Recap and Menu – Life Off Headset

(bi) Weekly recap + what we ate: Top Five/ Bottom Five- driving the van

How was the Memorial Day weekend, for those that are in America? I did choose going into nature with the family over spending the weekend home alone, but I didn’t leave until Sunday morning, so I had Saturday evening to myself – I went to dinner with my colleagues, came home, cleaned, watched some TV (Bridgerton – we finally got on the Netflix bandwagon.), read, and packed for the next day. It was a nice amount of time to have on my own.

It’s funny – I have often suggested the Husband go away on his own to get some alone time, but he always reminds me that wouldn’t be as nice because he wants to be home and have alone time. And I completely see that – there is something nice about a getaway, but there is also something nice about being in ones own house without external demands, a level of comfort and autonomy that I think is unique to having one’s own place to oneself. Also when you’re home you can tackle looming domestic tasks, which I think is also deeply satisfying. We probably don’t give each other enough of that kind of time….

Camping itself was a soggy affair. It’s been a wet Memorial Day weekend. I will say, it was mostly drizzle/dry/drizzle/dry while I was camping with the family. The Husband and kids (who had left the day before) and our friends got the brunt of the wet weather. They actually ended up going to the movies Saturday morning to get out of the rain. But still, the company was good and the air was nice. Our friend is a super camper – he brought tarps and many camp stoves, a camp sink, even a pizza oven. So we were not suffering in anyway. To be honest, most of the kids were on some sort of screen or another for a large chunk of the weekend – by the time I got there there were many fights over power banks because everyone’s device was running out of power (including the parents.) So it wasn’t the most disconnected weekend ever. Not my favorite thing, but I’m resigned to it. The kids did manage to go on a hike between rain showers; I feel like any amount of time in nature is a win, screen or no screen.

I slept in the hammock for the first time on Sunday night. It was a bit of a rough go at first, figuring out how to get into the sleeping bag, but once I figured that out, it was rather cozy. The next morning, it was nice to wake up with the morning air fresh on my face, listening to the rain on the rainfly. I will say the hammock is one of my favorite pieces of camping gear.

Monday morning, we made bacon and pancakes for everyone and the packed up the tent. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a dumpling place near Hersey, PA, and then for ice cream at a dairy further south in Pennsylvania. We are our cones in the sun then went to see the calves that were just around back of the ice cream store.

Now that we are the other side of Memorial Day, I feel like we are into summer for reals. Our pool has opened. Swim team practice starts this week. The weather is still deciding between rain and sun, making the air a little thick and humid, but temperatures aren’t scorching yet, which is good.

Because of my longer commute for my summer gig, I’ve been driving the van a couple days a week, mostly because I was afraid of burning out the clutch on our Impreza as I sat in stop/slow/go traffic all the way home. I still don’t love driving the van, but I have to admit that there are some nice things about it. So here – in the spirit of Elisabeth – is my Top Five/ Bottom Five of our van.

Top Five:

Apple CarPlay – The Impreza still has a CD player and my phone doesn’t always connect automatically to the Bluetooth. The van has Apple Car Play (and whatever the Android version of that is) – so it is pretty seamless when I get in the car to have my maps, playlists, audiobooks, etc. just pop up nice and big on the screen display. I know this is probably standard technology in vehicles, but it’s new technology to me and it’s magical.

The van reads me my text messages – This might be part of Apple CarPlay, but I love that when a text comes in, I can have the van read it to me. And also I can, with the push of a button, dictate a text message to send.

The van is an electric-hybrid – With gas prices what they are, I’m glad I don’t have to fill up the van with gas every week. There’s actually a charging station at work, which is convenient. I think we maybe fill the van with gas once a month.

It’s not a manual car – The Impreza is a manual car, which is fine and actually can be fun, but you know when driving a manual car isn’t fun? Driving it in rush hour traffic. I do appreciate that the van has no clutch to worry about and won’t stall out on me. Or I guess, I’m the one who does the stalling when I don’t shift quite correctly. I do like driving the manual car, but it is nice not to have to worry about shifting once in a while.

The trunk – First of all, the trunk is huge! We needed to transport some stuff for work, and I had to throw eight music stands, two large tote boxes, a stool, five boxes of stationary, and heaven knows what else into the back of the van. Everything went in easily; it wasn’t even a tight game of Tetris. It sure is handy having a large trunk. ALSO – another of my favorite thing: The van has that feature where you can wave your foot under the trunk and the trunk will pop open. This is especially helpful when I have an armload the groceries (or some boxes of stationary…) and I can’t reach my keys.

Bottom Five:

The van is HUGE – It doesn’t really fit in my parking spot at work. I can’t reach over and open the passenger side door from the driver side. When we first got the van, I complained that riding in it was like riding around in a mobile living room. I do realize that the size of the van could also be a plus – see above point about the trunk. And I do like that the van is big enough that the kids can all sit an arms length away from each other. And the 14 year old likes that she gets the whole back row to herself. But on the whole, it feels like I’m driving a boat and I’ve definitely miscalculated the turning radius a few times.

There are too many buttons – There are four separate buttons I could push to close the back sliding doors. FOUR. That seems excessive. But that’s on par for the rest of the van – there are buttons above, buttons to the right, buttons to the left, all the buttons on the steering wheel, the display. The temperature control can be run by both the digital display and the manual buttons underneath it. Also there are buttons in the back to control the temperature. I still haven’t figured out how to adjust the temperature control in the car. I had to call my husband one time because I couldn’t figure out how to close the moon roof. Also it’s push button start … I never know how many times to push the button to get the van to turn on. I always don’t do enough. There are altogether too many buttons. What do they all do?????

The shift button is next to the volume button and both are round – yes this is a button thing, but it is so egregious it deserves it’s own point. Take a look:

On the left is a knob to shift gears (which in and of itself feels weird to me). On the right is the knob to adjust the volume. I can’t tell you how many times while driving I’ve gone to turn the volume down and accidentally put the van in reverse. That just seems so dangerous, no? This is just a terrible design choice.

It makes a lot of beeps and random noises – There are a lot of safety features on the van – which is a good thing! – BUT some of those safety features involve beeping or chiming when something happens – if someone is in your blindspot, if you go over the speed limit, if you get too close to the car in front of you…. Granted with the size and shape of the van, visibility can be poor, so it is helpful to have all the features, but there are some beeps that I just don’t know what triggers them, and it causes a mild sense of panic whenever I hear them.

The van is keyless – Again, probably not new technology, but just new to me. And really there is a lot that is convenient about keyless entry, but I’m such a fuddy duddy and the keyless thing bugs me. I hate that I don’t have to put a key in the ignition to start it or take the key out of the ignition to stop the car. Why? Because if I don’t have a place to put the key when I get in the car, I lose the key fob. Clearly this is a me issue and not a problem inherent to the van. But gaaaaah! It’s so annoying when I can’t remember where the key fob is. I’ll have it in my hand to get into the van and then somehow chuck it somewhere and when I get to my destination, I’ve forgotten where the fob is. Also, I haven’t quite solved the question of where do I keep the key fob when I’m driving. The Husband says it should just live in my pocket, but have you see the size of women’s pockets??? Anyhow, the keyless thing drives me nuts.

I suppose in the end, the positives of the van outweigh the negatives. The things that make it good for our family at this stage in our lives are pretty fundamental while the things that bother me are probably just pet peeves. I suppose in the long run, I’m grateful we have both a smaller car and a larger car for us to use. I am starting to think about the 14 year old and how she will be learning to drive soon and what that means for our next car purchase in terms of timeline and type. I don’t think she can learn to drive on the Impreza because it is a manual car, but I also don’t know if she should learn to drive on the van. So perhaps we will have to get another car within the next two years.

Grateful For:

-Rain fly over my hammock. The hammock is such a simple thing, but I get such joy out of it. I was very grateful that I could sleep outside in the rain while the rainfly kept me dry.

-Along those lines – camping with friends who have lots of gear so we don’t have to pack as much. While there was much that made camping frustrating – I have a note to buy everyone camp pillows and the Husband needs his own sleeping bag – I feel very grateful that a we didn’t have to bring too much extra stuff because our friends had so much stuff that camping seemed luxurious.

-My Bus Stop Mom friends. I managed to get off work in time to meet my bus stop mom friends for Happy Hour one night and it happened to be Trivia Night. We had a lot of fun. And learned what an obelus is! And came in second to last. I’m also so grateful to these ladies because one day a few weeks ago, I had to be at work at 9am. The school bus doesn’t pick up until 9:10am, so I texted them to ask if one of them could take my kids to the bus and they both said yes. So grateful to have friends who can help me out when I need it.

-The not quite summer weather. It’s been sunny and 70s and not humid lately. If the weather were to be like this until Fall, I would be so happy. But, alas, I’m sure heavy hot humidity is in our future soon, as is typical for the DC area. So I’ll soak in this cool summer weather as much as I can.

-Leftover McDonald’s. I went to see the show my company was putting on, which I wasn’t working. There’s a whole section of the show that takes place in a McDonalds and the Prop person had to bring in 2 quarter pounders with cheese, 2 cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, fries and apple pies to be used in the show. None of which got eaten. So after the show, I went to say hi to the stage managers and prop head and I said, “What’s going to happen to all that food?”
“Nothing, do you want it?”
“YES!” I exclaimed.
Now I don’t really go to McDonalds very often, but there is something about the cheeseburgers with their soft sweet buns and the slight tang of the pickles that I do love. And of course I have a weakness for fries.

-Also in the vein of free food – I’m grateful for my Canadian director for being such a sweet and thoughtful person. He was popping home to Canada for Memorial Day weekend and asked if anyone wanted anything. I said jokingly, “Ketchup chips and wine gums, please!”
Well… he brought not just me, but each member of the cast and staff, a bag of ketchup chips and a pack of wine gums! Of course I was really excited to get my favorite Canadian snacks, but even more so, I’m so glad I work with someone who is always thinking of other people.

Looking Forward To:

-Reading retreat! Inspired by Stefany, I suggested to the Husband that we go on a reading retreat the weekend the kids are at Taiwan camp. We’ve picked Harrisburg, PA because that is near camp and there are three or four bookstores there. I’m so excited to browse bookstores and hunker down and read.

-Watching more Derry Girls. We finally got Netflix a few weeks ago. We might be the last people on earth to jump on that bandwagon. I was for sure the hold out in the family – I thought we had enough streaming services. But after March Madness, the Husband cancelled YouTube TV and signed up for Netflix. I think we’ll keep Netflix through the summer and then when football season starts we’ll switch back to YouTube TV. I foresee many nights of watching KPop Demon Hunters in our future. But also – I’m super excited to watch Derry Girls – I had watched season 1 on the plane back from South Africa last year and really loved it.

-Pool time! Our pool is now open and swim team practice has begun.

-This week’s Maycember events (even though it is June) – Piano recitals (for the 9 year old and the 14 year old.). Voice recital (for the 14 year old.) Swim Team practice (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – though not Friday because that is the piano recital), a birthday party to attend for the 6 year old. There are still 3 more weeks of school and I do feel like we are on a slow crawl to summer.

-Listening to more of this book -Once Upon a River – about a four year old that is pulled out of the Thames in 19th century England, and the three people who claim to know who she is. The Book has been a combination of engrossing and soothing, thanks in part to the excellent narration by Juliet Stevenson:

What We Ate (Two weeks’ worth, since I’ve fallen behind on posting this month):
Monday: Coconut Chicken Curry from NY Times cooking. I made a double batch, and froze half of it for later.

Tuesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked. (I was working and the Husband had happy hour plans with friends.) This was really tasty – she baked chicken chunks in the oven with a sweet and spicy glaze and steamed some broccoli to eat with it.

Wednesday: Can’t remember. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Bagels and smoked salmon.

Friday: Pizza and … some movie. I’m not sure what. This was the first weekend of Netflix, I think.

Saturday: The family was camping – I think they had steak. I went out for Tex Mex with work colleagues and had chile rellenos.

Sunday: Camping. Pizza and Caesar Salad. (Which, I learned during Trivia Night that Caesar Salad originated in Mexico.)

Monday: Snack dinner. We got home from camping this night and were tired. If it weren’t for the kids I don’t think we would have had dinner. But the 6 year old said, “Can we do that thing for dinner where you cut up cucumbers and cheese and eat it with crackers?” Yes! So easy and it makes people happy. (I had my leftover Tex Mex from Saturday, with a fried egg on top.)

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos for Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked again. The kids were actually off school, so the 14 year old took her brother and they walked to the store together and bought ingredients for dinner and then she came home and made dinner for everyone. It must have been tasty because there was nothing left when I got home, though the house smelled so good. I was told the recipe involved lots of butter and lemon, all good things in my book. She also make a chocolate cake (from a box) with buttercream frosting (from scratch). I myself was at Happy Hour, where I had fish and chips and a Greek Salad.

Thursday: Pasta Salad at the pool The first pool dinner of the summer! I made a caprese pasta salad – tomatoes, cucumbers, mozzarella, fresh basil, marinated white beans, and a parmesan balsamic dressing.

Friday: I think the family had some kind of sandwiches.

Saturday: Pizza at a friends’ house while they played Dungeons and Dragons. I wasn’t home in time for this, so I had snack dinner and went to the grocery store.

Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce, bagged salad, and watermelon on the side.

Well, that’s the news in this corner of the world as we turn the corner into June. I’ve been thinking lately about how much time I spend writing here, and it feels both like too much and not enough. May was clearly an overwhelming month – there wasn’t a lot of writing or reading/commenting on blogs, and yet the time I get squeak in felt like I was stealing that time from other things. I don’t know if I will feel like I have more space in summer – the long commute to work certainly eats into my time to tackle both the necessary and leisure things. Part of me wonders if I just need to declare that posting will be light – more for myself than for anyone else. Or should I just see where things fit… thoughts thoughts thoughts….

Anyhow, have a lovely week, as we look towards a new month!

What kind of car did you learn to drive on? What do you love/don’t love about your vehicle? Keyless entry – yay or nay? How do you feel about free food – yay? or yuck? Tell me what I ought to watch on Netflix! I like shows – both comedy or drama – about ordinary people trying their best not to make bad decisions while loving the people around them. Also soapy period dramas.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye April, Hello May!

When did it become May??? When did it get to be half way through May??? When did it become 3/4 of the way through May????? Can you tell I’ve been plugging away at this post for a very long time?

Well, I guess I started May in tech for a show. Then I worked supertitles for two recitals, started prepping for my summer show and also stage managed a one night gala performance. That’s four contracts in two weeks. (Five if you count my contract for admin work as head of the Stage Management department, which is indeed a separate contract.) And on top of that so many May-cember things. That is where May has gone. But… I like having these monthly reflections, so here is how April was, just as we are turning the corner into June.

April Highlights:
-The show I was working on. It’s a musical, so it’s been a really different experience for me since I primarily work on operas. Musical theatre performers are so very very fit and pretty. The combination of athleticism and grace of what they do onstage astounds me. And they were each of them so very kind and friendly.

-March Madness and basketball fever at our house.

-Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I did participate and had a whole rainbow collage planned to show folks, but I never made it past yellow. Maybe I’ll still put the collage together.

-Take your child to work day. It was fun having the kids with me to watch rehearsals – they helped me set up tables for the scene we were doing and they helped me announce breaks. The performers were all so kind to the kids, and I’m grateful for that.

-going contra dancing as a family. Always a fun time.

-Farmer’s market trip and stumbling across the Black Health Fair and the collage-making workshop. It was a nice afternoon of art and swag.

-Hiking with kids. Finally went on a hike. First of the year. So far only of the year. I need to do better on this.

-Chorus Benefit concert. Our opera chorus holds a benefit concert every year. I’ve never been, but this year they asked if I would volunteer to stage manage and I said yes. The 14 year old came with me and was my assistant. It was really lovely to see the many chorus members and realize that I knew almost all of them. Some of them I’ve known for over 20 years. It is such a great community.

-Attending our friends’ B’not Mitzvah. So glad we got to celebrate this milestone with them.

-Grilling for the first time this year, one time when we hosted friends for dinner.

-First make-up buying excursion with the 14 year old. Thank goodness for the helpful lady at the counter.

-The AC in our office at work got fixed! It was amazing.

-My mother’s visit.

-Discovering Frixion Markers – erasable markers!!!!

-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.

-Easter and Easter Service at our church, which is a vivid multicultural affair.

-Favorite Dinners this month: Steak Fajitas from NY Times Cooking. Grilled Teriyaki Chicken, using the Teriyaki sauce recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan cookbook. (The recipe is for teriyaki tofu, but the sauce works just as well on Chicken).

-Favorite movie watched: A Nice Indian Boy – a lovely rom com with some lovely people in it.

April Lowlights:
-Some delicate dynamics at work. Not bloggable, but it was tricky to navigate.
-Not being home a lot and feeling out of touch with the family.
-Teenagers. Gotta love them, but man….
But over all not a lot of lowlights in April. Or maybe the things that were tough at the time now seem figure out-able. I feel like it’s the same things all blurring together in my head that make life seem overwhelming, while the things that make me happy or brought me joy all are very specific in my head.

How I did on my various goals:
Creativity:
-Painted two pictures. (8/26 pictures for the year)
-wrote 3 haikus (13/52 haiku for the year… need to do some catching up on this.)
-1 hike. (1/12 so far this year – not doing so well on this goal)

Consumption:
– 1 live performance – Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas concert. It turns out this is the farewell tour for this fiddle and cello duo. I’m so glad we got to hear them play live.
-0 Museums. (3/12 for the year so far. Though we got free passes for the Phillips collection at a community event, so maybe that will happen in June.)

Health:
-4 sessions of strength training. (Goal was 8, but something is better than nothing.)
-Daily yoga – 30/30 days.
-5 vegan dinners. (Goals is 5/ month, so yay! This is making up for May where we’ve barely had any vegan dinners so far…)
-1 run. (Exercise was not a strong suit of mine in April.)

Quote(s) of the Month:
“I use he/they pronouns, but use whatever pronouns you want for me as long as you use them with respect.”
One of the performers in my April show said this on the first day of rehearsal as we went around and introduced ourselves.

“Our talent is our floor, but our character will be our ceiling.” Cori Close, UCLA Women’s Basketball coach.

Looking forward to in May (many of which have already come and gone):
-Well, the middle school musical was a big thing in our calendar. I’m kind of sad that it’s done and past. It was for sure a highlight of the month so far. The 14 year old was playing the lead – Marian in The Music Man, Jr. It was so amazing to see her onstage and to hear all the lines we’ve been running in context, and to hear all the songs she’s been practicing. I’m so incredibly proud of her for working so hard on this show. I felt like my heart grew every time I saw her onstage.
-Stage managing a gala concert. I feel like I’m being pushed outside my comfort zone with this one. It’s so very different from anything else I’ve done before – barely any rehearsal, big names, and one shot to get it all right. It actually makes me a little sick to think about it, but I’ve been reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck and her writing is inspiring me to look for opportunities to learn and grow. (This also just happened and it was a doozy getting there, but ultimately a really good experience.)
-Starting my summer show. And a long commute.
-listening to lots of audiobooks because of above commute. (Looking for suggestions!)
-The pool opens Memorial Day weekend! Swim team starts.
-A potential quiet house over Memorial Day weekend because the Husband is taking the kids camping with friends. (Update! I think we are getting Sunday and Monday off for Memorial Day weekend, so I might drive up and meet the family after work. Time in nature with family vs. time in a quiet house by myself…. it’s a tough decision, I have to admit.)

Grateful For (so far this month.)
-Middle school theatre and music teachers. Actually teachers in general.

-our van. I don’t like driving the van, but it does come in super handy sometimes. Like when I have to take 10 music stands, a stool, and two large bins of office supplies to our Gala location.

-Speaking of Gala – for finding free parking downtown. I had pre-paid for parking via SpotHero (do you know about SpotHero? It helps you find parking spots. We use it to book parking space at an airport hotel when we fly- it’s so much cheaper than airport parking.), but ended up finding free parking a block from our venue both days I had to be downtown. I was then able to give my pre-paid spot to my work BFF.

-All the people at work. What we’ve done at work is… I mean we’re not doing open heart surgery on infants or anything, but we had a massive pivot earlier this year and it’s been an amazing and challenging time. Everyone I work with has put in at least 110% to make opera happen and I’m grateful.

-A visit from my parents. I feel so lucky that my parents (who are 75 and 80) still have the energy and mental sharpness to travel to see us.

What We Ate: I’m afraid I don’t have much to report here because I’ve made it home for dinner only a handful of times so far this month. There was food. The family ate. No one went hungry.

So that’s a wrap on April. Aside from my horrendous commute, the next few weeks look a little calmer, and I hope to get back to writing here more regularly. Hope your May has been lovely and warm.

Weekly recap + what we ate: A Weekend in the Life

Last week was hot hot hot! It was practically summer here in the DC area with temperatures in the high 80s. Which all makes me wonder, with a little bit of dread, what July and August will be like.

I’ve done “Day in the Life” posts before, but usually for a week day, never for a weekend. I feel like our weekends are just as full of details as our weekdays. Part of that is because when I’m on a show, I usually work at least one day on the weekend, which makes my weekend essentially just one day. Which makes it very un-weekend like. Either way. I guess life is full of details, right? (note – there aren’t a lot of pictures in this post because I never remember to take a picture when I’m in that headspace.) So here is a Weekend in a Life, starting with getting off work on Friday night – because isn’t that when the weekend starts?

Friday 4/17:
6:30pm – Walking out the door after work. Head home for pizza and movie night, our Friday tradition.

7:00pm – Arrive home and settle into the basement. Tonight, the Husband bought pizza from a Detroit style pizza place. It features a very thick crust and the tomato sauce on top of the pizza rather than in the pizza. It’s tasty, but oh so filling. I also eat an entire bag of salad. I might have eaten too many Mini Eggs at work today and felt the need to re-set.
We watched Wicked: For Good. Maybe it’s because I missed the first 45 minutes of the movie since I got home late, but… I found part two not as satisfying as part one. There weren’t as many songs and I found the plot hard to follow. But even still the visuals were gorgeous and the performances stellar.

8:45pm – The 6 and 9 year olds get ready to go to bed. PJs, brush teeth. I floss and brush as well. I cuddle with each of the kids for a little bit.

9:30pm – scroll for a little bit on my phone while lounging in the living room.

9:50pm – Get up to go clean the kitchen. Call my sister-in-law; we’ve been trying to catch up all week, but she’s in California and the time difference makes it hard. I get a hold of her just as she’s sitting down for dinner so I tell her I’ll call her back.

10:00pm – Take a shower while waiting to call my SIL back. Once I’m out of my shower, I write in my journals for a little bit.

10:40pm – Call SIL back. Talk to her while I clean the kitchen, and then zest lemons for lemonade concentrate. (I made a batch for Easter dinner and it was a huge hit, plus with the weather so hot this week, it’s nice to have lemonade concentrate in the fridge.) I also get to talk to my brother.

12:00am – say good night to my SIL. Finish up the lemonade concentrate. The recipe involves steeping the zest for an hour then using the zest water to make simple syrup that ks boiled for thirty minutes. After the simple syrup is cooled, add the lemon juice. The recipe is a bit time consuming, but it makes a lemonade concentrate that is the right combination of mouth-puckering and sugar high. In between steps for the lemonade concentrate, I scroll some more and read a little bit.

1:30am – to bed and sleep.

Saturday:
6:45 am – Awake. I read in bed for ten minutes, then get up and do a 25 minute yoga video.

7:30am – get dressed. I usually don’t get dressed until I’m ready to leave the house for the day, but this day a friend is dropping her kid off at 7:45am for a playdate while she goes to her older kids’ tournament. The Husband and the 9 year old have gone out to run errands.

8:30am – eat breakfast and read another chapter of Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. Pour the lemonade concentrate into jars (it was too hot last night) The 14 year old heads out to a volunteer stream clean up service project. She has to complete three service projects for her church confirmation this spring. Our neighbor is her sponsor, and takes her to the clean up.

9:00am – I get out the watercolour paints and the kids and I paint for a little bit.

9:30 am – get ready to go to work. It’s a beautiful sunny day so I ride my bike. I haven’t ridden my bike in maybe a year so and am not as in shape as I was, so I have to walk the bike rather than ride it up the big hill by work. This is one of my fitness markers – whether or not I can bike up the last big hill to work.

10:00a – Arrive at work. Change clothes. Check email, then on to the first rehearsal session of the day.

1:30pm – Lunch and then a walk to the local coffee shop. I buy coffee beans for the husband and an unsweetened matcha latte for myself. (Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Husband takes the 14 year old to her voice lessons and the other kids to the park. And then everyone gets boba afterwards.) We also spend some time working on our office puzzle. This one is kind of a doozy:

2:30pm – Back to rehearsal. This afternoon’s rehearsal is mostly dancing. I am in awe of how dancers operate – how they take words and light instruction and turn it into art with their bodies. It’s beautiful to watch. I also spend some time in another room setting up 60 chairs for the director’s presentation on Monday.

4:30pm – Rehearsal is over an hour early! The Stage Management Team wrap up today’s rehearsal by doing a couple of notes for the rehearsal report.

5:00pm – Since we are done early, I join the team for some drinks at the $1 oyster bar. I proceed to eat a dozen oysters, fried calamari, and French fries.

6:40pm – Time to go home. I take the bus, which drops me three blocks from the house. I love public transportation! (I’ve left my bike at work – I need to figure out how to get it home.)

7:00pm- Arrive home. The family is in the backyard, the Husband grilling brats for dinner while the kids play. I’m not hungry, but I sit with them outside while they eat. It’s lovely to be able to sit and eat outside before the mosquitoes get bad in the summer.

8:00pm- game night! I have the kids do pjs and brush teeth first, though. We play Magical Athlete, a new game that my cousin sent us. The game involves racing your players to an end point but each player has a special power – one gets to move 2 spaces any time someone rolls a 6, for example. Or one can forgo rolling the dice and always move 5 spaces. Or one moves other players back two spaces if they pass them. This game was great for our family because it is pretty straight forward and doesn’t require too much reading or higher level mathematics.

8:30pm- The 9 year old and 6 year old go to bed. I give cuddles.

9:00pm – I spend 30 minutes picking up the living room and dining room while the 14 year old does the dishes.

9:30pm – Journal, then 20 minute dumbbell strength video while watching tv with the Husband. I can’t remember what we watched, but it was probably Brooklyn 99. Put in a load of laundry.

10:30pm – Hang laundry up. I’ve been on an air dry my laundry kick for the past year or so. I’m not sure if it’s really a thing, but I read somewhere that hanging your clothes to dry helps them last longer, so I’ve started doing that. I have a folding rack for hanging laundry, which I set up in the basement. (Usually it’s in the bedroom, but I didn’t feel like taking it upstairs.)

11:00pm – TBH, not sure what happened in this hour – I probably scrolled and read blogs for a little bit.

12:00am – Read in bed.

1:00am – lights out and go to bed, though I’d been nodding off as I read for the past half hour.

Sunday:
7:45 am – slept in a little bit. I wake up and sat in bed and read a little bit. The Husband comes in and we chat about the day and some kid things. Then I do a ten minute yoga flow, scroll some more musical theatre videos.

8:45am – Take the 6 year old to her 9am Agility Class, where I watch her jump and flip and climb while typing my Cool Bloggers’ Walking Club Week 2 post, and start this post.

10:00am- Agility Class over, headed home to change and grab the 9 year old. We then head to our friend’s house for a photo shoot. Our friend is running for a seat on the County Council and he’s taking photos for his campaign materials. He asked a bunch of the people he knew to be in the photos.

10:45am- photo shoot. Really we mostly hang out, eat snacks, and chat with our friends while the video and photo team sets up the various shoots. The kids do one set of photos and the Husband and I do another set.

12:00pm- head home to eat lunch. As I’m making lunch for the 9 year old, I realize that the soccer game I thought was at 1pm was actually at 12:30pm. I put his sandwich, carrots, and apple slices on a plate for him to eat in the car, he grabs his gear and we get in the car. (in the mean time, the Husband takes the 6 year old to a playdate.)

12:45pm- arrive at soccer game only 15 minutes late. The 9 year old plays full back and then goalie.

1:30pm: soccer over. I take advantage of the soccer game being close to a couple major retail areas and run some errands-
-Penzys to pick up vanilla and other things.
-Kid to Kid for shorts/ skirts for the 6 year old. (I find myself very resistant to buying new clothes for the 6 year old because she doesn’t have younger siblings to pass them down to, but summer is coming and she needs shorts.)
-Target- stock up on pads and face cleanser, deodorant – you know all the household things that build up because one thing itself doesn’t merit a trip to the store..

4;00pm- home finally. Running errands was exhausting. I help the 14 year old make cookies ; i find retail draining. The 14 year old is having a moment because while making chocolate chip cookies, she accidentally melted the butter and thinks that she has ruined the cookies. I pull out the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooks Illustrated, which uses melted butter and try to salvage the mood.

5:30pm – eat dinner. We eat dinner early on Sunday nights because the 14 year old has swim clinic at 6:55pm. The Husband cooked, so I clean up the kitchen afterwards. I also boil a dozen eggs in the Instant Pot for easy breakfasts the upcoming week.

7:00pm – I take the 9 and 6 year olds for a walk to the park. A perk of the later sunset is we can go outside after dinner. We play at the park for 15 minutes then we walk home. On the way home, I see a puppy running loose, darting in and out of traffic, causing no small amount of fast braking. The dog stops and looks at me, but then runs away when I try to get it to stay on the sidewalk. I know nothing about dogs and I’m really scared he (she?) is going to get hit by a car. A lady pulls over down the street.
“Is that your dog?” she asks.
I tell her he isn’t my dog and the lady notices that the dog doesn’t have a collar. She follows him as he runs into other yards. I’m feeling quite useless, but I try to wave to drivers to slow down whenever the dog runs into the street. Eventually the dog runs up to the porch of the house across the street. The lady goes up and knocks on the door. Eventually someone answers the door. They, thankfully, turn out to be the owners of the dog. The lady waves good night to me, gets in her car, and drives off. We continue our walk home. (This whole time, the kids were waiting patiently on the sidewalk. I’m really proud of them for not waiting instead of trying to cross the road to go home themselves.)

8:00pm – The Husband puts the kids to bed and I go to Trader Joe’s for a grocery run. I don’t usually go to Trader Joe’s, but the Giant never has good produce on Sundays. I stock up on some TJ staples (Everything Seasoning, Pound Plus Dark Chocolate Bars, Frozen Mango, Crumpets…) as well as pick up enough groceries to get us through most of the week.

9:00pm – home. I spend some time chatting with the Husband and 14 year old before she goes to bed. Then I scroll/ read blogs for 30 minutes.

10:00pm – I make soup for the next day’s dinner. Mondays evenings are busy – the 9 year old has fencing at 6pm and the 14 year old has basketball workouts at 7pm; we usually have soup on Monday so that the Husband can heat it up when he gets home from picking up the kids. Since I have to be at work early on Monday, I make the soup Sunday night – Coconut Corn Soup from New York Times Cooking. While the soup simmers, I journal, plan the week, and scroll some more (I can’t even remember what. I don’t love that – I do have a pile of books to read, but I was a little mentally fried by this point.)

12:00am – go to bed. I think. I didn’t write down what time I went to bed, but I’m pretty sure it was not before midnight.

And that’s the weekend! Some reflections – Things that were not typical:
-we didn’t have a family meeting. Those usually happen at 7:40 am on Saturday, but because I was working that morning the Husband wanted to run his errands before I went to work. There were a few things that fell through the cracks that I would have clocked if we had had the family meeting – like getting the time of the soccer game wrong and a couple agenda items and coming up with a game plan for Take Your Child to Work day – so lesson learned – make time for the family meeting!
-We didn’t go skating – usually the two younger kids have skating lessons on Sunday, but we are between sessions. Which is good because skating would have conflicted with the soccer game.
-The photoshoot – definitely a unique and one time event for us. (Though funny story – we were in our friend’s last photo shoot, so if you look at his old campaign material, you’ll see the 14 year old. This time, the 14 year old asked if she could list this on her resume as having done some print modeling. I told her no.)
-The late night Trader Joe’s run. Usually the Husband does the grocery shop on Sunday afternoon, but I think he wanted to spend time in his garden this weekend, so it got pushed off.

Things that were good:
-spending some social time (going to Saturday night happy hour and catching up with friends at the photo shoot.)
-game night as a family.
-family movie night – not just as an activity, but I enjoy having these traditions
-I really enjoyed Saturday’s rehearsals – they were low key on my end, but the material we covered was energizing to watch.
– I got to squeeze in some painting time.
-we got to show up for friends.

Things I would have liked less of on that weekend:
-less time in the car. This is partially why I like to bike to work on weekends, but in general
-less time running errands – i guess I could have done a Target or amazon order for some of the stuff. But I do really like going to Penzy’s and the customer service there is so warm and welcoming.
– less scrolling between tasks. (Perpetual goal.)
-late nights/ more going to bed earlier.

Things I would have like more of:
-more time outside.
-more empty space. Ironically last weekend was supposed to be a pretty open one because there wasn’t skating, but then things came up like needing to take my one friend’s kid for the day and my other friend calling with the photo shoot. I do think there is something nice about not being so scheduled that we can say “yes” to last minute things that come up.
-time for life/ home maintenance or to get ahead of tasks for the week ahead.
-more time to read.

I think that’s the tricky part when I’m working on a show – we work six days a week, so our one free day tends to be full of errands and to dos. I try to squeeze in at least one fun thing, but there were a lot of errands to run this Sunday as it is the one day off. I can see why people turn to grocery delivery or Amazon when they don’t have a lot of time to go to a physical store. I need to remind myself, though, that the six day work week is just until July and then I’ll have endless days off for the rest of the summer. At any rate, the weekend was not relaxing over all.

Grateful for:
-The lady who pulled over to help the lost dog. Seeing such moments of kindness makes me hopeful for the world.

-Our grill! Or rather our tenant who left us this grill. We’ve started using our grill this season – a sure sign that summer is here (or around the corner.) I used to be staunchly charcoal grill, then one of our tenants moved out and gifted us their gas grill since they didn’t want to move it. It was life changing. I miss the slightly woodsy flavor that charcoal grilling imparts, but being able to flick a switch and press a button in order to get the grill going – this has made grilling so much more efficient a process.

-That the kids are old enough to clean the kitchen without supervision. The Husband and I went on an evening walk because the kids were going to clean up after dinner. Incidentally when I was in high school, something similar would happen every night after dinner – my parents would leave for an evening walk, telling my brother and me to take care of the post dinner clean up. They were so trusting. My brother and I worked out a system where one person would do the dishes and one person would do everything else – we hated doing the dishes that much.

-Shady trails to walk along in 85 degree weather.

-The teacher at the elementary school who blasts up beat, happy music every Friday while working the carpool line. It puts such a spring in my step to hear that music as I approach the school with the kids in tow. Seems the perfect way to welcome the weekend.

-Frixion pens and Frixion markers. Discovering these erasable pens a few years ago was life changing. Recently, though I learned that they also make Frixion markers and I love them. I’ve been using them instead of Post Its to mark up my score – they are equally eye catching and don’t create as much clutter

Looking forward to:
-Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas – Fraser is a fiddle player and Haas plays the cello and they play together brilliantly . I don’t know when I first heard of them, but I have their first CD and I remember listening to it on repeat constantly when I was in my 20s. They are coming to the performing arts center nearby this weekend, and I’m excited to go. One thing, though, I think it might be a little weird to just sit through a concert of Scottish fiddle music – I wonder if we can get up and dance in the aisles?

– More meals out on the back patio. One of my favorite things about summer is eating outside.

-Take your child to work day! (I took so long to write this post that this already happened – more on this next week.)

-Listening to this audiobook:

I had heard Hazzard on a Fresh Air interview years and years ago when this book about his work as a paramedic first came out. I really wanted to read the book but I didn’t remember the details afterwards. Well a few weeks ago Birchie mentioned a book about a paramedic and I looked it up, and this was that book! Thanks, Birchie! The book is pretty grizzly and graphic so far, but also funny, quirky, and thoughtfully observed.

What we ate:

Monday: Teriyaki Chicken, Cedar plank salmon and trout, bagged salad, roasted broccoli. Apple Cobbler for dessert. We had friends over for dinner – they brought the roasted broccoli; we grilled out. The apple cobbler was made with some apple pie filling that a friend had made and gifted me for Christmas. It was originally supposed to be an apple pie, but my pie crust went bad, so I made cobbler instead. It was still tasty.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. We had pulled pork tacos.

Wednesday: It was my mother’s last night with us so we went out for Noodles and Dumplings.

Thursday: BLT sandwiches.

Friday: pizza take out and Wicked: for Good. Like I said above – beautiful movie, confusing plot.

Saturday: For me- Oysters, fried calamari, and an order of fries. For the family – grilled brats and sausages and steamed green beans.

Sunday: Tortellini with sausage and marinara.

That’s it. I’ve taken so long to write this post that another weekend is right around the corner. Hopefully we’ll have our family meeting this week.

What about you? Do you prefer gas or charcoal for grilling? What are your “must do” things for a weekend? Do you prefer physical store or buying off the internet?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Three Jobs I wish I could do

Last week was a mish-mash sort of week – it started off with the kids off school on Monday, and then mid-week, I started prepping for a new show. We went contra-dancing. My mother came to visit, and good friends of ours had their twins’ B’not Mitzvah (I learned that’s what it’s called when the Bat Mitzvah is for two girls). So busy and full, but also I didn’t have to work in the evenings, so some luxurious swaths of time as well.

Three Jobs that I wish I could do last week:
1) Animal control. There was a bird in our office building this week for a little over 24 hours. A cute little chirping sparrow that had somehow gotten inside. It started out in another office, then flew through the halls a little bit, and then flew into our office, I think, because we have very large windows and it was looking for sunlight. At first, it was kind of cute – the birds twittering almost made it feel like we were working outside.

But of course keeping a bird inside, where there is no food or water isn’t sustainable. Our facilities person was chasing it (him? I think they named him), trying to encourage it into the rehearsal room because there is a door to the outside. What a frightening experience the little bird must have been having. ( Fun Fact – numerous animal control companies were called but none of them would come – either they didn’t do birds, or our ceilings were too high.) Anyhow, we did eventually get the bird into a rehearsal room and out the door, but before that happened, there was much flapping, and chasing, and prodding on our part. I don’t think we were doing anything right. At least we were not effective.

2) Make-up Artist. At about 5pm on a Friday, I was at work, and I got this text from the Husband:

The 14 year old wanted to try some make-up for her school dance. That night. The dance was at 6:30pm. I don’t have a lot of experience with make-up – there was a time when I put on some mascara and lipstick for opening night, but I don’t even bother with that anymore. The Husband knows less than I do. But all the same, we wanted to be supportive.

No limbs were broken, but this sounded like the kind of situation that I should bail on work to help with. I shut down my computer, told my colleagues I had a family situation come up, and packed up my stuff.

“Meet me at Ulta,” I texted the Husband as I walked out the door.

I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, having no knowledge of current (or any) make-up trends – my only make-up instruction came from a Mary Kay consultant that visited my church group when I was 12. (She was a mother of some in the group.) I just remember her talking about the face’s t-zone. But I figured I could meet the Husband and 14 year old at Ulta where there was a large selection, and then search Reddit for advice.

I arrived at Ulta at 5:35pm, little before the Husband and 14 year old, and was immediately overwhelmed. Rows and rows of displays and shelves and images of brilliant eyes, rosy lips, and perfect dewy skin. And there was the $6 lipstick and the $36 lipstick – what’s the difference? And so many colours and shades and was that even make up or was that hair spray???? The Husband and 14 year old joined me, looking at me for direction. “You’re a 40-something woman. You mush know what to do,” was the subtext. I did not know what to do. This is when I wished I were a make-up artist.

Then I saw a lady with a name tag (which I didn’t read – so sorry), an artfully messy updo, arms blooming with tattoos, and a friendly face. She said, “Do you need help?”

Oh thank goodness!, I thought.

“YES!” I said, pointing at the 14 year old. “She needs make-up for the school dance and we don’t know what we’re doing.”

And the lady helped us with calm, soothing tones. She asked questions, helped pick out colours while telling the 14 year old what different things would do. The concealer didn’t have testers, but she was a former make-up artist, and said that she was pretty good at matching colour for us. We left with lip stain (what even is that??), concealer and mascara – which I felt was a nice basic collection of things for a first time make-up user.

3)Stationary Tester. This is a fun one – My order from JetPens arrived and I spent an evening playing with everything I ordered. I bought monthly tabs for my planners and journals, a few new pens to try:

Look at my journal and my planner all nicely tabbed!

A stamp for my book journal:

and my favorite thing is this book clip:

Now I can read hands free (until I have to turn the page.) There are so many fun things on the JetPens site – how fun would it be if I could spend my days testing pens and papers and stickers and other objects of efficiency and purpose?

Grateful For:
– Sunshine and nice weather and the Potomac River. Monday was a no school day, so I took the 9 year old and the 6 year old and a friend for a hike to Blockhouse Point Trail – at last, my first hike of the year! Blockhouse point is one of my favorite trails because it is never crowded and leads to a stunning view of the Potomac River.

-The 9 year old figured out how to tie his shoes. Now all three kids can tie their own shoes. (yes, the 6 year old figured it out before the 9 year old…). They still need help with their skates, but for every day shoes and cleats, they can tie their own shoes. Seems like a milestone.

-The 14 year old cooked dinner one night, and she and the other two kids cleaned up afterwards.

– Having a contra dance two miles from us. When I was first introduced to contra dancing, it was at a location that was maybe a 20-30 minute drive away from where I lived in DC. (Washington DC has one of the biggest contradancing scenes in the country and there used to be two dances a week. Now there is one weekly dance and two monthly dances – which is still a lot more than many other places.) Similarly, when I’ve gone contradancing in other cities, I’m sometimes driving for up to an hour to get to a dance. But it’s fine – if the music and the people are good, it was always worth the drive to me. However, there is now a monthly contradance very close to us, and it makes going so much easier and lower stakes and also makes it easier to go as a family. We went dancing with the 6 and 9 year old last week and had so much fun. We danced for an hour and a half and were all home and in bed by 10pm.

– A walk with the 14 year old and the fact that she has been able to walk to school the past few years. She was in an off mood over the weekend, so the Husband and I took her on a walk to her school and back. I’m feeling a bit of the feelings that she’ll only do this walk for two more months and then she’ll be off to high school, and there will be other traffic patterns to figure out for her. As we walked together to her school, she gave us the rundown of the inner monologue that she has as she walks – who lives where, when she meets up with friends, all the stories she makes up in her head about the houses and people that she see, where she walks on the wall, when she crosses the street… It was such a delightful peek into her brain.

– Having friends who let us celebrate milestones with them. I’ve never been to a Bat/Bar/B’Not Mitzvah celebration before, and it was such a lovely experience. I will say the morning service was loooong (two hours), but I really loved the ritual of it all and also following along the Hebrew readings (there was a translation provided). I found there was something really cerebral and thoughtful about the Torah readings.

We also helped our friends set up and take down the party afterwards, and they let me run the popcorn machine and the cotton candy machine during the party! I’ve never done this before, but was game to learn new things. Besides the instructions were written right on the machines so it was pretty straightforward. The cotton candy machine was SO messy! I had cotton candy fluff all over me. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the machine stopped working about an hour into the party. But even after the first round, I was covered.

Which is all to say, there is something really nice about having friends that feel comfortable and trust us enough to ask us to come early and stay late for such a big event. They are there to help us and they let us be there to help them. There is something wonderful about being able to help. Sometimes I feel like I have people in my life that only want to help me and never let me help them in return and things end up feeling very loop-sided. I’m really grateful for this friendship where we get to lean on each other.

And we got to take home the balloon arch:

Looking Forward To:
-Maycember. Really April-to-June-cember. At this weekend’s family meeting, we looked at the calendar for this next quarter and I can’t say I’m looking forward to the pace of the next few months, but everything on the calendar are things I’m genuinely looking forward to – recitals, the middle school musical (with the 14 year old in the lead!), elementary school performances, a new show for me to work on, a vocal recital for me to do titles for, my parents visiting again, the 14 year old’s middle school promotion ceremony, a camping trip for everyone but me (I’ll be working that weekend, so I can’t go, but – yay! – weekend with the house to myself!)… all that on top of the usual lessons and activities.

-Summers at the Pool. And then my reward for getting through April-to-June-cember is that my last contract ends in by July 4th and I can spend the rest of the summer hanging out with the kids – there will be a lot of pool time.

– Starting rehearsals for a new show. It’s one I’ve always wanted to work on, so I’m excited to get started.

-Warm weather. Maybe too warm. It’s going to be like summer here this week. But… it also mean I get to break out all my cute warm weather clothes.

-Sunday night dinner with friends.

-Reading more of this book – I just started it and it is quirky and insightful. I think I like books that look at humans from the outside:

What We Ate:
Monday: Spiced chickpea stew with coconut and tumeric, an Alison Roman recipe from NY Times cooking. Vegan. This was tasty; I had it for lunch all week. I didn’t eat it that night because I went out to happy hour with friends and I had fish and chips.

Taco Tuesday: Black beans, Sauteed shrimp, guacamole, mango slaw. Hard and soft shells. Cheese and sour cream, of course. Taco Tuesday is so tasty. The Husband cooked this time and it was delicious.

Wednesday: Mac and Cheese (from the blue box) and steamed green beans. This is the night the 14 year old cooked.

Thursday: Nasi goreng. Indonesian fried rice w/ fried tofu. No recipe, really, just used up whatever vegetables I had around – broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, leeks. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza and Zootopia 2. It was a cute movie. I think I’ve seen the first Zootopia, but I can’t say for sure.

Saturday: I went straight to the B’not Mitzvah party from work, so I didn’t have dinner, but they had so much snacky/appetizer food. My favorite was the deconstructed pasta salad – it was a plate with cherry tomatoes, tortellini, and marinated mozzarella balls all laid out separately on a bed of arugula so you could pick and choose what you wanted.

Sunday: Tortellini with sausage, onions, and greens. Blanched green beans. I usually steam the green beans, but I had the hot water from the pasta in a pot and I thought, “Why waste a good pot of hot water?” So I threw the green beans in there for four minutes.

I hope you have a great week!

Any jobs you wish you could do lately? Do you tie your shoes the bunny ear method or with a single loop? Favorite party snack/appetizer? Have you ever sat through a service for a religion different than your own?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Another round of unique things and frustrating things

I still feel like I’m digging out of being sick for a week, but it’s nice to feel like life is getting back to routine. Aside from some lingering crud and the occasional cough, I’m feeling better, though still very tired. I’m don’t know if the tired is just life or what. I’ve been trying to think of if I ever don’t feel tired? This might be something for me to track.

Anyhow, on weeks when life feels very routine, I like to do a round of “What make this day unique or special/ what made this day frustrating” in my journal. It’s a good reminder to me that even when things feel like a cycle of – sleep, wake, kids to school, work, sleep…. each day is different, even if in tiny ways.

Monday:
Unique: I took a nap in the afternoon before work. Still not feeling 100% this day.
-Reading in bed at night. I don’t often read in bed because the Husband often is asleep before I get into bed and I don’t want the light to bother him. This night, he had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs so I took advantage of having the bed to myself and read in bed.
Frustrating: The people in the parking garage that honk at me. The garage where I park at the current theatre is underground, which means there are lots of ramps to navigate. Some of these ramps are quite steep. Which, since I drive a manual car, makes me very anxious when the traffic is stop and go all the way out of the garage. So I tend to sit at the bottom of a section of ramp until the traffic is clear for a couple meters. That way I don’t get stuck mid way up the ramp and risk rolling backwards when I try to shift gears. People tend to honk at me when I do this. I get this – most people assume that stopping half way up the ramp is an easy thing, and I expect it is annoying to sit in a parking garage line and not have the car in front of you pull up. But I’m already a ball of anxiety getting out of the garage, honking tends to exacerbate my anxiety. Anyhow… I’ve started just waiting 45 minutes after work to leave so I don’t have to sit in the traffic.

Tuesday:
Unique: I didn’t have to work in the evening, so I sat and read my book after dinner. I wish this didn’t feel like a special thing, and was instead just an every day thing.
Frustrating: I should have had a conversation at work, but I didn’t because it was kind of a sensitive thing and the right moment didn’t happen for the conversation. It was frustrating because it was something I wanted to have taken care of and instead it continued to loom.

Wednesday:
Unique: An extraordinarily good pint of raspberries. I find raspberries a little hit or miss, and this one was for sure a hit. Sweet and firm and full of flavor.
– I went to visit a new to me museum – The Textile Museum. It’s across the street from the theatre and free admission. It’s a small, very niche, museum, which is sometimes the best kind. They currently have an exhibit about horse blankets and saddle covers. I loved seeing all the handwork. Like the exhibits on quilts that I’ve seen, I was struck by how no one knows who created these beautiful (and practical) works of art.

There was also an exhibit on sustainable fashion, which was fascinating. For example, this shirt below is made out of fibers made of pineapple leaves. The placard noted that different countries/regions have access to different materials, but globally, most of our clothes are made of the same materials, manufactured in a limited number of places, which contributes to a lot of waste and pollution. A lot of the sustainability ideas in the exhibit was about focusing on local efforts- whether it be natural resources or reclaiming/recycling fabric.

I stopped by the gift shop of my way out and picked up a few things: two napkins made from old sari materials, and this book on furoshiki, the Japanese art of wrapping things with fabric:

Also another special thing this day – my friend came over after work to do laundry – her machine is broken. We haven’t had a chance to hang out in a while since work has been so busy, so it was lovely to sip beverages and chat; she had a beer, I had some tea. She did some mending and I folded laundry. It was 11:30pm, but kind of the best kind of low key hang out to have with a very good friend.

Frustrating: We had a site visit for a theatre space at work and the parking near the space was a nightmare. I hate parking in the old parts of the city.

Thursday:
Unique – The Husband was out of town on a birthday trip with friends. He very rarely goes away by himself, so this was really unique. That evening, the kids and I went the the middle school STEM fair. I’ve never been to a science fair before – we didn’t do them when I was this age. It was so fun to see all the different projects and to realize that even the littlest spark of curiosity can be the seed for a science project. The 14 year old did an experiment testing different types of sugar for baking cupcakes. My favorite exhibit was one kid who compared catapults to trebuchets, even building one of each out of balsa wood and rubber bands.
Afterwards we went to a new to us Thai dessert cafe and had fancy drinks and Mango Sticky Rice Toast. It was all really tasty. The 6 year old wanted to lick the plate after we polished off the Toast. I told her she couldn’t lick the plate in a restaurant, but next time we could order it to go and she could like the plate at home.

Toast topped with condensed milk and fresh mango, along with sticky coconut rice, mango cream, whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. It was delicious.

Also – it’s Peak Bloom! A whole four days earlier than predicted. Peek bloom is one of those things that happen every year yet still feels unique every time it happens. I have plans to go see the blossoms with the kids next week on Spring Break; hopefully they will still be there. (update: we did this and it was beautiful)

Frustrating – Started gathering my tax information for our accountant. Starting them is not the frustrating thing; having to do them in the first place is. I guess this might more be classified as “annoying” rather than “frustrating.”

Friday:
Unique: I went to the fitness room at the rec center and ran the treadmill and did 15 minutes of strength with dumbbells. I tried 12 lb. dumbbells for the first time since the 5 and 10 lb ones were being used, and it wasn’t horrible. Again, I wish going to the fitness room wasn’t a unique thing in my schedule, but it is these days.

Frustrating: A few weeks ago, I wrote about receiving a W-2 for a gig I was never paid for. Well, this week got an email from the company’s accounting people saying, “Oops you’re right. You weren’t paid. Here’s a corrected W-2.” To which my response was, “Okay, thanks. Can I expect to be paid for the job still?” To which the nice lady in accounting said, “Sorry, that’s out of my hands. Here’s another email address that you can write to to ask.” I don’t understand how people run a business this way.

Saturday
Unique/ different – We went to the Farmer’s market this day (again, another thing I wish were more routine and not unique). We bought some amazing pastries and also apples and veggies and empanadas. While we were there we noticed that there was a Black Family Health Fair going on – there were people handing out toothbrushes and they said all were welcome; the fair wasn’t just for Black families. So we went to check it out. There were lots of booths from various health organizations, but also some fun activities. There was a booth where you could make smoothies by pedaling a bike that was attached to a blender. That was fun. We also enjoyed the art/collage workshop that was led by educators from the Phillips Collection. Going to the fair was such a lovely spontaneous activity.

The prompt was to build houses to represent our insides and our outsides. I don’t know that we followed the prompt. Our outside was brick and the inside was very Zen. The educator tried to make some comment about how it represents how tough and strong we feel like we have to be on the outside.

The other thing that made the day special was that we didn’t have any sports activities. We’re between basketball and soccer season and it was nice to have space in our day to do things like impulsively attend a health fair, or take an afternoon nap, or have family reading time after dinner. As we were lounging in the living room with our books, the 9 year old said, “This was a really great day!” Agreed, little guy. I totally agree.

Frustrating- I lost my Yeti mug a few weeks ago. Last year I wrote a post on things I would replace immediately and my Yeti Rambler with Hot Shot lid was one of those things. So I went to the local Ace Hardware to get a new one… and the 12 oz Yeti rambler with Hot Shot lid is no longer part of the Yeti line up; it’s seemingly been discontinued. They have a new Rambler, but it is slightly larger and doesn’t fit in my hand as well. So frustrating. I don’t want the new version, I want the 12 oz Rambler with Hot Shot Lid that I’ve had for five years now. My options seem to be:

-buy it in hot pink. Apparently some Ace Hardware Stores still have it in hot pink. Hot pink isn’t really my colour, though.
-buy the 18 oz (or 10 oz) water bottle and the hot shot lid separately.
-buy the new Rambler and be annoyed every time I use it.
-scour eBay or other re-sale sites. But it would have to be a new one – I’d feel weird buying a used one.

I ended up scouring eBay and buying one there. I might actually buy two more just as back up.

Sunday
Unique/Different – It’s the last show of my current run. There is always a special energy knowing that you’re doing a show for one last time.
I found street parking right outside the theatre so I didn’t have to pay for parking since it was Sunday.
After the show, we went to a friends’ house for dinner. It was a beautiful spring/cups of summer evening and the sun was still up, so I walked there. After sitting all day, it was nice to stretch my legs. The trees are blooming and there were lots of people out on their bikes. It’s like people are emerging from hibernation.

Frustrating- I don’t think there was anything frustrating about the day. It was a nice Sunday – some family time, some work, some friend time, and I finished my book. It was a pretty good day.

Grateful for:

-Driving a compact car so that it is easier to fit into parking spaces and navigate city driving.

-Chatting with colleagues. I was working supertitles for my latest show, which means I get to hang out in the booth a lot with the stage manager and the lighting supervisor. There is something to be said about being able to have casual conversations about work things – we can problem solve and kick around ideas to explore without being in some meeting where it feels like we have to have the right answer right there. A lot of my administrative work can be done remotely, which I appreciate, but I also am really grateful for casual face to face time to chat with my colleagues.

-For the chance to run supertitles for this latest show. I really love running super titles. I mean it’s essentially hitting a space bar 1000 times over the course of a two hour show, but I find it really satisfying to lock in and concentrate on the music and what is happening onstage. I’m glad when my boss was looking for someone to run titles I spoke up and said, “I can do it.” And that my boss then let me.

-that I’m feeling better after my week of sick.

-That the 9 year old still loves playing with his toy planes. He has such a big imagination. And makes up stories and battles with his toys. Yes, he also likes playing MarioKart, but I love that if I leave him alone he will also get deeply immersed in imaginative play, zooming his airplanes all over the house.

-Perennials that come up year after year. I always forget that we have hyacinths along our front walk until they suddenly pop up, fragrant and cheery.

-This sign that I saw backstage. A good reminder.

Looking forward to:
-Easter Dinner. The kids gave up burgers, chocolate, and lemonade for Lent. (mean one kid gave up each thing.) I was going to make a big fancy Easter dinner, but then we realized that we should just have burgers, lemonade and chocolate dessert. I’m not sure what the chocolate dessert will be yet. Maybe I’ll also make a vegetable.

-Starting a new show next week.

-Visiting the Phillips Collection. At the collage workshop, we were given family passes to visit the Museum. They have art workshops the second Saturday of every month, so I’m looking forward to finding a time to go. I haven’t been to the Phillips Collection since before the oldest was born, so I’m eager to put this on our calendar.

-Bike/runs with the kids now that the weather is nicer.

-Just started this book. It’s set in a Red Lobster during a snow storm.:

What we ate:
Monday: Coconut Chicken Curry in the Instant Pot, recipe from New York Times Cooking, with rice and Paratha. Made before I went to work. I’ve made this before and everyone always loves it. I made a double batch, so there is some in the freezer ready for when I go back to work.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos w/ cabbage, smashed avocado, sour cream, cheese, and salsa

Wednesday: Banh mi – take out. I was working this night and it was the night that the Husband was leaving for his trip.

Thursday: Lemon Miso Tofu and Broccoli Stir Fry a Hetty Liu McKinnon recipe from New York Times Cooking. I was looking for a way to use up some broccoli I got from the Farmer’s market and this recipe popped up. It was really bright and lemony and I loved it. I can see the sauce also being good on white fish. I would make it again, but maybe less aggressive with the lemon since the Husband doesn’t like things too lemony. (Except Lemon Bars. He makes and exception for those.) Vegan.

Friday: Pizza and movie? I had to work. The Husband was coming home this night, so I’m not sure what they ate or watched.

Saturday: Chipotle (for the kids – there was one next to the hardware store and the kids really wanted it; the 14 year old even offered to pay for her own); Leftovers for me (chicken and kimchi in a bowl). Peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the Husband.

Sunday: Wings, salad, and fries at our friend’s house. Our friend is a genius with the grill.

Well, that’s the news this week. And now we’ll be into April. The weather looks lovely and almost summer like this week- a nice week for a Spring Break staycation with the kids.

What chocolate dessert should I make for Easter? When was the last time you ate something so tasty you wanted to lick the plate? And did you? Have you had any favorite items be discontinued? Visit any super niche museums lately?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Sick Week MVPs

The first blossom sightings of the year! I think these are red buds.

After leaving readers on a bit of a cliffhanger last week when I posted from the waiting room of Urgent Care, I’m sure everyone was eager for the verdict. drumroll please…. the result of tests was…. Influenza B. I fully admit that I did not get a flu shot this year, so maybe I’m to blame, but…. the 14 year old also got diagnosed with influenza over the weekend, and she did get a flu shot – which she is a little salty about. But I hear that it’s been a particularly bad year for Influenza B. Well, I guess it’s been a good year for influenza, but a bad year for the rest of us who get it…

All that to say, all last week I was in a cycle of debilitating tiredness, taking the kids to school, coming home and sleeping all day, then feeling better mid afternoon and going to work in the evening. Then coming home, going to bed, and feeling like crap again in the morning and the cycle began again. I am the worst patient. Luckily I had Thursday and Friday off work and was able to fully rest. I did drag myself out of bed for a ninety minute meeting on Teams on Thursday, but otherwise stayed under the covers. I cancelled Happy Hour plans I had, and I cancelled plans to meet up at the trampoline park with my friends when the kids were off school. Which was a bummer, but rest and hydration seemed to be the priorities of the day.

I don’t remember the last time I was laid up for so many days, and it’s made me feel like the month has disappeared. Between tech week (twice! for two different shows) and a sick week, I blinked and woosh… next week will be April. I feel like before I got sick or went into tech, we were still deeply in winter. And now I’ve emerged and there are blossoms on trees and the hyacinths are blooming and fragrant along our front walk. Oh well. I do believe my body likes to tell me when I need to slow down and it was clearly telling me that I needed to slow down now.

On top of rest and water, there are a few things that got me through last week. These are my sick week MVPs:

-Hot Lemonade. When I’m sick I like having hot liquids. This is one of my favorite things to drink- lemon juice mixed with hot water and a drizzle of honey stirred in. The tart lemon is bracing and helps clear the gunk from my throat, the touch of honey helps things go down.

-Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice. My cold drink of choice when I’m sick. Like hot lemonade, it balances tart and sweet.

-Cool green grapes. I don’t have much of an appetite when I’m sick, but I did eat a lot of green grapes, their chilled flesh soothing my throat as I swallowed. I had bought some enormous grapes from Hmart the week before and they were perfect for a sick day. I swear each grape was the size of a marble shooter.

-Kleenex.

-Musical Cast Albums. I’m not the kind of person that can sleep for 48 hours straight. At some point I’ll move into that “tired but not sleepy” phase and then I’ll start feeling restless and bored. This is the danger zone for me. When I get restless and bored, I will get out of bed and look for things to do, and that will tire me out and I’ll be back at square one. So the trick is finding low key ways to help me through restless and bored. I know some people like to watch movies when they are sick, but I have such bad eye-sight that I would need to keep my glasses on to watch movies. When I’m sick, I like to leave my glasses off, so watching movies isn’t an option. So instead of watching movies, I listen to Broadway musicals as a low spoons way to rest without being too bored. This time around I listened to Side Show, Bridges of Madison County, and Caroline or Change, all of which were new to me.

-Audiobooks. Similar to listening to musicals, I like audiobooks when I’m sick because I can be slightly entertained while laying in bed. This time around I listening to the Alexis Hall novel Looking For Group. To be honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to the story – it was centered around Drew, who spends his time playing MMORPG – which for those who, like me, don’t know what that is, it stands for “Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game.” The book starts with a glossary of terms and I was immediately lost. I liked the witty sentences, I liked the snarky and funny characters. I loved Will Watt’s low dulcet oh so expressive tones. I could not tell you what happened in the book.

-Hot water bottle. I have an old fashioned rubber hot water bottle, purchased in a thrift store of a Colorado mountain town for $2. It keeps my bed warm and I love it.

-Cozy blankets. I love nothing more than being buried under a pile of blankets.

-The hot water boiler. Still my favorite purchase so far this year. Hot water at the push of a button.

-The Husband. Okay, he is the REAL MVP of my sick week. The Husband kept things running. He cooked dinner. He cleaned up after dinner. He took the kids to see the high school production of In the Heights (I’m sorry I missed that one – they all reported it was very very good.) He kept an eye on them when they were off school and I couldn’t get out of bed. He watched the first games of March Madness with them. He took the little kids to skating lessons, and then on a bike ride. He took the oldest kid to the doctor’s. He picked up my prescription. He gardened. He folded laundry. He got the kids to fold laundry. I mean the list goes on and on and on. Last week Stephany had a post where she pondered how people recover from sickness with kids around. Well, my answer is… I don’t, and I’m very grateful for the Husband that I don’t have to.

Anyhow, I’m slowly feeling more normal again. I’ve been able to go outside for some walks and enjoy the spring sunshine. I did a couple 15-20 minute gentle yoga videos. I took a hot shower. It’s funny how those things – sunshine, stretching, and showers – can all help me feel like a human after being sick. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% back to normal now, but I’m mostly there.

I usually write my weekly gratitude list at this point in the post, but all my weekly gratitudes this week would be all the sick week MVPs that I listed above, so check!

Looking Forward To:
-Peak bloom! Peak bloom! Peak Bloom! Peak Cherry Blossom Bloom is right around the corner. We are currently in stage 5 of 6. The earliest prediction is for peak bloom to arrive this weekend. Next week is Spring Break, so I think the kids and I will go downtown to walk among the cherry blossoms one day.

– Middle School STEM Night. The 14 year old and her friend did an experiment that involved baking lots of cup cakes. I’ve never been to STEM Night before, so I figured this might be a good year to go.

-March Madness has begun. We look forward to watching the Men’s and Women’s games. I’m not rooting for any particular team this year – neither team from the Husband’s alma mater made the bracket and the women’s team from my alma mater was, but they didn’t make it past the first round. In general, I like to root for whomever is losing because I love a good come from behind story.

-Spring soccer season for the 9 year old.

– Doing normal things like cooking dinner and picking up my bedroom. I’ve really missed doing these domestic things while I was sick. Not sure why. I hate picking up my bedroom normally but now I can’t wait to do it.

-Just started this book:

It’s an Age of Innocence re-telling set in present day Jewish society in London. I was inspired to pick it up because I’d never seen an Age of Innocence re-telling and given that I had just read the Wharton novel for Cool Blogger’s Book Club, it was fresh on my mind.
Also – side note, when I went to google for this book, another book with the same titles popped up. That book is about two orphans isolated in a Newfoundland cove. That one also sounds really interesting. I love the idea of reading two books with the same title.

What We Ate: Damned if I know. I think there was freezer soup one night. Pizza on Friday as always. The rest – I have no clue. The family was fed and that’s all that matters.

Well, that’s it for now. This week looks bright and sunny. I close another show on Sunday and then there’s Spring Break. We aren’t going anywhere, but we’ll have some local adventures, and maybe just some time to rest. And finish my taxes. And have some ham for Easter. I need to think about Easter menu. I see everyone having amazing travel adventures, and I have to be honest I do feel a little jealous. We don’t have any travel plans in the future. I think after a big travel year last year (Taiwan/Malaysia, South Africa, and Taiwan again), the idea of getting on a plane again seemed… like a lot. So we’ll be here for Spring Break – and, you know what, that’s not terrible. I’m going to lean into having some good family time with my kids while they are off school and before I plunge back into another busy season at work.

Weekly recap+ what we ate: Good-bye, February! Hello, March!

Another show opened! It has been a hard hard week for me, but the show opened and it looks really stunning. And the audience is super excited to be there; the feeling of good will is palpable.

We’re over a week into March, but I wanted to do a February recap, now that I’m on the other side of tech. I keep wanting to put tech week into this recap, but that was technically March, so it will go into the next recap.

February Highlights:
-New York City Trip with the 14 year old. Seeing Two Strangers (Carry a cake across New York), eating good food, people watching.

-Doing titles for a voice recital that was lovely and featured an elegantly charming set of Post WWI French cafe songs.

– Watching the Olympics. The stunning figure skating pairs long program. The heartbreaking Men’s hockey final. The mad dash of ski Mountaineering. The zen of curling. The colourful opening ceremonies. The opera-filled closing ceremonies.

-Super Bowl Sunday, which was combined with the Husband’s birthday. Seeing lots of friends, eating food, and celebrating. The game itself – couldn’t tell you what happened there. We had the Olympics playing upstairs while the game was downstairs, so I kept floating between events.

-Our Zojirushi hot water boiler. Best new addition to our household. Hot water instantaneously.

-Some warm days – going outside without being all bundled up.

-The 9 year old getting his first library card.

-Two more snow days. One I wasn’t working so I hung out with the kids. The other I had to work, so we paid the 14 year old to watch her siblings. It is kind of amazing not to have to worry about what to do with the kids on a snow day when both the Husband and I have to work.

-Lunar New Year – pineapple cakes, pomelos, and an excuse to get together and eat dim sum with friends.

-Lunch with a friend from college.

-A chill mid-afternoon hangout with two other families. There were sword fights and K-pop dance routines and grown up conversations.

-The 6 year old’s kindergarten performance of Arf!

-Happy Hour with the stage management team at a new-to-me restaurant with $1 oysters during happy hour. I love oysters.

-Watching the 14 year old play basketball.

-Elisabeth’s FIG Club, which encouraged us all to find joy in moments of gratitude during February – such a delight to read everyone’s FIGS.

-Starting rehearsals for a new show. The feeling of homecoming as we finally got down to rehearsal after six weeks (or really, a year) of turmoil at work. Gathering to do work that is familiar to us despite all the changes. I keep hearing the phrase “Flying the plane while building it,” and it did feel like that often. But, you know… when we understand the fundamentals of what needs to be done, the rest is just logistics and figure-out-able.

-Also there’s a banjo in our show. It makes me so happy.

-Favorite meals cooked at home: Ethiopian food (shiro wat, yellow lentils, and fried potatoes, eaten with injera), and Shrimp tacos.

February Lowlights

-Starting to develop some lower back pain. I’ve always been pretty healthy and pain free, so this kind of chronic pain is really annoying. I can usually make it feel better by stretching, but getting out of bed in the morning is an effort for sure.

-Not exercising. I did my yoga daily but didn’t run except for 15 minutes on the treadmill at the rec center before the 14 year old’s basketball game. The lack of exercise actually has a lot to do with the weather, so hopefully I’ll do better now that the weather is getting warmer.

-Some confusion about the 14 year old’s path in high school, forms that we supposed to be filled out that weren’t. This was VERY stressful.

-Our office at work is very very very cold. Which is usually fine, but it was a cold month. It has something to do with the fact that the thermostat is located in the hallway and regulates a few different offices.

-A bunch of adulting fails including getting a ticket for expired plates. (This is now fixed.)

-Having to work a lot of evenings.

– Pretty sad news about plans for a cultural institution that had been my home for the past twenty years. It’s pretty shitty and devastating for so many people.

Yearly Goals – not great on some fronts, but it was a very work intense month:
-Taking the stairs – I don’t specifically track this, but I think I did okay on this. I did have to take the elevator at work for a while because my id badge was deactivated and that was the only way to access the stairwell from the lobby.

-Creativity: I only painted one picture (It was a birthday card, and I still haven’t sent it); I wrote 3 haikus. I spent some time on the piano – we ordered the easy piano version of music from K-Pop Demon Hunters, so that was fun.

-Did not do any crossword puzzles because our Washington Post subscription expired and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it.

-Museums = 0/10. Hikes = 0/12

-3 vegan dinners. (Goal is 5/month)

-Exercise Goals: Strength training 6x (Goal was 8x/month). Yoga daily – CHECK!

-Family Goals: Game Nights =0 (though we do sometimes have an ongoing chess game going on); Date Nights =0; Call my parents once a week = 3 times, so close;

-Not a lot of time outside – only 17.5 hours in February. That’s less than 30 mins a day.

Quote of the month:
One of the singers I worked with this month was a collegiate wrestler before he decided to become an opera singer. I asked him if there was anything from wrestling that he still applied to life and he said that learning to step up to the mat no matter the circumstances taught him the importance of showing up, and being persistent and doing what you have to do. Then he said:
“I always say: I never lost a match; I just ran out of time.” I love the grit and determination behind this idea – the sense that you can lose a match but still have the stamina and fortitude to be on a winning path.

Looking Forward to in March:
-More sunlight in our days and Spring!

– Running supertitles for the next opera. The most exciting part of this is that I get paid the union stagehand rate to run titles.

-No school day for the kids on 3/20. No plans yet but I have the day off, so maybe we’ll do something special.

-Getting my tax information to our tax guy.

-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.

-March Madness.

-Spring Break starts at the end of the month. No plans currently; I probably have to work some that week.

-Cherry Blossoms!!!! Peak Bloom is predicted for as early as March 31st, though most media outlets are predicting the first week of April. We shall see….

-Not being in rehearsal all the time, so I will be able to do all the things I’ve been putting off, such as:

Bake things
Make dinner
Put the kids to bed
Clean out the kids’ clothes and prep for Spring
Run (this is more about the weather than my work schedule, though)
Game nights
Taking walks in the warmer weather
Paint, play piano, journal
Go to the grocery store
read books

Grateful for this Week:
-The stagehands, wardrobe crew, and wig and make-up crew – for making our show look so good and run so smoothly. And the assistant stage managers. The theatre where we are working has very limited room backstage and the ASMs are working miracles of organization and timing to get everyone onstage when they need to be, wearing the right clothes, with the right prop in hand. In one meeting, I gave them a shout out, saying “They are running New York City in the space the size of a postage stamp back there.”

-Cue lights! What are cue lights? They are lights that are hung around backstage that I use to indicate when a cue should happen. I turn on the light when the crew should be in “Standby” and turn the light off for “Go”. Most of the crew is on headset so they can hear me give the cues, but the cue light is also a good back up. Anyhow – when we first did a walk through of the theatre, we were told that they had ONE cue light. Well, this would have to go into the orchestra pit so I can indicate to them when to tune, meaning the crew wasn’t going to have any lights. BUT… the house crew at the theatre surprised us by purchasing a whole new cue light system! Hooray! It has SIX cue lights. (I only need five for this show.)

-My friend home from abroad. She and her family were in the Middle East (they work in the foreign service). They were sent home last week, given all the things going on. “Things” being the U.S. bombing Iran. I’m grateful that she’s home.

-That I didn’t lose my book. I had brought a book to read when I took the 14 year old to her voice lesson. And afterwards we went to a newly open cafe for sweet treat and to run lines. (It was opening weekend for the cafe and they were giving out free pastries!) Anyhow, I got home and realized my book was missing. I was in a bit of a panic because it’s a library book. But I texted the voice teacher and turns out I had left it at her house. Thank goodness.

-Panera Sip Club. Panera was running this deal where you could get 3 months of Sip Club for $3/month. Usually it’s $14/month. For $3/month, you could get all the coffee/tea/fountain sodas/lemonade/ice tea that you wanted. I think technically it’s limited to one every two hours. It’s not something that I would usually sign up for, but there is a Panera across the street from the theatre – it is in the Student Center (we’re performing on an University campus), and open until 11pm. And it’s tech, when I usually have more caffeine than normal to function/ pick me up during a long day. So I signed up and getting my cold Sip Club beverage is a nice excuse to get out of the building.

-Speaking of which – I’m grateful for getting to work on a University campus. I’m finding there’s something really special about university campuses – the students rushing here and there in non-homogeneous crowds: the squares with places to sit, even though we’re in the middle of the city; the sheer number of coffee shops and fast restaurants; the statues that greet you every few blocks. There’s just a youthful, hopeful air that I find energizing.

-Getting to drive home with my work BFF. We have a tradition of commuting together on opening night so that she can drink at the party and I can drive her home. It’s kind of our version of a friend date to run errands – we drive home and chat and catch up because even though we work down the hall from each other, the past few weeks have been intense and we’ve mostly been talking about work logistics when we cross paths.

-The snack box at work, which someone keeps stocked with chocolate, cookies, and other sweet and savory snacks.

-Freezer soup, for being a quick and easy thing to take for dinner.

-Kids being quiet. I took the 14 year old to school one day and when I came home it was eerily quiet in the house. I peeked through the two little kids’ door know and saw:

Yes, the door knob is missing. We removed it when the youngest was two because she kept locking herself in the room by accident and we didn’t have a key.

What We Ate: The Husband made dinner every night, since I wasn’t home in the evenings all week. I ate mostly leftovers at work.

Monday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos. This is the most requested type of Taco for Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Dumplings and green beans

Thursday: Zucchini Boats.

Friday: Pizza! I was actually home this night. The Husband made a pickle pizza and we ordered two pizzas from one of our favorite pizza places. We watched Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior. I don’t know how this movie came across my radar – it was released in 2006 on Disney Channel, but I only heard about it this year. How is that possible? Asian representation was so non-existent at the time, I feel like it must have gotten a lot of buzz in the community, no? (To be fair, I didn’t have a tv in the early 2000s and this was before you could stream everything.) Anyway, the movie was pretty much everything you would expect from a Disney movie, with some hilarious martial arts sequences thrown in. I don’t know that I would watch this more than once, but it was a fun and charming movie.

Saturday: Indian take out.

Sunday: Leftover Indian take out, tortellini with red sauce, and green beans.

Well, that’s the week that was. And the month that was. Here the weather is almost summer like, all sunshine and warm rays. Not sure how long it will last, but I’m going to try to soak it up this week.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Day in the life + FIGS Week #3

It’s been a grey, chilly week. The weather has sort of matched my week – dark and unrelenting. It seems like every day this week was something on the home front. The kids were off Monday for President’s Day and it was also my first day of rehearsal for a new show. School was closed again on Tuesday. Not sure why; it was Lunar New Year, but I’m not sure if that was the reason. Wednesday was Ash Wednesday – I worked late, but the husband took the kids to Mass. Thursday we had a site visit for the theatre where we’ll be performing in a few weeks, so that made that day extra long. Friday – Friday felt like a regular day. So I decided to do a “Day in the Life” post based on Friday, February 20th, 2026. More on the below.

Over all, though last week I just felt as if I was doing a terrible job at adulting. Here’s a list:
-I received a W-2 for a job that I realized I had never been paid for. Now I have to write that company and ask them where my fee is. And the job was a year ago, so I feel stupid to not have realized that sooner.
– I opened the bills for this month and was shocked by how high they were, only to realize they were that high because I forgot to pay them last month. Ugh. I think in the brain fog of jet lag in January following our trip to Taiwan, I just… forgot.
-my lower back hurts. I’m very lucky to be pretty healthy and free of ailments, so this constant lower back pain that I had last week was a new experience for me. Not sure what it is. If I make sure I stretch in the morning and try not to sit too much, the pain is usually gone by mid day. But in the morning, getting out of bed is more of a ginger effort that I’m used to.
-The to top it all off… I had gone to downtown DC for that site visit and miraculously I found parking on a street without meters. I was shocked that this street had free parking, so when I saw a parking enforcement agent across the street, I asked her if there were meters on this street. And she looked a me impatiently and said, “The meters are on the other street.”
I was running late, so I said a little prayer for having good parking Karma and headed to the venue.
A few hours later, I get back to my car – which in and of itself was an ordeal because I couldn’t remember where I parked and my friend was with me so we walked around the blocks a few times before I found it. I told my friend as we walked about finding free parking and the parking enforcement agent. We finally find my car and my friend says, “It looks like you got a ticket after all.” And my hear sank with disbelief. She looks at the sign and says, “I don’t know why – it clearly says two hour parking here.”
Greatly annoyed, I look at the ticket. Friends, I got a ticket because my tags were expired. In fact, they’ve been expired for two months.
I shouldn’t have talked to the parking enforcement agent.

Also – I would like to churlishly point out that in Maryland when you get a ticket, they put it in an envelope so that you can mail back the payment. They don’t do that in DC. I guess it is easier to just pay it online, but the principal of the matter….

Anyhow, there are some weeks when the whole adulting thing is just too much for me, and last week was one of them. It’s fine – it will all be fine. Nothing is life altering – it’s just all annoying and the last thing that I want to deal with.

But… on to my Day In The Life Post. This was what Friday, February 20th looked like for me:

6:15am- alarm goes off. I only recently started using an alarm to wake up in the mornings, because I wanted to get my mornings started earlier. Without an alarm I usually get up at 6:45am, so I started with 6:30 a few weeks ago and this week bumped it even earlier. I go back to sleep for a few minutes because I had been at work til 10:30p the night before and I was tired.

6:30p- out of bed for reals. Bathroom. Glass of water. I’ve been trying to get up early for some quiet alone time, but this morning the kids were up before me:

I make myself tea from my brand new water boiler. I’m loving the water boiler. It dispenses water at the push of a button, keeps the water hot all day, and I can set it the night before to be at the right temperature for tea when I wake up. It holds four liters of water so I only have to fill it once a week.

There was conversation and chatter- I don’t see the kids or the Husband very much when I work evenings, so I try to make time in the morning to catch up.

6:50: finally get my reading time while the two little kids eat cereal. Reading Crescent City, still. It is a very long book. I complain to the 14 year old (who recommended it) and she says, “That’s why I listen to the graphic audio version.”

The two little kids eat cereal and chatter about kid things.

7:20am -Then I fit in my daily yoga- just ten minutes today. I’ve been having a bit of lower back pain recently so I’ve been choosing yoga videos that focus on that.

7:40am- how does it take 20 minutes to do ten minutes of yoga? I get dressed and then take the 14 year old to school. She usually walks the mile or so to school, but I offered to drive her today because it was raining pretty hard. Also the Husband was working from home today so I could leave the other two kids at home.

7:55 pm- back home. I pack lunches (kids and my own). Also make myself roti egg for breakfast. I bought a pack of uncooked roti from Costco- the kids don’t like it as much as the paratha from H-mart, but I think it’s tasty, especially if not overcooked. Here’s how I make roti egg:

Crack egg onto griddle. Scramble it a little, but keep it pretty flat. Pinch of salt. Or drizzle of sesame oil, hot sauce, curry powder. Whatever is tasty.
Put roti on other side of griddle
After 30 seconds, flip cooked side of eoti on top of egg and flip the whole thing over so that the uncooked side of the roti is on the griddle, with the egg on top. Cook thirty seconds or so, then roll the whole thing into a tube.

It’s kind of a cheater’s version of Taiwanese dan bing (egg pancake). The two little kids, despite already having breakfast, ask for roti egg too. Good thing it’s fast to make.

My lunch:

brown rice w/ sweet potato puree and a boiled egg; yogurt with berries; snack box (grapes, cheese, triscuits, cucumbers slices); string cheese; trail mix; cut up carrots and veggies. napkin wrapped around sliverware.

While I make breakfast and lunch, we watch the Ski Mountaineering on the tablet. This is Skimo’s first year at the Olympics and I found it fascinating. The athletes sprint uphill on skis, then take the skis off, and strap them to their back, and climb stairs! And then they get to the top and rip these skins off their skis – the skins give them traction for the uphill sprint – and ski down. The whole thing takes less than four minutes. It’s exhausting to even think about.

8:30p- I sit down and eat my breakfast. Finally.

8:57am- the shoes and socks alarm goes off, indicating it’s time to atart heading out the door.

9:11am- arrive at parking lot on trail and walk up the path to school. Notice how high the water is in the creek because of the rain. The rain has stopped for a bit, but the kids still insist on bringing their umbrellas. My kids are obsessed with umbrellas and use any slightly damp occasion as an excuse to use their umbrellas. On the way up the path, run into another parent that I know. He used to work for USAID, so we often commiserate about our similar work situations.

9:30am- I usually take a walk after dropping the kids, but I had a new stage management team starting today so I head in early to allow time to pick up donuts to welcome them. There is a place near work that makes amazing donuts, and they’re vegan! This is the only picture I remembered to take of the beautiful donuts:

10:00am- meet and greet with new stage management team and my big boss.

11:00am- I spend the rest of the morning catching up on email. I send a company wide email welcoming this new stage management team, also noting that it is twenty years to the day that the Stage Manager started with the company. I love that. We both started here as interns, one year apart, when we were in our twenties and fresh out of school, and now we have houses and mortgages and a dog (him) and children (me).

12:50 pm- my brain is mush. Stop at the bathroom. Take a picture because I like my outfit today:

From head to toe: Orange beanie (Duluth Trading Company). Ottoman sweater from Free People (I love this sweater, but I never wear it because it is white. But when I put it on, I am always struck by how sophisticated white looks). Uniqlo Puffer Vest (ubiquitous fashion item for me from Hallowe’en until Easter pretty much). Red Dress from Wool&. Blue legging from Duluth Trading Company. Rain boot – I think they are Bogs.

Go for a walk. Admire the funny sign and cute small town vibes of the area where I work:

About ten minutes into my walk I get a text that our laptops are here! This is very exciting. We’ve been working on our personal laptops for six weeks now, ever since the company shake up. We still don’t have access to printing, but small wins are huge at this point.

2:30pm- In rehearsal. We finish staging Act 1 and then run it. We’ve spent three days putting the first act together one musical number at a time, and it feels really good to put the whole thing together and see what it’s like from the top of the overture to Intermission. We got some new props for rehearsal today:

5:30pm- Dinner Break, just as the sun is setting. I love that we have windows in our rehearsal room so I can see the sunset:

I send a text to my team with this picture, which is the order of the numbers we are going to review in the evening’s rehearsal.

During dinner, we do the jigsaw puzzle:

6:45pm – Dinner break is over. Back to rehearsal. We spend the evening putting the dancers and Supers (non-speaking roles) into Act 1.

This is the view from where I sit. On the travel alarm clock is a Post It reminding me when I have to release certain groups of people from rehearsal. I have to write it down and put it on the clock or else I will lose track of time and if I don’t release people in time, it will sometimes cost the company money. Timekeeping in rehearsal is very stressful for me.

10:00pm – Rehearsal is over for the day. The stage managment team gathers to go over the notes from rehearsal, which I type into a report and send out. It’s a lot of notes like “So and so needs a pocket…” “Change this word to that word” type of things.

10:45pm – walking out of work. I give my colleague a ride home. She came directly from another gig and didn’t have time to drive to us from her home, so she doesn’t have her car and has been taking the metro to work. We finish work so late that I give her a ride home. I’m loving the ten minutes we have to chat in the car on our drive.

11:10pm – home. I sit in the car for a little bit, scrolling – I find I always need a minute alone before I go into the house. I should perhaps go for a walk around the block instead of scrolling – that might be better for me.

It’s a clear, cold starry starry night. I pause in our front walk to breathe the cold winter air and look at the stars.

11:30p – I go inside. Put my stuff down. I notice that the dinner dishes are still on the kitchen counter. The Husband had texted me earlier that night to say that the youngest kid had been vomiting, so I’m guessing they just left the dishes for later while they dealt with the vomit. I go upstairs, give the kids kisses while they sleep, change into my sleepy clothes.

I’m tired and little hungry, so I snack on some cheese, cold cuts, slathered with dill pickle mustard.

I load the dishwasher and wipe down the counters. I don’t mind doing this late at night because I know when I’m not home in the evenings, there is a lot on the Husband’s plate and this is one small thing I can do for everyone.

12:15am – I read a little bit to try to wind down and end up falling asleep in my reading chair.

1:00am – I shake myself awake, brush and floss, and head to bed.

And that’s the day! It was mostly a pretty typical work day, though I’m not often at work for twelve hours so this one was longer than usual.

Grateful for This Week – FIGS Week #3. (Shout out to Elisabeth for encouraging people’s ray of gratitudes.) I felt like I struggled to find FIGS at the end of the day this week. I do remember feeling wonder, delight and gratitude in many small things, and in the moment thinking, “Oh that’s such a good small FIG!” But when it came time to remember these small things, at the end of the day when my brain was fried, I was tired to recall what brought those small moments of joy to me. So, rest assured – there were quotidian FIGS last week. I know in my heart they were there, even if my brain didn’t hold on to them.

But the FIGS I did hold on to:

-Our new Zojirushi water boiler came two weeks ahead of schedule. Just in time for a week of chilly weather. I’ve used it several times a day to make tea. No more waiting for the water to boil! The kids have also started using it when they make ramen.

-The stage management team on my show. They make me laugh. They catch things that I miss. They are damn good stage managers. Also – one day I was really really late to rehearsal – I had forgotten I had to take the 14 year old to voice lessons and miscalculated how long it would take to get to rehearsal from there. The other folks on my team started rehearsals without me and kept the room going. I’m really thankful that I work with people that I can trust to run a room.

-The Olympics. What a fun two weeks of watching people doing things really really well. We watched the gold medal hockey game live on Sunday morning- I always root for Canada in hockey and was so sad for them not to get the gold. AND did you see all the opera at the closing ceremonies? Seeing and hearing all the greatest hits of Italian Opera gave me such delight.

– Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes for Lunar New Year. From Costco(!). Pineapple cakes are a pastry with a shortbread cookie type exterior around a thick pineapple jam filling. I love pineapple cakes, but they are generally only available around New Year. I was so surprised to see them at Costco three weeks before Lunar New Year. I should have bought more than one box because when I asked my friend to pick up another box a few days before New Year, Costco had already moved on to stocking goods for other holidays (Eid. Passover.) These were some of the best pineapple cakes I’ve ever eaten. I took the box to work and shared them with the cast and it was fun to share a bit of something I love with everyone.

-Finding hearts in every day places:

I snapped this picture as I was leaving skating lessons with the 9 and 6 year old. They look so sweet sharing an umbrella, but not two seconds before, one child refused to share, saying the other child had a waterproof coat on and didn’t need an umbrella. I reminded them to be kind to each other and they stopped squabbling and shared the umbrella. Which is when I noticed the skating bag had settled into a heart shape.

-Along those lines – I’m grateful for the inane chattering conversations my kids have with each other. I feel so lucky that all three of them get along most of the time. Sometimes they will get into tearful yelling fights, but then they have a bit of time to themselves and are back to being real tight and when I ask if they’ve made up with each other they look at me like, “What are you talking about? Why would I argue with my amazing sibling, my favorite person in the world?” I know you can’t guarantee the future, but I hope they will continue to be there for each other their whole lives.

-My snow boots that keep my feet warm and dry.

-My Bed Is My Island. The 14 year old can be … reclusive. She really really loves her room and her bed. Some weekends, she emerges only for basketball games, church, food, and to go to the bathroom. So sometimes, we will knock on her door and ask if we can come in. And when she says yes, all of us – me, the Husband, the two younger kids – will pile together on her bed and play “The Bed is an Island.” It’s what a director friend of mine used to call those days when she didn’t have to be at rehearsal, but still had to prep for the next day at work so she would gather her computer, books, and scores, and just settle into a day of working from bed. Anyhow, in our version, we all pile into bed with the 14 year old and laze around. Sometimes we watch whatever YouTube videos she is watching, sometimes we just chat. This week, we ran lines with her for her school play. My Bed is My Island always starts as a mad scramble as everyone finds their comfy place in the family pile; usually at some point we settle into some configuration and it’s actually a quite comfy tangle of limbs and bodies. Often someone falls asleep. Often it’s me. The pile lasts anywhere from two minutes to an hour, and it’s just such a cozy way for us to hang out as a family of five without feeling like we have to drag the 14 year old from her bedroom. These moments are what I want the kids to remember of their childhood when I am gone.

Looking Forward To:
– My parents are coming to visit in April!

– These next two months are busy, but I have a few happy hours on the calendar with various friends, and I’m looking forward to catching up with friends.

-Summer. The Husband and I mapped out our summer and I’m excited for pool time and maybe camping and hanging out with my kids. I’ll be done with shows by the beginning of July, so the summer looks to be pretty relaxed.

-Using my new hot water boiler. Yes, I realize this is the third time I’ve mentioned the water boiler in my post, but I am seriously so very excited for this new addition to my family. I get up in the morning and say to myself, “Oh look! The water is already hot!”

What We Ate – I pretty much worked every night this week, so the Husband did the majority of the cooking.

Monday: Butter chicken. This is the famous Instant Pot Recipe from Usha Pitre. I made it before I left for work – the Husband finished out the recipe and made rice to go with it.

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos.

Wednesday: Smoked Salmon and bagels.

Thursday: Kung Pao Chicken.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made it) and Hamilton. It was the 9 year old’s turn to choose the movie, and he chose a re-watch of the musical.

Saturday: Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

Sunday: Dumplings and green beans.

Welp that’s the world here – I hope you have a FIG-gy week

Do you set an alarm in the morning? When was the last time you got a ticket? Any adulting fails lately? How about adulting wins?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Things I track and FIGS Week #2

Scaling mountains of ice and snow to get to school.

The week ended with weather that was positively spring like with temperatures in the 50s and, more importantly, blinding sunlight and clear blue skies. I am of the opinion that the sun and sky have more effect on me then the actual temperature. So much light and colour, the world can’t help but to feel like it is warming up. I left the house without my bulky winter coat a couple times and it feel so freeing! But this coming week looks to be a little on the grey side. Today (Sunday) was oh so rainy and chilly.

Anyhow, it’s been a week back in the office. It was fine. Everyone is overwhelmed and doing three jobs, but morale is high and we are all excited to be doing opera again. I want to remember to carry this feeling and remember it when the show feels hard – we are so very very very lucky to continue to tell stories onstage for people.

Stephany had a post a few weeks ago about the how she tracks her habits and goals and I was inspired to write a similar post. I’m fascinated by the minutiae of other people’s planning/tracking, so maybe other people will be interested in my methods?

So my current planner stack features:
-Hobonichi Weeks for day to day planning. (this might get it’s own post some day…)
-Levenger Five Year Journal, which I try to write in every day, with varying results
-A moleskin notebook that I use to track my reading; I write books that I read, and a few comments on them. This isn’t always a moleskin- it’s generally whatever blank notebook I have on hand when I run out of pages in the last one.
-A Hobonichi Cousin that I use to track routines, life, habits, some longer form reflections.

This has pretty consistently been my stack for the past five or six years. Last year, I tried a different planner, trying to put the planning and reflection/tracking in the same book, but that lasted less then a month before I went back to my tried and true method. I’m mostly going to write about how I use the Hobonichi Cousin here.

First off – Meals, media, and time outside:

On the top I track tv and movies that we watch. A lot of these are family movie night movies. Hearts are things that I really enjoyed.
Below that, I write down each day what we have for dinner. If we eat out, it gets a pink dot. If it is a vegan dinner, it gets a green dot. If it’s a meal we made at home that went over really well, I draw a heart so that I can go back and remember what was a hit with the family and make it again.
The last section is where I track time outside – each box on the grid represents one hour. I started doing this when I was trying to do 1000 hours outside, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to that in one year, so I now just track to see what is trending.

The Weekly Spread – Here I time track, writing down what I did every day in 30 minute segements.

This was a very light week for paid work.

I have a loose colour coding:
Green = work that I get paid to do
Purple = unpaid labor and family time (ie chores, making dinner, driving carpool, hanging out as a family)
Orange= time that is just for me, where I ignore (or don’t have to think about) the kids or family
Blue = Sleep.
Also on the left hand side, I write the books that I’m reading.

This is the section i’m the most inconsistent in filling out; I find I have a lot of nebulous time that is not accounted for….

365 Day Tracker – this is where I log my daily yoga. Here I also colour code according to how much yoga I do – pink=10 mins, orange = 15 mins, yellow = 20 mins, green=25 mins, and blue = 25 mins. There is something really fun and satisfying about this page. I sometimes think I should track something else for 365 days, but I’m not sure what that would be.

Daily Pages – This is where I write longer reflections that don’t fit into the 5 year journal. When I travel, this is where I write daily travel reflections, gather ticket stubs and what not. If I go to a museum or see a play, musical, etc., this is where I write my thoughts about what I saw. If I need to do a larger brain dump to problem solve something it goes here. I write haikus here for my weekly haiku project.
These daily pages also have a blank page at the start of each month and that’s where I write my monthly highlights/ low lights/ lessons learned.

The Monthly Spread – This is where the bulk of my tracking is. The categories I track here are mostly inspired by things I learned when I took The Science of Well Being, a free course on Coursera that is also known as the Yale Happiness Course because it is taught by a Yale Professor, Laurie Santos. Each week of the course, Santos talked about one thing that has been scientifically proven to make people “happier”, and gives assignments based on that topic. I took this course during the pandemic and it was really helped me focused on little things that I could be mindful about that could make life feel fuller, especially at a time that was really felt like a stressful daily grind. A lot of what her findings show is that people are really bad at predicting what makes them happy- the things people think they want are often inflated in their minds, leading to disappointment if it doesn’t come about. People find the most contentment when they focus on personal connection and what is right in front of them.

January. The first eleven days are blank because we were in Taiwan/I was getting over jetlag/feeling overwhelmed.

I like tracking things here because I can write a little more on what each thing is, allowing for a bit more reflection.

So what I track here:
-Hours outside (yes, I know I put this in two places, but I wanted also to see how much time I was spending outside on a daily basis.)
-Gratitude: at least one thing I’m grateful for each day.
-Savoring: one thing I take time to slow down and savor each day.
-Connection: at least one person I connected with that day. Santos has a week where she talks about the benefits of positive interaction. Sometimes for me, this is a long conversation over dinner, sometimes it is small talk in the grocery line or just a text exchange with a friend.
-Brush/floss: Okay, this one isn’t from Laurie Santos, but I used to be terrible at brushing and flossing, so I started making myself check a box for it. I’m not usually a box-checker, but in this case it really worked for me. One check for brushing, one for flossing.
-Exercise – I take this to mean movement. So the daily yoga and any work outs or runs I do go here, but also if I take a walk at lunch time, go skating with the kids, etc.
-Create: Here I write if I do something creative that day. To me this means write a blog post, compose a haiku, play piano, spend time painting, cook a fancy new recipe – basically anything where I create something from nothing.
-Anticipation: I write something I’m looking forward to. This wasn’t part of Santos’ course, but I read a NYTimes article about how anticipation boosts happiness so I added it to the list.

Along the bottom I track some of the habits I want to do this year:
-Paint 26 pictures
-Write 1 haiku a week
-visit a museum
-go on a hike
-do the Post Sunday crossword puzzle every week.

As a side note, some things that Santos talks about which improve well-birng that I don’t track:
-Sleep. My sleep is shit. I’m working on this, but I’ve tried tracking sleep and tracking does not motivate me to go to bed earlier, so I stopped.
-Meditation. I’ve tried, Lord know I’ve really really really tried meditation. I just can’t figure it out.
-Acts of kindness. This one was really hard for me to do mindfully without feeling performative. Some days I feel like the kindest thing I can do is hug my children and tell them I love them every single day, so I try to at least do that.

So that’s my system. I’m not a box checker, as I mentioned, so I don’t necessarily do these things to cross them off the list. But I do find it useful to see what things I’m making room in my life for. If I’m looking at my tracking spread and I notice I didn’t write something in a particular column for several days in a row, I will make an effort to find time to do it. But also, it helps when I’m in really busy time of the year to remind myself that there are certain things I still manage to do, even if it is as simple as brushing my teeth.

Anyhow, speaking of creating – here are my paintings from January:

This was from our hotel room in Beitou, Taiwan. Picture’s blurry because I didn’t actually take a real picture of this one and now I don’t know where it is….

The top picture is an exercise from Everyday Watercolor by Jenna Rainey; it’s a book of daily watercolor exercises. The bottom picture uses the salt technique where you sprinkle salt on wet paint to create a blotchy effect- it’s loosely based on a tutorial I found on YouTube on painting snowflakes.

Grateful For (FIGs, Week 2) – shout out to Elisabeth’s February FIGS collective, where she is gathering people’s gratitudes this month. These are some of my FIGs from last week.

-Libraries and printing. We aren’t fully set up with our IT at work yet, and I needed to print our music scores. So I went to the library to print them out. The process is so easy – log into the website with my library card, upload the documents and then go to any library and print. There is a thing where I have to have the librarians put a “fine” on my card to pay for the printing, but once I print the job, I pay off the “fine”. Also, the first 15 pages are free. This is such a great service.

-Sunlight in the morning. On Tuesday, I did my daily morning yoga in my bedroom instead of the basement. I pulled up my shade, and as I was doing my upward dog, I noticed that I could see pink sky when I had been used to the sky still being inky black at 7am in the morning. The days are starting to get longer.

-On the other side of the day, I walked out of work at 5:30pm one day and it was still light outside. After all those days of being stuck at home with the snow, the longer stretches of daylight are like fingers of hope and growth and the end of the tunnel.

-Our tax guy. I had to fill out new tax paperwork as part of the transition at work, and I was so very confused by the form. So I sent my tax guy an email and he told me exactly what to write in. Thank goodness.

-Getting to watch the 14 year old play basketball twice -once for her middle school team and once on her rec team. Her face always lights up when she sees me at her games, and I hope mine does too.

-Getting to pick up the kids after school. That moment they get off the school bus lifts my heart. I hope I never get tired of my kids coming home.

-To that end – school bus drivers. Some of the roads still are barely passable because the snow has not been cleared out to the curb. Grateful for the bus drivers that navigate that and get our kids to and from school safely.

-That quiet sliver of time between getting home with the kids and starting dinner. A few times last week, the 6 year old and I got the watercolours out and made a piece of art or two. A relaxing transition from the work/school day into the evening.

-Crisp clean sheets to slide between after a long day.

-Birdsongs and fat robins hopping in the snow. Spring is coming.

-Leaving for school a little on the early side and not having to rush up the path. There was time for the kids to pause and throw sticks in the still frozen creek, to tromp through the snowier path to school, and to summit the ice mountain that still sits in the parking lot between our path and the doors to school. (see photo at the top of the post!)

-A quiet office before the rest of my team arrives. I try to get to work half an hour before the rest of the stage managers get in; I love the stillness of the office in the morning and the ability to knock off some tasks without interruption.

-The Husband for helping make a tough situation better. We found out this week that when the 14 year old filled out her high school choice form, she had forgotten to also apply for the high school program that she wanted. (It’s a program that allows high school seniors to take a full year of classes at the community college for free.) So she got assigned to the school, but not to the program. I have to admit that the whole process was kind of confusing; we had thought you filled out the interest for after getting assigned to the high school. We were wrong. There were tears. So many tears. And yelling. And despair. All the stages of grief. This program was the whole reason she wanted to go to the school. Well, the Husband did some digging and it turns out that if she goes to the school counselor in the first week of school, she can still fill out an interest form for the program. So all is not lost. Thank goodness. I’m grateful that the Husband was persistent and called and emailed until he got an answer on the issue.

Looking Forward To:

-Starting rehearsal this week. Ready to dive in.

-Lunar New Year. It’s Tuesday. I have to work in the evening so no big celebration for us (plus it’s Taco Tuesday), but I will wear red and I did buy pineapple cakes, so I’ll bring those to work.

-Just started this audiobook, a memoir of growing up in Derry as one of eleven children being raised by a single father. It’s funny in that stolidly ironic way. On of my favorite bits is that whenever anyone asks O’Reilly’s father how he managed to raise 11 children on his own, he says, “Well, which of them would you have me give back?”

-Also started reading this book – I feel like it’s going to be the perfect read as I wait out the last of the cold winter:

What We Ate:
Monday: Chinese leftovers from Super Bowl Sunday.

Taco Tuesday: Middle school tacos – basically ground beef tacos.

Wednesday: Curry chickpeas with scallion and cilantro. From Milk Street Fast and Slow, their Instant Pot cookbook. Eaten with rice and paratha. We’ve discovered this year paratha from the frozen section of HMart. You cook the paratha on the griddle and it’s magical. Vegan.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and The Hitman’s Bodyguard. This 2017 film with Ryan Reynolds as a protection agent (bodyguard) who is hired to guard a notorious assassin played by Samuel L. Jackson. The movie was hilarious, with Reynolds and Jackson in top notch bantering form. Greatly enjoyed this movie. There is a lot of swearing and shooting in it, though.

Saturday: Dumplings and green beans.

Sunday: We went over to a friends’ house for a casual afternoon gathering, and ate lots of hummus and baba ganouj and fruit and Valentine’s candy. It was a lovely time – the big kids and little kids played together, then the tween/teens put on music and started performing K-Pop dance numbers. At one point, one of our hosts, who is a musician, started playing Part of Your World on the piano and the girls did an improv dance – I think they were all some form of seaweed. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. But all to say, dinner was … undefined. I filled up on snacks so wasn’t hungry when we got home. Of course the little kids were, so I boiled some ravioli and doused it with olive oil and parmesan and that’s what they ate.

I hope you have a sunny week! We have a lot of evening rehearsals this week, so I’m girding my loins for that. But I’m excited to get started with rehearsals.

How/what do you track or record? How do you transition from work to home life in the evenings?

Weekly recap + what we ate: A New York Adventure and FIGS

Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Through New York), I love a stage before a show!

This was my last week “off” before starting a new show. It wasn’t really “off” because I had emails and paperwork to go through and I’ve started thinking about staffing for next season and I had a supertitle gig on Sunday to prep for. But, I was able to work from home and I didn’t have to be in rehearsal so it was nice to have the flexibility. The kids were home Monday (no snow but the school district deemed the sidewalks and roads not sufficiently ploughed/shoveled for kids to make it to school safely), and then a delayed start Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday, however, it was business as usual. The school year has been extended by one day and there is a no-school day in March that will now be a school day, but there is something like five days of school that need to be made up, so I’m curious where the other days will come from.

The highlight of the week was going to New York to see a musical with the 14 year old. It was Broadway Week so you can get 2 for 1 ticket deals. last year we had gone go see Hadestown during Broadway week and it was such a fun adventure that I decided to go again this year. This year I just took the 14 year old, as a birthday present, pulling her out of school on a Wednesday for a mid-week escape.

We took the 8:10am train up, arriving in New York at 11:30am. The trip up was pretty smooth- I got some work done and had to take a meeting on the train. The best thing on the train was this group of senior women who were clearly on some kind of group trip. They settled into seats next to us and the proceeded to bring out the most lavish buffet I’d ever seen on a train – breakfast sandwiches (“bacon or sausage?” they asked each other), strawberries, grapes, homemade muffins. All on these eaten off delicate gold trimmed plates. They were most certainly living their best lives. I don’t know why they were going to New York or even if that was their final destination, but they were having such a good time.

Upon arriving in New York, our first stop was to get bagels from Best Bagels, four blocks from Penn Station. The bagels there are huge and fluffy, crispy on the outside and soft and chewy inside. I got a jalapeno everything bagel with bacon and scallion cream cheese and the 14 year old got an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese. We took our bagels to Bryant park and ate at the tables there. I was worried it would be too snowy to eat outside – the city was still ankle deep in snow in places and all over you could see work crews clearing the snow – but the tables and chairs in Bryant Park were clear and even though it was chilly, the sun was out and the day was cheery. (I took a lot of food pictures on this trip; when I first asked the 14 year old what she wanted to do besides see the show, she said she wanted to eat lots of tasty food. We certainly did our best.)

After we finished our bagels we went to Katagiri, a Japanese grocery store that had onigiri. Onigiri (Japanese rice balls wrapped in seaweed, often with meat or veggies stuffed inside) is one of the the 14 year old’s favorite food. We’ve always had them from grab and go places like 7-11 in Taiwan or from the boba tea shop or H-Mart. The onigiri at Katagiri made those pale in comparison. First of all they had so many different kinds – salmon, spicy tuna, veggie, eel…, a whole display case full. And they were huge – almost the size of my fist – and the rice was fluffy yet still sticky enough for the onigiri not to fall apart. I got a ume plum one and a shiso one and the 14 year old got a salmon one. They were so tasty and still a little warm.

We munched on the onigiri as we made our way to our next destination- Kinokuniya, the Japanese Manga/Book/Stationary store. We had visited here last year and I love popping in to see what they had. I didn’t end up buying anything, but it’s always fun to browse.

We left spent about twenty minutes in Kinokuniya before walking over to the theatre. Our seats at the theatre were next to a a bunch of theatre buffs. Next to us was a gay couple, one of whom had seen Wicked ten times. In front of us was two ladies in their thirties who had come from Buffalo and Florida for Broadway week. I loved listening to them talk and gossip about shows they’ve seen and Broadway stars.

We had seats in the second row of the balcony. Broadway theatres are smaller than the theatres where we see opera, so even though we sat in the balcony, I still felt like I was very close to everything. I will say, though, next time I might try sitting at a lower level, even if it’s farther back. I found with this show, the actors tended to direct their energy out in front of them, so I felt like I was watching much of the action from above rather than directly in the line of it. It’s not a big difference, but I’m curious how a show would feel from a different angle.

The show itself was wonderful. It’s a two person show, about a British guy and an New Yorker. His dad is marrying her sister and the whole situation is messy and complicated. The show was funny and sweet and moving – the best kind of rom com. The two performers brought so much energy and brilliance and heart to their performances. It must be a lot of pressure to have a two person show – so exposed, you know. I loved, though, how, even though it was just the two of them onstage, they made me believe that their world was full of so many other people.

The guy next to us said, “Someone wrote this. They put it on stage, and now it’s on Broadway. How amazing is that?” Amazing indeed.

After the show, we walked back to the train station. On the way, we picked up some Chinese food for dinner to eat on the train home (noodles and dumplings from The Handpulled Noodle in Hell’s Kitchen) and also got some boba tea as well (from Coco Bubble Tea). We also swung by a bakery to pick up some treats for the rest of the family. I had looked up bakeries near us and found Posh Pop Bake Shop, which had some beautiful desserts. I didn’t realize until later that it was a gluten free bakery. We came home with some apple cider donuts, a salted caramel brownie, and a birthday cake cookie.

I’m loving these little day trips into New York. To be honest, I find New York overwhelming – the people and the rush and all the things for sale, all the options for things to do, to see, to eat. Just walking down the street is an adventure filled with so many characters and stories. One of my favorite moments was in the evening as we were walking back to the train station. We heard a phone ring, I patted my phone, but it wasn’t mine. It was the guy next to me, slick looking guy in a business suit and long wool coat.

“Yeah,” he says impatiently into the phone. “I’m on my way. I’m nearly there. Look I’m on Seventh already.”

We were on Eighth.

Not that I’ve never fudged my location when running late….

Dusk in NYC. Something about all the tall buildings make the view of sky very precious. Golden, almost literally.

Anyhow, it was all in all a nice day. Next time I might opt for an earlier morning train. The 8:10am train was easy to get to, but also it didn’t quite leave us enough time to explore before the show. I had chosen the 8:10am train because it was $38 for that leg and the 7am train was $60. But I think the extra money is worth it to have more time at the beginning of the day. I’m hoping to make a Broadway Week trip to NYC an annual thing I do with one (or more) of the kids.

Grateful For: For the Month of February, Elisabeth is gathering people’s gratitudes for her gratitude collective, FIGS. I already regularly write a gratitude list in my weekly posts, but this month, I’m going to make an effort to write at least seven per week, though I’ve found that some days when I’m writing them out, I have so many more than one each day. Anyhow – some FIGS for this week that was:

-One more snow day. Yes, everyone was starting to get a little feral after ten days at home, but I was actually glad to have one more day cozy with the kids. We shoveled some snow, built up our snow fort, met the Husband for lunch, got boba, went to the library (got the 9 year old his own library card!), went to the park and slid down icy slopes on our butts (because I didn’t think to bring the sleds.). I work so many weekends, that I don’t often get an obligation-free day home with the kids, so the snow day felt like a gift of time with them.

She wanted the snow fort to be taller than she was when kneeling. Unfortunately I didn’t do a good job with the construction and on the next slightly warm day, the snow melted enough for the walls to fall in.

-A warm house after a cold walk.

– getting to go to New York with the 14 year old. I had such a good time, and I do genuinely like hanging out with my kid.

-Google for when I don’t know what I’m doing in PowerPoint, and people who provide tutorials to tell me how to do it. I use PowerPoint to my my supertitle slides, but I’ve never really learned it. Mostly just noodled around until it did what I wanted it to do. But for those times when noodling doesn’t work, I’m grateful that I can put what I’m trying to do and 90% of the time I will find a step by step tutorial that teaches me how to do it.

– Laughter. There was an article in the New York Times this week, The Evolutionary Brilliance of the Baby Giggle, that talked about the social importance of laughing. It’s an interesting read, but really what got me was the various videos in the article of babies laughing. I dare you to click over and not at least smile at the pure baby joy.
Laughter feels so good. I don’t often realize that I haven’t had a good belly laugh recently, until I do. One thing that made me belly laugh was last week – the 14 year old has a Bark Phone, through which we can set parental controls and also Bark will flag content that it thinks we should be aware of. Well, the latest thing is that Bark now give us a summary (clearly AI generated ) of the 14 year old. The Husband read it to me and we were rolling on the floor laughing. Apparently Bark knows our kid is well rounded because she spends equal amounts of time on Webtoons, listening to music, and on Libby. The kicker, though was when it told us that her most frequent contact was John Smith (not the real name!). “John Smith is often included in communication with ‘Mom’,” Bark relayed, “indicating that [14 year old] is open with her communication.”
Friends, “John Smith” is the Husband.
We howled with laughter, thinking about how Bark seemed to be hinting that John Smith was some nefarious stranger.

-Friends who help celebrate the Husband’s milestone birthday on Superbowl Sunday. I’m not the best at planning parties, so I’m glad that people come over and make it about the company and not the party. A few die hards did stay until the end of the game, including one friend from Boston who was holding out hope for the Patriots. We actually set up a second tv in another room to play the Olympics in case any of our friends weren’t into the Superbowl. I drifted between rooms, but I did watch the half time show. I wasn’t very familiar with Bad Bunny, and wow. It was unlike any half time show I’ve ever seen before – there was such specificity to the whole act, and it was full of people looking like they were having a great time. I kind of loved it.

-That dark chocolate quinoa crisps are back at Costco!

– All the people who make middle school sports possible. I got to catch the first half of the 14 year old’s basketball game this week, and I’m just so grateful for the Coach (who is the school nurse), and the people who put in time to ref the games, and our middle school sports coordinator. At a time when playing sports can be so expensive, I’m really grateful that through the schools there is a no/low cost way for kids to play sports.

-All the people out there who are steadily chipping away at the snowcrete, clearing sidewalks and cutaways that are thick with ice, even a week after the snow.

Looking Forward To:
-Contra Dancing this week. We’re going to try to go to the Thursday night contra dance.

-Familiar colleagues coming into town for my next show. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again.

-Pomelo! We went to HMart and picked up some fruit – they had pomelos for Lunar New Year, so we bought one. They also had mangosteen, which we had in Malaysia last winter. It’s of course not as fresh as in Malaysia, but it’s still tasty. Also … I didn’t really look at the price when I put it in the cart, and ended up spending $37 dollars on 2.5 lbs of mangosteen. Ooops. Sorry/not sorry. I kind of look on it as an indulgence – some people buy fancy clothes and cars. I buy fruit.

-A water heater/boiler! Not the HVAC kind; the making tea kind. We ordered a Zojurishi Hot water boiler to replace our kettle. It seems awfully fancy, but I’m excited. I’m most looking forward to not being late out the door because I’m waiting for hot water to fill my tea mug.

-Continuing to read the Washington Post. The news about the layoffs at the Post this week was devastating especially since I consider the Post my hometown newspaper. In addition to our online subscription, we get the Sunday paper delivered to our door every week- there is something I love about the newspaper appearing on our driveway, the kids immediately pulling out the comics while I look at the arts section, and then leafing through to the Metro, Travel, Book and Front page. As terrible as it feels to “support” Bezos and whatever he is doing to American journalism, it is inconceivable not to support the journalists. I felt very similar when people told me they were not coming to the opera anymore because the institution where we performed was being taken over and going in a direction they didn’t agree with. Look, I’m not going to tell people where to spend their money, but to me the art isn’t about the building it’s in, it’s about the stories that we can tell, the ways we connect and the work that is being done, day after day by the people who believe in the medium. So just as I hope people will continue to come to the opera and go to the Symphony (what another terrible blow there was this week for the Symphony), I will continue to read the Post and look forward to it appearing on my driveway every Sunday.

What We Ate:
Monday: Ethiopian food. I made misir watt and yellow lentils and then fried up some potatoes to go with since not all the kids like injera. (The injera I bought from the store). The yellow lentils were a little soupy when I first opened up the Instant Pot, but they thickened over time. Vegan.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos

Wednesday: This was our New York adventure day. The Husband took the two younger kids out for Korean fried chicken while the 14 year old and I were away.

Thursday: Golden Potato Leek Soup from NY Times Cooking and biscuits. I had some potatoes to use up. I added corn and peas to the soup, to give it a little more variety. I also threw in the leftover yellow lentils from Monday to give it a bit of protein. Two family members loved this soup, two family members said it had too much stuff in it.

Friday: Pizza (The Husband made)+ Central Intelligence – a 2016 funny buddy caper/action movie starring Kevin Hart and the Rock. It was pretty funny and the performances were fun, though the plot was confusing. Afterwards we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Saturday: Tortellini with red sauce and leftover salad.

Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday. Also a big milestone birthday for the Husband. We ordered Chinese food from his favorite take out place, pretzels, cake. And lots of other snacks and sweets.

On that – can I say some random thoughts on the Opening Ceremonies –
-I missed the first ten minutes and was super confused by the Opening Ceremonies taking place in three different locations. It took me a while to realize that those weren’t just different sets that people were parading through, but actually different parts of Italy.
-I want to vacation in a small Italian city now. I mean, yeah, there is clearly part of the Olympics that is one big travel ad for the country hosting. And tell you what – it works on me.
-Can we talk about the opening ceremony country looks? How cozy were some of the team sweaters? I’m looking at you Norway and Ireland. Also those thick scarves worn by Great Britain – I want one. I also wondered if people wear their outfits after the Olympics. I certainly would. The Canadian puffer vests looked very impractical but such a fun statement. (though maybe not impractical – I read that they can also be used as pillows!) Oh and the French contingent all looked like they were on Hoth.
-I was VERY annoyed when Guinea-Bissou and Haiti was marching and NBC split the screen over to talk to the American athletes waiting to march. I mean Haiti had TWO athletes and Guinea-Bissou had ONE. The network couldn’t give them our full attention?
-How fun was all the choreography? All I could think about was, “How do you even rehearse something that big???” I loved how it was clearly designed to be impactful from far away – what looks on the camera to be chaotic mass of swirling people, when seen from a gazillion steps back, is a beautiful purposeful swirl of color. Also – shout out to the few times you saw the crew pop out to move things. I always get excited when I see stagehands.
-The nine year old is participating in his school Geobowl. The theme this year is Europe and the opening ceremonies was a fun chance to get him to start thinking about all the different countries. When a European country marched, I would point it out on the map and tell him the capital. It’s okay to stay up til 11am if it’s educational, right?
-The Olympic flame coming through and lighting the cauldron. Made me tear up. Thinking about journey and history and past becoming present…. gets me every single time.

Well that’s the news from this end. The snow continues to blanket our world here, but I hear sunshine and warmer weather is around the corner.

What makes you laugh? Did you watch any Olympics? The Super Bowl?