Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate – back to work!

Between the baby not sleeping and starting a new gig, this week has been quite exhausting.

It’s definitely been challenging working from home with the two little kids. I guess I’ve finally gotten to experience who women (and men, but mostly women) all over the world have had to figure out for the past year – how to keep your career and children alive simultaneously. For me, it’s been a combination of massively flexing my work hours and luck that the baby napped a couple times and the four year old can play by himself. One day I bribed him by saying that he could listen to Hamilton if he stayed in the play room while I was in a meeting. Babysitting by Hamilton. Hah! Then there were days like this:

“Pardon the typos while I work from home with a toddler.”

There was definitely a part of my strategy that recognized that the backyard was probably the most engaging place for the kids to be, and therefore the most productive place to work. Luckily my parents have come to town to help out so there weren’t too many days like that. I do feel fortunate that this prep week has been combined with a quarantine week, so that I had a large degree of flexibility in managing my time.

But it certainly is strange to work again. To remember what it’s like to ask questions and have answers and format paperwork, to think about how a show is put together, and to work with people. That last bit has been especially welcome, though it has all been by Zoom so far. What a strange strange world in which to be making art. I do miss poking my head into the cubicle next to me to ask a question. Working in isolation seems the antithesis of why I love my job, given that the arts are a medium that is supposed to bring people together – those that consume and those that create.

Things achieved:
I made two WOOP goals last week: finish two books with imminent due dates, and get 8 hours of sleep every night. I did finish two really great reads – Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, and Hidden Valley Road. Both books were really thoughtful. Though they were about vastly different subjects, I think both books made me think about how people who are outside of mainstream society face a lot of difficulties when their obstacles are not talked about.

Things from this week:
Summer weather continues. The Husband spent many hours in the garden, often with a child or two alongside.

On Saturday, to get rid of some wood, the Husband made a fire and we roasted marshmallows despite the ninety degree weather. Which felt so wrong and so right all at the same time.

The tadpoles that we had been watching grow at the park are no longer there. We went to check out the puddle they had been swimming in and there were no tadpoles to be seen. Either they all have turned into frogs and hopped away, or the puddle dried up during one of the really hot spells last week. There had been some rain midweek and the puddle was full of water, so it was hard to tell. On the other hand, my friend Kristen had gathered a few tadpoles a couple months ago to bring to her preschool class, and this week she released the fully formed frogs into the wild. Seeing her teeny tiny frog gave me hope that the puddle tadpoles had indeed transformed into frogs and had hopped out of the puddle to find their next adventure.

The four year old makes me laugh all the time. He’s obsessed with Hamilton. When we say grace at dinner, he always adds, “And God bless Hamilton’s son.” And he will randomly sing or quote bits of the show. Like at dinner, “Mom, did you know that Hamilton wants to fight not write?”

The other day, near the end of lunch, he got out of his chair and crouched on the floor:

“Get back up here and finish lunch,” I said.
“I can’t! I’m a cicada waiting underground!”

Speaking of which – some cicada pics from this week. They are really starting to get noisy. Around our house, it’s like a subtle but constant hum. But at the park or places with more trees, it’s more like an incessant loud screeching.

I was particularly fascinated by this white cicada. At first I thought it was an albino cicada, but it turns out this is what they look like when they first emerge from their exoskeleton. It takes about half an hour for the blood to get pumping and their shells to harden and turn black. Fascinating.

The sidewalks are littered with the bodies of cicadas that don’t make it up trees. It makes for some very crunchy evening walks.

Things I savored this week:
-hugs from my kids
-eggplant fries from the local deli/diner
– reading a novel while listening to Murray Perahia play Bach’s French Suites
– that enveloping heat when getting into a 90 degree car.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Ravioli with Red Sauce and Garlic Bread.

Sunday: Tofu and veggie stir fry with Udon Noodles.

Monday: Farro salad with snap peas, cannellini beans, and tomatoes.

Tuesday: Kale Saag Paneer from Meera Sodha’s East. This was really really tasty. Homemade paneer!

Wednesday: The Husband cooked – he made taco salads.

Thursday: Sausage and Pasta in the Instant Pot – loosely based on a recipe from Milk Street Fast and Slow.

Friday: Pizza (take out – it’s been too hot to make our own) and Sonic the Hedgehog, which, surprisingly, was not as terrible as I thought it would be. It was the four year old’s choice, and it was actually kind of a fun and sweet movie.

Weekly recap + what we ate – things are heating up

I feel like summer is finally here. Like 90 degree weather and full sun here. It hasn’t tipped into the unbearable humidity yet, though. The baby pool is getting a lot of use, though the fancy water table is no longer working. However, the Husband has plans to rebuild that, so I’m excited. Also – I realized last week, that none of the kids have full swim suits. They all have tops, but no one has bottoms that fit. I guess we didn’t go to the pool this winter, so I didn’t realize it. Oh well. Swimsuits have been ordered.

Thursday was a very good day. I got my hair cut! The Husband had taken a half day off work to watch the kids so I could go to my appointment. Aside from an ill advised trim that I did on my own, my hair has been uncut for over a year. There was a lot of hair on the floor when all was said and done. The first cut was a six inch pony tail, though I only managed a sad picture of a few strands:

After the cut, I made an impulse stop of get some boba tea. Boba tea is one of my favorite indulgences, and another thing I tried to DIY this past year, but while nice, it just wasn’t the same as getting it in the store. I tried a new place and they allowed customers to customize their drinks. My order: oolong milk tea, no sugar, 50% ice, half boba and half coconut jelly. (My ideal is lychee jelly, but not a lot of places have that.) When I got home, I poured my tea into a glass and took it out to the back patio. With my newly shorn head and my special drink, it was a perfect summer moment. (Side note: apparently there’s a boba shortage! Very concerning.)

And since the Husband has taken the rest of the day off, he wrangled children, taking all of them with him to the 9 year old’s dance class while I met up with my friend Kristen for a hike. We went to Turkey Run, which is on the Potomac, and it being a weekday evening, it was quiet. For two hours, we hiked, talked, laughed, enjoyed being among trees, and occasionally hugged. It was such a good time. Grateful for: vaccines, 8:15pm sunsets, easy access to nature trails, and good friends.

I had a moment where I questioned if I should be having such a great day without my family, without even wanting to be with them, or missing them. But I think I’m okay with it. I think I’m okay with the best day I’ve had in a long time be one where I was by myself.

The cicadas have really been coming out this week. The kids are fascinated by them and on our evening walks, they look for cicadas. The Husband told them that the cicadas are trying to get to the trees to climb upwards, so the four year old has taken to rescuing them from the sidewalk and using a stick to carry them to the nearest tree.

Also – a good reminder of a toddler’s perfect squat.

I’ve been taking many many pictures of them. I’m fascinated by their many stages of being, their slow emergence as they molt, their buggy red eyes, their wings, their slow steady march up tree trunks, the exoskeletons they leave behind that still cling lifelessly as if for their lives.

The variety of cicadas to be found nearby.

Some fun discoveries this week:

I realized that just as our public library has lots of great online programming these day, so do other libraries. This week I signed up for two small sessions through the LA County Library – which was my library system when I was growing up. I logged into a session called “Relaxing with Art” and a toddler story time. The presenter for the Art session talked about the benefits of drawing as a way of decompressing and then led some drawing exercises. I’ve been missing having a weekly drawing assignment since my drawing class ended and it was nice to pick up my pencil and have some short art exercises to do.

The toddler story time was actually really interesting because I found out that LA County has a program where parents of young children can call in and talk to a parenting expert if there is something that they are struggling with. It’s certainly not something to be used in lieu of talking to a pediatrician, but having free parenting support available to the community in a variety of languages is so fantastic.

Took the kids on a hike and we saw herons! That was pretty cool.

The nine year old started going to in person piano lessons this week. I had to to take the two younger kids with me this week, but the Husband has said I can leave them at home in subsequent weeks. This means I’ll have 30 wonderful minutes to myself. I’m thinking of bringing my yoga mat and getting some yoga in while I hang out in the teacher’s back yard. If I were a runner, that would also have been ideal, but I’m not…. Also side note – there’s a lady in our community who will come to your child’s sport practices and lead a yoga class. How brilliant is that?

I’ve picked back up with the Science of Well Being Course. This week’s lecture talked about WOOP technique for setting positive goals. WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. What I thought was interesting was that Laurie Santos, the professor of the course, suggests that “Outcome” asks you not just to think about best outcomes from achieving what you want (Wish, first step), but to also think of the worst outcomes if you don’t. I think I tend to be motivated by focusing on the positive of achieving my goals, but the negative ramifications of failure are probably just as strong a motivator. In fact, I think the negative thoughts are what inspire me to make the goals in the first place. There are many times in the course where Santos talks about how one’s baseline for satisfaction moves and every so often you need to remind yourself what it was like to be at the bottom in order to counteract dissatisfaction. Of course you can belabour the point and be an insufferable optimist, or, conversely be an interminable pessimist, but I do think there is value in recognizing that your brain often adjusts its standards of happiness – happiness inflation, they call it.

Anyhow, I’ve decided to WOOP some goals this next week. Namely getting more sleep and finishing two books from the library that are due imminently.

The start of the summer shoe tan:

I also got the sandals out this week! Another sign of summer.

Made a key lime pie last weekend. The husband came home with a bag of key limes. I usually just use regular limes when I make key lime pie. But he was so excited, so I gave it a shot. These things are labor intensive! A whole bag of key limes made barely enough juice for one pie. There was a distinct taste from using key limes, but I can’t for the life of me describe it, and regular limes make tasty pies too. So I might stick with regular limes. (See above about baseline level of happiness.)

Because you have to take a taste before you know if it’s worth taking a picture!

This man, seen at the side of the road on our Friday evening commute home. What the what? The Husband says he is here every Friday. It was vastly entertaining, but perhaps the resulting rubbernecking could be dangerous?

I was stopped at a redlight when I snapped this, lest you think I take pictures while driving….

It’s been a rough week for sleep. We’ve moved the baby into the big kids room and she is sleeping on her crib mattress on the floor. She has had a rough time adjusting, perhaps only sleeping through the night one night out of seven. Luckily the other kids are heavy sleepers.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Tortellini with pasta sauce. We had met some families at a local brewery that afternoon and had lots of snack, so we weren’t terribly hungry by the time we got home.

Sunday: Sweet Potato and Poblano Tacos (from Dinner Illustrated), with homemade tortillas. I haven’t made tortillas in a while, and I’d forgotten how easy and tasty they are.

Monday: Eggplant and coconut rice from Meera Sodha’s East.

Tuesday: Mushroom crostada and bagged Caesar Salad.

Wednesday: Dosa and dal from Sdha’s Fresh Indian. I was quite proud of this meal. It was very time consuming to make, but very simple. And, if one makes the filling ahead of time, making the dosas actually comes together quite quickly. Not quite like at our favorite restaurant – these dosas get soggy if not eaten right away and are much smaller – but okay for at home.

Thursday: The Husband got burgers, fries and milkshakes from Five Guys. Normally I make dinner before dance class, and the fact that I didn’t have to make dinner made the day even more awesome. And while it’s not something I should do often, eating a jalapeno mushroom burger and fries at 10:30pm just feels really good sometimes.

Friday: Pizza and Hairspray, the original John Waters movie. I thought that the movie would feel dated, but it doesn’t really.

Books Read in April 2021

A lot of audiobooks this month. Some really fun and fluffy reads and some reads that made me think about economic inequities and how does one get ahead in life.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, read by Will Damron – Engrossing and fascinating story of Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent biotech startup Therenos. The whole story of how Holmes became a Silicon Valley darling through brazen lies, cover ups and threats had me riveted. Then the book gets into how Carreyrou, a Wall Street Journal reporter, pursued the story, and the book ratcheted up to a whole other level of suspense and intrigue. I read this shortly after I read Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists, and I found really compelling the contrast between Bregman’s advocacy for a 15 hour work week, and the intense and unhealthy pressure of Silicon Valley.

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore – 5h 14m. Fun romance novel about suffragette and scholar Annabelle Archer and the Duke that she targets in order to further the women’s movement. The plot was forgettable, but the characters were really fun and well written. The Duke of Montgomery is my romance hero catnip – the stiff do-gooder who is desperately trying to do the right thing when the “right thing” is to not fall in love. A la Mr. Darcy.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, read by Tom Hanks – This book was vaguely on my To Be Read list, but then I saw that Tom Hanks performs the audiobook and I immediately put it on my Read/Listen Now list. The novel, about the children who are left behind when their mother leaves them, thoughtfully explores what we call home and the people we let into our lives. Hanks’ narration is breezy and casual and curious – his approach is more of reading the book aloud and discovering it with the listener, rather than trying to dramatically bring the story to life.

How to Eat a Peach by David Chang with Gabe Ulla – 6h 8m. Memoir by the chef behind Momofuku. I put this book on hold after hearing an interview with Chang on Fresh Air. In his memoir, Chang talks about his rise to the top of the food world and the sense of urgency and drive that kept him there. He is also really honest about the racism and classism in the food industry – how pasta, for example, is expensive and “fancy”, but noodles are expected to be cheap.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle – 3h, 26m. A “what if” novel about a young lawyer Danni who gets a glimpse of her future – literally she wakes up five years in the future and after a few hours returns to her present – and then spends the rest of the novel wondering how she gets there. This book was a little unexpected for me. But, of course, the future often is.

Block Chain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei Wang – 5 h, 39m. I can’t remember how this book ended up in my holds list, but it was a fascinating read. In a series of essays, Wang explores how technology, globalization, and capitalism has affected rural China. In doing so she really makes a case that the idea that rural culture is backwards and urban living, specifically Western urban living, is the ideal is quite dehumanizing for much of China’s population.
“Metronormativity fuels the notion that the internet, technology, and media literacy will somehow “save” or “educate” rural people, either by allowing the to experience the broader world, offering other livelihoods, or reducing misinformation.”
Technology must be adapted to the people that it should serve, not the other way around. But a lot of technology these days is designed around a very homogeneous user – for example, if someone in rural China doesn’t know pin yin (a method of transliterating Chinese characters) a lot of technology is unavailable to them. A very thought provoking read. (Also – can someone explain blockchain to me? I feel like there was a whole section of the book I didn’t quite understand.)

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, read by Karen White – Bruder follows the lives of RV and van dwellers – modern day nomads, many of whom were forced into the wandering life in their middle ages (and later) because of life circumstances. Picking up jobs where they can – at Amazon factories, at campsites, farms – these migrants have learned to build a life for themselves as fewer and fewer Americans can afford to retire. Bruder’s book really challenges the idea that we are sold whereby if you work hard you can save up to retire comfortably. The people that Bruder meet meet life with creativity and resilience and surprising hope. It’s a sympathetic, yet unsentimental look at life on the road.

Reading with the Kids:
Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park. Read aloud with the nine year old. When Park, who is Korean-American, was little, she often would imagine that she was Laura Ingalls best friend, even while recognizing the racism of the Little House books. Prairie Lotus was her attempt to reconcile that conflict. The book tells the story of Hanna, a half Chinese girl who travels to the Dakota Territory with her father to start a new life in a new town. Park’s writing was filled with a lot of great details about frontier life and the people of that time and doesn’t shy away from issues of racism.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins, read by Paul Boehmer – While watching his two year old sister one day, Gregor falls down a chute in the laundry room and finds himself in the Underland, a world full of giant bats, snakes, rats as well as humans. Realizing this world might be the clue to finding his missing father, Gregor goes on a quest to find him. We listened to this audiobook on our way to and from school this month. While the plot was certainly engaging, I had a lot of anxiety over the idea of a twelve year old questing with a his baby sister strapped to his back. Also it’s one of those books where the point of the quest seems to be to kill off as many questers as possible… which is not really my jam.

Stargazing by Jennifer Wang – graphic novel. I’ve been trying to borrow more diverse books for my kids and this was one that check out for the nine year old. I decided to read it myself before returning. When Moon and her mother move in to the in law unit belonging to Christine’s family, the two Chinese American girls become friends despite their differences. A warm story about both having good friends and being a good friend, and the complicated feelings that friends can bring. I thought this was a lovely book.

Picture Books: Some that’s we’ve been enjoying this month
Toro Gomi’s simple picture books.
Brian Biggs Tinyville Town Gets to Work, about a town that builds a new bridge to solve a traffic problem.
Joyce Wan’s The Whale in My Swimming Pool, and The Bear in My Bed, two books about a little boy who finds large animals in inconvenient places. Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller, about a little girl who adopts a squash.

Weekly recap + what we ate – “tend and befriend”

Last weekend was mother’s day.

I told the husband that I wanted four things:
1) a nice picture with all three kids.
2) to go on a hike with everyone
3) a couple hours to myself where I didn’t have to parent
4) to eat dinner without anyone sitting on my lap.

We achieved 1 and 2.

To be fair, when I pointed out to the Husband that #3 didn’t happen, he promptly made plans to allow me time the following weekend (like now! so I can write).

And #4 is honestly probably a lost cause unless I don’t eat with the family.

I don’t know if it’s because of the excessive amount of togetherness this past year as we’ve all been under pandemic lockdown, but “time alone!” seemed to be the most requested mother’s day gift I’ve seen this year among my mom friends and groups. Perhaps last year, when we were newly in staying at home, and COVID cases were rising, mothers were in a better place mentally to savour and cherish the unrelieved time with their kids. But a year later… I think many of us are just burnt out from being responsible for the care, feeding, schooling, providing, working…. from all of it. From having to be so responsible for everyone else. And this mother’s day, I think many of us caregivers just want time to themselves, to slip the bonds of responsibility.

(This is not to say men haven’t had to be responsible too… the Husband has been a very equal partner. But study after study shows that the additional burdens brought about by pandemic living has disproportionately fallen on the shoulders of women. In fact, a lot of men I know are living their best lives right now while working from home….)

On Mother’s Day proper, we went on a hike at Red Rock Wilderness Overlook. The site features some remains of historic buildings – an ice house, carriage house, etc – which I always love seeing. The hike itself at first seemed quite gentle, a grassy meandering stroll through woods that came to an overlook of the Potomac. Perhaps it is the endless Hamilton listening that we’ve been doing lately, but I couldn’t look at this river without thinking of everything it has seen – the lives, the wars, the comings and goings.

As we hiked along the river overlook, we came to a precipitous drop off, across which a tree had fallen. Always up for an adventure, and having somewhat lost the path, we scrabbled downwards until we came to the shores of the Potomac. Here there was ample opportunity to throw rocks and sticks into the river and the nine year old found a rock face to scale. I was quite impressed by how high she managed to climb.

A scramble back up the banks of the river and we found the trail blazes again and headed back to the parking lot. This was a hike that was in our “Best Hikes for Kids” book that I had gotten, which is probably one of the best things I bought all last year. The baby managed a lot of the hike, though the Husband did carry her a couple times. She is getting to be a sturdy little hiker.

The nine year old had Thursday off, so the Husband took a half day and we went to the Air and Space Museum. I had heard that the Smithsonian had been loaned an X-wing Starfighter recently and before it was sent to the Air and Space Museum downtown, it would be cleaned and checked for damage at the restoration hanger at the Air and Space Museum by the airport. So the Husband got us tickets and we spent an afternoon with all manner of aircrafts and flight history. It was our first visit to a museum in over a year and I feel really grateful that we have such easy access to so many museums here. I can’t wait until the rest of the Smithsonian museums open back up. And the National Gallery of Art too. I’ve missed seeing things in real life.

Some tidbits from this week:

A Great Podcast Episode: I was listening to this episode of On Being where Krista Tippett talks to clinical psychologist Christine Runyon about the physiological effect the isolation and stress of the pandemic has had on us. One point that really struck with me is Runyon’s idea that along with “flight”, “fight”, and “freeze,” we, particularly women, also have another survival instinct which is “Tend and Befriend.” They go on to discuss how difficult it has been during the pandemic to not be able to “befriend” or form alliances or gather as a community, because for a lot of women, that is their reaction to a crisis. There are physiological tolls to being alone. The link above is to the broadcast episode; the “tend and befriend” discussion is in the unedited episode, and it was such a fantastic conversation to hear.

The county has put the basketball hoops back up. During the pandemic, at least one hoop on every county court was removed, to prevent people from gathering to play basketball games. Not sure how effective that was. But this week I’ve noticed that all the hoops are back up. One little sign of things going back to normal.

Speaking of which – I’m thinking about the new guidelines from CDC for masking. Or rather unmasking. Namely that fully vaccinated people can resume activities without masks or social distancing. Of course the children are not vaccinated. So I think I will continue to have them mask up at playgrounds and on playdates. I will probably wear a mask when I’m with my kids as a show of solidarity, and also while indoors at stores or what not – particularly since I feel like a lot of businesses around here will keep mask mandates in place. But maybe not? Our County has been somewhat conservative with mask mandates in the past, but they seem to be in line with our state regulations right now, which is for lifting mask mandates. Indoor dining is probably still outside of my comfort zone.

The kids got new shoes! Just in time for summer. I love our shoe store.

Perfect summer snack- cucmbers with “sprinkle”, either Pico Fruta, or Sesame Seaweed Furikake.

Tadpole update – They have legs!

Frugal food wins – Sad bunch of collards, wilted and neglected –> Collard chips! Seasoned with dill, garlic powder, onion powder and nutritional yeast, giving them a nice ranch flavour.

The cicadas have started to emerge. We took an evening walk on Friday night and had to tread carefully. There has been a lot of attention given to the cicadas, I’m actually quite excited.

Four Year Old Quote of the Week: “You have to rise up, just like Hamilton.”

What We Ate:

Saturday: Grilling! Kielbasa from our favorite Polish Deli, and grilled veggies. I love how easy grilling is with the gas grill. I never thought I would convert from charcoal, but while I miss the chemical aftertaste of charcoal, the ease of the gas grill is hard to beat.

Sunday: Indian/ Nepalese food take out.

Monday: Gochujang Roasted Cabbage and Carrots with Udon Noodles and Pan Fried Tofu.

Tuesday: Pasta Salad with leftover grilled veggies from Saturday, and Mango Salad from Meera Sodha’s Made in India.

Wednesday: Salmon Curry Coconut Rice from Milk Street’s Cook-ish, and pan seared Brussel Sprouts.

Thursday: Take out from a vegetarian Chinese food place near the Air and Space Museum.

Friday: Pizza take out and bagged Caesar Salad and The Booksellers, a documentary about antiquarian booksellers. A nostalgic, wistful account of our love of printed material. Oh the beautiful shelves of books in this film!

Haikus for April

Daffodil carpet
spread out under bare limbed trees
Welcome mat for spring.

Wafting on spring winds
blossoms drfiting, blown off trees
like an April snow.

Wet days, then sunshine
Rain coats. Seventies. Short sleeves.
Shifty spring weather.

She picks ev’ry stick
grasped in her baby fingers
so diligently

Biting April winds
awakens my winter coat
from hibernation.

She stands hesitant
Atop the mountain slide. Watis.
Then zips down with glee.

Buffeting spring winds.
Bracing. Cuts through the sunshine.
Blows off lethargy.

Spring brings morning sun
slanting through kitchen windows
stabs me in the eye.

Pandemic reset.
I’m relaxing commitments
to expectations

Weekly recap + what we ate – May al fresco

One of many many many walks we took this week.

And now we are into May!

We ate outside a couple times this week. Right now is the sweet spot, I think, for dining al fresco in our area. It is warm enough to comfortably eat outside, with just a light sweater thrown on as the sun goes down and temperature cools. At the same time, we haven’t yet entered into mosquito season. Mosquitos are fierce here. I used to go to Colorado for the summer and be blessedly free of mosquitos. Last year, I think I got a little zen about them and embraced the biting and itching. This year, we got at Thermacell – a device that essentially creates a bubble of bug repellant around a certain area. We haven’t tried it out yet, but it gets really great reviews across a variety of publications. I’m excited to try this out and looking forward to being able to sit on our back patio without being eaten alive.

This was a great week to get outside. It did rain one day, but we took a rainy walk anyway, and were rewarded with a geese sighting:

I got my second COVID vaccine shot. It was such a smooth soothing process. I wanted to stay in that white tent waiting room forever. If I ever make myself a she shed, I think it will be white and light filled, like the COVID waiting tent.

Aside from some minor aches, I luckily felt pretty normal the next day. I stayed up too late the night after I got the vaccine, so I still felt kind of not great, but that was entirely my fault, not the vaccine. All in all, it feels great to have two shots down on my vaccine card. I’m still trying to feel out what my comfort levels are with COVID precautions. We were never the stay at home and have groceries delivered people, but we’ve definitely been very diligent about mask wearing and not socializing indoors or eating at restaurants.

I did go to a Mom’s night on Friday. My friend Lizzie had invited me to a child-free hang out with some of her friends where we ate Mexican food and had uncensored conversations. I haven’t been in someone else’s house for over a year – except for going over to walk a friend’s dog one time. It felt so novel. I guess meeting new people is always novel, but after a year of lockdown, it was especially so. And oh so wonderful to connect.

I thought this article in the Atlantic was interesting (The Liberals who Can’t Quit Lockdown.) I read/ hear so much about how the demographics of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers skew conservative, male, right wing, etc, and I thought this article was particularly thoughtful in how it pointed out that there are extremists on all sides of the spectrum. It seems to me that those who don’t trust vaccines are probably not far removed from those who sanitized their groceries during the early days of the pandemic when there seemed to be no good information out there. I myself am finding emerging from lockdown somewhat daunting, but then again, I’m somewhat of an introvert. I hope it’s not because of some reaction to Trumpian policies. I’m pretty sure it isn’t. But I do think that the politicization of public health issues is in many ways the result of our our unfortunately binary political system.

Some things this week:

Wanting to speak up. On one of our park trips this week, the four year old made quick friends with another child, a five year old. Before I knew it, they had taken their bikes and had gone off down the paved loop around the park. I wasn’t too concerned as I could still see them, and the kid seemed like a really friendly, decent child. “He wanted to show me his hide out tree!” The four year old told me when they came back. I told the little boy’s mother, “Your son is a really great kid.” She seemed really pleased to hear me say that, and I’m glad I told her. And as the morning progressed, I realized something. Part of the reason this kid was so open and friendly was that he had a really great mom. You could just tell by the way she let her kids have a great deal of independence on the playground, and from the way she talked to them when she needed to – in this really calm, casual and non-judgemental tone. And I wish I had told her that. For some reason, I thought it would have been weird to say something. But afterwards, I thought… it shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be afraid to compliment good parenting when we see it. (I mean good anything, really). Raising kids is so fraught and filled with self doubt (or is it just me?), that we should be supportive, even of strangers.
So… to Ryan’s mom at North Four Corners Park – on the infinitesimal chance that you read this blog: I love the way you talk to your children.

Looking forward to popsicle season. The nine year old made smoothies for breakfast the other day and there was leftovers, so I pulled out the popsicle molds and made the first popsicles of the year! I love making homemade popsicles. There is something so economical and simple about homemade popsicles, though I do admit that the store bought always taste better. Except the chocolate ones. This recipe for homemade fudgsicles is really really decadent.

Popsicles and the astronaut. He wore that space suit almost every day this week.

Speaking of the nine year old in the kitchen, the kids are really into making fresh lemonade. It does take a lot of lemons to make lemonade, so I don’t do it as often as I would like. Maybe I need to be more efficient about juicing? This little plastic juicer was an H-Mart impulse purchase years ago and serves us well, but is perhaps not terribly efficient.

When your child matches the playground equipment (again):

Other wildlife sightings:

Google tells me these are called pileated woodpeckers. We came across them in two different parks. They were quite bold and settled in quite near us.

Pandemic cookbook MVPs (except the Vegetarian Back Packing book – not sure what that is doing in there.) All borrowed from the library and need to be returned. The “Overdue, but fines waived” notices that I’m getting are guilt inducing, but not very motivating. America’s Test Kitchen Vegan for Everyone was also a great resource. I think I may end up buying some of these to have for my own.

On Time Standing Still:

The other day, we were wandering around the park while the nine year old was in dance lessons and I noticed that the posters from the children’s theatre were still up from last year. It was as if time had been frozen, stuck in March 2020. The park was originally developed in the early 1900s as an amusement park, somewhere for the residents of DC to escape to. Many of the buildings are left over from this time, and their original art deco quality has been maintained. Being there these days has a rather timeless quality. Seeing last season’s posters up, I was struck by this weird sensation of different time periods overlapping, and unmoving. I wonder if this was what it was like to stumble upon Roanoke.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pasta Salad – tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers,

Sunday: Dinner at friend’s house. They grilled. We brought vegetable skewers (zucchini, mushrooms, peppers).

Monday: Tandoori Broccoli and Honey Braised Tofu from East. This was really good. The Broccoli is smothered in yogurt and spices and then roasted at 425. The Tofu is cooked in a sauce made from gochujang, soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. And we ate it outside, which always makes things taste better, in my mind.

Tuesday: Black Bean Soup from Milk Street Fast and Slow. Tasty, simple and filling.

Wednesday: Grilled Pork Tenderloin and grilled veggies and sweet potatoes. I always forget how simple and good grilled sweet potatoes is.

Thursday: Tomato Zucchini Tart from Milk Street Cook-ish, with bagged salad. Also very easy recipe – basically toss veggies in olive oil, vinegar and za’atar, pile it in a layer on puff pastry and bake until golden. I love recipes like this where the ratio of effort to taste is pretty low.

Friday: Girls night out – Mexican food. Meaning lots of chips and guacamole and salsa.

Weekly recap + what we ate – out like a lamb + goals

The last week of April – lots of sunny weather and outdoor time. The husband impulsively bought the kids one of those plastic bat and ball sets, and we took it out for a spin over the weekend. The four year old alternated plogging and batting. I sometimes forget to get outside on the weekends, but the weather this week has been too nice to ignore.

As I stare down the barrel of a return to work (yay!), I’m feeling like I want a little less meandering in my life in these next few weeks.

Ever since the nine year old went back to school, we haven’t gotten into a good rhythm. Or rather I mean a productive rhythm. This is our days: drop off nine year old at school/ playground until lunch time/ lunch/ putter and clean up/ pick up nine year old from school/ dinner. I would like that post lunch period to be more focussed. Right now it feels like a never ending slog of cleaning up after the kids punctuated by some reading (to kids and for myself) and some (too much) random scrolling. Ideally this is where some of the preschool curriculum would go, but I find after lunch I don’t have the energy for it. The kids mostly wander around and do random playing between lunch and second school pick up. Maybe instead of trying to go back to implementing the whole curriculum, I could do one organized activity. I think part of it is, now that we are commuting again, I’m losing time I used to use to plan and set up activity. But surely one activity would be plenty.

So here we are, heading into May and summer. I don’t usually articulate goals, but I sat down and wrote down some things that I would to get done before heading back to work:
– doctor’s appointments and check ups after I’m fully vaccincated
– hair cut, after fully vaccinated.
– finish the children’s book I’m writing for my friend Kristen.
– Sort out summer camp for the nine year old.
– research a pool membership for the summer (might be late for this, but I think there are still options out there. Or we will just go to the county pool. But the nine year old wants to join a swim team, so…)
– figure out what to do with my car- repair or replace.
– go hiking at least once
– organize book club evening with my mom’s group. I like to load up on social activities before I go back to work, because these things are harder to figure out when I am working.
– figure out a camping trip with my parents for when they are here.
– work on juggling with three balls
– blog every day for a week. Thought it might be a fun exercise to have a “week in the life” down for posterity.
– fun times with kids before I go back to work.
– sleep.

It seems a pretty lengthy list of goals for the month. On top of the daily grinds. Hopefully it will help me focus my time and efforts and scroll less. I seem to average 4-5 hours a day on my phone, which I don’t love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this article that I read, “Write Better Job Ads” It occurs to me that in many ways, that barriers to inclusion need also to be tackled at the entry level. So in a way, entry level employees should be seen as an investment. When organizations want to hire the “best” or the “most qualified” candidate – often the parameters for that are exclusionary. So perhaps you don’t need to hire the “most qualified” candidate for an entry level position or internship. Because often that candidate gets there through the benefits of systemic privileges. And honestly, the most qualified candidate probably has other options. So maybe the key to inclusive hiring is to cast the net wide and re-define what “best” means. Maybe it’s the person with less experience, but a lot of potential. Maybe it’s the person who brings a different life experience to an organization. This also means that a company needs to be willing to do the work to have these employees. Having someone who fits seamlessly into a company culture – maybe that says more about the company culture than the employee. I’m sure my musings on this matter are somewhat impractical, particularly in competitive fields. But surely in the arts, we can do the work?

Listening: This episode of On Being with writer Katherine May who wrote a book called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. It seems like a perfect pandemic book. There were so many thoughtful points in her interview with Krista Tippett. They talked about how we can’t just tell ourselves to “get over” unhappiness and suffering, but rather we need lean into them to really hear what our body and mind are trying to tell us. They talk about the need to slow down and how, as animals hibernate, we too, should have seasons in our life where we pause, reflect, and reassess. The hectic always moving pace of modern life leads us to miss a lot of the things and people around us and what makes us human. It is a gentle and pensive conversation. I have May’s book in my holds at the library and I can’t wait to get to it.

Some wonderful things this week:

My final project from drawing class:

I wanted to explore toys, and the lives they lead. I still struggle with seeing colours for what they truly are, and am surprised when things look better than I think they will. The shading on the baby’s face, for example. I couldn’t get it right, then I remembered that the teacher mentioned using purple for shadows. That did the trick, but it was hard to see that purple was the right choice until it was done. Working in colour is a little scary because it’s hard to fix. I don’t love the background.

I’m a little sad the class is over; it was a wonderfully supportive group of people to share art with.

Grateful for local listservs – We had been driving past this park next to the fire station. It had a play structure shaped like a fire station, and the four year old would always ask if we could go visit it. I couldn’t figure out if it was a public park since there was no parking, and there was no information about it on the County’s parks website. So I asked the listserv. Turns out it is a public park, but one maintained by a different branch of the county. And, in addition to this information, many people sent me other playgrounds with fire engine play structures. The four year old loves fire trucks, so we’ve put these parks on our list to visit this summer.

Fire engine. Not much cover, so best visited n a cloudy day.

Friday there was wind. Lots of wind, so we went to fly a kite. It never flew very high or for very long, but any amount of lift was thrilling. The four year old embraced the “run as fast as you can” method of kite flying.

The baby has discovered pockets. It’s the best things ever.

On our walk a few weeks ago, we came across a puddle full of tadpoles. This week we went back to see if the tadpoles were still there. They were! And fatter than last time. Someone had also put a bucket and a sign by the puddle, urging people to add water to the puddle so that it doesn’t dry up.

What we ate:

Saturday: Sushi take out.

Sunday: Can’t remember….

Monday: Gnocchi and red sauce (Husband cooked!)

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! Chicken, black beans, rice.

Wednesday: Charred cauliflower pasta from Milk Street’s Tuesday Nights.

Thursday: Lentil Bulgur Salad from Moosewood Cookbook (made with farro because that’s what we had). With the weather warming up, I think pasta/grain salads will be my go to make ahead meal for Thursday nights, rather than soup.

Friday: Pizza (homemade) and Annie, the 2014 version with Jamie Foxx and Quvanzahne Wallis, and some not as good as the original songs.

Haikus for March

A beltway of stars
shines so clear this inky night
freckling the March sky.

Sunlight warms my face
clean air, sharp in my nostrils
shut eyes see spring signs

The birds are singing
Brilliant blue cloudless skies
This first week of spring.

A path through the sky
3/21/21
space station fly by.
(note: I just learned that you can get email notification of when the International Space Station can be seen flying overhead for any given location. Spot the Station. Such a cool summer evening activity!)

Spring brings many things
Blue jays fly on outstretched wings
to eaves for nesting.

I sit in the car
breathing in the still quiet.
Chaos waits inside.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Spring, summer, winter, spring. All in one week.

We continued to enjoy the spring like weather this week. My mom’s group had a playdate at a little gem of a park. We were going to meet at the big park, but then thoughts of crowds sent me on a search for a smaller park, and I found one not too far away that was surrounded by trees and trails and had a play structure that was very suitable for toddlers.

I feel like I’m still trying to figure out how to interact with people again. Or maybe I’ve always been terrible at small talk.

It was a lovely, low key spring weekend. The Husband got a lot of yard word done, helped somewhat by the kids. There was soccer for the four year old. He is also re-learning socialization skills, I’m sure. The Husband also took that kids out of the house for a chunk of time so I could work on this opera picture book I’d promised my friend I would write for her kindergarteners.

About mid afternoon on Sunday, someone put out a call on the neighborhood listserv subject line: “Free Yarn!”. Apparently, this lady was helping to settle the estate of a friend who was a prolific knitter. Free+yarn was like a siren call to me and we headed over. On a tarp in this lady’s front yard was a rainbow of array of yarn. And not the cheap acrylic stuff. This was wool and cotton and linen. I came home with two bags of yarn. Not quite sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I’m so excited at the prospect.

This week’s spring weather slipped into summer weather, and then, surprisingly into winter. Maybe we’ve gotten used to the warmer temperatures. Surely 52 degrees is considered balmy in the middle of December, no? In April, on the tail of 60 and 70 degree weather however, 50 was downright frigid. I pulled our winter coats, hats and gloves from storage and the Husband turned the heat on. In April! Luckily, the weather righted itself in time for the weekend.

We are taking advantage of summer-like evening temperatures and sunlight to take some evening walks. I signed up for the county’s “plogging” challenge. Plogging is a fancy Swedish word for picking up trash as you walk, well technically jog. The county sent us some grabbers, trash bags, and gloves, and we are to log with them how much trash we pick up. So one night we went out and pickup trash at the end of our cul-de-sac. It was kind of heartwarming to see the two older kids working the grabber together, with the nine year old coaching the four year old on how they could work together. There was a surprising amount of trash on our street, but I think that at one point someone’s trash can broke and it all got swept to the end of the cul de sac in a storm.

I’m hoping that I can maintain the energy to get out for an post dinner constitutional regularly. It seems like a much better use of time than the usual 7pm chaos that goes down around here. We’ll see. There is usually some degree of whining, but then once we are outside, all is better. Particularly if given a rope.

Things that made me smile this week:

When your kid matches the playground and you have a moment where you can’t find him:

When your toddler is able to help load the dishwasher. (Side note, the nine year old also loaded the dishwasher once this week. Which I’m very proud of her for, but it’s not really as cute.)

She can’t talk, but she can load the dishwasher!

Tulips in spring.

Free play area at the Botanical Gardens that is made up of just sticks. Brilliant!

Baking chocolate chip cookies. Talking about potential jobs for 2022. The kids singing loudly together in the car.

What We Ate:

Saturday: I can’t remember. Very likely we ordered food.

Sunday: Roasted Carrot Udon adapted from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone.

Monday: Broiled Tomatoes and Garlic Pasta from Dinner Illustrated. This was really really good. Basically top tomatoes with parmesan cheese and walnuts, broil until cheese is golden. Infuse olive oil with garlic and pepper flakes and pour over pasta. The Husband had an appoinment that day so by the time we ate this, it was room temperature, more like pasta salad than a pasta dish. Still very tasty. It is getting to be pasta salad time of year – I might have to start making Thursday’s make ahead meal pasta salad instead of soup.

Tuesday: Potato vindaloo from Vegan for Everyone. Tasty and filling. We had a lot of leftovers.

Wednesday: Jollof rice with shrimp from Milk Street Fast and Slow. We were out of rice, so I made this with farro. So good. I might have to buy a hard copy of this cookbook; it’s been consistently good.

Thursday: Lentil Barley Soup, also from Milk Street Fast and Slow.

Friday: Ordered pizza and watched nature tv.

Books Read in March 2021

The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali read by Mozan Marno – Lovely lovely book about two teenagers who meet in a stationary shop in Tehran and fall in love. They are separated on the eve of their marriage and the novel tells about how their lives play out – the choices and non-choices that shape how our paths unfold. Sometimes I find coincidences in books elegant and sometimes predictable and clumsy. This book was somewhere in between – predictable yet elegant.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer – 16h, 15m. Treuer writes about the history of Indians in America after Wounded Knee, basically taking up where Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee ended, but also trying to break down the mythology of that book. He details the difficulties of integrating cultures and how crushing a dominating group can be. At the same time he wants people to understand Indians not merely by their history, but also by their present. “Less and less,” he writes, “do we define ourselves by what we have lost, what we have suffered, what we have endured.”

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London – 5h 10m. Contemporary romance novel about a plus sized blogger who writes a scathing post about a Bachelor-type tv program and then gets picked to be their next star. Although it is marketed as a romance novel, I find the whole reality tv Bachelor star idea inherently unromantic. Also, the book is not really about her finding love, but about her finding herself. I know a lot of people loved this book, and I really liked the premise, but ultimately I was pretty lukewarm about it.

Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown – 4h 23m. This novel is about Alice Hale, an aspiring writer, who moves with her husband from Manhattan to a house in the suburbs. There is a parallel story of the previous owner, a 1950s housewife. Both women are struggling with achieving an ideal domesticity, something that is both appealing and suffocating to them.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig – 4h, 8m. The main character in this book tries to commit suicide and ends up in this purgatory-like library where the books are alternate versions of her life. I think I preferred Haig’s How to Stop Time over this book – while both books grapple with existential questions about one’s life choices, How to Stop Time was better plotted. This book felt a little too wrapped up in the idea of exploring alternative lives, and there was very little momentum to the story.

Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes by Dana Thomas – hard copy. Thomas looks at the impact of the clothing industry on the economy, the environment, and the people who make our clothes. While the effects of keeping up with our insatiable appetite for clothing are pretty damaging, Thomas also explores how people and companies are coming up with kinder, more sustainable ways to keep ourselves clothed. Even looking at my closet, I can absolutely see how the fashion industry is so huge and pervasive. I wish that the solutions that Thomas highlights weren’t so high end. It seems that sustainable fashion – like so many other sustainable choices before us (Tesla, anyone?) – are only within the reach of those with money. The wasteful and poor quality clothes, the cheap stuff that doesn’t last – there is a market for it, and that isn’t something that can be solved with $400 eco-friendly jeans.

Holes by Louis Sacher – read aloud with the nine year old. I really enjoyed this book – it was clever, engaging and poignant. A hugely satisfactory read.