Uncategorized – Page 4 – Life Off Headset

The country we call home

In the wake of the spa shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian Americans, I’ve increasingly seen tossed around idea that people should “check in” on their Asian American friends and acquaintances. The spa shootings were just the latest in a string of attacks on Asians in the country. It seems that in the past year, anti-Asian sentiment has been exacerbated by a pandemic that started in China. The “China flu” or “Kung flu”, the whole list of xenophobic labelling has certainly been indicative of a casual and pervasive racist attitude, one that was amplified by our former president. It has made me so unspeakably angry.

I’ve been thinking of the idea of “checking in” a lot lately. No one has asked me how I feel or how my community is doing, and truth to be told, I think I would find it a little awkward if someone I don’t regularly have contact with were to contact me just to “check in”.

At the same time, I’m not going to lie, the radio silence does sort of sting – not because I personally want a spotlight on myself as an Asian American. Rather, the lack of discussion on the topic in my day to day conversations has left me wondering if the anti-Asian bias that I’m seeing is all in my head. Were these shootings just another American mass killing, that really isn’t about race? Is the anti-Asian sentiment which I feel has really come to the fore in the past year – is it something that I am imagining? Does being a model minority mean that we are expected just to ignore this and not make waves? When we don’t talk about racism (or ageism or ableism or sexism, or misogyny, what not) it gives the impression that it isn’t perceived as a problem in the world we live in.

I don’t want my children to feel like being half Asian is a burden, or makes them a target. I don’t think they quite understand that very real possibility yet. And while it would be great if they could go through life thinking that they have the privilege of being white, I want them to understand that there is a very real bias that they could face in life. It is a bias that may lead to them being fetishized, passed up for jobs, stereotyped, bullied or teased. I mean maybe not, hopefully no, but I’m not going to tell my kids that this will never happen. I tell them that this is something we as a society need to work on, even myself.

I understand the hesitancy to talk about this with one’s Asian friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Heck, I even wondered if I should have said something to our favorite sandwich guy who is Korean. I didn’t and I kind of regret it. I understand not knowing if one is doing or saying the right thing. And, to be fair, there is no one size fits all for this kind of thing. Some people would appreciate to be asked. Some people would rather not. Some people would welcome the opportunity to contribute to the narrative. Some people would resent being seen as a spokesperson for a whole continent. Some people would appreciate the sincerity. Some people would label it just another in a long string of performative gestures. It’s difficult to navigate – I get it.

But even if we aren’t talking about it, I hope people are thinking about it. I hope people are acknowledging that even if anti-Asian sentiment is not something they themselves see, it is indeed a very real and scary and is a legitimate reality. I hope people realize that it is not okay for these things to be happening.

I for one, though I might find the conversation awkward, would never fault anyone for doing what they felt was the right thing. Connecting is hard enough as it is, and any opportunity to do so is good, right? Awkward conversations are still conversations.

Anyhow if you were to “check in” with me, this is what I would say:

My father walks several miles a day. Lately he has taken to carrying a pointy stick with him on these walks. I would like to tease him about it and dismiss him as being paranoid and melodramatic, but I can’t. For him, being a victim of violence because of his race is a very very real fear. My parents, who have been on this continent for over fifty years, have done all the right things to be good Americans (and before that, good Canadians). They have contributed only good things to the society and economy of this country. And it really sucks immensely that this is how unwelcome they feel living in the country that they call home.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school!!!!

A welcome sight – the school bus fleet back on the roads! And also – the trees starting to bloom!

On Monday, the nine year old went back to in person school. It’s such a fraught decision, and no one-size fits all choice; every family needs to see what is best for them. So we looking at CDC guidelines and weighing our sense of risk against the stress that distance learning was causing for everyone – we knew that sending her back was the right choice for our family. She was so happy to see her friends again, though only about a third of her class elected to return to in person learning. The look of joy on her face at the end of every day helps me know that we made the right choice. At least the right choice for now. It might not be the right choice in two weeks, or three week, or what not, but it is the right choice for now.

So this week was about, again, adjusting and finding a new rhythm.

There is the commute to school. I don’t love having to drive up and down the freeway four times a day – actually only twice because I come home on local roads – but it felt like a more controlled environment than the school bus.

There is the morning routine and having to get used to leaving the house again.

There is the way my day is now defined by drop off and pick ups – which I think is helpful for me to focus my energy, but at the same time I still feel a little lost on how best to use the time.

I’ve decided that I want to visit as many of the parks in our county as possible, so after drop off, I will take the four year old and the baby to a playground.

The baby is frighteningly adept at climbing play structures. She loves going down slides. The four year old has gotten used to being asked to catch her at the bottom. He stands there with his arm outstretched as she come wooshing down the slide, colliding with him. He valiantly tries to keep upright while not letting his little sister hit the ground, and usually he succeeds. Watching sibling interaction has been one of the great joys of the pandemic.

My phone finally had to be replaced this week. I’ve had the same iPhone 6 for almost five years and The Husband tells me that it’s time. I’m a little resentful because I feel like things should last longer than five years, but the touch screen stopped working, so I guess he’s right. I tried to get by using voice command for a while, but it was getting a little ridiculous.

The whole process of getting a new phone was somewhat frustrating. I remember it being a lot easier five years ago – but now it seems that you need a lot more additional things just to be able to function. I feel like a curmudgeon about the whole thing.

Anyhow, I have a new phone and everything transferred smoothly, except for my Whatsapp which I didn’t realize had to be backed up separately. Oops. Actually there is something almost disappointing in how seamless my new phone set itself up. The new phone looks almost exactly like my old phone and I find myself missing that sense of “new” that usually comes with upgrading devices. It’s an odd sensation – like the new phone is wearing the same clothes as the old phone.

Some fun weekend adventures:

The husband had to work over the weekend, so I took the kids to the local Botanical Gardens and playground. So many signs of spring! The nine year old spotten some frog eggs in the stream. There was sunshine and fresh air and trees still bare, but starting to bud. The baby went down the slides at the big kids playground. Not the two story high one, but the smaller big one.

And there was this meditation that I found lovely:

On Sunday, we tried to take the kids to watch planes land; there is a playground near the airport where you can almost get your eyebrows shaved by landing planes. Unfortunately the parking lot was full, so we went to a playground around the corner though the view of planes wasn’t as spectacular at that playground. On the way, we got milkshakes and fries. It was probably in truth a touch too cold for milkshakes, but they were still tasty.

Steak ‘n’ Shake! Mid-afternoon indugence.

The baby has started asking to wear a mask when we go out. By “ask” I mean she hands it to us and makes her little insistent seal barking sounds. (She is still not talking, though she will repeat “dada” and “mmmm” (milk), and “baba” (for bao bao, Mandarin for “Pick me up” or “Hug)). I feel a little self conscious about her wearing a mask; is it overkill? – but on the other hand, she will have to start wearing one in six months, so I’m glad that she is okay with it, and it seems safe.

Fun project: Inspired by a conversation with my friend Kristen, who is a preschool teacher – I decided I wanted to try my hand at making butter. Holy cow it actually works! I wasn’t sure it was going to work because it took a lot of shaking and since I used a stainless steel jar I couldn’t see the progress. The kids lost interest after a couple minutes, so I kept going. It was a somewhat act of faith for me to keep shaking. I had made whipped cream from shaking before, so going from liquid cream to the smooth and thick whipped cream was expected. But then I thought – where does it go from here? And I keep shaking and shaking, the jar is soundless as I shake it. And then it becomes this kind of rough, chunky whipped cream. And I think, “That looks gross….” But I close up the jar and keep shaking. And at some point, there is a sloshing sound, and I open up the jar and see:

I’m sure there is some kind of metaphor here for theatre and art – about shaking and shaking and and having faith that the results will be consumable, even if the midway point looks chunky and clunky and messy.

What we ate:

Saturday: Pasta with jarred red sauce.

Sunday: Tofu banh mi Bowls with noodles

Monday:Chickpeas and Kale on Barley from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Fast.

Tuesday: Shrimp, Fennel and White Bean Stew from Mark Bittman’s VB6 cookbook.

Wednesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry w/ brown rice.

Thursday: Pav Bhaji from Meera Sodha’s Made in India. The Husband called this Indian Manwich – basically it’s a vegetable mash of eggplant, cauliflower, and potatoes cooked in cumin, coriander, garam masala, tumeric and amchur (we used chana masala powder instead). The whole things is slathered on buns and eaten topped with red onion and cilantro with a squeeze of lemon. Everyone asked that this be put into our meal rotation!

Friday: pizza and That Darn Cat! I’ve been borrowing from the library some of the Disney movies that I watched growing up. The four year old thought this movie was hilarious.

Books read in February 2020

A good month for reading – lots of audio books!

Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce, read by Anna Popplewell – Light hearted novel set in London during WWII, about a young lady who aspires to be a journalist, but ends up writing for a women’s magazine and secretly answering letters from readers. It was a light story, in that stiff upperlip British way where tragedy comes and goes but everyone manages to keep going with their lives.

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman – 6h 39mins. Braverman is a dogsledder and journalist and in this memoir, she recounts her personal journey as a young adult as she moves from cold environment to cold environments. There was something really immediate about reading this book as we went through a cold, snowy snap – I kept thinking, “Well at least it’s not so cold here that the dog food freezes before you can get it from the boiling pot to the dog bowl.” I envy her bold sense of adventure and her fearless impulses, but at the same time, there were moments when I seriously questioned her judgement and some of her recollections it made me nervous for young women trying to assert themselves in a world that still wants to make them victims in so many ways.

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Anker – (hard copy). I enjoyed this book more than an other I’ve read in a long time. One day Toby Fleishman’s ex-wife just drops their two kids off with him and then goes AWOL. The novel follows Toby as he tries to juggle family, work, and love life while trying to figure out what happened to his ex-wife. I first hear about it on the Everything is Fine podcast, on an episode when they talked about how wonderful it was to read a book where middle aged women were seen as having an advantage over younger women. Books about midlife crises and suburban moms sometimes really grate on me; I often find them full of privilege and self indulgence. But for some reason this one really resonated with me. I felt so understood from the moment in the first chapter that the main character says:
“I was now what was a called a stay-at-home mother, a temporary occupation with no prospect of promotion that worked so hard to differentiate itself from job-working that it confined me to semantic house arrest, though certainly I was allowed to carpool and go to the store.”
I think this book perfectly captures the ridiculous yet heartfelt angst of trying to get through life as an adult, the confusion of waking up one day in a life that you don’t quite understand, even though you feel like you did all the right things. This book was one of those “neglect your children for an afternoon so you can finish it” experiences for me.

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny – 7h 49m Book four of the Inspector Gamache series. I wasn’t entirely convinced about how the mystery itself played out, but I really enjoyed the way Penny gradually reveals characters and their backstories. I’ve been working my way through this mystery series. There is a certain laconic pacing that makes for slow reading, but that is part of the reason I find these books such a comfort read.

The Good Neighbor:The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King read by Levar Burton – I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook. Growing up, we didn’t have a television until I was seven years old, but I do remember watching some of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I remember actually being quite unnerved by the puppets. Hearing about how Fred Rogers came to create his famous television program and the philosophies behind his work, made me think about the choices I myself make with my children, particularly this pandemic year where we are re-thinking what we want as an educational experience for our children. Rogers’ insistence that a child’s emotional well being should be prioritized above learning numbers and letters, helped me tamp down any anxiety I might have over a “missing year” with the schools being closed.

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, read by Peter Noble – I tend to be left leaning, no surprise there, so a lot of the ideas presented in this book by the Dutch historian and writer are kind of my catnip. Universal basic income, open borders, fifteen hour work week, etc. I mean this book is pretty much preaching to the choir here, though I do appreciate knowing that Bregman presents research to show that such things are actually beneficial and not just pipe dreams. He also attributes the left’s inability to bring about change to their lack of radicalism, pointing out that Trump found a lot of support in the far right wing because his rhetoric was so outlandish. Bregman urges the left to be just as outlandish and crazy as the right – the anemic, polite posturing will not shift any needles. Food for thought.

Slicing Oranges

There is a lot of citrus in the house these days. There are blood oranges, minneolas, clementines, naval oranges – some even sent from my parents in California, tangarines… It’s the season, and in the depths of winter, they make for a sweet-sour juicy treat.

After dinner we usually have fruit. The other day, the nine year old took the oranges into the kitchen, sliced them, and brought them back, all laid out on a plate.

I took one look and clutched my pearls.

She had cut them into half moon wheels. This was not what I was used to.

I can be a little…. inflexible in the kitchen. The Husband tells me I have a lot of food rules.

“You have to cut it into smiles,” I insisted.

The Husband said, “You can’t tell her how to cut an orange.”

“Yes I can. Oranges are cut into wedges. Or else you can’t put them in your mouth and smile orange smiles.”

“Yes, I can!” the nine year old said, and proceeded to put a half wheel between her teeth and pull her lips over the edges. “Theee?” she said. “Orange thmiles!”

I shook my head, “No, no, no! This is not how you cut oranges to eat after dinner.”

The Husband took a patient breath. “How do you cut them? Can you show us?”

So I took another orange and proceeded to cut it in half from the pedical through the core. Then each half, I cut into three wedges for a total of six smiles. Satisfied with having my teachable moment of the day, we finished our fruit and moved on.

But later that week, as I was slicing oranges for lunch, I thought about it. I asked myself, “Why can’t oranges for after dinner be cut into half moons? I mean it certainly is prettier and makes for nice garnish. It surely doesn’t taste differently?”

So I decided to try it. I took an orange and cut it around its equator into slices, the segments radiating from the core like the sun rays. Then I cut those in half. So far so good. As I picked up the half wheel, I realized that cutting ihe orange in half wheels was a whole different eating experience; rather than struggling with stuffing a huge segment of orange in my mouth, I could peel back the rind and pull the orange segments apart, one small triangle at a time. This also proved a much easier way to share the orange slices with the Baby. It wasn’t what I was used to, but it worked rather well for getting food into bite-sized segments. Well then.

Later that day, I went up to my daughter and said, “Honey? I’m sorry. You can slice your orange however you want.”

Weekly recap + what we ate – More snow and celebrations

This was the Husband’s Birthday Week. We had take out of his choice. I baked scones – two kinds! I baked a requested cake. The recipe was from his mother’s recipe box and involved pearl clutching things like margarine and a box of icing sugar – no measurements needed. I had to Google that last one. Thank goodness I did. Apparently a box is one pound. I happened to have a two pound bag and had contemplated using the whole thing.

In these COVID times, an in person birthday gathering was not going to happen, so I organized a surprise birthday Zoom call. I guess one of the advantages of doing a birthday party via Zoom is that you can invite people from anywhere in place and time. In addition to family, we had friends from college and friends from where we are now all on the same call, some of whom were states and even countries away. Having such a cross section of the Husband’s life was one of the nice parts of having a Zoom party.

I wanted to come up with a way to make a Zoom birthday party fun and avoid the awkwardness of a gathering of people who hadn’t met before – the awkwardness potential potentially exacerbated by the Zoom factor. I hit upon the idea of playing Husband Trivia. I came up with trivia questions about Husband and encouraged everyone to bring questions too. I thought the game would go on for maybe 30 minutes, but to my delight almost everyone on the call brought a Husband trivia question and the call lasted an hour. There was much laughter and many fun facts about the Husband gleaned. I was so pleased with how it turned out. I’m not sure that it wasn’t the awkward gathering of random people that I had feared, but the Husband sure had fun seeing everyone and reliving life moments via trivia, so I count it as a success.

And with that, birthday season at our house was over for the year and we took the birthday banner down. From Christmas (Jesus) to the second week of February we celebrate a birthday every two weeks. (And then there is the outlier baby with the fall birthday.) Birthday season does feel a little relentless sometimes, having to plan so many back to back celebrations. But in the end, it does help cheer up the depths of winter to have something to celebrate.

The rest of the week was kind of up and down. I started another drawing class -I have a fair amount of excitement and trepidation going in; I’m looking forward to having weekly art projects, but at the same time, the syllabus seems a little advanced for me. I think I just have to be unafraid of making bad art.

Friday was a day off for the nine year old. I was again caught unawares of this day off. I think in the repetitive days, I sometimes forget to check my calendar. Determined to get outside, I packed some hot chocolate and snack bars and took the kids to a nearby nature center which had a couple miles of wooded walking trails. Babywearing in the winter is always somewhat bulky, so I chose not to bring the carrier or hiking backpack and just let the baby walk. Impressively, she managed to walk over a mile of the hike; I only had to carry her for the final stretch and then mostly to keep her from playing in the mud and water. The kids usually whine a little at the prospect of a hike/walk, but once they accept that this is what we are doing and they get out in nature, they find things to engage their interest. Like playing Three Billy Goats Gruff:

And finding vines to swing on:

The joy of discovering nature’s playground.

Friday was also Lunar New Year. I don’t really celebrate, but I did FaceTime with my grandfather in Taiwan. In past years, there’s always been either a Taiwan school event or the nine year old’s school has a performance, but… COVID. I realized that I’ve relied on others to remind me how to mark the occasion – most years I’m caught unawares when Lunar New Year rolls around. I think I want to get better at marking the occasion. Maybe not to the point where I make a Thanksgiving level meal, but noodles and dumplings and some other traditions might be nice. My parents did send me these really neat apples which were grown especially for the New Year with felicitious messages stenciled on. As you can see, the baby got to them before I could get a good picture, but they are really quite neat.

Just another excuse to post a cute baby picture. But the apple is pretty neat too!

This was also the week of the Trump impeachment hearings. That was definitely distracting and disheartening and took up way too much of my time and emotional energy.

I think I’m also still struggling with finding routine post quarantining. When we were stuck at home, a routine was easy and gave me a reassuring sense of structure. But now that we are back out in the world, there are, despite COVID, things that just creep up and need to be slotted in – book pick ups, dance lessons, errands, friends… I feel like I still haven’t found what the current rhythm is and everything feels a little freeform and hard to account for right now. I think I want to get back to tracking my time – that kind of accountability might be what I need to get structure back.

A funny thing happened the during the first day of art class. We were going around introducing ourselves and giving a bit of our story. And for some reason I didn’t introduce myself as an unemployed stage manager – I didn’t mention a career at all, just that I wanted to learn to draw and that I had three kids running around. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards, but it felt like somehow, I’ve started identifying myself with where I am now, and not what I used to be. I’m pondering that one…. because a year after we packed up our post its and 0.9pt pencils, I’m not sure what claim I still have to my occupational identity.

Fun food things:

Simplify: I made muesli for the first time. And a light kind of went off in my head. I used to make granola, but this is much easier. It’s like granola without adding sugar. Or having to bake it. Basically assemble what seeds, nuts, and dried fruit I had in the pantry, dump it in a container, and …. breakfast! I’ve been eating it steeped in boiling water and sprinkled with berries and it’s been a perfect cold weather breakfast.

Simplify II – I went to pick up some dumplings for the Husband’s birthday lunch. It turns out our favorite dumpling place has started selling frozen dumplings in bags of 40. I immediately bought a bag. I had been wanting to make dumplings for a while, but it is such a lot of work – fun work when you can gather people and have a dumpling party, but rather onerous when you have to do it all yourself. Well, for $25, I can have like homemade dumplings, without the homemade effort. Win!

What we ate:

Saturday: Take out from Full On – sandwiches, wings and onion rings.

Sunday: Cauliflower Curry and Lemon Rice with peanuts, recipes from Fresh India.

Monday: Sushi Take Out and birthday cake.

Tuesday: Fried Tofu with Braised Bok Choy, with farro.

Wednesday: Miso Mushroom Pasta from Milk Street Fast and Slow.

Thursday: Beef Noodle Soup from Milk Street Fast and Slow (cookbook of the week!). Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (Niu rou mian) was a staple of my childhood, but for some reason it took a fancy cookbook from New England to prompt me to make it for myself. It was a pure bowl of comfort and nostalgia.

Friday: pizza (homemade – really tasty whole wheat crust from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone) and Mary Poppins.

Books Read January 2021

More books read than normal, but I think most of the were leftover from last month; the first three books I finished in the first ten days of the new year.

Disoriental by Negar Djavodi – 9h 51 m. The story of an Iranian family who flees to Paris and the journey of the youngest daughter to self discovery – finding her way as an immigrant and as a gay woman. This is one of those books that I started without reading the back cover – it had been on a list of recommended books in translation – and as a result I wasn’t quite sure where the book was going for a while. The book jumps back and forth in time and was a little slow to get started for me, but once the threads came together it coalesced into a really touching story of family and immigration and identity. I was really drawn to the idea the narrator struggles with how to find a place in a new country without losing her heritage: “Because to really integrate into a culture, I can tell you that you have to disintegrate first, at least partially, from you own”

The Mothers by Britt Bennett – 5h 18m. I picked this one up after reading the Vanishing Half, Bennett’s bestseller from last year. This novel is about three friends and the ebb and flow of their relationship and how friendships can unravel even while being intertwined. Absorbing story.

How to Eat by Mark Bittman and David L. Katz, M.D. -(hard copy, so no time tracking) I’ve long been a fan of Mark Bittman’s super simple and accessible approach to feeding ourselves. This book, taken from a New York Times column that he and Katz wrote, cuts through a lot of the buzzy food research to distill what we do truly know about healthy food choices. The takeaway: eat a diet primarily of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, beans and nuts. I liked how they really talked about the flaws in scientific research; most food news is so sensationalist and there are no magic foods. They also make the point that the standard American diet is so detrimental to begin with that even minor changes to replace processed food in one’s diet would be a marked improvement. Reading this book really simplified healthy eating for me.

On Being 40(ish) edited by Lindsey Mead – a collection of essays about… being 40 (ish). Some of the essays spoke to me more than others. The existential angst of privileged people (of which I am sometimes guilty) gets a little tedious to read sometimes. But some standouts: Catherine Newman’s essay of friendship told through clothing was a beautiful tribute to her friend. Sophronia Scotts piece “I don’t have time for this” was just the anti-wallowing slap in the face that I needed. Jessica Lahey’s writing about mentoring at risk youth had some good lessons about connecting and the importance of a moment. “If I’m present enough,” she writes of her students, “and empathetic enough, an attosecond can expand to contain multitudes, to encompass their painful past and shape our possible future together. ”

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel – audio book narrated by the author. In this book the famous sex therapist examines cheating in an attempt to understand why people cheat, and perhaps lay out some lessons to be found in infidelity. She examines the motives and emotions behind people who cheat and people who have been cheated on and people who have been cheated with. One thing she says, that really struck me, was that people these days don’t usually cheat because they are unhappy, but rather because they think the could be happier. Of course there was something a little titillating about reading a book that gets into the weeds of infidelity, but ultimately for me, it made cheating just seem like something that took a lot of mental and emotional work.

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn – 6h 27m. Contemporary romance about Meg, an in demand hand-letterer and the uptight financier Reid who helps her get over her creative block. Sweet and funny. I thought Reid was a perfectly lovely hero in the Mr. Darcy mold. Actually I found him more interesting than Meg and at times I wish the novel weren’t in first person narrative so I could be hin his head more. (side note: why are so many fiction written in first person? It’s on my list to find some non-first person novels to read). The details about hand lettered signs and the stationary business were a fun deep dive.

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

Saturday we went to the park for the first time in weeks. The four year old took his new scooter and the nine year old rode her bike. At the park the kids climbed and ran and swung and hopped. We worked on teaching the four year old how to pump his legs on the swing. There was sun and 40 degree weather (which feels warm these days), and fresh air and a change of scenery and neighborhood dogs playing catch in the tennis courts.

It proved a good thing because it snowed the next day. Beautiful white snow! A thick blanket of it, covering everything.

The snow gave us several days of fun, despite the fact that distance learning has done away with the idea of a “snow day”. I’m a little bit in mourning about that, though one of the teachers had a virtual snow day that consisted of the students throwing wadded up balls of paper at their screen. IRL (as the kids say these days) we bundled up and went outside and built snow forts, shaped snowmen, made snow angels. The kids even helped the grown ups shovel. The four year old found a “snowchair”- a divot in the snow bank left next to our drive way by snow plows. The baby discovered the joy of eating snow… she would find chunks of snow and carry them around in her hand, chomping it like a snow cone. The nine year old delighted in throwing snow balls.

As for me- I loved the quiet and the cold. After the kids went inside, I would just stand outside, letting the cold envelop me, the snow muffling the sounds of outside and day. It was like being in an isolation chamber. And I could breathe and for two minutes not be responsible for anything except my own breath.

Afterwards, there is a quiet satisfaction to seeing all our snowy boots lined up next to the door and our snow suits hung in a row to dry in the bathroom.

The listservs exploded with snow gear for sale and free, a lot of it posted as “like new” and “barely worn”. I guess a lot of people had stocked up in snow gear last year. And then it hadn’t snowed.

I’ve been doing some more cardboard building. When we got our new stove in December, we acquired a new appliance sized box for projects. Also- when the stove was delivered, I asked if they had other boxes and they left a refrigerator box as well. Around the end of the year our cardboard box UPS truck finally collapsed and went out for recycling. For weeks the four year old has been requesting a FedEx Truck while the nine year old wanted an ice cream truck. And because he wanted to give me a challenge, the four year old requested a door in the back that went up and down. Well. I guess I was going to get serious about carboard box building so I did some internet research to find better ways of attaching cardboard together and found these screws designed for cardboard box building. Between those, packing tape and brass fasteners, I feel like I have a decent variety of tools for cardboard box construction, and my cardboard box construction game has been upped.

The back door on the truck is manually operated, but it does go up and down! It took a bit of making and testing and trouble shooting, but a fun challenge.

Also on another day, I made the four year old and airplane as well. There are many modes of transportation inside our house.

Despite the snow, the hyacinths have started to poke their green heads up. Perhaps the warmer weather has confused them. It is so deceptive to see them push their way through the ground so soon. I hope they survive.

Hearts found in nature:

We did some kitchen reorganizing and, taking stock of what I was using and not using these days, I packed away our lunch boxes and lunch containers. I realized that we haven’t really used them in a year and they were taking up a lot of accessible space that would probably be better occupied by things we actually did use. I’ve been seeing articles about pandemic fashion and how that has led people to minimize, and I feel like that’s what I did this week with our kitchen too. When I had pulled out all the containers and stacked them, they seemed like a lot, but I guess back when everyone was packing a lunch, I often felt like we didn’t have enough.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I really got into making these window clings from an art kit the nine year old had gotten for her birthday. Last spring, it seemed like window art was a huge source of solace and connection. Our neighorhood had various scavenger hunts where people would put things in their window for people to look for on their walks – there was a Bear Hunt and a rainbow hunt. I made all sorts of pictures and designs and one day, I asked my husband what word we should put in our window. And he said, “Resist.” It seemed appropriate at the time: resist implied health and resilience.

Making the word was a lengthy project – each letter took two to three days to make becuase you had to make the outline and wait for it to dry, and then add the colour and wait for that to dry before you could peel it and stick it to the window. But back then I was eager for tedious projects that required patience. It seemed at the begnning of the shutdown all we had was time and ourselves.

RESIST has been on our window for almost a year now. Some days, the late afternoon sun comes through the window and projects the word onto our walls. The colour has faded somewhat, but the word still shows up loud and clear. A message and a reminder. I’m contemplating adding another word to it. Not sure what, though.

What we ate:

Saturday: Brisket and Salad. On of our good friends has a smoker and he brought us some of his smoked brisket.

Sunday: can’t remember. ugh. Maybe take out???

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

Tuesday: Potato curry and a fennel apple salad from Fresh India.

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow), green salsa (from Bittman’s VB6 cookbook) and coconut lime cilantro rice.

Thursday: Cod soup based off a recipe from from Milk Street: Fast and Slow. This was actually a vegetarian soup leek, carrot and potatoe soup from the Milk Street Instant Pot cookbook. I threw in some cod for protein. And just used onions for the leeks.

Friday: Pizza (home made – dough from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone cookbook) and Once Upon a Mattress – the 2005 television version of the musical. Charming and sweet. The four year old would get up and dance during the dance numbers. The double dance routines going on was adorable.

On savoring dishes

So I’ve been slowly working my way through “The Science of Well Being” course – also known as the Yale course on happiness. Each week one is given some “rewirements” – scientifically proven actions that increase happiness. I’ve been tracking my progress on these rewirements in my notebook.

Some of the categories are: savoring, gratitude, exercise, sleep, meditation, connection, kindness. This last one has been pretty hard to practice during COVID times, but the others are quite COVID friendly. Practicing and tracking how I do on these things has given me a certain intentionality in my week, if only in retrospect some days.

A couple weeks in, however, it occured to me that I wasn’t doing very well on the assignment to “savor” something. I seem to be bad at realizing in the moment that the moment is worth savoring. So last week I decided to pre-select something to savor every day. That way, I wouldn’t have to wonder as I went through my day, “Am I savoring this?” “Is this a good savoring moment?” “Should I have savored that more?”

In an attempt to find some joy in a somewhat tedious chore, I chose to savor doing the dishes every day.

Doing the dishes is somewhat of a mental hurdle for me – the stack of plates, the work ahead of me so…. obvious in every scrap of stuck on food – it all seems like a huge amount of effort. But I decided that I would try to embrace the chore and attempt to turn it into an immersive activity.

Turns out, there were indeed some satisfying aspects in doing dishes: The scalding heat of hot water, encasing my hands in spa-like warmth through my rubber gloves – almost like the paraffin wax dip at the Tallgrass Salon. The steam that rises from that very hot water, fogging my glasses but also bringing a welcome warm moist heat on a cold dry day. The satisfaction of scrubbing and scrubbing and seeing the pot get cleaner with each pass of the sponge. The mountain of suds, growing as the pot fills with water. Listening to music as I work – some nights show tunes, some nights Brahams.

(Side note – Some nights, truth be told, it’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, or some such middle grade audiobook. I bribe the the nine year old to help with post dinner clean up by letting her listen to audio books. I try not to resent the aural intrusion into what I want to consider my time. Sometimes the twenty minutes at the kitchen sink is the only time I have to immerse myself in listening and it’s hard to give up my podcast/ music time to Judy Blume. (Gah! that sounds so petty! I mean it’s Judy Blume!) Ultimately, though, I usually decide that giving up my listening time is a reasonable price for the nine year old’s cooperation. Maybe I should invest in bluetooth headphones. Or maybe I should just revisit my childhood and the novels of Judy Blume. )

Then there is the satisfaction of taking my gloves off and seeing that the pile of dirty pot and dishes that had been on one side of the sink now sit dripping and gleaming on the drying mat on the other side. The joy and satisfaction of our bottle drying rack – one of the few third baby purchases that fill me with joy. (Another side note: I mean this bottle drying rack is amazing – it’s vertical and takes up a third of the counter space that our other bottle racks had taken up. And it’s so easy to use and clean. When you look at bottle drying racks, they all kind of are the same and are cesspools for mildew and general crud. Then there is this one that kind of blows the paradigm apart. Get it. Even if you don’t have babies. It’s also great for drying ziploc bags. I mean I’m not making any money off this or anything- I just love it; one of my top ten baby purchases.)

I won’t say that savoring dishwashing makes it any less of a chore, but it does help take my mind off how tedious it can be. If I’m going to have to do something every day (or, switching off with the Husband, every other day), I may as well find little moments of mindfulness and pleaseure in it. Which I guess is part of the science of happiness.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Birthday cake and back to the world

The three year old is now a four year old.

Four years ago, the country was trying to find its footing under a new administration. There were protests and shock and anger. And into this, a little boy was born. It’s funny, for the past four years, his life and the Trump administration were somehow intertwined in my head – I counted his years as I counted the years until the next election. And now here we are, the administration he was born into has turned over, though its ghosts still linger; the little boy is still here and growing.

But he is his own person, of course. A imaginative, curious, happy-go-lucky little guy. He loves trains, trucks, dancing to his own music, singing at the top of his lungs, books, and going for rides in the car. He drives his sisters crazy, but then gives them big hugs too. I love watching him puzzle out the world in his quiet perceptive way.

A couple days before his birthday, a box arrived at our door step:

Inside was a cake and a tin of cookies. I mean a cake in the mail!! How decadant is that?

The gift receipt indicated that the cake was to celebrate the two older kids’ January birthdays. And the receipt was unsigned. I did some Holmes worthy thinking – the birthday message used the diminutive form of the nine year old’s name, which very few people still use – but finally wrote to Milkbar customer service and asked them. Turns out it was my cousin in LA.

I remember when my cousin was born – and what a cute round eyed baby she was. I have so many great memories of hanging out with her when she was a baby. And now it’s certainly a little strange to realize that my baby cousin is grown up and does adulting type things like send birthday cakes during a pandemic to cheer up a couple of kids. She is an awesome person. And so are her parents (my uncle and aunt) – I’ve always known that they would raise pretty decent kids and it’s turned out to be true.

In other news this week, the baby was evaluated by the County Infants and Toddlers program for some developmental delays this week – primarily speech. It turns out she is on track in most developmental areas, except expressive language and socio-emotional development. The two areas are closely related, though. All our children were quite late to talk, so I’m not terribly concerned. Still, the baby was evaluated to have the verbal skills of a four month old, which is much more delayed than the other children were. It was a little discouraging to have the results broken down like that. However, she is so bright and capable in all other areas, that we are taking a “wait and see” approach, and declined to pursue an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) with the county.

In normal times, if we refused services we would have to get back in the cue and be re-evaluated down the line if she didn’t show developments progress. But given COVID times, the County Infants and Toddler program has a new system where you can check in with a case worker once a month and they will put together an IFSP when you feel ready for it. I perhaps tend towards the “low to no” intervention end of the scale, but I’m really grateful that the county provides these services for when we are ready.

The whole family went to get COVID tests again this week. It was probably not completely necessary, but we did it anyway. I took the two younger kids and had planned to go to the drive through testing site, tossing the baby into the car sans coat and shoes. Of course it was raining. And of course the drive through site wasn’t open. Change of plans! I took us all to a different testing site and had to carry the baby in without shoes or a coat. I definitely not one of my best moments, but oh well. We went in, got our nasal swabs – without fuss or crying from any of the littles! – and went home. Two days later:

Thank goodness.

We had quarantined the appropriate amount and then some, so we were pretty sure we would be negative. But it was reassuring to have the confirmations – if “not detected” can be counted as reassuring.

It’s been a slow emergence from quarantine. After almost three weeks of having gone no further than the end of the driveway on trash day, getting in the car was a little strange. I was almost reluctant to do even that, but I did have errands to run and the two older kids had their yearly check ups.

I was texting with a friend and saying how there is something nice about quarantining in that it’s been giving me an excuse to delay some bigger life decisions, and instead some days I’m just focussing on getting the family from meal to meal.. And my friend wrote back:
“I think what you are doing/ thinking makes total sense… See this thru w/ your family first and worry about anything else later.”
It is probably not sustainable – I mean I do have to file the taxes and figure out what I’m doing with my life, and we have some decisions to make about childcare and schooling and potential summer plans. I feel the the vaccine looming, like a pin that holds the dam in place, the deluge of decisions to be made roaring behind those floodgates.

Well… speaking of meal to meal…

What we ate:

Saturday: Tortellini with Sausage and Red Sauce. Cut up carrots and cucumbers on the side. With birthday cake.

Sunday: Oven Fried Chicken – the nine year old cooked, from the America’s Test Kitchen Young Chef’s cookbook. This was really really tasty – breaded with Corn Flakes. I made some garlic green beans to eat on the side.

Monday: Grain Bowl Marinara with Cannellini beans and Spinach from Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before 6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Cauliflower Korma with burnt raisins from Fresh India. I found some chapatis in the freezer and we had these on the side.

Wednesday: Sausage and Peppers (the Husband cooked)

Thursday: Leftover Soup day. Realizing we had amasses many containers of leftovers in the fridge, I declared that we would have “eat down the fridge” dinner.

Friday: Pizza and The Peanuts Movie. I was going to make pizza, but then we had car issues so we ended up getting take out. The movie was fine, though I kind of missed the hand drawn charm of the original Charlie Brown movies.

Haikus for January

Sliver of evening
glows pink gold through bare trees
As church bells toll.

Black poet, yellow coat
Elegantly eloquent
Sowing words of hope.

On a cold night,
Across a blazing bright moon
Clouds billow like smoke.

Lunch: cheese, cracker bits,
rejected sandwich, cut fruit,
this morning’s tea, cold.

Tangled limbs reach high
Cartwheeling through conifers
Bare in winter light.

A decade passes.
Seems long on paper, but feels
like no time at all.

Icing crust of snow-
Translucent on golden grass-
Crunch under my boots

White blankets bounce light,
Cutting through the winter grey.
Brightly fills the room.