Diane

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye March, Hello April!

Last week was spring break – we stayed home and had a relaxing staycation kind of week. Monday I took the kids down to the main library in downtown DC, and we also went to see some cherry blossoms. Other than that – we had some nice bike rides and playground time. Baking. A family trip to Costco. Hair cuts and dress shopping. Library visits and ice skating. It was nice to be home and living life at a relaxed pace.

The weekend was also pretty low key. On Saturday I dopped the 6 year old at an Easter Egg Hunt play date and went to get my emissions tested. The emissions didn’t take as long as I expected, so I stopped at Panera for my free Slip Club beverage and a BLT since I hadn’t had breakfast. Then in the afternoon, the Husband and the two little kids and I went on a nice long bike ride. In the evening, we watched the Men’s Final Four Basketball games. After the 6 and 9 year old went to bed, it was time to play Easter Bunny. The 14 year old was still up, and the Husband turned to her, dead serious, and said, “I have something to tell you. “

She looked at him expectantly.

“The Easter Bunny,” he said, “Isn’t real.”

I howled with laughter. The 14 year old helped us stuff eggs and then she actually went and hid all the eggs for us while the Husband and I finished watching the game.

Sunday, we went to 8am Easter Mass, which at our church is an English/ Bangla service. Reasons I really enjoy going to the English/Bangla mass:
-The rainbow of saris and kurtas that people wear are so fun to see.
-The homily is given in both languages, so it tends to be shorter.
-The music is provided by Bengali musicians and it is always upbeat and varied.

After Mass we went to breakfast at First Watch. We traditionally would go to IHOP for Easter breakfast, but the last couple of years, IHOP has always been so crowded so we decided to try something new. First Watch was for sure less crowded and the food was, in my opinion, better. The restaurant was having an Easter Egg hunt which was fun for the kids too. After breakfast we went home, had a nap. The kids hunted for Easter eggs. I made some lemonade and chocolate pudding for dinner, then we watched the Women’s NCAA Basketball final game while the kids folded laundry. The game was kind of a rout, with UCLA winning by 30 points.

For dinner we had burgers, tater tots, green beans, and lemonade. After dinner we went for a family walk – a rare thing these days to get all five of us to go for a walk together. The summer sunset sky was gorgeous! When we came home we had the chocolate pudding for dessert before sending the kids to bed. It didn’t feel like a fancy holiday weekend, but I think it was full of family, and good food, and what more could one want?

And now the calendar has turned to another month. April! Which means that 2026 is one quarter over. Here’s a look back at March:

March Highlights:
-Tech/Opening/Closing of a show. The Show certainly had it’s challenges, but I had such a good time with my co-workers.

-Family trip to the theatre to see The Sea Beyond the Ocean. Such a beautiful play.

-Supertitle recital gig of a lovely recital that featured Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel, one of my favorite song cycles.

-Running supertitles for another opera. I really like running supertitles – I get to lock into the music, but also I don’t have to talk to anyone else so I can just focus on one thing.

-Sunshine and warmer weather.

-It was a pretty negligent month for exercise, but I did go on my first run since November, and I did go to the fitness room at the rec center once.

-My friend L coming over to do laundry and getting to hang out with her late one evening.

-KPop Demon Hunters winning two Oscars, and seeing Golden performed on the telecast.

-My friend A coming home from their posting abroad. I mean not the reason they were sent home (they were posted in the Middle East), but the fact that I got to see her four months earlier than I was expecting.

-Going to the 9 year old’s Geobowl and the 14 year old’s Science Fair.

-Visiting the Textile Museum. Who knew horse blankets were so nuanced!

-Getting our tax information to our Tax Guy just in time.

-March Madness.

-Favorite meal cooked at home: Coconut Chicken Curry from New York Times Cooking.

-Cherry Blossoms. I never get tired of their fluffy delicate beauty.

Also – I snapped this picture while sitting in the shadow of the Washington Monument. I’m feeling a little down about the state of American politics, but I still feel inspired and hopeful by the symbols of our country, such as the American Flag and the Washington monument.

March Lowlights:
-Being sick. I was barely hanging on for a week mid-March. Turns out it was flu. I had to cancel so many plans that I had been looking forward to.
-News on the international front.
-News on the arts front at home. My heart aches for so many of my colleagues and former colleagues here in DC.
-A really hard tech process for the show I did. Everything was fine in the end, but there were definitely times when I thought I was just plain bad at my job.
-The back and forth as to the last day of school. This isn’t really a lowlight, but more like an ridiculous frustration. As the snow days piled up, the school district kept extending the school year, day by day until the last day, which was originally June 18th was pushed all the way to June 25th. I was glad I hadn’t signed the kids up for camp that week. But then…. then then… the week before spring break, the school district announced that they had gotten a special dispensation from the State to have a reduced number of teaching days and the last day of school would go back to being June 18th after all. ARUGH!!!! You know – I am find with whatever they decide to do, but to offer one thing and then change it back is… so annoying. I’m sure the school district knows how annoying this is.

How did I do on some of my 2026 Goals?
-Creativity – I only painted one picture; I wrote 3 haikus; I played piano several times – I’m trying to embrace the five minute piano noodle as something to do when I’m between tasks. So could do better on this front. But then I was sick for a week…

The one picture I painted all month. I guess technically it’s two. This was the leaf painting assignment from 30 Days of Watercolour.

-Finished one crossword puzzle. We didn’t renew our Washington Post Sunday paper til half way through the month, but it is now renewed so I can get back to doing my weekly puzzle.

-Museums = 1 (total so far this year, 4/10). Hikes= 0 (Not doing so well on the hiking goal)

-Vegan dinners = 3 (the goal is 5/month) I have to admit, vegan dinners are hard when I’m working in the evenings and am not home to cook.

-Excercise: not great. Strength training = 3x (goal was 8x/ month). Yoga daily = I missed two days when I was sick and 1 day when I just forgot. I did go running 4 times, once for only 10 minutes, but I’m still counting that.

-Family Goals: Game Night = 1 (Parcheesi; it was disastrous. Wait, I think there was a MarioKart night as well); Date Night = 0 (still); Call my parents once a week – I did horribly on this one; I think I called them once all month.

-Time outside: I tracked 14 hours, but it might have been more. I fell off the tracking wagon the days before and after I was sick.

Quote of the Month:
“I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.” from The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

Looking Forward to (the April edition):
– Contra dancing. We didn’t get to last month because of sickness in our household, so I’m hoping we’ll get to go this month.

-My mother’s coming to visit.

-Dinners and hang outs with various friends and families we know. The social calendar is a little full.

-An order from Jet Pens. As a gift to myself for getting through tech week (twice in one month!) and the flu, I ordered myself some things from JetPens – some monthly tabs so I can tab my planners, a new Preppy Fountain Pen, some new .25 point pens, and a book clip so I can clip my book open when I read while eating.

-Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas. I’ve been a fan of this fiddle and cello duo since their debut album in 2004 so I was super excited to see they are coming to play in our area. I very rarely go to live music concerts – usually if I’m going it live performance it’s opera or theatre – but especially these days, I feel like supporting live performance is important.

– Starting rehearsals for a new show and working with some of my favorite colleagues. (Okay, truth – most of my colleagues are my favorite colleagues. Now that I get to have a say in hiring stage managers, I don’t hire people I don’t want to work with… it’s a perk.)

– Reading in bed! I ordered a bedside lamp and it arrived!

Grateful for this week:
-Libraries. Particularly libraries that don’t have computers in their Children’s Section, thereby forcing my kids to actually look at books.

-Cadbury Mini Eggs. My favorite holiday candy. I got the big bag from Costco this year. Actually I got two. Last year I thought I didn’t need the big Costco bag of mini eggs so I didn’t buy them, and I regretted it ever since.

-A later piano lesson. The kids’ piano lessons are usually at 7:15am, but this week because it was Spring Break, their teacher was able to move the lesson to 8:00am and it was nice to stay home for that extra 45 minutes and have a leisurely morning.

-Bike trails and closed parkways. On the weekends, the parkway near us is closed to cars, giving us an endless length of road on which to ride our bikes.

-Spring Break and bonus time with my kids. Sure they periodically fought like tom cats, but overall I had a really great time hanging out with my kids this week. I think key to my great time was the fact that they play together pretty well, so a) I didn’t have to referee many arguments, and b) I could spend lots of time by myself without having to amuse them.

-Past me for making vanilla. Last year around this time, I had been given a mini bottle of vodka that I was never going to drink. So I tucked an vanilla bean inside to make vanilla. I had forgotten about it until this week, when I was making banana cake (this recipe – it’s really tender and moist) and realized we were out of vanilla. Panic! But then, I remembered that little bottle on our alcohol shelf. Past me to the rescue!

What We Ate:
Monday: Garlic-y Chicken with Lemon Anchovy Sauce a Melissa Clark recipe from NY Times Cooking. Eaten with rice and steamed broccoli on the side. I was looking to use up some chicken thighs I had in the fridge. This was really tasty.

Tuesday: Tacos from the taco place next to the barber’s. We had gone for haircuts for the kids and decided to grab dinner out before running some other errands this night.

Wednesday: Roasted Salmon and Potatoes with bagged salad. The 14 year old made dinner and it was super tasty.

Thursday: Kabocha Squash Japanese Curry from Hetty Lui McKinnon, and Pan Fried Tofu. I had picked up a Kabocha squash from the Farmer’s market and was looking for a way to cook it. I really loved this flavorful curry. I didn’t have Japanese curry, but Indian curry powder worked just fine. I think I’ve cracked the code on really delicious crispy fried tofu. This is my method:
-Press and drain tofu for at least 20 minutes. (I wrap it in a kitchen towel and then put my Dutch oven on it. Sometimes I start it in the morning so that it’s nice and dry by the time I get home after work.)
-Cut tofu into 1 inch cubes.
-Douse with soy sauce and then let it sit for at least 10 minutes to marinate.
-Toss in 1/4 cup of cornstarch, making sure all sides of tofu are coated.
-Heat about a 1/4″ of oil in a large skillet.
-When the oil is hot, add the tofu. Let it cook untouched for 3-4 minutes, until a nice crust forms. Then flip and cook for another 3-4 minutes on the other side.
-When nice and golden/ crispy on at least two sides, take out and drain on a paper towel.
The excessive amount of cornstarch seems to be ky.

Friday: Take out from local fish restaurant, because it was Friday in Lent. And for movie night: A Nice Indian Boy. I was looking for a rom com to watch since it was my turn to pick the movie, and came across this title from last year. It was just perfect – everything I want from a rom com: cute, appealing leads, offbeat secondary characters, believable conflict even within a quirky story, humour, heart, and wit. We laughed a lot. The movie tells the story of Naveen, a doctor, who yearns to meet the right man and get married. He meets Jay, a white man who was adopted by Indian parents, and much of the comedy and heart comes from the dynamics of Naveen’s family learning to accept Jay as the Nice Indian Boy they want for Naveen. I loved that everyone had a chance for a story arc, and the Indian wedding dance number at the end. This movie was the definition of feel good. Also Jonathan Groff is really pretty.

Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made – cheese, sausage and mushroom, fig and goat cheese, and a pepperoni).

Sunday: Burgers, steamed green beans, tater tots. Lemonade. Chocolate pudding. (Burgers, lemonade, and chocolate were all things that the kids had given up for Lent.) The Husband made the burgers and they were really tasty. The 9 year old at one point said, “It’s a good thing Easter isn’t on a Friday in Lent because we wouldn’t have been able to eat these burgers!” Um…..

Weekly recap + what we ate: Another round of unique things and frustrating things

I still feel like I’m digging out of being sick for a week, but it’s nice to feel like life is getting back to routine. Aside from some lingering crud and the occasional cough, I’m feeling better, though still very tired. I’m don’t know if the tired is just life or what. I’ve been trying to think of if I ever don’t feel tired? This might be something for me to track.

Anyhow, on weeks when life feels very routine, I like to do a round of “What make this day unique or special/ what made this day frustrating” in my journal. It’s a good reminder to me that even when things feel like a cycle of – sleep, wake, kids to school, work, sleep…. each day is different, even if in tiny ways.

Monday:
Unique: I took a nap in the afternoon before work. Still not feeling 100% this day.
-Reading in bed at night. I don’t often read in bed because the Husband often is asleep before I get into bed and I don’t want the light to bother him. This night, he had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs so I took advantage of having the bed to myself and read in bed.
Frustrating: The people in the parking garage that honk at me. The garage where I park at the current theatre is underground, which means there are lots of ramps to navigate. Some of these ramps are quite steep. Which, since I drive a manual car, makes me very anxious when the traffic is stop and go all the way out of the garage. So I tend to sit at the bottom of a section of ramp until the traffic is clear for a couple meters. That way I don’t get stuck mid way up the ramp and risk rolling backwards when I try to shift gears. People tend to honk at me when I do this. I get this – most people assume that stopping half way up the ramp is an easy thing, and I expect it is annoying to sit in a parking garage line and not have the car in front of you pull up. But I’m already a ball of anxiety getting out of the garage, honking tends to exacerbate my anxiety. Anyhow… I’ve started just waiting 45 minutes after work to leave so I don’t have to sit in the traffic.

Tuesday:
Unique: I didn’t have to work in the evening, so I sat and read my book after dinner. I wish this didn’t feel like a special thing, and was instead just an every day thing.
Frustrating: I should have had a conversation at work, but I didn’t because it was kind of a sensitive thing and the right moment didn’t happen for the conversation. It was frustrating because it was something I wanted to have taken care of and instead it continued to loom.

Wednesday:
Unique: An extraordinarily good pint of raspberries. I find raspberries a little hit or miss, and this one was for sure a hit. Sweet and firm and full of flavor.
– I went to visit a new to me museum – The Textile Museum. It’s across the street from the theatre and free admission. It’s a small, very niche, museum, which is sometimes the best kind. They currently have an exhibit about horse blankets and saddle covers. I loved seeing all the handwork. Like the exhibits on quilts that I’ve seen, I was struck by how no one knows who created these beautiful (and practical) works of art.

There was also an exhibit on sustainable fashion, which was fascinating. For example, this shirt below is made out of fibers made of pineapple leaves. The placard noted that different countries/regions have access to different materials, but globally, most of our clothes are made of the same materials, manufactured in a limited number of places, which contributes to a lot of waste and pollution. A lot of the sustainability ideas in the exhibit was about focusing on local efforts- whether it be natural resources or reclaiming/recycling fabric.

I stopped by the gift shop of my way out and picked up a few things: two napkins made from old sari materials, and this book on furoshiki, the Japanese art of wrapping things with fabric:

Also another special thing this day – my friend came over after work to do laundry – her machine is broken. We haven’t had a chance to hang out in a while since work has been so busy, so it was lovely to sip beverages and chat; she had a beer, I had some tea. She did some mending and I folded laundry. It was 11:30pm, but kind of the best kind of low key hang out to have with a very good friend.

Frustrating: We had a site visit for a theatre space at work and the parking near the space was a nightmare. I hate parking in the old parts of the city.

Thursday:
Unique – The Husband was out of town on a birthday trip with friends. He very rarely goes away by himself, so this was really unique. That evening, the kids and I went the the middle school STEM fair. I’ve never been to a science fair before – we didn’t do them when I was this age. It was so fun to see all the different projects and to realize that even the littlest spark of curiosity can be the seed for a science project. The 14 year old did an experiment testing different types of sugar for baking cupcakes. My favorite exhibit was one kid who compared catapults to trebuchets, even building one of each out of balsa wood and rubber bands.
Afterwards we went to a new to us Thai dessert cafe and had fancy drinks and Mango Sticky Rice Toast. It was all really tasty. The 6 year old wanted to lick the plate after we polished off the Toast. I told her she couldn’t lick the plate in a restaurant, but next time we could order it to go and she could like the plate at home.

Toast topped with condensed milk and fresh mango, along with sticky coconut rice, mango cream, whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. It was delicious.

Also – it’s Peak Bloom! A whole four days earlier than predicted. Peek bloom is one of those things that happen every year yet still feels unique every time it happens. I have plans to go see the blossoms with the kids next week on Spring Break; hopefully they will still be there. (update: we did this and it was beautiful)

Frustrating – Started gathering my tax information for our accountant. Starting them is not the frustrating thing; having to do them in the first place is. I guess this might more be classified as “annoying” rather than “frustrating.”

Friday:
Unique: I went to the fitness room at the rec center and ran the treadmill and did 15 minutes of strength with dumbbells. I tried 12 lb. dumbbells for the first time since the 5 and 10 lb ones were being used, and it wasn’t horrible. Again, I wish going to the fitness room wasn’t a unique thing in my schedule, but it is these days.

Frustrating: A few weeks ago, I wrote about receiving a W-2 for a gig I was never paid for. Well, this week got an email from the company’s accounting people saying, “Oops you’re right. You weren’t paid. Here’s a corrected W-2.” To which my response was, “Okay, thanks. Can I expect to be paid for the job still?” To which the nice lady in accounting said, “Sorry, that’s out of my hands. Here’s another email address that you can write to to ask.” I don’t understand how people run a business this way.

Saturday
Unique/ different – We went to the Farmer’s market this day (again, another thing I wish were more routine and not unique). We bought some amazing pastries and also apples and veggies and empanadas. While we were there we noticed that there was a Black Family Health Fair going on – there were people handing out toothbrushes and they said all were welcome; the fair wasn’t just for Black families. So we went to check it out. There were lots of booths from various health organizations, but also some fun activities. There was a booth where you could make smoothies by pedaling a bike that was attached to a blender. That was fun. We also enjoyed the art/collage workshop that was led by educators from the Phillips Collection. Going to the fair was such a lovely spontaneous activity.

The prompt was to build houses to represent our insides and our outsides. I don’t know that we followed the prompt. Our outside was brick and the inside was very Zen. The educator tried to make some comment about how it represents how tough and strong we feel like we have to be on the outside.

The other thing that made the day special was that we didn’t have any sports activities. We’re between basketball and soccer season and it was nice to have space in our day to do things like impulsively attend a health fair, or take an afternoon nap, or have family reading time after dinner. As we were lounging in the living room with our books, the 9 year old said, “This was a really great day!” Agreed, little guy. I totally agree.

Frustrating- I lost my Yeti mug a few weeks ago. Last year I wrote a post on things I would replace immediately and my Yeti Rambler with Hot Shot lid was one of those things. So I went to the local Ace Hardware to get a new one… and the 12 oz Yeti rambler with Hot Shot lid is no longer part of the Yeti line up; it’s seemingly been discontinued. They have a new Rambler, but it is slightly larger and doesn’t fit in my hand as well. So frustrating. I don’t want the new version, I want the 12 oz Rambler with Hot Shot Lid that I’ve had for five years now. My options seem to be:

-buy it in hot pink. Apparently some Ace Hardware Stores still have it in hot pink. Hot pink isn’t really my colour, though.
-buy the 18 oz (or 10 oz) water bottle and the hot shot lid separately.
-buy the new Rambler and be annoyed every time I use it.
-scour eBay or other re-sale sites. But it would have to be a new one – I’d feel weird buying a used one.

I ended up scouring eBay and buying one there. I might actually buy two more just as back up.

Sunday
Unique/Different – It’s the last show of my current run. There is always a special energy knowing that you’re doing a show for one last time.
I found street parking right outside the theatre so I didn’t have to pay for parking since it was Sunday.
After the show, we went to a friends’ house for dinner. It was a beautiful spring/cups of summer evening and the sun was still up, so I walked there. After sitting all day, it was nice to stretch my legs. The trees are blooming and there were lots of people out on their bikes. It’s like people are emerging from hibernation.

Frustrating- I don’t think there was anything frustrating about the day. It was a nice Sunday – some family time, some work, some friend time, and I finished my book. It was a pretty good day.

Grateful for:

-Driving a compact car so that it is easier to fit into parking spaces and navigate city driving.

-Chatting with colleagues. I was working supertitles for my latest show, which means I get to hang out in the booth a lot with the stage manager and the lighting supervisor. There is something to be said about being able to have casual conversations about work things – we can problem solve and kick around ideas to explore without being in some meeting where it feels like we have to have the right answer right there. A lot of my administrative work can be done remotely, which I appreciate, but I also am really grateful for casual face to face time to chat with my colleagues.

-For the chance to run supertitles for this latest show. I really love running super titles. I mean it’s essentially hitting a space bar 1000 times over the course of a two hour show, but I find it really satisfying to lock in and concentrate on the music and what is happening onstage. I’m glad when my boss was looking for someone to run titles I spoke up and said, “I can do it.” And that my boss then let me.

-that I’m feeling better after my week of sick.

-That the 9 year old still loves playing with his toy planes. He has such a big imagination. And makes up stories and battles with his toys. Yes, he also likes playing MarioKart, but I love that if I leave him alone he will also get deeply immersed in imaginative play, zooming his airplanes all over the house.

-Perennials that come up year after year. I always forget that we have hyacinths along our front walk until they suddenly pop up, fragrant and cheery.

-This sign that I saw backstage. A good reminder.

Looking forward to:
-Easter Dinner. The kids gave up burgers, chocolate, and lemonade for Lent. (mean one kid gave up each thing.) I was going to make a big fancy Easter dinner, but then we realized that we should just have burgers, lemonade and chocolate dessert. I’m not sure what the chocolate dessert will be yet. Maybe I’ll also make a vegetable.

-Starting a new show next week.

-Visiting the Phillips Collection. At the collage workshop, we were given family passes to visit the Museum. They have art workshops the second Saturday of every month, so I’m looking forward to finding a time to go. I haven’t been to the Phillips Collection since before the oldest was born, so I’m eager to put this on our calendar.

-Bike/runs with the kids now that the weather is nicer.

-Just started this book. It’s set in a Red Lobster during a snow storm.:

What we ate:
Monday: Coconut Chicken Curry in the Instant Pot, recipe from New York Times Cooking, with rice and Paratha. Made before I went to work. I’ve made this before and everyone always loves it. I made a double batch, so there is some in the freezer ready for when I go back to work.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos w/ cabbage, smashed avocado, sour cream, cheese, and salsa

Wednesday: Banh mi – take out. I was working this night and it was the night that the Husband was leaving for his trip.

Thursday: Lemon Miso Tofu and Broccoli Stir Fry a Hetty Liu McKinnon recipe from New York Times Cooking. I was looking for a way to use up some broccoli I got from the Farmer’s market and this recipe popped up. It was really bright and lemony and I loved it. I can see the sauce also being good on white fish. I would make it again, but maybe less aggressive with the lemon since the Husband doesn’t like things too lemony. (Except Lemon Bars. He makes and exception for those.) Vegan.

Friday: Pizza and movie? I had to work. The Husband was coming home this night, so I’m not sure what they ate or watched.

Saturday: Chipotle (for the kids – there was one next to the hardware store and the kids really wanted it; the 14 year old even offered to pay for her own); Leftovers for me (chicken and kimchi in a bowl). Peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the Husband.

Sunday: Wings, salad, and fries at our friend’s house. Our friend is a genius with the grill.

Well, that’s the news this week. And now we’ll be into April. The weather looks lovely and almost summer like this week- a nice week for a Spring Break staycation with the kids.

What chocolate dessert should I make for Easter? When was the last time you ate something so tasty you wanted to lick the plate? And did you? Have you had any favorite items be discontinued? Visit any super niche museums lately?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Sick Week MVPs

The first blossom sightings of the year! I think these are red buds.

After leaving readers on a bit of a cliffhanger last week when I posted from the waiting room of Urgent Care, I’m sure everyone was eager for the verdict. drumroll please…. the result of tests was…. Influenza B. I fully admit that I did not get a flu shot this year, so maybe I’m to blame, but…. the 14 year old also got diagnosed with influenza over the weekend, and she did get a flu shot – which she is a little salty about. But I hear that it’s been a particularly bad year for Influenza B. Well, I guess it’s been a good year for influenza, but a bad year for the rest of us who get it…

All that to say, all last week I was in a cycle of debilitating tiredness, taking the kids to school, coming home and sleeping all day, then feeling better mid afternoon and going to work in the evening. Then coming home, going to bed, and feeling like crap again in the morning and the cycle began again. I am the worst patient. Luckily I had Thursday and Friday off work and was able to fully rest. I did drag myself out of bed for a ninety minute meeting on Teams on Thursday, but otherwise stayed under the covers. I cancelled Happy Hour plans I had, and I cancelled plans to meet up at the trampoline park with my friends when the kids were off school. Which was a bummer, but rest and hydration seemed to be the priorities of the day.

I don’t remember the last time I was laid up for so many days, and it’s made me feel like the month has disappeared. Between tech week (twice! for two different shows) and a sick week, I blinked and woosh… next week will be April. I feel like before I got sick or went into tech, we were still deeply in winter. And now I’ve emerged and there are blossoms on trees and the hyacinths are blooming and fragrant along our front walk. Oh well. I do believe my body likes to tell me when I need to slow down and it was clearly telling me that I needed to slow down now.

On top of rest and water, there are a few things that got me through last week. These are my sick week MVPs:

-Hot Lemonade. When I’m sick I like having hot liquids. This is one of my favorite things to drink- lemon juice mixed with hot water and a drizzle of honey stirred in. The tart lemon is bracing and helps clear the gunk from my throat, the touch of honey helps things go down.

-Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice. My cold drink of choice when I’m sick. Like hot lemonade, it balances tart and sweet.

-Cool green grapes. I don’t have much of an appetite when I’m sick, but I did eat a lot of green grapes, their chilled flesh soothing my throat as I swallowed. I had bought some enormous grapes from Hmart the week before and they were perfect for a sick day. I swear each grape was the size of a marble shooter.

-Kleenex.

-Musical Cast Albums. I’m not the kind of person that can sleep for 48 hours straight. At some point I’ll move into that “tired but not sleepy” phase and then I’ll start feeling restless and bored. This is the danger zone for me. When I get restless and bored, I will get out of bed and look for things to do, and that will tire me out and I’ll be back at square one. So the trick is finding low key ways to help me through restless and bored. I know some people like to watch movies when they are sick, but I have such bad eye-sight that I would need to keep my glasses on to watch movies. When I’m sick, I like to leave my glasses off, so watching movies isn’t an option. So instead of watching movies, I listen to Broadway musicals as a low spoons way to rest without being too bored. This time around I listened to Side Show, Bridges of Madison County, and Caroline or Change, all of which were new to me.

-Audiobooks. Similar to listening to musicals, I like audiobooks when I’m sick because I can be slightly entertained while laying in bed. This time around I listening to the Alexis Hall novel Looking For Group. To be honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to the story – it was centered around Drew, who spends his time playing MMORPG – which for those who, like me, don’t know what that is, it stands for “Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game.” The book starts with a glossary of terms and I was immediately lost. I liked the witty sentences, I liked the snarky and funny characters. I loved Will Watt’s low dulcet oh so expressive tones. I could not tell you what happened in the book.

-Hot water bottle. I have an old fashioned rubber hot water bottle, purchased in a thrift store of a Colorado mountain town for $2. It keeps my bed warm and I love it.

-Cozy blankets. I love nothing more than being buried under a pile of blankets.

-The hot water boiler. Still my favorite purchase so far this year. Hot water at the push of a button.

-The Husband. Okay, he is the REAL MVP of my sick week. The Husband kept things running. He cooked dinner. He cleaned up after dinner. He took the kids to see the high school production of In the Heights (I’m sorry I missed that one – they all reported it was very very good.) He kept an eye on them when they were off school and I couldn’t get out of bed. He watched the first games of March Madness with them. He took the little kids to skating lessons, and then on a bike ride. He took the oldest kid to the doctor’s. He picked up my prescription. He gardened. He folded laundry. He got the kids to fold laundry. I mean the list goes on and on and on. Last week Stephany had a post where she pondered how people recover from sickness with kids around. Well, my answer is… I don’t, and I’m very grateful for the Husband that I don’t have to.

Anyhow, I’m slowly feeling more normal again. I’ve been able to go outside for some walks and enjoy the spring sunshine. I did a couple 15-20 minute gentle yoga videos. I took a hot shower. It’s funny how those things – sunshine, stretching, and showers – can all help me feel like a human after being sick. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% back to normal now, but I’m mostly there.

I usually write my weekly gratitude list at this point in the post, but all my weekly gratitudes this week would be all the sick week MVPs that I listed above, so check!

Looking Forward To:
-Peak bloom! Peak bloom! Peak Bloom! Peak Cherry Blossom Bloom is right around the corner. We are currently in stage 5 of 6. The earliest prediction is for peak bloom to arrive this weekend. Next week is Spring Break, so I think the kids and I will go downtown to walk among the cherry blossoms one day.

– Middle School STEM Night. The 14 year old and her friend did an experiment that involved baking lots of cup cakes. I’ve never been to STEM Night before, so I figured this might be a good year to go.

-March Madness has begun. We look forward to watching the Men’s and Women’s games. I’m not rooting for any particular team this year – neither team from the Husband’s alma mater made the bracket and the women’s team from my alma mater was, but they didn’t make it past the first round. In general, I like to root for whomever is losing because I love a good come from behind story.

-Spring soccer season for the 9 year old.

– Doing normal things like cooking dinner and picking up my bedroom. I’ve really missed doing these domestic things while I was sick. Not sure why. I hate picking up my bedroom normally but now I can’t wait to do it.

-Just started this book:

It’s an Age of Innocence re-telling set in present day Jewish society in London. I was inspired to pick it up because I’d never seen an Age of Innocence re-telling and given that I had just read the Wharton novel for Cool Blogger’s Book Club, it was fresh on my mind.
Also – side note, when I went to google for this book, another book with the same titles popped up. That book is about two orphans isolated in a Newfoundland cove. That one also sounds really interesting. I love the idea of reading two books with the same title.

What We Ate: Damned if I know. I think there was freezer soup one night. Pizza on Friday as always. The rest – I have no clue. The family was fed and that’s all that matters.

Well, that’s it for now. This week looks bright and sunny. I close another show on Sunday and then there’s Spring Break. We aren’t going anywhere, but we’ll have some local adventures, and maybe just some time to rest. And finish my taxes. And have some ham for Easter. I need to think about Easter menu. I see everyone having amazing travel adventures, and I have to be honest I do feel a little jealous. We don’t have any travel plans in the future. I think after a big travel year last year (Taiwan/Malaysia, South Africa, and Taiwan again), the idea of getting on a plane again seemed… like a lot. So we’ll be here for Spring Break – and, you know what, that’s not terrible. I’m going to lean into having some good family time with my kids while they are off school and before I plunge back into another busy season at work.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech week recovery

You know when you draft a post and then life hits you and you don’t post it and the post sits in your drafts folder? Well this is that post…. i had meant to publish it three days ago, but then I’ve been in bed with something the past few days. And now I’m sitting in urgent care so I can figure out what this something is. So why not go ahead and publish, while watching HGTV in the waiting room….

What was that bonkers weather we had here in the DC area last week? The first part of the week was so warm – in the 80s – I thought it was already summer. Then Thursday – SNOW! I thought we had moved past that. And it’s been chilly ever since. Crisp and clear and sunny, but still chilly. And Monday, the kids were released two hours early from school because of an impending tornado. That never happened.

Anyhow, it’s been a bit of a “recover from tech week” week. I had Monday off from work, and that really messed with my mind a little bit. Plus the time change – by mid week I had lost all sense of what day of the week it was. I felt like I just couldn’t catch up, and small things kept going wrong.

This week’s annoyances:
– I broke the interior handle on the driver side of my car. I don’t know what happened. I pulled the handle and it just got stuck. The exterior handle still works. So now I have to either get someone to let me out of the car, climb out another door (which – that parking brake makes that really painful) or I roll down the window, stick my hand out to open the door from the outside, then roll the window back up … all before I can turn off the car. It’s kind of annoying. It’s also kind of funny.

-I waited too late to sign up the 14 year old for a camp she really wanted to do and now it’s wait list only. I feel really terrible about this one. BUT also – the website kept saying that registration was still open, and it’s only when you click over to start the registration that the window that says “Waitlist only” popped up. I feel like this information should be on the website itself.

-Some unbloggable work things where people had big feelings, and I also had big feelings, but I can’t talk about them without throwing other people under the bus.

-My uncle (my dad’s younger brother) passed away. He lived in Taiwan, so I didn’t see him a whole lot, but my father was very close to him.

-I was late to bus pick up.

-General feeling of tiredness, myself and the kids. We had planned to go contra dancing last week but just couldn’t rally. There was one day when I just felt really run down and went to bed after dinner. The 9 year old got sent home from school one day because he was running a fever, and then proceeded to sleep until the next morning. I think we all just need a week of rest and cuddles.

Okay – so I guess lots of tiny things that made the week feel … ugh. Let’s not even mention news on the international/ national front. That is really hard to wrap my head around. BUT… maybe my malaise on the domestic front is just par for the course after tech week. Everything- the physical tasks and also the mental and emotional stuff- that I had been putting off while I worked on my show, just comes to the fore after opening.

I was having a conversation with a fellow stage manager, and she was saying that the third day after she comes home from a gig after being out of town, she is suddenly hit with a wave of restlessness and that “off” feeling where nothing is in the right place and her husband has let the house fall apart. And she said that after years and years of going away and coming home, she has realized that this is just the rhythm of coming off a gig. And she can now mentally tell herself, “Life isn’t falling apart- it’s just the emotional pattern of coming home.” So either she makes herself clean on day two, or on day three she reminds herself to give everyone grace. I know I’ve been working on shows and getting through tech week for twenty years, and yet I still have trouble managing the post tech mental and emotional and physical and household fall out. There has to be better strategies?

The highlight of our weekend was going to see a play – The Sea Between the Oceans. This is the Theatre for Young Artist (TYA) show that the Kennedy Center’s education department commissioned and produced. Sadly, it might be the last TYA show that the KC Education Department produces for a good long while, given current circumstances. This play was soooooo good! It tells the story of a 10 year old boy who goes to visit his favorite author to try to get her to finish the last book in her series. The play slips between the story being told in the book series (to do with pirates and adventures on the high seas) and the the story of the boy and the author. It was an hour and a half of adventure, sword fights, family drama, found family, and the power of books. I might have had a few moist eye moments. I was so inspired by the play that at bedtimes that evening we spent thirty minutes reading aloud, something which we hadn’t done for a while.

I need to take a minute to shout out TYA shows. TYA is a certain category of theatre contract that is devoted to, obviously, young audiences. While those involved aren’t paid as much as a non-TYA show, the hours of rehearsal are limited so that people can still find other work around the rehearsal hours. But even still, the shows are given the same I’m really embarrassed that I had never seen a TYA show at the Kennedy Center before because this one was so so so good and such a brilliant entry point for kids to experience the magic of theatre.

Sunday I took the 6 year old to agility class then went to work. I ran a show (the last performance of the run), had tater tots for dinner with my team as a last hurrah, watched a little bit of tech for the show after mine then went home and watched the last ninety minutes of the Oscars.

I’ve seen exactly zero of the best picture nominees, so that held little interest for me. What I was there for was KPop Demon Hunters which was up for Best Animated Film and Best Song. I loved this quote by the Maggie Kang, the co- director and writer, accepting the Best Animated Film award:

“Thank you to the academy and to all the fans who got us here. And for those of you who look like me, I’m so sorry that it took us so long to see us in a movie like this. But it is here, and that means that the next generations don’t have to go long.”

Growing up there wasn’t a lot of Asian representation in mainstream media, so I still get so very very excited when I see Asian faces on screens these days.

Grateful For:
-Evenings at home. I only had to work one evening the past week, so I got to be home for dinner and evening and bedtime routines. One evening we played Parcheesi – we hadn’t had a game night as a family in a long time. I have mixed feelings about Parcheesi – there is the opportunity to be a real asshole in the game and some people in the family took that opportunity. I guess they would think of setting up immovable blockades that grind the game to a halt as being “strategic” but it was highly annoying.

-weather nice enough to run outside. I haven’t’ been running outside since last fall. I’ve done a few treadmill runs, but I generally don’t enjoy those. It was wonderful to be out in the sunshine, shuffling along as my slow runner’s pace. Also grateful for the time to run outside.

-That the two little kids packed their own lunches. There was one morning when I was so exhausted that I slept in a little bit. When I got downstairs at 7:45am, I found that the 9 year old and the 6 year old had packed their own lunches. Yes there was mayonnaise all over the counter, but … small price to pay for not having to pack the lunches myself.

-Dogs on paths. While waiting for the 14 year old’s voice lesson the other day, I discovered there is a trail three block from her teacher’s house, so I went for a woodsy ramble. It was nice to be outside and among trees. But the delightful thing is that almost everyone who I passed on the trail had a dog. Sometimes two or three or four. It was such a joy to see the dogs running about.

(Side note – the dogs were all off leash even though the sign at the start of the path said all dogs should be on a leash, no longer than 4 feet. So I did think it was strange that almost every dog I saw was off leash. Dog owners – is this a thing? Or is it just the unspoken rule about this trail? I do wonder if the demographics of that part of town is part of the disregard for the sign? At any rate, I did love seeing all the dogs.)

-It’s Cadbury Mini Egg Season!!!! This is my favorite candy season. I haven’t been to the store in weeks, so I didn’t clock it until the Husband bought me three bags.

-A quiet living room. There were a couple moments this week when I had the living room to myself because the kids had gone to school, and the Husband was quietly working downstairs. A quiet living room, a cozy chair, a cup of tea, and a good book that slowly slides into a nap. It was nice.

-Theatre for Young Audiences.

Looking Forward To:
-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends. We didn’t have on last month, so I’m glad we made time this month. (i had to cancel this because I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday- bummer)

– Day off school. I think my friend and I are going to take our kids to the trampoline park. My friend is the one who just came back from overseas and her son says that one thing he’s missed the most about America was the trampoline parks. (This is TBD, depending on what happens at Urgent care)

-Getting back into a morning routine. After last week of being really tired and sleeping in, even on the weekdays, I want to get back to my morning routine: read, journal, make the bed, and yoga before I need to get into lunches, breakfasts, and cajoling children.

-Spring. Summer. The glimpse of warmer weather that we got this week made me eager for warmer weather and no more cold snow. The hyacinths are starting to bloom along our front walk.

-Reading this book:

I finished a lot of books this week, including The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which I loved, and this is the sequel.

What We Ate:

Monday: Ethiopian- misir wat, tikil gomen. I had bought injera over the weekend, which inspired this meal.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday

Wednesday: Can’t remember. I think the husband cooked something delicious and I went to bed right after because I wasn’t feeling well.

Thursday: Vegetable Tortilla Soup. From NY Times Cooking.

Friday: Pizza and – not sure what the family watched. I was working this evening.

Saturday: We went out to eat after the theatre. I had corned beef and cabbage.

Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce and green beans. Sunday classic.

Books Read January and February 2026

I haven’t done a book recap since the year started, so here is what I’ve read the first two months of 2026.

Automatic Noodle by Anna Lee Newitz – This science fiction novella tells about a group of deactivated robots in a post war future San Francisco who open a noodle shop in an abandoned kitchen. I mean how could I resist hand pulled noodles? This book was quirky and charming, exploring – as books about robots are wont to do – ideas of what it means to be human and challenging ideas of ownership. It’s a book about community and overcoming algorithms. It’s a pretty quick comfort read.

You’re the Problem, It’s You by Emma Alban, read by Chris Devon and Will Watt– This queer Victorian romance is an enemies to lovers story of two men who hate each other, but are constantly thrown in each other’s paths because of various society and family events. I thought it was very ordinary, and a touch longer than it needed to be. Plus enemies to lovers is one of my least favorite tropes in romance. On the other hand, it’s narrated by my audio book boyfriend Will Watt, and when the plot got over long, I just leaned into his mellifluous tones.

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung – This historical fiction novel set in China in 1948, follows Hai Ang the daughter of a prominent family who, along with her mother and younger sisters, are left behind when the rest of their family flees when the Communists come to their village. After Hai is tortured in place of her prosperous family, her mother takes her and her sisters and they being a grueling journey to find the rest of their family. The story is based somewhat on Chung’s family history. I picked up this book to read when I was in Taiwan because the events in this story led to a massive influx of Chinese people into Taiwan – it’s a period of time that my parents lived through as well. I thought this book was gripping – I kept wanting to know what happened and what Hai and her mother would survive each of the challenges put before them. Once they reached Taiwan, though, I thought the story lost a a little momentum. The main heart of this story for me, was Hai’s mother and how she was inextricably tied to this deeply patriarchal society.

The Names by Florence Knapp– I really liked the speculative premise behind this novel- a child is born, his mother must decide what to name him. The story diverges into three paths, each based on which name is chosen. I thought this book was gripping; I stayed up til 4am reading because I needed to know how it ended and what happened to each character. I loved how the storylines intersects through the different realities. Warning, though, domestic violence is a pretty manor plot point, and that was hard for me and kept me from loving the book.

Hum if You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais. I picked up this book last summer because it’s set in South Africa and I was getting ready for our trip there. I didn’t actually get around to reading it until I got back, though. This book is set in 1976 where, in the aftermath of the Soweto uprisings, Beauty Mbali searches for her missing teenage daughter and 9 year old Robin is taken to live with her aunt after her parents are murdered. Circumstances bring Beauty and Robin together and in the shadow of Apartheid they grapple with grief, racism, and loss. I thought this book was really great up til the last quarter of it when it kind of became a slightly ridiculous adventure/espionage story. Overall, though, I found this book to be a real page turner.

Good Spirits by B.K. Borison, read by Karissa Vacker and Will Watt. Another audiobook read by my audiobook boyfriend Will Watt. But aside from Will Watt, this also has another thing that is catnip to me: it’s a spin on Christmas Carol. Ghost of Christmas Past Nolan has been assigned to haunt Harriet York, though neither can figure out why as Harriet is lovely, kind, nice (to the point of being a door mat) with no skeletons in her closet. I really enjoyed this story and how Nolan and Harriet’s relationship unfolded – I was really rooting for both of them and the “ghost loves human” romance had just the right amount of conflict and angst. The ending felt a little unresolved, but that didn’t bother me that much. It’s kind of like a cozy Hallmark Holiday movie with a bit more spice and plot.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This narrative non-fiction read is about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, explored through the lens of the disappearance of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten. The “Memory” part of the subtitle is, I would argue, the focus of the story that Keefe is telling here – how the trauma of war affects those who live through it for the rest of their lives. This is one of those non-fiction books that I read and I can understand how people become radicals, even while asking myself if I would do the same if I were in their place. I really enjoyed the book – it was fascinating and heartbreaking all at once- the kind of book where I could marvel at the details and ingenuity of both sides of the conflict while at the same time being incredibly moved by the tragedy of the situation. Really excellent read.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden, read by Michael Crouch and January LaVoy – I found this book on a list of Audie award winners (audiobook award) and was prompted to pick it up because it starts in Nova Scotia, and that is kind of cat nip for me. It is set during WWI – field nurse Laura Ivan has returned home to Halifax following an injury on the front. She finds out that her brother Freddie has gone missing, presumed dead, but she believes that he is still alive so she accepts a nursing job that will take her back to the front, Belgium to be specific, so that she can look for her brother. In a parallel storyline, the reader follows Freddie who has woken up after an explosion, trapped in a pillbox (I had to Google that) with a German Soldier. As Freddie and Laura’s storylines converge, we encounter wartime plots, people desperate for answers and connection, and a mysterious Innkeeper who plays the violin. There is a bit of a supernatural story here, but one that is so embedded in the minds of people traumatized by war that it doesn’t seem supernatural at all. I loved this book – it took me a little bit of time to really get into this book, but eventually, the story sucked me right in; there is emotional heft in the choices that each character has to make, the characters are brave but not stupid, and the mystery unspools at just the right pace, allowing the reader to piece things together. The writing is lyrical and precise- there were so many sentences where I was blown away by the way Arden strung words together. The author’s note at the end, I thought had a really interesting take on how WWI was a very steampunk era where the old and new collided. I loved this book so much that after I finished the audiobook, I got the physical book from the library. This was my first “heart” in my reading journal for 2026.

Big Bad Wool by Leonie Swann translated by Amy Bojang – This is a sequel to Three Bags Full, a mystery novel in which a flock of sheep hilariously solve mysteries. (Which – I’m am very excited to discover – is about to be a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson – talk about catnip!) In Big Bad Wool, the sheep are at it again. I’ve got to be honest, the mystery part of this novel was completely over my head and at times tedious. I am here for the sheep – they are hilarious, witty, curious, and their observations about human foibles had me laughing out loud many times.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Read for Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club. This was a re-read for me; I had read it maybe twenty five years ago, around when the movie came out. I really loved this book – I loved how immersive the language is and how I felt like I just had to sink into Wharton’s prose world in order to have an idea of what was going on. It’s not a book that tries to hit you over the head right away. So much goes unsaid or is assumed that I think there is much room for interpretations as to what each character is really like or what motivates them. A friend told me that Wharton wrote books about interior design and that makes so much sense because I really felt like she was so precise about the physical world that her characters live in, and that was in stark contrast to how little she said about their true interior world. I mean the novel is from Archer’s POV, but he lacks self awareness and that precision that is present in his exterior world, and this makes his interior musing unreliable. Anyhow, I think this kind of open for interpretation nature of Archer made for some lively debate every week on Engie’s posts. This book checked off one box for my 2026 Classics Reading Challenge.

On my proverbial night stand:
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City Trilogy) by Sarah J. Maas – still plugging away at this book. I just got to the part that had my 14 year old bawling inconsolably. (I’ve never bawled at a book myself, but this was a real doozy and I get why she was inconsolable.)

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K.J. Charles – on audio. Almost done – I have twenty minutes left. I’m really enjoying this one.

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams – also almost done this one. It’s really well written, sweet and sexy and also a great mother/daughter dynamic.

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba – I was reading this as a book set in Africa for my Classics Reading Challenge, but then I realized it was first published in 1979 and the challenge is for books written before 1975. Oh well, I’m going to count it anyway.

How’s your 2026 Reading life so far?

Weekly recap+ what we ate: Good-bye, February! Hello, March!

Another show opened! It has been a hard hard week for me, but the show opened and it looks really stunning. And the audience is super excited to be there; the feeling of good will is palpable.

We’re over a week into March, but I wanted to do a February recap, now that I’m on the other side of tech. I keep wanting to put tech week into this recap, but that was technically March, so it will go into the next recap.

February Highlights:
-New York City Trip with the 14 year old. Seeing Two Strangers (Carry a cake across New York), eating good food, people watching.

-Doing titles for a voice recital that was lovely and featured an elegantly charming set of Post WWI French cafe songs.

– Watching the Olympics. The stunning figure skating pairs long program. The heartbreaking Men’s hockey final. The mad dash of ski Mountaineering. The zen of curling. The colourful opening ceremonies. The opera-filled closing ceremonies.

-Super Bowl Sunday, which was combined with the Husband’s birthday. Seeing lots of friends, eating food, and celebrating. The game itself – couldn’t tell you what happened there. We had the Olympics playing upstairs while the game was downstairs, so I kept floating between events.

-Our Zojirushi hot water boiler. Best new addition to our household. Hot water instantaneously.

-Some warm days – going outside without being all bundled up.

-The 9 year old getting his first library card.

-Two more snow days. One I wasn’t working so I hung out with the kids. The other I had to work, so we paid the 14 year old to watch her siblings. It is kind of amazing not to have to worry about what to do with the kids on a snow day when both the Husband and I have to work.

-Lunar New Year – pineapple cakes, pomelos, and an excuse to get together and eat dim sum with friends.

-Lunch with a friend from college.

-A chill mid-afternoon hangout with two other families. There were sword fights and K-pop dance routines and grown up conversations.

-The 6 year old’s kindergarten performance of Arf!

-Happy Hour with the stage management team at a new-to-me restaurant with $1 oysters during happy hour. I love oysters.

-Watching the 14 year old play basketball.

-Elisabeth’s FIG Club, which encouraged us all to find joy in moments of gratitude during February – such a delight to read everyone’s FIGS.

-Starting rehearsals for a new show. The feeling of homecoming as we finally got down to rehearsal after six weeks (or really, a year) of turmoil at work. Gathering to do work that is familiar to us despite all the changes. I keep hearing the phrase “Flying the plane while building it,” and it did feel like that often. But, you know… when we understand the fundamentals of what needs to be done, the rest is just logistics and figure-out-able.

-Also there’s a banjo in our show. It makes me so happy.

-Favorite meals cooked at home: Ethiopian food (shiro wat, yellow lentils, and fried potatoes, eaten with injera), and Shrimp tacos.

February Lowlights

-Starting to develop some lower back pain. I’ve always been pretty healthy and pain free, so this kind of chronic pain is really annoying. I can usually make it feel better by stretching, but getting out of bed in the morning is an effort for sure.

-Not exercising. I did my yoga daily but didn’t run except for 15 minutes on the treadmill at the rec center before the 14 year old’s basketball game. The lack of exercise actually has a lot to do with the weather, so hopefully I’ll do better now that the weather is getting warmer.

-Some confusion about the 14 year old’s path in high school, forms that we supposed to be filled out that weren’t. This was VERY stressful.

-Our office at work is very very very cold. Which is usually fine, but it was a cold month. It has something to do with the fact that the thermostat is located in the hallway and regulates a few different offices.

-A bunch of adulting fails including getting a ticket for expired plates. (This is now fixed.)

-Having to work a lot of evenings.

– Pretty sad news about plans for a cultural institution that had been my home for the past twenty years. It’s pretty shitty and devastating for so many people.

Yearly Goals – not great on some fronts, but it was a very work intense month:
-Taking the stairs – I don’t specifically track this, but I think I did okay on this. I did have to take the elevator at work for a while because my id badge was deactivated and that was the only way to access the stairwell from the lobby.

-Creativity: I only painted one picture (It was a birthday card, and I still haven’t sent it); I wrote 3 haikus. I spent some time on the piano – we ordered the easy piano version of music from K-Pop Demon Hunters, so that was fun.

-Did not do any crossword puzzles because our Washington Post subscription expired and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it.

-Museums = 0/10. Hikes = 0/12

-3 vegan dinners. (Goal is 5/month)

-Exercise Goals: Strength training 6x (Goal was 8x/month). Yoga daily – CHECK!

-Family Goals: Game Nights =0 (though we do sometimes have an ongoing chess game going on); Date Nights =0; Call my parents once a week = 3 times, so close;

-Not a lot of time outside – only 17.5 hours in February. That’s less than 30 mins a day.

Quote of the month:
One of the singers I worked with this month was a collegiate wrestler before he decided to become an opera singer. I asked him if there was anything from wrestling that he still applied to life and he said that learning to step up to the mat no matter the circumstances taught him the importance of showing up, and being persistent and doing what you have to do. Then he said:
“I always say: I never lost a match; I just ran out of time.” I love the grit and determination behind this idea – the sense that you can lose a match but still have the stamina and fortitude to be on a winning path.

Looking Forward to in March:
-More sunlight in our days and Spring!

– Running supertitles for the next opera. The most exciting part of this is that I get paid the union stagehand rate to run titles.

-No school day for the kids on 3/20. No plans yet but I have the day off, so maybe we’ll do something special.

-Getting my tax information to our tax guy.

-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.

-March Madness.

-Spring Break starts at the end of the month. No plans currently; I probably have to work some that week.

-Cherry Blossoms!!!! Peak Bloom is predicted for as early as March 31st, though most media outlets are predicting the first week of April. We shall see….

-Not being in rehearsal all the time, so I will be able to do all the things I’ve been putting off, such as:

Bake things
Make dinner
Put the kids to bed
Clean out the kids’ clothes and prep for Spring
Run (this is more about the weather than my work schedule, though)
Game nights
Taking walks in the warmer weather
Paint, play piano, journal
Go to the grocery store
read books

Grateful for this Week:
-The stagehands, wardrobe crew, and wig and make-up crew – for making our show look so good and run so smoothly. And the assistant stage managers. The theatre where we are working has very limited room backstage and the ASMs are working miracles of organization and timing to get everyone onstage when they need to be, wearing the right clothes, with the right prop in hand. In one meeting, I gave them a shout out, saying “They are running New York City in the space the size of a postage stamp back there.”

-Cue lights! What are cue lights? They are lights that are hung around backstage that I use to indicate when a cue should happen. I turn on the light when the crew should be in “Standby” and turn the light off for “Go”. Most of the crew is on headset so they can hear me give the cues, but the cue light is also a good back up. Anyhow – when we first did a walk through of the theatre, we were told that they had ONE cue light. Well, this would have to go into the orchestra pit so I can indicate to them when to tune, meaning the crew wasn’t going to have any lights. BUT… the house crew at the theatre surprised us by purchasing a whole new cue light system! Hooray! It has SIX cue lights. (I only need five for this show.)

-My friend home from abroad. She and her family were in the Middle East (they work in the foreign service). They were sent home last week, given all the things going on. “Things” being the U.S. bombing Iran. I’m grateful that she’s home.

-That I didn’t lose my book. I had brought a book to read when I took the 14 year old to her voice lesson. And afterwards we went to a newly open cafe for sweet treat and to run lines. (It was opening weekend for the cafe and they were giving out free pastries!) Anyhow, I got home and realized my book was missing. I was in a bit of a panic because it’s a library book. But I texted the voice teacher and turns out I had left it at her house. Thank goodness.

-Panera Sip Club. Panera was running this deal where you could get 3 months of Sip Club for $3/month. Usually it’s $14/month. For $3/month, you could get all the coffee/tea/fountain sodas/lemonade/ice tea that you wanted. I think technically it’s limited to one every two hours. It’s not something that I would usually sign up for, but there is a Panera across the street from the theatre – it is in the Student Center (we’re performing on an University campus), and open until 11pm. And it’s tech, when I usually have more caffeine than normal to function/ pick me up during a long day. So I signed up and getting my cold Sip Club beverage is a nice excuse to get out of the building.

-Speaking of which – I’m grateful for getting to work on a University campus. I’m finding there’s something really special about university campuses – the students rushing here and there in non-homogeneous crowds: the squares with places to sit, even though we’re in the middle of the city; the sheer number of coffee shops and fast restaurants; the statues that greet you every few blocks. There’s just a youthful, hopeful air that I find energizing.

-Getting to drive home with my work BFF. We have a tradition of commuting together on opening night so that she can drink at the party and I can drive her home. It’s kind of our version of a friend date to run errands – we drive home and chat and catch up because even though we work down the hall from each other, the past few weeks have been intense and we’ve mostly been talking about work logistics when we cross paths.

-The snack box at work, which someone keeps stocked with chocolate, cookies, and other sweet and savory snacks.

-Freezer soup, for being a quick and easy thing to take for dinner.

-Kids being quiet. I took the 14 year old to school one day and when I came home it was eerily quiet in the house. I peeked through the two little kids’ door know and saw:

Yes, the door knob is missing. We removed it when the youngest was two because she kept locking herself in the room by accident and we didn’t have a key.

What We Ate: The Husband made dinner every night, since I wasn’t home in the evenings all week. I ate mostly leftovers at work.

Monday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos. This is the most requested type of Taco for Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Dumplings and green beans

Thursday: Zucchini Boats.

Friday: Pizza! I was actually home this night. The Husband made a pickle pizza and we ordered two pizzas from one of our favorite pizza places. We watched Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior. I don’t know how this movie came across my radar – it was released in 2006 on Disney Channel, but I only heard about it this year. How is that possible? Asian representation was so non-existent at the time, I feel like it must have gotten a lot of buzz in the community, no? (To be fair, I didn’t have a tv in the early 2000s and this was before you could stream everything.) Anyway, the movie was pretty much everything you would expect from a Disney movie, with some hilarious martial arts sequences thrown in. I don’t know that I would watch this more than once, but it was a fun and charming movie.

Saturday: Indian take out.

Sunday: Leftover Indian take out, tortellini with red sauce, and green beans.

Well, that’s the week that was. And the month that was. Here the weather is almost summer like, all sunshine and warm rays. Not sure how long it will last, but I’m going to try to soak it up this week.

FIGS Week #4

Between rehearsal and having to make slides for a supertitle gig today, this past week has had very little margin for breath or things outside of work and parenting. I had planned to write a February recap post, but it didn’t fit in the schedule this week. So maybe next week. Or maybe not since this is tech week.

BUT, it is the last week of collecting FIGS for Elisabeth, so I wanted to at least write about this weeks’ gratitudes.

One of my biggest FIG this week was this recital that I did supertitles for Sunday night.- so many things brought me joy and made me feel so lucky that I get to do this gig

The recital program itself was one of my favorite recitals I’ve ever worked on. The entire program was in English – Copland’s Old American Songs, a set of songs based on poetry of Langston Hughes, a set of songs set to Shakespeare, and one of my favorite song cycles – Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel, based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. English art song is my jam. I know that’s super nerdy, but there you go. I love that stuff, the elegance, the restraint, the tuneful melodies, the ways the words and music all make sense to me.

One thing that makes working on surtitles for an all English program so wonderful is that yes, I’m working on music, but I’m also working with poetry – like I literally get to read poetry for my job. How cool is that? I think my favorite line from this recital program was from Shakespeare’s Fear No More the Heat of the Sun:
Golden lad and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.

or this one from Langston Hughes’ poem Song to a Dark Virgin:
Would that I were a flame,
but one sharp, leaping flame
to annihilate thy body,
Thou dark one.

“annihilate they body,” I mean that phrase gives me goosebumps!

Or R.L. Stevenson’s poem, Whither Must I Wander, the first stanza of which:

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather:
Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree,
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door –
Dear days of old with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

I think this poem would speak to anyone who has ever left home and returned to find it no longer the same.

Other FIGgy things from this gig:
-I got to take the Metro to work. This is a new venue for us, and it is two blocks from the Metro. I could have driven, but I avoid driving in downtown DC if I can help it. I got to take Metro, read my book, and not be stressed out by traffic.

-The venue itself had beautiful acoustics – the singer’s voice rang clearly and warmly thought the hall. I got to operate the surtitles from the back of the auditorium so I could hear everything live. Usually on this gig, I am stuck in a booth somewhere and the sound is coming through a speaker.

-The singer and pianist did such a great job. The baritone has one of those beautiful velvet baritone voices that you just want to crawl into. I left the recital feeling really uplifted by the music and the singing. Isn’t Music amazing?

-The two encores – one was a song called “Going Home” which, if you are familiar with the Largo from Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, is adapted from that tune. The song is, as you can tell from the title, full of nostalgia and weary wistfulness. The second encore was an aria from The Ballad of Baby Doe, which is an opera that is very rarely done, but which has a lot of significance for me personally and professionally, so it was lovely to hear a snippet of it. Usually by the time the encore rolls around, I’ve packed my bags and am ready to leave. This time, however, I stayed and was enraptured.

-Technology. So back in the day, before internet and what not, surtitles were done via slides – like those slides you put in a carousel and each opera took a whole stack of carousels. I was thinking that they probably didn’t do titles for recitals back then because it’s really expensive to do so many slides for a one off event. And I was thinking about all the technology that makes this job possible that wasn’t around twenty or thirty years ago. For example -being able to have the artist email me a pdf of the music, instead of having find a physical copy of the score and then photocopying it; PowerPoint – much sleeker than a whole bunch of carousels, but also super easy to make fixes or text alterations on the fly; Apple Music, so I can listen to the music ahead of time when trying to set cues; Forescore – the app I use to mark my scores, saving me the cost of having to print all those scores. I can’t imagine how/if anyone could do this job before these technologies that I might now take for granted.

-After the recital, as I was leaving I ran into an old colleague of mine. I didn’t think he would recognize me because it’s been over ten years since we worked together and he was much more senior than me in the company. But he recognized me and said hello and we chatted for a bit.

-People who come to voice recitals in general. As the audience was leaving, I heard one guy say to the woman that was with him, “How did you like your first art song recital?” She murmured something in response. and he said, “Yeah, people who come to voice recitals are a super specific subset of music lovers.” So I’m glad that enough people come to these voice recitals that the organization has been presenting recitals for 35 years.

It was a good gig. I was walking home from the Metro, I just felt an overwhelming sense gratitude that, even though I had to spend my day off from the opera working another job, I was pretty lucky that this other job brought me a lot of satisfaction and joy.

Okay – other FIG from the week, though –

-Elisabeth for organizing FIG-gy February and for collecting everyone’s FIGS. For everyine who shared FIGS. how lovely to share FIGS- your figs are my figs!

-The Metro doors opening again. Monday was another snow day. I’ve lost count, but it’s been enough snow days that school has been extended a whole week. Anyhow, since I didn’t have to drive the kids to work, I took the Metro to work. Just as I was getting off the elevator to the train platform, I saw the doors to the train start to close, and they shut just as I reached them. I resigned myself to waiting eight minutes for the next train. Then… the doors opened again! I looked down the platform and I saw the conductor leaning out of the window. He must have seen me and the other guy next to me and decided to let us on the train. I got on the train and got to work on time.

-a clean stack of freshly laundered underwear, just in time for tech week!

-The 13 year old walking down to the bus stop to pick up her younger siblings on an early release day, and then taking them to the park for an hour before bringing them home.

-Sleeping. I am really bad at going to sleep at a decent hour, but once I’m in bed, I don’t have any problems falling asleep. Sleep feels so good. I don’t know why I’m always avoiding it.

-Finding the pouch of my favorite pens that I thought I had misplaced.

-Sligo Creek. This is the creek that is near our house, alongside which is the trail/walking path. The other day, I was realizing that this creek is probably what led people to settle and built up a town in this area, and even before that, I’m sure Native Americans lived along it as well. I’m grateful that today the Creek, gives us a place for the kids to throw rocks and sticks and leaves in the water and watch them float away; it’s a place for ducks to swim, which we saw this week; it’s a place for us to take in nature despite our very urban lives.

The water is actually really disgusting, but still grateful for it all the same.

-The Husband doing all the things. Including filling the hot water boiler and cooking dinner all week. And for buying me a scone while he was out running errands.

-group chat with friends.

-The Kindergarten Concert, and being able to go. Thursday night was the Kindergarten music concert. The theme was dogs and each class sang two songs about dogs. The kids all dressed up like dogs with floppy construction paper ears. It was super cute. The 6 year old’s class sand BINGO was his Name, in French. And the whole thing was short – maybe only 30 minutes. I’m grateful that the concert was at 6:00pm so I could go over on my dinner break at work. It’s so hard to show up for things when I work the evenings, so I’m glad I could show up for this. Also grateful for elementary school music teachers.

-I came home one night to find this on the counter:

Yes, someone wrote “Kompost” on a covered tray of brownies…

-A sassy six year old. This exchange – exasperating at the time, but made me laugh afterwards: (For reference “Well, I want a pony and I can’t have one” is our standard response to our kids when they are being demanding and just need to wait.)
6 year old: I want hugs and kisses!
Me: Well, I want a pony!
6 year old: Go to a farm and get one!

(To be clear, I wasn’t being a cold-hearted mom and denying my kid hugs and kisses at bedtime – I had something on the stove and needed her to wait. )

-Laughing a lot at work. There are parts of this rehearsal process that have been challenging, but even still the process has been a lot of joy thanks to the rest of the stage management team. The other day, at our end of day meeting, one of them said, “I don’t remember laughing so much during a rehearsal process, and most of it has been in this stage management office.” I think we all just have the same sense of humour and the ridiculous things in rehearsal makes us laugh rather than enrages us. I mean the hours suck and the pay is crap, so if we aren’t having fun, why do what we do?

-Another work FIG- the prop crew for moving a bunch of things for us from one room to another. The room we were rehearsing in had to be used for something else, so after rehearsal one night we had to pack up all our props and furniture and move to another room in the building – it was past 10pm and we were tired, so I asked the prop head who was coming in to set the room for the next thing in the morning if he could move the last of our stuff and they did!

-When the eight year old declared, “I love nature!” as we were walking to school.

-A book that is just sucking me in.

Okay – that’s a wrap on official FIGS, but you know I’ll keep being grateful for things every day and every week.

–

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Day in the life + FIGS Week #3

It’s been a grey, chilly week. The weather has sort of matched my week – dark and unrelenting. It seems like every day this week was something on the home front. The kids were off Monday for President’s Day and it was also my first day of rehearsal for a new show. School was closed again on Tuesday. Not sure why; it was Lunar New Year, but I’m not sure if that was the reason. Wednesday was Ash Wednesday – I worked late, but the husband took the kids to Mass. Thursday we had a site visit for the theatre where we’ll be performing in a few weeks, so that made that day extra long. Friday – Friday felt like a regular day. So I decided to do a “Day in the Life” post based on Friday, February 20th, 2026. More on the below.

Over all, though last week I just felt as if I was doing a terrible job at adulting. Here’s a list:
-I received a W-2 for a job that I realized I had never been paid for. Now I have to write that company and ask them where my fee is. And the job was a year ago, so I feel stupid to not have realized that sooner.
– I opened the bills for this month and was shocked by how high they were, only to realize they were that high because I forgot to pay them last month. Ugh. I think in the brain fog of jet lag in January following our trip to Taiwan, I just… forgot.
-my lower back hurts. I’m very lucky to be pretty healthy and free of ailments, so this constant lower back pain that I had last week was a new experience for me. Not sure what it is. If I make sure I stretch in the morning and try not to sit too much, the pain is usually gone by mid day. But in the morning, getting out of bed is more of a ginger effort that I’m used to.
-The to top it all off… I had gone to downtown DC for that site visit and miraculously I found parking on a street without meters. I was shocked that this street had free parking, so when I saw a parking enforcement agent across the street, I asked her if there were meters on this street. And she looked a me impatiently and said, “The meters are on the other street.”
I was running late, so I said a little prayer for having good parking Karma and headed to the venue.
A few hours later, I get back to my car – which in and of itself was an ordeal because I couldn’t remember where I parked and my friend was with me so we walked around the blocks a few times before I found it. I told my friend as we walked about finding free parking and the parking enforcement agent. We finally find my car and my friend says, “It looks like you got a ticket after all.” And my hear sank with disbelief. She looks at the sign and says, “I don’t know why – it clearly says two hour parking here.”
Greatly annoyed, I look at the ticket. Friends, I got a ticket because my tags were expired. In fact, they’ve been expired for two months.
I shouldn’t have talked to the parking enforcement agent.

Also – I would like to churlishly point out that in Maryland when you get a ticket, they put it in an envelope so that you can mail back the payment. They don’t do that in DC. I guess it is easier to just pay it online, but the principal of the matter….

Anyhow, there are some weeks when the whole adulting thing is just too much for me, and last week was one of them. It’s fine – it will all be fine. Nothing is life altering – it’s just all annoying and the last thing that I want to deal with.

But… on to my Day In The Life Post. This was what Friday, February 20th looked like for me:

6:15am- alarm goes off. I only recently started using an alarm to wake up in the mornings, because I wanted to get my mornings started earlier. Without an alarm I usually get up at 6:45am, so I started with 6:30 a few weeks ago and this week bumped it even earlier. I go back to sleep for a few minutes because I had been at work til 10:30p the night before and I was tired.

6:30p- out of bed for reals. Bathroom. Glass of water. I’ve been trying to get up early for some quiet alone time, but this morning the kids were up before me:

I make myself tea from my brand new water boiler. I’m loving the water boiler. It dispenses water at the push of a button, keeps the water hot all day, and I can set it the night before to be at the right temperature for tea when I wake up. It holds four liters of water so I only have to fill it once a week.

There was conversation and chatter- I don’t see the kids or the Husband very much when I work evenings, so I try to make time in the morning to catch up.

6:50: finally get my reading time while the two little kids eat cereal. Reading Crescent City, still. It is a very long book. I complain to the 14 year old (who recommended it) and she says, “That’s why I listen to the graphic audio version.”

The two little kids eat cereal and chatter about kid things.

7:20am -Then I fit in my daily yoga- just ten minutes today. I’ve been having a bit of lower back pain recently so I’ve been choosing yoga videos that focus on that.

7:40am- how does it take 20 minutes to do ten minutes of yoga? I get dressed and then take the 14 year old to school. She usually walks the mile or so to school, but I offered to drive her today because it was raining pretty hard. Also the Husband was working from home today so I could leave the other two kids at home.

7:55 pm- back home. I pack lunches (kids and my own). Also make myself roti egg for breakfast. I bought a pack of uncooked roti from Costco- the kids don’t like it as much as the paratha from H-mart, but I think it’s tasty, especially if not overcooked. Here’s how I make roti egg:

Crack egg onto griddle. Scramble it a little, but keep it pretty flat. Pinch of salt. Or drizzle of sesame oil, hot sauce, curry powder. Whatever is tasty.
Put roti on other side of griddle
After 30 seconds, flip cooked side of eoti on top of egg and flip the whole thing over so that the uncooked side of the roti is on the griddle, with the egg on top. Cook thirty seconds or so, then roll the whole thing into a tube.

It’s kind of a cheater’s version of Taiwanese dan bing (egg pancake). The two little kids, despite already having breakfast, ask for roti egg too. Good thing it’s fast to make.

My lunch:

brown rice w/ sweet potato puree and a boiled egg; yogurt with berries; snack box (grapes, cheese, triscuits, cucumbers slices); string cheese; trail mix; cut up carrots and veggies. napkin wrapped around sliverware.

While I make breakfast and lunch, we watch the Ski Mountaineering on the tablet. This is Skimo’s first year at the Olympics and I found it fascinating. The athletes sprint uphill on skis, then take the skis off, and strap them to their back, and climb stairs! And then they get to the top and rip these skins off their skis – the skins give them traction for the uphill sprint – and ski down. The whole thing takes less than four minutes. It’s exhausting to even think about.

8:30p- I sit down and eat my breakfast. Finally.

8:57am- the shoes and socks alarm goes off, indicating it’s time to atart heading out the door.

9:11am- arrive at parking lot on trail and walk up the path to school. Notice how high the water is in the creek because of the rain. The rain has stopped for a bit, but the kids still insist on bringing their umbrellas. My kids are obsessed with umbrellas and use any slightly damp occasion as an excuse to use their umbrellas. On the way up the path, run into another parent that I know. He used to work for USAID, so we often commiserate about our similar work situations.

9:30am- I usually take a walk after dropping the kids, but I had a new stage management team starting today so I head in early to allow time to pick up donuts to welcome them. There is a place near work that makes amazing donuts, and they’re vegan! This is the only picture I remembered to take of the beautiful donuts:

10:00am- meet and greet with new stage management team and my big boss.

11:00am- I spend the rest of the morning catching up on email. I send a company wide email welcoming this new stage management team, also noting that it is twenty years to the day that the Stage Manager started with the company. I love that. We both started here as interns, one year apart, when we were in our twenties and fresh out of school, and now we have houses and mortgages and a dog (him) and children (me).

12:50 pm- my brain is mush. Stop at the bathroom. Take a picture because I like my outfit today:

From head to toe: Orange beanie (Duluth Trading Company). Ottoman sweater from Free People (I love this sweater, but I never wear it because it is white. But when I put it on, I am always struck by how sophisticated white looks). Uniqlo Puffer Vest (ubiquitous fashion item for me from Hallowe’en until Easter pretty much). Red Dress from Wool&. Blue legging from Duluth Trading Company. Rain boot – I think they are Bogs.

Go for a walk. Admire the funny sign and cute small town vibes of the area where I work:

About ten minutes into my walk I get a text that our laptops are here! This is very exciting. We’ve been working on our personal laptops for six weeks now, ever since the company shake up. We still don’t have access to printing, but small wins are huge at this point.

2:30pm- In rehearsal. We finish staging Act 1 and then run it. We’ve spent three days putting the first act together one musical number at a time, and it feels really good to put the whole thing together and see what it’s like from the top of the overture to Intermission. We got some new props for rehearsal today:

5:30pm- Dinner Break, just as the sun is setting. I love that we have windows in our rehearsal room so I can see the sunset:

I send a text to my team with this picture, which is the order of the numbers we are going to review in the evening’s rehearsal.

During dinner, we do the jigsaw puzzle:

6:45pm – Dinner break is over. Back to rehearsal. We spend the evening putting the dancers and Supers (non-speaking roles) into Act 1.

This is the view from where I sit. On the travel alarm clock is a Post It reminding me when I have to release certain groups of people from rehearsal. I have to write it down and put it on the clock or else I will lose track of time and if I don’t release people in time, it will sometimes cost the company money. Timekeeping in rehearsal is very stressful for me.

10:00pm – Rehearsal is over for the day. The stage managment team gathers to go over the notes from rehearsal, which I type into a report and send out. It’s a lot of notes like “So and so needs a pocket…” “Change this word to that word” type of things.

10:45pm – walking out of work. I give my colleague a ride home. She came directly from another gig and didn’t have time to drive to us from her home, so she doesn’t have her car and has been taking the metro to work. We finish work so late that I give her a ride home. I’m loving the ten minutes we have to chat in the car on our drive.

11:10pm – home. I sit in the car for a little bit, scrolling – I find I always need a minute alone before I go into the house. I should perhaps go for a walk around the block instead of scrolling – that might be better for me.

It’s a clear, cold starry starry night. I pause in our front walk to breathe the cold winter air and look at the stars.

11:30p – I go inside. Put my stuff down. I notice that the dinner dishes are still on the kitchen counter. The Husband had texted me earlier that night to say that the youngest kid had been vomiting, so I’m guessing they just left the dishes for later while they dealt with the vomit. I go upstairs, give the kids kisses while they sleep, change into my sleepy clothes.

I’m tired and little hungry, so I snack on some cheese, cold cuts, slathered with dill pickle mustard.

I load the dishwasher and wipe down the counters. I don’t mind doing this late at night because I know when I’m not home in the evenings, there is a lot on the Husband’s plate and this is one small thing I can do for everyone.

12:15am – I read a little bit to try to wind down and end up falling asleep in my reading chair.

1:00am – I shake myself awake, brush and floss, and head to bed.

And that’s the day! It was mostly a pretty typical work day, though I’m not often at work for twelve hours so this one was longer than usual.

Grateful for This Week – FIGS Week #3. (Shout out to Elisabeth for encouraging people’s ray of gratitudes.) I felt like I struggled to find FIGS at the end of the day this week. I do remember feeling wonder, delight and gratitude in many small things, and in the moment thinking, “Oh that’s such a good small FIG!” But when it came time to remember these small things, at the end of the day when my brain was fried, I was tired to recall what brought those small moments of joy to me. So, rest assured – there were quotidian FIGS last week. I know in my heart they were there, even if my brain didn’t hold on to them.

But the FIGS I did hold on to:

-Our new Zojirushi water boiler came two weeks ahead of schedule. Just in time for a week of chilly weather. I’ve used it several times a day to make tea. No more waiting for the water to boil! The kids have also started using it when they make ramen.

-The stage management team on my show. They make me laugh. They catch things that I miss. They are damn good stage managers. Also – one day I was really really late to rehearsal – I had forgotten I had to take the 14 year old to voice lessons and miscalculated how long it would take to get to rehearsal from there. The other folks on my team started rehearsals without me and kept the room going. I’m really thankful that I work with people that I can trust to run a room.

-The Olympics. What a fun two weeks of watching people doing things really really well. We watched the gold medal hockey game live on Sunday morning- I always root for Canada in hockey and was so sad for them not to get the gold. AND did you see all the opera at the closing ceremonies? Seeing and hearing all the greatest hits of Italian Opera gave me such delight.

– Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes for Lunar New Year. From Costco(!). Pineapple cakes are a pastry with a shortbread cookie type exterior around a thick pineapple jam filling. I love pineapple cakes, but they are generally only available around New Year. I was so surprised to see them at Costco three weeks before Lunar New Year. I should have bought more than one box because when I asked my friend to pick up another box a few days before New Year, Costco had already moved on to stocking goods for other holidays (Eid. Passover.) These were some of the best pineapple cakes I’ve ever eaten. I took the box to work and shared them with the cast and it was fun to share a bit of something I love with everyone.

-Finding hearts in every day places:

I snapped this picture as I was leaving skating lessons with the 9 and 6 year old. They look so sweet sharing an umbrella, but not two seconds before, one child refused to share, saying the other child had a waterproof coat on and didn’t need an umbrella. I reminded them to be kind to each other and they stopped squabbling and shared the umbrella. Which is when I noticed the skating bag had settled into a heart shape.

-Along those lines – I’m grateful for the inane chattering conversations my kids have with each other. I feel so lucky that all three of them get along most of the time. Sometimes they will get into tearful yelling fights, but then they have a bit of time to themselves and are back to being real tight and when I ask if they’ve made up with each other they look at me like, “What are you talking about? Why would I argue with my amazing sibling, my favorite person in the world?” I know you can’t guarantee the future, but I hope they will continue to be there for each other their whole lives.

-My snow boots that keep my feet warm and dry.

-My Bed Is My Island. The 14 year old can be … reclusive. She really really loves her room and her bed. Some weekends, she emerges only for basketball games, church, food, and to go to the bathroom. So sometimes, we will knock on her door and ask if we can come in. And when she says yes, all of us – me, the Husband, the two younger kids – will pile together on her bed and play “The Bed is an Island.” It’s what a director friend of mine used to call those days when she didn’t have to be at rehearsal, but still had to prep for the next day at work so she would gather her computer, books, and scores, and just settle into a day of working from bed. Anyhow, in our version, we all pile into bed with the 14 year old and laze around. Sometimes we watch whatever YouTube videos she is watching, sometimes we just chat. This week, we ran lines with her for her school play. My Bed is My Island always starts as a mad scramble as everyone finds their comfy place in the family pile; usually at some point we settle into some configuration and it’s actually a quite comfy tangle of limbs and bodies. Often someone falls asleep. Often it’s me. The pile lasts anywhere from two minutes to an hour, and it’s just such a cozy way for us to hang out as a family of five without feeling like we have to drag the 14 year old from her bedroom. These moments are what I want the kids to remember of their childhood when I am gone.

Looking Forward To:
– My parents are coming to visit in April!

– These next two months are busy, but I have a few happy hours on the calendar with various friends, and I’m looking forward to catching up with friends.

-Summer. The Husband and I mapped out our summer and I’m excited for pool time and maybe camping and hanging out with my kids. I’ll be done with shows by the beginning of July, so the summer looks to be pretty relaxed.

-Using my new hot water boiler. Yes, I realize this is the third time I’ve mentioned the water boiler in my post, but I am seriously so very excited for this new addition to my family. I get up in the morning and say to myself, “Oh look! The water is already hot!”

What We Ate – I pretty much worked every night this week, so the Husband did the majority of the cooking.

Monday: Butter chicken. This is the famous Instant Pot Recipe from Usha Pitre. I made it before I left for work – the Husband finished out the recipe and made rice to go with it.

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos.

Wednesday: Smoked Salmon and bagels.

Thursday: Kung Pao Chicken.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made it) and Hamilton. It was the 9 year old’s turn to choose the movie, and he chose a re-watch of the musical.

Saturday: Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

Sunday: Dumplings and green beans.

Welp that’s the world here – I hope you have a FIG-gy week

Do you set an alarm in the morning? When was the last time you got a ticket? Any adulting fails lately? How about adulting wins?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Things I track and FIGS Week #2

Scaling mountains of ice and snow to get to school.

The week ended with weather that was positively spring like with temperatures in the 50s and, more importantly, blinding sunlight and clear blue skies. I am of the opinion that the sun and sky have more effect on me then the actual temperature. So much light and colour, the world can’t help but to feel like it is warming up. I left the house without my bulky winter coat a couple times and it feel so freeing! But this coming week looks to be a little on the grey side. Today (Sunday) was oh so rainy and chilly.

Anyhow, it’s been a week back in the office. It was fine. Everyone is overwhelmed and doing three jobs, but morale is high and we are all excited to be doing opera again. I want to remember to carry this feeling and remember it when the show feels hard – we are so very very very lucky to continue to tell stories onstage for people.

Stephany had a post a few weeks ago about the how she tracks her habits and goals and I was inspired to write a similar post. I’m fascinated by the minutiae of other people’s planning/tracking, so maybe other people will be interested in my methods?

So my current planner stack features:
-Hobonichi Weeks for day to day planning. (this might get it’s own post some day…)
-Levenger Five Year Journal, which I try to write in every day, with varying results
-A moleskin notebook that I use to track my reading; I write books that I read, and a few comments on them. This isn’t always a moleskin- it’s generally whatever blank notebook I have on hand when I run out of pages in the last one.
-A Hobonichi Cousin that I use to track routines, life, habits, some longer form reflections.

This has pretty consistently been my stack for the past five or six years. Last year, I tried a different planner, trying to put the planning and reflection/tracking in the same book, but that lasted less then a month before I went back to my tried and true method. I’m mostly going to write about how I use the Hobonichi Cousin here.

First off – Meals, media, and time outside:

On the top I track tv and movies that we watch. A lot of these are family movie night movies. Hearts are things that I really enjoyed.
Below that, I write down each day what we have for dinner. If we eat out, it gets a pink dot. If it is a vegan dinner, it gets a green dot. If it’s a meal we made at home that went over really well, I draw a heart so that I can go back and remember what was a hit with the family and make it again.
The last section is where I track time outside – each box on the grid represents one hour. I started doing this when I was trying to do 1000 hours outside, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to that in one year, so I now just track to see what is trending.

The Weekly Spread – Here I time track, writing down what I did every day in 30 minute segements.

This was a very light week for paid work.

I have a loose colour coding:
Green = work that I get paid to do
Purple = unpaid labor and family time (ie chores, making dinner, driving carpool, hanging out as a family)
Orange= time that is just for me, where I ignore (or don’t have to think about) the kids or family
Blue = Sleep.
Also on the left hand side, I write the books that I’m reading.

This is the section i’m the most inconsistent in filling out; I find I have a lot of nebulous time that is not accounted for….

365 Day Tracker – this is where I log my daily yoga. Here I also colour code according to how much yoga I do – pink=10 mins, orange = 15 mins, yellow = 20 mins, green=25 mins, and blue = 25 mins. There is something really fun and satisfying about this page. I sometimes think I should track something else for 365 days, but I’m not sure what that would be.

Daily Pages – This is where I write longer reflections that don’t fit into the 5 year journal. When I travel, this is where I write daily travel reflections, gather ticket stubs and what not. If I go to a museum or see a play, musical, etc., this is where I write my thoughts about what I saw. If I need to do a larger brain dump to problem solve something it goes here. I write haikus here for my weekly haiku project.
These daily pages also have a blank page at the start of each month and that’s where I write my monthly highlights/ low lights/ lessons learned.

The Monthly Spread – This is where the bulk of my tracking is. The categories I track here are mostly inspired by things I learned when I took The Science of Well Being, a free course on Coursera that is also known as the Yale Happiness Course because it is taught by a Yale Professor, Laurie Santos. Each week of the course, Santos talked about one thing that has been scientifically proven to make people “happier”, and gives assignments based on that topic. I took this course during the pandemic and it was really helped me focused on little things that I could be mindful about that could make life feel fuller, especially at a time that was really felt like a stressful daily grind. A lot of what her findings show is that people are really bad at predicting what makes them happy- the things people think they want are often inflated in their minds, leading to disappointment if it doesn’t come about. People find the most contentment when they focus on personal connection and what is right in front of them.

January. The first eleven days are blank because we were in Taiwan/I was getting over jetlag/feeling overwhelmed.

I like tracking things here because I can write a little more on what each thing is, allowing for a bit more reflection.

So what I track here:
-Hours outside (yes, I know I put this in two places, but I wanted also to see how much time I was spending outside on a daily basis.)
-Gratitude: at least one thing I’m grateful for each day.
-Savoring: one thing I take time to slow down and savor each day.
-Connection: at least one person I connected with that day. Santos has a week where she talks about the benefits of positive interaction. Sometimes for me, this is a long conversation over dinner, sometimes it is small talk in the grocery line or just a text exchange with a friend.
-Brush/floss: Okay, this one isn’t from Laurie Santos, but I used to be terrible at brushing and flossing, so I started making myself check a box for it. I’m not usually a box-checker, but in this case it really worked for me. One check for brushing, one for flossing.
-Exercise – I take this to mean movement. So the daily yoga and any work outs or runs I do go here, but also if I take a walk at lunch time, go skating with the kids, etc.
-Create: Here I write if I do something creative that day. To me this means write a blog post, compose a haiku, play piano, spend time painting, cook a fancy new recipe – basically anything where I create something from nothing.
-Anticipation: I write something I’m looking forward to. This wasn’t part of Santos’ course, but I read a NYTimes article about how anticipation boosts happiness so I added it to the list.

Along the bottom I track some of the habits I want to do this year:
-Paint 26 pictures
-Write 1 haiku a week
-visit a museum
-go on a hike
-do the Post Sunday crossword puzzle every week.

As a side note, some things that Santos talks about which improve well-birng that I don’t track:
-Sleep. My sleep is shit. I’m working on this, but I’ve tried tracking sleep and tracking does not motivate me to go to bed earlier, so I stopped.
-Meditation. I’ve tried, Lord know I’ve really really really tried meditation. I just can’t figure it out.
-Acts of kindness. This one was really hard for me to do mindfully without feeling performative. Some days I feel like the kindest thing I can do is hug my children and tell them I love them every single day, so I try to at least do that.

So that’s my system. I’m not a box checker, as I mentioned, so I don’t necessarily do these things to cross them off the list. But I do find it useful to see what things I’m making room in my life for. If I’m looking at my tracking spread and I notice I didn’t write something in a particular column for several days in a row, I will make an effort to find time to do it. But also, it helps when I’m in really busy time of the year to remind myself that there are certain things I still manage to do, even if it is as simple as brushing my teeth.

Anyhow, speaking of creating – here are my paintings from January:

This was from our hotel room in Beitou, Taiwan. Picture’s blurry because I didn’t actually take a real picture of this one and now I don’t know where it is….

The top picture is an exercise from Everyday Watercolor by Jenna Rainey; it’s a book of daily watercolor exercises. The bottom picture uses the salt technique where you sprinkle salt on wet paint to create a blotchy effect- it’s loosely based on a tutorial I found on YouTube on painting snowflakes.

Grateful For (FIGs, Week 2) – shout out to Elisabeth’s February FIGS collective, where she is gathering people’s gratitudes this month. These are some of my FIGs from last week.

-Libraries and printing. We aren’t fully set up with our IT at work yet, and I needed to print our music scores. So I went to the library to print them out. The process is so easy – log into the website with my library card, upload the documents and then go to any library and print. There is a thing where I have to have the librarians put a “fine” on my card to pay for the printing, but once I print the job, I pay off the “fine”. Also, the first 15 pages are free. This is such a great service.

-Sunlight in the morning. On Tuesday, I did my daily morning yoga in my bedroom instead of the basement. I pulled up my shade, and as I was doing my upward dog, I noticed that I could see pink sky when I had been used to the sky still being inky black at 7am in the morning. The days are starting to get longer.

-On the other side of the day, I walked out of work at 5:30pm one day and it was still light outside. After all those days of being stuck at home with the snow, the longer stretches of daylight are like fingers of hope and growth and the end of the tunnel.

-Our tax guy. I had to fill out new tax paperwork as part of the transition at work, and I was so very confused by the form. So I sent my tax guy an email and he told me exactly what to write in. Thank goodness.

-Getting to watch the 14 year old play basketball twice -once for her middle school team and once on her rec team. Her face always lights up when she sees me at her games, and I hope mine does too.

-Getting to pick up the kids after school. That moment they get off the school bus lifts my heart. I hope I never get tired of my kids coming home.

-To that end – school bus drivers. Some of the roads still are barely passable because the snow has not been cleared out to the curb. Grateful for the bus drivers that navigate that and get our kids to and from school safely.

-That quiet sliver of time between getting home with the kids and starting dinner. A few times last week, the 6 year old and I got the watercolours out and made a piece of art or two. A relaxing transition from the work/school day into the evening.

-Crisp clean sheets to slide between after a long day.

-Birdsongs and fat robins hopping in the snow. Spring is coming.

-Leaving for school a little on the early side and not having to rush up the path. There was time for the kids to pause and throw sticks in the still frozen creek, to tromp through the snowier path to school, and to summit the ice mountain that still sits in the parking lot between our path and the doors to school. (see photo at the top of the post!)

-A quiet office before the rest of my team arrives. I try to get to work half an hour before the rest of the stage managers get in; I love the stillness of the office in the morning and the ability to knock off some tasks without interruption.

-The Husband for helping make a tough situation better. We found out this week that when the 14 year old filled out her high school choice form, she had forgotten to also apply for the high school program that she wanted. (It’s a program that allows high school seniors to take a full year of classes at the community college for free.) So she got assigned to the school, but not to the program. I have to admit that the whole process was kind of confusing; we had thought you filled out the interest for after getting assigned to the high school. We were wrong. There were tears. So many tears. And yelling. And despair. All the stages of grief. This program was the whole reason she wanted to go to the school. Well, the Husband did some digging and it turns out that if she goes to the school counselor in the first week of school, she can still fill out an interest form for the program. So all is not lost. Thank goodness. I’m grateful that the Husband was persistent and called and emailed until he got an answer on the issue.

Looking Forward To:

-Starting rehearsal this week. Ready to dive in.

-Lunar New Year. It’s Tuesday. I have to work in the evening so no big celebration for us (plus it’s Taco Tuesday), but I will wear red and I did buy pineapple cakes, so I’ll bring those to work.

-Just started this audiobook, a memoir of growing up in Derry as one of eleven children being raised by a single father. It’s funny in that stolidly ironic way. On of my favorite bits is that whenever anyone asks O’Reilly’s father how he managed to raise 11 children on his own, he says, “Well, which of them would you have me give back?”

-Also started reading this book – I feel like it’s going to be the perfect read as I wait out the last of the cold winter:

What We Ate:
Monday: Chinese leftovers from Super Bowl Sunday.

Taco Tuesday: Middle school tacos – basically ground beef tacos.

Wednesday: Curry chickpeas with scallion and cilantro. From Milk Street Fast and Slow, their Instant Pot cookbook. Eaten with rice and paratha. We’ve discovered this year paratha from the frozen section of HMart. You cook the paratha on the griddle and it’s magical. Vegan.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and The Hitman’s Bodyguard. This 2017 film with Ryan Reynolds as a protection agent (bodyguard) who is hired to guard a notorious assassin played by Samuel L. Jackson. The movie was hilarious, with Reynolds and Jackson in top notch bantering form. Greatly enjoyed this movie. There is a lot of swearing and shooting in it, though.

Saturday: Dumplings and green beans.

Sunday: We went over to a friends’ house for a casual afternoon gathering, and ate lots of hummus and baba ganouj and fruit and Valentine’s candy. It was a lovely time – the big kids and little kids played together, then the tween/teens put on music and started performing K-Pop dance numbers. At one point, one of our hosts, who is a musician, started playing Part of Your World on the piano and the girls did an improv dance – I think they were all some form of seaweed. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. But all to say, dinner was … undefined. I filled up on snacks so wasn’t hungry when we got home. Of course the little kids were, so I boiled some ravioli and doused it with olive oil and parmesan and that’s what they ate.

I hope you have a sunny week! We have a lot of evening rehearsals this week, so I’m girding my loins for that. But I’m excited to get started with rehearsals.

How/what do you track or record? How do you transition from work to home life in the evenings?

At the Top of the Hill

There was a moment a few weeks ago, while sledding- that moment where the sled is teetering at the top of the hill, a breath before gravity tips the sled forward and sends it swooshing down to the bottom of the hill. I’m sitting in the sled and that moment is fill of breathless anticipation. And dread. Some call it anticipation. But really it’s stomach churning dread.

Here’s the thing, I realized sitting at the top of the hill, though. When I’m in that sled teetering at the top of the hill, I look down and I see what is ahead of me. And there is one tiny path that is super smooth, and I know if I managed to go down that path, everything will be predictable, clockwork, as I expected. But all around that sliver of smooth clear path is lumpy bumpy snow. Snow with divots. Snow with footprints. And I know that hitting those spots will be jarring and even painful. It’s this not knowing what the ride will be like that makes me hate being at the top of the hill.

I was thinking about this moment a lot this week as I get ready to step back into the rehearsal room. I’ve been feeling a little off. There have been so many changes at work, and I feel as if I’m sitting in that sled, filled with dread, waiting to slide down the hill. I might be pushed, or I might push myself. Or gravity and physics might just do its thing and send me off before I know it.

This – perched at the top of the hill about to go down – is where I am today. I can see a path for the next few weeks where everything is frictionless and I avoid all obstacles, and at the same time I also see all the roadblocks and difficulties that lie ahead. And honestly, I don’t know until we get started if things will be nice and expected, or if I will hit all the potholes I see. And anyway, it’s more than likely there are bumps in the smooth way too because in the white sleekness of the path, the bright sunlight can hide all the bumpy parts. So there’s really no knowing. But there is fretting and resistance and reluctance.

I can try to steer to the narrow smooth sailing path. But, it’s a sled. It’s an imperfect vehicle and I can only do so much. Odds are – because of weather, weight, and physics – I will likely veer down the bumpy parts of the hill and all I can do is brace myself and try to keep myself (and the kids, and the show) inside the sled. And if we do fall out, I can just pick ourselves up and continue the journey, or carry the sled back up the hill to do it all again.

That moment at the top of the hill, though – it’s the worst and best moment. Teeth gritted, not knowing when the bumps will hit. But also knowing that if I don’t go tip down, I won’t know how amazing the ride will be.