Tag: anticipation

Weekly recap + what we ate: Another museum, another birthday! And Snow.

Our world is blanketed with snow so thick and frozen that you can walk on it. We’re on Day Three of the schools being closed and they’ve already announced that they will be closed tomorrow (Thursday) as well. The kids were super excited. The six year old made this to do list:

For those who aren’t fluent in six year old pictogram, the list reads:
1. Build snowman
2. Throw snowballs at the snowman
3. Go sledding
4. Make snow angels
5. Build and igloo
6. Have a snowball fight
7. Shovel Snow.

The weekend featured the usual runs of voice lesson and a basketball game for the 14 year old. The two little kids were invited to a playdate so they didn’t come to the game. The 14 year old won her game so we stopped to get fries from McDonalds on the way home. Why are fries SO tasty? I had to work Saturday night, and took the Metro in, just in case the snow came early. The Metro costs $2.50 more than parking, and takes 15 minutes longer (though in rush hour, it’s actually faster to Metro). I figure the extra time and money is worth the stress I save from having to drive through the city. I got to read my book, and truth to tell, the walk to and from the Metro Station is always a welcome opportunity to move.

Sunday, we woke to several inches of snow on the ground, with more coming down. We hunkered, and shovelled a little. The two older kids and I walked down to the park- I live seeing it blanketed with snow. The snow was almost sand like, making it quite a workout to walk through it.

Sunday evening we had some neighbors over for dinner – our kids swim together, but since swim was cancelled, we thought it was a good opportunity to get together. It was a lovely evening- I made pasta with Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce, foccaccia, and we had bagged salad. Our neighbors brought cookies and cannoli. Afterwards one of their daughters introduced us to Imposter. Have you played? It’s loads of fun; there’s an app where everyone secretly gets a word (the same word) except one person who is the imposter. Then everyone goes around and says one word related to the main word, including the imposter who has to try to figure out what word to add without giving away that they don’t know the word. There was a lot of laughing.

On the bummer side, the heat at my parents’ rental went out o n Sunday and since the Husband and I manage the property for them, we were the ones who had to deal with it. Monday morning we managed to get our car out and drive over to their neighborhood. They hadn’t been ploughed out yet, so we parked two blocks away and walked up to the house with space heaters for the tenants. I dropped the Husband and drove back home, and I’m pretty sure I burned the clutch on our car getting it back home over the unploughed streets. (We have two cars, but the van does not have all wheel drive, so we had to drive the manual Impreza). Later that evening, we headed to the rental house to see if we could troubleshoot and open the faucets since we didn’t want the pipes to freeze; the tenants had checked into a hotel by that point. Given the lack of parking at the rental, the Husband and I decided that the easiest thing would be to walk over. So the Husband and I walked the mile there, some of it on the road since the sidewalks hadn’t been cleared. I pulled on my wool and silk underlayers, bundled up and it turned out not to be so bad of a walk. The streets were pretty quiet and the sun was setting and the snow was still white and smooth. As we turned the corner to the house, I looked up and it was golden hour. The Husband said, “At least the light is beautiful.”

We finally were able to find an HVAC company that could come out on Tuesday – most places were saying Wednesday or Friday at the earliest. The heating and gas were fixed, thankfully and we could all breathe easier.

Before all that happened, though… the previous Monday was MLK Day and we went on a family museum adventure to the Renwick Gallery. The Renwick is a Smithsonian museum dedicated to the art of crafts and handiwork. There is currently an exhibit called State Fair: Growing American Craft. It features work that was created and displayed at State Fairs around the country from the early twentieth century to today. I loved this exhibit. It was a great reminder that art is not purely the domain of the artists whose work hangs in the big museums, who have highly publicized exhibits. Art can come from the farmer’s wife, who collects fabric scraps and sews them into a beautiful quilt after the kids go to bed, or the insurance agent who takes up knitting as a hobby, or the art student who is just learning how to throw pottery.

I think this exhibit was one of the most diverse exhibits I’ve ever seen – it celebrated the work of people from a wide variety of cultures and races and backgrounds. While I was going through this exhibit, I thought of the Amish Quilt exhibit at the American Art Museum I had seen a few years ago and how all those quilts were made by “unknown.” I loved that the pieces in this exhibit all were able to credit the creators.

Some of my favorite pieces:

This quilt was made by Grace Snyder (1882-1982) of Nebraska. She learned to quilt when she was six to keep herself occupied while she watched the cattle. The quilt is made up of 87,000 small triangles. It’s almost like a Grecian mosaic.
Butter Cow! by Sarah Pratt and her daughters Hannah and Grace. I’ve never seen one of these before, and this made me super excited.
Hair wreath by Josephine Daly (1860-1939). This was made over the course of eight years, from real hair. I find this beautiful and creepy,.
Pyramid of preserves, canned by Rod Zeitler of Iowa City. . All I could think about when looking at this was, that’s a lot of toast. Also – are they going to eat it all?
Seed art by Linda Paulson. This is art made by gluing tiny seeds one by one. So meticulous – look at the detail!

I picked up a few things from the gift shop. I don’t often buy things from Museum Gift Shops, but more and more I’m feeling like since our museums are free, I should support them in some way. Especially these days. I got a hand made bud vase – I don’t like cut flowers, but a sprig of something or a single flower could be nice. I also picked up this this beautiful book of stickers:

How beautiful are these stickers? I almost don’t want to use the stickers, they are so gorgeous, but I think it would bring people a lot of joy to see them, making them perfect for including in mail.

Afterward the museum, we walked up to Dupont Circle and had lunch at our favorite cheap Chinese restaurant. When the Husband and I started dating, he worked within walking distance from this place and we would often meet here for lunch, usually ordering the same thing – kung pao chicken for him, chicken and green beans for me. We order all that along with orange chicken, combination lo mien, and Mongolian Beef. It was all so tasty.

After lunch, we walked back to the metro, popping briefly into Second Story Books to browse. I mean with this sign out front, who could resist:

In other news from last week, it was also the middle child’s birthday. He is now 9 years old! Happy birthday to this imaginative kid who loves stories and puzzles and thinking about life. You can always find him reading – he’s recently really gotten Plants vs. Zombies – playing with his swords and nerf guns. He likes making up adventure stories in his head and enacting them with his little sister. He loves to build, be outside, ride his bike, kick a soccer ball, and play Mario Kart. He doesn’t like practicing piano, being told to put his book down, or when his sister takes his Lego creations apart.

Grateful for (The Snowy Snowy January Edition):

-The people in Minneapolis who go out in the cold and protest and protect and bear witness to the sad and heavy things happening there.

-The beauty and quiet of a world covered in snow.

-people who clear their side walks.

-Snow plough drivers. Our street didn’t get ploughed until Tuesday afternoon, and boy was I happy to see the snow plough when it arrived.

-The magical alchemy that is baking – flour, levener, liquid. Butter. All that combines to make magical cozy things that comfort us by the mouthful. In addition to focaccia I also made M&M cookies (this recipe, really good!), and thumb print cookies (from Cook’s Illustrated – a little bland, TBH), which I made with pepper jelly and blueberry jam.

-That our heat works.

-That our Metro stop is underground. A lot of Metro stops in the suburbs are above ground, which makes it very cold when waiting for the train. Our metro stop and the metro stop at my work are both underground so I can wait for the train without being exposed to the elements.

-Hot chocolate. When we heard a storm was coming, I told the Husband we had to stock up on butter, eggs, and hot chocolate. These are the important things.

-the back up electric kettle. Last week, our electric kettle meet an unfortunate fate when someone tried to move the cart it was sitting on without unplugging the kettle. There was broken glass and tears. For as much tea as I drink, being without an electric kettle is DIRE. Luckily we had an old kettle in our basement that I pulled out. It’s not ideal – it’s plastic, for one – but it will do until we get a new one. OR… I’m really considering upgrading to one of these electric water boilers. It would be a splurge, but all the Taiwanese people have them – it keeps water at a constant temperature. How many times have I been late to work because I was waiting for hot water so I could fill my coffee mug and take it to go?

Looking Forward to:

-Cool Blogger’s Book Club! Reading The Age of Innocence. This is a re-read for me, but knowing how it end, has made some things in the first few chapters really pop for me. I stopped at our library’s used bookstore to find a copy, and there is was! I also picked up a few other fun things:

I got the Far Side and the Get Fuzzy for the 9 year old – they were two of my favorite Sunday comics when I was growing up and I wanted to share them with him. He reports that Far Side is “funny, but scary.” Upon re-reading it, I can see what he means.

-This is more of a “Some day in the future” rather than concrete plans, but when we were in Dupont Circle, II was thinking that I would love to take a child-free Dupont Circle Day some day. I do love spending time with my kids, but they don’t really do leisurely meandering. If I had a child-free day in Dupont Circle, I would go to the Phillips Collection, then spend some time browsing the various stationary and book stores along Connecticut Ave., and then find some tasty food or a refreshing beverage (Maybe from the Afghan Chai truck??) and sit on the circle and people watch. I think I will put this on my list of fun things to do this spring.

-Radishes. We had two bags of radishes passed along to us from our friend with the CSA – he doesn’t like radishes. So I’m determined to eat one a day so that they don’t go to waste. There are beautiful watermelon radishes that I’ve been slicing thin and eating with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil for breakfast. There are also some black radishes that have a very spicy bite. I ate one sliced with salt and pepper and decided that I couldn’t eat them raw, so I cut one up and put it in congee. I might miso-roast the other black radishes.

-the kids going back to school. Monday was a grading day so we weren’t supposed to have school anyway, but now school has been cancelled through to Thursday because of the weather. On the one hand I’ve been enjoying the cozy time with the kids, and I dread going back to routine – it’s like having a second winter break.- , but on the other hand, it is really hard to keep up with the dishes and the house hold chores when everyone is home all the time.

-Just started this audiobook, a historical fantasy set in WWI; it’s just gotten a bit creepy…

What We Ate:

Monday: I was going to make Ethiopian food this day, but then I fell asleep after getting home from the Museum. So the Husband raided the freezer and assembled a dinner of dumplings, soup, and edamame.

Taco Tuesday: reheated the honey adobo chicken from last week. (I had to go to work this evening, so I wrapped some of the chicken in a soft tortilla and took it with me.)

Wednesday: Butternut Squash and Leek Za’atar Pie, Ottolenghi recipe for NY Times Cooking. I made this in an effort to use up some delicata squash, leeks, and chard that our friend had given us from their CSA when they were out of town. This seems like a fancy dish, because it’s all wrapped up in puff pastry, but it was actually pretty fast and easy to put together. Puff pastry makes anything feel fancy. I thought it was rather tasty – the kids didn’t care for the fact that I didn’t peel the squash beforehand, but once the Husband took off the skin (I was at work), they ate it. Made for good leftovers.

Thursday: Pasta and red sauce. Simple fast dinner for a night when I had to work and the Husband had evening plans.

Friday: The family had dinner out with a friend (I think they had burgers). I was at work. Can’t remember what I ate, probably leftovers.

Saturday: Pizza Hut (the 9 year old’s special birthday request) and The Music Man. The 14 year old got the lead in the middle school production of Music Man. I’m so excited and proud for her! Although after seeing the movie, she’s decided that Marian doesn’t make sense – she spends the first half of the show yelling at Harold Hill and then suddenly has a change of heart. It told her that that’s the actor’s challenge, isn’t it?
(I had to work. I think I had leftovers before heading to the theatre again)

Sunday: Marcella Hazan’s oh so easy famous Tomato Sauce w/ pasta, Turkey meatballs (This recipe, but baked instead of fried), potato and leek frittata, and salad (from a bag)

Hope those of you in the path of winter weather remain safe and warm. Here’s hoping there is sunshine and clear roads in your future.

Do you go to your State Fair? Have you ever entered anything into a State Fair? If you could, what would it be? What was your favorite Sunday comic growing up? What do you panic buy make sure you stock up for when bad weather is coming?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Jet lag, Art by Women, airplane films

Ouf, it’s been a rough week for re-entry. I have not been able to get onto a regular sleep schedule. I’m by mid afternoon, struggle to stay awake, and end up taking three hour naps and then staying up until 2am and then sleeping til 8am, which is pretty late in our house. Overall not good for my goal of improving my sleep hygeine in 2026. The house continues to be a mess, the kids run amok on their own in the morning. On the bright side – the six year old got tired of waiting for me to wake up one morning and packed her own lunch…

I did manage to go to work – definitely not bloggable these days – make dinner a few times, meet up with my Lenten (okay, I guess Advent/Epiphany) reading group this week. But other than that, it was a whole lot of sleeping.

Some good news (since so much of it is shit these days):
We found out which high school our daughter is going to. She got assigned to her #1 pick, which is great. The results are kind of based on home school/lottery/random assignments, so it was a little up to chance. The school she is assigned to is not actually our home school, but it is closer to us, which is nice – actually in most of the redistricting maps that have been drawn, it would probably be our new home school in the future, so chances are the two other kids will also go there. I’m excited because the school is getting rebuilt – so next year she will be at at a holding school that is a little far away, but the new building will open up her sophomore year. I can’t quite believe my baby is going to HIGH SCHOOL next year.

Speaking of my baby – it is also her birthday week. It’s been a little low key because her birthday comes so soon after the holidays that I’m always negligent at planning anything. Oh well – we’ll gather with some family friends and have cake, and I think we’ll plan something for her and her friends at some point. She’s on the fence as to whether she wants a big birthday party or anything, so we’ll see what she wants to do. But oh wow… This little baby made us first time parents and now she is 14!!!!

She was such an itty bitty thing! Born at 34 weeks, just under 5lbs – we were completely unprepared for her arrival. Some day I might get around to writing her birth story here.

And look at us now!

A Museum Visit– I went to a new to me museum – The National Museum for Women in the Arts, where aside from a few exceptions, all the art in the museum is by women or non-binary artists. The NMWA is in DC, but not a Smithsonian, so I did actually *gasp* pay money to go. It was well worth the $16 (They do have two free community days a month, and I was going to wait, but the exhibit I wanted to see was closing soon, so I figured I would just pay…. such a foreign concept for me. I feel so entitled.) I had known about the museum, though given all the free museums, this museum was never high up on my list of museums to visit. But during the last government shut down, when the Smithsonian closed, the NMWA was on a list of alternative museums to visit – they even had free admission for federal workers – and I made a note to check it out.

The exhibit that prompted me to visit was called Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, showcasing female artist from the time of the Dutch Masters. The exhibit was about to close and I didn’t want to miss it. 1600-1750 was such a prolific time for art, but all the artists you hear about from the time are men – Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc. I never thought to wonder fi there were also women artists, and of course there were. Many of them were sisters, daughters, or spouses of artists and they were mostly from upper middle and upper class families. The exhibit featured not just paintings, but also scientific drawings, book illustrations, and – most fascinating to me – samples of lace. The exhibit talked about how lace-making is such an art, but lacemakers are never credited by name or even known. It kind of reminded me of the exhibit of quilts that I saw at the Smithsonian a few years ago – the idea of handicraft as art, but art that does not credit the artist, likely because it’s done by women.

Another artform that was largely women’s domain was paper-cutting. It’s not really on people’s radar because the finished project is so fragile that it seldom survives to be passed down. Of course there are painting of paper cuttings, delicate mobiles with intricate designs. One papercutting adjacent work they had was this portrait – how amazingly skillful is that cutting?

I particularly liked the art by Rachel Ruysch – her paintings featured such detail and sense of life:

One detail from the above painting.

(Also – I just googled Ryusch, and she had ten children while being one of the most in demand still life painters of her time. I feel conflicted as to whether one’s identity as a mother should be part of an artist’s biography, but, man just thinking of her having ten kids is just as impressive as her paintings. Or maybe no – maybe she was a shit mom who left her kids with their nanny all the time. But still… she gave birth ten times. That’s kind of bad ass.)

After I saw the Dutch Masters exhibit, I wandered the other galleries – the main collection, was interestingly enough, arranged by themes (Red, Lavender, Domesticity), rather than by era. I thought that was a really interesting way to look a pieces in a larger context. I particularly was awed by these huge watercolor paintings:

Painting watercolours this large is amazing.
love the detail.

Then on the third level there was another exhibit called Tawny Chatmon: Sanctuaries of Truth, Dissolution of Lies, featuring work by Black photographer Chatmon. She embroiders her photographs with richly colored threads, making a striking textured visual. Her work seeks to reclaim objects that have been used to stereotype African Americans by restoring them to objects of meaning and significance. For example this photograph of a woman with a watermelon where the fruit is given a place of royalty rather than ridicule.

There is also her project “The Restoration” where she finds racist antique dolls and re-draws the offensively exaggerated facial features and dresses them in rich African textiles.

I left the exhibit awed by the courage and creativity Chatmon has to change the narrative that surrounds her. The whole museum, in general was pretty satisfying to visit. Highly recommend.

Speaking of consuming art– Here is a list of all the movies I watched on the plane on our flights to and from Taiwan, most of them foreign films. I like to watch international movies on international flights. I very rarely watch foreign language films at home, but something about being on a flight, being held hostage for hours – I don’t want to watch popcorn movies, I want to watch movies that feel a little challenging.

This is my strategy on international flights – I first go through the menu and favorite all the movies that look interesting to me. Some of my movie catnip: films set in Taiwan (or the country I’m going to visit), films in Mandarin (so I can practice my language skills. French also.), films with romantic story lines, films that say “Award winning performance”, films that don’t look too dark, heavy, or gory (I don’t need to watch violence on a plane… or ever, really), films with an ensemble cast on the poster, films with people looking happy on the poster, film with women and not just men on the poster, films that are set on planet Earth, period films, films that are less than 120 minutes long. Then after favoriting movies, I just see what speaks to me in the moment. I don’t put on a movie until at least an hour into the flight. I like to watch a movie with my meal, and then see what else I have time for.

Here are the seven movies I watched over 30 some hours in a plane to Taiwan and back:

*The Family Stone – USA 2005: This movie is on so many “Classic Holiday Movie” lists, but I had never seen it, so I decided to put it on. Let me tell you – The Family Stone will definitely not be on any of my “Holiday Movie” lists. It’s full of terrible toxic people, and not even in a good, fun to watch way. I mean aside from the one “Check all the DEI boxes” couple (gay, interracial, and Deaf), everyone is kind of just clueless and unkind, and that in and of itself feels cliched. Holiday movies are supposed to fill me with warm fuzzies and hope for humanity. I just wanted to read all these folks the riot act.

*OMG! Mom’s Big News – Malaysia, 2025: This movie is about a couple in their 50s, with grown kids who discover that the wife is pregnant just as they are planning for retirement. I thought this was a cute movie – funny, warm, and full of quirky characters. It kind of felt like a Hallmark movie in the best ways.

*Mumu – China 2025: A film about a Deaf man who works odd jobs while raising his six year old daughter (Mumu) only to have their life together threatened when his ex comes back for custody of the child. The movie starts out as a heartwarming, quirky almost-comedy about a father and his child, but then bam! Mumu turns real dark and becomes a noir thriller as the father, in order to make money, gets involved in an insurance fraud scheme that requires him to recklessly crash cars, and then… well no spoilers. (I do find with a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese movies they tend to have both light and dark moments. There is no one way to categorize a movie often.) Its the kind of movie that on paper sounds as if it will be peddling in emotional cliches – and it does – but the performances are so genuine and delightful, the relationships so real, that I was just sucked right in. Worth a watch if you can find it, I think.

Tic Talk – Taiwan, 2024: A teenage boy with Tourette’s syndrome dreams of being a singer and also of finding his mother. One day, he meets a travelling singer and hitches a ride on his truck, travelling throughout Taiwan and helping him with his stage and sound set up. The cynical singer and the shy teenager bond. A buddy road trip movie. I really enjoyed the music, seeing the life on the road, and seeing the scenery of Taiwan in this movie. Taiwan is a very outdoors country. This movie has catchy tunes and sweet performances.

Road’s End in Taiwan – Switzerland/Taiwan 2025: Swiss Damien receives a letter that his father – whom his mother had told him died years ago – has just recently passed away in Taiwan. He travels to Taiwan for his inheritance and meets Steve, his Taiwanese half brother. Damien and Steve embark on a road trip through Taiwan to find the other two people named in the will so that the will might be read. Yes, another Taiwan Road Trip movie, though this one travels down the East Coast, so a little different scenery. This movie was kind of sad and bleak (Spoiler – the dead father was NOT a good person), but I was pretty invested in the story.

*Montages of a Modern Motherhood– Hong Kong, 2024: New mother Jing struggles with balancing childcare, work, in-laws, and her marriage in this unflinching look at early motherhood. There were so many moments in this movie that I felt very deeply – the bone dead tiredness of having an infant; the sense of not knowing what to do coupled with undeniable instinct for what your child needs; the crying, constant crying. Watching it made me feel angry on behlaf of Jing, but also I felt so lucky that I had the post-partum support that I did. The movie is bleak, but also those first few months with a baby can be so isolating and intense that I’m glad this movie puts out there how hard it can be.

*A Family Knight-Mare (Sin cobertura – literally “no coverage”) – Spain 2025: Fed up with her family constantly being on their phones, young Rita asks a fortune teller at a Medieval fair to make their phone disappear. Before they know it, the family is transported to the real Medieval Times. Will the family be able to get home before they are stuck in the past forever? After watching two bleak movies, I wanted something lighter. This is the kind of family friendly live action movie that Disney used to make all the time. I thought it was entertaining, cute, and fluffy. Not the most memorable or subtle film, but still pretty entertaining.

Grateful For this week:

-The Bears having an unbelievable season. It makes the Husband really happy.

-The Husband for picking up the slack when all I could do was sleep.

-The people at church who acknowledged 14 year old’s birthday. At our church at the end of Mass, they take time to acknowledge birthday and anniversaries. The 13–>14 year old didn’t want to stand up, and instead sunk down even further in the pew, which I think the priest saw and realized something was up. He came up after and wished her a happy birthday, and so did a few other people. I think she didn’t want a public airing of her birthday, but the quiet individual wishes really made her smile.

-Good books and Libby. I just finished the Daughters of Shandong and could instantly have another book to read.

-Raincoats for the soggy soggy week we’ve been having.

-my colleagues at work.

-The now 14 year old. What a bright, kind, empathetic, unfussy human being she is. She makes me laugh by sending me silly YouTube Shorts, eats salad, looks out for her siblings, always tries to do the right thing and notices when people aren’t doing likewise, avoids drama, and is there for her friends. She likes cuddles, food, Coke, and music. I’m so glad she’s in our lives.

Looking Forward to:

-Bao buns. We went to a new to us Asian grocery store – a small little shop full of wonderful things. We were looking for a restaurant, but it was closed and this grocery store was next to it so we wandered inside, thinking maybe the restaurant was inside the grocery store. Well it wasn’t but the store was a little mom and pop affair so it felt awkward to just go in and leave again, so we wandered the aisles and picked up some fun things – curry puffs, canned rambutan, home made pork bao, tapioca flour, and some cookies for the kids. I noticed they have a boba counter in the back, so we’ll have to make a return trip some time!

-Fencing! We signed up the 8 year old for fencing lessons. He’s always running around with his light saber and Ren Faire sword, so we figured we should try to channel that energy.

-Figuring out how to get on a regular sleep cycle.

-My goals gentle aspirations for 2026. Two weeks into the new year and I’ve finally taken a moment to think about these things. I’m definitely of the “New year can start any time” school. I do think I need some adulting type goals, though – something financial. I need to sit with these for a bit and then maybe I’ll share them here.

-Just started this book. Interesting concept but pretty sad in the first few chapters:

-Listening to this audio book – Two of my catnips – Christmas Carol-inspired and Will Watt as one of the narrators! It’s pretty funny and charming so far.

What We Ate:
Monday: Half Price Burgers

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – I made Tofu Chorizo from the NY Times Cooking. It was a little too spicy. Not sure if it’s worth my effort to make again – I have a recipe for soy ground beef that is easier and the family likes better. But otherwise we had tostadas instead of hard shell tacos, and those were well enjoyed.

Wednesday: Pasta with red sauce. I was supposed to cook this night, but I got home from work and fell asleep in our reading chair. When the Hsuband couldn’t wake me, he made dinner instead.

Thursday: Masala Chickpeas with Tofu and Blistered Tomatoes, from NY Times Cooking, served with Paratha (bought frozen from HMart and cooked on the griddle.) This was a huge hit. It was drier than I thought it would be – next time, I might add a can of diced tomatoes as well. Vegan (I used coconut oil instead of ghee.)

Friday: Pizza and movie night. Only we watched Indiana University football instead.

Saturday: We went out for Indian Food, the 13 (now 14) year old’s choice as her birthday dinner out.

Sunday: We went over to a friend’s house and they made pizza on the grill for us. We brought bagged salad and cupcakes.

Welp that’s some of what’s been going on here – hope you’ve had a great weekend and that the week ahead brings some wonderful things even when the big picture is bleak.

Do you have a method for picking movies on a flight? Or picking movies to watch in general? How many women artists can you name? (They sell buttons with this written on them at teh National Museum of Women in the Arts. I think I used to be just able to name Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo off the top of my head.. Now I have more!) Do you have any adulting financial goals? I need some inspiration.

Welcome Home and to a New Year. Hello, 2026!

We got back from Taiwan yesterday morning, leaving Taipe at 11:45pm on Saturday night and pulling into our driveway in Maryland at 7:30am on Sunday morning. International travel across the date line is kind of a mind warp, right? On paper, it only took eight hours to get home from Taiwan, but really it was twenty hours of travel. I mean we landed in Seattle, our connecting city, at 6:00pm on Saturday, which is before we left in Taipei. It’s almost like getting time back. But those hours gained are jet-lagged discombobulated hours; I can’t say it did us much good or that any of us were at our best…

The journey home was full of mishaps – we lost a beloved teddy bear and a travel pillow, the last leg of our flight (SEA —> BWI) was delayed an hour, and one of our suitcases came off baggage claim with a wheel missing. We were too exhausted to deal with trying to find someone to file a claim or a lost item report. The cost of exhaustion seems to be apathy mixed with helpless despair, it seems. International travel does not bring out my best ability to deal with a crisis. (Unlike my cousin, who didn’t realize until he was checking in for his flight that he and his family needed Visas for Vietnam. It’s a wild story, but they ended up in Singapore instead. I admire their sense of calm and ability to pivot.)

Anyhow, we got home and, despite my best intentions to unpack and try to get us back on Eastern Time, we all fell asleep around 11am and slept for several hours. I did get up before the others and started unpacking the suitcases. The rest of the day, between us, the Husband and I did six loads of laundry (folding most of it!), I made waffles for dinner, the Husband did a quick essentials only grocery shop (did you know Lemon Oreos are essential?), we watched Indiana play basketball before pouring the kids back into bed. Despite having taken that enormous nap in the middle of the day, they were so very tired by 10pm. (Which was 11am Taiwan time).

Of course, not so very tired that they weren’t up at 3am, coming into our bedroom.

“I’m bored,” the six year old said.

“Go play in the toy room,” the Husband suggested groggily, half asleep. 

She went away.

Around 5:15am, there was some kind of sibling squabble. One child wanted to play, one child wanted to read. (The 13 year old slept on… teenagers and their sleep…) I told the 6 year old she could come cuddle in our bed.

“How long?” She asks. 

“Until six o’clock,” I say, snuggling her down and going back to sleep. 

Then every five minutes she sat up to look at the clock. Until… 

“It’s six o’clock!” And she springs out of bed.

“Go see if your brother wants to play,” I murmur sleepily. 

Off she goes and I go back to sleep. In my dreams I hear them playing with the 8 year old’s new chess set – are they really playing? Who knows? And foot steps up and down stairs. And no more fighting.

Some indeterminate time later, I hear some one shout, “Bloody nose!!!”

Then the 8 year old: “Go to the bathroom! I’ll help you!”

And he did. When I woke up another indeterminate time later, there were bloody tissues in the trash can and on the floor in the bathroom and the Clorox wipes sitting open on the counter. I did step on a gob of blood, but you know… getting to sleep through a bloody nose is kind of a win in my book.

And then it was morning. Going to school 24.5 hours after getting off an international flight is hard, so I drove the 13 year old to school instead of having her walk. And 90 minutes later, I took the 6 year old and the 8 year old to school, though we were pretty late, squeaking in just as the doors were closing. The 8 year old has school testing this week, and we were a little concerned about him being able to stay awake and focus in class, so we wrote the teacher and she agreed to let him take the test on the make-up days. (Who schedules school testing for the week after vacation???).

I, on the other hand had grand plans of setting up my planners and journals, logging a few hours of work, picking up the house, and folding more laundry, and hanging out with the Husband since he had taken the day off. But… I got home, had breakfast and then ended up taking a three hour nap on the couch. I do feel a little guilty that I made my kids go to school while I came home and napped, but that’s a perk, of being a semi-employed adult. We’ll see how long it takes to get people back on schedule. We went out to an early dinner tonight since it was half price burger night, and the kids ate half their burgers then were like:

Trip Highlights
Here are some photo highlights of our time in Taiwan, in case I don’t get around to doing trip recaps (My track record for trip recaps is pretty paltry.)

*Sunset at Tamsui, a coastal suburb of Taipei. It’s at the end of the trainline, and where my cousin lives.

+So much food! Dumplings on Christmas Day:

*Visiting the cemetery where my grandmother’s ashes are buried.

Night Market – this one in Chia yi, where my family is originally from:

Lucid red tracksuits!

*View from our boat tour of the coastal waters off Tainan, where we learned about fishing, and spoonbills:

*Fish Market in Kaoshiong:

*Dragon Fruit at a produce vendor’s stall:

*More Night Market Food – this one also in Kaoshiong.

*Selfie with my grandfather – he is 100 years old and the reason for this family reunion:

*We took a two night trip to Bietou, where there are hot springs and hiking. (Though it ended up being to wet and windy to really hike.)

Thermal Valley.

And on our last day, we followed a string of red lanterns and found a moment of calm in the gardens of a Buddhist Temple:

Photo taken by the 8 year old.

The photos don’t really capture how full each an every day was – full of family, full of new sights/smells/tastes, full of new discoveries of how life on this island nation work. Also, though, full of chaos and noise, full of long bus rides, full of feeling lost in a language that I don’t quite speak, a culture I don’t quite belong to. Yet ultimately, full of love and bonding, meories and conversations, and that kind of discomfort that opens my eyes to other ways lives can be lived.

Oh so fittingly of the universe, this poem by John Updike showed up in my apoemaday feed yesterday:

How beautifully Updike captures the return to the mundane – I, too, feel like I’ve put the yoke back on, even while knowing that the world is not so small as it once felt and sometimes still feels.

Return Trip Gratitudes:

-That the kids kind of slept on the flight home, and that they are pretty good travelers in general.  I feel so lucky – they didn’t complain, went where we asked them too, didn’t get lost, carried their own backpacks, pulled their own suitcases.

-Airport play areas. I am so grateful for these areas for kids to run off some energy while waiting for flights. (The play area in Taiwan has a baby’s area attached that comes with a hot water dispenser, a fully stocked wipes warmer, and extra diapers!) I think the eight year old is technically too tall for the play area, but we let him play there until there were too many toddlers as well. And in SEA, they made some friends and played tag and said “Six seven” to each other.

-Wifi at the airport. The 13 year old definitely is not into airport play areas, but luckily in each airport she had wifi and a comfy seat so she was well occupied.

-That our fruit didn’t get taken away when we got home. Before we went to the airport, we bought a bunch of fruit and snacks for the trip home, remembering the time last year when we were stuck in Seattle for nine hours. Taiwan is super strict about letting fruit and vegetables into the couttry, so I half expected that the US would be the same. I declared them and everything, but no one took them from us. We came home with a bag of bananas, three passion fruits, and six or seven wax apples. Wax apples are one of my favorite Taiwanese fruits, and you can’t get them in the US. I cut them up for a late night snack last night, and the crisp juicy slices were a wonderful reminder of our trip. The 13 year old ate the rest of the passionfruit this morning. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t get one of the last two, but I reminded myself how much I love it for her that she easily slices and scoops out and eats this fruit that was so foreign to her a week ago.

-The Mobile Passport Control app, allowing for easy re-entry into the country. We don’t have TSA Pre-Check or Global entry or anything like that, but I found that airport security lines are pretty streamlined these days and moved pretty fast. The nice thing in Seattle, too, is that even though we submitted our info via the app, there was still an agent who directed us to the right line and scanned us through and said, “Welcome home.” Having someone say, “Welcome home” is one of my favorite parts of international travel.

-That the Qdoba in the Seattle airport is open 24 hours. After that nine hour at SEATAC episode last year, when were were in a tiny terminal without any food, I was really glad we decided to stay in Terminal B where there was a Qdoba and it was still open at 7:30pm. I don’t know if it was the two weeks away from America or what (seriously, I think we had cheese maybe twice the whole ten days), but the 13 year old declared Qdoba “even better than Chipotle.” This is quite a statement from her.

-That the Husband had the foresight to pack the kids’ winter coats in the car for the ride home. Also – he went to pick up the car while the kids and I tackled baggage claim, so that when we got in the car with our luggage, the car was toasty warm. In Taiwan, the 50 degree weather was considered frigid, so coming back to 30 degree weather in Baltimore was quite a shock.

-That it didn’t snow at home, so we didn’t have to shovel out the driveway or anything to get back in the house.

-That the house was clean and the fish were alive when we got home. Our cleaner was scheduled to come while we were away, and it was so nice to come home to a clean house – which admittedly was not the state it was left in when we departed two weeks ago. Also, our friends came over to feed our fish and also played Santa. The Husband, like he did last year, left our friends with a box of Christmas presents and some holiday decorations, and while we were gone, they decorated the little potted fir tree we keep in our living room, and put the presents out. The look of delight and wonder from the 6 and 8 year old when they realized that Santa still found a way to us was absolutely precious.

-That eggs and buttermilk keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. Before we left we had two dozen eggs and half a container of buttermilk in the fridge I contemplated throwing them out, not knowing if they would keep. I’m glad I didn’t throw them out. They did indeed keep and we had waffles for dinner. There is definitely stuff in the fridge that didn’t survive the two weeks, and throwing it out will be a project for tomorrow.

=That we even got to go on this trip at all (BIG thank you to my parents) and that we went to the other side of the globe and back safely. I mean I believe in science and physics and all that, but sometimes I look at air travel and think, “Oooooookay… I’m just going to have to really trust that this is huge hunk of metal is going to stay up in the air.”

Looking Forward To:

– All the planner, journalling, and 2026 goal setting that I meant to do today, but napped instead. I’ve started Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word 2026 workbook – I’ve never really been one about having a word for the year, but I see a lot of chaos and uncertainty coming up, so I do find my self drawn to creating grounding principal for myself. (Conaway also has a 2025 end of year/2026 monthly reflection workbook that I really enjoy working through – I discovered them last year, and they are free to download.)

– Firepit date with friends. 

= Lenten Reading Group happy Hour.

-Cooking food, doing laundry (not in a laundromat), Taco Tuesday, Family movie night, Sunday night football… basically all the every day things that we didn’t get to do in Taiwan. I asked my cousin what she was most looking forward to when we got home and she said, “Doing laundry when I want and not having to drag my clothes five blocks.” So true

– enjoying all the snacks I brought home from Taiwan.

-A New Year! Yay 2026!

Weekly Recap + What we ate: One last show before the holidays; Unique and Frustrating

The week before was exhausting and hard and I never wanted it to end. There is something really special about working on a show that I love with some of my favorite colleagues, and also to top it all off, having my 13 year old also be in the show. This is probably the last time I will get to work on a show with one of my kids. By next year she will have likely aged out of being in the children’s chorus, and my other two kids don’t show any inclination for theatre. So I really tried to savor this past weekend of shows, these moments in the theatre we are having together, all the hard work and concentration. I feel so lucky to be able to share with her the joy and wonder of being able to tell stories onstage.

She felt it too. During our last show on Sunday night, every time I saw her backstage she was crying. At one point, she was standing next to me as her group was getting ready to enter, and she was crying so hard, another of the kids went and got her a handful of tissues. With one eye on my score – because I still had to call cues, of course – I leaned over and gave her a big hug and said, “You can’t cry and sing at the same time. Go onstage and enjoy the moment.”

I’d been trying to keep up with journaling during this show because I want to be able to remember what a wonderful time it was. Lately when I don’t feel like I have a lot of time for dep reflective journaling, I write down one or two things that were different and unique about the day and one or two things that were frustrating. Here are some of the things from the week of tech/performances :

Monday:
Unique/Different: Sitzprobe day. If you remember my post where I talked about Stizprobe – well this was a true sitzprobe (sitting rehearsal) because it was in a rehearsal room and not on stage, so we couldn’t wandel (wander). But it’s always exciting to hear the orchestra and for many of the children’s chorus, it was their first time ever singing with and orchestra.
-I talked to one of the kids in the show as we were waiting for rehearsals to start, and had a hilarious conversation with her. I have to admit that I had been struggling with some of the kids’ behavior – there has been a general lack of engagement and focus in rehearsal from a handful of them. I know that they are just kids and for many this is their first professional experience, but I was feeling pretty frustrated with some of the attitudes and talking back and not paying attention and not learning their music and breaking of props when I told that the flashlight stars are fragile. To be clear, most of the kids were doing really well and focused, it was just a handful that had worn me down. Plus having three hours of rehearsals with the kids every single night requires a very specific kind of energy from me. But then at the sitzprobe, I had this quirky delightful conversation with one of the kids and it helped remind me that these kids were…. well, kids. And asking them to focus for three hours at a time was asking a lot. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just kids and I needed to meet them where they were.
Frustrating: The theatre space is very small and the stage managers share a small office with two other departments so it’s very hard for me to get focused work time because there are always people coming in and out. (On the other hand, it makes for a good sense of camaraderie.)
-I didn’t get the Christmas cards done yet. (or the laundry folded, or the dishes done…)

Tuesday:
Unique/Different: On the way to work, a Secret Service car pulled in front of me and blocked traffic. Three or four minutes later, a motorcade came through. I don’t get to experience the Secret Service moving someone through very often, and I find it kind of fun to witness, regardless of one’s politics.
Frustrating: It was our Piano Tech rehearsal and we didn’t get through the whole show. We got through all of Act One and only half of the second act. It’s always frustrating not to get through the whole show before we add costumes. But at intermission, the plane onstage took longer to move than I had allowed for in the schedule (it was the first time the crew had taken the plane off stage – they eventually added two more crew members to help with the plane and other things.), and also there was a lot of starting and stopping for things I hadn’t planned on. I get very down on myself when rehearsals don’t move at the pace I would like.

Wednesday:
Unique/Different: -The kids had a chocolate chip bagel with cream cheese. Wednesday is 7:15am piano lesson day for the 13 year old and the 8 year old. The 8 year old took the 7:15am lesson this time so that the 13 year old could sleep in a little more, so I took the kids to get bagels in appreciation for getting to piano lessons on time. Usually the 8 and 6 year old split an egg bagel with strawberry cream cheese, but this day they chose to have a chocolate chip bagel because they had never had that before.
-Piano Dress rehearsal – I called all the spot light cues for the first act. I very rarely get any spotlight cues in my book by Piano Dress, so it was really a big achievement for me to have put the cues in my book and been able to call them at this rehearsal.

Putting cues in my book during a lighting session.

-And we got through the whole show and had time to go back and repeat some scenes with the alternate cast member. Also – there is one really fast costume change that didn’t go well the first time – one singer has one minute to change from a rose costume to a fox costume. Often we will just move on and hope it goes better the next time, but I pretty firmly said that we needed to give the dressers a chance to do it again. At first I was worried it would be a big waste of time because it took almost ten minutes to reset for the change. But the dressers and the singers nailed the change the second time through and that felt really good. I want to remember this moment because I don’t want to forget that the crew – wardrobe crew and stage crew – need time to rehearse as much as the singers do and that I need to make sure they get that time as we move through rehearsal.
Frustrating: Oh man, this day had a trifecta of frustration:
1) The bridge from the trail where I park and the kids’ school was closed for some construction work. We were already running late and I couldn’t get across the creek to get the kids to school. We ended up having to get back in the car and I just drove them to the school, but I still had to walk them in because they were so late. On the other hand, seeing the 8 year old explain to his little sister what a tardy slip was was kind of cute.
2) Then I stepped in dog poop. I’m pretty sure I stepped in dog poop while trying to find a way across the creek, but I didn’t notice it until I was halfway to work and the car started to really smell. And there was no way to pull over til I got to work. UGH.
3) I got to work and realized that I had left my wallet at home. An appliance repair company had called about a job I needed them to do and when I reached into my purse to get my credit card to pay them… it wasn’t there. On the bright side, I had left it at home while ordering the Christmas cards, so at least those were done. Plus I was going to be at the theatre all day so didn’t really need my wallet. But UGH.
All that happened before 10:30am. The rest of the day went pretty well, though. And luckily the 13 year old brought me my wallet when she came to rehearsal.

Thursday
Unique/Different:
-I went for a walk after dropping off the kids at school. I’ve been crap about moving or exercising other than 10 minutes of yoga in the morning. So I took 20 minutes before heading to work and walked the trail next to school. The air was brisk and cold.
-We had an Orchestra Tech rehearsal with and invited audience, which essentially meant the first time we performed the show in front of an audience. I love the first time we do the show for an audience because I feel like I get to see the show with fresh eyes. I’d spent two days calling the cues in rehearsal, and when we get an audience, I try to experience the show fresh – each time someone sings, each time the lights change colour, I feel an excitement that someone is seeing that for the first time. The moment when the curtain flies out revealing the plane onstage you can hear the audience inhale in wonder. The first time the children start singing, “Light your lamps, take up your places, for another starry night…” it’s just so exciting to know that a story is coming. The Husband brought the 8 and 6 year old and also one of the 13 year old’s friends, and it was nice to seem them in the audience when I went out to talk to the director.
-Also – I got all the spot light cues in my book and called them. woot.

Frustrating:
-Some work stuff dynamic stuff that isn’t really bloggable. Nothing big but just frustrating chain of information flow.

Friday:
Unique/Different-A Dress Rehearsal at 11am with an invited student audience, meaning I had to be at work at 9:15am. Now, I know a lot of people have to be at work at 9am, or even earlier, but I am not one of those people for whom this is a regular thing. It is so. very. early.
-The Student audience was amazing – even from backstage you could feel how excited they all were. I’m also really proud that an idea I had three weeks ago came to fruition. I had said in a meeting, “Hey, why don’t we do the intermission scene change with the curtain out and show the kids how we take the airplane apart and get it off stage?” Everyone was game for this idea, so we did it, and I think the students really liked watching the stage crew work.
-Opening night. It was a super long day what with that 11am dress rehearsal and then a 7pm performance. But we got Seoul Spice take out for dinner and that was yummy. (Seoul Spice is often described as Korean Chipotle – you get to customize your bowl.)

The view from my console.

Frustrating: Okay, this one might be TMI, but I got my period the day before and during the morning rehearsal/show, I totally bled through my pad and my underwear. Luckily I spend the show standing up, so I didn’t bleed through my pants. I didn’t get a chance to change my pad til after the show – there is only one rest room backstage (not counting the ones in the dressing rooms, but I can’t use those ones during the show) and it’s pretty busy at Intermission. Anyhow, it was all fine, but sometimes I get so frustrated that I’m 46 years old and still bleeding through my underwear when I get my period.

Saturday:
Unique/ Different-The perfect scarf drop. There is a moment in the show where a scarf drops from above and lands into a puddle of light. For whatever reasons of wind and physics the scarf never lands in the puddle of light – it always drifts upstage or downstage and ends up in the dark. Well, during the evening show, the scarf landed perfectly in the center of the puddle of light and it was magical.
-Walking to get boba between shows with the 13 year old, each of us with one ear bud so that we could listen to our book together as we walked. We’re currently listening to:

Frustrating: I forgot to call the houselights out at the start of Act 2. The houselights are the lights over the audience. Usually as the orchestra tunes, I call the houselights out, but for some reason, during the matinee, I forgot and we almost started the 2nd Act with the houselights up. I realized just in time but it made for a kind of squishy moment. And then… in the evening show, I again forgot to take the house light out during the tune. I hate making the same mistake twice. Clearly I whatever I had written in my book was ineffective at getting me to call things in the right sequence. I was just really frustrated at myself for messing up.

Sunday:
Unique/Different: Last day of performances- two shows this day. The matinee was the last show for one of our youth leads since he alternates with another singer in the part. At curtain call, he came out crying for his bow. As soon as the curtain came in, the whole cast surrounded him in the biggest group hug I’ve ever seen. The joy and support the cast felt on behalf of the kid was palatable in the air. I get choked up thinking back on it. Here is the other thing that was amazing about this moment – I’ve done this show three times over the past 11 years, and it has always been a white child in the main role. This year was the first time I’ve done it with a Black child in the part. And there’s something really bigger than the sum of it’s part when you cast a child of colour as such an iconic character. For the child himself, for the rest of the cast, for the audience- it’s kind of a shift in what we accept about the stories we tell on stage and who can tell those stories. It’s been a challenging time at work, and I want to remember that we tell stories with open minds and to open eyes, even amidst all the uncertainty.
-Also there was a bit of a burning issue with the spotlights at the start of the second act of the show. That was exciting. We had to take the spotlights out for about ten minutes while the crew fixed the issue.

Frustrating: That we can’t do twenty more performances of this beautiful show.

Grateful for:
-All the things above, the unique/different and the frustrating. I feel so lucky to have had that experience.
-The Husband. For doing keeping the kids alive and getting them where they need to be; for making food; for bringing me food; for doing the laundry; for juggling all the other things of life. Also for dealing with the 6 year old’s bloody nose at 1am.
-A surprise brie sandwich. I had made a turkey sandwich with the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers, layering turkey, arugula, cranberry sauce, and some brie that I found in the fridge. Only by the time I’d gotten to work, I had forgotten that I had put brie in the sandwich and my first bite had a s deliciously pungent surprise. I had that same sandwich until the turkey and cranberry sauce ran out, and I now call it surprise brie sandwich. It brought much joy to my lunch life.
-Friends for driving carpool.
-The freezer section at HMart. Going into tech/performance week, I knew that the 13 year old and I would be eating a lot of food at the theatre. Thank goodness for HMart. I stocked our freezer with dumplings, bao, and aloo paratha, all of which I would cook in the morning and pack for dinners that were filling and easy to eat at the theatre.
-While we’re talking about food – grateful for people who bring communal snacks to work. Snacking is super important to me at work:

There is a Trader Joe’s next to where our prop head shops….

-The crew at the theatre for being amazing and game, and crawling on the floor behind the stage to fix problems. And literally putting out fires.
-All the people I work with. There’s a bit of a sense that we’re in the foxhole together right now and I’m glad I’m there with these people.

Looking Forward To:
I’ve been struggling with feeling excited about our upcoming trip to Taiwan. I feel really ungrateful for saying that about a chance to travel internationally. BUT we were there last year and the kids were really looking forward to Christmas at home. Also – it’s going to be a lot of family, which will be chaotic; there will be my kids complaining that they don’t have iPads like all their cousins do; there’s jetlag and people’s schedules being off; there’s the discomfort of not being home and around familiar things…. So I am trying to acknowledge my feelings, but also think of the things that I am looking forward to. So here are some things I’m looking forward to:
-Seeing my grandfather. The whole reason this trip was planned is that we are celebrating my grandfather’s 100th birthday. He no longer travels to America, so I think every chance I get to see him is a gift.
-Seeing family. I’m conflicted about this because sometimes I feel it hard to connect with my cousins, but I do want to see them and I am looking forward to all our kids hanging out.
-The food. The food in Taiwan is so delicious. I’m looking forward to it all – noodles, bao, soy milk, stinky tofu…
-The fruit. This gets its own category from “food” because the fruit in Taiwan is so amazing – sweet and flavorful, and so many varieties.
-Seeing Mr. K, our bus driver from last year’s trip. My mother booked him to drive us again. He was just so chill and kind.
-Relaxing at hot springs and hiking – my mother has arranged a couple days for us together to chill at the end of a the week of intense family activity. I haven’t been hiking as much this year as I would like, so I’m looking forward to this.
-Watching all the movies and reading books on the plane ride. My sister-in-law and I have decided to have a book club. We’re going to read these two books:

What We Ate:
This was the week of make-ahead or eating out:
Sunday: Made a big pot of Dakdoritang (Korean braised chicken and vegetables). Kind of based off this recipe, but I added Kabocha squash and daikon and shitake mushrooms. It was really delicious. The 6 year old who hates mushrooms actually loved the mushrooms in this dish. I ate it all week.

Monday: I ate leftovers. I brought dumplings, cut up apples, aloo paratha, and carrot sticks for the 13 year old. The Husband took the two little kids out for pizza and ping pong with a friend after he dropped the 13 year old at rehearsal.

Tuesday: I ate leftover dakdoritang. Same as yesterday for the 13 year old. The Husband and family had chili at home – he had made a big pot on Sunday.

Wednesday: The 13 year old and I split a jamon torta that the Husband had brought home for me the day before. Did the rest of the family have chili again?

Thursday: The 13 year old and I had chili at work.

Friday: Seoul Spice take out for the 13 year old and I. The Husband and two little kids at home made pizza and they watched… not sure, but it was some Christmas movie. Maybe Candy Cane Lane?

Saturday: Leftovers at the theatre. I think. The details are hazy when one is going onto day six at the theatre in a row.

Sunday: The 13 year old and I went out for dinner between shows with my stage management team. We split a chicken sandwich and a burger. It was so tasty.

Welp that’s the news from here lately. We’re rounding the corner to the holidays and a new year. This last month of the year has just flown by. I’m a little bit in a panic state about packing and prepping for our upcoming travel; I’m feeling a bit of guilt about dropping the ball on presents and teacher gifts/cards; I have a few Christmas cards still to send (should I Sharpie out “Merry Christmas” and write in “Happy New Year”?? ). Christmas is not going to be very Christmas-y this year, and part of me is okay with that, but also part of me is having an existential crisis about it. I think we’ve decided that Christmas cards, Tuba Christmas and Mass are “must do” Christmas activities. The rest… I’m trying to decide how sad I am that we missed out on some of the usual holiday things. More to ponder.

Hope you all are heading into the home stretch of 2025 with time to reflect and look forward as well.

is 9am seem early to you? Have you ever had a brush with Secret Service? If you journal, any prompts you use when you have journaler’s block? What Holiday traditions are “must do” for you?

PS: If you want to see the show that I was working on, you can see a clip here and here. If you don’t blink, you’ll see me!

Weekly recap + What We Ate: Good-bye, November! Hello, December!

It’s the final month of 2025! November felt like a blur – a rush of doing and not so much being and reflecting. This is what my journal/ habit tracker looked like for the month:

this is where I track dinners, movie/tv watching, and time outside.
This is where I track habits.

It’s not like I didn’t make dinner, or go outside, or watch any tv/movies, or felt grateful, or brushed my teeth, or or or or whatever else I usually track. I just didn’t for whatever reason, take the time to write it down and meditate on it. Which, then makes me feel like I don’t really know how I spent my days. Oh I know I went to rehearsal, packed lunches, did laundry and all that day to day, but I have no recollection of what made each day specific. And taking that time to acknowledge the specifics of the day helps me to feel like life is less of a daily grind. It’s that whole “what made today unique/different” exercise I sometimes do in my journal.

But at any rate, things did happen. Here’s some of them:

November Highlights:
– Mom’s group reunion. When the 6 year old was born, the hospital facilitated a new mom’s group. We’ve kept in touch off and on over the past year – lunches, play dates, happy hour – and this fall, one of the moms hosted a gathering. It was such a lovely time to re-connect and share stories and tips and recipes. Most of our kids entered kindergarten this year, and to think that we/they had all met when the kindergarteners were squishy newborns – pandemic newborns too! What a wild time it was to reflect on.

-Soup Party. I hosted another soup party for colleagues at work. People brought soup, someone brough a fire pit, and someone taught us how to roast our own coffee in a cast iron skillet. A cozy, social evening.

-Tech/ Opening/Closing of my first opera of the fall. One of my favorites – I never got bored listening to all the beautiful music. The cast was divine, the director amiable, and the show was gorgeous.

-Starting rehearsals for my second opera. Working with some long time friends. I’ve known many people on this show for fifteen years or more; we all started in the business together, as assistants and interns. And now look at us! We get to be in charge! How did that happen?? There were days when I kind of felt like I was putting on a high school show with my best friends.

-Running along the Potomac while tech-ing and in performances for my first show of the fall. It’s always such a nice part of my day when we are at the theatre. It might be too cold to run next week when my current show moves down, but I need to remember to take some dinner time walks to clear my head. There is something so soothing about watching the water drift by.

-My parents came to visit. Unfortunately it was at a super busy time for me, so I didn’t see them as much as I wanted. However, they were able to fully embrace having grandkid time, picking them up from the bus, taking them to the library and to museums, and playing Legos and trucks and Uno.

-Thanksgiving. We had a small Thanksgiving – my mother was still here, and our choreographer joined us as well. She is from Italy and when I heard she didn’t have plans for the day off, I invited her to come have an American Thanksgiving. I always think it’s hard to be away from home on a holiday, even if it’s not your holiday. I love making a big Thanksgiving dinner. We had Turkey (Spatchcocked so it takes bout 90 minutes to cook), green salad, mashed potatoes (made the night before), gravy (made the night before), cranberry sauce (made the night before), soy-braised squash and mushroom rice (instead of stuffing), steamed green beans, Hawaiian rolls, and home made bread. Oh and Rainbow Jello Salad, which the 13 year old made all on her own for the first time. For dessert I had an apple pie and a whiskey chocolate cake. I usually also make a pumpkin pie, but I really wanted to make this cake recipe, so I decided to skip the pumpkin pie. I don’t know if we offered up a traditional Thanksgiving for our choreographer, but I hope she still had a good time – she told us so many stories of her life as a dancer and a beekeeper, and watched as the kids did their K-Pop Demon Hunters dance numbers for her. It was all in all a lovely day.

-Reading a really good book in one night. I hadn’t done this in a while. But I started The Seven Year Slip and it was so good that I just had to find out what happened and next thing I knew it was 4am. Now I know what the term “book hangover” means, physically and mentally.

-Getting our family photos back. – so much fun. here’s a little preview:

Murals!
Yep, the photographer had my kids in a city planter.
Metro!

Thanks to our wonderful photographer William Petruzzo! He’s taken our photos since the 13 year old was a baby and he is so much fun to work with – calm, adventurous, and engaging with the kids. I love how his photos are so full of light and personality.

November Lowlights:
-The continued stress of uncertainty at work. Not bloggable, but looms in the background every day I am at work.

-Long work hours and only four days off work the whole month. I feel like I’m dropping a lot of balls. Things are on the back burner waiting to be taken care of, discussed, settled.

-Blank journals. As I mentioned above, this is one aspect of my daily routine that has really been neglected, and I do feel it. When I have time to sit and reflect and brain dump, it helps me with feel calmer and like I have the space to make good decisions. There were a couple bad decisions made last month because I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t have the mental capacity or time to think things through before I acted or spoke.

-I would also add the state of American and world happenings, but I’ve stopped reading the news. So it’s all pretty horrible, I just don’t know specifically why or how horrible it is.

Grateful For in November:
-Carpools. When the 13 year old got into my current opera, we knew that getting her to 4pm rehearsal would be a challenge. Thank goodness for friends who will drive carpool. Also she has figured out how to take public transportation from school to the rehearsal studio by herself.

-Coworkers and colleagues. Opera is such collaborative work; I’m always grateful for the kind and brilliant people who I get to work with.

-Working on two operas that are remounts. Also grateful for the stage managers on those shows who came before me. I was able to just re-create the prior stage manager’s book in my own score, copying the cue placements right into my book. Really grateful for those stage managers for doing all the hard work of putting cues in the book the first time.

-Hot tea and my Yeti mug.

-relatively mild weather for this time of year.

-End of daylight savings and the morning light that it brought.

-The Husband, always the Husband who keeps life moving when I’m at work until past the kids’ bedtime. He handles the evenings night after night, and that is Herculean.

Looking Forward to for December:
-Setting up my journal and calendars for 2026. I need to take a day after this show is over to just sit and go through the year. Maybe at the library or in a coffee shop.

-Trip to Taiwan to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday. It’s going to be a very large family reunion. I’m looking forward to seeing it, but also kind of dreading it. I don’t see my cousins a lot and our lives as County employees and workers in the arts is very different from their competitive, corporate funded, high adventure lives. I need to remind myself to remember what is important to me when I get envious of their lives and achievements.

-reading and watching movies on the trip to Taiwan. I actually love flying, love the sense of stepping away from the world and having nothing to do but what is in front of me. I am looking forward to 12 hours on a plane – it will be kind of like a retreat.

-TubaChristmas. Tuna Christmas. Longwood Gardens. We are not going to Christmas to the hilt, but we’ll enjoy a few events. I had written in October about making the most of the last quarter holiday season even when I’m in an all consuming phase at work. I went back and read that list and I think I’m incorporating a lot of those things into my life. I’ve eaten lots of apples, and already watched four Hallmark Holiday movies, with more cued up. There is Christmas music playing even now as I type this while watching the evening sky turn pink then purple then inky blue. This season is packed; there is so much joy and savoring to wring out of the end of the year even while carrying on with the regular everything else of life. But these quiet moments of being, listening, and paying attention are where I think I feel the holiday spirit the most.

-Lenten reading group. Okay, we’re into Advent now, but in my mind it’s always been the Lenten reading group because that’s when we started. The Husband takes umbrage that they are called “Lenten Group” in the calendar… I had to miss our last meeting because of work, but we will have one more meeting before Christmas and I’m looking forward to it. We are reading this book:

First, before all that, though, this coming up week is tech week . It’s going to be a long week in the theatre. I love the show, I love the work, but it will be exhausting. So today, my one day off, this is what is on my docket to make upcoming life easier:

  • Pick out my outfits for the week.
  • Boil eggs. These are my go to protein to have ready at hand for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.
  • Finish the Christmas cards so that it isn’t looming over me for the rest of the week.
  • Pick up the house so we at least start from a tidy place.
  • Bake something so I have convenient easy snacks on hand for me and the 13 year old who will be at the theatre with me.
  • Make a big pot of something l so that there is food to pack for lunch and dinner. I’m thinking of this Korean soy braised vegetable stew.
  • Spend some time reading so I feel like I didn’t spend my whole day doing chores.

What We Ate – I worked until 8:30pm most nights, so didn’t get to join the family for dinner most nights. I do miss the chaos of our family dinners.
Monday: Kabocha squash and tofu with noodles. The Husband cooked. I met up with some work colleagues after work and had a burger.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. It was my day off, so I made chipotle honey chicken tacos from the NY Times cooking website. . Very tasty.

Wednesday: Turkey Soup, made from Thanksgiving leftovers. I actually made this on Tuesday since I had the day off.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches. (I was at work and had sandwich and ate leftovers out of the fridge when I got home at 8:45pm)

Friday: Sandwiches from one of our favorite delis. A quick meal before the winter piano recital for the kids. The 13 year old and I were both at rehearsal until 7pm, zipping up to the 7:30pm recital just in time (the 8 year old played at the 6:00pm recital), so we kind of had snack dinner and cookies at the recital reception for dinner.

Saturday: Chicken wings take out as the family watched football on the couch. (I joined later after I got off work.)

Hope you had a restorative weekend!

How was your November? What are you looking forward to as 2025 comes to a close? Any favorite cozy meals that you can cook once and eat for the rest of the week? Anything you do to prepare for a busy season?


Weekly recap + what we ate: Hallowe’en, Good-bye, October/Hello, November

And like that we are in November! The first week or so of November have been a blur as we got ready to move into the theatre. And I blink and look up and we’re almost half way through November by now! I’m trying not to think about it because I’m feeling very behind in life.

October Highlights:
-family hiking and contra-dancing in Shepherdstown WV.
-biking to work and biking with the 8 year old.
-family trip to the opera.
-It’s prime apple season. Going to farmers markets and getting apples. My favorite right now are Crimson Crisp and Arkansas Black. I like apples that are crunchy and the right blend of tart and sweet.
-Soup party at work.
-finished union negotiations finally.
– Starting rehearsal for my favorite opera.
-Some slow evenings at home with the kids – playing board games, reading, doing art.
-Lenten Women’s group meeting. We discussed a few verses in Esther about uncertainty and what to worry about and what God tells us not to worry about. (And is he telling us that it’s not worth the worry or is he telling us to trust him that all will be well?)
-tap dance classes with the 6 year old.
-Hallwe’en. Details on that below.

October Lowlights:
-The government shut down. UGH ugh ugh ugh. I know it’s now over, but the whole thing just dragged on and on and on. On the one hand I was happy that my friends had time to get together for random weekday lunches, on the other hand, it was such a time of uncertainty, not knowing what our elected officials were doing and when things were going to end. Incidentally, I don’t know if this is related, but I’ve been seeing a lot of For Sale signs on houses in my area lately. Late fall isn’t typically the prime time in our area for home sales, so I find it alarming that so many people are putting their houses on the market right now. I don’t know if that’s a sign of the current federal upheaval or what, but I can’t help but wonder.

-General uncertainty at work and some beloved colleagues leaving. I can’t write about it, but ugh ugh ugh.

-Getting back into the rhythm of working every day full time and in the evenings was hard. I think it’s always hard, though. I need to brainstorm ways to make it easier. Or just embrace the suck?

October Insights:
-“Don’t quit today.” One of my favorite October read/listens was Stephen Starring Grant’s Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home. There is one section where he finds himself on a really hard route and he’s messed up and doesn’t think he can finish and he calls a colleague and says he’s not cut out for the job and is going to quit. And his colleague says to him – and I’m paraphrasing badly – , “Don’t quit today. Finish your route, but don’t quit today.” That really stuck with me, the idea that when things are hard, just focus on what is in front of you. You can always quit tomorrow.

-People not things. I had written last month some reflections on where I am in my career, pondering if it’s okay that I’m not right now jumping for the chance to work on big complicated new productions. There were some really wise comments on that post. I think what I realized after writing that post and reading the comments is that for me, my job is about giving people the space and information they need to tell stories on stage. Shepherding a huge, technically complicated project through rehearsals to opening – that sounds really cool and I know if I did that, I would be so proud and exhausted. But you know, what I get the most satisfaction out of on the daily basis? It’s making sure the singers feel taken care of; keeping the director moving forward in their process; making sure my team is working together and communicating well. And these things I can do regardless of how technically complicated a show is. So every time I get sad that I’m not working on a fancy new production, I need to remind myself that I’m here for the people and the stories, not the machinery.

Hallowe’en recap:

The two nights before Hallowe’en:

All done just in the nick of time:

Costume details/ summary: I love making Hallowe’en costumes. My kids would probably be fine with store bought costumes, but they indulge my hankering to be creative. The two younger kids have wanted to be KPop Demon Hunter characters since they first saw the movie. I did briefly look for costumes online, but found it hard to find licensed Demon Hunter costumes, so it’s just as well that I was okay with making them. I wanted to write down the costume details because I think I made some fun discoveries as I made these costumes.

Flower fairy (13 year old): I didn’t actually make this costume, but I did help with the hot glue gun. Also I only had one stick of glue, so it was kind of a baited breath process, hoping that we had enough glue to attach everything that the 13 year old wanted. This costume featured a dress that the 13 year old already owned, a ridiculously expensive amount of fake flowers (dude, fake flowers are not cheap!), hot glue, gold ribbon, wings from last year, and the 6 year old’s flower crown from the Ren Faire.

Jinu (8 year old)– Thrifted ladies’ black button up shirt, with the arms trimmed to the right length. I crocheted the belt from yarn I had sitting around. The hat is ordered from Amazon. I thought for a minute of making the hat out of poster board, but I figured this would last longer and be less frustrating. Side note, while trying to figure out how to buy a gat hat- which was surprisingly difficult for something I eventually ordered of Amazon – I went down this deep youTube hole about how a genuine gat hat is made, and it is FASCINATING. The hat is hand woven from bamboo threads. If you are into in depth craft videos, check it out.

Zooey (6 year old)– this one took the most work of the three costumes. The shirt, skirt and sparkly shoes are thrifted. I went to four different thrift stores to find it all, but each thing was perfect for what I needed, so it all felt so satisfying. The glitter hightops actually light up, and the 6 year old LOVES them. I had to tell her she couldn’t wear them until Hallowe’en because I was afraid the batteries would run out. The skirt is a tennis skirt with built in shorts, so I’m sure we’ll get more use out of that too. Once I had all the base pieces, the 6 year old and I went to Michael’s and pick up almost every gold thing we could find so I could play with options for the embellishments.

The shoulder pieces were made from felt. I sized the felt with regular white glue to shape them. To do that, I cut the felt into the right shape. Then I covered both sides with diluted white glue and I sandwiched each piece of felt between wax paper. Next I molded the felt/wax paper sandwich over mason jars, using elastic bands to hold the pieces in place until the glue dried leaving the felt in its curved shape. After the glue dried, I sewed the shoulder pieces onto the white shirt.

The gold turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. I had ordered gold duct tape, but when I got it out to start using it, something was off and the duct tape was not sticky. In fact, it felt really oily. I had a moment of panic because I was going to use the duck tape for all the embellishments so that I would not have to sew anything. I ended up gluing the duct tape to the shoulder pieces and then looking for another solution for everything else. I had bought some heat transfer vinyl, the kind you’d use in a Cricut machine. It turns out, the stuff is just as easy to use without a Cricut machine – I just cut what I needed with scissors and then ironed it on to the shirt.
Friends – I have never used this stuff before, and it was like ANGELS SANG when I first applied it. It is SO easy to use and it looks amazing. And it’s better than duct tape because it will stretch with the clothes. Next time I have a project that involves putting designs on clothes, I’m going to use this stuff again. It was a game changer for me.

The rest of the embellishments: the tassels and the chain on the skirt were made from gold metallic braided trim. The gold studs on the shoulder pieces are gold stickers.

Striped tights – of the 6 year old’s choosing, something she already owned.

And luckily Zooey is the one Huntrx member without outrageous coloured hair, so I just put the 6 year old’s hair into Zooey buns to complete the look.

Hallowe’en Night – Our own neighborhood is very quiet on Hallowe’en, so we usually just put out a bowl of candy and go over to our friend’s neighborhood to trick or treat. Their neighborhood has an annual neighborhood decorating contest, so the houses are always so fun to see. This was one of my favorite houses – every year they have some kind of statement tombstones:

In case you can’t read them, the tombstone read, from left to right:
“Here lies America’s Reputation Abroad. Can’t get any lower than this!”
“Here lies the Federal Workforce. Death by 200, 000 cuts.”
“Here lies Co-Equal Government. It was a nice idea.”
“Here lies Freedom of Speech. Last Words: …..”

It seems like a very DC type display…

We ended up trick or treating from about 6:30p – 8:30pm. I loved seeing all the kids out in their costumes. Funny story, when we pulled out the Hallowe’en buckets, the 13 year old took the one that the 6 year old usually uses and wouldn’t give it back.
“Fine,” I said to the 13 year old. “you can keep the little tiny bucket. Your sister will trick or treat with a pillow case.”
Of course being reminded that she usually uses a pillow case, which could hold much more candy than the little monster bucket, immediately led the 13 year old to give the bucket back to her sister. Of course by then the 6 year old had figured out that, yeah really the pillowcase is the better option. So she went trick or treating for the first time with a pillowcase. Later hat evening, she discovered one of the perks of having a pillowcase to collect candy in was being able to stick one’s whole torso into the pillow case and inhale the candy. Literally, figuratively…

“It smells so good in there!” she said.

When we got tired of trick or treating, we went back to our friend’s house where the Husband had brought pizza for dinner. We then sat in the front yard around a fire pit and drank mulled cider (some folks added an extra something special in their cider). The kids stayed inside sorting and swapping candy. Our friends have tween/teens as well, but they always make sure the 8 and 6 year old are included when they hang out, which is nice. I might have fallen asleep in my camp chair as everyone talked around me. It was such a cozy way to end the evening. We’ve decided with our friends that we need more evenings around the firepit with mulled (spiked) cider.

Grateful For:
-The later bell time. In our school system there are two bell times – half the elementary schools start at 9am and the other half start at 9:25am. We are the later bell time, which is good because we need all the time we can get to get out of the house in the mornings.

-warm fall weather. And the morning light, though it does get darker earlier.

-Not having to work on Hallowe’en. I happened to have the day off work, and the elementary school was having it’s fundraiser run that morning so I was able to go cheer my kids on. I ran into a friend whose kids are in the same class as mine and we ended up having lunch between the kindergarten run and the 3rd grade run. Then I went home and had still had time to prepare for Hallowe’en. It was nice not to have to rush directly from work to trick or treating and to also show up for a school event.

-Also grateful that Hallowe’en was on a Friday night so that we didn’t have to get anyone to school the next morning. That was pretty awesome.

-Return policies. I spent a lot of money at Michaels last month – see Hallowe’en costumes. Thankfully they have a 60 day return policy, so I was able to return all the gold trim and embellishments that I didn’t end up using. So grateful that I could get that money back.

-That the 6 year old finally figured out how to ride her bike! I’m grateful for her siblings for giving her lots of advice, especially the 13 year old, whom I think did most of the coaching.

Looking forward to (the November edition):
-Visit from my parents.
-Opening my current show. Tech week has been going very smoothly, but the hours have been long.
-Then closing the show and moving on tot he next show. I’m excited because originally the 13 year old didn’t get a spot in the children’s chorus, but two days before rehearsal started, they had someone drop out and the spot was offered to the 13 year old. She was SO excited. She’s loved this show since she was really little and always wanted to be in the children’s chorus. It will be exhausting, but I’m looking forward to working on a show with her again.
-The staging staff coming in for this next show, all of whom are people I’ve worked with before and I’m really excited to work with them again.
-Thanksgiving. No idea what we are doing for Thanksgiving yet. Should think on that.

What We Ate – two weeks worth of meals here, because I’ve gotten behind in posting. The Husband was responsible for 95% of the dinners the past two weeks while I’ve been rehearsing late.

Monday: Cauliflower shawarma, Melissa Clark recipe from NY Times Cooking. I added red peppers and chick peas to this. I actually prepped the veggies snd tahini sauce in the morning before I went to work and the Husband put it in the oven when he got home. Apparently the kids had fun with this one:

Tuesday: Dinner out. The Husband and kids went to meet a friend for dinner. I had leftovers at work.

Wednesday: Chicken stir fry.

Thursday: Ramen with shrimp. I was working, so I’m not sure if the Husband or the 13 year old made dinner this night.

Friday: Hallowe’en – candy, pizza, brie, crackers. Maybe some fruit was eaten in there.

Saturday: leftover pizza and movie. I think they watched Lego Movie 2. I was at work.

Sunday: Sausage pasta for the family. I ate lefotvers out of the fridge when I came home

Monday: Lemony turkey white bean soup with greens. Pulled from the freezer. Note to self: this recipe freezes very well.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. I think the family had beef tacos. Not quite sure.

Wednesday: Udon noodles and stir fried chicken.

Thursday: Coconut curry chickpeas with pumpkin and lime Melissa Clark’s recipe from NY Times Cooking. This was really tasty. And good for many dinners after. I made this in the morning before going to work so that the family could have something fast to eat for dinner since they were going to see the 13 year old in the school play that night.

Friday: I think the family had pizza and watched the Lego Flash movie.

Saturday: This was tech week, I was at the theatre all day – no idea what the family ate for dinner.

Sunday: One of the ladies from the Mom’s group I joined when the 6 year old was born hosted a get together. It was such a fun reunion to see how our kids and families have grown in the past six years. It was a potluck affair. We brought soft pretzels and fruit salad. Afterwards we went over to firepit with our Hallowe’en friends and had chili around the firepit. It was a very social day for my one day off. Usually if I have a free day during tech week, I want to just hide and sleep, and my inner introvert was screaming a little to have to be so social, but I did really love seeing everyone. Plus life does not stop life-ing just because one has been at the theatre all week.

Well that’s life lately here. This weekend I’ll work all weekend – we have a show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so it will be a lot of time at the theatre for me. The family will come to the opening night performance. The opera is almost 3.5 hour long, so I’d put money on the 6 year old falling asleep before the end of the show. (Note to self: remember to tell her the story before she goes since she can’t read the supertitles.) Otherwise, the weather looks to be beautiful, so hopefully I’ll remember to get out for a walk or two to enjoy the sunshine.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend! How was your Hallowe’en? Is a pillowcase an appropriate candy catcher where you are? How was your October? Looking forward to anything in November?

(bi)Weekly recap + what we ate: What I wore one week in fall

I am feeling a little underwater right now. We’ve been rehearsing 11am – 6:30ppm, which in theory gives us the evening off, but I don’t get home until 8pm and the evening’s kind of over by then because my brain is fried. Plus I had some titles to do for an upcoming recital. And Hallowe’en. And the mornings…. I haven’t figured out my mornings. Conceivably the only thing new in the morning now that I’m back in rehearsal is that I have to pack my own lunch in addition to the kids’, which shouldn’t take that long, but somehow, any empty space in my morning pre -going back to rehearsals seems to be gone. I’ve been thinking about what of my own buckets I want to be filled in the morning, and how. This is what I came up with:

Body – yoga
home – make my bed
brain – read 15 minutes
soul – journal
family – check in with Husband before he leaves for work.

But then also, the MUST DOs in the morning:
-make lunch (two kids and myself)
-Get the kids’ breakfast. Often the Husband does this before he leaves for work. Really, the kids should be at the stage where they get their own breakfast.
-Supervise practicing piano for the 8 year old and worksheets for the 6 year old. (that makes me sound very Tiger Mom, but the 6 year old does worksheets so that she stays out of the 8 year old’s hair while he practices piano.)
-Supervise morning chores (unloading dishwasher, sweeping)
-Get myself dressed. (Sometimes shower, but very rarely. Meaning I try to shower at night. But even then I don’t shower every day.)
-Prep dinner (if needed) and pick up kitchen and make sure counters is clear.
-get the kids out of the house on time.

I feel like if some of any of the above doesn’t get done, we get by, but the effects of neglecting those things are cumulative and really pile up, making stress for future us and future me.

Which is all to say, getting my feet under myself the past few weeks has felt like a lot. In my journals, the second half of October has been blank. I can always tell when I’m in a busy season when I look back through my journals and there are a string of blank pages. And actually, funny enough, when looking at my five year journal, October/November seems to be the months every year with the most blank pages. Which I guess is itself telling.

Anyhow, before I got really swamped, I decided I would do a “What I wore” post because it take a little bit of daily effort to put together and I thought I’d be able to dash it off. Plus, it’s fall and fall is my favorite season for dressing – all cozy layers and deep colours. So here is a week in October:

Monday:

This was the first day of rehearsal. I have a jacket I used to wear to every first day of rehearsal, but when I put it on this time, it was a little tight around the shoulders, which makes me sad. So I wore this instead. Red Wool& dress. Striped sweater from a Teat & Cosset, a maternity brand that no longer is around. Yes, that’s a nursing sweater. But I still wear it because it is a comfy cotton/wool blend that keeps me from overheating and it’s neutral but not plain. The denim jacket is from Uniqlo – one of my clothing purchases this year. I always swore I’d never wear a denim jacket, but this one has a bit of stretch and a boxy, but not too boxy, silhouette, and is so practical and versatile that I’m growing to love it. Black jockey leggings (cotton with pockets!). Blue boots from Reiker. I actually liked this outfit so much that I work it for family photos later that week.

Tuesday:

I’m sure I wear this dress at least once every time I do a week of outfits. It’s a linen shirt dress that I wear throughout the year, regardless of season. It’s easy to dress it more warmly or less. Orange pocket leggings from Toad and Co. Grey wool sneakers from Geisswein. I used to have All Birds, but then they stopped having fun colours, so I found this other brand online. I actually find them more comfortable than All Birds.

Wednesday:

There’s the denim jacket again. I did probably wear that jacket every day this week. Butterfly sweater bought from Nordstrom Rack several years ago, before I stopped buying white clothes because of kids and messes. (I’m slowly introducing white back into my wardrobe.) Sweater is worn over blue Wool& dress. Purple scarf was a gift from a friend – it has the first page of Jane Eyre printed on it. Red Geisswein wool sneakers. I had ordered several pairs of Geisswein sneakers because I couldn’t tell from online which pair I would like best. I liked both.

Thursday:

My Day Off, hence the hastily snapped picture while I was at H&M. Snoopy sweatshirt and green joggers are all from Uniqlo. I bought the joggers for our trip to South Africa and these have proven very cozy and thick. I’ve worn this outfit on almost every day off this fall. Same shoes as yesterday.

Friday:

I had a different outfit planned this day, but then I didn’t do my yoga in the morning, so I decided to wear my very stretchy Duluth Trading Company NoGa pants in case I had time to do some light yoga at work. (I didn’t). I like the NoGa pants because they are basically yoga pants that I pretend are okay to wear at work. The purple sweater is from Uniqlo. The shoes are a repeat from yesterday. The hat was a gift from my bachelorette party sixteen years ago. The scarf is the same as Wednesday.
Later that day, I did change because we went to the opera. I have one nice dress, which I wore with a black blazer. I don’t really have pictures of that night, but I’ve probably worn it here before.

Saturday:

I’m pretty sure I wore this in last year’s “What I Wore” post. Sweatshirt dress, bought when I was pregnant – it has thumbholes! The sweater is a hand me down from my cousin. I was wearing my sneakers because I was coming from doing the13 year old’s voice lesson run and had gone on a walk while waiting for voice lessons. I had brought ankle boots to change into at work, but then I went directly from voice lesson to work and was slightly late to rehearsal so I didn’t change. The leggings are from Duluth Trading Company. They also have pockets. Everything I’m wearing has pockets. Except my underwear.

Sunday;

If I have to be at work on Sunday, I’m going to be comfy and casual. Fox overall and striped henley from Duluth, The same blue boots I wore on Monday.

Bonus Monday:

I took so long to write this post that I am back to Monday, so I thought I’d throw in this outfit too. Wide legged pants from Uniqlo. I feel like they are a little frumpy on me, but they are comfy and cool in the summer. (They’re actually summer weight pants). The shirt I’ve had for maybe 15 years, I think I got it at Nordstrom Rack or some such. I never want to wear it because it is a little short, but the new trend for high waisted pants has brought this shirt out of hiding. The orange sweater I love for the pop of colour. I think it’s another Nordstrom Rack purchase too. Or maybe Marshalls? I remember when I first saw it in the store, I put it back, thinking, “Oh, this is too orange.” But then I went back for it because I loved the colour so much.

So that’s my sartorial week one October week in 2025! I feel like I wear the same clothes over and over, but looking at this, I do see that I’ve made a few new purchases this year.

Grateful For:

-singers who close doors. So there are doors in our show. Three of them at one point. Something that is becoming really clear to me is that one thing seasoned singers do that younger/newer singers don’t, is they close doors behind them when they make an entrance. You cue them onstage, they open the door, walk through the door, and then close the door. A lot of younger singers don’t close doors behind them, just leave it gaping open because they are focused on the music they are about to sing. I think it’s just something that happens as singers mature and being onstage becomes more natural – they do things that are natural in every day life. When you or I walk through a door, typically we close it behind us. Another thing in this world is picking up things that fall onstage. In real life, if I drop a pencil, I will pick it up while going on with my life. Some singers don’t do that. Things will accidentally fall onstage and they just leave it there. And the audience is stuck wondering if someone is going trip over the thing. And afterwards, they will say, “I didn’t know if I should have picked i up.” Seasoned singers will just casually pick the thing up and move on with life. Anyhow, all that to say I really appreciate the singers who have been onstage enough years to close doors and pick up fallen objects without being told.

-Past me for freezing soup for an easy dinner for everyone when I’m not home and the kids and Husband have a million things to do. (I think I’ve been grateful for this a lot in the past, but Past Me is really clutch in this area.)

-five minute curtain holds. Here’s a secret at the opera: we always start the show 5 minutes after posted curtain time. So if the show says it starts at 7:30pm, we always start at 7:35pm. This was a very good thing because on the Friday before, we took the family to the opera. But the 8 year old had soccer practice until 6pm and the show was at 7:30pm. I had to work until 5:30 or so. The whole evening was precisely timed to get us where we needed to be -the 13 year old and I was supposed to meet the Husband at a Metro stop after I got off work – He would pick up dinner after soccer and pick us up at a nearby stop so that we could drive down in one car. But then as the 13 year old and I were walking to the metro, the Husband called and asked, “Can [the eight year old] wear his cleats to the opera?” OMG. The kid had forgotten to bring shoes. So the Husband picked up dinner, came home, picked us up, picked up shoes for the 8 year old and we got down to the theatre at 7:15pm, and ate our sandwiches in the lobby of the theatre in our fancy clothes. It was real classy. But that’s kind of how it goes when you squeeze in a trip to the opera after soccer practice. This is one of those times where we wonder, “Are we doing too much? or do we just suck at logistics?”
Which is all to say, thank goodness the show really started at 7:35pm and we had time to wolf down our sandwiches.

Looking forward to:

-Planners! My planners for 2026 arrived. I did order them off Amazon, which I feel a little guilty about. I usually order my planners from Jet Pens, but they were out of stock, so I waited a week to see if they would re-stock and then ordered from an Amazon retailer. But then… a week after I ordered them, Jet Pens had the planners back in stock. Bummer. Although I know if I had ordered them from Jet Pens I would have thrown another $100 worth of pens and stationary supplies in my cart too, so perhaps this is the more economical option. Anyhow – I love the delicious anticipation of empty planner just waiting to be filled.

-Getting our family photos back. We did end up going to the nearby downtown area and having our pictures taken against murals and plazas, and we even went into the Metro and had some pictures taken there too. I’m kind of excited to see how they turned out.

-light in the morning now that we’ve turned our clocks back.

-Tech week! It’s tech week! Yay moving into the theatre. I’m excited, but also already tired. It kind of sucks to have tech week the week after daylight savings ends. Last night we got done rehearsal at 10:30 and I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired, then I remembered that my body thought it was 11:30pm.

What We Ate – this is a really vague list because I wasn’t home most evenings for dinner. Shout out to the Husband. Also – this is kind of the typical weekly dinner rotation for those “How are we going to make dinner when we are down one parent at home” weeks. Which is all to say, sometimes we have complicated dinners loaded with lots of vegetables, and sometimes we feed the kids food that is tasty and low effort and it’s all fine.

Monday: Thai meatball soup, from the freezer.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. I think they had beef tacos.

Wednesday: Mac and cheese and hot dots. The 13 year old made dinner.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: We got takeout sandwiches from a diner before the opera.

Saturday: Pizza and movie night – I think the family watched Spiderman 2, the second Toby Maguire version of Spiderman.

Okay, that’s the report from the week. I’ll give the Hallowe’en report next time – it was a good time. Happy November! I’m not participating in NaBloPoMo this year – October is just not when I have the bandwidth (see above about empty journal pages.) But I’m excited to read what other people are up to when I can.

Weekly recap + what we ate: The start of a new opera season and reflections on the last one


Where did the week go? I actually started drafting this post on Monday this past week, but I’m finding it hard to find time to write right now; I don’t think I’m adjusting well schedule-wise to being back at work. But anyhow here’s what’s going on around here – last week I started prepping for a new show. It’s actually a revival of a production we did nine years ago. Funny story, last time I did this show, I was five or six months pregnant with our second kid. I wasn’t telling anyone, just wearing lots of loose clothing. There was one singer, a dear dear mezzo I’ve worked with many times who had no boundaries in the best way (okay, that sounds terrible, but I actually adore her.). One night she was sitting backstage and she says to me, “Diane… is there anything you want to share with me…?”

I stammered and blushed and said something to the negative.

Months later, after the baby was born, I ran into her husband, who had also been working on that show with us, and he congratulated me on the baby. “Thank you, “ I said, “You can tell your wife she was right.”

He said, “Yes, she’s like that. I like to wait until the baby is out to mention it.”

Anyhow. Sometimes the only way I remember how long ago things happen is in relation to my kids’ births.

All that to say, I’m hoping this show is a pretty straightforward process. The singers are new (except for the mezzo I mentioned above- she’s back and as delightful and kind as ever.) but the sets, costumes, director…. They are all the same. So pretty much plug in new singers and repeat. I even took the sticky tabs I used to mark the scenes out of my score from 2016 and put them in my 2025 score:

Old score in the back. New one in front. Tabs are still sticky! What magic is in that Post It glue that it all still works nine years later???

As I was going through things in my office, though, I found the score for the opera I did last fall, and oh boy, I had to take a moment, because thinking on last fall unleashed so many thoughts and feelings. That show was one of the hardest rehearsal processes I’d ever been through in recent memories. There was a lot to figure out on that show and I never felt like I had time to do anything and I felt as if I was constantly behind and disappointing my colleagues. I accrued so much overtime on that show. Also my son was in the show and that made things really stressful for the family. When I think of last fall in my mind it is just endless weeks of get kids to school/ work/ work/ work/ drive home/sleep for a couple hours and then get up and do it again. I learned a lot last fall about what I (and our family unit) has the capacity for.

Looking at my score from last year, with all those Post Its and sticky notes… it made me realize that I’m really proud to have gotten that show open and that it was a very good show. I took a picture of my score to remind myself what a huge accomplishment that show was for me because when I think back on last fall and that show, I just remember how tired and overwhelmed I was the whole time. I do also need to remember how cool the show looked, how much, despite everything, I truly enjoyed working with the director, the designers, the singers, the crew, and my own staging team. I think it is important for me to remember the magic we made onstage, and not just how hard the show was. Each of those Post Its represent something that I worked with other people to make happen, and that was really cool.

That said, I never want to be as exhausted as I was last fall ever again. I’m too old for that. I do love my job, but it can be intense. I think fighting that exhaustion is a combination of steps I take for my personal self (making good choices in food, sleep, family, and connections) but also the career choices I make. Perhaps it means taking projects that I know will be less grueling, when I have a choice. And maybe stepping back like that will stagnate my career, but I think I’m here for the long game, so a little pause in moving up the ladder is fine as long as I’m not sliding back down. Where I am right now in life, if I spend the rest of my life doing revivals of small shows where I can just take the score out from last time and push play… well, is that so bad? This season, I’m doing two revivals and one new production, and to be honest, even though new productions are high profile resume builders, the new production is the show I’m least looking forward to. Look, if you’re reading this and you’re someone that hires stage managers, you’re probably thinking, “Well, I’m never going to hire Diane; she just wants easy work.” But you know what? I think there’s a difference between knowing your limits so you don’t burn out and looking to coast. Or maybe there isn’t. Coasting might be how you prevent your car from overheating. You know, like putting the car into neutral once in a while. (That may be a completely wrong metaphor… I’m not a mechanic.)

All to say, I’ve been feeling a little conflicted as I’m putting last season to bed – my desire to work on challenging projects battles with my desire to sleep and be home to make breakfast on occasion.

Soup Party Recap: Last week we had our annual soup party at work, and it was a huge success. We had five types of soup, home made sourdough bread, focaccia, cookies, chips and dip. There was so much food. The soups were: Zuppa Toscana (made by my work BFF – I love this soup), green chili chili, baked potato soup, lemony white bean soup, egg drop soup, and I brought vegan chickpea gnocchi soup.
The egg drop soup was made by one of our interns and when I asked her for the recipe – because it was delicious, even better than restaurant egg drop soup – she said, “I low key stole it from TikTok.” Which seems about right.
Things that I think made the party successful this year:
-inviting more people (I also invited people from the costume shop and a few of them came – it was nice to have a mixing of departments)
-bringing my extra crock pot so not all the soup had to be re-heated in the microwave.
-Note cards so we could label each soup.
-Specifically asking for people to bring ladles if they had them. A lot of the stage managers are from out of town and are at the mercy of their rental kitchen for utensils, so I made a point to tell people to bring ladles if they had them.
Note for next time: Ask someone to bring butter. Also maybe someone could bring a drink or two. I know soup is a liquid, but we still get thirsty eating it.
I wish I had taken pictures of all the soups lined up, but I forgot. You’ll have to take my word that seeing all the soups lined up in the break room was pretty warm and cozy.
I was so delighted with our work soup party that I now want to have a non-work soup party. This is something I say I want to do every year, and I never do. I have a pretty light January and February work-wise in 2026, so it would be a good year to do it. The one thing, though, is I don’t have a microwave, so people would have to bring soup in crock pots or something that can keep them warm. But how many crock pots can I plug in at our house?

Grateful For:
-Finding my office key and IDs. Not once, but twice. On Tuesday I went to the office and reached into my purse for my keys and the pocket where I keep them was empty. Cue panic. I need my ID to swipe into the building and my keys to get into my office. I couldn’t remember what I had done with them last night because I had left in a hurry at the end of the day. I got the spare office key, went to my desk, and OH THANK GOODNESS!!! my keys and ID were sitting on my desk. Such relief. When I left work that day, I mindfully clipped it to my purse. (It’s on one of those retractable badge holders.)
On WEDNESDAY, I went to the office and reached into my purse for my keys and the pocket where I keep them was empty. Cue panic. And also, Oh FFS, not again! Once again, I got the spare key, let myself into the office, but this time, my keys were NOT ON MY DESK, which I kind of figured because after the debacle on Tuesday, I made sure to be more mindful about putting them in my purse. I always put them in the same pocket. I tried not to panic for the rest of the day, but I did a little bit. That evening, I went to the 13 year old’s school to look for them, thinking they might have fallen out of my purse when I dropped her off at school. Nope. I was beginning to despair and I thought, “I’m going to search the car one more time.” I even got in the back seat and reached under all the front seats. First the driver side. Then the passenger side. And … there, under the passenger side, were my keys and ID. They could very well have fallen out when someone tossed my purse in the back seat of the car when they got in the front seat this morning….
Anyhow, all found. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to go get a new ID because that requires going down town and is really inconvenient.

-the Metro employee who told me exactly how to tap my phone. I’ve been tapping my phone in lieu of using my metro card when riding the metro lately, but I almost every time it takes me three or four taps to work. The other day, the Metro employee at the gate said, “Do you have an iPhone? Tap the top of your phone.” And magically it worked on the first try.

-Not having to work any evenings last week. I started prep for a new show and usually there are one or two evening music rehearsals to cover during prep, but there weren’t any last week so I got to be home most evenings by the kids’ bedtime.

-my sweet coworker who brought me Ketchup chips! I think there is only one place in the area to get Ketchup chips- it’s a Wawa that my coworker walks pst once in a while. And he always remembers that I like Ketchup chips.

-The PTSA. We went to our first PTSA meeting last week. Yes, our oldest is in 8th grade and we have never been to a PTSA meeting. We are massively neglecting our civic duty. We went to this one because the Superintendent of the School District was speaking/ slash taking questions. There is all sorts of agita going on with the schools recently. The school boundaries are being redrawn and magnet programs are being reconfigured and moved. The high school choice program that our 13 year old is participating in might be dismantled. A lot of people are upset, namely parents. The whole process has really made me think about the issues of equity and opportunity in schools when our county has such a wide range of socio-economic demographics. One thing the Superintendent brought up is that equity is not about making a school’s magnet program available to students all over the county, but rather to make magnet programs available in more schools. (There is an interesting statistic I saw recently about how most of the kids in one of our area’s STEM magnet programs actually are from a wealthier part of the county. I find that super fascinating…) Anyhow, it will be fine. Our younger kids might have a very different high school experience than the 13 year old, but all told, baseline we are in a pretty privileged part of the country. Everyone will be fine. (Though some will be finer than others…) Anyhow, that is all to say, I’m grateful for PTSA volunteers for stepping up and making these meetings happen and for giving us the opportunity to advocate for our kids’ education.

-sweet sibling moments. The 8 year old found the copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons and decided to try to teach his little sister how to read. Also they were wearing the (sort of) matching striped shirts that I got them, which makes me smile.


Looking Forward To:
-mom’s group brunch. I always feel bad suggesting Friday lunch with my mom’s group since I know many of them have jobs and can’t get away at that time. At our last lunch, one of the moms offered to host a weekend gathering. I’m excited to see everyone. We all met in a mom’s group in the months before COVID and that was an especially bonding experience, but we don’t see each other as much as we’d like anymore.

-Hallowe’en. Gotta get a move on finishing the costumes. We have plans to trick or treat with friends – it’s basically an excuse to hang out by their firepit and eat lots of candy.

-The Act Two finale of the Marriage of Figaro. Sublime. Can’t wait to work on it.

-My parents are coming to visit at the end of November.

-My latest audiobook. This memoir is written by a man who was laid off from his marketing job during COVID and gets a job delivering mail in rural Virginia. It is by turns fascinating, hilarious, and heart wrenching. I’m learning I really like memoirs that take a deep dive into a profession (like this book and also What the Dead Know that I read earlier this year.)

What we ate: I have to admit, I haven’t been spending time in my journal lately so I have only a vague memory of what our dinners have been. Also I’ve been working til 6:30p or so every night so haven’t been making dinner. But here’s my memory of dinners the week before….
Monday: Gnocchi chickpea soup. I made a double batch of my soup party soup and the family ate it for dinner. Except I didn’t put in the

Tuesday: Soup Party at work – see above. The family had ground beef tacos at home.

Wednesday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Thursday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs. The 13 year old cooked.

Friday: Pizza and … I’m sure there was a movie, I’m just not sure what. Our friend was out of town so he gave us his CSA. There were three heads of lettuce and a radicchio. The 13 year old made a salad and threw in 1/2 the radicchio. I rather enjoyed the bitter crunchy of the radicchio, but the little kids did not care for it.

Saturday: Dinner out at Yu Noodles after the 8 year old’s soccer game.

Sunday: Pasta and red sauce and salad. Again, using the lettuce from our friend’s CSA.

Well that’s some of the news from here last week. Or last last week… Next week I have a “What I wore” post planned. Which, I’m realizing, is what I do when I’m feeling swamped at work but still want to blog.

Are there things you are proud of that you never want to do again? Who’s ready for Hallowe’en? Ever had an awkward conversation with someone at work? What kind of soup would you bring to my soup party? If you have a work ID, how to you carry it? Retractable clip? Lanyard? Clip?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Checking things off the list, and looking towards the fourth quarter

Last week was my last week of true flexibility, so I had a bunch of things scheduled – picked up my new glasses (hooray! I can read again), flu shots for the kids, oil change (and then discovered the car also needed a new battery), annual check up for the 6 year old. I also got my hair cut. I like to get my hair cut before I start rehearsals because a) I feel more confident going into rehearsals if my hair looks put together and not over grown, and 2) I just won’t want to spend the time to get my hair cut once rehearsals start. This was the fastest cut I’ve ever had – even with the shampoo, I think I was in and out in less than 2o minutes. At first, I thought the bob looked a little more boxy than I usually have it cut, but I decided to live with it for a while because I’ve found that what I like in the chair often doesn’t grow out well. Anyhow, a few hours later, I decided I actually really liked my new hair cut – it’s long enough to tuck behind my ears, but short enough to look sleek and efficient.

New hair!

The weekend, was also my last two day weekend until mid December, and we went on a little adventure to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. (As mentioned in my Cool Bloggers Walking Club post). I had said a few weeks ago to the Husband that I hadn’t been hiking in a while. Then the last time we were at a contra dance, there was a lady from Shepherdstown who said we should come to their dance. So the Husband planned a little half day trip for the family with hiking and dancing.. We left after lunch and drove to the Yankeur Nature Preserve, about twenty minutes outside of Shepherdstown. The Nature Preserve was farmland in the 1800s and then in the 1960s was given to the Nature Conservancy to be returned to it’s original forested state. The hike wasn’t a very ambitious, more of a nature walk through a forest via a trail. The loop peaked at a bench overlooking the Potomac where we sat and had snacks before getting back to the car.

After the hike we went to dinner at the Blue Moon Cafe, chosen because there had been a request for burgers. We sat in the outdoor garden, and ordered fried pickles for an appetizer. The two kids who had burgers said that the burgers were amazing. I had the crabcake dinner – the homemade crabcakes were really good too. From the restaurant we walked the couple blocks to the dance which was at the Community Club. The walk was really cute – Shepherdstown is a historic town – I think the oldest in West Virginia – and the downtown area is full of colonial architecture and little shops. Apparently it’s also the most haunted town in America and we passed by a group going on ghost tour.

The dance itself was very welcoming. The caller knew the Husband from back when he used to dance every week (sometimes twice) and go to contra dance weekends. When we walked in, she gave him a big hug and was so happy to see us all. The dance we pretty small and there were several people I recognized from the DC area there. Everyone was very forgiving of the kids being there, even when they kept going the wrong way during the dance. I was actually surprised that they danced as much as they did. Usually when we go dancing, they’ll do two or three dances and spend the rest of the time just running around chasing each other. Also this dance had snacks, which always helps. We danced til about 9:45pm and then piled back in the car and drove home. We got home around 11:30pm, but the nice thing about having a two day weekend is that you get to sleep in a little the next day. Or take a mid-Sunday nap. I have to be honest, Sunday was a little rough because everyone was very tired, but I do think it’s worth a day of being tired in order to have a nice adventure.

October Plans and Goals… or not. So I had originally titled this post “Fourth Quarter Goals and Plans” and I was going to write about my fall fun list/ goals for the rest of the year/ lofty plans of achievement. It seems early to be thinking about the holiday season already – I’m not trying to induce panic or anything in anyone, so sorry if you are having a bad reaction to my mention of the holidays. Though I’m sure many of you are on top of things and already planning holiday festivities. I don’t usually even think about the holidays until after Hallowe’en at the earliest. Sometimes after Thanksgiving when it’s too late and I do indeed panic. But I will say, I was a little taken aback when I got home and the kids were poring over a little something that arrived in the mail last week:

Thanks, Amazon.

I was thinking about goals for October, but then the way my work schedule is, October rolls right into November into December and it doesn’t let up. It’s a downhill slide to the end of the year from here. After kicking around October/fourth Quarter goals for a few days, I thought, “Who am I kidding?” I start rehearsals in two weeks for a show and do two operas back to back. I don’t think I will be aiming for anything loftier than get through to the new year with kindness, grace, and patience. Because here is what is already in the calendar for the rest of the year:

-Two operas back to back. (Meaning two times through the prep week/ rehearsal weeks/ tech weeks/ performance cycles). Between October 12th and December 15th, I just have one day off a week. I haven’t double checked the calendar, but that is just nine days off – one of which is Hallowe’en, and one of which is Thanksgiving.

-Start prepping for hiring next year, all while in rehearsals/ performance.

-Parent Teacher conferences.

-a Supertitle gig – I can’t work the actual recital because of opera rehearsal, but I’ll be creating the power point slides.

-the 13 year old’s school play

-family photos

-Well woman appointment and mammogram

-usual slate of activities for the kids – soccer, piano, agility class, skating, basketball.

-The holiday trifecta of Hallowe’en/ Thanksgiving/ Christmas and all the joys and expectations those involve. I think my parents might be coming for Thanksgiving.

-Lenten book club (Though I guess we are easing into advent.)

-a few random days off school and half days for the kids

-Trip to Taiwan for my Grandfather’s birthday celebration.

All to say, I don’t know that I have it in me to make a ambitious fun list because I think I will need to maintain some blank spaces for me and for family time. Here’s the thing, though – I think I (we) can have a low key fall/ winter and still lean into the season; I don’t need to have big adventures on my one day off in order to feel like I’m enjoying the season. It’s about paying attention to the every day things that make October, November, and December different from the rest of the year, to give the things that I do daily a special holiday sprinkle. Some ideas for low key seasonal things that can fold into the regular rhythms of the life while still allowing restorative space:
-eat lots of apples
-spend time outdoors and savor the trees in all their fall splendor. Take time to notice holiday decorations as I see them – I might not have the space in me to rally a trip to one of the huge light displays, but I can take time to marvel at the Christmas lights I see on my commute.
-Tuba Christmas. The one tradition I’ll always make time for.
-change the clocks and savor the shift in light (It was pitch dark at 6:30am this morning and I felt like I didn’t know what was happening.)
-make and enjoy soups and baked goods. Or just buy and eat lots of baked goods. Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe Joes or Peppermint Stars?
-drink lots of tea.
-dress in seasonal colours and fabrics – warm oranges, yellows, reds, cozy sweaters and hats, and booties, and scarves. I love fall and cool weather dressing.
-pull out/ borrow Christmas picture books to have casually around the house. Maybe find a Christmas themed read aloud to read with the kids. Any suggestions? The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is well loved in our house.
-board games and hot chocolate (with candy cane stir sticks).
-watch Hallmark Holiday movies, even if it’s while I do the dishes at night. (The Hallmark Holiday Movie schedule is out! I’m am VERY excited for #26 – checks so many of my Hallmark Holiday Movie catnip boxes. Also there’s a time travel one, which I always love; and there’s a new installment of the Three Wise Men series! So excited. Also the movies start this weekend!!)
-read a big book. I’m thinking I might finally get to reading East of Eden. Though I’m also kicking around Anna Karenina ever since I listened to Nilo Cruz’s play Anna in the Tropics.
-eat my kids’ Hallowe’en candy
-write and send the holiday card. (If you want to exchange holiday cards – email me or leave a comment and I’ll email you!) And display the cards that come to us.
-journal reflections on the year that was and the year ahead.
-be grateful for the year that was and is, and ask the kids what they are grateful for.
-seasonal music during church services. Singing Christmas carols loudly in the car.

Notably not on my list is NaBloWriMo – Look, last year I really relished the challenge of participating, and also I really loved reading all the content that people created. But I am not a fast writer and I don’t like the pressure of cranking out content without being able to ponder and edit and edit again. I like the sense of flow that I get from writing, but that flow sometimes means that I can sit at my computer to write and two hours will go by in a blink of an eye. November is just not the time for me to be cranking out a daily blog post in that immersive way. I look forward to reading and commenting on other people’s posts and I will hopefully continue to post at my usual once or twice a week rate.

I may be over-estimating how tapped I will be this last quarter of the year, but fall last year was miserable with how packed our lives were – we had two kids in operas, and I was working on a really challenging show that just sucked everything from me. That was for sure a “never again” experience. I’m glad my kids got to be in the opera and experience being on stage, but it just about killed us to make it work. This fall/winter, I want more space so I can savor and give attention to what is important.

Things to prioritize in a busy season:
-Sleep.
-Breathing.
-yoga and other exercise
-sunlight and fresh air
-nutritious food and comfort food.
-family
-kindness and grace and gratitude
-hugs and kisses.

I might need to write that out and put it on a Post It somewhere to remind myself, especially when I feel like I’m not keeping up with everyone around me who are holiday-ing to the fullest.

Grateful For:

-Our mechanic. I’m grateful that we have a mechanic we trust to bring out car to. Funny story – when I took the car in, he asked me which car I was bringing and I said the red Subaru Impreza.
“Oh! The manual one?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“Yes,” I said.
“Fun!”

-Fast Internet. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole one night last week and at one point, I thought, “Man, isn’t it nice that I can watch this whole video on the making of Sense and Sensibility without waiting for it to buffer?”

-The Husband for driving when we go places. I don’t really like driving, so I’m always grateful that he gets behind the wheel.

-Time in the evening with the family. We’ve had a few nights without plans so after dinner we’ve been just hanging out. One night we did puzzles. One night we painted. One night we played Skyjo. By “we” I do mean me and the 6 and 8 year old. The 13 year old would rather watch YouTube shorts in her room. I’m trying to be okay with this, but I feel my self being all judgmental parent about it. The funny thing is she will email me links to funny videos, which is sweet, but I’m like, “DUDE! I’m sitting in the next room, just come show me!” She says it’s more fun just to email me. Sigh.

-A shady spot at the soccer game on an 80 degree day. What the heck, Fall???

-but on that note- the otherwise gorgeous fall weather. The cool breezes that help cut through the autumn heat.

-my bike.

-Thrift Stores. I’ve been on the hunt at thrift stores for things with which I can piece together the kids’ Hallowe’en costumes. The two little kids want to be K-Pop Demon Hunter characters. I found some clothes that I can use as a base, spending less than $10 per kid so far. And then I went and spent $50 on bling at Michael’s. I think most of that $50 of bling is going to get returned. Our thrift stores here are huge and not really curated, so it’s exhausting to go. But I did find some gems, including this puzzle which made me think of Elisabeth!:

Looking Forward To:
-Starting work on my next show.

-Stage Management Soup Party! For the past few years the stage management department has had a soup party in the fall and it’s a lot of fun. We have quite a few vegetarians, so I’m thinking of either making the Chickpea noodle soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone, or this Chickpea Gnocchi Soup. Or maybe a lentil soup? So many options!

-Walk with furloughed friend. The government shutdown pretty much sucks, but it does mean that some of my friends are available for mid day walks and lunches. Silver linings.

-Kabocha squash. It’s squash season! Kabocha squash was one of my grandmother’s favorite vegetables. I got one from the farm stand the other day and I can’t decide what to do with it – curry? fried rice (there is a recipe in Meera Sodha’s new cookbook that looks really good)? This squash, kimchi, and chickpea dish looks divine, but might be too spicy for the family.

-Just started this on audio – it’s cute, and fun and set in Baltimore – always a kick to read a book set somewhere close.

Also the author has a book coming out this week Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, which lead to this text exchange with my friend who loves Hallmark movies as much as I do:

-And tearing through this book as well. (partly because it’s a three week loan. I’m still on the fence as to whether I like it or not. It’s very well written, but some of it just seems like too much every day life things.)

What we ate:

Monday: Tofu and Tomato Stir Fry with Sesame Rice from Meera Sodha’s new cookbook Dinner. You can also find the recipe here in Sodha’s column in the Guardian that features vegan recipes. This dish was basically a vegan take on eggs with tomatoes which is a very common dish in Taiwan. The rice was drizzled with sesame oil to give it a bit of a pop. I thought this was very tasty and it was quick – ready in less than 30 minutes. I made this because I had a bunch of tomatoes to use up. Sodha’s recipes are always full of flavor and pretty simple, but I have to say this cookbook isn’t speaking to me as much as her other cookbooks: East and Made in India and Fresh India – this book seems more fussy somehow. Even still, there are a few more dishes I want to try before I return this book to the library. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pulled pork tacos for Taco Tuesday. The Husband made the pork in the crockpot and we had our usual accompaniment of cabbage, pickled onions, sour cream, cheese, and hard and soft tortilla shells. The kids like the hard shells. I guess it’s a good vehicle for sour cream and cheese.

Wednesday: Breakfast sandwiches. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Spaghetti and meatballs with salad (bagged) and garlic bread. The 13 year old cooked. She also somehow made two whole boxes of spaghetti even though it was just four of us for dinner, so now we have a lot of plain pasta leftover. I froze it, but I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Freaky Friday, the 2003 Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsey Lohan version. It was my turn to choose the movie, and I picked Freaky Friday because I wanted to watch the sequel that came out this summer, but of course the kids had to see the first one first. Curtis and Lohan are brilliant in this movie. I will say, the romantic aspects didn’t seem as funny to me on re-watching. Mark Harmon (whom I have a huge celebrity crush on) trying to kiss Jamie Lee Curtis who is inhabited by her teenager’s mind- it just seemed icky. Was it funny twenty years ago?

Saturday: Dinner out at Blue Moon Cafe in Shepherdstown before the dance.

Sunday: Pasta (store bought ravioli) with red sauce. The 13 year old had leftovers because she had to eat earlier since she had swim clinic.

That’s the news from last week. This weekend looks to be rainy and I have to work, so it’ll probably be a good weekend to hunker and catch up on things. The house is due for a good “put back together” session. Hope you’re week went well, and you have good plans ahead.
Any suggestions for what to do with leftover (cooked) plain spaghetti noodles? Are you thinking/planning for the holidays yet? What’s your favorite soup?

Weekly recap + What we ate: Birthday celebrations, Unique moments, frustrating moments

For sure the highlight of last week was the 6 year old’s actual birthday. By some quirk of the calendar, her birthday fell on Rosh Hashanah and our schools were closed. We sort of joked that the schools were closed because it was her birthday, but the other two kids didn’t this this was funny and the 8 year old was actually quite salty about it. So we stopped saying that.

The Husband and I both took the day off to spend with the kids,. Originally we were going to go to Longwood Gardens but it wasn’t open, so we decided to go downtown and visit some museums on the Mall instead. A little selfishly, I chose to go to the National Gallery of Art because there was an exhibit on nature illustration that I wanted to see. We also let the birthday girl choose a second museum and she choose Natural History so that she could see the dinosaurs. The Dinosaur exhibit had undergone a major renovation in 2019, but I hadn’t been to visit it yet, so I thought this was a great museum to visit. We packed a lunch for everyone and headed for the metro.

First stop – National Gallery of Art and the exhibit Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World. This exhibit was a collaboration with the Museum of Natural History, and featured illustrations of small insects, animals, and plant life alongside taxidermy of those creatures and plants. I thought it was fascinating to think about artists paying such close attention to such small details. There was also one display where they demonstrated how some artists would recreate butterfly patterns by gluing the wings to the paper, and then peeling the wings off, leaving some of the scales behind. The artist would then use paints to touch up and enhance what was left behind.

Rosemary and insects.
Can you match the specimens to the drawing?

In a room near the Little Beasts exhibit was an exhibit called American Landscapes in Watercolor from the Corcoran Collection. The Corcoran was another art museum in DC that was dissolved in 2014, and much of it’s collection went to the National Gallery of Art. As the title suggests, this exhibit was all watercolor painting, and, since taking a watercolor class, I’m always interested in seeing what the medium can do. It was a small collection, but showed a wide range in style – from loose and florid to precise and brilliant. I’m always inspired when I see beautiful watercolor paintings, to try to figure out how an artist captures light and shapes so that I can recreate it myself.

Winslow Homer.
I love the light on this painting by Val Lewton.

After the watercolor exhibit, we decided to sit in the sculpture garden and have our lunch – sandwiches and fruit. The table next to us had an intrepid little visitor:

Afterwards we wandered to the Natural History Museum where we saw the Hall of Fossils. To be honest, the Natural History Museum isn’t my favorite – it’s always loud and over run with kids and school groups, and I quickly realized that my kids love this museum because the new Fossil Hall has LOTS of screens and interactive features. I guess just reading placards isn’t good enough for kids these days. Sigh.

Oh well. There was an interesting exhibit on cell phones. There was a lot of information about how cell phones take up a lot of natural resources and minerals, but also about all the good ways that people are using cell phone technology. There was also this sculpture made of cell phones. Boy was that a trip down memory lane….

it was fun to see if I could find all the phones that I’ve ever owned.

After the Natural History Museum, we headed home to rest for an hour before we set out again for a birthday dinner at our local Mexican restaurant. We had invited our friend and his three kids to come along at the last minute, which made it a very merry party. We were commenting on how we never see each other now that their weekends are very full, but an impromptu Tuesday night invite was perfect. I know Tuesday was a holiday for many people – with obligations and traditions – but for us it was a bonus day off, and it was kind of fun to have a weekend kind of day in the middle of the week.

Sombrero and birthday cake.

On my mind…I had mentioned in my last weekly post a feeling of interstitial ennui in my life. And that feeling kind of carried into this past week. I’m between shows, the kids are in school, and life is feeling a little routine. When I think about my week, it seems to be a string of morning rush/kids to school/work/kids home/dinner/bedtime/evening tv/sleep/ rinse repeat. I guess to some extent, if I zoom out far enough, every day is just going to be the same – wake up/ go to work (or do something with yourself)/ periodically eat a meal/ go to bed. We humans have (hopefully) many years of sleeping and then being awake.

A few months ago, Kae (at Grateful Kae) posted about a journal prompt: “What made today different?” The prompt has been kicking around in my brain ever since and these past few week, when I’ve been a little overwhelmed by the sameness of life (or is it underwhelmed?), thinking about what made the day unique or different has been a good reflective exercise; it’s these moments that make a day special and distinguishes one day from another. I’ve been writing two things in my journal: What made today unique? What made today frustrating? I added that second prompt because I feel like I can sometimes be either toxically positive or spiraling negativity, and I wanted to be able to look back on these days and see a balance.

So here are a couple unique and frustrating moments from last week:

Monday: Unique – a new team of stage managers started at work, and it’s always fun to see new teams come together; I started using my new computer; I made Ethiopian food for dinner.
Frustrating – listening to the new coverage of the Charlie Kirk memorial and being very disappointed by the hateful and demeaning rhetoric. I fully support honoring someone’s life, but to use it as an opportunity to put other people down and spew hatred is… distasteful.

Tuesday: Unique – going to the museum and celebrating the 6 year old’s birthday, detailed above.
Frustrating: The kids’ behavior at the restaurant was atrocious. They usually are really well behaved at restaurants, but I think we stayed a little too long and they were really excited to be with friends, so they were up and wandering about and just in general being a pain. (By kids, I mean the 8 year old and the 6 year old. The 13 year old was actually participating in conversation with her friend and the grown ups.)

Wednesday: Unique – the Husband and I started a new tv show (Paradise) which is unique because we don’t often start new shows together as it takes us so long to get to the end of a series since I work a lot of evenings. (Paradise is gripping, but the way, but maybe a little more suspense and tension than I want when I’m winding down late in the day.); Also my friend K called me and we chatted – she doesn’t often pick up the phone to call me, so this was nice.
Frustrating – the 13 year old was home sick. It’s not really frustrating, but just kind of a bummer.

Thursday: Unique – My friend L was at the bus stop in the morning, which she never is since the federal government took away WFH. After dinner, the Husband took the 13 year old to a high school open house and I took the kids to the library. I feel like we should have more evening library trips; the library is always so quiet and soothing, making it a nice pre-bed adventure.
Frustrating – I wasn’t very focused during the day and got distracted easily so I didn’t get as much work done on my super-title gig as I wanted. I need to figure out better methods for just buckling down and doing work. My current method is procrastinate and then work at a frenzied pace. That feels unnecessarily stressful.

Friday: Unique – I had first aid training at work. Good for another two years! We tried a new pizza place for Friday night pizza. It was fine. To be honest, most of the pizza around us is just fine. Or maybe it’s a me problem.
Frustrating – I didn’t check my calendar before I left for work and didn’t realize that my 10:30am meeting had been cancelled. Said meeting was the only reason I was going to our downtown offices. I had driven all the way downtown in morning traffic only to turn around and come home.

Saturday: Unique – We went to a birthday party for a friend of the 6 year old and had fun catching up with families from pre-school. The two little kids came with me when I took the 13 year old to her voice lesson and we got to go to the park by the voice teacher’s house. I did yoga in the middle of the afternoon because I didn’t have time to do it in the morning.
Frustrating: Our weekly family meeting did not go well. I don’t want to finger point or anything – just suffice to say we weren’t having a good communication day all around. Perhaps we need to rethink our expectations for them.

Sunday: Unique– I ran supertitles for a very lovely voice recital, and learned that Lakme is an opera with beautiful music and a cringe-y plot. I made fried green tomatoes for the first time. I got to go on a walk by myself after dinner while the rest of the family cleaned up.
Frustrating: Realizing, an hour before I left for work, that my new computer doesn’t have an HDMI port, which I need because I run the supertitle slides from a PowerPoint presentation off my laptop. Luckily my friend who was stage managing has a convertor.

Thoughts on the exercise: I’ve been recording unique and frustrating moments in my journal for a few weeks now and I really like it as a framework, especially for those days when I’m drawing a blank on what to write about how the day went. It helps me get very specific about the day. It feels like most of the things I note as being unique about the day are positive things, and I don’t know if that’s an entirely fair way of looking at my day. I do think that I need to uncouple the idea of unique/different with “positive”. On the other hand, you know how Anna Karenina starts, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”? Sometimes I think I feel the opposite is true for me; I can think of a million different unique things that bring me joy, but the things that make me unhappy and frustrated kind of boil down to one or two thing: people being unkind jerks is one of those things – whether that is Presidents or my own kids. Or even, a lot of the time, it’s me. I’m the jerk that’s making my own life frustrating.

Grateful For:

-The (now) six year old for being such a bright, energetic, happy, enthusiastic kid and for bringing such joy to our lives.

-The Husband packed the kids’ lunches one day last week so that I could go for a run with the 8 year old (he biked).

-Robert Munsch. There was a wonderful and touching article in the New York Times about the children’s book author Robert Munsch. When I was growing up, I LOVED Robert Munsch’s books. My favorite was Murmel Murmel Murmel, about a girl who finds a baby in a hole in her sandbox and tries to find someone to take care of him. I also loved The Paper Bag Princess, The Mud Puddle, Mortimer, and countless others. Munsh is now 76 and suffers from dementia and no longer can hold stories in his head anymore, which is so sad to me, but also makes me so grateful for the stories that he has already given the world. The profile talks about how Munsch was able to relate so well with children and be so creative in his story telling. I feel like there are many lessons to be learned from his unaffected trust of children’s intelligence.

-Flowers in our garden. Such a prefect dahlia.

–New York Times Cooking. Even though we meal plan on Sunday, there are days when what we planned just isn’t going to be what ends up on the table for one reason or another. For those days, I love my NYTimes Cooking subscription – I can type in what I’m looking to use up in my fridge, click the box for “Under 45 minutes” (or “under 30 minutes”) and click “dinner” and click “vegetarian” and I can reliably get one or two things to make for dinner. I know the internet can do this too, but NY Times cooking delivers just the right number of choices. And the comment section is golden.

– A rainy day, perfect for curling up with a book.

-But also that the rain let up for an hour so that I could go for a run.

-Free Museums. Your tax dollars at work. (Well maybe not next week, but…) Also grateful that no one has taken down the exhibits on Global Warming in the Natural History Museum yet.

Looking Forward To:

-Friday lunch plans with some moms from my mom’s group:

-Day off with my kids. We have a playdate planned. (In the most old fashioned of ways, the five year old came home with a note that said, “Hi’. Would like a playdate with us? K would love that. Here is my phone number. -K’s mom.” For some reason I found this delightful.) I kind of also want to check out a new craft cafe in the area. (Note – the play date did happen; the craft cafe didn’t. I’ll have to save that for another time…)

-Hallowe’en. The two little kids want to go as K-Pop Demon Hunter characters. The 6 year old wants to go as Zooey – I’ve picked up some things at the thrift store to make a costume for her. The 8 year old wanted to be Jinu. I was like, “Umm…. so you want to wear a white plaid shirt and jeans for Hallowe’en? Is that even a costume?” Really, I think we’re going to go with the black robe and hat look. (Okay – I just googled the hat – it’s a traditional Korean hat worn by noble men, called gat hat. It’s woven from bamboo threads and is truly an artisan craft. If you’re into super specific artisan videos, check out a video of the hat being made here. I was mesmerized.)

-Union negotiations finishing up. We are so close.

–Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I always hesitate to say I’m joining Elisabeth’s Cool Blogger’s Walking Club because even though I do manage to get a good amount of movement in every day, I hate failing at things. Plus I struggle with the idea of being cool. But I feel like the point for me of joining a group effort is to be intentional about walking or movement – of making time so that I don’t fail. So I’m going to commit this October. I mean I do usually get some kind of movement in everyday, so I just have to write it down.

– Cool Blogger’s Book Club! Thank you, Engie for organizing! We are reading The Joy Luck Club, which I read years ago, when I was in college. (I think?). Bonus- I found a copy at the Library Book Store for $1! Joy and luck, indeed!

What We Ate:

Monday: Tikil Gomen (Meera Sodha’s recipe), shiro (Ground chickpea stew), Cucumber and tomato salad, and injera – an Ethiopian dinner. I was originally going to make misir wot (Ethiopian red lentils), but as I was standing in the co-op googling the ingredients, I came across a recipe for shiro, which I had never made before. The co-op had chickpea flour, so I thought I’d try something new and the shiro turned out to be really good. I ended up eating the leftovers as a sandwich spread throughout the week. Vegan.

I don’t usually take pictures of my food, but I was really proud of this meal.

Tuesday: Dinner out at the Mexican restaurant.

Wednesday: Zucchini Butter Pasta by Hetty Liu McKinnon for NY Times Cooking. I had a crisper full of zucchini and no plans for dinner. This was fast and easy and tasty. Maybe a little heavy on the butter, though.

Thursday: Thai-inspired Meatball Soup by Ali Slagle for NY Times Cooking. I used ground pork instead of ground chicken and basil instead of cilantro for this. This was very tasty and came together quickly.

Friday: pizza and “Light and Magic” a six part documentary about Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company founded to create the effects for Star Wars. We only watched the first episode, but it was so fascinating to see just how groundbreaking the technology and thinking on that film was.

Saturday: Leftovers! Cleaning out the fridge.

Sunday: Kind of a hodge podge dinner – I had some green tomatoes to use up (so much so that they were no longer green), so I made fried green tomatoes. Then we had pasta (ravioli from the deli case at the store), steamed green beans, and a caprese salad. It was kind of eclectic, but tasty. I don’t often fry food because it is messy and involves a lot of steps, but boy is fried food tasty.

That’s some of the news from last week. I can’t believe we are already into October – the last quarter of the year!

Did you read Robert Munsch books growing up? Do you have a favorite? What made your week different/unique? Anything make it frustrating? Are all happy families happy in the same way? Any Hallowe’en plans yet?