It feels like I’m still struggling through May, but really it’s well into June! The older kids still have a week of school, which feels late to me, but at the same time, I’m thinking, “ALREADY??? Unfettered free time for them?!?!” The 3 year old will go to day care full time, but the older kids are having four weeks of camp and the rest will be trips or time with grandparents or parents. I have finally booked all the camps that we need for the kids, so our child care needs are covered. It’s certainly a relief to have it done, but I am second-guessing myself and wondering if there should be more organized activities. It will be fine. I have to remind myself that done is better than perfect. And really, there is no perfect. Grandparent camp/ camp mom and dad will definitely be on the unstructured side. I’m strangely a little nervous about the lack of plans or routine for the non-camp weeks… I want to fill the summer with joy and fun and good memories, but at the same time that feels like a lot of pressure to have those expectations.
Here, the air has been hazy and we , in an ironic twist, masked to go outdoors for a couple days. I guess I’m glad I stocked up on masks last March, even though the kids weren’t masking in school anymore. I didn’t think much of the reports of poor air quality, but when I woke up Thursday morning, the trees seemed shrouded in a light mist. Of course it wasn’t mist. The air in DC is no where are poor of a quality as those further north, and in Canada – I hope everyone is staying safe; it all sounds really worrisome and stressful.
My May show has closed, and that finishes out the season at that company. I’ll be back in September, though, so I don’t feel too badly about not having time to clean out my desk properly.
One day, when I was doing my pre-show checks, I was struck by how much less time my pre-show checks take by the time I get to performance number four. When we first move to the theatre from the rehearsal room, it can initially take upwards of 45 minutes to talk the crew through setting up the props (presetting the props, we call it), and then for me to double check all the presets. The prop list for this show was quite large and a lot of it is quite specific: candle in the black holder on the stage left prop table, candle in the brass holder onstage, two candle tapers in the wooden box, two inch stack of paper on the crate, one tray with six ashtrays and six candles, one tray with three ashtrays and three candles and two cups, etc., etc., etc. Also – once we get into the theatre I work with a union crew so I can’t just put things where I want it – I have to ask the crew to do it. In the rehearsal hall, the other stage managers and I preset the props ourselves, and it just goes faster when I don’t have to explain the exact angle a box needs to sit at because if it isn’t like that, the singer won’t be able to reach the thing on top of the box that is very important for that bit of stage business. But I am deeply grateful for the crew because sometimes we have very heavy and awkward items in the show and by the time we get to stage, I’m tired of having to move it around myself. So I’m always glad for the crew.
All that to say, the first few days onstage I’m rushing to make sure things get set up at those correct angles, and I feel like the props won’t get set up in time for the start of rehearsal. The prop preset seems huge. Sometimes they aren’t all set when rehearsal starts and I just prioritize – set/check the stuff in the first scene, leave all the stuff in the last scene and check those when we get closer. (This is not the optimal way of going about things.)
But then something happens along the way as we get towards opening night and then through performances – the preset list that was a long and daunting 45 minutes process suddenly becomes manageable and takes only fifteen minutes to check. Often the crew has it done before I come up to stage. I can take one glance at a shelf of trays and tell immediately when something is not right, when a slice of bread or bottle of wine is missing. It’s not that I am become careless in prop checking – though I have been known to miss something (one show, it was a canteen that I had forgotten, and a singer had to improvise with a wine bottle. Then he exited stage with said wine bottle and returned with the canteen. I quipped that he pulled a reverse-Jesus.) I’m not careless – I still methodically check things off the preset list – but certainly by performance #4, what once seemed like a huge task on Day One in the theatre, suddenly seems like a less big task, seems routine and easy. On these big big shows I usually do have a moment when I say to myself, “Just think, this preset used to seem impossibly large, and now it’s … not.” Maybe that’s a metaphor for other things in life… sleep training, weekday mornings, going to the airport after COVID….
Along those lines, in my last recap, I noted that I took an average of 16 000 steps per day during tech. As an exercise, I tallied how many steps I took during a regular performance – it takes in the neighborhood of 3000 steps over the course of four hours to run this particular show. That’s a 13 000 step difference. It got me thinking – that 13 000 step difference is the work it takes to figure out how the show is going to work in the theatre. I think sometimes people think that what we do as Stage Managers is make sure the show happens smoothly every night, but as I was doing the math of the difference in number of steps between a day of tech and a performance call, I realize that a lot of the core of my job is in those 13 000 steps. Being a stage manager is not just the 3000 steps it takes to run the show night after night. Rather it’s the 13 000 steps is the work it took to decide the backstage traffic patterns, to figure out the quick changes and prop presets, to make sure singers had clear instructions on how not to get hit by a piece of scenery, to run out onstage when the conductor or director stopped the rehearsal…. 3000 steps is what the audience sees. 13 000 steps, or roughly 5.5 miles, is what it takes to get there. The distance one travels is decidedly not the destination.
Speaking of distance…. I’ve been back to commuting. I recently read this opinion article: “Office Worker Don’t Hate the Office. They Hate the Commute” and something about it certainly rubbed me the wrong way. That they have to specify “Office Workers” seems to leave out large swaths of the population who don’t have the luxury of choosing to work from home. Similarly, a few weeks ago, I listened to an episode of The Art of Manliness titled The Science of a Better Daily Routine, in which they talked about science based ways to tweak your daily routine, including your commute. The guest mentioned that the optimal commute is 15 minutes and how we should craft our jobs with that in mind. It sort of irked me that he seemed to think tweaking your commute was an easy lifestyle change – like eating vegetables or drinking more water.
Anyhow, commuting has been on my mind recently as it has been taking vast amounts of my time. My current commute takes anywhere from 20 minutes on a Saturday morning to 1h, 5 mins on a weekday at 5pm. On days when it takes 20 minutes, it gives me a certain satisfying sense of flow; between home and work, there is but one traffic light, and that one is around the corner from my house. After that traffic light, I can drive without stopping all the way to work – my favorite is driving with my windows down, singing at the top of my lungs. It’s actually fun … if the traffic is light. If the traffic is not light… well then the commute can be soul sucking. All these people trying to get somewhere in their coffin-like metal pods. Alone, mostly. I find myself very rage-y some days when the traffic is moving particularly slowly. The punishing rays of sun that beat in through my window that I can’t escape from as I crawl along at 15 mph, past accidents and through construction. I am trying to be Zen about commuting, trying to make it an exercise in gratitude. I’m having varying degrees of success with this.
Things that make my commute a little less despairing:
– Snacks. Most days I’m commuting home around dinner time, and being hungry certainly does not improve my mood. I used to have granola bars and candy, and chocolate in the car for commuting, but these past few months, in an attempt to eat more vegetables, I’ve started packing crudités and cut up fruit for my commute. I feel like this little switch is a minor win on many levels. In the morning, I have been having my homemade iced chai in my cup holder, and it makes me happy. I tell myself I can’t drink it until I’m in the car, and it gives me something to look forward to. I do need to figure out some kind of portable breakfast because I’m finding that most mornings, I’m not hungry enough to eat breakfast before I get the kids to the school bus and then I’m starving by the time I get to work. Maybe the solution is to just eat at work, but I like to work when I get into work.
– Ice cold water. Staying hydrated is important, and ice cold water on a hot day can be divine. I’ve been filling up insulated water bottle with ice in the morning and topping it off before I leave work so that I have cold water for the drive home. I find having a sip of very very cold water helps perk me up a little bit.
– Something good to listen to. A good audiobook, an interesting podcast (lately I’ve been listening to Book Friends Forever, What Should I Read Next, and The Puberty Podcast), something good on the radio (This great story from the BBC on how opera companies use singing and breathing techniques to help COVID sufferers.), music. Having something engaging to listen to helps me not be so annoyed at the pace of traffic. I was also thinking that I could use the time to catch up on phone calls, but somehow I never feel like doing that.
– Sunglasses. I never saw the point in sunglasses, but a few years ago I got a pair of prescription sunglasses and it was life changing. Really bright sun tends to make me sleepy, which is dangerous when driving. Having sunglasses helps alleviate some of that sun drowsy feeling for me when I don’t have to constantly squint in the morning/ afternoon brightness.
– Reminding myself that I’m lucky to be able to commute to a job that I love, and one that requires my presence. In our world of AI advances, I’m glad that I’m not replaceable. (yet. Always yet. I don’t want to underestimate what we will do with technology). I don’t always feel like what I do is important in the larger context of world problems, but I do get a lot of satisfaction in how I function in the microcosm of putting on a show, and the in person interactions and experiences that I get to participate in. So on days when I am crawling through traffic I try to be grateful that someone needs me to show up somewhere.
So some fun things that have happened lately:
-On Memorial Day I had thought to take the kids on a hike with some friends, but it rained that morning, making it a little too muddy for that, so we decided to take the Metro into DC and go to a Museum instead. We decided to go to the Portrait Gallery because it’s right off the Red Line so easy to get to. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best choice of museum for four kids aged 3 to 11. I love that museum – I love seeing all the portraits of people and reading about what they did and how they made their mark. I always am filled with wonder at all the people who did amazing things whom I’ve never even heard about. But… I admit row and rows of portraits is probably not the most engaging for kids. Every time they paused in front of a painting or photograph for more than twenty seconds felt like an achievement. They did spend a whole three minutes in front of this painting, though:
Something about the energy and movement of the waves and the smoke seemed to capture the kids’ attention. They stood in front of it and talked about canons and shooting and destruction. It felt like a small win.
After the Portrait Gallery we were going to walk to the Natural History Museum, but all the streets were closed down by the Mall. At first I thought it was for the Memorial Day Concert on the Mall, but as we got closer, we realized that there was in fact a Memorial Day Parade. I haven’t seen a parade in ages, and certainly not one with this many marching bands. Of course we stopped to watch. The weather was pretty drizzly by this point, which acutally worked in our favor because the streets weren’t too crowded and we could get a good viewing spot. But all those poor high school students from all over the country, with their polyester uniforms and instruments having to march in the damp weather! I imagine they will always remember this… “Remember that time we got invited to play at the Memorial Day Parade in Washington, DC and it rained and we got soaked as we walked miles and miles down Independence Avenue?” Hard times certainly make for memorable times.
– The 11 year old is graduating from elementary school this year. (OMG.) The PTA got “Proud Graduate Class of 2023” yard signs for all the 5th graders and I walked over one morning to pick one up for our yard. Aside from paying the membership fee and venmo-ing money when staff gifts are being collected, I haven’t been very involved in the PTA. PTAs kind of scare me being the introvert that I am. – I know they are very nice and they do a lot of really great things, but meeting new people and activism has always been hard for me. Plus with kids at two different school I didn’t have it in me to join two separate PTAs. Anyhow, I show up at this person’s house and there are two ladies out front handing out yard sign. They asked the name of my kid and I told them and they said, “Oh my gosh, we love her!” Then they went on about what a good role model she is and how they’ve seen her play basketball, etc. etc. I feel like I spend a lot of time at loggerheads with the 11 year old and to hear other people sing her praises… well it reminded me that she really is a good kid and she tries hard to do the right thing and I need to be less hard on her. I was delighted to hear other people say such good things about her, yet it also made me feel bad that sometimes all our interactions are about things that I want her to do better on, and I should have more interactions that aren’t me naggingly remining her to do things. Definitely one of the things I need to work on.
-I finally opened the bag of Ketchup Chips I brought home from our trip to Montreal last summer. I tend to either abstain from snacks completely or eat the whole package of something. Since I can’t get ketchup chips here in the States, I couldn’t bear to open the one bag I brought home from Montreal knowing that once I opened it, I would devour the whole thing in one sitting. The Husband a few weeks ago, moved the bag of chips to our mantle, with some comment about how they are such a prized possession we should put them on display. Well, one day, after work, I finally decided that it was time to open the bag. Not sure why – something about it being summer and me being home from work early just made it feel like the right time to indulge. I opened the bag, inhaled the tomatoe-y vinergar-y aroma of the chips, then sat in the back yard with a book and my chips and savored every one. It was lovely, and, yes, I’m sad they are now gone.
Grateful For:
– All the things mentioned above that make commuting not so terrible. But also for technology and Google Maps. Being able to predict when I’ll be home, being able to see before I get on the road if the Capital Beltway is red or green… I remember when I got my first GPS – back before there was one on every smartphone. It was about the size of a baseball and sat on my dashboard. The first model I had couldn’t tell you traffic delays or anything, it just told you how to get from point A to point B. And before that, all I had to get around was a Thomas Guide. I grew up in Southern California and learned how to drive and get around using a Thomas Guide. Crazy to think that my kids will probably never have to look up a street location on a paper map book.
-The 11 year old’s piano teacher. The 11 year old has been on the fence about continuing with piano lessons. She likes being able to play, but does. not. practice. I’ve gone through phases of pleading, ordering, cajoling, bribing, and just ignoring her in my attempts to get her to practice, and it’s exhausting. I was thinking I should just let her quit, but then I was really struck by a list of things adults wish they could have learned (not sure where I saw the list) and the two top things were 1) play and instrument, and 2) speak a foreign language. (I’m glad I can do both, albeit rather imperfectly.) And then I spoke to a friend who has a side gig as a violinist and she said she is really glad her parents didn’t let her quit when she was my kid’s age. So I don’t want to be all, “You’ll stick with piano because I say so,” but I do want to find a way that the 11 year old will stick with it. I talked to her piano teacher and the teacher said that the 11 year old, when she is pushed can play beautifully, and she would be sad if she were to stop. Then the teacher said this to me, “I have students whose parents think piano is important and want their children to play an instrument even if they don’t practice at home, so they essentially pay me to sit and practice piano with them for thirty minutes once a week.” I don’t know that I feel that is the best use of my child’s activity fund, but at the same time, what if consistent lessons will be enough for her to eventually get over the hump of lacking self-motivation? I think one of the hard thing for me as a parent of a tween is not knowing who my child really is, or wondering if who my child really is is right in front of me, but I can’t see it. Anyhow, I’m glad for the long chat I had with her piano teacher – it gave me a lot of perspective. At first I was inclined to just let the eleven year old quit, but she and I talked about it and about how important it was and how much fun she seems to have when she’s just playing around on the piano and we decided that she’ll take a break for the summer and start again in the fall. I’m cautiously optimistic about this.
-A roof. I literally wrote this in my gratitude journal. One night it rained so so hard, and I was lying in bed with the 6 year old and he said, “It’s a good thing we have a roof.” And I thought… yes. I am very grateful for our roof.
Looking Forward To:
-I’ve booked our summer camping trip! Three nights car camping in the Shenedoahs. It will be me, the two little kids, and my parents. I’m excited for some time outdoors and I’m starting to research hikes for us to go on. I do need to get a new cooler since there is a crack in our old one.
– A visit from a friend. She’s an old friend from college who will be in the area. I haven’t decided what to do yet – maybe we’ll wander around Annapolis, maybe we’ll go on a hike?
-Being home for pizza and movie night. I’ve worked almost every Friday and Saturday night for the past six weeks, or we’ve had an event that we had to attend, so I’ve missed out on pizza and movie night for a while. I get to pick the movie.
– The 11 year old’s fifth grade graduation ceremony. Can’t believe I will have a middle-schooler!
What We Ate: I admit meal planning has been rubbish lately and the Husband has been making most of the dinners. So here is the very vague rundown of the past three weeks since I last did a menu recap…
Monday: Tofu and Broccoli Stir-Fry
Tuesday: Vegan Chickpea Gnocchi Soup. (Made it in the morning before going to work.)
Wednesday: Pasta of some sort
Thursday: Zucchini Boats.
Friday: Pizza and movie night (Zootopia). I think they ordered pizza.
Saturday: Dirty Meat – The was the big grilling party that we have for my work colleagues. This guy I work with marinates meat for a week in a combination of herbs and spices and then we gather to grill and eat it. There were over thirty people at our house for this party since it involved both past and present co-workers. It was a really good time. It might have also involved water balloons.
Sunday: Last minute dinner invite to go to a friends’ house. They had accidentally ordered too much food and needed help eating it. Not that we really need an excuse to see these friends.
Monday: Sauteed green beans, eggs, and Tater Tots. I’m not sure what the Husband/freezer that I can cook and call dinner?”
Tuesday: Pasta Salad with the leftover grilled vegetable from the Dirty Meat party.
Wednesday: Not sure at all.
Thursday: Mac and cheese made from scratch. Go Husband!
Friday: Leftover Pasta salad and pizza. I had to work, but the family watched Kung Fun Panda II (I think? Is there a second one? It was the baby’s turn to choose.)
Saturday: Pizza. On two consecutive nights? Not sure what is up with that.
Sunday: Leftovers scrounged from the fridge.
Monday: Burgers (Turkey and Beef), roasted vegetables, and tater tots. Our friends who came with us to the museum stayed on for dinner. I love having friends who you can just pull tater tots out of the freezer and call it dinner.
Tuesday: Broccoli Tofu Stir Fry
Wednesday: Eat down the fridge night.
Thursday: Pasta Salad. This time using my Friend’s Greek Salad recipe as a base. Made in the morning before I went to work.
Friday: Sandwiches and cookies. And easy dinner because the 11 year old had a piano recital we had to get to.
Wow! Lots going on. I agree that those nebulous summer weeks with no plans are daunting. I find that even WITH scheduled activities, there is a lot more time for spontaneous things to happen in the summer. Bedtimes are relaxed, it’s light much later, etc. We still have more unstructured weeks than I would like ahead of us, but it is going to be better than last summer which wilted my soul (we took the kids out of school early for a big family roadtrip, but that made the summer last FOREVER since we arrived home right after school let out – #LessonLearned).
I also love ketchup chips. I only have them once a year – maybe less than that – but they are delicious! Apparently you can’t buy Winegums in the US, either? I think you might have blogged about this before. I’m not a Winegums fan, but my aunt is and recently asked me to bring her down a whole bunch of Winegums when I visited the US.
Yes! Winegums are another of my Canadian loves that I can’t fine here.
I struggle with the lack of structure – and then I think, Maybe I’m the only one. The kids love having very organic days.
You didn’t see the point of sunglasses?! I am so dumbfounded by this. If I’m out in the sun for longer than ten seconds, I get a raging headache. That’s crazy that you went through most of your life without them! (Yes, this is what I choose to focus on in this delightful post with many topics. Sunglasses.)
I know, right!?!? I think I was influenced by that Cory Hart song about Wearing his Sunglasses at night and I thought they were just a fashionable affect. But no… sunglasses are actually very useful.
The 15 minute commute recommendation is very odd. You’d have to live sooo close to your job and maybe you don’t want that or can’t afford it? Like you said, it’s not an easy fix like tweaking how you meal prep. Our commute is pretty good all in all. We drop the kids off at school on the way to work and it takes 40 minutes, usually, from door to desk – at least for me as we park at a garage that is very close to my building. I miss commuting on the bus but we had this really complex schedule where I took the bus to work and Phil dropped the kids off, parked by a bus stop nearby daycare, and bussed to work. Then we did the reverse on the way home – he bussed home, I bussed to the car, got the kids, drove home. We had NO margin, though, as we were subject to a bus schedule. It would not work w/ 2 kids. But we are lucky that we can commute together. My husband goes into the office M-Th most weeks, I go in T-Th. So we get extra time together that we didn’t get when we took the bus. It’s not always the most quality time but it’s nice to chat about our days before picking up the kids and putting our parenting hats on.
Your job is so very fascinating. I never thought about all of the behind the scenes work that goes into a production! The difference in # of steps between tech and production is crazy!
On a good day, my commute to the rehearsal studio is between 15-20 mins, but there are always so many variables.
Children definitely put an additional level of stress and logistics into commuting. I was a bike commuter before I had kids but I can’t reasonably do that with kids – daycare drop off wouldn’t work and it would take too long to go pick them up if there was an emergency. Kids was one of the reasons we had to get a second car. Of course maybe I could get one of those cargo bikes like they have in the Netherlands….
I think it’s lovely that you and your husband can commute together!
1. Your job sounds so interesting.
2. I have two cents about this:
“It’s certainly a relief to have it done, but I am second-guessing myself and wondering if there should be more organized activities. It will be fine. I have to remind myself that done is better than perfect. And really, there is no perfect… I want to fill the summer with joy and fun and good memories, but at the same time that feels like a lot of pressure to have those expectations.” I relate to this with my whole heart. I always feel the pressure to make my kids’ Christmases, spring breaks, fall breaks, and summers perfect: filled with memories, filled with learning, filled with new skills, and connections.
And that leads to compar-sitis and feeling low about myself. My kids have pretty damn great lives. When I compare their childhoods to mine, hooooo boy. There is always more out there, better out there, more fun out there. Not going to get sucked into that.
Interestingly, I mainly see *WOMEN* sweating these fun-filled summers/Christmases/spring breaks. Men don’t have that problem, and I need to learn more from that.
I remind myself that there is no perfect. It already is good.
That is indeed a good reminder. Baseline for my kids is already pretty great.
My husband doesn’t see the point of summer camp for the weeks that I’m not working. It’s kind of fascinating to me because I grew up with a million activities and always somewhere to be. I guess, too, one needs to see what the child prefers.