Weekly recap + what we ate: Where I went

First off – I hope people who were in Hurricane Helene’s path are doing okay. My friend’s parents are in North Carolina and luckily they are fine, but there are so many around them who are facing enormous challenges. The devastation is huge and heartbreaking.

We did not do any decluttering last week (though now two weeks ago – you know when you write a post and it kind of sits in your folder because you don’t have time to finish it? Yeah… that was the past couple of days. Which means there will probably be another weekly recap post less than a week after this one) Anyhow, decluttering took a backseat because my parents came into town and I had to work most of Sunday. But for the upcoming week, things on my list:

-List toys on freecycle that we are going to get rid of.
-Take car seats to Wider Circle [note – this is done!]
-Find seam ripper and deal with purple Fort cushions
-Sit in the toy room and imagine what it would take to make it functional
-Maybe tackle the mess under the console table in my bedroom.

We did clean out a large chunk of the fridge- the jars of random condiments, dressings, pickles, kimchi…. It was a little concerning some of the things I found. It seems as if somethings never go bad- I’m looking at you, cranberry relish from Thanksgiving. Though I feel like there was some fermentation happening. Also I have a lot of jars of sourdough starter. Maybe I need to see if there is still life there. I think I need to also do a freezer clean out soon too and eat it down a little.

While I contemplate those things, I thought I’d write another account of where I went this past week. I did this once last Spring, when I was prepping for a show. It’s an interesting journaling technique I read about, which is exactly what it sounds like – recording where I went – and I thought it would be interesting to see what I’m doing now in one of my slower work periods- I’m on a 20 hour per week contract right now.

Monday
8:55am home –> School bus drop off (4 mins)
9:15am school bus drop –> friends’ house. Their kids were sick and I went over to hang out for a little bit with their kids since my friends had to be at work. (5 mins)
2:00pm friends’ house –> trail for a run (3 min drive + 25 min run)
2:30apm trail –> Library to drop off books (10 mins)
3:00pm library –> home (10 mins)
4:00pm home –> pick up 4 year old from daycare –> home again (10 minute walk x 2)
6:45pm home –>12 year old’s basketball clinic the –> home. The gym is walking distance, so I like to have her walk when possible. When she is reluctant, I offer the inducement of going with her and listening to our audiobook together. Right now we’re listening to Permanent Record by Mary H. K. Choi. (15 mins x2)

Tuesday
8:55am home –> school bus drop off (4 mins)
9:3oam school bus drop off –> Target (pick up deodorant and shaving cream) (10 mins)
10:15am Target –> Library –> home (yes! Twice in one week! I had an exciting hold come in, see below) (5 mins/ 15 mins)
11:30am home –> work (15 mins)
7:30pm work –> home (15 mins)

Wednesday
7:05am home —> piano lessons (7 mins)
7:15am piano lessons —> gas station —> bagels shop —> back to piano lessons (25 mins)
7:45am piano lessons —> middle school —> piano lessons (20 mins)
8:20am piano lessons —> home (7 mins)
9:00am home —> bus stop (4 mins)
9:30 am bus stop –> trail –> run/walk (3 mins drive/ 25 min run/ 20 min walk)
10:30am trail –> Hmart to pick up groceries for dinner (10 mins)
11:30am Hmart –> home (10 mins)
12:30pm home –> work (15 mins)
3:00pm work –> pick up 4 year old –> gymnastics class (30 mins)
4:30pm gymnastics –> home (10 mins)
5:30pm home –> work (15 mins)
10:30pm work –> home (15 mins)
THAT WAS A LONG DAY!

Thursday
9:00am home —> school bus stop (4 mins)
9:20am school bus stop -> home (4 mins)
11:30am Home —> work (bike, 25 mins)
3:30pm Work —> home (bike 30 mins)
6:50pm Home—> friend’s house to drop off the two little kids so we can go to —> back to school night at 7 year old’s school (20 mins)
8:30pm school —> friend to pick up littles —> home (20 mins)

Friday
9:00 am home —> school bus (4 mins)
9:20 am school bus —> work (15 mins)
3:50pm work —> 7 year old’s school – he missed his afternoon bus home (10 mins)
4:10 pm school —> home (10 mins)
5:45pm home —> grocery store, to pick up supplies to make a cake (meanwhile, the Husband and the 7 year old went to sewing class) (10 mins)
6:30pm grocery store —> home for the night. (10 mins)

Saturday
10:30a: home —> 7 year olds’s soccer game (15 mins)
12:15pm Soccer game —> home (15 mins)
5:30pm Home —> airport to pick up my parents, or rather cell phone lot. (40 mins)
6:15pm Cell phone lot —> arrivals —> silver diner for dinner (20 mins)
8:15pm Silver Diner —> home (30 mins)

Sunday –
8:55pm Home —> agility class for four year old (15 mins)
10:00am Agility class —> home (15 mins)
11:00a home —> work (15 mins)
11:15am- work —> farmer’s market nearby (5 minute walk)
11:45 am farmer’s market —> work (5 min walk)
3:00pm- work —> coffee run —> back to work (25 min walk)
6:00pm work —> home (20 min drive)

Thoughts from this week’s account of going places: Not a lot of driving this week for myself – just mostly to the bus stop and to work. I’m glad I live near our rehearsal studios and that my commute is usually 15-20 minutes. Proximity is also key for kids’ activities – no activity is more than 15/20 minutes away. My friend’s kid got placed on a soccer team that practices 30 minutes away on a weekday afternoon- getting on the beltway at rush hour would get tiresome really fast.
-That’s 3.5 hours in the car this week. Not bad. that’s 2% of my week. The less time I have to spend in my car, the better.
-I’m glad I got to get on my bike and did some walking.
-For a week on a reduced work schedule I went into work 4 out of 7 days, which feels like a lot. I’m still trying to figure out if I need to find a better rhythm when I have 20 hour weeks – like do I need to work from home more? Do I need to be more efficient with my hours? But each week is unique – different meetings and things to cover, so it’s hard to have a set consistent schedule. (Which reminds me, I need to remove my Out of Office message from this summer…)
-I find having to run errands irksome – Target, grocery store, etc. But I also don’t love constantly ordering from Amazon. Why do we always need stuff?
-We live pretty close to three airports, but I always prefer picking up people at BWI because it’s the simplest to get to. DCA is close to the city so the traffic patterns can be funky, and Dulles has waaaaaay too much traffic to get there. On paper it looks 30 minutes away, but in reality it can take up to an hour. I like picking people up/ dropping them off at the airport whenever we can – I love seeing them on the curb waiting, I love that first happy wave and hug, I love the sense of arrival. Though I’m always reminded of the scene in When Harry Met Sally… where Harry says he never takes people to the airport at the beginning of a relationship because he never wants to get to the stage where they say, “How come you never take me to the airport anymore?” Even in this age of Uber, Lyft, and public transportation, that sentiment still feels applicable today.

Creative project of the week: I baked a cake! I had to work on the youngest kids’ birthday, so we celebrated the night before. She wanted a unicorn cake. The Husband works next to a store that sells cake and cookie decorating supplies, so he popped over there to see if they had unicorn figurines or sprinkles or anything that we could put on a cake. The people who run the shop are very creative and helpful and love to give advice. From the store, the Husband texted me these pictures:

I’ve never done a shaped cake before, so I was a little skeptical, but I decided to give it a go anyway. The 4 (now 5!) year old helped to make the cake, and even though we lost a small chunk of cake as it came out of the pan, I just stuck the chunk back on and frosted away. I was going to pipe the decorations, but by the time I started it was late so I instead really leaned into using the sprinkles:

Interesting podcast episode that I listened to: This episode of House Calls where Surgeon General Vivek Murthy interviews Adam Grant, and organizational psychologist who specializes in work place culture. I listened to this book while mowing the lawn. There was one part that was a little off-putting where Grant talks about finding ways to admit mistakes and be vulnerable at work, and in a lot of ways, I think this is a luxury men are afforded more than women. Why can men admit mistakes and it comes across as being strong but when women do it, it’s perceived as flaky? Is it a tone thing? or an attitude thing? Or my own preconceptions? Not sure on that one…

But aside from that I thought it was was great episode. Grant talks about defining success as process and values based rather than product or achievement based – I thought that was a great point. And about half way through the episode, a really interesting conversation about parenting evolved. Grant talks a lot about getting your children’s buy in. I really liked his suggestion of asking your kids for advice as a way to make them feel important. I’ve started doing this sometimes and I’m surprised by how direct their solutions can be. Usually they say something like, “Do something else.” Inspired by that episode, though, I talked to the Husband and I think we want to implement weekly family meetings. A time for everyone to look at the week ahead and know where everyone is going and see if anyone has any larger family topics to bring up.

When my aunt was visiting a few weeks ago, she made the comment about how nice it was that everyone has a chance to speak at our dinner table. She was referencing how we go around at most dinners and everyone says their Rose, Buds, and Thorns. (ie something good, something they’re looking forward to, and something hard.) My aunt said when her kids were little, they weren’t allowed to speak at the dinner table – they lived with her in laws and dinner was a time for the matriarch of the family to pontificate on what a good family they are and tell the kids how important it was for them to do well in school and activities. So I guess the idea of my kids all getting a turn to speak was novel to my aunt. Dinner is certainly a loud and unchecked affair at our house. There is talking and shouting and getting up and sitting in laps (still)… I don’t know… I kind of love it, this communal chaos. I mean maybe not 100% of the time – sometimes I do just want them to sit down and eat dinner – that’s when we have silent eating time – but I miss out on so many dinners because of my work schedule that I feel like when I can be home for dinner, I want it to feel like a time where we can share and bond. With everyone’s different activities and stresses, I think we will only feel more fractured as a family as the kids get older, so I want to put in structures and routines now – dinner rituals, family meetings, pizza and movie nights – that can feel grounding.

Grateful For
– My parents coming to visit. They are so good about entertaining the kids.

-School adjacent activities. The 12 year old joined the cross country team and the 7 year old is taking programming classes after school. I love that they get to fit in extracurriculars that they can go to straight after school, and I don’t have to drive them. I feel lucky that we live somewhere where they have these opportunities.

– All of you who validated my high school feelings about the preschool WhatsApp group last week. I’m glad I have a place to vent these stressors. So it turns out that the invite to the party went to the whole Whatsapp group the week before I joined, so I guess if I had joined the group earlier, my child would have been invited to the party. So it wasn’t purposefully excluding my kids. I think I’m still trying to figure out if there is anything of value in staying in the group. I do believe in parenting as a community and that we can all support each other, but is being in this group the way to do it?

Looking forward to:
-A new month! It’s October! I feel like after Hallowe’en begins the slow slide towards the end of the year, so October is my one month to enjoy fall. It’s also a really buys time work-wise. I’ve seen some trees with leaves tipped in red and gold already, and on the one hand I feel like it’s too soon, but on the other hand I can’t wait to see all the beautiful fall colour.

-The (now) 5 year old’s birthday party. By the time we got around to booking a place, the only time slots were two weeks after her birthday. Oh well. I’m hoping to keep it super simple – pizza, cake, snacks, fruit, applesauce pouches, juice, and water. Maybe something for the grown ups to snack on too? The party is from 3p-5pm, so hearty snacks are definitely in order. The venue doesn’t allow balloons, so I’m taking this as an opportunity to eschew decor.

-Reading this book, the sequel to The House in The Cerulean Sea.

I loved The House in The Cerulean Sea so much. Some might accuse it of being a slight bit twee, but it was one of my favorite reads the year that it came out. I got a notification from the library that my hold for this book, its sequel, had come in. I had put a hold on this book the moment I could, even before it was released, but even still, I was surprised that my copy had come in so quickly. I went to the library to pick it up, only to discover that I had accidentally put the audiobook on hold, not the paper book. There was a case of CDs waiting for me on my holds shelf. Oh no. I knew the waitlist for this book would be on the longer side, so I sighed sadly and took the book back to the check out desk and asked if they could take the CDs back and put me on the holds list for the book. The librarian looked up the book.
“You know,” he said, pointing behind me, “This book might be over there on the Lucky Day shelf.” The Lucky Day shelf is for books that you can borrow for just three weeks, with no renewal period.
I walked over, and yes, indeed! There was a brand new shiny copy of the book. I might have squealed with delight as I went to check it out. Next to me at the self check out, a man looked at me knowingly and said, “Isn’t it the best feeling when the exact book you want is on the shelf?”
Yes, yes, it is.

What we ate:
Monday: Olive Garden Vegan Gnocchi Soup. This is one of my favorite soups to make – it’s super easy and vegan! Made ahead since I wasn’t home that night.

Tuesday: Fried fish and green beans. The Husband cooked.

Wednesday: Quinoa Black Bean and Mango Salad from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. I should get this cookbook out from the library again – it has lots of easy vegan recipes. I made this ahead of time since again, I had to work that night.

Thursday: Baked chicken breasts and steamed green beans. The 12 year old had wanted to make dinner (Cornflake chicken), but she ended up being sick, so I threw this meal together.

Friday: Pizza (ordered from a new to us place that does Detroit style pizza. It was tasty, but apparently getting there is tricky because it involved going into a residential complex.) and movie (Hotel Transylvania. Not one that I need to watch again.)

Saturday: Silver Diner on the way home from the airport. I got the liver and onions.

Sunday: We celebrated the 4–> 5 year old’s birthday early because I had to work on her actual birthday. She got to pick the dinner and she chose Dino chicken nuggets, green beans, and tater tots. And of course the cake.

She did take the Elsa dress off before we had cake. She’s really sensible like that.

Stage Management Skills in Real Life: Letting them tie their own apron strings

The apron collection in our kitchen.

I occasionally write about ways that aspects of my job intersects with my life. People often expect me to be some kind of organizational guru because I’m a stage manager, but truth… I don’t think I am. It’s a little chicken and egg for me. Am I a good stage manager because I have good organizational skills or did I learn good organizational skills because I became a stage manager. I think a lot of it is the latter. I have to work really hard to not seem like a professional mess, and occasionally those skills in the workplace are useful in the rest of life.

Anyhow, this one isn’t actually a stage management skill, but more a mind blowing tip turned life advice I got once while on the job.

I mentioned a few weeks ago about attending a retirement party of a dear dear colleague who was retiring after thirty plus years at my company. She has taught me so much in the twenty years I’ve known her. One of my favorite turns of phrases comes from her, “Managing expectations.” I’d never heard anyone else say that until she came into rehearsal one days and said to the director, “I need to manage you expectations on what will be ready the first time you rehearse onstage.” What a gentle, level headed, non-panic inducing way of saying, “We’re behind in our work and there are things that won’t be ready.”

But this tidbit came from seven or eight years ago, we were working on a production of The Marriage of Figaro. There was a scene where the maid Susanna had to take her apron off. She starts the scene with her apron on, so at the top of every rehearsal, I would help her into her rehearsal skirt then tie the apron on her since the bow was in the back. Some days, during the scene, the apron would come right off, and some days it would be a tangled mess and the singer would get frustrated as she tried to sing and fumble with apron strings.

One day, my colleague M was watching rehearsal, and saw the singer struggle with untying the apron strings. At a pause in rehearsal she came up to me and the singer and suggested to the singer, “Why don’t you tie the apron on yourself. “

The singer did so.

Then M said, “Reach around and untie it.”

And then magically, the singer was able to reach around an with one tug smoothly untie the apron.

Afterwards, M said to me, “If you let them tie their own apron strings, they’ll know which tail to grab to untie it. When you tie it for them, the strings sit differently from what they expect and they’ll get tangled.”

It was such a clear and simple thing, but I had never thought about it before. Trust the lady who has spent forty years tying apron strings to point this out to me. By letting someone get into something themselves, they will be able to see (or feel) more clearly how to get out of it. (I mean there are exceptions, of course. Corsets, for one.) It’s similar to another piece of advice from a mentor early in my stage management days, “Never hand a singer their prop. teach them where the prop table is, otherwise you’ll spend all your time handing people props.”

It was hard advice for me to internalize – as a stage manager, I feel like I should help people. I want to make life as easy for them as possible, remove obstacles, give them as little to do so they can just concentrate on the work they do onstage. But I’m realizing it’s more work and potentially frustration- for me, for the crew, for the singer themselves – when they get everything handed to them without learning the ropes (apron strings?) themselves. They need to be able to find the prop table back stage and the correct apron string when it comes time to take the apron off.

I think about M’s words often in my non-work life, too – particularly with my kids. I turn around in my head the difference between doing something for my kids and letting them discover something for themselves. Of letting them climb to the top of the play structure, discovering where each foothold is, rather than giving them a boost and bypassing those footholds. Because those are the same foothold that they need to know to climb back down. If they don’t find them going up, will they be able to find them coming back down? Or so many other things – if they put away the dishes, they’ll know where to find them later; same thing with backpacks and bike helmets and homework and friendships – though, we are still working on all these ones, truth be told. But you know, you can’t rescue everyone. And sometimes inserting yourself just mucks things up even more.

So as as a tribute to the wonderful M on her retirement, I am passing along her wise wise words to the world – “Let people tie their own apron strings.”

Have you ever received advice from a work colleague that’s stuck with you?

Weekly recap + what we ate: September Stressors

Declutter-palooza continues. This past weekend it was the toy/play room. Toy room before:

After:

It’s still pretty bad, but at least you can see the floor!

Decluttering the toy room felt a lot harder than the attic. I think partly because the toy room needs to become a hybrid toy room/guest room/office/ craft room, we’re going to have to really think about functionality and efficiency of space. Also a lot of the toys have sentimental value. The tabletop kitchen was something the prop crew head at one of my summer gigs helped me make one summer when the oldest kid was two or three. A lot of the trucks were from the Husband’s childhood. The Barbie apartment was a much beloved toy and even though it’s missing the balcony and is probably a safety hazard of exposed screws, the 12 year old does not want to get rid of it.

The black bin is full of toys to donate or Freecycle, so that will get moved out. We threw out two bags of toys but it was mostly small plastic trinkets and things that were broken or missing pieces. A lot of the bigger items and sets still remain. This is my struggle with the toy room – most of the stuff is the bigger things. We can throw out all the small plastic party favors and fidget toys and broken Barbies, but that barely makes a dent.

What I think is still in the “keep pile”:
-Wooden Train Track set
– Magnaformers
-Wooden blocks
-A box of matchbox cars and similar small vehicles
-Trucks, School bus, recycle truck, Jumbo jet, space ship, remote control car
-box of puzzles.
-Domino set – where you can set up dominos to topple.
-A box of stuffed animals
-Play shopping cart and dolls
-Play grocery stand
-Two doll houses and furniture (why two?? They’re both from the Husband’s childhood)
-a container of figurines
-the aforementioned play kitchen, food, pots and pans
-Nugget play cushions
-Dress up clothes. So many dress up clothes.
-Lincoln Logs. Genuine wooden ones from the Husband’s childhood.
-Lego set and Barbie paraphernalia, but this will go into the 12 year old’s room eventually so I don’t have to decide what to do with it.
-Four stomp cars.

On the “TBD” pile:
-Fort play cushions. These are huge cushions you can use to build forts. We bought it as part of a Kickstarter. Only the thing got recalled because there are magnets that hold the cushions together and the magnets can fall out. But I figure if I can take the magnets out, we can still use the cushions. But I can’t find my seam ripper. So TBD on that.

All in all, I’m finding this decluttering process rather stressful. Not just the decluttering, but also the figuring out of new systems, trying to set a baseline clean level that can be easily achieved. It’s the kind of thing where I can’t really see right now where the solutions are. So even though I think we’ve whittled down the toys by a lot, the room still looks really cluttered and messy.

I felt a lot of latent stressors percolating last week. Just a general feeling of overwhelm and restlessness. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an anxious person, but I did have some moments of feeling absolutely swamped. Things that were simmering in my stress cauldron last week:

-Mom guilt – signing my kids up for too many extracurriculars. Originally we had Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday without activities, but then opportunities came up and now we have activities on Wednesday and later in October Tuesday too. Each kid is doing at least three activities. Is it too much?

-Mom guilt – signing my kids up for not enough extra extracurriculars. And on the flip side, I’m getting notices of other things the kids could take part in, and I know that they are things that the kids would enjoy and I wonder, are they missing out?

– Not keeping track of all the different sign ups and what not. This is sort of related to the above, but there are a couple of things that we missed out on because I just couldn’t get my head together to do the sign ups or submit medical forms. And I keep double booking things and missing meetings. And it just makes me feel like things are falling through the cracks.

-Starting back at work and not quite knowing everything that’s going on. I have this feeling in the back of my mind that I’m missing something. I’m just going to have to fake it until I figure out what’s going on.

-Are we going to have a good time in Malaysia this winter? It’s an awful lot of money to spend to not have a good trip.

-WhatsApp group insecurities. So there’s a WhatsApp group for the 4 year old’s pre-school class. When my friend first added me, I thought it would be a nice way to get to know other parents. I even thought I’d reach out and invite people over for a happy hour since we live very close to the school. BUT then people started posting pictures and “Thanks for having us!” and “What a great time!” and “Thanks for coming!” messages for a party that my kid was not invited to. And I got really upset about it. I mean if you are going to a party that not every kid in the class was invited to, then maybe don’t mention it on the WhatsApp group? And then someone mentioned getting drinks on another person’s porch and I just started to feel very – well I’d say “high school” but I didn’t go through this in high school, so not sure what to call this feeling of being left out. And really, I’m probably reading too much into it – no one is being malicious or mean or anything. Just a little exclusive and insensitive about who all might be on the group. What I really want to do is to drop a message introducing myself, and ask if other people could do the same since most of the phone numbers in the group are unfamiliar to me. But… there are 40 names on the chain, so asking for introductions seems a little impractical. I was also reading an article last week about how people are more likely to connect during the beginning stages of an activity, and it’s made me realized that I feel like I’ve missed the boat on making friends within this WhatsApp group. Anyhow, I kind of need to get over my feelings about this list. This is not something that I need to spend mental energy on.

And then there is the things that are perpetually on my list of stressors – namely my ancient car and the window treatments for the living room. I feel like around last year at this time I wrote a post about things making me stressed- so maybe it’s just September that brings it on? I have to remind myself either I will fix some of these issues and they will stop stressing me out, or I will just decide they aren’t worth the real estate they are taking up in my head and leave things to resolve themselves.

Well, on the other hand – some fun things that happened last week.
-I had one of my supertitle gigs (more on that below!), and on my dinner break got to walk around the performing arts center and see some beautiful evening sky and listen to some music.

-We started weekend activities. One child had a soccer game on Saturday. On Sunday there was the usual Agility class for the 4 year old, and then skating for the the 4 and 7 year old. Since the skating lessons are back to back time slots, I will take the kid who is not in a lesson to public skate and then switch. Skating is so much fun!

-Friendship Picnic. After skating on Sunday, we had to have lunch, and I remembered that the County was having a Friendship Picnic at a nearby park where they would be serving free lunch. The shuttle to the picnic left from the ice rink parking lot, so I figured we could go check out the picnic.
I was so impressed by the whole affair! The Friendship Picnic has been going on for ten years and I never went because I always thought it would be a madhouse. Surely, anything that promised free food and bounce houses was going to be chaotic, and I don’t like being in chaotic crowds. But the whole thing was actually really well organized. When you arrived, if you wanted lunch, you picked up a wristband for a lunch option – the choices were vegetarian/kosher, Halal, and vegan, and there were wristbands for ice cream. There were also multiple coolers full of bottled water all over for people to grab. I picked the vegetarian/kosher option and we went to the tent that matched our wristband and got falafel in pita with fries. It was so delicious – the pita in particular was fluffy and not dry. The kids (I only had the two younger ones with me) didn’t eat much of their falafel, but they ate the fries. Oh well.
We sat in the shade and ate our lunch while listening to some county officials give speeches and when that was over, a band started playing music. When the kids were done eating, we went to the bounce houses. The 7 year old in particular loved this basketball connect four game and spent a while at it. When the kids got tired of the bounce houses, they went to the playground. All in all it was a lovely event. I’ll have to remember to mark my calendar for the Friendship Picnic next year.

-An interesting comment – I had posted a few weeks ago about how my biracial kids were the norm not the exception at school these days. I often think, with my kids, how important it is to see themselves reflected in mainstream media. I remember growing up in a small city in Canada where there were only a handful of Asian families. In my K-8 elementary school, our family and one other family from India were the only non-white families. There were no Black families. I remember wanting to be blond when I was a child; I thought you had to be blond to be pretty because that was what was around me and what I saw in the mainstream media. Anyhow, I was musing in that post about how long we’ve come – how my kids don’t have to be the only half-Asian kids in their class and how they see so much more diversity in their lives than I did growing up. And then we were watching a trailer for the first Transformers movie and the 12 year old sees Megan Fox on the screen and suddenly exclaims, “She’s really hot. And she’s not blond! Mom, she has dark hair like me and she’s so pretty!” And I didn’t know whether to feel thankful/happy that my 12 year old realizes that she didn’t have to be blond to be pretty, or to be sad that she ever even felt that way.

-Fun contrasting picture – I feel like this is the modern day equivalent to throwing everything in the dishwasher to hide the mess when guests come over – I had to jump on a work call one day while at home and I frantically pushed everything to one end of the dining room table to make room for my computer at the other end. This is what you saw on my screen:

This is what was behind the computer:

I’m not one to have a super curated zoom background for sure, but I’m going to at least pretend that my house is not a disaster.

Grateful For:
-Middle School Administrators. The 12 year old had an incident in school – not my story to tell, but even though I’m a pretty hands off parent, it was something I felt had to be addressed by the teacher. So I wrote an email to the teacher and the next morning, the Assistant Principal called me and told me the matter had been forwarded to him and the issue had been addressed. He was patient and told me what he did on his end and answered all my questions. I’m so grateful for the quick and compassionate response. I feel like middle schoolers can be so mercurial and confusing to deal with as they try to figure out how to navigate independence and making good choices – I’m so thankful for the administrators and teachers who are there to support tweens and their parents.

-Being able to print at the Library. We don’t have a printer at home. Usually when I need to print something the Husband or I will do it at work, but neither of us were at work the day I needed to submit medical forms for the 12 year old to join the cross country team at school. So I went to the library, loaded money on my library card and printed the forms off there. It was $1.50 for ten pages and very easy to do. while at the library, I looked at all the people working at the four rows of public computers and I thought of all the people who don’t have internet access at home and who need to go online for whatever reason – it seems like so many things have to be done online these days. What a wonderful thing the library is!

-My dentist and having dental insurance. I had a dentist appointment for a cleaning. It’s been over a year since my last cleaning, but I had to cancel my last appointment and the next availability was three months away, so it got away from me. I love my dentist and hygienist. They are nice, funny, they remember me. The aren’t in my insurance network, but they submit the paperwork to get everything reimbursed. And now my teeth feel smooth and clean!

-Good diction and imslp.com. Okay – this will be one of those “in the weeds” work type things, so apologies if it’s boring or if don’t explain it very well, but .. I had a supertitle gig for a voice recital last week. The first piece on the program was Franz Liszt’s Three Songs on Petrarch Sonnets. So the recital starts, the pianist starts playing and I’m following along in my music so that I can bring up the right translation slides at the right time to coincide with the singing. And suddenly I don’t quite know what is going on, because I can’t seem to follow the music. I think, maybe I can’t hear the pianist that well since I’m sitting in a booth at the back of the theatre? Maybe it’s because she’s playing too quietly? Maybe I’ve forgotten how to read music? Then the singer starts singing and it is definitely not what is on the page in front of me. The words are correct, but not the notes. At this point, I’m starting to panic a little bit because I’m realizing that I don’t have the right music in front of me. Which is concerning because I now don’t know when to advance the slides to the next bit of text since I don’t know when the next sung line is coming. So with one hand, I keep trying to keep the slides going to correspond to the words coming out of the singer’s mouth, with my other hand, I get out my phone and google “Liszt Petrarch songs”. And…
Did you know that Franz Liszt wrote two sets of songs based on the sonnets of Petrarch?
And I had the music for the wrong set in front of me.
Luckily the words are the same, and the singer has very clear diction, so I could keep up with the titles, though they were each a half beat late so that I could figure out which line he was on at any given time. And on my phone, I was able to go to this amazing website IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project, where they have legions of scores that are in the public domain) and pull up the right score and by the middle of the second song I was back on track – looking at the right music on my phone, while looking at the slide translations and numbers on my computer and iPad as the singer sang the set. So… I am grateful that the singer had good diction so I could follow the words when I couldn’t follow the music, and I’m grateful for imslp that i could quickly find the music. Isn’t the internet amazing?

Looking Forward To:

-My parents are coming for a visit!

– Baking a cake! The 4 year old turns five next week and I’m going to bake her a cake. She has also requested dino chicken nuggets for dinner. I need to find those.

-I mentioned this book in my books post, and it’s so much fun I can’t wait to read it every day. Sometimes I feel like my life is a suburban mom cliche and this novel plays into those cliches hilariously. There is a line about Old Navy Pixie Pants that made me snort with laughter.

What We Ate:

Monday: Zucchini, tofu and udon by Hetty Lui McKinnon from New York Times Cooking. Super easy -stir fry crumbled tofu, add sliced zucchini and garlic, add cooked udon noodles and a miso butter sauce. Grind lots of pepper over it. The 7 year old really loved this. vegan because I used olive oil instead of butter for the sauce.

Tuesday: Chicken with Apples and Curry from Dinner a Love Story. The flavors were good, but I have never been able to cook chicken breasts without the bieng stringy and tough. Tips?

Wednesday: Sandwiches from the Deli. The 7 year old had soccer practice at 6pm and we’re still trying to figure out how best to handle dinner on those days.

Thursday: Mac n Cheese, Waffles, and green beans. The Husband cooked and he had leftover waffles which we could have for breakfast, which is one of my favorite parts about making waffles. I worked this night and had a salad from the work Canteen.

Friday: Pizza (Store bought, Detroit style), and Hotel Transylvania. This movie did not do anything for me.

Saturday: We had dinner at a friend’s house – he smoked some meat and made some amazing baked beans. Apple pie for dessert.

Sunday: Eggs and leftovers. There was a Bears game on this night which we were planning to watch. At some point I looked at the Husband and said, “What are we going to feed the kids for dinner?” And he said, “I was going to make popcorn.” I must have given him a disapproving wife look because he then said, “I’ll make some eggs.”

How was your week? Does your zoom background belie the true chaos of your home? What were your three favorite toys growing up?

Books Read – August 2024

I feel like I read a lot of books in the first few weeks of August and then really slowed down for the next little bit. Eight books read in August.

The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham – This novel was on a list by Alexis Hall of romance novels that he likes. The Rakess takes the trope of the rake who is saved by a virtuous and upstanding woman and gender flips it. The book opens with the female protagonist, Seraphina Arden, in bed with someone and wondering how long she has to cuddle before she can kick him out. Seraphina embodies all the stereotypical rake behavior that one finds in romance novels – drinking, late night carousing, easy affairs. She meets Adam, a fine upstanding, morally uncorrupt widower with kids. Romance novel type things ensue. I was really intrigued by this premise, but ultimately the characters still felt like romance novel cliches with romance novel cliche trauma to justify the way they behave, and the writing was somewhat stolid and awkward. There are some intriguing side characters and progressive ideas about social reform, but ultimately everything was just kind of flat for me.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – for Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club. Thank you to Engie for organizing! I really liked a lot of this book, but I think the book kind of lost me with the whole “Lock Father in the Tower” bit and the resolution of the novel was kind of madcap. I also didn’t love the framing device of the journal – it seemed a little precious for my tastes. I did like the whimsy, the sense of time and young adulthood, the fantasy of being genteelly poor, Topaz – Topaz was great. So I put this book under, “Glad I read it, now can I watch the movie?”

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – When I was watching trailers for I Capture the Castle, youTube also brought up trailers for a 2020 movie version of Rebecca that came out on Netflix, and that sent me down a rabbit hole. You know, Rebecca, that novel about the young plain something who gets swept off her feet by a much older man and then goes to live in his manor estate and is haunted by the memory of his first wife. I don’t have Netflix so I couldn’t watch the movie, but I was transfixed by the clips I saw online. Then I decided to re-read the book. I remember reading Rebecca when I was in seventh grade and thinking it was the best book ever. I don’t know what it is with me thinking that lying manipulative men were romantic when I was a pre-teen/teen. (See: my obsession with Jane Eyre.) I thought it still held up as a creepy disturbing suspense novel, but I find it creepy and disturbing for different reasons now.

The Turnout by Megan Abbott – This is a suspense/thriller about sisters Dara and Marie Duront who run a ballet school along side Dara’s husband Charlie, a former pupil of their mother’s. There is a fire and a burly contractor comes to fix the damage, inserting himself into their lives and throwing off the delicate balance of the trio’s dynamic. All this against the backdrop of the annual Nutcracker production, which in itself is a high pressure situation. The novel is twisty and twisted as plot elements get revealed and unraveled. It’s not a genre I read much, but stories set in the performing arts world always attract me and I thought the writing was really spare and direct. It’s a page-turner for sure, and I liked the backstage glimpses, but ultimately, I was reminded that I don’t usually read suspense novels because I don’t like being tense all the time, waiting for (pointe) shoes to drop.

So Late in the Day: Stories of Men and Women by Claire Keegan – This is a trio of short stories, each in their own way about loneliness and inability to connect with people. I’d read Keegan’s Foster, and like that book, the writing in these stories is neat and unfussy, but also a little hard for me to grasp – things dance on the surface and I don’t ever feel like I know what is going on. I kind of feel like this is why people like Keegan’s writing so much – there is something very simple about it, but also it hides untold depths. I think what I liked about Foster, more than these stories, was that Foster had moments of genuine connection – in the stories in So Late in the Day, everyone just seems to want to be alone.

Blankets by Craig Thompson – autobiographical graphic novel about Thompson’s abusive sad childhood growing up in an Evangelical church, his struggle with religion, and his relationships with his family and his first love. So my first thought on reading this book was, “What a lot of work it takes to write a graphic novel!” Seriously, this book was like three inches thick and took me so long to read because it was to heavy to take anywhere. So there’s always a bit of awe and respect for the process behind a graphic novel and the skill involved to write, draw, and pace a story. The actual book itself was fine. It was kind of hard for me to get over the fact that even though his parents are strict Christians, 16 year old Craig was allowed to go visit his “girlfriend” Raina (the relationship was a little undefined) a couple hours away, and stay with her family for a week. I don’t know – maybe I had a super sheltered childhood, but that definitely wouldn’t have been something I was allowed to do. This book is often billed as a great romance, and I didn’t find it particularly romantic because Raina didn’t seem like a fully fleshed out character. The parts that were most effective for me were the parts about family and looking out for each other and letting them go. And the artwork was beautiful – the kind of stuff where I felt like I would never really see all there is to see in one picture because there was so much detail.

Drive your Plows over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones – I picked this book up from a Little Free Library, can’t remember why. Maybe I thought I should read some translated fiction by a Nobel Prize winner. I have to admit it took me while to get into this book, but then by the end, when it turned into a full fledged murder mystery, I was like, “Whoa, where did that come from??” It was like the book started out as something really cerebral and then in the last third switched genres on me. It took me several months to read this book, but I wish I had read this book in a more concentrated manner because by the time I got to the murder mystery reveal, I’d forgotten what had happened in the first half of the book and had to go back an re-read it. The main character, Janina, is a recluse in a Polish village who studies Blake and astronomy and teaches kids English and loves animals. She doesn’t use people’s names, instead referring to them by outstanding characteristics. People die. She gets involved in a meandering kind of way while interacting with other misfits. This book takes place in winter and the cold just comes off the page. All in all, I think this is book is way more accessible than I realized at first.

Funny Story by Emily Henry read by Julia Whelan: I hadn’t read any Emily Henry before, and I thought the premise of this one was cute – after Daphne’s fiancé runs aways with Miles’ girlfriend, Daphne and Miles move in together since she needs a place to live and he needs a new roommate. I listened to the audiobook. Also Julia Whelan. I really believe that Whelan can make any book absolutely riveting. So really, who knows if I liked this book or not! Actually I did like a lot of it – I thought the protagonists were adorable and liked the way female friendships developed in the book. There was some pretty typical romance novel BIG MISUNDERSTANDINGS and roadblocks, stuff that felt a little contrived, to be honest. Stuff of the, “Just pick up your phone!” nature. But I didn’t mind it. Over all there were several parts where I laughed out loud while driving, and both the leads were just so nice and earnest that I was totally rooting for them.

On my Nightstand – These books have all been in progress from my last book post – clearly September has been a slow month for reading.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker- Last chapter! Charlotte’s final book is published posthumously.

You Dream of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue – I really want to just sit down and read this book in one sitting because the chapters are short and I keep losing the narrative thread and forgetting who the characters are. But each chapter is really interesting – I just have no idea how the whole book is tied together.

The History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabell Hirsch- latest chapters: The dance card, Tupperware, the Bikini, Greta Garbo’s Ballpoint pen.

It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant – Overworked mom Mavis is guilted into heading the PTA’s new DEI committee. Then the principal goes missing. I’m only one chapter in, but this book is the lighthearted comedy I need right now.

Weekly recap + what we ate: September 2024 aspirations and Declutter-palooza update

First weekend of Declutter-palooza happened!

Here is the Attic BEFORE:

No attic is complete with out a naked Cabbage Patch Doll!

Here is the Attic currently:

Still lots of stuff, but a lot less!

We (I) tried to use the “No Mess Declutter method” which is, honestly one of those things like “time blocking” where I think… well isn’t that just how people do things anyway? (How is “dedicate blocks of time to work on each task” revolutionary? It totally seems like a productivity bro trying to sell something people (women) have been doing for years…) Anyhow the method is – pick up one thing. Decide if it goes in trash, donate, or has another home in the house. If it’s the two former choices, put it in the correct pile. If it’s the last choice, go put it in that better place. Come back. Pick up another object. Rinse. Repeat. I kind of wanted to avoid taking everything out of the attic and then having it take over the house while we dealt with it. So this method seemed to make sense. It wasn’t perfect – there are definitely meandering piles of things around the house that we are still thinking about – but at least you can walk from one end of the attic to another now.

A lot of our stuff just got moved to a better space in the house, but a lot of it legit left the house. I took five bags of clothes to Goodwill, we put a bunch of stuff out for bulk trash pick up, I took the toddler bed, a stroller, and some more clothes to an organization (A Wider Circle) that helps people furnish their homes. They also have started taking baby supplies and clothes, so any clothes smaller than a size 3 went to Wider Circle. I learned that they also take car seats so three of our four car seats are going there next week too.

Things we got rid of that I’m sad about:
-The stroller. We had a fancy stroller – an UppaBaby Vista which we got on super discount because it was the floor model at Buy Buy Baby. The Husband really loved this stroller. It got us through three kids and lasted ten years before the frame broke. It’s been to England. It’s been all over the country. It’s been pushed down stairs. One summer, in the middle of a trip to Dutch Wonderland, the frame just broke. The youngest was almost three at the time and that was when we stopped using strollers.
-The twin mattress. It was a crappy mattress, but I feel like maybe I should have tried to take it to Wider Circle rather than leave it for bulk pick up.
– And I can’t think of anything else really. Maybe a couple items of baby clothes? Of course there are things that we kept for sentimental reasons that we aren’t quite ready to move out of the house yet. But it’s a process, right?

One thing that felt really cathartic to toss:
-breastmilk containers. I had an entire 18 gallon bin full of breastmilk containers and bottles. Why???? I haven’t pumped in three years. I think in my mind I’d find some use for all those teeny tiny bottles. Hah. I put them all in recycling. Bonus: I got an 18 gallon bin back!

Things I’m a little perplexed about, but which will probably just get thrown in the trash:
-The stroller attachments – so we put the broken stroller out on the curbe, but we still have all the attachments – the car seat frame, the rumble seat, the scooter board, the bassinet. Most of the this stuff I scoured craigslist (remember that… does anyone use craigslist anymore?) to get. Only we have a Vista v. 1, which they don’t make anymore so our attachments won’t fit current Vista stroller. I’m going to email UppaBaby and see if there is any way these attachments are still useful. I makes me a little sad to just junk it because the attachments weren’t actually used all that much.
-Baby bottles. What to do with all these? Do they even sell nipples for these anymore? I might put them on Freecycle to see if anyone wants them. Also this process has hammered home to me how much plastic is involved in having a baby.

One thing that was destined for the trash until a child found it:
-my father in law’s briefcase. The 7 year old found it and loves it. He keeps his nerf gun and light saber in it, like some kind of toy mafia gangster or something.

Next stop – the Toy Room….

Picture for accountability

The toy room will definitely be harder because everything in it has some kind of sentimental value for someone. We had thought about doing it without the kids, but I feel like that would some kind of betrayal of the kids’ trust. So we will do it together. Or try.

In other musings – turn of the calendar page to a new month, brings reflection and aspirations.

Side note – I really liked this article about the three types of “ritual days” one should incorporate into their month:
-“Get your ducks in a row” day to take care of life admin tasks
-“Idle Hands” day without any plans or commitments to unplug and rest and refresh.
-“Monthly Recap of the Mind” day to reflect on the last month and plan for anything upcoming. I feel like I take time to do this already, but I could be more mindful about it.
I feel like I have moments of each of those days, sometimes all in one day. But I like the idea of purposefully setting dates for each of those things in the calendar and letting each task take the focus for one day (or even 4-8 hours of one day.)

August highlights:
– Working on a wonderful show. I’m terrible at lying and when people ask me how a show went, sometimes I give a half grin and say, “It was fiiiiiiiine….” And then you know it was kind of a shit show. BUT – people have been asking me about this last show I worked on and I immediately light up and say, “It was great, really, really great.” And I mean it.
– Camping with the two younger kids.
-Solo weekend when I went hiking with a friend and to the Cassatt exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
-meeting up with a friend whom I haven’t seen for five or six years at that Cassatt exhibit.
-First day of School!
-Visit from my mom and my aunt.
-Booking medical check ups and finding out that my uterii are fine.
-Peach Truck and other trips to the farmers market for fresh produce. (note to self – do more of this next summer)

August Low Lights:
-The 4 year old not getting into kindergarten. Made especially tough to swallow by the tuition increase at her daycare.
-Not having time to exercise – I only ran 7 times the whole month.
-hemorrhaging money a little bit for back to school things and activities.

September Aspirations – I realize looking back on August’s list that many of these things were on August’s list as well.
Home/Family Life:
-Declutter-palooza. See above.
– Settle into new patterns for the school year. Try to establish some good habits and routines.
– Get rid of my car. Clearly I’m making no progress on this since it shows up on this list every month. Micro goal – fill our the paperwork to donate the car to the high school trade program.
-Window treatments for the living room. Ditto above. Micro goal: Schedule appointment with the window people.
– Do some planning for a day trip to take while in Kuala Lumpur. (I’m feeling a little like we chose Kuala Lumpur too hastily because the parts of Malaysia that people say are worth visiting are outside of Kuala Lumpur, but with only four days, it might be too much for us to try to arrange to visit those places and get in the relaxing time that we want. But then part of me feels like any foreign country is worth seeing, right? I don’t really understand when people say “such and such place isn’t worth visiting.” It sounds so snobbish. The world is bigger than just the top ten sights, right?)
-Plan the 4 year old’s birthday party. (The Husband actually has booked the place already – I just have to make the invite and plan the food.)
-Make Cheesy bread. When we were visiting my friend in August, she made these really easy gluten-free cheesy buns, which she had learned about on her trip to Brazil. They were delicious. Fall is coming – I want to do more baking!
– make 2 vegan dinners a week.
-Figure out Hallowe’en costumes. October will be super busy for me, so I want to get this settled as soon as possible. So far, the 7 year old wants to wear his Darth Vader costume again and the 4 year old wants to be a fairy. Not sure about the 12 year old. Is 12 too old to go trick or treating?
-Schedule dentist appointments for the kids.
-Hike now that the weather is starting to cool off a little maybe I can convince the family to go for a hike. If not, maybe I can go on my own.
-Ride the Metro! Our metro station has re-opened after being closed all summer.

Me:
– 10 minutes of yoga or strength exercises 5/7 days a week.
– run 3/7 days a week
– Paint and send two cards.
– Blog – goal for 8 posts this month.
– Make time to journal and read in the morning.
-Schedule eye doctor appointment.
-To buy – purse (still), running/sports bras (I currently have three, but I only do laundry every two weeks, so I need more sports bras if I’m to run 3X a week.), a Fall jacket that isn’t my raincoat.
-see my friend K.
-Museum – maybe not this month, but writing it down so I don’t forget – there’s an exhibit on Impressionism at the National Gallery of Art until January. I want to make sure to go see it. There’s also a couple exhibits at the Freer and Sackler Museums (The Smithsonian’s Asian Art Collections) that look interesting too. There’s also a Lego exhibit at the Building Museum that would be fun with the kids.

Work:
-move desks at work.
-put all my contracted work dates into the calendar.
-update the production assistant guidebook.

Amazing Food Combination Discovery:
A little while ago, I wrote about discovering these chocolate quinoa crisps at Costco. Well, last week, I just made them better but spreading peanut butter on them. AMAZING. You’re welcome.

Grateful For:
-Cooler weather. Of course I wrote that then we got a row of 80 degree days. The mornings have been cooler at least. I’m excited for fall weather!

-Co-worker M who retired last week. She’s been at the Opera twice as longa s I’ve been there and has been so inspirational to me. She can be firm and gracious at the same time, and always makes sure that everyone is doing okay. There was a farewell party for her at work last week. I hate saying good-bye to people, but I had to tell her how amazing she has been. And she said the kindest thing to me – “You are proof that if you do consistent good work, you can get to the top of your department.” That almost made me cry. She also said she feels like the stage management department is a lot calmer since I took over. I don’t know that that is my doing, but I was so touched that she said that. I made her a card, because I thought she deserved a bouquet of flowers:

I’m really happy with how that purple ribbon turned out. That dark green Venus fly trap-ish leaf at the top, though… what even is that?

-Free dances and a lovely Sunday afternoon. We took the family to a Barn Dance last weekend at Glen Echo park. These are family friendly dances put on by the same group that organizes contra dances. (The Husband and I met at a contra dance at this same park.) Glen Echo is a former amusement park that is now kind of an arts/theatre/music/social dance venue. The Barn Dance takes place in the former Bumper Car Pavilion and it was free. There was a caller, live music and easy social dances. The kids all danced at least two dances and afterwards we went for a carousel ride ($2/ride or $5 to ride all day – one of the best deals in town!). Afterwards we went for ice cream at a new-to-me creamery. I had a scoop of the Guava ice cream and a scoop of the Old Bay Caramel. They were both really really really good. I was skeptical about the Old Bay Caramel, but if you like spice, savory, and sweet all in one – and I do – this might be right up your alley.

Looking Forward To:

-Public transportation. Like I mentioned above, our metro stop was closed all summer, and it has now re-opened. I’m looking forward to taking it places. I even took it to work once last week.

Signs outside the metro station.

-Getting back to work. I’m feeling a little fractured right now – I’m starting to go to work meetings even though rehearsals don’t start for two weeks, so I know enough to know just how much I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to getting back in the swing of things and setting a more regular schedule.

-Watching this documentary:

It’s been out for a while, but I haven’t gotten a chance to watch it yet, so I’m putting it on the list. Drama and backstage machinations at a Ren Faire!!!! I’m there for it.

What We Ate:
Monday: Grilled Cheese and Apples. This was the day from the last post, when we went to the Renaissance Festival. We got home so late that no one felt like cooking, so we just had something super simple for dinner.

Tuesday: Cheesy Green Chili Bean Bake, from NY Times Cooking. I was looking for a way to used up some poblano peppers I had. This was really tasty. I used black beans instead of pinto because that’s what I had. The 7 year old, when I told him we were having Cheesy beans for dinner opted to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But then half way through dinner, he said, “I think I’ll try the cheesy beans.” and he did and he said, “These are good! You didn’t tell me they would be good!” Sigh. (I made cornbread to go with it, but it wasn’t done in time so we just ate it with tortillas)

Wednesday – Eggplant and pork stir fry – the Husband cooked.

Thursday: Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric, though it’s more of a curry. This was also very tasty and it used a bunch of kale. Would make again. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza (take out – tasty but the restaurant is slow) and Glee.

Saturday: Eggs/Leftovers. This was Declutter-palooza day. I kind of forgot to feed the kids this day -the Husband threw together some eggs for them. Thank goodness.

Sunday: Kale pesto and gnocchi (from frozen) and leftover sausage. This was another day where we didn’t have anything planned but I had a little bit of kale leftover from Thursday’s chickpea stew. I’d never made kale pesto before, and was skeptical that the kids would like it, but they did!

How is your week? What have you thrown out lately? How old is too old for Trick or Treating?


Twenty Hats I’ve Worn – a post for NGS

A few months ago, when Engie asked me to write a guest post for her blog to help celebrate her twenty years as a blogger, I had so many ideas. Ultimately I chose to write about opera because it’s something I know very well, but this other idea kept knocking around in my head, percolating. So I thought, during this her blogiversary month, what better way to pay tribute to Engie than to write one more post in her honor – a post all about HATS!

I am an unabashed hat person. I love wearing hats. I am not particularly stylish in most of my wardrobe, but I do like the whimsy of wearing a hat. I used to be a scarf person, but those tend to get in the way when I’m working. These days, I don’t feel like my outfit is complete unless I have a hat on. I like how it can complete a basic or spare look. I like how a hat can cover up my hair when I’m having a bad hair day. I like how a hat can protect me from the sun in the summer and the cold in the winter. I like how hats are slightly out of fashion, so it’s a pretty easy way for me to have a unique fashion quirk. Often my hats are what people remember about me. I once was working with a director for the umpteenth time, and on the first day of rehearsal, I ran into them as we were walking down the hall to rehearsal, and they looked at me blankly at first then they got a light of “aha!” in their eyes. “I didn’t recognize you without a hat!” they said. Seriously – I’ve worked with director at least once every year or two for fifteen years.

Then there was the director who forbade me to wear hats in rehearsal. “It makes me feel as if you are ready to pick up and leave,” he said. He was a horrid troll of a man and believe me, I was tempted to many many times.

Imagine how delighted it makes me that Engie looks for hats everywhere – in the wild of life and in the books she reads. So to celebrate her, I’m going to send her an internet flood of hats. Here are twenty hats I’ve worn. (Literally.) I don’t have pictures for all the hats, so you’ll just have to imagine some of them. (Maybe if I get back to my parent’s house I can scan some pictures and update this post). I also had to dig deep into my own shoe boxes of photos to find some of these pictures. I can’t believe I’m about to post college-era photos of me on the internet… Also – how on earth did people take photos and post them on personal blogs (or really any blog) before smartphones? I don’t have a scanner so many of these older pictures are a picture I snapped of the photo. Sorry for the glare. Also- I feel like these pictures make it seem like I’m some kind of international globe trotter, but really it’s just that the majority of pictures I have of myself were taken on vacation over the course of twenty years. I’m pretty sure the Husband has more pictures of me than I do.

Anyhow, here’s the list – 20 (literal) hats I have worn:

1. My dad’s olive green winter toque. I don’t remember this hat, but there are pictures of me as a baby wearing it and it’s freakin’ adorable.

2. White kitty cat hat. When I was a kid, my grandmother (I think) knitted me an adorable winter hat that had cat ears on it. I would always get comments when I wore this hat. Also freakin’ adorable.

3. Blue corduroy cap. When I was in fifth or sixth grade or so, our school participated in a fundraiser for the Canadian Heart Foundation called Jump Rope for Heart. One of the lower level prizes was a blue cap with the Jump Rope for Heart logo on it. I thought this hat was VERY stylish. It might have elevated my baggy sweatshirt and comfy pants look of my pre-teen years.

4. Straw hat with red flowers. One of the first hats I had as a “grown up”, this hat came with me on many adventures. I got this hat in college and wore it until it was in shreds.

My dad and I hiking in Taiwan. You can see a hole already in the brim of the hat.

5. Straw hat with lace band. I bought this hat in Taiwan, when I went after graduating from college. I bought it at a very fancy Taiwanese department store and it felt very grown up to have bought it. I once left this hat in a college dorm while on a Glee Club tour in Puerto Rico. I arrived at the airport, realized I didn’t have the hat, and all on my own took a cab back to the campus to get this hat back. I had never taken a cab on my own before in my life, and I didn’t have enough money to give the driver a tip. Oh I felt so very very un-adult at in that moment. But I got my hat back.

With my friend on that Puerto Rico Glee Club tour.

6. Dark blue Scala cotton sun hat. I bought this hat twenty years ago before going on vacation somewhere. I don’t remember where. This hat is still in rotation and now so faded that it is almost grey. It’s actually a very popular hat – I still see it on people all the time – so I could replace it, even though it’s been at least 15 years since I originally bought it.

Hiking.
At Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens which has an amazing water lily display.

7. Electric Blue Sun hat. I got this hat in college. It has also been with me on many adventures and I still wear it. One of the best features of this hat is that it is packable, so I can just squish it up and stuff it in a suitcase.

In my senior year dorm room with my first boyfriend.
At the beach when my oldest was five. Check out the ketchup chips!

8. White floppy hat. I don’t have much memory of this hat, but I do have a picture of it. I do remember that I picked it because I wanted a plain hat that I could add my own ribbon to. In this picture I added a green ribbon.

At the Sutro Baths in San Francisco. Circa early 2000s.

9. Red beret with plaid band. I bought this hat from a hat stand in D.C. when I was in college. When I had one of my first internships out of college, I would wear it every single day, and it became somewhat of a signature item for me. I think at the time I thought it was cool to have a signature item that I wore every day. I think now it might be thought of as quirky, even odd and maybe unhygienic. Also unfortunately about the time I was wearing this red beret every day, was a certain incident with a certain intern who was captured in a famous picture hugging a certain U.S. President while she wore a beret. The beret became kind of a loaded item, but I didn’t quite realize that at the time. I lost this hat on a bus home from New York City, and I’ve been sad about it’s loss ever since.

No clue what’s going on here.
That time I went to Italy on my own for four weeks to try to learn Italian.

10. Green knit beanie. This hat was given to me by a lady who sang in the chorus of a production of Romeo et Juliette on which I was the Assistant Director in 2004. At the time I didn’t love it because it was so obviously a winter hat, but I kept it and twenty years later it’s one of my favorite hats. I love it because it is easy to wear and adds a splash of color to my outfit. I’ve had people I’ve worked with randomly give me hats – some of them are more practical than others. This green knit cap is very practical. The black 1950s hat that requires a lot of hair and hat pins is not.

When the middle child was just a baby!
Herring in Amsterdam.
That little baby a couple years later! One of the more impractical hats I’ve been gifted. People often give me their, “I’m cleaning out my mother’s closet and thought of you” hats. I love them as works of art, but they are not practical to wear.

11. Burgundy velvet bucket hat. I wish I had a picture of this hat. I wore it a lot in my 20s. It was very stylish – I liked a hat with a bit of a brim. But it was also a very hot hat to wear since the lining was made of polyester.

11. Red cap. The Husband bought me this cap early in our relationship. I love the look of it, but it does not stay on my head very well, so I don’t wear it as much as I would like. But I’ve worn it for many family photos and I wore this hat to my wedding.

Our snowy snowy wedding day
Family Photo with my mom – 2012
Family Photo – 2017

12. Red Beret. I don’t think it’s technically a beret, though. This hat was a gift from a friend/ co-worker after I lost the red beret with the plaid band. I still have this one, and wear it frequently since it works well in all seasons. This is the hat that I’m wearing in my headshot. I like red hats.

The youngest when she was just a barely born little squirt.
2016- Japan, at a conveyor belt sushi place in Tokyo.

13. Purple knit hat. My aunt in Taiwan mad this hat for me. There is a matching scarf. It is very warm in the winter.

My grandmother and me at a Taipei food court. She was one of the most elegant ladies I’ve ever known.

14. Checked cap. When I got married in 2019, my friend had a bachelorette party in my honor that she called, “Hats off to Diane!” It involved a bar crawl and everyone bringing me a hat. This checked cap is one that still wear a lot. My friend, L, who gave it for me said, “I figured with the red, white, and black pattern it will go with everything.” She was so right.

The oldest took this picture at the Kogod Courtyard.
Cherry blossom season! I’m including this picture because it also features another of my favorite hats- the middle kid’s White balls hat.

15. Blue cap with plaid lining. This was one of my first caps that I incorporated into my wardrobe. I liked that it’s brim was tilted up to reveal a blue and yellow plaid lining. A costume lady I once worked with loved this hat so much that she made a pattern of it and made one for herself. It was kind of magical to me that someone could just look at an article of clothing and draft a pattern.

16. Azure blue cap. This is another hat that I wear frequently these days. I can’t remember where or when I got this cap, but I was looking for a hat to replace the above mentioned blue cap with plaid lining. I like wearing this hat these days because it matches my shoes. It was kind of a cheap purchase and the brim’s wire tends to bend and warp out of place, so I do have to periodically straighten it.

Another picture of me dining out with the baby middle kid.

17. Tuba Christmas hat. Almost every year since the Husband and I started dating, we go to MerryTuba Christmas. A couple years ago, we decided that Tuba Christmas would be more fun if we wore swag so we got matching Tuba Christmas hats.. I love this hat so much- it’s slightly ridiculous and keeps my head warm.

Me and the youngest at a selfie stand in the park.

18. My bike helmet. One of the most important hats that I wear.

19. My father in law’s sun hat. My father-in-law was a very practical man. Everything he had was for a purpose and served that purpose very very well. He was also a very prudent and frugal man, so if he bought something you knew it was a quality object. This sun hat of his is definitely that.

The middle kid, hiking during COVID times.
At Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

20. Red floppy sun hat. This is my latest addition to my hat collection. I bought it last year on a day to Annapolis with my friend E. I was looking for a new sunhat and my favorite colour is red so this one was perfect.

Trying the hat on in the store.
Riding roller coasters at the County Fair last summer.

Well that’s twenty hats. There certainly are more hats I’ve worn in my life, but those were some of the highlights. Also- I don’t know that I ever need to make another post with so many pictures of myself on it ever again…

Now…. Here’s a challenge for you, friends! Do you have a hat in your life? In honor of Engie’s 20th blog anniversary month, find time in September to post about a hat that you’ve also worn so that Engie can continue to find hats in the world!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school 2024!

Obligatory first day picture!

Well we’re off to the races with the 2024-2025 school year. And a new month. Whew. It was a pretty uneventful first week. The kids went to school. They came home. Extracurricular activities haven’t yet started, and I’m not yet working on a show, so it does feel like we are easing into the new school year.

First day of school celebratory boba run coupled with an Hmart trip.

Right out of the gate, though, the 7th grader’s middle school had their Back to School Night on Thursday. It felt a little soon to have a Back To School Night the fourth day of school, but oh well. I was glad of a chance to go – aside from the school plays and some early pick ups in the office, I haven’t really seen her middle school yet; last year it seemed as if every school event was on an evening when I had to work. At Back to School Night, the majority of the evening had the parents/guardians going to their student’s classes in order, with six minutes in each class and four minutes to get from one period to the other. Each student has seven classes a day, plus advisory and homeroom- down hallways, up stairs, from one end of school to another. I don’t know how the 12 year old manages this every day. I was exhausted by the end of the evening, but it was nice to put faces to the teachers and get a sense of what school is like for her. Last year I found middle school to be a huge black hole – the kid went to school. There were weekly newsletters that came home – all good things though. Once in a while a message from the Principal about an incident, or a form for me to sign. A few times a year, I saw grades. I suppose middle school is just one more step to independence and not knowing what my kid is up to.

My mother and my aunt were still in town most of last week. They had gone to New York City, but came back mid week. We did some less obvious touristy things. One day we went downtown to the Kennedy Center. We didn’t see a show or anything, but it’s just a beautiful building to walk around, and we had lunch at the Cafe on the roof, where there is a wonderful view of DC. There is an exhibit on JFK and his role in the arts. On that day, since we were already in the city, we went to the Portrait Gallery. I mainly picked the Portrait Gallery because it’s an easy metro ride and also I love sitting in its courtyard. There was an exhibit on Hollywood portraits, what I really liked seeing.

One of the portraits was of Merle Oberon, which I found fascinating because I didn’t realize that she was half South Asian. The blurb next to her portrait talked about how she had to hide her mixed race identity because of discrimination. I think of how I have half Asian kids and how it’s kind of no big deal because being mixed race a) is kind of a meaningless term – what is “race” anyhow? and b) is so common these days. I once read a statistic that the majority of kids will be of mixed race in the next ten years. (Or something like that – don’t quote me – it’s one of those statistics that’s stuck in my head, but I don’t remember where I heard it.) So thinking about being a mixed race person when it wasn’t so common and even considered scandalous is one of those things that I find really interesting to read about.

The day after that, we went to The National Museum of Health and Medicine, which is just a mile from my house. It’s a collection of body parts and medical equipment and photos and artifacts and such things related to the human body and how it can fall apart. The collection was started during the Civil War when doctors were encouraged to keep specimens of body parts and what not for research purposes. The most famous thing about it is that it has the bullet that killed Lincoln, along with some of his hair and the bloody cuffs of the doctor who operated on him. I didn’t realize this, but it also has a piece of President Garfield’s spine as well, from when he was shot. I kind of feel like you need to have a very strong stomach and sense of curiosity to go to this museum. It was especially interesting to go to the museum with my aunt who is a physician. She reminisced about her medical school days and pointed out the body parts and organs that were on display and told me all about what they did. The lady is amazing – she is 77 years old and still sees patients three days a week.

How did they even know to save it???

The last day of my Aunt’s visit, we took a trip to Longwood Gardens. What a beautiful riot of summer colour! I’m always glad for a visit to Longwood Gardens.

Labor Day Monday I took the three kids to the Renaissance Festival. I hadn’t originally planned to go over Labor Day weekend, but on Sunday our friends told us they were planning on going the next day, so it seemed like as good a time as any to go. Plus our other weekends in September were going to be full of kids’ activities. We had a great time. We saw the jousting (twice!), fencing shows, acrobats, Shakespeare parodies. We listened to loud feet-stomping, heart expanding music, ate turkey legs, reveled in people watching. The weather was gorgeous – warm and sunny with a breeze at just the right moments. The kids got sticky with melted ice cream and dirty with playground mulch. We laughed and wandered and had an all around great time.

Dressed up in all the layers. You can’t see it, but she’s also wearing fairy wings.

I think I did really well pacing our day. Once I (like Oliver Burkeman says) get used to the idea that you can’t see everything, then I think I could enjoy the things I did see without the sense that I should be somewhere else. I had each of the kids pick one thing they really wanted to do, and then planned around that. The 12 year old wanted to eat fried food, the 7 year old wanted to see the jousting, the 4 year old wanted to ride the pony, I wanted to see shows and laugh. So I looked at the schedule and map and plotted it out as soon as I got there. I picked four shows to anchor our day – 12 noon jousting, 2:00pm Death Scenes from Shakespeare, 3:30p Vixes En Garde, 5pm Piper Jones show. Then in and around we ate turkey legs (side note – these have gotten really expensive! They are now $12 a pop. I guess I’m okay with it, but it’s a little alarming), went to the pirate playground, shopped, and went on the Pony ride. It also helped that we met up with our friends who had three kids, so the older kids could take off together while I stuck with the little kids.

Turkey legs!

Coordinating with my friends was a little difficult at first because with all the mass of humanity at the Ren Faire – and it was very crowded – my cell phone couldn’t find a way to make calls or send text messages. I think next time I need a better, more concrete plan ahead of time of where to meet people. One we met up with my friends, though, I really enjoyed Ren Fairing with friends.

Food on a stick- the 7 year old has sausage, the four year old has mac n cheese.

Oh, and the one thing I was the MOST excited about – they’ve put in water bottle fillers at our Ren Faire! For years, I’ve carted so four full Nalgenes with me to the Faire, because I’m too cheap to pay for water at the Faire. Well this year, there were three water bottle fillers (labelled “drinking water from the well”) Yay. Ren Faire gets better and better every year!

Inspirational Thought of the week: We are due for a huge decluttering effort at our house, so I’ve been listening to Decluttering and organizational podcasts for inspiration. Last week I was listening to A Slob Comes Clean’s episode called “How to Get Motivated” and she said

“There is no way to fail at better.”

Whoa. Her point is that even throwing away one piece of trash makes things better, and as long as you are moving towards “better” no matter how small the steps, you are not failing. I have to remember that when the prospect of decluttering (or anything large) feels overwhelming.

Kid Quote of the Moment:
The 7 year old can be a bit of a stubborn grumpy bear. But when something goes the way he wants it too, his delight is unparalleled. His latest catch phrase when something goes well – “Perfection wins again!”
I have no idea where he got that phrase from, but it makes me really happy every time he says it.

Grateful For:
-School Buses and school bus drivers. Amazingly, the school bus was on time in both the morning and the afternoon last week. Well except for one day when the bus broke down and they had to get a replacement. Even so, the bus ended up only being thirty minutes late, which seems pretty efficient given that they had to go find a whole other bus and driver. So I’m grateful for the school bus and school bud driver that takes my kid to school safely.

-A nice visit with my mom and my aunt. I don’t get to see my aunt very often, so it was lovely to have her stay with us for five nights.

– The kids’ piano teacher. A few weeks ago, while out for a walk with my 12 year old, she said to me, “You know what? Piano is my favorite extracurricular activity!” This made me really happy to hear because she loves music so much but there were a couple of years where we fought a lot about lessons and practicing. I give a lot of credit for this to her piano teacher who is so patient and positive with her but also challenges her.

Looking Forward To:

-Lunch with a friend. I start working on a show in October, with some hours here and there the next couple of weeks, so I want to schedule some fun social weekday things in September before my schedule makes that difficult.

-Planning our trip to Malaysia. On the way to Longwood Gardens, we listened to some podcasts about travel to Malaysia. (I like listening to destination/ travel podcasts for trip inspiration.) It really got me eager to start researching and planning the activities we will do with our four days there. It seems like all the really beautiful beaches are a bit farther than we want to go with just four days, so we’ll probably just stay in Kuala Lumpur.

-September declutter-palooza! As I mentioned above, we’ve decided that September will be a big month for decluttering since I will have a lighter schedule and am home more. The main areas are the attic and the current toy room, which needs to be cleaned out so we can put the guest bed in there and make the guest bedroom into the 12 year old’s room. The 12 year old currently shares a room with her two younger siblings. It’s partly because I can’t wrap my brain around setting up a room for her (so many logistics! Need to buy new furniture!), also partly because I like having all the kids on the same floor as us and giving the 12 year old her own room would mean putting her downstairs. Anyhow – I know I need to just get over this because a 12 year old should not have to share a room with her 7 year old brother and 5 year old sister if she can help it. (Although part of me thinks – my father shared a room with 7 siblings. But he lived in rural Taiwan. Life was different… Everyone looks at me like I’m a horrible mother when I tell them my 12 year old still shares a room with her siblings.) Anyhow, I’m excited about/dreading declutter-palooza. I know our house will be a lot better once we go through things and purge and shift. But… so much work, and I get attached to things. Hence listening to decluttering podcasts for inspiration. Maybe I should document the efforts here for some accountability.

What We Ate:

Monday: Stir fried eggplant with black bean sauce and tofu.

Tuesday: Tortellini with sausage. Fruit on the side.

Wednesday: Grilled chicken drumsticks and cucumber and cabbage noodle salad with black bean sauce.

Thursday: Pasta Salad. This was a kitchen sink meal. We came home on the late side and I didn’t have anything planned, so I chopped a bunch of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, and threw them in a bowl with some cooked pasta and canned tuna. Added a red wine vinegar vinegrette. It was much tastier than I thought it would be.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and Young Woman and the Sea, a recent film about Trudy Ederle, who in 1926 was the first woman to swim the English Channel, and she did it faster than any of the men before her. Disney sport movies are always predictably sentimental, and I am a sucker for that. I really liked this movie. I thought the story was inspiring and performances delightful to watch.

Saturday: Dinner out at The Olive Lounge after our trip to Longwood Gardens. I had a really delicious truffle pasta.

Sunday: Burgers and hot dogs and grilled zucchini. We had some friends over to grill- one of those super casual impromptu gatherings that you can have when you know your friends won’t judge you for not cleaning.

Monday: Grilled cheese and fruit. We didn’t get hime from the Ren Faire until almost 8pm so dinner was something quick and easy.

Onward to September! How was your holiday weekend? Have you ever had to share a room with a sibling? Pluses or minuses?

Books Read, July 2024

Squeaking in under the wire of August, here are the books I read in July. At least I think these are the books I read in July. I’ve misplaced my book journal so I haven’t written anything down for weeks and weeks. Sometimes I think I should move to an online system of tracking my reading, but I do love the act of putting actual pen to actual paper.

Bookish link of the month: This interview with author Jason Reynolds. The Washington Post does a series where they take a peek at an author’s bookshelves and working environment, and I find it a fascinating look into authors and where they come from and their process. I love this quote, where Reynolds talks about a cookie jar that he keeps on his shelf:
“If books are cabinets for stories, then my bookshelves hold a lot of things that are cabinets for stories that might not come in the form of what one might consider a book. Like that Ernie. To me, the story that exists in that clay is just as important as a story that is printed on the pages of some of these books. That image of my father, it’s not a book, but his life was, and therefore it gets to live on this shelf like everything else. In my life, all things with a story belong on a shelf.”

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley – Probably my favorite book I read last month, and one of my favorite I’ve read this year. A British civil servant works for a newly formed government ministry that pulls people from the past and transplants them in the present. She is assigned to work as a liaison for the time “expat”, explorer Graham Gore, pulled from a doomed 1845 Arctic expedition. This novel combines time travel, spy thriller, and romance novel with thoughtfulness and wit. I would say I’m not really into time travel novels (I thought The Time Traveler’s Wife a ridiculous novel.) or spy thrillers, so this novel was a nice gateway book into those genres. This book sucked me in, made me think about time and history, and was funny – I laughed out loud several times. The whole thriller/ spy plot wasn’t as interesting to me as the workplace comedy and the way Gore was a prism through which to look at our modern times. I particularly liked this exchange:
[Gore] was introduced to the washing machines, the gas cooker, the radio, the vacuum cleaner.
“Here are your maids,” he said.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Where are the thousand-league boots?”
“We don’t have those yet.”
“Invisibility cloak? Sun-resistant wings of Icarus?”
“Likewise.”
He smiled. “You have enslaved the power of lightning,” he said, “and you’ve used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help.”

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer read by Imani Parks, Cassandra Morris, and others. This epistolatory novel starts as a series of emails between two twelve year olds whose fathers have fallen in love and decide to send the girls to the same summer camp in hopes that they will bond. The agree to dislike one another. Hijinks and disasters big and small ensue. I listened to this novel with the kids. The 7 year old was at first a little reluctant, but then got kind of invested. I like a good epistolary novel, but this book pushed that device to it’s limits. There was one part, when the girls were at camp, where they still didn’t talk since they were intent on not liking each other, so they were writing emails instead. Which supports the epistolatory form, but did make for some clunkiness. Overall, though, I enjoyed this book – the characters are quirky, the escapades are amusing, and a big portion of the story takes place in the theatre world, which is always fun for me to read about.

Oh Beautiful by Jung Yun, read by Catherine Ho – I picked up this audiobook after hearing about it on What Should I Read Next where the guest was a huge audiobook listener. The book is about Elinor, a half Korean, half White journalist who used to be a model. She is assigned a story about the oil boom in North Dakota, close to where she grew up. As she researches her story, she also is forced to confront her own past as well as the past and future of North Dakota. For some reason, I thought this book was about immigration to North Dakota in the 1800s. But it wasn’t. Anyhow, I didn’t love this book to start – the main character doesn’t always make good choices, there is rampant misandry – every male in this book is some kind of predator- and it felt like that book wanted to tackle too many issues at once. Occasionally there would be a character that would surprise me and almost redeem the book, but then the book would go back to being about unhappy, unkind people meandering through life. I thought the book was thoughtful about so many points – the realities of life in a boom town, feeling adrift from family and one’s roots, sexual harassment in academia – but ultimately, the his book just wasn’t for me.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Tatly – This is a collection of short stories set in a Penobscot Indian Reservation in Maine. I picked this book up to read during our trip to Maine this summer. The stories center around David, a boy growing up on the reservation, and spans into his adulthood, back and forth in time. Some of the stories border on the absurd – like the one about running into a friend who has frozen his hair into the ground – to the heart wrenching, like the one about David’s sister who struggles with drug abuse. And throughout there runs a theme of intergenerational burdens and trying to make good choices but having none. I thought this book was grim and haunting, though surprisingly funny, and the writing is beautiful.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty– This was a fun book in a genre I don’t usually read (fantasy). Amina al-Sirafi is a middle-aged retired pirate who agrees to one last lucrative job in the hopes of earning a huge payout which would ensure a life of comfort for her and her daughter. I loved the Middle East/ African setting. I loved Amina, and her world weary, “I’m getting too old for this shit, but I’m still a bad ass” narrative voice. There is a colourful cast of characters and side kicks- the requisite “getting the team together” sequence had me grinning. It also has a tinge of “first in a series”, so that’s something to look forward too as well. Not sure I completely understood the world building and magic elements, but I had a good time anyway. There were some very funny/on point bits:
“For while the pious claim money doesn’t buy happiness, I can attest from personal experience that poverty buys nothing.”
or this exchange:
“[Your wife] knows you are a pirate?”
“I am no a pirate,” Majed huffed. “I am a cartographer with a checkered past.”
“Yes, a checkered past of piracy.”

On my proverbial night stand:

Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya – I’ve finished the chapter on Injustice, the last two chapters are Absurdity and Hope.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker – so close to finishing this one! Elizabeth Gaskell is writing a biography on Charlotte. Her husband is trying to get her last novel published.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – This book — every chapter rips my heart out and leaves me hanging. I love it and hate it at the same time.

You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue – the blurb calls this a “colonial revenge story”. It’s set in 1519 in what is today Mexico City. The writing is vivid and engrossing. I was looking for a historical novel in translation and this one popped up.

The History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hirsch – This my current audiobook, but I’m not commuting anymore so it’s been slow going, though fascinating. There was a delightful chapter on The Hatpin read by Helena Bonham Carter.

Weekly recap + what we ate: camping and end of summer adventures

Shenandoah views.

The kids have started school! Even the 4 year old starts a new pre-school class, so lots of new beginnings for everyone. Last week was pretty packed. As a last final adventure, I took the two little kids camping for two nights in Shenandoah National Park. The 12 year old declined to come, so she stayed at home. She did, however, have an adventure on her own in that she took public transportation on her own for the first time. She had walked to meet the Husband for lunch and then took the bus home. The ride was probably less than two miles, but it feels like a big milestone.

I had originally planned for a low key week at home this last week before school, but then I was feeling a little wistful that I hadn’t gone camping yet this year. So I looked at the campground and saw that there were still lots of camp sites available. After going back an forth- is it too much to go camping on such short notice? Shouldn’t we just lay low the week before school starts? Can I get everything ready in 24 hours?- I decided to go for it and booked two nights at Big Meadows Campground. I went on a big grocery run, pulled all the camping gear out of the crawl space, packed clothes and toothbrushes, made a road trip play list for the littles (by their request – Disney tunes, Hamilton, and Six), and then we were off.

It was a short camping trip, but it felt unhurried in that way that time expands when one is able to fully disconnect from life and from technology. I think for 36 hours, I was phone free, save for taking pictures and twenty minutes on the free wifi at the Lodge where we had stopped to use the bathroom. We left at 11:30am on Tuesday and were pulling into our camp site at 2:30pm, after having stopped briefly for a picnic lunch. In the past when we camped at Big Meadows, I’ve opted for a walk in site – by walk in, I mean a few hundred feet from the parking lot. I like that they are more secluded and surrounded by trees. However, since this trip was going to be so short, and also since it was just me and the two little kids, I chose a camp site nearer to the bathrooms with parking at the site. My reasoning was two fold – 1) I didn’t want to spend time hauling my gear from the car to the camp site and back since we were only spending two nights, and 2) I wanted to be close to the bathrooms so I wouldn’t have to walk too far if one of the kids needed to go.

Our campsite. I originally wanted to leave the rainfly off the tent, but then at the last minute I was worried it might rain, so I put it back on.

The first evening, we (really, I) set up the campsite. Then I made a fire in the fire pit and cooked dinner while the kids played. They swung in the hammock, and played with their trucks (I brought two toy trucks with us), poked the fire, watched leaves burn, and pretty much amused themselves while I got dinner going. After dinner we had some more time around the campfire and then I made a batch of hot chocolate. Once we were done the hot chocolate and the fire had died, we brushed teeth and went to bed. I slept okay the first night. The first night was was pretty miserable, to be honest, and I couldn’t figure out why. Somehow I couldn’t curl up for warmth or stretch out fully for comfort so I just tossed and turned all night. When I woke up at 6:30am, I finally realized why the sleeping bag I was in was so uncomfortable – I was sleeping in the 7 year old’s sleeping bag and he ended up with mine. After an early morning trip to the bathroom, I switched our sleeping bags back and managed to snag another hour and half of much more comfortable sleep.

The next day was our only full day in Shenandoah. I didn’t want to spend time driving, so I decided on a hike that we could walk to from the campsite, Lewis Falls Trail. Part of the trail to Lewis Falls is along the Appalachian Trail, which I find kind of neat. The Falls themselves were a little disappointing because there wasn’t really a good view of them, and you couldn’t go to the base of the falls, but we still had a nice hike and there were plenty of rocky scrambles and breathtaking views to enjoy. Perhaps not the most interesting hike in Shenandoah, but it’s close to the campsite, and not having to get back in the car at all that day was a huge plus.

We ended up hiking all day – we left at 10:30am and didn’t get home until 4:30pm, hiking about 7 miles total. The hike went surprisingly well with a 4 (almost 5) year old and a 7 year old. Even though it wasn’t the most difficult or unique hike, it was definitely a good ramble in the woods. I even got to play the rainbow game – it’s amazing how, even though the trail looks to be the same greens and browns, we could still find all the colours of the rainbow if we just looked:

Things that I think made this all day hike a success:
1) The weather was beautiful. It wasn’t too hot. In fact, when we started it was a little on the chilly side. Nothing makes my kids crankier than having to trudge somewhere in blazing hot weather.
2) Snacks. I packed lots of snacks, plus lunch. Granola bars, trail mix (mixed nuts, dried cherries, pretzels and m&ms), carrots, apples. Lunch was salami, Triscuits, cucumbers. When the kids started flagging, we would just sit and have a snack.
3) Going at the kids’ pace. I largely let them dictate how fast we went. If they wanted to stop and scramble on a rocky outcrop, I let them. If they wanted to gather armfuls of sticks, I let them. If they just wanted to sit on a log for a bit, cool.
4) While we’re on the subject – sticks. OMG the amount of stick collecting that happened! Small sticks in their backpack to take back to put in the camp fire that night. Large sticks that became walking sticks. Sticks that were swords and pistols. One humungous stick that was so large they carried it together for a good mile.
5) Walkie talkies and binoculars. Sometimes my kids find hiking boring – it doesn’t always last too long, but periodically they will get punchy with each other on a hike. Walkie talkies provided an excellent amusement for them on the hike – they insisted that one person walk in front of me and one person walk behind me so that they could talk to each other on the walkie talkies. The binoculars also got a lot of use, though, I should really get a second pair – there was a fair bit of fighting over sharing the one pair.

All the sticks!

After that hike, we came back to the campground. I got to spend 30 minutes reading in the hammock, which was divine. Eventually, I got up and made a fire and started dinner. Half way through boiling the water for the mac and cheese, though, I ran out of butane. I usually travel with two butane canisters, but for whatever reason I only had one with me on this trip – it was whatever cannister was in the bottom of the camping bin and I foolishly thought it had enough butane in it to get me through 36 hours. It didn’t. And there I was with a pot of half cooked pasta. There was a deflated sense of panic. But then I put the pot of water over the campfire grill and, doing things the old fashioned way, I managed to cook the pasta and make the mac n cheese. I was actually surprised that the water boiled over the fire. After dinner we had smores then went to bed. I slept much better than the night before, though I did rotate my sleeping bag around mid way through the night because I think I was sleeping on an incline with my head lower than my feet, and I can’t sleep comfortably that way.

S’mores – I like my chocolate gooey too, so I put my S’more on the grill for an extra moment.

The next morning, before breakfast we took an impromptu stroll. I wanted to explore the campgrounds and scout out which campsites I might want to book next time. Well, before I knew it, we had wandered onto the Appalachian Trail, the part of the trail that goes around the campground. We weren’t prepared for another hike – I was wearing Crocs! – but we figured why not. We ended up hiking for about 45 minutes, the kid found some rocky scrambles and nice views.

Eventually we found a path from the trail back to the campsite where we had cold breakfast, and I mourned the inability to have a cup of hot tea since I had no more butane. Then I started packing everything up so we could leave. The kids amused themselves by playing in the hammock. In a stroke of brilliance, I rigged up a rope so that they could swing themselves in the hammock by pulling on the rope. I need to remember that for next time because they are always asking me to swing them in the hammock, which I find eventually gets tedious.

It took me about an hour to pack up the campsite, and bundle everything into the car. We headed home, stopping for lunch as a diner in Warrenton, where I had the liver and onions. After I ordered, a lady sat down next to us at the counter and started talking about how much she hated liver and onions, which I thought was funny. We ended up talking as she waited for her to go order, and she explained to me that when she was pregnant with her now grown daughter, she worked in an office above the cafeteria, and when they made liver and onions, the smell wafted up into her office and made her feel sick. Fair enough. Liver an onions is one of those dishes I like to order at diners because it’s something I never would cook myself at home.

Anyhow, there was a lot of traffic around the DC area when I got home, so it took much longer to get home than I thought it would. I ended up having to call into a work meeting from the car – I had originally expected to be home well before the meeting, but I ended up getting home twenty minutes after the meeting started. Thank goodness for Teams and the flexibility it allows me. All in all, a successful camping trip! I can’t wait to go again.

Notes to myself for the next camp trip:
– must get some camp mugs so that the kids can drink the hot chocolate. I ended up giving them my travel mug, but then it meant I couldn’t have tea.
– If I’m going to go on six hour hikes, I need to invest in a trowel. Both kids at some point told me they had to go #2. Peeing in the woods is one thing, but I didn’t really feel comfortable letting them #2 in the woods unless I could properly bury it. So next time, I’ll bring a trowel.
-pack dishwashing gloves. I did a serious number aggravating the eczema on my hands with all the dishwashing I did over the 36 hours. My hands were so cracked that I could barely make a fist. So note for next time – pack dishwashing gloves.
-the kids don’t like Provolone cheese. I had wanted a hard cheese that could stand up to not being kept in the cooler, so I bought a block of Provolone. The kids refused to eat it. Next time, just bring cheddar and parmesan. Camping is not the time to try new flavors.
-The thinner flour sack kitchen towels dry faster, so bring those rather than the terrycloth kitchen towels.
– bring smaller trash bags. I brought 13 gallon trash bags, like I normally do, but I ended up taking the trash to the dumpster twice a day because I didn’t want to store it in the car (my site didn’t have a bear box.). It seemed wasteful to use a 13 gallon trash bag for half a days’ worth of garbage so next time I should bring smaller trash bags.
-Bring more long sleeved outfits. The weather was much colder than I had anticipated – I had even looked at the weather before I left and for some reason, seeing that the weather would be in the low 70s/mid 60s didn’t register as cold. After all, the weather was high 80s in DC. Welp, once we got to the mountains, we were cold. The only long sleeved outfits that I had packed for the kids were their pajamas and a sweatshirt or hoodie. Though of course the 7 year old’s sweatshirt was a size too small. Oh well, we managed. We all did wear the same clothes for the entire 36 hours, since it was the only long sleeved clothes that we had. We were going to get grimy from camping anyway, so I figured this was fine.
-Re-listen to this podcast episode from The Art of Manliness podcast. All about camping and camping gear. You kind of have to get past the bro tone of the podcast (what else could you expect with that title?) but I found some really helpful advice here about how to take care of gear.
-Good move – I unpacked and aired out all the camping equipment as soon as I got to the house and the majority of the camping gear was packed away within a few hours of our arrival home. I don’t always have the energy to air out all the camping gear right away, but I now see that it really pays off to make the effort to get it done right away. We got home at 3:20pm, and everything was aired and packed up by 6:00pm. (The kids’ sleeping bags, I had hung up to air out in the morning before we left for that impromptu hike, so I didn’t have to do that again at home.) If I don’t get the gear aired out and packed away right away, it tends to linger in the basement for days, even weeks. So yay me for getting it done right off the bat. I also started making lists in Notes of what was in each bin , including what items I will need to replenish in the bin next time we go camping. Sometimes these things are a little tedious, but are for sure gifts to future me. (In cast you are wondering, I like using this list from REI as my camping packing list.)

The rest of the week/weekend was pretty full. On Friday, I had lunch with a friend and her 5 year old before going to the open house for the 7 year old’s school. We were supposed to meet his teacher, but she had been in a minor car accident the day before so couldn’t come to the open house. We dropped of school supplies and the 7 year old still got to see his new classroom. Then in the evening we went to the pool, probably one of the last pool visits this summer as our pool closes after labor day. It was a little cool in the evening so we only stayed for an hour before coming home for pizza and Glee.

Saturday, we went out to visit my friend who lives in southeastern Maryland. It was a great visit – we swam in her pool, she made us the tastiest meal (burger and roasted vegetables), we got to visit with her neighbor’s sheep, she showed us her dock, and she taught the kids how to make Brazilian cheese bread. These tender little balls of doughy cheesy goodness were so tasty. She’s shared the recipe and I can’t wait to make them myself.

Saturday evening, my mother and aunt flew in for a visit, and we went from my friend’s house directly to the airport. We got to the airport a little early, so instead of going to the cellphone waiting lot, we went to a nearby park where you can watch the airplanes take off and land. I’ve always wanted to bring the kids to this park, but there is never any parking because it’s a pretty popular park. We were able to find parking and sat and watched planes take off while the kids played on the playground. Planes are so loud! I could feel deep visceral vibrations every time a plane went by.

On Sunday, we took my mom and aunt down to the Mall to see the monuments. It was actually quite hot and there was no small amount of whining from the kids about having to do so much walking. I feel like there is a lot to see in D.C., but unless you are on the Mall, it’s not always a very pleasant city to walk around in. Nonetheless, I think we covered a lot of ground. In four hours we saw:
-The outside of the White House (and the buildings around it)
– The Old Post Office Tower. This is one of those hidden gems of D.C., I think. The Old Post Office Tower is located in the Waldorf Astoria and is operated by the National Park Service. You can go up the Tower and get an amazing view of Washington, D.C. The view is not as spectacular as the Washington Monument, but tickets for the Washington Monument are really hard to come by, and I think the Old Post Office Tower is an easier alternative.
-Washington Monument
-MLK Memorial
-FDR Memorial
-WWII Memorial
And of course in the distance we saw (because on the Mall you can’t avoid seeing) the Capitol building, the Lincoln Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial. We also walked by the WWI Memorial, which I didn’t actually know existed. I’ll have to go back and check that one out. All told, I think we walked about seven miles, and it definitely felt like a typical touristy DC day.

Grateful for (the camping edition)
-The friend who, four or five years ago called us from the REI garage sale and said, “There’s a really nice tent here for sale. I think it will be perfect for you guys. I’m going to buy it and you can pay me back.” Every time I go camping, and set up the tent that is just the right amount of space for us (currently), I am so grateful that our friend M. saw this tent and thought of us.
-The same friend lending me marshmallow sticks and an extra camp chair.
-The kids being old enough to go to the bathroom together on their own. One of the trickiest things about camping with the two little kids is that someone always needs to go pee. Well, this trip, because our campsite was just two sites down from the bathroom, I felt pretty comfortable sending them to the bathroom together. In past years, I’ve brought a potty, or I’ve told them they can’t go to the bathroom until we put out the fire, or they’ve just peed in the woods. I love that now I can stay sitting by the fire and send the kids together to the bathroom.
-Dry weather. Because camping in the rain would have sucked.
-National Parks. I’m glad that there are National Parks, and that they provide so many opportunities to experience awe.

Looking Forward To:
-The kids being back in school. I have not been for a run or done any yoga since being home with the kids. I love my kids, but I also like it when they go to school and I have time to run and do things without having to referee an argument or feed someone or open a package or or or or…
-September house decluttering. September has been declared the month where we finally purge and declutter. I do not look forward to doing this, but I just have to think about how much nicer it will be when there is more open space in the house, and I no longer feel the burden of all the stuff in the attic waiting to be used.
-Reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Earlier this year, when I posted plans of reading down my TBR, so many people said I needed to move Homegoing to the top of the pile. You all were right. I’m only four chapters in, and it’s beautiful. Hard and sad, too.

What We Ate: With detailed camping notes.
Monday: Black Bean Tacos with Mango Slaw. Sort of based on this recipe from Love and Lemons. This was a super easy no-cook meal. (Well, I did warm up the tortillas.) Vegan for me. The kids ate theirs with feta cheese.

My meal planning notes and shopping list for camping.

Tuesday (Camping Day One):
–Lunch Picnic – Chicken Salad Sandwiches, carrots and cucumbers, apple slices.
– Dinner: Curry Ramen. I prepped most of this at home; I tossed sliced onions and carrots in a container with olive oil and curry powder. Chopped up some cabbage in a separate bag (I would have put this with the onions and carrots, but that container was already full.) At the campsite: Sauteed the onion/carrot/curry mixture until barely tender. Add water, ramen, frozen shrimp and cook until the noodles were done. I also impulsively prepped a freeze dried camp meal that had been in my camping box for a few years. It was really salty and pretty terrible. I don’t often throw out food, but I threw that camp meal out.

Wednesday (Camping Day Two)
–Breakfast – Bacon and egg burritos and fruit (strawberries and blueberries). Bacon is a “must have” camping food for me. For the eggs, at home I cracked them into a container and brought the container so I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking the eggs in transport. I always cook the bacon first and then fry the eggs in the bacon fat, that way I don’t have to bring extra oil on the trip. The kids did not really like this. I’m told it’s the Provolone’s fault because they could taste it on the eggs. Oh well. Typically they love this kind of thing.
–Lunch – eaten on the trail – Salami, Triscuits, carrots and cucumbers. (I had planned to bring the Provolone, but that was quickly squashed.) For snacks I brought trail mix, peanut butter crackers, and more carrots and apple slices.
–Dinner – Mac and cheese with hot dogs and corn cooked on the grill. This was the night I ran out of butane. For camping, I bring the mac n cheese where the cheese sauce is include . It’s easier to mix at the campsite if the mac and cheese comes with a cheese sauce already and not the powder. And I don’t have to bring butter that way. We cooked the hot dogs and the corn over the fire. The corn I prepped at home by rubbing it with olive oil, salt, and lots of pepper, then wrapping it tightly in foil. Once we got the fire going at the campsite, i just tossed the corn onto the hot embers and let it cook. For dessert we had s’mores. I’m not a fan of the Hersey chocolate so I always buy a bar of nice chocolate to use in s’mores. The 7 year old had picked out a dark chocolate raspberry bar, and it proved to be delicious in a s’more. Wil try that again.

Thursday: (Day Three Camping and home)
Breakfast – Yogurt, fruit, cereal. Even before we ran out of butane, I wanted breakfast on the departure day to be cold and simple so that we didn’t have to dirty anymore dishes.
Lunch – stopped at Frost Diner on the way home.
Dinner – (and we’re home.) – The family had burritos since they had gone to get haircuts at a salon next to the Taco Restaurant. I ate the leftovers they brought home since I stayed behind to pack up the camping gear.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee.

Saturday: Eat out, after our airport pick up: Japanese (I had the ramen and a spicy scallop roll)

Sunday: Burmese food take-out, picked up on our way home from walking the monuments. It was very tasty.

Hope you have a lovely last week of August. How are you planning on spending it?

Weekly recap + what we ate: July highlights/August Aspirations, 2024

Prop table. I love me a well-labelled prop table. I did something a little different this time and labelled the prop table by character rather than by object.

I’m enjoying the tail end of another weekend alone. The Husband has again taken the kids away on a road trip, this time to Indiana. They are going to visit friends, go to the Indiana State Fair, visit my in-law’s grave sites, and go to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. Is he an awesome dad or what?

I am at home by myself because I have to work so I couldn’t go along. I’ve had a nice few days, though. Even though the husband is the one who went away, I’m pretty sure I had the more restorative few days. Things I’ve done:

-Dinner with some friends whom I haven’t seen in ages.

– Drove up to Philadelphia to see the Mary Cassatt exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum. I had really wanted to see this exhibit, and sort of vaguely thought about going, but never made plans. When I saw the exhibit was closing in September, I was a little sad that I was going to miss it, but then I thought, “Why can’t I go see it?” No reason whatsoever! So I bought tickets and drove up. I think I would have taken the kids if I had had them this weekend, but being able to go by myself felt super indulgent. It was a beautiful exhibit, featuring a variety of Cassatt’s works – paintings, prints, pastels, sketches. I particularly loved seeing the sketches, and getting a sense of Cassatt’s process, how she captures a scene with a certain economy of line, and then whittles the scene down even further to the final painting.

I loved this series of paintings of women reading.

I also took in the Asian art exhibits. How intricate and practical many of the items were. It made me think of how skillfully beautiful every day objects were in centuries past. The amount of craftsmanship that it takes to paint a vase or carve figurines on a column is jaw dropping.

Mythical Guardian Lion
Carved columns from temples in India.

As an added bonus, I met up with a friend in Philadelphia whom I hadn’t seen in seven or eight years. We had both been baby stage managers together, learnin the trade from the same stage manager before going off to our respective careers. It was great to catch up and reflect on where life has taken us and what we’ve learned along the way.

-Watched some feel good rom coms – Finding You (struggling violinist goes to Ireland to find herself, meets cute movie star. Pretty Irish scenery, accents, Irish music, Vanessa Redgrave!) and About Fate (Girl needs a date for her sister’s wedding, coincidences throw a very nice boy in her way). Sweet and predictable and just what I wanted. Though, About Fate really annoyed me because it had the trope of sweet and capable guy meeting failure to launch girl. I get annoyed when protagonists are terrible at adulting. I mean a little bit of struggle is fine, but when they’re just incompetent at being decent humans I just feel uninvested in them getting a happy ending.

-Read. I finished three books and made good progress in two others, including I Capture the Castle for Cool Blogger’s Book Club. I might even get this weeks reading assignment done on time!

-Laundry lots of laundry. I had thought to get some other decluttering projects done, but that didn’t happen. I did purge a bunch of paper, though. The 7 year old insists on keeping every scarp of paper that comes home from school, so I took this opportunity to weed that out a little bit. I’m a little disappointed in myself to not declutter more, but on the other hand, we are at laundry basket zero, which never happens. Just in time for the rest of the family to come back with four days worth of laundry.

-Baked brownies. This recipe. It’s a super fudgy brownie, maybe too fudgy for my tastes. I have to say, my perfect brownie is the Ghirardelli mix from Costco. Maybe I should stop trying to find a perfect “from scratch” brownie recipe and just accept that what I want is the Ghirardelli. I also made peach muffins, since I picked up three boxes of peaches from this weekend’s Peach Truck run, the last of the season.

-Went on a hike with a friend K and her friend W. (I’ve managed to get a hike and a museum in this month after all!). We went on a short hike up to a spectacular view of the Potomac River and sat among rocks and talked about life while birds swooped around us. It’s so nice to talk with people who offer thoughtful conversation. I totally have a girl crush on W now and want to hang out with her again.

View from the top of the hike.
Soaring birds.

Afterwards we went to the nearby cute small town, got refreshing beverages – mine was a Sakura Lychee drink – and had lunch. What a nice ladies’ afternoon.

Fancy drink.

– Had my closing performance on Saturday. How I will miss this show. I like to make a list of the indelible moments of shows that I work on – live performance is so ephemeral and I think it is sometimes easy to let the experience flit away. Yet, I don’t want to take for granted how lucky I am to be part of a creative process, so even while running around backstage and checking props and people, I want to make sure I take time to savor moments, these singular fleeting moments that is live theatre. So here are some from this show:
– The tenor singing to the body of his dead brother, as he cradles it. Breaks my heart every night. Actually everything this singer does.
-The baritone who sings the priest, with his beautiful velvet voice. Wrap me in his voice forever, please.
-The baritone, who always shows me his handkerchief before he goes onstage because he knows I will ask to make sure he has it. (Because it would make for an awkward truce scene if he goes onstage without his white handkerchief)
-The bag pipes. Did I mention there are bagpipes in this show? How awesome is that? Definitely one to savor because how often will I get to hear bagpipes in such close proximity.
-The harp, which is directly behind me for most of the show. The harp part in this show is so delicate yet steady, each pluck of the strings resonates in me.
-The Sleep Chorus, a moment in the first act when the soldiers are singing about how they long for sleep and home. So beautiful it gives me chills every night.
-The percussion, timpani, and brass section, also behind me – those moments where they play so loud that I cover my ears yet still can feel the music through my soles, vibrating the floor.
-The baritone (there are a lot of baritones in this show) who plays the Aide-de-campe – his thoughtful, endearing, funny performance while he juggles a million props, and his ad libs in French. (That section on prop table with the white crate- that’s all him.)
-The insanity of the battle sequence, the backstage traffic of which felt like utter chaos until the third performance, when suddenly, magically, it began to run like clockwork and we could all just pretend that it’s utter chaos.
All in all I loved the past six weeks working on this show – one of the top career highlights, I would say.

Other Fun things this week:
-I make “clean out the produce drawer” muffins. I found this muffin recipe, and it seemed pretty versatile, so I looked in my produce drawer and found lots of languishing produce to put into a muffin. I added – apples, pears (that I had forgotten/didn’t realize we had), two wrinkled beets, a huge pattypan squash that had been given to use by our neighbors, but which confounded me so has been languishing in the produce drawer. I might have also added carrots too, but I can’t keep track. I reduced the sugar and used whole wheat flour. I think they turned out great. They were moist and just the right sweetness. The kids were decidedly lukewarm – no raves, but they did each eat several muffins so they couldn’t have been that bad. It was so satisfying to finally find a use for those two sad wrinkled beets in our produce fridge.

-Going to the park with the 7 year old to read. He didn’t have camp this week since it’s a lighter week for me, and he said he wanted to sit outside and read, so we brought our books to the park and read on a park bench together. He’s reading one of the Wings of Fire graphic novels. I’m reading I Capture the Castle.

-Going shoe shopping and school supply shopping. It was tax-free week in Maryland, so I figured it was a good week to get things done. The 12 year old didn’t have a school supply list, per se. I asked her what school supplies she needed and shed said, “I don’t need school supplies, I just use the Chromebook.” Well that made me a little sad. We bought her a binder and some paper and pencils and folders anyway. And then the two little kids got new shoes. They wanted the exact same shoes as they had last year, so that made for a quick and easy trip to the shoe store!

-Making lemonade. I’ve been craving lemonade lately, so I bought a bag of lemons and the 12 year old and I made mint lemonade base one afternoon. Perfect for drinking mixed with fizzy water. I had so much lemonade base that I stuck some in the blender with some strawberries that were a touch past their prime and poured the result into popsicle molds, making strawberry lemonade popsicles.

-When the kids steal my phone and take group selfies when I’m not looking. I get annoyed that they take my phone, but who can stay irked forever at these faces:

Reflections and Aspirations: I finally had a moment to write down my July reflections and August Aspirations. Why do I always seem to get to this when the month is already half over? Anyhow, here they are:
July 2024 Highlights:
-Writing guest blog posts for Elisabeth and Engie. So flattered to have been asked. Those posts were so fun to write.
-Swim Team Season. Summer Swim Team is exhausting, but I loved watching the 12 year old swim and seeing her have fun being on swim team. Also the 7 year old sort of figuring out how to swim. And taking showers on his own. Those felt like milestones.
– Going skating and duckpin bowling with the family. Small adventures.
-The 12 year old going to NYC with her theatre camp and her end of camp showcase.
– Watching the Olympics.
-Getting a new haircut. Also well woman exam, and mammogram. Still have not scheduled that eye appointment yet.
-Visit from my cousin and her daughter. So good to see them and hang out.

July Lowlights:
-The oppressively hot weather. Ick. So much ick. It made me not want to run or leave the house or do anything.
-The circus that is American politics. I try not to let the news get to me, but July 2024 was a lot and it made me just feel so angry and annoyed.
-Having to manage three drop offs and pick ups since all three kids were at different camps/schools. I felt like our mornings were a constant scramble. The moment we got in the car, someone would always ask, “Are we late?” and the answer was always, “No one is on time until Mom is on time to work.”
-Some hard parenting moments. Makes me want to throw up my hands and give up some days. When does it become less of a struggle to get kids to be responsible humans?

August Aspirations:
LIFE/FAMILY/FUN:
-Start school! Buy school supplies [DONE!], double check if the kids need any new clothes.
-Activity sign ups for the fall. I think I know what these are – pretty much the same as last year, but I just have to spend a few hours at my computer and knock it all out. (I’m really thankful that these things can be done online now. I think when I was a child it all involved postage and physical forms and writing checks. Some activities I still write checks for, though.)
– Planning a trip for the long weekend in September where there is no school. Perhaps. Need to really think about this and book things.
-Plan the Malaysia leg of our Asia trip. This has been on the list for several months now, but I think it really needs to be done this month or next.
-Renaissance Faire!!! Figure out when to go.
-Plan birthday party for 4 year old in September.

HOME:
-Window treatments (Still.) Make an appointment with the company that my friend recommended for them to come out and do a consult.
-Declutter one area. Desk? Sewing corner? Pantry?
-Get rid of my car. (Still.)
-Get the front door painted. Choose a paint colour. Paint colours are hard – I thought I’d make it easy on myself and only give myself two options, but what looks good in the morning always looks meh at night and vice versa. So which do I pick?

On the left – No more Drama. on the right, Morocco Red. Which would you pick for a front door?

ME/SOCIAL/FUN:
– Mom’s group lunch (already planned)
-Seeing my friend K. (Already did this)
-Mom and aunt’s visit. Reminder to myself to not revert to teen bratty-ness with my mom.
– Eye Doctor Appointment.
-Paint more pictures. For the sake of having a concrete goal: paint and send two cards.
-Do the NYTimes 9 minute strength workout at least four times a week.
-recommit to journaling daily.
-buy a new purse. My purse is literally in tatters. I’ve been thinking of this one from Quince, or this Sportsac one? I’ve usually had Sportsac purses, but my last one was a little on the small size, so I could stand to get something a little bigger.

WORK:
-Titles for September vocal recital.
-Update stage management handbook for work. (This can spill over into September)
-Finish/archive paperwork from my summer show.

Some of these will probably rollover to be September Aspirations, though, given that it’s almost the end of August.

Grateful for:
-Cooler weather. The weather has been glorious this week! The muggy humidity has left the air, the heat is not as oppressive as it has been, and there is a breeze in the air.

-Getting to dog sit. Every so often, I think, “Maybe I want a dog.” Then I think, “No, actually I don’t think I can fit that in my life.” So I’m grateful when my friends go out of town and I get to dog sit this cutie for them:

A couple weeks with Max is the perfect amount of time to scratch my dog itch (while I scratch his), and make me realize, that I don’t really want a dog 24/7. But I have been enjoying long walks and doggie snuggles and licks these past few weeks.

-My uterus is fine. Or more specifically my uteri are fine. This week started with an ultrasound that involved squirting water into my uterus to get a better look at things. Fun times. No, not at all – it was deeply uncomfortable. But in the spirit of “let’s all acknowledge how different yet normal everyone’s body is”, I’m reporting it here. So I’d been having really wacked periods – like unending light bleeding for months and then really long (like 3 week long) periods, and then weeks of nothing. At my last well woman visit, my doctor said, let’s check that out. When I was pregnant with my first kid, they thought I had a fibroid that was pushing the fetus and would interfere with a vaginal birth. So I had a c-section with her. (A whole other story – maybe I’ll write it here some day.) Then somewhere along the way they said, you have two uteruses. (I think this was after my second miscarriage after that first kid, it came up when they were trying to figure out why the miscarriages.) Anyhow, we tucked that information somewhere and people seemed generally unconcerned because I got pregnant again. I had two more kids, managed to VBAC them (because the babies seemed like they weren’t going to wait for that scheduled c-section.) Then went on with life and maybe still having a fibroid and two uteri, but not really doing anything about it. So fast forward to a couple weeks ago – odd periods, let’s get that checked out, vaginal ultrasound, squirt with water. Guess what? No fibroid! Yay! Just two perfectly healthy uteri. (And just one cervix. The real term they used bicornuate uterus – it’s pretty normal, though rare.) The inconsistent periods? “Well,” my doctor said, “Your uterus is fine, so it’s just you being in your mid forties. I can put you on hormones or birth control pills if you want to try to regulate your periods more.” I don’t really need another thing to keep track of, so I said, “Thank you, but I’ll just make sure to always travel with a back-up pad in my purse.” So that is the story of my uteri. After years of thinking I had a fibroid that I would have to deal with, it’s a huge relief to know that I don’t. Also grateful for my gynecologist because she is pretty awesome and I hope she never retires.

Looking Forward To:
– More peaches from the peach truck! I got three boxes this time since last time I got two and the kids went through them in four days.

-The last week before school starts. I’m contemplating taking the kids camping this coming week. On the one hand, I haven’t been camping yet this summer and could really use the extended time in nature. On the other hand, it seems a lot to cram into the last week before school starts, and maybe I want a more low-key week. We’ll see.

-Time with friends – I have a visit with a friend planned and also lunch with my mom’s group this coming week. Sometimes I feel like there isn’t a lot of interest from the moms in my mom’s group to get together, but I figure I don’t actually like hanging out in big groups, so even if it’s just one or two people coming to lunch, that feels pretty satisfying and makes it worth asking if anyone wants to gather.

What We Ate – I’m not feeling great about our dinner game these past few weeks. There hasn’t been a lot of meal planning, and I’ve just been eating whatever I can scrounge up or throw together. But at least, I’m eating down the fridge…:
Saturday: Pizza leftovers and Newsies (The proshot of the Broadway musical. Loved the dance numbers, the new musical numbers were pretty meh, though. Not sure if I feel the urge to see this in the theatre.)

Sunday: Pizza leftovers (again.)

Monday: Pork and Eggplant stir fry, eaten with noodles.

Tuesday: Salmon and potatoes, cooked on the grill. On the side we had cut up veggies, and I also made a pico de gallo and a mango salsa to eat with the salmon.

Wednesday: Chicken salad sandwiches

Thursday: The family was gone. I had dinner out with friends. I had a tomato, corn, burrata salad with shrimp and French fries.

Friday: Family still gone. I had congee with kimchi and two fried eggs.

Saturday: I had a late lunch, so I didn’t have dinner. When I got home after my show, I had left over Peruvian chicken with black beans, rice, plantains and the leftover salsa from Tuesday.

How is your August going? Is your summer winding down too?