Thoughts on getting more sleep

Last week was not a good week for going to bed on time. With my cousin visiting, everyone stayed up much later than usual, and when the kids are up until 9:30p/10p, I tend to push my own bedtime later. Not that they are really to blame; even when they do go to bed on time, I am plenty capable of staying up super late on my own.

I really want to get on a good sleep schedule for when I start rehearsals, but this past week there were a few nights when I was up until 2am. And in my head, I think “Well, 2am to 7am is five hours of sleep, I think that should be enough.” Then inevitably, the next night I fall asleep next to the kids while putting them to bed and leave the kitchen in a disastrous state, which always makes the next morning difficult. I know all the research says that poor sleep literally takes years off your life, so I really want to be more disciplined about this. Plus I’m getting too old to be unaffected by continuous nights of staying up til 2am, despite doing it plenty in college. Some things I’ve been doing that seem to be putting me in the right direction:

– Brushing my teeth when the kids do in the evening. A lot of times, I think “I can’t go to sleep until I brush my teeth!” so I stay up because the later it gets the more insurmountable a task teeth brushing seems. So I’ve started brushing my teeth when the kids do. I think it’s actually better for me because a) they brush their teeth to the Chompers podcast, so I know I’m spending enough time on each tooth, and b) it keeps me from snacking late at night. The biggest benefit, though, is that brushing my teeth with the kids removes one hurdle before bedtime.
–When I do finally make it into bed, I always take a minute to take a deep breath and fully savor my bed – the crisp cool sheets, the soap smelling hug of the duvet wrapped around me, the soft/firm feel of my memory foam pillow as it curves around my head. Some nights, I even say out loud (but softly because the Husband is usually asleep), “Ahhhhh Bed, bed, bed!” I think acknowledging what a wonderful place bed is helps make it a place I want to be.
– Just going straight to bed when I come home from a late evening at work. I used to think that when I got home at 11pm or midnight, I needed time to have a snack and unwind, but then I would just stay up even longer. So now I try to come home, hang up my coat, put away my lunch box, kiss the children goodnight and then get into pjs, brush my teeth and straight to bed. I try not to even get my phone out of my purse to charge because I don’t want to get side-tracked.

Things I should be better about to develop good sleep habits:
– On nights when I don’t have to work late, having a nightly routine and sticking to a time to start that and mindfully going to bed afterwards. In my ideal world, the hour before bed would be: 20 mins yoga, 20 minutes journaling, and 20 minutes reading. And this routine would start around 10:30pm. I think an offline bedtime routine would be good too. That would mean, though that the yoga and the reading would have to be done offline – currently I do a yoga podcast and read on my phone or iPad, so I would have to find alternatives. Then immediately to bed, is a big thing.
– Avoiding revenge bedtime procrastination. I ought to minimize screens in my pre-bed routine because scroll-creep is a big struggle for me. A lot of the time when I stay up, I’m on a device reading or scrolling. Once in a while I’m writing here. Carolyn Hax’s back catalogue of advice columns is a huge time suck for me, though I really like her advice, so I don’t think it’s an empty time suck, necessarily. Other internet rabbit holes. Even without social media, I often find myself clicking link after link while reading about something. I’ve also had nights when I’ve inexplicably spent hours re-organizing my Libby holds list and fall asleep on the couch. I just need to find tactics to take the things that I stay up late to do and make them into daytime activities. Maybe it will help to write down a list of things to google the next day when the late night urge strikes to go down internet rabbit holes. Also dedicating other time to write and so that I’m not writing late at night would help me feel like I have time to do it.
– Showering at night. Like tooth brushing, this is one of those tasks that seems more and more insurmountable the later it gets, but which I also really want to do before I get in bed some nights. There was a time when I could tell the baby that I needed to go take a shower so I couldn’t lie next to her until she fell asleep, and it was the only excuse she would accept. So maybe I should again link this to doing it directly after I put the kids in bed. (I’ve been reading B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits, and he talks a lot about linking aspirational habits to everyday trigger events, which is a tactic I think might be really good for me.)
– Getting into my pjs earlier. When it gets too late I just roll into bed in whatever I’m wearing, which isn’t the best, though I can’t really articulate why – I mean at the very least, I make the kids put on pjs, so I should walk the walk. Maybe the pjs should go on when I brush my teeth? I think the bigger idea is that I should frontload the pre-bed maintenance things so that they aren’t a barrier to getting into bed.
–Keeping tv time to just one episode or one hour.

I would like to have the following evening routine:

5:30p/6:00p – Dinner
6:15p – Clean Up. (It really helps if this gets done before dinner so that I don’t have to do it after the kids are in bed.)
7:00p – Time with kids. Game night, walk, Golden Girls.
7:45p – Start the kids to bed. I get into my pjs and brush teeth with them.
8:45p – little kids asleep. I take a shower if I need to
9:00p – Big kid in bed. TV time with Husband. (fit in the yoga/ exercise here if I want to do a longer routine.)
10:00p – work on my own project (writing, tidying something.) Think about the next day, prep things if I need to.
10:30p – Start bedtime routine – yoga, journal, read. STAY OFF SCREENS!!!!
11:30p – into bed!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some thoughts and things this week:

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

7 am in September.

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

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

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

Koons. We ran out of time so didn’t make it all the way to this one.
The buildings and gardens are also works of art.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seasonal Fun lists, regrets, and Fall Aspirations

My first glimpse of Fall colour this year – at Mont Royal in Montreal in AUGUST!!!

Today is officially Fall!

Earlier this month, I was thinking about all the “Summer Fun Lists” I see around the internet and, conversely this article “Our Biggest Regrets from this Summer “ on Slate. I certainly did not do all the activities on my summer fun list, but I did a lot of them. As I watch the last rays of summer fade, I realized that while there are certainly things I did not get to, I don’t really regret not doing them. I think of my Summer List as a brain dump of all the possible fun things to do between mid-June and September, and I don’t have to do them all; I can chose things off the list that suit my mood and situation at any given time. There is no Bingo prize for checking all the boxes. Certainly there are things on the summer list that do require advance planning – travel, seeing friends, activities that require tickets – but many things do not. And being a planning resistant person, I find that it really helps me clarify my priorities to see what I’m willing to put in the effort to plan for or even do on a whim.

Take, for example, my monthly mom’s group happy hour. I’m the one who plans these for my mom’s group, and it usually goes on the calendar three weeks out. I very rarely plan things that far in advance. Of course there are things that go on the calendar that far out, but these are the immovable things that are set by others – swim meets, rehearsal and performance dates, summer camp, etc. My mom’s group happy hour is one of the rare things that I will actively make plans for – I send out a doodle poll for dates and venue suggestions, pick the date and venue, make reservations, tell my Husband so he can plan to be home with the kids that night. It seems like a lot of work, but I feel like mom’s group happy hour is a priority – I love seeing these moms and swapping stories about poop.

The things on my list that I decide to do last minute or the day before – it’s not really a question of priority – it’s just that I think the priority during the summer is to get out and enjoy the sunshine, so any one of a variety of activities will do. I feel so lucky that there are so many wonderful adventures to have near me that can be pulled off impulsively, so there will always be worthwhile and beautiful things to do. As Oliver Burkeman notes in 4000 Weeks – once one realizes the finite nature of life, one can let go of the infinite possibilities and focus on those things that one actually chooses to do.

Last year, we tried to complete the Maryland Ice Cream Trail, and were a little bummed not to get to all ten creameries on the list and vowed to complete it this year. But you know what? We only made it to two of the ten this year, and I’m fine with that. We still had tasty ice cream. Last year we went to three creameries in one day in our quest and that was arguably not a great move. A great memory, but still… regrettable in other ways.

Alright, now that I think of it, I do have one summer regret – I regret signing the ten year old up for County camp. She didn’t love it (apparently the kids were mean) and it was a bit of a schlep for me. Of course hindsight is 20/20 because she loved the camp last year – but this year, I guess it was a different group of kids. At any rate, now I know and I think next year, we will do fewer weeks of camp. Perhaps over winter break I will have her come up with a list of all the possible things she might be interested in doing and then.

I’m not saying there aren’t other things that I wish I had done more of or less of this summer, but I don’t think I had a summer to regret.

Having said all that, Here are some thoughts and aspirations for Fall, roughly (if not technically) between now and Thanksgiving.

Hallowe’en Costumes. I love making Hallowe’en costumes. Last year’s Millenium Falcon was certainly epic for me. This year, however, the two littles wanted to be something that was going to be far simpler to just buy. The ten year old, however, has a more creative idea in mind. I think she was a little disappointed that she couldn’t top her brother’s Millenium Falcon last year (but honestly, what could?). So this year she has an idea that will be a lot of fun and involves cardboard. Or maybe foam core. We’ll see.

Carve a Jack-o’-Lantern, or two or three. I love pumpkin carving. I’m actually working on Hallowe’en this year, so I’ll have to pre-game. Maybe I should also come up with an appropriate costume to wear backstge?

Another round of attic clean out. Finally work up the heart to get rid of the baby stuff.

Apple Picking. If not apple picking then at least apple sauce and apple pie.

Fall Camping. Given my lack of two day weekends this one is very very aspirational.

Hiking in fall colour. Hopefully once a month. By the looks of this fall foliage predicator, it seems like peak colour with happen in our area around the end of October. The Husband is taking the kids to New York to meet up with my parents that weekend, and since that is tech week, I won’t be going. However…. that means that I will have a day off my myself, so I think I will plan a hike on that free day. Or maybe even a bike ride. There are also lots of hikes and activities that our County Parks department sponsors. They always look really interesting and informative, so I want to see if any will fit in our schedule.

Celebrate the baby’s birthday. This is actually this weekend. I didn’t get it together to plan a party, but we have family in town and we will have cake and balloons (shhh… this last will be a surprise). And she got to pick her breakfast cereal at the grocery store this week, a tradition in our household. She picked Fruity Pebbles.

Go to the Theatre. This one is practically done. I have tickets for Hamilton this weekend, purchased four months ago. I never plan theatre (or anything, really) that far out in advance, but last spring I decided that I wanted to take the two older kids so I went ahead and bought the tickets. I did kick myself later because I didn’t double check my dates – it’s the baby’s birthday weekend plus the kids have Monday off school, so maybe we could have taken a bigger family adventure. Oh well.
Hamilton aside, there’s a lot of other really interesting theatre happening near us – this production of Beauty and the Beast looks to be unconventional and awesome.

Survive Tech Week. Keep practicing good habits and making sure I stay human and don’t become a theatre zombie during a tech process that I might be dreading a teeny tiny bit.

Fix the Storm Door. The glass on the storm door got broken by a child a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty old door so will need to be replaced, I think.

Make progress towards ordering window treatments for the living room. We’ve had a stop gap solution in place for a while since our curtain rod broke. It involves sheers and some too-small black panels. I would like to take a step or two towards having proper window treatments in place again.

Ziplining with the ten year old. I had planned on taking her this summer, but it was just too hot, so we put it off until Fall.

Cozy Kitchen Adventures. Who says Fall Adventures have to mean leaving the house? Fall is the start of “hunker and carbs” season. I do want to make something in my Bundt pan since my last attempt was such a wet goopy fail.

Watch some recent movies. Cooler weather means hunkering and watching movies is a good way to hunker. I’m not always able to stay awake for a full movie these days, but there are some that I really want to stay awake for. I am super excited by this adaptation of on of my favorite books as a child, Catherine Called Birdy. AND the ten year old has read this book, so we can watch it together. Also Fire Island has been on my Watchlist all summer. It’s a gay Asian re-telling of Pride and Prejudice, and all of that is just my catnip.

Happy Hour with my mom’s group. A lot of the parents in this group prefer outdoor meet ups so I definitely want to get a few more Happy Hours in before the weather gets too chilly.

Happy Hour with fellow Stage Managers. There has been a seismic shift in the stage management staff at work this past year and it’s made me realize that I really value the my co-workers as human beings, not just as people I work with. The thought of not seeing them at all this opera season makes me a little sad, so I would love to arrange something.

Free Days that are restorative and fulfilling. Given that I’m working every weekend between next week and the middle of November, I don’t know how many of the Fall weekend specific things I’ll manage to get to – things such as Fall Festivals and Special Fall Events. Since I generally only have one day off a week, I really want to guard that time and spend it on what matters. I’ve been thinking about this lately – how to spend my one precious free day. When I have chaotic and hectic free days, I don’t feel at all ready to go back to work. A good free day needs to be a good combination of life tasks and family tasks and personal tasks and leisure tasks and social time and rest. Which seems like a lot to ask of just one day. So maybe I need to pick three of those categories each free day, with rest always being one of the choices.

Thoughts on the Queen’s Funeral

I am by no means a committed Royalist but I do enjoy the sense of history and tradition that the Royal Family embodies, and I am fascinated by how that plays out for the public, particularly sartorially. I’m sure growing up in Canada influenced my feelings of respect for the Queen and all that she represented. I woke up too late to watch the Queen’s funeral service this morning, so I set my laptop on the table as we ate breakfast and we watched the procession from Westminster Abby to Wellington Arch. Surprisingly, the five year old was entranced by the proceedings and spent all morning riveted to the screen. At one point, I asked him, “What do you like about this?”

“I like watching the crowds,” he replied.

I took a break from watching to do the school bus run, and the transportation of the casket the 25 miles to Windsor coincided with some errands I had to run afterwards, though I did listen on CSPAN to the coverage. I got home in time to watch the committal service at St. George’s Chapel.

The sheer scale of the funeral was awe-inspiring. Of course, I would not expect any less for a monarch, especially one who ruled for seventy years. At one point the commentator mentioned that there were over 4000 military troops participating. All of them moving in unison. It makes the mere 210 people we had to wrangle onstage this past weekend seem like nothing. I’m going to think about this next time I do a show with a big chorus – At least I’m not coordinating 4000+ people to march in step at 75 beats per minute.

So many indelible images for me from today’s funeral:

– The flowers thrown by the crowds onto the hearse as it drove by, many of which survived the drive to Windsor so that the queen pulled into Windsor castle strewn with flowers from her people.

– The corgis, looking freshly shampooed and fluffed. It made me so happy to see the Queen’s faithful companions included in the proceedings.

– The oceans of people who lined the streets. I know there are many who have no use for the monarchy, but there are also so many who clearly were touched by th Queen and made the pilgrimage to see her off.

– The solemn faces of the Royal Family, particularly Prince George and Princess Charlotte. The Queen’s funeral is indeed a solemn state occasion, yet seeing the two children there reminded me that this is also a family affair and the loss of a matriarch is mourned as much as the loss of a Queen. I often thought of attending funerals of my own family and how hard it was to be on display somewhat during the funeral and how after everything we got back to thee house and I just felt so exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. I hope the members of the Royal Family have time to process their grief and rest after all this.

– Also – somewhat superficially, the wide array of black attire and everyone looking so elegant.

– The pallbearers moving so smoothly together that they made it look as if the coffin was gliding on air.

– The Lord Chamberlain breaking his wand of office and putting it on the coffin to be buried with the Queen. That literal break representing so clearly the end of an era was such an embodiment of the ceremonies and symbolism of a state funeral. Also – the fact that this moment, this centuries old tradition was broadcast for the first time today… I mean it certainly makes sense that the breaking of the wand hasn’t been seen by the public before; that fact really highlights how long Queen Elizabeth’s reign was, and also how the current trend seems to be to demystify a lot of the rituals of royalty.

– When they played ‘God Save the Queen” as the casket left Wellington Arch on the way to Windsor Castle, I felt a lump in my throat. Here was the last trip the Queen would make to Windsor Castle, or anywhere, really. Sending her off with the national anthem, the words of which wish for her well-being, felt like a final tribute and gesture of farewell.

All my life, the anthem has been “God Save the Queen”, and it was simultaneously jarring and poignant to hear the congregation sing “God Save the King” at the end of the commitment service. I think that’s when I realized that the Queen was really gone and the weight of the monarchy had passed to her son. When I was growing up, it never occurred to me that the words of the anthem could change. I thought that there was another anthem that was sung for Kings, tucked away somewhere to be brought out when needed. How central the monarchy is to Great Britain that the passing of one person can literally change the country’s national anthem! And, I realized as I listened to the singing of “God Save the King” and watched the face of King Charles, inscrutable yet sad, I realized that, despite the laws of primogeniture being altered recently to allow females to succeed to throne in the order of birth, given the current line of succession – King Charles, to The Prince of Wales, to Prince George – I don’t think it will ever be “God Save the Queen” again in my life time.

It feels almost silly to say, but I’m glad that I got to live through a time when it was indeed, “God Save the Queen”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snack dinner.

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

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

Wednesday: The Husband made stir-fry and rice.

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

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

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

Labour Day Weekend 2022. Renaissance Festival!

Another Labor Day weekend in the books, and now I feel like summer is truly on it’s way to fall.

Not everything on my my Labor Day Weekend plans/ aspirations list got checked off, but the most important adventure was accomplished – we went to the Renaissance Festival! The Ren Faire was the perfect way to end the summer — it’s a special outing, outdoors, yet local so we can still come home and sleep in our beds and not have to unpack suitcases. I love going to the Ren Faire. The costumes, the shows, the atmosphere of hubub… Everything about it is just pure fun. Also – not going to lie, but an additional perk right now is that the two littles get to go for free, so I just had to buy tickets for me and the ten year old. (The Husband didn’t go – even though one of our first dates was to the Ren Faire, he doesn’t actually like them.) This was my first time taking the toddler. I think the five year old went once when he was still a baby in the baby carrier.

We went with some friends who had never been before, and when we met up with each other inside the festival gates, they said, “We’ve never been before, so we’ll take your lead on what to do.”

“Well,” I said, “Usually we see shows, eat food on a stick, people watch, and swelter in the heat.”

And we did all that and more.

We watched a Birds of Prey demonstration. The little kids went on Pony rides. The ten year old climbed a rock wall. The toddler wanted to as well, but you had to be four to climb. “I’ll can climb it next year!” she said.

There was a playground with a giant pirate ship where the kids would have played all day if we had let them. There were people dressed as pirates and wenches and kings and queens and fairies and knights and warriors and all other manner of fabulously imaginative creations. The toddler, being the only one in the family with Ren Faire appropriate clothes (aka dress up clothes) was the only one who got dressed up. She even wore a veil that the ten year old had been gifted the first time she went to the Renaissance Festival exactly six years ago to the date. Here’s a then and now:

The ten year old, when she was four.
And this year, the veil is passed on.

Of course we had turkey legs (and all other manner of faire food):

There were shows, so many shows to see. Comedy shows, Shakespeare snippets, juggling shows, music shows (bagpipes!). We watched the drama of King Henry VIII’s court unfold as Jane Seymour waits to become queen.

There was a longsword demonstration. We did not make it to the jousting, which was my one regret. In all my years of coming I have yet to see the jousting. I think I always plan on it but then get sucked into watching something else. Well, next year I’ll make sure it’s a priority.

There was face painting and fairy wings and a warrior’s shield.

We were there all day – arrived at 10:30am and left at 6:30pm. By the end of the day everyone was sweaty and dusty and sticky. The lady at the fairy wing booth said to me, “I can always tell the parents who let their kids have the most fun because those kids are the dirtiest.”

We probably stayed a little longer than prudent; I hadn’t brought the stroller so the toddler didn’t take an afternoon stroller nap and she had a pretty epic meltdown when we got home around 7:15pm. Even still, we had a really great time and, not that I would say it was worth an evening meltdown, sometimes one can’t let the last part of the day be the last word on the whole day. Sometimes the epic tantrum is just the price of admission for a fun filled end of summer adventure.

The rest of the long weekend plans/ aspiration list went pretty well:

  • We did get to the Farmer’s market. The Husband and I took the two little kids and picked up some yogurt and granola from the farmer’s market downtown. Then, because I wanted to do a bigger produce shop, we drove about twenty minutes to a farm stand in the next county because as much as I love our downtown farmer’s market, the produce is less expensive at the farm stand outside the city. The five year old, unbeknownst to me put a watermelon into out basket. The thing was half his size!
    Then because it was on the way home, we stopped at Ikea. I had been looking for a container for our paper recycling since our current solution was a cardboard shoebox that was starting to fall apart. The main criteria for the recycling container was that it had to have a lid because the baby is still in that phase where she will put random things in open containers. After scouring the internet, and ordering something from Amazon only to have it arrive broken, I thought we’d check out Ikea. And of course, they had the perfect thing for half the price of anything I saw online. We also found these hooded towels that were perfect size for the two little kids. They’ve outgrown the hooded towels from the baby years, but still like to be swathed post bath. I’d contemplated buying them a set from Pottery Barn or The Company Store, but, again, Ikea had the perfect thing for a fraction of the cost. And the Husband picked up a boot tray that he said was exactly what he needed for draining his plants. Again… perfect thing, fraction of the cost of buying a plant tray from the garden store. We also wanted to buy a mattress for the ten year old, but thought it’d be better to go when she could come with. We did not find a solution for shoe storage – the situation in our foyer with shoes has gotten out of hand. Everything we liked would have to be drilled into the wall, and we have vintage wood paneling that we are loath to drill into. (Later that day, the ten year old just took all the shoes out of the baskets and lined them up in the foyer. We’ll see how the “no storage” solution works… so far, it’s worked better than I thought.)
    All in all, though, a very successful morning of errands. I’d forgotten how fun Ikea can be for kids. Every time we walked into one of their faux rooms, the kids were delighted. “I want to live here!” the toddler would say. And for lunch, we ate in the Ikea cafeteria and had meatballs, which felt like a treat.
Lunch at Ikea.
The “view” from the Ikea balcony.
  • I meal planned for the week based on the produce run.
  • Did not managed to re-assess my closet completely, but I did take everything out and purged some things that didn’t fit. Some of it, like the party dresses, I set aside for my daughters in case they want to them when they can fit in them (which is sooner than I think… the ten year old already wears tops and sweaters that don’t fit me anymore). The closet is a little cleaner, but the clothes to be put into storage or given to donation are now in piles all over the bedroom. A little bit at a time, I guess. I don’t love my options for workwear that I have, particularly for the still warmer weather we are having, but I think I will make do for now and resist buying more.
  • Did not order shoes, but did put some options in my shopping cart.
  • Did go to the pool one last time before it closed for the season.
  • Slow run/walk accomplished when the Husband took the kids with him to run errands one morning. Very very slow. I think I only managed to run about 3/4 miles of it. Small steps. Literally.
  • I did get to relax on the back patio with a book, and I managed to fit in reading a little bit of each book in my current rotation. I feel like I want to incorporate some kind of family reading time. The little kids don’t read yet, but they can sit with a Vox book. Maybe this is a cozy cooler weather aspiration.
  • Socks and underwear ordered for the kids. I don’t understand why so many companies sell underwear in packs of five.
  • Did not completely finish prepping my score for rehearsals, but I did put in a little bit of work time to finish timing the show off a video. Even though the video is not the version we are doing, watching it got me super excited to start rehearsals. The music is so good!
  • I did not bake muffins, but given the Costco run last week, we are pretty well stocked for snacks.
  • And, not on the list, but something that the Husband and ten year old have made into a family tradition of late – we finished off the weekend by watching and episode of Golden Girls and folding the laundry. (Well the baby didn’t really watch, but she did do summersaults onto the couch.)

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

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

Three backpacks ready for school!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer at the Botanical Gardens

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

Some good things this week:

  • I confirmed dates for the supertitle job that I did last year. I’m really excited about being able to have more work dates to put in my calendar for the 2022-2023 season, plus I really do like doing supertitle work.
  • I found my work ID. I had thought I’d misplaced it but I found it right in time for my new gig. It’s such a silly thing, but finding it made me so happy.
  • I helped the 10 year old do something that I was kind of dreading and didn’t think I would have to do quite yet or be any good at. I’m being vague – it’s her story to tell, honestly, but it was a good bonding moment and I’m glad that we figured it out.
  • I met up with a friend for a walk, and we saw turtles in the pond along the trail! Also – this friend was just in Canada, and I half jokingly had asked her to bring me back wine gums since the baby had finished off the bag that I had brought home from our Montreal trip. Well my friend brought me back three bags! I was so excited.
Hello Turtle.
Happiness!
  • I canned and froze a bunch of peaches. This was also a bit of a loss because I waited a bit too long to can the peaches and some of them had gone bad before I got to them, which made me sad. But I still got seven jars and two trays of August peaches to eat in January.
Peaches to remind me in January what summer tasted like.
  • Dance parties in the kitchen as I clean up from dinner. The ten year old is great at helping wipe down the table and sweep the dining room, but the two littles are less helpful. They do provide some entertainment with their kitchen dance parties. I don’t listen to music enough to curate a cleaning play list, but luckily many other people have and I’ll often just type “cleaning” into the Spotify search function and hit play on whatever play lists come up. Usually it’s something that makes for great dancing:
Such goofy dancers. And the dishes still undone.
  • The Husband and I rarely have the same taste in tv watching, but we found a show to binge together – The Year of the Rabbit. It’s on Britbox, so we signed up for the free week trial just to watch this show, which I had read about on the website FrockFlicks. Year of the Rabbit is a hilarious, bizarre, smart comedy about a trio of Victorian era policemen – well two policeman and one aspiring policewoman who is trying to fight the patriarchy. “That isn’t even a thing,” she is told at one point. It came out in 2019 and there are, sadly, only six episodes. But given the Husband and my terribly track record for finishing series, six episodes was a perfect length for binging. Highly recommend.

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

First Day of School!

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

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

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

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

Saturday: Pizza at a birthday pool party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shavasana with a baby

The baby and her three-legged dog.

One of the things I’ve been trying to get back into is a short morning yoga routine. Even though YouTube abounds with yoga practices, I find I can focus better without the visual element so I usually use yoga podcasts to guide me. I know I could always just turn the volume off of a YouTube video, but I find that the people who lead the practice are less descriptive when there is a visual component. My current ideal yoga routine length is about twenty to twenty five minutes. I can do a longer practice in a class, but for some reason when on my own, I can’t focus as long. (I know the point of yoga is focus, so this is a little ironic).

The kids are now of an age that they can fend for themselves for twenty minutes in the morning while I slip away to the basement and roll out my yoga mat and put my earphones in. I’m not quite sure what they do for those twenty minutes, but I don’t think they are getting into the knives or burning the house down, so I figure they’ll be fine. Sometimes they are getting into my chocolate stash, though, which is almost as dire. On a good day, they are getting dressed.

The other day, as I was doing my yoga, the baby came down. She thinks it’s great fun to crawl all over me while I’m doing yoga. Something about the various poses screams “HUMAN JUNGLE GYM!!! OPEN FOR CLIMBING!!!”. She’ll sit on me while I do bridge pose, and giggle as she goes up and down with my pelvis. Warrior two finds her climbing up on my bent leg to hang on to my arms. Downward dog makes a tunnel for her to crawl under. It does make it a little difficult to move into chaturanga or plank pose to have her lying under me. Sometimes we play “squish” the baby when that happens.

In a way, it reminds me of when the kids were just born and I took a post-natal yoga class at my local hospital. They were held on weekday mornings and the new moms would always come in gingerly with their little squishy babies. The instructor was so amazing and she taught us to be as gentle with ourselves as we were with our little babies. Some classes, I spent the entire 45 minutes nursing, though I did manage to figure out how to nurse a baby while in bridge pose…. I’m listing this as one of my hidden talents.

At a birthday party recently, I talked to someone recently whose son was in the same pre-school class as my five year old. Turns out we had been in the same post natal yoga class with these boys who are now about to start Kindergarten. She commented on how she felt like she spent the whole class nursing and was always a little frustrated by that. “I finally got out of the house to do something,” she said, “And I still ended up attached to the baby. I felt so frustrated because I just wanted to spend some time doing something. It was supposed to be me time!”

I feel that resentment sometimes when the baby interrupts my yoga. This is me time, not mommy baby time. Yet the other day, when she came down and proceeded to insert herself into my routine, I tamped down my annoyance and tried to lean into it. I tried to savour her playfulness and her big smiles as she looked at me from below as I attempted some kind of Warrior. I took on her weight when she jumped on me as I was doing a seated forward fold. And I gave her kisses as I went from cow to cat and back again.

And then I settled into shavasana – aka corpse pose, aka the pose at the end of the practice where you just lie on your back and let go. The moment I was supine, the baby crawled on top of me and put her head on my chest. Well, actually at first she dug her pointy little chin on my chest, which was not relaxing. So I said, “Can you put your cheek on my chest?” and she turned her head to one side and laid her pillowy round cheek over my heart. And as the voice in my ear told me to relax and breathe and empty my mind, I thought, “With a thirty pound toddler on me? You’re kidding right?”

Then something happened as I tried to obey the voice in my ear that told me to breath and let go. I took deep breaths, and the baby breathed with me. And as we lay there, breathing together, I realized, “Okay, this is ‘me time’ too.” And all my resentment went away. Because I realized, right now, in this season of life, these kids are a part of me. I don’t mean that in the scary self-erasing, symbiotic almost parasitic sense that I sometimes feel when my kids are draining the energy from me. Nor was it one of those sentiments where I’m sacrificing myself and my tranquility on the altar of motherhood for these little terrors, you know, all the toxicity of the tired mom trope.

It was just this realization that our lives have been so intertwined and close, particularly these past two years, and that yeah, I do identify a lot as a mom these days, and it’s absolutely okay to allow myself to feel so defined by that. If a lot of the stress and anger and despair I feel within me some days come from parenting, then certainly a lot of the joy and wonder and peace does to. Like this moment, trying to squeeze in some yoga with a toddler interjecting at every turn. Come the following week, the kids will all be in school, and me time may look very different. For now, though, me time can be mom time, savoring the sweet weight of a little person doing Shavasana with me.

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

First day of daycare!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We went to the pool!

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

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

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

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

perfect summer salad.

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

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

Two more things this week:

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

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

What We Ate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shenandoah Camping- Day three and then home

Dinner cooked on the camp fire

To finish up the recaps from our July camping trip….

The second morning once again started with a 6:30am bathroom call. This morning, after bathroom call, I actually went back to sleep for an hour while the two kids played with their cars and figurines next to me in the tent. It was a kind of hazy shallow sleep, punctuated by their small voices making car noises and creating scenarios on the tent floor. Small figurines and cars always come with us when we go camping and we get a lot of mileage out of them.

Around 7:45- I got up and made breakfast- bacon and egg wraps. Which were tasty, although I think I should have bought thick cut bacon – it would have cooked more evenly and taken up less space in the frying pan.

Bacon frying!

A little after 9:00am, the Husband arrived with the 10 year old. They had left at around 6am to get to us and the ten year old was still a little sleepy. I thought they made good time given that they even stopped for donuts.

“Did you get to use the park pass?” was the first thing I asked them.

So the whole reason I chose to come to the Shenandoah over Western Maryland where we usually go camping was because every fourth grader in America gets a free National Park Pass good from September 1st to August 31st the year they are in fourth grade. Not one to turn down free stuff, I really wanted to use the pass and we planned two vacations around this park pass. However, we didn’t use the pass on our our Smoky Mountain National Park vacation because that park actually doesn’t charge a fee. So I was eager to use it on this trip. Except then the ten year old didn’t want to come with me. I realize that $30 is a small price to pay for entry into our National Parks, but I was super bummed not to be able to use the card. (Though it ended up being moot because when I drove in with the two littles, the entry gate was understaffed and unoccupied so I didn’t end up having to pay anyway.)

Anyhow, the Husband reassured me that they did in fact get to use the fourth grade park pass and I was pretty excited about that.

After everyone got to relax for a little bit and I got breakfast cleaned up, put away, and had hauled the dishwashing water to be dumped and come back, I wanted to go on a hike. So we packed a lunch and snacks and water in our backpacks and got in the car.

I chose the South River Falls Hike. It looked really doable in the hiking book, just 4.4 miles to the base of a waterfall and back. In my mind that was 2.2 miles to the waterfall, time for playing in the water and lunch, then 2.2 miles back. I figured it would take maybe four hours – ninety minutes there, thirty minutes at the waterfall and two hours back.

South Mountain Falls.

It took 6.5 hours and was much harder than I had anticipated.

Most of the difficulty was due to the elevation change throughout, some 1200 feet. The terrain in spots was a little rocky to get down to the waterfall and then back up to the trail so we had to go slow and careful with the kid. Even still, there were lots of things I really liked about the hike.

We saw lots of millipedes – which the kids loved to stop for… every single millipede.

two of the many many millipedes that we saw.

There were lots of moments to sit by the stream for a motivational snack break. (Gummy fruit snacks!)

There were rocky scrambles, one which ran over the stream and you could stand on the rocks and hear the trickle of water far below, even though you couldn’t actually see the stream.

There was running into a park ranger who talked us through the path to the base of the waterfall and answered all our questions of how they rescue people in case of emergency. I thought it was such a cool job to spend your day hiking and talking to park visitors.

There was the cool shade where we sat on rocks at the base of the waterfall and had our lunch of summer sausage, cheese, and fruit. And after lunch there was some refreshing wading.

taking in the water fall.
cool soak for my weary feet
Views from the base of the falls.

And on the way back, we even saw some owls. It was almost magical! There is something mesmerizing about owls and their haunting call and swift noiseless flight.

Very blurry picture of one of the owls we saw.

Overall, the kids did okay with the hike, difficult as it was. There was a fair bit of protesting that they couldn’t possibly go any further, but the baby actually made it all but the last mile, at which point, I put her in the carrier and she fell asleep. The five year old stoically made it all the way to the waterfall and back with nary a word. He found a good sturdy stick and trudged along, stick in hand. Only afterwards did he say to me, “I like camping, but I don’t like long hikes.”

a boy and his stick.

In the evening there was a fire, dinner cooked over said fire, and ‘smores. Then the Husband put the kids to bed. The ten year old decided that the tent was too crowded and wanted to sleep in the hammock. I hung a few glow sticks in hammock for her so that she wouldn’t be so in the dark. Truth be told, I was a little jealous – sleeping in a hammock seemed like it would have made for a soothing and refreshing night. Since the Husband was on kid duty and then retired soon after, I had the rest of the evening to myself. I sat by the fire, read my book and wrote in my journal as I tried to keep the flames alive as long as possible. The last log managed to burn for quite a long time and it was lovely to have a fire-lit evening to myself.

making smores.

The next day, we woke up to fog and drizzle, which still seemed magical. The Husband and I packed up the campsite while the kids played. The five year old kept setting the camp chairs in a row, playing train:

camp train!

The baby just tried to climb whatever she could:

She can make anything into her jungle gym!

On the way home, we stopped in Culpepper for lunch at a Bar-b-que place. The food did take a while to get to us, so when it became clear that the two little were feeling a little restless, I took them on a walk around the town. I feel like I need to have more tricks up my sleeve for the kids now that we are eating out more. I can’t expect them to sit still all the time in a restaurant if the service is slow and I don’t want them climbing all over things and behaving like indoor monkeys. At any rate, a walk around the block seemed like a good way to wait for the food to come. We even saw this piece of art:

And it seemed like every street we walked down was like taking a time machine back sixty years….

Eventually the husband texted that the food had arrived so we headed back to the restaurant. We ordered the family meal and it. came. in. a. garbage. can. lid. How fun is that?

The food was soooo good! When I go to BBQ, I had to admit, it’s all about the sides for me. Any place that doesn’t have collard greens is a disappointment in my book. This place not only had collard greens, but they also had hush puppies (which the kids tried for the first time and heartily approved of), fried okra and, something new to me, stewed apples. The stewed apples were so tasty, kind of like eating apple pie filling .

After lunch, we drove home, unloaded the camping gear from the car, and all took showers.

All in all, it was a great trip. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Some things that I really enjoyed about this camping trip:

Unplugging. Our campsite actually had pretty good cell service, but I needed my battery to last 3.5 days with minimal charging, so I kept it in airplane mode most of the time. I realized that this was actually a great way to limit my screen time. I would take my phone out of airplane mode three or four times a day, check my email and texts, respond to the ones that needed a response, text teh Husband proof of life pictures of me and the kids, then put the phone back in airplane mode. It made me realize that I don’t get messages of sufficient volume and importance to be checking my messages as much as I do. It was a good thing to realize. The one annoying thing was even though I had downloaded my books via the Libby app, for some reason the app wouldn’t open unless it had signal. So a couple times I had to take the phone off airplane mode just to get the app to open.

Hiking to views and to waterfalls.

Going to bed early.

Reading Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile out loud with the kids.

The hammock.

Simple meals of crackers, summer sausage, and cheese.

Seeing stars…