Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate – Spring peeks in

In a final attempt to get a hike in for February, we took the kids to a local woodland sanctuary. Though when we got there, half of it was closed for restoration. Nonetheless, we did enjoy some lovely signs of spring and had a nice amble/romp through the part that was open. We also saw some interesting rough shelters. More and more we are letting the baby walk. She is usually good for about 45 minutes of walking, admittedly at her own pace, so we don’t necessarily get too far.

Last weekend I introduced the kids to the ten hour BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I had forgotten how much of the movie is Colin Firth staring broodingly, and how very little he actually speaks. And how swoonworthy I find that. Though I’m sure in real life such behaviour would actually frustrate me greatly. But I guess that what’s literature (and excellent adaptation of literature) is for.

sleeping baby, cuddling nine year old, and Colin Firth. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Last week, I had an opportunity to be a guest for an opera company’s Zoom workshop for children. I was asked to talk about stage management. Dusting off my stage manager’s brain after almost a year felt like revisiting an old friend. I pulled out my work tote bags and my SM kit to see what was there for potential show and tell. I seem to have misplaced my stopwatch and my drawing template. I also had to create some marked up score pages. I had, in a fit of cleaning last fall, thrown out a whole box of old scores that I had been keeping for who knows what reason. Those scores were almost twenty years old and I decided they were no longer serving me. Welp…. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I regret tossing them – the inner wanna be purger felt quite liberated to have the space back. But then something like this comes along and the inner “keep it just in case”-er feels vindicated.

So I mourned a little and then got to work making a fake score page. There is something so soothing about placing calls in a score – the orderly calm of it, the rhythm of writing, and sticking…. I’m sure I used to take for granted the great satisfaction I get from putting post-its in the right place.

Initially I was a little nervous about the class because I feel like a lot of what we do as stage managers is more internal than demonstrative. It’s not the glamorous storytelling work of singers or dancers or designers. Do we tell stories? We certainly help create and communicate stories. In the end, we taught the kids about stage directions and taking blocking. And also how to say “Thank you, five!” I feel like though these are not creative skills, they are probably good life skills.

Art homework this week was bout the technique of frottage – basically making rubbings, very like what one did in elementary school with leaves and what not. I had hoped to get some outdoor samples for my rubbings – like leaves, or bark, or rocks or sidewalk – but the weather was quite wet all week. Instead I had to look for indoor objects of texture- which is not as obvious as one would think. It seems our current domestic life is one of smoothness and lack of texture. I became quite obsessed with finding items with words that made good rubbing projects. I went around the house touching all the words or lettering I found, to see if it would make a good frottage project. All the letter hunting inspired me to this drawing which I call “Alphabet Soup.” I think, if I were to do it again, I would add a spoon or some more objects of context.

I am trying to mentally prepare to send the nine year old back to school. There is a lot of information out there, but also so much is unknown.

Fun Sunshiny things:

I bought the nine year old one of those shirts with mermaid sequins – the kind where you can flip them back and forth and they change colours. The other day she was wearing her shirt and:

…. she became a human, late afternoon sun disco ball! This shirt and the nine year old’s discovery of the science of reflection – has brought many impromptu moments of sparkle.

Speaking of late afternoon sun and the nine year old, here is another moment of “resistance”. I feel like either it’s a statement about homework, or idly surfing while doing homework.

I put the baby on the tricycle this week for the first time. She seemed to love it. Both the tricycle and the helmet were from when the nine year old was a toddler, and now all three children have gotten use of them.

The four year old peeled a sweet potato all by himself for the first time. He was so proud of himself. I will say he’s been the most reluctant chore-doer of the kids. Even the baby loves to do chores. I read this article from NPR last week about children and chores, and the article talks about giving children three subtasks per hour – the idea being that these really small yet specific jobs helps to foster a sense of inclusion and responsibility. I think this might be the way to go with the four year old.

Pre-COVID I would sometimes go to the library and sit and read magazines for an hour or two. I love magazines. I love leafing through the glossy pages. I love the bite sized articles. I love the longer, more in depth articles. I love the shiny perfect pictures. I love information consumption. I love, let’s be honest, not having to pay for my own subscriptions and not having the paper clutter in the house. Needless to say leisurely magazine reading hasn’t happened for a while. So when I peeked into the Little Free Library by the park this week and saw a copy of Real Simple, I snatched it up. Never mind that it was four months old and talked about Thanksgiving. My brain kind of reacted as if the magazine was a Twix and I had been on a sugar fast. Immediately I pictured myself sitting in a comfy chair with a hot beverage, idly turning pages while planning meals and life organization tactics. This relaxing magazine reading with my cup of tea experience I’d envisioned has – surprise! – yet to happen. But there is a lot of hope invested in that magazine. If I can manage to keep the kids from hiding it.

One last message that appeared in my life this week, peeking at me from the edge of some fabric I was sewing into masks:

What We Ate:

Saturday- Sausage and grapes – the Husband cooked. This is one of my favorite dishes that I never remember to make.

Sunday- Steamed rice and veggies with Tofu from Milk Street Tuesday Nights

Monday- mushroom noodles from Milk Street Fast and Slow

Tuesday- Coconut cod curry and rice from Made in India

Wednesday- fennel and cannelloni bean soup from Milk Street Tuesday Nights.

Thursday- quinoa nori wraps from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone

Friday: pizza (with anchovies!) and Annie

Weekly recap + what we ate – winter sunshine

Even with snow on the ground, we explored a new park last weekend. I haven’t quite been able to have a proper woody hike this month, but I did try really hard to make it outside every day for at least twenty minutes. This park came up on the county recs Winter Activity Bingo sheet. The park had been newly renovated with new play structures and some eye popping murals. The murals were such a joyful burst of colour on a drab winter day.

The kids had a particularly fun time on this disc swing. There is something really happy about seeing two kids on the same swing, the older one holding the younger one up. The swing went pretty high and I found myself a little anxious, but then I reminded myself of the laws of physics.

By midweek the temperatures were into the 40s and the snow was almost all melted. I’m trying to develop a personal metric for when I need to wear my winter coat. 40s is definitely too warm for my winter coat. High 30s is puffer vest layered under winter coat. Low 30s is all that + fleece, boots, and silk long underwear. Hats and gloves throughout, though.

But, signs of spring continue to be seen:

Art class assignment this week was to adopt an artist. This was mine:

I chose Magritte. Ultimately this drawing felt a little derivative to me. I feel like I copied his subject matter more than his style. Though the instructor said with surrealists subject and style are intertwined more so than a lot of other genres.

I had two bunches of kale growing limp in the fridge, so I made kale chips. The last time I had kale chips was over a year ago. Some random friends from college all ended up living in this area and we decided – after ten years – that we should actually get together. Who knew it was the last dinner party we’d have in quite some time.

I’ve had mixed success with kale chips, but this batch turned out pretty good. I seasoned them with coconut oil and curry powder and baked at 275 for 30 mins, flipping half way through. I think I had always baked them at too high a heat and they always burnt. The America’s Test Kitchn recipe said bake at 200 for an hour, but I felt like the results weren’t spectacularly better enough to merit the extra half hour in the oven.

Interesting read this week about why we shouldn’t celebrate the death of Rush Limbaugh. This sentence particularly resonated with me:
“I’ve stopped referring to people as “racists,” “misogynists,” or “homophobes,” detailing their words and actions rather than reducing them to labels. After all, when you call me a name — “snowflake,” “social justice warrior” — I stop listening. I don’t think I’m an outlier.”

This also resonated with me, but for different reasons: I’m a short afternoon walk and you are putting too much pressure on me.

The four year old saw this heart in the wild and made me take a picture:

Weird food thing of the week: Dumpling water soup. We ate the last of our frozen dumplings from our favorite dumpling house this week. After we had the dumplings, I ladled some of the water from boiling the dumplings into a mug and sipped the hot liquid. It’s a habit I learned from my parents. On the one hand it’s a very frugal thing to do, but on the other hand it feel really indulgent.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli

Sunday: Pad Thai (recipe from ATK Vegan for Everyone) with sauteed green beans on the side.

Monday: Brussel Sprouts Risotto with dried figs. From Bittman’s VB6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Black Bean, Corn, Quinoa Salad with lime dressing from ATK Vegan for Everyone.

Wednesday: Salmon burgers and roasted carrots.

Thursday: Cilantro Scallion Chickpeas from Milk Street Fast and Slow. The baby loved this. And the chick peas were the perfect texture. I had been struggling with making chick peas in the InstantPot, and this time they came out uniformly tender. I think adding baking soda as recommended in the cookbook really made a difference in texture.

Friday: pizza (take out) and From the Earth to the Moon – documentary about space travel. I hope that we never look on space travel with anything less than awe and amazement.

Slicing Oranges

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

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

I took one look and clutched my pearls.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Recap + what we ate – still winter

The weekend arrived… plink plink plink. The sound of freezing rain. It covered everything in a sheen of warped glass. The Husband, from the Midwest, is a big believer of scraping ice when you can, not when you have to. (Actually this is his philosophy for many things). So every couple of hours he went and scraped off the cars. Towards the evening I put my earphones on, bundled up and took a turn at ice scraping. It turns out to be a rather soothing and invigorating task. Moreso when I only did it once the whole day. The slow, persistence of ice scraping and the puffer coat cocoon that encased me allowed me to acheive a sense of flow.

Of course I would probably feel differently if I were in a public parking lot at eleven pm after a long rehearsal. It does somewhat inspire me to scrape the ice off my car during a dinner break to make that 11am experience not so prolonged. That whole future self thanking past self thing….

Monday was President’s Day. Originally I had wanted to go hiking, but snow and ice made that not a great idea. So we had a cozy day at home, doing I don’t know what. The husband and 4 year old planted scallion bulbs. We played Parcheesi. We did manage a walk mid afternoon.

We had a lovely respite from the freezing weather with two days of sunshine and weather in the mid 30s – 40s. I took full advantage of this and took the kids to the playground. I’ve realized that three weeks of quarantine and then weeks of unending snow, freezing rain, and general wet weather has made me a little less precious about letting the kids play on a wet muddy playground. The mud will wash and things will dry. Of course things will probably irreparably dirty, but… oh well.

The two days of sunshine were followed by more snow. Enough to have a snow day in the city, though our school district continued to have virtual schooling. I miss the idea of a snow day. The things that bothers me somewhat is that the school district closed the Equity Hubs and the schools that were hosting care programs. Understandable given the weather, but then why not declare it a snow day for everyone? It is not much of an equity hub if the students who rely on it are pushed further behind. This school year has been so hard on everyone. There is a glimmer of hope in that in person schooling is set to begin again next month but even that is

I had my first art assignment. We were to make an abstract drawing by enlarging something, zooming in on the detail.. I chose a frozen raindrop on a branch, though it didn’t turn out to be as abstract as I wanted. Also – the drawing is on 24″ x 18″ paper, and during our critique session in class, I felt like it’s hard to really understand a picture without knowing the original size. I’m growing to love the fuzzy, forgiving nature of working in charcoal. Having a project to work on feels really great right now.

Fun food for Valentine’s Day. My mother makes beautiful food creations. She taught me how to make radish roses and bunny rabbit carrots. And one Thanksgiving she made this amazing fruit turkey. In that spirit, I made the kids special Valentine’s Day ramen.

Indoor art activity. I find letting the kids do art projects very stressful… the mess!! But they have fun and it’s a good way to pass the time indoors.

This week in the 4 year old’s preschool cirriculum we are talking about the five senses. Later in the week, his older sister was reading Little Red Riding Hood for class (What big eyes you have! What big ears you have! etc.), and the 4 year old says, “Mommy… The wolf is using his four senses!”

What We Ate:

Sunday: Dumplings (the frozen ones from our favorite dumpling place) and braised bok choy. While not as good as getting them from the restaurant, they were much better than any other frozen dumplings you can get at the supermarket.

Sunday: 1 Hour Vegetable Pot Pie from Minimalist Baker – vegan recipe, but I did use regular milk and butter. I love this recipe because it really does take an hour to make, and always tastes like you slaved for hours making it.

Monday: Vegetable Curry with Lemon Peanut Rice from Fresh India. I might have to buy that cookbook – everything I’ve made from it has been really good. Also I managed to find fresh curry leaves – often one of those “optional” ingredients – and I was excited to use them. They made things taste… I don’t know.. fresher? Hard to describe, but I could definitely tell the difference.

Tuesday: Mushroom Ragout with noodles from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone. This recipe is in the Mapo section – it’s Bittman’s vegan take on Mapo Tofu. The four year old loves mushrooms and devoured this.

Wednesday: Roasted perch and catfish and roasted veggies. For Ash Wednesday.

Thursday: Vegetable Barley Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. I didn’t have turnips, so I subbed radish and it was really tasty. Good food for a cold snowy day.

Friday: Takeout pizza and Brigadoon. Despite being disappointed that so many of my favorite songs were cut (Come to me, My Mother’s Wedding Day, From this Day On… actually I love all the songs in this score), I still really enjoyed this movie. There’s Gene Kelly for one – so elegant and poised. And also – plaid leggings on the men! It was LuLa Roe worthy.

Weekly recap + what we ate – More snow and celebrations

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finding vines to swing on:

The joy of discovering nature’s playground.

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

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

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

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

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

Fun food things:

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

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

What we ate:

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

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

Monday: Sushi Take Out and birthday cake.

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

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

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

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

Books Read January 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hearts found in nature:

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

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

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

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

What we ate:

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

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

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

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

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

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

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

On savoring dishes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three year old is now a four year old.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank goodness.

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

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

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

Well… speaking of meal to meal…

What we ate:

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

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

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

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

Wednesday: Sausage and Peppers (the Husband cooked)

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

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

Haikus for January

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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