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Weekly recap + what we ate: Spring Break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday: Japanese take out.

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

Weekly recap + what we ate: jumping

At the beginning of the week, I got into my car, only to find that the battery had died. Apparently on Friday, upon arrival home from school, and unloading from the car, someone (ahem… a child) did not fully close their door when they got out of the car. Another someone (another child) had turned off the dome light, so I had no idea that the car sat there all weekend with a door not quite closed. And a long weekend at that. So when I got into the car on Monday to go to the movie, the car wouldn’t start.

Luckily we have a spare car – an almost 20 year old vehicle that we inherited from the Husband’s parent – so I used that car for a few days. But then on Wednesday, I take the ten year old to her morning piano lesson in the spare car. I drop her, take the other two kids with me to pick up breakfast sandwiches (our Wednesday morning bribe to get the kids in the car by 7:06am), then come back to sit in front of the piano teacher’s house while the lesson finished up. The ten year old comes out, gets into the car and then …. the car doesn’t start. Cue my huge cry of disbelieving frustration. I cannot believe I have two dead batteries in two different cars in two days. I call the Husband at work and he comes and jumps the car, takes the four year old to school so I don’t have to turn the car off again, and tells me to go on a nice long drive. I have about 45 minutes before the ten year old needs to be at school, so we take a nice long drive.

Then that evening when I get home, we jump my car and I go on another nice long drive.

So jumping…

I don’t know if it’s just been hard getting back into a routine with COVID closures and snow days and what not, but this week has felt really unmoored. I was driving down the freeway on the way to the ten year old’s school and it struck me – I feel like a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad, with scarce time to linger and catch my breath. Every day is a mad dash from one school drop off to another to a toddler activity to home for lunch to back in the car for pick up from one school than another. But really, I just want to sit on my lily pad and watch the flies go by.

I think maybe also the weather has something to do with this sense of body constantly in motion. It’s been in the mid 20s all week, which it makes it a little too cold for me to really slow down and linger outside, even though outside is where I often get my energy. At that temperature, with no snow to play in, I’ve discovered my outdoor limit with the baby is about 45 mins. I think I clocked only 9 hours outside this week. But even still, we did go on some beautiful 45 minute walks – nice pauses between lily pad jumping.

I was on the hunt for more of the County’s Selfie Stands, so I took the baby for a walk on a trail around a lake. The county website said that there was a stand on this trail, but we didn’t find it. We did, however, see lots of geese – noisy creatures in their V formations, that swooped above our heads and then landed on the frozen lake. Turns out the selfie stand was at the end of the trail, but a fallen tree in our path had discouraged us from making it all the way there. Now that I know where it is, though, we will have to return.

I actually had two failed selfie stand excursions this week. The second one was at a park, and I’m pretty sure the stand isn’t there even though the website says there is. But we did get this cool picture of a hollow tree:

Another day, I tried to take the baby to a playground, but it was too cold for her to be interested in playing on the equipment, so we went for a walk around the park. The grounds around the park is prone to flooding, and there were some beautiful ice puddles. I found the variety of shapes and lines mesmerizing. The baby was fascinated by the effects of her stick on the ice, and the cracking sounds and patterns that she could make.

Later in the week, I did finally manage to locate a selfie stand. This one was on the site of a house and garden that I hadn’t been to before. The site was once a private residence but is now part of the County Parks system. The house and gardens sit on five acres of land in a quite wealthy residential neighborhood, and it was almost like visiting someone’s private estate gardens. Right now, everything was all bare and bramble, but there were potential flowers. I’ve made a note to come back to see how these tightly close buds will open to become magnolia and azaleas come warmer weather.

Other things of note this week:

The Husband cooked dinner all week again, and I found time to practice playing the concertina. I can now play a C major scale and a G major scale. I’m realizing that the 20 button concertina is perhaps better for playing chords and accompanying oneself while singing, rather than more melodic endeavors. So I’ve decided that before March 11th, when my rental period is up, I want to be able to sing “Dear Theodosia” from Hamilton while accompanying myself on the concertina.

Speaking of Dear Theodosia… because I’m driving the oldest kid to school these days rather than catching the 8:15a bus, we have an extra 45 minutes in the morning to chill at home. The other day after breakfast we had a bit of time and the four year old asked if we could sing Dear Theodosia, so I found some music online and we sang it together. It was such a beautiful perfect little moment in the pause before the chaos of getting out the door.

A great podcast conversation I listened to this week was this Fresh Air Interview with Kal Penn – I thought he had a lot of really beautiful things to say about being a child of Indian immigrants, and being an Indian actor in Hollywood. He had a striking anecdote about trying to convince a director that he shouldn’t play a part with an Indian accent, noting that he thought it was important the other Indian kids should get to see themselves on tv as Americans and not as caricatures. The director refused, and Penn notes: “I think it’s a bit of a misnomer that racism only comes from ignorance; it can also come from a conscious maintenance of power and a desire to keep people down.” Growing up, I always felt that being blond was the ideal because that is what you see in mainstream media, and Penn’s anecdote really hit close to home.

Conversation with the four year old:
4 year old: Can you read me Green Eggs and Ham?
Me: I don’t really like Green Eggs and Ham.
4 year old: It’s not about you liking Green Eggs and Ham.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Grilled pork tenderloin with roasted asparagus, green beans and potatoes. It was the birthday of the Husband’s father, who had passed away five years ago. On his birthday we always try to have a meal that he would have liked. There is something really fun about grilling when it is 20 degrees outside.

Sunday: Leftovers and apple pie.

Monday: Parsnip Soup.

Tuesday: I can’t remember, but it involved leeks and lemons and maybe fish? The Husband had borrowed a stack of cookbooks from the library and this recipe came from a Mediterranean cookbook.

Wednesday: Sweet and Sour Pork and Broccoli

Thursday: Broccoli Pasta Bake.

Friday: pizza and Sense and Sensibility. I saw this movie in the theatre when it came out in 1995, a year that was full of wonderful Austen adaptations, and I love it so much. I’ve watched it many times, and I partly picked the movie because we’re trying to watch movies from our own DVD collection. This time through the movie, I was stuck by how beautifully framed so many of the shots were, creating such a sense of intimacy in every scene. I had never noticed before, but the scene where Elinor tells Edward that Colonel Brandon has offered him a job is shot in almost one long take, as if the tension between the two almost lovers is too fragile to break up by switching camera angles.

The Weekend – Movie

Last weekend was a long weekend, and it felt like a good combination of lazy and productive and fun.

The “productive” was clearing out a mountain of baby clothes from the guestroom – which we currently call the multi-purpose room since it houses the guest bed, the baby’s pjs and changing table, the Husband’s seldom used work from home set up, my concertina, and all our winter coats and snow pants, and whatever random thing that doesn’t have a home. But my mother is coming in a few weeks to help with the kids when I start my next gig, so we need to make the room suitable for her.

There is something a little sad about boxing up the baby clothes to pass along to friends – the acknowledging that I’m done having babies (physically if not mentally) and that others get the joy of little baby cuddles. But I realized that just shoving the clothes in the attic was delaying the inevitable. So I sorted and packed and kept a few things in a bin I labelled “nostalgia” and then texted my friends with new babies to see if they needed clothes.

“Productive” was also going for two runs, even though the weather was in the low 30s. I had read somewhere that running makes the temperature feel ten degrees warmer, so with that in mind, I decided to brave the cold. I put on my wool and silk underwear and headed out. I’m still very very slow and running intervals rather than longer stretches, but it feels good to be moving and out in the air.

I passed this charming lone glove on my run – clearly a lost object that someone had placed on a branch in hopes that its owner would come looking for it. I love how it kind of poked out from behind the tree, waving at me while I ran past.

“Lazy” was hanging out watching football and basketball and eating popcorn for dinner and playing with our trucks and the Swedish climbing wall and deciding that the freezing rain was enough reason to let the ten year old skip swim clinic and just sit at home and watch football and eat the apple pie which the Husband made.

This latter was definitely not lazy on his part, but it was his first attempt at apple pie. Saturday would have been his father’s birthday, and he always made apple pie for the holidays. When we accidentally got a bag of granny smith apples in our grocery delivery, the Husband decided that he was going to honor his father by making an apple pie. It turned out really well! And whereas my apple pies always seem to come out with a soggy bottom, the Husband’s did not. I’m so proud of him!

Also maybe lazy was going on a winter walk. There had been snow forecast, but it turned out to be a mild dusting which quickly turned to icy slush and mud. Since we had spent the previous day hunkered inside, I decided we were going to go for a morning walk. I made the poor decision to wear my sneakers, along with the four year old, forgetting that there is some patches on our walk that has truly terrible drainage and then had to carry him over some large icy puddles. Note to self: just wear the boots.

And “Fun” was taking the ten year old to see West Side Story at the AFI Theatre. I love West Side Story. One summer, I was stage managing at an opera festival and my show was performed in rep with a production of West Side Story that was so so so good. Like I started crying from the moment Tony and Maria met in the gym because there was something so beautifully fatalistic yet full of life about that production. I don’t usually gush to directors, but at the opening night party, I cornered the director and gushed.

When I was in high school, or maybe college, I can’t remember, I somehow got my hands on a cassette tape of the original Broadway Cast Album of West Side Story. I can’t recall what I was doing at the time, or where I was going, but the commute was exactly the same length as the A side of the tape – from the brassy opening bars of the prologue to the romantic hopefulness of “One Hand, One Heart.” Every day, as I drove from home to work (or maybe school), I listened to Side A. I feel like there was something wrong with my tape deck that I couldn’t just flip the tape over, so I would just rewind the tape and listen to side A again. And it was kind of magical and perfect because twice a day in my car, Maria and Tony met, fell in love, and pledged their troth. I never moved on the the Rumble or its tragic outcome, or to Anita’s anger and Maria’s desperate love or the hopeless hopefulness of “Somewhere.” There was just this perfect little story of two kids from opposite sides falling in love.

So my love for West Side Story is longstanding and when I saw that the movie was finally being released, I knew I was going to have to see it somehow. (Somewhere…) I also thought it would be a great mother-daughter date since the ten year old loves musicals too. There’s that line in the book “Nothing to See Here” where the main character says something to the effect of parenting being showing kids what you love and hoping they love it too. This was absolutely that kind of excursion. (Spoiler alert: She loved “America” but though the Rumble too scary. “There’s a reason that this movie is PG 13!” she said, emphasis on the 13. )

Even pre-COVID I didn’t go to the movies much – maybe two or three times a year. During COVID – I think the ten year old went to a movie birthday party last summer where one of her classmates rented out the whole theatre, but that’s pretty much been it for movies in theatre. To be honest, I was a little on the fence about whether I thought this was going to be a good idea. I mean there’s the whole COVID and gathering in large groups thing, but also… the story doesn’t really have a happy ending. But I asked her if she would want to go and she said yes.

On the movie theatre’s website, patrons have to to reserve their seats when they buy tickets, so I could look at the seating chart and get an idea of how crowded the theater would be. It didn’t look like there were a lot of tickets being sold – and I had heard that the movie wasn’t doing that well at the box office. Given that the seating chart looked pretty empty and that they required proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test and masks in order to see a film, I figured that going to the movies was not the riskiest thing that we could do right now. But even still, I was somewhat relieved when the movie started and I looked around and counted maybe twelve people in the theatre. It’s so strange to have to do these kinds of risk calculations for something that used to be a typical casual date night activity, but I guess that’s life in COVID times.

The movie itself was wonderful. I though the new script by Tony Kushner brought some thoughtful backstory and details to the story. And I loved how gritty yet beautiful everything and everyone was. And the score, and hearing it played by a full orchestra. And the dancing… I love big dance numbers with choreography that tells a story as well as showcases how incredible the human body can be when it moves. And when many human bodies move together, it’s even more amazing. Every move was so deft and natural.

And there were definitely tears for me. I’ve always found “Somewhere” somewhat problematic in the stage show because while the song is beautiful, it kind of pulls the action away from the stage and story. But in the film, I thought they found such a moving solution for the song, one that had me in tears. I actually was in tears for a lot of the movie. Mostly during that “B” side of the tape that I never listened to all those years ago. Which is probably a good thing because driving while crying is tough.

Weekend: Finding Space

The weekend turned out more spontaneously social than we had expected. We had planned to knock off a bunch of house chores, and hopefully get the Christmas lights up, but then social invitations popped up. With it being the long weekend, it felt like we had a luxurious amount of unscheduled time. I think even with the spontaneous gatherings, it felt like a good combination of social, holiday, and house chores.

We did two big “go-through-and-purge”s. With the kids we went through their books and filled a box with books they were no longer reading. I have mixed feelings about owning books. I love having books, and I can remember how each book came into our lives. Who gave them to us, the bookstore I impulsively picked it up, the Little Free Library the baby raided…. But the reality is, even though we make liberal use of the library, books keep coming into our lives, and space is finite, and I’ve been finding it harder and harder to bring hard copies of books into my life permanently.

We have a linen closet in our house that we dubbed “The Library”. Shortly after moving in, we realized that we had more books than towels. And the Husband and I always joked that we wanted a library in our house. There are also various bookshelves scattered throughout the house. The Library is mostly the things we aren’t currently reading. We spent the morning culling the bottom three shelves, namely where the children’s books were, and also going through every book in the kids’ room and in the living room bookshelf. Even still, we only ended up with a small box of books to disperse back to the Little Free Libraries in our area. For some reason, I thought surely there would be more books to go into the donate pile. But books that we hadn’t opened in ages were clung to and declared “keepers.” Well, at least we made enough room for the books that will come in as Christmas gifts, which was kind of the idea anyway.

I also went through the baby’s closet and swapped out the 18 month clothes for 24 month/ 2 T clothes. It’s always bittersweet for me, moving to the next size of baby clothes. I probably put it off way longer than is prudent, until the children are squeezed, sausage-like, into too tight leggings and t-shirts.

When the baby hit 18 months, all I could find were the boy clothes from the 4 year old. I have no idea where all the girl clothes were. Probably passed along? So the baby wore mostly boy marketed clothes. This time, when looking for the 24 month/2T clothes, I found a bin of boy and a bin of girl clothes. The girl clothes had been packed away for the past eight years and unpacking them brought back so many memories. I realized, too, that there were also clothes that I have no memory of. Not sure if I was working much more in those days or what. I have to admit, I love buying girl clothes – they are always so bright and cute and cheerful. I’m sure there’s some kind of gendered expectations there that I’m pushing subconsciously. But, truth – boy clothes are often just… boring and dull. Greys, blues, khakis, stripes.

With a morning and half an afternoon devoted to chores, we spent the rest of Saturday at a friend’s house, celebrating a birthday. It was one of those visits that start as an open ended “Come by and the kids can play while we chat and enjoy some beers” and evolves into “Let’s order dinner.” And five hours later, with bedtime a good half hour in the rear view mirror, we are packing very tired, happy kids into the car.

Sunday morning, we explored a Seneca Creek State Park. We have so many county and national parks near by that this park was not even on my radar, even though it is only thirty minutes away. We met up with a couple of families from my mom’s group for a playground and walk. We started off at a the nature playspace – basically a bunch of logs set up for clambering and jumping. From there it was about a half mile walk along a trail around the lake to a recycled tire playground. Of course the half mile walk took almost an hour, but each kid went at their own pace, exploring sticks and rocks and dirt as they went. The playground was great because there was something for all the kids, including a zipline that kept the nine year old busy. I often think she might be getting too old for playgrounds, which is tricky when the two younger kids do still very much love going. Often when we go to playgrounds, unless she is with a friend, she is great at playing with her younger siblings. It was great, though, that this playground could be engaging for her.

Morning play and walk at Seneca Creek State Park.

The evening we kicked off holiday movie season with watching Elf and having milk shakes. It was a good holiday weekend.

Weekend recap + good news Wednesday

No big adventures this weekend – just getting ready for Halloween and helping the nine year old with her Native American shelter project, watching Star Wars, and finishing season two of Ted Lasso. I really enjoy Ted Lasso, but so far each season has ended on kind of a mixed emotional note.

Saturday I also carved the second pumpkin. The four year old wanted it to look like our dog friend Max whom we were dog sitting that day.

I was up late finishing the baby’s Han Solo Costume. I had bought a white polo shirt and blue sweat pants. I added a red stripe to the sweatpants with red duct tape and then made a vest with lots of pockets out of an old t-shirt and boot covers out of black felt.

Halloween was on Sunday, and the kids went trick or treating for the first time in quite a while. In 2019 there was the threat of bad weather so they didn’t go, and last year there was no trick or treating because of COVID. I think this was the four year old’s first real experience of trick or treating. We went out with some friends because unfortunately our neighborhood is pretty quiet. The nine year old took off with her friends and I ended up with the four year old and the baby. Which was just as well because the baby was Han Solo, except the costume was a little obscure unless she was with the Millenium Falcon. And even then I’d say only four or five people knew who she was. She was quite a trooper and walked the whole hour we were out, only wanting to be carried for the last block. She was a little hesitant at first, but once she realized that there was candy involved, she was very much game to walk up to strangers.

Our friend’s neighborhood was a great place to go. Lots of houses were decorated and people sat out in front of their houses, so it was easy to tell who was giving out candy and which houses to skip. Most people also put the candy on a table, so you could go up and say hello, but still keep a distance. You could tell that the adults handing out the candy loved Halloween and seeing the different costumes. It was just a really nice atmosphere.

I was really happy with how the Millenium Falcon turned out and it got lots of attention. Several people said that it was the best costume of the night. That made me feel really happy. Also making me happy – the baby gets really excited about the Falcon and will point at it and say, “Bacca!” as in Chewbacca.

We trick or treated til about 6:45p – the weather stayed mild and the sky light for much longer than I thought it would. Afterwards, I sat and chatted with our friends for a little bit, while the kids ate candy then we went home to the Husband who stayed home on the off chance someone came by. No one did. The Husband was smart and didn’t open the candy, so I guess we can return it. Which is a little disappointing for me because he got this really cool mix with Reese Peanut Butter Cups, Twizzlers, Kit Kats and Sour Patch Kids. I love all those things and was really excited to see a mix that combined chocolate and candy.

We took the kids to two of our neighbor’s house because we had promised to . One of them are new to the neighborhood and I knew they would be disappointed to get no trick or treaters. It was nice to chat to and lament the lack of trick or treaters in our neighborhood. I think it’s just the nature of how our street is next to a really busy street, so not many people will cross the road to our house. Also there aren’t a lot of kids on our street. I hope that evolves and changes.

so sad no one came to see these jack o’lantern masterpieces.

Two things that made me teary with joy today:

Michelle Wu elected as Mayor of Boston. Growing up, I think I internalized the idea that Asians, particularly Asian women could do great things, but in roles of quiet support and service. I didn’t grow up seeing Asian women in leadership roles, particularly in one that might be considered politically radical. Representation matters. I don’t know if Michelle Wu will be a good mayor or not, but I do know that seeing her lead a major American city will help tear apart the model minority narrative and hopefully inspire other Asian girls to not just be support, but be leaders and the face of civic change. In many ways that big picture is just as important as the immediate one.

COVID vaccines approved for children 5-11 years old. I’ve been hunting for available appointments. The County released a bunch of appointments around 5:30pm, and they were already gone by 7pm. I know that all my kids will be vaccinated eventually, but I’m feeling somewhat compelled to sit at my computer trying to secure a vaccine appointments for the nine year old.

Weekly recap + what we ate: outdoor adventures

I’ve been inspired by the 1000 hours outside movement. At least for me and the baby. I don’t have as much control over the two older kids since they are at school for most of the day. I know they definitely don’t get outside as much as I want. I often rant that when I was their age (*eye roll, sigh*) we had recess twice a day, plus at lunch. The nine year old currently gets 30-45 minutes of outdoor time at school all day. And none if there is even a hint of moisture in the air. At any rate, I can do my best to make sure we get out during the weekends, and that they have the right clothing to brave the elements come colder weather.

This weekend, we managed two outdoor adventures. One was planned weeks in advance and the other was a rather impromptu affair.

The impromptu trip was prompted by a project the nine year old had for class. She had to build an indigenous dwelling. There was also an option to make a poster or design a pamphlet, but we regarded those options with scorn and declared that we would b building a model. I never had to do a diorama or such model when I was in school, but the Husband did. And, given that his father was an architect, the Husband actually did very little of his own building.

I’ve come to the conclusion that diorama and model assignments for fourth graders are really a long term learning experience so that forty years later they can build dioramas and models for their children. Yes, we may have co-opted her assignment a little.

Anyhow, Saturday morning, my husband did some googling and it turns out that there is a reproduction of an American Indian Village at Patuxent River Park, about an hour and a half from where we lived. So after soccer and dance lessons, we piled into the car and went on a spur of the moment jaunt. (With three kids, I feel like three hours advance planning counts as “spur of the moment.”). When we arrived, only one of the housing displays was still up, but luckily it was the shelter that the nine year old had planned to make anyway: a longhouse. After checking out the longhouse frame, we went on a forest ramble. The trail map indicated that the trail went to the water, but in reality, it went to an overlook of marshland with a very tree filled view. Once could catch sight of slivers of water between the branches. But it being fall, the foliage made the view pretty great anyway.

Slight view of the water, but still some neat moments of nature

The next day came the planned adventure: a family hike at a local park lead by a naturalist. The baby and I had gone on one of these hikes before, but this time the whole family came along. Only the baby fell asleep on the way there so the Husband stayed behind and went on a little ramble with her when she woke up an hour later.

Going on a hike with a park naturalist Katrina was really eye opening. I think it’s one thing to wander the woods on your own and do some forest bathing, but there is something really special about going with someone who will point out all the little details in nature that I would have missed otherwise. Like all the tiny variation of mushroom. And the sliver trail left by a slug on a leaf. And even though I’ve always let my kids climb on trees and fallen logs, there was something to not only having the park authority tell us it was okay, but even point out the best logs for climbing. She also, upon hearing of the nine year old’s longhouse project, pointed out what she thought would be the best tree bark to use and helped us gather some. And when the four year old started losing steam, Katrina pulled out a deck of nature games to play.

My third big outdoor adventure last week was going on a hike at the nearby nature center called “What’s that Tree?” For this hike, a naturalist taught us how to identify trees by looking at the location, bark, leaves, and buds. Looking at buds, I found really hard at first, but eventually I started to see how buds all grew in different patterns and angles. The nature center leads a winter Tree Identification hike which is all bark and buds, and I think I might sign up for that one; it sounds like a really great challenge. Even though this was billed as an adult hike, I put the baby in her carrier and brought her along. And the Husband even took the morning off work to come too… it was almost like at date! I think I can now identify a boxelder and an American hornbeam, two trees that I wasn’t even aware of before the hike.

The other big project this week was the Halloween costumes. The nine year old had a class Halloween party, so there was a bit of an earlier timeline for her Princess Leia on Hoth costume. Luckily everything arrived in time and then I made a braid on a headband for her to wear and also the badge. The badge was a print out from the internet modge podged onto a piece of cardboard and then attached to a magnetic name tag from a former job. I had a moment when I was trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to give up this name tag, this relic of a on of my favorite gigs, for my child’s Halloween costume. And then I realized I was being silly and putting too much pressure on a a little name tag so I covered it in hot glue and slapped the badge on it.

The Millenium Falcon was chipped away at a little every night. I feel like it kind of deserves its own post because it was kind of huge but also a lot of fun to make.

Good things this week:

-Promising vaccine news for the kids. (Even more promising by the time I hit “post” on this.)

-Rainy Friday. I feel like the weather is finally turning to cold and wet autumn after unseasonably warm temperatures so far. But I love the crisp cold nip of air, and the shiny sheen of a rainy day. I’m so glad I finally decided to get rainboots last year.

-Pumpkin #1 is carved. The nine year old designed a cat face. I always dread carving pumpkins because of the mess and the time it takes. But this only took half and hour and clean up was pretty easy. So maybe I’m getting better at the whole pumpkin thing. I do actually like the carving process, it’s just that thinking about it is worse that the actual doing.

Notice the baby doing the nine year old’s homework.

-The baby will not require speech services. Hooray! We had her re-assessed by the county’s Infants and Toddler’s program since she still wasn’t talking much at her two year appointment. To our surprise, she actually was not showing the required 25% delay to receive services. She’s more like 10% delayed Turns out, that while she doesn’t have a lot of words, the way in which she is using the few words that she has is actually on track for her age -things like matching picture and words with real objects, being able to answer “where” questions, being able to name people, consistently using the words that she does have, and being able to whisper, using words to represent actions. Her lowest scores, since she was assessed in a variety of developmental areas, was in soci0-emotional areas. But the therapists said this was not uncommon for babies who have had such limited interaction during the pandemic. I still feel like such developmental assessments are somewhat arbitrary and can cause undue concern, but it is good to know what boxes are being checked off. The therapists left us with some tips for helping to grow her vocabulary and went on their way.

-Apple pie from September’s apple picking adventure. And finally getting a pie server. No more awkward attempts to serve pie (or cake!) with a butter knife.

-Inspiring thought for the week – I was listening to the Life Kit episode featuring Oliver Burkman who wrote a book 4000 weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I really liked that his approach to time was so different from the manic ultra-high productivity that seems to be so common in time management writing today. One thing he said in this interview – a thought which he attributes to James Hollis – is that rather than asking if something makes you happy, ask yourself “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me.” He goes on to say how parenting rarely makes one happy, but that it certainly can fall in the “enlarge” category. I feel that in our current climate of almost radical self-care, the enlarge/diminish question is perhaps a truer way to answer questions of what is worth spending our time on.

What We Ate:
This was a fun week because the four year old planned the menu this week.

Saturday: Take Out Indian following out Patuxent River Park Adventure.

Sunday: Leftovers

Monday: Request from four year old was “Pasta”. I made Eggplant Pasta from the America’s Test Kitchen’s Bowls cookbook.

Tuesday: “Rice and Green Beans!” Clean out the veggie drawer stir fry. I think in addition to green beans there was bok choy, broccoli, red bell pepper, and I’m sure there was something else too.

Wednesday: “Chicken Soup!” Chicken Bok Choy soup. Pretty easy improvised recipe: boil chicken tenders in chicken stock, remove and shred. Throw mushrooms, carrots and sliced bock choy, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil and star anise into chicken stock, boil until veggies are just tender, then throw in chicken dumplings and the shredded chicken and simmer until dumplings are done.

Thursday: The Husband make Spanish rice and black beans. (The request from the four year old was “Black beans with sprinkle”) He is trying to cook his way through the Betty Crocker’s Cooking Basics cookbook that he received in college.

Friday: Pizza and and failed attempt to watch Star Wars. Which might have been related to a failure to do chores. Sigh.

Weekly recap + what we ate: routines to lead us back to fall

Trying to get back in the habit of recapping our week and dinner menus.

And here we are in October. September seemed a blur of finding the rhythm of new routines. But actually I feel like it’s October when things finally find their pace. Of the four weeks in September, I think there was only one week where the nine year old went to school for all five days. Each weekend, too, brought a new activity – Soccer and Mandarin for the four year old, dance and swim for the nine year old. Two activities for each older child didn’t seem like a lot when I was doing the sign ups, but since I opted to place them on the weekend rather than spread over the weekdays, they are starting to add up to a chunk of our weekend. We’re still trying to figure out the right balance of “fun” time vs. “free” time.

Lest she feels left out, while her siblings are at school, the baby is doing a music class – meh – and a swim class – actually very fun. And we go on lots of walk and visit the playground frequently. Fall colour is starting to make an appearance, a little at odds with the 80 degree weather some days.

In the “made my life easier” category, the school district added a bus stop for the nine year old’s bus just down the street. In fact, it is in front of the four year old’s school. Even though we have to leave five minutes sooner than before to be able to walk to the bus stop, I think there is something psychologically easier about walking fifteen minutes rather than driving ten minutes as we used to do. After the bus picks up the nine year old, the four year old and the baby go to the nearby playground for twenty or thirty minutes before I drop the four year old at preschool. I’m finding it a really relaxing way to start the morning, particularly after the rush and hustle of morning routines.

And the afternoon drops off in the same location too. There was a little bit of mental calculus to decide if it was worth having her take the longer bus ride so that we could pick her up closer to home. On the one hand, it makes for one pick up location for both kids. On the other hand, she’s now on the bus for about an hour coming home. I figure we’ll try it until it turns out not to be a great solution. But I have to admit being able to walk to drop off and pick up has been kind of ideal.

The baby turned two in September.

She has started to nap somewhat consistently if I lay the day out right. Namely, if I don’t put her in a car between the hours of 11am and 1pm, I have a reasonably good chance of getting her home, putting some lunch in her, and then having her go down for a nap. Of course, often we are out and about in the mornings so putting her in a car during that window is unavoidable. Then I am stuck with the dilemma of letting her sleep and get her nap in and being stuck in the car, or waking her up to get her lunch and hope that the nap train has not left for good. With the former, it does allow me to get some reading done. With the latter… if it works that she does nap, then I can get some things on my to do list accomplished. Of course, most of the time the nap doesn’t manifest itself with the latter.

I’ve become used to doing more mental calculus for the repercussions of waking the sleeping baby. It usually goes something like… “Is the stuff of my to do list doable with a baby around? Is it computer tasks (then, no because she is very good at climbing onto my chair and swiping at my keyboard). Is it pick up or meal prep – in which case it’s okay to let her run rampant through the house…” Tasks are ranked in my head according to ease of execution with a toddler around and level of importance. Of course some days, she falls a sleep on me and then nothing gets done. I’m trying to savor the sweet weight of a sleeping baby in my lap. I’m getting a lot of reading done.

I’m trying to find adventures for us to go one. I found out that the nature center at one of our regional parks has toddler appropriate story times and hikes, so we’ve signed up for many of those. The naturalist who leads them is wonderfully engaging. She approaches every log, leaf, and hole in the ground with and infectious curiosity and enthusiasm. I’ve come to realize that my kids (and I as well, let’s be honest) can more easily distinguish a FedEx truck from a UPS truck than they can distinguish the many variety of trees that surround us. That seems unfortunate to me. The park naturalist gave me some great resources for identifying things in nature and I’m excited to explore that more.

We also managed to go apple picking, one Saturday in September. We came home with a ridiculous amount of apples. In addition to the apples we picked, we brought home an enormous bag of seconds. The Husband reasoned that the apples we picked should be for pies and eating out of hand, shuddering at the idea that we use it for apple sauce. The four year old was quite excited by the prospect of making apple sauce, however. Hence the bag of seconds. Half of the seconds have been made into apple sauce and frozen. Some years I can the apple sauce, but having canned a bushel of peaches in August, I didn’t have any more jars left. So into the freezer for this batch of sauce. If I get my act together, maybe the next batch will be canned. There was also apple pie filling made, and one actual apple pie. There is still filling for a second and third pie.

At the beginning of October, there was an art installation down on the Mall to commemorate the lives lost to COVID. 600,000 flags were planted at the foot of the Washington Monument. Some of the flags were inscribed with messages from people in honour of a lost loved one. When the exhibit was over, the artist asked for volunteers to help take down the flags, so I took the baby and we drove downtown to help. We went the second day of the strike, when about half of the flags had already been removed. Even still, what remained of the installation was still a heart stopping sight. Seeing the sea of flags fluttering in the breeze, all light and movement, quantifies the lives lost in a way that merely looking at number on a dashboard couldn’t.

I have to say, I miss being able to jump on the metro and pop down on a whim to the Mall to see the monuments and museums. The clean white marble lines, the vast expanses of green, and the buildings full of things of note, being able to meander through at my own pace because I know that I can come back easily. This is one of the aspects of pre-pandemic life I miss the most.

What We Ate – So far in October:

Monday: Falafel and Greek Salad – Falafel is from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan for Everyone Cookbook. The door on our toaster oven broke – and we finally decided to replace it. The new toaster oven comes with an air fryer function. I’m learning that this is just a fancy way of saying high heat convection. Anyhow, I tried and experiment with the falafel where I fried half of it in oil and used the air fryer for half. The falafel fried in oil tasted better. No surprise there. But… the air fryer did a great job of reheating the falafel the next day. So I guess that’s a win. The falafel recipe was also delicious. It called for using soaked dried chick peas rather than cooked, and a touch of cinnamon.

Tuesday: Quesadillas from Dinner Illustrated. By which I mean I used their method of cooking them in the oven rather than in the frying pan. The filling was my own inspiration – black beans, peppers (from the garden!), corn, pepper jack cheese.

Wednesday: Eggplant with Coconut Rice from Meera Sodha’s East.

Thursday: Mac and cheese from Dinner Illustrated. The recipe features chard and there was much skepticism going in, but everyone declared it tasty in the end. Yay.

Friday: Pizza and Curious George. We’ve been making homemade pizza again now that the weather has somewhat cooled and turning the oven to 525 degrees is something we can contemplate. It was the 4 year old’s turn to choose the movie. This was a version of Curious George from 2006 and there is some awkward dated bits, particularly the colonial tone of the parts set in Africa.

Saturday: Dumplings and cucumber salad.

Sunday: Leftovers. We are trying out having leftovers for Sunday dinner. The purpose is twofold: 1) clean out the fridge, and 2) getting dinner on the table with minimal effort between the 4 year old coming home from Mandarin classes and the 9 year old’s swim practice. I’m learning that there are leftovers no one is ever going to eat. But at least this way it won’t be because we forgot about them.

Monday: Tofu Scramble on Toast from Meera Sodha’s East. A vegan version of breakfast for dinner.

Tuesday: Take out since we got home late from flag gathering. Chinese. Really spicy, but super delicious.

Wednesday: Harvest bowls – Farro, lentils, roast sweet potatoes, apples, cranberries, feta, and kale. From America’s Test Kitchen’s Bowls cookbook. I’m really liking this cookbook. Everything is so customizable. It’s kind of more like a book of ideas.

Thursday; Carmelized Onion Ramen from East. Tasty. I always like eating noodles. Apple pie for dessert.

Friday: pizza and Baketopia. We recently discovered that our favorite Italian Deli also sells pizza dough. It’s really good. Much better than anything I can make – it bakes up super puffy and crispy. Game changer.

On not saying good-bye

Last week I heard of the passing of yet another opera colleague. Not one that knew personally, but one who I know touched the lives of so many people and of whom many glowing things were spoken. The composer Carlisle Floyd also passed away in the last days of September. His opera Susannah was the first show I called as an AGMA stage manager. I loved that piece – beautiful and darkly dramatic. Kind of like a Tosca for our age. A “shabby little shocker” and a great evening at the theatre.

A few weeks prior, I heard of the passing of a beloved director with whom I had worked with many times. A wonderful gentleman who loved life and drama and met it with kindness, generosity and a twinkle in his eye. From him I learned that the relationship between the artist and the audience is one of humility and gratitude and never to take for granted the privilege we have of being able to tell stories for a living.

I’ve always hated opening night parties and closing night parties. After opening nights, the director and design team leaves and you have to say good-bye. And then again on closing night you say good-bye to the cast and crew. I am wretched at saying good-bye. It always feels uncomfortable and makes me self-conscious. I work at a job where saying good-bye and moving on is a certainty – so why is there so much sentimentality for something that is just part of the job? On the other hand I think creating something forms bonds and properly saying good-bye honors that in a way. At any rate, I’ve taken to trying not to say good-bye. I say, “Until next time.”

This morning I went on a bright autumn walk with a friend. She is a former opera colleague, and we got to talk about the recent deaths of beloved industry colleagues. “The thing I think that is the hardest,” I said, “is that one of the joys of our profession is the idea of ‘until we meet again’. You never know when you will work together, but you have faith that paths will cross and art will be made. And now, there are so many people that we know we will never work with them again. It’s even more hard particularly right now when we’ve waited so long for even the possibility of working with them again.”

The pandemic – and life during the pandemic – has taken so many lives since March of 2020. There is something so very raw and personal, though, about the passings of these last few weeks. Maybe it’s because they were people whom I had a connection with, that I still held out hope of working with. Maybe it’s because after a year and a half of colleagues and collaborators being so distant, we are finally emerging to come together again in rehearsal rooms, familiarly and with new precautions. And that emergence had brought the glimmer of possibility that those relationships that had been banked will now be able to be stoked and rekindled.

Many of my colleagues in the arts have managed to work through the pandemic. They’ve brilliantly embraced technology and health and safety protocols to create on their own and with other people. I’ve enjoyed seeing many of their efforts and held their tenacity to our art with awe and a little bit of jealousy. But aside from seven weeks this summer, I have felt too overwhelmed with the fires on the domestic front to contemplate looking for work in this new pandemic cautious world.

As I’ve watched these projects scroll across my social media feeds, I’ve been happy for those that manage to still create and support creators. And I’ve known that yes, someday, I would be able to get back out there too, and thought, wouldn’t it be cool to work with those people too? And that possibility brought a hopeful buoyancy to that part of me that loved my job and what we do. While I am struck with the loss of future collaborations, I know that there will be many more to come. Yet still, I grieve those who will no longer be with us when the curtain goes up again.

Haikus for May, June and July

Get back on the bike
Show up and write anything
Back in the habit.

May:

Verdantly dancing,
Winter limbs don leafy coats
All the shades of green.

Exoskeletons
Sunshine trough cicada shells
Jewels left behind.

He slurps his noodles
A bowl of surprise and wonder
Discov’ring mushrooms.

Good Morning Spring Sun!
Slanting through kitchen windows
Stabs me in the eye.

June:

Cicadas flutter
on buzzing wings to treetops
alarmingly loud.

Ghost lights in water
Splash strokes, propelling shadows
Summer dusk swim meet.

June heat blankets me
in a thick layer of air,
prompts my lethargy.

The taste of summer skin
baking in the poolside heat
Sunscreen and chlorine.

The baby dances
unobserved in the kitchen.
It’s true what they say.

July:

Brood X now silent,
Bodies dissolved into earth
Leaving brown-tipped trees.

Skies open, rain storms.
Skies open, sunshine. Briefly.
Enough for a swim.

Weekly recap + what we ate – back to work

My camera roll is surprisingly empty this week. Well, empty of pictures that I took myself. It is somehow filled with selfies taken by the nine year old. Sometimes she loops her brother and sister into her shenanigans. As a result, I get surprise photos and videos in my feed when the iPad synchs with the cloud. I find it a cute, even while I am annoyed that she is co-opting my iCloud storage. The other day we had words about something and she recorded an apology on the iPad that popped up in my photo roll on my phone. It was hard to stay mad at that.

Anyhow this week was kind of a fresh start. The nine year old started camp and I started prep for my next show. I had enrolled the nine year old in a county camp – nothing fancy, just arts, crafts, games and plenty of time outdoors. The main virtue of the camp, quite honestly, was that it was incredibly inexpensive – $275 for six weeks, when most camps charge at least that much for a single week – and also that it is about a mile and a half from our house. She did walk to camp one morning with my dad, and I’m thinking I might do the walk with her on mornings when I don’t have to be at work in the morning. The one shortcoming of the camp is that it only runs until 3pm. This isn’t a problem for me since my parents pick her up, but I do realize that this makes this super affordable camp a non-option for many working parents.

For me, it was a combination of working from home and a day or two working on site. I’m learning to be more efficient with my time when I’m working at home. Working from home was definitely much easier this week since my parents were in town and could help watch the kids.

Even though I try not obsessively document my life in photos, I do notice that when my photo roll is empty, it means I’ve been particularly immersed in the “doing” of life, rather than remembering to take time to find the things to be savor or to be grateful for.

Good things this week, then:
– long visit with a friend whose kids are at the camp adjacent to the nine year old’s camp. It was great to catch up and talk about deep and frivolous things. The two younger kids came along and the four year old plays cars by himself for ninety minutes. I love that he can get in such a flow state of play. Also – I showed him a transformer and he was adorably amazed. “It’s a truck that turns into a robot!!!!”
– The nine year old had a couple swim meets this week. I took her to one and the Husband took her to one. I’m still finding it a little awkward to make conversation with other parents at these meets, but I do enjoy seeing the event management and planning that goes on to make the meets happen. The parents are all assigned tasks at the meet; I was a timer. Putting stage management skills to work, I guess. I find it interesting to see other pools as we travel for meets.
– I am really excited for this next opera I’m working on because it reunites me with a colleague whom I absolutely love working with. Actually she was one of the reasons I decided to take this job.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Snack dinner – hummus, crackers, cheese, whatever I could scrounge from the fridge. Still recovering from the camping trip.

Sunday: Burrito bowls from Dinner Illustrated. Pantry meal.

Monday: Hot dog at swim meet and Chipotle afterwards

Tuesday: Cacio e Pepe udon noodles and cucumber salad.

Wednesday: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and cucumbers. (Another swim meet night – the Husband took the nine year old, and I stayed home with the kids)

Thursday: Rice Pilaf with corn and shrimp from Milk Street Fast and Slow. InstantPot recipe to eat after swim practice

Friday: pizza take-out and In the Heights. Big movie – big dance numbers, big bold colours, big emotions, big voices.