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.
One of my resolutions this year is to go hiking once a month, and once a quarter to go on a new hike. We kicked it off this year by going to Cunningham Falls. While the hike we chose was short in length, it ended up having some challenging rocks to scramble over. The falls themselves were a little more crowded than we were comfortable with, so we just glanced at them and continued on. Definitely looking forward to re-visiting them in more precedented times. As our usual, we brought hot chocolate for the hike. The baby even walked the last half mile while clinging onto the Husband’s hand.
Rocky Climb
Most of the week was pretty low key. The baby had a fever. Normally this is something we would just roll with, but given.. the times… we called the pediatrician and scheduled a telehealth appointment. It was a pretty inconclusive appointment – basically chances were pretty slim that it was COVID related, but there wasn’t a zero chance. But on the other hand, it wasn’t anything that seemed to warrant going to the ER. The pediatrician said if we were quarantining at home, a COVID test was probably not necessary, but if we wanted that information, there was no harm in having one. We decided to get tested. The Husband and the eight year old went to rapid testing and had their results back – negative – by the end of the day. The two little kids were too young for rapid testing so we went to County testing site, which had a five day turn around, though it has taken longer than that for our results.
I have to say, the nasal swab was briefly, yet intensely uncomfortable. There might have been some eye watering on my part. The two littles, on the other hand, nary made a peep. “She is so quiet!” said the man who gave the baby her nasal swab.
So a quiet week.
Until….
On Wednesday, I turned on C-SPAN, and for a moment, I thought I was watching the next season of The Handmaid’s Tale. Then I realized, that the destruction and violence I was seeing was really happening. I feel like I am still, days later, trying to wrap my brain around what is going on. I wonder what people are so afraid of that they would literally destroy the center of American democracy. There are, of course, the lies they are being fed by the megalomaniac who is our President. One can’t discount the power of his words, but at the same time, I wonder what the new administration represents for some people, and why it makes them so fearful and angry. The whole thing makes me incredibly sad and I cannot believe this is what is happening.
Other things this week: – I’m taking this online course called the Science of Well Being (also colloquially known as the Yale Course on Happiness). In it, the professor talks about what research has discovered about what makes us happy. Part of the course are “rewirements” or rather concrete and mindful exercises to help you put the research into practice. So far they include things like: Savoring, Gratitude, Connecting with people, Acts of Kindness, Exercise and Sleep. I realized at the beginning of the year that I need to be a little more purposeful in tracking my attempts at rewirements. So I’ve started a page in my notebook to track and be purposeful. I’ve realized that Acts of Kindness is really hard in these pandemic times… that column has been regrettably pretty empty.
-Speaking of Gratitude: I am really grateful for the people who organize and work at the County COVID Testing Sites. It is free, easy, and outside. The day we went to get tested it was drizzling lightly, and the people working the testing center were out there in their rain gear, doing this work that I think is really important.
-My sourdough starter is not as robust as I expected, but I did get a batch of pancakes out of them. I’ll keep feeding it and hoping for the best. It isn’t skunked or anything, just…. anemic. I did try a recipe for apple and cashew stir fry as a topping for the pancakes and thought it was a great idea. The recipe is from Mark Bittman’s VB6 cookbook, continuing my Bittman kick lately.
Breakfast.
-I’m trying to be more purposeful with my time, especially where the three year old is concerned. He is great at entertaining himself, but he runs feral a little too often. So I’m trying to plan one or two activities for him throughout the day. This week, we made sourdough crackers and did some painting.
-I also attempted to make some Barbie clothes for the eight year old this week. I was hoping that she would be interested in learning how to sew, but she turned out to be more interested in having me do it. Oh well. I managed to make a wrap blouse and a peasant skirt. I’m always surprised when things I sew resemble something – like it’s some weird alchemy that thread and needle and cloth can transform into clothing. I don’t have an affinity for ironing, and I suspect that my projects suffer for that.
Not bad… I mean the sleeve ripped out after a day, but I think I could make another one.
What We Ate – another week without our produce box and eating up/ eating down what we had.
Saturday: Indian Take Out
Sunday: Kabocha Apple soup and 1000 hole crepes. Soup recipe based on this one, but I threw in a russet potato that I had laying around as well. The crepes were something I saw while leafing through old copies of Saveur magazine. Making them involves semolina flour and letting the batter rest for two hours, but all in all they were quite simple to make. The end result was stunning and delicious.
Monday: Mujadara and Morrocan carrots. The carrots were from the cookbook Cooking at the Kasbah, a cookbook featuring Moroccan recipes. We’ve had this cookbook for a while, and while I’ve enjoyed looking at it I’ve been a little intimidated by the recipes. This year, though, I’ve resolved to cook more from the many magazines and cookbooks that are on my shelves, and these carrots were a simple foray into this book. It just involves boiling the carrots in herbs and a touch of sugar (I used honey) until the carrots are glazed and just barely tender. It was a good preparation for some older, slightly bitter carrots that we had sitting around.
Tuesday: Leftover Chili w/ scallion corn muffins
Wednesday: Tofu and collard green with Soba noodles. Eat down the pantry/ fridge meal.
Thursday: Black and Pinto Bean Soup. Simple – saute onion, celery, carrots and then add broth/water, bay leaves and oregano, and about a cup of dried pinto beans. One pintos are soft, add two cans black beans, tablespoon chili powder, and about a teaspoon of chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. (I used a mix of canned and dried beans because that’s what we had in the house). Eat, topped with cilantro, avocado, and sour cream (or in our case yogurt cut with a bit of buttermilk – see above: “what we had in the house”)
Friday: Pizza (take out. I was going to make pizza, but we were out of yeast), and Star Wars. It is the eight year old’s birthday weekend and she has requested to have a Star Wars marathon so this was the first night of what will be a weekend of viewing.
It’s been a pretty low key week. There was no school, but the Husband worked Monday and Tuesday, and then took the rest of the week off. There was lots of Zooming with friends and family, and lots of family tussles as our energy periodically outgrew the confines of the house. I wanted to make sure to spend lots of time outside, too, and we did manage to go outside for a little bit every day, with some more extended outings. Aside from that, we slowly put our lives back together from the explosion of wrapping paper and toys that was Christmas.
One highlight was the book exchange I had organized with my mom’s group for the holidays. Over the weekend we had our book reveal. I’m actually quite proud of myself for putting the whole thing together. I created a survey online for participants to talk about their tastes in books, and then used a website to draw names Secret Santa style and everyone got someone to whom to send a book. There was also an option to have a book sent to your baby if you didn’t want a book for yourself. The online survey was really fun to put together – I based it on the format the Modern Mrs. Darcy uses for her podcast What Should I Read Next: participants list three books they love, one book they hate, what they are reading now and what they want more of in their reading life. (For the record – my responses were: Jane Eyre, The Great Believers, Between the Desert and the Sea// Gone Girl // Disability Visibility and Bless Me, Ultima// I don’t think I filled out the last question…). A couple days after Christmas we had a Zoom call where we revealed what books we received and talked about reading and books and life. I really liked having the time to talk about something not just our kids and hopefully we can make book discussion a regular thing. I’m thinking not a book club per se, because I think having to read a specific book can seem burdensome – but rather a time to gather to talk about what we are reading and swap book suggestions.
Monday I threw some frisbees in the car and took the children to a disc golf course in the next county. I know nothing about disc golf, but it sounded like a fun activity and as the weather was quite warm, it was a good excuse to explore a new place. I didn’t realize that there are actually special sized frisbees for disc golf, and rules and what not. At any rate, the field was so muddy from rain the previous day that after a few muddy tosses – including having to climb inside a tree to retrieve our frisbee – we quickly abandoned our attempts to play, opting instead for the playground across the parking lot. We ended up being at the playground for almost three hours. I had brought hot chocolate – my usual bribe when the kids are reluctant for an outing. There is something that feels so special about sipping piping hot hot chocolate outside on a (mildly) cold day.
This week I also took the baby to her 15 month check up. She growing and thriving. The pediatrician had some concerns about her lack of words and called in a referral for her to be assessed by the County’s Infants and Toddlers program. Honestly I am not too concerned as the other kids were also late talkers. Our second child received services from Infants and Toddlers when he was two years old, after we had declined services at 18 months. The baby understands us, follows directions and seems very capable. We will probably go ahead with the assessment, but I’m on the fence as to whether or not to actually commit to services. It is a bit of a time commitment for something that I’m not terribly worried about.
One day we went for a walk at the Arboretum. I had, surprisingly, only been once before and it was when the azaleas were in bloom. Winter seems hardly peak arboretum season, but there was actually a fascinating array of things to see. We explored the conifer collection – comparing and contrasting the wide variety of evergreens. Much of the collection had been donated from a private collection in New Jersey. It’s funny – when I think of collecting, I think of stamps and knick knacks. I never thought conifers were something a person would collect. But here was a wide swath of land that proved otherwise. Particularly interesting was reading all the tree tags on which it was documented where the tree was from and when it came into the collection. I was particularly struck by the wide variety of cypress trees.
There was also sweeping river vistas to take in, winter camellias lending a shock of color to the surroundings, bare trees reaching their finger like branches to the blue blue skies. These dormant trees, with their buds coiled tightly waiting for warmer weather, deceptively quiet, when really they are busy getting ready for spring. As I wandered among these sleepers, I wondered how they will bloom and unfurl come spring and resolved to come back in a few months to see.
Winter Trees.
An aptly named flower. “Winter’s Rose”
On New Years Eve, we played Ticket to Ride, ate some cake and then watched some tv as we waited for the ball to drop in Times Square. It was the eight year old’s first time playing Ticket to Ride and I hope we get to play some more as I quite enjoy that game. It’s the kind of game where you can be as competitive as you like, but there is also great satisfaction in just building really elegant train routes.
The Husband went to bed before the actual stroke of midnight. Just in time for the baby to wake up. I had been dozing on and off on the couch as the kids watched various tv shows and cartoon. Once the baby was up, though, I roused myself and watched the ball drop with all the kids cuddled on the couch. I know that there wasn’t a large crowd in Times Square as there usually was, but it was actually quite hard to tell how small the gathering was from the twenty minutes that I saw.
Anyhow, the baby rang in the new year by not sleeping, and so did I.
I know a lot of people are happy to see 2020 in their rear view mirrors, but I don’t know if I can dismiss it with similar vehemence. So many people suffered enormous losses this year – of loved ones, of incomes, of homes, of peace of mind- that all the dumpster fires analogies seem inadequate. In comparison, I definitely am so very fortunate that we came through the year with many reminders of how lucky we are. I mean distance learning has been difficult and being unemployed has been tough. I really miss my work and my colleagues. There are days when I just want to scream and scream and scream from the frustration of parenting. I miss having an identity beyond harried suburban mother. I miss libraries and museums. I miss playdates and grown up dinner parties.
But…. -my mom got to stay with us for four months (plus the two months she was with us at the end of 2019). And having that kind of support with the children and getting to hang out with her was such a gift. – the Husband got to work from home. – after an initial snafu, I was able to successfully file for unemployment. I know that a lot of my colleagues had a much harder time getting their government assistance sorted out so I’m glad I had good records and was able to submit the needed paperwork with little difficulty. Then, even after my initial benefits ran out, there was additional emergency assistance that has helped us. Unemployment benefits is in many ways an imperfect system, but I am so grateful for its existence this year. – we saved a ton of money on child care. – we discovered so many great outdoor places. I took the kids hiking by myself and no one fell off a cliff or got eaten by bears. – I read a ton of books. – I started figuring out my sewing machine. It is a rickety ancient machine, but it has been a workhorse, helping me crank out over 200 masks so far. And a pair of lounge pants for the three year old. – Before the world shut down, I was working on a really beautiful opera that I hope we will get to bring to audiences when this is all over. – My mom’s group is managing to stay connected and supportive of each other. – I got to see my friend Kristen every single week almost. And we agree that our 40s are so much better than our 20s or 30s. – I took a drawing class and learned so much about how to see the world and put it on paper. -I started this blog.
Fun things this week:
Fruit from California!
My parents had sent us some oranges from their tree in California. It was supposed to have arrived the week before Christmas, but it finally showed up on New Year’s Eve. I keep reading about how the mail has been quite delayed this holiday season what with an increase volume due to COVID. My hat is off to postal workers everywhere; it can’t have been an easy year let alone to say nothing of December. I had been concerned that the oranges would be a soggy moldy mess, but they were actually in great condition! I’m sure that despite whatever delays there was with the postal service, the mail was being kept in a cool dry place.
It was my birthday this week. Something that I try to forget about, but which those around me like to remind me of. Which probably makes me sound ungrateful, I realize. Maybe it’s the reminder of the inevitability of time marching forward? Anyhow, I used the day as an excuse to bake a cake. I made a Tres Leches cake from a recipe in our parish cookbook. I was initially drawn to the recipe because it called for evaporated milk. We had an incident a while back where instead of buying the sweetened condensed milk that I needed for Key Lime Pie, the Husband kept buying evaporated milk. Like three or four separate times. So we had several cans of it in the basement. Tres Leches cake calls for milk in many forms – and it was quite delicious.
Baking a cake.
We’ve started using the whiteboard function on Zoom to play Pictionary while on video calls. It’s been quite a hit. Sometimes I find it hard to make conversation on video chat – I guess I find it easier to talk to people in person. Pictionary has been fun because it’s an activity that we can all participate in and helps lessen the burden of having to make conversations. Also I like that it allows the kids to draw and play on the screen, but is so much more interactive than them just playing with the filters (which, quite frankly, annoys me).
I had made these door hangers last spring to use while pumping at work. Well we all know how much use I got out of them. So this week, when the Husband relocated his work from home set up to a room with a door, I repurposed on my door hangers for him:
I finally got around to playing Mario Kart, which the Husband purchased as a family present this Christmas. I am somewhat abashed to say that the three year old beat me the first two times I played. Perhaps I have some resolutions to make for 2021 afterall.
Mario Kart and matching pjs- How we spent the Winter Break.
What We Ate: I didn’t really meal plan this week. Plus a snafu with our Hungry Harvest Box led to no box this week. I hadn’t realized how much of my meal plannings was based on what came in our box. So it was a rather scrounge about week.
Saturday: Homemade pizza + The Happiest Season. This was our first attempt at pizza in our new oven. I used both our pizza stone and our baking steel – a luxury of having two ovens. Homemade pizza is so much better than regular store bought! I found some pineapple and anchovies in the fridge and also a can of olives so I threw those on one of the pizzas and was in umami heaven. One of the pizzas I tried to make on the pizza peel and the dough stuck, so I rolled the dough with the toppings into a log and we had a pizza roll instead. It was actually a fortuitous discovery as it made a version of pizza that was very portable and less messy than an open faced version.
Sunday: Smoked Salmon and English Muffins. I used this recipe from the Washington Post for the English muffins. I liked this recipe a little better than the one with sourdough that I had tried last week – these muffins came out with beautiful nooks and crannies, and the whole wheat flour made for a hardy taste.
nooks and crannies.
Monday: Dumplings and brussel sprouts with noodles.
Tuesday: Tofu Banh Mi Bowls. From this recipe, but with baked crumbled tofu instead of ground pork. And soy sauce instead of coconut aminos. Part of my resolve to plane one vegan grain bowl for dinner a week.
Wednesday: Pasta with jarred marinara and garlic bread.
Thursday: Vegetarian Chili and jalapeno cornbread. The Husband cooked. We are trying to eat less red meat and the thought of turkey chili seemed…. not quite what we wanted. So I suggested we ditch the meat altogether and just make a vegetarian chili. The Husband found a recipe that called for black beans, cannellini beans, sweet potatoes and corn. We also had some chili base in the freezer from a previous chili making effort, when we had made too much of the tomato-y part. All in all a good meal to use things up. Though we have a lot left over so maybe there was ultimately zero gain in freezer space.
Friday: Homemade pizza and Cars II (It was the three year old’s turn to pick). I didn’t see much of the movie because I had misread the pizza dough directions and didn’t realize that it needed two rises. So I was still making pizza when the movie started. But on the other hand the pizza turned out well.
Some days getting the kids outside is a challenge. Once they are outside, they generally are okay, but the initial push is always hard. Who can blame them? These days there are screens and cozy couches and a room overflowing with toys and books to keep them indoors. But I know everyone feels so much better when we get outside, so I push as hard as I can. I start with one child – bathroom, coat, hat, gloves, boots, out the door into the back yard – then move on to the next, and then the next, and then myself, hoping against hope that by the time I get the baby bundled and my own coat on, the first child to go outside has not tired of it and is wanting to come inside.
The other day – one of those drizzly wet days that we’ve gotten quite a few of this winter – a glance at the forecast seemed to indicate that the morning drizzle was as dry as it was going to get. Drizzly walk was better than soaking wet walk, I thought. (Though, truth be told, I am discovering that my kids actually find a run in a torrential rain quite fun.) The eight year old was in class, so it was just me and the three year old and the baby. And there was much resistance from the three year old.
He didn’t want to go out.
It was too wet.
He didn’t like his boots.
He wanted to stay inside and read books.
and so on.
“Let’s just go for a short walk,” I say. “We will just go around the block.”
A walk around the block in the drizzle would be doable, I thought. The baby can manage that so I wouldn’t have to get the stroller out. We would keep to our block so probably won’t encounter any people. Regardless it would probably be our only chance for fresh air that day.
“Okay, fine,” the three year old finally agreed.
So boots, coat, and out the door.
We walked down the street. And then stopped to splash in a tiny puddle. Stomp stomp stomp, went the three year old. Stomp stomp stomp, went the baby.
And then there were sticks and leaves to drop into the gutter and watch as the rainwater carried it away.
And then there was the search for the perfect stick to grasp. Each stick on the ground must be examined and compared to the one in hand.
And then we stopped to read license plates of the cars in the driveways we passed. It’s a good way to practice numbers and letters for the three year old. An colours too, as we point out yellow cars and white cars.
And then we stop to watch the UPS truck pull up and deliver packages.
And next was the white postal truck. “A new postal truck, just like mine!” the three year old exclaims. Last year he received a toy postal truck for Christmas and he still gets very excited to see its real life doppelganger.
And then there was the worm- just a regular old earthworm in the middle of the sidewalk. We squatted and watched its pink brown body contract and expand as it moved incrementally across the pavement. Slowly it drew its body together. Slowly it pushed itself forward. Millimeter by millimeter it travelled, until it reached the grass. The slowly slowly it started to burrow, pushing its way into the dirt. I thought of so many things as I watched the little earthworm’s journey. Where did it come from? How did it know where it was going? What wonderful things was it doing for our earth? What persistence it must have!
And finally we walk the last stretch of the block and arrive home.
I look at my watch and we had been gone for almost an hour.
Sometimes the short walk takes just as long as the long walk.
Christmas Cinnamon Rolls. Strangely the only picture I took all day.
It’s been a quiet Christmas and Boxing Day here. Lots of sugar was consumed, lots of wrapping paper torn off packages. Many squeals of joy.
The Husband was up early on Christmas morning cleaning up after my late night frenzied tornado of baking. We then had cinnamon rolls for breakfast (as was tradition) and “went” to church. Usually we attend Christmas Eve service, but for some reason the live stream wasn’t working that night so we skipped it and instead went to Christmas morning mass.
All told, it was after 10am when we got to presents. A lesson in patience for the children, I suppose.
The Husband had, the day before, brought up his work monitor to the dining room so that we could watch the Met’s opera stream while we decorated cookies and did our general Christmas Eve puttering. It was the Bartlett Sher production of The Barber of Seville starring Isobel Leonard, Lawrence Brownlee and Christopher Maltman. It was delightful and funny and heartfelt. I once heard someone say that Isobel Leonard seems physically incapable of “ugly singing face” – you know that thing when opera singers contort their faces to make the more heavenly/ awesome/ glorious sounds. Anyhow, I mentioned that to the Husband and he spent much of the afternoon watching her to see if it was true. It was. She is as constantly radiant of face as she is of voice.
One of my late night discoveries while baking was BBC Sounds and the wide variety of music mixes they have. I discovered mix named “A Peaceful Christmas” that combined calming new age-y music with a reading of Shackleton’s 1902 Expedition Diary and the Shipping Forecast. It was kind of the Husband’s catnip and I couldn’t wait to introduce him to it. We listened to it twice in one day. The Husband even put up a screen saver of snow falling on a cabin in the woods and on another screen, a fire in a fireplace, just to get us in the appropriate hunkering winter mood.
After presents we had some family Zoom followed by the kids playing with their new presents then I got to work cooking dinner. The Husband and kids played Mario Kart and had a great time.
Christmas Day menu: -Charred Brussel Sprout Salad from How to Cook Everything Fast (again!). This was yet another recipe that took advantage of the broiler for quick cooking. -Roasted Carrots (primarily for the baby, but the kids like these too – super simple: salt, pepper, olive oil and roast at 425 for about 15-20 mins) – cut up raw carrots (some people don’t like cooked carrots) -Stuffed pork roast. This was from Saveur magazine. It called for stuffing with pork with dried fruit and apples which had been marinated in bourbon and citrus zest. I might have let the fruit sit in the bourbon for a might too long because the filling definitely tasted more boozy than I had anticipated. Oops. – no specific dessert, but the house is overflowing with cookies and candy – there is not shortage of sugar.
The pork was slightly overcooked, but I was pretty happy with the meal overall. I do want to try the pork roast again. It was my first attempt butterflying and stuffing a roast and I didn’t get it as tightly rolled as I wanted to. But being able to broil in one oven and roast in the other felt pretty awesome.
After dinner we went on a walk to see the lights in our neighborhood. It being dark, we attached some battery operated Halloween lights to the stroller, and it turned out to be both practical and festive.
“You should keep the lights on that stroller even after Christmas!” a fellow neighbor out on an evening constitutional told us.
There were some really fun light displays to see. Since we go out rarely in the evenings these days, I hadn’t realized how many people put lights up this year. I would be happy to make the post Christmas dinner light constitutional a new tradition.
We capped the day off with watching Meet me in St. Louis while drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows. Truth to tell, I may have fallen asleep after “Ding Ding Ding Went the Trolley” and woken up just in time for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
Christmas often feels like the true end of the year. There is so much leading up to it – excitement, anticipation, planning… it is An EVENT. Kind of like opening night. The message of Advent being a season of active waiting came up frequently in church this year, and I took it to heart more so than in past years. Something about the limbo of pandemic living really made that message resonate. So we have this season where we wait for something. And then it arrives in a flurry of activity and emotion.
Then we get up the next day and still have a week more to get through until we get to turn the fresh page of the new year. That week feels somewhat anticlimactic. Perhaps because I very rarely work that entire week, I like to think of the week between Christmas and New Years as kind of a bonus week – a time to gather and reflect and organize for the next year. Of course New Years as new beginnings is somewhat arbitrary, despite being convenient. New resolutions and re-assessments and soul searching can (and should) happen as needed, I think.
But even as I peer into the murky future, I reflect on the past – a post mortem of the season, say. To do better: start the cinnamon buns Christmas Eve afternoon and go to bed earlier. More cookie drops to friends. More time outside. And there were for sure things this Christmas that I hope we carry to next year. The neighborhood walk to see lights, new matching pjs, lots of hot chocolate. Thank you pictures texted immediately (with accompanying flood of emojis chosen by the kids). Dumplings on Boxing Day. BBC Sounds Music Mixes. Time with family.
Ready for Christmas. Incidentally – note how all the ornaments have migrated to the top half of the tree.
It’s the week leading up to Christmas, swinging by Winter Solstice on the way. Someone on a message board I read wrote: “There is more light in the days ahead!” And it feels particularly apt this year.
My brother, a physician in a hospital, received his first vaccine dose this week. I’m so immensely relieved, grateful, excited, and happy. It feels a little unreal that a vaccine could bring us all out of this everything-from-home life that we’ve been leading since March.
“I imagine we are all going to emerge, blinking, as if coming out of a cave,” a friend of mine said the other day. Plato’s allegorical cave come to life.
Life back to normal still seems a long way off, though. Particularly since our state has just reinstated some restrictions such as the ban on indoor dining and stricter regulations on in person gathering. The school district has pushed back in person learning to February at the earliest.
Meanwhile life goes on. This weekend we did a big room shuffle, moving the two older kids to the bigger bedroom where the baby had been sleeping, and moving the baby to the former toy room and the toy room to the room the two older kids had been sleeping in. Eventually the Husband will move his office to share with the baby. It was certainly a lot of work, but I took the opportunity to shuffle and sort some toys, pack away some too-small clothes, and re-assess what room needs really need to be. We are slowing progressing towards the idea of bunk beds for the two older kids. I feel like room sharing is somewhat passe as an idea, particularly among children of opposite genders. But I really like the idea of the kids learning to co-exist before they get their own rooms. Perhaps, though, this will backfire and room sharing will make them crave their solitude rather than value communal living….
Some fun projects from this week:
English muffins cooling on the rack.
The sourdough starter is alive and bubbling. I haven’t made break yet, but I did make English muffins the other day. They were a little dense and didn’t have the nooks and crannies that I wanted, but they had an appealing sourdough tang to the flavour. The kids almost ate the whole batch before dinner. Also – I was surprised and pleased how much they ended up looking like commercial English muffins.
Handprint Christmas tree – The Husband has Handprint Christmas trees lovingly preserved from his childhood – construction paper craft projects he and his sister made in elementary school. He brings those out at Christmas time and hangs them on our walls. This year, I did a version using the kids hands, along with my hands and the Husband’s hand I would love to say we all sat down one evening with hot cocoa and crafted. But that would be a lie. It was more like, I grabbed hands as I could over the course of the day and then used painter’s tape to tape the to the wall. The result makes me smile nonetheless.
John McLane Christmas ornament. I saw this online and had to make it for the Husband. Incidentally we watched Die Hard this week too. Also – the Husband says Little Women is not a Christmas movie. I’m a little outraged by this.
There were more Cardboard projects this week thanks to the new oven. When they delivered it, I said, “Can you leave the box?” and they said yes. And they also had a refrigerator box that they left us as well. There are parts of the house that look like a cardboard city. It is getting a little ridiculous. At any rate:
Car Run.
Another Cardboard Fort for secret sibling meetings.
Well, the presents are wrapped, the cookies decorated. For the record this year – I made the Gingerbread recipe from King Arthur’s flower with the spice combination from Tartine. I like the texture of the results, but it is still not spcy enough for me.) The cut out cookies were also from King Arthur Flour. I liked the texture of this last one, but prefer the taste of the one from Cooks Illustrated that we made last year. Frosting from Cooks Illustrated with orange juice instead of milk.
Family cookie decorating efforts.
The kids got baths and matching Star Wars Pajamas and we watched It’s a Wonderful Life. We read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and cookies and milk have been put out for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. I’m sitting up waiting for the first rise of the dough for cinnamon rolls. I bake them every Christmas- a tender, not to decadent recipe from The Irish Pantry cookbook. It involves boiling and mashing a potato. I always seem to leave it til the last minute and then am up til all hours making them. At least this way, I can stay up for a peek at Santa.
What we ate:
Saturday: Was our 11th anniversary and we got take out from a Malaysian Restaurant that is one of our favorites. They gave us a free dessert. We also watched Elf.
Sunday: Breakfast for dinner – pancakes and veggie egg scramble. I love how we can make six pancakes at a time on our griddle – makes it so much faster to whip up pancakes!
Monday: Hoppin’ John with Collard greens form Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everyhing Fast. There was a mix up with our produce box this week and we were sent an abundance of collard greens and Brussels sprouts, neither of which are family favorites. But the Husband said this was not as bad as he thought it would be.
Tuesday: Broiled Salmon and Asparagus with Zucchini pancakes. This last was from the Moosewood Cookbook; I was hoping they would be like fritters, but they were more like omlettes with egg. The Salmon and Asparagus was from the Bittman Book, though it’s hardly something you need a recipe for: salt pepper, olive oil. Broil for 10-15 mins.
Wednesday: Charred Tomato and Broccoli Tabbouleh. Also from How to Cook Everything Fast. I thought this was really tasty. So I see a trend this week… I borrowed the Bittman cookbook from the library because I wanted to incorporate more efficient yet healthy meals to our dinner rotation. While I love a good project meal, most days I just want nutritious, fast, and edible. Tasty would be a plus, too. So far, I’m finding a lot of really good ideas and reminders in this cookbook. It’s a little heavy on the meat recipes, so it’s not a “cook your way through” type of book, but I’m finding that most of the recipes fulfil the nutritious, fast, and edible requirements and are tasty too.
Thursday: I had planned Toful Banh Mi bowls, but really we had the Husband’s specialty snack sausage balls with cookies. Also some cut up carrots, pepper and cucumbers. And we ate this while watching It’s a Wonderful Life.
There were certainly many things that just made me weary – Distance learning continues to be… challenging. I find Christmas and gift buying kind of overwhelming and mentally taxing. The baby seems to have two modes these days: clinging barnacle or destructive tornado. I’ve been really bad about making sure I get enough sleep, which is making me cranky and short tempered.
But overall, a lot of fun things brought me joy this week.
Learning new skills!
I keep a list in my journal of things I’ve learned to do. This weekend I added “changing a bike tire” to that list. The eight year old’s bike has had a flat for some time now, and the parts that the Husband ordered for it finally came in. He talked me through one tire and then I did the other tire. I also disconnected and removed the hand brake because it wasn’t really working and the eight year old preferred the pedal brake anyway. I realized as I was working that the bike is just a series of pieces screwed together. I had always been intimidated by the idea of bike repair, even simple stuff like changing a flat. But when I could see it as merely screwing and unscrewing, the whole process was somewhat demystified. The tricky part, of course, is keeping track of what one is tightening or loosening and not losing the bolts. I’m surprised it took me so long to figure this out.
On Sunday, we were invited to a driveway birthday party for a friend of the eight year old. Everyone signed up for a time slot and we drove up and hung out in their front yard. I convinced the Husband to get out his baritone and play Happy Birthday to the birthday girl. Before we set out for the birthday party, he made some booming baritone music to everyone’s delight at home. It was definitely a highlight of the weekend. Making music is such a joyful thing. Even when it is effortful, there is such a sense of accomplishment.
oom pah!
Speaking of music – Every so often I get obsessed by a certain song and want to find all the versions I can and listen to it and then also find the sheet music and learn to play it. This week it was More I Cannot Wish You from Guys and Dolls. I had heard Loudon Wainwright III perform a version of it on Fresh Air, and it kind of wrenched something in me. I had forgotten about the song because it wasn’t in the movie. There is something in the heartfelt simplicity of the song that is so perfect. I’ve been listening to it on repeat this week and evenadded it to the 3 year old’s bedtime playlist.
For the record, this bedtime playlist: -Put on Your Sunday Clothes (movie version) -Octopus’s Garden -Put on Your Sunday Clothes (Broadway Revival) -Rocketship Run -More I Cannot Wish You -Try to Remember Certainly a sentimental mix of songs….
Christmas lights. This was not the most impressive display, but the one that I managed to remember to take a picture of.
Tuesday we went to a drive through light display in a local park. Usually we go to the zoo’s light display, but it was closed this year because of COVID. Still wanting something festive and this drive through light display seemed to fit the bill. I picked up some Christmas cookies from our favorite bakery and we cranked up the Christmas music and we set out. It was delightful (pun!). Afterwards we battled rush hour traffic home and picked up Indian food for dinner.
Wednesday, there was snow! Kind of crazy given that it had been 60 degrees the weekend before. The eight year old loves snow. I managed to find snow suits for everyone and outside they went. I had a vague fear that by the time I got the baby into her snow gear, the older two would be ready to come inside, but I was wrong. They were outside for almost two hours. Having no sled, the eight year old got out the kiddie pool and tried to push her siblings around in it. It was the baby’s first real snow and she seemed to have a good time, taking off into the snow without fear. I think I do need to put a reminder in my calendar to look for the snow gear in November; while we had snowsuits and hats, the mittens were kind of… not quite adequate. Also I need to order some better base layers. But no one really complained. I think, for some odd reason, my kids don’t seem to mind the cold. Or maybe they were too enthralled by the snow. They got two great days out of the snow before it melted away.
Rub a dub dub….
On Friday our new range arrived! We had been without an oven since the summer. It wasn’t one thing, really, just a rather slow demise. By August, it was taking an hour and a half to preheat and the burners had to be lit manually. I’d been having a hard time pulling the trigger on buying a new one; big ticket items tend to paralyze me and being unemployed kind of compounded that paralysis. But the Husband did the research, took the lead on things and we finally ordered a new one last month. We had been making do with just the toaster oven and anything we baked had to be able to fit in an 8″x 8″ pan. Which meant a lot of bar cookies and only four scones at a time. I especially missed having an oven when I wanted to roast a whole sheet pan full of vegetables. Some of my favorite recipes that involved the stove I learned to adapt to cooking in a frying pan, or I figured out how to roast things in batches and combine them.
The new range has a double oven and six burners. It feels so decadent, but I’m very much looking forward to being able to baking pans and pans of cookies again. There is a little issue with it not sitting flat against the wall, but someone is coming to fix that soon. Until then… I’m so excited to be able to bake again!
In anticipation of the new oven, I dug out my sourdough starter and began the slow process of reviving it. I’m always a little skeptical about the viability of my sourdough starter after it sits for months in the fridge for a while. But somehow nature always surprises me and after about a week things are bubbling again. I did have to pitch a batch once after it turned pink and putrid, but I’ve have more successes than failures, thankfully. I do have a jar of starter in the freezer as a back up.
Cute Baby Things: When I ask the baby if her diaper is dirty, she will walk to her room and pat the changing table. It makes me really happy. And really, anything that can make diaper changing happy is a plus. Also: Baby playing Parcheesi. Not as cute as it seems. Actually quite difficult.
Onward to Christmas!
What We ate:
Saturday: Pasta with red sauce (from the Italian Deli next to the Husband’s office), bagged salad, and garlic bread. So simple, yet so good! Also watched A Christmas Story, in our tradition of a Christmas movie on Saturday night.
Sunday: Tostadas w/ BBQ pinto beans, pineapple salsa and coleslaw
Monday: Udon noodles with cabbage, carrots, and tofu.
Tuesday: Indian Take Out
Wednesday: Roasted Salmon with Broccoli, Beans and Rice
Thursday: Butter Chicken from Indian Instant Pot. I also threw in some potatoes that had to be used up.
Friday: Pizza and A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott version)
This week we got our Christmas Tree. We picked it up from our local fire and rescue station which has a Christmas tree fundraiser every year. Last year we bought a tree that was too tall for our living room and had to lop it off a little. This year we were a little more prudent and bought a more modest tree.
Christmas tree shopping 2020
(Incidentally, I listened to a fascinating and hilarious episode of Planet Money this week about the Christmas Tree market and why there seemed to be fewer trees this year. It seems to be a combination of more people staying home and the economics of ten years ago, when this year’s crop of trees would have been planted.)
Most of the Christmas tree decorations we have are from the Husband’s childhood, carefully preserved by his mother. The children loved the Garfield ornaments and the Star Trek ornaments. These last ones are pretty cool – they plug into the light string and make noises and say things like “Live Long and Prosper.”
Also on our tree are the ornaments from our wedding. The Husband and I got married the week before Christmas. And instead of a guestbook, we made Christmas ornaments and had people write us a message. The ornaments are simple wooden shapes with tissue paper and magazine images modge podged onto them. Every Christmas we read the messages on the back as we put them on the tree, remembering that snowy day in December when the city was shut down for a snow storm, but we were surrounded by so much love from family and friends.
Our wedding guest ornaments adorning our tree. This one says “May your marriage and live be filled with this… and don’t forget to say goodnight.”
Some Christmas/ Advent things we’ve been doing:
– lots of hot chocolate. I’ve been making my own mix with semi-sweet chocolate, cocoa, malted milk powder, powdered sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, nutmeg and cornstarch. It took some experimenting, but I think I’ve gotten a good balance of chocolate-y flavour and not too sweet. Not that I can recreate it because I kind of made it up.
– Advent books. I used to borrow 20 or so Christmas and winter books from the library every December, augmented several Christmas books that we own. Then I would wrap them and we would unwrap on every night and read it. It would sometimes get complicated when books had to be returned to the library and couldn’t be renewed, but hadn’t been unwrapped yet. Anyhow, last year, what with the new baby and all – I didn’t have the bandwidth to wrap them all, so I just put them in a shopping bag and we picked one out every night. And it was fine. So this year the Husband got a box and I gift wrapped it and we put twenty odd books in it and we have been reading one or two every few nights. Because of COVID restrictions we couldn’t go to the library to browse books, so I basically did a search for the word “Christmas” or “Winter” in children’s picture books and put a bunch of books on hold at the library for pick up. They’ve been coming in at a trickle, but we have more than enough to get us to Christmas day.
-Advent calendar. One of those chocolate ones with Gospel verses behind each door.
-Bonus Christmas movie night on Saturdays. We did Home Alone this week. I had forgotten that the bulk of the movie is not the slapstick humour that you see in all the previews. There is actually a lot of heart in this movie. Also on our list for Christmas movies is Elf, Meet Me in St. Louis, and It’s A Wonderful Life.
Other fun food things:
-Another pomegranate from our Hungry Harvest box. I had read about a technique where you cut the pomegranate in half and then hit it really hard to dislodge the seeds. So I tried it and it worked better than expected. These seeds I have been eating with the spaghetti squash. An odd dish of spaghetti squash, pomegranate seeds and roasted sweet potatoe. Surprisingly tasty.
-I found a jar of refrigerator pickles in the back of the fridge. I’m not at all sure how long they’ve been there, but they were still tasty and quite garlic-y. A little slice of summer in December.
-the three year old decided he wanted a bread sandwich the other night. He was not a fan of the black bean burgers. The rest of us liked them, though.
The low early afternoon sun of winter.
Love the shadows of the Christmas tree needles on the floor.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Smoked salmon on bagels.
Sunday: Perch cooked in oil and Green Beans
Monday: Spaghetti Squash with kale and chickpeas. I’m not a huge fan of spaghetti squash, but this came in our Hungry Harvest box, so I wanted to use it up. I feel like I never get the texture quite right. I’ve been cooking it in the InstantPot, but maybe it will be better once our oven comes and I can roast it. This recipe from Love and Lemons was actually quite tasty and even better as leftovers.
Tuesday: Black Bean Burgers from Dinner Illustrated. We had it with bagged salad. Trying to get more beans and legumes in our meals.
Wednesday: Mushroom and Broccoli Stir fry wwith Udon noodles.
Thursday: Chicken Makhani using this sauce. The Husband made this. It was really tasty.
Friday: Pizza and The Twelve Dates of Christmas. It’s Hallmark Christmas movie season!
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig – 6 h 7 mins. Lovely, light read about a man who ages so slowly that he has been alive for centuries. The book explores the ideas of family and history and time and perspective. I enjoyed the speculative history parts, particularly meeting Shakespeare.
Burial at Thebesby Seamus Heaney. Hard copy. Heaney’s adaptation of Euripides’ Antigone. I had wanted to read some of Heaney’s poetry, being unfamiliar with it. This play was the first thing available at the library. It read surprisingly modern, almost jarringly so. Perhaps that is because in my head the story of Antigone is an ancient one. I have vague memories of reading Anouilh’s version in high school French class. Heaney’s version focuses not so much on Antigone’s story, but rather that of Creon and his megalomania.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid – 6h 36m. Engrossing story of an aging Hollywood film star and the journalist who is helping her write her memoirs. I’m not sure if I really connected with any of the characters, but this book was really well constructed and deftly plotted. I was mesmerized and stayed up until 3am to finish it.
Poser by Claire Dederer – audiobook read by Christine Williams. I had heard an interview with Dederer on the podcast Everything Is Fine, and I thought she had a lot of very sensible thoughts about being a woman over 40. This book is a memoir told through yoga poses. She took up yoga to help with back pain that developed while breastfeeding and writes about how her yoga journey mirrored her own life’s journey. There were a lot of really thoughtful ideas about identity and how we search for identity even as it changes. I do think, though, I am getting a little fatigued with the genre of new mother personal essays. Whereas personal essays about new motherhood used to make me really feel seen and not so alone, they now feel a little cliched, and the domain of a certain demographic. Maybe I need to read about more diverse motherhood experiences?
Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen – 6h 48m. When I was a high school student in Southern California, people in the Taiwanese community talked about Loveboat all the time. It was a cultural exchange program in Taiwan for teenagers – not officially called Love Boat, but referred to as such for all the matchmaking that resulted in its pressure cooker of newfound independence. I never went – it sounded really intense to me. Wen’s book is a YA novel about Ever Wong, whose parents ship her off to Loveboat. There she does the requisite self discovery and flirting with romance and bonding with girlfriends. I must say this book really did make me a little nervous to have a teenager. s
Also in November, two audiobooks we listened to on our trips to the Shenandoahs, both given high approval ratings from the eight year old: Nim’s Island by Wendy Orr, narrated by Kate Reading – I loved this adventure story featuring the resourceful Nim. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, narrated by Kate Atwater – Such a great story about a robot finding her way and herself with the help of a colourful cast of animal friends.
