Tag: anticipation

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

Shenandoah views.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the sticks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My meal planning notes and shopping list for camping.

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

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

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

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I loved this series of paintings of women reading.

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

Mythical Guardian Lion
Carved columns from temples in India.

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

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

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

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

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

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

View from the top of the hike.
Soaring birds.

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

Fancy drink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Pizza leftovers (again.)

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

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

Wednesday: Chicken salad sandwiches

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

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

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

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

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech week and Opening!

We opened our show. Hooray! It’s been a doozy of a tech week. The first day in the theatre, there was a power outage an hour before we were supposed to start rehearsal and we didn’t know until the last minute whether or not we would be able to proceed. As our Production Manager said, “Either the power will come on or it won’t. There is no third option.” Luckily the power came back on about ten minutes after we were supposed to start rehearsal, and we were off to the races. The the second day of tech, we had some last minute staffing adjustments and were severely shorthanded for that rehearsal. It was an exhausting few days. But we got through the show, and

Picture from backstage:

The orchestra is onstage for this show, upstage of the set. That is my music stand on the right, where I stand for much of the show. Behind me is the harp, the brass section, the timpani, and the entire percussion section. (The strings are on the other side of the set up..) The percussion section is three players and takes up a lot of space, and spills into the wings – that’s that white line marked out on the floor. This show is very loud. Last week, I posted about being grateful for a strong downbeat from the conductor. Once we got with the orchestra, I was even more thankful. Most of the time, I can’t hear the singers because the percussion and brass is so loud right next to me. So you bet I’m watching the conductor and counting downbeats. And actually, there is so little space backstage that half the time I can’t have my music stand with me, so I just have to memorize entrance cues and count downbeats and trust that I’m sending people on at the right time.

Also – this alarming moment, when I looked down at my hand and saw:

Job casualty.

You know when you have that moment where you can’t remember hurting yourself, but you obviously did because you’re bleeding? Well, this wasn’t that. It’s fake blood. There’s a battle scene in the show and in the 15 seconds people are off stage the make-up team bloodies them. It’s a super chaotic moment backstage – the orchestra is wailing away (did I mention this show is loud?), there are people running on and offstage with (fake) rifles, there are people getting (fake) stabbed onstage, there’s smoke, there’s very loud bomb sound effects, there are wardrobe people trying to fix costumes that have come apart during the action, there are prop people ready to put (fake) dead bodies onstage, there are make-up people standing by to make everyone bloody, and I’m trying to push people in the right direction – onstage, down one wing, towards the make-up station. All within a very small corner of backstage space. Anyhow, no wonder I looked at my hand and panicked for half a second. Then I realized I must have had a brush with the make-up crew. It made for a nice badge to wear though, evidence of a tough rehearsal.

Things that got me through this tech week:
– Planning out my wardrobe for the week. As always, it’s great when I don’t have to think about what I’m going to wear.

-Making sure I brought food to eat. I barely had time to eat meals what with all that was going on, so I’m glad I brought a lot of food with me. The typical daily food pack this tech:

Ready to go into the lunch box.

From left to right: apple, cut up strawberries and cucumbers, marinated beans with cucumber and cherry tomatoes, beef stick, yogurt with bluberries and walnut (pink lid Thermos), congee (Blue thermos), banana, string cheese, rice crackers with avocado, trail mix (mixed nuts and dried cherries), tamarind balls, Korean spiced almonds. This is all the food I brought to get me through the day. There’s no food option close to work, so this is pretty much what I eat. If I don’t pack enough food, then I go hungry, or I have to get in my car and drive 10-15 minutes to the closest retail/restaurant strip.

-Taking a walk outside, even if it was just ten minutes.

-Watching the Olympics. It has proved a perfect way for me to turn my brain off and relax when I’m not at work. This past week, I’ve been very much into watching the Sport Climbing. It’s so inspirational to watch the climbers – their strength and ability to puzzle out a climb is jaw dropping. It makes me want to go to the climbing gym more often.

The bummer thing – The four year old (really she’ll be five in six weeks), won’t be going to kindergarten this year. Our appeal for her Early Entrance to Kindergarten denial was rejected. The whole thing is so confounding and frustrating. The report listed all the things that she did well and all the glowing comments from her school administer and from me, but just said that she didn’t meet criteria. I go back to the fact that her only insufficient scores were for reading skills, but she would have gone to a French Immersion program where we were specifically told not to teach our kids to read – and I feel like even though she didn’t check all the boxes, there is additional context that was not accounted for. Or maybe there is a bigger picture in terms of school numbers/funds, etc. that we don’t know about. Humph. Oh well. It really stings right now, especially since her preschool tuition is going up this year.
I’m trying to look on the bright side –
-she’ll have the new experience of being the oldest in her class, after spending her whole life being the youngest, so that will be a new dynamic for her.
-We actually do really like her preschool, so it’s not as if we wanted to find a different place for her because of that.
-I guess we will only have to pay for two kids in college for one year rather than two (I mean anything can happen on this though…)
-I won’t have to figure out summer camp for her next summer…
Even still – I don’t know that those points out weigh 1) not having to pay another year of tuition, and 2) having to do only one drop off/pick up.

Highlights of the week:
-The 7 year old’s theatre camp performance. They did a play called Wing It, about baby birds who don’t want to leave the nest. The 7 year old played a bird appropriately named Baby Orville, who is the first bird to leave the nest and fly. It was delightful. And afterwards, we went for a Carousel ride since the carousel is in the same park as the theatre camp. That was fun. It’s still just $2/ ride or $5 to ride all day – one of the best deals for entertainment in the area.

-Broccolini and sun dried tomato sandwich from The Sandwich Shop. My favorite sandwich, but I only get to eat it when I work this summer job. The bitterness of the broccolini and arugula, combined with the meaty sweet sundried tomatoes, make for a really satisfying vegetarian sandwich. I don’t usually buy lunch or dinner, but I decided to indulge one day when I didn’t have time to pack dinner and then the day of the final dress, the 12 year old came to the show and we picked up sandwiches and boba tea for dinner. It was nice to share some of tasty food.

-Playing the Disney playlist in the car at top volume and listening to the kids singing along from the back seat.

-Finding a new snack at Costco:

Chocolate covered quinoa crisps

Nestle Crunch was one of my favorite chocolate bars growing up, but I always felt as if there were too much chocolate and not enough crunch. Also I prefer dark chocolate. This little snack rectifies all that, lovely bite size, crunchy, dark chocolate combination. . Gluten-free, vegan, so you know, I feel virtuous eating them.

-Giant umbrellas to protect us from much needed rain.

-Going on a hike. After dropping the 7 year old at camp one day, I went to a local trail. I was thinking I would go for a run but it was drizzling and the trail was slippery, so I went for a walk/hike instead. It was wet and grey, but it somehow gave the hike a misty, solitary quality that I really needed.

-Dog-sitting. I’m not a pet person. I have no desire ever to have a dog. But I do enjoy dog-sitting for my friend once or twice a year. It’s just enough to scratch my “Maybe I want a dog..?” itch, and then I get to give the dog back. I imagine grandchildren might be the same way. Anyhow we’ve been dog-sitting for a week and and I love the cuddles, the long walks, and the big brown eyes.

-This impulse buy at Target:

I had a hand held Tetris game when I was growing up, and I LOVED that game, would play for hours and hours. It’s the perfect brain break for me. Sure, I can play on my phone, but I love how whimsical this is. And I don’t feel the temptation to scroll when on it. I might have shut myself in the bathroom last night with this game when I should have been doing responsible parenting things. The kids are fascinated too, though I have to constantly explain to the kids that the game is not a building game since they love to pile the bricks high.

Grateful For:
-Wonderful, patient colleagues. With all the roadblocks thrown in front of us during this tech period, I think things could have gotten really stressful and miserable. I mean things were stressful, but it always felt as if we were all in this together and there was no anger or bitterness or demeaning behavior. Everyone just really worked well together with the goal of creating a beautiful show and being kind to each other. Sometimes at the end of a tough rehearsal, I just feel deflated, but I never felt that way with this show.

-Not having to commute during rush hour any more. I really like the opera company I work for during the summer, but I don’t like that I have to go around the beltway to get there and that there is always construction on the way. But now that we have moved on to tech and performances, I no longer have to commute during rush hour anymore since I’m mostly working later now.

-That I had a safe commute so far this summer. There have been some pretty bad accidents on the beltway, causing lots of traffic delays. There was one day where the accident had happened at 3am, and still wasn’t cleared by 9:30am and they had to bring in cranes to clear the big rig that was tilted over on the side of the road. Every time I turn on the traffic report and hear of yet another accident, I would get annoyed at the delay it was causing me. But at some point in the summer, I started to re-frame my thinking – instead of being angry at the traffic and the drivers causing the delay, I told myself that I should be thankful that I’m not the cause of the delay, and that I continue to get back and forth to work safely.

-A nice place outside to eat my lunch. during tech, I spend most of my days in the theatre, so I try to go outside on my meal breaks so I get a change of scenery. The theatre I’m working at backs out a grassy and woodsy area, and there is a patio and tables where I can sit and each my lunch while looking out on the grass and trees. It is so soothing.

Looking Forward To:
– Catching my breath and getting some sleep. Tech week always makes sleeping and adulting hard. I’m looking forwards to going to bed earlier and having time to do all those tasks I’ve been putting off for two weeks. These last few weeks before school starts also feature just ONE child that needs to be dropped off, and no camps. I’m looking forward to the time and margin in the schedule.

-Back to school shopping. Two weeks until the start of school. Eeep! It’s tax-free shopping week this week in Maryland – perfect timing because the kids need new shoes. And I love shopping for school supplies. It’s always kind of a mad house and the kids don’t have the patience for it, but I love wandering through Staples

-Cooking dinner and eating vegetables. We went to the Farmer’s market this past weekend. I bought lots of fruit, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, carrots and potatoes. I’m looking forward to making dinner.

-This audiobook:

The title pretty much says it all. Each chapter is read by a different person – artists, journalists, thinkers, politicians, it’s quite a cast of readers. I’m only on object 12, and it’s so fascinating. The first object is a “Healed Femur c. 30 000 BC” – and it is pointed out that while animals with a broken bone would die, the amazing thing about humans is that when humans get injured someone (usually women) will care for them, and so we can survive. I had never thought about care work in that context before.

What We Ate – another tech week menu:
Saturday: Pizza and The Hunt for Red October for the family. I packed dinner and ate at work.

Sunday: Dumplings and green beans for the family. They saved me two. I had a broccolini and sun dried tomato sandwich from The Sandwich Shop.

Monday: Pasta w/ red sauce and sausage. I ate leftovers when I got home from work.

Tuesday: The family ordered Banh mi sandwiches. I ate my packed leftovers at work.

Wednesday: Sandwiches from The Sandwich Shop for the 12 year old and me before she came to see my dress rehearsal- broccolini and Sun dried tomato sandwich for me, Italian Cold Cut for the 12 year old. And we each got a boba. The Husband took the kids out to eat as a special treat since they weren’t coming to the show.

Thursday: Eggplant and pork stir fry eaten with noodles. The Husband cooked.

Friday: Pizza and Hamilton (the proshot on Disney+)for the kids. I had leftovers at work. I think the Husband also had pizza – he came to see my show after dealing with a water crisis.

Hope you are having a sun-filled week as summer hurtles towards the finish line! Or perhaps you are already there?

Bi- Weekly recap + what we ate: a week of outfits

Last week and this past week was one of those “so many random thoughts came into my head this week”-kind of week. So here’s a random dump of various goings ons since the last week of recaps…

-We went duckpin bowling last weekend. The bowling alley was like stepping back in time. At one point, the guy who brought us our food asked if we could keep the kids from leaning on the ball returns because, “those are original, from the 1950s.” The bowling alley had a deal for six bowlers plus shoes, a large pizza and a pitcher of soda for $105, which seemed like a steal for an afternoon of fun for our family of five.

step back in time! We have to score by hand and math!

-We’ve started rehearsal. I’m working on an opera set in World War I, so my google searches lately have been things like, “1900s German Telegram” and “gas masks” and “1900s pencils”. And my photo roll is full of snapshots from rehearsal as I communicate with the prop master about our rehearsal needs. Here’s a glimpse:

I was like, “What is that?”
Paper props
“Will this do for the French Lieutenant?”

In case you couldn’t tell, that white blob is a set of rehearsal bagpipes that I fashioned out of a cotton sack and paper and tape because the one we ordered for the show have’t arrived yet. It’s some of my best work. I have to admit I am mad good at making fake props. (I even wrote a post on it…)

-Swim season is finished! Even though I’m so glad that we no longer have to get to the pool every day, I’m a little sad to move on from that part of the summer because for all the complicated logistics, it was fun watching the 12 year old swim and I actually liked having an excuse to get into the pool four nights a week. The 12 year old received one of the Coach’s Choice awards – I’m so proud of her! Every kid also recieves a paper plate award – the 4 year old got “Best Bobber”, the 7 year old got “Best Flutter Kick” and the 12 year old got “Butterflyer at Heart”. How awesome is it that the coaches get together and think of an award for everyone?!

-The schlep every morning to get people places. This is what our foyer looks like in the morning as we get ready to leave:

I have lunchbox, purse, laptop bag, totebag with running clothes in it (in case I have a long dinner break). The kids each have a backpack and lunch. The 7 year old was at skating camp last week, so he also has helmet, winter coat, and his skates. It’s like every day is an expedition. I thought this was funny – him trekking up the hill to the ice arena. For the record, there is a set of stairs just to the right of this picture – he just chose not to use them.

-The 12 year old’s musical theatre showcase was so much fun! I have to admit I might have mouthed the words to her solo in the Shrek scene along with her as she sang it. In addition to musical numbers, they performed some book (spoken) scenes as well. I had kind of dismissed SpongeBob Square Pants the Musical without knowing anything about it, but the kids performed some scenes from it and they were pretty funny. I would be intrigued to see the show. I’m glad we signed the 12 year old up for this camp – I think she’s at an age that she does better at camps where she’s receiving training in something specific rather than general “have fun” camps. Though I still have hopes that she will want to go to a sleepaway camp at some point too.
Also, last week, the theatre camp program took all the kids to New York to see Hamilton. How cool is that? They left on the 8am Vamoose bus and came home at 11pm. Everything – the bus, the show, and dinner – was covered by the camp fees. We sent her with a bagged lunch and some money. It seems like such a milestone for us – we’ve never sent our kid on a trip like this without us. (Well, when she was a baby, my parents would take her to California during the summers, but this feels different because she’s expected to behave and make good choices on her own….) She had an amazing time. But also – it made me think that maybe a day trip to NYC to see a show is a pretty easy thing and I should do that with her at some point this fall.

-My aunt passed away last week. She was my father’s oldest sister. We weren’t exactly close – she lived in Houlong, a small town in Taiwan, and I’ve seen her maybe ten times in my life. But whenever we went to visit she was always so welcoming and generous with her time, making sure that I was enjoying myself, constantly feeding me, taking us around the town on her little scooter. I suppose I am getting to an age where aunts and uncles will soon start to pass – all of my father’s siblings live in Taiwan, and it seems a little unreal to me to hear news of their passings. Since I so rarely go to Taiwan, it is easy to forget, and to think that my aunt will always be there, and that I will see her when I go back this winter.

-On a lighter note – this tweet made me laugh. It is so so so true for us too:

The tweet was linked through this New York Times article on people’s grocery shopping habits. The article was super interesting and indulged a certain voyeur in me. My main takeaway was that Americans buy a lot of cheese. I feel like we buy a lot of cucumbers, apples, berries, and bread. And yes, cheese.
What can’t you wait to stop spending money on?

– Taiwanese Sausage! There are many boba places near work, and one of them also sells food, including Taiwanese sausage. It brings back such memories of being at the Night Markets in Taiwan. I’m trying to limit my boba consumption this summer, but Taiwanese sausage might be a dangerous gateway.

-another food related thing – My favorite salad these days – With the summer glut of zucchini, I’ve been making shaved zucchini salad for lunches. No real recipe, but this is what I do- with a peeler, shave the zucchini into ribbons. Add, salt, pepper, olive oils and red wine vinegar (or whatever acid. I would also use lemons if we had lemons). Mix it up to make sure the ribbons are all dressed. Sprinkle with fresh mint, walnuts, parmesan cheese. Top with an egg for protein. I also threw in some lettuce because we had some to use up. It’s been my go to lunch for the past two weeks. This is my entry in Tobia’s summer salad challenge :).

A Week of Outfits:
The Sunday before the first day of rehearsal, I put together 6 outfits to get me through the week because I knew the mornings would be really busy with three drop offs . It made my part of the morning so much easier not to have to think of what to wear. I’ve been hearing a lot about “Three Words” styling method, where you choose three words to describe your sense of style. There are a variety of the theme floating around, but one version is – one word that is your baseline style, one word that is describes your style aspirations, and one word that describes how you want to feel in your clothes. (I’ve read somewhere that “comfortable” isn’t a style word because we all want to be comfortable.. Because otherwise that would be my word for all three categories.) My words always change, but I think at the moment, I’m going to choose – Colourful, effortless, and playful. I will say, I have a few requirements of my clothes – I have to be able to move easily in it since I move and lift things a lot in rehearsals. Things have to be long enough that I don’t flash the world when I bend down or sit on the ground. Though I do sometime wear bike shorts underneath if it seems dicy. No button or things that I have to zip up the back. I have to get dressed by myself and have never mastered the art of zipping up the back of my own dress. Natural fibers if possible. Elastic waist bands. Pockets. Not black. I wear black a lot when I’m backstage so I try to avoid it when I’m not backstage. Machine washable.

I thought I’d post here the week of outfits. Excuse the bad photos – I’m by no means a fashion blogger. Think of this as “What does a middle aged stage manager mother of three wear?”

Monday: I didn’t take a picture on Monday but it was my blue Wool& Sierra tank dress with a flower patterned Uniqlo shirt over it. Because I’m too lazy top put it back on, here is it on the hanger:

Tuesday – Linen shirt dress. I love this dress because it is so easy breezy. Also – the sleeves are long. I’m trying to cover my arms, or at least my left arm because it gets a lot of sun during my daily commute, so I want a little bit of protection. This is the upper limit of short for me.

Masking because of a COVID precaution. It really took me back…

Wednesday: Poplin stiped skirt, Uniqlo shirt. The skirt is a new purchase – it was on the sale rack at JCPenney’s for $15. I love a nice skirt with pockets and an elastic waistband – there was a whole rack of these skirts, and I thought, “Why aren’t people buying this perfect for summer skirt?!?!?” The label says dirndl skirt, which I thought was funny.

Thursday: Hand me down cardigan from my cousin, yellow and white striped t-shirt from Pact, orange crinkle pants from Old Navy.

Friday: Red Wool& dress with J.Crew poplin men’s button up. The shirt is thrifted and I love everything about it. When I first saw it on the Men’s rack, I thought it had been mishung, but it really is a men’s shirt. Also – I really love my new hair with sunglasses.

Saturday – Was the day off, so no picture. I spent it in running shorts, a sports bra, and a running tank, on the off chance I got out for a run. Which didn’t happen.

Sunday: Olive green shirt dress (Uniqlo) with hat. I love this dress – so easy to wear. It does come with a belt, but I never belt it. I actually bought it when i was pregnant even though it’s not maternity wear. I thought the outfit needed a little something, so I threw on a hat. I used to have many summer hats, but I can only find this one blue one right now. I’ll have to look for the others. At least this hat matches my shoes. (On the note of shoes – I alternate between two pair of shoes in the summer – a pair of aqua Allbirds and a blue slip on Oofos. These are both getting a little worn in the soles, so I’ll need to replace them soon. I’m annoyed that Allbirds now only come in boring grey/black/neutral colours.)

Grateful For (It’s a long list this time because I realized I have two weeks worth here.):
-The Husband. He’s been the primary parent while I’ve been in rehearsals – he’s picked up kids, stayed home with sick ones, arranged play dates, made dinner, made needed purchases, scheduled work on the house, paid contractors… a lot. I feel downright lazy for only having to get the kids to school/camp then go to work every day.

-A box of veggies. Our neighbor was going out of town – you know, just an impulsive trip to the Bahamas like you do when your kids are all older and at camp – so he asked if we would feed his fish and also take this box of veggies from the Farmer’s market. Yes please!

-That I’ve lived to have seen – twice each – a woman run for President and a person of colour run for President. (This might be pre-mature thinking, but probably not.) Look, I don’t care about any one person’s politics. I mean I have my opinions (left leaning, in case it wasn’t clear), but I’m always curious and interested in what people think across the spectrum. I do care, though, that we live in a world where people should see aspects of themselves represented on a national and international stage. Growing up, I wanted to be blond because success was often embodied by beautiful blond people. I’m glad that, hopefully, that is not what achievement has to look like to my kids.

-Google Translate. The current opera is in three different languages since it tells the story of the Scottish, French, and German soldiers. My French is passable enough that I can understand the text, but my German is not (I only took two semesters of German in college.) Enter the miracle of Google Translate – I can just point it at the text, and it translates it for me! Now I know exactly why we need a telegram for that scene and what it should say.

-The Lost and Found. I swear, every day the 7 year old comes home from camp with one less item than when I sent him in the morning. Thank goodness, the camp puts the lost and found out front by the sign in table.

-Other people driving. The past two weeks have been a lot of driving for everyone. Because I work so far away, the Husband had taken over driving to swim practice – so grateful for him for doing that because it is really busy. Then this week, my friend has been driving the 12 year old to her camp because her theatre camp starts at the exact same time as the 7 year old’s ice skating camp. Since my friend’s kids go to a camp not too far from theatre camp, she’s been dropping the 12 year old in the morning. A million thanks to her for doing that.

– The singer M who let me into the building when I had left my swipe card inside after hours. As I was leaving work one day, I went to reach for my car keys, and realized that they were in my purse, which were in the rehearsal hall in the building, the doors of which were swinging shut behind me. Cue PANIC. It was 9pm in the evening and everything was locked and everyone was gone. But then, I saw a singer coming back from dinner to pick up his car, and I have never been so grateful to see a singer in my life. Relief washed over me. He was able to swipe me in and I retrieved my stuff.

-Hand me down bras! I need to re-evaluate my bra game – I’m still wearing nursing bras and my youngest kid will soon be five. But to be fair, those nursing bras are the most comfortable bras I’ve ever worn. When my cousin was visiting, she gave me a whole bag of bras that she had outgrown. Last week, I pulled them out to try on, and they are actually the same Uniqlo bras that I used to buy before I got pregnant with my third kid. Only she bought them in Taiwan so all the labels are in Chinese so it took me a while to realize they were the same bras. What a nice and useful coincidence.

Looking forward to:
-A weekend alone/ hanging out with a friend. The Husband is taking the kids out on an overnight, but I have to work, so I’ll stay behind. I’ll have a glorious day to myself, though. Things on my “want to do” list:
– hang out with my friend, probably hiking
– set the thermostat at 76.
– clean one thing. Either my desk or my craft table or the toy room?
– paint some cards.
– make a batch of hard boiled eggs for next week.
-maybe bake something else.
-read
-write recaps ffor our Maine trip
– run, or maybe even swim?
That’s a lot – I probably won’t get to all that, though.

– We have a friend coming in to town to come see my show in a few weeks. I always love having company. Especially company that is forgiving of the mess and chaos that is life with three kids.

-The Olympics!!! Always fun to watch and hear the stories.

-Started this Audiobook. I’ve never read Emilie Henry, and when I was looking for a new audiobook for my commute I saw this was read by Julia Whelan, so thought, “If nothing else, the narration will be good!” The 12 year old borrowed Book Lovers on audio and has been listening to it, so I figured it wouldn’t be bad to see what all the buzz is about. So far I’ve laughed out loud many times.

What We Ate (two weeks worth – it’s been a very … functional few weeks of eating.)
Monday- Sandwiches at the pool for the Husband and kids. I had veggies and fruit when I got home from work

Tuesday: Chicken salad wraps at the pool. I had tomato furikake sandwiches at home when I got off work. Basically mayo, sliced tomato, furikake seasoning on toasted bread. It was tasty and summer.

Wednesday: Meet the Husband and two little kids for dinner at a hot dog/burger restaurant. I arrived on the late side and ate chili cheese fries and leftover hot dog buns and sausage. I often realize that when we go to restaurants, I don’t really need to order myself food, I can just eat what the kids don’t eat…

Thursday: I ate leftover chicken salad wraps from Tuesday. Not sure what the rest of the family ate.

Friday: Swim Team Pasta Dinner Potluck. I made sesame noodles w/ chicken, cucumber, and peppers. I always feel self conscious about bringing sesame noodles to the Pasta Potluck, but it’s really easy to make and I think it makes a nice break for people who don’t eat tomatoes… (There were leftovers which I was happy to eat all week>)

Saturday: Pizza take out and The Frog Prince. (Which I might have slept through because I was really tired by this point of the week.)

Sunday: Leftover pizza for me. The rest of the family had pizza at the swim team awards banquet.

Monday: Eggplant stir fry with fish. The Husband cooked. This was really tasty as leftovers.

Tuesday: Grilled Chicken drumsticks, steamed broccoli, and leftover eggplant stir fry. I was working this night, so I marinated the chicken ahead of time and the Husband grilled it when he got home. I did a whole Costco size pack of drumsticks so the kids could take them for lunch.

Wednesday: The family went out to eat and I met them at ice cream when I got off work. I had a sandwich for dinner… that is an ice cream sandwich.

Thursday: Green beans and box Mac N Cheese for the Husband and kids. I had leftover sesame noodles at work.

Friday: Chinese Take-out for the Husband and kids and some friends they had over. I had, again, sesame noodles at work.

Okay – I’m off to continue my child-free day!

What’s your favorite summer outfit? Ten points if you can tell me what that stick like prop is.

Weekly recap + what we ate: back to work and July aspirations

Well I started working on my next show. It’s nice to be working out of the house again, but man this whole job thing is a lot. I managed to do three different morning drop offs last week and the 12 year old was only late to musical theatre camp 4 out of 5 times. We’ll do better. The mornings are deceptively languid from 6:55am – 7:30pm and then it’s rush rush rush panic and yell and where are your shoes and get in the car for the next hour. I think I need to re-think the morning structure. Or just accept the freneticism. Or have better systems. Who knows

Some fun things last week:
I did get my haircut. The new stylist worked out pretty well:

The cut isn’t as complicated as the guy I used to go to – it’s a bob rather than a pixie – but I still do like it; it’s a nice change from the pixie, which is what I usually get. I like how short and sharp the bob is, and I like the fringe-y bangs. AND it takes two minutes to shower now that it’s much shorter, which I always LOVE about having short hair. But also – all that grey! I have no interest in colouring my hair – I don’t think I could keep up with it – so I’m trying to go grey gracefully. But it is still a bit of a shock every time I see how much grey hair I have.

-I also had my long overdue well-woman appointment, and got bloodwork done. I don’t have a primary care physician, so my gyn does my bloodwork. She also ordered a thyroid ultrasound because I’ve been having a unending light periods for months now and then she also ordered me a poop in the box kit for colon cancer screening, which I can do instead of a colonoscopy. What a novel thing! Anyhow, I am rubbish about health screenings since I feel pretty healthy most of the time, so it felt like true adulting to go to one doctor’s appointment and have her assign me so many things – kind of like homework. Next up, I need to schedule my eye exam.

-We went skating on Saturday. The lady who does our bi-weekly cleaning is away this month, so on Saturday, we buckled down and had a morning of cleaning. I even cleaned the air registers. But anyhow, as a fun post cleaning activity, we went to the ice rink. At first I thought we could go to the pool. But do you know what is cooler than a swimming pool at 12:30pm in 80+ degree weather? An ice rink.


One of the things I love about going to the ice rink is that one can see so many different levels of ability all at once during free skate. You see the first timers clinging to the sideboards, their skates tied too loosely, ankles akimbo. AND you see the skaters who, while not Olympic caliber, can skate backwards and forwards and jump and spin and also do that hockey stop, you know the kind where you turn your skates sideways and send up a spray of ice. I feel like there aren’t a lot of places you can go to watch people hone their craft the way you can at the ice rink. Part of the fun for me is to watch people try a move again and again and again. There is something so inspiring about seeing all the different levels of skaters, knowing that everyone who I see doing a camel spin at one point was a beginner skater, inching around the ice, clinging to the sideboards.
After the ice rink we made a stop at a playground, at the kids’ request. The playground was nice and shady, but also a little buggy, so we only stayed 30 mins. Then we headed to Dairy Queen. When I go to DQ I always have the same thing – a Heath Bar Blizzard. Is there anything more delicious as a Heath Bar Blizzard on a hot day?

-Another swim meet! I had a different job this time – usually I time, but this time I got to be a runner, running the timing sheets to the people who enter the times into the system. The 12 year old swam her first 100 meter Individual Medley in a meet. That was fun to watch. It was the last meet of the season, except for Divisionals. Strange to think swim team season is wrapping up for the summer already!

Butterfly. It’s such a dramatic looking stroke!

-In other swimming news, I think the two little kids have started to figure out how to swim. So I seem to have misplaced their swim vests. (I say I, but … why do I say “I”? They should be responsible for their own damn swim vests!) So we’ve been going to the pool without swim vests. Which means, that we need to stay in the 3 ft area, or we go to 4 feet with both kids hanging on to me and that’s kind of tedious after a while. Anyhow, maybe this is the case of just taking off the training wheels, but both kids kind of figured out how to swim for two or three meters on their own – the 7 year old by doing his version of streamline, and the 4 year old by doggy paddling. This is kind of exciting to me – the 12 year old was swimming independently by the time she was six, so I was starting to get a little concerned that the 7 year old wasn’t going to figure it out and I would have to be with him in the pool forever. So yay!

-The Hallowe’en costumes are out at Costco!!!! What the what?

June recap and July Aspirations: Mid July seems about right for me to reflect on June and think about what I want to get out of the last 11 days of the month (note, that number was 15 when I started this post, but I’m writing slowly these days, I guess…)

June 2024 Highlights:
-Number 1 highlight definitely is our Family Trip to Maine. I want to write a trip recap, but who knows if it will happen.
-Finishing out the school year for the 12 year old and the 7 year old. Yay!
-Mid day weekday movie date with my friend L to see Babes. We laughed so so so hard, felt all the feels, and going to a movie on a Thursday afternoon just felt decadent.
-Swim team season starting and lots of time at the pool. It’s a bit of an endeavor to get there, but I genuinely enjoy being in the pool.

June 2024 Lowlights:
-The 4 year old not meeting assessment requirement to go to kindergarten early, and then having to start the appeals process.
-Post show malaise. I finished a show Labor Day weekend, and then fell into kind of a slump of not being productive.
-Discovering that our favorite restaurant in the area to get Taiwanese breakfast no longer serves Taiwanese breakfast. And by “our favorite” I mean “the only”. We used to go to this restaurant and be the first ones in the door on a Sunday or Saturday morning. So super bummed about this one. Well, I guess that’s another reason to get excited about our trip to Taiwan later this year
-The start of a heat wave. Can we call it a wave, if it is still hot, three weeks later?

July Aspirations:
– Get through swim team season.
– Start working on a new show. Stay ahead of the paperwork and don’t leave it for the last minute.
-Exercise: 10 mins of yoga/ day. Run. (I’m doing horribly at this. I don’t think I’ve run at all so far in July. But it’s just been so very very very hot.)
-find time to journal daily.
– Have a not miserable commute: good audiobooks/podcasts to listen to, make sure I have ice cold water and snacks at all times.
-Check dates for supertitle gig and poke the organization for a contract
-Plan some details of the Malaysia leg of our trip to Asia.
– The 7 year old wants to make a dress for the 4 year old – help him to this. Though this may be more of a August thing for when my work schedule slows down.
– Make plans to see my friend L who lives near where I’ll be working, and my friend K whom I used to see once or twice a month, but I haven’t seen since April.
-Schedule: Well woman (done), hair cut (done), dentist (scheduled), eye doctor, window treatment company.
– Think about a trip with the 12 year old.
– Declutter: desk, sewing/craft corner, kids’ papers, pantry. (or maybe just pick one.)
– Make more movement towards getting rid of my car. In May (or was it June?) I sent one email to collect information about donating the car to the high school auto repair training program. Then I kind of stalled. (heh heh. But the car hasn’t stalled. Its still runs okay, which is kind of my hang up.) I guess the next step is to fill out the paperwork.
-Eat peaches and summer vegetables. There is something called the Peach Truck that comes through our area and you can get a 12 lb box of peaches for $45. (Or two boxes for $64). My friend and I were going to go in together on a box, but she is going to be on vacation the next time the Peach Truck comes through. Maybe I can eat all 12 lbs myself? I might buy a box and bring it to work.
– Go to bed before midnight 1:00am. (I am not doing well at this one at all so far. It’s mostly prompted by wanting to wake up earlier and not be tired since I have a long commute to my current gig. But the desire to revenge bedtime procrastinate is strong. I’m a little inspired by Lindsay’s Weekly Dare project – maybe I can just go to bed by 11:30pm for one week? )
-Finish my current library books so that I can join Engie in reading I Capture the Castle for Cool Bloggers’ Book Club.

Random Dilemna – What to do with soggy Cheerios? One of my major irritants is that the kids don’t always finish their breakfast in the morning. Sometimes I will just finish it for them, but when the unfinished portion is a bowl of soggy neglected Cheerios… well my desire to not waste food might not extend that far every time. But what do I do with the Cheerios that are too wet to put in the trash and too solid to dump down the drain? I guess we have a garbage disposal so dumping down the sink isn’t the worst idea, but I don’t love dumping things down the sink unless it’s totally necessary. I could drain the milk out… but that seems like a lot of work. There are no good solutions here. (Well, there is, actually – the kids should just eat their Cheerios.) So the bowl of half eaten food just sits on the counter for the whole day until the Cheerios disintegrate into the milk.

Grateful For:
-Shade in the parking lot. It has been sooooooooooooo hot lately. I’m trying to lean into the enveloping feeling of a hot car, but sometimes it is too much. Luckily there are a number of trees in the parking lot at work, so if I’m strategic, I can park in a spot that will be shady when I get off work. I’ve also started putting a towel over the steering wheel during the day so it isn’t as hot when I get in the car.

-Finishing the hiring process for the stage management staff for the upcoming opera season. We’ve staffed the stage management teams for the 2024-2025 season! I never expected when I started the process last December that it would take all the way until July to finish the staffing – we had some people drop out to take other contracts so that kind of prolonged everything. I’m excited for all the returning and new people I’ll get to work with next season. I’m really grateful for my supervisor for leading the process, though. It was my first time working on staffing and she really held my hand and talked through every decision with me. Hiring is hard! Now fingers crossed that no one else withdraws from a contract. Although, sometimes its’ crazy to me to think that in February of 2024, I’m offering work for May of 2025.

-Work from home prep week. Last week, the first week on my contract, was mostly a paperwork week, so I was able to work from home for a lot of it. That was nice because a) I didn’t have to drive around the beltway every day, and b) I could be home and prep things for the afternoon swim practice and c) I could also get done all the life admin things mentioned at the top of this post. I’m thankful for the technology that allows me to work from home. At the same time, I also love being in the rehearsal room. So there are things to be grateful for either way.

– Democracy. It’s a bonkers time in American politics right now, like unbelievably incomprehensible. Or maybe the issue is that it is completely comprehensible if I look at things with empathy. But… I think all things considered, I’m grateful that people still believe in Democracy, despite the spectacle it currently is in America.

Looking Forward To:
-Duckpin bowling! The Husband suggested we go duckpin bowling this weekend as it is an activity that would be cool (as in temperature), family friendly, and screen-free. I’ve never been before, so I’m excited to try out something new.

-Visit from my mother! My mom is coming at the end of August and she’s bringing my aunt with her. It will be right as school starts, so things will be busy for sure, but it will be nice to see her. I haven’t seen her since Spring Break.

-Hearing about the 4 year old’s kindergarten appeal. I had a phone conversation with the person in charge of the 4 year old’s early entrance into kindergarten appeal. She was lovely and I was able to share all the bright and clever things that the 4 year old can do and also explain why I thought her reading scores were low. The appeals lady said she was surprised the reading skills score was so low because the 4 year old scored so high in all the other areas. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but fingers crossed.

-The 12 year old’s musical theatre camp showcase. They are doing various scenes from musicals and she is playing Fiona in the Shrek excerpt. Can’t wait to see it.

What We Ate:
Monday: Grilled Eggplant Salad – Recipe from the Washington Post. Dinner at the pool. I thought this was really tasty – It had a Southeast Asian flavor profile with mint and coconut and cashews. I added grilled tofu for protein. It was not a hit with the kids, and I will admit that the coconut dressing, which was delicious, looked like a certain bodily fluid. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pasta and meatballs. Dinner at the pool. The 4 year old’s request. I made turkey ricotta meatballs on Sunday, froze them, then popped them into the InstantPot on Tuesday morning with a jar of tomato sauce.

Wednesday: We met up with our friend for dinner. I had a very tasty burger and a salad. And then we had amazing desserts: creme brulee and sticky toffee bread pudding. I will almost always order crème brûlée if I see it on a menu.

Thursday: Chicken Salad Sandwich wraps – dinner at the pool. Chicken salad from the deli counter – really tasty.

Friday: Dumplings (from frozen – these were the Ling Ling brand- eaten at the pool), then pizza and Glee after swim practice.

Saturday: Dumplings (from frozen – these were the ones purchased at our favorite dumpling house), and green beans, eaten while watching King Fun Panda 4. Cute movie.

Sunday: fend for yourself nights – leftovers, noodles and dumplings and we started watching The Acolyte. How did we manage to eat dumplings three nights in a row? Well, 1)the kids LOVE dumplings so will always eat them. 2) they’re frozen and convenient so we almost always have them around, 3) they only take ten minutes to cook up.

Weekly recap + what we ate: July 4th and Swim season routines and favorites

Rainy bike ride on the Fourth of July.

If you’re visiting me via NGS’s website and my guest post there – hello and welcome! It was kind of a freak coincidence that I guest posted on two blogs a week apart, but that’s mostly because I knew that if I didn’t get a guest post written before I went back to work mid-July, it wasn’t going to happen, and I very much wanted to make it happen. At any rate – I suspect most of you read NGS’s blog already, but if you don’t you should – she writes in a bracingly honest manner about books, every day routines, her adorable dog and cat, and life’s conundrums big and small. My guest post there celebrates her twenty (!) years of blogging by naming twenty operas I love. Thanks for having me, Engie!!!

Last week, my cousins came to visit, and it was deeelightful! By cousins, I mean my father’s oldest niece K and her daughter E. So K is technically the one who is my cousin, but in Mandarin, I call her “older sister”. I guess that makes E my second cousin? Anyhow, they came and it was heavenly. They played with the kids, read them book, had mediation sessions with them (!), and taught them how to make all sorts of Taiwanese treats. It was like they ran a three day Taiwanese summer camp for them out of my house. The kitchen was constantly buzzing while they made things like di gua yuan – little balls, made of yams (or taro) and cassava flour -they’re kind of the same texture as boba, but bigger, and you eat them in a sugar syrup or over shaved ice.

These purple ones are made with taro.

Shaved ice. My cousin brought us a shaved ice machine. Taiwanese shaved ice is a lot finer than a regular snow cone and comes with a wide variety of toppings. We had shaved ice with condensed milk and the taro balls, but you can also do it with red beans, fruit, boba… It’s a nice treat.

They did such a good job of taking turns on the shaved ice machine!

Onigiri. My cousin also brought a little mold to make these seaweed wrapped rice triangles. The four year old loved making them, and called them “Sand Castles” because you pack the rice in the mold then push out a perfectly formed little triangle, like you would a sand castle.

Rice Triangle – perfect pool food! The 7 year old did not want seaweed on his, so he just has rice, vegetables, and pork floss.

AND they picked up around our house. At first I was a little embarrassed by how my Cousin was constantly tidying our very messy house, but then E told me that Cousin K LOVES to clean. I realized that she is a tidier and it made her happy to be able to make our house a little nicer, so I leaned into it and just decided to be thankful and happy.

On the last night of their visit, we went to Hot Pot, and then ice cream. It was one of those sticky summer nights, made even more sticky by the heat and drippy ice cream cones, but the kids didn’t care. They played on the fake grass, running around and doing cartwheels. Which – the four year old can do a half decent cartwheel. I hadn’t known she could do that. What a charming surprise the first time I saw her flip her legs in the air and kind of land on her feet.

All in all it was a wonderful visit!

Other things on my mind… Going into this summer, juggling swim team season was one of my biggest worries, but with two weeks left, I think we’ve gotten the hang of things, so I wanted to write future me a note about what is working/what is not working currently with the current swim/evening routine. The current breakdown:

3:30/4:00pm– start prepping dinner for the pool and packing swim bag. Make sure 12 year old eats a snack. This worked well when I wasn’t working, but it’s going to be tricky when I go back to work for the last two weeks of swim team season. It might be a lot of food prep and take out.
4:30pm– kids hopefully home from school/camp, we all put swimsuits on.
4:45pm– drive to pool.
5:00-5:30pm– little kids go to their pre-team session/ 12 year old and I swim. She’s trying to teach me how to do a handstand in the water :).
5:30pm– pool time free play. I make the kids stay in the pool until adult swim or else we lose a bit of momentum.
5:45pm– adult swim – we get out of the pool. The 4 year old and 7 year old eat dinner. The 12 year old eats another snack if she is still hungry.
6:00pm– we are all back in the pool- big pool or baby pool, depending.
6:15pm– 12 year old moves to swim team practice. I continue pool free time with the two littles.
7:15pm– I get the 4 and 7 year old out of the pool- they take showers and get into their pjs. I take my shower while they are getting dressed.
7:30/7:45pm– 12 year old done practice. We head home.
8:00pm – home. This is where it all goes south a little. ideally, the little kids can brush their teeth and go straight to bed. But often they want to stay up or have another snack. The 12 year old eats the rest of her dinner. I hang up swim sits and clean out lunch boxes, scroll a little on my phone. On Fridays, we come home and have pizza and watch Glee, kind of our summer version of Friday pizza and movie night.
9:00pm/9:30pm – The little kids go to bed. Hopefully. Requires some cuddling/book time from us. This is on the later side, but I figure it’s summer so things slide a little bit.
10:00pm – the 12 year old goes to bed. If I haven’t already fallen asleep while cuddling with the little kids, then I do some more pick up/scrolling/sometimes I watch some tv with the Husband.
Eventually, depending – I go to bed.

My current pool bag pack:
-Two towels – one for me and one extra (I’ve been using Turkish towels – I love them because they are thin and pack well.)
-Two hooded towel/ponchos, one for each little kid. I found these in the bargain bin at Bed Bath and Beyond last year. Love them – so easy to just pop on the kids.
– Space Bag with goggles (kids and mine), and pool toys (it varies, but currently water guns and mini beach balls), and a nose plug for the 7 year old that he wears intermittently
-Space Bag with pjs for the kids and change of underwear for me.
-my rash guard
-Sunscreen (Spray and lotion)
-Shampoo/body wash and conditioner
-lotion
-a book
-The two little kids have swim vests, but they are in charge of bringing those themselves.

The pain points I’m finding in the current routine:
-The big one is that we don’t get to eat dinner together as a family. I realize that we don’t eat dinner a whole lot together when I’m working evenings, so this shouldn’t be a big deal, but I do feel like the Husband is missing out a little bit. BUT we still do pizza and Glee on Fridays, and actually there is no swim practice on Wednesday nights, so we do have dinner together on Wednesday nights.

-I wish I had a different pool bag. I have one of those Classic L.L. Bean Tote bags that are ubiquitous. It used to belong to my Mother-In-Law, and it’s certainly a workhorse, but it’s really awkward for me to carry. The handles are a too short to sling on my shoulder, so I have to carry the bag by my side, which is ungainly when the bag is full and knocking against me. (Though I hear that carrying things at your side is ergonomically better.) I feel like this is the kind of thing I will just be vaguely annoyed at for three months a year and just live with. What I really want is for the two little kids to start packing and carrying (and remembering) their own stuff for the pool. Then my bag would be lighter. (The 12 year old has long been in charge of her own stuff.) Maybe next year is the year I get the two little kids their own swim bags.

-I wish I could take some time to just swim laps. I know swimming is great exercise, but I have to always be watching the two little ones because they still are not strong swimmers. In my ideal world, the 12 year old would watch them during adult swim, but she wants to hang out with her friends and I want her to do that as well. At any rate, it’s kind of a non-issue right now because the weather so hot, there are mandatory pool breaks for everyone, so even the grown ups have to get out of the pool during adult swim. One day, though, I aspire to be able to swim laps. Maybe one day if I don’t have to be at work until later, I’ll sneak in a quick trip the pool on my own.

-I don’t think I’m packing a big enough dinner for the kids and certainly not enough vegetables. Pool dinners are all about what is easy to eat, portable, and appealing to the kids. So it is a combination of whatever fits in the thermos and snack food. I’ve been letting the kids pick a “pool snack” each week, which is usually chips or some kind of salty snacks. Which, is there anything more summer than a bag of salt an vinegar chips eaten by the pool with wet fingers? anyhow, I feel like the pool dinners I pack aren’t ideally balanced and the kids are still hungry when they get home. (Or they are trying to delay bedtime?). Still need to figure this one out.

-There is no time for anything else with the kids. So no picking up, no practicing piano, no chores. Which I think is not the worst thing for summer, but the house is getting gradually messier and messier and I end up staying up late to clean and revenge bedtime procrastinate.

BUT I remind myself that there are only two more weeks left of swim team, so this is just a busy season right now. Because we are lucky, especially in the 90+ degree heat we’ve been having, to be able to go to the pool and cool off in the evenings. It actually feels wonderful. So I’ll live with the messy living room and chlorine scented skin and rack of constantly damp swimwear in the sunroom, because there is a lot of joy and fun to be had these days as well.

On the Flip side – the things saving me this pool season:
– Thermos and lunch box. I gave these a shout out last week, but these have been great for packing dinners for the pool.

-Everyone Lotion. My brother introduced me to this brand last summer. I’ve never been brand loyal to any one lotion, but I really like this one. It’s unscented, and not too thick and not too runny, and rubs in cleanly and isn’t too expensive and doesn’t have too many ingredients. This is what we use to keep our skin from drying out from pool water and frequent showering. We have the large bottle and then decant into a smaller bottle for the pool. I’ve also been using their kids’ body wash/ shampoo as well.

-Rash guard and goggles. In an act of adulting, I finally bought myself a rash guard and a pair of goggles. I’ve never been into rash guards because I don’t like pulling a wet bathing suit over my head. But then I realized if I wore a rash guard, I wouldn’t have to put on sunscreen on my arms and back. So when I saw this zip up rash guard hoodie on sale at Lands End, I decided to try it. Friends, what an amazingly sensible thing to wear! It keeps me protected, even my neck when I pull up the hood, and it keeps me a little warmer in the pool. I don’t know why I resisted sensible things. Same with goggles. I have terrible eyesight so I always just wore my sunglasses in the pool. But then I bought a pair of tinted goggles to help with my attempt to learn how to do a handstand, and again, wow! What a practical thing! I learned that I don’t really need to see too precisely in the pool and that I can put my head underwater and that I actually find being submerged kind of relaxing.

-Drying rack – The kids only have two sets of swim clothes, so we have to remember to hang up our swim stuff right away so that it will dry for the next day. I love our drying rack. I used to dry things in the bathroom, but they dry so much more quickly in the sun room. And I pretend that the drying clothes are contributing a nice moist air for all the plants in our sun room.

-Swimsuit cover up – Last summer, I bought this hooded swimsuit cover up from a booth at a festival. The booth primarily sold Turkish towels, and they also had beach cover ups made from the same material as their towels. I love this cover up – it is substantial enough that I can wear it with or without my bathing suit underneath. It’s really soft and comfortable. There’s a hood, for when I want a bit of protection for the back of my neck. And if I put it on over wet clothes, it absorbs most of the water, no glaringly awkward wet patches. It’s one of those things that seem pricey at the time, but I’ve worn it four days a week for the past month, so it’s been worth it.

This is the one I have, but in blue.

-Showers at the pool. Something clicked this year and the 7 year old has decided that he wants to take showers rather than baths. Yay! We’ve never been a “shower every day” family, but in the summer with sweat and sunscreen, we definitely need to up the bathing game. One of the best thing about evenings at the pool is I have the kids shower and get into pjs once we are done, so we arrive home clean and one step closer to bed. I love having that one step taken out of our evening routine. (Though I guess it’s just been moved to a different part of the routine…). Also I’m really glad that the kids can get dressed by themselves so that I can grab a shower too. I’ve never been more bathed in my life.

So that’s the swim life set up for us. Whew. It’s a big chunk if our lives right now.

Grateful For:
-Finding Uh-Oh Bear! We have a little stuffed bear that a friend gave us when the oldest was a baby (or maybe it was the middle child?). We call the bear Uh-Oh Bear because whichever child had the bear loved to throw it on the floor and say, “Uh-Oh!”. Uh-oh Bear came with us to Maine, but then we couldn’t find him when we were checking out of our last hotel. We thought we had maybe left him in Maine and were really sad about it because Uh-Oh Bear is a very beloved stuffy. (I know I probably should just make the kids leave the stuffies at home when we travel, but they love them so much. Last year when we went to Amsterdam we lost another stuffed bear on the plane. We aren’t great with not losing things…) Well, this week, I was getting ready for the morning when the kids came running up to me, super excitedly yelling, “WE FOUND UH-OH BEAR!!!”. The kids found him in the bottom of the 7 year old’s backpack. Hooray! I mean I have all sorts of questions as to why the 7 year old didn’t empty his backpack like I asked him to when we got home two weeks ago, but I’m just going to be grateful for now that Uh-Oh Bear is back with us.

-Beautiful skies. The weather has been so unbearably hot, but there have been some beautiful sunsets:

-A bit of rain and A Capitol Fourth and a nice chill Fourth of July. My Cousins wanted to watch Inside Out (the first one) before they got on the road home, and it was the perfect, cozy early afternoon activity on a hot day. After my cousins left, I realized that I hadn’t been outside all day, so I persuaded the 7 year old to go out with me – he on his bike, and I for a run alongside him. Just as we stepped outside, it started to sprinkle. I asked the 7 year old if he wanted to just stay home, and he said, no it’s not too much rain. So we went for a rainy walk/ bike ride and it was lovely. And then we came home and puttered and ate leftovers for dinner and then watched A Capitol Fourth.
When the 12 year old was little, I worked in Colorado during the summers, and my boss would always have a party on the Fourth of July where we ate food and swapped theatre stories while 1776 played in the background. Her house was on the top of a hill and had a perfect view of the fireworks the next town over. Only the the three year old was scared of fireworks, so we always just stayed in the house. Which is all to say, we’ve never really gone to see fireworks. There are also logistical issues too currently – our County has two firework displays, but they start so late (9pm – I get that it needs to be dark) and the one closest to us, you have to take a shuttle to get to the viewing location and actually isn’t even on the Fourth, it’s the Saturday after. It just has always seemed like a lot of work to go see fireworks. This year, the kids asked to go see fireworks, but I couldn’t wrap my head around going, so we stayed home and, as is our tradition, watched A Capitol Fourth and saw fireworks on TV instead. I actually love our little tradition – we get to see some really great performances, and then see fireworks over the Washington Monument, which is always very patriotic feeling. And then we fall asleep on the couch. Even though we don’t have cable, Capitol Fourth is streamed for free online – another thing to be grateful for. Maybe next year, I’ll think about taking the kids to see fireworks live, but for this year, watching them on TV was kind of nice too.

-Walkie talkies and the hours of play the kids have with them. I had gotten some walkie talkies last year for the kids to take camping, and last week they pulled them out and started talking to each other with them, carrying them with them at all times. There was one day when we went to run errands at Old Navy and the salesperson thought that they had taken the Old Navy staff walkie talkies and told the kids to put them back. It was hilarious and slightly embarrassing. My favorite moment from last week – this moment where I went to the park with the 7 year old – he insisted I take one walkie talkie with me while he held the other. It was a hot hot hot day, and when we got to the park, he sat at the bottom of the slide and just started talking to me on the walkie talkie – just one of those ordinary 7 year old conversations. It made me smile, this moment of him wanting to be far away, but still communicate. There’s a metaphor for something in that.

You can see his little legs hanging over the edge of the slide.

Looking Forward To:
-Figuring out kid drop off/ pick up logistics. This one is actually causing me a little bit of anxiety, so I’m going to re-frame it and say I’m looking forward to things all working out. Each of the three kids will have drop offs at different locations – the 4 year old at her usual day care, the 7 year old at camp at a nearby school, and the 12 year old at theatre camp. The 12 year old’s camp is the farthest away and starts at 9am. I’ve paid for before/after care for the 7 year old so I can drop him at before 9:00 am, probably at 8:40p. The 4 year old will get dropped at school at 8:30am. At least that is the current plan. There is also a lot of things for each kid to bring to school/camp – the 12 year old’s camp requires jazz shoes and a pencil and a 3 ring binder and a recording device (see above). The 7 year old’s camp has water play every day so he needs to bring swim suits and a change of clothes and a towel and sunscreen. And of course all three kids need lunches and water bottles. It all feels like a lot right now, so I’m looking forward to when it doesn’t feel like a lot and just feels like routine. Pick up is also going to be hard… will report back on how that works out. (Okay, two days in, and first day we were 5 minutes late for the 12 year old’s camp, second day we were right on time, but that also felt kind of late. We’ll continue to try to do better….)

-Getting my hair cut! I finally achieved my deal with myself where I wouldn’t get my hair cut until I scheduled my well woman exam. And I did that, and now as a reward I’m getting my hair cut this week. I’m looking forward to having bangs again and getting my hair off my neck, and the quicker showers that come with short hair. I’m trying out a new stylist that my friend recommended. I feel bad for not going back to the stylist that I’ve been seeing for over fifteen years, but it’s gotten so expensive to go to that salon – last year when I was there, it was $120, including the tip. This is just a cut – I don’t do colour or anything like that. I feel conflicted about balking at the cost because I do think people should be paid for their work, but $120 twice a year is a lot. And honestly, I like to keep my hair short, so ideally I would go three or four times a year. But then again, maybe it’s not so bad? Would I pay $120 for a dress? I’m sure I have, and I wear my hair every day so if we are thinking of cost per wear … Anyhow, I’m trying out a new stylist. My friend says if it works out with her stylist, we should schedule back to back hair appointments in have a friend date in the future.

– Starting work on a new show! I start prepping for my next show this week. I’m really excited about this show. I am not excited about the commute though – it’s the kind of commute that can either take 20 minutes or 75 minutes, depending on time of day. I’m going to stock up on podcasts and audiobooks and make sure I have good car snacks and cold water on hand. Currently in my listening queue, Oh Beautiful by Jun Yung – which is not the book I thought it was going to be, and I don’t love it yet – and BBC Radio Drama version of Agatha Christie’s Sad Cypress. I discovered these Agatha Christie radio adaptations last year, and I love them – they are all between one and two hours long, and keep me attentive. It’s interesting to me that the audiobook might be 7 hours long, but the radio play is only 1 – so what is lost/what is kept? I guess there are no descriptions of people or places – everything is done with sound effects and acting. So you might not know that the lady is in a mousy brown suit, but what the mousy brown suit tells you about a character must instead by conveyed through the actor’s portrayal.

-Watching more of this, my current “watch while I late night clean” show. I’m finding it eye-opening, sweet and cringey and so so so human. There is one bit where the main character, gender-fluid Sabi meets trans Olympia and asks her when she knew she wanted to transition, and Olympia says, “Every person is constantly growing into a better version of themselves. We’re all in transition.” I love that thought.

What We Ate:
Monday: Smitten Kitchen’s Coconut Rice with fried tofu and roasted sweet potato and cauliflower. This is the coconut rice from Smitten Kitchen Keeper which I keep making because it is so delicious. I tried making the coconut rice in the InstantPot this time and it worked out really well. Remember that for next time. Vegan.

Tuesday: Ramen – eaten at the pool. Ramen is a ridiculously easy thing to pack for pool dinner. I added chicken, broccoli, and frozen peas to it to bulk it up a little bit.

Wednesday: Hot Pot Dinner out with cousins K and E.

Thursday: Fourth of July, but we didn’t do anything special – we ate bagels adn other leftovers.

Friday: pizza and Glee. The Husband also made a salad.

Saturday: leftover pizza and Sing 2 and salad.

Sunday: Ramen, leftovers, whatever one could find. Sunday was kind of a random grab bag of things because I think we were just done with structured activities like cooking and eating at this point. We had a swim meet in the morning until 1pm, and then I spent the rest of the day prepping for the upcoming week while the kids did Lord knows what. There were forts and books and lots of chattering and screens – for the two littles I had borrowed these tablets from the library that are pre-loaded with educational games. It scratches that itch of being on a screen without me having to 1) actually buy them a screen, and 2) worry about what kind of inappropriate content they’re going to stumble on. And then periodically a kids would say, “I’m hungry!” and I would find them something to eat and they would eat and them move on then come back and eat some more. It’s funny how much our days are anchored around mealtimes – without any set mealtimes on this day, the whole day felt a little unmoored. But I think that’s okay once in a while.

How was your week? Any lost things found?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to summer and three small mind-blowing solutions

First of all – Elisabeth so kindly asked me to write a guest post for her! I was thrilled to do it and spill a lot -hopefully not too much. I imagine everyone who reads my blog already reads hers, but if you haven’t read hers yet, go there because not only does she write the most whimsical and heartfelt posts, she also has the best community of commenters there.

Anyhow, on to this past week – We got back from Maine last Sunday night. Sunday morning, as we were gathering to check out of the hotel, my friend texted me:

How awesome was that?!? Because honestly, the last thing I wanted to do after five hours in the car and eight days away from home was try to figure out dinner. So we got home around 6:00pm, unloaded the car and then went over for a dinner of ribs and grilled veggies and salads and good company. It was the perfect way to come home.

The past week has been a combination of relaxing and hard. Relaxing because it is summer and the kids are not yet in camp and I’m not yet working. So we do things at a slower pace. The bed times are later, the mornings stretch out. The afternoons seem infinite.

The hard part is there is currently a general lack of routine. I guess that’s the the flip side of the relaxing pace. The kids take forever to get out the door to anything. The house get messier so much more quickly because we are home all. the. time. It’s easy to to keep a house clean when we’re gone for eight hours a day and then have a routine pick up time. But when we are always home, things get left out or moved around or just generally lived in. And I don’t want to spend all my time picking up or cleaning so things get to be a bit of a pit by 4pm every day. I would rather be doing something other than cleaning. Or doing nothing. We’ve run errands, gone to swim lessons (always running late) and swim team practice (mostly on time), I’ve made dinner every night, I’ve managed to get the 7 year old to practice piano – small things like that. And then also – I’m with kids all. the. time. I haven’t been able to run or write or do any thing that gets me to a flow state, which makes life feel very jagged. And then, there’s the sibling squabbling. The 12 year old and the 7 year old have been home and constantly at each other’s throats.

One day, I asked them, “Why are you guys always fighting?”

To which the 7 year old replies, “Mom, that’s just how we communicate!”

Huh.

I’m having a low level sense of guilt and panic that we haven’t done summer enough. Next week, the 12 year old starts camp this week, and then the week after that I start working on my next show. This past week was essentially our only week to check all the summer fun boxes, and I feel like I didn’t get to a lot. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival was this week, something we usually enjoy doing, but it was so hot and what with our metro station closed, I couldn’t muster the energy to go down to the Mall. There were no trips to amusement parks or water parks or hikes or adventures to find ice cream or camping. This last one makes me wistful the most. There is so. much. pressure. to wring the life out of summer, and realizing that I didn’t do it the past week and will likely not get to it is kind of a bummer. BUT… I remind myself – we did just come back from our trip to Maine, and it has be excruciatingly hot… so maybe laying low and being domestic and chill was the right thing to do this week. And who knows what pockets of time I’ll find between shows in August?

These are all very much first world problems. So some good things, though:
– One day was hideously hot, so I declared we’d abscond to the basement and have a movie afternoon. We watched Night at the Museum, which I’d never seen before. What a fun movie! It felt really indulgent to watch a movie in the middle of the day. But also a perfect way to spend a summer day.
-Boba Tea. I shamelessly bribe the 12 year old to do things with me by promising her boba. Boba tea is my hot weather beverage of choice – oolong tea (sometimes with milk), 25% sugar, boba and lychee jelly. Makes me so happy – to have the 12 year old’s company and a boba tea. Maybe I’m just using her as an excuse to have a boba.
– Watching the kids swim at the swim meet. The two little kids aren’t officially on the swim team, but at the start of every meet, the kids on the pre-team have a kickboard race, where they swim one length with a kickboard and a swim buddy. It’s been fun watching them. And then the 12 year old has been killing it at her meets too, dropping time with each swim. On Sunday, her goggles flipped off when she dove in for her freestyle race, but she still swam like the dickens and came in second. Kind of makes it worth it to stand in the heat for four hours volunteering.


– Reading by the baby pool. The two little kids have been mostly wanting to play in the baby pool these days. We’ll usually go in the big pool for 30 minutes or so, and then they’ll move the the baby pool and spend the rest of their time there. Since I don’t have to go in the baby pool with them, I just sit on the side and read my book. Also – our pool renovated the baby pool this year, so there is a new beach entry at one end, and also bubblers and the kids love it.
-One day we went to the park and I got the 12 year old to go running with me. We only went one mile, and I had to bribe her with listening to an audiobook as we ran – we finished The Comeback – hearts all around. BUT it was still doing a physical activity with the 12 year old. I feel like it’s a win anytime I can get the 12 year old to do something with me..
-Singing showtunes together. One evening, we had a little bit of time before bed, so the kids and I gathered around the piano and sang songs, mostly musicals, also some Bruno Mars (Lest you think I’m hip with pop culture or what not, let me reassure you that up until a week ago, I had no idea who he really was. I heard “You Can Count On Me” while waiting in a store or something and it was catchy so I googled it.) Making music is fun. We should do it more.
-Fruit! There were lychees and Kent Mangos at Hmart this week. I always forget what kind of mangos are my favorite, so I’m writing it here – Kent mangos sweet and firm and not stringy.
-Celebrating a friend’s 90th birthday. He is the father of our former neighbors and the family had a celebration. I’m glad we were invited and went because we don’t see him very much these days.
-Adulting me scheduled (finally) my well woman exam. It had been so long since my last one that I am now considered a new patient. At first, I was told that the next available appointment with my doctor was not until September. SEPTEMBER! but then they found an appointment in two weeks at a mildly inconvenient time for me. But I’m going to make it work. Next stop – need to make appointments for haircut, dentist, and eye exam. Whoa. Okay. One adulting step at a time.

Three mind-blowingly simple solutions: So you know the things that sort of bug you, the pebbles in the shoes that so irk you, but you just kind of live with. Here are three things that were fixed in mind-blowingly simple ways recently:
– Watermelon cutting. One of my favorite things about summer is watermelon season. I grew up with the conventional “cut watermelon into wedges” method. It was simple, and everyone could eat watermelon with their hands. Only, it didn’t made for a neat an easy way to store the cut up watermelon in a container in the fridge – watermelon wedges are very inefficient, space-wise and I could never fit very many slices in the container. So lately, I’ve been just cubing the whole watermelon. I can fit half a watermelon in my largest plastic storage container when they are all cut up. BUT the kids prefer to have it in wedges. They like being able to hold on to a piece and wander around the house eating it and dripping watermelon juice everywhere and leaving watermelon rinds on random surfaces. (This is my least favorite part of watermelon season.) So whenever the kids see me cutting up watermelon, they say, “Don’t cut it all! Can you cut me a triangle piece?” Which is fine, only they also never manage to eat all the way down to the rind on wedges. I think something about the curve makes it hard to get all the pink/red watermelon flesh. Anyhow, irksome casualty of watermelon eating, I guess.
BUT I was at my friends’ house (the friend who made us dinner the night we got home from our Maine trip), and she had cut her watermelon into rectangles with the rind attached:

MIND BLOWN!!!! the rectangles fit neatly in a container, AND they have the rind so kids can eat it with their hands, AND they eat all the way down to the white parts because they can get to it without getting their face dirty. It was amazing. This is my new way of cutting watermelon. Now, I will say, the whole watermelon doesn’t lend itself to being cut into rectangles, so I still cut the flesh away for the rind at those parts and make that fleshy part of the watermelon into cubes and put into a container – which is great because I actually prefer eating watermelon with the rind already disposed of.

– Sleep shorts. I had been sleeping in flannel lounge pants that we had bought in Vermont two summers ago. I love these flannel pants – we actually have matching flannel sleep pants for the family – it’s pretty cute. But it’s now summer and I don’t know if it’s me being mid-40s or what, but it’s been way too hot to sleep in flannel sleep pants. I’ve been hunting around for cotton sleep sets, but it’s so hard to tell online what things are like and most things these days are a cotton blend, which might feel soft, but just makes me feel hotter. Also, so many of the sleep sets have button down tops, and though they look super cute, buttons are a little too much for me to have to deal with late at night when I’m stumbling to bed. So I’ve been just sleeping in flannel pjs and being hot. Also, I do like to sleep with a duvet regardless of temperature – something about burrowing into it is comforting and helps me sleep. So hot me, looking for sleep shorts, feeling overwhelmed and annoyed.
Then I went to Uniqlo to buy some shorts for the 12 year old. (I love that Uniqlo has unisex clothes. Because – pardon the rant – but why are girls’ shorts SO short? My tween certainly does not want to be wearing shorts with a 2″ inseam! Anyhow, I found shorts for her at Uniqlo – the men’s Airism line. They don’t come in cute colours or patterns like they the 2″ ones, but at least this way, she’s comfortable. Plus she doesn’t really care about colours.) Anyhow, I’m at Uniqlo and looking around, and I see a mannequin with these cute striped shorts on, and I take a closer look and they are… men’s boxers! So I go over to the men’s section and look at the boxers – they are 100% cotton (except for the elastic waist) and look exactly like what I want to sleep in. So I buy two pairs – another bonus, they’re men’s clothes so it’s like $15 for two pairs. And BAM! I’ve found the perfect sleep short. They are cool crisp cotton, not clingy jersey cotton, there is a button on the fly, so I don’t have to worry about awkwardly flashing anyone that way. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t think of this before because in my 20s I did wear a boyfriend’s boxers to sleep. But anyhow, another mind-blowingly simple solution for something. And now I’m sleeping much cooler.

I wear a size Men’s large. I’m trying not to let this get to my vanity.

–Speeding Tickets. Third one – this one actually happened a couple of months ago, but it’s kind of stuck in my mind, so here it is. Driving to the theatre, there is one street I have to go down. It’s a residential street and about once a year I get a speeding ticket. ARGH!!! so frustrating. Part of the issue is that the light is out on my dashboard, so I can’t really see the speedometer at night, and I drive a lot at night and the street is pretty dark. So I was trying to do all sorts of awkward things to keep from speeding – driving with the domelight on, counting telephone poles as I drove, etc… Then one day, I was coming down the parkway headed to this speed trap street and for some reason I can’t even remember why now, I just decided to get off the parkway earlier and go home a different way. A way without speed cameras and more light. And after that, I decided to always take that other road home, and you know what… I haven’t gotten anothefr speeding ticket since. I mean how mind-blowingly simple was that? Just go home the way without a speed camera and avoid speeding tickets. It’s embarrassing how long it took me to figure that one out.

Can I tell you a frustrating story from this weekend? I was dropping the 7 year old off at a birthday party, and I was trying to parallel park into one of the only parking spots I could find, but there was a car double parked in front of the free spot. I think they were waiting for a food order. I’m getting better at parallel parking, but doing it next to a double parked car is nigh on impossible for me. At one point, the double parked car saw that I was trying to get into the space and inched forward like a foot, but that was not helpful. (This is where the Husband said I needed to use my horn. I am very horn averse. It just seems loud and aggressive.) So I’m going back and forth and back and forth. I should have given up and moved on, only we were already late to the party and sometimes I get really fixated on things, especially when I think I’m right (this is my spot) and the other person is being an asshole (just freakin’ go around the block while waiting for your food, dumb nuts!). So I’m in a manual car and the parking space is on the slightest of inclines and this is also turning into a noisy attempt as every time I shift into first, I have to give it a lot of gas. It’s been going on a while when I look up and there’s a guy standing next to my car. A very nice looking young man with a helpful expression on his face.
“Ma’am,” he says, “I think your parking brake is on.”
And I just had to laugh. “No, actually,” I told him, “I’m just driving a manual car. But thank you.” While thinking to myself, “Are you even old enough to know how to drive a manual car?”
He immediately looked apologetic and backed off. I tried to give him a friendly wave because I thought it was actually kind of sweet that he wanted to help. Maybe a little mansplain-y, but you could tell he was just trying to do the right thing. It kind of made me hate the world a little less. Except maybe that guy double parked in front of me.

Okay, one more smile from this week – the 4 year old’s class wrote a list of things to know for kids moving up into their classroom. I wonder if our kid wrote the fifth item.

Grateful For:
– The grill. On days when it is too hot to turn on the stove, I can make dinner outside.

-Meeting people from other places. I was a little nervous going to the aforementioned 90th birthday party – we didn’t really know anyone other than the hosts and being a stranger always puts me out of my comfort zone. But the party ended up being really lovely. There were the most fascinating well-travelled guests there – a lot of them expats or people working for the IMF or some such – it seems a very DC kind of thing. And they all had great stories to tell about living in places like Kenya and Ethiopia and Kuala Lumpur. I learned about these Orthodox Christian churches in Ethiopia that were carved out of rocks in the late 12th century, and was given a very brief history of Christianity in Ethiopia. It was fascinating and something I knew nothing about. I heard stories of immigration and about living a first world life in a third world country. It was really inspirational to talk to these people and I’m glad they shared their stories with me. The world has so many adventures to be had.

-Shade at the playground. We’ve been going to the playground in the morning, but it’s been really hot – like 85-90 degrees hot. Thankfully at one playground there is a covered pavilion and at the other playground there are lots of trees, so I can sit in the shade while the kid plays. It’s actually not too bad in the shade -it’s the rays of the hot hot sun that really get to me.

-Thermos and lunchboxes so I can pack healthy dinners for the pool. Also dill pickle chips because those are tasty too.

Looking Forward To:
-Vegetables. We don’t eat enough vegetables when we travel, so I’m really looking forward to some veggie packed meals this week. We went to the farmer’s market this weekend – I had realized that it was silly not to take advantage of summer produce, even though my favorite produce stand is closed, so we found a farmer’s market on Sunday. We came away with greens, zucchini, Japanese (or are they Italian?) eggplants, cucumbers, cauliflower, carrots, and a 1/2 bushel of peaches. I can’t wait to prepare and eat it all.

-My cousins are coming to visit! They will be here for a few days. I think we are just going to do life things. It’s hard to motivate to go downtown to all the museums when our metro stop is closed, but maybe we’ll drive down and I can park at work?

-Devouring this book:

I’m not usually into time travel books or political spy thrillers, and this book is kind of a mash up of those genres. I picked up this book because it promised a love story and was written by a British-Cambodian author, and I’ve been sucked in and reading it every chance I get. I tore through it and then realized that I have only a few more chapters to go, so I slowed down my pace a little so I could draw it out as much as possible as I get to the end.

What We Ate – A lot of dinners at the pool this week. I think I have come up with a formula – a main that is some kind of carb/grain, protein, veggie that can be eaten out of a thermos + crunchy snack food + fruit. It seems to be working pretty well, but it does mean that in order to be at the pool by 5:00pm, I need to start making/prepping dinner at 3:30pm. I don’t know how this is going to work when I go back to work and have a commute…

Sunday: home from Portland, dinner with friends. They made ribs, caprese salad, slaw, grilled veggies, corn, and watermelon (cut into rectangle wedges!)

Monday: Tofu, steamed broccoli, and vermicelli noodles – eaten at the pool. I had some Omsom marinades in the fridge, so I used the Yuzu one for the tofu. I also tried this technique from the Omson website to prepare the tofu. It involves soaking the tofu in hot salted water before pan frying it. The recipe said that it would make for a crispy exterior. I didn’t find that it was that much crispier than my usual method of pressing for hours and the dredging in cornstarch. However, because the moisture isn’t all pressed out of the tofu, it did make for a pillowy soft interior. I’ll definitely try this technique again. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pasta salad – chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, parmesan cheese, with a dressing made of red wine vinegar, olive oil, dehydrated garlic, oregano. Dinner at the pool. I grilled a big batch of chicken thighs, putting some in the pasta salad and saving some for the next day. I’m super proud I thought to do that.

Wednesday: Chicken, black bean, and corn quesadillas. Dinner at the pool before the swim meet.

Thursday: Gimbap (Korean seaweed and rice rolls, kind of like sushi. Bought from the HMart take out counter), cucumbers with furikake, and blueberries. eaten at the pool.

Thursday: Two part dinner. Part one – dumplings (cooked from frozen) and Berry smoothies (I’ve really gotten into using kefir as the liquid for my smoothies. Also, I caved and have been adding honey to the smoothies – the touch of sweetness does really make them taste better). Eaten at the pool. Part Two: Pizza (Take out) and Glee.

Saturday: Dinner at friend’s 90th birthday party. His daughter, our former neighbor, cooked trays and trays of Ethiopian food. It was so delicious.

Sunday: Grilled cheese sandwiches. Simple Sunday.

Hope you are having a great summer week. Any mind-blowingly simple solutions to share?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where rivers meet.

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

Historic buildings at Harper’s Ferry.

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

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

The playground and the dairy in the back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also grateful to have the capacity to shop at Costco.

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

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

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

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

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

– Making food with our latest Penzy’s haul:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bathroom photo of me in my dress.

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

fried pickled ginger. Amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

View looking up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grateful for – the Tech Week edition:

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

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

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

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

Looking Forward To:

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

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

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

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

I find this cover a little terrifying…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Props are packed and ready to go to the theatre!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to:
-Opening Night for me!

-Opening Night for the 12 year old!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday: No idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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