meat (see: no microwave above). I love that I can cook pasta, meatballs, and noodles all at the same time. So I love it for convienience over quality of food. All that aside, however, what I use it for the most is to make boiled eggs, 12 at a time. Two minutes on low pressure with quick release and I get a lovely jammy egg.

Rice cooker: This is actually my mother’s and only a recent addition to my counter. I have gotten so much slack in the past from other Taiwanese people when they learn I don’t have a rice cooker. They look at me with a mixure of horror and pity. I had always used my IP to cook rice if it was brown and stove top if it was white rice. But one day, I was making something in the morning in the IP and wanted to have rice to go with it, so I used the rice cooker and it was magical – fluffy rice with minimal effort and checking from me. (Side note – when I was a child, one of my jobs was to make the rice. My mother would call when she was on her way home from work and I would put the rice and water into the rice cooker and flick the button.) When my mom wants her rice cooker back, I’ll give it back… I’m on the fence as to whether or not to get my own, though. Part of me realizes that I’ve gotten along just fine without one but another part of me recognizes the ease with which it makes rice.

Toaster Oven: In the great Toaster Oven vs. Toaster debate, I am Team Toaster Oven. This might be our most used appliance. We use it for, obviously, toast, and also to reheat things and to roast small quantities of things.

Coffee maker: Mocca Master – some kind of fancy Dutch drip coffee maker purchased by my coffee snob Husband. Apparently it regulates how the water is dripped in for optimal taste. I don’t dink coffee, so I couldn’t say.

Coffee grinder: Another meticulously researched purchase for the Husband’s coffee habit.

Waffle maker: We should use this more than we do for the amount of real estate it takes up on our counter, but it’s so hard to store somewhere else.

Edited to add: The ktichen scale! How could I forget the kitchen scale. I prefer baking by weights and the Husband weighs his coffee beans in the morning.

Small kitchen appliances that are not on appliance row:

Electric can opener – This is a vintage item that came to us after my in-laws passed away. An avocado green relic of another era, the can opener has earned its place on our counter through nostalgia and functionality.

Hot water boiler: Maybe my favorite of all our small kitchen appliances. Hot water instantly, at the temperature I set. We don’t just use it for tea, we also use it to fill pots with hot water so that they boil faster when we are making pasta or steaming vegetables, or really anything that requires boiling a pot of water on the stove. The kids use this to make ramen, which is nice way for them to independently feed themselves. It’s probably my favorite purchase of the year so far.

Soda Stream – Is this an appliance if it doesn’t require electricity? My brother bought this for us a few years ago when he came to visit. He drinks a lot of fizzy water and didn’t want us to keep buying it for him, so he bought us this. It gets more use in summer than in winter tbh. I like that I can make the water as fizzy as I like. Lately, though, I’ve been buying canned seltzer because I enjoy the different flavors.

Crock pot – Again this is my mother’s. We used to have one and then I lent it to an intern and never got it back and I felt bad asking for it back because they make so little money. So we use my mother’s when we need it. Which isn’t very often, maybe once every two or three months or so. I prefer my IP to my Crockpot because the IP has a timer function and the crock pot doesn’t. Also I’ve always felt like the taste of food I make in the crockpot tastes somehow chemically. I think I’m in the minority on this, though. (No picture of it because, to be honest, I can’t remember where it is.)

Immersion blender (middle left shelf): This was a hand me down from my Sister In Law, when the oldest was a baby, which I guess makes this appliance almost 15 years old. She had given me the immersion blender because I was in my baby food making phase. I used this to puree a lot of food for my kids when they were babies. In addition to the blender stick, it also has a whisk, which is very useful for making whipped cream. I prefer the immersion blender to the Vitamix when making pureed soups – less chance for hot soup splash accidents.

Food Processor (bottom shelf, right hand side): This is another vintage machine. I’m not even sure of it’s origins, only that I “borrowed” it from my mother when I moved out of the house in my twenties. It has barely a 2 cup capacity, which makes it perfect for making sauces and such. I also love it for shredding parmesan cheese. From time to time I think I should upgrade and get a bigger capacity food processor, but this one is probably thirty years old and still going strong, so I don’t see the point in replacing it.

Hand mixer (you can’t see it, but it’s behind the cheese grater): This was a wedding present from my former boss. I had said something about having bought a hand mixer and it was very heavy. She got me this one with the note, “I hope this is lighter than the other one.” Since we got the stand mixer, I don’t use this hand mixer that often, but I don’t want to get rid of it.

Small Coffee grinder (next to the food processor) – This was our old coffee bean grinder before we upgraded to the above. I use it to grind spices. It smells like cloves.

Grateful for this week:
-Getting to spend time with friends. My current rehearsal schedule and commute makes it hard to do anything outside of work/ morning prep/ swim team stuff- all my free days are mid week. But I didn’t have to be in to work until 6pm last Sunday, so I was able to go over with the family to a friend’s house for a little bit and it was really nice to hang out and be social.

-The French bookstore near us. I wanted to get the kids something to read in French so that they didn’t completely slide on their French skills this summer (they are in a French immersion program at school). I had heard about this bookstore – Bonjour Books – but never visited and this was the perfect opportunity. The store was an absolute gem – a solid well-curated selection of books in French (for grown ups and kids), a used book section, and best of all, a charming and helpful owner who spoke French to my kids and encouraged them to find something that interested them. I spent a lot of money here, but I have no regrets and will come and spend more. Also really grateful for the other customer at check out who gently prompted the 9 year old in French to ask for Tin Tin books.

-Living near a trail so that it’s possible to squeeze in a run in the 45 minutes between getting home from work and having to leave the house for something else. After sitting in the car for the 40 minutes it took to get home, I really needed to move a little before getting in the car again. So grateful that living near a trail (with lots of shade!) made it easy to slip on my running clothes and go for a run.

-Three cooler swim meets. Swim meets in the summer heat can be brutal, and I’m glad the three meets lasts week featured cloudy skies. (I’m looking in my list of gratitudes in my journal and I literally wrote “cloudy meet” three times in six day.

-That my big boss brought in donuts for the first day of rehearsal. I love donuts.

-That summer swim team season doesn’t last forever. As much as I love the kids participating in summer swim team, it is a lot of work and logistics and I’m glad it’s almost over and that it doesn’t go all summer. We have one more meet and the awards night left – I was going over the rest of the schedule with the Husband and he said, “You mean we’ve almost made it through swim season this year?”

-That it’s peach season. Is there anything more delicious than a ripe summer peach?

-Period products in the bathroom at work. Am I the only one who goes to the bathroom to change my pad and then forgets to bring the pad? I’m grateful our work keeps a stock of period products out in the open.

Looking forward to:

-The 14 year old volunteered to sing the national anthem at the next swim meet. I’m really proud of her for stepping up and asking for the opportunity and I’m looking forward to hearing her sing.

-Going to the theatre with the Husband. One of my favorite local theatre troupes has a show this month and I want to get tickets – their shows are always such a blend of whimsy and emotionally resonance. I’m writing this wish here so that it will be true.

-Happy Hour with my school bus mom friends next week.

-Listening to more of this audiobook – it might be a bit of a heavy listen for my commute, but after seeing the Enola Gay at the Air and Space Museum, I find myself wanting to learn more about Nagasaki and Hiroshima:

The Devil Reached for the Sky: An oral history of the making and unleashing of the atomic bomb, by Garrett M. Graff

What we ate:

Monday: Sandwiches from the Italian Deli near the Husband’s work – Pool Dinner. We had gotten back from our trip the night before and no one had time to go to the grocery store yet.

Tuesday: Dumplings, edamame, and sour cream and onion chips – eaten at the pool

Wednesday: Sesame noodles and watermelon. Pool dinner. My Go To recipe for sesame noodles from the New York Times Cooking site.

Thursday: Dan Dan Noodles with eggplant from New York Times cooking. This was very tasty. At first I was worried about having two noodle dishes in a row but you know what? We love noodles, and could eat them every day.

Friday: Snack dinner – charcuterie, cheese, crackers, fruit. Another of those hastily put together dinners for the pool. After swim practice, we went to a friend’s house to make s’mores on the fire pit where one of the kids introduced me to the amazing ness of a layer of peanut butter on the graham cracker before adding the marshmallow off the stick. Mind blown. It was delicious. I don’t always care for Hershey’s chocolate so I’m glad I found an alternative for my S’mores.

Saturday: Pizza (take-out) and family World Cup watching. I was at work, so I had leftovers for dinner.

Sunday: We had dinner at our friend’s house. They grilled chicken kabob. I had to leave for work before dinner was ready, so I basically snacked all afternoon. Before I left I did grab a pita and smear it with whipped feta. It was delicious.

Welp, another weekend is upon us. I have to work both days. The Husband’s cousin is coming for a visit, and there are Swim Team Divisionals on Sunday. Oh and there’s a little soccer game being played on Sunday too. The air was not great today – swim practice was cancelled. Fingers crossed that the air will be better by Sunday for Divisionals. I feel really awful for people who are in the thick of fire and smoke. There was a thick haze over everything as I drove too and from work and we got the masks out from COVID times for when we had to be outside going to and from the car. So interesting how easily the kids just put them on. I hope everyone is staying safe, however possible.

Tell me about your favorite small kitchen appliance!

Reading Retreat 2026 – 36-ish hours in Harrisburg, PA.

When the Husband and I realized that all three children were going to Taiwan camp, we thought it would be a good chance to getaway ourselves. In our 14 years of being parents, we have never gone away, just the two of us. I know there are couples who often take trips without their kids. We are not one of those couples.

Thinking about where were to go, I was inspired by Stephany and told my Husband I wanted to have a reading retreat. So we decided that we wanted to go somewhere that was a short (no more than two hours) drive from Taiwan camp. We wanted to go somewhere quiet with bookstores and where we could get a nice dinner. Well Harrisburg and Philadelphia were the biggest cities close to Taiwan camp. We’ve been to Philadelphia and love it, but with it being the 4th of July weekend – especially being teh 250th – we thought that Philly might be a bit of a madhouse and too exciting for us to want to just stay inside and read. We just wanted to go somewhere quiet and comfortable. We’d never been to Harrisburg and AirBnBs were a little more affordable there. Looking on the internet, I saw there were a few bookstore there. So Harrisburg it was. We dropped the 14 year old at Taiwan camp and headed off the road, checking into our AirBnB around 9:30pm – just enough time to make sure the place was okay and collapse into bed.

Friday, July 3rd: Even though the primary goal of our time away was to read, I figured we should do a little bit of sight seeing, so, inspired by Birchie, I booked us on the 9:00am tour of the Pennsylvania State Capitol. I was surprised that it was open for tours on a holiday weekend, but there were at about 10 people gathered by the tour desk bright and early on a Friday morning. The Pennsylvania Capitol is a jaw droppingly ornate building, all mahogany and marble and gold leaf. It was very impressive to see:

The House. Imagine going to work here every day.

Having checked the box to do one toursity thing in Harrisburg, we went on to find other things we loved – namely coffee, farmers markets and books.

After our tour, we stopped across the street at Denim Coffee for a beverage and a snack. The Husband loves coffee so visiting an independent coffee shop is always on our travel agenda. In addition to being near the Capitol Building, I chose Denim Coffee because they make their own chai. The Husband had a pour over, I had a chai, and we split an apple crumble bar.

Next was the Farmer’s Market where we picked up some vegetables – green beans, corn (just picked that morning), sugar snap peas, lettuce, and blueberries. I have to admit, at first I thought $10 a quart was pricy for blueberries. But then I thought, that $10 is also about the price of two bags of chips and I would really rather have a quart of fresh picked blueberries than two bags of chips.

Our next stop was Cuboard Makers Bookstore, in the nearby town of Enola. Cupboard Makers Bookstore is named thus because the owner’s husband was a cabinet maker. This store had a wonderfully colourful exterior:

We were greeted at the door with so many signs:

“Especially Odin” the sign says. Well we carefully walked in and, there on the front counter was Odin:

Odin was fluffy and chill and very amenable to being petted. The owners said that he keeps trying to escape, however.

This bookstore was mostly used books with a few shelves of the new buzzy titles. To be honest, this bookstore had so many books I found it a little hard to navigate. For example, there were three different romance sections, each devoted to different types of romance novels. The big find here, though, were the comic section where I found two Pearls Before Swine Treasuries, one Get Fuzzy Treasury and two For Better or For Worse books. These are some of my favorite cartoon strips, but I never think to buy the books. I snatched these up – the 9 year old also loves reading comics so I was eager to share them with him.

Here’s a strip that made me laugh so hard (This one is for all you planner junkies out there….):

After we left Cupboard Maker Books, we went to West Shore Farmer’s Market in Lemoyne, about 10 minutes away. We were a little hungry and wanted to get a snack. West Shore Farmer’s Market did not disappoint. There were produce stalls, butchers, bakeries, fishmongers. The Husband and I split a delicious Ham and cheese pretzel from Zook’s. We picked up some carrots, onions, and garlic for dinner as well as two pork chops, sauerkraut, and three hand pies. Then we got smoothies from the Juice Place. I had a smoothie called The Fountain of Youth, which was grapes, strawberry, apple, lemon, and ginger. It was zingy and refreshing, more like a juice than smoothie. The Husband had a Blueberry Chill – Blueberry, pineapple, banana, and coconut – which was very good too.

I also really enjoyed watching the woman at the donut stall fry apple fritters:

Their donuts looked SO good, but we opted to spend our calories on other things that day.

On the second floor of the West Shore Farmer’s Market was Bookworm Books. It was a small, very well curated used bookstore, which, honestly, was a more manageable than the sprawling Cupboard Maker’s Books. Here, the books were more recent – they have a special section devoted to Pennsylvania history and a custom frame store in the back. At Bookworm books, I picked up a copy of Star-Shipped by Cat Sebastian and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell.

Our next stop after West Shore Farmer’s Market was just around the corner – literally. We originally thought we’d just walk there, but it was over 100 degrees outside and walking across a parking lot was not appealing. So we drove the three blocks to The Paperback Exchange.

The Paperback Exchange was stocked with a shelves and shelves of used books, mostly mass market paperbacks. I think of the three bookstores we visited that day, this was my favorite. It had more popular selections than Bookworm Books, but was more focused than Cupboard Maker Books. Also, since it was mostly fiction, it didn’t feel daunting to try to find something I wanted to read. Here I picked up two vintage romance books – one by Judith Ivory and one by Pamela Morisi. I’ve always wanted to read something by Pamela Morisi, but her books are pretty rare.

The Paperback Exchange made me think about how mass market paperbacks are being phased out and what that means to no longer have these affordable, compact books available to throw in one’s bag and carry around. I wonder if the waning popularity of mass market paperback is reader driven or supplier driven? Are readers who used to reach for popular fiction (vs. literary fiction) now reading other things? Or via e-readers? Anyhow, I do wonder about the fate of stores like Paperback Exchange as mass market paperbacks are phased out- I mean their shelves are built to fit those size books. Soon Paperback Exchange will be a vintage bookstore….

Here’s the day’s book haul from all three bookstores:

-The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – I wanted to read another Maggie O’Farrell book, after having read Hamnet and The Secret Life of Esme Lenox.
-Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys – maybe it will give me insight into my son.
-Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed – Have always wanted to read this book and I needed a new non-fiction read for the mornings.
-The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston – I loved her Seven Year Slip, so have been looking to read more by this author.
-Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian – This book has been getting lots of good reviews and I can’t believe I found a copy at the used bookstore. When I was checking it out, the guy at checkout said he had just read it and loved it.
-Angel in a Red Dress by Judith Ivory – I loved reading Judith Ivory when I was in my 30s and honestly can’t remember if I’ve read this one before. But I don’t have it on my shelf at home so I figured I’d add it.
-Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya – Picked this 1954 novella up for my Classics reading challenge.
-Courting Miss. Hattie by Pamela Morisi – I’ve never read any Pamela Morisi, but a lot of romance writers that I’ve heard interview name her as a writer they really admire.
-Then on the right side is the stack of Comic strip treasuries – Pearls before Swine, Get Fuzzy, and For Better or For Worse.

After Paperback Exchange, we headed home where we relaxed on the couches and read until it was time to make dinner. I was super excited to make dinner from all the ingredients we got at the market that day.

Yes, the Husband brought his coffee grinder and MoccaMaster coffee maker with him. He never trusts AirBnBs to have decent coffee set ups.

For dinner, we had pork chops with fried sage leaves, boiled corn, steamed green beans, sauerkraut (home made, but we bought it), and salad of greens, cucumbers and tomatoes.

After dinner, we read some more before going to bed – I started and finished Pamela Morisi’s Courting Miss Hattie (I liked the story, but the prose didn’t sing for me), and one of the For Better or For Worse collections.

Saturday, July 4th.

After sleeping in, I woke up, had some tea and leftovers for breakfast and then – of course! – read some more. The weather was looking to be no cooler than the day before, but with potential rain coming, I hoped it would cool off. Around 11:30am, we headed out for our lunch reservation at The Millworks, a converted factory that now houses a restaurant/ brewpub and artists galleries. For lunch the Husband and I shared: salmon onigiri with beet rice, pork tacos, and a Greek grain bowl. The Greek grain bowl featured pickled grapes, which were mouth puckeringly tasty.

After lunch we wandered the artist galleries, talking to the artists that were there, some of whom we got to watch work. We ended up buying a couple pieces of art, including this pigeon for the kid’s room, because they love pigeons:

Gallery of Emily Zebel. I really wanted to take home the wolf picture, but we had already picked out two other pieces.

Down the block from Millworks was The Broad Street Market – I had been hoping to pick up more produce for dinner, but with it being the 4th of July, all the stalls had closed up early. I was a little disappointed because the barista at Denim coffee the day before had highly recommended the pretzel bun stall. Oh well, save something for next time, as Rick Steves likes to say.

One block further down from Broadstreet Market was Midtown Scholar’s Bookstore. This vast sprawling bookstore had three floors featuring a mix of new and used books in addition to having carts and carts of books outside. They had a deal where you could fill a bag with books from just $15. We didn’t end up buying any books here, though we spent about 45 minutes browsing. The store was stiflingly hot in the upper levels where the fiction was. As we went to the lower levels, the temperature got nice a cool. I spent a lot of time in the basement gardening and psychology section of this store.

Midtown Scholars – It used to be an old department store.

After the bookstore we headed back to our air bnb where we settled in for an afternoon of napping and reading. I finished Sing, Unburied, Sing and immediately started another book . The Air BnB had a shelf of books – mostly books by Frieda McFadden – whom I’ve never read, actually, but who seems really prolific. There was also a copy of Liane Moriarty’s latest book Here One Moment. I’ve only ever read Big Little Lies and I thought that was pretty gripping, so I thought I’d start Here One Moment and I was instantly sucked in.

Eventually, it was time for dinner, and as we hadn’t been able to buy more produce that day, we decided to go out for Indian Food. We chose Kathandu because it had a large selection of dosas. We ordered a masala dosa, a paneer dosa, a chili uppthatpam, and on other dish that was very spicy. While we were eating dinner, the storm that had been threatening finally unleashed itself with high winds. The power went out at the restaurant for a few minutes. We decided to eat slowly and wait out the storm.

After dinner, I wanted to go get ice cream, but the storm had downed a lot of trees, causing road closures. We couldn’t wrap our heads around trying to take detour upon detour just to get ice cream. We headed back to our Air BnB where we spent the rest of the evening reading, lounging, and watching comedy specials. I didn’t feel like I had the brain to watch a whole movie, but Sheng Wang’s one hour comedy special seemed just right.

That about wrapped up our reading retreat! The next day, we woke up, read some more, tidied up the Air BnB and then got on the road back to pick up the kids and my mother from Taiwan camp.

There was, however, one more delight waiting for us. We stopped at a hardward store on the way to pick up some poison ivy killer, and the store also had a store cat! It was sitting right at the front of the store on the patio furniture and was very amenable to pets and cuddles:

What a nice way to end the weekend.

All in all it was a relaxing few days and I enjoyed exploring Harrisburg. Our AirBnB was cozy, with plenty of places to lounge and read. It wasn’t the best stocked (no mixing bowls or tea kettle and the knives were crap) and it was on a busy road so there was no place to really walk. Next time I might look for a place with more within walking distance and perhaps even a pool – though maybe this latter was just my response to the weather being so record-breakingly hot. I’ve realized that when exploring new cities, the Husband and I like bookstores, coffee shops, gardens, and farmer’s markets. I would definitely love to take a reading retreat again and incorporate little side trips to those places.

My reading retreat reading tally:
Books finished: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward; Courting Miss Hattie by Pamela Morisi; Home, Sweat, Home: A For Better or For Worse collection by Lynn Johnson, Dare to Love a Duke by Eva Leigh
Books started/continued to read: The Eustace Diamonds by Antony Trollope: The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu; Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (I had to leave this at the AirBnB, but I’ve put it on my holds list.)

What would make a perfect reading retreat for you? Do you have a favorite used bookstore? Thoughts on the demise of mass market paperbacks? Do you know any stores wtih resident cats?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye June; Hello July!

We’re back from our holiday weekend of Taiwan camp (the kids) and reading retreat (the Husband and me). Last week was a short week of work for me, which was nice since my mother, brother, and niece were in town. My brother was only staying long enough to drop off my niece who would be going to Taiwan camp with my kids and my mother later in the week, but before he left, we did manage a trip to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.

The Udvar-Hazy Center is probably the more impressive museum here in DC, featuring two large hanger with over 200 air and space crafts. Some really famous aircrafts are there, like the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima), the Concorde, and the space shuttle Discovery. There is also an observation tower where you can see the planes land and take off from Dulles Airport. When we went up, there was a docent in front of a flight tracker screen and he told us all about how you can track information about commercial flights – their paths, their altitudes, etc. He was using an app called FlightRadar24 and it was really neat to see and think about all those planes taking all those people to all those cities.

It’s always fun to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center – also pretty cool that it’s a Smithsonian Museum so admission is free, though parking is $15. But you know what’s not fun? Getting home from there. The Udvar-Hazy Center is actually close to my summer job, and if you’ve been around here, I’m sure you’ve heard me complain about the commute. Well it took us almost 90 minutes to get home from visiting the aircrafts. So much ugh.

The rest of the end of June/ beginning of July was taking the kids to Taiwan Camp – twice! My mother, niece, and the 6 and 9 year old went up on Wednesday for the first day of camp, and the 14 year old went on Thursday because she was doing basketball camp that week too. After dropping the 14 year old, the Husband and I went on our reading retreat, which I’ll recap in another post, but here’s a preview:

One of the four bookstores we visited over two days.

We didn’t do much for the 4th of July since we were hunkered and reading and it was so very very hot and then there was that huge storm. Sunday we picked everyone up from Taiwan camp. After a stop for ice cream – actually two stops because the first place I wanted to go was closed because they had lost power, a sad fate for an ice cream shop – we took my mom and my niece to the airport – they were flying back to California that night. My nuclear family headed home where we unpacked, had dinner, played a round of MarioKart and then sent the kids to bed. The Husband and I watched the Mexico v. England soccer game. What a wild ride of a game that was!

I ended up staying up way past the end of the game because it turns out my mom and niece’s 7pm flight was delayed due to the weather – we’d been having super rainy thunderstorms. I thought I might have to go pick them up if their flight got cancelled, but it wasn’t officially cancelled until 12:30am. They got re-booked on a flight this morning at 6am so decided to stay at the airport. What a travel ordeal. What was originally a direct flight from BWI to SFO was, the next day, a flight from BWI to Chicago to San Diego to San Francisco. And after that they still had to get home to Berkeley. Props to my mom for dealing with all that. I hope neither my mom or my niece are terribly scarred by all that. Some times you just get really unlucky travel days.

And now I’m home and ready to jump into another show. But before I get too deep into the month, shall we look at how June 2o26 was?

June Highlights:
-Going to a weekday matinee of The Devil Wears Prada 2 with my friend.

-Piano recitals for the 9 and 14 year old. Voice recital for the 14 year old.

-Summer produce from the Farmer’s market.

-The 14 year old’s promotion ceremony – she is finished with middle school! High school here we come.

-Dentist appointments for me and the kids. To do checked off. (Did I mention my dentist has an office beagle???):

-So much pool time – swim meets, swim practices, swimming laps, cooling off in the waters.

-The last day of school for the other two kids. Yay we survived our first school year without day care payments. Not that life gets any less expensive. It’s just the money goes different places.

-My first foray to Royal Farms for their fried chicken.

-The first show at my summer gig – tech/ opened/ closed. Getting to work with a new to me Technical Director who was so good at her job and really cared about the singers not just being safe on stage, but also feeling safe on stage.

Our set – I think this is one of the prettiest sets I’ve ever worked on.

-Going to see Shakespeare in the Park – As You Like It. How lovely to be watching the residents of the Forest of Arden get matched and unmatched under the stars.

-Picnic lunch with three friends from college. So great to catch up.

-Seeing the Tall Ships in Baltimore Harbor.

-Visits from my brother, niece, and mother. Going to hot pot and the Udvar-Hazy museum.

-I went running three times! It’s pretty paltry, but it’s more than the month before, so I’m kind of stoked about it.

– Watching the World Cup. So we don’t have Fox, but we do have Telemundo via Peacock, so I’ve been watching all the games in Spanish, which is actually really fun because I feel like I can focus on the game and not get side tracked by the commentary. Plus I get to hear the most famous announcements of “Goooooooooool!”

-Favorite Dinner this month: Take out Style Sesame Noodles w/ teriyaki chicken. Perfect meal for the pool – can be eaten cold, packs a lot of flavor and vegetables and filling enough to fuel swim meets.

-Favorite thing we watched: Derry Girls. hilarious. The Husband said it actually reminded him a lot about his childhood growing up in Indiana.

June Lowlights:
-Some house things with my parent’s rental unit. Unbloggable, but it seems like every month there’s always something. I guess that’s just the price of owning a home. (literally….)

-The awful commute to and from my summer gig. Sorry if you’re tired of hearing about this one, but it is a truly awful time suck.

-Feeling very stretched. I think this is a lot to do with the point above – I spend so much time commuting that I’m finding I don’t have as much time for other life/family things. Spoiler alert – this will probably also be a July lowlight too….

-I got a stupid parking ticket. Again. This was totally my fault- I was just making a quick stop and I didn’t pay the meter. Stupid mistake.

Checking in on 2026 Aspirations:
Creativity:
-painted two pictures (10/26 pictures painted for the year.)
-wrote 1 haiku (16/52 haikus written this year… need to work on this.)
-finished two crossword puzzles (My goal is to finish one every week, but I got behind)

Consumption:
-1 live performance – As You Like It
-1 Museum – Udar-Hazy Center (see above!)
-0 hikes. (need to work on this….)

Health:
I was rubbish at tracking exercise in June. But I did start swimming while the kids were at swim team practice. It’s been too hot for me to go running consistently. But I did run inconsistently.
-Daily yoga – I think this was 25/30 days. Like I said – rubbish tracking in June.
-3 vegan dinners. Two of those were the Teriyaki Tofu from America’s Test Kitchen. It is that good. And easy. (goal is 5 vegan dinners a month, but given that we were at the pool almost every night, I’d say any vegan dinner is a plus.)

Quote of the Month:
“You can’t thrive for free”
-from Netflix’s Beef. Said by the Ali Wong character to her mother in law in regards to the cost of raising a child. I thought this was hilarious. Also we watched an episode of Beef and I don’t know if I’ll return for the rest – it’s pretty dark and full of people doing things that range from unfortunate to reprehensible. Not my jam. I know it was critically acclaimed. sigh. Sometimes I don’t feel cool enough for the critically acclaimed media that everyone loves.

Looking Forward to in July:
-Starting rehearsals for my second opera this summer. Excited to again be working with some great colleagues.

-World Cup. I have rehearsal on the afternoon of the World Cup Finals. Today I asked my stage manager if we could move rehearsal. I was only half kidding.

-planning our Niagara Trip. The trip isn’t until August, but planning is part of the fun, right?

-speaking of which, there is an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art featuring paintings of Niagara Falls, I want to try to take the kids before our trip – might be a fun tie in. Also there’s a Mary Cassatt exhibit there too. Might be the same one I saw in Philadelphia, but Cassatt is always worth seeing either way.

-Peach Truck Peaches!!! I ordered a 25 lb box of peaches from the Peach Truck.

-Digging into the pile of books I bought on my reading retreat:

Grateful for the week:

-$2.50 ice cream scoops for 4th of July.

I got a peanut butter chocolate pretzel.

-This imperfect country that celebrated its birthday last week. Look, there are a lot of not great things happening. BUT… I once had to spend three days at the INS office replacing my lost green card and I realized that there are much worse things going on in other countries. Things are messed up, but in the scheme of things, we’re really very lucky we live in America.

-That my mother, brother, and niece came to visit. It was nice to spend time with them. I got to have a few moments of one on one time with my niece, and we talked about books and school and food, and it was cool to see her becoming her own person.

-Slow mornings with the family and not having to rush to get to school or work.

-That the kids had a good time at Taiwan camp.

-Air conditioning.

-Food that lasts in the fridge. Actually refrigeration in general. We got home from our holiday weekend away and I was going to make our pantry standby of pasta with red sauce for dinner, but I was unexcited by the prospect, so I looked in the fridge and there was some ground turkey from before we left. I looked up ground turkey recipes and found this recipe for Italian Wedding Soup, and in addition to the turkey, it needed kale (which had been in our fridge for at least two weeks) and eggs (which were from at least two weeks ago), lemons (at least a week old), parmesan cheese (who knows how old that is..) and other things that we had in our pantry (chicken broth, pasta, panko break crumbs). Instead of parsley and garlic, I dumped the week old zhug sauce (from when we had shawarma earlier in the week) into the meatball mix. It felt really good to use up bits and bobs to make a really tasty meal that was a step above plain pasta and red sauce.

What we ate:

Monday: Cauliflower Sheetpan Shawarma with Tahini Sauce and Zhoug Sauce. My brother was visiting and he’s vegetarian. And I had a cauliflower to use up, so this was perfect. Honestly, though, it’s all about the sauces.

Tuesday: Chicken Wings and steamed green beans – eaten at the pool. My mother made her famous soy garlic chicken wings.

Wednesday: We ordered Indian Food for dinner – The 14 year old’s choice since it was her first time being alone with her parents since she was five, before we had more babies.

Thursday: Grabbed food on the road while driving 14 year old to Taiwan camp. I got Naan Tacos from a place called Tikka Shack Indian Grub, which I guess is a chain. They were really tasty.

Friday: Made dinner from stuff we picked up at the markets – Sage pork chops, steamed green beans, corn, salad, sauerkraut. it was delicious.

The salad is in a pot because the Air BnB did not have serving bowls. What the what????

Saturday: Went out to an Indian restaurant for dosas. Wow typing this out, i’m realizing that I had Indian for dinner three times this week. I do Love Indian food. If I had to choose a last meal, I would have a hard time deciding between noodles and dumplings or Indian Food.

Sunday: Italian Wedding Soup with Turkey Meatballs from NY Times Cooking. This was fast, and easy. I added dollops of Ricotta on top for added creaminess.

And onwards we move into July. 2026 now has more days behind us than in front of us – whew, that’s a thought.

What critically acclaimed tv show do you not get? What cuisine could you eat multiple times a week and not get tired of it? Favorite pantry meal? Are you watching the World Cup too? Can you thrive for free????

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tall Ships and Swim Meets

It’s July, and a scorcher of a weekend coming up for the July 4th Holiday. Two of the kids are at Taiwan camp, we’ll take the third kid up tonight, and then the Husband and I will be off at our reading retreat! The first full week of summer break has been a little … laissez-faire. I didn’t have to work every day; my mother, brother, and niece came to visit; everyone stayed up late and slept in. There were library visits, dentist appointments, and lots of time at the pool. The lack of routine is starting to leave me a little discombobulated, so I think some structure is needed… after this holiday weekend.

On Friday we went to Baltimore for Sail 250, a festival of Tall Ships from all over the world gathering in honor of America’s 250th birthday. There were three harbors in Baltimore lined with Tall Ships, but we only had time to visit the ships in the Inner Harbour. All the ships were open to the public to go aboard for free, and they all had sailors available to answer questions. I found talking to the sailors one of my favorite parts of touring the boats – it really brought a human touch to our experience. They all spoke varying degrees of English, and all were eager to answer questions to the best of their abilities and we always managed to understand each other.

I like to encourage the kids to be engaged when we have these experiences, so I told them that if they asked five questions on at least two different vessels, we could have ice cream later in the day. The 6 year old started out by asking the same question on all the ships (“How many people are on this ship?”) but then we told her that she had to come up with something more original, and she did. Hopefully the kids can learn to tap into their sense of curiosity and asking questions not just an annoying thing mom makes them do….

All the modern tall ships are training vessels, aboard which navel cadets learn about navigation and seamanship and engineering while at sea. Some ships are also ambassador ships that sail to different countries on goodwill missions. We visited five working ships as well as two vessels from Baltimore’s Historic Ship Museum. As a bonus, these Historic Ships that are always in Baltimore Harbour were free to visit as well during Sail 250. We visited the following ships:

NRP Sagres, from Portugal – On the upper level of this ship was several casks of Portuguese port. This ship had three steering wheels in the helm (am I even using the right words?) – well actually four: three for regular navigation all grouped together and one on the other side of the mast for emergency navigation.

Gorch Fock, from Germany – This ship was HUGE, probably the biggest one we saw that day. The Husband asked if they also had casks of alcohol, given that the Portuguese ship had port and they said they had beer. Then the Husband made some quip like, “I guess you like your beer warm.” To which the sailor replied, “No, that’s the English.”
The other best thing about this ship was the lady who came aboard carrying a dog. She would go up to the sailors and say, “Do you want to say hi?” Which would gain her some very confused looks. Then she would say, “I figured you’ve been on the sea for so long, you might be missing the chance to pet a dog.” It was both bizarre and really thoughtful.
One other thing I loved about this ship was getting a glimpse of the cook working in the kitchen. Kitchens aboard a ship are such models of efficiency. They have to feed over a hundred people with a kitchen the size of a closet.

ROU Capitan Miranda, from Uruguay – I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Uruguay flag before, and I loved how big and sunny it was, displayed on this ship.

My favorite thing that I saw on this ship was how neat an precisely the ropes were coiled:

Twenty years ago, the first opera I worked on for my current company was Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (adapted from the Melville novella.), set aboard a Man-o-War. The opening scene featured the chorus and supers as Sailors rushing downstage and pulling ropes upstage from these neat coils. The stage managers spent so much time in rehearsal coiling ropes so that they would be set correctly and unfurl smoothly. So when I saw these ropes coiled on the deck of Capitan Miranda, I gave a gasp of recognition. Our ropes in the show had to be coiled like the circle in the background, not the figure eights in the foreground, but it was so cool to realize that we were doing something in rehearsal that sailors really did. I can’t even fathom how the figure eight coil is done. I might have to go watch a YouTube video on that.

USS Torsk – this was a submarine, built in 1944 and part of the Historic Ships collection in Baltimore Harbor. Visiting the submarine really brought home how close the quarters are aboard and also how efficiently space was used. The 14 year old ask the docent a question, about how accurate was the movie Crimson Tide. The docent laughed and said that while a lot of it was accurate, really the two movies which really capture life aboard the submarine were Operation Petticoat and Down Periscope. I immediately put those two movies on our movie watch list. The 14 year old also asked a very macabre question about how people are rescued from submarines when things go wrong.

INS Sudarshini from India – This was a smaller ship, but probably the one that came the furthest. It left India six months ago and sailed to America via the Suez Canal and through the Mediterranean. One thing that struck me about this ship was that all the signs and labels on the ship were in English – I asked the sailor about this and he said that there is a standard Indian English that they are all taught. Another thing I really liked about visiting this ship was that there were a lot of other American South Asians aboard and I loved seeing how they and the sailors would really engaged in conversations – imagine sailing half way across the world and finding people, hearing your language, from your home country in Baltimore!

USS Constellation – this was the second of the Historic Ships that we visited. It is a Sloop-o-War, built in 1854. This was the kids’ favorite ship because the second level below deck, were lined with canons. There was also one level – the level where the sleeping quarters were – that were lined with hammocks. I might have climbed into a hammock and dozed off for a few minutes. Here the 6 year old asked, “How do the ships get here?” meaning into the harbour, and we were told all about tug boats.

La Belle Poule from France – this was the last ship we visited and was one we made sure to visit since the two younger kids are learning French in school. (Well, technically, all three kids are learning French, but the 6 and 9 year old are in an immersion program and speak it more readily.) The 9 year old still hadn’t fulfilled his question quota by the time we got to La Belle Poule, so I made him a deal – if he asked his question in French then each question could count for two. And he did! He even asked THREE questions! “Is the food good?” “What kind of food do you eat?” and “Why is the ship called La Belle Poule?” This latter was funny because when I first mentioned this ship, the kids started calling it “The chicken boat” because poule/poulet is French for chicken. But apparently the ship is named after the King’s mistress. I think the French sailor was very amused by the little American boy talking to him in perfect French and I was really tickled by it as well. I’m feeling ready to send him to France on his own now! (Not really, but I feel like between my French and his French we’ll get by okay in parts of France outside of Paris…)

Ships bell- the placard on the wall has instructions on how to ring the time.

In between ships we had lunch from the food trucks that were in the Festival area. By the point, everyone was pretty tired so I left them at the food demonstration tent (where they watched a chef make peach gazpacho) and I went to forage from the food trucks. I got Jamaican food and some pupusas. The interesting thing to me about pupusas is that I love them, but I never get a chance to eat them, so I was very excited to order some. However, pupusas show up regularly on the school lunch menu and the kids were decidedly not excited that this is what I brought them to eat. “This is school food!” one of the kid said. Well fine – they ate the Jerk chicken and beef patties instead. (The the 14 year old went to get tacos…)

So all in all, it was a really great excursion – the weather was sunny and hot, but not unbearably so, the ships were fascinating to visit and (with prodding) the kids displayed a minor amount of curiosity and engagement. Sail250 ran for five days and I wished we could have gone back for a second day and seen more ships, particularly since on the weekend there was an airshow as well. When we were there on the Friday, we got to see some of the planes practicing their maneuvers, which was loud and fun, especially the trio of planes that puffed out red, white, and blue smoke in their wake. Most of the practice runs were done over another harbour, though, so we didn’t catch as many as we could have on Friday. I would have also loved to see the ships actually put their sails up as they came in and out of the Harbour. But I think going on the Friday was a good choice because it wasn’t too crowded and the lines to board the ships weren’t too long.

Grateful For (so many swim team related gratitudes this week!):
-A drizzly swim meet. On Sunday morning, the 14 year old had a swim meet – this is one of the more fun meets of the year because it’s the Relay Carnival, which is all relay races. The 14 year old, though, was swimming in events 20 and 22 (out of 22) and the Coaches race (she’s not technically a coach, but the team coaches couldn’t participate for various reasons and the 14 year old does teach the pre-team, so they figured that qualified her to swim the coaches’ race.) All of which meant, we arrived at the meet at 8:15am for warm up, and she didn’t swim until 12:30pm. I’m giving her big props for staying engaged and warm and cheering on her teammates. But also – it drizzled steadily for the whole morning. It wasn’t thundering or raining hard enough for it to be dangerous to swim, so the meet just persisted. I had to time during the second half of the meet, and all our timing sheets were in plastic bags so they wouldn’t disintegrate. And the meet to a long time because there were a lot of disqualifications, which means those need to be cleared up before the next race can start. One parent did the math and said he figured each race was taking 15-20 minutes to run because of all the DQs.
But you know, there were moments when I was out there with rain dripping off my head, wiping my glasses clean for the umpteenth time, and I thought, “Well thank goodness it’s not 100 degrees and sunny.” Because, I think I would really rather work a rainy swim meet than a blazing hot swim meet.

-Stroke and turn judges. This one is also swim meet related – all the swim meets are staffed by parent (guardian/grown up) volunteers – the race coordinators, the timers, the referees, the people inputting the times, the stroke and turn judges. I have thought about doing the stroke and turn training, but I feel like I would feel bad about DQing a kid and it feels like a lot of pressure. But my friend who is a stroke and turn judge says that they are told not to think of it as DQing a kid, but rather giving the kid’s coach the information to help the kid be a better swimmer. If no one notes when a stroke is being done incorrectly, the swimmer can’t correct it. I really like that framing. I’m always worried about how to give feedback and thinking about it as wanting someone to do well is a good way to look at it.

-Libby and Little Free Libraries for making books easy to come by.

-Swim practice being rained out so that we could have Family Game Night instead. We played Dixit and had a lovely quiet evening at home.

-The Pool that hosted Wednesday’s swim meet for keeping the baby pool open for visitors. A lot of the time during a swim meet, the rest of the pool shuts down, but the pool where we had the Wednesday swim meet at kept the main pool and the baby open so people could still use them while the meet was going on. I had to bring the 6 year old along to the meet, so I was grateful that she could play in the water while her big sister swam.

-That my mother can still come visit us. My mother is 77 years old and still has the energy and inclination to come visit even though it means flying across the country. I’m realizing, especially since we had kids on the later side, that every visit from my parents is a gift and I am so grateful for each moment we all have together. She is also very independent and eager to take the kids on adventures – I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about entertaining her when she is here; we can have life as usual, with a few extra adventures thrown in if we want.

-Online shopping. Okay, I know there are all sorts of ecological evils associated with online shopping, but I needed a new tankini top, and bathing suit shopping (well most clothes shopping, let’s be honest) is so disheartening for me. I’m very grateful that I could just order a bunch of tankinis from Title Nine and try them out at home. These are the two that I ended up with:

I feel a little frumpy at the pool, but the tankini is my swimwear of choice, particularly in a bright print – I can go to the bathroom easily, it covers my stomach, and these ones are also suitable for me to swim laps. I guess I’m just very practical pool-wise.

Looking Forward To:
-Our Reading Retreat! Is finally about to happen. I’ve also booked a tour of the Pennsylvania State Capitol while we are in Harrisburg. It’s going to be so hot! I almost regret not booking a place with a pool, but as long as we have AC and comfy couches, I think it will be a good time.

-Starting work on a new show next week.

-Hearing how the kids like Taiwan Camp.

-Listening to this audiobook on our drive to Taiwan Camp and Reading Retreat:

What We Ate:
Monday: Vegan Pesto Pasta Salad from NY Times Cooking. Meant to be an easy pool dinner, but it rained, so we ate it at home. Always a hit. Vegan.

Tuesday: Zucchini Boats. We had a bunch of zucchini to use up so I stuffed them with a ground beef/black bean/salsa mixtures, topped with cheese and baked. It wasn’t the idea pool food, but it worked well enough.

Wednesday: Sandwiches and leftover pasta salad at the pool for the swim meet. Though we also bought hot dogs and fries from the pool snack bar.

Thursday: Chicken pasta salad – based on this recipe for Cilantro Mint Lettuce Wraps from the NY Times. I had planned to make the lettuce wraps, but then we used the lettuce for salad, so I made the chicken into pasta salad instead, adding cucumbers and grapes for crunch. I don’t know that the fusilli worked – I probably should have used noodles – but I did like the flavors of this dish.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Operation Petticoat, 1959 movie starring Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and a submarine. We watched this after coming home from Sail250 because it was what the docent on the submarine recommended. This was such a delightful movie. Surprisingly, the kids all really enjoyed this one and asked, “Can we watch more movies that are funny like this?” So if anyone has any suggestions for screwball comedies with snappy dialogue, funny performances, and lots of physical humour, send them our way!

Saturday: Teriyaki Tofu and Steam Broccoli from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. My brother is vegetarian, so I always use his visits as an excuse to make some of my favorite vegan/vegetarian recipes. This one is always a winner. I had to work this night, so I prepped it all and the 14 year old baked the tofu, steamed the broccoli, and made the rice.

Sunday: We went out for Hot Pot. My brother is from Berkeley, CA and has so much good food there, that I always hope he doesn’t get bored of the food options when he comes to visit us. One thing he always wants to do, though, is go to Hot Pot – I guess our Hot Pot has the best vegetarian options that he’s found anywhere. A new feature at our hot pot place, though:

They now hand out bibs and hair ties! We made good use of those bibs for the little kids, and I will say the adults probably should have used some too.

Well that was the week that was last. I hope everyone who is affected by this heatwave is staying cool this weekend. Happy Canada Day to those that celebrate, and Happy Fourth of July to those that celebrate that.

Do you have a favorite “classic” film? Have you ever been on a Tall Ship? Are pupusas a common food for you? What is your swim wear of choice?