Life Off Headset

Dinner this week – 7/27

I spend a lot of time thinking about food. If you look at the back of my notebook that I keep in rehearsal, you will find lists of food and meals – breakfasts, lunches, and dinner. This is what I do when rehearsals are slow sometimes – I meal plan.

Aside from the inherent nerdy satisfaction of planning, plotting out our dinners is a practical consideration for me. For one, I hate that forlorn 5:00pm look in the fridge when you wonder how your are going to pull dinner out of your rear with a jar of pickles, a block of tofu, and some shriveled carrots. Also – when I’m working evenings, I like to prep some kind of dinner in the mornings for the Husband and kid to eat when they get home – one thing to take off his plate and a way to make sure vegetables get served (if not always eaten). Another thing – I hate food waste, and if I take the time to look through the fridge and plan the week around what’s in there, less food ends up in the garbage or worm bin.

The meal planning has certainly ratcheted up since quarantine. We are avoiding excessive trips to the grocery store so Husband does the grocery shopping once a week. On Saturday mornings, we sit down and figure out what we need to keep ourselves fed for the week, then off he goes to the store. There is something hunter/gatherer about it to me.

It goes like this (as seen in my notebook above). First I write down what we need to eat up at the top. Then from there I figure out six meals for the week. My two main cookbooks are Dinner Illustrated and Indian Instant Pot Cookbook. I like these books because the recipes are for pretty complete meals; I don’t have to try put together this main and that side with whatever starch. We also keep a running list of favorite meals that I’ll look at too. Friday is always pizza. These days it’s take out pizza since our oven is less than reliable. Then at the bottom of the page, I write what groceries we need.

Once I have the meals picked, I assign them to a day. Monday is usually the least desirable meal – this way, the “meh” meal is early in the week. The Husband makes dinner once or twice – usually on Wednesday or Thursday. Then I try to alternate vegetarian meals and meat meals. Sometimes I also look at the weather so we aren’t running the oven when it is 98 degrees outside. Pre-COVID we also looked at when kids have activities and that would be something fast and simple like an Instant Pot meal, or sandwiches.

So this week:

Saturday: Chicken Salad Sandwiches and Cucumber Tomato Salad

Sunday: Potato Salad and Sausage

Monday: Cauliflower Tacos

Tuesday: Broccoli Chicken Stir Fry

Wednesday: Paneer Birayni

Thursday: Green Beans and Tofu

Friday: Pizza

Of course, some days, things go off the rails and we do plan B. Plan B is usually sandwiches. Sometimes breakfast sandwiches. Which the 8 year old can make. On those days when I feel like I just can’t with the dinner plan, I tell her she “gets” to make dinner (yay!). I turn on the stove for her and go pour myself a cocktail. Ok – I don’t drink, so the cocktail is only metaphorical.

July so far

Someone went through our neighborhood and put flags in everyone’s yard for the Fourth of July. It made me really happy.

So we are two thirds of the way through July. About half way done summer vacation. We celebrated yet another national holiday with just ourselves. The playgrounds have opened up again. Armed with hand sanitizers and masks, I’ve been taking the kids and they are so happy to climb and slide and swing again. Schools have just announced that learning will be online for this first semester. The three year old’s childcare facility re-opened at the beginning of the month, but we chose not to re-enroll him. With no prospect of work for me until next year at the (unlikely) earliest, it just didn’t make financial sense to send him. I’m trying to figure out what that means in terms of socialization and development for him.

I thought I would be more organized about the summer. But it’s been pretty aimless. Here’s the daily routine:

5:00a -ish – Baby wakes and nurses. I stay in bed, drift in and out of sleep. the Husband tried a couple times to get her in the morning and feed her solids, but she’s not into that first thing, I guess.

6a/6:30a – kids awake. The Husband usually takes care of the first round of breakfast and diaper. I usually am up by 6:30a.

7:00a – The Husband ambles downstairs for work. I do second round of breakfast if the kids want. Sometimes I get some journalling or an exercise video in.

8:30/9:00a – I take all three kids out for a walk, or adventure. It’s so hot these days that I try to get us out early. Also this is when the baby takes her first nap.

11:00/12n – home and lunch. Also nurse baby. The Husband comes up from work and does lunch with the kids. Whenever possible I have the 8 year old make her own lunch.

1:00/ 1:30p – begins the epic nap attempt with 3 year old. I’m very much on the fence about this because we are only successful at getting him to nap one or two days a week. So maybe I should give up trying? He is in such a better mood when he does nap, but the whole process takes so much time and struggle. The 8 year old helps with nap time – probably because it involves watching stories on the iPad. So really 1:30 – 3:30p is kind of a free for all – the 8 year old has a to do list that she kind of does, and I try to clean up the kitchen or do something productive. However, a lot of my mental energy is going into seeing if the 3 year old is napping. What is the baby doing? Not quite sure. I’m sure it’s some kind of crawling around and nursing. Really, in the afternoon she’s kind of demoted to appendage status.

3:30p – Husband off work. Sometimes we have happy hour (should do that more often).

4:30p – I start dinner, with the goal to sit down and eat by 6pm with kitchen clean up right after.

7:30/8:00p – Bedtime for 3 year old. The Husband handles bedtime for the baby and the 8 year old.

9:00p – kids in bed. TV/ hobby/ reading time.

way way too late (usually sometime between 1:30a and 2a) – bed time. I try to pump before bed too.

Things that have been working:

Thursday adventures: I’ve been trying to plan an adventure on Thursdays because that’s when I realize that I start to lose my shit. The weekend is in sight, but still so far away and we’ve already spent three days mostly at home doing the same old stuff.

3:15pm pick up time: It is so hard to keep the house tidy throughout the day. So I’ve set an alarm and at 3:15p, we stop what we are doing and pick up the living room.

The Husband taking on lunch time: Gives me a small break and I can cross one or two things off my to do list. Usually computer related. It’s a little difficult to do computer work with the three year old around because he likes to sneak up on me and swipe my screen.

Early dinner: I like having dinner on the table by 6pm. If we eat much later than that, the evening feels rushed.

Some things on my mind:

The FUTURE: So much uncertainty. Unemployment benefits are finite. I’m starting to question my life choices. Also – online school until the end of January. Trying to wrap my mind around that one.

How to be a better stage manager when not stage managing: I’ve never really been very meta about what I do, but I’ve begun to really think about the hard and soft skills involved in my profession. Probably related to the above mentioned questioning of life choices.

Sleep: mostly the baby’s. I can only seem to get her to nap in the stroller or while nursing. I’m savouring the baby snuggles, but I’m worried about creating bad habits.

Screen Time: There are so many amazing things online these days, that I’m having a hard time figuring out what is worth my time. Also likewise for the eight year old.

What to do with the kids all day???? I get them outside in the morning. I keep them fed. I make sure they wash their hands. That’s about it consistently. I feel like I need to set the bar a little higher.

We’ve been spending many hours along this trail and parkway.

Books Read June 2020

I didn’t get as much reading done in June as I had hoped. I think I need to be better at using reading to fill time rather than scrolling the internet. But still, some good reads. I spent much of my June reading life thinking about the advantages that I have and how hard it must be to navigate in a world in which you don’t fit into the dominant image of what a successful person looks like.

White Fragility by Robin D’Angelo – (6h 22m). I had placed this book on my holds list months ago, and ironically it came off my holds list the day George Floyd was killed. I have mixed feelings about this book in that I feel like the people who are likely to read it, probably are those who are already open to its ideas, and thus least likely to need to read it. The concept of the book feels a little like “preaching to the choir.” Also, D’Angelo defines “racism” and “white supremacy” in a way that neutralizes them, I think in an attempt to make them inclusive terms rather than divisive terms. I’m not sure that rhetoric works, though.

Reading this book is likely to be a very personal experience, and I don’t know that it’s a book one should recommend that others read- you kind of have to come to it yourself. I’m not white, but a lot of what D’Angelo writes about does hit home for me both as a POC and as a “model minority”. What I found compelling is how she asks us to recognize white as a race, recognize the implications of there being a dominant culture in this country, and recognize that those in the minority cannot enact change without the help of those in power. I wanted the book to be more useful than it was, though, I guess that actionable items was not the point of the book. It is meant to be a starting point. There was a great reading/ resource list at the back of the book, however.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin – (time – didn’t track). I remember my brother reading this book when we were little and he raved about it. It was a smart, fun read. More timely than I would have expected.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson – (3h 31 mins). This time/narrative bending book about three black families in Brooklyn was another hold that came through at a opportune point. Interestingly my friend was talking to me about the Tulsa race riots the day before I started reading this, and the Tulsa race riots played a formative part of the life of one family in this book. Indeed, I think a lot of this book is about how our past influences and informs our present, no matter how much we think we can strike out on our own and leave our family behind. At the same time, it is difficult to overcome generations of systemic racism and challenges without other people having faith in you. As always, when I read books, the way parenthood plays out in them resonate with me the most. I loved this quote, the father’s thoughts at a coming of age ceremony, and the encapsulation of the passage of time and stages:

“But what is the father of the child supposed to do with his hands? His big open hands. Where were they supposed to go when all they wanted was to reach out for his child, hug her, hide her from the world? These hands that learned at seventeen how to snatch smelly diapers away from her tiny body, rub A&D ointment over her rashed behind, hold her util the stinging stopped, until the crying stopped. Hold her- over his shoulder with his massive hand behind her fragile head, then on his chest, in his lap, in his arms, on his back, on his shoulders, his hand on her shoulder as she scooted too fast away from him….”

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal, narrated by Meera Sayal – Audiobook. Fun listen, though probably a little more racy than I expected, given that I listen to audiobooks a lot around my children. But the plot, involving a woman who gets a job teaching English at her local Sikh community center, alternates heavy and light, ultimately leaning towards heavy. I liked the characters and how the book addresses the invisibility and frustration of older women.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West – (4h, 39m). Funny, but also sad and infuriating. West’s writing – about being fat, about feminism, about how dehumanizing society can be to people who don’t fit a certain mold, namely white and ideally male – is raw, powerful, dramatic, visceral. It was interesting to read Lindy Wests’s book in the current racially charged climate. Much like how racism is rooted in systematic oppression by a dominant culture, there are really strong societal prejudices against people who are overweight that put them at an incredible disadvantage. From concrete things like how things are not built to accommodate large people, and indeed there is no incentive for companies to change that, to the more subtle messaging about how overweight people are undesirable. She also writes some really powerful stuff about the white male culture of comedy and the misogyny it perpetuates. She writes for a more inclusive world, for freedom of choice, for society choosing to be better. It’s a really good book.

“The only answer is decide we’re worth helping.”

Time is all there is

The garden at the Farm Park – I once asked as landscape architect what was the best backyard toy for kids and she said “Loose bits of wood.”

Most mornings, I try to take the kids outside. On a good day, we get out of the house by 9:30a. Sometimes it takes longer, and I find myself getting impatient, anxious that we are wasting time, that we will miss something.

Today we were out the door by 9:15am. And I was really pleased. But then, I thought, what is the rush? I mean, for sure, if we put off the morning walk too long, we get into the uncomfortably hot part of the day. But the difference between being out the door at 9:15am and 10:15am? Not a big deal. The goal these days is all about engaging and occupying the children. The time has to be filled somehow. If it is filled by leisurely jam smeared breakfast and shoe battles rather than fresh air and sunshine, is that worth consternation these days when time is plentiful because commitments are few?

Of course the children would love to have more time to splash in the creek. And if we get to the basketball courts too late, there will already be people using the hoop on the shady side. But there is always tomorrow to shoot hoops in the shade and send leaf boats down the river.

So maybe this is our version of the journey being as important as the destination. Yesterday I took the children to the local Farm Park, about a thirty minute drive away. We’ve been there once before, but I had always thought it too far away to go regularly. It’s kind of like, when I was in college and home was a five hour plane ride. My personal calculation was that it wasn’t worth the plane ride unless I got to spend one day with my parents for every hour on the plane. Well, the Farm Park was like that in my head – would the adventure be worth the drive?

But yesterday I realized: the adventure starts at home – with talk about going, and packing our picnic lunch, and making sure everyone has hats and sunscreen. And the adventure continues with the car ride – listening to Hansel and Gretel (because it was the only CD in the car), and then getting a little lost because Google maps does not give you enough lead time on this one particular exit. And the adventure continues at home with emptying the backpack and throwing away the string cheese wrappers.

I don’t want to be frivolous with my time, but these days, I’m finding I’m looking at time differently. There is, of course, the way too much time I spend scrolling the phone – and that is draining, and I do need to work on being more mindful of that. But there are things that I used to impatiently regard as time wasters – the dawdling children, the u-turns because of missed exits, the long walk across a sunny meadow to get to the swing in the shade – lately, in the midst of these things, I find myself pausing and breathing and thinking, “This will take the time that it takes. What is the rush?” Perhaps in a post-COVID world, I will feel differently and move again at a pressing pace. But perhaps not.

Saying Nothing or Saying Something

There has been a lot of talk lately about race in America. Or maybe that is just my left leaning NPR, NY Times, Atlantic Monthly media and social media diet. Also, completely randomly, Robin Diangelo’s book White Fragility came off my reserves list about the time Geroge Floyd was murdered. So I guess I have been spending a bit of time contemplating ideas of what is systemic racism in America today, and my part in it. And wondering if I have anything to say about it. And so I wrote a post about how I felt so very complicit in the current racial climate. How being a “model minority” allows me to reap the benefits of a system that has denied so much to people who aren’t white.

And then I had a conversation with a friend about the idea of White Fragility, and decided to write a different post.

It might have also started with me reading a thread on NextDoor where, in response to a post about speaking to White people about race, someone posted the following:

“I predict … that this thread will turn into another dumpster fire of sincere but mindless regurgitation of “White fragility”/systemic racism talking points from those on the left (with a fair bit and either self flagellation or self righteousness), and then maybe a few angry and exasperated voices from people on the right who will denounce everyone else as “woke” morons. Commenters will be deemed either racists or a idiots.”

And then a couple days later, I spent a morning talking to a good friend about the nature of trauma, and how it can be perpetuated in a way that is difficult to overcome. How trauma can have repercussive effects through generations. And I realized that all my self reflection about my role in systemic racial prejudice in this country is not helping anyone. That my own realization of how lucky I am as a person and as a parent, is a personal journey, not one to proselytize about.

I’ve taken to listening to some more conservative podcasts lately. Initially I was curious how those outside my leftist echo chamber were reacting to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and outrage. I wondered if something truly different was happening, or if this was just another incident in a news cycle fatigued by COVID reporting, an incident amplified by a country worn down by quarantine conditions. And I realized that there are large swaths of the country that do not see value in having a conversation about systematic prejudice and privilege in this country. Some deny it is even a thing. Some think that it obfuscates real issues. Most people really don’t like being told what to think. But one thing is that most people realize that there is a lot of hurt and division in our country. And perhaps that will never go away, and is just a fact of America.

So there’s that. And what to do from here? Or, rather, what do I want to do from here? For all the eye-opening nature of reading White Fragility and the discussion rampant these days about privilege, and how to raise children who are anti-racist, it still seems to me like a lot of jargon. I’ve never been one from protesting; large crowds of people make me very uncomfortable, regardless of whether or not there is a pandemic.

I read this essay by Obama, and it reinforced to me that the most meaningful impact is at the local level. I know the presidential election is the glamorous one, but the County and State level are where most of the real work is done. To that point, this work is not just political, but also economic and social. I think I would like to spend more time thinking about what that means. More action, less analysis. I’m kind of an overthinker, so this might be difficult for me. But I’m going to try.

Books Read in May 2020

Homework by Julie Andrews – 7h 57 m. Technically finished it in April.

Favorite Quote: “I spent so much of my early life trying to unify my need for home with my commitment to work. These days, I’ve come to realize that home is a feeling as much as it is a place; is is as much about loving what I do as being where I am.”

Truthfully, I preferred her first book, Home, to this one. The first book had more details about theatre life and her work. This one felt more like her datebook, regurgitated.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men by Mara Hvistendahl – 9h, 53m. Hvistendahl writes about the deep seated mind set behind prenatal sex selection, and delves into the repercussions of unbalanced birth ratios. Her research focuses on the issue primarily in China and India, though I wished that she had spent more time unpacking the issue in America, especially in the world of fertility treatments. (She does have a chapter about it, but I wish it had been more in depth). As a pro-choice person, it is hard for me to condemn abortion, but there is something really disturbing about sex selection. One of the ironies Hvistendahl points out, is that there is so much pressure for sex selecting for males that even well-educated women do it; technological advances that allow for sex selection do not translate into advances in gender equality. The book touches on the idea of what value do we place on women, and how imparting value translates into objectifying them. When gender ratios are skewed towards men, traditional gender roles are even harder to break.

Memorable takeaway – comparing sex selection with another atrocity: “The most obvious problem with [Female Genital Mutilation] is that is constitutes a human rights abuse. But beginning in the 1990s activists managed to elevate the issue beyond the realm of injustice by arguing that it threatened women’s health.” That is to say health is an effective platform for change. Human rights is not.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai – 11h 41m.

“Everyone knows how short life is… But no one ever talks about how long it is … Every life is too short even the long ones, but some people’s lives are too long as well… If we could just be on earth at the same place and the same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But liste: You tow are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That is a miracle.” -Julian’s soapbox towards the end of the book.

This was a beautiful, beautiful book about love, memory, living, and the people in our orbit. I know it’s about the AIDS epidemic, but the passages about a mother trying to figure out how to be with her daughter, really struck a chord with me too. It was striking to be reading about AIDS while living through a global pandemic. There is the same sense of fear and the same list of medically recommended behavioral shifts. Indeed, I would get their epidemic and our current one mixed up in my head and then feel jarred when there were scenes with crowds of people. I very rarely cry when I read books, but with this one, I came pretty close. Life is too short not to move on. It’s also too long not to move on.

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel – 8h 20m.

“Henry didn’t think Jana was a mean person; he thought she was a good person, with a meanness problem.”

It took me a bit to get into this novel which follows the members of a string quartet from when they are first founded to when they break up, many years later. I felt some of the parts about music were overwritten, but then again, very rarely do I like reading descriptive passages of music; it makes me realize how very personal one’s reaction to music is. Also none of the characters were very sympathetic in the beginning. But 20 somethings rarely are in literature. The got better as they aged.

Twenty-One Truths about Love by Matthew Dicks – 3h 29m.

“Given my advantages, nothing I do will ever be as amazing as an octopus opening a child-proof bottle.”

Pithy, breezy, a fun, fast read. This books was told as a series of lists. I always like books with non-traditional narrative structures.

Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman – Audio book, narrated by Michael Sheen. I

I listened to this as I sewed masks for a church project and I found myself staying up late to sew so that I could keep listening. It was gripping, and Malcolm and Alice were such real, brave characters. I find Pullman’s books make good audiobooks for me because there is a lot of plot, despite it’s big ideas. Spoiler alert: I’ve never been so sad by the destruction of an inanimate object.

The “I Voted” Sticker

Today is the Maryland Primary. It was originally slated for April 28th, but because of COVID, the state moved the election to June 2nd, and made it a “vote by mail” election. I deeply appreciate that the ballots were automatically mailed to registered voters so that I didn’t have to even request one. Voting should be as easy as it is important.

As I’ve watched the Democratic Primary process, with candidates dropping one by one, I came to feel that voting in the primary was going to be a wash. But then I looked at the ballot and reminded myself that there is more than just national politics. There were some local level elections as well. Also, to be honest, I am still somewhat confused by the process of electing delegates to the national convention. I tried to read up on that, but it seems a convoluted system and requires an advanced degree in statistics and probability.

Growing up, my parents often took me to the polls on election day. Now, since my children have been around, they come with me to the polls too. I want them to see how simple, yet important the process is. I want them to see that a lot of people do it, and realize that everyone should do it. This year, we didn’t have a polling place to go to — well, technically there are polling places open, but Maryland has set things up so that you don’t have to use them. Instead, we all walked to the mailbox down the street and dropped the completed ballot in the mail.

There was no election worker to smile and check my ID. And there was no one to hand us our “I Voted” sticker at the end. So after we came home, we made our own sticker.

Afterwards, I sent to it several of our elected officials, with a note asking them to please remind their constituents to vote. I’ve never written to my elected officials before, and I was a little nervous – I mean, I’m sure they get a lot of mail, and this seemed frivolous. But I thought that no one is handing out “I voted” stickers this year, and I wanted to see if I could get ours out into the world. I’ve always loved seeing the wide array of “I Voted” stickers that come across my social media feeds on election day, and this was my tiny way of trying to replicate that.

There is a lot going on in America right now. Certainly the outrage and civil unrest is compounded by a nation of people housebound and living under government mandated constraints for two months. I think that we are feeling particularly helpless and at a loss as to how we can make this country a more equitable, compassionate place. I’m at a loss too. I worry about not knowing what constitutes effective change and what is just lip service, albeit sincere lip service. I worry that I can’t perceive current events as relevant to me, when I know they are. I don’t want to read more media to try to sort this out for myself, so I think I need to delve into some more longform writings on race, class, and privilege. In the meantime, I voted.

Sally’s Recipe Box: Oatmeal Cookies

I am clearly not a food blogger which a fancy camera.

We have this index card box that is filled with recipes. The box belonged to the Husband’s mother. The recipes are a mish mash of things: papers clipped from magazines or the back of boxes, handwritten recipes in the type of neat yet indecipherable script that is no longer taught, some cards typed on a typewriter, a few even mimeographed sheets breaking away at their folds. The recipes titles often have people’s names in them: “Martha Ward’s Fudgy Icing”, “Grace’s Cole Slaw”, “Beef Stroganoff Eileen Dixon” There are a lot of Jello recipes.

I thought it might be fun to cook/bake/ assemble our way through some of these recipes. This month, we did Helen Trott’s Oatmeal Cookies. Helen was the Husband’s grandmother. I never got to meet her, but Husband said she was very nice and gentle.

The recipe was quite vague. No real directions at all. I wondered if people used to just know how to mix ingredients together to make cookies. Kind of Great British Bake Off style. And it called for Oleo. We didn’t have Oleo, so I used Crisco and butter. I actually misread the Crisco package the first time and added an extra 1/2 cup of shortening. Oops. But then I made the cookies again, as written, and I think I preferred the version with an extra 1/2 cup of Crisco. They came out more tender and spread a bit more in the baking.

The recipe also calls to “add spices, nuts, fruit, choc chips”. Not in any specific quantity. Just… you know… add them. If you want. How you want. Baker’s choice. Or in my case, kid’s choice.

So here is our recreation/ adaptation of Helen Trott’s Oatmeal cookies. I read introduction to the cookie section of King Arthur Flour baking book to figure out what order to combine the ingredients.

Helen Trott’s Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 c. shortening
1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. Water
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 c. oatmeal
handful of walnuts
handful of raisins
handful (or more) or chocolate chips)

Cream together shortening, butter, sugar and brown sugar

Add water, vanilla and egg until blended

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oatmeal, baking soda, and salt. Add flour to shortening/butter/sugar and stir until combined.

Mix in handfuls of nuts, dried fruit, chocolate chips, as the fancy strikes

Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 12-15 mins. Or 10 because I like my cookies partially raw.

The non “oops I put in an extra 1/2 c. of Crisco” version. Not as much spread, but still tasty.

So the unfortunate coda to this story. The second batch (seen above in a cookie jar made by our very talented friend Esther), fell victim to an ant invasion. It really pained my heart, but we ended up throwing the cookies out, having only eaten three or four (plus a bowl of the raw cookie dough. ‘Cause that’s how our cookie making rolls here). I’m not sure that there is really anything unhealthy with ant infested cookies, but it did wig me out a little. I’m a little ashamed of my own weakness, and wish that I could be one of those people for whom eating ant infested cookies could be no big deal.

Where the Wild Things Are

Our dog eared copy of the beloved classic.

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew – and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are. – from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

I feel as if suddenly it’s spring. Not just spring, but late spring, verging on summer. Somehow we missed spring, while sitting at home during a pandemic. The cherry blossoms (which are always an indicator here) peaked at the beginning of the stay at home orders. Usually the cherry blossoms are time marker for me, but this year, it was a blip, barely registering.

My cousin Karen has been writing daily on Facebook, each post labelled with the day number. I think if it were not for her posts and for the daily posts of other blogs I read, I would have absolutely no sense of what day it is or how deep into stay-at-home orders we are. When I’m working, the rhythm of time is pretty much defined by when in the process we are (ie. prep, rehearsal, tech, or performance) and when the next free day is. Without those markers, time seems to be particularly slippery.

Several years ago, when the eight year old was a baby, there was a knock on our door and it was our across the street neighbor with two shopping bags full of book they had our grown. In that pile was a well worn copy of Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. These days, the three year old has been really into reading Sendaks classic are at bedtime, there is something beautifully apt about Max’s story – how our walls are now our “world all around” as we sail “in and out of weeks.” I feel as if we are living with a pack of feral creatures who root in the pantry and fridge for food when the whim strikes, leaving mess and havoc in their wake.

To be sure, part of this is my own fault – perhaps I should not have left the three year old alone with a spray bottle, two cups of water, and some water colour paints. My hopes that he would docilely create art while I showered were laughably naive. I emerged from the shower to shouts from the 8 year old trying to contain the mess, and a rainbow of water spread on the floor, while the three year old stood on his chair, the spray bottle topless and empty. There are definitely terrible eyes being rolled and terrible roars and terrible teeth being gnashed. Sometime they are mine.

Unlike Max, I have no tricks to tame the beasts. Though come to think of it, his trick seems mainly to embrace the wild rumpus, even to instigate it. Maybe I should try more of that. Perhaps that is what we can learn from the little boy in the wolf suit. That at the end of the day, once we have exhausted ourselves rumpus-ing, we just want to be where someone loves us best of all. And where dinner is hot.

Off Headset (or why I started to blog)

Last summer, when I was pregnant with our third child, I had idyllic visions of starting a blog to document my pregnancy. I had always felt that I hadn’t been as mindful about the gestating process as I wanted to be. With my first pregnancy, I was five months gone before I admitted something was going on. With my second, I was working a pretty challenging schedule (Ring Cycle, anyone?). As a result, I never really took time to savour being pregnant. So last summer, I thought, “I have time off; I am going to start a blog to document things.” But then life, children, summer schedules, and quite honestly, inhibitions got in the way, and before I knew it, it was September and the pregnancy that I wanted to savour and document was … a baby. And I was back at work. And the next show happened. Then the next show didn’t.

And so here we are. But no time like the present, right? And nothing like a pandemic induced stay at home order to give myself time to “create before you consume.”

“Off headset” is what we say at work when we take our headsets off. Like when we go to the bathroom – because you don’t want to be the person who accidentally drops their headset into the toilet, or the person who broadcasts the sound of peeing to everyone else to hear. And at the end of the day, I say, “Off headset” as I am powering off my beltpack, and hanging up my headset – the signal that I’m are no longer available over headset, that rehearsal is over for me,and that I’m switching gears.

Life in opera can be all consuming. The long hours and middling pay means that one really needs to believe and love what one does to make a life of it. The intense rehearsals, monumental achievements, warm colleagues with crazy stories – these things tend to take up all my time and energy when I’m in production. Doubly so when I travel for gigs; when I’m in a new city, work can easily become the whole world, because throwing yourself into an show is the path of least resistance. But there is always a part of me that says, “This isn’t the sum of me! This sitting in rehearsal, solving other people’s problems, swapping horror stories during lighting sessions…. I have a life outside of this.”

So in that vein, I thought I’d create a space for myself to explore/write about things that occupy me when I am off headset – food, books, articles, thoughts, family, things that make me smile, think, and contemplate.