Books Read April and May 2024

I read a lot in April, but I didn’t read much in May because work was really busy, Lots of audiobooks because of commuting, though…

Last Night at The Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo – I picked up this book from my sister in law when I was visiting them in Berkeley. This novel is about Lily Hu, growing up in 1950s San Francisco and how she begins to question and explore her sexuality. It’s always fun to read a book about the place that I’m visiting, particularly since we did go to Chinatown and I had a frame of reference for some of the streets mentioned in the book. I loved all the historical details, and thinking about life as a Chinese American in mid century America. I think ultimately, though, coming of age novels aren’t really my jam right now. I find I get impatient to know what happens to a character once they break free of childhood so I’m always a little disappointed when the books end with them just starting their journey. I liked reading this book and all the characters, but I just wanted there to be more story and less personal angst. I think this is definitely a “me” problem because the book is beautiful written and well researched.

Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – A 2016 collection of writings, micro essays, drawings, and some things I can’t define. I first heard of Amy Krause Rosenthal through her delightful children’s books. (Oh gosh – I just googled her and she passed away in 2017, which makes me so sad now and tinges the book with bittersweetness) This book has an interactive texting component to it, which given that she has passed away, makes that element really poignant. Anyhow, this book is structured in class subjects and she uses each subject as a lens through which she examines all the things that give us angst and give us joy. I really loved this book – the book is very dog eared from all the passages I wanted to mark. I laughed and laughed so hard. Some favorite excerpts:
Under Social Studies:
“You run into someone from elementary school, someone you haven’t seen in forever. How have you been what have you been up to?! There are many ways to come at their questions, but considering your shared history – you were once prepubescent fort-makers together – there sis really only one response: What have I been up to? I’ll tell you the biggest, craziest things since I last saw you: A few humans tumbled out of my lady parts.“

Under Midterm Essay, about hitting middle age:
“An so it was, everything around me had a bittersweet sheen to it; moments were dramatically stamped FLEETING and TRANSIENT as I roamed about. A simple exchange between my son and me, for example, felt epic in its beauty and poignancy; all that happened was that he tapped on his bedroom window, I looked up at him from the sidewalk below, and he waved…. I lost it when my daughter excitedly asked me to quick come outside, watch this; See how fast my new sneakers make me run?
I didn’t exactly have a midlife crisis. I had a mid-life cry-bliss. “

And also has pithy charts and drawings like this one under Language Arts:

Murder Your Employer- the McMaster’s Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes – This is a novel about how to, well, murder your employer. I borrowed the audio book because it was narrated by Neil Patrick Harris and Simon Vance. The novel centers around Cliff, who is recruited to a school that trains people in murder, kind of a Hogwarths for would be killers. I thought this book was gleefully convoluted, and Holmes skewers the mystery genre to perfection. If you’re not into murder mysteries this might not be your thing, but if you do like them, this will feel delightfully similar in tone to Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.

The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto – Read for Mother Daughter Book Club. The 12 year old picked this out and then told me I had to read it. It’s about a high school boy who developed an obsessive crush on a classmate and how his crush retaliates. I didn’t love this book – all the characters are either morally terrible or clueless in a harmful way. The 12 year old loved it though – she loves novels with a good twist and this one was quite twisty. I did yelp out loud at one point. I have enjoyed other books by Jess Q Sutano, though – I think she writes fun and entertaining books.

My Brilliant Friend be Elena Ferrente– FINALLY finished this book from Cool Bloggers Book Club. My take away – WTF? Who are all these people? I mean a) literally in the sense that I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, and b) I could never figure out what they were about.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue – This beautifully written novel is about a village in Africa that is contaminated by the digging on their land by a BIG American corporation. The villagers spend years trying to get the big company to stop the digging and to pay reparations for all the death and disease the digging and toxic run off has has caused. The effort has a huge cost to the people of the village. This was a sad and frustrating read for me, as might be expected whenever a story pits people without resources against huge corporations and corrupt governments. I really liked this book, despite that- or maybe because of it. Mbue finds surprising nuances and complexities in corruption and survival.

The Tattooist of Auchwitz by Heather Morris, read by Richard Armitage– I picked this audiobook because it was read by Richard Armitage, who I’ve been a fan of since the BBC production of North and South. As might be expected from the title, this is a very very sad book – the misery was a little unrelenting. At the same time, I thought there were parts of it that were stunning even in the face of the autrocities of the Holoucaust.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan, read by Therese Plummer– I picked this up becauae I saw it on a list of short audiobooks. It is about a young computer programmer who moves to the Bay Area to work for a tech company and starts making sourdough bread in her spare time. I thought this satirical and charming book was a fun read, but the end was a little unhinged and bizarre. The astute observations on life in the Bay area made me laugh. There were parts that made me want to revive my sourdough starter and start baking bread again, the descriptions of bread baking were so evocative and romantic. I don’t love books where the ending comes out of left field, and this book kind of just left me scratching my head. I listened to a lot of this during late night commutes and there were parts where I thought, “Maybe this doesn’t make sense because I’m tired’.” And I’d go back and re-listen, a couple times even. But nope, the story was just that odd in places.

My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy – YA novel set in the world of high school theatre. (I suggested this as a mother daughter book club book, but I’m not sure the 12 year old read it.) High school senior Wade is passed over for the lead in the school production of My Fair Lady, so he decides to befriend Elijah in an attempt to show people how not self centered he is. Elijah on the other hand has joined the lighting crew for the show in order to make some friends, and jumps at th eopportunity to make friends with super popular Wade. I always find theatre books fun to read – seeing what an author got right or wrong compared to my own experiences. I loved those details in this book, but I didn’t love Wade. The concept of the book is based on what an asshole Wade is, but the story is told in first person and I find it very rare that people truly come off as assholes in first person.

On my proverbial night stand:

Landslide by Susan Conley- Maine author to go with our Maine trip. Really enjoying this book.

Life is Hard: How Philisophy can Help us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya- A couple years ago I read Setiya’s book Midlife: a Philosophical Guide, and found it so thoughtful to read. This book is about the various things that can make life challenging- infirmity, loneliness, failure, injustice- and seeing if phlosophy can help us navigate them,

Wild Genius On The Moors by Juliet Baker- Charlotte Brontë has died! Yet there are still thirty pages to go….

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer, audiobook- charming epistolatory novel about two 12 year olds whose fathers have met and fallen in love- it’s a little too cute sometimes (perhaps because of the audiobook format) but mostly proving delightful.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White- reading aloud at bedtime to the kids,

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty- another Maine author- a collection of interconnected short stories. I’m enjoying to so far.

Weekly recap + what we ate: decluttering and swimming

Wandering through the meadow

We looked at our calendar and realized that it was going to be one of our only free weekends to take a day trip to Longwood Gardens, so we decided to go on Saturday. The Husband and two littles went to a volunteer garden clean up at the church in the morning and when they came home, we had lunch and then got in the car. We usually go to Longwood Gardens in the morning and spend all day, so this was a bit of an abbreviated trip. I wondered if driving two hours for a couple hours at Longwood would be worth it, and it turns out it was a nice outing. We didn’t go to the conservatory, spending all our time in the outdoor portion of the gardens, and we skipped the treehouses where we usually let the kids play for a bit. But we did walk the meadow path, which is something we don’t always get to do because it is a little on the long side. And we did see the vegetable gardens which is always one of my favorite things. Here is the Rainbow collage from our visit:

One big disappointment was that they have taken out the children’s garden – there used to be a section with a fountain the kids could play in and the gardens were set up with bee themed paths with nooks and crannies to hide in. It was the kind of space that invited a lot of imaginative free play. The Husband talked to a guide and they said that they’re implemented more “interactive” displays for kids – namely little signs with information and prompts for discussion. Which… let’s be honest, I don’t know any kid that is going to say, “Boy, this placard is a lot more fun than these winding maze-paths.” Anyhow, that was kind of a bummer, but even still it was nice to be out in the sunshine and flower and trees and grass. The 12 year old took charge of the two little kids and they wandered down paths together singing show tunes, and when they got tired of that, she would ask for prompts from her siblings and make up songs for them. It’s nice to have moment like that to remember when they are at each other’s throats. We stayed at the gardens for about two and a half hours and then we went home, stopping for BBQ on the way home. It was delicious. All in all, a nice day.

Sunday was Time Trials for the 12 year old’s swim team. I took her to the pool at 7am and then stayed to work as a timer. It was really neat to see her swim and take an interest in her results. She even went up to one of the stroke and turn judges during a quiet moment and asked about the rules and how people most often get disqualified. They weren’t DQing people at time trials, but afterwards, she still went and asked the judge if she would have been DQd so she could learn and work on those things. I think I’m realizing that even though I find parenting a tween really hard, it’s so cool to see her becoming a person and take things on herself. Makes me feel like I just need to trust the process more and talk less.

Butterfly!

To celebrate time trials, I took the 12 year old for a smoothie and we tried a Mangonada – kind of a combination of mango smoothie with mango chunks layered with a swirl of sweet and spicy mixture called chamoy, and topped with a tamarind straw. It was amazing and I’ll have more! The rest of the day was occupied by a long visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while and then simple dinner and bed. All in all a nice weekend.

Post swim meet treat.

The week before was one of my few weeks without kids and without work. One of the big projects was to clean out the guest room. It has become a dumping ground for all the random things without a home or in transition in our lives. I spent a couple hours this week going through the boxes and boxes of kids’ clothes. It’s kind of a chore because they need to be sorted into stuff the little kids can still wear and stuff that no one will ever wear again. Then this latter pile is sorted into age and then girl and boy clothes. And then there are the shoes. So many shoes. I had a phase when I was obsessed with those Keen water shoes and would snatch them up anytime I saw them at consignment sales. It is kind of a problem. I have a pair in practically every size, and then some. Some sizes that are ridiculous because my kid certainly wasn’t walking when her feet were that size. So there are a lot of shoes. Which is kind of funny because we’re kind of shoe minimalists for the kids. They have a pair of running shoes, a pair of Crocs and a pair of rain/snow boots. And also a pair (or two of Keens).

This isn’t the “before” picture- it’s “during” picture, which I think is even more scary. Putting it here for a bit of accountability.

Also – over the years I’ve also amassed a motley assortment of breast pumps. Breast pumps were never covered in my insurance plan (this feature had been grandfathered in after Obamacare passed), so, counter-intuitively, I decided that I would spend lots of my own money on pumps. I had five electric pumps sitting around. Three of them I love, as much as one can love a breast pump – I mean I think there were days when I spent more time with my breast pump than with my family, so there was a kind of begrudgingly familiar relationship there. Two of the pumps were complete pieces of garbage. They weren’t efficient at all and had so many awkward parts. (I mean all pumps have awkward pumps, but these were particularly not streamlined.) Why was I holding on to crappy breast pumps??? What value were they adding to my life?

To backtrack a little, on the day before, my friend and I went to see an afternoon movie. We went to see Babes – a movie about two friends navigating their friendship as they traverse the waters of motherhood. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much in a movie theatre. The movie was so so so so funny. But also so on point about so many aspects for friendship and parenthood. There is a moment (spoiler alert) where one character encourages the other character to burn her breast pump. Oh my goodness, the triumphant glee with which they destroyed that breast pump brought me so much joy to watch. The next day, thinking back on the movie, I looked at those two crappy pumps sitting in the bottom of a storage bin and I was inspired. Those pumps were annoying as all get out to use – no point in trying to dispose of them in the perfect way. Chunk, toss. Straight into the garbage bag they went. I felt a tiny twinge of regret about throwing out something that was still in working order, but I’ll get over it.

Two of the other pumps, I ended up giving to a friend with a new baby girl. In addition to that friend, I have another friend (the one who came over on Sunday afternoon) expecting a baby in September, so I passed on a bunch of stuff to her too, including cloth diapers, a diaper pail, a baby sling. Why did I have a diaper pail still sitting around? I wasn’t even using it – it was in the attic, collecting dust and nostalgia.

In all honesty I could have just chucked everything into a donation pile and moved it all out of the house, but every time I pulled the clothes out, I got all sentimental, remembering when the outfit was worn. And when I got sentimental, I couldn’t bear to just sweep everything into a trash bag for donation; some of the pieces I wanted to pass along and know that they would get worn again. So I think that this week, between those two friends, I passed along four or five boxes worth of things – also a baby chair that I think I will need to get back because unbeknownst to me, the Husband is actually really attached to it – it cam all the way from Colorado with us when we had our first child. The guest room does not look any better, though, because most of the things I did purge were in bins, so they didn’t leave much visual clutter in the first place. If anything, the guest room looks worse because the things that were in bins are now all over the floor. Oh well, at least I know that progress is being made, even if it doesn’t look like it.

We’ve been swimming a lot this week. My skin smells constantly of chlorine and sunscreen and no amount of scrubbing will get that smell out. I’m really proud of the 4 year old – one day I forgot her swim vest at home, and she still spent an hour and a half in the pool (with time out for adult swim) – she can now touch the bottom in the shallow end. Neither the seven year old nor the 4 year old can swim yet, but they are comfortable paddling around in the 4ft section in their swim vests. We don’t swim much outside of summer, so every year it’s a bit of a surprise to see how the kids fare in the water. (Though there is a new aquatic center opened up near us, so maybe we’ll take advantage of that during the cooler months?). One of my dreams this summer is to get the 7 year old to swim independently. There were definitely 7 year olds swimming at time trials and their flailing perseverance was kind of adorably inspirational to watch.

We’re still trying to find our routine for pool nights. I’ve been trying to pack a big snack/dinner for the two little kids so they can eat at the pool after their swim session. Then I have them shower and change into pjs at the pool so that when we get home they just have to brush teeth and go to bed. The 12 year old either eats at home or eats at the pool. Sometimes both. The “coming home and going straight to bed” hasn’t been exactly working and there have been a lot of late nights. I don’t know if we just muddle through this erratic bedtime for the next five weeks, or if we should try to tweak the routine/schedule. Oh well, there’s only a couple more days of school and then we’re into summer, so maybe the relaxed evenings are what makes summer memories? Although, once camp starts, our mornings will be more hectic because camp starts earlier than school so we will have to be out the door earlier. My takeaway – there is no such thing as routine.

Towards the end of the week the principal called with the results for the four year old’s Early Entrance to Kindergarten assessment and he said that the 4 year old did not meet the criteria for early entrance. Wump wump. When I asked the principal what they thought she needed a little more time on, he said that she was actually above grade level for Math and letter recognition, but some of the reading skills weren’t quite there. Part of me thinks that if my child can already read, then she should be going into 1st grade, not kindergarten. I do wonder if early entrance to Kindergarten is about a child being highly gifted rather than just run of the mill “ready for kindergarten”. Anyhow, the principal said we can appeal the decision to the school district if we want. The first step would be a more in depth meeting with him.

I know I said I wouldn’t push the early entrance issue if the school thought she should wait, but it’s one of those things when faced with the realities, things always shift slightly. I think we will go ahead and meet with the principal and go from there. I think I also am a little concerned that her current pre-K teachers say she will be bored if she has to repeat pre-K so I want to know what can we/the preschool do to challenge her next year and keep her engaged? Or maybe we need to look into private Kindergarten? The whole thing has left me a little deflated because I had been really excited for her to start school next year – she is the most mature of the three kids, she does addition up to 10 on her fingers, she knows all the letter sounds and can write words if you spell them to her – all her teachers say she’s ready. She had even gotten a place in the same French Immersion program as the 7 year old, which meant that I would have two kids in one school. I’ve never had two kids in one school before! The Immersion program is by lottery, so I’m not sure if she’ll get a place the following year. And now it would mean another year of paying for childcare. Gah. All things that are a little bit of a bummer.

Haiku – I’m trying to take up the haiku habit again. It’s watermelon season, one of my favorite reasons for summer. Only watermelons are big, and not everyone in the family likes eating it….

Why did I ever
Buy a whole watermelon
Right before my trip?

Grateful For:
-My friend who came see a weekday matinee with me and the very flexible week at work that allowed her to do so. Is there anything as luxurious as taking in a weekday matinee? The theatre was practically empty and my friend and I ate popcorn for lunch and laughed loudly together. And afterwards we ran errands at Target together. It was kind of the perfect friend day.

-Laughing with my family. Inspired by a mention on Stephany‘s blog, I cued up some Nate Bargatze. Stand up comedy is not something that was ever really on my radar. But I like laughing, so I thought I’d give it a try and pulled up one of his albums the other day while cleaning the kitchen. Oh my did it feel good to laugh. And the 12 year old, who was cleaning alongside me laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time. We’ve had a lot of moody tween lately, so hearing her laugh kind of helped remind me that she can still find delightful things in life. She now wants to listen to stand up all the time – we listened to Jim Gaffigan on the way to Longwood Gardens. I’m discovering a whole new world of entertainment! I don’t always find the content appropriate – I think what was once considered “edgy” is actually kind of sexist/racist/ableist, etc. And body shaming seemed to be a big thing in a lot of the albums. Some of the punching down is uncomfortable, and not in a good way. So yeah, some of it has been a little hit or miss. But when the absurdities of life are brought front and center and I can relate to those absurdities, it’s kind of a hit.

-Music Teachers. We’ve had two music recitals the past few weeks and, let’s be honest, the enthusiasm outweighs the ability in many cases. And yet, it doesn’t matter at all. The teachers are as enthusiastic for the kid who played the 10 second piece as they are for the kid who played the 10 page piece. My kids’ music teachers spend their time day in and day out teaching kids how to make music and never seem to get jaded about what they do.

-Finding my journals. I lamented last week about feeling a little off because I had misplaced my journals. Well I found them! They were under a pile of things next to my desk. Hooray! I haven’t gotten back into the daily habit, but I did make time to jot a few things down every couple of days. It’s a little sad to me how blank May is, but when I look back, I’ll be able to tell that May 2024 was a very busy month, and that’s a kind of record keeping in and of itself.

Looking Forward To:
– Maine! I’ve been listening to podcasts on Acadia National Park to get inspired. Listening to travel podcasts is one of my favorite things to do when I’m getting ready for a trip. I just search my destination and I’ll get a list of podcast episodes that are relevant. I’m excited for hikes and beaches and lobster and seeing friends.

-On that note, there was a list in the New York Times called Read Your Way Through Maine. It’s part of an occasional series where they have an author recommend a reading list tied to a location. (There was one for San Francisco, which inspired some of my reading during spring break.) I love reading books set in places that I’m about to visit, so I’ve borrowed a couple books off the Maine list to read in anticipation of/while in Maine – Landslide is about a women, mother of three teenage boys living in remote Maine, trying to cope when her husband is hospitalized in a fishing accident. Night of the Living Rez is twelve interconnected short stories set in a Native community in Maine.

-Glee! Because swim team practice goes until 7:30pm, we have had to re-think our traditional Friday night pizza and movie. Similar what we do when the 12 year old had Friday night basketball practice, we’ve decided to replace the pizza and movie with pizza and a tv show. During basketball season we watched Galavant, but there was only two seasons of it and we’ve watched it all. We tossed around a couple idea – I had borrowed the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the library, and we thought we might introduce the kids to the Star Trek universe, but at the last minute I was in the mood for something a little more light hearted, and we decided to watch Glee. I had watched it off and on when it first came out, but I didn’t really have a television at the time, so I didn’t get to watch all of it. We are only two episodes in and it’s really fun. Some awkward adult content that I’m not quite ready to explain to the 7 and 4 year olds yet – I had forgotten the whole bit about the celibacy club – but they haven’t asked yet. The musical numbers are fun and the performances crackle; I’m enjoying it.

What We ate: We’ve survived our first two weeks of swim team practice. Last week the little kids started practice so it was the first week with us being at the pool from 5:00pm – 8:00pm. Dinner kind of felt all over the place.


Saturday: Leftover pizza and Kate and Leopold. It was my turn to choose the movie and I wanted a nice cozy rom-com. Does anyone else remember this movie? What a charming, sweet, perfect romantic comedy! And oh my gosh Hugh Jackman just glows through the whole movie. I feel like I’ve said it before here, but he’s just so pretty.

Sunday: Grilled chicken and vegetables. My friend’s 11 year old and my 12 year old have the same voice teacher, so Sunday after their recital, we asked if they wanted to come over for dinner. We stopped at the grocery story on the way home to pick up some chicken, my friend made a marinade at home and brought it over, and we had a great little cook out – chicken, vegetables, salad. Also – just as we were firing up the grill, our neighbor, who works at the farmer’s market, brought us four bunches of asparagus, so we tossed two bunches on the fire too. It was the perfect casual summer hang out with friends.

Monday: Vegetarian Tortilla Soup. Mostly this recipe from the NY Times, but I made it in the InstantPot and added black beans because we had some dried black beans that had been in the pantry for way too long and we kind of wanted the space back. I think my favorite part of this soup is that I dumped the last crumbs of a bag of tortilla chips into it to thicken it up (a trick I learned from Dinner Illustrated.) The chips had been sitting in the cupboard for a while and they were pretty stale, but no one ever wants to eat the tiny broken bits – how do you scoop salsa with that? I abhor food waste, so dumping the last dregs of the bag into the suit felt very satisfying. Vegan (we didn’t do the cheese and sour cream topping) . Everyone liked this a lot so I’m bookmarking the recipe.

Tuesday: Curry chickpea wraps. Pool dinner. This is the cool bloggers’ favorite curry chickpea salad, which I wrapped in tortillas along with some lettuce and brought to the pool for dinner. I love a curry anything and I even bought some mango chutney as the recipe called for (and then proceeded to eat a quarter of the chutney straight from the jar with a spoon. Was I hungry? Was it just that tasty?) I added a squeeze of lime juice to the salad to brighten it up a little. The little kids didn’t love this, but they still ate a couple bites. The 12 year old and I found this very tasty. Though she did say, “This would be better if you added chicken.”

Wedesday: Asparagus frittata and salad. Made from the other two bunches of asparagus our neighbor brought us.

Thrusday: PB & J and mac and cheese. I brought PB&J to the pool, along with cucumbers and apple slices. It wasn’t filling enough and the kids had mac n cheese (from the blue box) when they came home. Along with brie and Triscuits. I ate the brie smothered in the mango chutney. It was delicious. This is the kind of dinner pre-kids me would have eaten but also would have thought, “This really isn’t dinner.” But you know what? This is totally dinner. Smashing paradigms here.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee

Saturday: BBQ at Old South Smokehouse on the way home from Longwood Gardens. It was our first time trying this place, even though we drive past it every time we go to Longwood Gardens. It was tasty, but there were no collard greens on the menu. What kind of BBQ place doesn’t have collard greens on the menu? Also – we introduced the children to hush puppies. The 7 year old would not share his.
Also – not for dinner, but in the morning I did make a strawberry rhubarb crisp, based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I had tried out a new farm stand in hopes of finding a replacement for the one I used to go to which is not opening this season. This new one was on the pricy side for me, of course it’s in our county, which probably affects the price. At any rate, I bought some rhubarb there and some strawberries, with the plan to make a pie. Well, crisp is so much less effort, so I did that instead. Only the kids ate the strawberries before I could make the crisp, so I ended up making it with supermarket strawberries, which was fine, but caused me a disproportionate amount of consternation. The crisp was yummy.
Also – side note – let’s talk about the price of strawberries. So right now, strawberries are in the $3.99/pound to $4.99/pound range at the supermarket. The strawberries at the farmstand were $7.50/pint. Which in comparison to the supermarket felt really expensive. But then as we were all enjoying the pint that I brought home, I realized I pay $8 for a large boba tea, and this pint of strawberries is more filling and is better for me than my boba. And I can share the strawberries with the family. So really, if I’m thinking of how much I pay for a treat (which, let’s face it, Boba – which is kind of my one indulgence – is definitely a treat.), then $7.50 for a pint of strawberries really isn’t so bad. Sometimes when I’m trying to weigh the cost vs. value of something I need to put it into perspective like that to help me decide if it’s something truly worth my money.

Sunday: Pasta and jarred red sauce, cut up veggies, leftover mushroom rice. Typical Sunday – simple supper and eating down the fridge.

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 9 and 10: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Emergency Room and home

Finishing out our Spring Break Trip recaps… Because, you know, summer vacation starts next week.

Day 9 of our trip was perhaps the most stereotypical San Francisco Tourist day. I wanted to ride the cable cars and see Chinatown. Fisherman’s Wharf was a close walk from there, so we decided to see that as well. On this day, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece came along and we met up with the Husband’s friend R and my sister-in-law’s mother came for part of the day as well.

We left Berkeley around 9:30am in the morning and got off at Embarcadero where we caught the cable car to Chinatown. I’ve always loved the cable cars – I worked in San Francisco, one of my first stage management gigs in the early 2000s, and from the theatre you could walk a few blocks and catch the cable car which would take me to the apartment where I was staying. There was something so magical about jumping on the cable car and riding with the San Francisco air and hum around me, this very slow and aged method of transport. Also, at the time, that particular line was free. It was all so romantic. The cable cars are no longer free, but they are still really fascinating to ride.

We took the California line to Chinatown where we got off, and slowly meandered through the streets, with their paper lanterns strewn above and steep hills and colourful murals. I stopped in at a wok shop – it was filled with all sorts of kitchen implements that I remember my mom having in our kitchen when I was growing up. Reminding myself that it would be very impractical, I refrained from buying a wok, but I did pick up a ginger grater, just like the one my mom used.

We made a walk through stop at the Fortune Cookie Factory, which was really one room where you could see them making fortune cookies, taking the freshly baked cookie off the mold and quickly folding a slip of paper inside before it hardened. To be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s a “must see” of Chinatown, even though it’s on a lot of lists – it was kind of a cramped, rushed experience and took all of 20 minutes, 15 of which were standing in line.

After the Fortune Cookie Factory, we walked to the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This museum is housed in the powerhouse and cable car barn, and inside you can see the gears turning, winding the cables through the series of wheels, pulling the cable cars. It was really neat to think about how the cable cars we were just earlier riding on were powered by the machines we were looking at. There was all sorts of displays and artifacts that told the history of cable cars, as well as a collection of antique cable cars. My favorite was the display they had which showed how they detected frays in the cable. It was remarkably low tech – involving sensors that went off when a stray bit of cable filament was detected. I thought this museum was really interesting – definitely recommend it. AND it was free! I love me a free museum.

Just think -those are the very cables that pulled us to Chinatown!
One of the first cable cars.

After the cable car museum we decided to go back to Chinatown for lunch and ended up at a Pho restaurant – pho is one of my favorite dishes and this pho was amazing, so flavorful and rich. I also made a quick pit stop at a bakery in Chinatown to pick up some egg tarts, one of the 12 year old’s favorite desserts.

Following lunch, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, about a 30 minute walk, though North Beach. Fisherman’s Wharf is definitely touristy and part of the fun of going there is to people watch and soak in the bustling atmosphere. We were (probably) scammed into giving some guy $10, which felt icky to me, but the Husband said that we should think of the fast talker as entertainment, and he was hugely entertaining, with his swagger and confidence. So maybe not worth the whole $10, but at least worth something – it made me think about how maybe I shouldn’t be snobbish about how people decide to work hard for their money – because the guy was clearly working hard and probably not making much money. We also visited the Musee Mechanique, a huge collection of coin operated amusements and games. The place was fascinating – so many games to play and little dioramas that came to life at the drop of a coin – and some not so little dioramas too. Everything was so loud and bling-y and almost overwhelming. We gave the kids $5 each and let them play games until their money ran out.

After about an hour, our money spent, our ears ringing and our minds spinning from all the over stimulation, we decided to walk down the Embarcadero, taking the long way back to the BART station. On the way, we stopped at Pier 39 for ice cream (I got lychee- one of my favorites!) and to see the sea lions.

We got home around 6:15pm, and made pizzas for dinner and finished the evening by watching Mitchells vs. the Machines, which was a lovely movie.

The next day was Easter Sunday. We found a church in Berkeley and went to Mass. It was a lovely modest church and, maybe it was because we went to the 8:00am Mass, the pews were on the empty side. Nonetheless, the service was quite lovely. The homily was centered around the question of “Who will move the boulder?” – meaning we often worry about tasks that seem impossible (who will move the huge boulder from the tomb of Christ so that Mary may see to the body), but perhaps they are not as impossible as we think (the boulder being already moved when they arrive.) I’m not Catholic, not particularly religious, but I do often find things to ponder when I listen to homilies. Afterwards we went to breakfast – at first we tried to go to a local diner, but it was closed, so we ended up at IHOP, which actually was quite nice – we have an off and on family tradition of eating at IHOP on Easter Sunday.

We went back to my brother’s house where we had an Easter Egg hunt. We were on the fence as to whether or not to do Easter eggs, but then decided that the kids would like it, so we bought and filled a bunch of eggs and my sister in law had hid the eggs while we were at church. Now my SIL is Jewish, but fully appreciates the fun of looking for candy in plastic eggs. Even their neighbors came over for a little while.

After the easter egg hunt, we decided to go on a nice little walk around Berkeley. We went to a really tasty Mexican restaurant for lunch – I had tacos and nachos and plantains and horchata.

Then we headed to the middle school, by way of a pretzel store (Squabisch Pretzels, above), to play a game of pick up basketball – kids against grown up. So funny story – my brother was a HUGE basketball fan/player when we were growing up. But, being a short Asian boy, his dreams of playing in the NBA weren’t entirely realistic. When we decided to go shoot hoops, he pulled a pair of basketball shoes out of the attic that must have been at least 15 years old. Anyhow, as we were playing basketball with the kids, he shoe FELL APART! Like the sole came off. Only not all the way because the sole was stitched at the toe. He walked around the rest of the day with his sole flap flap flapping awkwardly. Well that pretty much put an end to the basketball game, so we decided to walk to coffee and Indian Rock Park, where there was a nice rocky scramble. My kids LOVE a rocky scramble. Indian Rock is a popular local spot for urban rock climbers. We saw a couple groups that had brought their own crash pads and were bouldering across the rock faces.

View from the top.

At the summit of the Indian Rock was a spectacular view of Berkeley and Oakland and across the Bay. We hung out there and let the kids play for a little bit, but soon it was time to go home and pack as we were leaving the next morning. I went to rally the kids, taking this photo of the fearless 4 year old before telling her to come down so we could leave.

King of the Hill. For a little bit.

Then things went south. I turned to look for the other kids, and then I heard a cry. I looked back and couldn’t see the 4 year old. Running over to the rocks, i saw that she had fallen down between two rocks and was crying. She very rarely cries, so I knew she was in trouble, so I reached in a pulled her out, giving her big hugs and cuddles and trying to comfort her as I carried her back to the exit. Then this is where it got scary. Someone, I can’t remember who, but I think the 12 year old started frantically saying, “BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!” It took me a while to register, but there was blood running down my hand, the hand that was cradling the back of the 4 year old’s head. Then my brain kind of just froze.

Things I am grateful for:
1) My brother, who is a physician. Took a look at the gash on the back of the 4 year old’s head, and rinsed it with water and decided that we should go to the children’s hospital and he came with me.
2) All the bystanders who offered help, including:
-the preschool teacher who came up and said, “I just completed my 1st aid training for school. Can I help?”
– the rock climber, who came up and just handed us a big wad of gauze. Okay, I guess it makes sense for people who are engaged in highly dangerous activities to carry gauze with them.
3) The Uber driver who took us there, offered us water and didn’t even blink that we were dripping blood in his car.
4) The Husband and my sister-in-law who got the rest of the kids home and fed them dinner. And the Husband who packed us up to leave while I was at the Hospital.
5) Bluey.
6) Insurance.

So we get to the ER at Oakland Children’s Hospital and check in. The lady at reception was so funny. First of all, a few minutes after we arrived, the power went out – I’m not sure what that was about, but then the generators kicked in. As the lady took my information, I asked how she was, and she said, “It’s Easter and the power keeps going out, so I think I’ve been better.” Then, as she was entering my personal information into the system – I give her my birthday, and she types it in, then looks at me and says, “That’s your birthday? You look good!”
“Thank you,” I say, laughing. “I’m sure you see lots of people in here.”
“I’m not kidding,” she says, “Sometimes people come in and give me their birthday and I’m really surprised.”

We were in the waiting room for about two hours initially. Frankly by the time we got to the ER, the 4 year old was a lot better. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” she said as we entered the hospital. Further proof – Paw Patrol was playing on the TV in the waiting room and as soon as we checked in, she walked over, pulled a chair in front of the TV and was glued to the screen. At some point, after the power went out, the TV turned off, so we switched to watching Bluey on one of our phones.

Waiting room.

Finally it was our turn to go back and be seen by the doctor.

So this is one of the great things about having my physician brother with me – Oakland Children’s is a teaching hospital, and the first people we saw was a nurse and a resident. “How are we doing?” one of them asked.
“She fell off a rock and hit her head,” I said.
Then my brother added, “There’s a two centimeter laceration on the base of her cranium. No loss of consciousness. She might need stitches.” Cool. Glad he was with me. The doctors and the nurse made murmurs of agreement. Then they went away to figure out the next steps. Before they went away, however, my brother said, pointing to his shoe (do you remember the broken shoe?), “Do you have scissors? I need to cut this sole off.” And the next thing we knew, this happened:

The resident said the he didn’t want my brother tripping and have to make a second trip to the ER.

And then a little while later, the attending physician came and looked at the wound. And she said, “You know there’s a technique we like to use on the head that is pretty un-invasive where we use the hair to close the wound. I think we should try that.”

People – this is what they did – and it’s probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered. They take tiny sections of hair on either side of the wound and twist them together tightly so that the wound closes. Then they GLUE THE HAIR TWIST so that it doesn’t untwist. They literally glued my baby girl’s head back together!!!!! Mind blown. And I didn’t need to worry about stiches (when I was five I fell and had to get stitches and there was a lot of screaming involved) or going home with a staple remover or anything. Here’s a picture (warning if you’re not into pictures of wounds, scroll down.):

All patched up and then we called the Husband to come pick us up and we were on our way. The 4 year old was in amazing spirits – I mean she got to watch endless Bluey, what’s not to love? All told, we spent about 3 hours in the emergency room. Which, actually doesn’t feel bad.

Don’t bother me, I’m watching Bluey!

And, okay, one other fun fact – in our 12 years of being parents, this was our VERY FIRST emergency room visit. I think that’s pretty good streak. Also – if I had to guess which kid would send us to the emergency room, it would definitely have been this one. The other two kids are pretty risk adverse.

I feel as if the rest of the trip was pretty anti-climactic after that. The next morning we left at 4am for the airport to catch our 6:10am flight. We got to the airport at 4:50am and we still only made our flight by the skin of our teeth – Oakland is a very busy airport and the security lines were long. We seriously thought we were going to miss our flight. But then in the end – our plane pulled out and then sat on the runway and then returned to the gate because of a transponder malfunction and we had to deplane and get another plane two hours later. Which was just as well because we originally would have had an awfully long layover in St. Louis, but as it was our layover was pleasantly long enough to grab lunch (fried ravioli!!!!) and a beer (Schlafly!). Then we were home – we took the shuttle to the hotel where we had parked, got in our car and went home, where, thank goodness for eggs, we had dinner then went to bed.

Whew that was our whole Spring Break Trip! Next year, I’m working over spring break, so if there is a trip, I probably won’t be able to go. I’m really glad we took the time and effort and money to make this trip happen!

Oh and postscript- because of the delay leaving Oakland, Southwest sent each of us $150 towards a future flight. Not as lucrative as how Elisabeth made out on her trip to Barcelona, but it’s enough to make another trip more affordable. So – here is a list of airports that are a non-stop flight from Washington DC – where should we go next?

Albany, NY
Albuquerque, NM
Aruba, Aruba
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Belize
Birmingham, AL
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Charleston SC
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Colorado Springs, CO
Columbus, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Destin/Fort Walton Beach, FL
Detroit, MI
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Myers, FL
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Grand Rapids, MI
Greenville, SC
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Liberia, Costa Rica
Long Island, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Los Cabos, MX
Louisville, KY
Manchester, NH
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis, MN
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Myrtle Beach, SC
Nashville, TN
Nassau, Bahamas,
New Orleans, LA
Norfolk, VA
Oakland, CA
Omaha, NE
Orlando, FL
Panama City Beach, FL
Phoenix, ZA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Turks and Caicos
Punta Cana, DO
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Richmond, VA
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City, UT
San Antoni0, TX
San Diego, CA
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Juan, PR
Sarasota, FL
Savannah, Hilton Head, GA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Tampa, FL
West Palm Beach, FL


Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: the Month of May

These last few weeks of May, after opening our show has kind of been a slog – after a show opens, I always feel like I’m like digging out of the hole of everything that’s piled up since I started rehearsals, but also wanting to relax and just sleep and eat junk food and do fun things. I’ve felt simultaneously unmotivated and also panicked about the length of the to do list, also summer is looming, but we’re all limping towards the finish line of school so things do not let up on the home front. Anyhow, the show is closed and I don’t have another show until July, so I’m hoping to make efforts on everything that’s piled up.

Current stressors (the big ones):
– My car. (Still). I did make progress on this last month – I sent an email to the high school program that takes used cars. It seems like it will be a pretty easy process to hand my car over to them. I just have to fill out the paperwork and find someone to take me since they don’t pick up cars.

– Cleaning/purging room clutter. (still) When my father was here, we moved a lot of the boxes of stuff that was in the guest room into the toy room. Then for our big meat party (more on that below) a week later, we moved the same boxes out of the toy room so kids could play, back into the guest room. Right now we’re just moving half a room’s worth of things we aren’t currently using back and forth and it just needs to be gone through and moved out of the house. It’s ridiculous that we have essentially two rooms in the house that no one can use.

-Swim season has started. The two little kids will start pre-team next week, but the 12 year old has started swim team practice already. It’s going to be hairy – four nights a week, pre-team is from 5:00pm – 5:30pm and then the 12 year old practices from 6:15pm -7:30pm. I don’t know when people are going to eat dinner. I was at first nervous that swim season would overlap with my work schedule, but luckily only the last two weeks overlap with my next show so I can be home to drive carpool. But again… when are we going to eat dinner? We usually eat dinner around 5pm/5:30p but I think that the 12 year old isn’t going to want to eat so close to practice. I might just have to let go of the idea of family dinners for a few weeks. I need to re-listen to this Lazy Genius podcast “How to Fix Dinner When You Are Never Home“

-Will the 4 year old get to go to kindergarten???? That’s the big looming question and a little out of our control. She does have her assessment scheduled so fingers crossed. One of our friends’ kids did not pass assessment, which made me little nervous. Apparently, they were told that their child didn’t know any sight words. Which – how many kids know sight words upon entering kindergarten?!?!?! I thought the point of kindergarten was to teach my child sight words! Anyhow – If the school says the 4 year old is not ready for kindergarten, then of course I’m not going to push it, but I really do think she’s ready and her teachers say that she’s ready and the she will be bored if she has to repeat the pre-K curriculum. I will admit that I’m being a little Tiger Mom and have been working on “the” and “and” with the 4 year old. Two little sight words probably won’t make or break things, but I figured it couldn’t hurt and she does seem to be curious about words.

-I’ve misplaced by journals. I haven’t journaled or tracked things in two or three weeks because I can’t find my journal stack. This is really stressing me out. I find that being able to write down my day and track things in life helps give me perspective on where my brain is and helps hold me accountable for how I spend my time. I know I could just write it down on a piece of paper, but the thought of loose pages just floating around doesn’t feel like the soothing exercise that journaling is supposed to be for me. I had thrown the journals in a tote bag to take to work on while the 4 year old was at agility class and I don’t know where I put the bag when I got home.

-My hair – (still) need to schedule an appointment to get it cut. Also need to schedule a well woman check up. This is just flat out procrastination and reluctance on my part.

-Speaking of hair…. There has been an outbreak of lice in the 4 year old’s classroom. I spent so many hours of the past two weeks treating and combing out hair. The last time we had a lice event in our house was when the 12 year old was in 1st grade and the Husband took care of it then – he would sit in the back yard with her and just comb and comb and comb her hair. So it’s kind of been a pain in the rear end – just inconvenient, not at all debilitating or anything.

I found the health notice kind of hilarious, to be honest.

Things that did get done in April/May (April Aspirations):
-We booked our tickets to Taiwan! That was a couple days of fast and furious emails and texts with the travel agent, but we’re are now going to Taiwan and Malaysia this winter. It feels strange because we never book tickets this far in advance – I think booking three months out is a long lead time. But now we have tickets six months out. We don’t have hotels or any other plans yet, but at least we know when we’ll be there.
-I figured out the summer camp schedule. Everything is booked. I have a few weeks I need to cancel because I had booked back up choices and then got off the wait list at our first choice. And I need to add before/aftercare for a few weeks because all the camps start at 9am and there are a few weeks where I can’t physically do two drop offs at one time or even be passably late because the camps are about twenty minutes apart. But at least I know where people will be.
-Finally processed the Duluth Trading Company return from Christmas.
-Bought a new Yeti tumbler. I got it from our local Ace hardware but then it leaked so I had to return it and get a new one, but I had thrown out the receipt so I didn’t want to deal with that. Eventually I did make it back to Ace and the folks at Ace were able to look up the purchase and do the exchange. Just in time for summer. Yay! (Have not purchased a new purse, or sandals or linen pants yet. Though I’m kind of obsessed with buying a new linen shirtdress – I have two that I wear constantly and I think one more will be make a nice uniform rotation through the summer. I really want one in a non-neutral colour. I love this teal, but wrap dresses don’t look good on me. Or this yellow one is cute… so many options!)
-And I did mow the lawn. Twice. I tried a third time, but the grass was too long and the mower stopped working so I gave up on it and the Husband fixed it and mowed the rest of the lawn. So… I still am behind on my mowing duties. One particularly busy week we did hire the landscapers to come mulch and they mowed the lawn while they were here, so that was nice.

Okay – so that was the laundry list of life. But we did have some fun adventures the past few weeks:

Harper’s Ferry. The week after opening was a pretty light week at work – just three evening performances and then time to do paperwork on my own. It was a good thing too, because Tuesday was a day off for all the kids as it was Primary Day. The daycare is used as a polling location, and probably also the public schools. Originally we were going to take the kids to Longwood Gardens but the Husband had to work instead, so it was just me and the kids and a wide open day. I was considering taking them to Shenandoah to go hiking, but then I had to go vote since I had forgotten to do early voting and by the time I got that done it was already almost 10:30am. (Shenandoah is doable in one day, but only if we leave by 9am.) So instead I decided to go to Harper’s Ferry. I had never gone before and there is hiking and some historical exhibits there. Plus it is only an hour away, so it would be an easy day trip. Harper’s Ferry Historical Park consists of some 19th century buildings that have been converted into historical museums, and a beautiful view of where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac River, and a bridge to some hiking trails.

Where rivers meet.

We attempted to go for a hike, and made it across the bridge from the town to the hiking trails before deciding the rain was too much for us, and we turned around and came back. Since it was raining, we took shelter in John Brown’s Fort, just in time for the Ranger talk on John Brown. I thought we were in for a brief look at John Brown, but you guys, the talk was 1 hr and 15 minutes!!!! At first I was worried that the kids wouldn’t be up for it, and even though I did have to take the 4 and 7 year old outside eventually, the 12 year old was rapt. She sat through all 75 minutes of the talk, just drinking it all in, and even asked the ranger a few questions at the end. She was particularly fascinated by the fact that John Brown was white. I guess she has always thought that John Brown was Black, which I think kind of makes sense, and that lead to interesting conversations afterwards.

Historic buildings at Harper’s Ferry.

One thing that stuck out to me was when the ranger talked about how the women were melting the pewter to make bullets for the raid because there were no bullets – and I thought about how we think of history as a series of big events and most of these events are precipitated by men. Because women are at home doing the every day things that keep life going. And men get to /got to make the big gestures that go down in history – and maybe this is the flaw in how we perceive what are important historical events? A woman’s life doesn’t have as many grand explosive events. It has every day events, like births and deaths and the day to day of raising children and making sure people get fed. And what gets recorded in the history books is not these day to day perpetual tasks – it is important that the bullets get made, but not as important as what they were used for, apparently. The men get the credit for making history, and the women have to just keep things running.

We spent the day at Harper’s Ferry and left around 3pm to go for an early dinner. I Googled to find places and we ended up at Potomac Street Grill in Brunswick, MD – a homely little restaurant that look, admittedly a little run down, but the food was excellent and judging from the crowd that came in and out, it was a local favorite. Afterwards, we stopped for ice cream at Rocky Point Creamery, which was sort of on the way home. I first experienced this creamery because it was one of the stops on the Maryland Ice Cream Trail and we’ve come back a few times since. Their ice cream is so creamy and fresh tasting. I had the raspberry, the 12 year old had the birthday cake, the 7 year old had vanilla, and the 4 year old had mint chip. The kids like coming to Rocky Point Creamery because there is a playground with a play structure made out of an old tractor, which they wanted to play on.
“You’ll get wet!” I said as it was still raining.
“We don’t care!” they replied.
And I figured, if they want to play so much that they don’t care about getting wet, then why not let them play. So they played for a spell on the tractor and then it was time to go home.

The playground and the dairy in the back.

We had our meat party. It did rain for much of the party, but our friend set up a huge tarp and we all gathered under it and it made for a really nice time, almost cozy. Thank goodness for the tarp- I had braced myself to have 25+ people inside our house, but I was able to encourage them to all go outside and we hung out under the tarp. There was tons of food – we marinated 20 lbs of meat, dessert, sides, homemade salsa, good conversations, lots of beer. Also a 10 lb brisket and four bowls of chicken wings. Also – oysters. One of my friends said she always wanted to learn how to shuck and oyster, so another friend brough oysters and a shucking knife and a handy contraption with which to place the oyster so that you don’t accidentally impale yourself. It was all in all a lovely evening.

Between our canopy, patio umbrella and our friend’s tarp, we got this party covered. Literally.
Life skills – the 12 year old shucking an oyster. I always feel intimidated by preparing any seafood other than fish or shrimp at home, but I think shellfish is easier than I think it is and very doable at home. Probably cheaper too.

Going to visit a friend out in southern Maryland. I have a friend/colleague (T) who moved last year to southern Maryland. A few of my other friends from work decided that we should go visit her on our day off because she is awesome and we missed her – she wasn’t on our current show and couldn’t come to the meat party since she was on another gig. We had originally planned to visit and grill and play board games. But then T’s neighbor who lives next door offered to take us out on her boat. So of course we said yes. Only we got on the boat and pushed off and the battery was dead so my friend jumped to shore and pulled our boat back to the dock. Then T called another friend and asked if that friend would be willing to take us out on her boat. And half an hour later we were on a boat with two large dogs, speeding across the water. And the weather was beautiful and the skies clear. And the next thing we knew, the friend with the boat had pulled into the dock of a restaurant and we all got out and had drinks and fried food while the dogs ran freely around the patio – it was that kind of place. Then we got back in the boat and headed back to T’s place, and by the time we got back, it was quite late and we had to head home. Not the afternoon we had planned, but maybe even better. I mean what is better and more joyful than being on a boat with a couple of dogs, the wind blowing in our faces?

We saw a blue heron!
Also a little morbid, but fascinating – we saw a dead skate floating in the water

Evenings and Weekends At Home: to play board games(Castle Panic is our latest family game – highly recommend), to take kids to soccer and agility class, to cook dinner, to walk to basketball workout with the 12 year old, to have dance parties in the living room, to fold the laundry, to go on nature walks and hikes, to have playdates and go to birthday parties, to catch up on some tv, to kick off Summer with a Memorial Day movie outing. (We saw IF with some friends. Or at least, the kids saw IF. I couldn’t tell you what happened in the movie – I got up once to refill popcorn, once to take the 7 year old to the bathroom, and once to take the 4 year old to the bathroom. The Husband went to see the Mad Max movie with the other dad. I look forward to seeing IF at some point at home where we can pause the movie if needed.) It feels like we’ve turned the corner into summer. Why are there still two weeks left before school is out????

Some Wise Words I Read Recently – from a Carolyn Hax column. The Letter Writer decided not to go to her stepson’s wedding because of an acrimonious relationship with his father and her relatives tell her that she capitulated and let the ex manipulate the situation. And the Letter Writer asks if she was wrong. I loved Hax’s response:

I think too often I get stuck in the binary of right vs. wrong. I think it’s good to remind myself that that’s a false binary and life is so much more complex than that. Cultivating “enough”, however, seems like a stronger way to move forward.

Grateful for:
-The van. I have finally started driving the van. Yes, that’s the van that we bought in October. But with the excursion to Harper’s Ferry and the trip out to see my friend, I figured everyone would be more comfortable in the van than in the Impreza. The van has toooo many buttons for my tastes, and feels like I’m driving a small apartment on wheels, but I think I’m slowly getting used to driving it.

-Micky Mouse Club House. How did I get through hours of combing and treating the kids’ hair? I sat them in front of episodes of Micky Mouse Club House. The four year old now asks if she can have her hair brushed, which is really code for “Can I watch Mickey Mouse Club?” The instructions for the Nix, under “things you need to treat lice” literally says, “Something to keep your child busy (movie, game, etc.)” Can I pay for that out of my FSA?

-Long return windows – as in Duluth Trading Company. Of course part of the reason I took so long to process the Duluth return from Christmas was because I knew the return window was long (one year). I suppose if there had a been a shorter window, I might have gotten things done sooner. But as it is, I’m thankful that the return process at Duluth was pretty painless and I could return all the stuff that didn’t suit even though it is five months later.

-Costco. Because when you are having 25-30 people over, it’s kind of the obvious choice for many things. When we first moved to the area, the nearest Costco was about 30 minutes away. And now we have one two miles up the road.

Also grateful to have the capacity to shop at Costco.

-And grateful to the friends and colleagues at work. We had a couple aftershow parties last week since it was the last show of the season – one was an official company party and one was an unofficial “Everyone show up with food to celebrate” kind of affair. I have to say, I work with some of the kindest, funniest, and most talented people. Most people know what they will be working on next season and it’s so nice when we compare notes and find out we’re on the same shows. It’s something to look forward to, knowing that even though this opera season is over, we’ll see each other again in a few months. I don’t always like being the stage manager in charge – sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing (as opposed to being an assistant stage manager, which I do feel very comfortable doing), but knowing that the people I work with believe in me and think I do a good job really helps me conquer my imposter syndrome.

-And grateful for the Husband for keeping the house picked up and the kids fed and life moving while I’m at work, and for helping to set up for the meat party.

-The pre-summer weather. We’ve had some bouts of rain and some bouts of high heat, but in general, it’s been that perfect cool, crisp, sunny, not yet humid weather. I know the humidity is coming, though, so I’ll savor this weather while I can. I got the bike out and biked to work a few days and it was delightful.

Looking forward to:
-Piano and voice recitals coming up. Another thing on the calendar, but always nice to see the kids work towards something they can perform.

-Trip to Maine. I borrowed some travel guides and I’ve made plans to see a college friend on the way there, so I’m excited.

– Making food with our latest Penzy’s haul:

We made a trip to Penzy’s and I saw the dehydrated garlic and dehydrated onion on the shelf and decided to get some. When I was at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival last year, there was a cooking demonstration and the chef mentioned that he likes to use reconstituted dehydrated garlic in stir fry because it doesn’t burn as easily.

-Speaking of which – the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is the end of June – perfect timing since I’m off work and the two older kids won’t be in camp yet so I’m looking forward to going down to the Mall with them to take in all the exhibits. This year’s theme is “Indigenous Voices of America: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian.” The NMAI opened in 2004, and I remember being in DC when it opened – it was that year that I interned at the opera. So wild to think that it’s already been 20 years since I first arrived here in DC!

-Summer adventures. Our day trip to Harper’s Ferry reminded me of how in COVID times and how I would just pack the kids in the car and take them to parks or ice cream shops a car drive away. Even though it was COVID, I always had such fun taking these little day trips and seeing new places. I have three weeks off this summer, and I want to make sure to take some day trips with the kids. The Maryland Ice Cream Trail 2024 has been released and this year the map has pinpointed hikes near the creameries – hike + ice cream! what a great combination!

-This Audiobook, which I know some of you have read:

I’m listening to it with the 12 year old. Often it’s only way I can get her to leave the house – I promise her that we can listen to the book wherever we are going. Sometimes when we go out for walks, she will take one earbud and I’ll take the other and we’ll listen to it together. I feel really annoyed that I have to bribe her like this to leave the house, but I think I need to re-frame this as a sweet way to spend time together. And the book is hilarious.

What We Ate: So one thing about losing my journals is that I haven’t been writing down what we’ve been having for dinner. I’ve worked several evenings, so there’s been a good share of eating out. Some memorable meals, though:
– Creamy coconut rice with chili lime vegetables from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. This meal was a huge hit – even the 4 year old who will pick the vegetables out of everything ate all of it. The coconut rice is creamy like risotto, but baked so that it is a magical, hands off dish. And the vegetables are roasted and then sprinkled with a vinegary chili lime dressing. Definitely a keeper. I can’t find it online, but this recipe is worth checking out the book.
– Also from Smitten Kitchen – roasted tomato pasta salad. Very tasty. I roasted the tomatoes in the morning so that when we got home, I just had to boil the pasta and throw the whole things together.
-Meera Sodha’s Brussel Sprout fried rice.
– pasta salad made from the leftover grilled veggies from our meat party.
-Chicken on the Run – Peruvian Chicken – our go to take out when the 7 year old has sewing class since the restaurant is just down the block.
-There were various nights of take out wings and pizza. And movie nights – I think there was an Avengers movie, and some nature films.

Well, it’s the last day of May. Onward to June and Summer. How was your May?

Books Read- March 2024

It’s almost June, but here’s what I read in March. I didn’t plan it this way, but March was a very romance heavy month.

The Marquis Who Musn’t by Courtney Milan – This is the second book in Milan’s Wedgeford Trials book that centers on a 19th century village in England with a huge Asian immigrant population. Naomi Kwan wants to take ambulance classes and learn first aid, but as a single woman, is constantly told she couldn’t. She enters into a fake engagement with the handsome new in town Liu Ji Kai in order to register for classes as an engaged woman. But Kai has other motives for being in town. Warm friendship ensues. Not my favorite Milan – her plotting is a little clunky, but I can always count on her for smart characters, fascinating and well researched historical settings, and good writing with some spot on sentiments. Sentiments like this:
“Is that why she hasn’t yelled at me anymore about the ambulance class?”
Her aunt simply shook her head. “Since when does my older sister yell?”
Naomi felt her nose wrinkle. “Technically correct. Emotionally false.”
Or this one:
“Let me teach you a trick,” Mr. Liu said. “You seem to need some way to fend off questions, and this works for about everything… Go ahead. Repeat the question you just asked me.”
“Who are you?”
He gave her a cutting look – a sweep of his eyes from head to toe as if he were a scythe, slashing her down. “My private situation is none of your business.”
She staggered back. He radiated triumph. “See? Easy enough.”
“Easy for you,” She muttered. “How do you expect me to use that at home? Have you no parents?”
Even in 19th century England, Milan has captured the angst I often feel as an Asian daughter.

Ten Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt – Amnesia plots are absolutely not my thing, but this book kind of turns that trope on its head. Sam runs a bed and bath store and thinks his jerk CEO/boss Jonathan is going to fire him, endangering the jobs of all his employees, so when Sam has an accident while talking to Jonathan, he fakes amnesia to buy himself time. Of course uneasy friendship, respect, understanding, and love ensues. Along with a pretty terrific cat. I really enjoyed this book- it was laugh out loud funny in places, and beautifully touching in others. I loved the narrator- he made this book the audio equivalent of all my favorite Bdritish rom coms rolled into one, with a colourful and hilarious cast of characters.

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean – second novel in the Bareknuckle Bastards series. I really like Sarah MacLean- her novels are really well written, her heroines are smart and independent and there are always finely detailed secondary characters. This novel involves Hattie, who wants to run her father’s shipping business, and Beast who is… actually I’m a little foggy on the twists and turns of the plot points and how Hattie and Beast got involved. I think that bit was a little thin. It involves a long held grudge and a smuggling ring. Hattie and Beast were great characters. The plot was… incidental.

The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan – slight and pithy. To be honest, I don’t remember much of it, though my notes seem to indicate that I found a lot of it worth highlighting. It’s the story of a romance where each chapter is based on a letter of the alphabet.

The L section, is Latitude – “ What a strange phrase- not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see people all the time, the question is what we do about it.”
Isn’t that always the question?

S for scapegoat – “I think our top two are: not enough coffee. Too much coffee.”
Also so true.

X for ..x – “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.”

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean– this was the final book in her Bare Knuckle Bastard series. After I read Brazen and the Beast, I figured I might as well finish the series. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Brazen and the Beast. I really wanted this book to be an epic saga in the vein of Gone With The Wind or Thorn Birds. The heroine Grace is a fascinating character and I wanted to read about how she ran away from her childhood home and built her empire, but the story starts after she’s already become a powerful figure in the underworld. Ewan is fine, complicated and kind of puzzling to me, and he’s the least interesting part of Grace’s story. Also- massive overuse of the word “lush”.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillroy– this book was on a San Francisco reading list and since we were about to go to San Francisco, I put it on my Libby holds. Then a few days before we were going to leave for the Bay Area, I saw a copy of it in the Little Free Library in front of our piano teacher’s house. How fortuitous! Anyhow- this book was fine. It features a meet cute in an elevator in Sam Francisco, an impromptu wedding date and then dating life. It was pleasant enough but there was a certain lack of tension in the relationship- the book features two smart independent people who clearly like each other- they just have to figure out the logistics. The things that could have made the book interesting – namely, she’a Black and he’s White- gets mentioned and then dropped and never really addressed.

On my proverbial Night stand:

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors- so close to finishing this one. Charlotte is getting married!!!!!

My Fair Brady- YA book set in the world of the high school musical.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan – audiobook that I picked because it was on the shorter side and I knew I could get through it before my commutes got shorter. It’s about a woman working in tech who inherits a sourdough starter and it changes her life. Makes me want to revive those starters in my fridge.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi – middle aged female pirate, leaves her ten year old daughter at home to carry our one last, hopefully lucrative, assignment. It is proving delightful so far. I’m laughing a lot.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Opening Nights and Mother’s Day in the City

The view from backstage. The Emperor’s throne is waiting in storage behind the projection screen.

I opened my show! The 12 year old opened her show! The 12 year old closed her show! Yay! It’s been a very packed week.

First of all – the 12 year old’s middle school production of Annie Jr. was delightful! She played Tessie, one of the orphans. Tessie is the one who says, “Oh my goodness! oh my goodness!” The Husband noted that he could pick her out in a crowd because of the huge plaid pocket I put in her pinafore. I couldn’t go to the first performance because I was working, but I went to the second performance, which was also the closing performance. It’s so funny seeing the whole show come together after spending all that time running lines with her. There is something very mechanical about running lines and I was so impressed by how comfortable she was onstage. (In the program, the 12 year old thanked her parents from runnign lines with her!”) And the whole production – I mean obviously the production values aren’t terribly high because it’s middle school, but it had it’s own handmade charm. There was one scene with a couch, and then the couch had to move downstage for the next scene so we watched the kids move it and afterwards I asked the 12 year old why the couch wasn’t on wheels? And she said, “Well, we borrowed it from the Teacher’s Lounge.” Which I think perfectly sums up the whole thing.

In the program, the twelve year old thanked, among others, “…her parents who helped her prepare for auditions, run lines, an boost her confidence.” I thought that was really sweet of her.

And that night after she came home from getting ice cream with her cast mates, she started crying because the whole thing was over and oh how I know that feeling – I think that is one thing that makes theatre so special – that high you get from doing something ephemeral and the low you get from realizing that it’s ephemeral. And even though you know you can audition for more shows, you’ll never repeat this very exact show again with these very exact cast mates.

The night after the 12 year old had her shows, I opened my show. There was a very fancy party afterwards. I wore a dress – the other dress I bought at Macy’s in March when I bought that red jumpsuit that I wrote about last month. This dress probably isn’t quite fancy enough for an opening night party, but it is comfortable and forgiving – the smocked waist is elastic – and flowy, which I like. I wish it came in another colour, because black/white/grey isn’t my favorite color palatte. I don’t wear make-up, and have no clue what to do with my hair now that it hasn’t been cut for a year and is looking a little overgrown, so I think maybe the whole look is a little unpolished – but there are limits to what I want to do with myself and hair and make-up don’t quite make it into those boundaries right now. I did wear heels, though, so there’s that.

Bathroom photo of me in my dress.

The party had all sorts of tasty Asian inspired food, a photo booth, lots of loud music. I had fun talking to people I don’t usually get to talk to. The best thing, though was the fried pickled ginger. Who would have thought to do that? It was DELICIOUS.

fried pickled ginger. Amazing.

The opening night party was the Saturday before Mother’s Day, so it was nice that I kind of had a pass to sleep in (until 8am!) then next morning. All week, the kids had hinted that they had planned a special Mother’s Day. Not to be a grinch, but I kind of don’t love celebrating Mother’s Day. (Or my birthday, or anything where I have to be the center of attention). I don’t like surprises, so the family was going to tell me what they had planned, but then they were giving out tickets to teh White House Garden Tour for Mother’s Day Sunday, and I asked the Husband if he wanted to go. And he said, “But we’ve planned Mother’s Day!” and I reminded him that my father was in town and he could watch the kids and when would we have a chance for free childcare while we go out together again? And he said okay. So on Mother’s Day Sunday, the 11 year old made French toast (perhaps with help from her siblings – I’m not sure since I was in bed), we ate the French toast, I took the 4 year old to her agility class and then when I got home, the Husband and I took the Metro downtown.

First stop was coffee. The Husband had wanted to check out this Indonesian coffee shop for ages, but we were never in the area at the right time. It is a fifteen minute walk from the White House so it was the perfect pitstop. I had a chai and a cherry croissant. The chai was delicious- bitingly spicy and just a hint of sweetness. I asked afterwards who made the chai mix and the barista enthusiastically pointed me to the company, Soul Chai. Definitely check them out if you like your chia spicy and not sugary. I’ll be ordering some for sure.

After coffee, we proceeded to the White House. Now getting tickets to the White House Gardens tour is not exactly a rarified thing. Thousands of tickets are passed out for each weekend of garden tours, and they are free. (Honestly, I’d be annoyed if they weren’t free…) However, I was able to get tickets through work, which meant that I didn’t have to stand in line at 8:30am to get tickets. tl:dr – I found the whole experience rather… underwhelming and would not stand in line for tickets unless you were an American history/government fan.

I think calling it a “Gardens Tour” was a little bit misleading. It was more of a “Grounds Tour”. The pre-ordained path allowed people to view the gardens from a distance, but there weren’t a lot of flowers to be seen as we walked along. My take away – the White House grounds is a lot of grass and trees. Which, I supposed makes sense – grass because you need to land helicopters, and trees because it seems like planting a tree is a beloved activity for past residents of the White House to leave their mark and/or honour an occasion. And I guess if I’m being honest, while the horticultural side of the garden tour felt pallid, the historical part of the tour did feel quite momentous. Here was a tree planted by the Obamas, here are the windows to the Oval Office, here is the Rose Garden and that walk way seen so many time on the West Wing. So I suppose what the garden tour lacked for me in actual garden, it made up in weighty historical significance and that did make for some pondering.

There was a military band playing music throughout the day. They played lots of Disney tunes.
This was as close as we got to the Rose Garden
That’s the oval office there, you can see if you squint.
Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden and Jill Biden’s cut flower garden.
This commemorative oak planted by Herbert Hoover came from Lincoln’s birthplace. I like the juxtaposition of that with the Washington Monument in the background.

After the Gardens Tour, we decided to take in a museum. The White House is next to the Renwick, which is an American Art Museum that focuses on craft and handiwork. I’ve seen several things there, and really found it intriguing so I was eager to go again. I thought there was an Amish quilt exhibit there, but when I arrived, I found that the Amish quilt exhibit was at the American Art Museum in Gallery Place/ Chinatown, which was seven or eight blocks away. Oops. We took in the exhibits at the Renwick anyway, the best being this exhibit of nets hung from the cieling. It was visually appealing, but also relaxing experience because you had to lay down on the floor to get the full impact:

View looking up.

After we took in the other exhibits in the Renwick, we decided to go to the American Art Museum and see the Amish Quilt exhibit after all since the restaurant that we picked for dinner was in that direction anyway.

Love the effect of the black squared to create negative space on this quilt.

I thought this exhibit was stunning and though provoking. What struck me, apart from the visual aspect of the quilts, was the idea that all these quilts hung in a museum, yet they were all labelled “Artist: unidentified” – it made me ponder the tension between quilts that are quite skillfully and and artistically assembled – the patterns and colours are quite intricate – and the Amish who are a modest, attention shunning people. Highly recommend this exhibit.

I love the piecework on this quilt – it looks random, but really has a lot of structure.
This one is called Stairway to Heaven.
Such variation in colour and pattern.
I mean look at that amazing stitchwork!
More exquisite stitchwork!

After the exhibit, we went to dinner. Recently the New York Times published and article entitled “The 25 Best Restaurants in Washington, DC Right Now.” (Hilariously, the comments are full of people noting that a lot of the restaurants on the list are in the Maryland or Virginia suburb, so the title of the article is misleading. I’m surprised by the vehemence of some of the comments.) Some of the restaurants on the list I’ve been to, but many were new to me, especially those in the city since we very rarely eat out in the city. There is no where I feel my suburban mom-ness more than in a hip DC restaurant. At any rate, we decided to check out a restaurant on the list, Baan Siam, a Thai restaurant in Mount Vernon Square, near Gallery Place. This isn’t like your standard Thai restaurant – pad thai and drunken noodles are nowhere to be seen. The food is from northern Thailand. The Husband and I ordered fried pumpkin, fried spicy mushrooms (enoki mushroom – this was novel because I’d never had fried enoki mushrooms and the long thin shape made it well suited for finger food), spicy chicken in banana leaf (very spicy, but also sweet, sour, and funky in a good way), shrimp chili paste fried rice with fried pork belly, and a small cucumber salad. It was all super flavorful and tasty. And for dessert, we had mango with sticky rice, because of course.

After dinner we took the metro back home, arriving back at the house aroun 7:45pm. When we got home, things were pretty quiet, so the Husband and I snuck in the back door and collapsed on the living room couch waiting for someone to notice we were home. No one did. Everyone ended up going to bed super late- not ideal for a Sunday night, but it was all fine.

Grateful for – the Tech Week edition:

-Blue highlighter. This is sort of a weedy work hack, but – There is one entrance I cue (the green post it) that is in the middle of an orchestral interlude. I like to think I read music pretty well, but I always felt iffy about this entrance, never confident that I was cuing it in the right place. Reading a piano reduction of the orchestral part can be confusing because there are so many notes in the page and I have to figure out which notes correspond to what I’m hearing, and if I don’t count it completely accurately, I get easily lost. Most nights it was kind of a prayer and a “feeling” for where the cue was. So one day during tech, I took a blue highlighter and highlighted the notes of the melody. And suddenly, I could see what I was listening for and I could follow the music and cue the sequence perfectly. Sometimes I just have to highlight what I need and ignore the rest of the notes and I won’t get lost. I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

-dropping my flashlight. One of my backstage tools is my mini Maglite. It is essential for lighting the way backstage when everything is dark. I converted my light with a kit so that it is push button operated instead of twist. Anyhow, at the start of tech, it was working somewhat sporadically which was kind of annoying and I was going to order myself a new one. Then at one point, I accidentally dropped the Maglite on the floor and it started to work! Yay!

-The Husband who held down the fort – handling pick up and dinner and bedtime on his own all week. Also while dealing with a whole slew of plumbing problems at our rental house. And then he even brought all the kids to my dress rehearsal, even though it meant a late night for everyone. I think the 4 year old fell asleep in the last act, but the other two kid watched the whole thing.

-middle school drama programs. For giving my kid such a great experience. For giving her an outlet to be silly and make friends. For giving her a place to go after school. For bringing the community together to cheer these talented and enthusiastic kids on.

Looking Forward To:

-Being home in the evenings – now that my show is open, I’m looking forward to being able to pick up the kids from the school bus, make dinner, put kids to bed and zone out in front of the tv with the Husband watching Brooklyn 99 or 30 Rock or maybe we’ll get to that third season of Ted Lasso.

-Swim Season – We’ve signed up for the pool, and I’m excited to spend time at the pool and to cheer the 12 year old on at swim meets. There were a couple days last week that were blazingly hot and I thought how it feels like summer, but we’re not quite there yet.

-Dirty Meat Party – There is currently twenty pounds of meat marinating in my fridge in preparation for the grilling party that we have every time a certain colleague/friend of mine is in town working on a show. It’s probably the biggest party we throw every year and while I don’t always like having 25 people descend on my house, I do love seeing everyone having a good time. There is some rain in the forecast, which makes me a little nervous because I am ill equipped to put 25 people inside my house. But we can’t postpone it because then the meat will be over-marinated. Also – the party has always been called the Dirty Meat Party, but maybe I should reconsider because as the 7 year old ran to the school bus, he called out, “I can’t wait to eat dirty meat!!!!”

-Reading this – middle aged female pirate goes on adventures. It’s proving delightful so far. I’ve laughed out loud so many times while reading it.

I find this cover a little terrifying…

What we ate:
The only dinner I made at home last week was Friday night, my day off. I made this Pearl Couscous with Creamy Feta and Chickpeas . I added some shrimp in the last 5 minutes of baking. It was very tasty, but I wish there was a way to make it a one pot meal. perhaps just cooking it all on the stovetop and not baking it?

In lieu of the other dinners that week, here is another “At Work All Day” lunchbox picture:

Lunch: broccoli quinoa salad, which I had made last week and still working through. Plum.

Dinner: marinated beans with potatoes and arugula. Avocado and a boiled egg to eat along with.

Snacks: cut up apples and hummus, protein bar (from Costco, really just a glorified candy bar), two carrots (yes, I just toss them in whole. easier that way), beef stick (actually for the drive home to snack on when I get sleepy.)

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech week and loving one’s job

Props are packed and ready to go to the theatre!

Half way through tech week! I had this idea that I would go one of those “Photo every hour” posts that Engie or Stephany do periodically- I thought it might be a a good way to capture a day of tech for me to look back on. Hah hah. Once we got into the evening rehearsal, shit gets real and I couldn’t keep up. Friday, our first tech rehearsal onstage, was particularly busy – our Production Assistant was out sick, so I had to do their job and my job. I logged 25,000 steps and climbed 34 flights of stairs that day. Part of the reason for all those stairs is that our set is three levels high. Here’s the view from the top level:

(Side note – it’s been much debated on how to refer to the levels of the set. There is a ground level, a middle level and a top level. Now if, in rehearsal, someone says, “Go to the second level,” which level would you go to? I would go to the mid level, but many people would go to the top level. We eventually just ended up calling them “mid” and “top” level.)

But I did take some pictures throughout the day, so here is a dump of pictures of that first day of tech last week, in and around the “intense, running around, and checking attendance, and listening to instructions, and relaying instructions to cast and crew, and why is everyone talking all at once? and making sure people didn’t get run over by the scenery or props, and took their cues on time and oh my god, and, how do we get thirty people onstage through that three foot wide gap? and yes, you should wear the hat now and no, now you take it off, here, just give it to me, and are people going to make their costume changes in time for their next cue? No they aren’t, they’ve just missed their entrance, and where are the dancers? and we need to give them a break, and what is that rule in our union contract? and the director wants to do things a different way, okay we’ll make that work, and we want to add fire? and this singer is now dead, can they go home or will we go back and do their scene again? and oh my goodness, we managed to tech through the whole show, thank GOD” part of the day….

Thursday was a set looks (where stage management and the director looks at the set for the first time and decide that, “Yep, this is what we were expecting.” and we make all sorts of discoveries as to how people will get onstage.) and then a Stizprobe (first time singers are with orchestra – sit and sing).

Friday was the first Piano Tech rehearsal, the first time onstage staging rehearsal for everyone. This is what was in my camera roll for that day:

6:30am – wake up – summer morning sunlight and I make the bed.

7:35am – roll out my yoga mat for 10 mins of yoga. The 4 year old helps.

8:30am – breakfast, eaten at the kitchen counter, with a book. Cottage cheese and blueberries – I’m trying to eat high protein/ high fiber breakfasts and lean away from the heavy carb breakfasts. Which is hard because bagels are tasty.

8:45a – quick 5 minutes of laundry folding before taking the kids to the school bus. Those three small folded piles all I manage to fold in five minutes.

10:30am- At work. paperwork. Make rehearsal logs for the day. Usually our production assistant does this, but they are sick this day. That’s my favorite brand of mechanical pencil – and I found that they sell it with a red barrel. Red is my favorite colour, so I ordered a whole box of them.

12:30p – lunch, sitting outside. I’m going to spend much of the day running around in the dark – Gotta grab sunlight when I can.

1:15pm – checking attendance. The rehearsal scheduling department gives me a list of people who are running late to rehearsal.

2:30pm – An hour into the first piano tech rehearsal. My music stand.

4:30pm – random picture of how we want to set this giant 30′ silk onstage – I take pictures of a lot of things because sometimes it’s easier than trying to describe to the crew how we want things to look. Sometimes I say things like, “That guillotine needs to be centered this spot on stage.” And it still isn’t clear because everyone has their own perspective and they move the thing here and there and I try to explain and then finally it goes in the right place and the crew says,. “You mean the upstage edge needs to split center?”. And I say, “Yes, thank you,” And I think to myself, “It probably would have been clearer if I had said it that way. Thank you for figuring that out.”

6:00pm – Run at dinner time. The weather was beautiful.

7:00pm – Quick picture in the bathroom of my piano tech outfit. I always wear the same thing – floral patterned top (Uniqlo) and linen joggers (Gap – patched in two places and maybe need to be replaced soon.). I like to wear bright colours during tech so I can be seen onstage. I do wear shoes, but I had just changed out of my running clothes and hadn’t put them on yet.

9:30pm – one hour left in the evening rehearsal, back at my music stand for a moment. These blue index cards are where I write who is making an entrance. If it’s just a handful of people, I will write it directly on a Post It, but when there are 30+, I write it on an index card and put it in my binder. I often only write first initial and last two letters of last name. ie. John Smith would be JSm. I had an assistant director once who called these the “airport codes” for each chorister. It’s a good feeling for me that I’ve been with these choristers so long that when I’m writing down the mass chorus group, writing their airport code takes no mental effort at all.

11:33pm – screenshot. Sometimes when I’m leaving and I realized I’ve I forgotten to log out of my timesheet, I take a screenshot of my phone so I remember what time I walked out the door. I get a lot of spam in my email.

12:10am – arrive home. I find that the lunchboxes I ordered for the kids have arrived. Yay! In the past week, one child has cracked their lunchbox and the other has lost theirs (I don’t want to be the one to open that lost lunch box when it is recovered…). I do have one extra for each child, but I like having a few spares for those times when the lunchbox doesn’t get cleaned the night before. I love these Sistema lunchboxes because they are relatively inexpensive and they can go in the dishwasher. And they are durable. We’ve had ours for about four years now. I was going to buy just one spare, but amazon also sold them in a four pack for about $12/each, so I went that route. They are getting harder to find, so I worry what will happen when Sistema stops making this size. Maybe I should order another 4 pack…

And that was a photo summary of Day 1 of tech. Day 2 of tech was Saturday, and I didn’t have to be at the theatre until 1pm, so I did a load of laundry (and hung it to dry), took the 7 year old to his morning soccer – the game was on despite the drizzly drizzly weather, and then dropped the 12 year old to her voice lesson on the way to work. On the days when I don’t have to be in until 1pm, I feel like the morning should be luxurious, but then it fills ups, especially on weekends. I spent the first part of the day at work light walking – basically we stand onstage while the lighting designer sets light levels – which is kind of tedious, but can be beautiful:

The evening was a piano dress rehearsal, first time in costume. It’s always a very long night, but we got through the whole show, which is always good.

Here is a random spot of beauty on asphalt, to break up all the work goings on, as seen on my run:

Doing Something You Love. I had a text exchange with a colleague last week. She was asking me about someone that had worked with me as a Production Assistant previously. (Side note: This really happens. Not sure how it is in other industries, but word of mouth is huge. It doesn’t matter who you list as a reference – if I know you’ve worked with someone I know, I will often have a casual conversation about you.). This former Production Assistant wanted to move on from stage management, and I replied to my colleague, “I think I knew she wanted to do something different. I’m always surprised when people don’t want to be stage managers because I genuinely like what I do a lot.” And my colleague wrote back – “Me either… I love what I do.”

Then I heard this interview with filmmaker Caitlin Cronenberg, who is the daughter of a famous filmmaker. And Cronenberg was asked about her feelings on nepotism, and she said, “You know, there are children of people doing things, and it’s because you look at your family member making art for a living and enjoying what they do. And you say, I want to love what I do. I want to make art for a living. And that’s why so many actors, so many directors and producers have children who are also in the business. 

And it made me think how the 12 year old used to say that she wanted to be a stage manager, and I always thought that it was because she thought the work was interesting. But maybe, that isn’t it. Maybe she realizes that finding something you love to do – whether that is your job, or something outside of your job – that is important. And maybe she thinks, “Hey, there’s this thing that mom really loves doing… maybe I would love doing that too.” It made me think about how much my children pick up on the attitude/emotions/moods that I exude and how important it is to model that intangible quality – we all want our children to be happy, so they also need to have models of how to be happy. I hope that the 12 year old finds something that she loves doing. She doesn’t have to love it 100% of the time – I certainly don’t love my job 100% of the time; I most certainly don’t love parenting or painting or writing 100% of the time – but she has to love enough aspects of that thing that she finds periodic joy in doing it – not the results, not the end product, but in the doing.

Grateful For:
-The sanitation workers who pick up our trash and recycling. The other day, I came home after dropping the kids at school and the recycling trucks were making their routes. They just finished our house, and then I saw them take my elderly neighbor’s trash and recycling cans back up her driveway for her. It was such a nice thing for them to do! The Husband, who used to work for the county’s solid waste department, says that if you have difficulties putting your trash cans at the bottom of your drive, you can have your house coded so that the sanitation workers come get your trash cans and put them back if you want – there are special colour trash bins for this. I love that. I guess taking trash cans down to the curb was one of those things I took for granted (the 12 year old does it at our house), and I’m glad that there are provisions for people for whom it is difficult.

-Child minders. There are 20 children in our show. I am so grateful for the child minders to when the children to and from stage and keep an eye on them when they are not onstage.

-my sewing machine. I spent Sunday finishing up the 12 year old’s costume for Annie. I had to hem the pinafore, so I plugged in my sewing machine that has been dormant for several months now, and it worked. My mother in law had passed this sewing machine down to me – I believe it belonged to her aunt. It isn’t fancy – pretty much just does a straight stitch – but I don’t need fancy for where I am in my sewing skills. I was able to hem the pinafore. Then I added a pocket with some scrap fabric, because I know when I work on shows we are always asking for pockets in costumes. Then I looked at everything together, and the muslin pinafore looked a little bright, so I tea dyed it. It was my first time tea dying something and the process was pretty easy. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the pinafore is now a light brown color. Also – another skill I did for the first time, is I made a button hole! The top of the dress dipped a little low in the front, so I added a button and made a button hole. Oh – here’s another gratitude – I’m grateful for creators who post tutorials of how to do things on the internet.

Old faithful sewing machine. I say a prayer of thanks every time it manages to turn on and work. Look – it’s the beginning of a buttonhole!

before tea dying.
After tea dying- she will not be wearing athletic socks. Also our house is a stye.

Looking forward to:
-Opening Night for me!

-Opening Night for the 12 year old!

-Orchestra rehearsals. We start adding the Orchestra to our rehearsals this week. I often think how lucky I am that I get to listen to a full orchestra play all the time. The wall of sound, the colours of the different instruments, the bone vibrating sensation of six trumpets and six trombones playing backstage, right next to me. There is something so amazing about that degree of unamplified music -so immediate and so grand. I love it all.

-Watching Starstruck. I started the third season of this show while making lasagna last week. I loved the first two seasons of this rom com about Jessie, who unknowingly hooks up with a famous movie star Tom in Season 1 and the fall out from that. The show is hilarious and touching. I don’t usually like shows where people make a mess of their lives, but there is something I really relate to in Jessie.

What We Ate:
Monday: Butter chicken – I used the leftover sauce from the Butter Chicken I made a few weeks ago, but I probably should have cooked it on the stove rather than in the Instant Pot because it was very runny.

Tuesday: Not sure – Husband cooked. I took myself out for Thai food because it was the day of the final room run and I wanted to eat something special.

Wednesday: Zucchini Pesto Lasagna from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. We had a bunch of zucchini to use up. And I figured this would be good for leftovers as well. It was tasty, but very cheesy. I find lasagna is always a lot of work, and I could have the same results by just making the sauce and veggies and tossing it with noodles rather than layering and baking in a tray.

Thursday: Not sure – Husband cooked, I think…. I packed dinner, see below…

Friday: Pizza (take out) and an Avengers movie. I packed dinned, see below…

Saturday: No idea.

Sunday: leftovers/scrounge in the fridge. My brain was so fried by this point, I can’t even remember if I made the kids dinner. Oh wait. yes I did. I boiled some pasta, tossed in broccoli during the last three minutes, drained and mixed in the leftover ricotta sauce from Wednesday’s lasagna, for a cheesy, broccoli pasta. (See – I did just what I said above – mixed the lasagna sauce with cooked pasta and veggies and it was just a tasty a much less work.

Since I don’t really have an idea of what the family had for dinner for most of last week, as I was away most nights last week, I thought I’d take a picture of a typical food pack that I bring to work on any given day during tech week when I usually eat both lunch and dinner at work. This was actually from Thursday, but then I ended up going out for lunch that day and didn’t eat most of this and so just re-packed it and took it on Friday:

Lunch: Broccoli Quinoa Salad, avocado, hard boiled egg, plum

Dinner: zucchini pesto lasagna, cut up veggies and apple slices

Snacks for throughout the day: another container of veggies and apple slices, hummus, roasted chickpeas, mini pretzels, string cheese, mixed nuts. (Also at the office we have peanut m&ms, peanut butter pretzels, chocolate caramels, and gummy Nerds.).

Aside from breakfast, this all gets me through the day.

That’s it for last week. It’s been exhausting, but I am excited about the show. Also excited to be opened and to pick up around the house a little bit.

What do you love doing? And taking a poll: Which level would you call the “second level”?

Weekly recap + what we ate: getting ready for tech week

Some fun and random happenings this past week:

Blueberries: There was an episode of Hidden Brain this week called The Curious Science of Cravings, and the guest is psychiatrist Judson Brewer who researches cravings. At the end of the episode, Brewer talks about replacing his craving for gummy worms with blueberries. It was a very a propos episode because there have been the most amazingly plump and sweet blueberries in the store lately. I’m not sure what genetically engineered magic is going on here, but they’ve been a highlight of my food life right now. I can easily eat half a pint at a time. I don’t want to get too attached, though, because I recognize that this is just a season.

Bring your Child to Work Day. I took the 7 year old to work with me on Thursday. This was exciting because it’s the first time since COVID that my work has allowed people to come into rehearsal. Well, officially. The 7 year old actually went with the Husband to work in the morning first. I thought this was pretty cool – the Husband’s work had a diesel bus come and take the kids on a ride, then they switched to an electric bus so the kids could feel the difference. For lunch, I met the Husband and the 7 year old for sushi lunch, then I took him to work with me. We didn’t have any special activities planned this year, but he watched me take a Teams call, sat with me in rehearsal, played with the set model, and helped us move props around. At one point, he even stood next to me and helped me cue performers onstage. Afterwards he said he had a good time, though whether it was from actually being at work with me, or just from not having to go to school… who knows?

Outfit of the week: We had some really chilly mornings and sunny afternoons, so it’s been about layering this week. I originally wanted to just wear my hooded sweatshirt dress, but I also wanted another layer because the dress looks kind of shapeless if worn just on its own. So I threw on this orange pullover – the pullover used to belong to the Husband, but it no longer fits, so I rescued it from the donation bin when I was looking for an oversized sweatshirt last winter. I kind of love the colour combination.

Of course it’s going to be blazing hot this week, so this might be the last I wear this outfit until the fall.

-Shopping for Annie – I might have mentioned that the 12 year old is in Annie Jr. at her school – she plays an orphan. Tessie. She gets to play an orphan with a name! And lines! A couple weeks ago she came home with the costume list of what she had to bring for her orphan costumes – basically a ragged dress, bloomer, ankle socks and flat shoes. I’m hoping to get bloomers form the costume shop at work, but the rest of it, I thought we would just go to the thrift store and see what we could get. We ended up finding a green plaid dress – something very much of the 1990s, but could probably also work for 1930s and also – it’s rayon and says Dry Clean Only, so I hope the 12 year old doesn’t make any messes on it – or maybe that would be okay for an orphan look), a cardigan, and some sensible brown shoes. I have something leftover from work that could work as a pinafore, though it’s going to require some cutting and sewing. And the dress too needs to be hemmed. Here’s the first pass with things pinned into place. I feel like as things go, “Orphan” is a pretty easy assignment for a first time theatre mom.

She opens the same week as I do – so we will both be in tech at the same time. How funny is that?

Speaking of tech – this week is the start of tech . Fortunately I have a day off before we move into the theatre, so I can do some prep for the long days. On the list:
-Pick out my outfits for the week, so I don’t have to think about it in the morning when I’m going to be tired.
-Grocery shopping so I have food.
-Meal prep – I have some zucchini to use up, so I’m planning to make a zucchini lasagna so that the family can have one meal taken care of, and I’ll have leftovers to pack. Also prep some kale salad – that’s nice and hearty and will keep in the fridge.
-Boil eggs (or rather, I make them in the InstantPot) so I have a quick, easy source of protein.
-make a batch of marinated beans – again, a quick and easy source of protein.
-buy some office snacks – I like to bring a sweet snack and a savory snack – usually gummy bears or twizzler or m&ms, and then popcorn or Whisps. We’ll see what strikes my fancy at Costco.
-meal plan the rest of the week – I have some soups in the freezer that I can just take out for the family to eat.
-pick out a nice light read, for when I need a brain break, and an audio book for the longer commutes. (I think I picked a book – see below.)
– plan running clothes so I can go on runs during my dinner break.
-make sure all the bills are paid. Sometimes during tech I forget.
-Laundry.

Whew. It seems like a lot to try to get done in one free day. Plus get that Annie costume done. And I have another super titles gig that I have to prep the titles for. However, most likely on that one free day, I’ll go to Costco after the morning school bus run and then be exhausted for the rest of the day.

My goals for tech week – well my self-care goals for tech week:
-eat well (well, I mean eat the tasty junk food but also eat just as much, if not more, healthy stuff)
-sleep. Go straight to be when I get home late at night.
-find time to go outside – ideally running, but even just a ten minute walk around the building on a dinner break would be great.
-journal and reflect on how each day of tech went and what to do better. Tech can be a really stressful, and I always feel like I don’t have time to process all the stressors and inputs, but this time around, I do want to make sure I think about each day in a more mindful manner so that I don’t internalize the pain points in an unproductive way.
-remember to hug the Husband and my children. Remember to call home when I can. Find ways to connect even though I’m tired and never home at night or on weekends.

Grateful for:
-A cancelled music lesson and unexpected time with the 12 year old. On Friday, I had to take the 12 year old to her 4:00pm voice lesson. The lesson is usually on Saturday at 1pm, but her voice teacher is also in my show and we had rehearsals on Saturday, so we rescheduled it. It is a bit of a trek, and it was Friday rush hour, so I was a little anxious about being late. (side note – I’ve been trying to be less anxious about being late because lateness anxiety makes me a really bad driver and that is just dangerous. So now, I just tell myself, “The worst that can happen if you are careful is that you are late. The worst that can happen if you are not careful is that you get in a car accident.” And then I decide it’s okay to drive carefully and be a little late. Not that I’m being late in a cavalier kind of way, but in a “Just breathe” kind of way.) Anyhow, we were about half way to lessons when the voice teacher called and told me she had accidentally double booked us, and so sorry but can we re-schedule. Well, I wasn’t going to complain about not having to continue on around the beltway at 4pm on a Friday. So I impulsively got off at the next exit and the 12 year old and I went to get boba teas. And while we waited, we had some nice conversations and played War with a deck of cards a the boba tea shop and it turned out to be a really nice way to spend a newly granted 30 minutes of time.

-The local bike repair shop. There is a bike shop near work, so I took my bike in one day to see if it needed a tune up. The person working there, put it up on a rack, spun wheels, squeezed brakes, looked and squinted and prodded and then declared the bike was in great shape and I didn’t need a tune up. “You just need to remember to clean your chain,” he told me. And he suggested a cleaner to use. And I said, “How do I use that?” And he gave me a sideways glance because I’m pretty sure he was supposed to charge me if he was going to do maintenance on my bike. But then he said, “I’ll show you this one time.” And he cleaned my bike chain. And now my bike shifts much more smoothly. I did buy the cleaner and also two bike lights. My last bike lights went missing, so now I have new ones which is great because I can bike more safely in the evenings now. Since the bike was at work, a couple of evenings I went for a bike ride rather than a run on my dinner break – it’s just much more fun, zipping along, wind in my hair, than running. The terrain where I work can be a little hilly and as much as biking uphill is a pain, it was exhilarating.

-Wearing my running shoes to work. On Sunday I wore my running shoes to work because I wanted to bike home afterwards, and I hate wearing/ packing two pairs of shoes, even if it means doing something as unfashionable as wearing running shoes with a shirtdress. Anyhow – it ended up being a doozy of a rehearsal with us rehearsing in two rooms, having to move props back and forth, changing of original rehearsal plans, tracking down people… I logged over 10 000 steps in that day. At one point, I was rushing back and forth between the two rooms for the umpteenth time (side note – someone once told me that Stage Managers never run. I don’t know if I subscribe to that philosophy.), and I thought, “Hey, my feet feel pretty comfy!” And I looked down and remembered that I was wearing running shoes. I’m really glad that I made a sensible shoe choice that morning.

-Carpool and safe walking streets. Having kids in activities means getting people to places. And having a 4 year old and a 7 year old and a 12 year old means that when there is only one parent at home in the evenings, the little kids have to ride along to the big kid’s activities. Luckily, we’ve been able to find solutions for a lot of the 12 year old’s activities. Our neighbors also have kids in the same swim clinic as the 12 year old, so we alternate driving on Sunday nights. And knowing that I’m working most Sunday nights this month and next, the neighbors will be driving several weeks in a row – I’m grateful that they are happy to drive even when they drive more than we do. Also – the 12 year old can walk to her basketball workouts – it’s a 15 minute walk and now that it’s light outside in the evenings, it’s an easy walk; when it got dark at 5:30pm, I was nervous and would walk with her since even though there are lighted crosswalks, sometimes the cars drive faster than I would like. And then also grateful that the 12 year old’s school is doing Annie – I was disappointed when the 12 year old didn’t make it into the children’s chorus for my show, but I’m now realizing that logistically it is much easier for her to be in Annie because it rehearses directly after school and she can just walk home. (Being in my opera would have required a lot of really hard commuting and late nights.) I also just found out that the school has activity buses, so even if we hadn’t lived in walking distance to school, she still could have gotten home after rehearsal. So grateful that the school provides those buses for the other kids.

Looking Forward To:
-Getting to the other side of Tech. There is a lot of I love about tech and being in the theatre and creating moments on stage and helping people backstage. But also there is a lot that is exhausting and this is a big big big show (for an opera) and I am really looking forward to being on the other side and knowing that it all worked out. And going to Old Ebbits for late night happy hour oysters, which we always do to celebrate at some point.

-Making plans to make plans for a date with one of my friends from my mom’s group. I had lunch with a couple women from my mom’s group, but one in particular just had a baby and I always like chatting with her, and that’s kind of hard in a group setting. I had run to the restaurant for lunch so she offered to drive me home and we agreed to get together after tech and before her maternity leave was over. So I put a reminder in my calendar for the day after final dress rehearsal: “Ask T for a date next week.” I find it kind of silly to have to plan to plan, but I don’t always know what’s going to pop up in my calendar after opening, so didn’t want to schedule it right away. But I’ve scheduled scheduling it!

-I just started this book – I got it for Mother/Daughter book club – it checked the 12 year old’s boxes for romance and theatre. Seems perhaps apt reading for me in this next week. Kind of like when I read Milddlemarch while in Rome:

What We Ate:

Monday: Tofu tacos – the Husband cooked. I don’t know what recipe he used but they were tasty. There was even cilantro lime rice to go with it.

Tuesday: Sheet pan chicken and mustard glazed cabbage, from the New York Times Cooking. I prepped this in the morning and the Husband just popped it in the oven when he got home. Some family members did not like the cabbage, but the chicken was a big hit.

Wednesday: Grilled cheese sandwiches – the Husband cooked a variety.

Thursday: Pasta salad with marinated beans. My favorite marinated beans recipe mixed with pasta, chopped peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. I make the beans and chopped the veggies in the morning, and the Husband made the pasta and mixed everything together when he got home. Bonus – I got to eat marinated beans with avocado and eggs for breakfast one morning:

I added the avocado after I took the pictures. Sprinkled with pepper and some dill pickle sprinkle from Trader Joe’s.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Legally Blonde. It was my turn to choose the movie, and luckily it was my one night home. Sometimes if I’m not home, they skip over me and I don’t get to choose until the list cycles through again. I wanted a classic, fun movie. Legally Blonde was definitely that – I mean I guess classic for a kid of the 90s – what a fun movie – and more thoughtful than I had remembered. There’s some good empowering messages going on here.

Saturday: I was working, the family ordered wings.

Sunday: Leftovers – whatever people could find in the fridge.

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 7 and 8: California Academy of Sciences and Rock Climbing and Good Food

Continuing on recaps from our Spring Break trip to Berkeley and San Francisco….

One of our other goals for visiting the Bay Area was to visit our friend R who lived in San Francisco. He used to live in DC, but moved to San Francisco five years ago or so. Even though R doesn’t have kids, he’s always really liked hanging out with ours and whenever we see him, he always suggests family friendly excursions, which I appreciate. This times, he suggested that we visit the California Academy of Sciences, an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum all rolled into one. We took the BART and then the bus from Berkeley there and met our friend outside the museum. There was so much to see there, but here are some highlights –

Stingray tank:

There was a great outdoor space where on one end there was a huge water table set up and a station with lots of corks and sticks and you could experiment and build a boat/raft to send down the waterways of the water table. On the other end was a play area with huge insects and sticks and structures to climb. We liked this part of the museum so much we came here twice!

There was a whole exhibit about colour in nature and all the ways that animals and plants use colour. It reminded me of the rainbow game I play with the kids, and would surely have been cheating to play it in the exhibit. I particularly liked this display on beetles, and this other case on sea life. What a beautifully vibrant colour!

Lunch – probably the best meal I’ve had in a museum – roasted brussel sprouts and tortilla soup:

The Rainforest Exhibit, steamy and warm and full of lush greenery, butterflies, and birds:

Then we wandered down into the Aquarium where there were Jellyfish –

Sea horses – so cool because I had never seen a seahorse before:

And I did play the rainbow game with the kids while at the aquarium:

That evening we headed back to Berkeley for dinner, while the Husband stayed in San Francisco to go to dinner with his friend. My brother’s family, my parents, and the kids and I ended up at this very tasty Thai restaurant called The Funky Elephant. The restaurant was teeny tiny and we ended up sitting outside, even thought the evening had gotten chilly. The restaurant rolled out some heat lamps for us, whic helped a little. The food was unlike any other Thai restaurant we’d ever been to – spicy and flavorful and not too sweet. We ordered lots of food to share and I particularly liked the crispy rice salad with tofu and the Fried Brussel sprouts. (Yes! I had fried brussel sprouts TWICE in one day! That was exciting.) And for dessert we all shared a mango sticky rice, which is one of my favorite deserts ever. Highly recommend this place if you are ever in Berkeley.

95% of the time, when I see mango and sticky rice on a menu, I will order it.

Incidentally, the Husband texted while I was at dinner and said that his friend had an extra ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert and would it be okay if he went? Of course I said yes! I myself have never been to any kind of rock concert – and honestly, I don’t know if it’s my thing what with the noise and crowds – but I was super excited that he got a chance to go.

The next day was Friday, and my brother took the day off to hang out with us. We had planned to go hiking, but it turned out to be a rainy rainy day, so he suggested that we go to the rock climbing gym instead. Going to a climbing gym as a family had long been on my “Family Fun Wish List”, so I was excited to go. The Husband did not go with us – he wasn’t interested in climbing and wanted to have a day to himself instead. He told me afterwards that he had gone to Telegraph Road, which is one of the major streets in Berkeley, and had just walked around. I had told him that he should check out Amoeba Records. Twenty years ago, I lived in Berkeley while working one of my first stage management gigs at an outdoor Shakespeare company in Marin County. On my days off, I would spend a lot of time at Amoeba Records and also Rasputin Records. Anyhow, the Husband found the two music stores and we had this text exchange:

It’s funny in our age of streaming media to think the huge percentage of my paycheck that I poured into record stores, only to now not really have any convenient way to play those CDs.

Meanwhile, back to the climbing gym … My brother is super active and outdoorsy- he is the guy that goes on five day back country camping trips, and goes to the climbing gym at least twice a week. He had child sized climbing belts and shoes for the two little kids to wear- gear that used to belong to my niece but she had outgrown. He had actually passed the climbing gear along to his neighbor’s kids, so he called them to see if we could borrow it back. The climbing gym, Pacific Pipe in Oakland, was a huge facility. I think it’s one of the biggest in the area, and also one of the oldest. We bought day passes and rented shoes for the 12 year old and me.

We started out with some bouldering:

Then we moved on to top roping – my brother belayed. This gym had a space dedicated for kids to top rope, but it was under construction – I think they were changing up the routes – so the kids just climbed on the easier grown up walls. I was really impressed by how well the kids did and how high they went, and how even though there were many handholds, they tried really hard to follow the colour of each route, even though it wasn’t always easy. I didn’t feel like renting a climbing belt, so I just stuck to bouldering myself. It is SUCH a workout.

For lunch we went to Ikea then the kids wanted to climb some more, so we went back to the gym for another hour or so.

Around 3pm, we headed home. The two little kids and I walked down with my sister in law to pick up my niece from school.

Since it was a Friday in Lent, we wanted some tasty vegetarian food for dinner, so my brother took us to Vik’s Chaat. I had come here years ago, when it was just a restaurant in a big warehouse. Now it also has an Indian grocery story attached, which was very exciting to me and I made a note to check it out later.

We ordered lassis; the kids had mango, and I had a rose lassi. I don’t often see rose lassis on a menu, but it is one of my favorite lassi flavors so I always order it when I see it.

Dinner itself was very tasty, but somewhat of an ordeal. Vik’s is not like Indian restaurants at home where you order a bunch of dishes – basically everything come in a Thali so you get whatever your order – saag panner, dosa, samosa, along with chutney, dal, and rice. The idea being that your order is your meal. Well one child, likes to eat family style and try a bunch of different things, and also wasn’t familiar with the menu, and thought the cheese dosa would have paneer in it, but it just had American Cheese. And said child was probably hangry and tired and then had a meltdown in the restaurant and had to be taken aside to calm down. The whole thing made me realize how, even in America there are places that can be bewilderingly different from what we are used to in our own city.

After dinner, I checked out the grocery store. Because I didn’t want to bring a lot of things home with us in our suitcases, I exerted great restraint and did not buy all the dals and spices and snacks that were there. I did, however buy a 16 oz container of cardamom pods and 16 oz cloves and a bag of Assam tea because it all was about 1/2 the price as what I usually get at home, and I can’t usually find Assam tea at home. It is soon going to be iced chai season and I am really excited.

After that we headed home, the kids went to bed, I chatted a little with my brother and sister-in-law before going back to our apartment and turning in for the night. We had two more days left in our trip and they would be filled with planned and unplanned adventures.

Weekly recap + what we ate: better late than never – April aspirations

So I had a realization this week that between April 2nd and April 25th, I will have had exactly ONE day off work. Actually for the whole month of April, I will have three days off. We work a six day week when we’re in rehearsal, so it’s not as out of the ordinary as it sounds to have only a handful of days off – and of course, some of these long weeks is self inflicted because on last week’s day off, I had to work my supertitle gig. But still. Ooof. If I ever wonder why I feel so behind this month, this is why. I find myself re-writing the same to do list week to week and never being able to cross anything off. I did make a March reflection/ April aspiration list while on the plane home from California from Spring Break- so even though April is over half way over, I thought I’d share the list – you know, just another thing that’s behind these days….

March highlights:
-Spring Break trip to Berkeley and San Francisco – this was for sure the high highlight. I promise to finish the recaps, including the details on the trip to the emergency room.
-Lenten Women’s Group. This group that met Tuesday nights during Lent provided so much connection and thoughtful reflection.
-Going to lots of theatre, but especially the local high school production of Beauty and the Beast.
-Watercolour class. I learned SO much in this class.
-a really quick trip to see the cherry blossoms – literally a 15 minute run before a work meeting. I used to think going to see the cherry blossoms was something for tourists, but I’ve grown to love the magical feeling of walking among the trees in bloom, and now I feel like they are a yearly must see.
-On the work front – figuring out a new sign in sheet system for performers. Something that’s needed a bit of reform for a while and I’m so relieved that we’ve started to implement the new system. There are still some things to work out, but it’s a start.
-Daylight Saving and longer days and warmer weather.
-Going running with the 12 year old. Once.
– Dinner with a beloved colleague.

Lowlights – I’m not sure if there are any specific lowlights in March. Well, maybe the Emergency Room trip with the four year old, but even that was pretty chill once we got there. There is the daily tediousness of kids and chores and screentime struggles. I guess for me also, not having time to journal, which then makes it feel like life is slipping by unremarked upon, which always, for some reason, makes me panic a little and sends me into an existential spiral. Looking back, the are mostly the same lowlights as last month. I wonder what that says – maybe I’m stuck in a rut?

April Aspirations:
– Taxes. Done by the end of the first week of April, which is early for us, but our tax guy had implemented an April 1st deadline for tax documents, which is helpful. Next year I need to do better accounting for our rental property, though. It was harder than it had to be this year.
-Research options to get rid of my car. (Still – have not made any progress on this one.)
-Process Amazon and Duluth Trading company returns. (The Amazon one is done. The Duluth one is complicated, so the box just sits forlornly in my bedroom.)
-Submit forms for the 4 year old’s early admittance to kindergarten.
-Purge the toy room.
-Finalize summer camp schedules. I think I forgot to sign up the 12 year old for basketball camp. I need to check on that one.
– Things that need replacing – 1) my purse/crossbody bag had a huge hole in the outside lining so needs to be replaced, 2) I need new sandals for summer, and 3) a new Yeti travel tumbler since I lost mine two months ago and it is nearing iced chai season for me, 4) maybe, for fun, new linen pants for the summer. Though I don’t find pants fun anymore.
-Decide on our Asia Trip.
-Mow the lawn twice. I promised that Husband that instead of hiring a yard service I would trade off mowing the lawn with him. He has now mowed twice and I have mowed not at all.

Okay, I am realizing that I’ve been blogging on and on about needing to get rid of my car and purge toys and what not for about five months now. I should make some movement on those so I can start griping about new things.

So the ironic thing is the Husband took the kids camping with friends this past weekend, and I didn’t go because I had to work. And I thought, “Great! House to myself! I’ll knock out some of those April Aspirations!” NOPE. The first night, I got home, picked up/tidied the living room, cleaned the kitchen, made baked chick peas, did a full load of laundry and then was too exhausted to even read my book. Saturday night was even worse, because for some reason I was soooooo tired, though I did manage to fold and put away that laundry that I started the night before. It’s so annoying how little life tasks got in the way of bigger life tasks.

Sunday morning, I drove up to the campground, which is only 40 minutes away, and hung out for an hour before having to head in to work. I had expected to show up in time to help the Husband break down the camp, but when I got there at 8:45am, he had already taken the whole thing down. My kids were eating breakfast out of red solo cups and barely said hello to me before running off into the woods with the other kids. Feeling pretty useless, I settled into a camp chair, wrapped in a blanket that my friend’s mom piled on me, pet the dog and just chatted with everyone until I had to go to work.

We had a weekend of really big rehearsals. The show I’m working on has a lot of people – 58 choristers, 12 supers, 10 dancers, 20 children, and 7 principal singers. That’s 107 people in the room. Well 100 on Sunday because some people were excused from that rehearsal. It is it’s own brand of organized chaos. I spent a lot of Sunday in dance rehearsals – the dancers set their choreography separately and then we merge them in with the singers. I find dance so fascinating – the process is mind boggling to me, how the choreographer says a few words, makes some slight movements, and out of it comes gorgeous feats of athleticism and movement. It’s such a different creative process and language from working with singers or actors. And how dancers remember all the steps and sequences – I am in awe.

Other fun things this week:
-Carpet of blossoms at the bus stop. The Kwanzan cherry blossoms, which bloom about two weeks after the Yoshina blossoms on the Mall. I love their huge puffs of pinkness. At our school bus stop, there is a Kwanzan cherry tree and the petals are starting to shed, making a bubble gum pink carpet on the green grass. I love the colour palette they make up:

And the four year old likes throwing the petals in the air like confetti:

– The vocal recital that I did the supertitles for this week featured the world premiere of a new song cycle. I thought it a beautiful piece, and especially loved the poetry. The text is by poet Jeanne Minahan, and a lot of the poems were about new parenthood. I loved these lines from a poem called After:

They say I gave you birth,
I think they may be wrong,
you bore me from that place
of no return, you pulled me
from myself, I’ve learned.

Sometimes I feel like that – like I don’t feel like the same person I was before I had kids – that they unearthed something in me, or perhaps because of them I’ve had to find a little bit more focus in myself.

-On the day of the recital, I had a really long dinner break. The weather was gorgeous – blazingly hot and sunny, and almost summer like, only without the oppressive humidity of deep summer. So I took a walk to Georgetown and treated myself to a boba tea. There are three or four boba places in Georgetown and I’m determined to try them all. I didn’t get out on a walk every day this week, so taking a walk on my dinner break felt amazing. I passed a guy playing bagpipes on a corner:

Squint to see the bagpiper. Hearing music unexpectedly is always so lovely.

Outside the boba place was this fun mural:

The actual boba place was okay- I liked that you could get your tea black and they had lychee jelly. I ordered a black oolong tea, 30% sugar, with boba and lychee jelly. It was fine, except the tea was still warm – a good sign because that meant it was freshly brewed and not powder- but I did want a cold drink and it took a while for the tea to chill because it had been hot. The other funny thing was that the place insisted that you order via a kiosk. When I got there , there was a group of college girls there (I think they were college age – I can’t tell how old anyone is anymore). They were all speaking French so i guessed that they were exchange students or something. But they apparently couldn’t pay via credit card and were super confused and ended up going to the counter and asking the lady at the register how to pay since they only had cash. The lady at the register took their order and payment at the register. Which made me feel like, “Why do I have to use a kiosk?” I hate using kiosks. Oh well. But watching these young ladies, I was full of admiration – I had badly wanted to study abroad in college and I didn’t manage to work up the courage to do so – but what a great adventure it must be for them to be living in a foreign country and have to navigate things like kiosks at the boba place. There is so much to learn about navigating life that I now take for granted, but I know that when I was young, the world was bewildering.

Boba and Georgetown canals and sunshine. A nice evening. Also – look how bright it is at 6:30pm!!!

Grateful For:
-Windows in our rehearsal hall. I’m pretty sure this has been on my list before, but it is still a wonderful thing. I’ve spent many a rehearsal process in windowless rooms, so to be able to rehearse in a room with floor to ceiling windows feels so luxurious. The other day, during a particularly tedious rehearsal, I was able to look out the window and see all the beautiful pink clouds of sunset and it was such a stunning little pick me up.

-The monitor set up that the Husband put in our guest room for when one of us has to work from home. When the Husband first set up two external monitors and a set of speakers on our little Ikea desk, i thought it was overkill. But now I fully admit, it is an awesome set up. When I had to format supertitles this week, it was amazing to be able to run the slides on one screen, edit them on another and have the original text up for comparison on a third. Plus, I can play the music via the speakers and actually give the titles a test run. It’s all so much more efficient than clicking back and forth, minimizing and maximizing screens when I need to look at one thing or another.

My set up for working on supertitles.

-Living walking distance to a Metro station. On Saturday, I biked to work, but then when I left it was dark and I still don’t have lights on my bike, so I was able to take the Metro home. It was really nice not to have to worry about how I was going to get home.
Although, on my way out of the Metro, I saw a sign:

Our stop is going to be closed basically ALL SUMMER. That is going to really suck.

Looking Forward To:
– Lunch with some people from my Mom’s group. Only one person could make it to the April meet up, but I think two or three can make it this time. It will be nice to catch up.
-Mowing the lawn. I actually don’t mind mowing the lawn, especially since we now have an electric lawnmower and it isn’t as loud or smelly as the gas one we used to have. And it is an excuse to be outside. I don’t do much yardwork – the mosquitoes and the fear of pulling up the wrong plants keep me away. But mowing… I actually look forward to.
-Just started this audiobook – picked because Richard Armitage (who was oh so dreamy in North and South) narrates it. The novel is gripping and feels appropriate reading for the time/times, but so very sad so far. I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way through right now – I think I may need a lighter audiobook to get through tech week. (I’m open to suggestions for audio books!)


-mornings off. Our rehearsal schedule is entering a period when we mostly work afternoon and evenings, so I’ll have a couple mornings off this week. Goals – take care of some of those April aspirations, run, meal prep. Of course this means that the Husband will be home almost every night on his own with the kids. I think a room full of 100 performers is much easier than 3 kids. At least when I tell the chorus what to do, they just do it and don’t argue with me.

What We Ate: I didn’t really meal plan this week because there were a lot of variables going on. I’ll need to do some prep this week and next, since I’ll be going into tech week the first week of May. (Also – how is next week the first week of MAY already?!?!?!)

Monday: Bean and parmesan soup, made in the InstantPot, with leftovers which I was able to freeze.

Tuesday: The Husband made pasta and green beans for the kids. I worked and ate leftovers.

Wednesday: The Husband and the kids went to dinner with a friend while I worked. I had leftovers again. And a massaged Kale salad with cheddar, apples, avocados, and pepitas.

Thursday: The Husband made mac and cheese from scratch for the kids. I was working this night and had a salad from the canteen at work.

Friday: I had leftovers (soup), the Husband and kids were camping and ate camp food, not sure what. .

Saturday: I had a kale salad and the leftover Mac and cheese – basically scrounge around in the salad and leftover-eating.

Sunday: The Husband brought home pizza. I had leftover pizza when I got home from work.