The show has teched and opened and closed and I’m ready for summer. The weeks of work was an intense time. Now on the other side, I am amazed a what a big push it was for us to get through those two weeks of performing a large show in the time of COVID. I don’t pretend that putting up an opera is anywhere on the scale as organizing and army or surgery – in fact we often say “It isn’t brain surgery” when things feel overwhelming. But mounting an opera is a project that takes a couple hundred people to pull off, and there are 1500-2000 people watching every performance expecting to be entertained, so it does feel like a large undertaking.
This show, though, felt particularly daunting at times. One main reason was that part way through the run, I was asked to step in at the last minute for the stage manager, bumping up from my assistant stage manager role. Stepping into someone else’s track is not always easy, and being the stage manager requires a level of visible responsibility that can be intimidating for me. But someone needed to call the show and the company asked me, so I was nervously excited to do it. And turns out, when you are calling a show cold without rehearsal, people are really forgiving when you bungle a scene shift cue and the audience gets to watch a bit of awkward stage business that they really shouldn’t witness. Hah.
Everyone was super supportive and encouraging and I really felt lifted by that support. And the chorus, our wonderful wonderful chorus, gathered backstage around the stage manager’s console at the end of the first show I called and gave me a huge round of applause. Oh my goodness, I was so touched by the gesture, my heart almost exploded from gratitude.
When I stage manage a performance, I have a little ritual where I write some variation of the following in my notebook as I prep for the show to start:
Each line is kind of like a mile marker. As the show goes along, I will write the time next to each section when it starts – Curtain Speech, Orchestra Tune, Act 1 begins, Act 2 begins, etc… At the end of the evening, I can easily calculate how long each segment of the show was because I know what time they each started. Actually, even more than “easily” because I have an excel table that will calculate the time math for me – I just input the start times of each part. Time keeping is a big part of stage management – using it well and knowing where it goes.
I read an article recently that talked about the difference between routine and ritual being one of intent and mindfulness. The article quotes Mason Currey who wrote a book called “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”, as saying that “Rituals create and mark a transition towards a different kind of mental or emotional state.” While a routine might just be a repeated action, rituals can help focus the mind to an upcoming task. Writing the mile markers of the show is certainly routine – it’s a task that has a practical function and needs to be done before every show – but I think of it also as a ritual, something I do methodically to introduce a calm to the start of my show. There can be many unknowns, but I do know that I will look at the clock at these points in the evening and it’s helps me mentally prepare to get there.
At any rate, the first time I had to call the opera I was subbing on, I stood at the console before the show and had my little ritual of writing down the points of time that I needed to note. Then I took a deep breath and, looking at what I had written, suddenly it all seemed very manageable. This huge show I had just been thrown in charge of…. I just had to get from “[Curtain] Speech” to “End [of Bows]”. What I had to do was laid out right there in black and white. So very doable.
For as much calamity that had been thrown at our show in the days, hours, and minutes before the orchestra downbeat, I realized then that there was an end point and I just had to get there. Simple enough. Indeed, I don’t know that I could very well avoid getting there. Sure, I could not tell the orchestra to tune, but that was a very unlikely as it would probably raise eyebrows and cost a lot of money. Looking at my list of mile markers brought a kind of “ah ha!” moment for me, a realization that the end of the show will happen- there is it, written in my notebook, as if it were preordained. It was like a road map, I just had to arrive at “End bows” and my job was done (mostly) and I could go home. There was a great sense of reassurance in knowing that I just had to focus until “End Bows”.
There is a saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. And if it isn’t okay, it isn’t the end.” I think of this a lot when things get hard, or even when I anticipate things getting hard. Work in the moment, but know there is an end. There are times I will even break things down even further and tell myself that I just have to get through the next ten minutes. After I get through enough ten minute sections, I will get to “End of Bows.”
Sometimes in life, when things seem daunting, I know when the end will be – “End Bows” for example- and sometimes I don’t – waiting at the hospital with my sick Father-in-law. Either way, it helps just knowing that there is an end point, a time when this show, this task, this moment of life will be finished and I will be able to look back and reflect and move on.
The mornings hover between spring and summer, just where I like it. The temperatures are low enough that there is a slight chill, the air is dry from having released its humidity in a midnight rainstorm, leaving wet grass and the smell of rain. Yet the earth has tilted so the sunlight is early and direct, warming out faces as I walk the kids to school, and our backs as I walk home after drop off. I know that soon, 8am will be suffocatingly humid and 80 degrees, so I remind myself to savour these favorite mornings.
The other day, I made a to do list for the week. Yes, I’m slowly getting back into the habit, dumping out my brain like the linen closet and putting things back folded and neat, and maybe putting aside those tasks that are no longer useful. The week’s to do list read:
-pay bills – sort bills from [rental property] – figure out summer camp – eat the peaches
One of summer’s greatest gifts is fresh peaches. Bought by the bushel from farmer’s markets, they are so plentiful and sweet, the seconds barely discernable from the firsts. Sometimes I like to go pick them myself, although prime peach season is typically August, when the weather is at its hottest and most humid, so the labor is never as enjoyable as the fruits of said labor. The boxes of peaches pile up in the house and we eat them as fast as we can, then turn to making pies and turnovers and eating them wrapped in ham with a slice of basil and also the peach shortbread recipe from Smitten Kitchen. But inevitably the we can’t eat them fast enough and I end up canning several jars of them and tucking them away in the basement.
Canned summer peaches are a present from my summer self to my future winter self. In the depths of winter, to open a jar of peaches and remember what summer tastes like is like eating nostalgia and warmth wrapped together. Even peaches that I remember being not quite sweet in the heat of summer, taste perfectly sweet when I spoon them into my mouth as I stare at the snow blanketing bare limbs in January.
Of course the kids always want to eat the peaches right away, after they have been put up. But I tell them, no. I want to save the peaches for that moment in winter when it feels like we have been in it for so long that I can’t remember what summer is like. Then, when I feel like summer is so far away, do I bring out a jar, and crack it open, unleashing glistening deep yellow mounds of edible sunshine.
This winter, though… it was unseasonably warm. I thought about my peaches sitting on the filing cabinet in the basement and always said to myself, “Nah. It’s not cold enough yet to bring them out. It surely will get colder and more miserable this winter.” And whether I was having a fit of asceticism, denying myself peaches, or whether the winter truly was a mild one, either way I now found myself mid May and the peaches still had not been eaten.
And so as we turn the corner into May, and I started to make my summer fun list, I realized that the peaches were still sitting in the basement when soon it would be time to bring home more bushels of peaches and can them for next winter. And what would be the point of eating canned peaches in August when the fresh peaches were so abundant?
So I put it on my list – “Eat the peaches”
As if it were a chore. But it’s not a chore. Quite the contrary. It’s just sometimes I need a reminder to do the thing that brings me joy.
Or also, bring the kids joy. The moment I brought the jars up from the basement, their faces lit up. “Peaches!” they exclaimed and crowded around as I popped open the jars, the vacuum sealed lids coming off with a satisfying sucking sound. Thuuuwack!
The baby, in particular, loves to drink the liquid that the peaches were canned in. “Potion!” she calls it, lifting the entire jar to her mouth and chugging greedily. It reminds me of Zero and Stanley in the book Holes, drinking centuries old canned peaches, calling it “Sploosh”.
So we are now down to a couple peach halves floating in “potion” in the fridge, and that is all that remains from last year’s batch. I don’t know what I’m saving those last two peach halves for, why my reluctance to eat them. Perhaps I’m holding on to the memory of last summer, wanting to draw it out as much as possible. Not anything specific at all, even. Just the idea of warm and sun and padding barefoot in my kitchen and the luxury of leisure time. (How strange that canning peaches, once a necessity, is now for me almost a leisure activity.) I have this irrational sense that once I finish those last bits of last year’s peaches, I will have lost last summer, released it into the ether of memory and time.
This is silly, I tell myself. Be practical. I need to clear that jar away to make room for the incoming crop of peaches. Besides I will be so sad if I hold on to those last few peaches so long that they spoil and then I can’t enjoy them at all. Perhaps practicality and planning is the only thing that can overcome my sentimentality over a bit of canned fruit. So I write it on my list:
Now that I’m peering into summer, no better time to finish my Spring Break recap. Hah! It’a little getaway we took back before rehearsals even began…
Immediately after my brother and his family visited for their spring break, was the ten year old’s own spring break. I don’t think I quite appreciated how flexible one could be with vacation before the oldest started school. Now most of our vacations have to be planned around school holidays. I guess they don’t have to be, but too many missed days of school and we get the administrative side eye. We did pull the ten year old from school the Friday before Spring break so that we could pack in a little trip before I started work the next week.
There is a program that gives every fourth grader in America a free National Parks Pass for a year. I had signed the ten year old up for last September, but I’m a little abashed to admit that we have yet to take advantage of it. It expires in August, so I thought we should plan some trips around visiting National Parks. I had managed to get a couple days off work for the first half of the ten year old’s Spring Break, so the Husband found a nice place on Airbnb next to the Smoky Mountains and off we went.
Since my parents were coming with us, we rented a minivan to drive down. I have long resisted a mini van, but seeing as how I’m driving a nineteen year old car, we have started to think as to whether a van might indeed be an option for our next car. The verdict – definitely a more comfortable ride for everyone and the amount of space for luggage is pretty great. But…. the Husband declared we are not getting a mini van until the kids are out of their “must push the buttons” phase, given the arguments and tears that ensued over who got to push the button to close the sliding doors, not to mention the number of times that one of the kids managed to, in their eagerness to push buttons, closed a door on someone trying to get in the van. Plus my parking lot at work is tiny.
At any rate, back to our trip. We left at 7am – the Husband had wanted to leave at 6am, but that didn’t happen. As is our road trip tradition, we stopped at McDonalds for breakfast. We didn’t make many stops – just one for lunch and once for gas, and arrived at our place around 5:30pm. We were greeted by a cozy yet spacious cabin in the mountains with a stunning view of the Smokies as well as a hot tub.
It was actually quite cold when we got to our Airbnb. In fact, there were snow flurries that afternoon. But even the snow couldn’t hide what a great view we had from the back deck of the cabin:
view from the back deck
We settled in that evening – the kids were super excited to explore a new dwelling and there was even a pool table for them to try out. Since it was Friday night, we had our pizza and movie night – picking up pizza from Pizza Hut and streaming Seeing Red – which was a pretty awesome movie. The film is set in Toronto and my parents had lived there when they were newly arrived in Canada, so that was one things that made the movie particularly fun.
The next day promised rain, so we decided to visit the Tuckalechee Caverns, which were just down the road. The caverns were breathtaking and I loved seeing all the different shapes and sizes of rock formations, and hearing the guide explaining what causes rocks to form one way as opposed to another. It was also really amazing how they had set up all these lights in the caverns so people could really see the different formations. At one point, though, the guide turned out the light so we could see how absolutely dark it was in the caverns. Being plunge into darkness made me think of the two boys – one just six years old – who discovered the caverns – back in a time when there weren’t the powerful flashlights that we have today. What an adventure it must have been for those two kids! Scary, too, I bet. One of those boys who discovered the caverns still owns the caverns to this day. When I walked in to buy our tickets, the man behind the counter asked where I was from. I told him and then I asked whether he was from the area.
“Yes I am,” he said. “Born here. In fact, by grandpa was one of the boys who discovered the caverns.” And he pointed with his thumb to an elderly man sitting behind the fudge counter a few feet over. A family business.
This was one of my favorite formations – I love the way the water and sediment flowed to, over millions of years, create a rock that almost looks like a rippling piece of fabric.
There was also a waterfall and what was known as the “beach” where the water was so clean from being filtered through all the rock and sediment from the surface that one could drink it. In fact, the guide told us, locals often come and pay the owner of the caverns so that they can fill their water jugs from the water in the caverns.
Waterfall.
Stalactites and Stalagmites.
After returning from the caverns, the Husband and I went to the next town over to buys some groceries and to just sit for a while in a coffee shop. It was nice to get away for a little while. After dinner that night, we tried enjoyed a stunning sunset and then, while the kids tried to figure out how to play pool, the Husband and I tried out the hot tub… it was nice, but I don’t know that hot tubs are really my things. Something about sitting around in hot water seems so passive. Which, I guess might be the point of the hot tub as a relaxing activity.
Smoky Mountain Sunset.
The next day we all went on a hike. The hike we had wanted to go on proved to have no parking at the trailhead, so we drove on and found another hike. There are many to be had in the Smoky Mountains. Oh also, ironically, even though we were very eager to use our park pass and that was the whole reason we picked Smoky Mountain National Park in the first place… turns out you don’t need to pay to get in to the park. At any rate, the hike that we went on, passed a cemetery, with some very interesting names to be found, also the heartbreak of infant mortality.
Also… nine children!
But after the cemetery, we admittedly trudged on feeling a little uninspired by the trail we picked. It was mostly just trees and shrubs and very little shade or pretty views. I mean trees and shrubs are all fine and well, but the original hike we had wanted to go on promised the opportunity to venture behind a waterfall. So this trail of just trees and shrubs seemed honestly kind of a let down. But presently we ran into someone hiking the opposite direction. He mentioned something about how coming back was easier than getting there.
“How far did you go?” we asked.
“I went all the way to the waterfall,” he said.
A waterfall! Well, that was a bit of motivation to keep going. So we continued on. We stopped at a flat rock next to the stream to eat our packed lunch- sandwiches, fruit, cucumbers, carrots, and cookies. And then after clambering down a rocky path….
We spent the next little while climbing over rocks and traversing logs, and half heartedly trying to not get too wet.
On the way back, the baby got a little fussy.. she had hiked quite a while, so it was to be expected. I had forgotten to bring the baby carrier in my backpack. (This carrier, by the way, which I love because it packs up super small and light yet can still be used for my 30 lb toddler. It’s not the most comfortable for hours and hours, but it’s perfect to throw in the backpack for those moment when she’s walked two miles and is ready to quit.). So, finding myself without a carrier, I decided to improvise. I had the Jane Eyre wrap that my friend had given me, so I tied the ends together and threw the loop over one shoulder to make an sling and it worked better than I had thought.
After that hikes, we came back to our airbnb and there was soup waiting for us in the slow cooker. We had stopped to pick up some garlic bread- the freezer kind. Actually two different freezer kinds so we could have a taste test. After dinner, the Husband and I tried out the hot tub while the kids tried to figure out how to play pool.
The next day we went in the opposite directions toward the “quiet side” of the Smokies to visit Cade’s Cove, which is a valley amidst the Smokies that is full of hiking trails and the remnants of historic European settlements. There is an eleven mile loop that you can drive that takes you to these various buildings and trails. We started to hike the Trail to Abrams Falls, but the entire loop was five miles and, hiking with little kids, one kind of has to go at their pace so we didn’t make it to the Falls. Even though we did not get to see Abrams Falls, we did some really fun rock scrambling and sat by the river, watching the water tumble by.
I swear this child is half mountain goat.
A boy and his hiking vest!
I also loved seeing on this hike signs of spring among the bare trees of winter:
Blossom among bare limbs.
When we got back to the car, we continued driving along the Cade’s Cove loop and stopped at the Visitor’s Center. I had packed sandwiches, fruit, and chips and we tailgated in the parking lot, next to a big open field. The kids took the opportunity to stretch their legs and run across the vast expanse of grass:
Next to the Visitor’s Center was a collection of buildings from the European settlers. I always find this kind of thing fascinating, to wander historic houses and imagine what people’s lives were like and how they came to settle the land, and also about the Native Americans who came before them. I especially liked this water mill that still runs and the trough of water that was built to carry water to it, long before days of plastic and silicone waterproofing.
After the visitor’s center we continued along the Cades Cove loop, stopping to check out various historical buildings. I had bought a slim guidebook at the Visitors Center and read outloud the history of certain buildings.
Dinner that night was barbeque at a charming place called Full Service BBQ. I’m guessing it’s called Full Service because it’s located in a converted gas station. It was a pretty great little place, you can read about it below!
The next morning we piled back into the car, stopped for breakfast, and drove home. All in all it was a nice getaway. A little too short- I would have liked to have had some more time just to ait on the porch swing and breathe in the mountain air and mist, but I’m glad we packed in some good hiking adventures.
Some things that kept us entertained during the ten hour drive:
– audiobooks. We listened to The Golden Compass, Book One of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. It was a full cast audiobook, which I sometimes find can make for disjointed listening. I still don’t fully grasp all the theoretical aspects of Pullman’s book, but he manages to wrap it in some thrilling adventures and interesting characters, so I don’t mind not understanding everything.
– I got the kids Boogie Boards as an alternative to handing them screens for the whole trip. They seemed to like them well enough, though they were constantly dropping the pens, which was annoying. When we stopped at a restaurant on the way home, we beoight the boogie boards and played Exquisite Corpse, which was kind of funz
– drawing pictures on my iPad. I haven’t done any drawing since my drawing class last year and I really miss taking the time to think about a drawing assignment and putting it on paper. i got a pen for my iPad with the thought of exploring some digital drawing programs. So on a couple of particularly long lengths of the drive I thought I’d try my hand at drawing on the tablet. I have to say, prefer the tension and resistance that I get when using real paper, and also the imperfection of not being able to instantly erase thing. The colours seem too bold on my digital pictures.
The view from the passenger seat- dashbordRedbuds and blue skies along Highway 81
What We Ate, the Airbnb/ Spring Break
Friday: Pizza Hut and Seeing Red.
Saturday: pasta and meatballs with salad and garlic bread. Because we didn’t want to buy too many ingredients, this meal was entirely from pre-made components. We got meatballs from the meat aisle and a jar of marinara. Also had a bag of salad on the side. I thought it was a pretty easy meal to throw together.
Sunday: Mushroom Farro soup. The Airbnb had a slow cooker, so I made a soup in the morning (loosely based off this recipe) and it was ready for us when we got back from a long day of hiking. We picked up some garlic bread to pop in the oven and eat on the side and it was a pretty great meal.
Monday: Barbeque at Full Service BBQ – a BBQ place that was housed in a converted gas station. The seating was outdoors, and they had bubbles and hula hoops and chalk for the kids to play with while we waited for our food. I had the ribs with a side of braised green beans and they were really tasty. However, the most intriguing item on the menu for me was the “purple drank” which was a combination of grape and peach Kool-Aid. The ten year old ordered it; I had a sip of hers and was immediately transported back to my childhood when my brother and I would mix up large pitchers of Kool-Aid on a hot summer day, the sugary taste of the drink, like candy in a pourable form. It was simultaneously a sugar bomb and nostalgia shot.
It’s half way through tech week, and it’s been a particularly hard one. The show is on the large side – there’s ninety performers onstage, a gazillion props and costumes, and, the realities of doing theatre in a world that is very much still in a pandemic, people are constantly in and out on five day isolations or ten day isolations. Precautions are being taken, but … life, you know. I’m feeling constantly like I’m playing catch up, barely getting people onstage in time with the right prop and often in the wrong costume. It will get better and we will have a great show, but everything feels hard right now. As I keep saying when things don’t go right – everyone needs rehearsal. The singers get three weeks to figure out the show and for some reason everyone expects the crew to get it right the first time. But they need a chance to figure things out too and some shows are easier to figure out than others.
It’s my first time back in this particular theatre in over two years. Strange to think about. The crew is mostly familiar, but everyone has a wary air of tiredness, caution, and welcome.
Sunday was Mother’s Day. And a day off. I think if I’d had time to think about it, what I really wanted for Mother’s Day would have been three hours alone to catch up on bills and other computer tasks. And also to deal with the growing mountain that is my “floordrobe”.
Actually it’s more like a “bench-drobe”. Coming home after midnight, when everyone is asleep means that I don’t want to turn on the lights in the bedroom for fear of waking the Husband. So I fumble around in the dark to get into my pjs, shedding that day’s clothes onto the bench at the foot of the bed, and fall into bed. Inevitably it leads to a mountain of clothes, a week’s worth in a pile on the bench , spilling on to the floor. I could pretend that when I am not working til past midnight I carefully and thoughtfully hang up my clothes, or put them in the hamper, but truth… when I’m not working til midnight the pile is still there, but usually only three days worth.
A lot gets said these days about self care, but for me I think a big part of self care is tackling the looming things so I don’t stress about them. There is a passage in the novel Fleishman is in Trouble where the newly divorced main character’s therapist tells him to buy nice curtains for his new apartment, telling him to think of it as an act of self care. And Fleishman remarks that self care isn’t spending his money on new curtains, it’s saving his money so that he can move into a less crappy apartment. I think of this a lot when the question of “self care” comes up. I find that it’s easy to find twenty minutes for yoga or a run or to sit and read a book, but it’s harder to find the energy to tackle the things that really would make life better. Like figuring out summer camp for the ten year old (still not done yet!), squaring away the bills for the rental house. Buying pants.
This last is a big one. I came out of the pandemic without black pants that fit. Which is problematic when a large chunk of my job requires me to move around in the dark wearing black clothes. The last few shows I just pulled out my old maternity pants. Which was fine because I was stage managing so I pretty much stood i once place and my headset was attached to my console. Now that I’m Assistant Stage Managing, I need pants with a firm waistband so I can clip my flashlight and headset belt pack to a belt. Yoga pants do not serve this purpose. Post pandemic stage manager woes.
Anyhow, back to Mother’s Day…despite my desire for some life admin time, it seemed to me, that shutting myself in my room and leaving the Husband on child duty after he’s been solo parenting in the evening for two weeks was not the nice thing to do, Mother’s Day or not. So I said I would be happy getting some tasty food, going on a walk, and not having to think too hard about dinner.
And we did indeed do all that. Everyone let me sleep in until almost ten and there were pancakes waiting when I woke up. Sleeping til ten sounds positively indulgent but when I figured I didn’t get home from rehearsal until 2am the night before, 2:30am- 10am is actually a regular night’s sleep.
There was a card and a gift bag waiting for me. Inside the bag were a bag of almond flour and a package of lychee gummies. My reaction was a combination of “Huh… ooookay” and “They know me so well!” And then there was this priceless card:
I had originally wanted to give the Husband the day off from kid duty, but he insisted since it was Mother’s Day, we should do some family things. So we took the five year old to Sunday language class, then with the other two kids in the car we went for fun drinks and snacks at a new-to-us Cuban place. Empanadas and plantain chips for the win!
When the five year old was done language class, we went for a walk on the trails surrounding one of the local nature centers. We wandered down by the stream and practiced skipping rocks. I managed to skip one three times! I’d never been really good at it, but the Husband gave me some tips and I think I sort of got the hang of it. Then we ordered Indian food for takeout.
After dinner the Ten year old offered to clean up so the Husband and I were going to take some time to discuss all the life things that we hadn’t had a chance to connect about since we hadn’t really hd any waking hours together. But I fell asleep on the couch and that was the end of things for me. I think it was 7:30pm. But, we did check off all the Mother’s Day wishes on my list, so I think I will call that a win.
Some things that made the week better:
A Haiku for this week:
April turns to May. Spring teeters on summer’s brink. Rain and sun and green.
Some time during the pandemic, our rehearsal rooms had larger windows put it, and the resulting flood of light is quite wonderful. During evening rehearsals, when we have almost ninety people in the room trying to stage a very busy village square type scene, I can look out the window and take a moment to savor the pink and orange sunset. I snapped this picture the other day of the late afternoon transforming my little corner of the rehearsal hall into some kind of of Dutch still life.
The toddler has started saying, “I love you, mom.” That makes me feel pretty good. She also, an independent soul, has developed her own “ism” where whenever she wants to do something, she says, “I want to do it by my own!”. I love it too much to try to correct her.
Also – irritating, but makes me laugh – the toddler getting ahold of my phone and filling my photo roll like this:
View from a toddler.
Scheduled a happy hour with the mom’s from my mom’s group. Something to look forward to.
Been baking some pretty good loaves of sourdough bread, using this no-knead recipe. My starter seems to have gotten back on it’s feet, after being somewhat lackluster for much of the spring. This recipe, is pretty hands off and each step fits easily into the windows of time when I’m home.
Overnight camping with some friends. The time outdoors was nice, and even though sleeping in a tent with a toddler is not restful – six o’clock in the morning she wakes me up with yelling, “It’s too bright!!” – there is something peaceful about being surrounded by dew and bird calls first thing in the morning.
morning view from the tent.
Re-discovering the tv show Pushing Daisies – whimsical, romantic, funny and visually stunning, I remember watching this series about a pie maker who can wake the dead when it first came out. The Husband and I have started watching it again, fifteen years after it originally aired. We watch one episode at a time, knowing that there are only two season and wanting to prolong the delight of watching it.
Discovering another lovely tv show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. This show out of Australia and based on a series of books is also great fun and super stylish. Some days when I work late, I tell the Husband to leave the kitchen for me to clean up. Partly I’m being nice, but also partly I want an excuse to watch an episode of this show, which I stream while I do the washing up.
Then of course, my co-workers who make me laugh even when we are literally in horse shit.
What We Ate:
Saturday: I was working, but this was the night the Husband took the kids camping with some friends. I showed up at the campground after work and had a couple sandwiches and ‘smores for dinner. I think everyone else had hot dogs and burgers.
Sunday: Leftovers.
Monday: The Husband made a tofu stir fry.
Tuesday: Not quite sure what everyone ate. It might have been Thai take-out.
Wednesday: Black Beans, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Eaten with tortillas and pickled onions.
Thursday: Chicken tortilla soup. Also made in the InstantPot. Recipe from America’s Test Kitchen
Friday: Pizza and Hercules. I was at work.
Saturday: I think the family got take out. I ate leftovers at work.
My brother’s family was in town the last week of March for their Spring break. It had been almost two and a half years since we saw them in person- last time they were here, the baby was eight weeks old. Of course there have been many video calls since them, but seeing them in person was pretty great.
I feel so lucky that we live somewhere where there is a wealth of things to see and do, and most of it is free. One thing my brother and sister-in-law really wanted to see was the new Yayoi Kasuma exhibit at the Hirshhorn, the contemporary and modern art museum on the Mall. I had missed the last Kasuma exhibit when it was here, so I was eager to go this time, even though it meant lining up at 9:00am for tickets on a Sunday. Fortunately, my brother and his In-laws went down on the early side to get in line and my sister-in-law, my mom, and I followed with the kids at a more reasonable hour.
I will admit the only work of Kasuma I had been familiar with were pictures of her pumpkins. The current exhibit featured two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, but first up was a pumpkin:
I was unprepared for how the pumpkin took up so much space and how looming it would feel in its dotted room. I also love how the precision of the dots contrast with the more organic curves of the pumpkin.
The Infinity Mirror Rooms were another kind of overwhelming and immersive experience. These are rooms where the walls are made of mirrors so they seem to extend without limits. There was a time limit on how long each museum patron could be in the room – 30 seconds for the first room and 60 for the second. I think there is something ironically claustrophobic about being in a room that seems to stretch for infinity. The first room featured all these stuffed protuberances that came out of the ground like a field of polka dotted cacti. It was kind of whimsical and fun.
The second room featured polka dot lanterns aglow in a dark mirrored room. This room reminded me a little of being out on Hallowe’en, and how disembodied one can feel in the dark, even when surrounded by lighted objects. (I’m sure there’s some kind of metaphor for life in that somewhere…)
After we went through the Kasuma exhibit, we also went to see the Laurie Anderson exhibit. The exhibit was a fascinating blend of sound, film, and visual images. There was one piece that featured projections of people sharpening knives, the sound almost symphonic. There was also several rooms with words and pithy thoughts scrawled, graffiti like, all over the walls and floors. Here were a few of my favorites:
good to remember…
I find the Hirshhorn rather overwhelming to visit, to be honest. In think contemporary art requires a lot of mental bandwidth from me, and a lot of it, while interesting, demands attention unrelentingly. At the Hirshhorn, a lot of the exhibits often have audio as well visual components and sometimes I don’t feel like I have room to process everything. And a lot of the time, I had to admit that I just don’t “get” what I’m seeing, even though I read the little placard next to the work. Sometimes I feel like I’m either overthinking contemporary art, or under thinking it. And honestly sometimes it just makes me giggle. I’m glad I live near and can visit in short bursts and take things in one exhibit at a time.
At the time of my brother’s visit, most of the museums were still open on reduced hours, so we spent one day walking around and visiting monuments since we couldn’t go to any museums. We saw the MLK memorial and the FDR memorial, those being two of the closest to the cherry blossom in the tidal basin. Of course it wasn’t officially peak bloom anymore, but there was still lots of blossoms to be seen. And lots of petals to rain down on our heads like snow.
Among all that, I had one last supertitle gig for this season, and perhaps my favorite of all the vocal recitals I worked this year. The pianist for the recital was also a composer and the second half of the program was entirely songs cycles that he had written. He introduced each song set and there was something wonderfully personal about a hearing a composer talk about the backstory of their own work.
Another fascinating thing that happened that week – I took my mom to the Mall to find an outfit for a meeting she had coming up. As we were walking to Macy’s, we saw a good wandering around the parking lot.
“Strange!” I thought. But I’d seen a lot of geese flying overhead recently so I didn’t really think much of it, though I have to admit that seeing a goose wandering in the Macy’s parking lot has a certain charm, so long as one stays out of the goose’s way. Then, as I was walking up to the door, I saw:
Why yes, that is a goose and two eggs in the planter in front of Macy’s. In my head I have a story (much like when my middle child was born) of a goose couple starting to fly off on a journey when suddenly the mama goose says, “We need to pull over now! The eggs are coming!” And she lays two eggs in the middle of a parking lot. (I, fortunately did make it to the hospital with my middle child…). Anyway, given that there were clearly two geese guarding the precious eggs, we figured it was better if we just went our merry way into Macy’s and let the geese have some family privacy. Or as much as one can have in the middle of a parking lot.
What we ate: we actually ate out more than usual because cooking dinner for twelve people seemed overwhelming.
Saturday: take out thai, picked up on our way home from the airport.
Sunday: We had dinner at a new to us restaurant with lots of outdoor seating and firepits. Though the evening was on the chilly side, the restaurant staff brought us blankets and lots of extra firewood for the firepit. Of course half our blankets were immediately commandeered by the kids to build blanket forts…. The food was pretty good and they had these fun smores kits for dessert. The fun thing about their s’mores is that in addition to the typical Hersheys chocolates they also had York Peppermint Patties and thin Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Such a brilliant idea!
building forts…
Monday: ordered Vietnamese food. We needed something quick because we were having family photos taken.
Tuesday: Terriyaki Tofu and grilled Korean Beef and grilled veggies. With rice and seaweed salad on the side.
Wednesday: I had to work so I got a take out grain bowl from Beefsteak.
Thursday: Japanese take out.
Friday: Pizza and movie night at our Tennessee AirBnB (more on that next post…). Pizza Hut, which was better than I had remembered, though they were out of mushrooms, which I have never encountered before.
Continuing to catch up on things… but here’s the latest from the last half of March – (also, the internet ether ate my original post, so I’ve had to rewrite this weeks after the fact… grrr… but yay for me for sitting down to write.)
The week started off with a COVID exposure in the five year old’s classroom. Since he was fully vaccinated and didn’t have any symptoms, he was allowed to continue to go to school. He was one of only four kids in class for half the week, which actually suited him just fine. On the evening of the first day, we were doing “Rose, buds, and thorns” and when it was his turn to tell his “Rose”, he said, “My rose is that it was very quiet at school today.” Sometimes I feel like he is a very old soul who just wants to sit in his quiet corner of the world and think deep thoughts. And play with his trucks
The week was also officially peak bloom here in the DC area. It seems to come earlier and earlier every year. I think in my head peak bloom is still an April event, but … here we were in the third week of March and the trees were a riot of white and pink puffs. Everywhere I turned, I was greeted by
On my way to work:
I was at a stop light when I snapped this picture. The sky and blossoms and everything… so much spring!
On my dinner break run:
Unseen, but behind me is a traffic and construction vehicles.
I think I make it down to see the cherry blossoms every two or three years. This year, since my mother was in town, I decided to take her down. It was the last day of official peak bloom, and also the first sunny day all week, so of course the Tidal Basin was quite crowded. But we still had a lovely walk and basked in the beauty of all the cherry trees and did a lot of people watching. My sister in law told me that the Japanese have a whole slew of words for the various stages of cherry blossoms, and one of them is “hanafubuki” which translates to flower snow storm. Walking among the trees with pedals showering down on us with every strong breeze, I certainly could see what a fittingly evocative word “hanafubuki” is.
I took some quintessential DC pictures:
As well as some cute baby in blossom pictures:
Some other things this week:
I got some disappointing news this week about work and it put me in a bit of a funk. A job that I was hoping to get didn’t come through for unexplained reasons. I know that lack of job security is always going to be part of gig work, but it still shook my confidence a little. But, I guess not summer work means that I now can plan other adventures with the kids. I’m trying to look on the bright side even while being really bummed about things.
The baby got a spot in a vaccine trial for children ages 6 months to 5 years. She is doing a Pfizer trial and will get three shots, which have a two in three chance of being a real vaccine. Of course that means that she has a one in three chance of having the placebo. She took the blood draw and the first shot without any fuss or crying and she was super excited to get a sticker and a bandaid afterwards.
soo excited about that bandaid!
There is a stage manager, now no longer with us, who was known for saying “Life is short, Opera is long.” Well, the show I was working on certainly was long – 3 hours, 30 minutes from orchestra tune to the end of bows. Add to that the fact that I’m usually up on stage an hour before we start, and I’m on my feet for about 4.5 hours straight each performance. My legs were starting to feel the strain, so I asked the company if I could have an anti-fatigue mat for my console and they said yes. I don’t know why such a small thing made me so happy, but it did. I got the kind that has some lumps and bumps so I can massage the bottom of my feet when they start to feel restless, and I feel like my legs feel less tired at the end of the night now.
We went out for fancy bagels to celebrate the ten year old’s last basketball game. And since we got there at closing time, the bagel truck was handing out free donuts. Yay free donuts! I’m not sure if the donuts made up for losing the basketball game, but it was certainly a pick me up!
One day we went to the local botanical gardens. Things were still very bare and wintery, but there were some lovely things to see. Like this sculpture carved from the trunk of a tree that had to be removed. I thought this was just so cool:
There were also some flowers in the garden:
Seeing these flowers reminded me of a book I’m reading right now – Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her book is a collection of essays about what we can learn from observing how plants exist and co-exist with other plants. There is one essay, where she writes of how when she was applying to study botany, she said she wanted to know why the goldenrod and the aster were so beautiful next to each other, only to be told by a professor that wondering about such things was “not science.” Well, it turns out that there is a reason that goldenrods and asters are so appealing together – something to do with how the human eye perceives colour. I love how Wall Kimmerer’s book urges us to pay attention to beauty and how knowing why something draws our attention doesn’t make it any less breathtaking. Whenever I see purple and yellow together, I think of this book.
While cleaning out my desk, I found this list of names. When the baby was just born, she was nameless for about a month. The Husband and I are very indecisive about picking names. Well, I went back to work soon after the baby was born, and there was one chorister in our show that would ask me at every rehearsal, “Did you pick a name yet?” and the answer was always, “No, we’re still deciding.” One day, I came to rehearsal and she handed me this list.
“I had some suggestions,” she said. I was so touched.
I actually like a lot of the names on the list and one or two would have been a strong contender. I keep this list pinned to my cubicle because it reminds me of a time when someone was super nice to me when I was in the haze of having a newborn.
What we ate: Saturday: Ordered out Peruvian chicken. And ate outside on our back patio – a sure sign of fair weather coming. I love eating outside, especially in spring, before the mosquitoes get bad in the backyard. When we eat outside, it’s almost okay that the kids eat meanderingly – running around in the backyard and coming to the table for a bite here and there.
Sunday: Leftovers. I had a matinee performance, so didn’t get home til on the later side.
Monday: Pasta and broccoli rabe from Dinner Illustrated. Not a hit. I love bitter taste profiles, but I seem to be the only one in the family.
Tuesday: Black Pepper tofu and asparagus stir fry. This recipe was pretty aggressive with the black pepper – it calls for 1 tablespoon of black peppercorns, coarsely crushed. It might have been a little much for the kids, but the adults liked it.
Wednesday: Zucchini boats. This is a pretty easy meal – ground turkey sauteed with veggies, dump in a jar of salsa and simmer then put into hollowed out zucchini halves, sprinkle with cheese, and bake. This is a good meal for make ahead because I made the filling before I left for work, and all the husband had to do was prep the zucchini, fill the boats and bake. Apparently the kids loved this one.
Thursday: Baked gnocchi. I had never tried baking gnocchi before, but I happened to have a pack in the fridge, and I saw a recipe so I decided to give it a go. This was a great kitchen sink recipe to use up veggies from the fridge. I also had a bunch of kale so I made kale pesto to throw on it as well. Really tasty, though leftovers taste better when heated up – the gnocchi sort of loses it’s soft chew when cold.
Friday: Pizza and Peanut Butter Falcon. This 2019 movie was hilarious and heartfelt and charming. It tells the story of Zach, a man with Downs Syndrome, who runs away from his group home to try to find his hero, a retired wrestler. There is so much to love about this movie – the gritty sense of place, the really lived-in performances, the hopeful and touching friendships portrayed. But I think what is also so awesome about this movie is it’s origins. The movie is made by two first time filmmakers who work at a camp for disabled people. The lead actor in the movie Zach Gottsagen has Downs Syndrome and attended this camp. Zach had studied acting for a while, and mentioned to the filmmakers that there were never lead roles for people with Downs Syndrome. So the filmmakers decided to write a movie with Zack as the lead. What strikes me about this is that I think for all the talk about needing diversity and representation in mainstream media, underrepresented people still need those who are in the majority to recognize that their stories need to be told and can appeal to wide audiences – because the people who hold the purse strings and make decisions in Hollywood, or what not, are often not from underrepresented populations. There was a spot of controversy earlier this month with the movie Seeing Red, the new Pixar film about a Chinese Canadian teenager hitting puberty. A certain critic had called the film “limiting in scope” because he felt that setting the movie very specifically in the Asian Canadian community made it unrelatable to many people. It is certainly fine for a person to not care for a movie – but to do so based on the grounds that the movie is not set in the world you come from, with the people that you see everyday… it seems kind of … insular. Anyhow, between Peanut Butter Falcon and Seeing Red, I’ve been thinking a lot about how writing stories featuring diverse people must be supported by a willingness from those who are able bodied, white, cis-gendered, male, etc. to produce and consume these stories, to see the value in what underrepresented populations have to say.
This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a month now… I’m feeling a little bit like finding the time and energy to finish it has been difficult mentally – see title of this post. But we are taking some time away and I’m hoping to catch up on life and get back to writing. I also have to remind myself that polished prose is great, but just the act of writing is incredibly fulfilling for me too.
The weekend kicked off with… snow!
Witch hazel in snow.
The evening before, the ten year old had gone over to the neighbor’s house to swim in their outdoor pool, and then we woke up the next morning to snow. Just when we had thought spring had arrived and we’d be done with cold weather. The daffodils and witch hazel that had just last week exploded in a riot of yellow, were now bending under a layer of snow and ice.
The two little kids greeted the snow with delight. I hunted down the snow gear and got them into it and out we went. It wasn’t terribly fluffy or fun snow- mostly wet and a little slushy but not packing consistency. I half heartedly tried to ball together a tiny snow man, and was pretty unsuccessful. The kids seemed happy enough just to push the snow around and shovel it into stacking cups. The five year old even made a good attempt at cleaning off my car, which I was grateful for as a couple hours later, I got in the car to go to work. It was opening night!
Good helper!
The day after opening night was Daylight Savings. Thank goodness I got to sleep in – the folks working on the other show we are producing at the moment had a Sunday matinee and had to be at the theatre by late morning. Ouf.
I took the kids on Sunday afternoon to give the Husband some childfree time. We dropped the four year old at Mandarin class, and the class was just the right length for us to go grocery shopping then be back in time to pick him up. Then we went on a little adventure to see a very familiar room:
In a great green room….
The room was an art installation at a local arts center which houses three floors of artists studios. During opening hours, you can often see artists working on new pieces of art – the works on display range from painting to photography to sculpture, fiber arts, ceramics… it seems every media is represented. I had heard of this place and always wanted to visit, so when I heard about the Good Night Moon Room, figured it was a good reason to visit. The kids were delighted to see so many familiar things brought to life. Afterwards we visited many of the other artists’ studios, though the little ones didn’t last too long. They didn’t have the patience for just looking and not touching. (Notably, the Fiber Arts Guild had a “touching basket” in their studio – which I thought was a great idea.) I’ll have to make plans to return sans kids, and I definitely had my eye on one or two pieces that might make a nice present for the Husband.
art gallery…
I’m not sure why, but the time change has hit me pretty hard this time around. Maybe it’s having gone through the intensity of tech week only to be robbed of an hour of sleep. Ironically, I had a supertitles for a vocal concert a couple days after opening, and this was one of the slides for a song by Rachmaninoff:
At any rate, it’s been kind of hard to motivate and get things done.
A while ago, I had read this snippet from the New York Times’ Little Love Story series (fourth one in the link), It’s titled “Listless, Lost, then Found”, and is a mini essay about how the author, a person of many lists, grapples with having the flu and being so laid low that they are unable to make lists. In contrast their friend says, “I’m listless! I’ve stopped making lists. I’m free!” What an interesting concept wed to a turn of phrase! I was struck by how aptly the term “listless” describes the malaise I feel after a show when I am so exhausted from getting to opening night that I can’t even pull it together to plan the days that follow. Am I listless because I have no lists to guide me, or do I have no lists to guide me because I’m listless? Unlike the author’s friend, I do not feel freedom in having no lists. (Well, maybe when I am on vacation? Though that hasn’t truly happened in a very very long time. )
Somewhat paradoxically, I find the I make better use of my time when I have less free time, than when I have more of it. Knowing that I have to be in rehearsal or onstage for nine hours a day encourages me to make plans for the rest of my time- fitting that run in on my dinner break, getting dinner prepped in the morning, playing Wordle while the toast is toasting. When I have no constraints or obligations on my time, everything, even Wordle, seems less urgent. (I have played definitely played a Wordle round at 11:30pm while sitting in the parking garage after work). Even when things are urgent – taxes!- they seem less so when I feel like I have the entire day to do them.
Well, then, I think I do need to pull out of the listless state. The literal one. Making the list is, I feel, step one for me to get moving on the urgent and important things.
At the same time – I’ve been taking the baby to some Toddler Time sessions at a local nursery school. It’s a morning of free play, crafts, stories, and outdoor play with a sandbox and bubbles at the end of the session. The teacher who organizes the session also leads an open forum for parents while the kids play in the sandbox. The school operates in a co-op model and there are lots of signs up, encouraging parents to engage with their child. This is one of my favorite signs, particularly the last point:
Life lessons from preschool…
In other news, both older kids’ school have gone mask optional now – the ten year old since mid last week, and the four year old just at the beginning of this week. Lifting mask mandates seems appropriate for the two year anniversary of the world spinning to a stop. The lifting also seemed to happen quite quickly here. I had been hearing in the news of other states and school districts lifting mask mandates – and indeed our indoor mask mandate had been lifted for a couple week now – but the email we got from the school district was literally, “Starting tomorrow…” The 4 year old’s school at least gave us a weekend of warning.
For the five year old, realizing that many of his classmates are still unvaccinated, we have told the teacher that we prefer he keep his mask on while indoors. When we asked him if he had a preference, he actually said that he preferred to keep it on. From what he tells me, all the kids in his class continue to wear masks inside. I wonder if it is because he has always had to wear a mask to school that he is in no hurry to remove it.
We left the choice up to the ten year old, although we told her that she needed to wear her mask indoors at school the week before my family comes to visit and while they are here. I don’t know if any of this is rational or not, to be honest.
One lovely benefit of the time change is longer days and I took advantage of the extra evening light to go on our first post dinner stroll of the year. Since I like to have dinner early, we often have from 7pm – 7:30pm to fill with some kind of activity before bed. The two littles seemed particularly delighted for the first evening constitutional of the year:
I love taking a turn around the block after dinner- the sky is painted orange and pink, the birds and crickets are out. We usually take the same path around our neighborhood, and there is a nice familiarity about it. One neighbor had a fish pond in their front yard and we always like to stop and watch the fish. And this time of year the trees are exploding with puffs of blossoms.
What we ate: (I seem to have large blanks in my memory of dinners this week.
Saturday: ?? Opening night… I’m sure it was some kind of leftovers
Sunday: Sunday leftovers.
Monday: Cornflake fried chicken and Arni’s Jrs. The chicken recipe is from Americas Test Kitchen’s Cookbook for Young Chefs and is actually baked, not fried. Arni’s Jr. are a salad from the Husband’s favorite childhood restaurant. It’s essentially iceberg lettuce, mozzarella cheese, cubed ham, cubed turkey, scallions, and radishes, all topped with blue cheese dressing. Oh, and croutons.
Tuesday: The Husband made Cincinnati Chili. I tried out a new place near work. I was excited to be able to order something with a large variety of veggies, though it was definitely on the salty side.
Wednesday: Kitchen sink yellow curry. I had some yellow curry paste and some yellow squash, eggplant, and tofu to use up.
Thursday: A special St. Patrick’s Day snack meal. Potted salmon, crackers, soda bread made from The Irish Pantry cookbook. Also roasted potatoes and cut up carrots. I had always been interested in the “potted” chapter of the cookbook – the idea of traditional methods of preserving meat with a layer of butter kind of appealed to my inner pioneer girl. I can’t say that the potted salmon was any more tasty than any other method of making salmon, and it was certainly more work than roasting salmon in the oven and then putting it in the fridge to keep it from spoiling. There is something that feels really indulgent in being able to try a preservation technique from hundreds of years ago. These high effort activities that were a necessary part of the every day kitchen of yesteryear have become a quaint kitchen experiment of today, it seems.
Friday: Pizza and March of the Penguins. I had to work and ate leftover curry.
The show is open! Not without it’s share of excitement, of course. On our final dress rehearsal – the one with an audience – one of the singers called out sick and so the Assistant Director walked the role onstage while another singer sang the part from a music stand at the side of the stage. It’s not an uncommon practice when a singer goes down at the last minute during a final dress rehearsal, but it does necessitate a flurry of emails and phone calls. Oh well, as I kept reminding folks, better it happened at final dress than on opening night!
A shot of my book at the tech tables during an afternoon lighting session:
I go through a lot of Post-its and removable stickers while getting a show up. Everything I stick in my book is color coded. Like above – the orange post-its are my “Standby” cues where I warn departments of upcoming moves. In this case, those are descriptions for the follow spot operators, light cues and projection cues. The standard post-it yellow is usually notes about what is happening on stage – I don’t have to “call” it, but I need to know that it is happening. The yellow is just soft enough that I can ignore it. And then, at the very edge of the page are green stickers. And like at a traffic light, green means “Go” – that is when the move happens. In this case it’s a lighting cue, a Rail Q , and a projection cue all at the same time.
My supervisor sent me an encouraging text before a big rehearsal, expressing confidence in me, then gave me one piece of feedback. “… you may consider adding a few pleases and than you to your pages and announcements.” It was a great piece of feedback because I realized that while “Thank you” is pretty easy for me to remember, “Please” is harder for some reason. Yet if I think about it, I spend most of my job asking people to do things for the production. From sending notes to different departments, i.e. costume note: “Can singer X have a pocket in his jacket for a coin purse?” to actually calling the cues – “Standby Light Cue 35 and Rail Cue 2”. Basically my job consists of me being kind of demanding of people’s time, talents, and attention. So yeah, “Please” should be a bigger part of my everyday vocabulary, an indication of respect for said time, talents, and attention.
So I wrote myself a reminder in the notebook that I keep open next to me whenever I’m working:
(You can also see some of the other random notes I scribble – mostly times for breaks and when people are released from rehearsal – as well as some discarded stickies from cues that I got to take out of my book).
Anyhow, this is what my timelog/tracker looks like most weeks:
This is what it looked like last week:
pretty blank…
Clearly I didn’t make time to journal or log last week. The Husband says I should just scrawl “OPERA TECH WEEK!!” across the whole spread.
Thinking back, I was only at work a little over 40 hours last week, but many of those days I was there until midnight so I found myself prioritized sleep and family time and rest last week.
Things that worked well this past tech week: – packing healthy lunches and not having to eat out. – related to above – packing dinner from freezer meals – some of what I pulled out of the freezer was well over a year old, maybe even two. Or more. (We still have wedding cake in our freezer and we were married in 2009… not sure what we are saving that for!) Double win of not having to spend money to go out to eat and also eating down the freezer. – managed to spend 20 minutes of my 1 hour dinner break on a run a couple times a this week. – sleeping as soon as I got home. I have a terrible habit during tech week of coming home and being too amped up to go to sleep right away. And then also being hungry – so I usually stay up late eating junk food. This time I made a conscious effort to go to bed as soon as I got home, letting the hunger lie until the morning. I did eat half a container of kimchi one night, but then I went straight to bed. The kids are early risers and the Husband goes to work at 6:45am, so I kind of feel like I need to be up by then, and staying up til 2am does not help help me be up by 6:45a. As lovely as it is when the ten year old decides to get the younger kids dressed and fed, I don’t really want it to be her responsibility. (I worry about her falling victim to “Oldest Daughter” syndrome.)
Things that didn’t go well: – having patience with my kids and family when I barely get to see them. – Keeping up with non-work items – most notably I still have to get my taxes prepared. – Being able to focus and be productive when not at work. – Finding time to take the kids so the Husband can get some alone time. – the aforementioned bingeing on kimchi late at night, when really I should have just gone to bed.
I don’t think any of the above is insurmountable, but I think/ hope I can have better systems in place the next time I have a tech week so that these stress points can be less … stressful.
BUT…. Spring is coming!
I saw my first cherry tree in bloom while driving to work! I was at a stop light, so I took a quick picture. I think we are about week out from peak bloom here in the DC area, but given how bare all the other trees still look, I was caught entirely by surprise by this tree.
Later in the week, the ten year old had half day of school, so I picked her up from school and we stopped for Blizzards at Dairy Queen (Heath Bar for me, Oreo for her) then found a park to sit and enjoy our frozen treat. Surely a blizzard and a blooming cherry tree are harbingers of warmer weather!
One day, I didn’t have to be at the theatre til the afternoon, so I met up with my friend from college for a walk. We saw these purple flowers:
And someone writing whimsy on the path:
spring choices!
The witch hazel in the front yard has burst into yellow blooms… a very tangible manifestation of sunlight. When I walk by the bush on my way to the front door, there is the sweet spicy smell that lingers heavily. The smell of witch hazel and hyacinths mixed together definitely says spring. Here is the easterly sun streaming through the witch hazel in the morning:
And in the westerly sun in the evening:
Other exciting happenings:
While I was at work one evening, this tree branch finally decided to break away from the tree in our front yard. I usually park under that tree, so it was lucky I wasn’t home. Although truth be told, the tree had been not well for ages so parking under it probably wasn’t terribly prudent. We’re waiting for the County to come haul the debris away. But in the mean time, I couldn’t help but to admire the intricate frills and pale green beauty of the lichen and moss growing on the dead branch. Or maybe it’s fungus? Not sure.
One of the two nights I was home was a basketball practice night. After dinner, the Husband took the ten year old to basketball and I stayed home with the two little kids. I asked them what they wanted to do, and they said, “Play in the toy room!” So I brought my book and sat and read while they built things with their Magnaformers. It was such an ordinarily quiet half hour, and I was really content. I mean it was probably an extraordinarily quiet half hour, since they don’t usually play so quietly and independently. But maybe we are turning a corner…?
What We Ate:
Saturday: Dumplings and Hamilton. As reluctant as I was to subscribe to Disney+, I was very excited to finally finally be able to watch Hamilton. We’ve been listening to the soundtrack constantly for a year now (I know… we were late to the party!) Sometimes I find watching stage performances on the screen a little frustrating because inevitably I feel like I’m missing out on something when the camera often only shows part of the stage pictures, and I did feel that intermittently. But even so, there were still lots of really fun, innovative, and beautiful staging moments. At the same time, I think it’s really a testament to the Lin Manuel Miranda’s work and to how well produced the cast recording was that I didn’t feel like seeing the filmed stage version added a whole lot to the piece. Anyhow, the four year old, who can quote large chunks of it – his response: “A little good a little bad.” “What was bad?” I asked “You didn’t tell me that people died!” I was a little flabbergasted at that one. I mean this is the little boy who prays every night for “God please bless Hamilton’s son Philip.” So surely he realized that people died. Oops.
Sunday: Leftovers. I scrounged a plate together of odds and end: tofu with furikake seasoning, kimchi, and a leftover rice rolled up in Nori with cucumbers and ume plum paste.
Monday: Not quite sure… I think the Husband made some kind of stir fry. I worked and packed leftovers
Tuesday: Chicken Tacos. The five year old declared that he wanted Taco Tuesday, so Husband make chicken in the crock pot the night before.
Thursday: the Husband made Breakfast Sandwiches. I worked in the evening, so packed leftovers.
Friday: Pizza and Luca. Charming movie. Something about movies that are centered on friendship really make me want to cry…. Or maybe it’s just Pixar movies in general… damn they are so manipualtive!
For work, we have to take a COVID test every other day. Somedays I forget to do it at home, and very often I end up swabbing my nose in the car on the way to work. One day during the week, I had to get gas so I ended up swabbing while waiting to pump gas. Then I looked at the gas prices. There is something so utterly surreal to me about swabbing my nose for an at Home COVID test while pumping $3.76 gas. It was like a summary of the world at that moment: The war in Urkaine, sanctions against Russia, the trickledown effect of soaring gas prices, and taking a test kit out of a box so that I am allowed to show up for work. The sad thing is, since I took this picture, gas prices have risen to over $4.30/gallon. Which, I realize, is not the highest in the country, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen gas prices that high. Google tells me it was over ten years ago.
This week we moved from the rehearsal room into the theatre – it’s tech week!!! It’s always a challenging process because the hours are long, we work late and we are finally adding so many new elements – sets, lightings, costumes, wigs, make-up, orchestra – that it requires a lot of concentration and clear minded-ness to feel like I’m doing my job properly. Still, for me there is something magical about moving to the theatre. The collaborations, the hushed whispers in the dark that bring about beautiful moments onstage, the stage crew who work really hard backstage for effortless transformations to bloom onstage, the wardrobe and wig crew who can turn one character into another in less than a minute. So it’s always a tough week, but also energizing in the way that tough weeks can be. Also, after two years away from this stage, I don’t want to ever take for granted the excitement of creating something for stage.
The opera I’m working on Cosi fan tutte is full of misogyny and problematic sexist and racist attitudes. (Are there any other kind of sexist and racist attitudes?) It was premiered in 1790, so it’s portrayal of women and men and foreigners is not entirely surprising. However, Mozart’s music is sublime and it’s not an opera that requires a lot of forces, so I suppose opera companies and directors will continue to present it and they will continue to grapple with the difficulties the opera presents. I actually really love the opera, but I definitely see it with different eyes now than when I first heard it twenty years ago. When I was in college I thought the whole “Let’s play a trick on our girlfriends and see if they will stay true to us or if they will fall for other men while we pretend to be away!” was kind of funny albeit ridiculous. I don’t think it’s funny or ridiculous now… I just think it’s stupid and mean, and the aftermath almost heartbreaking.
Despite all this, there are some really thoughtful and heartfelt things being uncovered in rehearsal, and the other day, I wrote down something the director said about a simple stage gesture. She said that the gesture of offering someone your hand palm up really was a physical manifestation of how we can “choose our partner with kindness”. And that really stuck with me – this idea that we choose our actions and can choose to carry them out with kindness -beautifully encapsulated a way of going through life with purpose and with empathy. I know she was talking about the characters in the opera and the choices they were making, but I also think this idea of “choosing with kindness” can inform so many things that we do offstage, and how we treat those around us.
I’ve been thinking lately about this idea of kindness. One of the assignments when I took the Yale Happiness Course was to practice acts of kindness. Kindness was something that was scientifically proven to boost a person’s sense of well being. I will admit that kindness doesn’t always come instinctively to me and that particular assignment, deep in a pandemic, was not the easiest one. But… this past week, amidst all the craziness of getting the show onstage, I realized that I had been the recipient of a lot of acts of kindness lately. Here are some: -my assistant brought me a cookie from the work cafeteria when I had to work during my break – the chocolate chip cookies from work are one of my favorite things. They are huge, for one, and they are also just slightly underbaked, which I loved in my cookies. -my boss who stayed for my tech rehearsals and gave me encouraging words and helped me think through some awkward situations. – the assistant director who wrote the show timings in my score – a somewhat tedious process that I usually do myself, but I had gotten so behind that I never managed to do it before rehearsal started. – The ten year old got her sibling dressed and fed them breakfast twice this week so I could sleep in a little bit. (By which I mean, I slept til 7:15am) -The Husband vacuuming out my car when he had it over the weekend – it was practically as if it had been detailed. I usually am quite ungrateful when he does this because I don’t like having the stuff in my car moved around, but this time it was actually quite wonderful as my car had become quite a mess of crumbs and crushed leaves and various unidentifiable detritus.
Pithy quote of the week –
“The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold anything else.” via Seth Godin’s Blog
Made me smile:
Is there anything as joyful as a dog riding in the car with their head out the window, tongue lolling in the wind?
What We Ate: The Husband decided that this week was going to be wraps week! Having a theme certainly made meal planning easier.
Saturday: Take-out Chinese food
Sunday: Leftover from take-out
Monday: Breakfast burritos (The Husband cooked. I was at work and ate leftovers)
Tuesday: Sweet Potato tacos. I prepped the sweet potatoes so that the Husband just had to put them in the oven to roast when he got home. There was supposed to be black beans in them too (My favorite recipe from Dinner Illustrated), but the Husband forgot those. Oops.
Wednesday: Mushu veggies. I’m actually mildly proud of this meal- not because it was particularly tasty, but because I walked in the door at 5:45pm and we were eating by 6:10pm. There was a kind of zen kitchen flow going on where I just chopped and tossed things into the frying pan, but I managed to do it in the right order so everything cooked the right amount of time. I vaguely followed this recipe for the sauce and used whatever vegetables I had on hand – ended up being cabbage, carrots, green onions, snow peas, and mushrooms. I also mashed up a block of tofu and threw that in as well.
Thursday: The Husband made kung pao chicken and rice. By this point the kids were tired of eating things in wraps and asked for rice. I worked the evening and packed the leftover mushu filling for my dinner.
Friday: Pizza and movie night – the family watched Encanto. After much deliberating, we finally signed up for Disney plus. (By “we” I mean the Husband made a unilateral decision while I was at work. But sometimes I feel like if I’m not going to be home in the evenings for a week, he should get to make a couple unilateral decisions for the good of the family.) At work, I had ramen and cut up veggies for dinner.
The week started with a holiday weekend, and I was off on Sunday, so I wanted to have some kid specific time. I took the ten year old to brunch at the place of her choosing. She had classic pancakes, eggs and bacon. I had the shrimp and grits. I’m always torn at restaurants whether to order what I know and love or what I would never make at home. I really like the breakfast scramble at this restaurant, but I also would never make shrimp and grits at home. Ordering at restaurants always fills me with indecision, and I have to remind myself that a) I can always come back and get the other thing, and b) it’s just food – whatever I order will be fine. The ten year old also had a chocolate milk shake. And I had a virgin bloody Mary – one of my favorite brunch indulgences. I have a pretty strong and immediate reaction to alcohol so I generally abstain, save for swiping a sip of The Husband’s beer once in a while, but spicy tomato juice garnished with a pickle is my catnip, so I order it without the alcohol.
All the yummy libations!
In the afternoon, since the five year old didn’t have language class due to the holiday weekend, I wanted to take the kids on a hike. Only the two younger ones came, along with my mother. We went down by the C&O Canal and the weather was sunny and (relatively) warm. We didn’t actually get too far on the hike because we discovered a rocky outcropping and the kids spent an hour and a half playing among the rocks. “It’s our secret hideout!” the five year old declared, and indeed there were all these child sized crevices and ledges for them to scamper over. I was a little nervous because the rocky ledge was right over the river, but everyone was careful. While the kids played there, I saw a downy woodpecker and an eastern blue bird flitting in the trees next to our rocky hideout. Between the tap tap tap of the woodpecker and the bright blue and orange of the blue bird, I was mesmerized by these small flying animals. I’ve never been a bird watcher – indeed I only identified these two after the fact with help from my friend google – but I’ve always admired people who can identify birds and plants on sight.
secret hideout!
downy woodpeckereastern blue bird
Otherwise I do feel like this week has been work/rehearse/eat/sleep. Aside from the exhausting day mentioned in the last post, we’ve been chugging along. I didn’t do so well in my being human goals – I did go outside for a walk on my lunch/dinner break every day, and I did pack healthy snacks and meals. However, sleep wasn’t great – I stayed up too late one night filling out the passport forms for the kids and never quite got back on track. And still trying to figure out how to leave the office on time. Journaling/planning seems like only gets done twice a week and I’m afraid that I’m forgetting a lot of details in the every day to day, which then makes the week feel like even more of a blur. Next week will be tougher, I’m sure since we move onstage.
moments this week:
This reminder as I filled out the kids’ passport applications:
Good to remember that my children should be fully occupied by being children. Even as I want them to learn to do chores or behave with maturity and common sense (which, I own, I often lack myself).
This sculpture, one of several in a yard that I walked past on my daily meal break walk. (I did manage to get outside almost every day):
And on another walk – this mini camper, one of several, hanging whimsically on a tree…
Spring flowers starting to push themselves up:
February seems too soon!
Bringing in treats for my co-workers for a special day:
Taking a walk by myself one day after doing school drop off. I had left the baby at home with my mother because she (the baby) was having a difficult morning and would not motivate to get her shoes and coat on. Since alone time is so scarce for me, after I dropped the five year old at school I took a walk by myself down the nearby trail. It had rained the night before so the creek was high and loud. I stood one the banks and soaked in the noisy swirl of water rushing by and the soggy bareness of almost spring.
The school board announcing that any further snow days this year (unlikely at this point) will be distance learning days. I kind of hate the idea. Distance learning was so so so difficult for us and I think there is much joy to to be had in the unexpected nature of a snow day. The alternative would have been to extend the school year, and/or take away some already planned non-instructional days, which they actually have already done- the school year was just extended by two days. I definitely would have preferred further extension of the school year over the switch to distance learning. Oh well, there are certainly many sides to everything.
Of course the week has been terrifying and unbelievable on the world news front. One of our singers is from Moldova and he has been quite grave even as he rehearses with boundless energy and enthusiasm.
Podcast episode of note this week: This episode of On Being with Trabian Shorters. Shorters talks about the concept of asset-framing, where you look at people through the lens of their aspirations and contributions rather than through their challenges and struggles. His work is primarily focused on empowering Black communities, but I thought it’s a pretty powerful idea, and one that should be more obvious and inuitive than it is.
” It is defining people by their aspirations and contributions, before you get to their challenges. So whatever is going on in someone’s life, you don’t ignore it, but you don’t define them by the worst moment or the worst experience or the worst potential; none of that. You have to look past their faults, to see who they really are.”
“So what we want to do — yes. So what we want to do is acknowledge the true person, the true spirit living in someone — the thing that motivates them; what gets them moving. It is not that they are poor. They don’t wake up in the morning inspired by that; their spirit isn’t moved by that. Their spirit isn’t moved by being marginalized, or all that kind of thing. There is something that they aspire to have, to create, to give to someone else. And if you start your relationship with a person by acknowledging what spirit is actually living in front of you, then you’re going to have a different relationship.”
The flip side of asset-framing, what is more common, is deficit-framing where you define people through their challenges. Shorter argues that when you define people primarily as a problem to be solved, it is a lot harder to find long lasting solutions. I thought this a pretty powerful thought regarding how we think about providing resources:
If I can define them [Black people] by their worst threat, greatest inequity, whatever, then I can attract resources. Well, this culture of denigration for dollars means that, yes, you’ll attract the resources, but you do so by writing your population into the public consciousness as inferior, as ineffective, as pathological. All these things are the only ways that people know to know us, because the way that we have been taught to survive is by dramatizing our injustices, which — I think it’s important to point out, the injustices are real. So we’re not saying ignore any of them. We’re saying that is not what defines us. That’s not what defines anyone.
I was thinking this week about this idea of asset framing on a much smaller and lower stakes scale in terms of the people I encounter every day. Sometimes people get labelled as “difficult” or “unreliable” and then they get easily written off. But perhaps if I think of what these “difficult” people are actually bringing to the room or hoping to accomplish, then it helps me find the empathy to connect with them and help them over their challenges.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Family ordered Vietnamese take-out.
Sunday: Leftovers.
Monday: The Husband made caramel fish. It was really good – I had some for my after rehearsal late night snack.
Tuesday: Black-eye peas and spinach curry, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Husband made rice when he came home. (I took more leftover caramel fish for dinner.)
Wednesday: The Husband made fish with corn and fava beans. (I took the leftover curry from Tuesday for dinner)
Thursday: Asparagus frittata made in the morning before work. Husband made salad and cut up carrots and cucumbers.
Friday: Pizza and Stinky and Dirty. I didn’t make it home for dinner, unfortunately. But I did order my favorite Tempeh Panini from a place near work for dinner. I decided to splurge on take-out after a long hard week. Plus we were out of leftovers for me to pack for dinner.
