Diane

Weekly recap + what we ate: back to work and July aspirations

Well I started working on my next show. It’s nice to be working out of the house again, but man this whole job thing is a lot. I managed to do three different morning drop offs last week and the 12 year old was only late to musical theatre camp 4 out of 5 times. We’ll do better. The mornings are deceptively languid from 6:55am – 7:30pm and then it’s rush rush rush panic and yell and where are your shoes and get in the car for the next hour. I think I need to re-think the morning structure. Or just accept the freneticism. Or have better systems. Who knows

Some fun things last week:
I did get my haircut. The new stylist worked out pretty well:

The cut isn’t as complicated as the guy I used to go to – it’s a bob rather than a pixie – but I still do like it; it’s a nice change from the pixie, which is what I usually get. I like how short and sharp the bob is, and I like the fringe-y bangs. AND it takes two minutes to shower now that it’s much shorter, which I always LOVE about having short hair. But also – all that grey! I have no interest in colouring my hair – I don’t think I could keep up with it – so I’m trying to go grey gracefully. But it is still a bit of a shock every time I see how much grey hair I have.

-I also had my long overdue well-woman appointment, and got bloodwork done. I don’t have a primary care physician, so my gyn does my bloodwork. She also ordered a thyroid ultrasound because I’ve been having a unending light periods for months now and then she also ordered me a poop in the box kit for colon cancer screening, which I can do instead of a colonoscopy. What a novel thing! Anyhow, I am rubbish about health screenings since I feel pretty healthy most of the time, so it felt like true adulting to go to one doctor’s appointment and have her assign me so many things – kind of like homework. Next up, I need to schedule my eye exam.

-We went skating on Saturday. The lady who does our bi-weekly cleaning is away this month, so on Saturday, we buckled down and had a morning of cleaning. I even cleaned the air registers. But anyhow, as a fun post cleaning activity, we went to the ice rink. At first I thought we could go to the pool. But do you know what is cooler than a swimming pool at 12:30pm in 80+ degree weather? An ice rink.

One of the things I love about going to the ice rink is that one can see so many different levels of ability all at once during free skate. You see the first timers clinging to the sideboards, their skates tied too loosely, ankles akimbo. AND you see the skaters who, while not Olympic caliber, can skate backwards and forwards and jump and spin and also do that hockey stop, you know the kind where you turn your skates sideways and send up a spray of ice. I feel like there aren’t a lot of places you can go to watch people hone their craft the way you can at the ice rink. Part of the fun for me is to watch people try a move again and again and again. There is something so inspiring about seeing all the different levels of skaters, knowing that everyone who I see doing a camel spin at one point was a beginner skater, inching around the ice, clinging to the sideboards.
After the ice rink we made a stop at a playground, at the kids’ request. The playground was nice and shady, but also a little buggy, so we only stayed 30 mins. Then we headed to Dairy Queen. When I go to DQ I always have the same thing – a Heath Bar Blizzard. Is there anything more delicious as a Heath Bar Blizzard on a hot day?

-Another swim meet! I had a different job this time – usually I time, but this time I got to be a runner, running the timing sheets to the people who enter the times into the system. The 12 year old swam her first 100 meter Individual Medley in a meet. That was fun to watch. It was the last meet of the season, except for Divisionals. Strange to think swim team season is wrapping up for the summer already!

Butterfly. It’s such a dramatic looking stroke!

-In other swimming news, I think the two little kids have started to figure out how to swim. So I seem to have misplaced their swim vests. (I say I, but … why do I say “I”? They should be responsible for their own damn swim vests!) So we’ve been going to the pool without swim vests. Which means, that we need to stay in the 3 ft area, or we go to 4 feet with both kids hanging on to me and that’s kind of tedious after a while. Anyhow, maybe this is the case of just taking off the training wheels, but both kids kind of figured out how to swim for two or three meters on their own – the 7 year old by doing his version of streamline, and the 4 year old by doggy paddling. This is kind of exciting to me – the 12 year old was swimming independently by the time she was six, so I was starting to get a little concerned that the 7 year old wasn’t going to figure it out and I would have to be with him in the pool forever. So yay!

-The Hallowe’en costumes are out at Costco!!!! What the what?

June recap and July Aspirations: Mid July seems about right for me to reflect on June and think about what I want to get out of the last 11 days of the month (note, that number was 15 when I started this post, but I’m writing slowly these days, I guess…)

June 2024 Highlights:
-Number 1 highlight definitely is our Family Trip to Maine. I want to write a trip recap, but who knows if it will happen.
-Finishing out the school year for the 12 year old and the 7 year old. Yay!
-Mid day weekday movie date with my friend L to see Babes. We laughed so so so hard, felt all the feels, and going to a movie on a Thursday afternoon just felt decadent.
-Swim team season starting and lots of time at the pool. It’s a bit of an endeavor to get there, but I genuinely enjoy being in the pool.

June 2024 Lowlights:
-The 4 year old not meeting assessment requirement to go to kindergarten early, and then having to start the appeals process.
-Post show malaise. I finished a show Labor Day weekend, and then fell into kind of a slump of not being productive.
-Discovering that our favorite restaurant in the area to get Taiwanese breakfast no longer serves Taiwanese breakfast. And by “our favorite” I mean “the only”. We used to go to this restaurant and be the first ones in the door on a Sunday or Saturday morning. So super bummed about this one. Well, I guess that’s another reason to get excited about our trip to Taiwan later this year
-The start of a heat wave. Can we call it a wave, if it is still hot, three weeks later?

July Aspirations:
– Get through swim team season.
– Start working on a new show. Stay ahead of the paperwork and don’t leave it for the last minute.
-Exercise: 10 mins of yoga/ day. Run. (I’m doing horribly at this. I don’t think I’ve run at all so far in July. But it’s just been so very very very hot.)
-find time to journal daily.
– Have a not miserable commute: good audiobooks/podcasts to listen to, make sure I have ice cold water and snacks at all times.
-Check dates for supertitle gig and poke the organization for a contract
-Plan some details of the Malaysia leg of our trip to Asia.
– The 7 year old wants to make a dress for the 4 year old – help him to this. Though this may be more of a August thing for when my work schedule slows down.
– Make plans to see my friend L who lives near where I’ll be working, and my friend K whom I used to see once or twice a month, but I haven’t seen since April.
-Schedule: ~~Well woman~~ (done), ~~hair cut~~ (done), dentist (scheduled), eye doctor, window treatment company.
– Think about a trip with the 12 year old.
– Declutter: desk, sewing/craft corner, kids’ papers, pantry. (or maybe just pick one.)
– Make more movement towards getting rid of my car. In May (or was it June?) I sent one email to collect information about donating the car to the high school auto repair training program. Then I kind of stalled. (heh heh. But the car hasn’t stalled. Its still runs okay, which is kind of my hang up.) I guess the next step is to fill out the paperwork.
-Eat peaches and summer vegetables. There is something called the Peach Truck that comes through our area and you can get a 12 lb box of peaches for $45. (Or two boxes for $64). My friend and I were going to go in together on a box, but she is going to be on vacation the next time the Peach Truck comes through. Maybe I can eat all 12 lbs myself? I might buy a box and bring it to work.
– Go to bed before ~~midnight~~ 1:00am. (I am not doing well at this one at all so far. It’s mostly prompted by wanting to wake up earlier and not be tired since I have a long commute to my current gig. But the desire to revenge bedtime procrastinate is strong. I’m a little inspired by Lindsay’s Weekly Dare project – maybe I can just go to bed by 11:30pm for one week? )
-Finish my current library books so that I can join Engie in reading I Capture the Castle for Cool Bloggers’ Book Club.

Random Dilemna – What to do with soggy Cheerios? One of my major irritants is that the kids don’t always finish their breakfast in the morning. Sometimes I will just finish it for them, but when the unfinished portion is a bowl of soggy neglected Cheerios… well my desire to not waste food might not extend that far every time. But what do I do with the Cheerios that are too wet to put in the trash and too solid to dump down the drain? I guess we have a garbage disposal so dumping down the sink isn’t the worst idea, but I don’t love dumping things down the sink unless it’s totally necessary. I could drain the milk out… but that seems like a lot of work. There are no good solutions here. (Well, there is, actually – the kids should just eat their Cheerios.) So the bowl of half eaten food just sits on the counter for the whole day until the Cheerios disintegrate into the milk.

Grateful For:
-Shade in the parking lot. It has been sooooooooooooo hot lately. I’m trying to lean into the enveloping feeling of a hot car, but sometimes it is too much. Luckily there are a number of trees in the parking lot at work, so if I’m strategic, I can park in a spot that will be shady when I get off work. I’ve also started putting a towel over the steering wheel during the day so it isn’t as hot when I get in the car.

-Finishing the hiring process for the stage management staff for the upcoming opera season. We’ve staffed the stage management teams for the 2024-2025 season! I never expected when I started the process last December that it would take all the way until July to finish the staffing – we had some people drop out to take other contracts so that kind of prolonged everything. I’m excited for all the returning and new people I’ll get to work with next season. I’m really grateful for my supervisor for leading the process, though. It was my first time working on staffing and she really held my hand and talked through every decision with me. Hiring is hard! Now fingers crossed that no one else withdraws from a contract. Although, sometimes its’ crazy to me to think that in February of 2024, I’m offering work for May of 2025.

-Work from home prep week. Last week, the first week on my contract, was mostly a paperwork week, so I was able to work from home for a lot of it. That was nice because a) I didn’t have to drive around the beltway every day, and b) I could be home and prep things for the afternoon swim practice and c) I could also get done all the life admin things mentioned at the top of this post. I’m thankful for the technology that allows me to work from home. At the same time, I also love being in the rehearsal room. So there are things to be grateful for either way.

– Democracy. It’s a bonkers time in American politics right now, like unbelievably incomprehensible. Or maybe the issue is that it is completely comprehensible if I look at things with empathy. But… I think all things considered, I’m grateful that people still believe in Democracy, despite the spectacle it currently is in America.

Looking Forward To:
-Duckpin bowling! The Husband suggested we go duckpin bowling this weekend as it is an activity that would be cool (as in temperature), family friendly, and screen-free. I’ve never been before, so I’m excited to try out something new.

-Visit from my mother! My mom is coming at the end of August and she’s bringing my aunt with her. It will be right as school starts, so things will be busy for sure, but it will be nice to see her. I haven’t seen her since Spring Break.

-Hearing about the 4 year old’s kindergarten appeal. I had a phone conversation with the person in charge of the 4 year old’s early entrance into kindergarten appeal. She was lovely and I was able to share all the bright and clever things that the 4 year old can do and also explain why I thought her reading scores were low. The appeals lady said she was surprised the reading skills score was so low because the 4 year old scored so high in all the other areas. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but fingers crossed.

-The 12 year old’s musical theatre camp showcase. They are doing various scenes from musicals and she is playing Fiona in the Shrek excerpt. Can’t wait to see it.

What We Ate:
Monday: Grilled Eggplant Salad – Recipe from the Washington Post. Dinner at the pool. I thought this was really tasty – It had a Southeast Asian flavor profile with mint and coconut and cashews. I added grilled tofu for protein. It was not a hit with the kids, and I will admit that the coconut dressing, which was delicious, looked like a certain bodily fluid. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pasta and meatballs. Dinner at the pool. The 4 year old’s request. I made turkey ricotta meatballs on Sunday, froze them, then popped them into the InstantPot on Tuesday morning with a jar of tomato sauce.

Wednesday: We met up with our friend for dinner. I had a very tasty burger and a salad. And then we had amazing desserts: creme brulee and sticky toffee bread pudding. I will almost always order crème brûlée if I see it on a menu.

Thursday: Chicken Salad Sandwich wraps – dinner at the pool. Chicken salad from the deli counter – really tasty.

Friday: Dumplings (from frozen – these were the Ling Ling brand- eaten at the pool), then pizza and Glee after swim practice.

Saturday: Dumplings (from frozen – these were the ones purchased at our favorite dumpling house), and green beans, eaten while watching King Fun Panda 4. Cute movie.

Sunday: fend for yourself nights – leftovers, noodles and dumplings and we started watching The Acolyte. How did we manage to eat dumplings three nights in a row? Well, 1)the kids LOVE dumplings so will always eat them. 2) they’re frozen and convenient so we almost always have them around, 3) they only take ten minutes to cook up.

Books Read – June 2024

Two interesting book-related links to share first –

This article: “The Joy of Reading Books You Don’t Entirely Understand.” The author makes a case for reading deeply and challenging yourself. For not letting a difficult book, or a book in which you have no context intimidate you into not reading it. I makes me think about how Engie writes in her book recaps about things she’s had to look up. I think there are two things, though – there are books that are set in a world that I know nothing about, and then there are books where I feel like I ought to understand what is happening, but for reasons of writing or plot or what not (or even my own headspace at the time), I just can’t wrap my head around what is going on. I just quit an audiobook last week that I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. I couldn’t tell where the story was going or what it was doing. Am I missing out by abandoning this book? Am I under-estimating the joy I could have from just reading as a meditative exercise? Though, when I want that kind of immersive, dense kind of reading experience, I turn to poetry. Reading a book I don’t understand has not yet gotten me to a nirvana state yet. What am I missing here?

The New York Times released a list of “Best” books of the 21st Century. It’s an interesting endeavor. Of course it’s completely subjective and leans heavily towards books originally written in the English language, and what I think of as “prestige” reading. There is a distinct lack of genre fiction. Of the 100, I’ve only read 11. There are several books on the list that I would be interested in reading, mostly the non-fiction choices. But honestly there are a lot of books that I’m not interested in reading. Life is too short, you know… And reading is such a subjective thing. Reading through the list, I had a few thoughts –
– there is something that takes all the joy out of reading when it is turned into a competitive sport – check the boxes for the books you’ve read!!! I don’t want to feel bad about not reading something on the list, but there is a sense of “Oh, I’m not well-read…”
-The part that I found the most fascinating was the individual author’s list of their top 10 picks. Sarah MacLean has a list!
-Maybe I’m not the target audience for a list like this. There are a lot of books I enjoyed reading more than My Brilliant Friend. But then, I go back to the article I mentioned at the top of this post – Was I expecting to understand more of the book than I needed to?
-As always, the comment section is gold. Tons more book recs to be found there.
-I’ve probably spent more time reading about this list of 100 books than I have actually reading a book this past 24 hours.

Anyhow – on to the books I read in June. A lighter month. Not quite sure why.

Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – Historical novel about a midwife in revolutionary war Maine. I enjoyed reading this book- the protagonist, Martha Ballard, was a pretty great character and really liked the relationship with her husband and children all the details of her life as a midwife. The author’s notes at the end were fascinating. In my head, though, I kept comparing it to another book I read years ago – Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence – also about a mid-wife in eighteenth century Maine solving a mystery. I LOVED Heart and Bones. If you find a copy, you should read it. It’s a very different book from Frozen River – the story is a lot darker, the ending not as satisfying, but in a good way. The writing… the writing is SO GOOD, a little dense, but the kind of book that completely transported me. I need to find a copy of Hearts and Bones and re-read it. But -okay I was talking originally about Frozen River – I thought it was a pretty good historical mystery novel, though I felt like the “mystery” was maybe the weakest part of the story and the plot veered towards “woman in peril” thriller at the end. Everything up until that part, though, I really liked.

The Comeback by Lily Chu, read by Philippa Soo – This book, about a woman who inadvertently starts dating a K-pop star, was the 12 year old and my Mother-daughter book club book – we listened to it together when running errands or hanging out. We both really liked this book, and laughed quite a bit. I’ve read/listened to all three of Chu’s books, and while they get billed as romance novels, I’m here for the strong women, their friendships, and the voyage of self discovery. The romantic interests are always dreamy and cute, but also kind of… rote. I think The Stand In is still my favorite of the three, but this one was great too. And I’ve been listening to some K-pop to go along with this book, which is a genre I know nothing about. “It’s like American pop songs, but I can’t understand the words they are singing,” I said to the 12 year old. “Yeah…” she replied in that, “I know, isn’t it great?!?” Kind of tone.

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith – Mid month, when I was kind of in a reading slump, I borrowed a bunch of graphic novels, and Wash Day Diaries was one of them. This book features five interconnected stories about a group of friends in the Bronx who go about the ordinary business and ordinary drama of their days. It’s nice to see a book centered on strong female friendships. Also – as someone with pretty low maintenance hair, seeing hair washing as a ritual event, was really fascinating. (Side note – I was reading about graphic novels in audio form and decided to listen to a sample of one – it was kind of like listening to a radio play. When I’m done my current audiobook, I might explore a graphic novel on audio.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout – I picked up this book from a Little Free Library a while ago, and it has just been languishing on my bookshelf. When I did a huge re-organization of the bookshelf a while back I pulled this as one to read since it was a slim volume and I thought I could read it quickly. I did not read it quickly – not through any fault of the book, but I just kept misplacing the book and then it would fall off my radar for a while. I thought this book was really well written, but – you know that thing where you read a book blurb, but don’t really read it quite correctly, and then the book ends up not being what you were lead to believe? I, for some reason, thought Lucy Barton was 90 years old on her death bed and I spend the first little bit thinking that her mother was a ghost. And as I read further, it quickly became clear that that wasn’t what was going on. So then I spent the rest of the book feeling a little lost. Anyhow, there are a lot of sad things in this book. A lot of beautifully written realizations in this book. But it was such an internal book, I didn’t get a sense of who Lucy really was – she spends so much time talking about the past that I didn’t know who present day Lucy was. And maybe that’s the point? That we can’t encapsulate who we are, that we contain many facets, even to ourselves? I finished the book feeling like there must be more in Lucy’s story.

Landslide by Susan Conley – I read this book while in Maine, one of the suggestions from a Maine reading list. This novel is about a documentary filmmaker living on the coast of Maine, and how her life with her two teenage sons is upended when her fisherman husband is involved in an accident while fishing off the coast of Nova Scotia. I really loved this book, and how the struggles and joys of living in a community with a dying industry figure prominently. Reading this book as we drove up the coast of Maine, really made me think about how these coastal towns are having a hard time surviving, yet how the people who live there have such a strong sense of place. I love how Conley also writes about the ironies and triumphs and angst and confusion that comes with raising teenagers, particularly teenage boys. I knew I wanted to read more of this book, when I read this on the very first page:
I tell myself it’s a beautiful face. It’s important to tell myself that many things about teenage boys are beautiful so I don’t panic.
or this:
“I’m trying to adhere to the say-very-little strategy, but when Sam [oldest son] gets to me I can’t help myself.”

Or this:

“I’ve started keeping a running list in my mind of things I need to do for the wolves[her sons] On bad days I call this the List of Resent ments. I try not to think about the list. But my brain would have worked differently without the boys. I think it would have stayed more open, and that I would be making more films and not a List of Resentments.”

It’s not all about the narrator’s feelings on the complexities of motherhood, though. This book is just felt real and honest about the good and bad things in life, and how hard it is to hold yourself together and be an adult when life isn’t going very well.

On my proverbial Night Stand. I am 3/4 of the way through many books, and barely into a few others. I don’t know how I got to the point of having so many books going at once. Hopefully we’ll finish them in July?

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: – I haven’t made much progress in this book this month. Charlotte is dead, a biography has been commissioned, but there is some drama with that.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Tatly- Another book from the Maine reading list – this one is a group of short stories centering around two men who live on the same reservation. Tatly has a new book out and I want to finish this book before I pick up his new one.

Blankets by Craig Thompson – graphic novel memoir about Thompson’s childhood and young adulthood as he grapples with the conflict between his first relationship and his faith. I had left this book out and both the 12 year old and the 7 year old started reading it because, you know, it’s got pictures! Must be appropriate. It was for sure not 100% appropriate for the 7 year old.

Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty – Middle aged female pirate on one last mission. I had started this, got sucked in, then had to return it to the library and it took months for it to come off the Libby holds list. BUT I then found it on Hoopla, where everything is always available immediately. So now I can jump right back in. Can’t wait to see how things turnout.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – Picked this up from a Little Free Library – it’s my current poolside read because I actually own this book so I don’t have to worry about library fine in case it accidentally drops in the water.

Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya – Still plugging away at this. I’m on the chapter on Injustice. The last chapter was on Failure.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White – read aloud to the kids at bedtime

The Turnout by Megan Abbott – Thriller set in the world of a ballet studio during Nutcracker season.

What have you read lately? Do you ever read books you don’t understand?

Weekly recap + what we ate: July 4th and Swim season routines and favorites

If you’re visiting me via NGS’s website and my guest post there – hello and welcome! It was kind of a freak coincidence that I guest posted on two blogs a week apart, but that’s mostly because I knew that if I didn’t get a guest post written before I went back to work mid-July, it wasn’t going to happen, and I very much wanted to make it happen. At any rate – I suspect most of you read NGS’s blog already, but if you don’t you should – she writes in a bracingly honest manner about books, every day routines, her adorable dog and cat, and life’s conundrums big and small. My guest post there celebrates her twenty (!) years of blogging by naming twenty operas I love. Thanks for having me, Engie!!!

Last week, my cousins came to visit, and it was deeelightful! By cousins, I mean my father’s oldest niece K and her daughter E. So K is technically the one who is my cousin, but in Mandarin, I call her “older sister”. I guess that makes E my second cousin? Anyhow, they came and it was heavenly. They played with the kids, read them book, had mediation sessions with them (!), and taught them how to make all sorts of Taiwanese treats. It was like they ran a three day Taiwanese summer camp for them out of my house. The kitchen was constantly buzzing while they made things like di gua yuan – little balls, made of yams (or taro) and cassava flour -they’re kind of the same texture as boba, but bigger, and you eat them in a sugar syrup or over shaved ice.

Shaved ice. My cousin brought us a shaved ice machine. Taiwanese shaved ice is a lot finer than a regular snow cone and comes with a wide variety of toppings. We had shaved ice with condensed milk and the taro balls, but you can also do it with red beans, fruit, boba… It’s a nice treat.

They did such a good job of taking turns on the shaved ice machine!

Onigiri. My cousin also brought a little mold to make these seaweed wrapped rice triangles. The four year old loved making them, and called them “Sand Castles” because you pack the rice in the mold then push out a perfectly formed little triangle, like you would a sand castle.

Rice Triangle – perfect pool food! The 7 year old did not want seaweed on his, so he just has rice, vegetables, and pork floss.

AND they picked up around our house. At first I was a little embarrassed by how my Cousin was constantly tidying our very messy house, but then E told me that Cousin K LOVES to clean. I realized that she is a tidier and it made her happy to be able to make our house a little nicer, so I leaned into it and just decided to be thankful and happy.

On the last night of their visit, we went to Hot Pot, and then ice cream. It was one of those sticky summer nights, made even more sticky by the heat and drippy ice cream cones, but the kids didn’t care. They played on the fake grass, running around and doing cartwheels. Which – the four year old can do a half decent cartwheel. I hadn’t known she could do that. What a charming surprise the first time I saw her flip her legs in the air and kind of land on her feet.

All in all it was a wonderful visit!

Other things on my mind… Going into this summer, juggling swim team season was one of my biggest worries, but with two weeks left, I think we’ve gotten the hang of things, so I wanted to write future me a note about what is working/what is not working currently with the current swim/evening routine. The current breakdown:

3:30/4:00pm– start prepping dinner for the pool and packing swim bag. Make sure 12 year old eats a snack. This worked well when I wasn’t working, but it’s going to be tricky when I go back to work for the last two weeks of swim team season. It might be a lot of food prep and take out.
4:30pm– kids hopefully home from school/camp, we all put swimsuits on.
4:45pm– drive to pool.
5:00-5:30pm– little kids go to their pre-team session/ 12 year old and I swim. She’s trying to teach me how to do a handstand in the water :).
5:30pm– pool time free play. I make the kids stay in the pool until adult swim or else we lose a bit of momentum.
5:45pm– adult swim – we get out of the pool. The 4 year old and 7 year old eat dinner. The 12 year old eats another snack if she is still hungry.
6:00pm– we are all back in the pool- big pool or baby pool, depending.
6:15pm– 12 year old moves to swim team practice. I continue pool free time with the two littles.
7:15pm– I get the 4 and 7 year old out of the pool- they take showers and get into their pjs. I take my shower while they are getting dressed.
7:30/7:45pm– 12 year old done practice. We head home.
8:00pm – home. This is where it all goes south a little. ideally, the little kids can brush their teeth and go straight to bed. But often they want to stay up or have another snack. The 12 year old eats the rest of her dinner. I hang up swim sits and clean out lunch boxes, scroll a little on my phone. On Fridays, we come home and have pizza and watch Glee, kind of our summer version of Friday pizza and movie night.
9:00pm/9:30pm – The little kids go to bed. Hopefully. Requires some cuddling/book time from us. This is on the later side, but I figure it’s summer so things slide a little bit.
10:00pm – the 12 year old goes to bed. If I haven’t already fallen asleep while cuddling with the little kids, then I do some more pick up/scrolling/sometimes I watch some tv with the Husband.
Eventually, depending – I go to bed.

My current pool bag pack:
-Two towels – one for me and one extra (I’ve been using Turkish towels – I love them because they are thin and pack well.)
-Two hooded towel/ponchos, one for each little kid. I found these in the bargain bin at Bed Bath and Beyond last year. Love them – so easy to just pop on the kids.
– Space Bag with goggles (kids and mine), and pool toys (it varies, but currently water guns and mini beach balls), and a nose plug for the 7 year old that he wears intermittently
-Space Bag with pjs for the kids and change of underwear for me.
-my rash guard
-Sunscreen (Spray and lotion)
-Shampoo/body wash and conditioner
-lotion
-a book
-The two little kids have swim vests, but they are in charge of bringing those themselves.

The pain points I’m finding in the current routine:
-The big one is that we don’t get to eat dinner together as a family. I realize that we don’t eat dinner a whole lot together when I’m working evenings, so this shouldn’t be a big deal, but I do feel like the Husband is missing out a little bit. BUT we still do pizza and Glee on Fridays, and actually there is no swim practice on Wednesday nights, so we do have dinner together on Wednesday nights.

-I wish I had a different pool bag. I have one of those Classic L.L. Bean Tote bags that are ubiquitous. It used to belong to my Mother-In-Law, and it’s certainly a workhorse, but it’s really awkward for me to carry. The handles are a too short to sling on my shoulder, so I have to carry the bag by my side, which is ungainly when the bag is full and knocking against me. (Though I hear that carrying things at your side is ergonomically better.) I feel like this is the kind of thing I will just be vaguely annoyed at for three months a year and just live with. What I really want is for the two little kids to start packing and carrying (and remembering) their own stuff for the pool. Then my bag would be lighter. (The 12 year old has long been in charge of her own stuff.) Maybe next year is the year I get the two little kids their own swim bags.

-I wish I could take some time to just swim laps. I know swimming is great exercise, but I have to always be watching the two little ones because they still are not strong swimmers. In my ideal world, the 12 year old would watch them during adult swim, but she wants to hang out with her friends and I want her to do that as well. At any rate, it’s kind of a non-issue right now because the weather so hot, there are mandatory pool breaks for everyone, so even the grown ups have to get out of the pool during adult swim. One day, though, I aspire to be able to swim laps. Maybe one day if I don’t have to be at work until later, I’ll sneak in a quick trip the pool on my own.

-I don’t think I’m packing a big enough dinner for the kids and certainly not enough vegetables. Pool dinners are all about what is easy to eat, portable, and appealing to the kids. So it is a combination of whatever fits in the thermos and snack food. I’ve been letting the kids pick a “pool snack” each week, which is usually chips or some kind of salty snacks. Which, is there anything more summer than a bag of salt an vinegar chips eaten by the pool with wet fingers? anyhow, I feel like the pool dinners I pack aren’t ideally balanced and the kids are still hungry when they get home. (Or they are trying to delay bedtime?). Still need to figure this one out.

-There is no time for anything else with the kids. So no picking up, no practicing piano, no chores. Which I think is not the worst thing for summer, but the house is getting gradually messier and messier and I end up staying up late to clean and revenge bedtime procrastinate.

BUT I remind myself that there are only two more weeks left of swim team, so this is just a busy season right now. Because we are lucky, especially in the 90+ degree heat we’ve been having, to be able to go to the pool and cool off in the evenings. It actually feels wonderful. So I’ll live with the messy living room and chlorine scented skin and rack of constantly damp swimwear in the sunroom, because there is a lot of joy and fun to be had these days as well.

On the Flip side – the things saving me this pool season:
– Thermos and lunch box. I gave these a shout out last week, but these have been great for packing dinners for the pool.

-Everyone Lotion. My brother introduced me to this brand last summer. I’ve never been brand loyal to any one lotion, but I really like this one. It’s unscented, and not too thick and not too runny, and rubs in cleanly and isn’t too expensive and doesn’t have too many ingredients. This is what we use to keep our skin from drying out from pool water and frequent showering. We have the large bottle and then decant into a smaller bottle for the pool. I’ve also been using their kids’ body wash/ shampoo as well.

-Rash guard and goggles. In an act of adulting, I finally bought myself a rash guard and a pair of goggles. I’ve never been into rash guards because I don’t like pulling a wet bathing suit over my head. But then I realized if I wore a rash guard, I wouldn’t have to put on sunscreen on my arms and back. So when I saw this zip up rash guard hoodie on sale at Lands End, I decided to try it. Friends, what an amazingly sensible thing to wear! It keeps me protected, even my neck when I pull up the hood, and it keeps me a little warmer in the pool. I don’t know why I resisted sensible things. Same with goggles. I have terrible eyesight so I always just wore my sunglasses in the pool. But then I bought a pair of tinted goggles to help with my attempt to learn how to do a handstand, and again, wow! What a practical thing! I learned that I don’t really need to see too precisely in the pool and that I can put my head underwater and that I actually find being submerged kind of relaxing.

-Drying rack – The kids only have two sets of swim clothes, so we have to remember to hang up our swim stuff right away so that it will dry for the next day. I love our drying rack. I used to dry things in the bathroom, but they dry so much more quickly in the sun room. And I pretend that the drying clothes are contributing a nice moist air for all the plants in our sun room.

-Swimsuit cover up – Last summer, I bought this hooded swimsuit cover up from a booth at a festival. The booth primarily sold Turkish towels, and they also had beach cover ups made from the same material as their towels. I love this cover up – it is substantial enough that I can wear it with or without my bathing suit underneath. It’s really soft and comfortable. There’s a hood, for when I want a bit of protection for the back of my neck. And if I put it on over wet clothes, it absorbs most of the water, no glaringly awkward wet patches. It’s one of those things that seem pricey at the time, but I’ve worn it four days a week for the past month, so it’s been worth it.

-Showers at the pool. Something clicked this year and the 7 year old has decided that he wants to take showers rather than baths. Yay! We’ve never been a “shower every day” family, but in the summer with sweat and sunscreen, we definitely need to up the bathing game. One of the best thing about evenings at the pool is I have the kids shower and get into pjs once we are done, so we arrive home clean and one step closer to bed. I love having that one step taken out of our evening routine. (Though I guess it’s just been moved to a different part of the routine…). Also I’m really glad that the kids can get dressed by themselves so that I can grab a shower too. I’ve never been more bathed in my life.

So that’s the swim life set up for us. Whew. It’s a big chunk if our lives right now.

Grateful For:
-Finding Uh-Oh Bear! We have a little stuffed bear that a friend gave us when the oldest was a baby (or maybe it was the middle child?). We call the bear Uh-Oh Bear because whichever child had the bear loved to throw it on the floor and say, “Uh-Oh!”. Uh-oh Bear came with us to Maine, but then we couldn’t find him when we were checking out of our last hotel. We thought we had maybe left him in Maine and were really sad about it because Uh-Oh Bear is a very beloved stuffy. (I know I probably should just make the kids leave the stuffies at home when we travel, but they love them so much. Last year when we went to Amsterdam we lost another stuffed bear on the plane. We aren’t great with not losing things…) Well, this week, I was getting ready for the morning when the kids came running up to me, super excitedly yelling, “WE FOUND UH-OH BEAR!!!”. The kids found him in the bottom of the 7 year old’s backpack. Hooray! I mean I have all sorts of questions as to why the 7 year old didn’t empty his backpack like I asked him to when we got home two weeks ago, but I’m just going to be grateful for now that Uh-Oh Bear is back with us.

-Beautiful skies. The weather has been so unbearably hot, but there have been some beautiful sunsets:

-A bit of rain and A Capitol Fourth and a nice chill Fourth of July. My Cousins wanted to watch Inside Out (the first one) before they got on the road home, and it was the perfect, cozy early afternoon activity on a hot day. After my cousins left, I realized that I hadn’t been outside all day, so I persuaded the 7 year old to go out with me – he on his bike, and I for a run alongside him. Just as we stepped outside, it started to sprinkle. I asked the 7 year old if he wanted to just stay home, and he said, no it’s not too much rain. So we went for a rainy walk/ bike ride and it was lovely. And then we came home and puttered and ate leftovers for dinner and then watched A Capitol Fourth.
When the 12 year old was little, I worked in Colorado during the summers, and my boss would always have a party on the Fourth of July where we ate food and swapped theatre stories while 1776 played in the background. Her house was on the top of a hill and had a perfect view of the fireworks the next town over. Only the the three year old was scared of fireworks, so we always just stayed in the house. Which is all to say, we’ve never really gone to see fireworks. There are also logistical issues too currently – our County has two firework displays, but they start so late (9pm – I get that it needs to be dark) and the one closest to us, you have to take a shuttle to get to the viewing location and actually isn’t even on the Fourth, it’s the Saturday after. It just has always seemed like a lot of work to go see fireworks. This year, the kids asked to go see fireworks, but I couldn’t wrap my head around going, so we stayed home and, as is our tradition, watched A Capitol Fourth and saw fireworks on TV instead. I actually love our little tradition – we get to see some really great performances, and then see fireworks over the Washington Monument, which is always very patriotic feeling. And then we fall asleep on the couch. Even though we don’t have cable, Capitol Fourth is streamed for free online – another thing to be grateful for. Maybe next year, I’ll think about taking the kids to see fireworks live, but for this year, watching them on TV was kind of nice too.

-Walkie talkies and the hours of play the kids have with them. I had gotten some walkie talkies last year for the kids to take camping, and last week they pulled them out and started talking to each other with them, carrying them with them at all times. There was one day when we went to run errands at Old Navy and the salesperson thought that they had taken the Old Navy staff walkie talkies and told the kids to put them back. It was hilarious and slightly embarrassing. My favorite moment from last week – this moment where I went to the park with the 7 year old – he insisted I take one walkie talkie with me while he held the other. It was a hot hot hot day, and when we got to the park, he sat at the bottom of the slide and just started talking to me on the walkie talkie – just one of those ordinary 7 year old conversations. It made me smile, this moment of him wanting to be far away, but still communicate. There’s a metaphor for something in that.

You can see his little legs hanging over the edge of the slide.

Looking Forward To:
-Figuring out kid drop off/ pick up logistics. This one is actually causing me a little bit of anxiety, so I’m going to re-frame it and say I’m looking forward to things all working out. Each of the three kids will have drop offs at different locations – the 4 year old at her usual day care, the 7 year old at camp at a nearby school, and the 12 year old at theatre camp. The 12 year old’s camp is the farthest away and starts at 9am. I’ve paid for before/after care for the 7 year old so I can drop him at before 9:00 am, probably at 8:40p. The 4 year old will get dropped at school at 8:30am. At least that is the current plan. There is also a lot of things for each kid to bring to school/camp – the 12 year old’s camp requires jazz shoes and a pencil and a 3 ring binder and a recording device (see above). The 7 year old’s camp has water play every day so he needs to bring swim suits and a change of clothes and a towel and sunscreen. And of course all three kids need lunches and water bottles. It all feels like a lot right now, so I’m looking forward to when it doesn’t feel like a lot and just feels like routine. Pick up is also going to be hard… will report back on how that works out. (Okay, two days in, and first day we were 5 minutes late for the 12 year old’s camp, second day we were right on time, but that also felt kind of late. We’ll continue to try to do better….)

-Getting my hair cut! I finally achieved my deal with myself where I wouldn’t get my hair cut until I scheduled my well woman exam. And I did that, and now as a reward I’m getting my hair cut this week. I’m looking forward to having bangs again and getting my hair off my neck, and the quicker showers that come with short hair. I’m trying out a new stylist that my friend recommended. I feel bad for not going back to the stylist that I’ve been seeing for over fifteen years, but it’s gotten so expensive to go to that salon – last year when I was there, it was $120, including the tip. This is just a cut – I don’t do colour or anything like that. I feel conflicted about balking at the cost because I do think people should be paid for their work, but $120 twice a year is a lot. And honestly, I like to keep my hair short, so ideally I would go three or four times a year. But then again, maybe it’s not so bad? Would I pay $120 for a dress? I’m sure I have, and I wear my hair every day so if we are thinking of cost per wear … Anyhow, I’m trying out a new stylist. My friend says if it works out with her stylist, we should schedule back to back hair appointments in have a friend date in the future.

– Starting work on a new show! I start prepping for my next show this week. I’m really excited about this show. I am not excited about the commute though – it’s the kind of commute that can either take 20 minutes or 75 minutes, depending on time of day. I’m going to stock up on podcasts and audiobooks and make sure I have good car snacks and cold water on hand. Currently in my listening queue, Oh Beautiful by Jun Yung – which is not the book I thought it was going to be, and I don’t love it yet – and BBC Radio Drama version of Agatha Christie’s Sad Cypress. I discovered these Agatha Christie radio adaptations last year, and I love them – they are all between one and two hours long, and keep me attentive. It’s interesting to me that the audiobook might be 7 hours long, but the radio play is only 1 – so what is lost/what is kept? I guess there are no descriptions of people or places – everything is done with sound effects and acting. So you might not know that the lady is in a mousy brown suit, but what the mousy brown suit tells you about a character must instead by conveyed through the actor’s portrayal.

-Watching more of this, my current “watch while I late night clean” show. I’m finding it eye-opening, sweet and cringey and so so so human. There is one bit where the main character, gender-fluid Sabi meets trans Olympia and asks her when she knew she wanted to transition, and Olympia says, “Every person is constantly growing into a better version of themselves. We’re all in transition.” I love that thought.

What We Ate:
Monday: Smitten Kitchen’s Coconut Rice with fried tofu and roasted sweet potato and cauliflower. This is the coconut rice from Smitten Kitchen Keeper which I keep making because it is so delicious. I tried making the coconut rice in the InstantPot this time and it worked out really well. Remember that for next time. Vegan.

Tuesday: Ramen – eaten at the pool. Ramen is a ridiculously easy thing to pack for pool dinner. I added chicken, broccoli, and frozen peas to it to bulk it up a little bit.

Wednesday: Hot Pot Dinner out with cousins K and E.

Thursday: Fourth of July, but we didn’t do anything special – we ate bagels adn other leftovers.

Friday: pizza and Glee. The Husband also made a salad.

Saturday: leftover pizza and Sing 2 and salad.

Sunday: Ramen, leftovers, whatever one could find. Sunday was kind of a random grab bag of things because I think we were just done with structured activities like cooking and eating at this point. We had a swim meet in the morning until 1pm, and then I spent the rest of the day prepping for the upcoming week while the kids did Lord knows what. There were forts and books and lots of chattering and screens – for the two littles I had borrowed these tablets from the library that are pre-loaded with educational games. It scratches that itch of being on a screen without me having to 1) actually buy them a screen, and 2) worry about what kind of inappropriate content they’re going to stumble on. And then periodically a kids would say, “I’m hungry!” and I would find them something to eat and they would eat and them move on then come back and eat some more. It’s funny how much our days are anchored around mealtimes – without any set mealtimes on this day, the whole day felt a little unmoored. But I think that’s okay once in a while.

How was your week? Any lost things found?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to summer and three small mind-blowing solutions

First of all – Elisabeth so kindly asked me to write a guest post for her! I was thrilled to do it and spill a lot -hopefully not too much. I imagine everyone who reads my blog already reads hers, but if you haven’t read hers yet, go there because not only does she write the most whimsical and heartfelt posts, she also has the best community of commenters there.

Anyhow, on to this past week – We got back from Maine last Sunday night. Sunday morning, as we were gathering to check out of the hotel, my friend texted me:

How awesome was that?!? Because honestly, the last thing I wanted to do after five hours in the car and eight days away from home was try to figure out dinner. So we got home around 6:00pm, unloaded the car and then went over for a dinner of ribs and grilled veggies and salads and good company. It was the perfect way to come home.

The past week has been a combination of relaxing and hard. Relaxing because it is summer and the kids are not yet in camp and I’m not yet working. So we do things at a slower pace. The bed times are later, the mornings stretch out. The afternoons seem infinite.

The hard part is there is currently a general lack of routine. I guess that’s the the flip side of the relaxing pace. The kids take forever to get out the door to anything. The house get messier so much more quickly because we are home all. the. time. It’s easy to to keep a house clean when we’re gone for eight hours a day and then have a routine pick up time. But when we are always home, things get left out or moved around or just generally lived in. And I don’t want to spend all my time picking up or cleaning so things get to be a bit of a pit by 4pm every day. I would rather be doing something other than cleaning. Or doing nothing. We’ve run errands, gone to swim lessons (always running late) and swim team practice (mostly on time), I’ve made dinner every night, I’ve managed to get the 7 year old to practice piano – small things like that. And then also – I’m with kids all. the. time. I haven’t been able to run or write or do any thing that gets me to a flow state, which makes life feel very jagged. And then, there’s the sibling squabbling. The 12 year old and the 7 year old have been home and constantly at each other’s throats.

One day, I asked them, “Why are you guys always fighting?”

To which the 7 year old replies, “Mom, that’s just how we communicate!”

Huh.

I’m having a low level sense of guilt and panic that we haven’t done summer enough. Next week, the 12 year old starts camp this week, and then the week after that I start working on my next show. This past week was essentially our only week to check all the summer fun boxes, and I feel like I didn’t get to a lot. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival was this week, something we usually enjoy doing, but it was so hot and what with our metro station closed, I couldn’t muster the energy to go down to the Mall. There were no trips to amusement parks or water parks or hikes or adventures to find ice cream or camping. This last one makes me wistful the most. There is so. much. pressure. to wring the life out of summer, and realizing that I didn’t do it the past week and will likely not get to it is kind of a bummer. BUT… I remind myself – we did just come back from our trip to Maine, and it has be excruciatingly hot… so maybe laying low and being domestic and chill was the right thing to do this week. And who knows what pockets of time I’ll find between shows in August?

These are all very much first world problems. So some good things, though:
– One day was hideously hot, so I declared we’d abscond to the basement and have a movie afternoon. We watched Night at the Museum, which I’d never seen before. What a fun movie! It felt really indulgent to watch a movie in the middle of the day. But also a perfect way to spend a summer day.
-Boba Tea. I shamelessly bribe the 12 year old to do things with me by promising her boba. Boba tea is my hot weather beverage of choice – oolong tea (sometimes with milk), 25% sugar, boba and lychee jelly. Makes me so happy – to have the 12 year old’s company and a boba tea. Maybe I’m just using her as an excuse to have a boba.
– Watching the kids swim at the swim meet. The two little kids aren’t officially on the swim team, but at the start of every meet, the kids on the pre-team have a kickboard race, where they swim one length with a kickboard and a swim buddy. It’s been fun watching them. And then the 12 year old has been killing it at her meets too, dropping time with each swim. On Sunday, her goggles flipped off when she dove in for her freestyle race, but she still swam like the dickens and came in second. Kind of makes it worth it to stand in the heat for four hours volunteering.

– Reading by the baby pool. The two little kids have been mostly wanting to play in the baby pool these days. We’ll usually go in the big pool for 30 minutes or so, and then they’ll move the the baby pool and spend the rest of their time there. Since I don’t have to go in the baby pool with them, I just sit on the side and read my book. Also – our pool renovated the baby pool this year, so there is a new beach entry at one end, and also bubblers and the kids love it.
-One day we went to the park and I got the 12 year old to go running with me. We only went one mile, and I had to bribe her with listening to an audiobook as we ran – we finished The Comeback – hearts all around. BUT it was still doing a physical activity with the 12 year old. I feel like it’s a win anytime I can get the 12 year old to do something with me..
-Singing showtunes together. One evening, we had a little bit of time before bed, so the kids and I gathered around the piano and sang songs, mostly musicals, also some Bruno Mars (Lest you think I’m hip with pop culture or what not, let me reassure you that up until a week ago, I had no idea who he really was. I heard “You Can Count On Me” while waiting in a store or something and it was catchy so I googled it.) Making music is fun. We should do it more.
-Fruit! There were lychees and Kent Mangos at Hmart this week. I always forget what kind of mangos are my favorite, so I’m writing it here – Kent mangos sweet and firm and not stringy.
-Celebrating a friend’s 90th birthday. He is the father of our former neighbors and the family had a celebration. I’m glad we were invited and went because we don’t see him very much these days.
-Adulting me scheduled (finally) my well woman exam. It had been so long since my last one that I am now considered a new patient. At first, I was told that the next available appointment with my doctor was not until September. SEPTEMBER! but then they found an appointment in two weeks at a mildly inconvenient time for me. But I’m going to make it work. Next stop – need to make appointments for haircut, dentist, and eye exam. Whoa. Okay. One adulting step at a time.

Three mind-blowingly simple solutions: So you know the things that sort of bug you, the pebbles in the shoes that so irk you, but you just kind of live with. Here are three things that were fixed in mind-blowingly simple ways recently:
– Watermelon cutting. One of my favorite things about summer is watermelon season. I grew up with the conventional “cut watermelon into wedges” method. It was simple, and everyone could eat watermelon with their hands. Only, it didn’t made for a neat an easy way to store the cut up watermelon in a container in the fridge – watermelon wedges are very inefficient, space-wise and I could never fit very many slices in the container. So lately, I’ve been just cubing the whole watermelon. I can fit half a watermelon in my largest plastic storage container when they are all cut up. BUT the kids prefer to have it in wedges. They like being able to hold on to a piece and wander around the house eating it and dripping watermelon juice everywhere and leaving watermelon rinds on random surfaces. (This is my least favorite part of watermelon season.) So whenever the kids see me cutting up watermelon, they say, “Don’t cut it all! Can you cut me a triangle piece?” Which is fine, only they also never manage to eat all the way down to the rind on wedges. I think something about the curve makes it hard to get all the pink/red watermelon flesh. Anyhow, irksome casualty of watermelon eating, I guess.
BUT I was at my friends’ house (the friend who made us dinner the night we got home from our Maine trip), and she had cut her watermelon into rectangles with the rind attached:

MIND BLOWN!!!! the rectangles fit neatly in a container, AND they have the rind so kids can eat it with their hands, AND they eat all the way down to the white parts because they can get to it without getting their face dirty. It was amazing. This is my new way of cutting watermelon. Now, I will say, the whole watermelon doesn’t lend itself to being cut into rectangles, so I still cut the flesh away for the rind at those parts and make that fleshy part of the watermelon into cubes and put into a container – which is great because I actually prefer eating watermelon with the rind already disposed of.

– Sleep shorts. I had been sleeping in flannel lounge pants that we had bought in Vermont two summers ago. I love these flannel pants – we actually have matching flannel sleep pants for the family – it’s pretty cute. But it’s now summer and I don’t know if it’s me being mid-40s or what, but it’s been way too hot to sleep in flannel sleep pants. I’ve been hunting around for cotton sleep sets, but it’s so hard to tell online what things are like and most things these days are a cotton blend, which might feel soft, but just makes me feel hotter. Also, so many of the sleep sets have button down tops, and though they look super cute, buttons are a little too much for me to have to deal with late at night when I’m stumbling to bed. So I’ve been just sleeping in flannel pjs and being hot. Also, I do like to sleep with a duvet regardless of temperature – something about burrowing into it is comforting and helps me sleep. So hot me, looking for sleep shorts, feeling overwhelmed and annoyed.
Then I went to Uniqlo to buy some shorts for the 12 year old. (I love that Uniqlo has unisex clothes. Because – pardon the rant – but why are girls’ shorts SO short? My tween certainly does not want to be wearing shorts with a 2″ inseam! Anyhow, I found shorts for her at Uniqlo – the men’s Airism line. They don’t come in cute colours or patterns like they the 2″ ones, but at least this way, she’s comfortable. Plus she doesn’t really care about colours.) Anyhow, I’m at Uniqlo and looking around, and I see a mannequin with these cute striped shorts on, and I take a closer look and they are… men’s boxers! So I go over to the men’s section and look at the boxers – they are 100% cotton (except for the elastic waist) and look exactly like what I want to sleep in. So I buy two pairs – another bonus, they’re men’s clothes so it’s like $15 for two pairs. And BAM! I’ve found the perfect sleep short. They are cool crisp cotton, not clingy jersey cotton, there is a button on the fly, so I don’t have to worry about awkwardly flashing anyone that way. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t think of this before because in my 20s I did wear a boyfriend’s boxers to sleep. But anyhow, another mind-blowingly simple solution for something. And now I’m sleeping much cooler.

I wear a size Men’s large. I’m trying not to let this get to my vanity.

–Speeding Tickets. Third one – this one actually happened a couple of months ago, but it’s kind of stuck in my mind, so here it is. Driving to the theatre, there is one street I have to go down. It’s a residential street and about once a year I get a speeding ticket. ARGH!!! so frustrating. Part of the issue is that the light is out on my dashboard, so I can’t really see the speedometer at night, and I drive a lot at night and the street is pretty dark. So I was trying to do all sorts of awkward things to keep from speeding – driving with the domelight on, counting telephone poles as I drove, etc… Then one day, I was coming down the parkway headed to this speed trap street and for some reason I can’t even remember why now, I just decided to get off the parkway earlier and go home a different way. A way without speed cameras and more light. And after that, I decided to always take that other road home, and you know what… I haven’t gotten anothefr speeding ticket since. I mean how mind-blowingly simple was that? Just go home the way without a speed camera and avoid speeding tickets. It’s embarrassing how long it took me to figure that one out.

Can I tell you a frustrating story from this weekend? I was dropping the 7 year old off at a birthday party, and I was trying to parallel park into one of the only parking spots I could find, but there was a car double parked in front of the free spot. I think they were waiting for a food order. I’m getting better at parallel parking, but doing it next to a double parked car is nigh on impossible for me. At one point, the double parked car saw that I was trying to get into the space and inched forward like a foot, but that was not helpful. (This is where the Husband said I needed to use my horn. I am very horn averse. It just seems loud and aggressive.) So I’m going back and forth and back and forth. I should have given up and moved on, only we were already late to the party and sometimes I get really fixated on things, especially when I think I’m right (this is my spot) and the other person is being an asshole (just freakin’ go around the block while waiting for your food, dumb nuts!). So I’m in a manual car and the parking space is on the slightest of inclines and this is also turning into a noisy attempt as every time I shift into first, I have to give it a lot of gas. It’s been going on a while when I look up and there’s a guy standing next to my car. A very nice looking young man with a helpful expression on his face.
“Ma’am,” he says, “I think your parking brake is on.”
And I just had to laugh. “No, actually,” I told him, “I’m just driving a manual car. But thank you.” While thinking to myself, “Are you even old enough to know how to drive a manual car?”
He immediately looked apologetic and backed off. I tried to give him a friendly wave because I thought it was actually kind of sweet that he wanted to help. Maybe a little mansplain-y, but you could tell he was just trying to do the right thing. It kind of made me hate the world a little less. Except maybe that guy double parked in front of me.

Okay, one more smile from this week – the 4 year old’s class wrote a list of things to know for kids moving up into their classroom. I wonder if our kid wrote the fifth item.

Grateful For:
– The grill. On days when it is too hot to turn on the stove, I can make dinner outside.

-Meeting people from other places. I was a little nervous going to the aforementioned 90th birthday party – we didn’t really know anyone other than the hosts and being a stranger always puts me out of my comfort zone. But the party ended up being really lovely. There were the most fascinating well-travelled guests there – a lot of them expats or people working for the IMF or some such – it seems a very DC kind of thing. And they all had great stories to tell about living in places like Kenya and Ethiopia and Kuala Lumpur. I learned about these Orthodox Christian churches in Ethiopia that were carved out of rocks in the late 12th century, and was given a very brief history of Christianity in Ethiopia. It was fascinating and something I knew nothing about. I heard stories of immigration and about living a first world life in a third world country. It was really inspirational to talk to these people and I’m glad they shared their stories with me. The world has so many adventures to be had.

-Shade at the playground. We’ve been going to the playground in the morning, but it’s been really hot – like 85-90 degrees hot. Thankfully at one playground there is a covered pavilion and at the other playground there are lots of trees, so I can sit in the shade while the kid plays. It’s actually not too bad in the shade -it’s the rays of the hot hot sun that really get to me.

-Thermos and lunchboxes so I can pack healthy dinners for the pool. Also dill pickle chips because those are tasty too.

Looking Forward To:
-Vegetables. We don’t eat enough vegetables when we travel, so I’m really looking forward to some veggie packed meals this week. We went to the farmer’s market this weekend – I had realized that it was silly not to take advantage of summer produce, even though my favorite produce stand is closed, so we found a farmer’s market on Sunday. We came away with greens, zucchini, Japanese (or are they Italian?) eggplants, cucumbers, cauliflower, carrots, and a 1/2 bushel of peaches. I can’t wait to prepare and eat it all.

-My cousins are coming to visit! They will be here for a few days. I think we are just going to do life things. It’s hard to motivate to go downtown to all the museums when our metro stop is closed, but maybe we’ll drive down and I can park at work?

-Devouring this book:

I’m not usually into time travel books or political spy thrillers, and this book is kind of a mash up of those genres. I picked up this book because it promised a love story and was written by a British-Cambodian author, and I’ve been sucked in and reading it every chance I get. I tore through it and then realized that I have only a few more chapters to go, so I slowed down my pace a little so I could draw it out as much as possible as I get to the end.

What We Ate – A lot of dinners at the pool this week. I think I have come up with a formula – a main that is some kind of carb/grain, protein, veggie that can be eaten out of a thermos + crunchy snack food + fruit. It seems to be working pretty well, but it does mean that in order to be at the pool by 5:00pm, I need to start making/prepping dinner at 3:30pm. I don’t know how this is going to work when I go back to work and have a commute…

Sunday: home from Portland, dinner with friends. They made ribs, caprese salad, slaw, grilled veggies, corn, and watermelon (cut into rectangle wedges!)

Monday: Tofu, steamed broccoli, and vermicelli noodles – eaten at the pool. I had some Omsom marinades in the fridge, so I used the Yuzu one for the tofu. I also tried this technique from the Omson website to prepare the tofu. It involves soaking the tofu in hot salted water before pan frying it. The recipe said that it would make for a crispy exterior. I didn’t find that it was that much crispier than my usual method of pressing for hours and the dredging in cornstarch. However, because the moisture isn’t all pressed out of the tofu, it did make for a pillowy soft interior. I’ll definitely try this technique again. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pasta salad – chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, parmesan cheese, with a dressing made of red wine vinegar, olive oil, dehydrated garlic, oregano. Dinner at the pool. I grilled a big batch of chicken thighs, putting some in the pasta salad and saving some for the next day. I’m super proud I thought to do that.

Wednesday: Chicken, black bean, and corn quesadillas. Dinner at the pool before the swim meet.

Thursday: Gimbap (Korean seaweed and rice rolls, kind of like sushi. Bought from the HMart take out counter), cucumbers with furikake, and blueberries. eaten at the pool.

Thursday: Two part dinner. Part one – dumplings (cooked from frozen) and Berry smoothies (I’ve really gotten into using kefir as the liquid for my smoothies. Also, I caved and have been adding honey to the smoothies – the touch of sweetness does really make them taste better). Eaten at the pool. Part Two: Pizza (Take out) and Glee.

Saturday: Dinner at friend’s 90th birthday party. His daughter, our former neighbor, cooked trays and trays of Ethiopian food. It was so delicious.

Sunday: Grilled cheese sandwiches. Simple Sunday.

Hope you are having a great summer week. Any mind-blowingly simple solutions to share?

Reflections for my kids at the end of the 2023-2024 School Year

Well we made it through another school year! It always feels like a triumph to make it to the last day of school. Back in September, the school year was just stretched out before us, full of questions and possibilities. Well now we know. There were first days and snow days and holidays and testing days. And we got through them all. If you’ll pardon me being a sentimental mother, here’s some thoughts for my kids that I want to hold on to about this past year…

Dear L (12 year old)-
You get the longest letter because I feel like you had the biggest shift this year, going to to middle school. It’s been amazing watching you navigate your first year there. I was so nervous and worried at the beginning of the school year- how were you going to get to school? Would you be able to find your classes? Do you have friends? Will the other kids be nice to you? So much would be new. And even though I didn’t specifically go to middle school – my school was K-8 – I know how tough those years can be, trying to figure out who you are, what you want to do, how you want to do it, what brings you joy… And all the while the kids around you having the same struggles, and sometimes not very kind about it. I didn’t have to worry about you. I should have known that you had the independence, kindness, and confidence that a kid needs to thrive middle school. How many times did we have this exchange:

You: There was another fight in the hallways today.
Me: Oh no. Are you okay? What did you do?
You: I just kept walking to class.

I think that ability to stay far away from the drama will serve you well in life.

Middle school has been kind of a black hole for me – you go off in the morning, come home at night. I don’t really know what goes on in between, and since you don’t have (or do) homework, I just have to trust that you are learning – learning things and learning how to learn things and do the work. I don’t know if my memories will be the same as yours, but this is what I will remember about your 6th grade year: Your first sleepaway experience with the school Outdoor Education program (which you loved – are you sure you aren’t interested in sleepaway camp???). How you really got into theatre. Seeing you up on stage singing and dancing was so much fun. You realizing that you were actually pretty good at math and that it was those horrid kids in the Chinese immersion program who were the shitty ones. You walking home from school singing show tunes at the top of your lungs. How you took it upon yourself to write all your teachers Thank You notes at the end of the year. (Though we should still work on how to spell circumference). You coming home brimming with news and gossip. You figuring out how to talk to your teachers on your own. Fighting about screentime and whether or not you could get a cellphone. I think this last one will be with us for at least another year. It’s an ongoing conversation… Let’s see what happens next year!

Dear A (7 year old)-
It’s been a tough year in first grade, hasn’t it? I’m so sorry for all the stupid challenges that you faced this year at school. The homework was excessive – how I wanted to tell you to just burn it all!
But… you’ve learned to read – in two languages! You can do math! You make art and music. I love having little conversations with you in French – we won’t be talking about economics any time soon, but being able to talk to you in French about your day or things that you need is delightful. I’m so amazed at how much of the language your brain has picked up in just two years. And you’ve made some good friends, I think. Apparently playing soccer at recess is the highlight of many of your days. And outside of school, this year you’ve learned to sew and play the piano and ride your bike. I think those are all amazing accomplishments.

Dear W (4 year old)-
I guess technically you don’t have a “school year” since you are in day care all year round, but you did move to a new classroom last August. We all went into this school year hoping you could go to kindergarten this fall, but clearly the universe (or the school district) had other plans. Oh well, as one of your teachers said, you’ll be the smartest kid in kindergarten when you get there. “Why can’t she go to Kindergarten?!?!?” has now become a catchphrase in our family any time you do something funny or smart or responsible. (Which is at least four or five times a day.) I hope you’ve had a great year in your pre-K classroom. From what I see, you’ve done so much! You learned to write letters and numbers, you made good friends, you played in the sandbox a lot. A lot a lot. There were beaches of sand dumped out of your shoes when you came home some days. Your big sister got to come to your class to be the Mystery Reader. I guess if you don’t get to go to kindergarten you’ll get to have all that fun all over again. Whatever next year brings, I’m sure you’ll meet it with your usual enthusiasm and joy.

Well, now it’s time for summer. I hope we find time to enjoy summer and the time off from school. Sooner than we know, it will be the end of August again, and time for another school year.

We make videos of the kids on the last day of school, asking them questions about the past year. I try to ask the same questions every year, but I don’t always remember. Here are the answers from this year:

12 year old, just finished 6th grade:
Most Challenging thing: Adjusting to have so many different teacher and a locker with a code. And classes being louder with people I didn’t know or associate with at all.
Best Thing: One, we didn’t really have homework. Two, the teachers were nicer than I expected.
Worst Thing: The fights. And the drama. And the kids being WAY too loud and some of the teachers were just mean. Well, they weren’t mean they were just taught at certain way when they were kids and they’d always been taught that way so they didn’t know how to adjust the teachings to the needs of the kids.
What are you most proud of this year? I got into both the play and the musical and I had lines in both.
What are your hopes and aspirations for 7th grade: That the new theatre teacher likes me.
What advice would you give someone going to 6th grade? Don’t get on the teacher’s bad side.

The 7 year old, just finished 1st grade:
Most Challenging Thing: The grades. Especially when you have the best teacher in 1st teacher.
Best Thing: There are friends that you remember from kindergarten.
Worst Thing: Math is hard.
What are you post proud of this year? I got to second grade, because that was unlikely.
Looking forward to the most in 2nd Grade: I hope I get good notes. (I think he means grades here – notes= French for grades.)
What advice would you give someone going into 1st grade? Don’t speak English if you are going to French.

The 4 year old, in Pre-K:
Most Challenging Thing: Circle Time
Best Thing: Playing.
Worst Thing: Getting in fights. (Me: WHAT?!?!) There are fights in line.
What are you most proud of this year? Writing my name.
Looking forward To: Getting into kindergarten.
What advice do you have for someone coming into your classroom? Don’t be mean.

A Trip to Maine- Summer 2024

We just got back from a trip up to Maine. I’m always so slow to write trip recaps, so here are some highlights…

Eating lots of seafood-

Portland Maine- cobblestone streets

Ferry ride

Historic Mansions

Then on up the coast.

Our home for four days on Swan’s Island, near Acadia National Park:

We went to the beach:

Saw the lighthouse-

Went to the quarry swimming hole.

And generally relaxed and watched many, many, many hours of Start Trek: The Next Generation. There were lazy days, sandy treasures, bug bites, hot tubs, saunas, and beautiful sunsets.

Then we came home, stopping in Jersey City to visit a friend on the way. There were many long days in the car, but also hotel pools and hotel breakfasts and hotel tv, which, let’s be honest, the kids love. The drive home down I95 on a Sunday was hard, and the Husband is a hero for doing all the driving.

And now it’s summer and back to summer camp schedules and swim meets and in a few weeks, a summer opera gig for me. So many things to look forward to this summer- some tedious, and some exciting and some just new rhythms. These little life shifts are sometimes hard for me, but I think it’s good to keep me from getting into mindless ruts. When time opens up or is obligated in different ways, it is a chance to see where the important things fit.

Friday, as we were driving home- a very long car ride on a very long day- literally the longest day- I realized that the year is half over. I wonder if this is just how time goes- 2024 seemed to stretch endlessly before me six months ago and now I can see the shore. (Forgive the clumsy metaphor, but I have been in Maine looking at shores for the past week.). These markers are arbitrary, which seems like both a gift and a burden. A gift of freedom to mark my path however I want, but also a burden to know that I am responsible for navigating myself to that shore. I want this week, amidst feeding the family and driving them places to have some time to think about what the rest of the year can be.

Books Read April and May 2024

I read a lot in April, but I didn’t read much in May because work was really busy, Lots of audiobooks because of commuting, though…

Last Night at The Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo – I picked up this book from my sister in law when I was visiting them in Berkeley. This novel is about Lily Hu, growing up in 1950s San Francisco and how she begins to question and explore her sexuality. It’s always fun to read a book about the place that I’m visiting, particularly since we did go to Chinatown and I had a frame of reference for some of the streets mentioned in the book. I loved all the historical details, and thinking about life as a Chinese American in mid century America. I think ultimately, though, coming of age novels aren’t really my jam right now. I find I get impatient to know what happens to a character once they break free of childhood so I’m always a little disappointed when the books end with them just starting their journey. I liked reading this book and all the characters, but I just wanted there to be more story and less personal angst. I think this is definitely a “me” problem because the book is beautiful written and well researched.

Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – A 2016 collection of writings, micro essays, drawings, and some things I can’t define. I first heard of Amy Krause Rosenthal through her delightful children’s books. (Oh gosh – I just googled her and she passed away in 2017, which makes me so sad now and tinges the book with bittersweetness) This book has an interactive texting component to it, which given that she has passed away, makes that element really poignant. Anyhow, this book is structured in class subjects and she uses each subject as a lens through which she examines all the things that give us angst and give us joy. I really loved this book – the book is very dog eared from all the passages I wanted to mark. I laughed and laughed so hard. Some favorite excerpts:
Under Social Studies:
“You run into someone from elementary school, someone you haven’t seen in forever. How have you been what have you been up to?! There are many ways to come at their questions, but considering your shared history – you were once prepubescent fort-makers together – there sis really only one response: What have I been up to? I’ll tell you the biggest, craziest things since I last saw you: A few humans tumbled out of my lady parts.“

Under Midterm Essay, about hitting middle age:
“An so it was, everything around me had a bittersweet sheen to it; moments were dramatically stamped FLEETING and TRANSIENT as I roamed about. A simple exchange between my son and me, for example, felt epic in its beauty and poignancy; all that happened was that he tapped on his bedroom window, I looked up at him from the sidewalk below, and he waved…. I lost it when my daughter excitedly asked me to quick come outside, watch this; See how fast my new sneakers make me run?
I didn’t exactly have a midlife crisis. I had a mid-life cry-bliss. “

And also has pithy charts and drawings like this one under Language Arts:

Murder Your Employer- the McMaster’s Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes – This is a novel about how to, well, murder your employer. I borrowed the audio book because it was narrated by Neil Patrick Harris and Simon Vance. The novel centers around Cliff, who is recruited to a school that trains people in murder, kind of a Hogwarths for would be killers. I thought this book was gleefully convoluted, and Holmes skewers the mystery genre to perfection. If you’re not into murder mysteries this might not be your thing, but if you do like them, this will feel delightfully similar in tone to Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.

The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto – Read for Mother Daughter Book Club. The 12 year old picked this out and then told me I had to read it. It’s about a high school boy who developed an obsessive crush on a classmate and how his crush retaliates. I didn’t love this book – all the characters are either morally terrible or clueless in a harmful way. The 12 year old loved it though – she loves novels with a good twist and this one was quite twisty. I did yelp out loud at one point. I have enjoyed other books by Jess Q Sutano, though – I think she writes fun and entertaining books.

My Brilliant Friend be Elena Ferrente– FINALLY finished this book from Cool Bloggers Book Club. My take away – WTF? Who are all these people? I mean a) literally in the sense that I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, and b) I could never figure out what they were about.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue – This beautifully written novel is about a village in Africa that is contaminated by the digging on their land by a BIG American corporation. The villagers spend years trying to get the big company to stop the digging and to pay reparations for all the death and disease the digging and toxic run off has has caused. The effort has a huge cost to the people of the village. This was a sad and frustrating read for me, as might be expected whenever a story pits people without resources against huge corporations and corrupt governments. I really liked this book, despite that- or maybe because of it. Mbue finds surprising nuances and complexities in corruption and survival.

The Tattooist of Auchwitz by Heather Morris, read by Richard Armitage– I picked this audiobook because it was read by Richard Armitage, who I’ve been a fan of since the BBC production of North and South. As might be expected from the title, this is a very very sad book – the misery was a little unrelenting. At the same time, I thought there were parts of it that were stunning even in the face of the autrocities of the Holoucaust.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan, read by Therese Plummer– I picked this up becauae I saw it on a list of short audiobooks. It is about a young computer programmer who moves to the Bay Area to work for a tech company and starts making sourdough bread in her spare time. I thought this satirical and charming book was a fun read, but the end was a little unhinged and bizarre. The astute observations on life in the Bay area made me laugh. There were parts that made me want to revive my sourdough starter and start baking bread again, the descriptions of bread baking were so evocative and romantic. I don’t love books where the ending comes out of left field, and this book kind of just left me scratching my head. I listened to a lot of this during late night commutes and there were parts where I thought, “Maybe this doesn’t make sense because I’m tired’.” And I’d go back and re-listen, a couple times even. But nope, the story was just that odd in places.

My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy – YA novel set in the world of high school theatre. (I suggested this as a mother daughter book club book, but I’m not sure the 12 year old read it.) High school senior Wade is passed over for the lead in the school production of My Fair Lady, so he decides to befriend Elijah in an attempt to show people how not self centered he is. Elijah on the other hand has joined the lighting crew for the show in order to make some friends, and jumps at th eopportunity to make friends with super popular Wade. I always find theatre books fun to read – seeing what an author got right or wrong compared to my own experiences. I loved those details in this book, but I didn’t love Wade. The concept of the book is based on what an asshole Wade is, but the story is told in first person and I find it very rare that people truly come off as assholes in first person.

On my proverbial night stand:

Landslide by Susan Conley- Maine author to go with our Maine trip. Really enjoying this book.

Life is Hard: How Philisophy can Help us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya- A couple years ago I read Setiya’s book Midlife: a Philosophical Guide, and found it so thoughtful to read. This book is about the various things that can make life challenging- infirmity, loneliness, failure, injustice- and seeing if phlosophy can help us navigate them,

Wild Genius On The Moors by Juliet Baker- Charlotte Brontë has died! Yet there are still thirty pages to go….

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer, audiobook- charming epistolatory novel about two 12 year olds whose fathers have met and fallen in love- it’s a little too cute sometimes (perhaps because of the audiobook format) but mostly proving delightful.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White- reading aloud at bedtime to the kids,

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty- another Maine author- a collection of interconnected short stories. I’m enjoying to so far.

Weekly recap + what we ate: decluttering and swimming

We looked at our calendar and realized that it was going to be one of our only free weekends to take a day trip to Longwood Gardens, so we decided to go on Saturday. The Husband and two littles went to a volunteer garden clean up at the church in the morning and when they came home, we had lunch and then got in the car. We usually go to Longwood Gardens in the morning and spend all day, so this was a bit of an abbreviated trip. I wondered if driving two hours for a couple hours at Longwood would be worth it, and it turns out it was a nice outing. We didn’t go to the conservatory, spending all our time in the outdoor portion of the gardens, and we skipped the treehouses where we usually let the kids play for a bit. But we did walk the meadow path, which is something we don’t always get to do because it is a little on the long side. And we did see the vegetable gardens which is always one of my favorite things. Here is the Rainbow collage from our visit:

One big disappointment was that they have taken out the children’s garden – there used to be a section with a fountain the kids could play in and the gardens were set up with bee themed paths with nooks and crannies to hide in. It was the kind of space that invited a lot of imaginative free play. The Husband talked to a guide and they said that they’re implemented more “interactive” displays for kids – namely little signs with information and prompts for discussion. Which… let’s be honest, I don’t know any kid that is going to say, “Boy, this placard is a lot more fun than these winding maze-paths.” Anyhow, that was kind of a bummer, but even still it was nice to be out in the sunshine and flower and trees and grass. The 12 year old took charge of the two little kids and they wandered down paths together singing show tunes, and when they got tired of that, she would ask for prompts from her siblings and make up songs for them. It’s nice to have moment like that to remember when they are at each other’s throats. We stayed at the gardens for about two and a half hours and then we went home, stopping for BBQ on the way home. It was delicious. All in all, a nice day.

Sunday was Time Trials for the 12 year old’s swim team. I took her to the pool at 7am and then stayed to work as a timer. It was really neat to see her swim and take an interest in her results. She even went up to one of the stroke and turn judges during a quiet moment and asked about the rules and how people most often get disqualified. They weren’t DQing people at time trials, but afterwards, she still went and asked the judge if she would have been DQd so she could learn and work on those things. I think I’m realizing that even though I find parenting a tween really hard, it’s so cool to see her becoming a person and take things on herself. Makes me feel like I just need to trust the process more and talk less.

To celebrate time trials, I took the 12 year old for a smoothie and we tried a Mangonada – kind of a combination of mango smoothie with mango chunks layered with a swirl of sweet and spicy mixture called chamoy, and topped with a tamarind straw. It was amazing and I’ll have more! The rest of the day was occupied by a long visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while and then simple dinner and bed. All in all a nice weekend.

The week before was one of my few weeks without kids and without work. One of the big projects was to clean out the guest room. It has become a dumping ground for all the random things without a home or in transition in our lives. I spent a couple hours this week going through the boxes and boxes of kids’ clothes. It’s kind of a chore because they need to be sorted into stuff the little kids can still wear and stuff that no one will ever wear again. Then this latter pile is sorted into age and then girl and boy clothes. And then there are the shoes. So many shoes. I had a phase when I was obsessed with those Keen water shoes and would snatch them up anytime I saw them at consignment sales. It is kind of a problem. I have a pair in practically every size, and then some. Some sizes that are ridiculous because my kid certainly wasn’t walking when her feet were that size. So there are a lot of shoes. Which is kind of funny because we’re kind of shoe minimalists for the kids. They have a pair of running shoes, a pair of Crocs and a pair of rain/snow boots. And also a pair (or two of Keens).

This isn’t the “before” picture- it’s “during” picture, which I think is even more scary. Putting it here for a bit of accountability.

Also – over the years I’ve also amassed a motley assortment of breast pumps. Breast pumps were never covered in my insurance plan (this feature had been grandfathered in after Obamacare passed), so, counter-intuitively, I decided that I would spend lots of my own money on pumps. I had five electric pumps sitting around. Three of them I love, as much as one can love a breast pump – I mean I think there were days when I spent more time with my breast pump than with my family, so there was a kind of begrudgingly familiar relationship there. Two of the pumps were complete pieces of garbage. They weren’t efficient at all and had so many awkward parts. (I mean all pumps have awkward pumps, but these were particularly not streamlined.) Why was I holding on to crappy breast pumps??? What value were they adding to my life?

To backtrack a little, on the day before, my friend and I went to see an afternoon movie. We went to see Babes – a movie about two friends navigating their friendship as they traverse the waters of motherhood. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much in a movie theatre. The movie was so so so so funny. But also so on point about so many aspects for friendship and parenthood. There is a moment (spoiler alert) where one character encourages the other character to burn her breast pump. Oh my goodness, the triumphant glee with which they destroyed that breast pump brought me so much joy to watch. The next day, thinking back on the movie, I looked at those two crappy pumps sitting in the bottom of a storage bin and I was inspired. Those pumps were annoying as all get out to use – no point in trying to dispose of them in the perfect way. Chunk, toss. Straight into the garbage bag they went. I felt a tiny twinge of regret about throwing out something that was still in working order, but I’ll get over it.

Two of the other pumps, I ended up giving to a friend with a new baby girl. In addition to that friend, I have another friend (the one who came over on Sunday afternoon) expecting a baby in September, so I passed on a bunch of stuff to her too, including cloth diapers, a diaper pail, a baby sling. Why did I have a diaper pail still sitting around? I wasn’t even using it – it was in the attic, collecting dust and nostalgia.

In all honesty I could have just chucked everything into a donation pile and moved it all out of the house, but every time I pulled the clothes out, I got all sentimental, remembering when the outfit was worn. And when I got sentimental, I couldn’t bear to just sweep everything into a trash bag for donation; some of the pieces I wanted to pass along and know that they would get worn again. So I think that this week, between those two friends, I passed along four or five boxes worth of things – also a baby chair that I think I will need to get back because unbeknownst to me, the Husband is actually really attached to it – it cam all the way from Colorado with us when we had our first child. The guest room does not look any better, though, because most of the things I did purge were in bins, so they didn’t leave much visual clutter in the first place. If anything, the guest room looks worse because the things that were in bins are now all over the floor. Oh well, at least I know that progress is being made, even if it doesn’t look like it.

We’ve been swimming a lot this week. My skin smells constantly of chlorine and sunscreen and no amount of scrubbing will get that smell out. I’m really proud of the 4 year old – one day I forgot her swim vest at home, and she still spent an hour and a half in the pool (with time out for adult swim) – she can now touch the bottom in the shallow end. Neither the seven year old nor the 4 year old can swim yet, but they are comfortable paddling around in the 4ft section in their swim vests. We don’t swim much outside of summer, so every year it’s a bit of a surprise to see how the kids fare in the water. (Though there is a new aquatic center opened up near us, so maybe we’ll take advantage of that during the cooler months?). One of my dreams this summer is to get the 7 year old to swim independently. There were definitely 7 year olds swimming at time trials and their flailing perseverance was kind of adorably inspirational to watch.

We’re still trying to find our routine for pool nights. I’ve been trying to pack a big snack/dinner for the two little kids so they can eat at the pool after their swim session. Then I have them shower and change into pjs at the pool so that when we get home they just have to brush teeth and go to bed. The 12 year old either eats at home or eats at the pool. Sometimes both. The “coming home and going straight to bed” hasn’t been exactly working and there have been a lot of late nights. I don’t know if we just muddle through this erratic bedtime for the next five weeks, or if we should try to tweak the routine/schedule. Oh well, there’s only a couple more days of school and then we’re into summer, so maybe the relaxed evenings are what makes summer memories? Although, once camp starts, our mornings will be more hectic because camp starts earlier than school so we will have to be out the door earlier. My takeaway – there is no such thing as routine.

Towards the end of the week the principal called with the results for the four year old’s Early Entrance to Kindergarten assessment and he said that the 4 year old did not meet the criteria for early entrance. Wump wump. When I asked the principal what they thought she needed a little more time on, he said that she was actually above grade level for Math and letter recognition, but some of the reading skills weren’t quite there. Part of me thinks that if my child can already read, then she should be going into 1st grade, not kindergarten. I do wonder if early entrance to Kindergarten is about a child being highly gifted rather than just run of the mill “ready for kindergarten”. Anyhow, the principal said we can appeal the decision to the school district if we want. The first step would be a more in depth meeting with him.

I know I said I wouldn’t push the early entrance issue if the school thought she should wait, but it’s one of those things when faced with the realities, things always shift slightly. I think we will go ahead and meet with the principal and go from there. I think I also am a little concerned that her current pre-K teachers say she will be bored if she has to repeat pre-K so I want to know what can we/the preschool do to challenge her next year and keep her engaged? Or maybe we need to look into private Kindergarten? The whole thing has left me a little deflated because I had been really excited for her to start school next year – she is the most mature of the three kids, she does addition up to 10 on her fingers, she knows all the letter sounds and can write words if you spell them to her – all her teachers say she’s ready. She had even gotten a place in the same French Immersion program as the 7 year old, which meant that I would have two kids in one school. I’ve never had two kids in one school before! The Immersion program is by lottery, so I’m not sure if she’ll get a place the following year. And now it would mean another year of paying for childcare. Gah. All things that are a little bit of a bummer.

Haiku – I’m trying to take up the haiku habit again. It’s watermelon season, one of my favorite reasons for summer. Only watermelons are big, and not everyone in the family likes eating it….

Why did I ever
Buy a whole watermelon
Right before my trip?

Grateful For:
-My friend who came see a weekday matinee with me and the very flexible week at work that allowed her to do so. Is there anything as luxurious as taking in a weekday matinee? The theatre was practically empty and my friend and I ate popcorn for lunch and laughed loudly together. And afterwards we ran errands at Target together. It was kind of the perfect friend day.

-Laughing with my family. Inspired by a mention on Stephany‘s blog, I cued up some Nate Bargatze. Stand up comedy is not something that was ever really on my radar. But I like laughing, so I thought I’d give it a try and pulled up one of his albums the other day while cleaning the kitchen. Oh my did it feel good to laugh. And the 12 year old, who was cleaning alongside me laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time. We’ve had a lot of moody tween lately, so hearing her laugh kind of helped remind me that she can still find delightful things in life. She now wants to listen to stand up all the time – we listened to Jim Gaffigan on the way to Longwood Gardens. I’m discovering a whole new world of entertainment! I don’t always find the content appropriate – I think what was once considered “edgy” is actually kind of sexist/racist/ableist, etc. And body shaming seemed to be a big thing in a lot of the albums. Some of the punching down is uncomfortable, and not in a good way. So yeah, some of it has been a little hit or miss. But when the absurdities of life are brought front and center and I can relate to those absurdities, it’s kind of a hit.

-Music Teachers. We’ve had two music recitals the past few weeks and, let’s be honest, the enthusiasm outweighs the ability in many cases. And yet, it doesn’t matter at all. The teachers are as enthusiastic for the kid who played the 10 second piece as they are for the kid who played the 10 page piece. My kids’ music teachers spend their time day in and day out teaching kids how to make music and never seem to get jaded about what they do.

-Finding my journals. I lamented last week about feeling a little off because I had misplaced my journals. Well I found them! They were under a pile of things next to my desk. Hooray! I haven’t gotten back into the daily habit, but I did make time to jot a few things down every couple of days. It’s a little sad to me how blank May is, but when I look back, I’ll be able to tell that May 2024 was a very busy month, and that’s a kind of record keeping in and of itself.

Looking Forward To:
– Maine! I’ve been listening to podcasts on Acadia National Park to get inspired. Listening to travel podcasts is one of my favorite things to do when I’m getting ready for a trip. I just search my destination and I’ll get a list of podcast episodes that are relevant. I’m excited for hikes and beaches and lobster and seeing friends.

-On that note, there was a list in the New York Times called Read Your Way Through Maine. It’s part of an occasional series where they have an author recommend a reading list tied to a location. (There was one for San Francisco, which inspired some of my reading during spring break.) I love reading books set in places that I’m about to visit, so I’ve borrowed a couple books off the Maine list to read in anticipation of/while in Maine – Landslide is about a women, mother of three teenage boys living in remote Maine, trying to cope when her husband is hospitalized in a fishing accident. Night of the Living Rez is twelve interconnected short stories set in a Native community in Maine.

-Glee! Because swim team practice goes until 7:30pm, we have had to re-think our traditional Friday night pizza and movie. Similar what we do when the 12 year old had Friday night basketball practice, we’ve decided to replace the pizza and movie with pizza and a tv show. During basketball season we watched Galavant, but there was only two seasons of it and we’ve watched it all. We tossed around a couple idea – I had borrowed the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the library, and we thought we might introduce the kids to the Star Trek universe, but at the last minute I was in the mood for something a little more light hearted, and we decided to watch Glee. I had watched it off and on when it first came out, but I didn’t really have a television at the time, so I didn’t get to watch all of it. We are only two episodes in and it’s really fun. Some awkward adult content that I’m not quite ready to explain to the 7 and 4 year olds yet – I had forgotten the whole bit about the celibacy club – but they haven’t asked yet. The musical numbers are fun and the performances crackle; I’m enjoying it.

What We ate: We’ve survived our first two weeks of swim team practice. Last week the little kids started practice so it was the first week with us being at the pool from 5:00pm – 8:00pm. Dinner kind of felt all over the place.

Saturday: Leftover pizza and Kate and Leopold. It was my turn to choose the movie and I wanted a nice cozy rom-com. Does anyone else remember this movie? What a charming, sweet, perfect romantic comedy! And oh my gosh Hugh Jackman just glows through the whole movie. I feel like I’ve said it before here, but he’s just so pretty.

Sunday: Grilled chicken and vegetables. My friend’s 11 year old and my 12 year old have the same voice teacher, so Sunday after their recital, we asked if they wanted to come over for dinner. We stopped at the grocery story on the way home to pick up some chicken, my friend made a marinade at home and brought it over, and we had a great little cook out – chicken, vegetables, salad. Also – just as we were firing up the grill, our neighbor, who works at the farmer’s market, brought us four bunches of asparagus, so we tossed two bunches on the fire too. It was the perfect casual summer hang out with friends.

Monday: Vegetarian Tortilla Soup. Mostly this recipe from the NY Times, but I made it in the InstantPot and added black beans because we had some dried black beans that had been in the pantry for way too long and we kind of wanted the space back. I think my favorite part of this soup is that I dumped the last crumbs of a bag of tortilla chips into it to thicken it up (a trick I learned from Dinner Illustrated.) The chips had been sitting in the cupboard for a while and they were pretty stale, but no one ever wants to eat the tiny broken bits – how do you scoop salsa with that? I abhor food waste, so dumping the last dregs of the bag into the suit felt very satisfying. Vegan (we didn’t do the cheese and sour cream topping) . Everyone liked this a lot so I’m bookmarking the recipe.

Tuesday: Curry chickpea wraps. Pool dinner. This is the cool bloggers’ favorite curry chickpea salad, which I wrapped in tortillas along with some lettuce and brought to the pool for dinner. I love a curry anything and I even bought some mango chutney as the recipe called for (and then proceeded to eat a quarter of the chutney straight from the jar with a spoon. Was I hungry? Was it just that tasty?) I added a squeeze of lime juice to the salad to brighten it up a little. The little kids didn’t love this, but they still ate a couple bites. The 12 year old and I found this very tasty. Though she did say, “This would be better if you added chicken.”

Wedesday: Asparagus frittata and salad. Made from the other two bunches of asparagus our neighbor brought us.

Thrusday: PB & J and mac and cheese. I brought PB&J to the pool, along with cucumbers and apple slices. It wasn’t filling enough and the kids had mac n cheese (from the blue box) when they came home. Along with brie and Triscuits. I ate the brie smothered in the mango chutney. It was delicious. This is the kind of dinner pre-kids me would have eaten but also would have thought, “This really isn’t dinner.” But you know what? This is totally dinner. Smashing paradigms here.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee

Saturday: BBQ at Old South Smokehouse on the way home from Longwood Gardens. It was our first time trying this place, even though we drive past it every time we go to Longwood Gardens. It was tasty, but there were no collard greens on the menu. What kind of BBQ place doesn’t have collard greens on the menu? Also – we introduced the children to hush puppies. The 7 year old would not share his.
Also – not for dinner, but in the morning I did make a strawberry rhubarb crisp, based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I had tried out a new farm stand in hopes of finding a replacement for the one I used to go to which is not opening this season. This new one was on the pricy side for me, of course it’s in our county, which probably affects the price. At any rate, I bought some rhubarb there and some strawberries, with the plan to make a pie. Well, crisp is so much less effort, so I did that instead. Only the kids ate the strawberries before I could make the crisp, so I ended up making it with supermarket strawberries, which was fine, but caused me a disproportionate amount of consternation. The crisp was yummy.
Also – side note – let’s talk about the price of strawberries. So right now, strawberries are in the $3.99/pound to $4.99/pound range at the supermarket. The strawberries at the farmstand were $7.50/pint. Which in comparison to the supermarket felt really expensive. But then as we were all enjoying the pint that I brought home, I realized I pay $8 for a large boba tea, and this pint of strawberries is more filling and is better for me than my boba. And I can share the strawberries with the family. So really, if I’m thinking of how much I pay for a treat (which, let’s face it, Boba – which is kind of my one indulgence – is definitely a treat.), then $7.50 for a pint of strawberries really isn’t so bad. Sometimes when I’m trying to weigh the cost vs. value of something I need to put it into perspective like that to help me decide if it’s something truly worth my money.

Sunday: Pasta and jarred red sauce, cut up veggies, leftover mushroom rice. Typical Sunday – simple supper and eating down the fridge.

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 9 and 10: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Emergency Room and home

Finishing out our Spring Break Trip recaps… Because, you know, summer vacation starts next week.

Day 9 of our trip was perhaps the most stereotypical San Francisco Tourist day. I wanted to ride the cable cars and see Chinatown. Fisherman’s Wharf was a close walk from there, so we decided to see that as well. On this day, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece came along and we met up with the Husband’s friend R and my sister-in-law’s mother came for part of the day as well.

We left Berkeley around 9:30am in the morning and got off at Embarcadero where we caught the cable car to Chinatown. I’ve always loved the cable cars – I worked in San Francisco, one of my first stage management gigs in the early 2000s, and from the theatre you could walk a few blocks and catch the cable car which would take me to the apartment where I was staying. There was something so magical about jumping on the cable car and riding with the San Francisco air and hum around me, this very slow and aged method of transport. Also, at the time, that particular line was free. It was all so romantic. The cable cars are no longer free, but they are still really fascinating to ride.

We took the California line to Chinatown where we got off, and slowly meandered through the streets, with their paper lanterns strewn above and steep hills and colourful murals. I stopped in at a wok shop – it was filled with all sorts of kitchen implements that I remember my mom having in our kitchen when I was growing up. Reminding myself that it would be very impractical, I refrained from buying a wok, but I did pick up a ginger grater, just like the one my mom used.

We made a walk through stop at the Fortune Cookie Factory, which was really one room where you could see them making fortune cookies, taking the freshly baked cookie off the mold and quickly folding a slip of paper inside before it hardened. To be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s a “must see” of Chinatown, even though it’s on a lot of lists – it was kind of a cramped, rushed experience and took all of 20 minutes, 15 of which were standing in line.

After the Fortune Cookie Factory, we walked to the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This museum is housed in the powerhouse and cable car barn, and inside you can see the gears turning, winding the cables through the series of wheels, pulling the cable cars. It was really neat to think about how the cable cars we were just earlier riding on were powered by the machines we were looking at. There was all sorts of displays and artifacts that told the history of cable cars, as well as a collection of antique cable cars. My favorite was the display they had which showed how they detected frays in the cable. It was remarkably low tech – involving sensors that went off when a stray bit of cable filament was detected. I thought this museum was really interesting – definitely recommend it. AND it was free! I love me a free museum.

Just think -those are the very cables that pulled us to Chinatown!

After the cable car museum we decided to go back to Chinatown for lunch and ended up at a Pho restaurant – pho is one of my favorite dishes and this pho was amazing, so flavorful and rich. I also made a quick pit stop at a bakery in Chinatown to pick up some egg tarts, one of the 12 year old’s favorite desserts.

Following lunch, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, about a 30 minute walk, though North Beach. Fisherman’s Wharf is definitely touristy and part of the fun of going there is to people watch and soak in the bustling atmosphere. We were (probably) scammed into giving some guy $10, which felt icky to me, but the Husband said that we should think of the fast talker as entertainment, and he was hugely entertaining, with his swagger and confidence. So maybe not worth the whole $10, but at least worth something – it made me think about how maybe I shouldn’t be snobbish about how people decide to work hard for their money – because the guy was clearly working hard and probably not making much money. We also visited the Musee Mechanique, a huge collection of coin operated amusements and games. The place was fascinating – so many games to play and little dioramas that came to life at the drop of a coin – and some not so little dioramas too. Everything was so loud and bling-y and almost overwhelming. We gave the kids $5 each and let them play games until their money ran out.

After about an hour, our money spent, our ears ringing and our minds spinning from all the over stimulation, we decided to walk down the Embarcadero, taking the long way back to the BART station. On the way, we stopped at Pier 39 for ice cream (I got lychee- one of my favorites!) and to see the sea lions.

We got home around 6:15pm, and made pizzas for dinner and finished the evening by watching Mitchells vs. the Machines, which was a lovely movie.

The next day was Easter Sunday. We found a church in Berkeley and went to Mass. It was a lovely modest church and, maybe it was because we went to the 8:00am Mass, the pews were on the empty side. Nonetheless, the service was quite lovely. The homily was centered around the question of “Who will move the boulder?” – meaning we often worry about tasks that seem impossible (who will move the huge boulder from the tomb of Christ so that Mary may see to the body), but perhaps they are not as impossible as we think (the boulder being already moved when they arrive.) I’m not Catholic, not particularly religious, but I do often find things to ponder when I listen to homilies. Afterwards we went to breakfast – at first we tried to go to a local diner, but it was closed, so we ended up at IHOP, which actually was quite nice – we have an off and on family tradition of eating at IHOP on Easter Sunday.

We went back to my brother’s house where we had an Easter Egg hunt. We were on the fence as to whether or not to do Easter eggs, but then decided that the kids would like it, so we bought and filled a bunch of eggs and my sister in law had hid the eggs while we were at church. Now my SIL is Jewish, but fully appreciates the fun of looking for candy in plastic eggs. Even their neighbors came over for a little while.

After the easter egg hunt, we decided to go on a nice little walk around Berkeley. We went to a really tasty Mexican restaurant for lunch – I had tacos and nachos and plantains and horchata.

Then we headed to the middle school, by way of a pretzel store (Squabisch Pretzels, above), to play a game of pick up basketball – kids against grown up. So funny story – my brother was a HUGE basketball fan/player when we were growing up. But, being a short Asian boy, his dreams of playing in the NBA weren’t entirely realistic. When we decided to go shoot hoops, he pulled a pair of basketball shoes out of the attic that must have been at least 15 years old. Anyhow, as we were playing basketball with the kids, he shoe FELL APART! Like the sole came off. Only not all the way because the sole was stitched at the toe. He walked around the rest of the day with his sole flap flap flapping awkwardly. Well that pretty much put an end to the basketball game, so we decided to walk to coffee and Indian Rock Park, where there was a nice rocky scramble. My kids LOVE a rocky scramble. Indian Rock is a popular local spot for urban rock climbers. We saw a couple groups that had brought their own crash pads and were bouldering across the rock faces.

At the summit of the Indian Rock was a spectacular view of Berkeley and Oakland and across the Bay. We hung out there and let the kids play for a little bit, but soon it was time to go home and pack as we were leaving the next morning. I went to rally the kids, taking this photo of the fearless 4 year old before telling her to come down so we could leave.

Then things went south. I turned to look for the other kids, and then I heard a cry. I looked back and couldn’t see the 4 year old. Running over to the rocks, i saw that she had fallen down between two rocks and was crying. She very rarely cries, so I knew she was in trouble, so I reached in a pulled her out, giving her big hugs and cuddles and trying to comfort her as I carried her back to the exit. Then this is where it got scary. Someone, I can’t remember who, but I think the 12 year old started frantically saying, “BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!” It took me a while to register, but there was blood running down my hand, the hand that was cradling the back of the 4 year old’s head. Then my brain kind of just froze.

Things I am grateful for:
1) My brother, who is a physician. Took a look at the gash on the back of the 4 year old’s head, and rinsed it with water and decided that we should go to the children’s hospital and he came with me.
2) All the bystanders who offered help, including:
-the preschool teacher who came up and said, “I just completed my 1st aid training for school. Can I help?”
– the rock climber, who came up and just handed us a big wad of gauze. Okay, I guess it makes sense for people who are engaged in highly dangerous activities to carry gauze with them.
3) The Uber driver who took us there, offered us water and didn’t even blink that we were dripping blood in his car.
4) The Husband and my sister-in-law who got the rest of the kids home and fed them dinner. And the Husband who packed us up to leave while I was at the Hospital.
5) Bluey.
6) Insurance.

So we get to the ER at Oakland Children’s Hospital and check in. The lady at reception was so funny. First of all, a few minutes after we arrived, the power went out – I’m not sure what that was about, but then the generators kicked in. As the lady took my information, I asked how she was, and she said, “It’s Easter and the power keeps going out, so I think I’ve been better.” Then, as she was entering my personal information into the system – I give her my birthday, and she types it in, then looks at me and says, “That’s your birthday? You look good!”
“Thank you,” I say, laughing. “I’m sure you see lots of people in here.”
“I’m not kidding,” she says, “Sometimes people come in and give me their birthday and I’m really surprised.”

We were in the waiting room for about two hours initially. Frankly by the time we got to the ER, the 4 year old was a lot better. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” she said as we entered the hospital. Further proof – Paw Patrol was playing on the TV in the waiting room and as soon as we checked in, she walked over, pulled a chair in front of the TV and was glued to the screen. At some point, after the power went out, the TV turned off, so we switched to watching Bluey on one of our phones.

Finally it was our turn to go back and be seen by the doctor.

So this is one of the great things about having my physician brother with me – Oakland Children’s is a teaching hospital, and the first people we saw was a nurse and a resident. “How are we doing?” one of them asked.
“She fell off a rock and hit her head,” I said.
Then my brother added, “There’s a two centimeter laceration on the base of her cranium. No loss of consciousness. She might need stitches.” Cool. Glad he was with me. The doctors and the nurse made murmurs of agreement. Then they went away to figure out the next steps. Before they went away, however, my brother said, pointing to his shoe (do you remember the broken shoe?), “Do you have scissors? I need to cut this sole off.” And the next thing we knew, this happened:

The resident said the he didn’t want my brother tripping and have to make a second trip to the ER.

And then a little while later, the attending physician came and looked at the wound. And she said, “You know there’s a technique we like to use on the head that is pretty un-invasive where we use the hair to close the wound. I think we should try that.”

People – this is what they did – and it’s probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered. They take tiny sections of hair on either side of the wound and twist them together tightly so that the wound closes. Then they GLUE THE HAIR TWIST so that it doesn’t untwist. They literally glued my baby girl’s head back together!!!!! Mind blown. And I didn’t need to worry about stiches (when I was five I fell and had to get stitches and there was a lot of screaming involved) or going home with a staple remover or anything. Here’s a picture (warning if you’re not into pictures of wounds, scroll down.):

All patched up and then we called the Husband to come pick us up and we were on our way. The 4 year old was in amazing spirits – I mean she got to watch endless Bluey, what’s not to love? All told, we spent about 3 hours in the emergency room. Which, actually doesn’t feel bad.

And, okay, one other fun fact – in our 12 years of being parents, this was our VERY FIRST emergency room visit. I think that’s pretty good streak. Also – if I had to guess which kid would send us to the emergency room, it would definitely have been this one. The other two kids are pretty risk adverse.

I feel as if the rest of the trip was pretty anti-climactic after that. The next morning we left at 4am for the airport to catch our 6:10am flight. We got to the airport at 4:50am and we still only made our flight by the skin of our teeth – Oakland is a very busy airport and the security lines were long. We seriously thought we were going to miss our flight. But then in the end – our plane pulled out and then sat on the runway and then returned to the gate because of a transponder malfunction and we had to deplane and get another plane two hours later. Which was just as well because we originally would have had an awfully long layover in St. Louis, but as it was our layover was pleasantly long enough to grab lunch (fried ravioli!!!!) and a beer (Schlafly!). Then we were home – we took the shuttle to the hotel where we had parked, got in our car and went home, where, thank goodness for eggs, we had dinner then went to bed.

Whew that was our whole Spring Break Trip! Next year, I’m working over spring break, so if there is a trip, I probably won’t be able to go. I’m really glad we took the time and effort and money to make this trip happen!

Oh and postscript- because of the delay leaving Oakland, Southwest sent each of us $150 towards a future flight. Not as lucrative as how Elisabeth made out on her trip to Barcelona, but it’s enough to make another trip more affordable. So – here is a list of airports that are a non-stop flight from Washington DC – where should we go next?

Albany, NY
Albuquerque, NM
Aruba, Aruba
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Belize
Birmingham, AL
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Charleston SC
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Colorado Springs, CO
Columbus, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Destin/Fort Walton Beach, FL
Detroit, MI
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Myers, FL
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Grand Rapids, MI
Greenville, SC
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Liberia, Costa Rica
Long Island, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Los Cabos, MX
Louisville, KY
Manchester, NH
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis, MN
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Myrtle Beach, SC
Nashville, TN
Nassau, Bahamas,
New Orleans, LA
Norfolk, VA
Oakland, CA
Omaha, NE
Orlando, FL
Panama City Beach, FL
Phoenix, ZA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Turks and Caicos
Punta Cana, DO
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Richmond, VA
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City, UT
San Antoni0, TX
San Diego, CA
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Juan, PR
Sarasota, FL
Savannah, Hilton Head, GA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Tampa, FL
West Palm Beach, FL

Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: the Month of May

These last few weeks of May, after opening our show has kind of been a slog – after a show opens, I always feel like I’m like digging out of the hole of everything that’s piled up since I started rehearsals, but also wanting to relax and just sleep and eat junk food and do fun things. I’ve felt simultaneously unmotivated and also panicked about the length of the to do list, also summer is looming, but we’re all limping towards the finish line of school so things do not let up on the home front. Anyhow, the show is closed and I don’t have another show until July, so I’m hoping to make efforts on everything that’s piled up.

Current stressors (the big ones):
– My car. (Still). I did make progress on this last month – I sent an email to the high school program that takes used cars. It seems like it will be a pretty easy process to hand my car over to them. I just have to fill out the paperwork and find someone to take me since they don’t pick up cars.

– Cleaning/purging room clutter. (still) When my father was here, we moved a lot of the boxes of stuff that was in the guest room into the toy room. Then for our big meat party (more on that below) a week later, we moved the same boxes out of the toy room so kids could play, back into the guest room. Right now we’re just moving half a room’s worth of things we aren’t currently using back and forth and it just needs to be gone through and moved out of the house. It’s ridiculous that we have essentially two rooms in the house that no one can use.

-Swim season has started. The two little kids will start pre-team next week, but the 12 year old has started swim team practice already. It’s going to be hairy – four nights a week, pre-team is from 5:00pm – 5:30pm and then the 12 year old practices from 6:15pm -7:30pm. I don’t know when people are going to eat dinner. I was at first nervous that swim season would overlap with my work schedule, but luckily only the last two weeks overlap with my next show so I can be home to drive carpool. But again… when are we going to eat dinner? We usually eat dinner around 5pm/5:30p but I think that the 12 year old isn’t going to want to eat so close to practice. I might just have to let go of the idea of family dinners for a few weeks. I need to re-listen to this Lazy Genius podcast “How to Fix Dinner When You Are Never Home“

-Will the 4 year old get to go to kindergarten???? That’s the big looming question and a little out of our control. She does have her assessment scheduled so fingers crossed. One of our friends’ kids did not pass assessment, which made me little nervous. Apparently, they were told that their child didn’t know any sight words. Which – how many kids know sight words upon entering kindergarten?!?!?! I thought the point of kindergarten was to teach my child sight words! Anyhow – If the school says the 4 year old is not ready for kindergarten, then of course I’m not going to push it, but I really do think she’s ready and her teachers say that she’s ready and the she will be bored if she has to repeat the pre-K curriculum. I will admit that I’m being a little Tiger Mom and have been working on “the” and “and” with the 4 year old. Two little sight words probably won’t make or break things, but I figured it couldn’t hurt and she does seem to be curious about words.

-I’ve misplaced by journals. I haven’t journaled or tracked things in two or three weeks because I can’t find my journal stack. This is really stressing me out. I find that being able to write down my day and track things in life helps give me perspective on where my brain is and helps hold me accountable for how I spend my time. I know I could just write it down on a piece of paper, but the thought of loose pages just floating around doesn’t feel like the soothing exercise that journaling is supposed to be for me. I had thrown the journals in a tote bag to take to work on while the 4 year old was at agility class and I don’t know where I put the bag when I got home.

-My hair – (still) need to schedule an appointment to get it cut. Also need to schedule a well woman check up. This is just flat out procrastination and reluctance on my part.

-Speaking of hair…. There has been an outbreak of lice in the 4 year old’s classroom. I spent so many hours of the past two weeks treating and combing out hair. The last time we had a lice event in our house was when the 12 year old was in 1st grade and the Husband took care of it then – he would sit in the back yard with her and just comb and comb and comb her hair. So it’s kind of been a pain in the rear end – just inconvenient, not at all debilitating or anything.

I found the health notice kind of hilarious, to be honest.

Things that did get done in April/May (April Aspirations):
-We booked our tickets to Taiwan! That was a couple days of fast and furious emails and texts with the travel agent, but we’re are now going to Taiwan and Malaysia this winter. It feels strange because we never book tickets this far in advance – I think booking three months out is a long lead time. But now we have tickets six months out. We don’t have hotels or any other plans yet, but at least we know when we’ll be there.
-I figured out the summer camp schedule. Everything is booked. I have a few weeks I need to cancel because I had booked back up choices and then got off the wait list at our first choice. And I need to add before/aftercare for a few weeks because all the camps start at 9am and there are a few weeks where I can’t physically do two drop offs at one time or even be passably late because the camps are about twenty minutes apart. But at least I know where people will be.
-Finally processed the Duluth Trading Company return from Christmas.
-Bought a new Yeti tumbler. I got it from our local Ace hardware but then it leaked so I had to return it and get a new one, but I had thrown out the receipt so I didn’t want to deal with that. Eventually I did make it back to Ace and the folks at Ace were able to look up the purchase and do the exchange. Just in time for summer. Yay! (Have not purchased a new purse, or sandals or linen pants yet. Though I’m kind of obsessed with buying a new linen shirtdress – I have two that I wear constantly and I think one more will be make a nice uniform rotation through the summer. I really want one in a non-neutral colour. I love this teal, but wrap dresses don’t look good on me. Or this yellow one is cute… so many options!)
-And I did mow the lawn. Twice. I tried a third time, but the grass was too long and the mower stopped working so I gave up on it and the Husband fixed it and mowed the rest of the lawn. So… I still am behind on my mowing duties. One particularly busy week we did hire the landscapers to come mulch and they mowed the lawn while they were here, so that was nice.

Okay – so that was the laundry list of life. But we did have some fun adventures the past few weeks:

Harper’s Ferry. The week after opening was a pretty light week at work – just three evening performances and then time to do paperwork on my own. It was a good thing too, because Tuesday was a day off for all the kids as it was Primary Day. The daycare is used as a polling location, and probably also the public schools. Originally we were going to take the kids to Longwood Gardens but the Husband had to work instead, so it was just me and the kids and a wide open day. I was considering taking them to Shenandoah to go hiking, but then I had to go vote since I had forgotten to do early voting and by the time I got that done it was already almost 10:30am. (Shenandoah is doable in one day, but only if we leave by 9am.) So instead I decided to go to Harper’s Ferry. I had never gone before and there is hiking and some historical exhibits there. Plus it is only an hour away, so it would be an easy day trip. Harper’s Ferry Historical Park consists of some 19th century buildings that have been converted into historical museums, and a beautiful view of where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac River, and a bridge to some hiking trails.

We attempted to go for a hike, and made it across the bridge from the town to the hiking trails before deciding the rain was too much for us, and we turned around and came back. Since it was raining, we took shelter in John Brown’s Fort, just in time for the Ranger talk on John Brown. I thought we were in for a brief look at John Brown, but you guys, the talk was 1 hr and 15 minutes!!!! At first I was worried that the kids wouldn’t be up for it, and even though I did have to take the 4 and 7 year old outside eventually, the 12 year old was rapt. She sat through all 75 minutes of the talk, just drinking it all in, and even asked the ranger a few questions at the end. She was particularly fascinated by the fact that John Brown was white. I guess she has always thought that John Brown was Black, which I think kind of makes sense, and that lead to interesting conversations afterwards.

One thing that stuck out to me was when the ranger talked about how the women were melting the pewter to make bullets for the raid because there were no bullets – and I thought about how we think of history as a series of big events and most of these events are precipitated by men. Because women are at home doing the every day things that keep life going. And men get to /got to make the big gestures that go down in history – and maybe this is the flaw in how we perceive what are important historical events? A woman’s life doesn’t have as many grand explosive events. It has every day events, like births and deaths and the day to day of raising children and making sure people get fed. And what gets recorded in the history books is not these day to day perpetual tasks – it is important that the bullets get made, but not as important as what they were used for, apparently. The men get the credit for making history, and the women have to just keep things running.

We spent the day at Harper’s Ferry and left around 3pm to go for an early dinner. I Googled to find places and we ended up at Potomac Street Grill in Brunswick, MD – a homely little restaurant that look, admittedly a little run down, but the food was excellent and judging from the crowd that came in and out, it was a local favorite. Afterwards, we stopped for ice cream at Rocky Point Creamery, which was sort of on the way home. I first experienced this creamery because it was one of the stops on the Maryland Ice Cream Trail and we’ve come back a few times since. Their ice cream is so creamy and fresh tasting. I had the raspberry, the 12 year old had the birthday cake, the 7 year old had vanilla, and the 4 year old had mint chip. The kids like coming to Rocky Point Creamery because there is a playground with a play structure made out of an old tractor, which they wanted to play on.
“You’ll get wet!” I said as it was still raining.
“We don’t care!” they replied.
And I figured, if they want to play so much that they don’t care about getting wet, then why not let them play. So they played for a spell on the tractor and then it was time to go home.

The playground and the dairy in the back.

We had our meat party. It did rain for much of the party, but our friend set up a huge tarp and we all gathered under it and it made for a really nice time, almost cozy. Thank goodness for the tarp- I had braced myself to have 25+ people inside our house, but I was able to encourage them to all go outside and we hung out under the tarp. There was tons of food – we marinated 20 lbs of meat, dessert, sides, homemade salsa, good conversations, lots of beer. Also a 10 lb brisket and four bowls of chicken wings. Also – oysters. One of my friends said she always wanted to learn how to shuck and oyster, so another friend brough oysters and a shucking knife and a handy contraption with which to place the oyster so that you don’t accidentally impale yourself. It was all in all a lovely evening.

Between our canopy, patio umbrella and our friend’s tarp, we got this party covered. Literally.

Life skills – the 12 year old shucking an oyster. I always feel intimidated by preparing any seafood other than fish or shrimp at home, but I think shellfish is easier than I think it is and very doable at home. Probably cheaper too.

Going to visit a friend out in southern Maryland. I have a friend/colleague (T) who moved last year to southern Maryland. A few of my other friends from work decided that we should go visit her on our day off because she is awesome and we missed her – she wasn’t on our current show and couldn’t come to the meat party since she was on another gig. We had originally planned to visit and grill and play board games. But then T’s neighbor who lives next door offered to take us out on her boat. So of course we said yes. Only we got on the boat and pushed off and the battery was dead so my friend jumped to shore and pulled our boat back to the dock. Then T called another friend and asked if that friend would be willing to take us out on her boat. And half an hour later we were on a boat with two large dogs, speeding across the water. And the weather was beautiful and the skies clear. And the next thing we knew, the friend with the boat had pulled into the dock of a restaurant and we all got out and had drinks and fried food while the dogs ran freely around the patio – it was that kind of place. Then we got back in the boat and headed back to T’s place, and by the time we got back, it was quite late and we had to head home. Not the afternoon we had planned, but maybe even better. I mean what is better and more joyful than being on a boat with a couple of dogs, the wind blowing in our faces?

Also a little morbid, but fascinating – we saw a dead skate floating in the water

Evenings and Weekends At Home: to play board games(Castle Panic is our latest family game – highly recommend), to take kids to soccer and agility class, to cook dinner, to walk to basketball workout with the 12 year old, to have dance parties in the living room, to fold the laundry, to go on nature walks and hikes, to have playdates and go to birthday parties, to catch up on some tv, to kick off Summer with a Memorial Day movie outing. (We saw IF with some friends. Or at least, the kids saw IF. I couldn’t tell you what happened in the movie – I got up once to refill popcorn, once to take the 7 year old to the bathroom, and once to take the 4 year old to the bathroom. The Husband went to see the Mad Max movie with the other dad. I look forward to seeing IF at some point at home where we can pause the movie if needed.) It feels like we’ve turned the corner into summer. Why are there still two weeks left before school is out????

Some Wise Words I Read Recently – from a Carolyn Hax column. The Letter Writer decided not to go to her stepson’s wedding because of an acrimonious relationship with his father and her relatives tell her that she capitulated and let the ex manipulate the situation. And the Letter Writer asks if she was wrong. I loved Hax’s response:

I think too often I get stuck in the binary of right vs. wrong. I think it’s good to remind myself that that’s a false binary and life is so much more complex than that. Cultivating “enough”, however, seems like a stronger way to move forward.

Grateful for:
-The van. I have finally started driving the van. Yes, that’s the van that we bought in October. But with the excursion to Harper’s Ferry and the trip out to see my friend, I figured everyone would be more comfortable in the van than in the Impreza. The van has toooo many buttons for my tastes, and feels like I’m driving a small apartment on wheels, but I think I’m slowly getting used to driving it.

-Micky Mouse Club House. How did I get through hours of combing and treating the kids’ hair? I sat them in front of episodes of Micky Mouse Club House. The four year old now asks if she can have her hair brushed, which is really code for “Can I watch Mickey Mouse Club?” The instructions for the Nix, under “things you need to treat lice” literally says, “Something to keep your child busy (movie, game, etc.)” Can I pay for that out of my FSA?

-Long return windows – as in Duluth Trading Company. Of course part of the reason I took so long to process the Duluth return from Christmas was because I knew the return window was long (one year). I suppose if there had a been a shorter window, I might have gotten things done sooner. But as it is, I’m thankful that the return process at Duluth was pretty painless and I could return all the stuff that didn’t suit even though it is five months later.

-Costco. Because when you are having 25-30 people over, it’s kind of the obvious choice for many things. When we first moved to the area, the nearest Costco was about 30 minutes away. And now we have one two miles up the road.

Also grateful to have the capacity to shop at Costco.

-And grateful to the friends and colleagues at work. We had a couple aftershow parties last week since it was the last show of the season – one was an official company party and one was an unofficial “Everyone show up with food to celebrate” kind of affair. I have to say, I work with some of the kindest, funniest, and most talented people. Most people know what they will be working on next season and it’s so nice when we compare notes and find out we’re on the same shows. It’s something to look forward to, knowing that even though this opera season is over, we’ll see each other again in a few months. I don’t always like being the stage manager in charge – sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing (as opposed to being an assistant stage manager, which I do feel very comfortable doing), but knowing that the people I work with believe in me and think I do a good job really helps me conquer my imposter syndrome.

-And grateful for the Husband for keeping the house picked up and the kids fed and life moving while I’m at work, and for helping to set up for the meat party.

-The pre-summer weather. We’ve had some bouts of rain and some bouts of high heat, but in general, it’s been that perfect cool, crisp, sunny, not yet humid weather. I know the humidity is coming, though, so I’ll savor this weather while I can. I got the bike out and biked to work a few days and it was delightful.

Looking forward to:
-Piano and voice recitals coming up. Another thing on the calendar, but always nice to see the kids work towards something they can perform.

-Trip to Maine. I borrowed some travel guides and I’ve made plans to see a college friend on the way there, so I’m excited.

– Making food with our latest Penzy’s haul:

We made a trip to Penzy’s and I saw the dehydrated garlic and dehydrated onion on the shelf and decided to get some. When I was at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival last year, there was a cooking demonstration and the chef mentioned that he likes to use reconstituted dehydrated garlic in stir fry because it doesn’t burn as easily.

-Speaking of which – the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is the end of June – perfect timing since I’m off work and the two older kids won’t be in camp yet so I’m looking forward to going down to the Mall with them to take in all the exhibits. This year’s theme is “Indigenous Voices of America: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian.” The NMAI opened in 2004, and I remember being in DC when it opened – it was that year that I interned at the opera. So wild to think that it’s already been 20 years since I first arrived here in DC!

-Summer adventures. Our day trip to Harper’s Ferry reminded me of how in COVID times and how I would just pack the kids in the car and take them to parks or ice cream shops a car drive away. Even though it was COVID, I always had such fun taking these little day trips and seeing new places. I have three weeks off this summer, and I want to make sure to take some day trips with the kids. The Maryland Ice Cream Trail 2024 has been released and this year the map has pinpointed hikes near the creameries – hike + ice cream! what a great combination!

-This Audiobook, which I know some of you have read:

I’m listening to it with the 12 year old. Often it’s only way I can get her to leave the house – I promise her that we can listen to the book wherever we are going. Sometimes when we go out for walks, she will take one earbud and I’ll take the other and we’ll listen to it together. I feel really annoyed that I have to bribe her like this to leave the house, but I think I need to re-frame this as a sweet way to spend time together. And the book is hilarious.

What We Ate: So one thing about losing my journals is that I haven’t been writing down what we’ve been having for dinner. I’ve worked several evenings, so there’s been a good share of eating out. Some memorable meals, though:
– Creamy coconut rice with chili lime vegetables from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. This meal was a huge hit – even the 4 year old who will pick the vegetables out of everything ate all of it. The coconut rice is creamy like risotto, but baked so that it is a magical, hands off dish. And the vegetables are roasted and then sprinkled with a vinegary chili lime dressing. Definitely a keeper. I can’t find it online, but this recipe is worth checking out the book.
– Also from Smitten Kitchen – roasted tomato pasta salad. Very tasty. I roasted the tomatoes in the morning so that when we got home, I just had to boil the pasta and throw the whole things together.
-Meera Sodha’s Brussel Sprout fried rice.
– pasta salad made from the leftover grilled veggies from our meat party.
-Chicken on the Run – Peruvian Chicken – our go to take out when the 7 year old has sewing class since the restaurant is just down the block.
-There were various nights of take out wings and pizza. And movie nights – I think there was an Avengers movie, and some nature films.

Well, it’s the last day of May. Onward to June and Summer. How was your May?