Category: Recap and Menu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1:30am – to bed and sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12:00am – Read in bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Shady trails to walk along in 85 degree weather.

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

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

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

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

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

-Listening to this audiobook:

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

What we ate:

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

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. We had pulled pork tacos.

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

Thursday: BLT sandwiches.

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

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

Sunday: Tortellini with sausage and marinara.

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

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