Author: Diane

Weekly recap + what we ate: Jet lag, Art by Women, airplane films

Ouf, it’s been a rough week for re-entry. I have not been able to get onto a regular sleep schedule. I’m by mid afternoon, struggle to stay awake, and end up taking three hour naps and then staying up until 2am and then sleeping til 8am, which is pretty late in our house. Overall not good for my goal of improving my sleep hygeine in 2026. The house continues to be a mess, the kids run amok on their own in the morning. On the bright side – the six year old got tired of waiting for me to wake up one morning and packed her own lunch…

I did manage to go to work – definitely not bloggable these days – make dinner a few times, meet up with my Lenten (okay, I guess Advent/Epiphany) reading group this week. But other than that, it was a whole lot of sleeping.

Some good news (since so much of it is shit these days):
We found out which high school our daughter is going to. She got assigned to her #1 pick, which is great. The results are kind of based on home school/lottery/random assignments, so it was a little up to chance. The school she is assigned to is not actually our home school, but it is closer to us, which is nice – actually in most of the redistricting maps that have been drawn, it would probably be our new home school in the future, so chances are the two other kids will also go there. I’m excited because the school is getting rebuilt – so next year she will be at at a holding school that is a little far away, but the new building will open up her sophomore year. I can’t quite believe my baby is going to HIGH SCHOOL next year.

Speaking of my baby – it is also her birthday week. It’s been a little low key because her birthday comes so soon after the holidays that I’m always negligent at planning anything. Oh well – we’ll gather with some family friends and have cake, and I think we’ll plan something for her and her friends at some point. She’s on the fence as to whether she wants a big birthday party or anything, so we’ll see what she wants to do. But oh wow… This little baby made us first time parents and now she is 14!!!!

She was such an itty bitty thing! Born at 34 weeks, just under 5lbs – we were completely unprepared for her arrival. Some day I might get around to writing her birth story here.

And look at us now!

A Museum Visit– I went to a new to me museum – The National Museum for Women in the Arts, where aside from a few exceptions, all the art in the museum is by women or non-binary artists. The NMWA is in DC, but not a Smithsonian, so I did actually *gasp* pay money to go. It was well worth the $16 (They do have two free community days a month, and I was going to wait, but the exhibit I wanted to see was closing soon, so I figured I would just pay…. such a foreign concept for me. I feel so entitled.) I had known about the museum, though given all the free museums, this museum was never high up on my list of museums to visit. But during the last government shut down, when the Smithsonian closed, the NMWA was on a list of alternative museums to visit – they even had free admission for federal workers – and I made a note to check it out.

The exhibit that prompted me to visit was called Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, showcasing female artist from the time of the Dutch Masters. The exhibit was about to close and I didn’t want to miss it. 1600-1750 was such a prolific time for art, but all the artists you hear about from the time are men – Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc. I never thought to wonder fi there were also women artists, and of course there were. Many of them were sisters, daughters, or spouses of artists and they were mostly from upper middle and upper class families. The exhibit featured not just paintings, but also scientific drawings, book illustrations, and – most fascinating to me – samples of lace. The exhibit talked about how lace-making is such an art, but lacemakers are never credited by name or even known. It kind of reminded me of the exhibit of quilts that I saw at the Smithsonian a few years ago – the idea of handicraft as art, but art that does not credit the artist, likely because it’s done by women.

Another artform that was largely women’s domain was paper-cutting. It’s not really on people’s radar because the finished project is so fragile that it seldom survives to be passed down. Of course there are painting of paper cuttings, delicate mobiles with intricate designs. One papercutting adjacent work they had was this portrait – how amazingly skillful is that cutting?

I particularly liked the art by Rachel Ruysch – her paintings featured such detail and sense of life:

One detail from the above painting.

(Also – I just googled Ryusch, and she had ten children while being one of the most in demand still life painters of her time. I feel conflicted as to whether one’s identity as a mother should be part of an artist’s biography, but, man just thinking of her having ten kids is just as impressive as her paintings. Or maybe no – maybe she was a shit mom who left her kids with their nanny all the time. But still… she gave birth ten times. That’s kind of bad ass.)

After I saw the Dutch Masters exhibit, I wandered the other galleries – the main collection, was interestingly enough, arranged by themes (Red, Lavender, Domesticity), rather than by era. I thought that was a really interesting way to look a pieces in a larger context. I particularly was awed by these huge watercolor paintings:

Painting watercolours this large is amazing.
love the detail.

Then on the third level there was another exhibit called Tawny Chatmon: Sanctuaries of Truth, Dissolution of Lies, featuring work by Black photographer Chatmon. She embroiders her photographs with richly colored threads, making a striking textured visual. Her work seeks to reclaim objects that have been used to stereotype African Americans by restoring them to objects of meaning and significance. For example this photograph of a woman with a watermelon where the fruit is given a place of royalty rather than ridicule.

There is also her project “The Restoration” where she finds racist antique dolls and re-draws the offensively exaggerated facial features and dresses them in rich African textiles.

I left the exhibit awed by the courage and creativity Chatmon has to change the narrative that surrounds her. The whole museum, in general was pretty satisfying to visit. Highly recommend.

Speaking of consuming art– Here is a list of all the movies I watched on the plane on our flights to and from Taiwan, most of them foreign films. I like to watch international movies on international flights. I very rarely watch foreign language films at home, but something about being on a flight, being held hostage for hours – I don’t want to watch popcorn movies, I want to watch movies that feel a little challenging.

This is my strategy on international flights – I first go through the menu and favorite all the movies that look interesting to me. Some of my movie catnip: films set in Taiwan (or the country I’m going to visit), films in Mandarin (so I can practice my language skills. French also.), films with romantic story lines, films that say “Award winning performance”, films that don’t look too dark, heavy, or gory (I don’t need to watch violence on a plane… or ever, really), films with an ensemble cast on the poster, films with people looking happy on the poster, film with women and not just men on the poster, films that are set on planet Earth, period films, films that are less than 120 minutes long. Then after favoriting movies, I just see what speaks to me in the moment. I don’t put on a movie until at least an hour into the flight. I like to watch a movie with my meal, and then see what else I have time for.

Here are the seven movies I watched over 30 some hours in a plane to Taiwan and back:

*The Family Stone – USA 2005: This movie is on so many “Classic Holiday Movie” lists, but I had never seen it, so I decided to put it on. Let me tell you – The Family Stone will definitely not be on any of my “Holiday Movie” lists. It’s full of terrible toxic people, and not even in a good, fun to watch way. I mean aside from the one “Check all the DEI boxes” couple (gay, interracial, and Deaf), everyone is kind of just clueless and unkind, and that in and of itself feels cliched. Holiday movies are supposed to fill me with warm fuzzies and hope for humanity. I just wanted to read all these folks the riot act.

*OMG! Mom’s Big News – Malaysia, 2025: This movie is about a couple in their 50s, with grown kids who discover that the wife is pregnant just as they are planning for retirement. I thought this was a cute movie – funny, warm, and full of quirky characters. It kind of felt like a Hallmark movie in the best ways.

*Mumu – China 2025: A film about a Deaf man who works odd jobs while raising his six year old daughter (Mumu) only to have their life together threatened when his ex comes back for custody of the child. The movie starts out as a heartwarming, quirky almost-comedy about a father and his child, but then bam! Mumu turns real dark and becomes a noir thriller as the father, in order to make money, gets involved in an insurance fraud scheme that requires him to recklessly crash cars, and then… well no spoilers. (I do find with a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese movies they tend to have both light and dark moments. There is no one way to categorize a movie often.) Its the kind of movie that on paper sounds as if it will be peddling in emotional cliches – and it does – but the performances are so genuine and delightful, the relationships so real, that I was just sucked right in. Worth a watch if you can find it, I think.

Tic Talk – Taiwan, 2024: A teenage boy with Tourette’s syndrome dreams of being a singer and also of finding his mother. One day, he meets a travelling singer and hitches a ride on his truck, travelling throughout Taiwan and helping him with his stage and sound set up. The cynical singer and the shy teenager bond. A buddy road trip movie. I really enjoyed the music, seeing the life on the road, and seeing the scenery of Taiwan in this movie. Taiwan is a very outdoors country. This movie has catchy tunes and sweet performances.

Road’s End in Taiwan – Switzerland/Taiwan 2025: Swiss Damien receives a letter that his father – whom his mother had told him died years ago – has just recently passed away in Taiwan. He travels to Taiwan for his inheritance and meets Steve, his Taiwanese half brother. Damien and Steve embark on a road trip through Taiwan to find the other two people named in the will so that the will might be read. Yes, another Taiwan Road Trip movie, though this one travels down the East Coast, so a little different scenery. This movie was kind of sad and bleak (Spoiler – the dead father was NOT a good person), but I was pretty invested in the story.

*Montages of a Modern Motherhood– Hong Kong, 2024: New mother Jing struggles with balancing childcare, work, in-laws, and her marriage in this unflinching look at early motherhood. There were so many moments in this movie that I felt very deeply – the bone dead tiredness of having an infant; the sense of not knowing what to do coupled with undeniable instinct for what your child needs; the crying, constant crying. Watching it made me feel angry on behlaf of Jing, but also I felt so lucky that I had the post-partum support that I did. The movie is bleak, but also those first few months with a baby can be so isolating and intense that I’m glad this movie puts out there how hard it can be.

*A Family Knight-Mare (Sin cobertura – literally “no coverage”) – Spain 2025: Fed up with her family constantly being on their phones, young Rita asks a fortune teller at a Medieval fair to make their phone disappear. Before they know it, the family is transported to the real Medieval Times. Will the family be able to get home before they are stuck in the past forever? After watching two bleak movies, I wanted something lighter. This is the kind of family friendly live action movie that Disney used to make all the time. I thought it was entertaining, cute, and fluffy. Not the most memorable or subtle film, but still pretty entertaining.

Grateful For this week:

-The Bears having an unbelievable season. It makes the Husband really happy.

-The Husband for picking up the slack when all I could do was sleep.

-The people at church who acknowledged 14 year old’s birthday. At our church at the end of Mass, they take time to acknowledge birthday and anniversaries. The 13–>14 year old didn’t want to stand up, and instead sunk down even further in the pew, which I think the priest saw and realized something was up. He came up after and wished her a happy birthday, and so did a few other people. I think she didn’t want a public airing of her birthday, but the quiet individual wishes really made her smile.

-Good books and Libby. I just finished the Daughters of Shandong and could instantly have another book to read.

-Raincoats for the soggy soggy week we’ve been having.

-my colleagues at work.

-The now 14 year old. What a bright, kind, empathetic, unfussy human being she is. She makes me laugh by sending me silly YouTube Shorts, eats salad, looks out for her siblings, always tries to do the right thing and notices when people aren’t doing likewise, avoids drama, and is there for her friends. She likes cuddles, food, Coke, and music. I’m so glad she’s in our lives.

Looking Forward to:

-Bao buns. We went to a new to us Asian grocery store – a small little shop full of wonderful things. We were looking for a restaurant, but it was closed and this grocery store was next to it so we wandered inside, thinking maybe the restaurant was inside the grocery store. Well it wasn’t but the store was a little mom and pop affair so it felt awkward to just go in and leave again, so we wandered the aisles and picked up some fun things – curry puffs, canned rambutan, home made pork bao, tapioca flour, and some cookies for the kids. I noticed they have a boba counter in the back, so we’ll have to make a return trip some time!

-Fencing! We signed up the 8 year old for fencing lessons. He’s always running around with his light saber and Ren Faire sword, so we figured we should try to channel that energy.

-Figuring out how to get on a regular sleep cycle.

-My goals gentle aspirations for 2026. Two weeks into the new year and I’ve finally taken a moment to think about these things. I’m definitely of the “New year can start any time” school. I do think I need some adulting type goals, though – something financial. I need to sit with these for a bit and then maybe I’ll share them here.

-Just started this book. Interesting concept but pretty sad in the first few chapters:

-Listening to this audio book – Two of my catnips – Christmas Carol-inspired and Will Watt as one of the narrators! It’s pretty funny and charming so far.

What We Ate:
Monday: Half Price Burgers

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – I made Tofu Chorizo from the NY Times Cooking. It was a little too spicy. Not sure if it’s worth my effort to make again – I have a recipe for soy ground beef that is easier and the family likes better. But otherwise we had tostadas instead of hard shell tacos, and those were well enjoyed.

Wednesday: Pasta with red sauce. I was supposed to cook this night, but I got home from work and fell asleep in our reading chair. When the Hsuband couldn’t wake me, he made dinner instead.

Thursday: Masala Chickpeas with Tofu and Blistered Tomatoes, from NY Times Cooking, served with Paratha (bought frozen from HMart and cooked on the griddle.) This was a huge hit. It was drier than I thought it would be – next time, I might add a can of diced tomatoes as well. Vegan (I used coconut oil instead of ghee.)

Friday: Pizza and movie night. Only we watched Indiana University football instead.

Saturday: We went out for Indian Food, the 13 (now 14) year old’s choice as her birthday dinner out.

Sunday: We went over to a friend’s house and they made pizza on the grill for us. We brought bagged salad and cupcakes.

Welp that’s some of what’s been going on here – hope you’ve had a great weekend and that the week ahead brings some wonderful things even when the big picture is bleak.

Do you have a method for picking movies on a flight? Or picking movies to watch in general? How many women artists can you name? (They sell buttons with this written on them at teh National Museum of Women in the Arts. I think I used to be just able to name Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo off the top of my head.. Now I have more!) Do you have any adulting financial goals? I need some inspiration.

Welcome Home and to a New Year. Hello, 2026!

We got back from Taiwan yesterday morning, leaving Taipe at 11:45pm on Saturday night and pulling into our driveway in Maryland at 7:30am on Sunday morning. International travel across the date line is kind of a mind warp, right? On paper, it only took eight hours to get home from Taiwan, but really it was twenty hours of travel. I mean we landed in Seattle, our connecting city, at 6:00pm on Saturday, which is before we left in Taipei. It’s almost like getting time back. But those hours gained are jet-lagged discombobulated hours; I can’t say it did us much good or that any of us were at our best…

The journey home was full of mishaps – we lost a beloved teddy bear and a travel pillow, the last leg of our flight (SEA —> BWI) was delayed an hour, and one of our suitcases came off baggage claim with a wheel missing. We were too exhausted to deal with trying to find someone to file a claim or a lost item report. The cost of exhaustion seems to be apathy mixed with helpless despair, it seems. International travel does not bring out my best ability to deal with a crisis. (Unlike my cousin, who didn’t realize until he was checking in for his flight that he and his family needed Visas for Vietnam. It’s a wild story, but they ended up in Singapore instead. I admire their sense of calm and ability to pivot.)

Anyhow, we got home and, despite my best intentions to unpack and try to get us back on Eastern Time, we all fell asleep around 11am and slept for several hours. I did get up before the others and started unpacking the suitcases. The rest of the day, between us, the Husband and I did six loads of laundry (folding most of it!), I made waffles for dinner, the Husband did a quick essentials only grocery shop (did you know Lemon Oreos are essential?), we watched Indiana play basketball before pouring the kids back into bed. Despite having taken that enormous nap in the middle of the day, they were so very tired by 10pm. (Which was 11am Taiwan time).

Of course, not so very tired that they weren’t up at 3am, coming into our bedroom.

“I’m bored,” the six year old said.

“Go play in the toy room,” the Husband suggested groggily, half asleep. 

She went away.

Around 5:15am, there was some kind of sibling squabble. One child wanted to play, one child wanted to read. (The 13 year old slept on… teenagers and their sleep…) I told the 6 year old she could come cuddle in our bed.

“How long?” She asks. 

“Until six o’clock,” I say, snuggling her down and going back to sleep. 

Then every five minutes she sat up to look at the clock. Until… 

“It’s six o’clock!” And she springs out of bed.

“Go see if your brother wants to play,” I murmur sleepily. 

Off she goes and I go back to sleep. In my dreams I hear them playing with the 8 year old’s new chess set – are they really playing? Who knows? And foot steps up and down stairs. And no more fighting.

Some indeterminate time later, I hear some one shout, “Bloody nose!!!”

Then the 8 year old: “Go to the bathroom! I’ll help you!”

And he did. When I woke up another indeterminate time later, there were bloody tissues in the trash can and on the floor in the bathroom and the Clorox wipes sitting open on the counter. I did step on a gob of blood, but you know… getting to sleep through a bloody nose is kind of a win in my book.

And then it was morning. Going to school 24.5 hours after getting off an international flight is hard, so I drove the 13 year old to school instead of having her walk. And 90 minutes later, I took the 6 year old and the 8 year old to school, though we were pretty late, squeaking in just as the doors were closing. The 8 year old has school testing this week, and we were a little concerned about him being able to stay awake and focus in class, so we wrote the teacher and she agreed to let him take the test on the make-up days. (Who schedules school testing for the week after vacation???).

I, on the other hand had grand plans of setting up my planners and journals, logging a few hours of work, picking up the house, and folding more laundry, and hanging out with the Husband since he had taken the day off. But… I got home, had breakfast and then ended up taking a three hour nap on the couch. I do feel a little guilty that I made my kids go to school while I came home and napped, but that’s a perk, of being a semi-employed adult. We’ll see how long it takes to get people back on schedule. We went out to an early dinner tonight since it was half price burger night, and the kids ate half their burgers then were like:

Trip Highlights
Here are some photo highlights of our time in Taiwan, in case I don’t get around to doing trip recaps (My track record for trip recaps is pretty paltry.)

*Sunset at Tamsui, a coastal suburb of Taipei. It’s at the end of the trainline, and where my cousin lives.

+So much food! Dumplings on Christmas Day:

*Visiting the cemetery where my grandmother’s ashes are buried.

Night Market – this one in Chia yi, where my family is originally from:

Lucid red tracksuits!

*View from our boat tour of the coastal waters off Tainan, where we learned about fishing, and spoonbills:

*Fish Market in Kaoshiong:

*Dragon Fruit at a produce vendor’s stall:

*More Night Market Food – this one also in Kaoshiong.

*Selfie with my grandfather – he is 100 years old and the reason for this family reunion:

*We took a two night trip to Bietou, where there are hot springs and hiking. (Though it ended up being to wet and windy to really hike.)

Thermal Valley.

And on our last day, we followed a string of red lanterns and found a moment of calm in the gardens of a Buddhist Temple:

Photo taken by the 8 year old.

The photos don’t really capture how full each an every day was – full of family, full of new sights/smells/tastes, full of new discoveries of how life on this island nation work. Also, though, full of chaos and noise, full of long bus rides, full of feeling lost in a language that I don’t quite speak, a culture I don’t quite belong to. Yet ultimately, full of love and bonding, meories and conversations, and that kind of discomfort that opens my eyes to other ways lives can be lived.

Oh so fittingly of the universe, this poem by John Updike showed up in my apoemaday feed yesterday:

How beautifully Updike captures the return to the mundane – I, too, feel like I’ve put the yoke back on, even while knowing that the world is not so small as it once felt and sometimes still feels.

Return Trip Gratitudes:

-That the kids kind of slept on the flight home, and that they are pretty good travelers in general.  I feel so lucky – they didn’t complain, went where we asked them too, didn’t get lost, carried their own backpacks, pulled their own suitcases.

-Airport play areas. I am so grateful for these areas for kids to run off some energy while waiting for flights. (The play area in Taiwan has a baby’s area attached that comes with a hot water dispenser, a fully stocked wipes warmer, and extra diapers!) I think the eight year old is technically too tall for the play area, but we let him play there until there were too many toddlers as well. And in SEA, they made some friends and played tag and said “Six seven” to each other.

-Wifi at the airport. The 13 year old definitely is not into airport play areas, but luckily in each airport she had wifi and a comfy seat so she was well occupied.

-That our fruit didn’t get taken away when we got home. Before we went to the airport, we bought a bunch of fruit and snacks for the trip home, remembering the time last year when we were stuck in Seattle for nine hours. Taiwan is super strict about letting fruit and vegetables into the couttry, so I half expected that the US would be the same. I declared them and everything, but no one took them from us. We came home with a bag of bananas, three passion fruits, and six or seven wax apples. Wax apples are one of my favorite Taiwanese fruits, and you can’t get them in the US. I cut them up for a late night snack last night, and the crisp juicy slices were a wonderful reminder of our trip. The 13 year old ate the rest of the passionfruit this morning. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t get one of the last two, but I reminded myself how much I love it for her that she easily slices and scoops out and eats this fruit that was so foreign to her a week ago.

-The Mobile Passport Control app, allowing for easy re-entry into the country. We don’t have TSA Pre-Check or Global entry or anything like that, but I found that airport security lines are pretty streamlined these days and moved pretty fast. The nice thing in Seattle, too, is that even though we submitted our info via the app, there was still an agent who directed us to the right line and scanned us through and said, “Welcome home.” Having someone say, “Welcome home” is one of my favorite parts of international travel.

-That the Qdoba in the Seattle airport is open 24 hours. After that nine hour at SEATAC episode last year, when were were in a tiny terminal without any food, I was really glad we decided to stay in Terminal B where there was a Qdoba and it was still open at 7:30pm. I don’t know if it was the two weeks away from America or what (seriously, I think we had cheese maybe twice the whole ten days), but the 13 year old declared Qdoba “even better than Chipotle.” This is quite a statement from her.

-That the Husband had the foresight to pack the kids’ winter coats in the car for the ride home. Also – he went to pick up the car while the kids and I tackled baggage claim, so that when we got in the car with our luggage, the car was toasty warm. In Taiwan, the 50 degree weather was considered frigid, so coming back to 30 degree weather in Baltimore was quite a shock.

-That it didn’t snow at home, so we didn’t have to shovel out the driveway or anything to get back in the house.

-That the house was clean and the fish were alive when we got home. Our cleaner was scheduled to come while we were away, and it was so nice to come home to a clean house – which admittedly was not the state it was left in when we departed two weeks ago. Also, our friends came over to feed our fish and also played Santa. The Husband, like he did last year, left our friends with a box of Christmas presents and some holiday decorations, and while we were gone, they decorated the little potted fir tree we keep in our living room, and put the presents out. The look of delight and wonder from the 6 and 8 year old when they realized that Santa still found a way to us was absolutely precious.

-That eggs and buttermilk keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. Before we left we had two dozen eggs and half a container of buttermilk in the fridge I contemplated throwing them out, not knowing if they would keep. I’m glad I didn’t throw them out. They did indeed keep and we had waffles for dinner. There is definitely stuff in the fridge that didn’t survive the two weeks, and throwing it out will be a project for tomorrow.

=That we even got to go on this trip at all (BIG thank you to my parents) and that we went to the other side of the globe and back safely. I mean I believe in science and physics and all that, but sometimes I look at air travel and think, “Oooooookay… I’m just going to have to really trust that this is huge hunk of metal is going to stay up in the air.”

Looking Forward To:

– All the planner, journalling, and 2026 goal setting that I meant to do today, but napped instead. I’ve started Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word 2026 workbook – I’ve never really been one about having a word for the year, but I see a lot of chaos and uncertainty coming up, so I do find my self drawn to creating grounding principal for myself. (Conaway also has a 2025 end of year/2026 monthly reflection workbook that I really enjoy working through – I discovered them last year, and they are free to download.)

– Firepit date with friends. 

= Lenten Reading Group happy Hour.

-Cooking food, doing laundry (not in a laundromat), Taco Tuesday, Family movie night, Sunday night football… basically all the every day things that we didn’t get to do in Taiwan. I asked my cousin what she was most looking forward to when we got home and she said, “Doing laundry when I want and not having to drag my clothes five blocks.” So true

– enjoying all the snacks I brought home from Taiwan.

-A New Year! Yay 2026!

A List of Some Good Things from 2025

There were certainly a lot of really hard things about 2025. News along the international front. News along the domestic front. We’ve had some really perplexing house issues. Work hasn’t been the most joyful of places at times; I’ve had a lot of well loved colleagues leave, and everyone is doing the job of three people. So I wanted to acknowlege that 2025 was a banner sucky year for many people in many ways. And it seems like the hits keep coming. But I am grateful there were also many things that didn’t suck for me. I fell lucky for good health, and my family, and a roof over our heads, and relative security.

Here are some other specific good things that happened in 2025, in no particular order:

-ringing in 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was the last leg of last year’s Asia trip. The food, the people, the heat, the rain. Some day I will finish my trip recaps.

-Taco Tuesdays – we’ve had tacos either home made or at a restaurant for almost every Tuesday in 2025. It started off with one Taco Tuesday, and then everyone loved it so much that the next week when we were meal planning, it was asked for again. And then again. And then again. When I look back at my dinner list in my journal, most of the dinners I marked with a heart – meaning the family really liked it – were Taco Tuesdays.

-Contra Dancing as a famly. Thank you to the Husband for encouraing us to go and for dancing with the kids, even if it’s awkward to dance with three kids at a time.

-Silly car games- Cows and Cemetaries. Punch Buggy (We used to play with Teslas, but there are so many of those around now, it’s not as fun.), Bonkers (Every time you see a yellow car, you yell “Bonkers!”, a green car is “Bankers!”, and an orange car is “Bunkers!”)

-New to us Board/Card Games that the whole family can play: Sky Jo, Happy Salmon, Dixit, Bohanza.

-Watching New Girl with the 13 year old, and Glee as a family.

-Rose Buds and Thorns – in January I started a special journal to record our Rose Buds and Thorns. We don’t do it every day at dinner, but maybe once or twice a week. One of my favorite things is to see how each member of the family changes/ understands the ritual. At the beginning of the year, the youngest always had the same rose (“I’m here with my family.”) Literally that was her response every time. But lately she’s been thinking of different roses, and that’s been kind of neat to see.

-The running track at the kids’ elementary school

-WhatsApp calling – lets me call my friend who lives in Oman, and also when we are travelling internationally, it’s how I am able to make phone calls. It’s not new technology, but I’m a bit of a luddite so it’s new to me.

-Finally getting rid of my 22 year old Subaru. Not a “good” thing, per se, but a necessary thing that had to be done, and which I found difficult. I donated it to the local high school’s technical program, which seemed like a good place for it to go.

-K-Pop Demon Hunters. Gonna be gonna be Golden!

-Hallowe’en, and making the two younger kids KPop Demon Hunter Costumes. Specifically, discovering Iron On Vinyl was amazing.

-Family Meetings. We started having weekly family meetings at 7:45am on Saturdays. They’re not the most enjoyable part of the week, but from a planning perspective, they really help get everyone on the same page for what is ahead.

=Being able to leave the kids at home alone. In Maryland, kids have to be 8 to stay home by themselves, and 13 to babysit younger kids. We hit those birthday milestones this year with the two older kids. So nice not to have to take the kids with us all the time when we just want to run a quick errand. Also, the 13 year old is enjoying making a little bit of money for watching her siblings.

-South Africa with the 13 year old. Trip of a Lifetime. I will finish the recaps some day.

-Working on The Little Prince with the 13 year old in the chorus.

-The Secret Garden at the high school – one of my favorite musicals. A beautiful production. Makes me excited for the 13 year old theatre kid to go to high school.

-Kunene and the King. Hey, I saw a play! With talking, and no singing or dancing. I haven’t seen a straight play in years. And it was beautiful. Not just the play itself, but the beautiful intimacy of two people on stage with just words.

-Small Wonders Exhibit at the National Gallery of Art – a fascinating examination of the intersection of art and science.

-The Duck Decoy Museum – new to me and delightfully niche.

-New York Transit Museum – also new to me and delightfully niche.

-A new afternoon bus stop that is walking distance from home and next to a playgroun.

-Tap Dancing Lesson, and learning something new.

-Lenten Reading Group. This year we started meeting monthly, or at least trying to – I think we met maybe eight times over the year. A lovely thoughtful community.

-The youngest starting Kindergarten – no more day care payments!!!

-Visits from my parents and seeing my kids

-Our new shoe rack. Trying to tame the foyer chaos.

-Finally getting new window treatments. I love that they are top down/bottom up. They look a little plain, but I’m calling it “neutral” or “versatile”.

-Injera from the Ethiopian market.

-Will Watt. Audiobook narrator of my dreams.

=getting my taxes done the first week of April, rather than at the last minute like I usually do.

-A good year for reading – I read 63 books this year – a new high for me.

-A good year of working on opera with really great colleagues, old and new. Feeling like I’m growing as a stage manager, even though I still make lots of mistakes. Feeling really supported at work, even when sometimes it feels like a dumpster fire.

-The two younger kids mostly being able to swim.

-Learning how to dive. The 13 year old taught me and her siblings.

-My Snoopy Sweatshirt. I bought a few new articles of clothing this year, but this is by far my favorite. I wear it almost every day off, and sometimes to work too.

-(almost) daily yoga. I managed to fit in at least ten minutes of yoga almost every day. Even days when I was travelling, I discovered videos of “standing yoga” that I could do while waiting for flights.

-The 6 year old figuring out how to ride a bike

-The 13 year old making dinner periodically.

-A New Pope!

=A new, less fussy sign in sheet process for the Chours, Supers, and Dancers at work. The sign in sheet we had before was full of symbols and hieroglyphics to indicate lateness and took like a 30 minute training session to teach new stage managers to use when they had to check attendence.

-Cany Cane Beets.

-Colevita cutomizable multi-pens. These are amazing! You buy the barrel (they make them for three, four, and five colors), and then can load it with your choice of colour and pen thickness.

-The youngest finally getting baptized. The middle kid’s first communion.

-a new chair for the living room- just the right size to lounge and read, either alone or with a companion.

-Some good TV: The Gilded Age (watched all) . Poker Face (watched all). Derry Girls (only watched the first season, on a plane. We don’t have Netflix, so I have to figure out how to watch the rest of it.)

-Down Cemetary Road on AppleTV. Okay, grisly crime/ mystery shows aren’t really my thing. You know, the kind that ratchet up the tension with weird camera angles and twang-y music. But… I will watch anything with Emma Thompson in it. The Hsuband has graciously offered to pre-watch the episodes to tell me if there is enough of Dame Emma in each episode to make it worth my trouble.

-Fun family photos on the Metro and in the downtown area.

-Audio plays. LIke Audiobooks, but shorter and more dramatic.

-Day trip to New York City with the two older kids to see Hadestown; a very good use of a random Wednesday off school. Also Hadestown was amazing – beautiful, bold, gripping, makes you think and makes you feel.

-Lucid red track suits. I finally fulfilled my life long dream of getting the kids matching tracksuits. An added bonus – the colour I got, Lucid Red, which is an almost neon colour, making is super easy to keep track of my kids at the airport and at playgrounds.

-printable labels. I’ve embraced typting up my cues and printing them on labels to put in my score. I used to think people who printed their labels were fussy, but I’ve discovered that if I have the cue list ahead of time, it’s actually faster for me, and it looks neater.

-Closing out the year in Taiwan, celebrating my Grandfather’s 100th birthday and the 10th anniversary of my Grandmother’s passing. Everyone in the family made it for at least some portion of the five day gathering- 5 uncles and aunts (+3 spouses), all 13 grandchildren (+8 spouses/partners), and 16 great grand children. We needed two buses to get everyone around.

-Six- seven. Was it annoying as heck? Yes! But it was also hilarious how second nature saying “Six Seven” became among my kids and how much joy they got out of saying it. Every day life became kind of a treasure hunt for them trying to find sixes and sevens out in the wild. There was something really awesome about how a meme that meant nothing could make people laugh so much. Maybe there is a lesson there about how we can find joy and connection in life even in nothing-ness.

I’m sure there were many more things that brought joy, delight, or added value to my life in 2025, but those were some high points. I was going to add pictures and links to past posts and make this post all pretty, but I’m trying to blog from a mobile device in a foreign country, and that feels a little beyond my mental capacity right now. So here you go, just words on a page. Here is a slight preview of where we are, though:

Bietou, Taiwan, famous for all its hot springs. Our hotel room features Tatami mat floor.

I hope everyone got to close out 2025 with some good memories, and that 2026 will bring good things too!

What made 2025 not suck for you?

Weekly Recap + What we ate: One last show before the holidays; Unique and Frustrating

The week before was exhausting and hard and I never wanted it to end. There is something really special about working on a show that I love with some of my favorite colleagues, and also to top it all off, having my 13 year old also be in the show. This is probably the last time I will get to work on a show with one of my kids. By next year she will have likely aged out of being in the children’s chorus, and my other two kids don’t show any inclination for theatre. So I really tried to savor this past weekend of shows, these moments in the theatre we are having together, all the hard work and concentration. I feel so lucky to be able to share with her the joy and wonder of being able to tell stories onstage.

She felt it too. During our last show on Sunday night, every time I saw her backstage she was crying. At one point, she was standing next to me as her group was getting ready to enter, and she was crying so hard, another of the kids went and got her a handful of tissues. With one eye on my score – because I still had to call cues, of course – I leaned over and gave her a big hug and said, “You can’t cry and sing at the same time. Go onstage and enjoy the moment.”

I’d been trying to keep up with journaling during this show because I want to be able to remember what a wonderful time it was. Lately when I don’t feel like I have a lot of time for dep reflective journaling, I write down one or two things that were different and unique about the day and one or two things that were frustrating. Here are some of the things from the week of tech/performances :

Monday:
Unique/Different: Sitzprobe day. If you remember my post where I talked about Stizprobe – well this was a true sitzprobe (sitting rehearsal) because it was in a rehearsal room and not on stage, so we couldn’t wandel (wander). But it’s always exciting to hear the orchestra and for many of the children’s chorus, it was their first time ever singing with and orchestra.
-I talked to one of the kids in the show as we were waiting for rehearsals to start, and had a hilarious conversation with her. I have to admit that I had been struggling with some of the kids’ behavior – there has been a general lack of engagement and focus in rehearsal from a handful of them. I know that they are just kids and for many this is their first professional experience, but I was feeling pretty frustrated with some of the attitudes and talking back and not paying attention and not learning their music and breaking of props when I told that the flashlight stars are fragile. To be clear, most of the kids were doing really well and focused, it was just a handful that had worn me down. Plus having three hours of rehearsals with the kids every single night requires a very specific kind of energy from me. But then at the sitzprobe, I had this quirky delightful conversation with one of the kids and it helped remind me that these kids were…. well, kids. And asking them to focus for three hours at a time was asking a lot. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just kids and I needed to meet them where they were.
Frustrating: The theatre space is very small and the stage managers share a small office with two other departments so it’s very hard for me to get focused work time because there are always people coming in and out. (On the other hand, it makes for a good sense of camaraderie.)
-I didn’t get the Christmas cards done yet. (or the laundry folded, or the dishes done…)

Tuesday:
Unique/Different: On the way to work, a Secret Service car pulled in front of me and blocked traffic. Three or four minutes later, a motorcade came through. I don’t get to experience the Secret Service moving someone through very often, and I find it kind of fun to witness, regardless of one’s politics.
Frustrating: It was our Piano Tech rehearsal and we didn’t get through the whole show. We got through all of Act One and only half of the second act. It’s always frustrating not to get through the whole show before we add costumes. But at intermission, the plane onstage took longer to move than I had allowed for in the schedule (it was the first time the crew had taken the plane off stage – they eventually added two more crew members to help with the plane and other things.), and also there was a lot of starting and stopping for things I hadn’t planned on. I get very down on myself when rehearsals don’t move at the pace I would like.

Wednesday:
Unique/Different: -The kids had a chocolate chip bagel with cream cheese. Wednesday is 7:15am piano lesson day for the 13 year old and the 8 year old. The 8 year old took the 7:15am lesson this time so that the 13 year old could sleep in a little more, so I took the kids to get bagels in appreciation for getting to piano lessons on time. Usually the 8 and 6 year old split an egg bagel with strawberry cream cheese, but this day they chose to have a chocolate chip bagel because they had never had that before.
-Piano Dress rehearsal – I called all the spot light cues for the first act. I very rarely get any spotlight cues in my book by Piano Dress, so it was really a big achievement for me to have put the cues in my book and been able to call them at this rehearsal.

Putting cues in my book during a lighting session.

-And we got through the whole show and had time to go back and repeat some scenes with the alternate cast member. Also – there is one really fast costume change that didn’t go well the first time – one singer has one minute to change from a rose costume to a fox costume. Often we will just move on and hope it goes better the next time, but I pretty firmly said that we needed to give the dressers a chance to do it again. At first I was worried it would be a big waste of time because it took almost ten minutes to reset for the change. But the dressers and the singers nailed the change the second time through and that felt really good. I want to remember this moment because I don’t want to forget that the crew – wardrobe crew and stage crew – need time to rehearse as much as the singers do and that I need to make sure they get that time as we move through rehearsal.
Frustrating: Oh man, this day had a trifecta of frustration:
1) The bridge from the trail where I park and the kids’ school was closed for some construction work. We were already running late and I couldn’t get across the creek to get the kids to school. We ended up having to get back in the car and I just drove them to the school, but I still had to walk them in because they were so late. On the other hand, seeing the 8 year old explain to his little sister what a tardy slip was was kind of cute.
2) Then I stepped in dog poop. I’m pretty sure I stepped in dog poop while trying to find a way across the creek, but I didn’t notice it until I was halfway to work and the car started to really smell. And there was no way to pull over til I got to work. UGH.
3) I got to work and realized that I had left my wallet at home. An appliance repair company had called about a job I needed them to do and when I reached into my purse to get my credit card to pay them… it wasn’t there. On the bright side, I had left it at home while ordering the Christmas cards, so at least those were done. Plus I was going to be at the theatre all day so didn’t really need my wallet. But UGH.
All that happened before 10:30am. The rest of the day went pretty well, though. And luckily the 13 year old brought me my wallet when she came to rehearsal.

Thursday
Unique/Different:
-I went for a walk after dropping off the kids at school. I’ve been crap about moving or exercising other than 10 minutes of yoga in the morning. So I took 20 minutes before heading to work and walked the trail next to school. The air was brisk and cold.
-We had an Orchestra Tech rehearsal with and invited audience, which essentially meant the first time we performed the show in front of an audience. I love the first time we do the show for an audience because I feel like I get to see the show with fresh eyes. I’d spent two days calling the cues in rehearsal, and when we get an audience, I try to experience the show fresh – each time someone sings, each time the lights change colour, I feel an excitement that someone is seeing that for the first time. The moment when the curtain flies out revealing the plane onstage you can hear the audience inhale in wonder. The first time the children start singing, “Light your lamps, take up your places, for another starry night…” it’s just so exciting to know that a story is coming. The Husband brought the 8 and 6 year old and also one of the 13 year old’s friends, and it was nice to seem them in the audience when I went out to talk to the director.
-Also – I got all the spot light cues in my book and called them. woot.

Frustrating:
-Some work stuff dynamic stuff that isn’t really bloggable. Nothing big but just frustrating chain of information flow.

Friday:
Unique/Different-A Dress Rehearsal at 11am with an invited student audience, meaning I had to be at work at 9:15am. Now, I know a lot of people have to be at work at 9am, or even earlier, but I am not one of those people for whom this is a regular thing. It is so. very. early.
-The Student audience was amazing – even from backstage you could feel how excited they all were. I’m also really proud that an idea I had three weeks ago came to fruition. I had said in a meeting, “Hey, why don’t we do the intermission scene change with the curtain out and show the kids how we take the airplane apart and get it off stage?” Everyone was game for this idea, so we did it, and I think the students really liked watching the stage crew work.
-Opening night. It was a super long day what with that 11am dress rehearsal and then a 7pm performance. But we got Seoul Spice take out for dinner and that was yummy. (Seoul Spice is often described as Korean Chipotle – you get to customize your bowl.)

The view from my console.

Frustrating: Okay, this one might be TMI, but I got my period the day before and during the morning rehearsal/show, I totally bled through my pad and my underwear. Luckily I spend the show standing up, so I didn’t bleed through my pants. I didn’t get a chance to change my pad til after the show – there is only one rest room backstage (not counting the ones in the dressing rooms, but I can’t use those ones during the show) and it’s pretty busy at Intermission. Anyhow, it was all fine, but sometimes I get so frustrated that I’m 46 years old and still bleeding through my underwear when I get my period.

Saturday:
Unique/ Different-The perfect scarf drop. There is a moment in the show where a scarf drops from above and lands into a puddle of light. For whatever reasons of wind and physics the scarf never lands in the puddle of light – it always drifts upstage or downstage and ends up in the dark. Well, during the evening show, the scarf landed perfectly in the center of the puddle of light and it was magical.
-Walking to get boba between shows with the 13 year old, each of us with one ear bud so that we could listen to our book together as we walked. We’re currently listening to:

Frustrating: I forgot to call the houselights out at the start of Act 2. The houselights are the lights over the audience. Usually as the orchestra tunes, I call the houselights out, but for some reason, during the matinee, I forgot and we almost started the 2nd Act with the houselights up. I realized just in time but it made for a kind of squishy moment. And then… in the evening show, I again forgot to take the house light out during the tune. I hate making the same mistake twice. Clearly I whatever I had written in my book was ineffective at getting me to call things in the right sequence. I was just really frustrated at myself for messing up.

Sunday:
Unique/Different: Last day of performances- two shows this day. The matinee was the last show for one of our youth leads since he alternates with another singer in the part. At curtain call, he came out crying for his bow. As soon as the curtain came in, the whole cast surrounded him in the biggest group hug I’ve ever seen. The joy and support the cast felt on behalf of the kid was palatable in the air. I get choked up thinking back on it. Here is the other thing that was amazing about this moment – I’ve done this show three times over the past 11 years, and it has always been a white child in the main role. This year was the first time I’ve done it with a Black child in the part. And there’s something really bigger than the sum of it’s part when you cast a child of colour as such an iconic character. For the child himself, for the rest of the cast, for the audience- it’s kind of a shift in what we accept about the stories we tell on stage and who can tell those stories. It’s been a challenging time at work, and I want to remember that we tell stories with open minds and to open eyes, even amidst all the uncertainty.
-Also there was a bit of a burning issue with the spotlights at the start of the second act of the show. That was exciting. We had to take the spotlights out for about ten minutes while the crew fixed the issue.

Frustrating: That we can’t do twenty more performances of this beautiful show.

Grateful for:
-All the things above, the unique/different and the frustrating. I feel so lucky to have had that experience.
-The Husband. For doing keeping the kids alive and getting them where they need to be; for making food; for bringing me food; for doing the laundry; for juggling all the other things of life. Also for dealing with the 6 year old’s bloody nose at 1am.
-A surprise brie sandwich. I had made a turkey sandwich with the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers, layering turkey, arugula, cranberry sauce, and some brie that I found in the fridge. Only by the time I’d gotten to work, I had forgotten that I had put brie in the sandwich and my first bite had a s deliciously pungent surprise. I had that same sandwich until the turkey and cranberry sauce ran out, and I now call it surprise brie sandwich. It brought much joy to my lunch life.
-Friends for driving carpool.
-The freezer section at HMart. Going into tech/performance week, I knew that the 13 year old and I would be eating a lot of food at the theatre. Thank goodness for HMart. I stocked our freezer with dumplings, bao, and aloo paratha, all of which I would cook in the morning and pack for dinners that were filling and easy to eat at the theatre.
-While we’re talking about food – grateful for people who bring communal snacks to work. Snacking is super important to me at work:

There is a Trader Joe’s next to where our prop head shops….

-The crew at the theatre for being amazing and game, and crawling on the floor behind the stage to fix problems. And literally putting out fires.
-All the people I work with. There’s a bit of a sense that we’re in the foxhole together right now and I’m glad I’m there with these people.

Looking Forward To:
I’ve been struggling with feeling excited about our upcoming trip to Taiwan. I feel really ungrateful for saying that about a chance to travel internationally. BUT we were there last year and the kids were really looking forward to Christmas at home. Also – it’s going to be a lot of family, which will be chaotic; there will be my kids complaining that they don’t have iPads like all their cousins do; there’s jetlag and people’s schedules being off; there’s the discomfort of not being home and around familiar things…. So I am trying to acknowledge my feelings, but also think of the things that I am looking forward to. So here are some things I’m looking forward to:
-Seeing my grandfather. The whole reason this trip was planned is that we are celebrating my grandfather’s 100th birthday. He no longer travels to America, so I think every chance I get to see him is a gift.
-Seeing family. I’m conflicted about this because sometimes I feel it hard to connect with my cousins, but I do want to see them and I am looking forward to all our kids hanging out.
-The food. The food in Taiwan is so delicious. I’m looking forward to it all – noodles, bao, soy milk, stinky tofu…
-The fruit. This gets its own category from “food” because the fruit in Taiwan is so amazing – sweet and flavorful, and so many varieties.
-Seeing Mr. K, our bus driver from last year’s trip. My mother booked him to drive us again. He was just so chill and kind.
-Relaxing at hot springs and hiking – my mother has arranged a couple days for us together to chill at the end of a the week of intense family activity. I haven’t been hiking as much this year as I would like, so I’m looking forward to this.
-Watching all the movies and reading books on the plane ride. My sister-in-law and I have decided to have a book club. We’re going to read these two books:

What We Ate:
This was the week of make-ahead or eating out:
Sunday: Made a big pot of Dakdoritang (Korean braised chicken and vegetables). Kind of based off this recipe, but I added Kabocha squash and daikon and shitake mushrooms. It was really delicious. The 6 year old who hates mushrooms actually loved the mushrooms in this dish. I ate it all week.

Monday: I ate leftovers. I brought dumplings, cut up apples, aloo paratha, and carrot sticks for the 13 year old. The Husband took the two little kids out for pizza and ping pong with a friend after he dropped the 13 year old at rehearsal.

Tuesday: I ate leftover dakdoritang. Same as yesterday for the 13 year old. The Husband and family had chili at home – he had made a big pot on Sunday.

Wednesday: The 13 year old and I split a jamon torta that the Husband had brought home for me the day before. Did the rest of the family have chili again?

Thursday: The 13 year old and I had chili at work.

Friday: Seoul Spice take out for the 13 year old and I. The Husband and two little kids at home made pizza and they watched… not sure, but it was some Christmas movie. Maybe Candy Cane Lane?

Saturday: Leftovers at the theatre. I think. The details are hazy when one is going onto day six at the theatre in a row.

Sunday: The 13 year old and I went out for dinner between shows with my stage management team. We split a chicken sandwich and a burger. It was so tasty.

Welp that’s the news from here lately. We’re rounding the corner to the holidays and a new year. This last month of the year has just flown by. I’m a little bit in a panic state about packing and prepping for our upcoming travel; I’m feeling a bit of guilt about dropping the ball on presents and teacher gifts/cards; I have a few Christmas cards still to send (should I Sharpie out “Merry Christmas” and write in “Happy New Year”?? ). Christmas is not going to be very Christmas-y this year, and part of me is okay with that, but also part of me is having an existential crisis about it. I think we’ve decided that Christmas cards, Tuba Christmas and Mass are “must do” Christmas activities. The rest… I’m trying to decide how sad I am that we missed out on some of the usual holiday things. More to ponder.

Hope you all are heading into the home stretch of 2025 with time to reflect and look forward as well.

is 9am seem early to you? Have you ever had a brush with Secret Service? If you journal, any prompts you use when you have journaler’s block? What Holiday traditions are “must do” for you?

PS: If you want to see the show that I was working on, you can see a clip here and here. If you don’t blink, you’ll see me!

Weekly recap + What We Ate: Good-bye, November! Hello, December!

It’s the final month of 2025! November felt like a blur – a rush of doing and not so much being and reflecting. This is what my journal/ habit tracker looked like for the month:

this is where I track dinners, movie/tv watching, and time outside.
This is where I track habits.

It’s not like I didn’t make dinner, or go outside, or watch any tv/movies, or felt grateful, or brushed my teeth, or or or or whatever else I usually track. I just didn’t for whatever reason, take the time to write it down and meditate on it. Which, then makes me feel like I don’t really know how I spent my days. Oh I know I went to rehearsal, packed lunches, did laundry and all that day to day, but I have no recollection of what made each day specific. And taking that time to acknowledge the specifics of the day helps me to feel like life is less of a daily grind. It’s that whole “what made today unique/different” exercise I sometimes do in my journal.

But at any rate, things did happen. Here’s some of them:

November Highlights:
– Mom’s group reunion. When the 6 year old was born, the hospital facilitated a new mom’s group. We’ve kept in touch off and on over the past year – lunches, play dates, happy hour – and this fall, one of the moms hosted a gathering. It was such a lovely time to re-connect and share stories and tips and recipes. Most of our kids entered kindergarten this year, and to think that we/they had all met when the kindergarteners were squishy newborns – pandemic newborns too! What a wild time it was to reflect on.

-Soup Party. I hosted another soup party for colleagues at work. People brought soup, someone brough a fire pit, and someone taught us how to roast our own coffee in a cast iron skillet. A cozy, social evening.

-Tech/ Opening/Closing of my first opera of the fall. One of my favorites – I never got bored listening to all the beautiful music. The cast was divine, the director amiable, and the show was gorgeous.

-Starting rehearsals for my second opera. Working with some long time friends. I’ve known many people on this show for fifteen years or more; we all started in the business together, as assistants and interns. And now look at us! We get to be in charge! How did that happen?? There were days when I kind of felt like I was putting on a high school show with my best friends.

-Running along the Potomac while tech-ing and in performances for my first show of the fall. It’s always such a nice part of my day when we are at the theatre. It might be too cold to run next week when my current show moves down, but I need to remember to take some dinner time walks to clear my head. There is something so soothing about watching the water drift by.

-My parents came to visit. Unfortunately it was at a super busy time for me, so I didn’t see them as much as I wanted. However, they were able to fully embrace having grandkid time, picking them up from the bus, taking them to the library and to museums, and playing Legos and trucks and Uno.

-Thanksgiving. We had a small Thanksgiving – my mother was still here, and our choreographer joined us as well. She is from Italy and when I heard she didn’t have plans for the day off, I invited her to come have an American Thanksgiving. I always think it’s hard to be away from home on a holiday, even if it’s not your holiday. I love making a big Thanksgiving dinner. We had Turkey (Spatchcocked so it takes bout 90 minutes to cook), green salad, mashed potatoes (made the night before), gravy (made the night before), cranberry sauce (made the night before), soy-braised squash and mushroom rice (instead of stuffing), steamed green beans, Hawaiian rolls, and home made bread. Oh and Rainbow Jello Salad, which the 13 year old made all on her own for the first time. For dessert I had an apple pie and a whiskey chocolate cake. I usually also make a pumpkin pie, but I really wanted to make this cake recipe, so I decided to skip the pumpkin pie. I don’t know if we offered up a traditional Thanksgiving for our choreographer, but I hope she still had a good time – she told us so many stories of her life as a dancer and a beekeeper, and watched as the kids did their K-Pop Demon Hunters dance numbers for her. It was all in all a lovely day.

-Reading a really good book in one night. I hadn’t done this in a while. But I started The Seven Year Slip and it was so good that I just had to find out what happened and next thing I knew it was 4am. Now I know what the term “book hangover” means, physically and mentally.

-Getting our family photos back. – so much fun. here’s a little preview:

Murals!
Yep, the photographer had my kids in a city planter.
Metro!

Thanks to our wonderful photographer William Petruzzo! He’s taken our photos since the 13 year old was a baby and he is so much fun to work with – calm, adventurous, and engaging with the kids. I love how his photos are so full of light and personality.

November Lowlights:
-The continued stress of uncertainty at work. Not bloggable, but looms in the background every day I am at work.

-Long work hours and only four days off work the whole month. I feel like I’m dropping a lot of balls. Things are on the back burner waiting to be taken care of, discussed, settled.

-Blank journals. As I mentioned above, this is one aspect of my daily routine that has really been neglected, and I do feel it. When I have time to sit and reflect and brain dump, it helps me with feel calmer and like I have the space to make good decisions. There were a couple bad decisions made last month because I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t have the mental capacity or time to think things through before I acted or spoke.

-I would also add the state of American and world happenings, but I’ve stopped reading the news. So it’s all pretty horrible, I just don’t know specifically why or how horrible it is.

Grateful For in November:
-Carpools. When the 13 year old got into my current opera, we knew that getting her to 4pm rehearsal would be a challenge. Thank goodness for friends who will drive carpool. Also she has figured out how to take public transportation from school to the rehearsal studio by herself.

-Coworkers and colleagues. Opera is such collaborative work; I’m always grateful for the kind and brilliant people who I get to work with.

-Working on two operas that are remounts. Also grateful for the stage managers on those shows who came before me. I was able to just re-create the prior stage manager’s book in my own score, copying the cue placements right into my book. Really grateful for those stage managers for doing all the hard work of putting cues in the book the first time.

-Hot tea and my Yeti mug.

-relatively mild weather for this time of year.

-End of daylight savings and the morning light that it brought.

-The Husband, always the Husband who keeps life moving when I’m at work until past the kids’ bedtime. He handles the evenings night after night, and that is Herculean.

Looking Forward to for December:
-Setting up my journal and calendars for 2026. I need to take a day after this show is over to just sit and go through the year. Maybe at the library or in a coffee shop.

-Trip to Taiwan to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday. It’s going to be a very large family reunion. I’m looking forward to seeing it, but also kind of dreading it. I don’t see my cousins a lot and our lives as County employees and workers in the arts is very different from their competitive, corporate funded, high adventure lives. I need to remind myself to remember what is important to me when I get envious of their lives and achievements.

-reading and watching movies on the trip to Taiwan. I actually love flying, love the sense of stepping away from the world and having nothing to do but what is in front of me. I am looking forward to 12 hours on a plane – it will be kind of like a retreat.

-TubaChristmas. Tuna Christmas. Longwood Gardens. We are not going to Christmas to the hilt, but we’ll enjoy a few events. I had written in October about making the most of the last quarter holiday season even when I’m in an all consuming phase at work. I went back and read that list and I think I’m incorporating a lot of those things into my life. I’ve eaten lots of apples, and already watched four Hallmark Holiday movies, with more cued up. There is Christmas music playing even now as I type this while watching the evening sky turn pink then purple then inky blue. This season is packed; there is so much joy and savoring to wring out of the end of the year even while carrying on with the regular everything else of life. But these quiet moments of being, listening, and paying attention are where I think I feel the holiday spirit the most.

-Lenten reading group. Okay, we’re into Advent now, but in my mind it’s always been the Lenten reading group because that’s when we started. The Husband takes umbrage that they are called “Lenten Group” in the calendar… I had to miss our last meeting because of work, but we will have one more meeting before Christmas and I’m looking forward to it. We are reading this book:

First, before all that, though, this coming up week is tech week . It’s going to be a long week in the theatre. I love the show, I love the work, but it will be exhausting. So today, my one day off, this is what is on my docket to make upcoming life easier:

  • Pick out my outfits for the week.
  • Boil eggs. These are my go to protein to have ready at hand for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.
  • Finish the Christmas cards so that it isn’t looming over me for the rest of the week.
  • Pick up the house so we at least start from a tidy place.
  • Bake something so I have convenient easy snacks on hand for me and the 13 year old who will be at the theatre with me.
  • Make a big pot of something l so that there is food to pack for lunch and dinner. I’m thinking of this Korean soy braised vegetable stew.
  • Spend some time reading so I feel like I didn’t spend my whole day doing chores.

What We Ate – I worked until 8:30pm most nights, so didn’t get to join the family for dinner most nights. I do miss the chaos of our family dinners.
Monday: Kabocha squash and tofu with noodles. The Husband cooked. I met up with some work colleagues after work and had a burger.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. It was my day off, so I made chipotle honey chicken tacos from the NY Times cooking website. . Very tasty.

Wednesday: Turkey Soup, made from Thanksgiving leftovers. I actually made this on Tuesday since I had the day off.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches. (I was at work and had sandwich and ate leftovers out of the fridge when I got home at 8:45pm)

Friday: Sandwiches from one of our favorite delis. A quick meal before the winter piano recital for the kids. The 13 year old and I were both at rehearsal until 7pm, zipping up to the 7:30pm recital just in time (the 8 year old played at the 6:00pm recital), so we kind of had snack dinner and cookies at the recital reception for dinner.

Saturday: Chicken wings take out as the family watched football on the couch. (I joined later after I got off work.)

Hope you had a restorative weekend!

How was your November? What are you looking forward to as 2025 comes to a close? Any favorite cozy meals that you can cook once and eat for the rest of the week? Anything you do to prepare for a busy season?


Weekly recap + what we ate: a week of tech meals

Lighting Session.

Well, since I last poked my head around here, I’ve teched, opened, and closed a show. And I also prepped and started rehearsals for my next show. I feel like we’re kind of in survival mode right now – long hours at work for me; the 13 year old is also in my upcoming show so has rehearsals several times a week – I’m really proud of her for getting herself to rehearsals after school; my parents have come to visit. And as always, the Husband is holding down the fort, keeping the kids fed, the house picked up, and my laundry folded. The hours are late because the opera I was in performances for is looong – 3.5 hours from orchestra tuning to end of bows. That’s long. It was a beautiful show, though. And I love the music – some days I feel so lucky that I get to live in Mozart’s brilliance for a living. It’s not always fun and roses, but there is a lot of beauty to be found in my job.

At the beginning of tech week, I thought it would be interesting post to capture what I pack in my lunch box during tech week. Lunch box is a bit of a misnomer because in it I also pack dinner and lots of snacks. Basically my formula is:

-Lunch
-snacks for rehearsal breaks
-Dinner
-Snack for drive home. I’m often driving home late at night so a snack helps keep me awake.

Sometimes if I don’t eat breakfast, I also pack breakfast. Usually it’s yogurt and berries with a swirl of honey. Sometimes it’s just a peanut butter sandwich.

So here is looking at Tech Week through the lens of what I pack for dinner.

Day one of tech – On the work schedule:
11am Set Looks and Spiking. This is where the set and furniture is put onstage and the director – and scenic designer, if there is one – gets the first chance to look at everything and tweak things that can be tweaked. It is also often the first chance for the crew gets to do each scene shift in order. They do it slowly, and not at all in time. “Spiking” refers to putting down tape marks where all the furniture will go. Our show was a revival of a show that we had done previously and the scenic designer was not present.
7:00pm Sitzprobe. A rehearsal where the singers get to sing with the orchestra, no staging or props or anything; everyone just concentrates on singing with the orchestra for the first time. Sitz is German for sit. Probe is German for rehearsal. We actually had a Wandelprobe – “wandel” means to wander – where the singers instead of sitting at chairs with music stands got to walk around an open set while singing. Note for future self, though – while in my stage manager mind, a Sitzprobe and Wandelprobe are similar in that we only have a reduced stage crew with us, they are very different for the singers. We had called it a sitzprobe on the schedule when really it was a wandelprobe and people were upset because they were expecting to just come and sit and sing. Singers prepare and dress differently for a Sitz vs. a Wandel.

Anyhow, what I packed to eat:

Pink snack box (Lunch): Empanada (from Farmer’s Market the day before), cucumbers, apple slices, hummus, a boiled egg.
Green Lid (Dinner): Smitten Kitchen’s One Pot Farro and Tomatoes. I often make one large pot of something to eat throughout tech week. This time is was this deliciously simple, filling, and versatile farro dish. I add a can of cannellini beans to bulk it up. Vegan since I leave out the cheese.
Orange snack box (Post show/ drive home snack): Trail mix (I make my own – pretzels, mixed nuts, M&Ms), grapes, apple slices, string cheese, cucumbers.
Extra snack: two clementines.

Day Two of Tech:
1:30p – 5:00pm: Piano Tech #1
7p – 10:30p : Piano Tech #2
Piano Tech is the first rehearsal onstage with scenery, and often lighting. We work through the show slowly, making sure everyone – performers and crew and stage management – can figure out what the traffic onstage and backstage is. This rehearsal is with piano not orchestra, hence the name Piano Tech.

What I packed:

Lunch box – Jamon Torta (wrapped in foil) – the Husband had gone to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants a few days ago and brought me back a Jamon Torta, my favorite thing on the menu. I didn’t have time to eat it then so I packed it for lunch. Apple slices, cucumber slices, banana muffin (I had found a bag of frozen muffins in the freezer! Nice treat)
Dinner: One Pot Farro with roasted delicata squash and a boiled egg. (Eggs are another of the things I always prep for tech week – fast, easy source of protein)
Snack box: Same as the day before. I didn’t finish it all, so I replenished it and packed it again.

Day Three of Tech:
morning – putting cues in my book, cleaning my book for the evening rehearsal
2:00p – 5:00pm – lighting session. Where the lighting designer sets lighting levels without any performers onstage. I have to be there to put the cues on my book and remind the lighting designer of when thing happen and where people are standing onstage.
7:00pm – 11:00pm – Piano Dress rehearsal. We add costumes to the mix. Still a piano rehearsal.

Lunch Box: Empanada (from the empanada run earlier in the week). Apples, cucumber and banana muffin. I think these were actually leftover from the day before. The torta was so huge I didn’t eat much of the other stuff I packed.
Dinner: One pot farro and tomatoes with roasted delicata squash
Blue Snack Box: apple slices, boiled egg, trail mix, sesame rice crackers from Trader Joe’s, Undercover Quinoa Chocolate crisps.

Then we had a day off!!!

Day Four of Tech:
Morning: putting spot light cues in my book. Spot light cues are the bane of my existence. They are fussy and a lot of words to say. For example “Spot 3 Standby to pick up singer in Frame X at 50%, head and shoulders as they come through the stage left door.” The Frame number tells them what colour to put in the spot light. The percentage is how bright to make the light. “Head and shoulders” is how big to make the light; head and shoulders means the spotlight should only cover the singer’s head and shoulders. There is also “full body”, which is the whole person, “3/4 body” which is about to the knees, “waist” open to the waist. The Assistant Lighting Designer writes the cue sheets for the spot lights, but I still have to put it all in my book to relay the information to the Spot operators.
Afternoon: Lighting session
7:00pm – 11:00pm: Orchestra Tech rehearsal. We finally add the orchestra to the mix.

What I packed:

Lunch (or dinner – it’s pretty interchangeable at this point):
-One pot farro, with delicata squash. Though this time I add arugula and eat it as a salad, dressed with some olive oil and rice vinegar.
-Green rimmed tupperware: Coconut chickpea curry with pumpkin. I had made it for dinner the week before, and it made good leftovers for tech week. Vegan.
Snack container: Trail mix, sesame rice crackers, undercover chocolate quinoa crisps, cucumber slices, string cheese.
Additional snacks: apple slices. Grapes and carrots.

Day Five of Tech:
Morning: Continue putting spot cues and fixes in my book.
Afternoon: Lighting session
7pm – 10:30pm: Orchestra Tech #2. Ran the show with the orchestra.

Lunch (or dinner)
-Round container: One pot farro eaten as a salad with arugula and raw golden beets and olives.
– Square container: Coconut chickpea curry with pumpkin, again.
Snack Container: Trail mix, cucumbers with furikake seasoning, boiled egg, sesame rice crackers, apple slices
Additional Snacks: aple slickes, grapes and carrots.

Day Six of Tech – Final Dress Rehearsal! It was Wednesday, which is when the nearby Farmer’s market is, so we went to get empanadas for dinner.

Day off!!!

Opening Night – Finally.

Just dinner this day:
-In the insulated container: Meera Sodha’s congee with celery and braised soy mushrooms. I made it for breakfast one day since I had a bunch of leftover rice in the fridge and had enough leftovers to take for dinner. I got the recipe from her latest cookbook Dinner, which features vegetarian and vegan Asian inspired recipes. This congee was delicious comfort food, and so simple and fast to make. The braised mushrooms magically had the consistency of pork belly – which for me is a selling point.
-In the snack container: cucumbers, grapes, sharp cheddar cheese, and a piece of apple cake. (About the cake – the day after final dress was a day off, and I was so drained that even though I had a laundry list of things to do, I just couldn’t do anything but sit in a comfy chair and alternate napping and reading a book. At some point in the afternoon, I felt the need to get off my behind and do something (not that napping and reading are nothing), so I baked an lemon apple cake with some apples we had that were past their prime. Baking turned out to be the right low energy activity. I need to remember that next time I am feeling in a post tech slump – baking is a good activity to bring me back into the world of productive “life-ing”. Not that I follow the cult of productivity, but I do think I need to have an activity that takes me out of the zoned out numb brain state that I’m in after teching a show. )
-Snack- carrots and apples for the drive home.

And that’s a tech week of food for me. There is something really satisfying about bringing all my food with me – I kind of actually don’t like to buy lunch or meals; it never tastes as good to me, and it takes too much time. I’d rather spend my time going for a walk.

Grateful For: I’ve been pretty lax about keeping up with my gratitude journal this month. I really want to get back to it because I find it really grounding. One day I sat down and did some aggressive gratitude-ing, and just did a gratitude brain dump, and I felt so much better after. So in that spirit, and given that it’s almost Thanksgiving, here is some off the cuff gratitud0ing, stream of consciousness style as I wait for the 13 year old to finish basketball.
-beautiful fall weather – cool, brisk, crisp and bright.
-the kid who just said, “Good pass!” To the thirteen year old at this basketball pick up game. Pick up is sometimes rough – right now it’s her and eight other middle school boys and, let’s be honet, boys can be kind of not nice to girls on the basketball court and there have definitely been not nice comments made. So it’s nice when a kid says something nice to another.
-being done rehearsal in time to be home to give the kids good night hugs and kisses.
-being done rehearsal in time to hang out with the Husband on the couch.
-My mom making dinner tonight and leftovers waiting for me at home.
-Friends who drive carpool.
-Will Watt, my current favorite audiobook narrator, and his expresive, silken voice, for making me almost look forward to my commutes.
-My portable bluetooth keyboard that allows me to type blog posts on my phone during kid activities.
-Whoever is in charge of the drop off line on Friday at the elementary school for blasting feel good tunes as kids are being dropped off. I look forward to walking the kids to school on Fridays, knowing that I’ll be greeted by upbeat music.
-That my kids walk hand in hand to school. I love watching them walk up to the doors together and disappear through them. I’m grateful that they always (almost always) are happy and willing to go to school.
-That I get to work on two of my favorite operas this fall. One is behind me and one has just started rehearsal.
-That I get to work on one of my favorite operas with my 13 year old in the chorus.
-That the prop guy at work retrieved the stage management snack box that I had accidentally left in our office at the theatre. I had meant to bring it back to the rehearsal studio, but it was so late when we left the theatre after the final show, I had forgotten. And the snack box is very important. I also didn’t want the mice to get to it.
-Butter, flour, baking powder, and buttermilk. Heat. And the strange alchemy that makes biscuits.

Looking Forward To:
-Thanksgiving. It’ll be a small gathering, but I’ll still be making all the food. Current plan for menu is: Buttermilk brined spatchcocked turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, rice with kabocha squash, roasted broccoli (or steamed, depending on time), rainbow Jell-o, apple pie, chocolate whiskey cake. Maybe bread. Maybe a green salad.

-Thanksgiving leftovers.

-A day off that isn’t Thanksgiving, so I can get life tasks done.

-Track suits! I used to order the kids matching pjs for Christmas, but the 13 year old wears adult sizes now, so it’s hard to find something for all three kids. This year I ordered the kids matching track suits instead, something that’s been on my “want to buy them” list for a while. I’m really excited.

-Curling up with hot tea and a book. Not sure when this will ever happen this month, but I’m looking forward to it.

-This was just released on Audible – looking forward to listening to it on my commute. (After I finish my current Will Watt narrated book. )

It’s by the same group of people who made the audio play version of “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, which I also really enjoyed. Peter Dinklage as Poirot was so much fun.
(Speaking of which – did anyone catch the broadcast of Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Twelfth Night on PBS’s Great Performances? Dinklage’s performance as Malvolio was brilliant – comic precision blended with strangely earnest pathos. I’ve always found Malvolio tedious, and this was the first time he seemed human.
The rest of the production – I have feelings. This was a star studded cast – Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong’o, Jesse Tyler Ferguson – and I think there was some really brilliant ideas in the production – the Viola/Sebastian relationship was really well done; the music; some of the minor characters were really well portrayed; the curtain call was brilliant, but also flabbergastingly lavish. But… the production wasn’t romantic. I think Twelfth Night is a very romantic play – the sincerity and depth of feelings of all the characters is what makes the play funny, even as people’s hearts are breaking. The gender bending love triangles here are played purely for laughs, and I feel like that makes them come off as without depth. Despite some great performances, I never believed that Olivia or Orsino loved anyone except themselves. And maybe that’s the academic, esoteric truth about Olivia and Orsino. But I don’t think – I don’t want to believe – the characters are as shallow as all that. Viola is such a great character – probably my second favorite literary character after Jane Eyre – that you have to believe that Orsino is worthy of her love. And in this production, he just … wasn’t all that. It’s a tricky task, to be sure, to deliver an Orsino that deserves Viola, but I have seen it done before, and it’s disappointing when you come out at the end of Twelfth Night feeling like Viola could have done better.
Anyhow, that’s my five second review of the production. I’d be interested to see if anyone else caught the production and had thoughts. It’s available to stream until the end of the year on PBS)

Welp that’s a whole lot of brain dump (written over ten days) for one night, and I desperately need to go to not stay up too late, so I’ll wrap it up. No weekly dinner menu because a) I didn’t write it down the past few days, and b) the Husband did most of the cooking and I wasn’t home a whole lot for dinner the past few weeks. I think there was soup from the freezer, eggs, chicken stir fry. Taco Tuesday… all of it filling and tasty, I’m sure.

Anyhow, I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving are gearing up for a lovely one, however you are spending the day!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Hallowe’en, Good-bye, October/Hello, November

And like that we are in November! The first week or so of November have been a blur as we got ready to move into the theatre. And I blink and look up and we’re almost half way through November by now! I’m trying not to think about it because I’m feeling very behind in life.

October Highlights:
-family hiking and contra-dancing in Shepherdstown WV.
-biking to work and biking with the 8 year old.
-family trip to the opera.
-It’s prime apple season. Going to farmers markets and getting apples. My favorite right now are Crimson Crisp and Arkansas Black. I like apples that are crunchy and the right blend of tart and sweet.
-Soup party at work.
-finished union negotiations finally.
– Starting rehearsal for my favorite opera.
-Some slow evenings at home with the kids – playing board games, reading, doing art.
-Lenten Women’s group meeting. We discussed a few verses in Esther about uncertainty and what to worry about and what God tells us not to worry about. (And is he telling us that it’s not worth the worry or is he telling us to trust him that all will be well?)
-tap dance classes with the 6 year old.
-Hallwe’en. Details on that below.

October Lowlights:
-The government shut down. UGH ugh ugh ugh. I know it’s now over, but the whole thing just dragged on and on and on. On the one hand I was happy that my friends had time to get together for random weekday lunches, on the other hand, it was such a time of uncertainty, not knowing what our elected officials were doing and when things were going to end. Incidentally, I don’t know if this is related, but I’ve been seeing a lot of For Sale signs on houses in my area lately. Late fall isn’t typically the prime time in our area for home sales, so I find it alarming that so many people are putting their houses on the market right now. I don’t know if that’s a sign of the current federal upheaval or what, but I can’t help but wonder.

-General uncertainty at work and some beloved colleagues leaving. I can’t write about it, but ugh ugh ugh.

-Getting back into the rhythm of working every day full time and in the evenings was hard. I think it’s always hard, though. I need to brainstorm ways to make it easier. Or just embrace the suck?

October Insights:
-“Don’t quit today.” One of my favorite October read/listens was Stephen Starring Grant’s Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home. There is one section where he finds himself on a really hard route and he’s messed up and doesn’t think he can finish and he calls a colleague and says he’s not cut out for the job and is going to quit. And his colleague says to him – and I’m paraphrasing badly – , “Don’t quit today. Finish your route, but don’t quit today.” That really stuck with me, the idea that when things are hard, just focus on what is in front of you. You can always quit tomorrow.

-People not things. I had written last month some reflections on where I am in my career, pondering if it’s okay that I’m not right now jumping for the chance to work on big complicated new productions. There were some really wise comments on that post. I think what I realized after writing that post and reading the comments is that for me, my job is about giving people the space and information they need to tell stories on stage. Shepherding a huge, technically complicated project through rehearsals to opening – that sounds really cool and I know if I did that, I would be so proud and exhausted. But you know, what I get the most satisfaction out of on the daily basis? It’s making sure the singers feel taken care of; keeping the director moving forward in their process; making sure my team is working together and communicating well. And these things I can do regardless of how technically complicated a show is. So every time I get sad that I’m not working on a fancy new production, I need to remind myself that I’m here for the people and the stories, not the machinery.

Hallowe’en recap:

The two nights before Hallowe’en:

All done just in the nick of time:

Costume details/ summary: I love making Hallowe’en costumes. My kids would probably be fine with store bought costumes, but they indulge my hankering to be creative. The two younger kids have wanted to be KPop Demon Hunter characters since they first saw the movie. I did briefly look for costumes online, but found it hard to find licensed Demon Hunter costumes, so it’s just as well that I was okay with making them. I wanted to write down the costume details because I think I made some fun discoveries as I made these costumes.

Flower fairy (13 year old): I didn’t actually make this costume, but I did help with the hot glue gun. Also I only had one stick of glue, so it was kind of a baited breath process, hoping that we had enough glue to attach everything that the 13 year old wanted. This costume featured a dress that the 13 year old already owned, a ridiculously expensive amount of fake flowers (dude, fake flowers are not cheap!), hot glue, gold ribbon, wings from last year, and the 6 year old’s flower crown from the Ren Faire.

Jinu (8 year old)– Thrifted ladies’ black button up shirt, with the arms trimmed to the right length. I crocheted the belt from yarn I had sitting around. The hat is ordered from Amazon. I thought for a minute of making the hat out of poster board, but I figured this would last longer and be less frustrating. Side note, while trying to figure out how to buy a gat hat- which was surprisingly difficult for something I eventually ordered of Amazon – I went down this deep youTube hole about how a genuine gat hat is made, and it is FASCINATING. The hat is hand woven from bamboo threads. If you are into in depth craft videos, check it out.

Zooey (6 year old)– this one took the most work of the three costumes. The shirt, skirt and sparkly shoes are thrifted. I went to four different thrift stores to find it all, but each thing was perfect for what I needed, so it all felt so satisfying. The glitter hightops actually light up, and the 6 year old LOVES them. I had to tell her she couldn’t wear them until Hallowe’en because I was afraid the batteries would run out. The skirt is a tennis skirt with built in shorts, so I’m sure we’ll get more use out of that too. Once I had all the base pieces, the 6 year old and I went to Michael’s and pick up almost every gold thing we could find so I could play with options for the embellishments.

The shoulder pieces were made from felt. I sized the felt with regular white glue to shape them. To do that, I cut the felt into the right shape. Then I covered both sides with diluted white glue and I sandwiched each piece of felt between wax paper. Next I molded the felt/wax paper sandwich over mason jars, using elastic bands to hold the pieces in place until the glue dried leaving the felt in its curved shape. After the glue dried, I sewed the shoulder pieces onto the white shirt.

The gold turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. I had ordered gold duct tape, but when I got it out to start using it, something was off and the duct tape was not sticky. In fact, it felt really oily. I had a moment of panic because I was going to use the duck tape for all the embellishments so that I would not have to sew anything. I ended up gluing the duct tape to the shoulder pieces and then looking for another solution for everything else. I had bought some heat transfer vinyl, the kind you’d use in a Cricut machine. It turns out, the stuff is just as easy to use without a Cricut machine – I just cut what I needed with scissors and then ironed it on to the shirt.
Friends – I have never used this stuff before, and it was like ANGELS SANG when I first applied it. It is SO easy to use and it looks amazing. And it’s better than duct tape because it will stretch with the clothes. Next time I have a project that involves putting designs on clothes, I’m going to use this stuff again. It was a game changer for me.

The rest of the embellishments: the tassels and the chain on the skirt were made from gold metallic braided trim. The gold studs on the shoulder pieces are gold stickers.

Striped tights – of the 6 year old’s choosing, something she already owned.

And luckily Zooey is the one Huntrx member without outrageous coloured hair, so I just put the 6 year old’s hair into Zooey buns to complete the look.

Hallowe’en Night – Our own neighborhood is very quiet on Hallowe’en, so we usually just put out a bowl of candy and go over to our friend’s neighborhood to trick or treat. Their neighborhood has an annual neighborhood decorating contest, so the houses are always so fun to see. This was one of my favorite houses – every year they have some kind of statement tombstones:

In case you can’t read them, the tombstone read, from left to right:
“Here lies America’s Reputation Abroad. Can’t get any lower than this!”
“Here lies the Federal Workforce. Death by 200, 000 cuts.”
“Here lies Co-Equal Government. It was a nice idea.”
“Here lies Freedom of Speech. Last Words: …..”

It seems like a very DC type display…

We ended up trick or treating from about 6:30p – 8:30pm. I loved seeing all the kids out in their costumes. Funny story, when we pulled out the Hallowe’en buckets, the 13 year old took the one that the 6 year old usually uses and wouldn’t give it back.
“Fine,” I said to the 13 year old. “you can keep the little tiny bucket. Your sister will trick or treat with a pillow case.”
Of course being reminded that she usually uses a pillow case, which could hold much more candy than the little monster bucket, immediately led the 13 year old to give the bucket back to her sister. Of course by then the 6 year old had figured out that, yeah really the pillowcase is the better option. So she went trick or treating for the first time with a pillowcase. Later hat evening, she discovered one of the perks of having a pillowcase to collect candy in was being able to stick one’s whole torso into the pillow case and inhale the candy. Literally, figuratively…

“It smells so good in there!” she said.

When we got tired of trick or treating, we went back to our friend’s house where the Husband had brought pizza for dinner. We then sat in the front yard around a fire pit and drank mulled cider (some folks added an extra something special in their cider). The kids stayed inside sorting and swapping candy. Our friends have tween/teens as well, but they always make sure the 8 and 6 year old are included when they hang out, which is nice. I might have fallen asleep in my camp chair as everyone talked around me. It was such a cozy way to end the evening. We’ve decided with our friends that we need more evenings around the firepit with mulled (spiked) cider.

Grateful For:
-The later bell time. In our school system there are two bell times – half the elementary schools start at 9am and the other half start at 9:25am. We are the later bell time, which is good because we need all the time we can get to get out of the house in the mornings.

-warm fall weather. And the morning light, though it does get darker earlier.

-Not having to work on Hallowe’en. I happened to have the day off work, and the elementary school was having it’s fundraiser run that morning so I was able to go cheer my kids on. I ran into a friend whose kids are in the same class as mine and we ended up having lunch between the kindergarten run and the 3rd grade run. Then I went home and had still had time to prepare for Hallowe’en. It was nice not to have to rush directly from work to trick or treating and to also show up for a school event.

-Also grateful that Hallowe’en was on a Friday night so that we didn’t have to get anyone to school the next morning. That was pretty awesome.

-Return policies. I spent a lot of money at Michaels last month – see Hallowe’en costumes. Thankfully they have a 60 day return policy, so I was able to return all the gold trim and embellishments that I didn’t end up using. So grateful that I could get that money back.

-That the 6 year old finally figured out how to ride her bike! I’m grateful for her siblings for giving her lots of advice, especially the 13 year old, whom I think did most of the coaching.

Looking forward to (the November edition):
-Visit from my parents.
-Opening my current show. Tech week has been going very smoothly, but the hours have been long.
-Then closing the show and moving on tot he next show. I’m excited because originally the 13 year old didn’t get a spot in the children’s chorus, but two days before rehearsal started, they had someone drop out and the spot was offered to the 13 year old. She was SO excited. She’s loved this show since she was really little and always wanted to be in the children’s chorus. It will be exhausting, but I’m looking forward to working on a show with her again.
-The staging staff coming in for this next show, all of whom are people I’ve worked with before and I’m really excited to work with them again.
-Thanksgiving. No idea what we are doing for Thanksgiving yet. Should think on that.

What We Ate – two weeks worth of meals here, because I’ve gotten behind in posting. The Husband was responsible for 95% of the dinners the past two weeks while I’ve been rehearsing late.

Monday: Cauliflower shawarma, Melissa Clark recipe from NY Times Cooking. I added red peppers and chick peas to this. I actually prepped the veggies snd tahini sauce in the morning before I went to work and the Husband put it in the oven when he got home. Apparently the kids had fun with this one:

Tuesday: Dinner out. The Husband and kids went to meet a friend for dinner. I had leftovers at work.

Wednesday: Chicken stir fry.

Thursday: Ramen with shrimp. I was working, so I’m not sure if the Husband or the 13 year old made dinner this night.

Friday: Hallowe’en – candy, pizza, brie, crackers. Maybe some fruit was eaten in there.

Saturday: leftover pizza and movie. I think they watched Lego Movie 2. I was at work.

Sunday: Sausage pasta for the family. I ate lefotvers out of the fridge when I came home

Monday: Lemony turkey white bean soup with greens. Pulled from the freezer. Note to self: this recipe freezes very well.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. I think the family had beef tacos. Not quite sure.

Wednesday: Udon noodles and stir fried chicken.

Thursday: Coconut curry chickpeas with pumpkin and lime Melissa Clark’s recipe from NY Times Cooking. This was really tasty. And good for many dinners after. I made this in the morning before going to work so that the family could have something fast to eat for dinner since they were going to see the 13 year old in the school play that night.

Friday: I think the family had pizza and watched the Lego Flash movie.

Saturday: This was tech week, I was at the theatre all day – no idea what the family ate for dinner.

Sunday: One of the ladies from the Mom’s group I joined when the 6 year old was born hosted a get together. It was such a fun reunion to see how our kids and families have grown in the past six years. It was a potluck affair. We brought soft pretzels and fruit salad. Afterwards we went over to firepit with our Hallowe’en friends and had chili around the firepit. It was a very social day for my one day off. Usually if I have a free day during tech week, I want to just hide and sleep, and my inner introvert was screaming a little to have to be so social, but I did really love seeing everyone. Plus life does not stop life-ing just because one has been at the theatre all week.

Well that’s life lately here. This weekend I’ll work all weekend – we have a show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so it will be a lot of time at the theatre for me. The family will come to the opening night performance. The opera is almost 3.5 hour long, so I’d put money on the 6 year old falling asleep before the end of the show. (Note to self: remember to tell her the story before she goes since she can’t read the supertitles.) Otherwise, the weather looks to be beautiful, so hopefully I’ll remember to get out for a walk or two to enjoy the sunshine.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend! How was your Hallowe’en? Is a pillowcase an appropriate candy catcher where you are? How was your October? Looking forward to anything in November?

Cool Blogger’s Walking Club- week 5 + 3 takeaways

Rounding out Cool Blogger’s Walking Club – thanks again to Elisabeth for organizing this community effort.

I’ve been picking something to notice on my walks – past weeks, I’ve notice Hallowe’en decorations, and flowers. This week I picked fall foliage. End of October is peak fall foliage time here in Maryland. There seemed, though, to be a variety of foliage from some trees still being mostly green, to brilliant oranges, yellows, and reds, to some trees already all bare.

Monday 10/27:
-15 min yoga
-Walk kids to school from the parking lot on the path. Take a loop through the woods on the way back to the car. Took this picture:

It’s a picture of a leaf on my windshield, but I love how it looks like i was able to capture a leaf mid fall.

Tuesday 10/28:
-15 mins yoga
-Walk kids to school from the parking lot on the path. Take a loop through the woods on the way back to the car.
-Walk at lunch time. Saw some beautiful mottled leaves.

Wednesday 10/29:
-Ten minute yoga
-Walk at park during the 13 year old’s piano lesson. Saw this beautiful orange tree:


-Walk kids to school from the parking lot on the path. Take a loop through the woods on the way back to the car.

Thursday 10/30:
-10 min yoga
-Walk kids to school from the parking lot on the path. Take a loop through the woods on the way back to the car. It was a soggy day, making the colour of the leaves really pop.


-Walk in the neighborhood around work on my dinner break.

Friday 10/31:
-Yoga 20 mins
-Walked to pick up kids from the school bus. The late afternoon light through the trees was stunning, setting the leaves ablaze:


-Hallowe’en! Trick or treating for two hours.

Takeways from CBWC Fall 2025:

  • Walking, getting out, moving – I can choose to do those things. I don’t have to get out for miles and miles, but when I have a free space of time, a ten minute walk rejuvenates me more than if I had spent those ten minutes scrolling. I need to especially remember this when I get really swamped and can’t find the time to go for a run and start feeling sluggish. I can make the choice to move.
  • On the subject of choice- I feel so grateful that I have a variety of options on how I commute and travel. I can drive, take the Metro, or bike. So days when my schedule is a little more flexible, I can choose to take metro or bike instead of driving. It is a bit of a luxury, I realize, because not everyone has all those options. If my car breaks down I can still get to work. If I miss the bus, I can still get in my car.
  • I had a lot of fun choosing something to notice every week. Being on the look out for Halloween decorations really made the lead up to Halloween fun. Looking for flowers when the world was starting to go dormant brought little flashes of colour to a grey world. And I’m glad I took time to look for leaves because often fall is a very busy time for me at work, and I don’t get to go leaf peaking. I sometimes get to winter and realize I’ve missed the wonderful colours of fall, so I’m glad I took time to find the pops of fall that I could see this week.

(bi)Weekly recap + what we ate: What I wore one week in fall

I am feeling a little underwater right now. We’ve been rehearsing 11am – 6:30ppm, which in theory gives us the evening off, but I don’t get home until 8pm and the evening’s kind of over by then because my brain is fried. Plus I had some titles to do for an upcoming recital. And Hallowe’en. And the mornings…. I haven’t figured out my mornings. Conceivably the only thing new in the morning now that I’m back in rehearsal is that I have to pack my own lunch in addition to the kids’, which shouldn’t take that long, but somehow, any empty space in my morning pre -going back to rehearsals seems to be gone. I’ve been thinking about what of my own buckets I want to be filled in the morning, and how. This is what I came up with:

Body – yoga
home – make my bed
brain – read 15 minutes
soul – journal
family – check in with Husband before he leaves for work.

But then also, the MUST DOs in the morning:
-make lunch (two kids and myself)
-Get the kids’ breakfast. Often the Husband does this before he leaves for work. Really, the kids should be at the stage where they get their own breakfast.
-Supervise practicing piano for the 8 year old and worksheets for the 6 year old. (that makes me sound very Tiger Mom, but the 6 year old does worksheets so that she stays out of the 8 year old’s hair while he practices piano.)
-Supervise morning chores (unloading dishwasher, sweeping)
-Get myself dressed. (Sometimes shower, but very rarely. Meaning I try to shower at night. But even then I don’t shower every day.)
-Prep dinner (if needed) and pick up kitchen and make sure counters is clear.
-get the kids out of the house on time.

I feel like if some of any of the above doesn’t get done, we get by, but the effects of neglecting those things are cumulative and really pile up, making stress for future us and future me.

Which is all to say, getting my feet under myself the past few weeks has felt like a lot. In my journals, the second half of October has been blank. I can always tell when I’m in a busy season when I look back through my journals and there are a string of blank pages. And actually, funny enough, when looking at my five year journal, October/November seems to be the months every year with the most blank pages. Which I guess is itself telling.

Anyhow, before I got really swamped, I decided I would do a “What I wore” post because it take a little bit of daily effort to put together and I thought I’d be able to dash it off. Plus, it’s fall and fall is my favorite season for dressing – all cozy layers and deep colours. So here is a week in October:

Monday:

This was the first day of rehearsal. I have a jacket I used to wear to every first day of rehearsal, but when I put it on this time, it was a little tight around the shoulders, which makes me sad. So I wore this instead. Red Wool& dress. Striped sweater from a Teat & Cosset, a maternity brand that no longer is around. Yes, that’s a nursing sweater. But I still wear it because it is a comfy cotton/wool blend that keeps me from overheating and it’s neutral but not plain. The denim jacket is from Uniqlo – one of my clothing purchases this year. I always swore I’d never wear a denim jacket, but this one has a bit of stretch and a boxy, but not too boxy, silhouette, and is so practical and versatile that I’m growing to love it. Black jockey leggings (cotton with pockets!). Blue boots from Reiker. I actually liked this outfit so much that I work it for family photos later that week.

Tuesday:

I’m sure I wear this dress at least once every time I do a week of outfits. It’s a linen shirt dress that I wear throughout the year, regardless of season. It’s easy to dress it more warmly or less. Orange pocket leggings from Toad and Co. Grey wool sneakers from Geisswein. I used to have All Birds, but then they stopped having fun colours, so I found this other brand online. I actually find them more comfortable than All Birds.

Wednesday:

There’s the denim jacket again. I did probably wear that jacket every day this week. Butterfly sweater bought from Nordstrom Rack several years ago, before I stopped buying white clothes because of kids and messes. (I’m slowly introducing white back into my wardrobe.) Sweater is worn over blue Wool& dress. Purple scarf was a gift from a friend – it has the first page of Jane Eyre printed on it. Red Geisswein wool sneakers. I had ordered several pairs of Geisswein sneakers because I couldn’t tell from online which pair I would like best. I liked both.

Thursday:

My Day Off, hence the hastily snapped picture while I was at H&M. Snoopy sweatshirt and green joggers are all from Uniqlo. I bought the joggers for our trip to South Africa and these have proven very cozy and thick. I’ve worn this outfit on almost every day off this fall. Same shoes as yesterday.

Friday:

I had a different outfit planned this day, but then I didn’t do my yoga in the morning, so I decided to wear my very stretchy Duluth Trading Company NoGa pants in case I had time to do some light yoga at work. (I didn’t). I like the NoGa pants because they are basically yoga pants that I pretend are okay to wear at work. The purple sweater is from Uniqlo. The shoes are a repeat from yesterday. The hat was a gift from my bachelorette party sixteen years ago. The scarf is the same as Wednesday.
Later that day, I did change because we went to the opera. I have one nice dress, which I wore with a black blazer. I don’t really have pictures of that night, but I’ve probably worn it here before.

Saturday:

I’m pretty sure I wore this in last year’s “What I Wore” post. Sweatshirt dress, bought when I was pregnant – it has thumbholes! The sweater is a hand me down from my cousin. I was wearing my sneakers because I was coming from doing the13 year old’s voice lesson run and had gone on a walk while waiting for voice lessons. I had brought ankle boots to change into at work, but then I went directly from voice lesson to work and was slightly late to rehearsal so I didn’t change. The leggings are from Duluth Trading Company. They also have pockets. Everything I’m wearing has pockets. Except my underwear.

Sunday;

If I have to be at work on Sunday, I’m going to be comfy and casual. Fox overall and striped henley from Duluth, The same blue boots I wore on Monday.

Bonus Monday:

I took so long to write this post that I am back to Monday, so I thought I’d throw in this outfit too. Wide legged pants from Uniqlo. I feel like they are a little frumpy on me, but they are comfy and cool in the summer. (They’re actually summer weight pants). The shirt I’ve had for maybe 15 years, I think I got it at Nordstrom Rack or some such. I never want to wear it because it is a little short, but the new trend for high waisted pants has brought this shirt out of hiding. The orange sweater I love for the pop of colour. I think it’s another Nordstrom Rack purchase too. Or maybe Marshalls? I remember when I first saw it in the store, I put it back, thinking, “Oh, this is too orange.” But then I went back for it because I loved the colour so much.

So that’s my sartorial week one October week in 2025! I feel like I wear the same clothes over and over, but looking at this, I do see that I’ve made a few new purchases this year.

Grateful For:

-singers who close doors. So there are doors in our show. Three of them at one point. Something that is becoming really clear to me is that one thing seasoned singers do that younger/newer singers don’t, is they close doors behind them when they make an entrance. You cue them onstage, they open the door, walk through the door, and then close the door. A lot of younger singers don’t close doors behind them, just leave it gaping open because they are focused on the music they are about to sing. I think it’s just something that happens as singers mature and being onstage becomes more natural – they do things that are natural in every day life. When you or I walk through a door, typically we close it behind us. Another thing in this world is picking up things that fall onstage. In real life, if I drop a pencil, I will pick it up while going on with my life. Some singers don’t do that. Things will accidentally fall onstage and they just leave it there. And the audience is stuck wondering if someone is going trip over the thing. And afterwards, they will say, “I didn’t know if I should have picked i up.” Seasoned singers will just casually pick the thing up and move on with life. Anyhow, all that to say I really appreciate the singers who have been onstage enough years to close doors and pick up fallen objects without being told.

-Past me for freezing soup for an easy dinner for everyone when I’m not home and the kids and Husband have a million things to do. (I think I’ve been grateful for this a lot in the past, but Past Me is really clutch in this area.)

-five minute curtain holds. Here’s a secret at the opera: we always start the show 5 minutes after posted curtain time. So if the show says it starts at 7:30pm, we always start at 7:35pm. This was a very good thing because on the Friday before, we took the family to the opera. But the 8 year old had soccer practice until 6pm and the show was at 7:30pm. I had to work until 5:30 or so. The whole evening was precisely timed to get us where we needed to be -the 13 year old and I was supposed to meet the Husband at a Metro stop after I got off work – He would pick up dinner after soccer and pick us up at a nearby stop so that we could drive down in one car. But then as the 13 year old and I were walking to the metro, the Husband called and asked, “Can [the eight year old] wear his cleats to the opera?” OMG. The kid had forgotten to bring shoes. So the Husband picked up dinner, came home, picked us up, picked up shoes for the 8 year old and we got down to the theatre at 7:15pm, and ate our sandwiches in the lobby of the theatre in our fancy clothes. It was real classy. But that’s kind of how it goes when you squeeze in a trip to the opera after soccer practice. This is one of those times where we wonder, “Are we doing too much? or do we just suck at logistics?”
Which is all to say, thank goodness the show really started at 7:35pm and we had time to wolf down our sandwiches.

Looking forward to:

-Planners! My planners for 2026 arrived. I did order them off Amazon, which I feel a little guilty about. I usually order my planners from Jet Pens, but they were out of stock, so I waited a week to see if they would re-stock and then ordered from an Amazon retailer. But then… a week after I ordered them, Jet Pens had the planners back in stock. Bummer. Although I know if I had ordered them from Jet Pens I would have thrown another $100 worth of pens and stationary supplies in my cart too, so perhaps this is the more economical option. Anyhow – I love the delicious anticipation of empty planner just waiting to be filled.

-Getting our family photos back. We did end up going to the nearby downtown area and having our pictures taken against murals and plazas, and we even went into the Metro and had some pictures taken there too. I’m kind of excited to see how they turned out.

-light in the morning now that we’ve turned our clocks back.

-Tech week! It’s tech week! Yay moving into the theatre. I’m excited, but also already tired. It kind of sucks to have tech week the week after daylight savings ends. Last night we got done rehearsal at 10:30 and I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired, then I remembered that my body thought it was 11:30pm.

What We Ate – this is a really vague list because I wasn’t home most evenings for dinner. Shout out to the Husband. Also – this is kind of the typical weekly dinner rotation for those “How are we going to make dinner when we are down one parent at home” weeks. Which is all to say, sometimes we have complicated dinners loaded with lots of vegetables, and sometimes we feed the kids food that is tasty and low effort and it’s all fine.

Monday: Thai meatball soup, from the freezer.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. I think they had beef tacos.

Wednesday: Mac and cheese and hot dots. The 13 year old made dinner.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: We got takeout sandwiches from a diner before the opera.

Saturday: Pizza and movie night – I think the family watched Spiderman 2, the second Toby Maguire version of Spiderman.

Okay, that’s the report from the week. I’ll give the Hallowe’en report next time – it was a good time. Happy November! I’m not participating in NaBloPoMo this year – October is just not when I have the bandwidth (see above about empty journal pages.) But I’m excited to read what other people are up to when I can.

Cool Blogger’s Walking Club – week 4: Flowers!

Thanks again to Elisabeth for rallying us walkers together!

I’ve been choosing something to notice on my walks. Last week was Hallowe’en decorations. This week, I decided to look for flowers on my walk. Not an easy thing because we are definitely in the part of fall where things begin to go dormant, but there were still some fall flowers to be seen in the yards I passed on my neighborhood walks:

Monday 10/20:
-Took the metro to work and then home. (24 minutes for the round trip, punctuated by a metro ride in the middle.)
-30 minute walk around the neighborhood on my lunch break, looking for flowers.

Tuesday 10/21:
-My step count notes a walk between 10am-11am. I’m not quite sure what this was…
-30 minute walk on my lunch break, looking for flowers.

Wednesday 10/22:
-Walked kids to school from the parking lot by the trail and then spent another thirty minutes walking the trail, taking the long way loop back to the car. Did not see any flowers. Makes sense since I was tromping through the woodsy part of the trail.
-30 minute walk on my lunch break. Saw this flower:

Still counts as a flower sighting, right?

Thursday 10/23:
My day off work.
-apparently I took 2700 steps at Target in the morning. Does that count for CBWC??? I mean I spent a hour wandering around – it’s a lot of exercise looking for what you need and not finding it.
-mowed the grass (20 minutes). I’m counting this because it does involve walking and being outdoors.
-the evening we did family photos and essentially spent an hour and a half walking around downtown.

Dahlias in our garden that I saw while mowing.

Friday 10/24:
-Walk kids to school from the parking lot by the trail today, and then spent another thirty minutes walking the trail, taking the long way loop back to the car in the parking lot. This time I did manage to see some flowers:

Saturday 10/25:
-Walk with the 6 year old to pick up breakfast sandwiches while the 13 year old was in her voice lessons.
-30 minute walk on my dinner break. I walked to the co-op to pick up some shampoo. But they were out of the shampoo I wanted, so I bought peanut butter, pita, and some olives instead.

Sunday 10/26:
-I worked most of the day, but managed to squeeze in a walk to coffee, which turnes out to be twice as long as I intended because the first coffee place was closed so I walked to another one. (20 mins)

Are there flowers blooming where you are?