COVID snapshot – Life Off Headset

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Five years ago

I had a thought that I should write a list of gentle aspirations for March, but then I realized that I accomplished NONE of my gentle aspirations for February. So if you want to know what’s on my March Goals list, you can just go back and read the February list. It’s all the same stuff. I just never did it last month. I take that back – we did get the kids to write Valentine’s Day cards. And I did make it to one of the 13 year old’s middle school basketball game. (Though that might have actually been this month and not last month.)

So mid March 2020 was when we all retreated from public life. Well, those of us who weren’t considered “essential”. The five year anniversary of the start of the COVID pandemic is making me reflect on those times. I’ve been struggling to put my thoughts into words, but then Daria had a lovely reflective post, prompted by this podcast, and I’m going to use her questions. I guess for my purposes, I think of the thick of the pandemic as being from March 12th 2020, when my show was cancelled up til probably September 2022, when it felt like we were doing opera again, albeit with masks and precautions in place.

Watching for the trash truck! Highlight of the week.

What do you remember most?
I remember being home with my kids a lot, and not being able to go to work. So many people in my industry pivoted and started producing opera/theatre online or in other venues. At the time, I had a six month old, a three year old, and a 8 year old. I couldn’t think beyond just keeping everyone going at home and struggled to figure out how to have structure in our days. Thank goodness for the internet. Other things I remember, off the top of my head:
-sewing masks as part of a church mission
-pumping and donating breastmilk
-lots of cardboard box creations
-struggling with online schooling for the oldest child and not knowing how hard to be on her for constantly surfing the internet when she should be paying attention in class
-Lots of time outdoors. Exploring new parks and trails.
-RBG dying and taking the two girls down to pay respects.
-The Husband being at home for a little bit, setting up a desk and computer wherever he could and then going back to the office the moment they let him. (I don’t blame him on that one.)
-The Husband doing all the grocery shopping so that we could limit contact.
-taking a drawing class online – it was such a great creative and social outlet.
-Borrowing so many books from the library. The library setting up a system to request books for pick up.
-Masks. Wearing masks. I remember the first time I put on a mask. I was in line at Costco and I thought, “Well, here goes. I should probably put this mask on.” It felt like a big step, admitting that there really was something going on.
-Once we started producing opera again, arguing with singers about, “Yes, you do have to wear a mask in rehearsal.”
-The not knowing when things would end. What “end” even meant.
-So much time together as a family.
-Figuring out Zoom. Having a Zoom birthday party for the Husband.
-The vaccine, finally getting vaccinated.
-The youngest participating in a vaccine trial.
-The show we did in May 2022 when people were still getting COVID in large numbers and every performance there would be a list with all the people who were out that night. Even the stage manager got COVID and I had to bump up to call the show and we called every available stage manager we knew to come in and cover my assistant stage manager track, and ended up with a patchwork of stage managers to cover the run. There was one show where no one was available for the whole evening, so we just hired someone to cover my track for the first half of the show. That to me was just bonkers – that we had a sub come in for half a show.

What led up to here?
I remember in February hearing about a virus that was proving deadly and spreading quickly, but it was not yet in our county. And then on March 12th, suddenly being aware of this phrase, “social distancing.” I asked my co-worker, “What does social distancing mean anyway?” And she didn’t know and we went on with our tech session. We were in the theatre at the time, in tech for an opera that I was very excited to work on. It was the day of our first orchestra rehearsal onstage and we were at the theatre that afternoon setting lighting levels. On a break, my co-worker came up to me and said, “Six feet.”
“What?” I asked, having forgotten our earlier conversation.
“Social distancing is six feet apart.”
Okay, I thought, I can do that. And then a couple hours later, my big boss came into the theatre where we all were working on lighting cues and said that the show was being cancelled and we should all go home.
And the next day, we were told that the schools would be closed for two weeks.
And that’s how it all started for us.
And then I made the mistake of going to Costco on March 14th. That trip took two hours and I couldn’t get paper towels or eggs.

Who went through this with you?
My family- the Husband and the three kids. My mother, who had planned to come help out with the new baby for one month and ended up staying with us for five. My mom’s group, via Zoom and masked distanced walks. My friend K, who decided that we needed a weekly socially distanced happy hour. All the teachers and educators who taught kids through zoom. My online art class. The whole world. I think that’s what was amazing about this is that it was world wide. Everyone experienced it differently, but we all experienced it.

Where did you go through this event?
At home. In the kitchen. In the dining room. In the living room. In our backyard. At parks. On hiking trails. At mass vaccination sites. At drive through testing sites. And eventually, back at the theatre.

How did you feel then?
Bewildered and numb – I was just waiting for someone to tell me what to do and I tried not to think about things too much. Angry. I was angry a lot at the people around me for not being easier to live with. Frustrated with the sameness of every day. Grateful. Grateful for the things that did come to us, grateful for the ways that we could isolate and be our own bubble. Grateful that the Husband could still work. Grateful that my mother was with us and toilet trained the middle child. Tired. I had a six month old who had to be nursed to sleep at the time. Worried. For my grandfather who didn’t believe in vaccines. For my father living on his own because my mother was with us. Happy too, though, that we could still have some good times and adventures.

What changed in your world?
Well, I couldn’t go to work anymore and was home all the time with the kids. That was probably the big thing. But also I think there was a re-thinking in my industry about work-life balance. People who were getting burnt out from going from gig to gig to gig without a pause started to take a step back and ask if it was all worth it. There was a mass exodus of mid-career stage managers from the industry.
I think also, we became more aware of the health of people around us – I’ll always remember the quote I heard, “It used to be we coughed to cover up a fart. Now we fart to cover up a cough.” I think we became much more aware of how to stay healthy in large groups of people – masks, hand washing, covering coughs and sneezes, staying home if you’re sick. I mean we should already have been doing this but it became downright uncivilized if one didn’t do it in the wake of the pandemic.

What changed in you?
I always find these questions hard because I feel I lack the self awareness to really answer it. I don’t really think of myself on a pre-ordained path, so I don’t really see it as changing. I kind of see myself as flowing and bending as life goes on and there was a lot of flow and bend in 2020-2022
Here’s one thing – I stopped worrying about the oldest kid’s grades. (I was actually interviewed for a story in the Washington Past about this) I realized that in elementary school I just wanted her to be learning, and I had to stop caring about the A. I’m a little more concerned about her grades now that she is in middle school, I will admit, but the pandemic gave me a good insight into my expectations for elementary school.
I wouldn’t really call this a change, but I also had to shift my mind from being a work out of the house mom to being a stay at home mom. That took a bit of adjustment. But I was also glad for the time with the baby because I had gone back to work when she was just a week old, and I hadn’t really had time with her.

What good came out of this event?
I think we learned that family is important. That as long as we were stuck in this thing together, things would be okay.
One thing work-wise that came out of this was I started to do supertitle work. It was one of the first jobs that was offered me when my company started doing opera again. I hadn’t really thought about doing supertitle work before and it turns out I actually love it.
When I did come back to work, working from home was acceptable. I remember going back to work after having a baby in 2017 and 2019 and asking if I could work, from home on the days I didn’t have to be in rehearsal or at the theatre and it was like pulling teeth. But after the pandemic, it was something that everyone was allowed to do. Well until now.
I started a blog. Yup, this here is a pandemic blog, started in April 2020. And this blog has been a wonderful outlet for all the things in my head, and has also lead to my discovering a great community of people who also share what’s knocking around in their heads.
I started running. When the local Taiwan School opened up for Sunday Mandarin classes again, I enrolled the middle child. The last time we took language classes at the Taiwan School, parents had to sit in the classrooms, but in September 2021, they did not let parents sit in the classrooms anymore. So I had 90 minutes of time to kill while the middle child was in class. I decided to start running. I didn’t really have much of an exercise routine before that, maybe some yoga and a few post-partum fitness classes. But I figured I was approaching my mid 40s and I should start something. I don’t love running, but it’s a pretty low barrier for entry, so I do it. And I usually feel better when I do.

What would you do differently?
I don’t know that I have a good answer to this questions, because I think we all did the best we could with the information we had. I guess one thing is I would try harder to reach out to friends. We had good friends whom we didn’t see for a whole year, and they live two miles away. I think I would have tried harder to reach out even in a distanced way. I loved our little family unit, but I think it’s also important to nurture all relationships, to check in on people, form connections.

How do you feel about the pandemic now?
I think back on 2020-2022 and it feels a little surreal to me that we went through that. That the world got quiet and empty. That there were special early morning shopping hours at the grocery store for the immunocompromised. That people really became innovative about how to do the things that they were used to doing. When I think of historic milestones that I’ve lived through, there’s 9/11 and there’s the COVID pandemic. I also think right now in America also feels a bit like a historic moment as well with the dismantling of the Federal government. All these events have that same sense of bewilderment and confusion and upheaval. March 13th will always be a “Where were you when…” moment for me.
One thing that the current climate is making me realize, though, is just how much kindness and community materialized when we couldn’t gather. There were certainly events of hate and fear during COVID, but there was a reaction to it, a sense that people wanted to set things right. I don’t get that sense right now. Right now I feel as if America is dividing from each other and the rest of the world.
It’s funny, we were trying to explain the pandemic to the two younger kids the other day. They have no memory of those years, but the oldest was 8 at the time and very much remembers it. I asked her to tell her younger siblings about it, and she said, “The pandemic was the most amazing time. We got to stay home all the time and be together and watch lots of tv and screens.” I think that’s a good perspective to remember – even though it was such a stressful and anxious time for me, the 8 year old was actually loving life. I do wonder what will be the legacy of that two and a half years of pandemic life.

Funny Story – This morning as I was driving the kids to piano lessons, we passed the beltway, which at 7:15 in the morning was already bumper to bumper. “Look,” I said, “All those people going to their office.”

“Are they going to print things?” asked the 5 year old.

“No, they’re going to work,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said, a little confused. “And then they will go back to their houses?”

“Well, no. They now they have to work in their office.”

“Oh. That’s silly,” she said.

I think about all the ways the world changed, has changed. I mean the world is always changing, right? But it seems like there have been some big shifts in the past five years. The 5 and 8 year old don’t really know a world where going to the office every day was the norm for most people, even though the Husband does it. They don’t think twice if they are asked to put on a mask when they are cough-y. They submit to nose swabs and shots without a second thought. I feel like these little things are what part of what remain of those years we spent in lockdown, even for people who don’t remember it.

On that note, I’m leaving you with this, which made me laugh out loud and then I sent it to all my friends who are trying to do all the things while pretending everything is fine:

I don’t actually have Instagram, so excuse the weird screen shot, but it’s from Emotional Club’s Instagram feed.

Grateful For:

-Whatsapp calling and friends. I have a friend who moved to Oman because her husband works in the foreign service and was posted there. They’re halfway through their posting and I really miss her. We’ve been texting back and froth frequently, but this week we decided to have a phone call, which we did through Whatsapp. It was amazing! We talked for 90 minutes, catching up on all the things.

-After school park time. Sunshine and warmer weather.

-That I’m okay after a fall. I tripped on my run through the woods and fell face down on a huge smooth slab of rock. I for sure thought that I was going to be a bloody mess, but I wasn’t, luckily. I was a little sore and shaken, but otherwise okay. 24 hours later, my chin is black and blue and looks awful, but at least I didn’t have to get stitches or knock out my teeth or anything.

-On that note – I’m grateful that I started back up with running. I want three times (well, two and a half – I kind of abandoned the third run after that fall) and it wasn’t that painful. Last year I ran all through the winter, even in 20 degree weather, but I didn’t have the will to do it this year. It feels nice to be back at it after a break, though.

-Cake! I made another cake. This one was an Old Fashioned Donut Bundt Cake. It tasted just like a cake donut. If you like cake donuts, make this cake! Sign of the time- I had originally planned to make another cake, but that cake called for six eggs. What with eggs being expensive still, I decided to make this cake that only took four. And even then I asked myself if that was a good use of eggs. It was.

-The 13 year old’s basketball coach. Basketball season is over and I’m really grateful for the coach and referees that made the season possible.

-High School Musicals – We went to the high school production of the musical The Secret Garden this weekend. It was SOOOOOO good! The Secret Garden is my favorite musical and I figured that would either make seeing a high school production either a blissful experience or a grin-and-bear-it experience. Here’s the thing about this musical – The music is gorgeous, so heartbreakingly beautiful. Also it’s not easy and it’s very exposed and the ensembles are tricky. You have to know how to sing to pull it off – none of this sort of speak-sing stuff that you can maybe get away with with some other musicals. The kids in this show had such beautiful voices. And so much spunk and personality onstage. And the production was so well put together – some minor technical difficulties as one would expect at this level, but nothing major. And there were some really lovely directing choices. I think it’s going to be one of my favorite theatre experiences this year.

-The smell of witch hazel blooming in our front yard. That floral spicy smell greeting me as I come home.

-Finding just the right books. I popped by the Library’s used bookstore last week. I had meant to donate a bag of books, only the paper bag split as I was taking it to the car and the I could only find parking in the far parking lot and didn’t want to carry all those books in a split paper bag to the used bookstore. So I’ll deal with that another time. But as long as I was there, I figured I’d do some browsing and I lucked out because I found two books that were on my “want to find” list. One is Nelson Mandela’s memoir that I want to read in anticipation of a trip to South Africa later this year, and the other book is the memoir of Renee Fleming that I wanted to to get for the 13 year old because Fleming is her favorite opera singer. It’s my lucky day! I also picked up two comic strip collections because the kids really love reading those- one Calvin and Hobbes and one for The Boondocks. Does anyone remember the Boondocks? It was this hilariously edgy comic strip from the early 2000s.

Looking Forward To:
-Lenten Reading Group. Last year a friend invited me to a Lenten reading group and even though I’m not what anyone would call religious, I did enjoy doing the readings and thinking about how we can function with grace and kindness towards ourselves and other human beings. The group is meeting again this year, just three times, but I’m looking forward to it. The readings so far have seemed very apt in the times that we live in.

-Voice recital this week for which I’m doing super titles. It’s an eclectic program with lots of contemporary pieces and five or six different languages.

-Reading my library haul. After hitting up the library bookstore, I went to the library to pick up a hold and ended up coming away with a whole new stack of books to read and a cookbook:

What We Ate:
Monday: Swede and Red Lentil Soup. I had a rutabaga that our friend had passed a long to us from his CSA. Hot tip – googling recipes for “swede” (what the British call the Rutabaga) yields much more interesting (to me) recipes than googling “rutabaga”. I really liked this soup. I was the only one, though. Thankfully I made a batch of no-knead bread to go with it so people were still happy with dinner. Vegan. Except some of us put butter on the bread.

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos from New York Times Cooking. This was a surprisingly fast dinner – it was on the table in about twenty minutes. And with this meal we finished up the 6lb 13oz cabbage.

Wednesday: Salmon with Miso Rice and Ginger Scallion Vinaigrette from New York Times Cooking. First day of Lent, so a meat free dinner. This was really tasty and simple. Everyone liked it. Except one child who screamed that they didn’t like salmon and why didn’t I make catfish. But then proceeded to eat the rice with their hands. I don’t bother to make food that the kids will like because this is the sh*t I have to put up with. If I’m going to get yelled at, I might as well like the food that I’m eating.

Thursday: Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma that I’ve seen linked on Suzanne’s blog. When I was reading this recipe, it struck me that it was very similar to the delicious Kabocha Squash and Apple Shawarma recipe that I got in my Purple Carrot meal box one time. So I added apples to the original recipe and made a zhoug sauce to go with it all. It was delicious. Except the 5 and 8 year olds who said they didn’t like vegetables so I told them they could make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which they did. Good, more Shawarma for me! Vegan.

Friday: Pizza (The Husband made) and Glee.

Saturday: Pasta Salad made from Jenny Rosenstrach’s marinated beans as a base. Then I add tomatoes, cucumbers, pasta, and red onion. Vegan. Only once again some child rebelled and they had pasta with butter and parmesan cheese for dinner.

Sunday: leftovers and Ramen. Sunday is one of those days when I get to six o’clock and realize that, yes indeed the kids do need to eat dinner. At least the younger kids. The 13 year old fends for herself because she has evening swim clinic and needs to eat on the early side. So Sunday was ramen because it’s easy and fast. I added vegetables (the last of some napa cabbage that was in the fridge) and eggs to the ramen, and for my own bowl, I threw in a bunch of kimchi.

I hope you are having a lovely week. We are battling the time change here, but every day is better and there is more sunlight at the end of the day now.
Are you reflecting on the early days of the COVID pandemic now that it’s been 5 years? If you could tell March 2020 you something, what would it be? How would you describe those times to someone who didn’t have to live through it?

Shenandoah Camping- Day three and then home

To finish up the recaps from our July camping trip….

The second morning once again started with a 6:30am bathroom call. This morning, after bathroom call, I actually went back to sleep for an hour while the two kids played with their cars and figurines next to me in the tent. It was a kind of hazy shallow sleep, punctuated by their small voices making car noises and creating scenarios on the tent floor. Small figurines and cars always come with us when we go camping and we get a lot of mileage out of them.

Around 7:45- I got up and made breakfast- bacon and egg wraps. Which were tasty, although I think I should have bought thick cut bacon – it would have cooked more evenly and taken up less space in the frying pan.

A little after 9:00am, the Husband arrived with the 10 year old. They had left at around 6am to get to us and the ten year old was still a little sleepy. I thought they made good time given that they even stopped for donuts.

“Did you get to use the park pass?” was the first thing I asked them.

So the whole reason I chose to come to the Shenandoah over Western Maryland where we usually go camping was because every fourth grader in America gets a free National Park Pass good from September 1st to August 31st the year they are in fourth grade. Not one to turn down free stuff, I really wanted to use the pass and we planned two vacations around this park pass. However, we didn’t use the pass on our our Smoky Mountain National Park vacation because that park actually doesn’t charge a fee. So I was eager to use it on this trip. Except then the ten year old didn’t want to come with me. I realize that $30 is a small price to pay for entry into our National Parks, but I was super bummed not to be able to use the card. (Though it ended up being moot because when I drove in with the two littles, the entry gate was understaffed and unoccupied so I didn’t end up having to pay anyway.)

Anyhow, the Husband reassured me that they did in fact get to use the fourth grade park pass and I was pretty excited about that.

After everyone got to relax for a little bit and I got breakfast cleaned up, put away, and had hauled the dishwashing water to be dumped and come back, I wanted to go on a hike. So we packed a lunch and snacks and water in our backpacks and got in the car.

I chose the South River Falls Hike. It looked really doable in the hiking book, just 4.4 miles to the base of a waterfall and back. In my mind that was 2.2 miles to the waterfall, time for playing in the water and lunch, then 2.2 miles back. I figured it would take maybe four hours – ninety minutes there, thirty minutes at the waterfall and two hours back.

It took 6.5 hours and was much harder than I had anticipated.

Most of the difficulty was due to the elevation change throughout, some 1200 feet. The terrain in spots was a little rocky to get down to the waterfall and then back up to the trail so we had to go slow and careful with the kid. Even still, there were lots of things I really liked about the hike.

We saw lots of millipedes – which the kids loved to stop for… every single millipede.

two of the many many millipedes that we saw.

There were lots of moments to sit by the stream for a motivational snack break. (Gummy fruit snacks!)

There were rocky scrambles, one which ran over the stream and you could stand on the rocks and hear the trickle of water far below, even though you couldn’t actually see the stream.

There was running into a park ranger who talked us through the path to the base of the waterfall and answered all our questions of how they rescue people in case of emergency. I thought it was such a cool job to spend your day hiking and talking to park visitors.

There was the cool shade where we sat on rocks at the base of the waterfall and had our lunch of summer sausage, cheese, and fruit. And after lunch there was some refreshing wading.

And on the way back, we even saw some owls. It was almost magical! There is something mesmerizing about owls and their haunting call and swift noiseless flight.

Very blurry picture of one of the owls we saw.

Overall, the kids did okay with the hike, difficult as it was. There was a fair bit of protesting that they couldn’t possibly go any further, but the baby actually made it all but the last mile, at which point, I put her in the carrier and she fell asleep. The five year old stoically made it all the way to the waterfall and back with nary a word. He found a good sturdy stick and trudged along, stick in hand. Only afterwards did he say to me, “I like camping, but I don’t like long hikes.”

In the evening there was a fire, dinner cooked over said fire, and ‘smores. Then the Husband put the kids to bed. The ten year old decided that the tent was too crowded and wanted to sleep in the hammock. I hung a few glow sticks in hammock for her so that she wouldn’t be so in the dark. Truth be told, I was a little jealous – sleeping in a hammock seemed like it would have made for a soothing and refreshing night. Since the Husband was on kid duty and then retired soon after, I had the rest of the evening to myself. I sat by the fire, read my book and wrote in my journal as I tried to keep the flames alive as long as possible. The last log managed to burn for quite a long time and it was lovely to have a fire-lit evening to myself.

The next day, we woke up to fog and drizzle, which still seemed magical. The Husband and I packed up the campsite while the kids played. The five year old kept setting the camp chairs in a row, playing train:

The baby just tried to climb whatever she could:

She can make anything into her jungle gym!

On the way home, we stopped in Culpepper for lunch at a Bar-b-que place. The food did take a while to get to us, so when it became clear that the two little were feeling a little restless, I took them on a walk around the town. I feel like I need to have more tricks up my sleeve for the kids now that we are eating out more. I can’t expect them to sit still all the time in a restaurant if the service is slow and I don’t want them climbing all over things and behaving like indoor monkeys. At any rate, a walk around the block seemed like a good way to wait for the food to come. We even saw this piece of art:

And it seemed like every street we walked down was like taking a time machine back sixty years….

Eventually the husband texted that the food had arrived so we headed back to the restaurant. We ordered the family meal and it. came. in. a. garbage. can. lid. How fun is that?

The food was soooo good! When I go to BBQ, I had to admit, it’s all about the sides for me. Any place that doesn’t have collard greens is a disappointment in my book. This place not only had collard greens, but they also had hush puppies (which the kids tried for the first time and heartily approved of), fried okra and, something new to me, stewed apples. The stewed apples were so tasty, kind of like eating apple pie filling .

After lunch, we drove home, unloaded the camping gear from the car, and all took showers.

All in all, it was a great trip. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Some things that I really enjoyed about this camping trip:

Unplugging. Our campsite actually had pretty good cell service, but I needed my battery to last 3.5 days with minimal charging, so I kept it in airplane mode most of the time. I realized that this was actually a great way to limit my screen time. I would take my phone out of airplane mode three or four times a day, check my email and texts, respond to the ones that needed a response, text teh Husband proof of life pictures of me and the kids, then put the phone back in airplane mode. It made me realize that I don’t get messages of sufficient volume and importance to be checking my messages as much as I do. It was a good thing to realize. The one annoying thing was even though I had downloaded my books via the Libby app, for some reason the app wouldn’t open unless it had signal. So a couple times I had to take the phone off airplane mode just to get the app to open.

Hiking to views and to waterfalls.

Going to bed early.

Reading Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile out loud with the kids.

The hammock.

Simple meals of crackers, summer sausage, and cheese.

Seeing stars…

Weekly recap + what we ate: listless

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a month now… I’m feeling a little bit like finding the time and energy to finish it has been difficult mentally – see title of this post. But we are taking some time away and I’m hoping to catch up on life and get back to writing. I also have to remind myself that polished prose is great, but just the act of writing is incredibly fulfilling for me too.

The weekend kicked off with… snow!

The evening before, the ten year old had gone over to the neighbor’s house to swim in their outdoor pool, and then we woke up the next morning to snow. Just when we had thought spring had arrived and we’d be done with cold weather. The daffodils and witch hazel that had just last week exploded in a riot of yellow, were now bending under a layer of snow and ice.

The two little kids greeted the snow with delight. I hunted down the snow gear and got them into it and out we went. It wasn’t terribly fluffy or fun snow- mostly wet and a little slushy but not packing consistency. I half heartedly tried to ball together a tiny snow man, and was pretty unsuccessful. The kids seemed happy enough just to push the snow around and shovel it into stacking cups. The five year old even made a good attempt at cleaning off my car, which I was grateful for as a couple hours later, I got in the car to go to work. It was opening night!

The day after opening night was Daylight Savings. Thank goodness I got to sleep in – the folks working on the other show we are producing at the moment had a Sunday matinee and had to be at the theatre by late morning. Ouf.

I took the kids on Sunday afternoon to give the Husband some childfree time. We dropped the four year old at Mandarin class, and the class was just the right length for us to go grocery shopping then be back in time to pick him up. Then we went on a little adventure to see a very familiar room:

The room was an art installation at a local arts center which houses three floors of artists studios. During opening hours, you can often see artists working on new pieces of art – the works on display range from painting to photography to sculpture, fiber arts, ceramics… it seems every media is represented. I had heard of this place and always wanted to visit, so when I heard about the Good Night Moon Room, figured it was a good reason to visit. The kids were delighted to see so many familiar things brought to life. Afterwards we visited many of the other artists’ studios, though the little ones didn’t last too long. They didn’t have the patience for just looking and not touching. (Notably, the Fiber Arts Guild had a “touching basket” in their studio – which I thought was a great idea.) I’ll have to make plans to return sans kids, and I definitely had my eye on one or two pieces that might make a nice present for the Husband.

I’m not sure why, but the time change has hit me pretty hard this time around. Maybe it’s having gone through the intensity of tech week only to be robbed of an hour of sleep. Ironically, I had a supertitles for a vocal concert a couple days after opening, and this was one of the slides for a song by Rachmaninoff:

At any rate, it’s been kind of hard to motivate and get things done.

A while ago, I had read this snippet from the New York Times’ Little Love Story series (fourth one in the link), It’s titled “Listless, Lost, then Found”, and is a mini essay about how the author, a person of many lists, grapples with having the flu and being so laid low that they are unable to make lists. In contrast their friend says, “I’m listless! I’ve stopped making lists. I’m free!” What an interesting concept wed to a turn of phrase! I was struck by how aptly the term “listless” describes the malaise I feel after a show when I am so exhausted from getting to opening night that I can’t even pull it together to plan the days that follow. Am I listless because I have no lists to guide me, or do I have no lists to guide me because I’m listless? Unlike the author’s friend, I do not feel freedom in having no lists. (Well, maybe when I am on vacation? Though that hasn’t truly happened in a very very long time. )

Somewhat paradoxically, I find the I make better use of my time when I have less free time, than when I have more of it. Knowing that I have to be in rehearsal or onstage for nine hours a day encourages me to make plans for the rest of my time- fitting that run in on my dinner break, getting dinner prepped in the morning, playing Wordle while the toast is toasting. When I have no constraints or obligations on my time, everything, even Wordle, seems less urgent. (I have played definitely played a Wordle round at 11:30pm while sitting in the parking garage after work). Even when things are urgent – taxes!- they seem less so when I feel like I have the entire day to do them.

Well, then, I think I do need to pull out of the listless state. The literal one. Making the list is, I feel, step one for me to get moving on the urgent and important things.

At the same time – I’ve been taking the baby to some Toddler Time sessions at a local nursery school. It’s a morning of free play, crafts, stories, and outdoor play with a sandbox and bubbles at the end of the session. The teacher who organizes the session also leads an open forum for parents while the kids play in the sandbox. The school operates in a co-op model and there are lots of signs up, encouraging parents to engage with their child. This is one of my favorite signs, particularly the last point:

In other news, both older kids’ school have gone mask optional now – the ten year old since mid last week, and the four year old just at the beginning of this week. Lifting mask mandates seems appropriate for the two year anniversary of the world spinning to a stop. The lifting also seemed to happen quite quickly here. I had been hearing in the news of other states and school districts lifting mask mandates – and indeed our indoor mask mandate had been lifted for a couple week now – but the email we got from the school district was literally, “Starting tomorrow…” The 4 year old’s school at least gave us a weekend of warning.

For the five year old, realizing that many of his classmates are still unvaccinated, we have told the teacher that we prefer he keep his mask on while indoors. When we asked him if he had a preference, he actually said that he preferred to keep it on. From what he tells me, all the kids in his class continue to wear masks inside. I wonder if it is because he has always had to wear a mask to school that he is in no hurry to remove it.

We left the choice up to the ten year old, although we told her that she needed to wear her mask indoors at school the week before my family comes to visit and while they are here. I don’t know if any of this is rational or not, to be honest.

One lovely benefit of the time change is longer days and I took advantage of the extra evening light to go on our first post dinner stroll of the year. Since I like to have dinner early, we often have from 7pm – 7:30pm to fill with some kind of activity before bed. The two littles seemed particularly delighted for the first evening constitutional of the year:

I love taking a turn around the block after dinner- the sky is painted orange and pink, the birds and crickets are out. We usually take the same path around our neighborhood, and there is a nice familiarity about it. One neighbor had a fish pond in their front yard and we always like to stop and watch the fish. And this time of year the trees are exploding with puffs of blossoms.

What we ate: (I seem to have large blanks in my memory of dinners this week.

Saturday: ?? Opening night… I’m sure it was some kind of leftovers

Sunday: Sunday leftovers.

Monday: Cornflake fried chicken and Arni’s Jrs. The chicken recipe is from Americas Test Kitchen’s Cookbook for Young Chefs and is actually baked, not fried. Arni’s Jr. are a salad from the Husband’s favorite childhood restaurant. It’s essentially iceberg lettuce, mozzarella cheese, cubed ham, cubed turkey, scallions, and radishes, all topped with blue cheese dressing. Oh, and croutons.

Tuesday: The Husband made Cincinnati Chili. I tried out a new place near work. I was excited to be able to order something with a large variety of veggies, though it was definitely on the salty side.

Wednesday: Kitchen sink yellow curry. I had some yellow curry paste and some yellow squash, eggplant, and tofu to use up.

Thursday: A special St. Patrick’s Day snack meal. Potted salmon, crackers, soda bread made from The Irish Pantry cookbook. Also roasted potatoes and cut up carrots. I had always been interested in the “potted” chapter of the cookbook – the idea of traditional methods of preserving meat with a layer of butter kind of appealed to my inner pioneer girl. I can’t say that the potted salmon was any more tasty than any other method of making salmon, and it was certainly more work than roasting salmon in the oven and then putting it in the fridge to keep it from spoiling. There is something that feels really indulgent in being able to try a preservation technique from hundreds of years ago. These high effort activities that were a necessary part of the every day kitchen of yesteryear have become a quaint kitchen experiment of today, it seems.

Friday: Pizza and March of the Penguins. I had to work and ate leftover curry.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech Week!

And suddenly we are into March.

Sign of the times:

For work, we have to take a COVID test every other day. Somedays I forget to do it at home, and very often I end up swabbing my nose in the car on the way to work. One day during the week, I had to get gas so I ended up swabbing while waiting to pump gas. Then I looked at the gas prices. There is something so utterly surreal to me about swabbing my nose for an at Home COVID test while pumping $3.76 gas. It was like a summary of the world at that moment: The war in Urkaine, sanctions against Russia, the trickledown effect of soaring gas prices, and taking a test kit out of a box so that I am allowed to show up for work. The sad thing is, since I took this picture, gas prices have risen to over $4.30/gallon. Which, I realize, is not the highest in the country, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen gas prices that high. Google tells me it was over ten years ago.

This week we moved from the rehearsal room into the theatre – it’s tech week!!! It’s always a challenging process because the hours are long, we work late and we are finally adding so many new elements – sets, lightings, costumes, wigs, make-up, orchestra – that it requires a lot of concentration and clear minded-ness to feel like I’m doing my job properly. Still, for me there is something magical about moving to the theatre. The collaborations, the hushed whispers in the dark that bring about beautiful moments onstage, the stage crew who work really hard backstage for effortless transformations to bloom onstage, the wardrobe and wig crew who can turn one character into another in less than a minute. So it’s always a tough week, but also energizing in the way that tough weeks can be. Also, after two years away from this stage, I don’t want to ever take for granted the excitement of creating something for stage.

The opera I’m working on Cosi fan tutte is full of misogyny and problematic sexist and racist attitudes. (Are there any other kind of sexist and racist attitudes?) It was premiered in 1790, so it’s portrayal of women and men and foreigners is not entirely surprising. However, Mozart’s music is sublime and it’s not an opera that requires a lot of forces, so I suppose opera companies and directors will continue to present it and they will continue to grapple with the difficulties the opera presents. I actually really love the opera, but I definitely see it with different eyes now than when I first heard it twenty years ago. When I was in college I thought the whole “Let’s play a trick on our girlfriends and see if they will stay true to us or if they will fall for other men while we pretend to be away!” was kind of funny albeit ridiculous. I don’t think it’s funny or ridiculous now… I just think it’s stupid and mean, and the aftermath almost heartbreaking.

Despite all this, there are some really thoughtful and heartfelt things being uncovered in rehearsal, and the other day, I wrote down something the director said about a simple stage gesture. She said that the gesture of offering someone your hand palm up really was a physical manifestation of how we can “choose our partner with kindness”. And that really stuck with me – this idea that we choose our actions and can choose to carry them out with kindness -beautifully encapsulated a way of going through life with purpose and with empathy. I know she was talking about the characters in the opera and the choices they were making, but I also think this idea of “choosing with kindness” can inform so many things that we do offstage, and how we treat those around us.

I’ve been thinking lately about this idea of kindness. One of the assignments when I took the Yale Happiness Course was to practice acts of kindness. Kindness was something that was scientifically proven to boost a person’s sense of well being. I will admit that kindness doesn’t always come instinctively to me and that particular assignment, deep in a pandemic, was not the easiest one. But… this past week, amidst all the craziness of getting the show onstage, I realized that I had been the recipient of a lot of acts of kindness lately. Here are some:
-my assistant brought me a cookie from the work cafeteria when I had to work during my break – the chocolate chip cookies from work are one of my favorite things. They are huge, for one, and they are also just slightly underbaked, which I loved in my cookies.
-my boss who stayed for my tech rehearsals and gave me encouraging words and helped me think through some awkward situations.
– the assistant director who wrote the show timings in my score – a somewhat tedious process that I usually do myself, but I had gotten so behind that I never managed to do it before rehearsal started.
– The ten year old got her sibling dressed and fed them breakfast twice this week so I could sleep in a little bit. (By which I mean, I slept til 7:15am)
-The Husband vacuuming out my car when he had it over the weekend – it was practically as if it had been detailed. I usually am quite ungrateful when he does this because I don’t like having the stuff in my car moved around, but this time it was actually quite wonderful as my car had become quite a mess of crumbs and crushed leaves and various unidentifiable detritus.

Pithy quote of the week –

“The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold anything else.” via Seth Godin’s Blog

Made me smile:

Is there anything as joyful as a dog riding in the car with their head out the window, tongue lolling in the wind?

What We Ate: The Husband decided that this week was going to be wraps week! Having a theme certainly made meal planning easier.

Saturday: Take-out Chinese food

Sunday: Leftover from take-out

Monday: Breakfast burritos (The Husband cooked. I was at work and ate leftovers)

Tuesday: Sweet Potato tacos. I prepped the sweet potatoes so that the Husband just had to put them in the oven to roast when he got home. There was supposed to be black beans in them too (My favorite recipe from Dinner Illustrated), but the Husband forgot those. Oops.

Wednesday: Mushu veggies. I’m actually mildly proud of this meal- not because it was particularly tasty, but because I walked in the door at 5:45pm and we were eating by 6:10pm. There was a kind of zen kitchen flow going on where I just chopped and tossed things into the frying pan, but I managed to do it in the right order so everything cooked the right amount of time. I vaguely followed this recipe for the sauce and used whatever vegetables I had on hand – ended up being cabbage, carrots, green onions, snow peas, and mushrooms. I also mashed up a block of tofu and threw that in as well.

Thursday: The Husband made kung pao chicken and rice. By this point the kids were tired of eating things in wraps and asked for rice. I worked the evening and packed the leftover mushu filling for my dinner.

Friday: Pizza and movie night – the family watched Encanto. After much deliberating, we finally signed up for Disney plus. (By “we” I mean the Husband made a unilateral decision while I was at work. But sometimes I feel like if I’m not going to be home in the evenings for a week, he should get to make a couple unilateral decisions for the good of the family.) At work, I had ramen and cut up veggies for dinner.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Testing and ten year old

This was the week of COVID test distribution. All public school students were sent home on Monday with a rapid test kit. (Well, all schools that were still meeting in person; eleven schools in our district had transitioned to distance learning because of their COVID numbers, though I understand test kits were available for those families to pick up at the school.) Our school had a Zoom COVID test party, which I thought was a cute idea. The Principal led everyone though how to use their test kits, with a 15 minute dance party while we waited for the results. The nine year old’s test was negative. I had a feeling that it would be, but given that the four year old had no symptoms and he tested positive, I’ve given up any expectations on how COVID spreads.

The County also started handing out test kits at Public Libraries. I love that the public libraries are seen as the right hub for the distribution to happen. The first two days, I drove by a couple libraries and the lines were quite long, so I didn’t stop. In fact, on Tuesday they ran out of tests before the end of the distribution window. Wednesday, I got there half an hour after the window opened and managed to get several kits because they gave two to each resident, including children. The line was quite long when I arrived, but it moved quickly and we were in and out in about ten minutes. I’ve been hearing stories about how there are people selling on Craigslist these COVID test kits that city/county governments are distribution for free … which I find really angering.

In other COVID news, on Tuesday evening, we were told that the the four year old’s class would be closed because of an exposure in his classroom. The school was initially somewhat vague about re-opening plans because while the state has approved a five day quarantine and negative test for kids to return to class after an exposure, our County still mandates a 10 day quarantine period. So I girded my loins for another ten days at home with the four year old. But then, the next evening, the school and wrote, saying since the four year old had had COVID within the past ninety days (seventeen days, to be exact) he was allowed to return to the classroom. Hooray! I had already made plans with him for Thursday, so he went back on Friday, one of two kids in class. I asked him how it was being in such a small class, and he said he liked it. Though he added, “But sometimes my head said to me, ‘What is going on?'”

I hear you, little guy. Some days it feels like such a mental and emotional roller coaster having to navigate COVID.

In happier side, my oldest turned ten last week. Wow. I look at her and wonder how we got here so soon and how she got to be so tall and have so many opinions. A decade seems to me to be a long time … surely it hasn’t been a decade since she was born? And then other days, I think, if she’s been around so long, why haven’t I figured this whole parenting thing out yet? Isn’t ten years enough time to figure things out? But I have to admit that my kid still confounds me every single day, and every single day I’m convinced that I’m bungling things.

Anyhow, at her request, we had an ice cream cake and Chipotle and probably a little too much screentime. The day after her birthday was a half day of school, so the Husband took a half day off and we took her skating. Or rather the ten year old and four year old and I went skating and the Husband watched the baby and cheered us on. It was the four year old’s first time skating and I thought he did okay! And he got lots of help from his sister. He was also super excited by the Zamboni as it is featured in the book that we got him for Christmas, “Unconventional Vehicles“.

After the four year old got tired of skating, the ten year old and I skated together for the rest of our time, gliding lazily around the rink, trying to avoid the groups of teenagers and middle schoolers. Originally this was supposed to be a mommy daughter date, and she was disappointed that her little brother had to tag along because of his school closure, so I’m glad we got a good half hour on the ice just the two of us.

Some kid adventures this week:

Both the baby and the four year old began the winter sessions of swim lessons this week. Winter swim lessons are certainly harder to navigate than summer swim lessons. In the summer, you can put them in their swim suits before you leave the house and they can ride home slightly wet, sitting on a towel. But in the winter, there’s all those layer of clothes and the dressing and undressing and undressing and dressing. But the kids have fun and I do want them to learn to swim sooner rather than later. Though to be honest, I feel like they’re going to need more than once a week lessons to truly learn. I think the ten year old really learned to swim independently the summer she had daily swim lessons for two weeks.

A new to us park: It was quite cold (for us) this week. No snow, but temperatures in the low 30s to mid 20s. I only made it outside for 13 hours this week (17 hours a week is the average to get to 1000 hours for the year. But I figure things will even out in the summer…) Still, I was determined to explore a little bit outside, so Monday day after school drop off, I took the baby to an “adventure playground” that was a little bit of a drive from home, but not too far from the ten year old’s school. I think the only thing truly “adventure” about this playground was the climbing wall, but there was a castle and a pirate ship which were perfect for imaginative adventures. And lots of slides and swings and pretend cars.

Game nights: On nights when we manage to clean up dinner by 7:15p or so, we’ve taken to playing games as a family. For Christmas we added Sleeping Queens, King of Tokyo and Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza to our game cupboard. Even the four year old can play these games, which is great because for a while I felt bad that he was left out of game night. We help him strategize sometimes, and I’ve loved seeing how he’s coming to understand how each game is played. It’s been really fun, and we laugh a lot. Yes, sometimes there is pouting and tantrums when someone doesn’t win, but we’re working on those life lessons, I hope.

What We Ate: The Husband decided that he wanted to cook dinner this week, which was kind of great. It made me realize that a) I do like cooking and have been somewhat a control freak about it, and b) cooking takes up a lot of time, and I have so much more free time in the evenings when I don’t have to cook! The kid’s Swedish Climbing Wall has been great during this pre-dinner time – I can sit in the room while they climb it, but I only have to interact minimally so I can read or do some work while they play.

Saturday: Hmmm… can’t remember.

Sunday: The Husband made some kind of stir fry.

Monday: Spicy tofu tacos and Napa Cabbage Slaw. This was really tasty – one of those meals where you realize that it’s the sauce that’s important, not what you put it on.

Tuesday: Chipotle, as requested by the ten year old for her birthday.

Wednesday: Dumplings and french fries, take out. Not the healthiest, but it was supposed to be a post-skating snack and then we realized afterwards that we were too full to eat a proper dinner. There was definitely a lot of birthday slacking going on this week.

Thursday: Chicken Broccoli Stir Fry with Rice.

Friday: Pizza – the Husband even put anchovies on mine! And we watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I feel like I spent the whole movie staring at Keanu Reeves with a little bit of wonder at how different he is in this movie from really anything else he’s done.

Stage Management Skills in Real Life: green sticky dots

I very much love this use of green sticky dots.

Earlier this week, I got the call to schedule my vaccine appointment. While I feel like I had waited forever, in truth, it was just last week that eligibility had only opened up for me – under 65, no health conditions or qualifying employment. I had been feeling antsy and impatient, but I had been ready to wait. I had heard through the neighborhood listserv that there was one particular vaccination site in the next county that had plenty of availability, so I switched my site preference on my pre-registration to that site rather than the one in my own county. And actually, when I looked at the map – this other site was actually closer to me than the one in my own county. Then I just waited.

Monday evening, as I was clearing up dinner, I got a phone call. The automated call put me into hold que. Around twenty minutes into waiting, I started to despair, thinking that it had just been a bug and I’d gotten my hopes up. But I stuck it through. (I tend to be the person who stays in their original checkout line at the grocery store even though it is the slowest one.) And after thirty minutes, someone picked up. They had appointments for the next day, and I said, “Yes, Please!” I was booked for both shots right then. I’m really grateful to all the people working the phone lines, scheduling appointments.

My appointment was at a state site. It was a series of large temporary structures set up in a parking lot and run by FEMA, though I also saw people from the Coast Guard there too. There was directional signage and arrows on the floors and friendly knowledgeable people. In fact, it kind of reminded me of the first day of tech in a new space. I was asked for my appointment QR code and ID and then pointed towards a door and sent to another station where I was again asked for my QR code and ID.

And then, to my delight, amidst all the scanning and vetting and iPads and what not, I saw something very familiar: at each station was a pack of green sticky dots and a pack of orange sticky dots.

These are the very same sticky dots that I use to put spot light cues in my score. Seeing these sticky dots delighted me to no end. They are such a staple of my stage management kit that I feel almost possessive of them – silly, I know. But my sticky dots, aside from one or two homeschool/ preschool art projects, have been languishing unused for over a year. It gave me great joy to know that someone somewhere (or many someones) were using sticky dots.

So after asking me questions about allergies and my current health, the nice young man doing my intake put a green sticky dot on me. I guess it meant that I was low risk for immediate side effects.

I moved on to the next station, where I rolled up my sleeve and very nice person jabbed me in the arm, handed me a vaccination card and I was then directed into yet another tent.

Here in this tent, I sat with all the other green dots on the left side of the room, where there were rows of chairs spaced six feet apart. I was told to have a seat and wait for fifteen minutes before I could leave.

So I chose a seat and sat there, six feet from my fellow vaccinated. Kind of like the graveyard scene in Our Town.

The white canopy of the tent made for a soft, diffuse natural light filled space – all bright and airy. It was the most well lit and quiet place I had been in a long time.

I might have stayed for more than fifteen minutes.

The Husband texted: Are you coming home?

I replied: I don’t know. It’s quiet and well-lit here.

–I have a 2pm meeting

–Fine, okay.

I’m already looking forward to my second shot.