First of all – Happy Election Day for folks in the U.S. I’m excited for possibilities, but also worried about the realities. This week is a big week at work, so I’m just going to bury myself in my show and focus on what I can do, which is tech a show, breathe the fall air, and hug my family. (And maybe post here.) I voted early the first day I could here. There were also some local school board elections and an important Senate race in Maryland, so voting did feel weighty despite living in a blue county in a blue state. All the same, there is a sense of helplessness as I watch things unfurl across the country. I’m not one to talk aloud, but I tell you, more than once while listening to the radio, I’ve exclaimed “What the f***!!?!?” at one sound bite or another. Listen – I’m clearly left leaning, and you can lean whichever way you want. But I hope ever American (well, every American who can, which is a whole other issue) understands what’s at stake here and goes to vote.
On to the topic at hand….
I did a “week of outfits” post this summer. Now we are in fall so I thought it would be fun to see what I wore one week in fall. I love dressing for fall. The layers! The cozy hats and scarves! Warm colours! It was unseasonably warm last week, so a lot of my outfits were an exercise in interstitial dressing- in fact aa lot of these weeks outfits have something that I also wore that week in summer. Most of these photos were taken in the dressing room at work.
Sunday- (Chorus Rehearsal Day – I like to up my game a little for chorus rehearsals) my first time wearing this new top. This top had gnomes and toadstools on it! Perfect in keeping with my three words (Colorful, effortles, and playful). Vest is Uniqlo, dress is Wool&, leggings are Jockey, boots are Sorels. I never thought I’d be a puffer vest wearing person. Or wear leggings. I was never going to be that iconic suburban mom. But now I wear them all the time. Practicality and comfort wins out.
Monday – (Another chorus rehearsal day) Someone said this outfit was very autumnal. This plaid skirt has an elastic waistband and pockets. What’s not to love. Hat from San Diego Hat Company, a gift from a friend. Sweater from Uniqlo. Can’t remember where I got the skirt- maybe from Nordstrom Rack? I’ve had it for at least 1o years Orange pocket leggings from Toad & Co. Boots are Reiker via Zappos. The boots really need a polish.
Tuesday – (Just rehearsals with Principal Singers today, so a little more casual) I love this sweatshirt/ hoodie dress- it’s so comfy and the sleeves have thumbholes. The pockets are kind of useless, though, so I don’t wear it as much as I like. I think I got the dress at Kohl’s when I was pregnant. It is cotton spandex and very stretchy. Hat- gift from my sister in law. Sweater hand me down from my cousin. Not my usual thing because it is acrylic, but I love the slouchy shape. Leggings from Duluth Trading Company. Same boots as yesterday.
Wednesday – (Another Chorus Rehearsal Day). This outfit was definitely interseasonal dressing. The pants are wide legged linen pants that I got from Old Navy this summer (you can see them in the post from last summer). It was an impulse purchase one day while I was there looking for pjs for the kids. They are so comfy and easy to wear. I love them so much and regret not getting more. elastic waistband and pockets. The sweater belonged to my late father-in-law. I love the over-sized coziness of it. Boots- same Sorels that I wore on Sunday. Honestly it was too hot for this outfit, but I was only wearing a tank top underneath, so I couldn’t take the sweater off.
Thursday – No rehearsal this day, so I biked to work. Shorts are Uniqlo. Shirt is a tie back top from Old Navy from the days when I was nursing. It’s open in the back so it’s kind of like wearing a nursing cover disguised as a shirt. You can also tie the shirt at the back for a more fitted look. When I was nursing, I wore these shirts all. The. Time. Running shoes are Altrecs. I don’t wear them to run because my insoles don’t fit, but they are comfy for walking and running around doing errands. I did change into a dress when I got to work. (It’s the green linen dress from the summer post). When I bike to work, dresses are an easy thing to pack and throw on for the day.
Friday – Free day. I went on a walk and to dinner with friends. The weather was almost in the 80s this day. This tank top from Duluth Trading Company is my latest go-to for a day off. It has a built in bra! The plaid flannel is also Duluth. I love that it’s nice an thick so I can wear it as a light jacket if I need that layer. Shorts from Uniqlo. Same Altrecs as the day before.
Saturday – (Double Chorus rehearsal day). Another interseasonal outfit. The cotton poplin skirt was another a new purchase this summer. (Also can be seen in the summer post) It was on the sale rack at JC Penny- there was a whole rack of these super cute blue striped skirts. Why would anyone not like this skirt? Elasric waistband and pockets! Sweater DKNY probably from Nordstrom Rack, twenty years ago. Plain blue top under. I don’t remember where I got that top – maybe Marshall’s? It’s been in my wardrobe for over ten years, I think. I definitely remember wearing it when pregnant. Shoes are Allbirds. I’m sad Allbirds don’t come in bright cute colours anymore. These are almost falling apart, but I’m not excited enough by the current colours that I’m rushing to get another pair. Same black knit hat as Sunday and Tuesday. Also my ginormous lunch box is at my feet, since I had to pack two meals for work that day. Photo taken by the 12 year old. (Who said this outfit was “not frumpy”. She tells me when my outfits are frumpy.)
Maybe I’ll do another what I wore post next week? It gets a little boring once I move to stage because I wear a lot of black. 🙂
What is your favorite thing to wear in the fall? Anything that you swore you’d never incorporate into your wardrobe but have since changed your mind?
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
Even though I try to meal plan, I usually find it more helpful to write out what we actually ate in any given week. This past week was a very functional week of dinner – just about the simplest and fastest ways to get dinner on the table and everyone fed. I think it will be like this for a few weeks since 3 out 5 of us will be at a rehearsal or performance every night of the week.
Monday: Barley Vegetable Soup – from the freezer. I’m not even sure when we made this.
Tuesday: Mac and Cheese and green beans and waffles. Waffles are one of those things that are easy for me to prep ahead on nights when I have to work. I put together the dry ingredients and the Husband add the wet when he gets home. I made savory cornmeal waffles from the King Arthur Baking book, and it was really really tasty – like Mexican food in waffle form.
Wednesday: Ribollita Soup. This wasn’t a great recipe. It was too acidic for our tastes – I think too much crushed tomato? I might throw some pasta in the leftovers to make it more like a pasta dish.
Thursday: Hallowe’en. We went to a Friend’s house and they fed us. Veggies, and dip and pizza before trick or treating, and chicken wings and salad after trick or treating.
Friday: We had dinner out with friends that were visiting. The Husband and I shared sandwiches – a fig, prosciutto and brie sandwich and a BLT. We had fried portabellos for an appetizer that was really tasty.
Saturday: the Husband and two littles had pizza and watched Dispicable Me 4 at home. I had dumplings (from the freezer) at work. The 12 year old went to the opera with friends. I think they had pizza and fries. She sent me a picture!
Sunday: I worked late and had Wednesday’s ribollita in a tortilla. It was a little soggy. Not sure what the Husband made for the kids, but the house smelled really nice when I got home. I love walking into a house that smells like home-cooked dinner.
What was your favorite meal last week?
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
In my weekly posts, I always write a couple things I’m looking forward to. Anticipation is actually something I track daily. A few years ago, I read an article about how social scientists have found that anticipation increases well being and ever since I’ve tried to find something to look forward to every day, from big things to small things. (It’s not this article, but same ideas)
I thought for NaBloPoWriMo, I’d write my gratitude list on Saturday, when I look back at the week, and then on Sunday I’d look forward.
Things I’m currently looking forward to:
-Tech rehearsals. Actually being at the other end of tech. I’m going to be honest – there are stage managers that LOVE tech – those rehearsals where we move onstage and start incorporating scenic, lighting, costume, wig elements into a show that hitherto we have been rehearsing in a room on lines of tape. I don’t know if I’m one of those stage managers. I find tech extremely stressful. There is a lot to keep track of. There is never enough time or money. Sometimes what we do in the room don’t always match with the realities of what we can do onstage, no matter how much we try to anticipate it all. On top of that, it’s hard to “life” when in tech – I eat crappy food, don’t get to read or exercise, or see my family. Not to mention the Husband is solo parenting through all this, and driving all the kids to all the things. It’s rough. But, I do love seeing things onstage, solving problems, driving the ship, hearing the orchestra and singers come together, collaborating with directors and designers. So yeah – I’m looking forward to tech and the opera we’ll create together onstage. I’m also looking forward to the day off before final dress rehearsal.
-Running along the Potomac. To give myself one “life” thing to look forward to during tech – I’m going to try really really really hard to fit at least one run in on my dinner break. I love running along the Potomac – watching the sun set over buildings, over Roosevelt Island. Monuments in the background. Seeing the crew teams rowing down the river. Other runners. There’s a lot of see, even as I try to clear my mind.
-Chocolate chip cookies. The cafeteria at the theatre has the BEST chocolate chip cookies. They are the size of my face and have the just right degree of squishy slightly underbaked quality in the middle. Of course, they are often sold out by dinner time, so even thought I almost always bring my food, I always go to the cafeteria to get myself a chocolate chip cookie (or two). Some days, it’s the best part of my day.
-A Year with Frog and Toad, the musical. We went to see this show at the local professional children’s theatre last year and it was delightful. The kids still sing parts of it. (Sometimes when I ask the 7 year old to take something to another room for me, he’ll grab the thing and run off singing “I’m a snail with the mail and I’ll deliver without fail!”) The high school is doing it for their fall musical and we’re going to go see it. A night at the theatre!
– Visiting a friend in January. I had a friend that was supposed to visit this week, but didn’t end up being able to come to town. So we’ve make plans to plan a visit in January.
-reading everyone’s posts this month for NaBloPoWriMo. Thirty people have signed up for the challenge! I’m looking forward to “meeting” more bloggy friends.
What are you looking forward to?
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
On my weekly posts, I always try to write at least three things I am grateful for that week. So for NaBloPoWriMo, my weekly gratitude list gets it’s own post.
This week, some things I’m grateful for:
-My sewing machine still working. I sat down two days before Hallowe’en to sew my 12 year old’s costume, and when I plugged it in – nothing happened. I started to despair. Is there anything more despairing than a non-working sewing machine two days before Hallowe’en???? After a moment of spiraling, I unplugged the machine and plugged it into a different outlet. And it worked! Turns out the machine is so old that you have to plug the plug in right side up. I tried to google why this is, but the explanation is too dense for me to process right now. The important thing is that the machine worked and I was able to finish the 12 year old’s Hallowe’en costume.
-Beautiful balmy weather this week. There were a couple days where the weather was in the high 80s this week. Not what I expected for end of October, but the sunshine and warm air was lovely.
-My bike. I had one day when we didn’t have rehearsal so I just went to work to do some paperwork. Since the day was a little flexible, I decided to ride my bike in. I did walk the bike up the big final hill, but other than that, it was a great ride. And then a few days later, because my bike was still at work, I went for a bike ride instead of a run on my dinner break. Running is not so fun for me. Biking is pure joy.
-Text from my 12 year old. There have certainly been some ups and downs and learning curves with getting the 12 year old a phone, but one of the most delightful things is that she now texts me. Sometimes it’s just “hi.” Sometime it’s more than that. Often it’s “When are you coming home.” And then there are lots of pictures – mostly food and selfies. There are parts of the phone that aren’t really working for me, but getting texts from my daughter does make me smile.
-Daylights Saving time ending and getting one more hour of sleep. (Though it’s a little bit of bad timing because I’m about to start tech, which means a lot of late nights. When my body will think it’s 11:30pm and I’ll still have 30 mor minutes of rehearsal to go….)
-Binder Clips. Is there anything as useful as a binder clip? I mean aside from the obvious purpose of holding paper together. We use them in the kitchen to close up bags, like a chip clip. I use them at my desk as a photo holder. I use them when cooking to hold my cookbook open. I use them to clip a bunch of scrap paper together to make a little notepad. So many uses! This week, I discovered a new use – to hold up a music stand. So if you’ve ever worked with a music stand, you know that the top part goes up and down so that if you are standing or sitting, you can adjust the stand to the right height. But… Sometimes with not so great music stands, you pull the top up to be able to use them at a standing height and the weight of your book slowly makes the top sink down again. It’s maddening. Often, we just take gaff tape and tape the stand at the height we like, but this really pisses the prop people off because it can really gum up the shaft of the stand and then it won’t raise or lower anymore. Well, one of my colleagues showed me something brilliant. You can take a binder clip, and clip it to the inner shaft at the height you want and the binder clip with keep the top part of the stand from sinking down. Amazing! The simple binder clip fixed a problem that I’ve had ever since I started stage managing. I’ll take a picture and add it to this post if I can – it’s a little hard to describe how truly brilliant this is.
What are you grateful for this week?
I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoWriMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!
So I originally titled this post, “I’m going to try…”. But then I kept hearing yoda’s voice o my head, “Do or do not. There is no try.”
It might be bonkers for me to attempt to post once a day in what will be a very busy month – tech starts next week, I have 2.5 show and a vocal recital to work on this month. (The 0.5 is a shortened adaptation of a show that I’m already doing.) The kids still have the full slate of activities. There’s Thanksgiving.
But I love the idea of old fashioned blogging. And it’s so much fun to take a walk around the internet in November visiting all the thoughts and ideas and images that other people are putting out. And yes, maybe there is a sense of FOMO and wanting to be a part of it all. So I looked at my calendar and started plugging in ideas for posts, fitting in shorter ideas for the busier weeks, and it doesn’t look impossible. Ambitious, maybe. Not impossible.
So I’m going to start one day at a time – as evidenced by the fact that this post is on day two – and lean into writing posts on my phone in the gaps of time I do have. Maybe things won’t be as polished. There probably won’t be as many pictures. The posts will certainly be shorter.
Also… I’m absolving everyone from the responsibility of leaving comments here. I love getting comments and that sense of community, but – there are a log of blogs to read in November. So… if something I write inspires you, I’d love to hear it, but I think we all realize that sometimes… nothing needs to be said but a big “heart” or “thumbs up”.
So here we go….
Day #1. Shall we start with introductions?
I’m Diane. In live in the Washington DC area and I work primarily as a stage manager in opera. I also do other stage management gigs when offered and I also do supertitle work. (Supertitles are the translations that flash across the screen above the stage during operas or concerts. I do titles work for a series of vocal concerts.)
I would say I’m employed full time seasonally. There are weeks when I work 10 hours and weeks when I work 60 hours. There are also weeks I work 0 hours. It really depends on where I am in my season. And I should say by “work” I mean “paid work.”
There are a lot of other things I work at in life. House, laundry, cleaning – none of that very well. And we do have a bi-weekly cleaner. And then there’s the kids. We have three kids. I usually refer to them by age on this blog. They are 12, 7, and 5 right now. Everyone likes to tell me they are well behaved. They certainly are in public.
A lot of my mental energy is also spent thinking about what we eat and how to feed everyone when we are all on different schedules. I do a lot of meticulous meal planning. Or at least I try. Some weeks it’s toast and box Mac n cheese.
I also like to spend time writing here and reading and idly scrolling the internet, visiting museums and taking long walks outside. I write the occasional haiku and paint the occasional picture.
And then there is the Husband, who is amazingly supportive and holds down the fort as I’m off doing opera. He’s a super hero in a dad’s disguise.
I started this blog as a pandemic project. I liked reading blogs and would always leave long tangential comments, so I thought maybe I should find my own space to write long tangential comments. It’s been a lovely outlet, and I also love that I’ve found other blogs to read and that people from those blogs come visit this corner once in a while.
For more about me, here’s some more “get to know me” things to read (as if you need more to read during NaBloWriMo):
Anything else you want to know? I’ll do an “Ask Me Anything” post if anyone has questions to ask me! Ask questions in the comments, or here.
Welcome November!
12 year old is full on tween. She has startlingly human moments but also moments when I want to crawl into a ball and not emerge for six years. I suppose those moments are very human too. She likes basketball, musical theatre,
7 year old is my little old man. He has an incredible imagination and loves nothing more than to sit and read. He’s also into
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #3 was to delete one app from your phone. I deleted Feedly. I’m trying to figure out what value different apps bring me, and I thought Feedly was one that I could delete because it’s a bit of a time suck and also doesn’t have any essential functions in my life. Interestingly, though, my screen time actually went UP last week. I think the main reason is that I started rehearsal and have been doing a lot more messaging via Teams on my phone for work communications. I could just bring my laptop to rehearsal and communicate that way, but the phone takes up less space. Also, I don’t have notifications turned on on my phone, so I have to pick up my phone and look at it to see if there are any new messages. Maybe I should just turn my notifications on? But also, I’m very much feeling the point that was mentioned in the first Bored and Brilliant Challenge about how a phone is a distraction even just sitting on a table. I don’t want distractions during rehearsals or I’ll miss something. I think this goes back to thinking about how my phone can add value to my life.
Here’s another thing I noticed when I deleted Feedly – if I’m mindlessly scrolling, it doesn’t matter how many apps I delete, I will find a way to mindlessly scroll. I stopped checking Facebook about three years ago because I felt like it was becoming a toxic time suck for me. But you know what I realized? There will always be other sites that are a toxic time suck for me. Two big time sucks for me currently are askamanager.org, and corporette.com. They have very active comment sections and when I’m bored, I often find myself there. It’s not as bottomless as reddit, but it does have the same appeal, I think, of people posting questions or comments, and other anonymous internet strangers weighing in. Why am I so obsessed with other people’s problems or questions? This is actually one of the reasons I quit Facebook is that there was generally a lot of anxiety on the various groups I was in. I get it – life is huge and confusing and hard and people want/need support and to know they’re doing the right thing. I definitely have looked things up or posted questions when grappling with something and on the flip side, I think there is something in me that likes to solve problems, so when I read posts where people are looking for advice, I find myself wanting to help them solve their problems. And in various FB groups, I just started finding anonymous internet venting to be an overwhelming input for me. I think reading and responding to internet comments becomes toxic for me when I find myself reading about other people’s problems and thinking more about their problems than my own. And then it gets to a point other people’s problems just seem so overwhelming that I no longer have empathy for a commenter/poster and just get disgusted with humanity.
Which is all to say, I’m not sure what deleting Feedly has accomplished. Maybe I’m more thoughtful about my mindless scrolling – I have to choose to go to a website rather than it just popping up on my feed. Deleting Feedly was a good experiment in figuring out what kind of internet consumption I find enriching rather than deflating. I’m finding that I’m not missing the influencer type blogs that I mostly read in Feedly. Those blogs always made me feel like I wasn’t doing a good job of wringing the full potential out of life. I think I’d much rather just use my internet browser and go visit blogs where I feel a sense of kinship – likely if you are reading this and have a blog, I’m talking about you. I do miss getting my daily dose of poetry show up in my Feedly. But I can just go to that website on my own every day. I might even set up a widget that just opens that website.
The other thing I’ve noticed this week about my phone usage is that I’ve been catching myself looking at my phone as I walk to/from the car this week. Breaking that habit was the whole point of Challenge #1! I think there have been some stressors at work, and I want the slight distraction of easy media consumption the minute I walk out the door in order to decompress a little. But checking the phone doesn’t make me feel less stressed, I’ve noticed. Checking my phone is just a way to distract myself from the discomfort of feeling unsettled and agitated at work and thinking about what is really bothering me. So I’ve been trying to think of things I can do to help clear my head and re-set while keeping my phone in my bag. Some ideas: -hard copies of books. I’ve started putting a book in my lunchbox so that I read on my lunch break rather than scroll. -write haikus in my head (or on paper) -Listen to more music. I guess this technically is phone usage, although a couple of times while driving to work, I was feeling really stressed thinking about the day ahead, so I put on the classical music station and that helped calm me down a little. I think when I am feeling overwhelmed, I need to be in a wordless environment for a while. Chatter tends to interfere with my ability to think, even if it’s just the radio. I like classical music because I can think about the musical lines and instruments, in a more abstract way than if I were to listen to something with a lot of lyrics. -walking meditations. I’ve never really gotten into meditation, but sometimes being ultra-mindful of each step I’m taking helps me feel more grounded. -jigsaw puzzles. We have a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle going on in our office. I’ve never done a puzzle with so many pieces before, and it’s certainly a challenge. I used to be of the school that one doesn’t look at the box when doing a jigsaw puzzle, but then someone brought in the 1500 piece puzzle and I’ve changed my stance.
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #4 is to take a faux-cation. Meaning dedicate a chunk o f time to be away from your phone. They even suggest setting an out of office message. That seems a little performative for me, so I don’t know if I’ll do that part. I’m not sure when I’ll take my faux-cation. I have friends visiting on my next free day and then I don’t have another day off for over a week. Maybe I can take a faux-cation morning before rehearsal? It’s a hard time in the work period to not be connected. Of course, it’s also the perfect time to be distraction free for a while since I have a lot of paperwork to get through. Maybe my faux-cation is just a couple hours to put my head down and plough through my paperwork?
A very nice free Day. I had a great free day last Thursday! I got so much done. After dropping the kids at the bus, I took my car in for an oil change. I was going to run home while they changed my oil, but they said the car would be done in an hour so I went for a run by the mechanics instead, which was actually better because the mechanic is about a 1/4 mile from a trail and the fall leaves and crisp air made for a lovely run. I had forgotten my earphones, so I had to run i silence, which I thought was going to boring, but it wasn’t at all.
After I got my car back, I went to a consignment sale at a local pre-school (it’s their big fund raiser). I went to get pants for the 7 year old, but I also found this super cute t-Shirt for the 5 year old too:
Then I had lunch with the Husband at a really nice Mexican place by his work. The place had just gotten a nice write up in the paper, though the Husband has been coming since they were open. At the end of our meal, the owner offered us some grasshoppers! They were crunchy and spicy- like chips!
Then I went to the library because I had a hold come in and I also picked up a few other books:
The library is in the same building as the Rec center where early voting was taking place, so I also went to vote. It was the first day of early voting! The room was busy, but not crowded. I was in and out within ten minutes.
Then I picked up the 5 year old for gymnastics. I drafted a blog post while waiting for her class, which always feels super productive to me. Then we went home.
Next, I took the 7 year old for his costume fitting. I’ve never actually been in a costume fitting before, despite all these years of working in a theatre. It was fascinating. Costume people are amazing! The way they could look at a garment and know what seams to add or remove or take apart and put back together to make a garment fit was mesmerizing. It’s kind of surgical, the way they talk about clothes. Like you would never guess that this shirt was made for someone twice the size of the 7 year old, and since it was a rental shirt, they couldn’t cut it. So they just tuck and make a false cuff.
He looks a little like Fievel from An American Tail.
After we got home, though it all went downhill from there. The Husband was out with a friend, so I was solo parenting. No one wanted to help pick up or set the table or do homework. I was annoyed that I was making tasty pasta that no one seemed to care about. People yelled at me. I yelled at people. Then I told them not to yell at me, and I shut myself in my room until bedtime. On the bright side… when I was shut into my room the 12 year old dished up the pasta and fed the 2 younger kids. In front of the tv. I can’t decide if that’s a win or not.
But in an effort not to let one horrible hour torpedo the rest of a lovely productive and restful day, I cling to all the nice things and productive things that happened that day. And I did end the day by making a plum torte, so that was nice. Baking always helps, and this recipe (from New York Timing Cooking) was super easy to whip up. Apparently the recipe is run every fall. It’s legendary and people got mad when the Times didn’t publish it one year. It’s not the best thing I ever made, but the taste to effort ratio is pretty high.
Grateful For: -Getting two runs in this week, on my dinner break and on my free day. Perfect cool fall weather for running. I can still wear shorts, but the sun isn’t torturous.
– My work BFF who is so so so smart and I can bounce thoughts off her when I’m trying to navigate a thorny issue. (She’s also a great friend not just at work, and our kids hang out together all the time. I joked with her the other day that one day one of us should go work somewhere else because between the two of us we have so many work-branded tote bags that we’re always getting our stuff mixed up when we hang out.)
-Leftovers. So glad to have leftovers for quick easy lunch and dinner packing last week.
-On that same note – grateful for past me for making a double batch of soup and freezing it for easy dinners last week.
-Wifi at activities. I’m really grateful that there is wifi in the waiting room at gymnastics so I can get some work or blogging done while I wait for them to get done activities. Maybe I should be watching them bounce on trampolines, but… the gym isn’t really set up to always be watching the kids.
Looking Forward To: -A visit from a mentor, now friend.
-Hallowe’en. I think everyone’s costume is set. I actually have most of the day off, so I think I’ll get to go trick or treating from the beginning. I had originally been scheduled to work until 6:00pm or so, but now I’m going to try to get home by 5:00pm. I’ve been squeezing some costume sewing in when I can.
-Listening to this audio book – I wanted a cozy audiobook to get me through the next few weeks. The combination of an Alexis Hall novel read by Will Watt for 10 Things that Never Happened was the epitome of cozy romance for me (still disagree with you, Engie!), so I chose another Alexis Hall novel read by Will Watt, and it’s been the perfect, swoony and sweet audiobook for me right now:
What We Ate:
Monday: Turkey white bean soup from freezer
Tuesday: Fried perch and tater tots. The Husband cooked while I was at work. I ight have eaten the whole bowl of leftover Tater Tots when I got home at 11pm. It was just an excuse to use Trader Joe’s Dill Pickle seasoning.
Wednesday: Skillet pasta and sausage. The Husband cooked.
Thursday: Cheesy pumpkin pasta bake with kale. From NY Times Cooking. This was really tasty. I wanted leftovers, but the kids took them all for lunch. I actually froze half of it before baking because it only requires 15 mins at 500 degrees to bake so it will make an easy dinner. I added a can of cannellini beans for more protein, and made it with silken tofu instead of cream, so it would not be as rich.
Friday: leftover soup and pizza
Saturday: Dumplings and the Pokemon movie (for those at home), kale salad (for me at work)
Sunday: leftovers
How is your week going? Is there one app you would like to delete? What is your favorite way – your most bucket filling way – to spend time on your phone?
Last week of October, and finally got around to writing up the books I read last month. Not a lot of books read, but I was determined to finish that Bronte biography, and I did!
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – I picked up this book at a Little Free Library and it just sat in my shelf until a lot of you told me to read it. What a beautiful powerful book. I wish every chapter were its own book. I think that might be one reason I didn’t love love this book- I just wanted more of each story and the format almost felt like it was a short story collection. Interestingly enough, I just listened to an author interview where the author talks about how short story collections don’t have to end with a big satisfying bow the way novels do. I think once I accepted this book as a collection of connected short stories, I enjoyed it more.
History of Women in 101 Objects: A Walk Through Female History by Annabelle Hirsch, read by Read by Gillian Anderson, Katy Hessel, Anita Rani, Jackie Kay, Len Pennie, Annabelle Hirsch, Shirley Manson, Rebecca Solnit, Sandi Toksvig, Marina Hyde, Naomi Shimada, and a Full Cast– This book looks at history, specifically Female History, through the lens of objects . Some objects are very pedestrian (like the Miele vacuum cleaner, the bikini), some less so (a 16th century glass dildo…) Some chapters drew my interest more than others, but as a whole it was a fascinating way to walk through history. I would say this audio book kind of felt like a podcast on occasion because each chapter was so short and varied.
Pride of Bagdhad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon– This is a graphic novel based on a true incident where lions escaped from the zoo during the bombing of Baghdad. In this book, the lions wander the city looking for food and trying to grapple with what it means to be free and have the ability to interact with other animals. I borrowed this when I was on my graphic novel kick a few months ago. I think my problem with graphic novels, though, is the writing/dialogue can sometimes read somewhat stilted for me. Maybe that’s the nature of unfurling a story panel by panel? Despite that, though, I thought this book was beautiful, and the story really sad. There were times when I turned the page and then gasped at the stunning images or story.
Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya – I had read Setiya’s Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and found it gave me a lot to ponder in regards to what is fulfilling and the purpose of setting goals. My big take away from that book is that learn to enjoy activities for the sake of doing the activities rather than achieving goals because you don’t know when life will end. I didn’t find Life Is Hard as compelling or as focused. Each chapter looks at one things that might give use despair (Infirmity, Loneliness, Grief, Failure, Injustice, Absurdity, and Hope. That last is kind of a spoiler for what the book ultimately says) Setiya looks at ways that philosophers and thinkers have examined these problems and reconciled how to live with them. The book is a little dense, but there were some quotes that I liked:
“…being happy is not the same as living well. If you want to be happy, dwelling on adversity may or may not be of use. Bur mere happiness should not be your goal.” – I agree that happiness is overrated.
“Projects fail and people fail in them. But we have come to speak as if a person can be a failure as though failure were an identity, not an event. When you define your life by way of a single enterprise, a narrative arc, its outcome will come to define you.” I love this idea of failure as an event, not a identity. People are not failures. So important to remember.
“Hope coexists with quiescence. If there’s courage in hoping, it’s the courage to face the fear of disappointment that hope creates. When things turn out badly, hope is more harrowing than despair.” I feel like this is very apt to our current times as we count down the days to the election.
The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: the Story of Three Sisters by Juliet Barker – After two years of steady reading, I’ve finally finished this door stop of a book. I found so much of this book fascinating – it vividly captured the tedium of living in remote rural England. (I guess most of England was remote and rural at the time.) I mean this was before the internet and electricity! Interestingly, though, the lives of the Brontes seemed a combination of loneliness and connection. They were often far from friends, but the letters flew back and forth with great frequency and there were frequent visits and community events. It made me think of how we fill our time so differently now. I loved how much of a person’s personality shines through in their letter writing. Reading the excerpts from correspondence was one of my favorite parts of this book. The letters were always polite and correct, but could convey so much. I think about how we can offload the task of writing such correct and proper letters to ChatGPT now, and it makes me sad. I mean this phrase, in which Charlotte declines a proposal: I am not the serious, grave, cool headed individual you suppose – you would think me romantic… and say I was satirical and severe. However I scorn deceit and I will never for the sake of attaining the distinction of matrimony and escaping the stigma of an old maid take a worthy man whom I am conscious I cannot render happy. We certainly don’t write like that anymore. There was also so. much. death in this book. Of the six Bronte children, two died in infancy as well as the mother. And then, of course, Emily and Anne and brother Bramwell also died before they were into their thirties. Bramwell was a trip – troubled, aimless and full of scandal. I thought a lot in this book about their father as well, who outlived all his kids and kept doing his work as a minister until his death at age 84. If you’re into dense literary biographies, this is probably a good book to sink into.
On my bookshelf: I just finished reading a couple books, so there are only two books on my books in progress shelf:
This is so awkward: Modern Puberty Explained by Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett – This book is what the title suggests. It looks at the science behind puberty and then offers tips and scripts for how to talk about it with kids. Natterson and Kroll Bennett are the co-hosts of one of my favorite parenting podcasts.
Confessions of an Unlikely Thru-Hiker by Derick Lugo – Lugo is a young Black comedian who decides to hike the Appalacian trail, even though he had never even been camping before. I have a fascination with stories of people who do epic hikes (Wild, The Salt Path).
I’m going to start having a longer commute in a few weeks, so if anyone has any good audiobooks to recommend, please tell me!
We started rehearsals last Thursday. Starting mid week is always a little tough because you get the momentum of the first day excitement and then bam, you have a day off and it feels a little like letting the air out of your own tires. Oh well, it’s the schedule and I’ll take any days off that I can get.
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #2– No Photo Day. The point of this challenge was to force you to really look at the things you might be tempted to take a picture of, rather than taking your phone out to snap a picture. Studies show that taking a picture of something actually could lead you to remember it less. This challenge kind of hit home when I remembered how a few weeks ago, I wrote about the bright purple flowers in our front walk on a gloomy day. When I was writing that post, I looked for a picture to post of those flowers, but I couldn’t find one. “Surely, I took a photo of that moment,” I thought. “I remember that flower so vividly!” But I hadn’t taken a photo – I had just seen the purple aster popping out on a grey grey day and that memory had embedded itself in my brain. Would I have had such a vivid memory of that flower if I had taken a photo? I don’t know.
Last week, I took exactly three pictures:
I sent this to the Husband as proof I was logging off my comouter and coming home.
Took this one for last week’s post on books I was reading- I’m enjoying both.
The seven year old doing his homework in rehearsal. I sent this to the Husband as proof that he does do his homework sometimes.
And truth to tell, I had to look back at my camera roll to remember what pictures I had taken. on reflection, I think I took pictures to communicate something to someone else. These were not photos of things I wanted to remember for myself. I don’t know if this “No Photo” thing will stick. I do take a lot of pictures for practical reasons – to remember parking spots and grocery lists, to use at work when it is easier to take a picture than try to find the words to explain what I mean when I’m trying to give a note about a prop of some such. And I do like having photos of my family with me, capturing moments we have together. But I think because it is so easy to take photos, I have a higher expectation of these images I capture- I want them to be perfect, I want moments to be perfect. And some are. Sunsets, laughter, getting to the end of a hike. But also – I don’t need a million pictures of these things. I don’t need to take picture after picture, holding the camera between me and the things I want to capture. I can just take one, and maybe it’s imperfect, maybe not everyone is looking at the camera. But that’s the moment too. (Actually, the 7 year old is notorious for turning his back to the camera when I want to take a group picture – at least it’s honest of where we are.) Of course, when it comes to a family picture for the Christmas card, I reserve the right to try to get a nice one.
So last week, as part of the No Photo challenge, I challenged myself to write a haiku every time (well not every time) that I wanted to take a photo, as a way to think about why I’m struck by something. Here are some of the haikus I came up with:
This one is about those purple flowers on our front walk: On a gloomy day Purple asters line the walk. Such bright drops of joy.
Inspired by the first signs of fall foliage that I saw: Orange dappled leaves Flaming amidst still green trees. The first to welcome Fall.
Another one for fall: Dropping temperatures bring sartorial changes – Cozy clothes season!
They play, chattering Sharing imaginations. Worlds only they see.
Full moon shines. The clouds drift lie widow’s weeds across transcendent beauty.
I will say, last week my phone pick ups did go down 21% from the week previous. (from 98 average pick ups per day to 78). And my daily screentime average was down 25% from the week before (2 h 42 m m vs. 3h 37 mins). I don’t think lower numbers is the ultimate goal in and of itself, but rather what I do with the time, that additional 55 minutes.
Bored and Brilliant Challenge #3 is to delete one app. I’m not sure which one that would be. I no longer check social media and I don’t play any phone games. My most used apps are text/messages, Feedly, and Safari. Safari is probably mostly reading blogs. So I guess that would mean deleting Feedly. Will report back.
Other goings ons– -Speaking of phones. We got the 12 year old her first phone this week. It has been a huge decision and it’s actually a little earlier than I had wanted to give her a phone. Let’s be honest, if I could have waited until college, I would have. I’m kind of late to technology adoption and late to change. But with activities ramping up and with her being in a show this fall, I felt like for safety and communication, it was best to give her a phone so she could move around more independently. We got her a Bark Phone – the Husband did the research – and it seems like a low commitment way to get her a phone that had lots of parental controls on it. I had briefly contemplated a smart watch, but I wanted her to have something that she could leave in her locker and that wouldn’t be attached to her wrist and constantly monitoring her or sending her physical notifications. Before we got the phone, we all agreed to each come up with three rules about phone usage. If anyone else has guidelines or thoughts on phones and kids, I’d love to hear it. Right now we’re trying to figure out how we decide which apps she can download. I’m not opposed to her having some fun things to do on her phone, but I don’t want her to have so many apps that she is constantly switching between apps looking for that dopamine hit one gets when exposed to new and fresh things. Like you know when you constantly re-fresh apps looking for something new? Anyhow… lots to think about here.
-Soup Party at Work. This was a lot of fun. I make Chinese Corn and Egg Drop Soup. We also had Baked Potato Soup, Lasagna Soup, Sausage Kale Soup, Chicken and White Bean Soup, chicken orzo soup. Lots of bread and carbs too. It was a nice cozy way to gather. I want to have a soup party in the new year, maybe February? It seems like February would be a nice month to have a gathering.
-Family time on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon. My days off are all over the place this month. I had last Sunday off. I took the 12 year old to buy fabric for her Hallowe’en costume then we were home. We had lunch together outside on our back patio and then later we went together to the park where we played basketball together. The 7 year old and the 5 year old are comically unskilled at basketball, and it made for a lopsided game with people changing sides on a whim. But it was a lot of fun for all five of us to be doing something together, and the weather was perfect.
-I’ve been thinking about NaBloWriMo. (Thanks, San, for organizing!). November is legit bonkers busy for me, but I love the idea of a collective flooding of the internet of good old fashioned blogging. Maybe I’ll write shorter posts? My weekly posts have four parts – life update, gratitude, anticipation, what we ate – maybe I can concentrate on writing/posting one part per day?
Grateful for: -Hand me down winter coats. I have a friends who gives us all her kids’ outgrown winter coats. She has three kids and each kid always has two or three coats, so it’s a lot of coats. I think between the two little kids, I’ve only ever had to buy one or two winter coats since they were born. (The oldest always gets a new (or thrifted) winter coat.) One day last week it was quite chilly and I needed winter coats for the kids, and I was really grateful that I had a whole closet of winter coats to pull from. The first onset of cold weather is always a scramble for appropriate winter gear, and it’s nice to know that I’m covered on the coat front for a few more years at least.
-Fall apple season. I think apples might be my favorite part of fall. There are so many kinds of apples at the farmer’s market and every apple is a kind of adventure of discovery. Is there anything more satisfying than biting into a perfectly crisp, tart-sweet apple.
-Cookbooks on Libby. For the Soup Party, I wanted to make a recipe from a book I had borrowed from the library, but I didn’t have time to get it from the library, so I checked Libby, and there it was! I find that cookbooks on Libby aren’t always formatted to easy to browse and read, but when I’m just looking for a recipe, it’s a good way to find cookbooks.
Looking forward to: I have to be honest the next few weeks look like kind of a grind of work and activities, so I don’t have anything fun planned. This all hit home when I tried to schedule dentist appointments for the kids and there was literally no weekday until mid December where I could take all three kids at once to the dentist. It was hard enough getting two kids to back to back appointments. – Fall walks. I’m going to try to go on a walk every day at lunch. On days when I’m working an evening rehearsal, I’m going to try to fit in a run since I have 90 minutes between rehearsals. I’ve packed my running clothes and shoes and they are at my office right now, so hopefully it will prompt me to go run.
-2025 calendar. Our 2025 wall calendar arrived! Can I tell you how much I LOVE this wall calendar? It’s the At a Glance Move A Page Three Month Calendar. It’s designed so you move each month up as you go so that you can always see the next two months as well as the current one. A lot of 3 month calendars that I looked at were just four pages of three months each, so you’d have to flip back and forth to see adjacent months if you were on, say, March. Or they were all three months on one page, so you’d have to re-write future months as they became present months. There is no re-writing necessary with this calendar. Also – this calendar has lines in the date blocks so it makes writing in it neater. I bought several different 4 colour pens, so everyone in the family gets their own colour on the calendar.
-Free Day to run errands. I have a free say mid week, so I’m hoping to get some errands done. I’ve scheduled an oil change, want to return library books, run, lunch with the Husband, and visit a local consignment sale- the 7 year old is in dire need of pants.
-oh the most important thing I’m hoping to do on my free day is VOTE! Early voting starts this upcoming week. I have a little trepidation and a little hope about the elections. I don’t trust the polling so I feel like anything could happen. I feel like we’ve been here before- is it just me, or has every election seemed nail bitingly unpredictable?
What We Ate: it was soup week here! Partly because of fall weather, partly because it’s an easy thing to make ahead of time when things get busy.
Monday: Chicken rice soup. Made in the Instant Pot. I’m trying to use up things in the freezer, and we had a bunch of chicken breasts, so I put them in the Instant Pot with celery, onions, butternut squash, turnips, brown rice, and chicken broth. It was really tasty and there were leftovers for all week.
Tuesday: Corn and egg drop soup and dumplings. I made a double batch of the corn and egg drop soup so that I could bring to the Soup Party at work. I used the recipe from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou. It’s actually just a corn soup in the recipe, and I added the egg drop part to up the protein. The dumplings were pulled from the freezer – we had bought from the Farmer’s market last month.
Wednesday: Soup Party at work! I brought the Corn and Egg Drop Soup. It was even more ginger-y because I had added ginger slices and let them sit overnight.
Thursday: Chili- the Husband made this on Sunday night. It was super tasty.
Friday: Pizza (takeout) and IF. I had to work this night and had leftovers.
Saturday: I had to work, so I had leftovers. Not sure what the rest of the family ate.
Sunday: Toast and leftovers. Sunday is usually simple supper/ clean out the fridge night.
How is fall in your area? If you are in the States – are you voting in person or by mail? Early or on Election day? What’s the last photo you took? What’s the last photo you sent someone?
I was feeling kind of “meh” about September. We had a big goal of doing a lot of decluttering, but we had one major win (the attic), and one kind of fail (the toy room.) We have a plan for the foyer to manage our shoes and socks and drop zones, but it requires ordering new shoe storage. I’m excited about the shoe storage that we have picked out, but it is pricy, so I’m not sure when we’ll order it. And then on top of it all, the start of school and activities just feels overwhelming – totally my own doing, of course, but it’s stressful.
But when I went to journal about my September, I found there were some highlights tucked in there.
September Highlights: – My parents came to visit. -The youngest kid turned five!!! We had cake at home and also a birthday party for her with friends at the small local aquarium. -The kids and I went to the Renaissance Faire. It was so much fun. I’m glad we went early because it’s been sold out for the rest of the season since mid September. -Going through the attic and throwing out/donating/ passing along so much stuff. The space that this has opened up is amazing. -Family Game Night. A wonderful, quieter alternative to big adventures. -Discovered some tasty food near us – a Balkan restaurant and an Indonesian one. -The County’s Friendship picnic – tasty falafel and bounce houses. -On the work front – working a corporate gig (a new to me experience), and doing super titles for a Vocal Recital (familiar gig, nice to return to). -We found out that the 12 year old got into the children’s chorus for the holiday opera that I’m working on. She was so excited. I took this picture of her reading the offer:
September Lowlights – funny how many of these lowlights are tied to the highlights: -Trying to figure out the logistics of getting the 12 year old to opera rehearsals. Rehearsals start at 4pm, and that’s kind of a logistical nightmare. She doesn’t start until November, but it’s causing a lot of stress. -My parents came to visit, but I barely saw them because I was working most nights that they were here. – Not managing to work through the toy room declutter. -Not having a chance to go on any hikes or visit any museums all month. This might be the first month all year where I didn’t fit in either a hike or a museum visit.
October Aspirations: Okay, I had written a big long list for October aspirations, but I think I’ll just whittle it down to a few essentials: – Survive our schedule, making sure everyone stays fed, rested, and gets where they are scheduled to be. In addition to the kids’ usual activities, the 7 year old is going to be a supernumerary (non-speaking extra) in the opera I’m working on. I might regret signing him up – it will be several late nights and will take thoughtful logistics, but he’s excited to do it, and I’m excited to have him in the show. -Hallowe’en. I think we have costumes sorted out. I need to make them, but I’ve penciled costume work days into my calendar. – Another effort on the toy room purge. -VOTE. This is a big one. Early voting starts in ten days. If I don’t do anything else, I need to do this. -Remember to hug the Husband and children every day. -Daily time outside. Even the low bar of the Cool Bloggers Walking Club seems high to me right now, but here’s a reminder to step outside and breath the fall air every day. -I had a bunch of other aspirations written down – the perpetual “get rid of car” project, planning for our Asia Trip, hike, museum, exercise, no-spend month, social plans… I think those are going on the “really, maybe, probably not this month” list. I’m setting expectations low here.
Other Things This Week: -Contra-dancing! The Husband suggested we go contra-dancing this week. There is a new-ish contra dance about two miles down the road from us on the second Thursday of the month. The Husband and I met contra-dancing and we used to go several times a month. In our area you used to be able to go to a contra dance on Friday Nights and Sunday nights, and if you were willing to drive to Baltimore, you could also go to one on Saturday nights as well. It’s a pretty popular activity here. The Sunday night dance no longer runs now, thanks COVID. And we also haven’t been for a while, thanks, kids. I don’t think we’ve been since before the 7 year old could walk. Anyhow, the Husband told me about this Thursday night dance and we went, taking all the kids, and we all had such a great time. The music was amazing, the people friendly. There were several people that remembered us from when we used to attend the dance regularly. I laughed, I spun really fast, I moved my feet to the music, I swung my kids around, I made small talk with nice people. It was a really great time.
Blurry screen capture from video the 12 year old took of the Husband and me.
-Good talk with a teacher – One of the kids has been struggling in school so we set up a meeting with the teacher to talk about strategies. I’ve always been a little hands off with my kids’ schools, but this year, I’m realizing that there is a an element of collaboration that is needed – teachers and administrators want to know when kids are struggling, and it’s better to ask the questions rather than assume things will work out. I’ve always felt bad about emailing teachers about issues, and taking their time, but I’m seeing that there is a time and a tone for these communications, especially in the elementary/middle school years. I’m sure high school is a whole different ball game.
-Matching Overalls! We went to Duluth Trading Company on Saturday – the Husband needed some new shirts and pants. I’m doing a casual, no-pressure Buy Nothing month (inspired by Stephany!), so I didn’t buy anything for myself, but I did try on some jeans and they weren’t terrible. I might buy myself a pair in November. I haven’t worn jeans in two years and it’s hard to go back, but they are a really versatile piece of clothing and good for running around backstage. So I will marinate on that. But in the mean time, I couldn’t resist picking up a pair of overalls for the 5 year old. They have a super cute fox print pattern on them. And… the overalls come in adult sizes as well. The 12 year old and I both tried them on together. I was sooooo tempted to buy us all matching overalls, but they are on the pricy side and the 12 year old found a pair of ivory corduroy overalls she liked better, and I decided to resist the temptation and stick to my “no buy” intentions. But look how cute we all are!
-We finally finished watching a TV series! This is very rare for us – we often peter out of energy when watching something together, or if I’m watching something on my own, I am often reluctant to watch the series finale because I don’t want the show to end (I’m looking at you, This is Us). We watched the last episode of Ted Lasso over the weekend. (Though there are rumors of a Season 4…?). The last episode was predictably sentimental and heart-tugging to the point of manipulative, but I kind of loved it. I feel like it’s not “cool” to wear your emotions on your sleeve anymore – there is so much television about people being mean to each other, or being irrevocably lonely, or trying to get ahead, or having terrible things happen, and blood and sex and gore and ironic wise assery. And Ted Lasso’s big hearted optimism is the antidote to that. This last season – sure it was predictable and it seemed like they were box checking plot points, but dammit if there weren’t some genuinely touching moments and I might have been a little teary eyed.
-Bored and Brilliant Challenge. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m trying to work my way through the Bored and Brilliant Challenge – six challenges put together by the podcast New Tech City/ Note to Self in 2015 to help one re-set phone habits. The first challenge was to keep your phone in your pocket (or your bag) when you are in transit. As part of the episode, the host sat on a New York City street and counted how many people walking by were interacting with their phone. Of the 1000 people she counted, 30% of people were interacting with their phones, which actually seems low to me – but the episode was from 2015, so maybe people were less attached to their phones nine years ago? At any rate, one of the main points of this first challenge is how even when you don’t look at your phone, even having it out is a distraction and keeps you from truly connecting – with others, with your surroundings, with yourself. I’ve been doing this “phone in pocket” challenge, and at the beginning I noticed that I would, out of habit, pull my phone out after work as I walked to my car. This wasn’t great, especially since I often left work late at night when it was dark out. But it was also something that I wasn’t even thinking about. What was interesting to me about this challenge, too, is that one would think that a behavior that requires effort (pulling out one’s phone) comes against more friction than something that requires no effort (leaving the phone in my bag). But that itch to check my phone – the discomfort of being bored – clearly was winning out over the inertia of leaving the phone in my bag. So when I started finding myself reaching for my phone while walking or in the car or wanting to take it with me when I walked down the hall to talk to someone at work, I tried to acknowledge the discomfort of being bored, the urge of wanting to be entertained, and sat with that a little bit. Like seriously, what is so boring about walking to the car that I feel like I need to be looking at my phone? I’m sure there are scientific studies that look at how the brain processes content from the phone vs. other inputs. Maybe this “challenge” will just become a habit.
Challenge #2 is to have a Photo Free Day, where you don’t use your phone yo take any pictures for a whole day. I do like to take pictures to remember things, and capture moments. Will report back on how this challenge goes.
Grateful For: -Walking trails to school. Twice last week, I drove the 7 year old and his friend to school. The first time, was because we missed the bus, so I drove and parked along the trail that goes to the school and we walked the rest of the way – I kind of loathe sitting in the carpool line and thought this would be nicer. The 7 year old said to me, “It’s nice to start the day with a walk!” So on Friday, I asked if he wanted to walk to school again, and he did, so we once again parked on the trail and walked up to the school. I’m grateful that for living in a pretty urban suburb, there are still lots of ways to walk.
-Being home for dinner. Opera season is starting for me, which means a lot of nights and weekends. I’m grateful when I get the evening off and can be home for dinner. I love family dinners.
-Parks and playgrounds. On Saturday, the 12 year old had a birthday party. It was about 25-30 minutes away from home, and we didn’t think it would be efficient to drop off then return, so we took the opportunity to go grocery shopping and to take the two little kids to a playground. I feel so lucky that there are so many parks and playgrounds in our area. You can often find one (or two or three) within a 10 or 15 minute drive of wherever you are in our part of our county. So if ever we need to kill some time, going to a playground is usually a good solution. I’m also grateful that the kids still like playgrounds.
-Not quite getting rid of my car yet. Our van had to go into the shop and we were down one car for a week, so I ended up driving my 20 year old car while my husband drove the Impreza until the van was fixed. I know we are lucky to have three cars for situations like this – even if one car is 12 years old and the other car is 20 years old. Part of me thinks, maybe we don’t need to get rid of my car – it’s good to have an extra car for instances like this. But it is silly and expensive and hard to justify keeping a third car for emergencies when we live a 10 minute walk to public transportation.
Looking forward to: -Hallowe’en. I’m not working on Hallowe’en this year, so I get to take the kids trick or treating. The costumes have all been chosen. There were some last minute changes, but I stuck firm that I wasn’t making different Hallowe’en costumes, so any changes had to be able to be sourced/purchased.
-Starting rehearsals. We’ve been prepping for the start of rehearsals. It’s always exciting to learn a new score and wrap my brain around new sets and costumes (well, new to me – the costumes are rented and the set takes parts of previous shows and uses them together). At a certain point, however, I am itching to move from the show being in my head to see how it is going to get up on its feet, to see what the singers and creative team is like, to hear the music sung by real live people.
-Soup Party! I’ve organized a soup party for my department at work. I’m excited – and the weather is just starting to turn chilly enough for soup weather. I think I’ll make Chinese corn soup – it’s easy to put together and very tasty. Not sure if I’ll make it vegan (tofu instead of eggs).
-Just started these two books:
In busy seasons, I try to find books that are fun to read and engagingly written right off the bat, and these two books are that, in very different ways. One is about navigating puberty- it gives the science behind the changes that happen and also gives ideas on how to kids about the changes in a wonderfully non-judgmental way.. The other book is a love story that straddles two eras.
What We Ate: Monday: Pasta Salad. Made before I went to work in the afternoon. Jenny Rosenstrach’s marinated beans, pasta, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. Vegan.
Wednesday: Leftover pizza from the 5 year old’s birthday party.
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: pizza (take out) and Glee
Saturday: The 12 year old was at a birthday party. The husband and I weren’t terribly hungry after a big lunch, so we didn’t eat, but we did buy the two little kids a sandwich to split from the grocery store.
Sunday: Leftovers for me. Yogurt with berries and honey. Toast (again) – PB&J on English muffins for one kid, melted cheese on English muffins for the other kid. Cut up veggies on the side.
Sometimes my writing schedule gets off and then I realize it’s been two weeks since and update even though my last post was just last week. Time can be funny like that…
I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life, a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be— the advance of fulfillment, and of desire— all these needs met, then unmet again.
Those words- “all these needs met, then unmet again.” has stuck with me. I’ve been thinking lately with regards to many things, work and life. In regards ot work, how there will never be a perfect system. We go through reorganizations and departmental changes, each time hoping that this is the optimal way to run things, but it is never a forever solution. People come and go and bring different talents, fill different holes with their different strengths. Different stressors come up, different duties, tasks to be done. You check the boxes then more things come up on the list. So there is no ultimate system, just a meeting today’s needs.
And in other parts of life – we adjust our lives and patterns to meet needs and then before we know it, things shift and once again there are unmet needs. Kids too. And oneself. Feed ourselves until we are no longer hungry, but then we will be hungry again. File the paperwork so that we get that insurance reimbursement then we have to go to the doctor again. But also things like, tell someone you love them, and then tell them again, because we can continue to meet that need of those around us to be loved. It is an exhausting cycle to think about. But also – there is some wonder in the thought that we can meet needs, that perhaps this is life’ work – to continue to meet needs – physical and emotional. Perhaps that’s the “good life” of the poem?
So along those lines –
It was a really busy few weeks for me. What week isn’t? (Side note – One of my favorite quotes is from an essay by Ursula Le Guin, who, when asked what she does in her spare time, says: “In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.” I never want to imply that the things that occupy my life and make my life feel frantic, this busyness of a hamster wheel that I feel stuck in sometimes – I would never want to imply that my personal busyness is morally superior than that which occupies anyone else’s time – we all of us occupy our time by living. When did being busy become a virtue? Or is that just the narrative I’ve internalized somewhere? )
Anyhow, the week before last, I took on an event gig, which required me to be at work at 8am. I know many people show up at work at 8am (or even earlier!), and props to them. 8am is a whole new world for me. I basically wake up at 6:00am, eat breakfast, pack lunches, get dressed and leave for work by 7:00am. It feels so much more efficient than my typical mornings which stretch longer (6:45am wake up to 8:50am leave for school bus) and where all those things seem to take up two hours rather than one. I mean, I do sometimes get a yoga stretch in, a bit or reading, a moment to journal. Or sometimes those stretches are occupied by looking for permission slips, or socks, or prepping dinner, or when I’m lucky a couch cuddle with a kid and a picture book. A 7am out the door, however, does not allow for those extra things, though.
The event was a two day affair, a symposium on mental health, and it went pretty smoothly. I was there mostly to help out the stage manager that the producing organization brought, facilitating communication with the crew. There was a lot of setting water glasses onstage and chairs and side tables for the different panels and speakers. Events are interesting to me because the stakes feel so high since you only get one go at it, but also at the same time you only get one try at it, often with minimal/no rehearsal, so the stakes somehow simultaneously feel oddly low. Like you just have to do the best you can to get people where they need to be when they need to be there and if it isn’t 100% smooth, it’s very rarely your fault. Event work is good money, to be honest, and I know many people who just do event work for a living.
But… I think I would miss rehearsal. I like going to rehearsal and creating something and being part of that process. I like taking a hundred people and stirring them all together to make a story onstage. I like watching artists discover how they tell stories and doing my part to make that story happen. And I like working somewhere where I know whom I’m working with and I don’t have to wonder if so and so is going to show up or if they have to cancel at the last minute to testify before congress. Or we have to re-arrange the PowerPoint last minute because the speaker cancelled. There is certainly a thrilling rush of adrenaline to work under the fast paced scenario of an event, but I think it would be exhausting to do that every. single. gig. Maybe I’m too comfortable where I am?
Which, on that note, I did finally move my cubicle at work, so I guess that’s a step towards discomfort. I’d been putting this off since I don’t like change and have been sitting at my original desk for almost twenty years. But someone pointed out that the desk of my predecessor in the Production Stage Manager role was probably better suited for, well, being the PSM since it was in a corner and was bigger and had a couch for sitting and chatting, which is something that happens more now that I have more work responsibilities. I’d delayed and delayed but then we were all getting new computers at work, so I figured it was as good a time as any to move cubicles. I don’t love it – I can’t see when people are in the office because of the way the cubicle walls are set up, but maybe I can move the cubicle walls.
Other fun things: – Family game night. We often have pizza and movie on Fridays, and sometimes also on Saturdays as well. One week, though, the 7 year old demanded game night. So we had a Saturday game night. Everyone had different ideas for what they wanted to do, so we did all of it – we started by playing King of Tokyo, then we spent some time playing with the marble run and building domino topplings (is that a word?), and then we ended the evening by playing Uno. It was a great time – even with some sore losing and sore winning antics. I’m hopeful we’ll do more game nights.
You can sort of see the 12 year old in the chair at the top of the picture – she’s listening to an audiobook with her earphones on. But hey, she’s in the same room as the rest of us, so it’s still family time, right?
-FIVE! The youngest officially turned five. (Despite the unicorn cake of the last post, her birthday wasn’t until the next day.) They don’t get any younger, I suppose. This past weekend we had her birthday party at a nearby aquarium. It’s a small aquarium mostly focused on local marine life, with one room of tanks and then a huge play space outside. The kids got a tour of all the fish, and got to feed some of them, and also touch some of the animals in the touch tank. Then there was pizza and snacks and cupcakes and play time. I feel like 90% of the reason the 5 year old wanted to have the party at the aquarium was that the outdoor play space is in the shape of a pirate ship.
-No School Day/ Car Free Day. The two older kids had last Thursday off school for Rosh Hashanah. (I mean the calendar doesn’t say that – it just says Non-Instructional Day, but the school calendar doesn’t call it Christmas Break either…) It’s my last no school day with the kids for a while, and I wanted to have an adventure, but the 12 year old was reluctant to visit a museum or go on a hike (the two things I would have done), so we stayed close to home and it ended up being mostly a lovely day. In the morning we “ran” to a cafe and had special drinks and pastries. The run was the 7 year old’s idea. It was a very slow run, punctuated by much walking, but I think both kids felt good about it. At one point, the 7 year old was losing steam and the 12 year old grabbed his hand to encourage him along, telling him we just needed to make it to the next light.
We shared earbuds and listened to musical theatre soundtracks, singing along at the top of our lungs, which got a lot of smiles from other people on the path. After our special drinks and pastries, we walked home (still singing loudly) and had lunch. At some point during the walk home, I had it in my head that I wanted to have a car-free day. So after lunch, we took the metro to my work as an exercise for the 12 year old on how to take the metro on her own. I mean we were with her, but I had her lead the way. Then we went to the library near work, got some books – including Dogman books in French (Super-Chien!) – and then came home. The rest of the day, I baked Brazilian Cheesy Bread and brownies and we watched some tv as a family. It was a pretty low key day, but it was nice to spend time with the two big kids.
Side note: the library we went to was a DC Library, which we don’t often go to since we live in Maryland. I snapped this photo for their Busy Person’s Book Club- I love that idea.
-a new Costco snack. I went to Costco to pick up food for the 5 year old’s birthday party, hoping to also grab another bag of those Chocolate Quinoa Crisps, but they were no where to be found!!!!! Typical of Costco to lure me in with a fabulous snack and then not carry it any more. No worries! Costco does not lack for snacks, and I found a new one – These crunchy savory rice cakes – all my favorite Thai food flavor profiles in a bite sized morsel!
One Not Fun Thing: -The decluttering has kind of hit a roadblock. I gave away the kids’ play tent on Freecycle. Several mistakes here – I should have double triple checked that they were okay with my giving it away, even though they said okay initially – but the biggest one was giving it away while the youngest was at home. There were tear. So many tears. Heart-wrenching sobs. Our youngest kid is perhaps our most pragmatic child and is the least likely to get upset or feed into melodrama. So when she does get upset, it feels so so heart-breaking. Anyhow, I feel terrible about giving away the tent now and am kind of petrified of giving away anymore toys from the toy room. So much for the toy room purge progress. This definitely needs to get back on track, though.
Two OMG things that I’m probably the last person on earth to have discovered: – Shaking out the floor mats. Every Wednesday morning, I take the kids to piano lessons. While the 12 year old has lessons, I go get gas. I’ve gotten in the habit of throwing out the trash while I pump gas, and it’s such a simple way to keep the car tidy. Well lately, I’ve also been shaking out the floor mats as well, and what a difference that makes! Vacuuming the car seems like a lot of work, but shaking out the floor mats? With a quick flick, i get rid off all the grass and dirt and what not and the car looks almost like I vacuumed, even though under the floor mat is still covered in grass and dirt and whatnot. I guess this isn’t earth shattering, and I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before to do this, but it makes a huge difference.
-USB plugs! Despite using a computer almost every day of my life for the past thirty years, and having to plug in and unplug USB plugs, and often plugging them in upside down and getting frustrated and wondering if I was missing something – well, you know what? I was missing something. USB plugs are marked! The marked part of the plug is the top. What???? I feel like such an idiot not to have known this. I’ll never try to plug in a mouse upside down again.
Grateful For:
-Flowers in the front walk- a splash of colour during a grey week. The sun has come out now, but last week was so grey and drizzly. Coming home in the rain, I just wanted to rush into the house, but the purple flowers that line our front walk, poking their heads out reminded me to take a moment and savor beautiful things.
-The Husband booking the 5 year olds’ birthday party venue. I will admit I am not a birthday person. Witness the 7 year old not getting a party last year because I just couldn’t get it together. So this year for the youngest kid’s birthday, the Husband took it up on himself to research venues, run the options by the 5 year old, and then book the venue she picked. Done. Once a venue is booked, I’m good at food and other logistics. It’s that first push of the boulder that I’m not good at.
-The guy (D) who comes and fixes things for us. I am not a DIY/ Fix it myself kind of person. I might paint a room, and I have changed a light switch, and I did tile the basement of our first house. But in general, while I like the idea of doing my own DIY projects, I wouldn’t work on a timeline that is acceptable to other people in the house. Enter D, who comes in and will do both small and large jobs for us. He is careful and also honest – if something isn’t in his wheelhouse, he’ll tell us rather than try to figure it out. Anyhow, he was here to paint our new front door, and he’s done such a smooth job that every time I close the front door, I give it door an extra stroke because it’s just so glossy and pretty. He also replaced a light fixture in the kids’ room – I had always hated the fixture that was in the room when we moved it – everything was always so dark. Oh also installed a new medicine cabinet. Now the room is full of light. I’m grateful to D for making out home nicer bit by bit.
Newly stained door!New (to this room) light fixture!
Looking Forward To: -Starting a new opera. This week I’ll start prep for my next show. I’m excited to get back to a rehearsal room, but also kind of dreading it. The calendar is very full these next few months and I get overwhelmed thinking about it. One week, one day, one hour at a time, I suppose.
-Going contra dancing! The Husband sent me a link to a contradance that is ten minutes away and suggested that we go. It’s on a Thursday night and there are a million reasons we shouldn’t go – we haven’t been contra-dancing in years, and it might be a disastrously late night for everyone, the kids might hate it – but I’m looking forward to going. The Husband and I met at a contradance, so there’s a special place in my heart for dancing.
-re-setting my phone habits. I was listening to this 2015 episode of Note To Self with Sherry Turkle where she talks about how the mere presence of one’s phone is a huge distraction and I do find that it’s true for me. There are for sure things that I find valuable from having my phone, but also lots that just makes me fell sluggish. I want to be more thoughtful about how my phone plays in my life, so I’m trying this Bored and Brilliant challenge to re-set some habits. It’s supposed to be a 7 day challenge, but some of the challenges I think I’ll do more more than one day. The first challenge was to put one’s phone away while in transit – while driving, walking, on public transportation – and I’m trying to make that a longer habit. I think my goal is not necessarily to reduce time on my phone, but to reduce the number of times I pick up my phone.
– We started this tv show:
It’s sharply hilarious and skewers everyone on the political spectrum, as one might expect of a show about a gay public high school teacher in a school in Austin, TX. As I have a kid who is spitting distance to high school, this show fills me with dread and hope.
What We Ate (two weeks’ worth): I’m going to be real honest. I don’t know what the family ate while I worked the event. Upshot they were fed. Thank you to the Husband and my mother. We’re going into full on opera season, so I want to start thinking through more meals that can be made ahead or that the husband can make quickly.
Monday: Chicken wings and green beans. These are my mother’s chicken wings that the kids always ask her to make. It involves marinating the wings in garlic and soy sauce, pan frying and then baking with honey and more garlic. I could eat a whole panful by myself. Here’s the recipe:
Tuesday: no clue
Wednesday: no idea.
Thursday: Zucchini boats. The Husband cooked. Zucchini stuffed with ground turkey and topped with cheese. I told the seven year old to label the leftovers:
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee
Saturday: Toast. We had a lot going on this weekend and we wanted to make sure we had time for game night, so we had the ultimate simple supper. Toast. Some of us had toast and peanut butter, some had toast and jam. There was probably fruit and cut up veggies to go with, but I can’t be sure.
Sunday: Toast again. It was that kind of weekend.
Monday: Sandwiches (grilled cheese) and leftovers. Monday is very activity heavy so we usually have soup or sandwiches on Monday.
Tuesday: Eggplant Dan Dan Noodles, a Hetty Lui McKinnon recipe from the New York Times. Tasty and surprisingly fast, using Japanese eggplant from the farmer’s market. I added tofu, just fried it the same as the eggplant. VEgan.
Wednesday: Lemony White Bean Soup with Turkey and Greens from the NY Times Cooking site. This was really tasty – I started it on teh stove and the finished it in the InstantPot so it would be ready to eat when we got back from gymnastics. I didn’t have ground turkey, but in an effort to clean out our freezer, I took some chicken breasts and chopped it in the food processor. I also chopped up the chayote squash that came in our Hungry Harvest box and which had been confounding me, and threw that in too. After dinner, there was only two or three servings left, so I added another can of beans, a quart of chicken broth and the leftover ground turkey from the zucchini boats, cooked it in the InstantPot for another 15 minutes and then presto! had soup to go into the freezer for a quick leftover meal later this month.
Thursday: Chickpea Sweet Potato Stew when I read this recipe on Suzanne’s site, I immediately screenshot it to make since I had some sweet potatoes to use up. The twelve year old and I thought this was delicious. The rest of the family didn’t love it. The Husband doesn’t like too much coconut milk in his food. Maybe if I had made it with chicken they would have liked it more.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Rush Hour. I had never seen this movie before, and it was very entertaining. For those who are unfamiliar, Rush Hour is a buddy cop movie featuring Jackie Chan as a police officer from China who comes to China when his bosses daughter is kidnapped, and gets paired with a Black LAPD officer played by Chris Tucker to solve the case. I was kind of afraid before we watched that there would be cringe-y Asian stereotypes in it, something that I’m kind of sensitive to the kids seeing. (I had to turn off All Dogs Go To Heaven within the first ten minutes because my kids really don’t need to see a buck toothed slanty eyed dog from “Siam”. Same reason I’ll probably not show my kids Breakfast at Tiffany’s any time soon, even though Audrey Hepburn is sublime in that movie. I wouldn’t say “never” but there would have to be some conversations first.) But Rush Hour was surprisingly free of bad Asian stereotypes and racist jokes. There were definitely “race” jokes, but I do think there’s a fine line between jokes about race and jokes that are racist. And the whole Black Cop/ Asian Cop thing – I don’t know if my kids will ever get how really cool and revolutionary that pairing of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan was. Also -now I want to show them Shaolin Soccer.
Saturday: Leftovers and Bahn mi sandwiches. (I worked this evening)
Sunday: Pizza leftover from the 5 year old’s birthday party. I brought way too much food to the party, but it’s not a bad thing because now I have fruit salad and cut up veggies and chip and guac to last all week. And pizza. I froze one whole pizza for later – I’ve never done this, so I’m excited to try it out.
And now we are into October. Fall and Hallowe’en and all the things! And then the slide into the end of the year. Hope you are having a lovely week, that you are staying safe and dry where you are.
