Diane

(bi)Weekly recap + what we ate: Distances

It feels like I’m still struggling through May, but really it’s well into June! The older kids still have a week of school, which feels late to me, but at the same time, I’m thinking, “ALREADY??? Unfettered free time for them?!?!” The 3 year old will go to day care full time, but the older kids are having four weeks of camp and the rest will be trips or time with grandparents or parents. I have finally booked all the camps that we need for the kids, so our child care needs are covered. It’s certainly a relief to have it done, but I am second-guessing myself and wondering if there should be more organized activities. It will be fine. I have to remind myself that done is better than perfect. And really, there is no perfect. Grandparent camp/ camp mom and dad will definitely be on the unstructured side. I’m strangely a little nervous about the lack of plans or routine for the non-camp weeks… I want to fill the summer with joy and fun and good memories, but at the same time that feels like a lot of pressure to have those expectations.

Here, the air has been hazy and we , in an ironic twist, masked to go outdoors for a couple days. I guess I’m glad I stocked up on masks last March, even though the kids weren’t masking in school anymore. I didn’t think much of the reports of poor air quality, but when I woke up Thursday morning, the trees seemed shrouded in a light mist. Of course it wasn’t mist. The air in DC is no where are poor of a quality as those further north, and in Canada – I hope everyone is staying safe; it all sounds really worrisome and stressful.

My May show has closed, and that finishes out the season at that company. I’ll be back in September, though, so I don’t feel too badly about not having time to clean out my desk properly.

One day, when I was doing my pre-show checks, I was struck by how much less time my pre-show checks take by the time I get to performance number four. When we first move to the theatre from the rehearsal room, it can initially take upwards of 45 minutes to talk the crew through setting up the props (presetting the props, we call it), and then for me to double check all the presets. The prop list for this show was quite large and a lot of it is quite specific: candle in the black holder on the stage left prop table, candle in the brass holder onstage, two candle tapers in the wooden box, two inch stack of paper on the crate, one tray with six ashtrays and six candles, one tray with three ashtrays and three candles and two cups, etc., etc., etc. Also – once we get into the theatre I work with a union crew so I can’t just put things where I want it – I have to ask the crew to do it. In the rehearsal hall, the other stage managers and I preset the props ourselves, and it just goes faster when I don’t have to explain the exact angle a box needs to sit at because if it isn’t like that, the singer won’t be able to reach the thing on top of the box that is very important for that bit of stage business. But I am deeply grateful for the crew because sometimes we have very heavy and awkward items in the show and by the time we get to stage, I’m tired of having to move it around myself. So I’m always glad for the crew.

All that to say, the first few days onstage I’m rushing to make sure things get set up at those correct angles, and I feel like the props won’t get set up in time for the start of rehearsal. The prop preset seems huge. Sometimes they aren’t all set when rehearsal starts and I just prioritize – set/check the stuff in the first scene, leave all the stuff in the last scene and check those when we get closer. (This is not the optimal way of going about things.)

But then something happens along the way as we get towards opening night and then through performances – the preset list that was a long and daunting 45 minutes process suddenly becomes manageable and takes only fifteen minutes to check. Often the crew has it done before I come up to stage. I can take one glance at a shelf of trays and tell immediately when something is not right, when a slice of bread or bottle of wine is missing. It’s not that I am become careless in prop checking – though I have been known to miss something (one show, it was a canteen that I had forgotten, and a singer had to improvise with a wine bottle. Then he exited stage with said wine bottle and returned with the canteen. I quipped that he pulled a reverse-Jesus.) I’m not careless – I still methodically check things off the preset list – but certainly by performance #4, what once seemed like a huge task on Day One in the theatre, suddenly seems like a less big task, seems routine and easy. On these big big shows I usually do have a moment when I say to myself, “Just think, this preset used to seem impossibly large, and now it’s … not.” Maybe that’s a metaphor for other things in life… sleep training, weekday mornings, going to the airport after COVID….

Just page one of the prop preset. There is another page and then three pages of diagrams.

Along those lines, in my last recap, I noted that I took an average of 16 000 steps per day during tech. As an exercise, I tallied how many steps I took during a regular performance – it takes in the neighborhood of 3000 steps over the course of four hours to run this particular show. That’s a 13 000 step difference. It got me thinking – that 13 000 step difference is the work it takes to figure out how the show is going to work in the theatre. I think sometimes people think that what we do as Stage Managers is make sure the show happens smoothly every night, but as I was doing the math of the difference in number of steps between a day of tech and a performance call, I realize that a lot of the core of my job is in those 13 000 steps. Being a stage manager is not just the 3000 steps it takes to run the show night after night. Rather it’s the 13 000 steps is the work it took to decide the backstage traffic patterns, to figure out the quick changes and prop presets, to make sure singers had clear instructions on how not to get hit by a piece of scenery, to run out onstage when the conductor or director stopped the rehearsal…. 3000 steps is what the audience sees. 13 000 steps, or roughly 5.5 miles, is what it takes to get there. The distance one travels is decidedly not the destination.

Speaking of distance…. I’ve been back to commuting. I recently read this opinion article: “Office Worker Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute” and something about it certainly rubbed me the wrong way. That they have to specify “Office Workers” seems to leave out large swaths of the population who don’t have the luxury of choosing to work from home. Similarly, a few weeks ago, I listened to an episode of The Art of Manliness titled The Science of a Better Daily Routine, in which they talked about science based ways to tweak your daily routine, including your commute. The guest mentioned that the optimal commute is 15 minutes and how we should craft our jobs with that in mind. It sort of irked me that he seemed to think tweaking your commute was an easy lifestyle change – like eating vegetables or drinking more water.

Anyhow, commuting has been on my mind recently as it has been taking vast amounts of my time. My current commute takes anywhere from 20 minutes on a Saturday morning to 1h, 5 mins on a weekday at 5pm. On days when it takes 20 minutes, it gives me a certain satisfying sense of flow; between home and work, there is but one traffic light, and that one is around the corner from my house. After that traffic light, I can drive without stopping all the way to work – my favorite is driving with my windows down, singing at the top of my lungs. It’s actually fun … if the traffic is light. If the traffic is not light… well then the commute can be soul sucking. All these people trying to get somewhere in their coffin-like metal pods. Alone, mostly. I find myself very rage-y some days when the traffic is moving particularly slowly. The punishing rays of sun that beat in through my window that I can’t escape from as I crawl along at 15 mph, past accidents and through construction. I am trying to be Zen about commuting, trying to make it an exercise in gratitude. I’m having varying degrees of success with this.

Things that make my commute a little less despairing:
– Snacks. Most days I’m commuting home around dinner time, and being hungry certainly does not improve my mood. I used to have granola bars and candy, and chocolate in the car for commuting, but these past few months, in an attempt to eat more vegetables, I’ve started packing crudités and cut up fruit for my commute. I feel like this little switch is a minor win on many levels. In the morning, I have been having my homemade iced chai in my cup holder, and it makes me happy. I tell myself I can’t drink it until I’m in the car, and it gives me something to look forward to. I do need to figure out some kind of portable breakfast because I’m finding that most mornings, I’m not hungry enough to eat breakfast before I get the kids to the school bus and then I’m starving by the time I get to work. Maybe the solution is to just eat at work, but I like to work when I get into work.
– Ice cold water. Staying hydrated is important, and ice cold water on a hot day can be divine. I’ve been filling up insulated water bottle with ice in the morning and topping it off before I leave work so that I have cold water for the drive home. I find having a sip of very very cold water helps perk me up a little bit.
– Something good to listen to. A good audiobook, an interesting podcast (lately I’ve been listening to Book Friends Forever, What Should I Read Next, and The Puberty Podcast), something good on the radio (This great story from the BBC on how opera companies use singing and breathing techniques to help COVID sufferers.), music. Having something engaging to listen to helps me not be so annoyed at the pace of traffic. I was also thinking that I could use the time to catch up on phone calls, but somehow I never feel like doing that.
– Sunglasses. I never saw the point in sunglasses, but a few years ago I got a pair of prescription sunglasses and it was life changing. Really bright sun tends to make me sleepy, which is dangerous when driving. Having sunglasses helps alleviate some of that sun drowsy feeling for me when I don’t have to constantly squint in the morning/ afternoon brightness.
– Reminding myself that I’m lucky to be able to commute to a job that I love, and one that requires my presence. In our world of AI advances, I’m glad that I’m not replaceable. (yet. Always yet. I don’t want to underestimate what we will do with technology). I don’t always feel like what I do is important in the larger context of world problems, but I do get a lot of satisfaction in how I function in the microcosm of putting on a show, and the in person interactions and experiences that I get to participate in. So on days when I am crawling through traffic I try to be grateful that someone needs me to show up somewhere.

So some fun things that have happened lately:

-On Memorial Day I had thought to take the kids on a hike with some friends, but it rained that morning, making it a little too muddy for that, so we decided to take the Metro into DC and go to a Museum instead. We decided to go to the Portrait Gallery because it’s right off the Red Line so easy to get to. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best choice of museum for four kids aged 3 to 11. I love that museum – I love seeing all the portraits of people and reading about what they did and how they made their mark. I always am filled with wonder at all the people who did amazing things whom I’ve never even heard about. But… I admit row and rows of portraits is probably not the most engaging for kids. Every time they paused in front of a painting or photograph for more than twenty seconds felt like an achievement. They did spend a whole three minutes in front of this painting, though:

Capture of H.B.M. Frigate Macedonian by U.S. Frigate United States, October 25, 1812 – painting by Thomas Chamber

Something about the energy and movement of the waves and the smoke seemed to capture the kids’ attention. They stood in front of it and talked about canons and shooting and destruction. It felt like a small win.

After the Portrait Gallery we were going to walk to the Natural History Museum, but all the streets were closed down by the Mall. At first I thought it was for the Memorial Day Concert on the Mall, but as we got closer, we realized that there was in fact a Memorial Day Parade. I haven’t seen a parade in ages, and certainly not one with this many marching bands. Of course we stopped to watch. The weather was pretty drizzly by this point, which acutally worked in our favor because the streets weren’t too crowded and we could get a good viewing spot. But all those poor high school students from all over the country, with their polyester uniforms and instruments having to march in the damp weather! I imagine they will always remember this… “Remember that time we got invited to play at the Memorial Day Parade in Washington, DC and it rained and we got soaked as we walked miles and miles down Independence Avenue?” Hard times certainly make for memorable times.

– The 11 year old is graduating from elementary school this year. (OMG.) The PTA got “Proud Graduate Class of 2023” yard signs for all the 5th graders and I walked over one morning to pick one up for our yard. Aside from paying the membership fee and venmo-ing money when staff gifts are being collected, I haven’t been very involved in the PTA. PTAs kind of scare me being the introvert that I am. – I know they are very nice and they do a lot of really great things, but meeting new people and activism has always been hard for me. Plus with kids at two different school I didn’t have it in me to join two separate PTAs. Anyhow, I show up at this person’s house and there are two ladies out front handing out yard sign. They asked the name of my kid and I told them and they said, “Oh my gosh, we love her!” Then they went on about what a good role model she is and how they’ve seen her play basketball, etc. etc. I feel like I spend a lot of time at loggerheads with the 11 year old and to hear other people sing her praises… well it reminded me that she really is a good kid and she tries hard to do the right thing and I need to be less hard on her. I was delighted to hear other people say such good things about her, yet it also made me feel bad that sometimes all our interactions are about things that I want her to do better on, and I should have more interactions that aren’t me naggingly remining her to do things. Definitely one of the things I need to work on.

-I finally opened the bag of Ketchup Chips I brought home from our trip to Montreal last summer. I tend to either abstain from snacks completely or eat the whole package of something. Since I can’t get ketchup chips here in the States, I couldn’t bear to open the one bag I brought home from Montreal knowing that once I opened it, I would devour the whole thing in one sitting. The Husband a few weeks ago, moved the bag of chips to our mantle, with some comment about how they are such a prized possession we should put them on display. Well, one day, after work, I finally decided that it was time to open the bag. Not sure why – something about it being summer and me being home from work early just made it feel like the right time to indulge. I opened the bag, inhaled the tomatoe-y vinergar-y aroma of the chips, then sat in the back yard with a book and my chips and savored every one. It was lovely, and, yes, I’m sad they are now gone.

And afternoon with ketchup chips, working from home Also – as idyllic as this scene seems – we were actually soon driven in by the mosquitoes.

Grateful For:
– All the things mentioned above that make commuting not so terrible. But also for technology and Google Maps. Being able to predict when I’ll be home, being able to see before I get on the road if the Capital Beltway is red or green… I remember when I got my first GPS – back before there was one on every smartphone. It was about the size of a baseball and sat on my dashboard. The first model I had couldn’t tell you traffic delays or anything, it just told you how to get from point A to point B. And before that, all I had to get around was a Thomas Guide. I grew up in Southern California and learned how to drive and get around using a Thomas Guide. Crazy to think that my kids will probably never have to look up a street location on a paper map book.

-The 11 year old’s piano teacher. The 11 year old has been on the fence about continuing with piano lessons. She likes being able to play, but does. not. practice. I’ve gone through phases of pleading, ordering, cajoling, bribing, and just ignoring her in my attempts to get her to practice, and it’s exhausting. I was thinking I should just let her quit, but then I was really struck by a list of things adults wish they could have learned (not sure where I saw the list) and the two top things were 1) play and instrument, and 2) speak a foreign language. (I’m glad I can do both, albeit rather imperfectly.) And then I spoke to a friend who has a side gig as a violinist and she said she is really glad her parents didn’t let her quit when she was my kid’s age. So I don’t want to be all, “You’ll stick with piano because I say so,” but I do want to find a way that the 11 year old will stick with it. I talked to her piano teacher and the teacher said that the 11 year old, when she is pushed can play beautifully, and she would be sad if she were to stop. Then the teacher said this to me, “I have students whose parents think piano is important and want their children to play an instrument even if they don’t practice at home, so they essentially pay me to sit and practice piano with them for thirty minutes once a week.” I don’t know that I feel that is the best use of my child’s activity fund, but at the same time, what if consistent lessons will be enough for her to eventually get over the hump of lacking self-motivation? I think one of the hard thing for me as a parent of a tween is not knowing who my child really is, or wondering if who my child really is is right in front of me, but I can’t see it. Anyhow, I’m glad for the long chat I had with her piano teacher – it gave me a lot of perspective. At first I was inclined to just let the eleven year old quit, but she and I talked about it and about how important it was and how much fun she seems to have when she’s just playing around on the piano and we decided that she’ll take a break for the summer and start again in the fall. I’m cautiously optimistic about this.

-A roof. I literally wrote this in my gratitude journal. One night it rained so so hard, and I was lying in bed with the 6 year old and he said, “It’s a good thing we have a roof.” And I thought… yes. I am very grateful for our roof.

Looking Forward To:
-I’ve booked our summer camping trip! Three nights car camping in the Shenedoahs. It will be me, the two little kids, and my parents. I’m excited for some time outdoors and I’m starting to research hikes for us to go on. I do need to get a new cooler since there is a crack in our old one.

– A visit from a friend. She’s an old friend from college who will be in the area. I haven’t decided what to do yet – maybe we’ll wander around Annapolis, maybe we’ll go on a hike?

-Being home for pizza and movie night. I’ve worked almost every Friday and Saturday night for the past six weeks, or we’ve had an event that we had to attend, so I’ve missed out on pizza and movie night for a while. I get to pick the movie.

– The 11 year old’s fifth grade graduation ceremony. Can’t believe I will have a middle-schooler!

What We Ate: I admit meal planning has been rubbish lately and the Husband has been making most of the dinners. So here is the very vague rundown of the past three weeks since I last did a menu recap…

Monday: Tofu and Broccoli Stir-Fry

Tuesday: Vegan Chickpea Gnocchi Soup. (Made it in the morning before going to work.)

Wednesday: Pasta of some sort

Thursday: Zucchini Boats.

Friday: Pizza and movie night (Zootopia). I think they ordered pizza.

Saturday: Dirty Meat – The was the big grilling party that we have for my work colleagues. This guy I work with marinates meat for a week in a combination of herbs and spices and then we gather to grill and eat it. There were over thirty people at our house for this party since it involved both past and present co-workers. It was a really good time. It might have also involved water balloons.

Sunday: Last minute dinner invite to go to a friends’ house. They had accidentally ordered too much food and needed help eating it. Not that we really need an excuse to see these friends.

Monday: Sauteed green beans, eggs, and Tater Tots. I’m not sure what the Husband/freezer that I can cook and call dinner?”

Tuesday: Pasta Salad with the leftover grilled vegetable from the Dirty Meat party.

Wednesday: Not sure at all.

Thursday: Mac and cheese made from scratch. Go Husband!

Friday: Leftover Pasta salad and pizza. I had to work, but the family watched Kung Fun Panda II (I think? Is there a second one? It was the baby’s turn to choose.)

Saturday: Pizza. On two consecutive nights? Not sure what is up with that.

Sunday: Leftovers scrounged from the fridge.

Monday: Burgers (Turkey and Beef), roasted vegetables, and tater tots. Our friends who came with us to the museum stayed on for dinner. I love having friends who you can just pull tater tots out of the freezer and call it dinner.

Tuesday: Broccoli Tofu Stir Fry

Wednesday: Eat down the fridge night.

Thursday: Pasta Salad. This time using my Friend’s Greek Salad recipe as a base. Made in the morning before I went to work.

Friday: Sandwiches and cookies. And easy dinner because the 11 year old had a piano recital we had to get to.

Books Read: March, April, and May 2023

Here we are in June and I haven’t done a book post in a while, so time to catch up. March was a slow month for reading – work was really consuming and I only finished three books. April I had spring break and our trip to get some books in, and also maybe I was just reading easier books? Here’s what’s I’ve been reading the past few months:

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. My father gave me a copy of this book – Yu is a Taiwanese American writer; I’m pretty sure my parents know his parents. Interior Chinatown is a quirky novel that tells the story of actor Wallace Wu who has spent his whole life playing “Generic Asian Man” while he dreams of really playing “Kung Fu Guy”, the pinnacle for an Asian actor. The book sometimes reads like a screenplay, sometimes reads like a fever dream, sometimes reads like a diatribe on the Asian American experience. The struggle to assimilate, the conflicting feelings about wanting to assimilate – a lot of the themes of the book spoke to me on a very personal level. I thought this was a really good book.

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto, read by Risa Mei – This book is a sequel to Dial A For Aunties, a book I found hugely entertaining. I didn’t love this book as much. Perhaps it was the audiobook experience – the Indonesian accents seemed overdone to the point of caricature and really started to grate on me. Maybe I would have enjoyed reading it better than listening to it. The story itself was amusingly ridiculous, chaotic and madcap.

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu – This novel tells two parallel/ intersecting stories of two friends growing up in war-torn Uganda and of a woman in the Midwest who befriends one of them after he immigrates to America. It is a beautifully written book that explores the idea of how we make our own identity, especially when one has to leave it behind. Some of the book was a little slippery and hard to grasp for me – I couldn’t really tell which were the separate sides of the revolution that were being fought – and there was some violent parts that I didn’t love.

The Dinner by Herman Koch – I bought this book by Dutch author Herman Koch to read during our trip to Amsterdam. I like reading novels related to my travel destination whenever I can. Koch’s novel unfolds over the course of a very fancy dinner in which two brothers and their spouses meet to talk about a very important issue. This was an expertly crafted and suspenseful thriller, which ultimately left me with an “ick” feeling. It’s pretty much a book about horrible people being really unself-aware, doing horrible or idiotic things. This book also featured on of my least favorite plot devices, which I won’t say because it would be a bit of a spoiler. Despite that I found much to admire in the book – it is very well crafted and the satirical food writing is very on point.

Fencing with the King by Diana Abu-Jaber – This novel tells the story of Amani, a divorced poet struggling with writer’s block, who accompanies her father to his homeland of Jordan. Her father has been invited to participate in the birthday celebrations of the King, who had once been his fencing partner. I really like this book – I’d never been to Jordon nor, indeed do I know much about it, and this book immediately swept me on a journey to a foreign country, so immersive was Abu-Jaber’s writing. I don’t usually have patience with main characters who are too driftless in the world, but Amani was at least trying to work through the malaise. This book had family secrets, political intrigue, foreign adventures and a touch of romance. I really enjoyed this one.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton – This graphic novel memoir tells about Beaton’s time working in the oil sands of Alberta. This was a grim, uncomfortable read, one that doesn’t shy away from the sexism and casual misogyny and abuse that she faced every day. At the same time, she is able to cling to the kernels of kindness that she finds among her co-workers, and she recognizes that people aren’t bad, rather the oil sands are just in an impossible and toxic environment. I thought the art in this book was beautiful too. This book really stuck with me. (Side note – I thought I was unfamiliar with Beaton’s work, but then in one part of Ducks, she shows herself drawing horses, and I thought the horse looked familiar, and sure enough – it turns out that she had written a pretty awesome book that I had read with my kids – The Princess and The Pony.)

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine – Read this for my “book club” with my 11 year old. She had read it for school and then handed it to me to read. I thought the book was very sweet and funny – a Cinderella story of sorts, this book tells the story of Ella who is cursed to always do as she is told, and her adventures to break this curse. Prince Char seemed a little too perfect for my tastes, but the 11 year old says that’s what fairy tale princes are supposed to be like.

The Golden Hour by Niki Smith – A graphic novel that was also a mom/daughter book club read. The 11 year old had read it and then given it to me, saying she thought it was really good. This is the story of Manuel, a high school student who is trying to find his way after witnessing an act of gun violence. He finds solace in take photographs and eventually in the friendships that he forms at school. The art in this book is stunning and the climax of the book even more so.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, read by Sherman Alexie – I picked this book up because it was mentioned in the Judy Blume “By The Book” column of the New York Times. After I borrowed it, I realized that Alexie had written a hilarious and surprising children’s book Thunder Boy, Jr. that I had read last year. I guess this book is a YA classic and somewhat controversial, partly for it’s frank talk of sexuality. The novel tells the story of native American teenager Junior, who decides to go to a high school off his reservation, angering his best friend. This book is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking and the last few chapters are absolutely gripping and beautiful. I hear there are some illustrations in the book that I didn’t get to see since I read this on audio. The audio version does have lots of bonus content, though, including an interview with Alexie, where he talks about his inspiration and about how much of the book was autobiographical.

Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne – a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, this is a fun and steamy romance novel set in DC, which made it extra fun for me. I love a good Jane Austen inspired spin off and I really enjoyed this one. In this version, Liza is a DJ trying to fight big corporate property developer Dorsey as he tries to take over her neighborhood. But, as in the original Austen, Dorsey is perhaps not the man Liza thinks he is. I loved trying to track the parallels between the original Austen and this modern day interpretation and especially appreciated the freedoms that the characters have when freed from the constraints of 19th century society. I have always felt frustrated by the lack of agency Austen’s women have and how they are bound by the rules of their time, and this modern day version was really enjoyable for me in that Liza doesn’t have to wait for Dorsey to save her family, but takes charge of things on her own.

The Good People by Hannah Kent – I picked up this book from our AirBnB in Amsterdam. I left my copy of The Dinner behind for the next traveler and took this book with me to read on the plane. This historical novel tells the story of Nora, who loses her husband on the first page of the book. Nora lives in a small Irish village and now must look after her invalid grandson on her own. She hires teenage Mary to help her and then becomes more and more convinced that her grandson is a changeling child. Nora seeks the help of Nance, an elderly healer, to bring her true grandson back, and in doing so runs up against both Church and Law. This book is apparently based on a true story. It is such a bleak book. I was really drawn in by the story and the cast of characters, and I thought the writing was good, but there wasn’t a lot of joy to be found in this account of rural Ireland.

Foster by Claire Keegan – This novella reminds me a lot of one of my favorite songs, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in that it’s told from the perspective of a child who doesn’t know everything that’s going on, but certainly understands the important things. The narrator, whom I think is nameless, is sent to live with an older couple so that she is out of the way while her mother carries her next child to term. It’s a quiet story, just as love sometimes is.

Picture books that we (I) liked:

Sugar in Milk by Thrity Umrigar – a story about immigration and finding room for everyone.

If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall – I love Sophie Blackall’s books – the illustrations are always so lovely. In this book, a young child tells aliens what they can expect to find on our planet.

Green Pants by Kenneth Kraegel- We loved this story about Jameson who will only wear green pants. He is faced with an impossible dilemma when asked to be in his beloved cousin’s wedding because, well, tuxedo pants aren’t green.

In the Neighborhood by Rocio Bonila – In this neighborhood, everyone keeps to themselves. Until one day….

Peace is an Offering Words by Annette LeBox, Pictures by Stephanie Graegin – So I was at the library counter checking out books one day, and behind the counter, I saw the back of this book on a cart to be re-shelved:

Books with Aisian children always catch my eye, so I asked the librarian if I could see the book and then if I could borrow it. The book turned out to not be about Asian kids, but about people in general -the text poetically reminds us of ways we can find and extend peace in the world. This is a lovely, quiet book that the kids asked for repeatedly at bedtime.

On my proverbial night stand:

Index, A History of by Dennis Duncan – There is a whole chapter about page numbers. This is a very nerdy book, full of interesting tidbits about how we read and categorize things.

The Chuckling Fingers by Mabel Seeley- Murder mystery from the 1950s. A little melodramatic.

Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Baker – yes, still. There is now scandal involved in the Bronte family and it’s engrossing.

Year of Miracles: Recipes of Love + Grief + Growing Things by Ella Risebridger – a essay book with recipes or a cookbook with essays? Some really eloquent and thoughtful writing here.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – full cast audio book production. Very funny and on point.

(bi)Weekly Recap + what we ate: Opening Night and other Miscellaneous things

Another show opened. Woot! Some random thoughts from this month so far:

A few of my tech week MVPs:
– pre-planning my wardrobe and laying out a week’s worth of clothes on Sunday night. I had done this on my Fall show, but had fallen out of the habit the past two shows. I need to remember to do this more often – not having to spend time thinking about what I’m going to wear every morning makes getting dressed go much faster. For some reason, when I have to decide anew every morning what to wear, it takes more time to choose than when I do it on Sunday night.
– Yogurt. I’ve been trying to run or walk on my dinner breaks – I didn’t do as many runs as I usually do, but I did always get outside for at least 30 mins on my dinner break. Of course this meant less time to eat dinner, so I tried to pack things that would be easy and fast to eat. Yogurt was definitely on the “easy and fast” list. I filled a thermos with yogurt, frozen fruit, pecans, chia seeds, and a drizzle of maple syrup. It was a very easy yet filling thing to eat and the thermos kept it cold. At first I felt like yogurt really wasn’t a dinner food, but it actually was pretty filling and got me through the evening rehearsal.
– Amazing colleagues, who are so very good at their jobs that even the hard stuff is not so hard. It’s not always easy, but it’s not so hard that I want to quit.
-The Husband, as always, who holds down the fort, did the after school pick up, fed the kids, took them to basketball practice, and skating lessons, and read to them, and put them to bed. All on his own.

I snapped this picture onstage one day while we were setting lighting cues. It’s the most snow I’ve seen all year. One rehearsal, I found myself standing underneath the snow bags as the snow was coming down and it was the oddest sensation – of being covered in snowflakes but not cold at all.

The most snow I’ve seen all year. Also… it gets into everything.

Tech Week Step Count:
Piano Tech Friday : 22, 475
Piano Dress Saturday: 24, 263
Sitzprobe Sunday: 12, 100
Orchestra Tech Monday: 17, 819
Orchestra Tech Tuesday: 11, 936
Orchestra Tech Wednesday: 15, 948
Final Dress Thursday: 11, 654
(Average of 16, 599 steps/day)

The next weeks will be a little busy because I’ll be in performances for one show while prepping/ rehearsing another show in another part of town. It will be a lot of time in the car, and the commute can be terribly slow, but I’ve started a new audiobook that makes me look forward to getting in the car:

I was looking for an audiobook for my commute and found this on the list of finalists for the 2023 Audie Awards. I’ve never read any Terry Pratchett, and people seem to really love his work, so I thought I’d give it a try. It is proving very funny and layered so far.

Other random ordinary life happenings:

It was Spirit Week for the 5th Grader. I feel somewhat guilty that I’m not the best person at keeping up with the various spirit weeks/ teacher appreciation weeks/etc. at school. I’ll see the email come through and then promptly forget. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the teachers or school spirit, it’s just that these weeks with some specific requirement every. single. day. seems light another kettlebell of mental load that I can’t handle, especially during tech week. I’m glad the 11 year old kept track of Spirit week because I knew it would make her happy to participate but I just couldn’t do it for her. Maybe this is growth? I forget about things so that she can develop a sense of responsibility to remember them? One morning was moustache day and I drew a moustache on her with Sharpie. A few days later, she comes to me with a sock on her hand and says, “It’s sock puppet day today.”

No use getting annoyed at the last minute request for sock puppet help, since I wouldn’t have been home in the evening to help anyway. But we did our best and I think it was pretty cute:

Fun fact – that hat is the hat that the 11 year old came home from the hospital wearing. We didn’t realize that we had to bring clothes to the hospital for our new baby so the nurses had to raid the NICU closet for us.

One day I had the morning off, so I volunteered at Field Day at the six year old’s school. I was put in charge of a volleyball station. Though “volleyball” and “put in charge of” are used very loosely here. It was chaotic – 20-40 kids at a time at my station – and there was lots of yelling of instructions. Also – teachers are amazing. Because they have to do it all. the. time.

A new smoothie shop opened around the corner from the Husband’s work place and they have a papaya smoothie that was very delicious. I discovered this little shop the day that I had to take my car in for a new tire. I had imprudently run up the curb in front of our our house one midnight when I got home from a late rehearsal. Because that’s just what I needed at that hour. Anyhow, the next morning, the Husband helped me change the tire. Also.. I went to open my trunk to get the jack and the spare out, and MY JACK WAS MISSING. What the what?!? You have to dig kind of deep to get to my jack, so I’m completely confounded by this. Or maybe I removed it at some point and couldn’t remember? Anyhow it was a completely bizarre mystery. Spare Tire put on and I went to Firestone to get a new tire. The six year old came with me to Firestone (Thank goodness I had warranty on my tires) and on the way back to the Metro to get home, we saw this new smoothie shop had opened. So we ordered smoothies – berry for him, dragon fruit for me. It was so fresh and tasty that I went back later that week and ordered a papaya smoothie. It sort of reminded me of the Papaya Milk drink that I would get from the Taiwanese drink store back in California. I sat in the spring sunshine in the plaza next to the smoothie shop to drink my papaya smoothie and it was such a wonderful quiet few minutes to myself.

Is there anything more lovely than a special cold beverages, sipped outdoors on a spring-almost-summer day?

There was also Mother’s Day in the mix. I did get to sleep in until 9am. Which was good because I had been up super late the night before at the opening night party. I don’t love going to work parties, because I’m just awkward socially and feel very uncool standing there clutching my Coke while people do suave things like chat with ambassadors and drink champagne. But, I did talk to some nice people – friends of a friend – and there was this amazing cheese spread:

And this was only one tiny corner of the cheese table.

Anyhow, the day after was Mother’s Day. I had a show to work in the afternoon so it didn’t feel very special. I don’t love Mother’s Day – again that whole feeling awkward about the attention thing. The one thing I did ask for Mother’s Day – getting a picture with all my kids – did not happen, so I was a little bummed about that. But the other thing I wanted – to eat dinner outside – that did happen. Granted, it was Chipotle because we had promised the 11 year old Chipotle for an excellent report card, but I still got to enjoy the warm evening. And the kids made a sign for me:

Grateful for:

-Wireless headsets. When I was first starting out in this business, there were no wireless headsets in the theatres where I worked. You got a headset and beltpack which was hard wired into a place in the wall so you either ran the show without a headset – which made it difficult to communicate with your stage manager – or you ran the show attached to this wall, with this really long tail or cable everywhere. Now when I started out I was working in small theatres, so having a wired headset was inconvenient but doable. If you were working in a big theatre, I guess you just ran the show without a headset and everyone just had to trust that things would happen and problems would get solved? It seems so inconceivable to me. Anyhow, we now have wireless headsets and we can roam the backstage and keep in touch with the rest of the stage management team, and I think that’s awesome.

-Our back patio. The weather has tipped into that between spring and summer time when there is longer days but the weather is not yet unbearably hot. My favorite time this time of year is the morning or early evening – when the sun is not at it’s zenith and the weather is slightly cooler – perfect for a light sweater, but okay if not. I love having a back patio and being able to sit back there with my tea in the morning, or a seltzer in the evening. Having a space to be able to enjoy the weather and the fresh air, a little table on which to put my beverage, and a chair to relax in and periodically a book to keep me company – that’s a good time right there.

– My car. And the mechanic who keeps it running. I drive a 2003 Subaru Legacy. It’s not the most fancy car these days, and it certainly has its chronic issues, but it gets me from point A to point B. I know its days are numbered, but I will drive it until it is no longer safe to do so. On my free day week, I took it in for an oil change and to have a belt tightened. My conversation to book the appointment with my mechanic went like this (Also note, we used to have three cars, but now only have two):
Me: I’d like to bring my car in for an oil change.
Mechanic: Yes of course. What is your phone number?
Me: [I tell him]
Mechanic: Oh yes. Which car of your fleet are you bringing in?
Me: The Subaru Legacy.
Mechanic: Oh Yes. The old one.

That made me laugh… I drive “the old one.”

But even still, it’s getting me from point A to point B. And these weeks when I’m working two jobs, I am doing a lot of getting from A to B.

Looking Forward To:
– Grilling with friends and colleagues. One of our traditions at work is to gather for a cookout once in a while and this year will be the first cook out since 2019. There are thirty+ people about to descend on the house. I’ve never hosted that many people before and honestly our yard is not that big. Also… I just realized that this will be more people than were at our wedding. Anyhow I’m hoping it will be pretty low key – grill, chairs, tables, people bring sides/apps/ beer, and we just hang out for an afternoon. Effortless. Easy. Plus, since a good number of them are stage managers, clean up is usually done before I can blink twice and accept the help.

– Summer. I have work booked until mid August this year, so I’ll have to be very purposeful to get some of our usual summer adventures in. It’s a balance, though… since we work six days a week, if I pack the day off with too many adventures, I might not have time to recharge and do the life maintenance things that I need to. But I am looking forward to the pool and outdoor music and hikes and camping and getting on my bike.

-I started watching The Gilded Age, a period drama that came out last year. It is by Julian Fellowes who wrote Downton Abbey and the cast is divine. It features some huge theatrical talents who, from what I understand, were all available for a mini series since COVID had shut down the theatres. I’m only one episode in, but it is proving that same blend of detailed and juicy yet proper that I loved about Downton Abbey. This is my new “while I wash the dishes” incentive.

– Working with a colleague whom I have known for over twenty years, but whom I haven’t seen since 2011. One thing about my work is many people come in and out of my life. Many of the colleagues from the early days when I was just starting out in opera are the most dear to me. We all started out as baby opera makers with big dreams and there is something really bonding about being in that stage of one’s career together. Some of these people are no longer in the industry, some of these people run their own opera companies now – funny the directions life takes you. Whenever we part ways at the end of a gig, I never say good-bye – it’s always, “See you later!” because I believe that our paths will cross again. When we finally do get to work together again, there is a sense of familiarity and growth that brings me so much joy and wonder.

What We Ate: It’s been a few weeks, but the Husband made all the dinners while I was in tech, so not quite so a very vague list…

Monday: Tortilla Soup. This recipe from the Two Sleevers website. Made a couple weeks ago and froze the leftovers. Present Me thanks Past Me for this foresight.

Tuesday: Eggplant Pasta. Vegan. Sautee eggplant with onions in InstantPot, add tomato sauce and pasta on top and cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. I made this to use up an eggplant we had in the fridge. The family was not a fan, but I thought it was perfectly fine. Vegan.

Wednesday: Eggs and leftovers.

Thursday: Take out Sandwiches. Again. This was the night we tried to go to an event at the local park where they had food trucks and live music. The place was swamped and the food trucks couldn’t keep up with the volume of people. Plus it was expensive. I think we paid $20 for 3 plain hotdogs. So we abandoned the park, went to our friends’ house, ordered sandwiches from our favorite deli and ate in the backyard while the kids bounced on their trampoline. I’d say it turned out to be a very nice evening.

Friday: Chana Masala in the Instant Pot. This recipe from the blog Feasting at Home. I thought this was really tasty and I ate it in wraps for lunch for the rest of the week. The family was lukewarm. It might have been because I forgot to turn the IP into “keep warm” and the food was cold by the time they got home.

Saturday: I had leftovers while at work. The family had pizza and movie night. I’m not sure what they watched.

Sunday: Dumplings and leftovers. I was at work and had yogurt for dinner.

Monday: all I have scribbled in my journal is “pasta”…. I think that means the Husband made tortellini and red sauce.

Tuesday: Wings. The Husband ordered wings from one of our favorite places. (Me: leftovers/yogurt at work)

Wednesday: Eggs and Toast. (Me: leftovers at work)

Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Complete Blank. I’m pretty sure the Husband cooked.

Sunday: Mother’s Day and Chipotle.

–

Amsterdam Recaps: Day 4 Food Tour!

This day featured one of the things I was most looking forward to- a food tour!

We opted for the Hungry Birds food tours, based on recommendations on the internet. I like going on guided tours, and I thought that a tour where we got to eat periodically might be a good one for the kids.

The tour wasn’t until noon, so after breakfast (coldcuts, cheese, bread and leftover noodles) we decided to first walk down to the floating flower market. Along the way we passed this fun sculpture on the side of a building:

And more buildings with detailed architectural features, like these statues on the side of this building:

And these rows and rows of shutters:

On our canal tour, the guide said that the City of Amsterdam is asking people who have these shutters to put them back on their houses for the more historic look.

This alley of plants:

The floating market itself was quite crowded. The stalls in the market are on boats floating on the canal, though I didn’t realize that until I took a step back too look at them; when walking through the market, the stores just look like open stalls lining the street. We didn’t linger, but it made for a nice stroll to see the colourful flowers and bins of bulbs.

That was kind of the extent of the tulips that we saw. Everyone seems to be shocked that we didn’t go see the tulip fields, even though we were in Amsterdam at the start of tulip season. The fields are outside of Amsterdam and by all accounts very crowded. I don’t love going to super crowded places – I always feel like I can’t get a good view of the attractions, and that the lines move too slowly to be enjoyable while at the same time the crowds push one along so one can’t savor things at one’s own pace. Perhaps if we return to the Netherlands during tulip season, I might book a tour to see the tulips – something a little more controlled.

After we wandered through the floating flower market, we headed to the meeting spot for our food tour. The food tour was in the Pijp district of town, and area that has a more urban vibe than the flower market’s historic canals and leaning houses. When out tour guides arrived, they brought the first tasty bite of the food tour: cookies from Van Stepele.

The story behind these viral cookies is that the person who started the bakery wanted to create one perfect cookie, so people wouldn’t have to choose. The guide said the line is usually around the block for the cookies but since there is only one cookie, it moves really fast.

Next stop: Surinamese sandwiches and fried plantains from Tjin’s. This part of the food tour delved into the history of the Dutch and the different cultural influences to be found in Amsterdam. I wasn’t familiar with Suriname at all, save for a reference to it in the musical Candide. (It’s a little shameful how much of my knowledge of history comes primarily from opera and musicals.) Suriname is a small country in South America which was colonized by, among other nations, the Dutch. Slaves from Africa and Asia were brought there and it has a wide mix of cultural influences. When Suriname gained it independence from the Dutch in the 1970s, many Surinamese people came to the Netherlands to maintain their Dutch citizenship. The sandwiches we had from Tjin’s Toko were spicy and flavorful – they featured a curried mash of potatoes and chicken on a bun with some home made hot sauce. We also had some fried plantains on the side.

The next stop was a FEBO automat. I’d never been to an automat before and at first I was a little dubious at the idea of a hot vending machine. The croquettes , however, turned out to be crunchy and tasty. I can absolutely see how they come to be a late night hot spot. The kids had fun putting the coins in an opening the door to retrieve their food.

After the automat came my favorite spot of the tour: herring! We stopped at a fish stand and had a very classic Dutch snack- brined herring – along with some fried cod. The options for herring was to have it cut up into little pieces, or to have it all in one piece which you would eat by holding it over your mouth by the tail. Of course we opted for the “hold the fish by the tail” option.

Classic serving with pickles and diced onions.

Here comes the fish….

His look is skeptical, but he ended up loving it.

I don’t seem to have pictures of the Husband with the herring, but he did also eat it, though he said he preferred the fried cod.

Continuing on, we had cookies and coffee from Brood, a bakery with a mission to bring their stores worldwide, particularly to developing nations, as a way to contribute jobs and money to their economies. Then we wandered through Sarphatipark, an expanse of green space in De Pijp area. This would become one of the kids’ favorite places in Amsterdam because they had this really cool adventure playground, with a zipline and more challenging play structures.

After the park, we wandered through Albert Cuyp Market, an outdoor market that started as an informal collection of vendors and carts selling their wares, but which soon became so popular and chaotic that in 1905, the city government made it an official market. They have all sorts of vendors; when we walked through, in addition to vegetables and fish and cheese and snacks, I saw booths selling clothing, fabric, and various house hold items.

The food tour wandered the market, and stopped at a couple stalls of classic Dutch treats. First Stop, Poffertijes, the little Dutch pancakes. We really enjoyed watching this machine squirt batter into the hot molds and then seeing the man at the counter flip the poffertijes over at lightning speed. The pancakes are then put on a plate, layered with butter and a sprinkled with powdered sugar. They were very tasty and mostly a vehicle for melted butter.

The silver machine squeezes batter into the heated molds and then the guy flips them when it is time.

Dutch Licorice, which comes in all sorts of flavors and shapes, including some shapes not suitable for children. I liked the salty licorice the best, but there was a peanut butter one that I also really enjoyed.

Just a small smattering of the licorice that was available at this stall.

Stroopwafel, that combination of cookie and caramel. This stall – Rudi’s – claims to use the “original” stroopwaffel recipe. Their stroopwaffels were delicate and gooey, very different from the store bought variation. The other claim to fame is that this stall is run by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Moonlighting, in case the acting thing doesn’t work out.

Our final stop was at a brown cafe, one of the casual cozy bars where people in Amsterdam go to have a drink, grab a bit of simple food, catch up with friends, and just hang out and wile away the time. The brown cafe we went to on our tour has been around since 1877, with the building being even older than that.

Our tour group huddled together at the bar and at a table near the bar and we chatted about what foods we liked and what we wanted to try again. The kids had Cokes, I had a mint tea, and the Husband had a koopstoje, which involved drinking an practically overflowing glass of Dutch juniper gin, with one’s hands behind one’s back, and then chasing it down with a beer.

Even though the tour was supposed to end at 4pm, we were at the bar chatting until 4:30pm. Afterwards, our guide walked us back to the Albert Cuyp market, since that was an easy landmark and we all went our separate ways. The kids wanted to go back to the playground at the Sarphatipark, so we headed there, though the 3 year old fell asleep on the way and we had to carry her for a bit. I settled onto a bench with her asleep on me while the two older kids plyaed at the playground. We had promised them ice cream, but they were so busy playing, that we ended up skipping that.

Baby was tired and missed the playground. Sad Panda.

For dinner we decided to get dinner at an Indonesian place that the food tour organizers had recommended. One of the things I really wanted to try while in Amsterdam was a rice table, or rijstaffel, which is a meal with many small dishes served with rice. We ordered both the regular and the vegetarian rijstaffel and were presented with many tiny dishes of a wide variety of food. There was chicken in coconut sauce, chicken in peanut sauce, tempeh in coconut sauce and tofu in peanut sauce, green beans cooked in coconut milk, stews, salads, fried rice… I’m sure there was even more. It was so much fun to try all the different varieties of flavors.

Also, I was really tickled by these vats of chili sauce in the back of the restaurants. Imagine going through that much chili sauce!

Once we were done dinner, we took the tram back to our Airbnb and had some tv time (for the kids) and reading time (for the grown ups) until we went to bed around 9pm, though the kids didn’t really sleep until closer to 10pm.

What a fun day it was. The kids loved the food tour and the day was relatively meltdown free until dinner then there was some whining and general tiredness. Step count for the day: 17, 634/ 6.6 miles. And I only had to carry the three year old for less than a mile of it!

Next up, an even bigger walking day!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Gearing up for Tech Week

I did a big Costco run last week. Tech week is coming up and I felt like I had to stock up on snacks. Some new finds:

I like a spicy snack, and these two treats are opposite end of spicy. The almonds are spicy/ savory – perfect for when I’m tired of the sweet MLK. They are salty, smoky and crunchy with a little bit of heat. The Tamarind bites had intrigued me for a while and I finally decided to try them. I like tamarind a lot and I’ve always like chili spiced dried mango, so I figured these might be similar. These have that distinctive sweet/sour tamarind flavor with a nice kick from the chili. Not for eating by the handful, but I find one or two at a time very satisfying.

I got these strawberry yogurt bites more for the kids:

The kids really like yogurt tubes, but I can’t keep those in the car, so I thought this might be a nice alternative. They are sort of like yogurt covered raisins but with strawberry instead. The jury is out. They are a nice snack, but not very filling.

These protein bars:

I go back and forth on protein bars. I like the idea of them, but are they really better than just having a Snickers? I grabbed these because a guy standing next to me in the aisle said that it’s the only protein bar his gluten free son will eat. I’m very easily swayed by random strangers recommending things to me in store aisles. Anyhow, these are fine. They are a little larger than I expected, so feel like a lot. They taste okay to me and the ingredient list is not unexpected. Overwhelming endorsement, I know. I probably wouldn’t buy them again because they are on the pricy side, but if I need a gluten free bar, this isn’t a terrible option.

Other fun things:

Sometimes my kids take my camera and take really inane and unflattering pictures. Sometimes, though, they capture things like this:

Ignore me in the background blissfully unaware that my phone is gone. Look instead at the unbridled joy that the 6 year old captured.

That picture is going in my file of “Things to look at when I feel down.”

We also had Take Your Child To Work Day. The Husband took the kids to his office, where they had all sorts of fun activities – a Fire Truck, build a solar car, pizza lunch! Then he brought the kids to my work, where we had some late afternoon activities – build a prop flower, listen to some singers sing, tour the building, try on costumes. I was a little disappointed that the kids couldn’t come to rehearsal, but we have a no guest policy right now because of COVID. All the same, it was fun to see the kids at work briefly.

Very satisfying: I labelled the prop tables. There are a lot of props in my current show. The situation on the prop table had gotten quite chaotic – they had become some kind of random dump area. So one afternoon I just took the time and organized them and labelled spots for all the props. I do usually do this at some point in the process, but usually when there aren’t so many props it doesn’t feel as urgent. Or as satisfying when it is done. Opera aficionados can probably guess what opera this is:

Sort of annoying: The 3.5 year old got sent home with pink eye one day. The Husband went to pick her up and took her to the pediatrician and got drops then stayed home with her. I’m glad that he has a job that allows him to do that. I mean certainly if I had an emergency, I could have taken the afternoon off, but the Husband officially gets to take time off work. Benefits and all that.

Anyhow, we got drops for her, which she refused to let us put in:

It took a bit of bribery and holding her down to maybe get a drop in her eyes twice a day. And really, after the first day, bribery didn’t work.

Domestic Adventures: I made muffins in anticipation of tech. This time I made Coconut Peanut Mochi Muffins from Hetty McKinnon’s To Asia with Love. The muffins use sweet rice flour so they are gluten free, and they came out chewy like mochi but dense like a muffin. The swirl of peanut butter helps give it a substantial taste so that the muffin doesn’t tip into desert territory. I really liked these muffins and will definitely make them again. The kids didn’t love them, but the Husband did. The kids said it would be better with chocolate chips. Of course.

I did some mending. My favorite yellow linen pants had a hole in them from last fall when I accidentally poked them with my pencil. I decided to patch them and then saw that there was an even bigger hole on the left knee, so I patched that too. I find mending very satisfying. I do worry, though, that it might be considered not really acceptable to wear patched clothes at work. I patch my kids clothes all the time, but maybe the standard of appearance is different from kids vs. working professionals? Anyhow, I figured one of the benefits of working in the arts is that wearing patched clothes is probably okay since our dress code tends to be more relaxed and whimsy is not frowned upon. So I’ve been wearing them to work. Thank goodness because I really only have two or three pairs of pants right now.

We did a big purge of the kids’ toy room. The toys were getting overwhelming and the room was constantly messy. So we sat down and had the kids choose their five favorite toys/ sets and everything else got put into purgatory in the attic. This is what we were left with:
– Doll House and Castle
-Barbie house and accessories (This is a lot and I’m thinking that may need to be whittled down even more.)
-Magnaformers
-Blocks
-Train Tracks
-Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels garage (One cookie tin full.)
-Trucks (we led the six year old keep six trucks)
– Nugget and Fort play cushions
– Kitchen and accessories
– Baby Dolls and Toy Shopping Cart
– stuffies. Each kid got to keep five
– dress up clothes
-Swedish Climbing Ladder (This is bolted to the wall so had to stay, but the kids do legitimately play on it.)
-Things that the kids didn’t specifically say to keep, but which don’t take up a lot of room so we kept: The Speak n spell, Learn to Code Robot

Things that got sent to purgatory: Crazy Fort fort kit (which took up one big box – the kids really loved playing with this set during the pandemic, but they don’t build forts as much anymore), lots of trucks, all the craft kits, Transformers (surprisingly), stuffies not chosen.

What is left still feels like a lot. I guess since our kids are so far apart in age, there is going to be a wide range of toys. But we did put two big movie boxes of toys into the attic and just threw out a lot of the small or broken toys. (The 11 year old, who is a school bus patrol, apparently has been taking some of the small unmemorable figurines with her to the school bus and handing them out to younger kids as a reward for good behavior. I’m actually quite tickled that she is doing that. ) I think the ultimate goal is to whittle the toys down so they can go into another room, which will free up the toy room so that the 11 year old can have her own room. I think room sharing gets old once one is in the double digits. The toy room feels like a constant battle. I would love for it to be Pinterest organized and labelled, but the reality is if they can shove their toys easily to the side so that the cleaners can do the floors, I think I can begrudgingly live with that. So at least having fewer toys to shove into the perimeters will hopefully make said shoving go faster.

Something that made me smile: the six year old is starting to read, much to my surprise. during the Pandemic, I thought I might teach him using the How To Taech Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons, but it didn’t take. And then he got into a French Immersion program and we were told not to actively teach our kids to read because it sometimes confuses them as they are learning go read in French. So I just decided to let it go. We still read to him, but I didn’t try to ask him to sound out words or identify letters. Well the other day, I was driving him home and I heard … “ssssss- t- o…..p. Stop.” “can you read?” i asked him. “yeah.” “Who taught you?” “my brain.”

Grateful for:
– My Yeti Rambler with Hotshot lid. I had originally got this cup to keep my tea hot, but this week I also had the realization that it could also keep my drinks cold. Not sure why it took me so long to figure this out. Anyhow, it was perfect for making iced chai in the morning and sipping it all day long. One morning I even treated myself to a chai at my favorite coffee place near work and they put it in my Yeti and it was a nice pick me up all day long.
– Nice weather and longer hours of daylight. It had been raining all week which made the days kind of dreary. I had a happy hour scheduled with my mom’s group, and I thought it was going to have to be inside, but then the weather cleared up the afternoon of our happy hour. So we sat outside. And because we schedule our get togethers after bedtime, it was nice that the sun didn’t set until after 8pm so we still had some sunlight when we finally met up.
– This gratitude entry in my journal made me laugh: “Grateful for not moving the bar” There is a bar in our show. (As in there is a scene that takes place in a restaurant.) Of course we can’t have the real bar in the rehearsal room because it is part of the set. So have a substitute bar in rehearsal that is heavy as f*ck. Like it takes five people and six dollies to move it. We’ve been rehearsing in two rehearsal rooms so we had to move the bar one day from one room to the other, and it wasn’t fun. And then we thought we would have to move back to the first room again. But then the stage manager thought through the schedule and decided that we wouldn’t have to move it again, perhaps ever. So grateful.

Looking forward to:
-Tech week. Moving into the theatre! Prepping tech week food! I genuinely look forward to making sure I have food to get me though tech week. The week is long and stressful (I mean relatively – there are for sure more stressful jobs.), so I like to make sure I have food and snacks to get me through. In addition to the Costco snacks and mochi muffins, I’ll make a big batch of boiled eggs and bake muffins for a quick breakfast and have soup or curry that I can bring in a thermos for dinner.
– Meeting up with friends one evening at a park for food trucks and live music. It is starting to be live outdoor music season here, one of my favorite summer activities. I don’t know how many we’ll get to with my heavy work schedule this summer, but I’m trying to bookmark all my favorite events so I remember when they are happening. (we did this. It was kind of a bust – the park was over crowded and there weren’t enough food trucks for everyone and the food and beer wasn’t that good and it was expensive. So we bagged it and picked up sandwiches and went over to our friends’ house)
– Summer camp. This is still on the list because I still haven’t done it and I think if I make myself look forward to it being done, I will get it done. I thought I had an idea of what to do, but then the one camp I was thinking of only does ages 8-12, and I need something that both the 6 year old and 11 year old can do together. There are many advantages to having kids 5 years apart, but finding activities that both can do together is not one of them.

What we Ate:
Monday: Leftover Potatoe Leek Soup from the week before. Leftover soup has become one of our go to quick meal strategies.

Tuesday: Breakfast Sandwiches, made by the 11 year old.

Wednesday: Pasta and Meatballs in the Instant Pot.

Thursday: Sandwiches from Santucci’s, eaten in the park. Our first weekday park picnic of the season. Such an easy summer evening activity.

Friday: The Husband made stuffed zucchini. I ate leftovers at work.

Saturday: Happy Hour out with my mom’s group. I had mussels and asparagus. Meanwhile back at home, the Husband made pizza and the family watched the second Boss Baby movie. (The kids had watched the first movie on the plane to/from Amsterdam. Yes, they watched it twice.)

Sunday: Mac and cheese from the blue box and salad. Made my the 11 year old. I just realized – she made dinner twice this week. That feels kind of cool.

Amsterdam Recap- Day 2 & 3 – Long walks, boats, and family time.

The distinctive rooftops of Amsterdam. Not even sure where this is, but I love the variety all next to each other.

Days 2 and 3 in Amsterdam were very much family days with my Sister in law and her family, so I’m combining them into one post.

Waking up on Saturday was tough because of the time change. I think everyone slept til about 10:30am or so. Except the Husband. He likes to go find coffee in the morning, when we travel so I think he was out of the house by 8:30 or 9am. We soon discovered that Amsterdam is not a city that wakes up early and he was hard-pressed to find coffee before 9am on a weekend unless it was at a Starbucks.

For breakfast, the Husband had gone to Jumbo, the grocery store around the corner, and came back with some cold cuts and cheese and fruit, which we ate with the sourdough bread that we had bought the day before from Levain et Le Vin. The bread was sooooo good! Tangy and with a texture that was soft yet chewy. One of the cold cuts that the Husband brought back was Ossenwort, a raw sausage… kind of like a tartare. I liked it, but I think the kids were a little leery. I think just buying food from the regular grocery store is one of my favorite things to do while on vacation – I love seeing what is on the shelves and what people eat.

No kitchen at the Airbnb, but there was a kettle for hot water, which is *very* important. And that bread was delicious.

Breakfast: Ossenwort, cheese (not sure what kind, though I did eventually learned that *belegen* means aged), sourdough bread and fruit.

After breakfast and some lazing around, we set off to meet my Sister in law and her family for lunch. We decided to walk to the restaurant since it was only 15 minutes away. Halfway there, my SIL came zooming by on her bike. She had dropped her kids at the restaurant (with my brother in law) and came back to see if our kids wanted a ride. The six year old and the three year old got into her bakfiets (Eurpoean cargo bike) and she rode off them. I was a little surprised that there were no seatbelts or anything in the bakfiets – the kids just sat in the front cargo box. But that might just be my overcautious American brain.

We met up at a pancake place shaped like a carousel. Pancakes are on all the lists of Dutch foods to try- to my mind Dutch pancakes lean more toward crepes than the big fluffy American pancakes I’m used to. The kids ordered pancakes, the Husband had poffertjes (tiny pancakes) and I had a waffle. I also had mint tea, which would turn out to be one of my favorite drinks in the Netherlands- so simple, just fresh mint in hot water, served with a cookie and a bit of honey on the side.

The 3.5 year old and her pancake. Let’s be honest – she mostly just ate the whipped cream directly out of the cup.

After lunch my SIL and her family headed back to their house, but I was eager to explore so we said we would walk/ take the tram to their place. It was a drizzly day, but I still liked walking and getting a sense of the city. We walked to Leidseplein, a very popular square that had these cute gecko sculptures and also a very ornate looking theatre:

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. I love looking at theatres, even from the outside.

From Leidseplein we took the tram three stops up and got off next to the Vondelpark, and from there we walked across the park to m SIL’s place. On the way to the park, we passed this sculpture garden:

The Emmaplein. I looked it up later and these sculptures are by members of a post War Dutch sculpture collective called Group D’Adam. So cool to have a sculpture garden that one can randomly stumble upon.

Drizzly park landscapes:

Cranes in tall nests:

And then a random man with a dog offered to take our picture on this bridge. (Side note, I noticed in the park that almost all the dogs were off leash. This is certainly different from the parks around me at home. But my Brother In Law made a comment that the Dutch love to have order and rules, but they never think the rules apply to themselves – so it’s kind of ordered chaos in a way.) I thought the man with the dog was going to take our picture from one end of the bridge, but he actually went to stand somewhat precariously among the greenery of the banks of the stream down below the bridge.

not the *best* picture, but I will always remember the man who took it.

And of course a canal:

At my sister in law’s house, we ordered Indonesian food and the kids watched a movie. The food was … fine. I heard that Indonesian food was big in Amsterdam, because of the Dutch’s history in The East Indies. This food was a lot like Chinese food and a bit too saucy for my taste. Though the noodles were pretty good. Around 7pm, we headed back to our AirBnb where we watched some TV (I think it might have been RuPaul’s Drag Race or Friends – it seems that the grown up shows have subtitles and the kids shows were dubbed, so the kids watched a lot of Friends and reality tv while in Amsterdam. Along with some SpongeBob and The Thundermans which they didn’t mind watching in Dutch because they already had seen the episodes.) We tried to get the kids in bed around 10pm, but the kids mostly tossed and turned until finally falling asleep around midnight.

Sunday morning we woke up around 9:30am, and had breakfast – more bread, cold cuts, and fruit. Then we headed out for the day’s adventures. We stopped at a coffee shop around the corner called Uncommon. The Husband said the coffee was very good, and actually got coffee there several times during the week. I had a matcha latte, which I sipped as we went to meet our boat for our canal tour- the one that we had rescheduled from Friday when we missed it. This time, we knew where we were going, and showed up right on time to the boat.

The first thing I liked about the canal tour was that they had snacks! Windmill cookies, little sausages, cheese, crackers, Dutch licorice and of course Heineken. Apparently licorice is a huge thing in the Netherlands, coming in all sorts of flavors. The licorice on the boat was salty licorice, and I rather liked it.

I highly recommend a canal tour in Amsterdam- it gives one a view of the cities and architecture that’s different from just walking around. I chose this tour group (Captain Jack’s) because it had an open top boat; a lot of the other tours had glass covered boats and I imagine the view is not as good. Our boat captain was a retired business professor from Utrecht. He told lots of funny stories and historical tidbits. He talked a lot about how much each building cost or who had the money to buy a building- an expected perspective from a business professor.

The architecture of Amsterdam is such a great way to learn about the city. We learned that one reason the houses are so narrow is that properties were taxed on their width. There are several super narrow houses in Amsterdam, including this one that we saw:

We also saw rows and rows of houseboats, which seems like it’s own fascinating subculture.

All different shapes and sizes and materials. Also interesting that some of them have top levels that come apart so they can fit under bridges.

And tug boats pulling houseboats.

I think this is actually the Houseboat Museum.

And the opera house, which is always fun for me to see.

We also floated passed the Anne Frank House. We did not visit the Anne Frank House on this trip; while I do think it’s an important museum to see, I wanted to wait until the kids could go through it with the patience and respect that the place deserves. Right now the two little are very eager to express their feeling loudly when they get bored and I didn’t think that would be appropriate or fair towards the other people who might have been at the Anne Frank House. So we will save it for next trip.

Many of the houses have distinctive features on the outside. My favorite, which I didn’t get a picture of was one house that had a statue of a stork above the door- it was (and I think still is) a midwife’s location. This one has a statue of St. George and the Dragon.

Just any old house with a knight and dragon hanging out in front… Like you do.

Another interesting aspect of the houses along the canals is some of them are leaning. They were originally built on wooden poles and over years, the poles sink, or rot, or weaken, causing one side of the house to sink. Fascinating. But also a little worrisome, I would imagine.

The boat tour took about two hours and afterwards we met up with my sister in law and her family. We picked up some sandwiches and headed to to Vondelpark for the rest of the afternoon There the kids chased pigeons (seems to be a universal pastime) and played on the playground. In addition to swings and climbing structures the park had a little wooded area where the kids could play with sticks and build wood forts. The weather was beautiful and it was nice to be outside after two days of drizzly wet weather.

Around 4pm, we headed to a bar for happy hour snacks, which also sort of passed for dinner. We had a variety of typical happy hour/bar food: French fries, cheese and meat plate, bitteballen (fried croquettes with meat filling.) After a while, my sister in law and her family headed home and we headed back to our Airbnb. It was only about 5:30p at the time, so we decided to stop for ice cream at a cute shop we had seen during our wanders. The shop had cones with various characters on them. The six year old went first and he, unsurprisingly, picked a Paw Patrol cone. The lady behind the counter started scooping ice cream.

All of a sudden, the lights went dim, disco lights started flashing, bubbles streamed through the air, and the Paw Patrol theme started playing. And at the end, there was a big burst of foam to cap it all off. It was an epic delightful surprise.

Of course after that display, we all had to get character cones. The 3.5 year old choose a unicorn, the 11 year old chose Darth Vadar, I chose Slimer from Ghostbusters and the Husband chose Ghostbusters too. We sat outside and enjoyed our ice cream while watching the lights and bubbles and foam display for each customer.

When we had finished our cones, we took a long meandering way home. We came across this snake-shaped play structure next to a garden and spent about half an hour playing there.

And on the way home we saw more canals, made even more beautiful in the light of the almost setting sun:

We arrived home around 6:30p, and put on the first Ice Age movie and snuggled down for a family movie night. Everyone was in bed by 9:30pm, but the six year old tossed and turned and stayed awake for another hour. Our Airbnb was one big room, so it wasn’t as if we could put the kids to bed and then stay up ourselves, so all week we actually went to bed the same time as the kids most nights. On day 3 we were still fighting jetlag, but we told the kids that even though they weren’t sleepy we were going to turn out the lights and stay in bed. And eventually they did fall asleep.

Well that was our first weekend in Amsterdam. It was a combination of family and touristy stuff, which was a nice pace for the first few days. The week to come, my sister in law’s family would be busy with school and life so we wouldn’t see them very much so I’m glad they made time for us on the weekend.

More adventures to come. Including, on Day 4… a food tour!

Weekly recap + what we ate: big ticket items and small pleasures

Another full week, but not as packed as the week before, thank goodness- On Monday we started rehearsals for a my next show, and that evening I had my last titles gig of the season. I worked 5 evening during the week, so I’m feeling really behind on the home front. Laundry, general house picking up, spaces that need to be organized, the living room still needs curtains. I also still need to register the two older kids for summer camp and I’m starting to have a little bit of anxiety about that. And we still have to renew our pool membership for the summer.

And all of it is big ticket items. I think in my mind we got through the expensive part of the year with our spring break trip and I’m waiting for a less expensive month, but really it doesn’t come.

Some highlights of my week:
– Slowly getting back into running. I did one pre-rehearsal run and one dinner break run, both less than 1.5 miles, but it’s something. I attempted another run on Saturday on the dinner break. The weather looked iffy, but I thought I could beat the rain. I was wrong. About 3/4 of a mile out it started to sprinkle. Then it turned into a deluge. Like one of those “I stood under a restaurant awning for 10 minutes hoping it would pass but eventually gave up and ran the four blocks back to work” kind of deluge. I was quite the sad soddened mess. And the dumb thing is I didn’t check the weather before hand that day; the morning was gorgeous so I didn’t even bring a raincoat. wump wump.

– Balloons in rehearsal. There are balloons in rehearsal. Bright colourful balloons. I got to use the helium tank and blow them up. It made me happy. One of my co-workers offered to take them down to the rehearsal hall for me, and I was like, “No way! I blew them up, I want to carry them down the hallway!” Of course they were sad and droopy by the next day, but that’s okay.

– The voice recital that I did supertitles for. Most of the songs were new to me, but there were two I absolutely loved. The first is called A Soft Day. It’s by a English composer C.V. Stanford, based on a poem by Winifred Letts. The poem describes a day that is damp and quiet and full of nature.

A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honeyed mouth;
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elder-flower and thyme
And the soaking grass smells sweet,
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.

A soft day, thank God!
The hills wear a shroud
Of silver cloud;
The web the spider weaves
Is a glittering net;
The woodland path is wet,
And the soaking earth smells sweet
Under my two bare feet,
And the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the leaves.

I love poems that are able to capture a moment so precisely in words that I can almost feel the misty air around me. The song setting of this poem has that same relaxed and pensive feeling to it. And the way the notes “drip” like the rain…

British contralto Kathleen Ferrier. Pianist Frederick Stone. Such elegant singing.

My second favorite song in the recital was a beautifully sweet lullaby by Puccini. Puccini wrote lots of operas, big, grand affairs. I guess he also wrote lots of songs too, and I thought this one, Sogno d’or (Golden Dreams) was lovely. In it a parents sings to a child about how the angels will come to them as they sleep. You can listen to it here.

Soprano Krassimira Stoyanova. I worked with her years ago – she was a lovely person. We managed to communicate despite her not speaking English and me not speaking Italian.

Sunday was my day off, and even though there is not skating lessons this week since it is between sessions, I still took the kids skating. Actually the whole family went, though the Husband only sat and watched. It’s been so fun to see the kids get more and more confident on their skates. The three year old can skate by herself now, even though she insists on holding my hand while we skate.

In the afternoon we went downtown to meet my cousin who was in town for work. One thing I like about living near D.C. is that people often come to town for work, so we get to see them. We met my cousin at the National Postal Museum, which is one of my favorite of all the Smithsonian Museums. They have lots of informative and interactive exhibits which I find appeals to both me and the kids. Kids can learn how to sort mail, and design their own stamps and collect stamps too.

After the Postal Museum we walked down to Chinatown and had dinner at Jaleo, a tapas restaurant that is quite well known here. We decided to order the shrimp and squid paella in addition to a variety of tapas. I’ve been to Jaleo several times, but never ordered the paella; I think in my mind, a dish that’s mostly rice sounds unexciting. Well. I was proven wrong. The paella was heavenly. We also ordered dessert and there was a rice pudding with a lemon cream. Rice pudding, also something that is a very pedestrian desert in my mind, but which was divine in this iteration. I might have to reconsider my prejudice against rice.

Something that makes me smile: my pen holder from Muji and my red pencil. Years ago a colleague introduced me to 0.9 lead and it’s been my lead thickness of choice ever since. Of course everyone at work now used 0.9 lead pencils and we were constantly mixing up pencils since the barbells were all the same color. Eventually I stuck a piece of tape on mine so I knew which one was mine. When I found that Amazon sells my favorite pencils in my favorite color red, and not only that, in packs of 12, I immediately got a box and now I always know which 0.9 lead pencil is mine.

The pen holder, I found of the Japanese houseware store Muji. I was always putting my pencil down and forgetting where it was. Now, I have this clip on my binder and my pencil – and the green Frixion pen that I use to mark entrances – live there and I always know where it is. That adage “A place for everything” – I feel like this pen clip embraces that for me, at least in this small area of life. It’s not just about my writing utensils’ location but about containment and security. It makes me happy and feels so satisfying knowing where to put my pencil after I jot a notes, and to be able to find it when I need it.

A link I loved: I always enjoy the New York Times “By the Book” column where they interview noted people about their favorite books, not so favorite books, reading habits, etc. This week’s column features Judy Blume, and it is excellent. I put a lot of the books she mentioned in my TBR list, and have already started Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and two chapters in it is already by turns hilarious and hesrtbreaking. I think of Judy Blume mostly as the author of “Superfudge”. I do remember reading “Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret” but not really relating to it as much as I thought I would. Maybe it’s time for a re-read?

Grateful for:
– a morning walk with a friend. Several days I had afternoon and evening rehearsals, so I had the morning off. One morning, my friend from the bus stop asked if I wanted to go for a walk, so we did. The weather was nice, sunny, spring time weather. Afterwards we made plans to meet up at the park on Friday when the kids’ were off school. This friend is moving at the end of the summer – her husband is in the foreign service – and it makes me a sad that they are moving because I feel like I don’t make friends’ easily. I’m really glad she started talking to me at the bus stop one morning. They’ll be back in a couple years, though – I’ll just have to keep in touch.
– Having a car and being able to drive the kids to school. Another school bus related thing. One day, the morning school bus did not come at all. After half an hour of waiting, the parents who were at the stop took all the kids that were still waiting for the bus to school – whomever had a free seat in their car took a kid. I’m grateful that this is a community where this generosity is not weird and people are just willing to give another kid a ride to school without a second thought.
– Getting to listen to really talented people make music. For this show, I’m running the stage left side of stage. In rehearsal it means that from where I sit I get a prime view of the rehearsal pianist. I am in awe of how their hands dance over the keyboards, up and down, fast and slow. Sometimes they even sing the parts of the chorus or other characters who aren’t in rehearsal while their hands sprint across the notes. I try to find moments to savor every day and last week, many of those moments were watching the rehearsal pianists.

Looking forward to:
– Finalizing summer camp plans. As in looking forward to it being done, much the same way I was looking forward to our taxes being done.

– Happy Hour with moms from my mom’s group.

– reading this book. I love a good Jane Austen retelling and this one is proving pretty fun and thoughtful.

What we ate: (a lot more eating out than normal this week. I feel like we’re kind of in a meal planning slump)

Monday- I had my titles gig so I got take out from Beefsteak – tofu kimchi bowl. I am not sure what everyone else ate.

Tuesday- Pasta salad with the leftover grilled veggies from the Sunday before. vegan. I was working, so I made this in the morning before I went to work.

Wednesday – The Family had take out wings to celebrate a good report card. I was at work and brought leftover pasta salad.

Thursday – vegetarian tortilla soup in the Instant Pot. From this recipe from Two Sleevers website (aka the Butter Chicken Lady). Made in the morning before I went to work.

Friday – The Husband took the kids out to eat because they were off school and the 11 year old had a basketball game upcountry. I probably lay had leftovers.

Saturday- Pizza and movie night. The family watched Might Ducks. I went out for a drink with colleagues after work and missed the movie.

Sunday – Jaleo with my cousin.

Amsterdam- Arrival and Day 1

For Spring Break, we went to Amsterdam and here are the start of trip recaps! It was our first time on a plane since January of 2019. Also our first time on a plane as a family of five, which the calculus of sitting on an airplane with five people is a lot more complicated than as a family of four. Like do we sit 4+1? or 3+2? Do we split the family across the aisle? or front seats and back seats? Decisions!

We chose Amsterdam because the Husband’s sister lives there and we hadn’t seen her and her family since they came to the States in August of 2019. The Husband and I aren’t great at vacation planning and tend to do things a month or two out. I think because I sometimes book work at the last minute, I’ve always been wary of booking vacations too far in advance, trying to keep my calendar open for work. This trip, we had been talking about for a while, and I think we booked the Air BnB last fall because I was pretty certain by then that I wouldn’t be working during Spring Break. The flights were booked in January which my mind screamed, “TOO SOON!!!” But in reality we probably would have gotten cheaper tickets if we had booked sooner. Oh well, as it was, I think each step gave us considerable sticker shock and we had to recover before we could take the next step.

We had a 5:30pm flight out on Thursday. At first, to save the cost of a cab, we considered taking the Metro to the airport since a new Metro line just opened that goes all the way there. That plan would have required us to leave at noon. My friend told me that many of the hotels by the airport offer long term parking and a shuttle to the airport, and that was way cheaper than the airport long term parking – <$10/ day vs. $14/ day

Why did I not know about this before?!?!?

So that’s what we did. Getting to the airport was super smooth, except we didn’t check and the six year old had a full water bottle going through security and had to go through again. I was surprised how things have changed and you no longer have to take your electronics and liquids out of your bag to go through the x ray machine, and you only have to remove boots, but not Crocs or running shoes.

Random thoughts on the flight:

-We had packed to be able to travel carry on only, but the flight was full, so when we checked in, the airline offered to check all our bags for free. I was fine with that. I don’t mind checking at all; I prefer to pack carry on only because I don’t like having to lug big suitcases.

-We ended up deciding to get the four seats in the middle + one single seat across the aisle. I sat with the three kids in the middle and the Husband sat in the lone seat across the aisle. I think this was the best way to go – I didn’t feel like we wanted to subject anyone else to sitting next to my kids. The 11 year old and I sat on the aisle seats of the middle section and the two little kids sat in the middle, which I think worked out well.

-I’m always worried about food and entertainment for the kids when we take trips. I had packed everyone their own snack bag and bought them all activity books and packed crayons and markers and books. I think we used one activity book while waiting for the flight and the three year old did about ten minutes of her sticker book at one point. But really all the kids just used the in flight entertainment, and the 11 year old also had her own tablet. They mostly watched movies and once in a while played games. The six year old really got into playing Angry Birds which I thought was hilarious. As for food, I definitely overpacked on that front because there were lots of snacks and drinks and meals on the flight, so a bunch of the food I packed actually ended up coming home with us a week later. I know I overpacked in the food and entertainment front, but I feel like if the in flight entertainment hadn’t worked or if the kids didn’t like the airplane food, I wanted to have a back up.

– I had forgotten that the in flight entertainment required wired headphones. I had packed them for the two little kids, but didn’t pack any for myselft. The airline did hand out earphones, but my set weren’t great. So I mostly read on the flight. I did watch about an hour of a Mrs. Harris goes to Paris, but didn’t finish it before getting to Amsterdam. I finished it on the way back – it’s a delightful movie, even when watched with bum earphones. For Christmas, I did buy the Husband this Airfly dongle that allows one to use bluetooth earphones with any earphone jack. Unfortunately I didn’t try it out until the return trip back.

-The flight itself was a direct overnight flight – we arrived in Amsterdam at 6:30am. I think I managed to get the kids to sleep for an hour or two, and so did I, but it wasn’t really high quality sleep. I don’t think the 11 year old slept at all, to be honest.

-Lesson learned – have the kids pee about an hour/45 mins before landing. I didn’t do this and just minutes after the fasten seatbelt sign went on, the 3 year old declared, “I have to go potty!!!!”
“You have to wait,” I told her. “We have to keep our seatbelt fastened, but the plane will land soon and then you can pee.”
“I HAVE TO GO POTTY!!! I HAVE TO GO POTTY!!!!” she started screaming. Over and over and over. For the twenty minutes it took us to land and taxi to the gate. If you were on our flight, I sincerely apologize.
At one point, she said, “I’M GOING TO PEE MY PANTS!!!” And I tried to get her to sit on a towel, but she refused. “I PEED MY PANTS!!!!” Loudly. Everything was said loudly. It was epic.
The moment the fasten seatbelt sign went off, the Husband took her to the bathroom with a change of clothes. Guess what? She lied. She did not pee her pants.

And so we arrived bright and early in Amsterdam. We took the bus to our Air BnB. There seem to be many options to get to and from the airport. We chose the 397 bus because it had a stop about a 15 minute walk from our AirBnB, but got off at the wrong stop and actually ended up wandering around a little bit. In my failure to plan, I did not get international data on our phone plans, so it was a bit of an aimless wander. With all of us toting our luggage. At one point, I just took the six year old’s rolling suitcase too. Everyone was a little cranky and a little tired and a little hungry, so it was kind of a drudgery of a walk. Even still, I was so excited to see my first glimpse of Amsterdam canals and bicycles. The morning was rather quiet – we discovered over the course of the week that Amsterdam is not a city that rises early.

The first picture I took after we got off the bus from the airport.

At one point, though, I did decide to stop and ask for directions and some very nice people pointed us in the right direction. We were staying in the Oud-West, which was about a fifteen minute walk from the Museumplein where all the famous art museums are and from Vondelpark, one of the major swaths of green space.

We finally made it into our AirBnB, which featured the first of many steep steep staircases we would traverse. I was originally a little nervous about the kids going up and down the stair, but over the course of the week they got really good at walking up the stairs sideways, one slow and steady step at a time.

The AirBnB was rather spartan – one big room that had a eating area, living room/tv and two beds, and one little room with another bed. There was no kitchen, which I don’t know why I hadn’t realized that when we booked the place. But what the place lacked in amenities, the hosts more than made up for with their kindness and generosity and attentiveness. They took our dishes and washed them, and also did our laundry a couple times during the week; and – the kids’ favorite thing – the hosts gave us two huge bins of toys – duplos, trucks, picture books, activity books, pencil crayons. The kids would be well entertained.

What with it being 3am back home when we arrived, I immediately took a little nap. I knew we would battle jet lag, but I hadn’t slept much on the flight, so I needed to catch up a little bit. Mean while the kids played with their duplos and with my phone, taking some snapshots to keep things real:

Random slice of life shot of our Air Bnb.

Kid’s always take the most flattering pictures. Hah!

While I napped, the Husband ventured out and came home with sandwiches, which we ate, and then we set out for our first adventure. (well, not counting getting lost.) I had booked us a canal boat ride for 2pm the day we arrived, figuring that it would be a nice easy activity for the first day when we might be tired. Only we couldn’t quite find the place where we were to meet our boat and missed the tour. The company was very nice and re-booked us for Sunday. At first they offered to walk us down to another part of the canal and try to get on the boat, but it was turning into a drizzly, rainy day and they said that we would have a better time on Sunday when the weather was nice.

So now we had a few hours suddenly free before we had to meet my sister in law for dinner. We decided to take a wandering route back to our AirBnB. We somehow ended up wandering down Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat, where all the high fashion stores were – Gucci, Hermes, Dior. It was fun to peer in the windows at all the fancy clothes. And the Cybex stroller store. So fancy.

We got back to the AirBnB and rested for an hour or so then walked to my SIL’s place. On the way, I was really obsessed with the architecture of the buildings around us – the houses all so tall and skinny had such a distinctive profile. the Husband pointed out how all the houses have these pully hooks up top to help with moving furniture in since the stairways are too narrow to bring anything in through the front door. Later on my sister in law told us that no one uses the pulleys anymore – when they want to bring in furniture, they have to hire a special lift and take out a permit because the lift will block a big chunk of the sidewalk/ road.

Also on the way, I wanted to find some kind of dessert to bring and we ended up stopping at a bakery and wine shop with the cutest name: Levain et Le vin. All of their bread is sourdough bread and I picked up a loaf for breakfast the next day as well as some pastries for dinner while the Husband got himself a coffee.

Then it was off to my SIL’s house. It was really interesting to see their place – so different from our home back in the States – much more compact and economical space-wise. They also had the steep steep stairs. My SIL had ordered pizza, so we had that and the grown ups chatted while the kids played – she has two young kids too and it was so heartwarming to see the cousins play together even though they hadn’t seen each other since 2019, and the three year old not at all. But I guess Hot Wheels is a universal language.

Around 7pm, we headed back to our AirBnb. It was really drizzling hard, and I had forgotten to pack a raincoat for the 3 year old. However, before we left, my neighbor had given us one of those ponchos that fold up super small and I had thrown it into my purse. I pulled it out and put it on the three year old. Obviously it was waaaaay too big, but it kept her relatively dry!

When we got home, we changed into our pjs and just hung out watching some American tv with Dutch subtitles. I can’t remember what it was – something on the Discovery channel, I think. Pretty soon, though, the littles fell asleep:

Around 9pm we packed everyone to bed. We were all so exhausted from not having really slept on the flight that bedtime was easier than I thought it was going to be.

So that was our flight and first day on the ground in Amsterdam. It was a little strange being in a foreign country, but also there was a lot that didn’t feel foreign. On the one hand, visually we were clearly in a different country – the architecture, the canals, the bikes. So many bikes, whizzing by. I was really envious of the speed and ease with which I saw people getting around by bike. On the other hand, everyone spoke English and we could just use our credit cards everywhere. The Husband noted that “It just doesn’t feel like I’m in a foreign country.” I agree with him. I completely see why a lot of English speakers who want to move abroad chose Amsterdam.

More recaps to come! Tell me, haver you ever been these Amsterdam?

Weekly recap + what we ate: A Week in the Life edition- prep week

Last week was positively summer, with weather hitting 80 degrees. We’ve come home from spring break to the find the Yoshino cherry blossoms gone and replaced by branches of green, but the area has been replaced by Kwanzan cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, and redbuds. And the azaleas. Pink and purple and white bushes everywhere. Oh and the lilacs – the heavenly floral scent of lilacs!

The “emergency car chocolate” I keep in my car for… well, emergencies and late night commutes home has melted and I need to replace it with another car snack that can withstand the extreme heat.

I always enjoy reading “Week in the Life” posts, so I thought I’d capture a week in my life. I find that I have a lot of different versions of a “typical” week – there’s working and not working. But also within working, there’s prep week, rehearsal week, tech week, and performance week. So this is prep week, the week we have before rehearsal starts to get everything ready. It is supposed to be a pretty easy 40 hour week, but I’m prepping a pretty big show, so I ended up working more like 45 hours this week. Also, I don’t usually do the afternoon pick up when I’m working, but since prep week is a little more flexible, I like to do it when I can to give the Husband a break.

Monday: We just got back from Amsterdam the day before. Kids are off school, and the Husband has taken the day off to be with them since I have to work. If one of us can’t be home with the kids, we put the two older kids in the After care program at school.
5:00am – I never get up this early, but I’m a little jet lagged, so I’m awake. I get up, putter, try to put some stuff away. Make breakfast. Meal plan for the week and make a shopping list for the Husband who will do a grocery shop and Costco run.
10:15am – I leave for work
10:45am – 6:30pm – Work. It’s the first day of a prep week for a new show, so it’s a lot of onboarding of new people, showing people around, meetings. I do take a 30 minute walk at lunch time and talk to my sister in law on the phone. Our union mandates meal breaks have to be at least 1 hour long, but I don’t need the whole time to eat, so I always try to take a walk during lunch.
6:30-7:00p – Leave work. Pick up 11 year old from basketball. Drop her at home and then go get gas. (Often if I can’t be home for dinner, I’ll pick up the 11 year old from basketball so the Husband only has to schlep the other two kids along just once.)
7:00p – 8:00p – When I get home, the kids and the Husband are watching Golden Girls. I eat Dinner. The Husband had bought Bahn mi sandwiches for dinner since we didn’t really have any food at home post trip. I eat whatever is leftover.
8:00p – I help put the kids into bed. I fall asleep in the 3 year old’s bed while cuddling.

Tuesday:
5:00am – awake again, much earlier than normal. Putter, continue to try to put things away from our vacation. I have to pull some sheet music from online for my supertitle gig – I’m working a recital the following week. Usually the pianist will send me the music, but this pianist is on vacation, so I have to find the music myself. Not a big deal since it’s all in the public domain and therefore easy to track down online for free. There’s one set of songs that I couldn’t find, so I ask the pianist to scan it to me when he gets a chance.
6:45am – Husband leaves for work, so I get started with breakfast, and packing lunches for the kids and myself. At 8:10am, we do a kid exchange with the neighbors – we have kids the same ages and at the same schools, so they take the three year old to school and I take their 6 year old to the school bus with us. While the 11 year old take the 3.5 year old to the neighbors for kid exchange, I squeeze in 10 minutes of yoga. Then I get dressed for the day.
9:00am – Take the kids to the school bus, then drive to work.
9:45am – 3:45p – Work. I spend much of the day pulling paperwork from the last time we did this show.
3:45p – I pick up 6 year old and neighbors’ kid from school bus and take them home. While home I get the kids a snack then I putter and scroll until the Husband gets home with the 11 year old. She has math tutoring at school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
5:45p – Head back to work to cover an evening music rehearsal.
6:00pm – 10:30pm – Work. Covering a music rehearsal with the chorus. Basically these are the rehearsals where the chorus learns their music. It’s pretty low key and I continue to read and review the paperwork for the show and get myself organized.
10:30p – Back home.
12:00 midnight – ish? Go to bed I’m a little unclear. I think I worked on titles and scrolled a little bit before going to bed. This was not a good weak for mindful sleep habits.

Wednesday:
6:00am – wake up. The 3.5 year old is in our bed somehow.
6:45am – wake up the other kids.
7:10am – Take 11 year old to piano lessons. Then take the other two kids to pick up breakfast sandwiches, as is our Wednesday morning routine. Usually I also get gas but I had filled up on Monday because my gas light had come on. The place we go to get sandwiches from is run by the super nice Korean man who always gives us free chips.
8:00am – home from piano lessons. Quickly pack lunch and eat breakfast sandwiches before the kid exchange happens. 10 minutes exercise video while kid exchange happens.
9:00am – Take kids to school bus then head to work.
9:30am – 10:15am – Run. I haven’t run in over a week because of being on vacation, so I do just 1.5 miles and also have a nice walk. I often run at work because it’s some of my only child free time and we don’t usually start work before 10am, so I can get a run in.
10:15am – 3:45pm – Work. I spend the day measuring the groundplans for the set so we can mark it out with tape in the rehearsal room the next day.
3:45pm – leave work to pick up kids from bus. Take kids home. Feed them a snack and make dinner (Chinese Corn and Egg Drop Soup – this was a huge hit, I’ll have to make it again).
6:00p – When the Husband comes home with the 11 year old, I head back to work to finish up some stuff – there’s another chorus music rehearsal, which I’m not covering, but my colleague who is covering it is doing it for the first time, so I want to be around just in case. I also spend some time chatting to my work BFF.
9:30pm – wrap up at work and head home. I work on some titles til pretty late at night. Liberally sprinkled with bouts of random internet blackholes.
1:30am – brain is fried, go to bed.

Thursday:
6:30am – wake to a 3.5 year old in my bed again. Go back to sleep, tired from being up late the night before.
7:15am – out of bed. I think the 11 year old got the little kids breakfast, so I just have to pack the lunches. 8:10am – kid exchange and I get in my 10 minutes of yoga.
9:00am – school bus run then to work.
9:45am – 6:30pm – Work. Today we tape the rehearsal room – laying down the tape outline of the set so the singers get a sense of where things are (hopefully. I mean some people don’t quite understand that a tape line is a wall and will keep walking through it, but I always figure they’re not going to walk through it when we get onstage and the wall is real.) Taping takes all day, but I do squeeze in a 15 minute walk at lunch time.
6:30pm- Home, I eat dinner – the Husband made something that involved chicken and broccoli and yummy siracha honey sauce. I wanted to be home before 6:45pm so that the Husband could take the 11 year old to basketball without having to schlep the younger kids. Then because the weather is so nice and it feels like summer, I take the two younger kids to play in the backyard for a little bit.
8:00pm – Come back inside and prep for bed. The Husband goes to pick up the 11 year old from basketball and then he and I quickly sign off on our taxes – we owe money this year, mostly because I took several 1099 gigs in 2022, more than I have in a long long time. A little bit of sticker shock on that one, especially on the heels of our Spring Break Trip, we feel a little like we’re hemorrhaging money.
9:00pm – Kids to bed (finally!), and once again, I fall asleep in bed with the 3.5 year old.

Friday:
4:00am – The 6 year old climbs into bed with the 3.5 year old and me. Then tells me to stop breathing on him. I take this as a sign and get up and work on titles for the next two hours.
6:00am – The 3.5 year old is up so I start the morning routine. (Is it really a routine? It doesn’t feel calming as a routine should. I guess maybe the morning tasks/chores?) Pack kids’ lunch (x3), and my lunch, get kids breakfast. I make potato leek soup (vegan) in the Instant Pot, so that there is something ready for dinner tonight since there is a basketball game in the evening.
8:10am – kid exchange. 10 minutes yoga. Then get dressed.
9:00am – bus drop off, chat with a friend at bus stop, then go to work.
9:45am – 6:00pm – Work. Today I work on helping the Prop Coordinator unpack all the props in the show. There are a lot of props; the prop list is 8 pages long. Four pages of those are for Act 2, which, while only 20 minutes long, features so. many. props. and. people. I take a 30 minute walk at lunch.
6:00pm – leave work and drive to 11 year old’s basketball game.
7:15pm – 8:15pm – basketball game. When I arrive the score is 22-1. The 11 year old scored that 1 point on a free throw. So yay? They did not make a spectacular comeback or anything, but they played hard. I think the final score was 35-7. They had won almost all their games in the winter league, so I think it’s hard for them to play against teams that are more polished and competitive then them. I mean there were players making legit 3 pointers on the other team. But she still loves to play, so I think that’s what’s important.
8:30pm – arrive home, put kids to bed. I do some titles work.
not quite sure – I didn’t log when I actually went to bed this night.

Saturday:
6:30am – awake. putter. journal, read, write.
7:00am – Make waffles for breakfast. Then clean up and putter.
10:00am – Go for another short run, then shower.
11:00am – outside in the backyard with the 3.5 year old while the Husband takes the 6 year old and 11 year old to a family dance class. One of the local theatres has a dance class for grown ups and kids, and I thought it would be a fun activity for the Husband and kids to do together. I would have enrolled the 3.5 year old, but she is too little. I work on titles out on the back patio while the 3.5 year old plays. Every so often I take a break to kick a ball with her. Around noon we go back inside and have dinner.
1:00pm – I head to work.
1:30pm – 6:30pm – Work. I spend the day organizing the props and then setting up the rooms for rehearsal next week.
6:30p – head home. The family is having pizza and movie night. They are watching Pirates of the Caribbean, which is such a fun movie. I arrive half way through and after the movie ends, I make the family start again at the beginning so I can watch the first twenty minutes or so because I always like seeing how things begin.
9:00pm – Kids to bed. Once again, I fall asleep in the 3.5 year old’s bed. Around midnight I wake up and move to my own bed.

Sunday:
7:30am – Awake. We spend the morning cleaning (we have cleaners coming the next day – yes, we clean for the cleaners…), putting away the things from our vacation (it never ends, it seems…), and working on some titles. I’m sure there was some reading and internet scrolling in there as well.
10:30am – The 6 year old and the 3.5 year old have skating lessons. Let me tell you, going to a nice cool ice rink when it is 80 degrees outside feels heavenly! It’s the last lesson of the session – the 3.5 year old gets to move up to the next level, but the 6 year old has to repeat his level. After lessons, we stay for free skate. I register the kids for the next session before we leave.
1:00pm – Take the kids to HMart for a weekly grocery shop. I don’t usually do the weekly shop at HMart, but it is close to the rink, and I needed mostly produce and fruit, so HMart made sense. Also fun – there was a person in the Hmart parking lot selling fresh coconut – the kind where he cuts the top off for you and drains it into a container and cuts out the flesh. I bought us one to share and it was so tasty!

2:30p – Home. We’re having friends over to grill for dinner, so I prep veggies and chicken for the grill and put away the groceries. I bought a lot of veggies so that I could grill up extra for the week ahead.
4:30p – take a nap, I’m exhausted.
5:00p – start the grill. Friends come over. We have kielbasa, hotdogs, chicken and grilled veggies (eggplant, zucchini, peppers). Also two different kinds of bagged salad. Super simple.
8:00pm – Friends head home and our kids get ready for bed. They’re in bed by 9:15pm – I told them I couldn’t stay and cuddle tonight because I had to get my titles done for the concert the next day. I finish formatting the text of the titles (in word, which is exported to Excel) and the Husband does some database magic and imports the titles directly from the Excel into the Powerpoint. I stay up to finish adjusting the titles and marking title placement in my music.
1:00am – brain is fried. Fall asleep on the couch, with the 3.5 year old who woke up at midnight and came to find me.

And that’s seven days in my life! It felt very work heavy because I had to work on the titles gig also. I can often tell how busy a week was when there are not a lot of pictures in my phone roll, and this week’s photos seemed to be mainly (unflattering) pictures the kids took of me while I was puttering around the house or working at the computer. Typically, I also might have spent more time doing cleaning/laundry/household chores, but let’s be honest, the Husband does most of the cleaning and laundry. I might have folded one basket of laundry all week. I’m really grateful for him.

Weekly recap + what we ate: pre-trip version

We are home from our spring break trip! Where we went:

Recaps to come. I hope. I still think I want to write recaps from our Montreal Trip too, so clearly I am behind.

But a quick rundown of the week before, since I selfishly like having these accounting of my days…

It was a week off of work, which was great because I could get some last minute errands and pre-trip things done.

some Highlights:
– Going for a cherry blossom run. I had always heard that the Kenwood neighborhood also has beautiful cherry blossoms, and it was less crowded than going to the Tidal Basin, so I thought I’d check it out. When I looked it up, I saw that there is a trail next to it, so I decided to combine my run with a cherry blossom wander. I parked at one of the lots off the trail that lead to the Kenwood neighborhood and had a little run then spent the rest of the morning wandering the streets. It was not as crowded as the Tidal Basin, so I felt like I was able to amble and savor at my own pace, though the blossoms in Kenwood are not the panoply of colors one sees downtown. It’s so interesting that this little neighborhood becomes such a cherry blossom hot spot. It was at the tail end of cherry blossom peak bloom and there was a light breeze, which sent cherry blossom petals drifting through the air and scattered on the roads.

-The six year old had a concert. The French Immersion students put on a concert every year, though apparently it hasn’t happened in a while because of the pandemic. Each class presents some kind of musical performance in French. The kindergartener show involved singing and dancing to a song about chocolate. I know I put on shows for a living, but I am seriously impressed by the coordination that it takes to organize 200+ kids to sing and dance in French. It’s always funny for me to go see school shows because there is a certain level of chaos that I would never see at my work, and yet… things always work out and people get onstage and offstage. I mean I just have to stage manage, but the teachers have to direct, choreograph, child wrangle, cajole, cheerlead… what full jobs they have… on top of the every day teaching.

The black light and fluorescent vests made me laugh.

– I got a discount on a book! I went to Barnes and Nobles to pick up a book for my flight. I usually like to read a book by someone from the country that I was visiting, so this is the one I chose:

Anyhow, as I was leafing through it, I noticed that the inside blurb page was upside down – you can see in the picture how the strip of the stepback is white and it should be red. I would have bought the book anyway because I wanted to read it and this gaffe wouldn’t have affected reading the book. But I took it to the front desk, pointed out the flaw, and they gave me 20% discount!

Giggle of the week –
This sign, seen in the neighborhood, which abounds with Little Free Libraries:

I feel like the six year old would take advantage of that too.

Grateful For:
– Public Transportation – I had lunch with a friend one day and I could take the metro there. It was just as fast as driving, but much more relaxing, and I could read my book a little.
– A friend for lending me a suitcase. I was going to buy a new suitcase since the wheels of my carry on rolling suitcase have come apart. I’ve had that suitcase for almost twenty years, so I guess it was about time to replace it. But when we went to look at suitcases, I was so overwhelmed by the options and couldn’t pick one. Relating my suitcase woes to my friend, she said, “I have one that you can borrow!” So I did. It saved me money and it saved me the mental energy of having to choose a suitcase. Sometimes having something just given to me is even more perfect than having to choose it myself.

-Time. Last week, I had more money than time, what with being unemployed and all. I think about this a lot. Sometimes when I’m unemployed I find my spending goes out of control because I finally have the time to browse/choose/buy those new shoes to replace the ones with holes that I have been making do with, or catch up on house projects, or refresh the kids’ wardrobes. I find when I’m thick in work, I don’t tend to throw money at things, rather I just decide to hobble through and replace things when I have time to think about it. But of course it means that I tend to have the time to spend money when I’m not making any money – which doesn’t even out as much as I would like. I suppose the answer, somewhat, is to increase my income. But also I think I should lean into thinking about how to spend time not money when I’m unemployed. Some things do need to be replaced, but maybe some things can be repaired? I sewed up a hole in a sweater that I wanted to take for vacation rather than buying a new one. And also – I went on the abovementioned run to see the cherry blossoms in Kenwood. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have had time to do while working, but when I don’t have to be in at work, I can do these things. I can use time to buy moments of beauty. I can use time to buy moments of connection, like when I have lunch with friends. (Okay, also it took money to pay for lunch, but we could have just as easily gone for a walk and visit, or she could have come over for tea… the food wasn’t the important part.) Anyhow… when I’m feeling money poor and time rich, maybe I need to think about the things that time can buy me. On that note, I realize how lucky I am that I do have time – there are many people who have neither time nor money and that must be so stressful and hard.

What We Ate:

Monday: Chickpea noodle soup from Vegan for Everyone by America’s Test Kitchen. The six year old wanted veggie soup and I had celery to use up- I feel like I make this a lot when those two boxes need to be checked. Vegan.

Tuesday: Waffles. Quick dinner before the six year old’s school concert. I had heard a hack earlier this year of measuring two batches of dry ingredients when you make/bake something so that you just have to add the wet ingredients later on for a second batch. I thought this brilliant so last time I made waffles, I measured a second portion of the dry ingredients into a container and put it in the pantry. When I needed a quick dinner this night, I just tossed in the wet ingredients and everything was came together super quickly. I know measuring the dry ingredients doesn’t take that much time, but when you factor in finding things, hauling it out, measuring, and then putting it back away… to be able to just dump it in a bowl… pre-making the dry ingredients has the ease as if we were making our favorite waffle recipe from a box mix.

Wednesday: Dinner out with friends from out of town. I had pasta with mushrooms. There was parker house rolls with bacon jam involved.

Thursday: Off in an airplane!