Recap and Menu – Page 9 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Boba weekend and not judging

My go-to Boba order – Oolong milk tea, no sugar, regular ice, half boba, half lychee jelly. Bliss.

This weekend started with a rough night of sleep -the highlight of which was a three year old getting into bed with me and taking her “not poopy” diaper off in bed around 3am. And of course, the diaper was indeed poopy. So was her bottom. I suppose a bleary eyed 3am diaper change these days is a good, almost nostalgic, reminder of those newborn days. Then there was the 5am insistence that she wanted breakfast. And even though I could hear the Husband awake and moving around in the kitchen, the three year old insisted that it had be be “Mommy breakfast, not daddy breakfast!” All my good intentions for better sleep hygiene are being sabotaged by a pint sized toddler.

The rest of the weekend felt very indulgent. We went to try out a new Hot Pot place for Saturday dinner. We haven’t been to Hot Pot since before the pandemic, and I feel like going to Hot Pot is kind of a barometer of our comfort level with COVID times. (For those who haven’t been – hot pot is an Asian dining format where you get a pot with a pot of broth over a burner at your table – either individual pots or one pot for the table – and the diners add meats and sea food, and veggies and noodles to their own preference. It is a great social meal and usually takes a couple hours to really do it right.) Not quite sure if Hot Pot is a rational barometer or not, to be honest. We didn’t go to one of those places with a conveyor belt that brought your food, but rather our Hot Pot foods were brought by waiters after we ordered it via iPad, so it wasn’t like other people in the restaurant were breathing on it. There was also a charming robot that delivered boba tea, though we didn’t get to try that out because it seemed to get stuck a lot. We just went to the tea shop next to the restaurant and got boba after dinner. Then there was a band playing out on the plaza outside the restaurant so we hung out and drank our boba and listened to music for a little bit while the kids ran around on the grass. We probably over did it a little as the three year old vomited on the sidewalk at one point. “Don’t step in my vomit!” she yelled to us cheerily afterwards. So I guess she was okay.

Sunday, the eating tour continued because we decided to go to the Taiwanese breakfast place. Taiwanese breakfast features bowls of steaming soy milk – either sweetened with sugar, or savory with scallions and sesame oil – which we eat with large sticks of fried dough (“yo tiao”). Along with that we have scallion pancakes, dumplings, noodles, seaweed salads, edamame and mustard green salad, “dan bing” (egg pancakes)… So much food, but all of it is super tasty and comforting. And afterwards, because there was a tea shop just next door, I had my second boba tea of the weekend. Boba is definitely a treat for me and to have it twice in one weekend was extra special. The tea shop next to Taiwanese breakfast also happens to serve Taiwanese shaved ice which is softer and fluffier than the Western version, and is topped with different jellies and red bean and fruit. My dad had been wondering if there was a shaved ice place in our area, so I was glad to have found this place and have mentally bookmarked it for later.

After breakfast and boba, we went to buy new shoes and boots for the kids. Our favorite shoe place has a policy that if you buy snow boots in September or October, if it doesn’t snow more than an inch all winter, they will take the shoes back in April. It is definitely pricier to buy shoes at Shoe Train, but the service is really great. The shocker this time around is that the ten year old now wears the same size shoe as me! I wasn’t ready for that yet…

Once everyone had new shoes, I took the two little kids to the park since the weather was beautiful and I wanted to spend some time outside. Then in the evening, we went over to a friend’s house for dinner. We got take out Chipotle and pizza and just sat around and talked all evening. I also baked a pie. The Husband had been wanting to make a pie with some of the apples he had gotten from the market a few weeks ago, so I was determined to make it happen, but then forgot we were hanging out with friends that night. So I asked if we could bake the pie at their place and they said sure! I made the filling and dough at home – the kids helped – and then assembled the pie and baked it in my friend’s oven and we had pie for dessert.

So it felt like a very full weekend. I did not get to the ten year old’s Halloween costume, so I need to make that a priority for the next few weeks, for sure.

Other fun/ interesting/ thought-provoking things from last week:

-Monday was Indigenous People Day, but the kids still had school. Traditionally this day is an open house at school for the parents to come an observe the classroom. My dad has been in town visiting, so he came with. Having two kids in two different schools meant a bit of travel to see both kids’ classes, but the open house was all morning and we ended up spending forty-five minutes at each school.

I was interested to see the five year old’s French Immersion class, and I was impressed that it was truly full immersion. Even still, the kids all managed to behave and learn and follow directions. The teacher repeated herself a lot and did a lot of pointing and demonstrating. It’s only been two months of school, and the five year old can already count to ten in French, do some basic math, and he can introduce himself. He also used random French words at home – things like “sac à dos” (backpack) and “poubelle” (trash can). It kind of takes me back to when I learned French in elementary school. When I was I was growing up in Ontario, in my school district, everyone started learning French in Grade Three.

We then went to the five year old’s class where all the students were really well behaved and quiet. Not that these attributes should be the pinnacle of student behavior, but rather everyone seemed really engaged. The ten year old did say afterwards that people were on really good behaviour and sometimes the teacher has to ask more than once for students to do things.

-This week, I had a supertitle gig for a Vocal Recital. I procrastinated a little on getting the titles done so the morning of the concert, after the open houses, I went to a cafe and worked for several hours. Being able to sit and sip my chai and work seemed so indulgent. The concert itself was lovely. There was an interesting set of songs by Franz Liszt that I was unfamiliar with, but which were dramatic and sweeping and made me wonder what it would have been like if Liszt wrote an opera. And the nicest thing, is on my dinner break, I went to the Roof Terrace of the building and the sky was beautiful and the golden light bathed the Washington Monument in pink light.

-Something that made me think this week: This podcast episode from the Puberty Podcast titled “How To Parent without Judgement”. I listened to this episode at a good time this week – it had come to my attention that that the ten year old feels like I judge her too much. Which is probably true. I have a lot of opinions, and I sometimes have a hard time hiding said opinions, even if it’s just the way my eyes widen and my eye brows go up when I hear or see something. Some musings from this podcast:
– There is a great point about how we need to stop judging ourselves. There is a fine line between being self aware and self-flagellating ourselves.
– Parenting without judging also encompasses judging other people. The hosts point out that when you express opinions on other people’s choices, your child will pick up on that and that will influence how they feel and talk about their own choices.
-There was some great tips and box text for managing moments without judgement. One things they mentioned was not making it about making the child feel bad for their negative behaviour, but rather present it as a bigger picture. For examples, if a child is constantly snacking out of the package, instead of condemning that specific action, you can say, “Hey, I bought the snacks for the whole family to share. Why don’t we pour some in the bowl for you.” Also – they recommend giving kids (and yourself) time before you make suggestions or share thoughts. ie. don’t re-hash the game on the way home from the soccer field. (If at all, to be honest)
– One issue that this episode brought up for me was about positive judgements. Often when we talk about juding someone, we are talking about having negative thoughts about them – but is having positive or complimentary thoughts also considered “judging”?
I’ve saved this episode because I think I will need to often remind myself of the many wise points.
Speaking of which, this made me laugh this week:

from Em&Friends line of parenting support cards.

-The baby was involved in a video shoot at work this week. We are putting up two shows right now, and the show that I’m not working on needed a little kid for some projection videos in the show. The opera Il Trovatore is one of those Italian blockbusters that feature all the opera clichés – love, revenge, war, class divides – and is famous for having a plot point that involves a baby getting thrown in a fire. Oh and also the Anvil Chorus. It’s full throated loud singing and melodrama. Great stuff. Anyhow I guess they needed a baby to throw into the fire, so we were asked if ours would be willing. I said sure! Baby’s first pay check!
From all accounts, she did really well at the video shoot. Took direction, didn’t fuss and was super friendly and cute. I’m sure it had something to do with the gazillion lollipops they gave her. I peeked in at one point and was so proud to see her serious little face paying attention to the director, but I didn’t stay because I didn’t want to distract her. Afterwards, she came and sat in on my rehearsal for a little bit, though I can’t imagine what she thought of it. My show is a lot of loud declarative singing in German. My friend snapped a little picture of the baby in costume of the video shoot:

– I bought more masks this week. As I hovered on the webpage, I was struck with the dilemma of how many masks to buy. It is cheaper to buy more, but will the we still need masks in two months? Three months? I still have to wear a mask at work. The three year old still wears a mask at daycare. Masks are optional for the two kids in elementary school, but the five year old still prefers to wear a mask (“I don’t want to get sick,” he says.) The ten year old prefers to go without. Plus, the masks we found that work best for the kids just started releasing kids masks in fun bold colours…
Spring of 2020 and the start of COVID impacting our lives sometimes seems very distant to me. Yet here I am two and a half year later and buying face masks is just another part of the life maintenance routine. At the beginning, I didn’t know what kind of masks to get and spent so much time sewing masks trying to find the perfect fit. Now I know what masks I like to get for the kids, and from which website. If they had a subscribe and save feature, I’d be all signed up. Funny how we adapt and adjust.

-I managed to bike to work three times. And by the end of the week, I biked all the way up the hill that I had walked up last week. Progress. Going uphill is still hard as f***, though.

-We head into tech at the end of this week. As always, my life goals for tech week:
*eat healthy nourishing food. (Mostly. I mean there is a lot of unhealthy snacking that goes on too, but as long as I’m also eating the healthy stuff, I’m okay with this.)
*Run on my dinner breaks.
*Sleep when I get home late at night instead of scrollling
*Help the Husband fold a basket or two of laundry whenever I can.
Work goals: Stay calm, stay organized, stay on top of things, and be nice.

And as a last note – Angela Lansbury passed away last week. When I was a child we watched Murder She Wrote every Sunday night. And then as I got older, I grew to love her satirical edge in musicals like Sweeney Todd and Anyone Can Whistle. I love this quote from her Washington Post obituary.

The lady knew her priorities lay in her strengths.
Or maybe her strengths lay in her priorities?

What We Ate:
Saturday: I worked, the Husband made something that involved green beans and stir fry, I believe.

Sunday: We had been planning on eating out, but we had gone hiking so the Husband made tortellini, salad and garlic bread.

Monday: Mac and Cheese (from the blue box) and sausages. The Husband cooked because I was working.

Tuesday: Not sure – I was working.

Wednesday: Red Lentil Soup in the Instant Pot. Continuing my attempts to clean out the pantry. Vegan.

Thursday: The Husband cooked – Fried Tofu Sandwiches. This was an interesting recipe because it involved marinating the tofu in pickle juice. We had tofu to use up and the Husband googled “Tofu Recipes” and specifically looked for one that did not involve stir frying or Asian cuisine.

Friday: Pizza (Take out) and The Force Awakens.

Weekly recap + what we ate: rituals and whimsy

This was the first week where I’ve really noticed the trees donning their Autumn colours. First a faint swipe of colour here and there, like blush among the green and then towards the end of the week, brilliant red and gold trees. Some trees I saw while out on my lunch time walk:

This past weekend on my day off, I took the kids and my father on a hike to Weverton Cliffs. The five year old had requested, “A hike to a view” as his weekend activity, and Weverton Cliffs came up in my search as very kid friendly. The hike was about two miles out and back hike, and though there was a bit of an elevation gain, the switchbacks made it all very manageable; all three kids walked the whole way – I didn’t have to carry anyone! I feel like 3 miles is the limit for the baby these days. And indeed at the top, we were rewarded with a view. And also some hot chocolate, as one child said that they would not go hiking unless there was hot chocolate. The weather was actually a little warm for hot chocolate, but I think we enjoyed the decadence of having hot chocolate while gazing out on this:

There wasn’t quite enough fall colour to make it seem like this was our “Fall Folliage” hike, but the view was breathtaking nonetheless.

Something I read that made me think this week:
– This article from Barking Up the Wrong Tree, about the power of rituals. There seems to be a fine line between rituals, routines, and habits, but one distinction that the article makes is that rituals are not necessarily practical actions – that is to say a morning exercise routine has a tangible function, but crossing yourself and praying before every meal does not. The interesting point of the article makes, though, is that rituals, even if they don’t have tangible outcomes, do have a huge psychological function. Rituals help anchor chaotic times; they can provide concrete actions in times of anxiety.

There is a great example of how the tennis player Rafael Nadal has all these rituals during a tennis match – from only stepping over lines with his right foot, to making sure his game ID is face up on the bench to squeezing his energy gel exactly four times before he consumes it. These rituals may seem like ticks, but really they are ways for him to create order in his environment. He is quoted from his memoir:
“Some call it superstition, but it’s not. If it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same thing over and over whether I win or lose? It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.“

I was thinking about my life currently, and I don’t think there are many rituals in my day to day. We do say grace before dinner. When I’m stage managing a performance, I have certain things I like to write in my notebook during the half hour before a performance… Aside from that, I can’t think of any rituals that don’t feel like they have a practical purpose. For example, I put my work ID in the exact same spot in my bag the minute I leave work – it is a routine action, but is it a ritual? The practical aspect is that it keeps me from losing my keys. On the other hand, it is a transitional gesture, to signal the end of the work day, so there is indeed an air of ritual about it.

Anyhow, the article made me think about what times in my day would a ritual be helpful for me to create an inner calm amidst chaos – mornings. evenings. before big chorus rehearsals. Tech. Holidays. Travel. In one of the studies the article cited, researchers had subjects perform a ritual involving sprinkling salt and crumpling up paper before they had to sing a big solo. They found that subjects who did this seemingly pointless gesture performed more accurately. So maybe I need to find my own version of salt sprinkle/paper crumple to incorporate into my mornings? I am intrigued by the idea.

Fun things:
-I rode my bike to work. Friday morning, I was going to try to fit in a run before work since we started at 10:30a, then I realized that I could instead get on my bike, get my exercise and commute at the same time and it seemed like that best idea I’d had all week. It’s a 4.9 mile bike ride and takes about half an hour, which is ten minutes longer than taking the metro, but much more fun in the crisp autumn air, especially after having several dreary rainy days. I will admit there is a couple blocks that go uphill and I did get off and walk the bike; hopefully if I ride my bike more I’ll be able to ride up that block soon. After work, I biked to the park and met up with my friend who had picked up the two little kids from school and we played in the playground until it was time to go home for dinner.

-We did not go apple picking last weekend, but we did stop at a farm stand that had many many many different kinds of apples. We bought one of every variety, but didn’t keep straight which was what so I can’t go back and stock up on the varieties that I like the best. For the record, I like crisp apples that are a combination of sweet and sour – apples that crunch when I bite into them. Turns out the apples from Spicknall’s stand are the same price as they would be if we had indeed gone apple picking. I might have to re-evaluate the value of apple picking. Of course our favorite apple picking place has a goats and chickens and a playground, so I guess it is probably more about the event than the fruit.

-We’ve started rehearsal for our next show. One day, mid week, our director emailed me, saying she was cleaning out her son’s closet and did I want some toys that he had outgrown. “Sure!” I said. The next day she brought in a bin full of train tracks and a Lego robot. Now, I have always had an adverse reaction to train tracks and Legos. I know everyone sees creative open ended toys that are fabulous for the imagination. I see tiny pieces that I will have to pick up, or (in the case of Legos) that I will step on, causing excruciating pain. In my ideal world, all toys would be formed to be one single piece, preferably larger than my fist, and with no bits or bobs that will fall off. At any rate, I do fully recognize that these train tracks and robots will send my kids into toy heaven, so I am grateful for the hand me downs.
I put the bin of train tracks in the Stage Management office, and when I came back at the end of rehearsal, this is what I found:

Apparently a box of train tracks could not be resisted by the other stage managers. Over the week, the train set us has grown and morphed, been disassembled and reassembled. We are playing. Seeing the joy people are finding in assembling wooden paths has made me realize that we don’t play enough. We come in and work with great intensity, yet I think there is something that could be incredibly useful in having a trainset in the office. It invites us to shift our brains to something else for a little while and work together. I mean we always work together – I think that’s one of my favorite things about my colleagues is that there is no one I don’t work well with – but building train routes together is a whole other way of working together – kind of whimsical and relaxed. It is a shame our office at the theatre is too small for train tracks. Maybe I need to find something whimsical and fun but compact. A jigsaw puzzle, perhaps?

What we ate: Two soup nights this week – it’s the easiest thing to make ahead in the InstantPot when there is a lot going on in the evenings. In trying to stick to making two vegan dinners a week, I was trying to branch out from the usual bean soups, and I found two soups that were pretty tasty.

Saturday: Take out from one of our favorite restaurants, a Burmese place that had closed briefly during the pandemic but is now open again for take out. Hooray!

Sunday: The Husband and I had date night – that is to say we went grocery shopping together while my mom watched the kids, then had early dinner at a deli. The ten year old made frozen tortellini with red sauce for her siblings.

Monday: Wild Rice Mushroom soup in the InstantPot – It’s a basketball night, so I needed to make something that would be ready to eat when the Husband and kids got home. Vegan.

Tuesday: The Husband cooked. Something involving eggplant. I worked late and had leftover Burmese take out for dinner.

Wednesday: Zucchini pancakes from Bare Minimum Dinners. Such a simple idea – grate two zucchinis, mix up a batch of pancakes from mix (I used Kodiak), add the zucchini and onion powder and some chopped herbs ( cilantro, mint, parsley was what I had on hand) to the mix. I also made some tzatziki on the side and we ate it with chopped up carrots.

Thursday: Pumpkin Lasagna Soup in the Instant Pot. Another activity heavy evening, so I made dinner ahead of time to be ready when folks got home. I was a little skeptical of the recipe, but it sounded interesting – a pumpkin soup with half a cup of tomato sauce and coconut milk and chickpeas and lasagna noodles. It turned out to be really really tasty. vegan.

Friday: Pizza (takeout) and Cool Runnings. I had never seen this 1993 movie about the Jamaican Bobsled team, and it came up in a list of family friendly movies under 100 mins, the time limit being important because we were having a late start to movie night. The movie is highly fictionalized but even still, it is delightful, funny, and inspiring – kind of a perfect family movie night film.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Prep Week

Post It Box organized and ready for rehearsal!

This week was prep week for a new show. Prep week is always a more relaxed because I can pretty much set my own hours as long as I get my work done – I’m not bound by a daily rehearsal schedule. Ironically, though, this week didn’t get a lot of my “me” tasks check off because I used a lot of my work flexibility to take care of kid stuff – there were a few school bus pick ups that I took for the Husband, an appointment for one kid, and the baby had an Open House at her daycare.

This all meant leaving the office early, but also meant I worked through lunch a lot so that I could leave early, and lunch is usually when I take my daily walk. I’m still trying to track my 1000 hours outside and this week I think I had two hours total. It’s a little ironic that when my day is dictated by the rehearsal schedule, I seem to have more time to slot in things like my daily walk and exercise. When my work life is more flexible, I feel like I have to fit in more family/ life admin stuff since that stuff is harder to fit in around my rehearsal schedule.

Some thoughts from this week:

– We had some fans installed this week – a bathroom fan (finally no steamy bathrooms post shower. Also good for the walls), a bedroom fan (just in time for 50 degree nights. hah!) and a wall fan in the kid’s room (because a ceiling fan was a bad idea given the bunk beds). One night this week, we left the kids home with my mom who is visiting and the Husband and I went to Lowe’s to look at ceiling fans at 9pm. Date night, I guess. I was a little taken aback when I walked into Lowe’s and saw:

I’m not even ready for Hallowe’en yet!

– Out of the blue an old friend/work colleague reached out to me. We had done summer stock together twenty years ago when we were both fresh out of college, and then taken a couple of those road trips one does when one finishes a gig and is twenty and unemployed and has nothing better to do than see how far you can get on a tank of gas. Our professional paths crossed fortuitously in the years that followed, but then he got a teaching job at a University and I stopped travelling as much so we fell out of each other’s orbits. Anyhow, it was lovely to talk to him and catch up and see where we’ve each landed. It’s funny, when you’re twenty and starting out in opera and have thoughts of all the big companies and big ideas you want to work for, and then what you find you wants when you’re forty is a spouse and a home and to come home and cook dinner for them.

– Speaking of which… Listening to this Squiggly Careers podcast episode about how to take control of your career.

This has somewhat been on my mind lately – there have been lots of changes at work and it’s not so much that I am questioning if I want to be where I am, but it’s more that I’m wondering if there is anything wrong with wanting to want to be where I am. That’s to say, I think personally I am in a place right now where I don’t want to travel and gig and where I want to be able to take my kids to the school bus and snuggle with the Husband on the couch at night; to do that, perhaps I am giving up some career ambitions. And I’m okay with that mostly, but when I work with people who are doing the constant gig and hustle, I do think about how different my life is from that. I am definitely a little jealous of those stage managers who get to to take a show to Europe, but those opportunities don’t happen overnight – they come out of cultivating relationships long terms, and while pre-kids – pre-marriage, really- I might have been able to invest myself in developing relationships that might grow into an international career, it’s not something I can come to as easily now. I think there is taking control from a point of making career things happen, and taking control in terms of being happy where one is. And I’m in the latter. I know there’s a world of new technologies and ideas in companies across the world, and it’s been really fascinating these past few weeks learning about how different people work. In a way, the changes at my company mean that new ideas come to me rather than than I go to them. Is it a complacent place to be? Maybe. I think that’s okay for now, though. The podcast hosts did have one self-reflective exercise in the podcast that I liked – Take five minutes and finish this sentence in as many ways as possible: “Wouldn’t my career be amazing if….” That might be a good exercise for me to ponder.

-A shout out to Kae’s post “If you See Something Say Something” on taking time to express gratitude to others. I was inspired to write to my daughter’s swim team coach from this summer. The guy was just did so much to build skills and team spirit with the swim team kids this past summer, and I had been meaning to write him since August, but never did. So prompted by Kaelyn’s post, I did. It reminds me of the unit in the Happiness Course (aka Yale’s class called The Science of Well Being) that talks about gratitude, and one of the assignments was to write a gratitude letter – something I think I can think about and execute more regularly, I think.

On the aspiration docket this rainy rainy weekend – We were going to go apple picking, but the weather does not look ideal for that. It’s my last two day weekend in a while, so my weekend aspirations are trying to maximize family time and also life admin items:
– skating lessons for the five year old. Swim clinic for the ten year old
– Attic clean out
-Ten year old’s Halloween costume. Manageable chunk – maybe we will design and get supplies.
– going to a play then dinner out as a family.
– Supertitle work for my next titles gig.
– Seasonal sort and cycle the kids clothes. The weather’s getting cooler so I need to make sure we are set for long sleeve shirts, sweaters, and pants.
-meal plan and grocery shop for next week.
– try to squeeze in some outdoor time between bouts of rain.
– maybe an afternoon of hanging out and watching a movie on the couch.

What We Ate:
Saturday: This was the three year old’s birthday dinner at a local Mexican restuarant.

Sunday: Kitchen sink ramen. Ramen with whatever veggies I needed to use up thrown in.

Monday: Butternut squash flatbread from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean. I pre-made the filling and chopped some cucumbers to eat on the side so the Husband just had to fill the tortillas and pan fry them when he got home. This was quite tasty. Vegan, with optional cheese. I did grill the leftover halloumi to go with it – I’ve never done that before, and it was quite tasty.

Tuesday: White bean and tomato stew from Bare Minimum Dinners. This meal was kind of brilliantly simple – cannellini beans, garlic, tomato paste, water, ditilani pasta. On the Husband’s suggestion I made a double batch and the ten year old took it for lunch in her thermos all week. Vegan, except some people added cheese.

Wednesday: Mushroom and Grape Tartines from Milk Street Tuesday Night Mediterranean, with a quick panzella salad on the side. I was originally going to make a greek salad, but part of the tartine recipe called for hollowing out the baguettes so I decided to make a panzella salad with the bread pulled from the baguettes. That felt like a really frugal food decision!

Thursday: My mother made chicken wings and stir fry. Thank goodness because Thursday night was pretty activity heavy.

Friday: Pizza and Movie – we watched Thirteen Lives, a movie from this year about the Thai cave rescue. Overall a really gripping movie – the story is so tense, even though I knew the outcome. I do wish the movie had devoted more time to the story of the boys in the cave and how they managed, though I imagine twelve boys surviving by meditation sessions led by their coach might not make for gripping drama the way cave diving does. I also didn’t love the kind of “white savior” aspect of a bunch of white men saving a group of Thai boys, but in truth when one looks at any kind of high risk elite activity like cave diving, then the socio-economic truths of it is that it is indeed a white man’s game. For a podcast version of the story, we really loved the first season of the podcast Against the Odds which looked at the story over six episodes. The kids were captivated by this podcast.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Authenticity and THREE!!!

Glenstone Museum. One of this week’s bright spots.

This week was one of those “between jobs” weeks.

I did not knock out as much of my “To do” list as I wanted – partly because the week after a gig is always a slow re-entry for me, partly too because my cousin came to visit. I do want to be better at picking up life after I’m done a gig. Too often, the aftermath of a gig feels like … well, you know that scene in the Drew Barrymore Cinderella movie Ever After (such a good movie!!!) when Drew is supposed to meet the Prince, but she’s in her servant clothes so she races back to the house, goes in through the back door, and then emerges out of the front door in a gorgeous gown and pearl circlet, just in time to meet the Prince, and then the shot changes to behind the front door, where the servants are collapsed on the floor in exhaustion from having transformed her so quickly….

Yeah, aftermath of a job feels like the servants on the ground in a heap. I’ve spent so much time keeping the job related parts of life afloat, that the non-job parts of life, the parts that actually allow me to function, get somewhat neglected and left in a heap (by me, not by the Husband… he does a magnificent job of holding down the fort!). And when the gig is over, I have to pull the servants up off the floor and put everything back in order, but it takes a while for me to get in the right headspace for it. I fully realize it’s a privilege not to have to figure out how to balance work and life all fifty-two weeks of the year – big props to people who do it – so I want to get better at tackling the life stuff efficiently when I don’t have work stuff on my plate.

I’m pretty good at doing the things I want to do but don’t really get to do when I’m working – I went running three times, had lunch with a friend, made muffins, got to write in this space. It’s the life admin stuff that I struggle to find the discipline to attack – laundry, big organizational projects, paperwork that needs to be done – the adulting stuff, I guess. And now I’m about to go back to work and some of it still looms. I might just have to dedicate time for it when I am working so it doesn’t pile up for when I’m not working on a show.

Some thoughts and things this week:

– The ten year old has started piano lessons again, after a break for much of August. Her lessons are at 7:15am and I particularly notice the shifting of the seasonal light on those mornings when I take her (and the other kids) to these early morning lessons. We’ve passed into the season when the sun is just starting to rise as we pack into the car, and this week, at a stop light, I glanced into the side view mirror and couldn’t resist taking a picture of sunrise behind me. Even though the traffic ahead of me sat in misty morning grey, the cars behind me were bathed in a golden red glow. Soon, I know, it will still be quite dark when we go to piano lessons, but it was a good reminder to savor the beautiful golden moments when I can.

– I’ve been listening to the podcast Under the Influence with Jo Piazza. (Not to be confused, now that I’ve Googled it, with Under the Influence from the CBC with Tim O’Reilly, which also looks interesting).

It’s a series that takes a look at the world of social media influencers, particularly mothers. I’m only six episodes in, and it’s been fascinating and though provoking. Even though I have social media accounts, I had to quit them cold turkey a few years ago because they had become a time suck and just made me feel bad about my life and career. Still, the idea of being able to make a living through gathering a social media following is really intriguing. The podcast really dissects the cultural implications of how women, who would otherwise be home-makers or stay-at-home mothers – that is to say unpaid labour – have parlayed domestic life with children into a commodity that they can be paid for. The episode on Authenticity, particularly was pretty engrossing, and made me think about how the term “authentic” is often bandied around when describing influencers.
Being authentic is valued. But so is being happy and shiny. Yet there is this paradox where when one only posts happy and shiny content, one is labelled as not authentic. I don’t think not posting the rough and hard and ugly parts of life makes a person less authentic. There is something, to me, inauthentic about reaching for a camera and generating content when your child is having a meltdown, rather than putting your camera down and comforting that child. The hard moments aren’t splashed across the happy shiny Instagram, perhaps because people are trying to navigate them rather than share them. I’m all for sharing hard moments – and I really appreciate it when people are brave enough to share them – but I don’t think sharing the hard moments makes a certain person or post more “authentic” than any other. The thing is, any one social media posts can lack context and doesn’t really reflect anything beyond that moment. Even look at our annual Christmas card – I pick the cutest picture of my kids to send to people. Am I being inauthentic because I don’t also include a picture of me washing up a poop accident? It seems like demanding authenticity just sets people – women – up for failure.
They make an interesting point on the podcast about how Hillary Clinton was mocked for wearing a scrunchie when that was probably the most true to herself thing that she could wear. While Obama or Trump or any man could probably wake up, take a shower, put on a suit and be ready for a press conference in thirty minutes, Clinton probably has to go through an hour or so of hair an make-up before appearing in public. The degree to which we demand authenticity from women yet at the same time shame her if she doesn’t put on a face, really speaks to a double standard.
The conversations on the podcast also has made me think of how I present on this little corner of the internet. I don’t want to be an influencer by any means, and it’s made me realize that while I’m grateful for the handful of people who read, I really just want to write what I want to write and brain dump the things that are interesting to me. Like this podcast, which I highly recommend.

– My mother also came to visit while my cousin was here and I managed to get tickets to the Glenstone Museum, a private museum that specializes in contemporary art, mostly installation pieces from Post WWII. A big part of the collection are sculptures throughout it’s outdoor campus, which makes for a really wonderful afternoon of meandering through trails and sitting and enjoying nature and art. The tickets are released on the first of each month are are usually booked three months out, so I was really surprised when I looked on the website earlier this week and saw that there were tickets available for later in the week. Another things I loved about the museum is they don’t have the usual placards in place giving information and thoughts about the pieces. Rather there are very knowledgeable docents who will talk to you about the artwork and the museum if you want, otherwise they leave you to contemplate the pieces for yourself. I sometimes find contemporary art hard to understand, and being able to talk to a docent and ask questions made the artwork so much more accessible. Definitely worth a trip back.

Koons. We ran out of time so didn’t make it all the way to this one.

The buildings and gardens are also works of art.

– This piece of advice from the blog Ask A Manager:

I sometimes run into this situation with interns and I admit I don’t always have the patience to be gracious about coaching someone through steps that they already have documented in paperwork. “What have you tried so far?” seems to me a great way to help distill where the trainee might be getting hung up, rather than me just telling them how to solve things.

– The big thing this week, was that the baby turned THREE!!! I’m feeling all the feels on this one. The night before her birthday, the Husband says to me, “This is our last day of ever having a two year old.” And it just about slayed me. It’s been hard, certainly, to know that she is our last baby. I love babies – the sweet, cuddly, exploratory, needs-to-be-protected, blind faith, little personalities – they are just such great companions. I’m excited to see who the baby grows up to be, but at the same time nervous because I know I can’t control that. But who she is right now is an adorable, mischievous, intrepid, dexterous, opportunistic, happy, clever, and cheeky little child. She’s the most independent of the three kids and finds such joy in everything around her. Having a baby as the world shut down was not something that I could ever had imagined happening, but she was certainly one of the bright marvels that helped keep things interesting.

skating last weekend. I used to think skate helpers were silly, but I realized that for her, keeping up with her siblings was more important than learning to skate properly. So skate helper it was.

What We Ate: I was home all week and all three dinners I cooked were vegan. We’ll see how it goes when I go back to work next week – I feel like vegan meals aren’t as easy to make ahead of time.

Saturday: I was working the evening show. I was running late to work, so I just shoved two half eaten meatball sandwiches from the night before into a container and ate them at my desk. I might have also had an apple.

Sunday: I was working a matinee, so I had bubbly water and cake for dinner at the reception following the performance.

Monday: Orange Cauliflower with Fried Tofu and Rice. The cauliflower recipe was from the Bad Manners Brave New World Cookbook and was their vegan take on orange chicken. Aside from being made from cauliflower rather than chicken, this was healthier because the cauliflower was baked, not fried. Of course then I fried the tofu to go with.

Tuesday: Tacos with meatless meaty filling from Bare Minimum Dinners, with cabbage mango slaw and avocados. I’m really liking Bare Minimum Dinners. There aren’t a lot of vegetarian recipes in it, but this meatless taco filling was pretty great. It’s a combination of mushrooms, walnuts, and pinto beans with the sauce from an adobo pepper in chipotle sauce. It was actually on the spicy side, so I just heated up a can of black beans with cumin and a clove of garlic for the two little kids

Wednesday: We went to meet a friend at a local Biergarten. They have the best wings – they smoke them then fry them so they are so full of flavor. I feel like this evening definitely offset all the vegan dinners we ate this week.

Thursday: Curry Udon Noodles with Teriyaki Jackfruit from Bad Manners Cookbook. This was my first attempt cooking with jackfruit, which I hear touted as a substitute for pork. My verdict – Jackfruit is pretty tasteless, so good sauce is needed. It did mimic the texture of fplled pork, though. But also, I added a bunch of mushrooms in with the Teriyaki sauce, and I think I would be just as happy to eat this dish with mushrooms instead of Jackfruit.

Friday: Pizza (made by The Husband) and movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru. This movie was pretty hilarious in parts, but kind of lost steam towards the end. (Or maybe we lost steam?) And then to round things out…. we had cake. I made a cake for the baby’s birthday and we zoomed the rest of the family to sing happy birthday. (Also sent some store bought cupcakes to school, because I guess this is the times right now where we can only send store bought treats. I understand the reasoning what with allergies and COVID, but it still makes me a little sad.) My cousin helped with the cake – we made this chocolate cake recipe with vanilla frosting and then sort of followed the instructions for a pinata cake. I don’t think the cake was high enough to have the desired effect of m&m spillage. But maybe it’s one of those things that’s only perfect on Instagram?

Bi -Weekly recap + what we ate – in rehearsal/tech/opening!

The view from my pew – the show takes place in a church.

There is a t-shirt floating around in theatre circles that says, “I can’t. I have rehearsal.”

I feel like that is where I’ve been the past two weeks.

We had three days of rehearsal in the rehearsal hall then five days onstage, three of those rehearsals with orchestra. Certainly it’s a truncated rehearsal period from what I was used to. Even still, it was nice to be back in rehearsal and getting a show up off the ground and making things happen for other people. It’s also my first time working in this venue with this group and everyone has been incredibly supportive and positive even though we are doing something fairly ambitious. I’ve been at my main stage management gig for fifteen years now (whoa! when did that happen?!?), and there is an easy familiarity with the crew that I regularly work with there – even so, I’m being reminded this past week that there are kind competent (beyond competent, really) people in many theatres all over and it’s good for me to work with and for new people. Getting to work for a stage manager that I’ve known for years certainly helps makes things easier.

Anyhow, the show opened last night. I think it’s a great show – the music is stunning and the cast, many from the musical theatre world, really sing their hearts out. There is a certain raw physicality that musical theatre performers have that opera singers don’t necessarily always display and I’ve had a lot of fun watching the show come together- it’s like they sing with their whole body, and they aren’t afraid of making the music sound ugly.

Some things on my mind lately:
-I’ve barely seen the kids lately – because of being at the theatre late, I tend to sleep in late, waking up just in time to pack lunches and maybe feed the little kids breakfast, though the Husband often does that. Big props to the Husband for holding down the fort and solo parenting in the evenings. Of course, it should mean that I cherish and savour the time I do have with my kids, but it’s kind of been… not relaxing. I’ve been turning over in my mind why I struggle with parenting and how I can feel more confident about how I help my kids launch into the world. I think a lot of it boils down to resetting the expectations I have and learning to see my kids as their own people. I’ve been listening to The Puberty Podcast, and this episode on helping kids thrive really helped frame some of my struggles.

– I’m giving myself gold stars for good tech week life habits. I squeezed in a run on my dinner break one day, even though it was raining. I packed lunch and dinner and lots of healthy-ish snacks. (Though I did buy a cookie the day of final dress because the work cafeteria has the best fluffiest chocolate chip cookies, as big as my face and I thought by then I deserved to indulge). I went to bed pretty much as soon as I came home.

– Having said that, I will say, I did stay up an extra half hour one night to scroll the news of the Queen’s death and all the pageantry and protocols that are involved in laying her to rest. The breadth and depth of her life amazes me. Also, on another level, I keep thinking about the amount of work and planning that must be involved in a royal funeral and a coronation and everything. And there hasn’t been a change in British monarch in seventy years so there is no one around who can say, “Well the last time, we did this, this, and this.” I’m sure all the protocol and procedures are written down somewhere, but as someone who puts on shows for a living, I bet there will be things that come up where they say, “Wait… how did they do it last time? Why didn’t they write that down?” The logistics of how to figure out what to do fascinates me as much as the actual logistics of the proceedings.

-I do not give myself a gold star on life admin during tech week, though. The life to do list is a little lengthy right now and it’s causing a little bit of stress for me. The Husband and I had lunch yesterday and I didn’t have the brain to think about the litany of house/life maintenance that we need to get done this fall.

-The kids take any opportunity when they see my phone lying around to take pictures. Some days I open up Photos to find fifty nine pictures of the baby’s foot. But sometimes, mostly orchestrated by the oldest child, something like this appears in my photo roll, and it makes me smile.

– These lines from one of the arias in my show:

When the thunder rumbles
now the age of Gold is dead.
And the dreams we’ve clung to,
dying to stay young
have left us parched and old instead.
When my courage crumbles,
When i feel confused and frail.
When my spirit falters,
on decaying alters.
And my illusions fail.

I go on right then.
I go on again.
I go on to say I will
celebrate another day.
I go on.

I’ve been so intrigued by the last five lines – is the idea that there will always be another day, and we should celebrate that day? That is to say, just having another day is cause for celebration? Or is the idea that even if today is hard and we don’t feel like celebrating, there will be days in the future where we will want to celebrate the things that we hold dear, so we should push forward? I love both sentiments.

These are the deep thoughts that I contemplate during rehearsal sometimes…

It’s a beautiful piece. You can hear this aria sung in a piano arrangement here.

Things I am grateful for:
– The stranger behind me at a stoplight who got out of his car to flag me down and tell me my gas cap had rolled off my roof five blocks back. I thought I was trying to be efficient by cleaning the garbage out of the car while I pumped gas, but it got me off my rhythm of pump gas, replace gas cap, get receipt.
-The Husband for getting the kids fed and to bed every night by himself. He even took the ten year old to basketball practice and the five year old to skating lessons, hauling all the kids around.
-The kids for (mostly) getting themselves ready in the morning, so I can sleep til 7am most mornings.
– Supportive colleagues and kind people to work with.
-The cooler weather. Fall is here in the mornings, though summer still lingers in the afternoons.
-The Husband for getting my bike tuned up. I went for a little bike ride this morning as I had neither work nor children to stop me. It was hard, but felt like a perfect fall activity.

What we ate – I did manage to prep dinner for most of the first week of rehearsal, even though I was working and didn’t make it home in time to eat with everyone. Most nights I had leftovers from the previous evening for dinner myself. The second week of rehearsal, the Husband planned and cooked dinner all on his own. I might have pressed tofu one night, but he handled everything else. I have no idea what they ate, so only the menu from the first week below.

Saturday: Pizza and Movie Night. We watched Secondhand Lions, a movie from 2003 that was really charming and delightful. The film, about a boy who is left with his eccentric uncles (played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine) was the embodiment of “family movie”… I think the word “wholesome” feels out of style right now, but that would describe this movie. I don’t think they make family films like this these days; everything is superheroes and explosions.

Sunday: This was the day we went to the Renaissance Festival. We got home around 7pm so all I could muster was snack dinner, which the kids actually loved and have asked if we can do it again. I just assembled a bunch of stuff, made sure I had all the food groups, tossed it on a plate and put it in front of the kids.

Monday: Labor Day – It was proposed that we ought to grill. So, I decided to grill some meatballs from the Milk Street Tuesday Night Mediterranean. The recipe called for broiled, but I thought they worked well on the grill. I guess grilling a meatball is not much different form grilling a burger – ground meat on fire. Also grilled eggplant and Zucchini

Tuesday: This favorite vegan Gnocchi soup – at the request of the five year old. I made most of it ahead of time, so that all the Husband had to do when he came home was to bring the pot to a boil and add the kale and gnocchi. Apparently the baby even ate the kale bits. Surprising because she is in a “I don’t like vegetables” phase. (Which isn’t entirely true, but veggies are pretty hit or miss with her).

Wednesday: The Husband made stir-fry and rice.

Thursday: Instant Pot pinto beans, made before I went to work. Eaten with corn tortillas and a simple cabbage slaw.

The picture and directions I sent to the Husband for Thursday night’s dinner.

Friday: The Husband took to the kids to the golf course for the outdoor concert, and they ate sandwiches.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school and back to work

We are now into September! It seems like some switch of nature was flipped and starting on the first day of September we’ve been having breezy, cool morning. I would almost call them crisp! And the rest of the days have been warm, but not overbearingly so. I am glad for the shift away from the oppressive heat of this past summer months.

The two big kids started school this week. Starting before Labor Day still seems early to me, a kind of like a false start. And starting the Monday before Labor day certainly makes a long first week, particularly since I don’t believe we have any full weeks of school until October thanks to various holidays and half days.

I was a little nervous about the five year old starting a French Immersion program. It is total immersion – the teacher won’t speak English to the parents in front of the kids and parent volunteers are not allowed to speak English when they volunteer in the classroom. I’m excited to see how it all plays out, even though I have a billion questions in my head about the practicalities and logistics of how my son is going to get through his day. I have to remember that the program has been in place in our county for over 40 years, so I imagine they’re doing something right!

I did teach the five year old to say “les toilettes” before he started, though.

The ten year old’s bus didn’t come to the stop the first day so the Husband had to drive her to school. I’m so glad he took the morning off for the first day of school. I called the bus depot later that day and received a vague answer to my inquiries as to why the bus didn’t show. “The driver knows to stop there now. It will be there tomorrow,” I was told. And it was.

She is starting a new school, which I imagine must be tough to start new in fifth grade, but she seems to be liking it a lot. I certainly debated whether it was a good idea to pull her from her old school, and now I know for sure it was the right thing to do. She looks so much happier coming off the bus at the end of the day than she did last year. I’m kicking myself for not switching schools sooner, but hindsight is 20/20, they say.

With three kids at three different schools, I was a little nervous about morning logistics. The baby needs to be at daycare by 9, the five year old’s bus picks up at 9:06am at a location about a three minute drive away from home, and the ten year old’s bus comes at 9:00am, two blocks from our house. And through good luck and kind people, it’s been going pretty smoothly. We have neighbors whose oldest kid is also starting in the French immersion program, and whose youngest is in the same daycare class as the baby. So every morning the ten year old walks the baby to the neighbors and brings their older kid to our house. The neighbors do drop off and pick up for the two preschoolers. I take the two kindergarteners to the school bus, and the Husband picks them up from the bus stop at the end of the day. It works out well because my work day starts late and the Husband’s work day ends early whereas our neighbors have a more conventional work day so doing the bus run would be harder for them. It’s only been one week, but I’m optimistic that this can be a good long term solution.

So my first child free morning… I felt a little adrift. For three years, I’ve pretty much always had a kid with me when I wasn’t working – aside from my girls’ weekend earlier this year and that day the Husband and I went to New York. So with my kid free time, I ran some errands then decided to go to the local botanical gardens where I read my book for a little bit and had a phone call with my sister in law. Then one of my good friends texted, asking if I needed anything from Costco. And I texted back, “Can I come too?”

So yeah, I spent part of my first child-free morning at Costco. Buying all the snacks. I think there are times when I have to embrace the fact that I am a suburban mom. Mid morning Costco runs are one of those times. On the other hand, I love having errand dates with friends.

The last two days of the week I started back at work on a show that I’m very very excited about, Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. It’s a piece I’ve always wanted to work on, but it isn’t really an opera, and it requires a lot of singers and musicians so it’s not something I would have done in the course of my regular opera work. However, the symphony is doing the piece this month, and back in May when I found out my friend was stage managing it, I said, “I’m free in September, if you need an assistant.” And yay! Now I get to work on it. I’ve been listening to the music and the score is so so so good!

Some good things this week:

I confirmed dates for the supertitle job that I did last year. I’m really excited about being able to have more work dates to put in my calendar for the 2022-2023 season, plus I really do like doing supertitle work.
I found my work ID. I had thought I’d misplaced it but I found it right in time for my new gig. It’s such a silly thing, but finding it made me so happy.
I helped the 10 year old do something that I was kind of dreading and didn’t think I would have to do quite yet or be any good at. I’m being vague – it’s her story to tell, honestly, but it was a good bonding moment and I’m glad that we figured it out.
I met up with a friend for a walk, and we saw turtles in the pond along the trail! Also – this friend was just in Canada, and I half jokingly had asked her to bring me back wine gums since the baby had finished off the bag that I had brought home from our Montreal trip. Well my friend brought me back three bags! I was so excited.

I canned and froze a bunch of peaches. This was also a bit of a loss because I waited a bit too long to can the peaches and some of them had gone bad before I got to them, which made me sad. But I still got seven jars and two trays of August peaches to eat in January.

Peaches to remind me in January what summer tasted like.

Dance parties in the kitchen as I clean up from dinner. The ten year old is great at helping wipe down the table and sweep the dining room, but the two littles are less helpful. They do provide some entertainment with their kitchen dance parties. I don’t listen to music enough to curate a cleaning play list, but luckily many other people have and I’ll often just type “cleaning” into the Spotify search function and hit play on whatever play lists come up. Usually it’s something that makes for great dancing:

Such goofy dancers. And the dishes still undone.

The Husband and I rarely have the same taste in tv watching, but we found a show to binge together – The Year of the Rabbit. It’s on Britbox, so we signed up for the free week trial just to watch this show, which I had read about on the website FrockFlicks. Year of the Rabbit is a hilarious, bizarre, smart comedy about a trio of Victorian era policemen – well two policeman and one aspiring policewoman who is trying to fight the patriarchy. “That isn’t even a thing,” she is told at one point. It came out in 2019 and there are, sadly, only six episodes. But given the Husband and my terribly track record for finishing series, six episodes was a perfect length for binging. Highly recommend.

And here’s the obligatory first day of school picture:

We are headed into the last long weekend of the year. Plans and aspirations:
– Farmer’s market
-meal plan for the week. I’m working several nights, so I want to have solid dinner plans in place.
– Closet re-assessment, especially going into work season, figuring what I’m going to wear since nursing tanks and shorts isn’t really work appropriate.
-Order shoes. My current shoe have holes in the toes. I hate shoe shopping, so will probably just place a huge Zappos order and see what works.
-Pool with kids. Closing weekend of our pool so I want to get one more day in
– Renaissance Faire! I haven’t been since before the five year old was born, so I’m really looking forward to this. Huzzah!
-Run? I’m starting back into it now that I’m back at work. Going slow – a 1/4 mile at a time.
– Relax with a book. I like to rotate books, so I have in my current reading pile: Mother Trucker, The Self Driven Child, Boyfriend Material, Tiny Habits, and A Lovely War on audio.
– A little bit of work – I want to organize my score to feel better prepared for rehearsals to start on Monday.
– Order socks and underwear for the kids.
-Bake muffins for snacking next week.

What We Ate: I did clean out the pantry last weekend! I meal planned around some stuff that I wanted to eat up and made a mental note of things to use up in the near future. I gave myself permission to throw away the random ingredients that someone buys – usually from the Asian grocery store – because they they it will make me happy to figure out how to cook it (Good-bye, honey panko crumbs and dried lily root bulbs and five year old dried cranberries brought home from Canada.) And I set up a snack bin for the two big kids to be able to participate in packing their own lunches.

Actually the ten year old has mostly been packing her own lunches for a while, and I wanted to five year old to start doing it as well. It has been pretty hit or miss with him. I’ll make his sandwich and cut up the fruit and cucumber and he will put it all into his lunch box and then add a snack from the snack bin – I guess that is a good start. And then of course, one morning the baby pulled the lunch snack bin out of the pantry and got a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut open and eat a bunch of the snacks. This is why I can’t shower in the mornings.

We’re trying to have more vegan dinners this month and I managed three out of five weekday dinners to be vegan this week (Monday, Tuesay, and Thursday)- which I think is pretty good.

Saturday: Pizza at a birthday pool party.

Sunday: Pizza (made by the Husband) and Movie. Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2. Even though I hadn’t seen the first Guardian of the Galaxy movie, I was able to enjoy the second one without too much confusion. It was a surprisingly affecting movie.

Monday: Tempeh Arugula Sandwiches from Bad Manner’s Brave New World cookbook – I have the cookbook, but you can find the recipe here. These sandwiches were really good, though they involved a bit of prep – the tempeh had to be marinated and cooked ahead of time and so did the cashew cheese. But once I had all the elements of the sandwich, it was a pretty quick meal. I have to say, it was my first time making cashew cheese, and though I wouldn’t really call it cheese, it was certainly delicious and the leftovers made a great dip for tortilla chips.

Tuesday: Eggplant Pasta from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean. I also added zucchini because we had some to use up from last week.

Wednesday: Couscous with Tomatoes and Shrimp. The Husband was out that night, so I made shrimp, which he doesn’t usually care for. I used up half a package of couscous that had been lingering in the pantry. Recipe from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean.

Thursday: Instant Pot Black-eye Pea and Spinach curry from InstantPot Indian, eaten with naan. This was another of the pantry inspired meals. I was working this day so I wanted to make something for the family to eat in case I didn’t get home in time for dinner. The two littles pretty much ate the naan, but everyone else liked this a lot. I thought that bag of naan from Costco would last us for a few meals. I was wrong. We ate the whole bag.

Friday: Take out sandwiches enjoyed while chatting with friends and listening to music at the local golf courses’ Friday night music concerts.

Weekly recap + what we ate: the last week of summer!

The baby started daycare this week, and the two big kids start school on Monday. Three kids all starting new schools! And each kid will be at a different school. So three drop offs. Well, actually two drop offs because the ten year old’s bus picks up down the street.

I was feeling all the feelings when I dropped the baby at her first day of school. She has been home so long and I am going to miss having my little buddy with me. I was worried drop off would be hard, but she waltzed right in with nary a backward glance that first day. My friend said that this was probably a sign that she was ready to be with other kids. I think she was also a little lured by having a second breakfast. The next two days, though, there was more resistance, including one morning where the teacher pried a crying child out of my arms. But the last day of the week she was fine and walked right in. She was really excited because they had had water play the day before and wanted to do it again. Shhhh – don’t tell her that was the last water play day this summer.

We decided to have the five year old enroll in the French Immersion program – a decision influenced slightly by our trip to Montreal. To be honest, I’m still not convinced it’s the right choice, but we’re going to take it one year at a time. The ten year old is starting a new school – switching school for fifth grade is probably not the easiest thing, but I think we agreed that we gave the Mandarin immersion school a good try and it just wasn’t the best fit for us now and into the future. With so many options for school these days, I feel a lot of pressure to make the “right” choice for my kids. And that “right” choice not just for the person they are today, but for the person they will grow into and the world they will live in. And perhaps I’m overthinking this – after all, it is just elementary school.

This last week of summer, we were home. I wanted to take things easy for the kids and also I had several work and union calls sprinkled throughout the day. But the week turned out to be kind of the perfect “last week before school”.

We went school supply shopping! I tied very hard not to fill the shopping basket with things for myself. I did buy one pack of post-its in my favorite, but hard to find colour combination.

We had playdates. We finally met the neighbors across the street this summer – don’t know why it took four years. They actually are members at our pool, and one days at a swim meet, the ten year old said to me, “Those are the girls who live across the street.” And I went over and made friends. I feel like sometimes we get so caught up in living our lives – especially with COVID, that we forget to extend our social bonds. Anyhow, one afternoon this week, I sent the ten year old over to their house to play. And a few hours later they came over to our house to play. And they actually played – screen-free and with low/no parental intervention. It was amazing.

We went to a waterpark with friends. There is a small waterpark near us, but it is only open to County residents during weekdays. Weekend and holidays it is only open to residents of the city it’s in. So one day my friend took the day off work and we packed lunches in coolers, ad we took our kids. After we got used to the many rules, we all ended up having a great time. The ten year old convinced me to go on the really tall slides, and I’m so glad I did. There was one that was super fast and thrilling and one that was slower, where you could see the end coming with time to take a breath and close your eyes. I thought both were really fun, but I actually preferred the slower one – there was something so soothing about meandering down the twists and turns while gazing at the blue sky and clouds.

We went to the pool!

We went to the library and borrowed a bunch of books, including a whole slew of Vox books for the kids. Much as I like reading to them, sometimes it’s great that they can sit with a Vox book and be engrossed so I can get other things done. Definitely one of my favorite things lately for a screen free way to keep the little kids busy.

We had Open Houses for the schools. Both big kids had open houses on the same day, but at different schools. Thankfully the times were slightly staggered. Even still, I didn’t quite time things right and I think we ended up showing up to the last fifteen minutes of each open house. Note for next time: show up earlier if you want PTA ice cream. Even still we got to see the schools and talk to their teachers. Afterwards I took the kids for ice cream at one of my favorite ice cream places, Tropics Ice Cream and Jerk. They have lots of fruit flavors, which is what I like. I got my favorite passion fruit and lychee combination. I also found out that they sell Jamaican patties frozen by the case. Which was very exciting for me – their patties are really tasty and make a perfect lunch option. I think I might think about picking up a case or two in the future for some easy lunches.

Seeing friends – My mom’s group gathered for happy hour one night. Last night we went to hear music at the Golf Course with friends. The band was really fun and our kids went running off in all directions. The five year old found friends from his school and took off with them, kind of a first because he’s always been kind of clingy. We live in a pretty big metropolitan area so I don’t take for granted when we are somewhere and we run into people we know. The golf course concerts are perfect because it’s semi enclosed and very safe and we know our kid will find their way back to where we set up our picnic blankets and lawn chairs. Watching the kids run and dance and laugh and play made me feel like that was summer right here.

Eating summer produce. We don’t always get to the Farmer’s Market – and to be honest the produce is on the pricy side so it’s cheaper to drive twenty minutes to a farm stand – but one of my favorite vendors was having a peach sale, so I put in an order for a 1/2 bushel of peaches and a 1/2 bushel of peach seconds. It always seems like a lot of peaches when I bring them home, but I’ll can some peaches next week, and we’ve already eaten the seconds. We also picked up tomatoes and cucumbers and lots of other vegetables. For lunch that day, I had tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese. It was really tasty.

I did not get as much cleaning/purging done as I wanted. But I have big plans to tackle some of that this weekend. Also I really need to tackle my email box for the account I use to make purchases since I’m running out of storage, though that might not be a this weekend thing. Weekend plans/ aspirations:

go through pantry and organize. I want the big kids to pack their own lunches so I need to clear space in the pantry for them to have bins for lunch foods.
tidy toy room and guest room in anticipation of cleaners coming on Monday. The guest room has become a unintended office for me and the paper situation is a little out of control.
organize school supplies and backpacks.
Five year old has a birthday party invite that I’ll take him and the baby to. The Husband and the ten year old got invited to a football game.
Meal plan. We are toying with the idea of doing vegan week nights, so I need to dig a little to figure that out.
hopefully raft night at the pool for a lazy Sunday night before school starts.

Two more things this week:

How is “flowy” not a word!?!?!?! Have they never heard of a flowy skirt? Or flowy hair? Then the next word I tried was “Crony” and that was accepted. And now I have some irate internal monologue about patriarchy and the male-centeredness of Wordle.

And I’ll leave you with this – one day on the way home from school, the five year old suddenly flopped down in the grass next to the sidewalk with a big sigh. “I love shade!” he said with a smile on his face. And he’s right. Is there anything as delicious as a cool spot on the grass underneath a shady tree on a summer’s day? (okay, part of my brain screamed “TICKS!!!!” but I’m telling that part of my brain to shut up and just check for ticks when we get home.)

What We Ate:

Saturday: Home from Montreal. I think the grown ups decided we weren’t hungry because we were unpacking. The baby somehow managed to find a bag of wine gums and ate those. Right before bedtime, she says to me, “But we haven’t had dinner!”
And I say, half-jokingly, “But you ate all that candy!”
And she says, with a little giggle, “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” As if wine gums were a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Sunday: can’t remember. I think it was low effort frozen tortellini and jarred red sauce.

Monday: I went out for happy hour with my mom’s group. The Husband made breakfast sandwiches for the kids.

Tuesday: Chicken Tinga Tacos. Made simple cabbage slaw and pickled onions to eat with. The Husband has requested Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Ratatouille sheet pan gnocchi, based somewhat on this recipe. Baked gnocchi is a wonder! I used canned tomatoes instead of fresh, and I think it gave the dish a more saucy taste. Will make again.

Thursday: I was full from Happy Hour and then I went to the Kindergarten Back to School Night. The Husband, home with the kids, I think he fed them chicken salad and PB& J for dinner.

Friday: Sandwiches from our favorite deli, eaten at an outdoor concert. Along with ketchup chips. I brought back several bags of ketchup chips from Canada and I’m almost afraid to break into them because who know when I will get more. But I guess no one is enjoying them when they sit uneaten in the pantry…

Home and everyday adventures.

We’ve just come home from our summer road trip to Montreal. It was a wonderful time, and now I’m plunged into a week of unpacking/ school prep/ union negotiations/ baby’s first day (ever!) of daycare. I have trip recaps coming from our road trip…and I have to finish the Shenandoah recaps too. Whew. It feels like there was a lot of travel there, but I think we’ve just packed two trips into the end of the summer because the 10 year old’s swim team schedule took up much of June and July.

The weeks before we went to Montreal felt really packed. I had the two little kids with me for one week and then all three with me the next week. I had all sorts of fun plans for the week with the three kids, but then I got sick. Not COVID sick, thankfully, but aches, pains, sore throat, persistent cough, and low energy. And then at the end of the week, I got pink eye. I felt so sad to have to cancel the fun family plans that we had, but I think the kids were just as happy to hunker on the couch with me and binge watch Ugly Betty. (A show that I never watched when it was on air, because I didn’t have a tv then, but is really delightful.) Also, I discovered that HBO co-produced a Chinese version of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries called Miss S. It is set in 1930s Shanghai, so I also watched that to brush up on my Chinese and scratch the Miss Fisher itch. Miss S, was better at the brushing up than at the scratching of the itch. I think there are some cultural differences that make the Chinese version feel a little more superficial and melodramatic than the original. The costumes and the people, however, are just as gorgeous.

At any rate, before I got sick, we still managed to squeeze in some fun adventures with the kids. I knew we were going on a big trip, so I didn’t feel like I had to get too ambitious, and at the same time, I knew that getting the kids out of the house was going to be important to everyone’s well being. It turns out there are so many little adventures to have near home that require very little prep. Either they fit in a morning and we can be home for a late lunch, or I throw together a simple lunch (PB&J sandwiches, cucumbers, fruit, and some trail mix or cookies) and take it with.

Patapscoe State Park and A Day playing in the River then stop at Spicknall’s Farm Stand – I think this is one of my favorite day trips during the weekday. The river is always shady and quiet, there aren’t a lot of people. There is a fun bridge to cross over to get to the river, and the river is nice and shallow and cool. We were dog sitting the day we went, and I think we all had a very relaxing day. We spent a few hours at the river and then stopped at the playground at the park before heading home. On the way home we picked up some produce from Spicknall’s farm stand – peaches, melons, squash, eggplant, corn, and tomatoes. I’m always so surprised by how inexpensive the summer produce is when you get out of the city/suburbs.

Library for morning story time then books and a park – There is a children’s library near us that has the best story times. The librarian always does some songs and fingerplay activities as well as reads the funniest books in the funniest voices. This library is just for children so inside is all picture books and toys. It makes for an easy outing – 9:30am story time, then inside the library for an hour or so, then we walk to the park ten minutes away to play for a while. Typically there is little bakery nearby that we will walk to to get a treat, but it was closed the day we were at the library. So the kids immediately decided that we would just have to come back for storytime/library/park again. The baby has taken to saying, “I want to go back there tomorrow!” anytime we do something she likes and then have to leave.

Glen Echo Park for Carousel Rides and the Aquarium – We got wristbands to ride the carousel all day, but turns out the five year old was not as enamored of carousels as the baby. The baby would probably be happy to ride it all day. The five year old could only be convinced to ride three times. We also got tickets to to go to the aquarium. It’s a small affair – just one room of tanks, mostly focusing on the sea life of the Chesapeake Bay. Even still, we spent about an hour there. There was also a touch tank with horseshoe crabs and other creatures. And then outside the aquarium, a big sand pit to play in. We only did a half day at Glen Echo, but next time, I might also get tickets for the puppet show and stay longer.

The National Building Museum – With so many free museums in DC, it is easy for this one to fall off my radar because it does charge admission, but it is worth it. It is actually a really great museum for kids, though, and there are some really neat exhibits about architecture and building. Every summer they do a huge installation exhibit in their great hall – one year they converted the space into a huge lawn with fake grass and hammocks, one year it was a beach. This year, in a joint venture with a theatre company, they installed a theatre – Playhouse, they call it. During the evening the theatre company has been performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I thought it would be fun to go see the space and this theatre. We missed the tour so couldn’t go backstage, but we could look at the space from the audience and from above. The Building Museum also has a great Play/Work/Build room where kids can build with big and little foam blocks. There was also an interactive/ Virtual reality Notre Dame exhibit where you got a tablet and walked into a room with pictures of Notre Dame, and you could point the tablet at the QR code on the pictures and get at 360 degree view of what it was like when Notre Dame was being built. Pretty cool, and very high tech. There were a couple other exhibits that we didn’t get to see, so I do want to go back. We took the metro down, which always makes things seem like an even bigger adventure.

Two Dollar Tuesdays at the Regal Movie Theatre – This was one of the outings I took the kids on when I was still feeling run down, but not so run down that I wanted to stay home since we had been home for two days straight already. Regal Theatres does $2 Tuesday matinees during the summer of older movies, so I took the kids to see the third How to Train Your Dragon movie. (It was either that or Trolls.) After parking, popcorn, and soda it really wasn’t as frugal an adventure as I had thought it would be, to be honest. Yet, the movie was pretty good, and it was the baby’s first time at a movie theatre. The theatre was a little more crowded than I had thought – when I reserved my tickets the theatre only had a handful of seats occupied, but when we got there there were several summer camp groups. Oh well… I feel like it still felt like a classic summer adventure – popcorn and Sprite and a movie in an chilly air conditioned theatre on a hot hot day. I had a good time.

Next time, I’m only getting one popcorn for them all to share!

And of course – parks, playgrounds, and playdates.

Some other thoughts that came into my life in that past little while:

-I love Carolyn Hax’s advice column, and there were two things she wrote recently that really struck me – so much so that I screen shot them and saved them to my phone:

I think I’ve been struggling lately with expectations – of myself, of my kids, of my husband, of my work. Hax also had one column where she said that “All anger and resentment lie in the gap between expectation and reality.” It may sound defeatist to stop expecting change, yet I think there is a fine line between giving up your expectation that someone/something will change and being realistic about the future and acting accordingly. There are so many things, I think “Oh if only it were this way or that way, it would be better!” And perhaps I need to shift to accepting these things and seeing them for what they are and work with that.

– Perhaps in that same vein of expectations and adjusting, this quote via swissmiss, is so very true, I think:

-I thought this Wordle especially ironic as I solved it at the park while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes:

On that note – I’ve been shifting my Wordle strategy lately. When I started, I would try to build off the previous word I played and try to solve in as few steps as possible, but lately I’ve been trying to fully suss out all the letters before guessing the word – so I try to play as many letters as possible in the first three lines. Sometimes this method is more efficient, but it always pains me a little to play a word that I know will be wrong in the hopes of discovering more letters. There’s something a little poignantly sacrificial about that tactic. Well… any other Wordle tactics I should try?

-One day, when I was sick and hunkering on the couch in the basement, the Husband brought home take out for dinner. In anticipation of his arrival, I sent the kids upstairs to set the table. They were soon back, claiming to have accomplished the task. Skeptical, I sent the five year old up with my phone. “Take a picture for me!” I said. And he did:

I don’t know why this picture delights me so much, but it does.

-The picture at the top of this post is just a picture of the sky. It’s been such a beautiful shade of blue these first few weeks of August. It’s not quite captured in the picture, but I wanted to remember that such a blue exists.

What We Ate, the pre-vacation, minimal shopping version:

Monday: Happy Hour with my mom’s group so I had nachos at the local brewery.

Tuesday: Tomato and Corn Tart and Salad. The tart is loosely based on this recipe. I had picked up tomatoes and corn from the market and wanted to make the full recipe, but the way the day went, I didn’t have time to make the cornmeal crust, so I used puff pastry. I’ve decided frozen puff pastry is a freezer staple that allows me to instantly pull off a fancy-ish dinner. Throw some sauteed veggies in a pastry crust with some cheese and egg. Bake. An easy elegant dinner in less than 45 mins.

Wednesday: eggplant snow peas stir fry – kitchen sink kind of dinner to use up some veggies in the fridge.

Thursday: Grilled sausage, corn and hotdogs with bagged Caesar Salad and cut up melon. We had a friend over for dinner and grilling is always the perfect easy meal for impromptu casual dinner with friends.

Friday: Pizza and Thor

Saturday: Farro and Snap Pea Salad from Dinner Illustrated. I was trying to use up some veggies and happened to have everything to make this salad.

Sunday: Dumplings and green beans. One of our go-to simple weekend dinners.

Monday: Spaghetti and Meatballs. A request from the kids. I used the InstantPot meatball recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners – so easy.

Tuesday: Take out Burgers and fries.

Wednesday: Chilaquiles, sort of. Another kitchen sink meal (can you tell I was trying to eat down the fridge before we left on vacation?). I wanted to do something to use up the package of corn tortillas in the fridge and the Husband had grown some corn in the garden that he wanted us to eat. There was a recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners for chilaquiles which was pretty much just salsa and tortilla chips and eggs. So I fried up all the corn tortillas – they turned out really really tasty and we almost ate them all on their own. Then I looked in the fridge and turns out we were out of salsa, so I dumped canned tomatoes, onion, and peppers in a skillet, added a can of black beans and the corn and cracked some eggs into the whole concoction to poach. It was kind of a combination of chilaquiles and shakshuka.

Thursday: Tortellini and red sauce and Alfredo sauce. I was trying to use up some cream, hence the Alfredo sauce. But then I realized I could actually just freeze the cream and use it when I got back. The Alfredo sauce was pretty tasty, though.

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.