I started this post on a rainy rainy Saturday, while the oldest was at her voice lesson….
. The teacher is teaching out of a church and there is a little church library with comfy chairs and warm wood paneling and muted colours and wifi and it all feels very cozy. I have my tea with me, but there are no coasters here and I’m afraid of putting my mug down on a surface here without a coaster. All to say, I have 45 minutes, so let’s see if I can write a post.
Here is October! We flipped our 3 month calendar and December is in sight! (Note to self: Order a new 3 month calendar. Actually order planners in general.) October came in blazing hot with temperatures in the 80s, but now we are looking at another drizzly week ahead. The leaves are starting to be tinged red and brown. The season is moving forward for sure.
So Hello, October. Good-bye September. Here was how September was:
September Highlights:
-The last week of our pool being open and swimming laps. Seeing the kids make leaps and bounds in swimming this year.
-Our Annual Trip to the Maryland Renaissance Festival – there was music, food, juggling, jousting, acrobatics, and the purchase of a giant wooden axe.
-The 14 year old got a part in the high school play!
-Some nice social time for me – Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends. Walks with a friend I met at a new mom’s group 7 years ago. Ethiopian food lunch with another friend. It always fills my cup to connect with friends.
-Long weekend trip to Monticello and Shenandoah for hiking.
-My parents visiting. We didn’t do a whole lot special (aside from the Monticello/Shenandoah trip)- just life with them around.
-Celebrating the birthday of the youngest. She is now Seven! We had strawberry shortcake the day of and the following weekend a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese with an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. AND she got all her Thank You cards out! I got to send snail mail for her – it feels really nice to send snail mail.
(On that note – we watched a Kathleen Madigan comedy special and she has this line about how amazing the Postal Service is, “Here’s 45 cents. Please take this to Alaska.” I mean she’s right – that’s an amazingly cheap service. Although now it’s $0.82, which still seems like a good deal to bring a bit of joy to someone far away.)
-Biking to school with the kids.
-Starting Tap Dance Class. It’s been a challenge, but fun. I’m working on flapping with my left foot without accidentally scuffing my heel on the ground.
-Date night with the Husband – we had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and then went to a performance of Bernstein’s MASS.
=My cousins came to visit (Actually my cousin and her grown daughter, but I call them both my cousin). We went to Glenstone Museum and took a walk at the Botanical Gardens and just hung out.
-Summer: The Donna Summer Musical at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Our first dinner theatre experience and it was a lot of fun.
-Favorite Dinner Cooked: Crispy Tofu Tacos (so good we had it twice last month), Thai Quinoa Salad.
-Favorite thing watched: I finished Starstruck and found it such a sweet and funny show. We also started to watch Schitt’s Creek, Better Things, and Gilmore Girls.
Goals and Habits:
-Painting: only 1 painting this month. I thought I would paint during our long weekend away in Monticello, but I didn’t. I think painting is taking a backseat in October since I have to finish the Hallowe’en costumes.
-Crossword puzzle completed: 1
-Live Performances: 3 – Bernstein’s MASS and also lots of live performances at the Renn Faire, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
-Museums: 2 – Glenstone Museum and Monticello
-Hike: 1 – Shenandoah hike on Turk Mountain Trail
-Yoga: 18/30, but I think this was actually higher because I wasn’t good at logging and habit tracking last month.
-Run: 6x (+2 bike rides and 2 laps swims)
-Strength: 2 (My goal is 8x a month, but I’m finding it really hard to motivate myself for this one…i just need to find a consistent way to work it in)
-Vegan Dinners: 4 (Goal is 4x a month, so yay)
September Lowlights:
-The situation at the Kennedy Center being shut down. I’m not directly affected because I no longer work there, but the trickledown effect is huge throughout the arts community in DC.
-Our fridge not working, us buying a new fridge, then the old fridge working again and us regretting getting a new fridge so soon. Oh well. I guess the fridge was over 12 years old so it was getting unpredictable.
-Stressing about kids’ activity sign ups. I still feel like the kids are doing too much but also missing out on things. There’s no perfect solution here.
-Saying good-bye to a beloved work colleague who has gone on to a bigger job.
-Some non-bloggable stressors in life – I guess I’ll just say sometimes it’s hard to have patience with the world and those around me, for sure the fault is mine.
Quote of September:
Don’t try to convince the other person during the argument.
-Ron Friedman on the Radical Candor Podcast. This quote really landed when I was in the midst of the aforementioned non-bloggable things. Friedman’s point is that sometimes it is best to make your case and walk away and let the other person ponder, rather than pushing to change someone’s mind in the midst of the argument. People need time to come to conclusions themselves.
Looking Forward to in October:
-Hallowe’en! I’m a little stressed about having to make the costumes, but I’m excited. I don’t have a serger, so I’ve been watching lots of YouTube videos on how to make a French seam. (Is this even necessary???)
-Starting rehearsals for a new show. To be honest, I’m dreading this show a little – I don’t do well with change, and there will be a lot of new things to deal with since we will be in a new (to me) venue. I mean even the fact that I’m calling it a venue and not a theatre is kind of telling. Also not looking forward to the schedule – there is rehearsal almost every night for the next month. The Husband looked at everyone at our family meeting today and said, “Take a good look at mom so you remember what she looks like when you see her again in November.”
BUT despite that- I AM looking forward to the stage manager colleagues coming in and to working with them.
-My cousin is coming for a quick visit.
-Theatre trip to see Come From Away (we just did this and it was FANTASTIC!)
-Supertitle gig. It looks like it’s a lot of songs from the Great American Songbook, which is always a great joy to listen to. And we don’t run titles for the popular song selections, so I just get to listen.
-Elisabeth’s Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I was going to have a theme for every week’s walk, but this first week snuck up on me, so no themes this week.
-reading some fun books. In the busy season at work, books need to be gripping and fun. Currently reading:
-also, I started watching Bridgerton Season 4 and it’s been so wonderfully swoony so far. Looking forward to watching more of it. (i’ve skipped season 2 and 3 because I didn’t like those books as much as Sophie and Benedict’s story. Theirs is probably my favorite of the series. That and While He Was Wicked. The rest of the book series is very meh for me.)
Grateful for this past week:
-The Library close to my mechanics. I had to take my car in for an oil change and was able to go to the library three blocks away while I waited. How amazing that there is this place with desks and wifi and I can park there for three hours – for free.
-Flowers even though it is autumn. There are some autumn dahlias in our garden that bring a cheerful burst of colour to our front yard.
-Sandwiches. What a perfect invention for when one is hungry! Bread, meat, cheese, mustard. All able to be slapped together quickly for a satisfying mouthful. These days, I’ll take whatever is in the fridge, but it’s been brown mustard, turkey, and cheddar cheese. If I have more time, and I have it on hand, I’ll add avocado or arugula.
-The rain letting up just in time for my walk to the Metro and then from the Metro to work.
-Naps and an unscheduled Saturday afternoon in order to take one. I had been feeling a little run down all week and ended up taking a 3 hour nap and felt much better when I woke up at the tale end of the afternoon. Also grateful to the Husband for taking care of dinner while I was napping. Naps are such glorious restorative things.
-a fun hair cut. So two nights before my appointment to have my hair cut, I had a dream that I was getting my hair cut. And in that dream, the stylist – who, incidentally wasn’t my stylist and I spent a good portion of my dream asking, “But where’s Alexei???” – the stylist gave me a super sleek 1920s bob with blunt bangs. So I go to get my hair cut and when I sit down, Alexei asks, “What are you thinking today?”
And I tell him all about my dream. And he says, “Okay.”
He starts snipping away.
“I’m digging your dream,” Alexei said. “This is so much better than those people who come in and tell me, ‘AI told me I should do this.’ And the AI image has nothing to do with what their hair texture is like, or what what their face is like or anything.”
And twenty minutes later – my hair was short and I had my blunt bangs. (Alexei works fast and charges by the hour…).
I’ve since washed the hair and it still looks cute. This has been my favorite hair cut in ages.
What We Ate:
Monday: Salmon Pasta – the 14 year old made dinner. I don’t have the recipe for what she made, but it involved salmon, spinach, and pasta.
Taco Tuesday: Crispy Tofu Tacos from NY Times Cooking. We made these last month and everyone loves them. I served with cabbage and avocado. Vegan, though the kids put sour cream and cheese on theirs.
Wednesday: Ground anything Bolognese sauce and pasta w/ bagged salad. This was a “clean out the freezer” meal. I had three containers half full of crushed or pureed tomatoes, and a variety of ground meat in the freezer – sausage, beef, lamb, and pork. Though the pork smelled a little off, so I ended up throwing that out. Anyhow, it all went in a pot with carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and the left over tofu from Tuesday’s crispy tofu tacos. Hearty and oh so satisfying.
Thursday: Thai Inspired Coconut Curry Soup from NY Times Cooking. We still had sweet potatoes and a cauliflower left from the CSA box our friend gave us while he was out of town, and this soup was a delicious way to use it up along with the rest of a jar of red curry paste in the fridge. This was really tasty. The recipe itself is vegan, but I added chicken broth to get it out of my fridge and a dash of fish sauce.
Friday: Pizza (the Husband made – sausage and mushroom; pickle; red pepper; fig and balsamic. All very tasty) and Funny Girl. Funny story here – it was the 14 year old’s turn to pick a move and she wanted to watch a movie musical, so she picked Funny Girl, having seen the stage show this summer when we were in Niagara-on-the-Lake. So we rented the movie from Amazon and put it on. And we’re watching it and I’m reading the credits and it says, “Songs by John Kander and Frank Ebb.” And I thought, “Oh I didn’t realize that!” And then we’re watching the movie and Barbra Streisand is frolicking onstage in a huge musical number and the plot unfolds, and I keep asking the 14 year old, “Was that part in the stage play?” And she kept saying, “No, I don’t think so.”
Then truth be told I might have fallen asleep for a little bit because the movie is going on and on, and I’m like, “When is Barbara Streisand going to sing Don’t Rain on My Parade???” And then I make some comment about how the movie version of Funny Girl seems very different from the stage show. And then the 9 year old pipes up from his corner of the couch:
“We aren’t watching Funny Girl. We’re watching Funny Lady.”
Wait what???
Did you know there was a sequel to Funny Girl, called Funny Lady?
We had accidentally rented Funny Lady instead of Funny Girl. I guess the 9 year old noticed, but he hadn’t seen the stage show, so he didn’t clock that we were watching the wrong movie. By then we were half way through Funny Lady, but we stopped the movie, rented Funny GIRL, and pizza and movie night lasted an epically long time.
Saturday: Bahn mi sandwiches, take out. This was the evening I wasn’t feeling well, so we wanted something fast and easy.
Sunday: Sausage, tortellini, and red sauce – typical Sunday dinner.
That’s the dispatch from here. Hope everyone had a lovely weekend and a great week ahead!