Recap and Menu – Page 10 – Life Off Headset

Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer delights

Summer morning walk in the woods. So hot, but not bad in the shade.

I just spent an hour and a half ordering backpacks for the two bigger kids, which clearly is the start of fall/ end of summer. I also threw in a couple of matching skorts for the ten year old and the baby because I was pretty close to free shipping and the two girls love to wear matching clothes and I think it’s super cute when they do. Of course ordering a couple back packs should not take 90 minutes, but when you have kids hanging out with you giving opinions and generally wrecking havoc and unloading shelves, it always takes more time than one would think.

And so onward to the last month of summer. The five year old had his last day of pre-school last week (sob!), and still he has been asking, “Is today a go to school day?”

“No,” I tell him. “Remember, you don’t have to go to school again until you start kindergarten at the end of the month.” And my heart constricts a little because how is it possible that my little guy is old enough to start school somewhere where I don’t get to walk him to the door and sign him in everyday, where he doesn’t get to nap and where he’ll be expected to go to the bathroom on his own? So many things that I wonder if he is ready for it… but no way better to be ready than to actually do it, I guess. In my head he seems so much smaller than the ten year old was when she started kindergarten, but I think he will always be smaller than her in my mind.

We are still on the fence as to where he should go to kindergarten. Our school district offers several immersion programs, the spots available via a lottery system in K and 1st. The five year old was offered a spot in the French Immersion program, so we are now trying to decide whether to send him there or to send him to our home school, where the ten year old will be come fall. (The ten year old was also in a Mandarin immersion program for several years, but this past year we realized it wasn’t the best fit for her, so she is returning to our home school for one last year before middle school. The five year old was offered a place in the Mandarin immersion but we couldn’t see sending him to a program that we just pulled our oldest child out of.)

It is truly a situation where the choice is hard because there are no bad choices, I don’t think. We have friends in the French Immersion and friends at our home school and both schools are equally beloved. When we first had the choice, I thought we would take our time to decide, thinking that a little bit of time might help us sort through the choices. But… it has been almost two months and, really, giving ourselves more time to choose is just… giving us more time to choose. Neither school has emerged as the clear choice. I think, that perhaps, as in many things, there is never a best choice, there is just a choice, and how we move forward from that.

Anyhow – it’s been a couple weeks of slight shifts and transitions. The five year old had his last days of preschool/daycare and will be home doing “Mommy Camp” until school starts at the end of August. The ten year old finished up county camp. She has one week of basketball camp and then will also be joining “Mommy Camp”.

Swim Team has also finished up – I am so proud of how the ten year old did this season. The last race of the season, Divisionals, she was only slated to swim one race (25m backstroke), but at the last minute someone got sick so she also swam the first leg of the freestyle relay. At the end of season party, the ten year old received one of the Coaches’ Choice Awards. It’s the award for the swimmers who aren’t necessarily the fastest, but who have great team spirit and a positive attitude and show up and work hard. In truth, these qualities are the main reason why I encourage her to do activities and it was so exciting to see her get recognized for being such a great person. I’m a little sad swim team is over for the summer – as much work as it was to get the kids to the pool five days a week, it was really fun to watch the kids swim and work so hard to get better and the every-day-at-the-pool routine was nice to have.

We had a camping trip, and prepping for that occupied much of my brain, if not my time. (More camping recaps to come.)

So that’s what’s been on my mind lately. But some of the fun things we’ve done the past few weeks:

One day the ten year old’s camp was closed because it was Election Day and her camp location was a polling center. So I took the ten year old and the baby to ClimbZone, an indoor climbing center where instead of the typical climbing walls one would find in a climbing gym, the climbing structures are in all sorts of fun shapes and structures – like bookshelves, Mount Rushmore, enormous blocks, the Empire State Building… It was a great way to spend a hot afternoon. The baby is already asking to go back.

We had dinner one night with some friends, and as we were sitting chatting at the dinner table, I noticed some of those acrylic press on nails. On a whim, I put one sparkly gold nail on my middle finger, and then found that I couldn’t get it off. So I went through the next couple of days with this whimsical bit of sparkle on my finger, and it made me laugh at how ridiculous it was… everything feels so much more glamourous with a shiny gold nail…. driving carpool, pushing kids on the playground, walking the dog….

Life is so much glamourous with sparkly gold nails. Or a single sparkly gold nail.

We went to another concert on the lawn at our local concert hall. I think one of my favorite things, aside from the music – Charm City Junction, a roots/bluegrass band – is that the location is perfect for soaking up golden sun set rays. The music was a lot of fun, and at one point, one of the musicians pulled out a gourd banjo and I was fascinated. Also particularly fun this time is that we struck up a conversation with the people sitting behind us and turns out they are contra-dancers. Since the Husband and I met while contra-dancing, we fell into a lovely friendly conversation with these strangers about the dance community. Then they pointed to a bunch of people in front of us: “Those folks are contra-dancers too.” And it turns out they were friends of the Husband from the days when he was a hardcore contra-dancer. Talking to the couple, made me realize how much fun we used to have contra-dancing and what a big part of our lives it used to be. I don’t know that we are quite ready to go back dancing with the current state of the COVID world, but hopefully some day.

The Husband took a day off work and we went to the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibit by photographer Robert Adams. I was unfamiliar with him and his work, and I really liked seeing a large number of his photographs in one place so I could see the scope of what he did. Some of the things that stood out to me in the exhibit:

This Adams’ quote about silence. One often thinks of silence as an auditory thing, but Adams strove to capture silence in his pictures – both the silence of beauty and promise and the silence of destruction.

*East from Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder County, Colorado*

This photograph. When I first saw it, I thought it was a picture of a lake or the ocean seen from a mountain top. When I read the placard, I discovered that it was actually the suburban sprawl of Boulder beyond those trees. How strikingly similar they look. I spent ten years working in Colorado and many of Adams’ pictures reminded me of my time there – how bright it was, and how stark. Also, seeing the pictures during a heat wave, many of his photographs seemed to radiate heat, with their bareness and light, even though they were taken in the winter.

*Concrete and Ice, Missouri River, Clay County South Dakota*

This photo which juxtaposes the concrete blocks with the similarly solid ice. It was in pictures like this where I could really see what he meant by photographing silence.

Then no visit to the National Gallery of Art is complete without visiting the big blue rooster on the roof, and the Calder room next to the roof entrance:

I always feel so lucky that we live a short Metro ride from so many great museums. We can have a half day trip to see an exhibit and not feel like we need to see everything since it is easy enough to come back. I find that with museums, I much prefer this easier, more reflective pace.

I thought this interesting:

It’s a picture of the back of the building where I work. I’ve never actually seen it from this view before because there was another building that buts up pretty close to it, and the front of the building looks rather like the right side seen in the picture – very utilitarian and square. But they are doing some construction and have torn the building behind us down and the other day when I walked by, I was struck by how I’ve worked in this building for almost twenty years and never realized what lovely period architectural details the building had. There is something so delightfully surprising about seeing these details revealed. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something…. not sure what. I’m going to have to store this moment in my mental “metaphors to be used” file.

And one oops – The two older kids got their COVID booster shots, and I thought I’d save time and drop off the school medical forms for the baby as well. I handed the forms to the receptionist and she looks us up. “We can’t fill out these forms because she’s not up to date on her well visits,” I’m told. Wait what?!? Turns out I completely forgot to schedule the baby for her 2.5 year well child visit. Which should have happened five months ago. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I really felt foolish. Oops. So the appointment was scheduled for the following week, which would put her 2.5 year visit about a month before her 3 year old well visit. Not catastrophic by any means, but between this and double booking the ten year old for camp, I feel like I’m losing track of threads. In a lot of ways, life is a lot easier when I’m working and someone hands me a schedule everyday with where I need to be and what I’m supposed to be doing.

What We Ate:

Saturday- dumplings and green beans

Sunday- hotdogs and corn on the grill. Bundled up and taken to be eaten at the pool.

Monday- Smashed Zucchini with chickpeas and peanuts, New York Times recipe. I had a bunch of zucchini to use up, and this salad sounded interesting – the zucchini is eaten raw, just salted, almost like cucumber. I think I liked this more than the rest of the family.

Tuesday- BLTs. I over cooked the bacon. I like my bacon still slightly chewy, but the rest of the family likes it crisp.

Wednesday- take out bahn mi sandwiches and lawn concert – Charm City Junction.

Thursday- Chicken tacos from Toco Loco by Jonas Cramby. Love making tacos – if I cook the meat ahead of time, or in the InstantPot, the meal comes together so quickly when I get home – heat tortillas on the grill, make an easy cabbage salad (chop cabbage, two big pinches of salt, juice of one lime or red wine vinegar. Cilantro if I’m feeling fancy.), slice some avocados and put it all on the table. Some pickled onions if I have them. And then a meal that everyone can assemble as they wish. I feel like the ratio of tastiness to work is pretty high.

Friday – sesame noodles from Bad Manners cookbook for swim team potluck. The theme was Pasta dinner, and I was a little self conscious about bringing an Asian style noodle dish, but people still ate it, so I guess it was okay.

Saturday – Dinner at friend’s house – they grilled.

Sunday – Swim Team award’s banquet. Pizza and cake.

Monday – Pizza and Sneakerella, a Cinderella with a twist story. I thought it was a lot of fun, and it was neat to see a Cinderella movie where Cinderella was a boy.

Tuesday – Eggplant noodle salad from the Greens Cookbook.

Wednesday – Zucchini Boats with ground turkey. This recipe from Dad with a Pan is my go to recipe when I have zucchini. It’s so easy to put together and really tasty.

Hope your summer is unfolding with delights and adventures!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer week at home

It’s been a nice chill, but full weekend at home. Saturday it rained all day – we had had a pool party birthday party scheduled but that got moved to Sunday because of the rain. I ended up signing up the ten year old for a basketball clinic at the rec center called “Hoops and Scoops” which involved basketball drills and ice cream. It was run by the local police department and Dick’s Sporting Goods donated basketballs. While the Husband took the ten year old to the clinic, I took the five year old to buy new shoes. Then we went back to the rec center to watched the ten year old play and also browse some books at the Library and Used Bookstore attached to the rec center.

Today there were two birthday parties, one of which was at a pool. The five year old was really excited to check out this pool because it has more features than our pool. In fact, we used to take swim lessons at the pool before the pandemic since it was walking distance from our first house. After a pool filled afternoon, I came home to find the Husband has set up the kiddie pool and the toddler was playing in it – we had a relaxing hour of sitting on the back patio watching the kids splash while reading books and eating pretzels. While I love the riches of activities that summer brings, I also love moments of sitting in the sunshine with a book. (I’m currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and it’s is so devastatingly good. I’m not one to cry over a book but this one has me pretty close to tears.)

The other “must do” item on my weekend to do list was to have the kids clean out the car. We are three weeks into summer vacation, and between camp and swim lessons at one pool and swim team at another and playdates for the toddler, I feel like we are even more busy than during the school year. There has been a lot of time spent shuttling kids around in the car, and the expected detritus accumulating – socks and random articles of clothing from kids changing in moving vehicles so as not to be late for swim practice, wrappers from all the snacks because dinner won’t be for a while, random art projects and books and stuffed animals and the “just in case” rain coats, reusable grocery bags, all the nature things that the toddler insists on bringing home, masks… so many masks, receipts. The mess and clutter was getting to me, so inspired by Kae’s blog post on kids’ chores, I decided that since the kids helped me make the mess, they should help clean out the car. It took probably longer than it should have but really only took about an hour and a half, so it’s nice to have that barometer for myself the next time I feel overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning out the car. And even though we didn’t vacuum the car because the rain made running electricity a bad idea, I did have the kids wipe things down with baby wipes and do the crevices with a q-tip soaked in Dawn and vinegar. I have to say, it’s made getting in the car so much less stressful. I’m sure hedonistic adaptation will mean that the calm that my clean car induces will eventually become a baseline rather than a high, but I’m lgoing to try to remember to lean into it for now.

I think he liked sitting in the front seat!

Other things this week:

– Wednesday’s swim meet got rained out spectacularly. How ironic that at 5:30pm we were commenting about the heat and humidity and by 7:00pm, we were drenched and chilled by a dry cool air. They initially did not call off the meet because it was not thundering, but when it was raining so hard we couldn’t see the bottom of the pool, they held for a little while and a few minutes later we were back at it. The second time the heavens opened up, around 8:30p, though, it was decided that we were done for the evening even though there were three events still to race. Watching the clouds start to gather on the horizon, and seeing the rain streaming from those clouds a couple miles away was mesmerizing to me. The ten year old swam two of her three events, and managed to drop a bunch of time on her freestyle, so I was super happy for her about that. She placed second in that race, which was the highest she’s ever placed.

– This article in the New York Times about how some theatres are making systematic and fundamental changes in order to pay their staff a living wage. It hit particularly close this week as we are in the midst of union negotiations, of which I can’t say anything, even though it has been taking up a big chunk of my time and attention these days. Suffice to say, I love my job and I also understand the staggering attrition rate in my field of late. Also – I’m not on the substack bandwagon but I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in the inner workings of theatre – it’s brilliant combination of gossipy and insightful.

– Saturday, the rain let up enough for me to run – which I haven’t done since I was working and my parents were watching the baby. I only managed to run a half mile and walked the other mile, but it’s something and it felt really good to do it. In the evening, we went for a family evening walk and saw some lovely things:

The picture on the right is a kind of wood ear fungus. I normally get a little squeamish around fungus (more so in the wake of reading Mexican Gothic.), but this fungus practically looked like a flower.

– One day this week, I ran errands around town with the toddler and we missed lunch and it was hot, so I (of course) decided to treat myself to a boba tea. I discovered a new to me boba place that also served onigiri, the Japanese rice balls that are filled with a savory (or sweet, but I prefer savory) filling and wrapped in nori. I was really delighted to see they had onigiri because you don’t see it a lot and my attempts to make it have always failed. It was the perfect pit stop for a mid afternoon re-fuel.

– My other food related discovery this week, came via the tv show Younger, which I binged one night when the toddler would not go to bed except then proceeded to climb on my lap as I sat on the couch and she fell asleep. Younger is one of those shows I watch without the Husband – I love the soapy fluffiness about it and the very earnest people – there are no real villains here. Anyhow in one episode a character is asked the secret to her grilled cheese and she says that she uses mayonnaise instead of butter (which I think is a pretty common adaptation), but then… and here’s the best part… she sprinkles a layer of cheese on top of the mayo so that when the sandwich is put on the griddle, the cheese melts and cooks and creates a crispy cheesy crust on the sandwich. OMG. My mind was blown by the simple brilliance of how to improve a simple grilled cheese sandwich and I had to try it. It is pretty tasty. And really nice to look at too:

toddler lunch. Though I may have eaten some of that sandwich.

– A tool I’ve been constantly using lately – Photo editor:

With the kids in separate camps and swimming at separate times, I often don’t get a chance to talk daily after school logistics with the Husband. So I’ve taken to sending him a photo of important information sometimes. Like this week, I had made a smoothie for the 5 year old to have before swim and it was easier just to snap the picture and use the “Edit” feature to notate the picture so the Husband knows 1) where the swim bag is, and 2) where the 5 year old’s snack is. I’ve also taken pictures of marinating meat in the fridge so that know where to find it when he gets home. Picture worth a thousand words, indeed.

What we Ate:

Saturday: Pasta with red sauce and meatballs.

Sunday: can’t remember? Probably leftovers.

Monday: Fourth of July – grilled: Soy Ginger Salmon, Sausage, Corn, Shrimp, and Eggplant on the grill (to go into this salad), Watermelon and popsicles for dessert

Tuesday: Lemongrass Ginger Tofu and Sesame Edamame Udon noodles. The Husband bought me the latest Bad Manners Cookbook and everything I’ve made out of this vegan cookbook has been pretty good. Except the Zucchini Bundt Cake, but that was because I used waaaay too much squash and it ended up being too moist to bake even though it was in the oven for ninety minutes.

Wednesday: Swim meet – Leftover sausages from Monday.

Thursday: Korean Tacos from Dinner Illustrated. The ten year old calls this Buffalo Tacos because it is made with spicy gochujang.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and Snoopy.

Saturday: Meatball Tortellini Soup made in the InstantPot since the meatballs were still frozen. I kind of just made this up, but it turned out really well – Sautéed diced onions and garlic in the Instant Pot, dump in frozen meatballs and brown them slightly, add the leftovers of a carton of chicken broth, a frozen cube of pesto, a can of low salt diced tomatoes, and then enough water to cover. Pressure cook on high for 7 minutes (actually was longer than that because I forgot to put the silicone ring in…. wump wump.) When finished cooking, quick release pressure, stir in frozen tortellini and pressure cook for 2 minutes on high.

Sunday: Leftovers for dinner. There was an article in the Washington Post recently about Fending for Dinner, and the New Yorker article that inspired the Post, which I thought delightful. I often fend for lunch and we usually do it once a week for dinner, this opening of the fridge and making a meal of the contents. We also call it “cleaning out the fridge dinner.” The New Yorker column had some great names for this kind of meal, one of my favorite being the Quebecoise term touski as in “tout ce qui reste” – all the is left.

Weekly recap + what we ate: tech and Mother’s Day

It’s half way through tech week, and it’s been a particularly hard one. The show is on the large side – there’s ninety performers onstage, a gazillion props and costumes, and, the realities of doing theatre in a world that is very much still in a pandemic, people are constantly in and out on five day isolations or ten day isolations. Precautions are being taken, but … life, you know. I’m feeling constantly like I’m playing catch up, barely getting people onstage in time with the right prop and often in the wrong costume. It will get better and we will have a great show, but everything feels hard right now. As I keep saying when things don’t go right – everyone needs rehearsal. The singers get three weeks to figure out the show and for some reason everyone expects the crew to get it right the first time. But they need a chance to figure things out too and some shows are easier to figure out than others.

It’s my first time back in this particular theatre in over two years. Strange to think about. The crew is mostly familiar, but everyone has a wary air of tiredness, caution, and welcome.

Sunday was Mother’s Day. And a day off. I think if I’d had time to think about it, what I really wanted for Mother’s Day would have been three hours alone to catch up on bills and other computer tasks. And also to deal with the growing mountain that is my “floordrobe”.

Actually it’s more like a “bench-drobe”. Coming home after midnight, when everyone is asleep means that I don’t want to turn on the lights in the bedroom for fear of waking the Husband. So I fumble around in the dark to get into my pjs, shedding that day’s clothes onto the bench at the foot of the bed, and fall into bed. Inevitably it leads to a mountain of clothes, a week’s worth in a pile on the bench , spilling on to the floor. I could pretend that when I am not working til past midnight I carefully and thoughtfully hang up my clothes, or put them in the hamper, but truth… when I’m not working til midnight the pile is still there, but usually only three days worth.

A lot gets said these days about self care, but for me I think a big part of self care is tackling the looming things so I don’t stress about them. There is a passage in the novel Fleishman is in Trouble where the newly divorced main character’s therapist tells him to buy nice curtains for his new apartment, telling him to think of it as an act of self care. And Fleishman remarks that self care isn’t spending his money on new curtains, it’s saving his money so that he can move into a less crappy apartment. I think of this a lot when the question of “self care” comes up. I find that it’s easy to find twenty minutes for yoga or a run or to sit and read a book, but it’s harder to find the energy to tackle the things that really would make life better. Like figuring out summer camp for the ten year old (still not done yet!), squaring away the bills for the rental house. Buying pants.

This last is a big one. I came out of the pandemic without black pants that fit. Which is problematic when a large chunk of my job requires me to move around in the dark wearing black clothes. The last few shows I just pulled out my old maternity pants. Which was fine because I was stage managing so I pretty much stood i once place and my headset was attached to my console. Now that I’m Assistant Stage Managing, I need pants with a firm waistband so I can clip my flashlight and headset belt pack to a belt. Yoga pants do not serve this purpose. Post pandemic stage manager woes.

Anyhow, back to Mother’s Day…despite my desire for some life admin time, it seemed to me, that shutting myself in my room and leaving the Husband on child duty after he’s been solo parenting in the evening for two weeks was not the nice thing to do, Mother’s Day or not. So I said I would be happy getting some tasty food, going on a walk, and not having to think too hard about dinner.

And we did indeed do all that. Everyone let me sleep in until almost ten and there were pancakes waiting when I woke up. Sleeping til ten sounds positively indulgent but when I figured I didn’t get home from rehearsal until 2am the night before, 2:30am- 10am is actually a regular night’s sleep.

There was a card and a gift bag waiting for me. Inside the bag were a bag of almond flour and a package of lychee gummies. My reaction was a combination of “Huh… ooookay” and “They know me so well!” And then there was this priceless card:

I had originally wanted to give the Husband the day off from kid duty, but he insisted since it was Mother’s Day, we should do some family things. So we took the five year old to Sunday language class, then with the other two kids in the car we went for fun drinks and snacks at a new-to-us Cuban place. Empanadas and plantain chips for the win!

When the five year old was done language class, we went for a walk on the trails surrounding one of the local nature centers. We wandered down by the stream and practiced skipping rocks. I managed to skip one three times! I’d never been really good at it, but the Husband gave me some tips and I think I sort of got the hang of it. Then we ordered Indian food for takeout.

After dinner the Ten year old offered to clean up so the Husband and I were going to take some time to discuss all the life things that we hadn’t had a chance to connect about since we hadn’t really hd any waking hours together. But I fell asleep on the couch and that was the end of things for me. I think it was 7:30pm. But, we did check off all the Mother’s Day wishes on my list, so I think I will call that a win.

Some things that made the week better:

A Haiku for this week:

April turns to May.
Spring teeters on summer’s brink.
Rain and sun and green.

Some time during the pandemic, our rehearsal rooms had larger windows put it, and the resulting flood of light is quite wonderful. During evening rehearsals, when we have almost ninety people in the room trying to stage a very busy village square type scene, I can look out the window and take a moment to savor the pink and orange sunset. I snapped this picture the other day of the late afternoon transforming my little corner of the rehearsal hall into some kind of of Dutch still life.

The toddler has started saying, “I love you, mom.” That makes me feel pretty good. She also, an independent soul, has developed her own “ism” where whenever she wants to do something, she says, “I want to do it by my own!”. I love it too much to try to correct her.
Also – irritating, but makes me laugh – the toddler getting ahold of my phone and filling my photo roll like this:

Scheduled a happy hour with the mom’s from my mom’s group. Something to look forward to.
Been baking some pretty good loaves of sourdough bread, using this no-knead recipe. My starter seems to have gotten back on it’s feet, after being somewhat lackluster for much of the spring. This recipe, is pretty hands off and each step fits easily into the windows of time when I’m home.
Overnight camping with some friends. The time outdoors was nice, and even though sleeping in a tent with a toddler is not restful – six o’clock in the morning she wakes me up with yelling, “It’s too bright!!” – there is something peaceful about being surrounded by dew and bird calls first thing in the morning.

Re-discovering the tv show Pushing Daisies – whimsical, romantic, funny and visually stunning, I remember watching this series about a pie maker who can wake the dead when it first came out. The Husband and I have started watching it again, fifteen years after it originally aired. We watch one episode at a time, knowing that there are only two season and wanting to prolong the delight of watching it.
Discovering another lovely tv show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. This show out of Australia and based on a series of books is also great fun and super stylish. Some days when I work late, I tell the Husband to leave the kitchen for me to clean up. Partly I’m being nice, but also partly I want an excuse to watch an episode of this show, which I stream while I do the washing up.
Then of course, my co-workers who make me laugh even when we are literally in horse shit.

What We Ate:

Saturday: I was working, but this was the night the Husband took the kids camping with some friends. I showed up at the campground after work and had a couple sandwiches and ‘smores for dinner. I think everyone else had hot dogs and burgers.

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: The Husband made a tofu stir fry.

Tuesday: Not quite sure what everyone ate. It might have been Thai take-out.

Wednesday: Black Beans, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Eaten with tortillas and pickled onions.

Thursday: Chicken tortilla soup. Also made in the InstantPot. Recipe from America’s Test Kitchen

Friday: Pizza and Hercules. I was at work.

Saturday: I think the family got take out. I ate leftovers at work.

Sunday: Mother’s Day Indian Food take out.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Spring Break

My brother’s family was in town the last week of March for their Spring break. It had been almost two and a half years since we saw them in person- last time they were here, the baby was eight weeks old. Of course there have been many video calls since them, but seeing them in person was pretty great.

I feel so lucky that we live somewhere where there is a wealth of things to see and do, and most of it is free. One thing my brother and sister-in-law really wanted to see was the new Yayoi Kasuma exhibit at the Hirshhorn, the contemporary and modern art museum on the Mall. I had missed the last Kasuma exhibit when it was here, so I was eager to go this time, even though it meant lining up at 9:00am for tickets on a Sunday. Fortunately, my brother and his In-laws went down on the early side to get in line and my sister-in-law, my mom, and I followed with the kids at a more reasonable hour.

I will admit the only work of Kasuma I had been familiar with were pictures of her pumpkins. The current exhibit featured two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, but first up was a pumpkin:

I was unprepared for how the pumpkin took up so much space and how looming it would feel in its dotted room. I also love how the precision of the dots contrast with the more organic curves of the pumpkin.

The Infinity Mirror Rooms were another kind of overwhelming and immersive experience. These are rooms where the walls are made of mirrors so they seem to extend without limits. There was a time limit on how long each museum patron could be in the room – 30 seconds for the first room and 60 for the second. I think there is something ironically claustrophobic about being in a room that seems to stretch for infinity. The first room featured all these stuffed protuberances that came out of the ground like a field of polka dotted cacti. It was kind of whimsical and fun.

The second room featured polka dot lanterns aglow in a dark mirrored room. This room reminded me a little of being out on Hallowe’en, and how disembodied one can feel in the dark, even when surrounded by lighted objects. (I’m sure there’s some kind of metaphor for life in that somewhere…)

After we went through the Kasuma exhibit, we also went to see the Laurie Anderson exhibit. The exhibit was a fascinating blend of sound, film, and visual images. There was one piece that featured projections of people sharpening knives, the sound almost symphonic. There was also several rooms with words and pithy thoughts scrawled, graffiti like, all over the walls and floors. Here were a few of my favorites:

I find the Hirshhorn rather overwhelming to visit, to be honest. In think contemporary art requires a lot of mental bandwidth from me, and a lot of it, while interesting, demands attention unrelentingly. At the Hirshhorn, a lot of the exhibits often have audio as well visual components and sometimes I don’t feel like I have room to process everything. And a lot of the time, I had to admit that I just don’t “get” what I’m seeing, even though I read the little placard next to the work. Sometimes I feel like I’m either overthinking contemporary art, or under thinking it. And honestly sometimes it just makes me giggle. I’m glad I live near and can visit in short bursts and take things in one exhibit at a time.

At the time of my brother’s visit, most of the museums were still open on reduced hours, so we spent one day walking around and visiting monuments since we couldn’t go to any museums. We saw the MLK memorial and the FDR memorial, those being two of the closest to the cherry blossom in the tidal basin. Of course it wasn’t officially peak bloom anymore, but there was still lots of blossoms to be seen. And lots of petals to rain down on our heads like snow.

Among all that, I had one last supertitle gig for this season, and perhaps my favorite of all the vocal recitals I worked this year. The pianist for the recital was also a composer and the second half of the program was entirely songs cycles that he had written. He introduced each song set and there was something wonderfully personal about a hearing a composer talk about the backstory of their own work.

Another fascinating thing that happened that week – I took my mom to the Mall to find an outfit for a meeting she had coming up. As we were walking to Macy’s, we saw a good wandering around the parking lot.

“Strange!” I thought. But I’d seen a lot of geese flying overhead recently so I didn’t really think much of it, though I have to admit that seeing a goose wandering in the Macy’s parking lot has a certain charm, so long as one stays out of the goose’s way. Then, as I was walking up to the door, I saw:

Why yes, that is a goose and two eggs in the planter in front of Macy’s. In my head I have a story (much like when my middle child was born) of a goose couple starting to fly off on a journey when suddenly the mama goose says, “We need to pull over now! The eggs are coming!” And she lays two eggs in the middle of a parking lot. (I, fortunately did make it to the hospital with my middle child…). Anyway, given that there were clearly two geese guarding the precious eggs, we figured it was better if we just went our merry way into Macy’s and let the geese have some family privacy. Or as much as one can have in the middle of a parking lot.

What we ate: we actually ate out more than usual because cooking dinner for twelve people seemed overwhelming.

Saturday: take out thai, picked up on our way home from the airport.

Sunday: We had dinner at a new to us restaurant with lots of outdoor seating and firepits. Though the evening was on the chilly side, the restaurant staff brought us blankets and lots of extra firewood for the firepit. Of course half our blankets were immediately commandeered by the kids to build blanket forts…. The food was pretty good and they had these fun smores kits for dessert. The fun thing about their s’mores is that in addition to the typical Hersheys chocolates they also had York Peppermint Patties and thin Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Such a brilliant idea!

Monday: ordered Vietnamese food. We needed something quick because we were having family photos taken.

Tuesday: Terriyaki Tofu and grilled Korean Beef and grilled veggies. With rice and seaweed salad on the side.

Wednesday: I had to work so I got a take out grain bowl from Beefsteak.

Thursday: Japanese take out.

Friday: Pizza and movie night at our Tennessee AirBnB (more on that next post…). Pizza Hut, which was better than I had remembered, though they were out of mushrooms, which I have never encountered before.

Weekly recap + what we ate: listless

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

The weekend kicked off with… snow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Sunday leftovers.

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly recap + what we ate: Opening Night!

The show is open! Not without it’s share of excitement, of course. On our final dress rehearsal – the one with an audience – one of the singers called out sick and so the Assistant Director walked the role onstage while another singer sang the part from a music stand at the side of the stage. It’s not an uncommon practice when a singer goes down at the last minute during a final dress rehearsal, but it does necessitate a flurry of emails and phone calls. Oh well, as I kept reminding folks, better it happened at final dress than on opening night!

A shot of my book at the tech tables during an afternoon lighting session:

I go through a lot of Post-its and removable stickers while getting a show up. Everything I stick in my book is color coded. Like above – the orange post-its are my “Standby” cues where I warn departments of upcoming moves. In this case, those are descriptions for the follow spot operators, light cues and projection cues. The standard post-it yellow is usually notes about what is happening on stage – I don’t have to “call” it, but I need to know that it is happening. The yellow is just soft enough that I can ignore it. And then, at the very edge of the page are green stickers. And like at a traffic light, green means “Go” – that is when the move happens. In this case it’s a lighting cue, a Rail Q , and a projection cue all at the same time.

My supervisor sent me an encouraging text before a big rehearsal, expressing confidence in me, then gave me one piece of feedback. “… you may consider adding a few pleases and than you to your pages and announcements.” It was a great piece of feedback because I realized that while “Thank you” is pretty easy for me to remember, “Please” is harder for some reason. Yet if I think about it, I spend most of my job asking people to do things for the production. From sending notes to different departments, i.e. costume note: “Can singer X have a pocket in his jacket for a coin purse?” to actually calling the cues – “Standby Light Cue 35 and Rail Cue 2”. Basically my job consists of me being kind of demanding of people’s time, talents, and attention. So yeah, “Please” should be a bigger part of my everyday vocabulary, an indication of respect for said time, talents, and attention.

So I wrote myself a reminder in the notebook that I keep open next to me whenever I’m working:

(You can also see some of the other random notes I scribble – mostly times for breaks and when people are released from rehearsal – as well as some discarded stickies from cues that I got to take out of my book).

Anyhow, this is what my timelog/tracker looks like most weeks:

This is what it looked like last week:

Clearly I didn’t make time to journal or log last week. The Husband says I should just scrawl “OPERA TECH WEEK!!” across the whole spread.

Thinking back, I was only at work a little over 40 hours last week, but many of those days I was there until midnight so I found myself prioritized sleep and family time and rest last week.

Things that worked well this past tech week:
– packing healthy lunches and not having to eat out.
– related to above – packing dinner from freezer meals – some of what I pulled out of the freezer was well over a year old, maybe even two. Or more. (We still have wedding cake in our freezer and we were married in 2009… not sure what we are saving that for!) Double win of not having to spend money to go out to eat and also eating down the freezer.
– managed to spend 20 minutes of my 1 hour dinner break on a run a couple times a this week.
– sleeping as soon as I got home. I have a terrible habit during tech week of coming home and being too amped up to go to sleep right away. And then also being hungry – so I usually stay up late eating junk food. This time I made a conscious effort to go to bed as soon as I got home, letting the hunger lie until the morning. I did eat half a container of kimchi one night, but then I went straight to bed. The kids are early risers and the Husband goes to work at 6:45am, so I kind of feel like I need to be up by then, and staying up til 2am does not help help me be up by 6:45a. As lovely as it is when the ten year old decides to get the younger kids dressed and fed, I don’t really want it to be her responsibility. (I worry about her falling victim to “Oldest Daughter” syndrome.)

Things that didn’t go well:
– having patience with my kids and family when I barely get to see them.
– Keeping up with non-work items – most notably I still have to get my taxes prepared.
– Being able to focus and be productive when not at work.
– Finding time to take the kids so the Husband can get some alone time.
– the aforementioned bingeing on kimchi late at night, when really I should have just gone to bed.

I don’t think any of the above is insurmountable, but I think/ hope I can have better systems in place the next time I have a tech week so that these stress points can be less … stressful.

BUT…. Spring is coming!

I saw my first cherry tree in bloom while driving to work! I was at a stop light, so I took a quick picture. I think we are about week out from peak bloom here in the DC area, but given how bare all the other trees still look, I was caught entirely by surprise by this tree.

Later in the week, the ten year old had half day of school, so I picked her up from school and we stopped for Blizzards at Dairy Queen (Heath Bar for me, Oreo for her) then found a park to sit and enjoy our frozen treat. Surely a blizzard and a blooming cherry tree are harbingers of warmer weather!

One day, I didn’t have to be at the theatre til the afternoon, so I met up with my friend from college for a walk. We saw these purple flowers:

And someone writing whimsy on the path:

The witch hazel in the front yard has burst into yellow blooms… a very tangible manifestation of sunlight. When I walk by the bush on my way to the front door, there is the sweet spicy smell that lingers heavily. The smell of witch hazel and hyacinths mixed together definitely says spring. Here is the easterly sun streaming through the witch hazel in the morning:

And in the westerly sun in the evening:

Other exciting happenings:

While I was at work one evening, this tree branch finally decided to break away from the tree in our front yard. I usually park under that tree, so it was lucky I wasn’t home. Although truth be told, the tree had been not well for ages so parking under it probably wasn’t terribly prudent. We’re waiting for the County to come haul the debris away. But in the mean time, I couldn’t help but to admire the intricate frills and pale green beauty of the lichen and moss growing on the dead branch. Or maybe it’s fungus? Not sure.

One of the two nights I was home was a basketball practice night. After dinner, the Husband took the ten year old to basketball and I stayed home with the two little kids. I asked them what they wanted to do, and they said, “Play in the toy room!” So I brought my book and sat and read while they built things with their Magnaformers. It was such an ordinarily quiet half hour, and I was really content. I mean it was probably an extraordinarily quiet half hour, since they don’t usually play so quietly and independently. But maybe we are turning a corner…?

What We Ate:

Saturday: Dumplings and Hamilton. As reluctant as I was to subscribe to Disney+, I was very excited to finally finally be able to watch Hamilton. We’ve been listening to the soundtrack constantly for a year now (I know… we were late to the party!) Sometimes I find watching stage performances on the screen a little frustrating because inevitably I feel like I’m missing out on something when the camera often only shows part of the stage pictures, and I did feel that intermittently. But even so, there were still lots of really fun, innovative, and beautiful staging moments. At the same time, I think it’s really a testament to the Lin Manuel Miranda’s work and to how well produced the cast recording was that I didn’t feel like seeing the filmed stage version added a whole lot to the piece. Anyhow, the four year old, who can quote large chunks of it – his response: “A little good a little bad.”
“What was bad?” I asked
“You didn’t tell me that people died!”
I was a little flabbergasted at that one. I mean this is the little boy who prays every night for “God please bless Hamilton’s son Philip.” So surely he realized that people died. Oops.

Sunday: Leftovers. I scrounged a plate together of odds and end: tofu with furikake seasoning, kimchi, and a leftover rice rolled up in Nori with cucumbers and ume plum paste.

Monday: Not quite sure… I think the Husband made some kind of stir fry. I worked and packed leftovers

Tuesday: Chicken Tacos. The five year old declared that he wanted Taco Tuesday, so Husband make chicken in the crock pot the night before.

Wednesday: Brussel Sprouts Nasi Goreng – essentially fried rice with Brussel Sprouts.

Thursday: the Husband made Breakfast Sandwiches. I worked in the evening, so packed leftovers.

Friday: Pizza and Luca. Charming movie. Something about movies that are centered on friendship really make me want to cry…. Or maybe it’s just Pixar movies in general… damn they are so manipualtive!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech Week!

And suddenly we are into March.

Sign of the times:

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

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

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

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

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

Pithy quote of the week –

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

Made me smile:

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

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

Saturday: Take-out Chinese food

Sunday: Leftover from take-out

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly recap + what we ate:

The week started with a holiday weekend, and I was off on Sunday, so I wanted to have some kid specific time. I took the ten year old to brunch at the place of her choosing. She had classic pancakes, eggs and bacon. I had the shrimp and grits. I’m always torn at restaurants whether to order what I know and love or what I would never make at home. I really like the breakfast scramble at this restaurant, but I also would never make shrimp and grits at home. Ordering at restaurants always fills me with indecision, and I have to remind myself that a) I can always come back and get the other thing, and b) it’s just food – whatever I order will be fine. The ten year old also had a chocolate milk shake. And I had a virgin bloody Mary – one of my favorite brunch indulgences. I have a pretty strong and immediate reaction to alcohol so I generally abstain, save for swiping a sip of The Husband’s beer once in a while, but spicy tomato juice garnished with a pickle is my catnip, so I order it without the alcohol.

In the afternoon, since the five year old didn’t have language class due to the holiday weekend, I wanted to take the kids on a hike. Only the two younger ones came, along with my mother. We went down by the C&O Canal and the weather was sunny and (relatively) warm. We didn’t actually get too far on the hike because we discovered a rocky outcropping and the kids spent an hour and a half playing among the rocks. “It’s our secret hideout!” the five year old declared, and indeed there were all these child sized crevices and ledges for them to scamper over. I was a little nervous because the rocky ledge was right over the river, but everyone was careful. While the kids played there, I saw a downy woodpecker and an eastern blue bird flitting in the trees next to our rocky hideout. Between the tap tap tap of the woodpecker and the bright blue and orange of the blue bird, I was mesmerized by these small flying animals. I’ve never been a bird watcher – indeed I only identified these two after the fact with help from my friend google – but I’ve always admired people who can identify birds and plants on sight.

Otherwise I do feel like this week has been work/rehearse/eat/sleep. Aside from the exhausting day mentioned in the last post, we’ve been chugging along. I didn’t do so well in my being human goals – I did go outside for a walk on my lunch/dinner break every day, and I did pack healthy snacks and meals. However, sleep wasn’t great – I stayed up too late one night filling out the passport forms for the kids and never quite got back on track. And still trying to figure out how to leave the office on time. Journaling/planning seems like only gets done twice a week and I’m afraid that I’m forgetting a lot of details in the every day to day, which then makes the week feel like even more of a blur. Next week will be tougher, I’m sure since we move onstage.

moments this week:

This reminder as I filled out the kids’ passport applications:

Good to remember that my children should be fully occupied by being children. Even as I want them to learn to do chores or behave with maturity and common sense (which, I own, I often lack myself).

This sculpture, one of several in a yard that I walked past on my daily meal break walk. (I did manage to get outside almost every day):

And on another walk – this mini camper, one of several, hanging whimsically on a tree…

Spring flowers starting to push themselves up:

Bringing in treats for my co-workers for a special day:

Taking a walk by myself one day after doing school drop off. I had left the baby at home with my mother because she (the baby) was having a difficult morning and would not motivate to get her shoes and coat on. Since alone time is so scarce for me, after I dropped the five year old at school I took a walk by myself down the nearby trail. It had rained the night before so the creek was high and loud. I stood one the banks and soaked in the noisy swirl of water rushing by and the soggy bareness of almost spring.

The school board announcing that any further snow days this year (unlikely at this point) will be distance learning days. I kind of hate the idea. Distance learning was so so so difficult for us and I think there is much joy to to be had in the unexpected nature of a snow day. The alternative would have been to extend the school year, and/or take away some already planned non-instructional days, which they actually have already done- the school year was just extended by two days. I definitely would have preferred further extension of the school year over the switch to distance learning. Oh well, there are certainly many sides to everything.

Of course the week has been terrifying and unbelievable on the world news front. One of our singers is from Moldova and he has been quite grave even as he rehearses with boundless energy and enthusiasm.

Podcast episode of note this week: This episode of On Being with Trabian Shorters. Shorters talks about the concept of asset-framing, where you look at people through the lens of their aspirations and contributions rather than through their challenges and struggles. His work is primarily focused on empowering Black communities, but I thought it’s a pretty powerful idea, and one that should be more obvious and inuitive than it is.

” It is defining people by their aspirations and contributions, before you get to their challenges. So whatever is going on in someone’s life, you don’t ignore it, but you don’t define them by the worst moment or the worst experience or the worst potential; none of that. You have to look past their faults, to see who they really are.”

“So what we want to do — yes. So what we want to do is acknowledge the true person, the true spirit living in someone — the thing that motivates them; what gets them moving. It is not that they are poor. They don’t wake up in the morning inspired by that; their spirit isn’t moved by that. Their spirit isn’t moved by being marginalized, or all that kind of thing. There is something that they aspire to have, to create, to give to someone else. And if you start your relationship with a person by acknowledging what spirit is actually living in front of you, then you’re going to have a different relationship.”

The flip side of asset-framing, what is more common, is deficit-framing where you define people through their challenges. Shorter argues that when you define people primarily as a problem to be solved, it is a lot harder to find long lasting solutions. I thought this a pretty powerful thought regarding how we think about providing resources:

If I can define them [Black people] by their worst threat, greatest inequity, whatever, then I can attract resources. Well, this culture of denigration for dollars means that, yes, you’ll attract the resources, but you do so by writing your population into the public consciousness as inferior, as ineffective, as pathological. All these things are the only ways that people know to know us, because the way that we have been taught to survive is by dramatizing our injustices, which — I think it’s important to point out, the injustices are real. So we’re not saying ignore any of them. We’re saying that is not what defines us. That’s not what defines anyone.

I was thinking this week about this idea of asset framing on a much smaller and lower stakes scale in terms of the people I encounter every day. Sometimes people get labelled as “difficult” or “unreliable” and then they get easily written off. But perhaps if I think of what these “difficult” people are actually bringing to the room or hoping to accomplish, then it helps me find the empathy to connect with them and help them over their challenges.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Family ordered Vietnamese take-out.

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: The Husband made caramel fish. It was really good – I had some for my after rehearsal late night snack.

Tuesday: Black-eye peas and spinach curry, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Husband made rice when he came home. (I took more leftover caramel fish for dinner.)

Wednesday: The Husband made fish with corn and fava beans. (I took the leftover curry from Tuesday for dinner)

Thursday: Asparagus frittata made in the morning before work. Husband made salad and cut up carrots and cucumbers.

Friday: Pizza and Stinky and Dirty. I didn’t make it home for dinner, unfortunately. But I did order my favorite Tempeh Panini from a place near work for dinner. I decided to splurge on take-out after a long hard week. Plus we were out of leftovers for me to pack for dinner.

Weekly recap + what we ate: putting on hard pants

Work clothes. Nary a sweat pant in sight.

The five year old is in a phase where he only wants to wear “soft pants”, meaning sweatpants or fleece pants. Jean, khakis, cords… these are all considered “hard pants” and not as desirable to wear.

This week, we’ve started rehearsal and I’ve put on hard pants again. I can’t remember the last time I wore my jeans. They feel stiff and constricting, pulling me in and making me stand up straighter. But maybe this is what they always felt like and I just can’t remember.

I suppose I’ve also put my metaphorical hard pants on as well, re-learning how to do my job and interact with people. I’ve definitely stumbled a few times and dropped things that used to be second nature to me. (I forgot to introduce the music staff to the singers at the music rehearsals. It’s a nice formality and no one died, but I’ve written a note to myself to remember for next time.) Part of me is so excited to be in rehearsal again, listening to singers and music and doing my part to bring things to stage. And another part of me keeps wondering if I’m getting things right. I mean it’s not the cliched brain surgery, and no one’s life is in my hands, but there are certainly a lot of moving parts and people to manage.

So how did I do on my “maintaining humanity” goals this first week of rehearsal?

Sleep – pretty good. I think I went to bed t 12:30am one night but all other nights I was in bed by midnight. Which is huge for me. Of course, there was the one night that the Husband fell asleep in the five year old’s bed during bedtime books (the man is definitely working above and beyond in the “unpaid labor” department these days). So the five year old decided to sleep in our bed. And some time around 1am, the Husband came to bed and then around 3am the baby also found her way to our bed. So… not a great night for sleep even though I was in bed for a good number of hours.
Outside Time and Exercise: I did manage to go on a 20-30 minute walk on each of my lunch breaks. And I did wake up early enough to do a 20 minute yoga podcast, though one time it was interrupted by the kids so it was more like 15 minutes.
Plan/Journal/Read – not exactly daily habit, but managed to do this three times this week. I almost forgot about the five year old’s appointment for his second COVID shot – we were about to walk to school when I remembered. Oops.
Meal Plan/ Healthy snacks – Well, it was Valentines Day week, so there was an explosion of chocolate in the office, which I didn’t even try to resist. One colleague brought in these dark chocolate Reese Peanut Cup thins, which were really really good. But I also managed to bring in healthy snacks – fruit, veggies, and string cheese. As for meal planning, the Husband and I split dinners and it turned out pretty well balanced eating week. The InstantPot was definitely the week’s dinner MVP.
Water – did better on this than last week!
Communication – Not great this week. I had to work later than I had anticipated most nights, so I missed dinner more than I had planned and wasn’t great about keeping the Husband updated as to when I would be home. It’s definitely a work in progress. Will continue to try to be better about this.

Some good moments:

The five year old did indeed get his second COVID vaccine shot! Hooray! I also managed to get a parking ticket while at the pediatrician’s office because the appointment went long and I am the Luddite who still actually uses coins in meters as opposed to pays with the app. So funny story, though, is that there were two tickets on my car when I returned, and as I went to read them, a wind came and blew the one ticket away – just snatched it and carried it off, leaving me holding the yellow envelope. I had visions of never being able to pay the ticket and the fee just building and building… I called the Husband in a panic and he said, “Just call the number on the envelope!” Which of course was the solution. Turns out my tags were expired. Like by a year. January 2021. Cue more panic and bemoaning the difficulties of adulting.

Okay, turns out I hadn’t forgotten to renew the registration. I had just forgotten to put the sticker on my plate. I got home later and dug through the mail bin and found the registration and sticker. This sticker has been sitting in the mail bin for. a. year. Yeah… major adulting fail. Expensive adulting fail. But hey, at least the COVID shot was free.

-One of the great joys about going on a walk on my lunch break is that I work in a really fun a quirky neighborhood. Some highlights this week:

A random swing on an urban tree next to a parking lot. One day I sat on the swing and ate my lunch. The sky was so blue and it was thirty degrees outside. There was something really soothing about lunch on a swing on a winter’s afternoon.

This cheerful, colourful house – bright yellow against the blue sky.

One windy windy day as I walked by a music store, I heard music. I looked up and there were windchimes buffeted in the gales, making music. I stopped to listen and savour, even as the same chilling wind that made music with the windchimes bit into my skin.

– One night (actually the aforementioned night of EVERYONE in our bed), I realized that the book I was reading (Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle – a very very good read), was due the next day, and since it was a Libby ebook, I couldn’t renew it. To add to that, it’s a pretty popular book right now so it took forever to get it off the wait list. The app said I had two hours left to read and twelve hours left in the borrowing period. So after I came home from work, put the kids to bed, and ate some dinner, I put on my pjs and climbed into bed with the book, determined to finish it. It felt so indulgent to just sit in bed an read. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Sure, I often read before I go to bed, but that’s often only 15 minutes or so. This was almost two hours. I tried not to feel guilty about the dishes not done or the laundry not folded. Maybe I’ll get to the point when I’ll be able to sit in bed and read the evening away and not feel guilty. Well, that might be what vacation is for.

In the end, I didn’t finish the book that night, but I woke up the next morning and finished reading it just in the nick of time for the book to disappear back into the Libby ether. The kids maybe had to fend for themselves for breakfast. But that’s what cereal is for.

-I’ve been taking part in the Wordle craze – it’s been a great brain break. I can tell when I’ve had a long day when I don’t remember if I’ve done the day’s puzzle or not, and it turns out I have. This week’s puzzle had a couple that definitely challenged me:

Both these involved random guessing and maybe some Googling. I don’t necessarily think of that as cheating. Actually, as I inch closer to that sixth try, I tell myself, “Well, at least, if I break my streak, I’ll have learned a new word.” So this week, I learned two new words!

For the record, an agora is an open space used for gatherings and markets. Pupal is the adjective version of pupa.

-The baby had managed to lose her mittens again. The other day, we were getting ready to go outside and she said, “Mittens!”
Then she ran downstairs and came back with two mismatched socks that she had clearly pulled from the mismatched sock bin and stuck her hands in them. How adorably innovative!

-Valentines Day! I don’t usually go all out for the kids’ Valentines day at school, but it’s been such a weird 23 months that I felt like I wanted to do something special. So for the ten year old, we ordered some fun animal post its for her to hand out. For the five year old, I ordered pop bracelets and made little valentines that said “You Make My Heat Pop!” I sat with him and we thought up of a nice thing to say for each of his classmates and wrote it on the card. I was really touched and impressed that he could think of something specific for each of his classmates. Though for one kid, he said, “I like E—- because he is not funny.” Which apparently caused some consternation on the part of E’s mother.

-Book props. In our show there is a book that we use as a prop. I love book props; they are usually supposed to look plain and period and you never know where they come from or what might be in them. It generally doesn’t matter what’s in them as long as they are the right size and look appropriately of the time. I like flipping through them; often they’re something dry yet flowery from many years past. The prop book in our show is from 1913, written by a man named James Whitcomb Riley who was a poet and writer and also responsible for creating Orphan Annie and the inspiration for Raggedy Anne. apparently he was quite popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What I found particularly interesting about this book was that most of the pages of this book are still unopened. I was originally going to say “uncut” but then I went down an internet rabbit hole and discovered that “unopened” is the correct phrase for this book with its pages still joined together at the edges. It’s There is something a little sad to me about a book that’s over 100 years old, and still unread. I did enjoy, however, getting to indulge in some poetry reading during a slow moment in rehearsal.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I wasn’t home in time, but the Husband made dumplings and green beans and saved some for me to eat when I got home.

Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday! In honour of the teams, the Husband made Cincinnati Chili and Orange Julius. Friends brought veggies and other snacks.

Monday: The Husband made Stuffed Pepper Soup. It was supposed to be a casserole, but didn’t quite turn out that way. Really tasty nonethless.

Tuesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry eaten with rice.

Wednesday: Pasta and meatballs in InstantPot. Made ahead in the morning so that there would be dinner ready when everyone got home. I really love making spaghetti and meatballs in the IP. It’s a little soggier than making everything separate, but so much easier to cook and clean up; everything just goes into the pot – sauce, noodles, meatballs on top – cook high pressure for 8 minutes. All done. I was pretty happy with the meatballs too – I didn’t have enough meat, so I threw about a cup of mushrooms in the food processor and then added that to the meat – it turned out really well!

Thursday: Black Bean Soup in InstantPot. Another make-ahead meal since I wasn’t going to be home in time for dinner. It turned out a little thick so the Husband put it in wraps and the family at it as burritos.

Friday: Pizza and Aladdin. The Husband made pizza. I made it home in time to eat leftovers, though I missed the actual movie.

Weekly recap + what we ate: off balance

This was my first week back at work. Prep week, where we get things ready on our end for rehearsals to start. It was a little bit of a struggle because there were some childcare issues so the Husband and I had to split our time watching the baby for the first three days. Oh my goodness, huge hugs and props to all the working parents who juggled kids at home whole working… it’s all kind of a mess, and continues to be, I know.

I did make it back into the office. My desk was pretty much as I left it 23 months ago, including the above pictured joke pad that one of my colleagues left me. The last time we worked on a show together, we would read a silly joke page after every rehearsal day, one of those things we did so we would remember to laugh at least once a day. The pictures of my kids were still pinned to my cubicle walls, though they were all two years younger, the baby only five months old when we were all sent home from work. My pencils and post-its were where I had left them in March 2020, the binder of the show I never opened sat next to the groundplans for the shows that opened but never finished their run. My hot water kettle, waiting to be filled with water and be set to work burbling hot water for my afternoon tea. It was almost like stepping back and picking things up right where we left them, only we are now all wearing masks and a new sense of fragility and gratitude.

Working in theatre is not a normal 9a-5p job, and over the past months I’ve thought a lot about how I can do better at balancing the inconsistent hours with some consistency in the things that make make me feel human and not like a worker bee. The hours can be long and odd, and there is this notion that people should make sacrifices for their art, but I think that saying art is about humanity is pointless if I’m sacrificing my own humanity to help create it.

I’ve made a list of things that I want to make sure I find time for even when things get busy.
– Sleep. I’m a huge revenge bedtime procrastinator. Lately, though, I’m finding that maybe because I’m getting older or maybe because of the rhythm and demands of pandemic life, I really feel it when I only get 4-5 hours of sleep several nights in a row. One night of 4 hours might be okay, but more than that, and I crash hard on the subsequent nights. So yeah, asleep by midnight is my goal.
– Time outside. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make the 1000 hours outside goat of 2.75 hours outside every day, but I do want to find at least 30 mins a day to be outside. Hopefully I can still walk the kids to the bus stop and school, so that’s at least 40 mins. But the days when that doesn’t work out, I can take time at lunch. Last week on my lunch break, I sat outside to eat lunch and then took a walk around the block, which I thought worked out well.
–Communication with family/ the Husband. I think the person who feels the most pressure from my awkward hours is the Husband who is at home with the kids every single night. A lot of our stress comes from the evening hours being inconsistent – some weeks I’m home two nights a week, some weeks I’m home for dinner, some not…. I want to make sure I communicate with him ahead of time the expectations for that evenings and weekends. Also we need to set time to sit down and look at the calendar so that things don’t fall through the cracks. (hello, upcoming tax season!) And then remembering to call home on my dinner breaks to check in since the Husband is often asleep when I get home from the evening rehearsals.
– Meal plan and stock up on healthy snacks. We haven’t been great about meal planning the past few weeks, and I want to be more deliberate about it – particularly meal planning dinner with the Husband so that the burden of dinner doesn’t fall completely on him. Whenever possible, prep dinner before I leave for work so that dinner is simple when he gets home. Also having healthy snacks in the office for when the hours get long.
– Exercise – even if it’s 15 minutes of yoga in the morning, I want to have a more consistent plan. I also want to see if I can get a short run (not that I do anything but short runs) in when I have long breaks between rehearsals.
–Drink water – I realized last week that because I have to wear a mask all day, I’m not drinking as much water as I normally do. So I just need to remember. Maybe I can make it some kind of automatic behavioral thing…
–Making time to journal/write/plan/read. Activities to clear my head and help me keep things in perspective. Sometimes I can lose track of the world happening outside of the rehearsal room or the theatre

So that’s the aspirational plan to stay human.

This episode of the Happiness Lab about anger popped up in my feed Wednesday evening as I was making dinner. Somewhat ironically… I had had a tough ten minutes involving noodles and grocery resentment. The moment resulted in me throwing my favorite kitchen spoon in frustration and anger. And my favorite kitchen spoon broke. It was not a great moment and now my favorite kitchen spoon is irretrievably shattered. Something about the directions on the noodle being only in Japanese and then them turning into a gelatinous clump in the pot and dinner being jeopardized (of course my mind spun and catastrophized) and not being able to go to the store and choose my own noodles and n0 one coming to help me (though I don’t know rationally what anyone could have done to save the clumpy noodles)… anyhow. Not my finest moment of zen and calm, I am somewhat ashamed to say.

And you know what, it all turned out fine. I rinsed the noodles, pulled them apart by hand and they were delicious. I apologized to the Husband for yelling and looked sadly at the broken spoon. The Husband, very sweetly was already trying to find a replacement, but I’ve been trying to find a replacement for ages and have been unsuccessful. And this is actually the second time I’ve smashed a kitchen utensil in anger. So there is that.

Afterwards I was listening to that Happiness episode on anger, and something they said stood out for me – on the podcast, the therapist/expert Faith Harper said that holding in your anger is like pushing down a beach ball under water; eventually it will pop up and hit you in the face. So the trick is being able to take a step back and figure out what your anger is telling you because emotion is your body and brain trying to tell you something. I’m going to sit with that for a while. Because I think often I try to rationalize away my anger, and really the emotion can be more useful if it is accepted than if it is dismissed.

Two quotes from Harper that I really want to remember when I need to be forgiving of myself and of other people:

“You’re not responsible for your first thought. You’re responsible for your second thought and your first behavior.”

“We’re not perfect… I don’t know that we get better so much as we get better at it… Nobody has this down; we are all works in process”

Some hodge-podge bits from the week:

This lost doll at the playground, waiting for her owner. Kind of creepy, kind of whimsical:

It was the Husband’s birthday this past week. He has said he didn’t want a cake, or any celebratory dessert. But I couldn’t just let his birthday go by like that. So I made him a key lime pie. It’s one of his favorite desserts and it’s so super easy and only takes about 45 minutes to make. The ten year old made a slideshow presentation for him where she asked me and her siblings our favorite things about him and then compiled them into slides. It was so super cute and thoughtful and made me laugh.

I found myself downtown one day last week, and decided to pick up Chinese take-out from this place where we used to eat all the time when we were young urban city dwellers. The kung pao chicken is the Husband’s favorite, so much so that we ordered a tray of it for our rehearsal dinner even though we had moved into the suburbs by then. Much to our surprise, the owner himself drove the food all the way up to us in wintery rush hour traffic.

Anyhow, as I was waiting for our food to be ready, I wandered down to the used bookstore down the block. It’s the kind of place that has carts of books out front for $4/each. I found this book among the piles and it immediately took me back to my childhood:

It’s one of those books put forth by National Geographic in the 80s. We had a copy of this book when I was growing up, and I loved looking at the glossy yet raw pictures of life in the various parts of China. Even though in the book, Taiwan was included as part of China, I never felt any kind of kinship with the Asian faces in the pages; it all seemed so different and exotic. There was something odd, too, about my parents, who have always been staunchly pro-Taiwanese Independence, having a book that celebrated China.

For some reason the first line of the introduction have always stuck with me:
“When I was a child my mother warned me, as I dug a large hole in our backyard flower garden, that if I kept on digging I would end up in China.”
As a child, this idea was fascinating- digging a hole to emerge in a place so different from where I was… it seemed not like the introduction to a coffee table book, but rather the beginning of an adventure story.

And this week- the first glimpse of Spring. Is it too early? Will they make it? Stay tuned to find out….

What We Ate:

Saturday: Grilled veggies and pork chops using a bulgogi marinade. There is something really fun about grilling in 30 degree weather. I was always a charcoal grill person, until I got at gas grill and realized how much easier it was.

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: Chicken Katsu and Cabbage Salad from Dinner Illustrated

Tuesday: Breakfast Sandwiches

Wednesday: Orange Tofu and Sugar Snap Pea Stir Fry.

Thursday: The family had tortellini and red sauce and salad. When i got home from work I had half a pack of olives, croutons, and the leftover tofu from Wednesday. Eaten standing up in the kitchen while trying to urge the kids to get ready for bed.

Friday: Pizza and Frozen. It was the baby’s turn to pick the movie so we lined up all the animated dvds that we had and let her choose one. I think she picked Frozen because she loves snowmen.