Diane

Weekly recap + what we ate – More snow and celebrations

This was the Husband’s Birthday Week. We had take out of his choice. I baked scones – two kinds! I baked a requested cake. The recipe was from his mother’s recipe box and involved pearl clutching things like margarine and a box of icing sugar – no measurements needed. I had to Google that last one. Thank goodness I did. Apparently a box is one pound. I happened to have a two pound bag and had contemplated using the whole thing.

In these COVID times, an in person birthday gathering was not going to happen, so I organized a surprise birthday Zoom call. I guess one of the advantages of doing a birthday party via Zoom is that you can invite people from anywhere in place and time. In addition to family, we had friends from college and friends from where we are now all on the same call, some of whom were states and even countries away. Having such a cross section of the Husband’s life was one of the nice parts of having a Zoom party.

I wanted to come up with a way to make a Zoom birthday party fun and avoid the awkwardness of a gathering of people who hadn’t met before – the awkwardness potential potentially exacerbated by the Zoom factor. I hit upon the idea of playing Husband Trivia. I came up with trivia questions about Husband and encouraged everyone to bring questions too. I thought the game would go on for maybe 30 minutes, but to my delight almost everyone on the call brought a Husband trivia question and the call lasted an hour. There was much laughter and many fun facts about the Husband gleaned. I was so pleased with how it turned out. I’m not sure that it wasn’t the awkward gathering of random people that I had feared, but the Husband sure had fun seeing everyone and reliving life moments via trivia, so I count it as a success.

And with that, birthday season at our house was over for the year and we took the birthday banner down. From Christmas (Jesus) to the second week of February we celebrate a birthday every two weeks. (And then there is the outlier baby with the fall birthday.) Birthday season does feel a little relentless sometimes, having to plan so many back to back celebrations. But in the end, it does help cheer up the depths of winter to have something to celebrate.

The rest of the week was kind of up and down. I started another drawing class -I have a fair amount of excitement and trepidation going in; I’m looking forward to having weekly art projects, but at the same time, the syllabus seems a little advanced for me. I think I just have to be unafraid of making bad art.

Friday was a day off for the nine year old. I was again caught unawares of this day off. I think in the repetitive days, I sometimes forget to check my calendar. Determined to get outside, I packed some hot chocolate and snack bars and took the kids to a nearby nature center which had a couple miles of wooded walking trails. Babywearing in the winter is always somewhat bulky, so I chose not to bring the carrier or hiking backpack and just let the baby walk. Impressively, she managed to walk over a mile of the hike; I only had to carry her for the final stretch and then mostly to keep her from playing in the mud and water. The kids usually whine a little at the prospect of a hike/walk, but once they accept that this is what we are doing and they get out in nature, they find things to engage their interest. Like playing Three Billy Goats Gruff:

And finding vines to swing on:

The joy of discovering nature’s playground.

Friday was also Lunar New Year. I don’t really celebrate, but I did FaceTime with my grandfather in Taiwan. In past years, there’s always been either a Taiwan school event or the nine year old’s school has a performance, but… COVID. I realized that I’ve relied on others to remind me how to mark the occasion – most years I’m caught unawares when Lunar New Year rolls around. I think I want to get better at marking the occasion. Maybe not to the point where I make a Thanksgiving level meal, but noodles and dumplings and some other traditions might be nice. My parents did send me these really neat apples which were grown especially for the New Year with felicitious messages stenciled on. As you can see, the baby got to them before I could get a good picture, but they are really quite neat.

Just another excuse to post a cute baby picture. But the apple is pretty neat too!

This was also the week of the Trump impeachment hearings. That was definitely distracting and disheartening and took up way too much of my time and emotional energy.

I think I’m also still struggling with finding routine post quarantining. When we were stuck at home, a routine was easy and gave me a reassuring sense of structure. But now that we are back out in the world, there are, despite COVID, things that just creep up and need to be slotted in – book pick ups, dance lessons, errands, friends… I feel like I still haven’t found what the current rhythm is and everything feels a little freeform and hard to account for right now. I think I want to get back to tracking my time – that kind of accountability might be what I need to get structure back.

A funny thing happened the during the first day of art class. We were going around introducing ourselves and giving a bit of our story. And for some reason I didn’t introduce myself as an unemployed stage manager – I didn’t mention a career at all, just that I wanted to learn to draw and that I had three kids running around. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards, but it felt like somehow, I’ve started identifying myself with where I am now, and not what I used to be. I’m pondering that one…. because a year after we packed up our post its and 0.9pt pencils, I’m not sure what claim I still have to my occupational identity.

Fun food things:

Simplify: I made muesli for the first time. And a light kind of went off in my head. I used to make granola, but this is much easier. It’s like granola without adding sugar. Or having to bake it. Basically assemble what seeds, nuts, and dried fruit I had in the pantry, dump it in a container, and …. breakfast! I’ve been eating it steeped in boiling water and sprinkled with berries and it’s been a perfect cold weather breakfast.

Simplify II – I went to pick up some dumplings for the Husband’s birthday lunch. It turns out our favorite dumpling place has started selling frozen dumplings in bags of 40. I immediately bought a bag. I had been wanting to make dumplings for a while, but it is such a lot of work – fun work when you can gather people and have a dumpling party, but rather onerous when you have to do it all yourself. Well, for $25, I can have like homemade dumplings, without the homemade effort. Win!

What we ate:

Saturday: Take out from Full On – sandwiches, wings and onion rings.

Sunday: Cauliflower Curry and Lemon Rice with peanuts, recipes from Fresh India.

Monday: Sushi Take Out and birthday cake.

Tuesday: Fried Tofu with Braised Bok Choy, with farro.

Wednesday: Miso Mushroom Pasta from Milk Street Fast and Slow.

Thursday: Beef Noodle Soup from Milk Street Fast and Slow (cookbook of the week!). Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (Niu rou mian) was a staple of my childhood, but for some reason it took a fancy cookbook from New England to prompt me to make it for myself. It was a pure bowl of comfort and nostalgia.

Friday: pizza (homemade – really tasty whole wheat crust from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone) and Mary Poppins.

Books Read January 2021

More books read than normal, but I think most of the were leftover from last month; the first three books I finished in the first ten days of the new year.

Disoriental by Negar Djavodi – 9h 51 m. The story of an Iranian family who flees to Paris and the journey of the youngest daughter to self discovery – finding her way as an immigrant and as a gay woman. This is one of those books that I started without reading the back cover – it had been on a list of recommended books in translation – and as a result I wasn’t quite sure where the book was going for a while. The book jumps back and forth in time and was a little slow to get started for me, but once the threads came together it coalesced into a really touching story of family and immigration and identity. I was really drawn to the idea the narrator struggles with how to find a place in a new country without losing her heritage: “Because to really integrate into a culture, I can tell you that you have to disintegrate first, at least partially, from you own”

The Mothers by Britt Bennett – 5h 18m. I picked this one up after reading the Vanishing Half, Bennett’s bestseller from last year. This novel is about three friends and the ebb and flow of their relationship and how friendships can unravel even while being intertwined. Absorbing story.

How to Eat by Mark Bittman and David L. Katz, M.D. -(hard copy, so no time tracking) I’ve long been a fan of Mark Bittman’s super simple and accessible approach to feeding ourselves. This book, taken from a New York Times column that he and Katz wrote, cuts through a lot of the buzzy food research to distill what we do truly know about healthy food choices. The takeaway: eat a diet primarily of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, beans and nuts. I liked how they really talked about the flaws in scientific research; most food news is so sensationalist and there are no magic foods. They also make the point that the standard American diet is so detrimental to begin with that even minor changes to replace processed food in one’s diet would be a marked improvement. Reading this book really simplified healthy eating for me.

On Being 40(ish) edited by Lindsey Mead – a collection of essays about… being 40 (ish). Some of the essays spoke to me more than others. The existential angst of privileged people (of which I am sometimes guilty) gets a little tedious to read sometimes. But some standouts: Catherine Newman’s essay of friendship told through clothing was a beautiful tribute to her friend. Sophronia Scotts piece “I don’t have time for this” was just the anti-wallowing slap in the face that I needed. Jessica Lahey’s writing about mentoring at risk youth had some good lessons about connecting and the importance of a moment. “If I’m present enough,” she writes of her students, “and empathetic enough, an attosecond can expand to contain multitudes, to encompass their painful past and shape our possible future together. ”

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel – audio book narrated by the author. In this book the famous sex therapist examines cheating in an attempt to understand why people cheat, and perhaps lay out some lessons to be found in infidelity. She examines the motives and emotions behind people who cheat and people who have been cheated on and people who have been cheated with. One thing she says, that really struck me, was that people these days don’t usually cheat because they are unhappy, but rather because they think the could be happier. Of course there was something a little titillating about reading a book that gets into the weeds of infidelity, but ultimately for me, it made cheating just seem like something that took a lot of mental and emotional work.

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn – 6h 27m. Contemporary romance about Meg, an in demand hand-letterer and the uptight financier Reid who helps her get over her creative block. Sweet and funny. I thought Reid was a perfectly lovely hero in the Mr. Darcy mold. Actually I found him more interesting than Meg and at times I wish the novel weren’t in first person narrative so I could be hin his head more. (side note: why are so many fiction written in first person? It’s on my list to find some non-first person novels to read). The details about hand lettered signs and the stationary business were a fun deep dive.

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

Saturday we went to the park for the first time in weeks. The four year old took his new scooter and the nine year old rode her bike. At the park the kids climbed and ran and swung and hopped. We worked on teaching the four year old how to pump his legs on the swing. There was sun and 40 degree weather (which feels warm these days), and fresh air and a change of scenery and neighborhood dogs playing catch in the tennis courts.

It proved a good thing because it snowed the next day. Beautiful white snow! A thick blanket of it, covering everything.

The snow gave us several days of fun, despite the fact that distance learning has done away with the idea of a “snow day”. I’m a little bit in mourning about that, though one of the teachers had a virtual snow day that consisted of the students throwing wadded up balls of paper at their screen. IRL (as the kids say these days) we bundled up and went outside and built snow forts, shaped snowmen, made snow angels. The kids even helped the grown ups shovel. The four year old found a “snowchair”- a divot in the snow bank left next to our drive way by snow plows. The baby discovered the joy of eating snow… she would find chunks of snow and carry them around in her hand, chomping it like a snow cone. The nine year old delighted in throwing snow balls.

As for me- I loved the quiet and the cold. After the kids went inside, I would just stand outside, letting the cold envelop me, the snow muffling the sounds of outside and day. It was like being in an isolation chamber. And I could breathe and for two minutes not be responsible for anything except my own breath.

Afterwards, there is a quiet satisfaction to seeing all our snowy boots lined up next to the door and our snow suits hung in a row to dry in the bathroom.

The listservs exploded with snow gear for sale and free, a lot of it posted as “like new” and “barely worn”. I guess a lot of people had stocked up in snow gear last year. And then it hadn’t snowed.

I’ve been doing some more cardboard building. When we got our new stove in December, we acquired a new appliance sized box for projects. Also- when the stove was delivered, I asked if they had other boxes and they left a refrigerator box as well. Around the end of the year our cardboard box UPS truck finally collapsed and went out for recycling. For weeks the four year old has been requesting a FedEx Truck while the nine year old wanted an ice cream truck. And because he wanted to give me a challenge, the four year old requested a door in the back that went up and down. Well. I guess I was going to get serious about carboard box building so I did some internet research to find better ways of attaching cardboard together and found these screws designed for cardboard box building. Between those, packing tape and brass fasteners, I feel like I have a decent variety of tools for cardboard box construction, and my cardboard box construction game has been upped.

The back door on the truck is manually operated, but it does go up and down! It took a bit of making and testing and trouble shooting, but a fun challenge.

Also on another day, I made the four year old and airplane as well. There are many modes of transportation inside our house.

Despite the snow, the hyacinths have started to poke their green heads up. Perhaps the warmer weather has confused them. It is so deceptive to see them push their way through the ground so soon. I hope they survive.

Hearts found in nature:

We did some kitchen reorganizing and, taking stock of what I was using and not using these days, I packed away our lunch boxes and lunch containers. I realized that we haven’t really used them in a year and they were taking up a lot of accessible space that would probably be better occupied by things we actually did use. I’ve been seeing articles about pandemic fashion and how that has led people to minimize, and I feel like that’s what I did this week with our kitchen too. When I had pulled out all the containers and stacked them, they seemed like a lot, but I guess back when everyone was packing a lunch, I often felt like we didn’t have enough.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I really got into making these window clings from an art kit the nine year old had gotten for her birthday. Last spring, it seemed like window art was a huge source of solace and connection. Our neighorhood had various scavenger hunts where people would put things in their window for people to look for on their walks – there was a Bear Hunt and a rainbow hunt. I made all sorts of pictures and designs and one day, I asked my husband what word we should put in our window. And he said, “Resist.” It seemed appropriate at the time: resist implied health and resilience.

Making the word was a lengthy project – each letter took two to three days to make becuase you had to make the outline and wait for it to dry, and then add the colour and wait for that to dry before you could peel it and stick it to the window. But back then I was eager for tedious projects that required patience. It seemed at the begnning of the shutdown all we had was time and ourselves.

RESIST has been on our window for almost a year now. Some days, the late afternoon sun comes through the window and projects the word onto our walls. The colour has faded somewhat, but the word still shows up loud and clear. A message and a reminder. I’m contemplating adding another word to it. Not sure what, though.

What we ate:

Saturday: Brisket and Salad. On of our good friends has a smoker and he brought us some of his smoked brisket.

Sunday: can’t remember. ugh. Maybe take out???

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

Tuesday: Potato curry and a fennel apple salad from Fresh India.

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow), green salsa (from Bittman’s VB6 cookbook) and coconut lime cilantro rice.

Thursday: Cod soup based off a recipe from from Milk Street: Fast and Slow. This was actually a vegetarian soup leek, carrot and potatoe soup from the Milk Street Instant Pot cookbook. I threw in some cod for protein. And just used onions for the leeks.

Friday: Pizza (home made – dough from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone cookbook) and Once Upon a Mattress – the 2005 television version of the musical. Charming and sweet. The four year old would get up and dance during the dance numbers. The double dance routines going on was adorable.

On savoring dishes

So I’ve been slowly working my way through “The Science of Well Being” course – also known as the Yale course on happiness. Each week one is given some “rewirements” – scientifically proven actions that increase happiness. I’ve been tracking my progress on these rewirements in my notebook.

Some of the categories are: savoring, gratitude, exercise, sleep, meditation, connection, kindness. This last one has been pretty hard to practice during COVID times, but the others are quite COVID friendly. Practicing and tracking how I do on these things has given me a certain intentionality in my week, if only in retrospect some days.

A couple weeks in, however, it occured to me that I wasn’t doing very well on the assignment to “savor” something. I seem to be bad at realizing in the moment that the moment is worth savoring. So last week I decided to pre-select something to savor every day. That way, I wouldn’t have to wonder as I went through my day, “Am I savoring this?” “Is this a good savoring moment?” “Should I have savored that more?”

In an attempt to find some joy in a somewhat tedious chore, I chose to savor doing the dishes every day.

Doing the dishes is somewhat of a mental hurdle for me – the stack of plates, the work ahead of me so…. obvious in every scrap of stuck on food – it all seems like a huge amount of effort. But I decided that I would try to embrace the chore and attempt to turn it into an immersive activity.

Turns out, there were indeed some satisfying aspects in doing dishes: The scalding heat of hot water, encasing my hands in spa-like warmth through my rubber gloves – almost like the paraffin wax dip at the Tallgrass Salon. The steam that rises from that very hot water, fogging my glasses but also bringing a welcome warm moist heat on a cold dry day. The satisfaction of scrubbing and scrubbing and seeing the pot get cleaner with each pass of the sponge. The mountain of suds, growing as the pot fills with water. Listening to music as I work – some nights show tunes, some nights Brahams.

(Side note – Some nights, truth be told, it’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, or some such middle grade audiobook. I bribe the the nine year old to help with post dinner clean up by letting her listen to audio books. I try not to resent the aural intrusion into what I want to consider my time. Sometimes the twenty minutes at the kitchen sink is the only time I have to immerse myself in listening and it’s hard to give up my podcast/ music time to Judy Blume. (Gah! that sounds so petty! I mean it’s Judy Blume!) Ultimately, though, I usually decide that giving up my listening time is a reasonable price for the nine year old’s cooperation. Maybe I should invest in bluetooth headphones. Or maybe I should just revisit my childhood and the novels of Judy Blume. )

Then there is the satisfaction of taking my gloves off and seeing that the pile of dirty pot and dishes that had been on one side of the sink now sit dripping and gleaming on the drying mat on the other side. The joy and satisfaction of our bottle drying rack – one of the few third baby purchases that fill me with joy. (Another side note: I mean this bottle drying rack is amazing – it’s vertical and takes up a third of the counter space that our other bottle racks had taken up. And it’s so easy to use and clean. When you look at bottle drying racks, they all kind of are the same and are cesspools for mildew and general crud. Then there is this one that kind of blows the paradigm apart. Get it. Even if you don’t have babies. It’s also great for drying ziploc bags. I mean I’m not making any money off this or anything- I just love it; one of my top ten baby purchases.)

I won’t say that savoring dishwashing makes it any less of a chore, but it does help take my mind off how tedious it can be. If I’m going to have to do something every day (or, switching off with the Husband, every other day), I may as well find little moments of mindfulness and pleaseure in it. Which I guess is part of the science of happiness.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Birthday cake and back to the world

The three year old is now a four year old.

Four years ago, the country was trying to find its footing under a new administration. There were protests and shock and anger. And into this, a little boy was born. It’s funny, for the past four years, his life and the Trump administration were somehow intertwined in my head – I counted his years as I counted the years until the next election. And now here we are, the administration he was born into has turned over, though its ghosts still linger; the little boy is still here and growing.

But he is his own person, of course. A imaginative, curious, happy-go-lucky little guy. He loves trains, trucks, dancing to his own music, singing at the top of his lungs, books, and going for rides in the car. He drives his sisters crazy, but then gives them big hugs too. I love watching him puzzle out the world in his quiet perceptive way.

A couple days before his birthday, a box arrived at our door step:

Inside was a cake and a tin of cookies. I mean a cake in the mail!! How decadant is that?

The gift receipt indicated that the cake was to celebrate the two older kids’ January birthdays. And the receipt was unsigned. I did some Holmes worthy thinking – the birthday message used the diminutive form of the nine year old’s name, which very few people still use – but finally wrote to Milkbar customer service and asked them. Turns out it was my cousin in LA.

I remember when my cousin was born – and what a cute round eyed baby she was. I have so many great memories of hanging out with her when she was a baby. And now it’s certainly a little strange to realize that my baby cousin is grown up and does adulting type things like send birthday cakes during a pandemic to cheer up a couple of kids. She is an awesome person. And so are her parents (my uncle and aunt) – I’ve always known that they would raise pretty decent kids and it’s turned out to be true.

In other news this week, the baby was evaluated by the County Infants and Toddlers program for some developmental delays this week – primarily speech. It turns out she is on track in most developmental areas, except expressive language and socio-emotional development. The two areas are closely related, though. All our children were quite late to talk, so I’m not terribly concerned. Still, the baby was evaluated to have the verbal skills of a four month old, which is much more delayed than the other children were. It was a little discouraging to have the results broken down like that. However, she is so bright and capable in all other areas, that we are taking a “wait and see” approach, and declined to pursue an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) with the county.

In normal times, if we refused services we would have to get back in the cue and be re-evaluated down the line if she didn’t show developments progress. But given COVID times, the County Infants and Toddler program has a new system where you can check in with a case worker once a month and they will put together an IFSP when you feel ready for it. I perhaps tend towards the “low to no” intervention end of the scale, but I’m really grateful that the county provides these services for when we are ready.

The whole family went to get COVID tests again this week. It was probably not completely necessary, but we did it anyway. I took the two younger kids and had planned to go to the drive through testing site, tossing the baby into the car sans coat and shoes. Of course it was raining. And of course the drive through site wasn’t open. Change of plans! I took us all to a different testing site and had to carry the baby in without shoes or a coat. I definitely not one of my best moments, but oh well. We went in, got our nasal swabs – without fuss or crying from any of the littles! – and went home. Two days later:

Thank goodness.

We had quarantined the appropriate amount and then some, so we were pretty sure we would be negative. But it was reassuring to have the confirmations – if “not detected” can be counted as reassuring.

It’s been a slow emergence from quarantine. After almost three weeks of having gone no further than the end of the driveway on trash day, getting in the car was a little strange. I was almost reluctant to do even that, but I did have errands to run and the two older kids had their yearly check ups.

I was texting with a friend and saying how there is something nice about quarantining in that it’s been giving me an excuse to delay some bigger life decisions, and instead some days I’m just focussing on getting the family from meal to meal.. And my friend wrote back:
“I think what you are doing/ thinking makes total sense… See this thru w/ your family first and worry about anything else later.”
It is probably not sustainable – I mean I do have to file the taxes and figure out what I’m doing with my life, and we have some decisions to make about childcare and schooling and potential summer plans. I feel the the vaccine looming, like a pin that holds the dam in place, the deluge of decisions to be made roaring behind those floodgates.

Well… speaking of meal to meal…

What we ate:

Saturday: Tortellini with Sausage and Red Sauce. Cut up carrots and cucumbers on the side. With birthday cake.

Sunday: Oven Fried Chicken – the nine year old cooked, from the America’s Test Kitchen Young Chef’s cookbook. This was really really tasty – breaded with Corn Flakes. I made some garlic green beans to eat on the side.

Monday: Grain Bowl Marinara with Cannellini beans and Spinach from Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before 6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Cauliflower Korma with burnt raisins from Fresh India. I found some chapatis in the freezer and we had these on the side.

Wednesday: Sausage and Peppers (the Husband cooked)

Thursday: Leftover Soup day. Realizing we had amasses many containers of leftovers in the fridge, I declared that we would have “eat down the fridge” dinner.

Friday: Pizza and The Peanuts Movie. I was going to make pizza, but then we had car issues so we ended up getting take out. The movie was fine, though I kind of missed the hand drawn charm of the original Charlie Brown movies.

Haikus for January

Sliver of evening
glows pink gold through bare trees
As church bells toll.

Black poet, yellow coat
Elegantly eloquent
Sowing words of hope.

On a cold night,
Across a blazing bright moon
Clouds billow like smoke.

Lunch: cheese, cracker bits,
rejected sandwich, cut fruit,
this morning’s tea, cold.

Tangled limbs reach high
Cartwheeling through conifers
Bare in winter light.

A decade passes.
Seems long on paper, but feels
like no time at all.

Icing crust of snow-
Translucent on golden grass-
Crunch under my boots

White blankets bounce light,
Cutting through the winter grey.
Brightly fills the room.

Weekly recap + what we ate – new beginnings

Week two of quarantine. (Clearly there is a backlog of blogging here despite not being able to leave the house…)

Technically the state released the baby from isolation, but the rest of us still have another week. I was a little tickled that the State gave her a “return to work” letter for her employer

I have to admit, Quarantining hasn’t been awful or earth shattering. And honestly, as someone who is easily stymied by decision making, getting to stay home, and having many options taken off the table has been a little too comfortable. Sometimes I think that when Margaret Atwood’s Gilead comes to be, I might not fight too hard. Which is terrifying. But I have to admit there is something comforting about not having to make decisions.

It has been a lot of time in the backyard. We kick the soccer ball around- even the baby manages to walk into it and send it a few feet forward. The kids play swords with sticks, so far no one has gotten seriously hurt. We have dance parties in the backyard.

On Inauguration Day, we had CSPAN on all morning. Usually the schools here take that day off, but not this year- something about the way it timed out so close to MLK day. The nine year old did have her regular Wednesday half day so we were able to watch the ceremony on TV.

I can perhaps be a little cynical about politics and its perpetuating of a staid status quo, but I did find much in Wednesday’s inauguration to give me hope that needles are moving. To me, President Biden, Lady Gaga, Garth Brooks- they weren’t the story of the day. The momentousness of the day was Kamala Harris, Doug Emhoff, Amanda Gorman, the masks worn, the guy who wiped off the podium between speakers – that is to say the things that were unfamiliar to me. And the Obamas, I will admit. They looked pretty happy and fabulous.

I don’t know if my kids will really understand the significance of Kamala Harris as Vice President, how much her presence can redefine who people picture as the leader of a country. And in turn what that presence allows people, especially children, to think are possible career paths. I know we tell our kids they can be anything they want to be, but representation matters too. Diversity matters. Not being the “other” matters.

Fun things:

We got a new kitchen stool. Which seems like such a pedestrian thing to be excited about, but a) quarantining = slow news, and b) it’s one of those rolling library stools. If I could fill my house with library equipment I would be so happy. I’m trying to convince the Husband that we need a library cart now. The best moment was leaving it in the kitchen for the kids to discover, and the three year old and the baby trying to figure out what it was. They stared and stared at it. Finally, the three year old exclaimed:
“You stand on it!”
It made me ridiculously delighted.

I’ve assigned the nine year old lunch duty on Wednesdays when she has half days. We borrowed the America’s Test Kitchen’s Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs from the library and she’s been picking from that. This week she made tostadas. I turned on the oven and supervised, but she did most of it herself. It is definitely difficult to be hands off- I’m a bit of a control freak in the kitchen. But I keep telling myself that the stress of watching her cook is worth the sense of achievement and confidence she gets from being in the kitchen.

At the back of my five year journal, I keep a list of things I’ve learned to do.
2020’s list:
-spatchcock a chicken
-sew masks
-spin yarn using a drop spindle
-make corn tortillas
-replace a window screen
-change a bike tire
-make English muffins.

At the end of last year, I decided that I wanted to learn something that would take a bit more time to master – something that would take practice, rather than just one attempt after watching a YouTube video. (I tried to learn some programming last year, but that didn’t take. I might still try again this year). So I asked my friend Eleanor if she would teach me to juggle.

Eleanor and I were in college together and in addition to be a talented musician and clever wordsmith, she could figure skate and juggle – sometimes at the same time. So she agreed to teach me over Skype. I’ve spent two weeks juggling one ball and now have moved on to two balls. At first, I juggled mandarin oranges, which got a little messy. This week, I dig through my scrap fabric bin and made some juggling balls. I went down an internet rabbit hole trying ot figure out what the best method to make them was. I think this is the over-researcher/ delayed decision maker in me. Eventually I decided to make simple four panel balls and fill them with rice, though some of the more dedicated juggling sites said that was a bad idea for filling. I figure this was a case of done is better than perfect and if the rice doesn’t work out I can always make another set.

At the recommendation of the pediatrician, we are having the baby evaluated for some developmental delays. Because everything is virtual these days, and the evaluators can’t make home visits, they requested some videos of the baby doing her thing. So I spent a fair bit of time following her around filming the random baby things she does. Turns out she spends a great deal of her time: 1) eating, 2) climbing on furniture, and 3) taking things out of containers and strewing them all over the house. I am trying to be very zen about this and savor this age of discovery, but it’s really hard when I’ve had to put the pump parts back into the box for the umpteenth time in one morning. On the other hand, I think her ability to put small objects (duckbill valves) into jars (milk collection bottles) bodes well for her score in fine motor skills.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pork tenderloin and green beans with milk shakes for desert. I’ve always managed to overcook pork tenderloin, but this time I made it on the grill and told myself that a little pink was okay and it turned out beautifully.

Sunday: Roast veggies (sweet potato, parsnip, potatoes) with kale quinoa pilaf. Though I used farro instead of kale.

Monday: Pumpkin (squash) black eye pea curry and tamarind rice from Meera Sodha’s Fresh India. This meal was complex and required spinning many plates in the kitchen to prepare, but actually quite simple to execute as long as you kept things moving along.

Tuesday: Black bean taco salad. Topped with leftover pork tenderloin cubes.

Wednesday: Cabbage fried rice.

Thursday: Lentil Soup. I labelled the leftovers “Nurse’s Lentil Soup” because the recipe came from a Washington Post article with the headline: “This lentil soup is so good one nurse has eaten it for lunch every workday for 17 years”. It’s a bit of an overstatement. I think it says more about the nurse than about the soup, to be honest. Though the soup definitely improved when eaten as leftovers – as soup often does.

Friday: Pizza and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Home made sheet pan pizza – crust was a little thick – I think I got distracted and made it with too much flour. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was a fixture of my childhood. The kids thought it was hilarious.

Books Read December 2020 + 2020 media diet favorites

Blame it on Christmas stress, blame it on endless scrolling of news… I don’t know, for whatever reason I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done in December. I did get most of the way through Braiding Sweetgrass, which was an amazing read, but then had to return it to the library, so it didn’t make the December list. But hopefully soon.

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya – 6h 15 m. I can’t remember why I had put this book on my holds list, but I didn’t read the “back” before I started, so it was a little slow to start for me, as I tried to figure out what story was being told. It ostensibly tells the story of Ultima, a mystical elderly lady who comes to live with the family of Tony Marez, a six year old boy. I really liked how this book explored how Catholicism and a more pagan spiritualism can be so divisive yet also can coexist. One of my favorite passages:
“But from my father and Ultima I had learned that the greater immortality is in the freedom of man, and that freedom is best nourished by the noble expanse of land and air and pure, white sky.”

How to Stop Losing your Sh*t with Your Kids by Carla Naumburg – 3h, 26m. I think I had higher hopes for this book, but it turns out it was not so much about how you relate to your children, but how you manage your own moods and frustrations. Basically the take away is: stop being so distracted, put down your phone, and get more sleep. And while these are definitely things I am working on and it’s a worthwhile message, I was hoping for a book with magical solution for getting my kids to pay attention to what I say. I’m not sure that book actually exists.

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson – Audiobook read by Bahni Turpin. This was an engrossing novel about Marie Mitchell, a young black intelligence officer who is sent to an African country to assist with a covert plan of American interference. Part spy novel, part romance, part family drama I was utterly absorbed. I almost wished I had read the book rather than listened to it.

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana by Maryse Conde, Translated by Ricahrd Philcox – 6h 54m. We’ve been getting The Week magazine and I alway like reading the book recommendations. This title came to me off a list of recommended works in translation. The book tells the story of twins Ivan and Ivana as they travel from their home in Guadalupe to Africa to France, their lives diverging and converging yet always intertwined as they try to figure out how to live a good life. The language is very spare, but elegant and descriptive. The characters lack introspection, which sometimes annoys me in books, but I didn’t mind it here. It’s as if these characters were inadvertently caught up in a hurricane of human events and never had time to process them. Wondrous and tragic, indeed.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger – audio book read by Scott Brick – The Depression era story of four orphans who escape a Native American reform school and set off on an epic journey to find home. The main character had an almost cliched inability to trust other people which was a huge plot motivator, but also somewhat frustrating for me. But aside from that, this was a good story, well told – spun with enough tension to draw the listener/reader along, and peopled with complex, flawed, but surprisingly sympathetic characters.

2020 Media Recap

I probably read more last year than ever before: 50 books, and 18 audiobook. I think this was partly the pandemic, but I also tried really hard to read more rather than scroll. Around the summer, I put some time limits on my phone so that if I picked up my phone after 10pm, the easiest thing to do was read. I also liked tracking how much time it really takes to finish a book – usually 6-10 hours. Realizing the actual time commitment of a book, helped me realize that it is absolutely something that I can fit in and finish. Maybe in 2021 I will pick a truly lengthy tome.

Anyhow, some highlights of media consumed in 2020:

Books:
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai – deeply touching story which makes you think about what we have time for and what we don’t in this life.
And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O’Connell and A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk- essays on motherhood that really resonated with me
Shrill by Lindy West – dissecting what is funny and how to stand up when things aren’t.
No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder- eye-opening book about domestic violence as told through many lenses.

Some delightful picture books we read this year:
A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin – a little boy and the joy of jumping on beds.
King Arthur’s Very Great Grandson by Kenneth Kraegel- a six year old descendant of King Arthur goes in search of adventure and finds surprising things.
Green Pants by Kenneth Kraegel – the joy of doing our own thing, but also the hard choices of doing things for others.
So many more, but I didn’t keep track….. Maybe I should start doing that….

Theatre:
Jane Eyre from The National Theatre – my favorite book, brought to stage in such a dynamic, brilliant, and passionate production.
The Metropolitan Opera nightly streams. So many great operas and their At Home Gala was particularly fun and insightful.
Opera Lafayette’s The Blacksmith filmed on a ranch in Colorado. Whimsical, inventive and a does of happiness.

Podcasts:
On Being with Krista Tippett – such contemplative, exploratory and wise convresations – particularly this episode with Jane Goodall and this one with Bryan Stevenson.
Elaine Paige on Sunday for the unabashedly sentimental music of musical theatre.
Chompers – brilliant idea: a two minute tooth brushing podcast for kids.

Weekly recap + what we ate – positivity

A week that started off with much excitement.

The eight year old turned nine!

Crazy to me to think that nine years ago, I was 33 weeks pregnant and went in for a routine OB check whereupon they determined that my fluids were low and sent me to the hospital. And three hours later, the OB sliced me open, pulled out a baby, and we were suddenly parents.

And now that 4lb 8 oz baby is a creative, expressive, energetic, empathetic nine year old.

Since we couldn’t have a birthday party, we asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to watch Star Wars movies all weekend. So that’s what we did. Interspersed with a couple chores and some time running around outside. We didn’t watch every Star Wars movie ever, but we did get through quite a few – Rogue One, Solo, Empire Strikes Back, The Phantom Menace, and The Force Awakens.

At the beginning of the week, there was a call on our landline. Usually we let those go to voicemail, but the caller ID said “MD COVID” so I was pretty sure it wasn’t spam.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hello. This is ___ from the Maryland Health Department. Is this the parent of [Baby’s Name]?”

“Yes, this is.”

“We’re calling to follow up on [baby]’s positive COVID test result….”

**** mental record scratch in my head ****

So that happened.

The lady on the phone was quite nice and very understanding of the fact that one really cannot isolate a 15 month old on their own, so the whole family would be quarantining. I am also somewhat fascinated that they give you a letter for your school or employer that outlines the dates of your quarantine and dates when you can re-test.

Things I’ve googled since talking to the health department:
“difference between quarantine and isolating”
“quarantine protocol”
“CDC COVID quarantine guidelines”
“how to sew juggling balls”
“building with cardboard techniques”

We are completely mystified since the rest of the family had negative test results. Apparently false positives are very rare, so I’m just assuming that the baby did indeed have COVID. The rest of us have been completely asymptomatic, so there is always a possibility that she did get it from one of us, and then the virus passed out of our system before we got tested. We’ll never know. It is frustratingly mysterious.

In essence, life continues somewhat the same as before, only we don’t go to the playground or on hikes, and we’ve finally had to figure out grocery delivery. Thankfully we also have some friends who went on a grocery run for us to our favorite small grocery store. I’ve had to miss winter walks with my college friend, but we’ve had lengthy phone dates.

I have never been so grateful to have a backyard.

Also very grateful for the new oven.

Other Fun Things this week:

Since life is very much focussed at home, I’ve been doing a lot of baking. After three weeks of uncertainty, my sourdough starter started to bubble and rise again. It had been three weeks of dutifully discarding and feeding with an anemic bubble or two of life to show for it. I was starting to wonder if I had killed my starter. I tried to make some bread with the inert starter around the new year, but the dough did not rise despite 24 hours in the “proof” setting of the oven (another feature of the oven which made me really excited). I had killed my starte once before, and in that case the pink scum on top of the starter left no doubt that the science experiment was done. But this time the scant bubbles I saw every morning of this starter kept hope alive. This week, though, some corner turned, and the starter came to bubbly, frothy life. I baked two batches of bread and fresh baked bread brought us much joy.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Busy Toddler preschool curriculum. It is pretty low key – just 30- 45 minutes of activities a day. Some of the activities are pretty hit or miss in terms of keeping the 3 year old interested. This week, though, tongs and pom poms were surprisingly engaging for both the littles.

Our kitchen window faces east, and it’s getting to the time of year when the morning sky is gorgeous as I make my first cup of tea. Definitely something that falls into the “savor” list:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pasta and meatballs with Garlic Bread. A dinner request from the (now) nine year old’s birthday weekend. I made turkey meatballs which I then threw into the InstantPot with noodles and tomato sauce. (Love this method for making pasta and meatballs because everything can be made in one pot.)

Sunday: Chipotle. Second dinner request for birthday weekend.

Monday: Tombstone Pizza and Brownies. With cut up carrots. The (now) nine year old’s birthday dinner request. She also made most of it herself.

Tuesday: Roast Salmon and Green Beans with coconut rice. This was really tasty. The salmon was just salt, pepper, olive oil roasted at 400 for 15 mins. The coconut rice was from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow. Basically you make brown rice and when it’s done you stir in coconut oil and torn up nori pieces. The green beans were from Meera Sodha’s Fresh India cookbook and featured sauteeing the beans in sesame seeds, ginger, garlic and tomatoe paste. It was really good and easy – a high taste to ease of cooking ratio!

Wednesday: Tofu Ground “beef” with noodles and pickled cucumber, radishes and carrots. A riff on the ground pork and rice noodle dish from Dinner Illustrated.

Thursday: Leftover Chili (The last of it)

Friday: Homemade pizza and Bears, the Disney Documentary – beautiful. Also I was really fascinated by the footage during the end credits that showed how the film crews were able to get close to the animals.

Five Years Realizing Life

2016-2020 on the left. 2021-2025 on the right.

For Christmas in 2015, my husband bought me this five year journal. In it, he wrote:

Happy Christmas! I’m giving you this journal on December 25, 2015. I can’t wait to hear abut all the wonderful adventures you’ve had in 2020!

When I started this journal in 2016, we were in Taiwan, our first (and so far only) trip there with the 8 year old, who was then three. As we were were waiting for our flight out of SFO we received news that my grandmother had passed away. The trip became quite a larger family reunion than we could have imagined as all my aunts, uncles and cousins came back to Taiwan for the funeral. It was quite possibly the last time I was together with all my uncles, aunts and cousins on my mother’s side.

I think about where we were then. We were about to experience our third miscarriage in two years, and the idea of a second child, let alone a third, was seeming quite remote. That was the year I got to work on a Ring Cycle, that pinnacle of opera-dom. It was my last year working summer opera.

And here we are, 2020 just having ridden off into the sunset, taking with it times that I couldn’t have imagined, even if I were the type to speculate about the future.

Sitting down with this journal and a cup of hot tea has become a morning ritual whenever I can manage it. Over the years, my writing and pen tips have gotten smaller as I try to cram more and more thoughts onto the lines assigned for that date in that year. (I now use a 0.38 Pentel Energel Pen. Also periodically the Muji 0.3 coloured gel pens, but those tend to bleed, as I found out after an unfortunate incident with the baby and the aforementioned cup of tea.) As I write I like to glance at where we were in life the year before, then two, three, four years before. Often there are striking parallels – like coincidentally meeting up with friends on the same date two years in a row.

I tend to write about the day past, reflecting on what happened. I try to think of the whole day because so often what sticks in one’s mind is how the day ended. There have been many a day that have ended miserably that started wonderfully and I know I can’t let how a day ends define the whole day.

All in all, there are more entries that I thought there would be, even if, some days there is just a hastily scrawled “Tech.” or “Two chorus day”. No further explanation needed.

Even though sometimes there feels like there is a same-ness to life, that life has a certain repetitive rhythm, no two entries over five years are identical. Sometimes I do record an event that is recurring (case in point… “Still no sleep for baby”), but that event is nestled in a whole day that is different from the one before it. Similarly, the usual rehearsal/ tech / performance routine is only repetitive on paper; each show has its own challenges and moments of triumph. And when I look more broadly, at the weeks rather than the days, I realize that even when I feel stuck in an interminable grind, things do change and life does eventually move on to the next thing.

There are also empty entries. My second trimester pregnant with the baby is largely blank, for example. But this in itself is telling- I was horribly tired and working two operas back to back. I don’t need to have written it down to remember how I would steal away to take a nap in my car on breaks between rehearsals. Or how I didn’t tell anyone at work that I was pregnant again, even as I worked a gala in a slinky sequined dress and heels while six months pregnant. This I remember acutely without having written it down (and now, ironically, I’ve recorded here for posterity).

Such big things I do remember – glamourous once in a lifetime galas, births, deaths, family reunions. Also, surprisingly, the ranting venting entries of many frustrations all read surprisingly familiar. At some point in the past five years of looking back on journal entries, I’ve come to realize that I tend to remember how I felt about things more than what I did; the little things that annoy me still tend to annoy me. The rage and anger I felt about certain things have perhaps not been let go as much as I had hoped.

On the other hand, it is the mundane details of my day to day that that I have difficutly recalling and thus am most grateful for having a recorded. For some reason my memory of the daily grind is ephemeral. Looking back at the 183o (+/-) entries documented over five years really brings back for me the smaller moments of life- the long walks, the chilly days, what we ate, friends we saw. Sunshine. Playdates. Paperwork. Library visits. Naps. Snuggles. The banal. It is these things that Emily Webb speaks about in Our Town when she says:

“Do human beings ever realize life while they live it – every, every minute?”

Emily Webb is right. The anger and negativity, while definitely therapeutic to write down, is not what I want to remember. Realizing life I think is in those little moments of joy and security. I recently read a definition of bliss as “a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive and conscious.” (David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, quoted in Kieran Setiya’s Midlife). I don’t want to be inauthentic about what I write in my journal, but I do think that I need to remember to record the bliss as well as the blech – to balance writing for the moment and writing for my future self.

A couple of months ago, Levenger was having a sale on their five year journals. I scooped up three of them. At the time it seemed quite indulgent. These journals are beautifully made- the paper is smooth, the linen covers are durable, the binding is sturdy- and they are not cheap – though I suppose if you look at cost per entry, they are actually quite affordable. The Levenger sale definitely prompted me to stock up, hoarding them like toilet paper. When they arrived I looked at them – decadently packaged in an elegant silver box and wrapped in a soft cloth. And it struck me that I just purchased something that I intend to use in the year 2035. There is something comforting in that. I can’t predict whether or not my child will sleep tonight, or what the three year old will next have a meltdown about. But, if all goes according to plan, in 2035 I will write something in the last of these three journals that I bought in 2020. Suddenly I feel like I didn’t buy enough. There is a whole other lifetime beyond 2035.