anticipation – Page 3 – Life Off Headset

(bi) Weekly recap + what we ate: Life update. Five things, five categories

Lots of things going on these days. Here is a long rambling brain dump of a post, to catch up on life in my neck of the woods.

The end of the school year is in sight. Last Friday was originally supposed to be the last day of school, but the school year was extended by two half days to make up for all the snow days that we had. The 13 year old was already signed up for basketball camp this coming week, so I gave her the option of 1) going to camp after her half days of school, or 2) skipping the last two days of school and going to camp. She chose option 2. So last week, she cleaned out her locker (and her backpack, and actually her room too!), and now she is done with seventh grade.

Middle school is so funny – I feel like the first year is about getting used to not being in elementary school. Then you have 7th grade where you get into a rhythm of things. But then 8th grade you are preparing to leave – the fall of 8th grade is when students here apply/choose high schools. In our area of the county, there is a consortium of five high school, each with different specialties and programs. Every student gets into their home school, but they can apply to get into any of the other four schools as well – some require applications and some are lottery. The high schools all have open houses in October and the school choice forms need to be in by November 1st. It all sounds very stressful. The 13 year old current first choice is our home school, so this might be an easy process. But I think we’ll go to all the open houses anyway, just to be informed. I know high school is two years away, but having to go through the process of school choice in a four months makes it all seem really soon. Time. Time. Time. Flying.

Last week was the 5 year old’s graduation from pre-K. They had a cute little ceremony – children processed, songs were sung. Each child got to say what they wanted to be when they grew up. Our five year old said she wanted to be a doctor. There was balloons and cakes and good friends. She still is enrolled in day care for two more weeks, so it all felt a little anticlimactic. In fact, driving in the car a few days before the graduation, she said, rather excitedly, “I only have two more days of school left!”
“Honey,” I said, “you do know you still have to go to school after graduation, right?”
“Oh.”
I felt bad bursting her bubble.

The eight year old will go to those two half days/ make up for snow days and then he’ll be off. He’s a little salty about the fact that he still has to go to school, but oh well. Ironically, his school was cancelled last Friday because the air conditioning was broken at his school. After he graduates, we’ll have our traditional ice cream and school year recap outing.

Other things in life: An unexpected car wait. I had to take the van in for a small fix. I was originally told that it would take an hour, so I decided to wait. Friends, it took four hours. I’m glad I brought my book and my portable keyboard with me so that I had something to occupy me. Eventually, I got tired of sitting in the waiting room, despite the unlimited cheap hot chocolate. I had finished my book, written a blog post, and my phone was running out of battery. So I took myself out for a walk. The car dealership is not in a particularly picturesque part of town, but by that point in the afternoon, anything was going to be better than the waiting room. I wandered to a plaza next door. I stopped at Giant for some snacks, contemplated getting a hair cut (but the next appointment was in an hour and I really hoped I would be on my way by then.) And then I discovered a board game store. I wandered in and browsed their selection of games and after a while, I asked the guy behind the counter for recommendations for a game I could play with my kids, ages 13- 5, one of whom couldn’t read yet, and without lots of tiny pieces. I came away with two games:

We played the Happy Salmon game a few days later, and let me tell you, if you are looking for a gentle quiet game, this is not it. It is a loud, hilariously raucous, energetic, fast paced game. We laughed so very hard. Definitely a welcome addition to our game collection.

I haven’t opened Dixit yet, but it looks beautiful too.

All in all, it was irksome to be stuck at the car dealership, but I think I made the best of the time.

But speaking of which – I did go back a week later to that hair place that I had seen and finally got a hair cut:

Just in time for summer heat, back to having short hair!

Contra-dancing – We went contra dancing as a family last week. That was lots of fun. The band was super hot. The kids all danced. The two littles like to dance as one person, which sometimes makes it confusing, but everyone was super forgiving and helped push them in the direction they needed to go. A super sweet thing – the three kids waltzed together at the end of the dance. I love how for the last waltz, this band will come down off the stage and play from the middle of the dance floor. It’s all kind of magical.

Two new culinary adventures: Chocolate orange cake. It was really pretty. I made two because we had the ingredients for two. I thought I would give one away, but I didn’t. We just ate both cakes ourselves. Is there anything more lovely than having a cake on the counter?

Tanghulu – candy coated fruit, very popular in the Taiwanese night markets. The 13 year old has wanted to try to make this ever since she tried it in Taiwan. Basically it involves melting sugar with water and cooking it down until it is “hard crack” temperature – meaning the sugar/water hardens when cooled. The process sounds simple, but getting the timing right is kind of tricky. Still, we were pretty successful for our first attempt:

A Day Playing hooky – I had a day where I didn’t have to be into work, so I met up with a friend and we ran errands, picked up Chipotle and the went back to her house and watched Bridgerton. We don’t have Netflix, so I’ve never seen Bridgerton. I do like the books – well except the last two books, I thought those were not as good as the first six books – so I’ve been so curious about the tv series. We watched two episodes, ate popcorn and had a lovely mid-week relaxing day.

This past weekend was Father’s Day. It wasn’t the most exciting of Father’s Day. I feel kind of bad about that – the 13 year old had a swim meet on Sunday, so we were out of the house by 7:45 am to make it to the meet. (Next week’s meet is 30 minutes away, so we’ll have to be up and out of the house even earlier than that… I’m not looking forward to that one…) The Husband took the 5 year old to Agility Class and then ran errands with the kids. I came home, we had lunch and then I took the 13 year old to basketball workout. We did spend the evening with friends who grilled for us, but then I had to leave to take a meeting for union stuff. It wasn’t a very celebratory Father’s Day, I’m afraid. I’ll have to do better next time.

Five things that are currently working in life:

Patio Time – Summer porch time is a beautiful concept. Only I don’t have a porch. But I do have a back patio, so I’ve been having a bit of summer patio time in the mornings. Just 15 minutes of me with my book and a beverage in the morning, enjoying the air and sunlight. Our patio is east facing, so it has started to get hot. Thank goodness for our patio umbrella.

Playaways – Playaways are little tablets you can check out from the library that are pre-loaded with educational games. A few weeks ago, I borrowed a few from the library for the 8 and 5 year olds. Promising them Playaway time has been a great bribe/ incentive with them, since they generally don’t get a lot of tablet time. I like that the Playaways aren’t connected to the internet so I don’t have to worry about my kids going online and ordering $4000 worth of dum dums or anything like that. Currently in the morning, if they get all their stuff done, they can have Playaway time, and it’s been working pretty well.

Daily yoga– I’ve been able to doing at least 10 minutes of yoga every day this year so far, except for one day when we were travelling back from Malaysia. What’s been working for me to do this:
1) Charlie Follows yoga videos – I like that her videos are anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes so I can choose what fits into my day. I like that there is no intention setting or chanting or too much cheerleading going on – just straight forward yoga routines with options to make it easier or more challenging, without judgement. I like that there is no music. The other yoga resources I like to use for practices are Down Dog Yoga (I also like that it’s no frills), Rise and Shine Yoga Flows by MoveWith on Audible (I like that it’s an audio only option), and Sara Beth Yoga (has lots of ten minute videos, but she is a little affirmation heavy for my tastes, TBH).
2) I usually do the yoga in the morning. I feel like it’s less mental energy just to know that I’ll do it in the morning.
3) if I don’t get to it in the morning, I write “YOGA” on my hand to remind me to find another time to do it. Usually I will do an evening routine before going to bed. Once in a while, if it’s quiet at work, I will roll out a mat in my office and do 10 minutes there.

Swim bags for each kid – Up til now, I’ve always hauled all the stuff to the pool for me and the two younger kids. The 13 year old has always carried her own stuff. This summer, I got each child their own swim bag. No more having to carry my stuff, the little kids’ stuff, and dinner to the pool myself. No more having to be responsible for goggles and towels and kickboards. It’s the kids’ responsibility to make sure their bags are properly packed. Not to say I don’t still remind them constantly. Wow going to the pool feels much lighter now.

Half a Duvet. The Husband sleeps hot. I like to sleep bundled and buried under loads of covers: this had led to a bit of a duvet conflict. We’ve been looking into getting separate duvets- when we were in Amsterdam two years ago, we noticed that all the duvets were individual sized, even on the bigger beds. I thought this might be a good solution to the duvet conflict so I’ve been trying to find “European Twin” duvets. But then the other day, I had an inspiration. Just fold the existing duvet in half! Brilliant. The Husband doesn’t have to wrestle with the duvet and I get double thickness of duvet to snuggle into!

Five consuming things (that I’m consuming or that are consuming me):

–Dill Pickle Hot Cheetos – OMG three things I love: Cheetos, dill pickle flavoured things, and spicy things. I may have polished off one bag in one sitting. I did have some help. And then I went to the store and bought two more bags. I feel a low level panic that this is a one time food item. That thought makes me sad.

–Root Beer Float Cookies – I found these at Trader Joe’s. They are vanilla creme sandwich cookie bits, covered in pop rocks and root beer flavored coating. These also might have been eaten in a single sitting:

I only have a picture of the empty bag because they were eaten so quickly

–Gilded Age, Season Two – Just started the second season of Gilded Age and devoured the first few episodes – what a deliciously soap opera of a show.

–Swim season. We’re at the pool three hours a day, four or five days a week. The little kids do preteam at 5:00pm-5:30pm, and the oldest helps out on preteam. Then the oldest’s swim practice is from 6:15p-7:30pm. So we eat dinner at the pool, sometimes shower at the pool, then go home and go to bed. I spend a lot of time thinking about what we are going to eat, what time to pick up kids, when they are going to change … the logistics is consuming. At least we are lucky that we have evening practice and not morning practice as a lot of other pools do. In fact I’m writing some of this post while waiting for swim meet to start.

– South Africa – Preparing for the trip to South Africa is consuming me too. Packing! It is winter in South Africa, but here in Dc it’s summer and 90 degrees, which makes it very difficult to think about what 50 degree weather Diane will want to wear. Also binoculars- what kind to get that are compact but also not the most expensive? My time has been taken up by waaaay too much googling. I’ve been listening to podcasts about travel and packing tips. This trip has definitely been consuming me mentally.

Speaking of which…

Five things I’m stressing about for my trip:

Bras – I have somehow convinced myself that I need a new bra for the trip because I probably won’t have access to laundry. But you know, at home I wear the same bra all week and maybe, maybe wash it every other week. (sorry, probably TMI there…) So why, on the eve of a trip, have I decided that while on vacation I’m going to take to washing my bras more than I normally would?? I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect travel bra – thinking of bras for travel has taken up a lot more of my brain space that I would like to admit. Maybe the perfect bra for “international flight/ sightseeing” thing doesn’t exist. I don’t have any perfect bras – maybe I’m using this as an excuse to buy more?

Shoes – How many shoes do I need to pack? Do want to pack my ankle boots? Normally, I would wear my ankle boots on the plane because they are the heaviest item, but we will have a layover excursion in London where it will be hot, so wearing the ankle boots isn’t that appealing. Currently I have my slip on sneakers and my water resistant wool runners. Are those too similar? Should I ditch one and pack the ankle boots? Also I’m trying to think of a not Crocs option for a comfy shoe to wear while hanging out at the hotel or the pool (if there is a pool – I’m not sure on that one.) I don’t want to bring my Crocs because they are too bulky, and I don’t have a good pair of sandals. So what is the slim Croc alternative?

eSim card – When we were in Asia, I got an eSim for my phone rather than getting the daily international plan that AT&T offered. The eSim was something like $30 for two weeks while the international plan was $12/day. I could make calls and texts via Whatsapp, and use data when I had to look something up, and that seemed to be all I needed. Anyhow, I need to look into whether I should do the same thing for South Africa. The bummer thing, though, is that the 13 year old’s phone is a Bark Phone and I can’t put an eSim on it, I don’t think. So she’ll just have to use wifi when she can, I guess? And I’ll try not to lose her.

Hotel housing – I didn’t realize that I had to put in a special request for the 13 year old and I to room together. I guess I had kind of assumed that they would put family members together. But that isn’t the default and right now we are not assigned to share a room. Wump wump. I need to call the tour company and see if anything can be done. If not, I’m sure we’ll survive and make new friends.

Currency – I want to get some Rand before the trip, but I’m not sure how to go about this. Also I’m kind of obsessed with thinking about if I need a money belt to carry all that money around?

And it’s more than five, but so many other things stressing me out– I need to find the travel chargers, I have to remember to pay for activities and the cleaners because those payments will be due before I get back, I have to photocopy my and the 13 year old’s IDs to our trip leader, I have to download the tour company app… So many little things that need to be done. I just have to work my way down the list one thing at a time…

Five things I’m Grateful for:

-I got my period this week and I won’t have to deal with that while in South Africa. I won’t say there’s zero percent chance that I’ll have to deal with my period – I’ll still bring supplies – but there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t have to try to figure out how to buy period products in a foreign country. (Though I have to say the pads we found in Taiwan were AMAZING!).

-vanilla ice cream topped with peanut butter. This is a delicious way to use up the last dregs of peanut butter in the container – drop a few scoops of vanilla ice cream in the jar and eat.

-Parents who coach youth sports and parents who organize swim meets. The 8 year old had his last soccer game, and I have to say his coach deserves HUGE kudos. It can’t be easy to wrangle ten 8-9 year old boys, but he has such patience with them. And with other parents. And on that note – organizing a swim meet is a lot of work, and the parents at our pool do it once a week for six weeks during the summer. I’m so grateful for the time and effort they give so my kids can have a great experience.

-Bluetooth in the car. My last car did not have Bluetooth so I listened to the radio a lot. I still love the radio, but I also love getting in the car and being able to finish my audiobook.

-These little plastic cups. Last winter, our tour guide in Taiwan, a lovely gentleman named Hoya, gave use these plastic cups with lids as tour swag – they all have his contact information on them. When we first got them, I groaned inwardly about having to bring more plastic home, but I was wrong. I’ve gotten so much use out of these little cups. These days, I use them to bring smoothies to the pool with us. I love that the lids fit tightly and the little loop makes them easy to carry.

-Bonus gratitude – I’m grateful that the 13 year old now takes the initiative to write thank you notes to her teacher on her own. I caught her writing these during a quiet moment at the swim meet:

5 Things I’m Looking forward to:
-Trip to Longwood Gardens – I think we are going to try to squeeze in a trip before the 13 year old and I leave for South Africa. It’s always so pretty there in the summer. (And in the fall. And in the winter. And in the Spring…)

-Eating more watermelon. It’s watermelon season!

-Half days this week. I was originally going to work a gig next week, but due to a miscommunication, the company went in another direction in terms of staffing. Which is fine with me. Despite needing the income, the thought of the job was giving me some minor anxiety because I’d never worked for the company before and it was an international summit, and I don’t like doing new things. (There is a reason I’ve been working for the same opera company for twenty years.) Anyhow, the last two days of school are next week and they are half days. I’m looking forward to having a few hours of mornings free to be able to run errands and then half days to spend with the kids.

-South Africa! South Africa! South Africa! Counting down the days!

-Reading this book:

It’s about two elderly women in Cape Town, one Black and one white who are bitterly feuding neighbors. I picked up a paperback copy from Barnes and Nobles this week -I like having a physical book to read on the plane. Also – thank you to folks who gave recommendations for books for my trip! I’m loaded up my Libby with books to read once I finish the Woman Next Door.

What we ate : Two weeks worth of meals here – most of it pool dinners.

Monday: Braised White Bean with Greens and Parmesan from NY Times Cooking- Something fast, and I needed up use up some chard in the fridge. This was essentially a soup. It was tasty.

Tuesday: Quesadillas – black bean and corn.

Wednesday: Dumplings (eaten at the pool – I pan fry them and put them in a thermos.) Cut up veggies and fruit, and pop corn.

Thursday: Snack dinner – sausage (in a bun), edamame, cucumbers, carrots, red peppers, popcorn, fruit smoothies. Dinner at the pool.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made it) and Glee. We usually watch an hour of a tv show on Friday nights during swim season because we get home from the pool too late for a full movie. I do also pack a lot of snacks for the pool so the kids don’t get hungry before we get home.

Saturday: Chinese Takeout and Invictus – this 2009 movie tells the story about how Nelson Mandela used rugby to help the people in post-Apartheid South Africa find common ground. Quiet and elegant and all the expected sentimentality of a good sports movie. I really liked it. It was also an interesting movie to watch during our current political climate. I had wanted to watch it in anticipation of our trip.

Sunday: leftovers. We had a lot of leftover Chinese food, so I reheated that for dinner.

Monday: “Baked” Ziti from Dinner Illustrated. This is a genius recipe because the pasta is cooked right in the sauce, saving a step. I was also really excited because this recipe allowed me to use up some kale that was languishing.

Tuesday: Dumplings and edamame and smoothies. Eaten at the pool.

Wednesday: Pesto Pasta Salad – tortellini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, cannellini beans. Not the meal I had planned, but a pretty simple one to throw together with stuff from our pantry. Eaten at the pool before swim meet.

Thursday: Japanese style Tuna Noodle Salad from NY Times Cooking. This was a light noodle salad. I didn’t love the tuna – I probably would make this with tofu or chicken. But the dressing was tasty. Eaten at home – we didn’t make it to the pre-team practice this day because of preschool graduation.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee.

Saturday: Dinner out to celebrate graduation and Father’s Day. The family had burgers. I had the butter chicken.

Sunday: Grilling at our friend’s house. It was the usual burgers, brats, and dogs along with the smoked pork that our friend likes to make. I might have also eaten way to many chips. My friend introduced me to the idea of mixing sour cream (or Greek yogurt) into the salsa for a creamy dip.

Oh my, well that’s a lot of ink spilled for one post, but that’s life lately. Hope you have a lovely week ahead. I’ll be finalizing details for my trip and helping a friend celebrate her birthday. What are you up to this week?
Anything currently working really well for you in life? Have you ever played Happy Salmon or Dixit? What’s your favorite dip to eat with chips? Favorite ice cream topping? What things are you consuming lately? What is consuming you?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good bye, May. Hello, June!

Last week was a very Maycember week. The 13 year old’s swim team practice started, though it was really cold and rainy and she ended up only going to one practice. I had an unusually full week of work as the opera season wound down – I worked on a workshop of a piece we’re doing next Spring; we’re commissioning a new book and new arrangements. The workshop was a very fly by the seat of my pants affair – the first day I climbed the equivilent of 20 flights of stairs as I ran around making things were happening that needed ot happen – in the end, though, it was fun to see as new show all come together. We also had feedback and post mortem sessions at work where we talked about how things went on the last show. I really appreciate how everyone spoke frankly and with open minds. I had lunch with my dad one day, which was nice because my parents often want to come help out when the Husband has to essentially solo parent during my busy times at work so when they are here, I don’t get much one on one time with them because I’m always at work. I’m glad my dad and I made time to have lunch.

Friday night was the piano recital for both the 8 year old and the 13 year old. I had to work on Friday – we did end of season feedback sessions – and barely made it to the recital in time. This is probably the last year that the 13 year old will play in the younger kids’ recital, which means two recitals for us from here on out- one for the oldest and one for the middle kid.

Saturday was First Communion for the 8 year old. When the oldest had first communion it was during COVID, and the church was much less crowded than this time. I was not prepared for the sheer mass of humanity that filled the church on Saturday morning. Because our church has such an international congregation, the readings were done in English (the Husband did the first reading!), French, and Spanish. (I said to the Husband that we should have sent the 8 year old to French religious ed classes!). But the other fun thing was the pageant of international fashion on display – saris and dashikis and caftans in bright and bold hues. Hats and high heels. People really brought it, and I loved seeing it all.

After the service, we went home, had a quick family meeting, and then went out to lunch. I was then anticipating a lazy afternoon at home, but the weather had other issues. There was a tornado warning in our area and a whole lot of rain in a very short amount of time. Mid afternoon, my father texted that there was water in his basement unit. The husband and I grabbed armfuls of towels and headed over to my father’s house where we spent the next hour and a half cleaning up water. Not originally on my Bingo card for the day, but what can you do?

Once we got everything cleaned up, we raced to pick up pizza and went home to throw towels into the laundry and then change into nice clothes because the Husband, the 13 year old and I had tickets to the opera that night. My father was going to stay home with the two little kids for pizza and movie night. It was a mad rush to get to the theatre and we actually missed the first ten minutes or so of the show. Funny story, though, I got to the theatre and realized that I didn’t have my glasses with me; I was wearing my sunglasses! I found out later that the glasses were in the sunglass case and had fallen out of my purse during the mad water/pizza/clean up episode. Well, I guess my options were to take my sunglasses off and watch the opera in a blur – I told the Husband that after all, isn’t opera about the music? – or wear the sunglasses for the show. I chose the latter and the opera had a lovely sepia tinged quality to it.

Sunday was the usual mix of activities – Agility class and then skating. This Sunday, however, we also had the 13 year old’s voice recital right after skating. It was one of those days where everyone just piles in the van and gets to go to each other’s activities.

While the little kids skated, the 13 year old and the Husband and I had a lovely little walk on the trail next to the rink. I am becoming acutely aware that our time with the oldest is growing shorter and shorter. She was an only child for the first five years of her life and I think we all miss the days when it was just the three of us. Rose coloured glasses and all that, but there was something really sweet and fun about those times. I love our family unit of five, yet at the same time, anytime we can have moments of what we like to call “the original” family, it feels really special.

The voice recital was lovely – I like how her voice teacher frames it as just another chance to practice. We practice technique and we also practice singing in front of people. After the recital we went to an early dinner at a Mediterranean/kabob place. It was super tasty – I got the Mediterranean platter which had salad, grape leaves, falafel, hummus, and white bean salad. Then we went home and finally felt like we could rest. Well, first there were baths and Bluey and then bedtime for the kids. While I took care of that, the Husband drove my father to the airport as he was headed home. He had been staying here in Maryland since the beginning of May and it was so nice to have him in the fabric of our lives.

Anyhow, we’re now into a new month! June! That interstitial time between the end of a school year and the beginning of the next one. Reflecting on the month that was…

May highlights:
-My parent’s visit
-Lots of social plans – Happy Hours, lunches, walks, BBQs. I feel like after 6 intense weeks of work, I finally emerged and started to re=form ties with people.
-Phone chat with my friend A. who is currently living abroad.
-Closing my show.
-The end of opera season.
-Some good feedback and post-mortem sessions at work. Some new ideas for improvement that I’m looking forward to implementing.
-At work, a workshop for an opera we’re doing next season. I very rarely get to see a work at this ground level of development and it’s kind of exciting, but also a lot of work.
-Going to the opera with the Husband and 13 year old.
-Hiking with the family on Memorial Day weekend.
-A new pope! And he’s American!
-Local street fair with the kids – it was overwhelming at first, but then settled into a wonderful afternoon.
-Started to watch the new season of Pokerface with the Husband.
-Watching the 13 year old in her middle school musical.
-The 5 year old got baptized and the 8 year old had his first communion.
– Being home in the evenings.
-Piano recitals. Voice recitals.
-Reading lots of books. None of them particularly spectacular, but all very entertaining.
-The weather turning towards spring/summer
-Continuing my yoga streak – I’ve only missed one day so far this year, and it was a day I was travelling.
-Went to the dentist for my cleaning.

May lowlights:
-The ongoing situation of uncertainty and anxiety at work and in Washington DC in general. I know this is on the list every month this year so far, but I’m afraid the month it doesn’t make the list is the month that I delude myself into thinking this is a kind and inclusive way to go about things.
-Sometimes parenting is HARD. I never know what the right thing to say is. I worry about how my kids will navigate life if I don’t get things right. (I mean, I know that nothing is going to 100% be my fault, but it’s a hard message to internalize.)
-Water in the basement at my parents’ house. Ugh. What a mess. We’re going to do some work in the yard to fix the drainage.
-The Maycember frenzy. All the good and fun things I listed under “highlights” were indeed highlights. But having them all packed into one month was exhausting.

Looking Forward To, the June Edition:
-The 5 year old’s preschool moving up ceremony. She’ll be off to kindergarten.
-South Africa! It’s really happening. I’m super excited. We also just found out that we’ll have lengthy layovers in London Heathrow, so our tour company has given us permission to go into London for a few hours. It’s like having a bonus trip!
-Evenings at the pool. I’ve decided that I’m going to swim laps while the little kids are in pre-team. I haven’t been running lately; due to my own inertia, I find it hard to motivate myself to run when my day is not broken up into blocks the way it is when I am in rehearsals. So swimming while the kids are in pre- team hands me a block of time to fill.
-The end of the school year. I took a gig on the actual last day of school for the two older kids and then I’ll be in South Africa for the 5 year old’s last day of preschool. I’m trying to not be too sad about not being there for thee milestones. I have to remind myself that it’s just a blip in the life of my kids and they probably won’t remember that I wasn’t there this one year. They’ll remember if I’m never there for these things. Show up when you can, I guess.
-Wrapping up at work – archiving, tying up some loose ends.
-A bonus day with the kids – they are off school. I’m a little irked that there is.a day off of school less than two weeks before school ends, but actually, it’s Eid. The 13 year old wants to make tanghulu – a candy coated fruit that is very popular at Taiwanese night markets. Wish us luck!

Grateful for:
-That the 5 year old likes to take her medicine. I mentioned last week that the 5 year old had a swollen eye and the doctor put her on antibiotics. Maybe it was the Kit Kats we used as a bribe, but the 5 year old was so eager to take her medicine. She was constantly reminding us that it was medicine time, bringing it to us, asking how many doses she had to take. Then she developed a technique to swallow the medicine while tasting it as little as possible. It was all so easy. The two older kids would regularly refuse and then vomit up their medicine, so this was a nice change of pace.

-The rain. Yes, it did flood the basement, but it also took all the humidity out of the air, leaving some beautifully clear and bracingly crisp mornings.

-The wet dry vac. Speaking of the rain. So glad we had this to clean up the water.

-Wifi at work. The first time I ever did a new opera workshop was in 2012 and we did not have wifi at work. Furthermore, because we work for a quasi federal institution, they did not permit flash drives on work computers. There was one computer in our whole rehearsal studio that you could stick a flash drive into if you wanted to print new material from the composer. All this to say, when you’re working on a new piece and the composer or librettist says, “I have new pages. How can we print the for the cast?” – it is so much easier to do this now that the creatives can hop on wifi and email the new pages to me to print.

-Rain coat, rain boots, and umbrellas.

-My father. I’m sure he could always pull the “I’m 80 years old” card and opt out of playing with my kids or walking the mile from his house to ours every day or cleaning up the water in his basement. But he does all that and more with a cheerful disposition.

-Key lime pie. Because it is delicious.

-These sparkly sneakers. They make the 13 year old so happy and they go with everything. She wore them with her fancy recital dresses and also with her denim shorts. And she made up a song about them, singing, “I love my beautiful bedazzled shoes,” over and over again.

What we ate – I think the Husband cooked all the meals last week because I didn’t get home until past dinner time all last week.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. Ground beef tacos

Wednesday: Tortellini and red sauce.

Thursday: Bahn mi sandwiches from our favorite Vietnamese take out place. These are seriously so delicious and simple.

Friday: Sandwiches (PB& J, Ham, Turkey) and leftovers after the piano recital. It was nearly 8pm when we got home from the piano recital, so we just threw together the easiest of easy here.

Saturday: pizza (take out) and Frozen II. It was supposed to by my father’s turn to choose the movie, and given that last time it was his movie night he chose Chariots of Fire, I would hazard a guess that someone changed their mind about what movie would be fun for an 8 year old and a 5 year old to watch.

Sunday: Mama’s kabobs – we went out to eat after the voice recital. The food was delicious.

Hope you have a lovely weekend. What do you have going on? We have a soccer game, and then the usual agility class for the 5 year old. Is there skating? I can’t remember… And I imagine we’ll go to mass in there at some point. In between things I want to sit down and write a packing list with the 13 year old for South Africa.

Do you remember life before wifi? Is there anything sparkly in your closet? How was your May? What does June look like?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Memorial Day weekend and reconsidering evenings

Even though it was a long weekend. I still had to work on Saturday and Monday I had a shop call for our union. So it didn’t feel like a long weekend. But it was the first Sunday in ages when no one had any activities, so I declared I wanted to go on a hike. I haven’t been on a proper hike in such a long time – I don’t think I’ve been on one yet this year. We wanted to just go for half a day, so I picked a new to us location that was about 45 minutes away – Gambrill State Park. I thought it was a perfectly pleasant hike – the weather was nice and cool, and the hike had some pretty steep parts to keep it interesting. (The Husband at one point said, “I have one work for you – switchbacks. Clearly this hiking path was made by young men with good knees.”). There was a nice little view of the city below at the end. I think it was a 3 mile loop which we did in about 2.5 hours.

At the parking lot, there was a little nature/history center. It had a couple small exhibits on the wildlife in the area and then also a room dedicated to the Civilian Conservation Corps which built the park as part of the New Deal. I was super fascinated by this menu that was on display.

I have so many thoughts: First of all – the three meals are Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper. Where’s lunch? I’m guessing Dinner is the midday meal? (I’ve never really used the term “supper”.) Though it looks like dinner is the large meal on the weekends. On the weekdays, it’s sandwiches. Secondly – it’s a lot of meat. The vegetable pickings are… slim – buttered beets? And the only fruit I see are oranges, stewed apricots, and prunes. Thirdly – I’m glad they got ice cream. Fourthly – what’s a “cheese salad” sandwich?

Speaking of food – this whole trip I had been promising the kids that we could have ice cream if they came on the hike – yes, my kids need to be bribed to go hiking with their parents. The 13 year old said, “I don’t want ice cream. I want boba.” To which I said, “I don’t think there will be boba where we are going.”

Well, lo and behold, when we got to the vista point, there were two young men hanging out with boba drinks. I gave the 13 year old a nudge and she went up to them and said, “Excuse me, where did you get your boba?”

Well, I was wrong – there was a boba place about 15-20 minutes from the park.

After the hike, we went to late lunch at a nearby diner, where the portions were huge and delicious and then we went to get boba. The Boba place was in the back of a family owned Filipino grocery store.

Oolong tea, lychee jelly and boba. My usual. The boba was a little too soft for my tastes.

The boba place was in the same plaza as a furniture store. The Husband and I have a weakness for furniture stores. There’s something really fun about going and looking at furniture for us – I don’t know what it is – we like sitting in chairs, opening and closing drawers, looking at side tables. I think furniture is fun and full of possibilities. A lot of furniture in furniture stores, though, we find is too big for our space so we don’t often buy anything. At any rate, there was a Memorial Day sale going on and we ended up buying two chairs. One for the Husband to sit and read in the sun room and one swivel chair that’s big enough for two people that is going to be super cozy for reading together. Not sure if that will go in the kids’ bedroom or in the living room yet. I also found this super cute swivel chair that I was really tempted to get for the 13 year old’s room, except it’s white and a white chair in a teenager’s room seems… unwise.

Anyhow, that was our big Memorial Day adventure. On Monday I took the little kids to the park while the Husband gardened. Then I had a meeting for union stuff, and then I headed over to a friends’ house to eat lots of meat. Out friend had a smoker and he made pulled pork, brisket, and ribs. It was all delicious.

Evenings: I’ve been pondering evenings. It’s another quirk of “reentry” after closing a show that suddenly I get my evenings back. Now that I’m not at the theatre every night, a whole new time slot has opened up in my life. There was one day last week, when the kids were home from school by 4:30pm, and I didn’t have to start dinner until 5:00pm, and I sat in the living room and read while the kids did… I’m not sure, but it didn’t involve me. And it felt horribly indulgent. But then I thought, “What if this is just what life is like?” I’m sure there was something on my to do list that I could have done – my desk, for example, needs a going through, there are bills to be paid (and a traffic ticket) – but none of that felt urgent. The time between coming home from the bus and then starting dinner – surely it isn’t a time of leisure, is it? It feels like there should be million things to do upon returning to the house in the evening.

Another night last week, the Husband took the 8 year old to soccer practice and I was home with the other two kids. “What shall we do?” I asked. And how silly it felt to be asking, “What shall we do?” at 7pm in the evening. Shouldn’t we be at the point in the evening where we stop doing things? Anyhow, the 5 year old’s response was, “Can we bake something?” So I made a lemon buttermilk cake. It was delicious. Here are some other things we have done with our evenings, post dinner clean up:
-played card games. (Currently I love playing Skyjo – it’s a numbers game, which is nice because it doesn’t require deftness with the English language or being able to read, meaning that both my father and the 5 year old can play.)
-Watched New Girl with the 13 year old and howled with laughter.
-Read a book while listening to the kids practice piano.
-Read a book while the kids played together. One night, the 13 year old decided she wanted to stage “Dear Theodosia” from Hamilton with her little siblings. It involved stuffed animals and chairs put together to make a crib.
-Walk around the block.

It used to be the late afternoons/evenings were a slow crawl towards bedtime, but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. The kids are old enough that they don’t require constant vigilance. They usually even help clean up. There are kid activities, and even then, with both parents at home, we can take turns driving. And we don’t need to participate in the activities; we can just drop off. And then go run errands or read or take a walk or write. I hate to say it, but kids activities have sometimes been lovely pockets of alone time for me.

The other thing for me is that 7:00pm is a little bit of a mind shift. When I’m at work, 7pm is the start of the last rehearsal of the day. At 7pm, there are three and a half more hours of work in front of me before I can clock out. 7pm is the most hectic time off the day at work because we have chorus and dancers and principals and supers showing up for rehearsal all at once and it’s a mad frenzy to check all the sign in sheets and make sure were are ready to start rehearsal. But when I’m not working, 7pm feels like the end of the day – the dishes are all done (hopefully), the floors are swept, and there is just one little sliver of time left before the kids can go to bed. Before the kids need to go to bed and we can, as the Husband says, Turn off the taxi cab light. 7pm is wind down time. Okay, baking a cake is not a wind down activity, but there is a certain soothing rhythm to baking that lends itself to a gentle close to the day. And, truth, some nights it takes up upwards of 90 minutes to clean up after dinner, so clearly a leisurely evening is not always the case. This is probably for another post, but I don’t understand how some nights post dinner clean up is 20 minutes and sometimes it just seems to take. so. long.

Which, having said all that, we are about to go into eight weeks of summer swim season, so the evenings will decidedly not be leisurely as there will be practices four nights a week as well as a weekly meet. But I guess that’s it – maybe we are in a season – and I work in an industry – where the routines and rhythms are constantly shifting? So I have to work at being intentional – or intentionally unintentional – about those evening hours. I could putter around the house endlessly, but I could also read a book. I could sit down and pay the bills, or I could scroll. All activities add value to my life, fills buckets – yes, even scrolling in moderation. I think what doesn’t fill my buckets is feeling like I am defaulting to being unintentional with my energy. Maybe I need a list of activities that could be done in 15, 30, 60 minute increments? A couple things I do want to do more is consistent journaling, painting, organize something (bins, papers, files, craft supplies…)

I’ll leave you with this bit of sartorial serendipity….
When you and your kid inadvendently dress all matchy-matchy:

Grateful For:

-The parent in the 5 year old’s class who had the class over to try vegetables from their garden. What a sweet little field trip. Also, the 5 year old ate kale. This is the kid who picks any speck of green out of her food. And then a few days later, she ate salad. On her own. Like filled a bowl with vegetables and lettuce and ate it.

-Our friend for giving us his CSA while he’s on vacation. We ate the salad greens and the fennel. (The fennel I used in a fruit salad). We still have chard and mustard greens left, though…

-our piano and people who play it, filling the house with music.

-summer evenings warm enough and light enough for a post dinner constitutional.

-having the ingredients on hand to impulsively make a cake. And then having the cake on the counter to snack on all week.

This cake definitely tastes better than it looked.

-That one of my bus stop friends whom I no longer get to see anymore because of return to office requirements got off work two hours early and came to the bus stop and I got to see her and chat.

-getting a run in between activities and sudden rain showers.

-It’s mulberry season! There are several mulberry bushes along the paths/trails where I walk and it’s a true joy of summer – picking mulberries off the bushes and eating them – a sweet/tart treat.

-Dogs at the dentist. My dentist has an office dog – a cute chill little beagle that greets patients as they come in. It just brightens my day when I go for my cleaning to see her bright eyes and wagging tail.

-Siblings not fighting:

-Being able to get a same day doctor’s appointment. The 5 year old’s eye was strangely swollen one day, so she couldn’t go to school. But I was able to call the pediatrician and get an appointment for later that day. They couldn’t tell for certain what it was, but put her on antibiotics just in case.

-Getting a bonus afternoon with the 5 year old because she couldn’t go to school. See above. After the doctor’s I took her to the park and we had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine.

Looking Forward To:
-Piano recitals for the 8 year old and the 13 year old. (This has since happened…)

-First Communion for the 8 year old. This falls under the “I’m not Catholic, but I like rituals and gatherings.”

-Voice recital for the 13 year old. Maycember keeps coming.

-going to the opera with the Husband and the 13 year old.

-Seeing this movie:

I don’t go to the movies a lot – it just always seems very expensive to me in terms of time and money. But this movie looks like exactly my catnip, so a friend and I are going to see a weekday matinee.

-Also – You’ve Got Mail is currently on Amazon Prime. It’s been on my “Movies I’ve never seen but really want to watch” list forever. So that’s going to happen too. I actually put it on one night as I was doing the dishes, but it was so adorable that I turned it off and decided I wanted to save it for when I could snuggle on the couch and watch it.

What We Ate:

Monday: Sandwiches and cut up vegetables. Simple supper for an activity filled Monday night.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. Chicken mole tacos – this was the mole sauce that I made a huge batch of last month and then froze. It actually tasted better this second time around. I still have one more jar of sauce in the freezer. yum.

Wednesday: Greek Pasta Salad. Vegan. I was looking for a vegan pasta salad and came across this recipe for tofu feta – it’s basically tofu marinated to give it the flavor profile of feta. I thought it was delicious. The family really liked it. The Husband said that once you get over the fact that the “feta” is not, in fact, cheese, it’s really tasty.

Thursday: Breakfast Sandwiches

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made pizza) and The Eternals. It was the 13 year old’s turn to choose the movie and she picked this Marvel movie – the movie was fine, but it was 2.5 hour long, which was longer than I wanted to spend watching flashing flight scenes and bizarre hard to follow plots. But I do think Gemma Chan is divine.

Saturday: My dad took us out to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant where we ordered waaaaay too much food, all of it delicious.

Sunday: we didn’t really have dinner because we had a late lunch at a diner with hugmongous portions so no one was hungry come dinner time

Monday: We went over to a friend’s house for Memorial Day cookout. Our friend loves to smoke meat and he had brisket, ribs, and pulled pork. Also mac n cheese, baked beans, and two kinds of pie. We brought fruit salad and an green salad.

Hope you have a lovely weekend!
How long does it take for you to clean up after dinner? On that note – do you call it dinner or supper? Anyone have ideas of what to do with mustard greens? Any movies that you’ve always wanted to see but never have? What would you do with 15 minutes of free time? 20? 30?

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: Thinking about an Intentional Summer

Last week was my first week without a show to work on, and, as always, there’s a period of readjustment/ re-entry after being gone in the evenings and weekends so much. Things are not where I expect them to be, routines have shifted, some routines haven’t shifted yet I need to figure out how to fit back into them. Expectations have shifted. That’s a big one, I’m learning. When the family doesn’t expect me home, it’s a bit of a shift when I am all of a sudden around.

Some delightful things last week, though…

-Social plans with friends – Happy hour (or rather happy three hours) with my friends from the bus stop who I don’t see anymore because of return to office orders. It was great to catch up and I had a delicious dill pickle brined fried chicken sandwich. Another day, I had lunch with other friends whom I used to work with but now don’t see anymore.

-Randomly running into one of those lunch friends four days later at the skating rink with our kids. Isn’t it so delightful when you randomly run into a friend? And it was so nice to meet her son. I have friends who I meet through our kids and it’s nice to have friends that were friends before kids and you finally meet their kids and it’s like meeting a mini version of your friend.

-Going to Ikea with my parents. Having lunch at the cafe where the light is so soft and makes everything look good. Also – how much do I love wandering through Ikea! All the lives and possibilities it’s trying to sell me? Everything so practical. And finding the exact chair we wanted in their clearance room for $17, marked down from $35.

*It was a very rainy day – felt very Scandanavian.*

-The 5 year old was finally baptized. The Husband is Catholic, so this is something that we had intended to do in 2020, but pandemic and then procrastination. And here we are. I’m not Catholic, but I do love rituals of tradition and gathering.

-It’s also Breakfast Smoothie Season here. The kids have been having berry smoothies (cashews – though I’m temporarily out, frozen berries, kefir, honey, chia seeds, banana, ice.) and I’ve been having green smoothies (kale, ginger, honey, vanilla, kefir, banana). The other day, the 5 year old said to me, “You have an Elphaba smoothie and I have a Galinda smoothie!” Side note, I think we will be watching Wicked for movie night soon.

Summertime….For the first time in a while, I’m not working during the summer. Even though the prospect of nine weeks at home seems to stretch into the void, I know it will fly by quickly and before you know it, we’ll be back in school. I don’t want to arrive at the end of August feeling like I didn’t have an intentional summer. Which is not to say everything needs to be planned – I just want to have a good mix of fun, productive projects, active moments, and relaxing time. And connection. I am fast realizing that our summers as a family of 5 are limited. We only have four or five years left before the oldest one is launched and off to college. I want to set building blocks so that we feel connected as a family.

Things that are already on the calendar:
-Swim Team for the 13 year old, pre-team for the 8 and 5 year olds. This means 5 evenings a week at the pool for most of June and July.
-Trip to South Africa with the 13 year old. (10 Days)
-Weekend in New York City to meet up with the Husband’s sister.
-Summer Camp -for the 8 year old: 2 weeks of theatre camp. For the 13 year old, 2 weeks of basketball camp and 3 weeks of theatre camp
-continuing with piano lessons (13 year old and the 8 year old), and basketball workouts (13 year old), and skating lessons (8 year old and 5 year old) and agility class and/or gymnastics (5 year old)
-five days at a Taiwanese American cultural camp for the 5 and 8 year olds. They are going with my mother. I don’t really know what goes on there, but it’ll be their first time away without me or the Husband and I’m excited/nervous about how they’ll take it.
-the 5 year old’s last day of preschool will be the end of June. (SOB!). I’ve sent the notice. I’m feeling a little sad and wistful and I’m regretting that her last day will be while I’m away, but it didn’t make sense to keep her in longer since she’s going to Taiwanese American kids camp the day before I get back.

Other Summer Things on my Menu of Activities: I’m calling this a “menu” because these are things I’ve brainstormed for this summer – some fun activities, some life tasks. It’s not a “to do” list or any kind of mandate by any means.
-Time at the Pool (aside from swim team time – I would love to swim some laps myself. Maybe even take the kids to the county pool where there are water slides.)
-Getting the two younger kids to learn how to swim confidently and independently.
-Make a family summer play list.
-Family biking time – teaching the 5 year old to ride without training wheels and getting the 8 year old a new bike. (he is currently using a pink and turquoise hand me down bike with broken pedals.)
-Teaching the 8 year old how to tie his shoes.
-Boba taste test. There are a lot of boba shops around here. The 13 year old and I have a plan to try all the places and pick our favorite.
-Camping.
-Hiking.
-Visit the library and read lots of books
-Find a perfect pair of sandals. This is on the summer list every year for the past three years or so, but I love my current El Naturalista Zumaia sandals so much that I always I manage to squeeze one more summer out of them. I would like to get a new pair of sandals before I leave for South Africa.
-make paletas. I borrowed some books from the library with recipes I want to try.
-Mow the lawn regularly. I don’t like yardwork, and the Husband does most of it, so I’m vowing to take on some of it.
-host friends for grilling/dinner
-Lunches and meet ups with friends, particularly mom friends and former federal worker friends.
-Outdoor concerts and music
-eat lots of peaches. (Last year we regularly got peaches from The Peach Truck, but they aren’t delivering nearby this year. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the 30 minute drive for a 25 lb box of amazing peaches.)
-Take the kids to a rock climbing gym or to the adventure park.
-Take the kids to the local water park.
-Closet audit. Get rid of things I no longer wear.
-Watercolor postcard project. Paint and send mail. (Do you want a postcard from me? I feel like if I collect addresses, I’m committing myself to doing this one. Which would be a good thing.)
-Go school supply shopping in early August. Also Maryland’s tax free week is the beginning of August, so if we need any clothes or shoes, that would be a good time to go shopping for those. (Although the kids usually get fresh shoes for summer…)
-Teaching the kids some life skills (cooking, touch typing, how to tell time, maybe cursive – is that too ambitious?)/ making sure they get into the habit of doing their chores.
-Eating outside when possible.
-Have a screen free day or two.
-See some opera. Even though I won’t be working for the opera company I worked for last summer, i do want to see some of their productions.
-movie afternoons, either at home or at a movie theatre.
-Buy produce at a farmer’s market, or a farm stand. Make yummy food from our purchases.
-Going to the County Fair, riding all the rides and seeing the animals.
-Work-wise – we have union negotiations coming up this summer. I want to be an active participant in that.
-I also have a few work meetings scattered here and there that I’ll need to attend.
-Decluttering projects: The sewing corner, my desk corner, the medicine/linen closet in the bathroom, the pile of outgrown clothes/hand me downs in the 13 year old’s bedroom. The toy room. I’m posting a picture to remind myself what a dire situation these places are. Brace yourselves, it’s kind of awful. I hope I’ll have some “after” pictures come August.

Potential Summer Stressors:
-Money. When I’m not working, money is of course a little tighter. I’m going to try to pick up one off gigs when I can, but to be honest, I don’t love event work; it pays really well, but is highly stressful for me.
-Not having enough alone time. I will always have at least one child at home with me this summer, and sometimes I just want to sit and read and not have to fix a snack or read someone a book or referee a fight or what not. I’m lucky that my kids are pretty self sufficient, but even still, it’s not nothing.
-Being hot. Being in the sun. Being in the car when I’m hot. This always just puts me in a bad mood. At least I won’t have a soul sucking commute like I did last summer, though there will be time in the car because of camp drop offs/pick ups.
-mosquitoes.
-house projects with the house we manage.
-Getting the kids to actively participate in chores or family activities/ fighting about screen time. I fully recognize the need for them to have time to chill and decompress, but also want to balance that with a sense of responsibility.
-Eating dinner at the pool all the time and keeping pool time organized in general. It’s a lot of work to pack for the pool. Last year, I got it down to a good routine, but every year is a little different. One of the big shifts this year is I have to reconsider where we dry the swim stuff. We used to dry it in the lower bathroom, but now that is the 13 year old’s bathroom, so it is going to be inconvenient for her to have to always move the stuff.

Now that I’ve written all that down, I can see summer as full of possibilities and also some road blocks. I think what will help with the road blocks:
-Researching low cost activities. We are lucky there are a lot of free things to do in the area.
-Sitting down and making a plan to do those low cost activities. Put them on the calendar.
-Being brave and saying, “Yes” to any gigs that I can work.
-Having a structure to my days – block in rest time and adventure time and chore time. Or acknowledge that some days will only be two of those three categories. Or even just one.
-Have lots of cool treats and beverages in the fridge and freezer.
-Meal plan. I do this a lot anyway.
-Making a screen time plan with the kids.
-Embrace mornings as calm times. Embrace evenings as family time.
-Remember that the goal is we a feel connected and ready for the new school/work year in September.

Grateful For This Week:
-Stories from my parents. I’m going to admit that my parents and I don’t have a super easy relationship. It’s loving and supportive, but the conversation has never really flowed easily between us. I’m sure I need to unpack that a little -I feel like it has something to do with the culture that my parents are from (very patriarchal/valuing filial piety) and the culture I grew up in (less so, and resentful of filial piety) Anyhow, on Mother’s Day, the New York Times published article called “25 Questions to Bring You Closer to Your Mom.” Every so often in the days that followed, I would ask my mom and dad one of the questions, and the answers were surprising and insightful. Some of my favorites:
“What was your nickname growing up?”
“What are some of your favorite memories of the two of us?”
“What’s the worst advice you ever received about motherhood?”
“Who made you feel seen when you were growing up?” I thought this one was particularly interesting because both my parents said when they were growing up, they didn’t want to be seen, because that meant they were in trouble. This made my heart ache a little.

-Dog Man books in the Little Free Library. The 8 year old LOVES Dog Man books. I love not having to pay full price for them.

-Sleep. Trying to catch up and having the time to catch up and having a bed in which to catch up. I’ve been noticing this past year that I get incredibly tired the day or two before I get my period. Like “in bed by 9:30pm” tired. (I’m usually in bed at midnight most nights). I’m grateful I had the time and space to be able to just sleep last week when I was premenstrually tired.

-Cherry Coke and a chocolate chip cookie. An awesome combination.

-The 5 year old getting into the French Immersion program. This means that she will get to go to the same school as the 8 year old. Thank goodness. I mean we would have figured out three kids at three different schools – and we will have to in a few years – but I’m grateful that that is a future me problem.

-The Husband for clearing everyone out of the house when I had a splitting headache. He took the 8 year old to soccer practice and also convinced the other two kids and my parents to ride along. I lay in a dark and quiet room and popped a bunch of Advil and was feeling much more normal when they came home two hours later.

-That the rain let up just in time. We were supposed to meet our friends for a picnic and a show last Friday, and just as I was stepping out the door, the rain came down in unrelenting sheets, making driving pretty scary, and I thought, “Uh oh, so much for a picnic!” But the rain was actually quite isolated and the skies at the park was clear and the picnic tables were relatively dry and we had a lovely picnic lunch and then went to see a student musical theatre showcase and it was quite a fun evening.

-Park benches along a trail and the the perfect not to hot/not too cold weather to sit on one and enjoy the wind in the trees.

Looking forward to:

-June. Maycember is hitting pretty hard. I don’t know that June will be any more restful, but I’m looking forward to flipping the page on the calendar. It’s all good things in May – baptisms, recitals, soccer games, parents visiting, first communions, wrapping up the school year – but it is exhausting to be always out and about.

-Memorial Day Weekend. Is this weekend?!?!?! where did that come from? I understand we have plans to grill with our friends, but I’m a little hazy on the details.

-This audiobook. I don’t usually do romance novels on audio, but this one is narrated by Will Watt, who read Ten Things That Never Happened, and he was so charming and heartfelt in that book that when I saw he had recorded a new audio book, I immediately put it on my holds list. His deep, rumbly voice is like being wrapped up in my favorite feel good movie.

What We Ate:
Monday: Pesto Pasta Salad from NYTimes Cooking. I didn’t have capers, so I used sundried tomatoes instead, and I subbed walnuts for the pine nuts. Everyone really liked this. Vegan

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos. This was the night I went out with my friends, so i had a very tasty dill pickle brined fried chicken sandwich. Before I left, I prepped the shrimp for the tacos and left the 13 year old with instructions on heating up the taco shells.

Wednesday: Kielbasa on the grill, sweet potatoes, and steamed broccoli. The Husband cooked. The sweet potatoes were this recipe, and were really tasty. The Kielbasa was from the Kielbasa factory, and we cooked them on the grill. I’m so excited for more grilling. Also – in my quest for ways that the kids can help in the kitchen after dinner, I had the 5 year old label the leftover kielbasa:

Thursday: Dumplings and green beans

Friday: Chicken sandwich picnic – I also packed cucumbers, apples, and strawberries.

Saturday: Pizza (carry out) and Chariots of Fire (It was my dad’s turn to pick the movie. I’ve never seen Chariots of Fire before – the two older kids were surprisingly engaged. The 5 year old, not so much.)

Sunday: Mac and Cheese – the 13 year old is made dinner! She did accidentally put in twice the amount of butter than was called for, so it was a very rich mac n cheese.

Hope your week has been lovely!
What would you do with 25lbs of peaches? What corner in your house is most in need of a good declutter? Favorite frozen treat or cold drink for summer? Who made/makes you feel seen? Mosquito solutions? Any plans for the Memorial Day weekend? I have to work on Saturday, but I’m hoping for a hike and some time with friends on Sunday and Monday.

Weekly recap + What We Ate: Closing Night and Mother’s Day

Welp, another show closed and in the books. I meant to post this earlier in the week, but I’ve been so exhausted that I haven’t been at my computer. Plus my parents are visiting, which means that we need my desk chair at the dinner table, which means every time I have a minute to sit down and write, it feels really inconvenient because there is no chair at my desk. Well, I got over that road block and am now sitting at the kitchen table to write this little life update.

It’s a little crazy to think that I don’t have another show to work on until October. I didn’t book any work this summer because I would be travelling at a time that overlaps with a contract I usually take. I’m a little sad that I won’t be in the theatre for such a long time, but I’m going to lean into having a great summer home with the family.

I always make a list after every closing of moments that I want to remember forever on a show, and for this show, some were:
– the opening number with a billion light cues to call, which was kind of scary at first, but once I got into a rhythm, it was almost fun. Calling cues is the part of my job that gets all the glory, but for me it’s actually the easiest part of the job – you just have to know where the cues go and be able to follow the music and read the post its and look up once in a while to make sure things are still on track.

-The tenor and the baritone leads doing a silly dance onstage in the number when they are pretending to be teenagers. Nothing more fun than seeing grown men dance with abandon.

-The part at the end of the show where the lead female character sings, “Be here now. Be here now.” It’s such a beautiful phrase of music and some days, when I was really bone tired, I could hear her voice in my head, grounding me and helping me focus.

-The baritone who sings the father in the opening scene – I’ve known him for four or five years now and he’s still quite a young singer, but I think he has the heart of a dad and was just so perfect for the part.

-The bass’s aria set in the Zen Center, when he tells the main character to “Take one step…”. This was a special reunion for me because I first met this singer when he first came to America as a student – he was shy, barely spoke English, and had a voice and a heart as big as a house. And now he has a flourishing career all over the world. I’m always struck in my business by how strong the bonds are that we forge when we are starting out.

-The way the crew opened the walls at the back of the set. Opera can be pretty low tech – most of the time when you see something move in opera, it’s not computers or motors or what not; it’s a bunch of stage hands pushing or pulling. The first time we ran this scenic move, the wall zoomed open at an alarming rate and the lighting designer said, “It’s too fast! Do we really want it this fast?” But the doors needed to open within three bars of music. So I told the crew, “Open gently, then move off quickly.” And they did. And it was magical.

The rest of the week…

Usually after we open a show, I get some of my time back, especially evenings. But this performance schedule had six performances over six eight days, and one additional rehearsal on the night we didn’t have a show. So it has felt a little unrelenting. On my one night off, I went to see the 13 year old’s middle school musical – she was in the ensemble for Once Upon a Mattress. It was a cute show, clearly a lot of work, and everyone performed with so much enthusiasm. It’s fun to know that she had a tech week on the heels of me having my own tech week. After the show, she took me around an introduced me to all her teachers, which was kind of fun – that she still wants people to know who I am…

The rest of the week was errands and catch up and catching my breath. I had dropped so many things by the wayside that I’m slowly trying to pick up the mess and pieces and try to figure out what life is supposed to look like when I’m around.

Mother’s Day – I’m not a huge Mother’s Day person. These are the three things that I always ask for Mother’s Day:
– Get my picture taken with my kids. Doesn’t have to be fancy – just one photo where no one is picking their nose, or crying, or what not, and where I look half way decent.
-Some time outdoors. Either a hike, or a walk, or an activity.
-Some time alone.

The scorecard was decidedly mixed this year. I did sleep in until 7:30pm. At one point, I felt a little hand on my leg and then another little hand thrust a card under my hand. The card was sweet, even though said child had spelled his name wrong. It made me laugh. the 13 year old had used her own money to buy me a bag of M&Ms and a bag of gummy bears. I was torn between thinking it was such a thoughtful gestures and not wanting her to waste her money on candy at CVS. Parenting is full of conflicted emotions.

We had our usual spate of activities in the morning and afternoon. In the morning I took the 5 year old to Agility Classes, and, the sweetest thing, one of the coaches was handing out roses to moms. “Here,” he said to me, “I see you here every week, and I think you deserve a rose.”

My mother’s Day roses living with the 13 year old’s opening night tulips. She also got two bags of Takis for opening night. That’s what she really wanted…

After lunch, and a nap (perhaps that was my alone time?), more activities, and to be fair, the Husband asked if I wanted him to take the kids to skating lessons, but I said I would do it because I knew he wanted time to be in his garden, and he had been solo parenting for the better part of the time for six weeks while I was in rehearsal, so if anything, I figured that he deserved the alone time. Funny story – when the kids were little, they used to call the Husband “MommyDaddy”, I think this might have been because I was often out in the evenings. So I now joke that Mother’s Day should also be for the MommyDaddy as well.

But I got to skate while the kids were in lessons, so that was like alone time. After skating the kids wanted to play outside so I took the to the nature center. I read my book while they made me food. Here is bark burger and a leaf pie.

We spent about half an hour at the Nature Center before going home, where we turned around three times and then headed to Benihana. Originally it had been suggested that we go to Hot Pot again, but we had just been there, so I suggested Benihana as an “event” type meal. (If you’re unfamiliar, Benihana is a chain of hibachi restaurants where the meal is cooked in front of you with a lot of flash and dash. It’s like dinner and a show.) I hadn’t been since I was a teenager and the kids had never gone, so I figured it would be a fun outing. The food itself isn’t spectacular. Not awful, just very ho hum. But let’s be honest, we’re all there for the flying spatulas and spinning eggs. After dinner the restuarants were handing out Macarons for the mothers (or the assumed mothers), which was another nice treat. I think mother’s day is a little performative sometimes, but you know what, I’ll take a free treat.

After dinner, the family tried to fulfil my wish of spending time outside and getting a picture with the kids by taking us to a trail and going for a walk with the idea of taking a picture together. But for reasons that are a little inexplicable, and in retrospect were probably a little silly, things went quickly south and no good pictures were taken and people stormed back to the car in a fit of anger. To be honest, I’m not sure quite what happened. I think partly, I just wanted a quick photo on my iPhone with everyone looking at the camera, and the family instead brought this huge set up with a tripod and the 13 year old’s fancy camera, which I don’t know that anyone really knows how to get the photos off of it… And then no one would take a nice picture, which was hugely annoying for me. I just want one thing and I got a little snarky at the family’s inability to deliver that one thing. (okay, three) Anyhow, it was kind of an ignominious end to Mother’s Day. Oh well. We’ll all try again next year.

Conversation with my Five Year Old:
Me: Are you wearing underwear?
5 year old: No.
Me: Again?!?! You should be wearing underwear. Why don’t you wear underwear?
5 year old: Sometimes it’s just too much pants.

Grateful For:
-My parent’s health. My parents are both the upper side of 70 and are still so very active. They travel internationally three or four times a year, come visit us, play with the grandchildren. Go on long walks every day, usually four or five miles. Lead community organizations. Advocate for Taiwanese independence. Once in a while I look at them and I realize objectively they are quite old, something I tend to forget because they are so busy. I realize more and more that every year, month, week, day with them is a gift.

-Sunny sunny weather. Open window, fresh air. A comfy chair and a good book. And a messy living room, well inhabited.

-A new Pope! I know that it’s odd to be grateful for something that was probably inevitable, but I’m so glad that for a few days, I could replace doomscrolling with “hope”scrolling as I checked for news from the conclave.

-Getting to commute to work with my work BFF. She lives two miles from me and during busy opera season we don’t really get to hang out, so when we carpool to work, it’s like at 35 minute friend date.

-My Eye Doctor, for fixing my glasses. One night as I was going to bed, I stumbled and dropped my glasses and the lens popped out. I’m sure it was a minor fix, but I took it to My Eye Doctor, where I got the glasses from, and they put everything back together again.

-D, our contractor. He’s been working on renovating the basement of my parent’s rental unit and finished the work last week. But then this week we had sheets of rain and there was some water in the basement. D came over the same day that we called and looked at things, and then realized the sump pump wasn’t plugged in and more than that, the outlet that it was plugged into wasn’t working. He spent an hour at the house fixing everything. He’s so easy going and thoughtful and full of practical solutions, I’m so glad we have him on speed dial.

-Lights backstage. It is dark. Rope lights make everything better.

-Middle school teachers. On the day of the second performance of Once Upon a Mattress, I drove the 13 year old to school, so I could drop off snacks for the cast. OMG. Walking into the middle school was like walking into an alternative universe populated by strange half grown people all looking confused and defiant and disaffected and joyful. Sometimes all at once. And then there were these grown ups who kept saying, “Sit down. Don’t block the hallway. Get to class,” as if they were programmed on some kind of auto-loop. I went to a K-8 school, so this whole middle school thing is alien to me. And then as I was leaving the school, it struck me – this is what it is like every. single. day. The noise and chaos and emotion and physicality. It wasn’t just one crazy morning. it’s is every. day. Every day, my daughter walks these halls of screaming sensory overload. No wonder she comes home and wants to sit in her room and not talk to anyone for the rest of the night. And every day the teachers and school professionals manage the chaos and try to focus it into an environment for learning and growing. I have a hard enough time dealing with one tween/teenager. I am so grateful for the people who deal with hundreds of them every day.

Looking Forward To:
-Happy hour and lunch dates with friends. Now that my schedule is lighter, I’m doing all the social things.

-Season two of Poker Face. The Husband and I watched Season One together last year and it was a lot of fun. I’m excited for more murders and hijinks. Highly entertaining.

-Summer pool season. The weather is already in the 80s and muggy here and I can’t wait until I can be in the pool. Our pool opens in two weeks and soon we’ll be in the thick of summer swim team season. I’m going to have to think about how to prep for nightly dinners at the pool between swim practices.

-Just started this book. I’m determined to finish it before I go to South Africa next month, so I’ve set myself weekly reading goals. It’s proving fascinating and engrossing so far.

It’s a big book (almost 600 pages). But 25 of those years he spent in jail, so I’m really intrigued what that part of the book will be like.

What We Ate:

Monday: Ravioli Bake. The Husband made this and it was tasty – he was looking for easy recipes to make ahead and take along for those days when the 8 year old has to ride along to the 5 year old’s 6pm gymnastics classes and didn’t have time to have dinner beforehand.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – Ground beef tacos with guac, salsa, sour cream, cheese, and hard shells.

Wednesday: Chicken wings. My mother made them. This is one of her specialty dishes. The kids love it. It involves soy sauce, honey, and garlic.

Thursday: Black Pepper Asparagus and Tofu Stir Fry. I had picked up some asparagus and broccoli from the farmer’s market so I use both in this stir fry. Vegan.

Friday: not sure what the family ate. I was at work and ate leftovers. (Well sort of – I packed leftovers, but then got busy and didn’t eat them.).

Saturday: Pizza (take out) and Frozen.

Sunday: Benihana for Mother’s Day.

Welp, hope you have a lovely weekend. Ours is the usual kid activities and then the 5 year old is finally getting baptized. Hopefully there will be sunshine and fresh air involved, though.
What summer things are you looking forward to? Pools – yay or nay? Favorite pool dinners? Have you ever been to Benihana? Who was your favorite teacher in middle school?

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Opening Night, and April Reflections.

Another show opened! Yay! Now we are open, and I have a week of performances and meetings and cleaning up before I close out opera season. It feels like space has opened up in my life, but it is May which means a lot of life/ family/kid things are happening this month.

This weekend was probably busier than it should have been for me, given that it’s been a little non-stop at work. I should have taken time to gather my forces and refocused on what I need to do on the life admin/home front. On Thursday, my one official day off, I ran errands with a friend, went on a walk with another, took the two older kids to be “Mystery Readers” at the 5 year old’s classroom, took the 8 year old to soccer… it seemed like a lot for a free day when I really just needed to sleep or stare at the wall.

On Saturday, I decided to take the kids to a local street festival. We all biked there, which was really fun. Usually I walk while the two little kids bike and scooter (the 13 year old was on a service project with friends), but this time the kids said I should bike too, and it worked out better than I thought. The 5 year old is a dervish on the scooter and being on a bike, I could finally keep up with her. There’s something really fun about an excursion with the family where all of us are rolling on wheels. My goal is to get the 5 year old off her training wheels this summer.

The street festival has valet bike parking, which was really great. So we biked/scootered to the festival and left our bikes with the bike valet – so convenient. The place was super crowded and at first I remembered why I don’t often go to these festivals – there were so many people; I was supposed to meet up with friends, but I couldn’t find them; the inflatable activities weren’t being monitored and it was open season – chaos and even dangerous as balls and foam arrows flew around. I was actually pretty miserable for the first 30 minutes. But then I managed to pull the kids away from the inflatables/flying objects “fun” zone and we walked down the street and found a children’s musician singing songs about nocturnal animals. We sat in the shade, ate our snacks and listened to music, and I began to decide that I was having fun after all.

We walked on down the road, checking out some displays by various county organizations and found a mountain biking group – they had set up a little course and were letting kids try out mountain bikes. The 8 year old wanted to try and he ended up spending twenty minutes there, riding the same course of two little speed bumps over and over. He’s due for a new bike this spring – he is still using a hand me down purple and turquoise bike with broken pedals, which I think is a testament to how much he loves being on his bike – so afterwards I talked to the people running the mountain biking booth, and they said to get him a mountain bike because he can do whatever he wants on a mountain bike. The group also does youth mountain biking rides with a “no one left behind” philosophy – I’m excited to check it out further for the 8 year old. (And maybe the rest of the family…?)

Afterwards the mountain biking, we stopped at the truck touch, and I did end up running into some friends and having some great catch up time. So in the end, I’m really glad I took the two little kids to the street festival. I think I just have to remind myself to try to find the not so crowded places to be. One thing I thought was cool was they had “sensory friendly” tents where you could sit in a comfy chair with a pair of earmuffs on when things got to be too much. i thought that was such a great idea at an event that could be overwhelming.

That evening, the 13 year old and I got dressed up and went to the Gala Concert at my work. Her favorite opera singer was singing, so I thought it would be fun for her to go. We went with some friends, and it was nice to just go and watch a show without having to work on it at all.

Sunday I took the 5 year old to Agility Class and then came home, turned around twice and then went to work for the Sunday matinee performance. It’s nice that the show is so short because I have time to come home and still have a bit of time to re-set for the week.

I’ve been trying to lean into the idea of a “Sunday reset” to get me ready for the week ahead. So far my Sunday Reset list involves:
-Putting away the floordrobe and all the clothes on the bench in the bedroom.
-taking a shower. For me and the kids.
-planning my clothes for the week.
-boiling eggs for the week so I have easy breakfast. (I can’t find my silicone egg holder for the InstantPot so I’ve been boiling eggs on the stove and they don’t turn out as well. Suggestions welcome.)
-Tidying the living room and my desk. (usually one or the other, but I would love for it to be both.)
-exercise
-Cleaning out the backpack bins by the door
-Bluey with the family. Or Andor.
I would like to also add:
-dealing with the mail bin.
-clipping the kids’ nails. I always forget to do this until their nails are too long. I think if I had a set time to clip nails, it would be better.
-Getting the kids activity bags set so I don’t have to think about it later in the week.
-clean out my purse – it gets so full of receipts over the week.

I’m also wondering where the line is between Sunday routine and Sunday Reset. Maybe one is a flashy internet term and one is just … life. Because I would also like to find time on Sunday to be outside, to write on my blog, to connect with friends. But that doesn’t feel like it’s in the “get ready for the upcoming week.” category. Am I overthinking this? Also where is the line between over thinking and acting mindfully?

April Recap/ Reflections
April was definitely consumed by work work work work. I started prep for a show on March 31st and we had our final dress rehearsal on April 30th.

April highlights:
-finished our taxes on time. Finished the 13 year old’s taxes. (She got paid for the show that she was in last December. It was a 1099 and we claimed her voice lessons as an expense against it, so she ended up operated at a loss last year.)

-rehearsing, teching, and opening a show. It’s been one of the smoothest show processes I’ve ever had. It helps that it’s a remount of an existing production, and the show is short. Even still, everyone was lovely to work with, which is really important.

-“Ask Me Anything” session for the Production Assistants with the Staging Staff at work. So may words of wisdom and practical considerations to pass along to the next generation of people in the arts.

-March Madness. Yes, it says March, but it finished in April. We watched some really exciting games together as a family. I’m not a huge basketball fan, but it’s fun to see the Husband and 13 year old really get into something together.

-My mother and Uncle’s visit. Taking them down to the Mall and walking amongst the monuments.

-The weather – Spring has sprung. Sunshine, warm air. We’ve moved past cherry blossoms into tulips.

-Running – I ran 7 times last month, which is the most I’ve run since November. Getting to run along the Potomac on my dinner break is always great for views. I love that the path I take to run takes me across a bridge over the river, and from that end, I can look back and see my work place all lit up, and it seems so far away – it makes me feel like I accomplished something on my run, even though it’s really only a little more than a mile away.

-Continuing my daily yoga. Some days I squeaked it in with a 10 minutes video before bed, but most days I did 15-20 minutes in the morning.

-Lenten reading group. Such a great group of ladies with whom to contemplate life.

-Take your child to work day. I did not participate – my work hadn’t organized anything, but the Husband took all three kids to work, and they all had a great time. His work place goes all out for TYCW day, with lots of crafts, riding busses, scavenger hunts (one of the items is “Photocopy your hand”)

-figured out the 8 year old’s soccer team. He’s having such a good time being out on the pitch again.

-Easter service with the Bangla musicians.

-we finally got window treatments! It’s a little plain, but better than the mismatched curtains that I had before. I was so delighted by the top down/bottom up mechanism that I spent a good fifteen minutes after they were installed putting the shades up and down. The plainness of the shades do open up the wall on either side, and now I feel like I need art for the wall.

April Lowlights:

The Federal Government blood bath continues and it is very much hitting home. I’m trying not to think about it, but almost every conversation I have with friends starts with a ginger, “How are you doing?” because I just don’t know if people still have their jobs or not.
Not having a lot of time at home, leaving a lot of the burden of parenting with the Husband. Tech is hard on everyone.
Dropping a lot of balls in life admin.
Taking the corner into the parking lot poorly and putting a sizable dent in the car. AGH!
The house desperately needs a declutter, but I haven’t had time or energy to do it. I’m so tired of not being able to find things or constantly stepping on papers and toys and half done projects.
Owing money on taxes. This is to be expected now, but ouf. I’m going yo try to pay quarterly taxes this year, to make April less painful, but it might all be a wash.
The death of the Pope. What a humble, wise, kind, and beautiful person. The passing of public figures don’t usually hit me that hard, but the death of Pope Francis brought a real sense of loss.

April Insights- two insights, one practical and one philosophical:

-Practical- and this is super weedy stage management stuff, just warning you – Getting my cues in my book before we hit tech makes life so much easier during tech week. Okay, this seems obvious, but I struggle with this one. One thing I’m trying to work on with my own personal journey as a stage manager, is working ahead when I can. I often wait to put cues in my book because I think, “What if things change?” But you know what? They can’t change all 150 cues. So I should do what I can and move the Post It as I need to. For this show, I had the stage manager’s book from the last time they did this show, and that even gave me time to type my light cues onto labels for my own book. I’ve always kind of raised my eyebrows at people who type their cue labels, thinking it’s a lot of work for something, and kind of fussy. But OMG! how clean and pretty does it look to have all the cues typed?

This is the opening number – this is the most cues I have on one page, but the first twelve minutes of the show is a wild ride indeed. I basically just keep my head down, keep calling cues, counting measures, and am thankful that the lightboard operator is good at her job and keeps up with me.

I had hemmed and hawed about typing my labels because I like my light cues to be in a diamond shape and I couldn’t figure out how to print the labels in the right orientation to make them diamond shaped. I procrastinate for a week, thinking I would be able to figure it out. But then I decided, if the choice is between hand writing all 150+ light cues on the exact right shape label vs. typing them on not quite the right shape …. well typing them is so much faster. So I said to myself, “Diane, stop being ridiculous. Done is better than perfect. Stop waiting for the perfect solution to hit you on the head. You’ve been staring at this for a week now. Just do it the slightly different way and get it done.”

– The Philosophical – At our AMA with our Production Assistants, one of them asked us what is the best advice we’ve ever been given, and one of my co-workers said something that stuck with me. She said that Gavin Creel, a musical theatre star who passed away last year, said something that really stuck with her – (And forgive me if I’m not saying it correctly or paraphrasing it badly – I can’t find internet transcript of his exact words) He said that life isn’t a ladder to climb; it’s a lily pond. We are all on our own lily pads, and sometimes you jump from one lily pad to a bigger one, and sometimes you jump from a bigger one to a smaller one. And sometimes you jump onto a lily pad that sinks and sometimes you jump on to a lily pad that floats away and takes you somewhere unexpected and wonderful. I think this is such a beautiful metaphor because we live in a world that is obsessed with climbing the corporate (or what ever) ladder, but we have to realize that life is not all about climbing up. It’s about finding the lily pad where you want to be, and also about being willing to jump to a different lily pad when the time is right.

Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. Big thank you to Elisabeth for inspiring and highlighting daily movement. Some walks this week: walk on the trail near the 8 year old’s school, and grateful for a bench in the shade. Run at work on my dinner break, with blue skies and cool sculptures and architecture. Walk around the plaza at work on the day when I didn’t quite have time to go for a run. Walk to the Farmer’s market near work, where I got a pineapple ginger paleta (so refreshing, a bracing blend of sweet and spicy), and admired the front yard sculpture exhibit the neighborhood is sponsoring. A date to Costco with a friend (I’m counting this! We walked, and we got out of the house.). A walk on our nearby trail with a friend, catching up. A walk around the block one evening after work with the family, watching the kids collect leaves and run ahead of us, a perfect post dinner Sunday evening activity for Summer.

I was initially hesitant to declare participation because I knew I was going into a busy month, but you know what? It is more doable than I anticipated. I was motivated to find those ten minute chunks, late at night, on my meal break, etc. And it also gave me an excuse to try to cajole my family along with me. I think there was one day the first week of April where I didn’t get out and walk/run/bike, but I probably could have squeezed in something. Sometimes it takes planning, but also sometimes it’s about realizing when you have a bit of empty space. Not that we have to fill up all the empty space in our lives, but I’ve realized that going for a walk is still a form of having empty space – it gives me time to think, or not think, to breathe, and work out a bit of restlessness. Ultimately, though, there is no failure here. We do what we can do.

Grateful For:

-The above mentioned chance for the 13 and 8 year olds to be Mystery Readers for the 5 year old’s class. Before we went, the 8 year old said that he was nervous, but he did a great job! He read Pigs to the Rescue and The Giving Tree. The 13 year old read Daddy Daughter Day and 100 Dragons Named Broccoli.

-the box of tempation at work:

It is filled with chocolate:

-Everyone at work who does such a great job to make the show look and sound so good.

-Parent coaches. Despite what I wrote last week about the fight between the two coaches at the 8 year old’s soccer game, I really believe parent coaches are doing amazing work. I watched the 8 year old’s practice last Thursday. Herding a bunch of 2nd graders seems like an exercise in frustration, but Coach Greg kept it together and managed everything so well.

-Carpools. The thirteen year old had a full day of activities on Saturday, and I didn’t have to drive her to anything thanks to carpools.

-That I still have a job. It seems like every week, there is a new round of layoffs at work.

-Zhong zi, and my mother for bringing them. When my mother was visiting in mid April she brought a whole bag of zhong zi. These are sticky rice balls, filled with meat and mushrooms and wrapped in bamboo leaves. They are one of my favorite Taiwanese foods. One day when the fridge was pretty bare since we’ve been behind in the shopping, I needed a quick lunch and found the bag of zhong zi. I steamed them up and we had them for lunch and it was the perfect low fuss meal.

-comfortable shoes. That match the carpet at work. A wonderful thing on days when I am on my feet all day.

-Other things that make tech week go well: lunch boxes and ice packs, the Husband, a comfortable bed, water bottles, the ginormous chocolate chip cookies from the canteen at work, monitors and a strong conductor’s down beat.

Looking Forward To:

-The 13 year old’s middle school musical. Opens this week. I’m really excited to see it.

-My parents are coming for a visit. They very rarely come see us together, so this feels kind of special.

-May! What a month. We have lots going on this month – the 5 year old is FINALLY getting baptized. The 8 year old has first communion. The weather is turning the corner from Spring into Summer. Farmer’s markets. Piano recitals. Voice recitals. Happy Hour and lunches with friends.

-Watching Season two of Andor as a family. Well, actually, watching season one of Andor as a family. I haven’t even seen the first season. I hear it’s really really really really really good.

-Reading this book, not sure what it’s about yet, but I find myself nodding along with a lot of its shrewd and cutting observations. And the chapters are short so it flies by.

What We Ate:
Monday: Lamb stew, from the freezer. Thank you again, past me.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. The Husband made chicken tacos

Wednesday: I had empanadas from the Farmer’s market since I was at work. This is the best part of being at work on Wednesday. I think the Husband made some kind of sausage skillet for the rest of the family.

Thursday: Dinner out with friends.

Friday: I had leftovers at work for an early dinner then went out with the stage managers after the show and had a truly decadent dinner – scallops, risotto, kale salad, fancy guava soda made from scratch, peanut butter pie for dessert. The Husband and kids had pizza (take out) and watched Smoky and the Bandit. (Which I have never seen myself.)

Saturday: Kitchen sink chopped cabbage salad with chicken. I was kind of at a loss for what to make, so I took a bunch of sad vegetables from the fridge (cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, red onion, avocado), chopped it up, added walnuts, olive oil, salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar. Threw in some shredded chicken and… dinner! It was tastier than it ought to have been given the despair I felt when I first opened the fridge.

Sunday: Egg/ Breakfast sandwiches. The Husband cooked because I was at work. I think I had toast and yogurt when I got home.

Hope you have a lovely week.
Do you have a Sunday reset? How was your April? What does May look like for you? What do you make for dinner when you are looking in despair at the fridge at 5pm? Do you feel like you are on a ladder or a lily pad?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Day in the Life

We are half way through tech week. I’m am exhausted, but it’s been a really smooth and productive tech process so far and everyone is working really well together, so that always feels good.

I was inspired by the Day in the Life post that Stephany (among others), so I thought I’d write one too. The last time I wrote one, it was a year ago, during tech week. This time, I thought I’d write about a typical rehearsal day – this is Monday April 21st. Of course it wasn’t a typical day because the kids were off school – they always get the Monday after Easter off.

7:15am – Wake up. This is a little later than usual, but I had stayed up way too late the night before to finish my book (Heartbreaker by Sarah McLean), and the kids didn’t have school, so there was no huge rush in the morning. The Husband took the day off to stay home with the kids today, so he was around. The kids get up pretty early on their own – usually 6:15a/6:30a. I have a vague early morning memory of one child standing next to the bed saying, “I’m hungry!” I told them to go to the kitchen and find something to eat. I get up, and make the bed. I’m not usually a linger in bed person. Once I’m done sleeping, I like to get out of bed. I pull clean sheets and put them on the bed because the cleaners are coming this morning and they will change the sheets.

7:30am- Family Meeting This s year we’ve started having weekly family meetings on Saturday at 7:30am, but the family was out of town last weekend, so we had our family meeting on Monday morning. Our family meeting format is:
-Shout outs
-Calendar
-Meal Planning
We used to also cover “agenda items” – issues that any family member wants to discuss. This would range from “Can I have X app on my phone?” to “Summer” to “My sister won’t play with me”, and often ended with someone storming off in anger. It was just a frustrating way to spend our Saturday morning, even though going over the calendar was important. Then I listened to this webinar on family meetings last week and picked up some good ideas to try: 1) shorter meetings, 2) shorter agenda, 3) take turning s leading the meeting. So we’ve taken problem solving agenda items off the family meeting plan in the hopes of making the meetings shorter, more efficient, and less emotionally fraught. The webinar said that family meetings are times to connect, and I really want to try to embrace that. (The webinar is from a local group called PEP – they lead all sorts of parenting classes and currently many of them are free to watch the webinar recording. I highly recommend them – I find their approach calming – they very much take a “parent as advisor/coach” approach to things.)

Family meeting tools: The three month calendar. Multi colour pens – each person gets a colour on the calendar. The red notebook is where we write shout outs and rose/buds/thorns. My Hobonichi weeks. And my phone.

9:00 – Family meeting over, move on with morning. I pack lunch for myself. It will be a long day at work, so I pack lots of food. I think I also made toast for the kids here too. Or maybe I made toast for them to eat during the family meeting. The cleaning people have arrived by now and they start in the basement. Usually we’re not home when the cleaners are here, but since the kids are off school, we work around each other.

9:30am – yoga/stretch. I’ve been doing really well at daily yoga. I really like Charlie Follows yoga. Since the cleaners are the basement, I do my yoga in the kids’ room without my yoga mat – it’s the only room that has a clear floor at the moment. At one point the Husband comes in to talk about some life admin details, and the kids come running in and out. It’s not a relaxing 15 minutes of yoga, but I’m not a meditative yoga sort of person. I just really want to move and stretch.

10:00am – life admin – Since I don’t have to be a work until later, I take some time to catch up on some computer errands – registration, paying bills, blog reading and comments, emails. I get dressed.

10:30am – I convince the 13 year old to go on a walk with me. It’s like pulling teeth, but I feel like if I don’t get her out of the house, she might not leave the house all day. We walk down to the trail and around the neighborhood.

Someone has been writing chalk messages on the path.

11:15a – back home and getting ready to go to work. When we get home I find the Husband in the backyard doing some gardening and the two little kids are hanging out with him. I start getting ready to go to work – since I don’t have to drive carpool today, I’ve decided to bike to work. I have to get my lunch box in my backpack, and an change of clothes. My sister in law calls while I’m packing to go to work. We talk two or three times a week – she lives in California and she usually calls as she’s walking to her bus which usually lines up with when I’m going to work if I have an afternoon rehearsal, so the time difference works out.

11:30a bike to work. I love that most of my bike commute is along a parkway, so the traffic is minimal and I can go for long stretches without a stop light. There is a big hill at the end. I don’t always make it up the hill, but this time I do! Yay!

12:00n – arrive at work. change clothes

Then start my work day with some work at my desk – email, paperwork, putting cues in my score. Also checking in with the other stage managers. We have two shows going on right now, and since I’m the head of the department, I like to check in with the SM team on the other show when I can.

2:00pm – 5:00pm – first rehearsal of the day. This is an exciting day because we get to have a guitarist in rehearsal. We don’t usually get this but the guitar part is quite prominent in our show, so the conductor requested a few rehearsals in the room with the guitarist. The show also features a large electronica part- electronic music that is played on a keyboard. I didn’t get a picture, but it’s a very involved set up. At this rehearsal we work through the whole show with Principal singers.

The yellow Post It on the clock has our afternoon break schedule written on it so I don’t forget to break when we need to. Each of those green stickies is a light cue. This one particular section of the show is fiendishly difficult to call.

2:50pm- 15 minute rehearsal break. We typically rehearse 90 minutes then take a 15 minute break. Someone brought Levain cookies from New York and shares them during the break. My coworker and can’t decide which cookie to have so we each take one and split- oatmeal raisin and a chocolate chocolate chip.

Also on our break, we work on our team jigsaw puzzle. We usually have a puzzle going in the stage management office. We actually just started this one today:- it’s beautiful, the pieces are whimsical shapes:

Then we’re back at rehearsal, working through the show.

5:00pm – End of first rehearsal, Production meeting via Teams. Today is load in- when the tech team starts putting the set into the theatre. We have a brief meeting to check in to make sure all departments are on track for the final push to opening night.

5:30pm – Dinner. i eat my packed food, talk a walk, read a little bit of my book and do a ittle bit of the puzzle. Per union regulations, I get one hour for meal breaks which sometimes feels like a lot of time. (And some days not enough time…)

6:30pm – 9:45pm – Second rehearsal. The evening rehearsal is with chorus. We only have 16 people in the chorus so it’s not too hectic. We work through all the chorus scenes.

Evening rehearsal- new Post It with evening break times.

There are a lot of rolling chairs in our show.

8:30p- rehearsal break! Puzzle and snacks. Then back to rehearsal.

9:45pm – 10:30pm – notes. After rehearsal the stage management team gathers to go over any notes that need to be relayed to other departments and then talk over the next day’s schedule. Tomorrow is a really light day- only one rehearsal in the evening.

10:30pm – Take metro home with my bike. I appreciate that I can take my bike on the metro outside of rush hour. I don’t appreciate that the metro elevator smells like pee.

Train was pretty crowded at 11am because the hockey game had just gotten over.

11:00am – home. The metro is only four blocks home. It’s a beautifully warm evening and the road to the house is downhill and I love speeding down fast and coasting around the corner onto our street. So I do it twice. Two laps around the block with the wind in my face and then I pull in home.

I put away my lunch box, kiss the sleeping children, oil the cutting board, and spend a few minutes writing in my journal. Resisting the urge to revenge bedtime procrastinate I’m in bed by midnight.

Cool Bloggers’ Walking Club -I’m going to loosely interpret Elisabeth’s CBWC criteria as “get out of the house and move” because I didn’t do a lot of walking, per se, but I did:

Monday: bike to work + walk with the 13 year old (as detailed above)

Tuesday: bike to work

Wednesday: running

Thursday: dinner break walk the rooftop terrace at work (yet another picture of the Washington Monument)

Friday: Running on my dinner break.

Saturday: walk while the 13 year old was at voice lesson. There’s a meandering wooded trail. But if you look to the left, you’ll see we are right on a busy road.

Sunday: went ice skating while the kids were at lessons:

Grateful for:
-My work BFF brought me dill pickle chips! I might have eaten the whole bag in one sitting.

-The thirteen year old went on a walk with me!

-Beautiful weather.

-Parks and trails where I can enjoy the beautiful weather.

-Getting home safely at the end of a long rehearsal day. I’m going to be honest, driving home at 11:30/midnight is TOUGH.

-All the stage managers at work who gathered for an “Ask Me Anything” session with our two Production Assistants and shared their wisdom. The PAs are basically interns at the beginning of their career, so I like to have an AMA for them with the stage managers during their time with us. It’s voluntary for my staff, and I’m so grateful that all eight of the stage managers/assistant directors who were in town showed up to shared and support the PAs. Also they were all brutally honest about work life balance and the hard parts of being a stage manager, but also talked about why they loved the job too.

-My bike.

-Freezer leftovers for a low mental energy dinner. Thank you to past me.

-School and Teachers. Nothing makes one more grateful for schools and teachers than ten days at home with the kids over spring break. To be fair, I worked for much of those ten days.

-On that note, I’m also really grateful to the Husband for spending 10 days with the kids while trying to work from home and having a truly terrible hotel experience when he tried to take the kids out of town. (What kind of hotel still claims the rooms are unavailable because they are being cleaned at 8PM??!??!?!?) Also – grateful to the Husband who took the 8 year old to his soccer game, finally. And a shouting match broke out between the parent coaches. He says it was wild. I’m glad I wasn’t there, but also part of me wishes I had brought popcorn. The Husband had all the fun things to deal with last week.

Looking Forward To:
-Sleeping. Once tech week is over, I’m going to take a long nap.

-Evenings at home. I get to be home two nights next week. Yay!

-Mystery reader. You can sign up to read to my 5 year old’s preschool class. So we are doing that this week. I’m actually going to have the 8 year old and the 13 year old read. It’s not a big mystery because the 8 year old was so excited he has already told his sister.

-listening to this book on my commute:

What We Ate: I’m going to be honest – I ate mostly leftovers from the fridge because I was at work most nights. This is what I think the family ate, big thanks to the Husband.

Monday: Cabbage Soup from the freezer. Thank you Past Me.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. Carnitas from the freezer. Thank you Past Me.

Wednesday: No idea.

Thursday: Tofu and noodles. I prepped tofu crumbles for the Husband in the morning and he sauteed vegetables to go with it.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Frozen.

Saturday: Nachos with the leftover carnitas from Tuesday.

Sunday: Bahn Mi bowls, using the leftover tofu crumbles. This recipe, but with tofu instead of pork, and noodles instead of cauliflower rice. Love this recipe – it is tasty and comes together super quickly.

Weekly recap + What We Ate: What I wore, the cold spring edition

I’ve been thinking about fashion and appearances lately. First of all last week, I listened to an Edit Your Life episode featuring an interview with personal stylist Dacy Gillespie. Gillespie and Christine Koh had a really deep conversation about body image. “At what point,” Gillespie says, “did we get the idea that our bodies were wrong?” And I think that’s such a powerful thing to contemplate, this idea that “flattering” is a construct and we don’t need to subscribe to that construct. There is nothing “wrong” not “not ideal” about our bodies. Dressing in something flattering, she says, is just “prioritizing someone else’s opinion.”

Another thing she says: “Generally, we don’t have much control over the shape of our body. However, based on our shape, we’re being told to wear certain clothing items.”

Take the idea that “This shirt is flattering because the colours make your skin glow.” I mean that’s all well and good, but what if I like a colour that doesn’t make my skin glow? Am I going to just not wear my favorite colour? It’s all a personal choice, for sure, but the way fashion/style is so tied to societal ideals of what a person should look like, just feels like we might be denying ourselves of a bit of fun and enjoyment in clothes. Or if an item of clothing makes you feel good and confident, what does it matter if it isn’t slimming? It’s a bit chicken and egg, right? A dress makes you feel confident because it is slimming, but where does this idea that slim is better come from? Also, subscribing to what mainstream media is saying what a person should look like seems impossible when bodies are constantly changing. Maybe I had an ideal body in my 20s, but expecting 46 year old me to look like 20 year old me is just unrealistic. I think the Gillespie and Koh have a really empowering discussion and it’s worth a listen.

Soon after I listened to that episode, Nicole had a post, inspired by Cup Of Jo, called Tell Me Something Beautiful About You, where she muses about self-love and confidence and why it is so difficult to say what we love about the way we look. As always, her post is inspiring and beautiful and lifts us all up. And the comments were so wonderfully honest. I suspect if you read my blog, you already read Nicole’s, but if you don’t you need to go read it now, and all the comments, and ponder the question she asks – “What do you like about the way you look?”

I wrote a comment about how two of the things I liked the most about myself were things I got teased about when I was little. I’ve always really liked my mouth because my lips are naturally plump and red. But when I was growing up, kids at school would refer to my lips with a racial slur. And this was okay back then. I mean it’s not okay. It’s never okay. But no one ever called the kids out on it. All it made me do was suck in my lower lip so that it wasn’t so noticeable. The other thing I’ve always liked about myself are my eyes, but again, I feel weird saying that because there’s a lot of baggage that comes with Asian eyes and standards of beauty. This is the stupid part – even though I have big round eyes, the kids at school would still tease me and pull their eyes into little slants when talking about me. What the what??? My mother always said she liked my eyes because they were so big and round. And there is kind of an implication that eyes that aren’t big and round are less appealing. That’s the tricky thing about finding something appealing – I feel like society is set up in some kind of dichotomy where if X is considered attractive, the opposite of X is considered not attractive. When really a) it’s all subjective, and b) shouldn’t what we like about people be “and” not “or”? I love that Nicole gave us space to shout out the things about ourselves that make up feel good about ourselves while acknowledging that everyone is different and beautiful.

And this is what I want to say – I like your face. You can break it down into what features I like about your face, but really I like your face because it belongs to you. It isn’t that you have big eyes or button nose or plump lips. I like your face because through it shines everything you are.

Anyhow, Nicole asked for selfies, and I’m providing selfies, well pictures of myself. I was percolating this post for a while – I like to do a week of outfits once in a while – but the confluence of Nicole’s post and the Edit Your Life episode kind of made it feel like a fitting time to do another in this series.

This is the outfits from the my first week of rehearsals. When I’m in rehearsal and tech, I plan my outfits out on Sunday for the week, so I don’t have to think about it in the morning. This week, I thought the weather would be warm and sunny, and well, even though March went out like a lamb, April came back in like a lion so not everything I wore was something I picked out on Sunday.

Monday, First Day of Rehearsal:

I forgot to take a picture at work because the first day was very busy, so here it is on the hanger in the bathroom. (I take my pictures at work because we don’t have a full length mirror at our house. I would like to change this, but there’s no good place to put/hang a full length mirror.) Wool& tank dress and a Eileen Fisher jacket. I also wore black leggings and tan ankle boots, my checked cap, and a scarf. I know no one wears scarves as accessories anymore, but I still love wearing them. Plus is was really cold that day. I wear this outfit every first day of rehearsal, kind of like a ritual uniform. I think the jacket makes it looks a little more business like – or at least what passes as business like in my world. I love that jacket – it goes with anything. I’ve worn it with sweatpants and managed not to look like I was wearing sweatpants.

Tuesday:

Blue Wool& dress (Sienna), Sweater from Uniqlo, puffer vest from Uniqlo, knit cap (present from a chorister twenty years ago – I didn’t like this hat when it was first given to me, but now I wear it all the time.), black leggings, blue boots. I love those boots.

Wednesday:

This was an outfit that I had picked out when I though it would be warmer, but it ended up being super cold, so I added the sweater and the hat. Cotton gauze Old Navy wide pants (bought last summer and love them so much – would wear them all the time if I could), striped long sleeve t-shirt from Duluth Trading Company, Zip up hoodie sweater from DKNY (I’ve had this sweater for twenty years, bought it at an outlet mall outside of Denver. For many years I didn’t wear it because it is quite short and would always hit me funny. But then I started wearing high waisted pants and suddenly this sweater is perfect!), hat from Duluth (last minute hat addition when I realized it was almost the same colour as the pants). Shoes are wool runners from Giesswein. I had a pair of Allbirds that I wore all the time, but the Allbirds no longer come in fun colours, so in my search for wool shoes, I found these. I find them more supportive than Allbirds, especially for the balls of my feet.

Thursday:

I’m wearing pants! It must be very cold if I’m wearing pants. I think my original outfit was a dress. Same green hat as on Tuesday. Striped shirt from H&M, bought years ago when I was pregnant and trying not to show. It’s not technically a maternity shirt, but it does have a very boxy cut. Uniqlo puffer vest. Pants are from Duluth Trading Company, the cotton version of the NoGa pants. They are very soft and stretchy and, yes, could probably pass for yoga pants. Shoes – red Giesswein runners. I liked the Giesswein shoes so much I ordered them in two colours.

Friday:

This was a rainy rainy day. This was again not the outfit I had planned to wear, but given the rainy weather, I did not want to wear a dress to work.
Black gap maternity long sleeve t-shirt (another maternity item that I still wear), Duluth overalls in a fox print. (These are the grown up version of the overalls that the 5 year old has.) Purple DKNY sweater (same as Wednesday.) Rain boots (I think they’re Bogs?). I’m so glad I work somewhere where I can wear overalls and rain boots to work.

Saturday:

Black and white cap (Also worn on Monday), Mushroom and gnome print shirt from Duluth Trading Company, Uniqlo vest (this is definitely in my “20% of my wardrobe worn 80% of the time” pile.), Red Wool& tank dress (Same as worn on Monday – I love the Wool& dresses because I can wear them several times a week and they can be styled so differently. Also I don’t need to wash them after every wear, so they are very easy.), black leggings, blue boots. I think I wore this same outfit in one of my outfits of the week post last fall.

Sunday: Day off. I don’t have a picture of Sunday – again, no full length mirror at home. I wore my blue tie dye sweat pants, a red tank top and a red plaid flannel. Clearly it was a day at home.

That’s it – What Diane wore in one week, the unexpectedly chilly Spring Edition. One thing I’ll say, as I look back on these photos, is that I genuinely like and feel comfortable in everything that I wore that week, and indeed most of my wardrobe. If I don’t feel comfortable in it, or feel “meh” about it, then it doesn’t belong in my closet. I think last year I wrote about my three style words, and they were Colourful, effortless, and playful. I still feel like that’s how I dress, “flattering” be damned.

Cool Bloggers Walking Club: unofficially The kids were on spring break last week, so I took the metro or rode my bike to work for most of the week. (When they are in school, I tend to drive since I have to drive to the bus stop anyway). So I had lots of walks to and from the Metro Station. I also went down to the Mall again with my Uncle and Mother- this time we walked to the MLK and FDR Memorials.

Snapshots from my commute – 7 walk to metro, 10 minute metro ride, 7 walk to work on the other side. I think this falls into the “every little bit counts” column of CBWC. Here are some very boring images from my commute.

Walk to park with kids on Easter Sunday while they biked/scootered. Cherry blossom season has passed into sakura-fubuki stage. Literally means “Cherry blossom snow storm” – it’s when the wind blows the blossoms off the trees and it makes a delightful snow of petals. The Japanese have many phrases for the various phases of cherry blossom season.

Walks around the block with my co-workers. There are these random swings. I always want to stop and swing, but never do. Some day.

Grateful For:

-A borrowed umbrella and the rain letting up just in time for me to walk home from the Metro.

-My mother’s visit.

-Shorts and t-shirt weather. Warm air in the evening.

-A car free day and the bike and Metro that made it possible.

-Lilac bushes in our backyard. They smell so lovely. Makes me take a pause to inhale. (I realize this is the third week in a row that I’ve written about a lovely smell… there’s something to that, maybe.)

-That I don’t have to wipe my kids’ butts anymore. Usually. We were at a restaurant and one kid had to go #2 and I was really grateful that I could just send her into the stall by herself. I will admit though, the universe laughed at me and that very night I was roused at midnight later that day because a child had a poop explosion in bed. But even still – I can’t remember the last time I had to clean up a poop mess, so I’m still sticking to being grateful for this.

-The Husband taking the kids away. Last week was spring break. The Husband worked from home most of the week and then took the kids away on an overnight with my mother. Our schools are also closed the Monday after Easter, so the Husband had TEN DAYS with the kids while I worked evenings and Saturdays. So grateful that he was holding it down on the home front. I think he deserves a month of hermit time after this.

Looking Forward To:

-Freakonomics Radio is doing a series where it looks at live theatre. The first episode is called “How is Live Theatre still Alive?“. Of course, as someone who works in live theatre/ opera, I am very much interested in this question. Opera is expensive, and sometimes I question my life choices and wonder if I’ll be able to do this until I retire. (Though honestly with everything going on in DC these days I’m wondering if I’ll be doing this next year…) I’m really excited to hear Freakonomics get into the nitty gritty of where the money in theatre comes from and where it goes.

-Tech! It’s tech this week! I’m a little nervous about this show – there are some very difficult sections of light cues to call. But I’m excited to be in the theatre, so see the work we’ve been doing in a rehearsal room on a taped floor with music stands and rehearsal cubes comes to life with sets and costumes and lighting. I’ve planned my clothes for the week. I have lots of leftovers/ meals in the fridge. I’m looking forward to running along the Potomac on my dinner break. I’m telling myself that I’m looking forward to going to bed without revenge bedtime procrastination – because if I tell myself then, maybe I’ll do it.

-I finally got a hold of someone who placed the 8 year old on a soccer team. I’m a little nervous because he’s not going to know anyone because he’ll be playing in a different part of town than his last team, but I’m excited that he’ll get to be out on the pitch again.

-Speaking of tech it also means a longer commute, so I’m looking forward to diving into a new audiobook. I’m almost done my audiobook so I need a new one since my commute to the theatre is longer than my commute to the rehearsal space. I generally like fast moving, gripping fiction for my tech week, something to keep me engaged when my brain is fried. Suggestions welcome!

What We Ate:

Monday: Eggplant and Pork stir fry with Udon noodles – The Husband cooked. I ate some leftovers when I got home and it was really delicious. I made myself a sweet potato and quinoa salad to eat at work and all week. Loosely based on this recipe from Pinch of Yum, but I didn’t have chickpeas so I threw in a can of cannelini beans with the quinoa.

Tuesday: Shrimp tacos. I wasn’t home that night, but I prepped the shrimp so the Husband cooked them and some chicken when he got home.

Wednesday: Spaghetti and meatballs. The 13 year old made dinner, including making the meatballs from scratch. I’m really proud of her- I pulled out the basic recipe from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, she and the Husband made a shopping list, and then he sent to the store with his credit card. She walked to the store and bought all the ingredients herself (she was really proud that she resisted the temptation to buy chips or candy – I’m proud of her too and I split a bag of Vicky’s Spicy Dill pickle chips with her later that evening as a celebration.). Then she came home and made dinner. I ate some when I got home from work and it wasn’t bad.

Thursday: The Husband took the kids out of town. I had leftover spaghetti and meat sauce when I got home from work.

Friday: Cabbage Soup. I made a big batch of kitchen sink cabbage soup on Thursday night after I got home from work – hopefully enough for a few meals during tech for me and for the family to reheat and eat one night while I’m working. Anyhow, I took a container to work to eat on Friday. Vegan.

Saturday: The rest of the family were camping to celebrate a friends’ birthday party. They had had some Thai food for lunch so I ate that for dinner when I got home from work at 9pm.

Sunday: Easter Dinner! We had a low key Easter. We went to 8:30 Mass, which to my surprise, was half in Bangla. Our church has masses in French, English, and Spanish because there is a large immigrant community in our congregation. On Easter Sunday, the 8:30am Mass was also in Bangla, which I wasn’t expecting, but which was actually a nice surprise. Half the homily and readings were in Bangla. There was also Bangla music a few times throughout the service, which made for a really fun change of pace. I loved seeing all the women coming to church dressed up in their saris on Easter Sunday – all jewel tones with gold trim, silken fabric wafting as they walked.

After Mass, we went out to brunch at Denny’s. We have a family tradition of going to IHOP of Denny’s or some diner for Easter brunch after church. Then we came home, looked for Easter Eggs and cleaned the house a little bit. After that, we went to the park with the two little kids – the 13 year old was in hermit mood and stayed home – the kids biked and scootered. We ended up running into some friends at the park. Then we came home and I cooked Easter dinner. After dinner, everyone cleaned up the kitchen and had showers and we finished out the evening by watching Bluey and eating chocolate pudding. Not too busy, but a good combination of activities, I think.
The Easter Menu: Ham (baked in Guinness with a brown sugar coating), marinated zucchini (this recipe, but I grilled the zucchini rather than fry it), broccoli quinoa salad, pull apart Challah rolls (I chose these over the Hawaiian roles because I like the texture better, even though they taste similar). For dessert, I made Smitten Kitchen’s Best Chocolate Pudding – I love this recipe because it is easy and fast and I almost always have the ingredients on hand so I can make it when I need a last minute family dessert that also feels special.

Hope you all have a great week!
Has Spring arrive yet for you? What is your “20%/ 80%” item in your closet? Do you have anything that you recently rediscovered in your closet? What’s the first meal you remember making and how old were you? What else should the 13 year old make?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to work and Six Things Sunday

I’m back in rehearsal for a show. I’m lukewarm on the show, but I’m having a really good time with the people I’m working with. I think if I got to choose, I’d rather work with good people than on good opera. It reminds me of something that I once read Nicole Kidman say where she picks projects based on the director rather than the material because she has very little control over what the final film will be like, so she prioritizes having a fulfilling working experience. All to say, I’m glad to be back in the rehearsal room creating opera with people with whom I look forward to seeing every day. At the same time, I’m feeling a little tapped right now. I really don’t know how people managed to work full time and take care of life at the same time. The good news is I’ve signed off on our taxes, so that pressing issue is finished. But all the little life admin stuff – registration, calendar checking, decluttering, organizing – all that has fallen by the wayside.

To be honest, though, when I look at my day, I don’t think my growing life admin list is because I don’t have the time to do these things. There is always time, right? It’s just what does my brain feel up to in those bits of time when I’m not at work or trying to get the kids fed and out the door? It certainly isn’t life admin. Take for example, sleep. I always tell myself that I will just go straight to bed when I come home late at night after a rehearsal, but lately I’ve been coming home, eating all the snacks and scrolling until 1am. I’m not even doing things that fill my bucket like reading or journaling or scrolling. Or really, I should just be sleeping. And then it makes the morning come too soon and I’m dragging. It’s kind of a bummer habit I need to get out of.

Another case in point, this was originally going to be a five thing Friday brain dump, but now it is a Six on a Sunday post because I decided to scroll rather than blog on Friday night. Which, I know I feel better writing than scrolling, but I just find it hard to find the motivation and get back into a rhythm when I have to be at work 8 or 9 hours a day.

Three Bummer Things:
-An awful commute. One day, I forgot my phone at home, so after school drop off, I went home to get it and decided to take the “short” way to work. The “short” way is the Google Maps way. It is usually shorter, but it goes through a busy area, so the route can also be not so short. (My usual way to work takes 17 minutes, and it is down a parkway so it is much more predictable. The “short” way takes 15 minutes, which, now that I’ve typed that out, I find myself thinking, “Do those two minutes really matter?” I guess in my head one is “15 minutes” and one is “almost 20 minutes.”). Anyhow, the “short” was not short that day – there was more traffic than usual, and I ended up being stuck behind a big white truck that moved slowly. I think that can be a metaphor for our times – Stuck behind a big white truck and unable to see what is ahead. Anyhow, I finally got to work, but since, in an effort to get out from behind that big white truck, I came at our parking lot in a different direction than I was used to and I hit an unseen small bit of fencing pole that was poking up from the ground. There is now a huge dent/scratch in the car. UGH! An excellent way to end a hideous commute. I’ve refrained from taking the “faster” route since then.

-Not being able to find Cadbury mini eggs anywhere. C’mon, World! It’s still a week before Easter- why is EVERYWHERE out of these?

-The soccer league I signed the eight year old up for still hasn’t put him on a team, and the season started three weeks ago. I’ve written and called and all I get is that they are still working on it. I would normally just ask for my money back, but the 8 year old really wants to play soccer this spring. The issue is that the team he played on last fall was disbanded because they couldn’t find a coach. I feel a little bit of guilt on this issue because 1) I did sign him up a month after registration opened (but still three weeks before the season), and 2) I didn’t volunteer to coach when they asked me. I work a lot of Saturdays so coaching would have been tough, but I could have coached practices.

Three Delightful things:

– Friday’s swim lessons- two things delightful: 1) the five year old moved up one swim level and I was able to get her in the next class. Registering for county swim class is a little like Hunger Games here, so I was amazed that I could get her into the class. And 2) I ran into a mom friend at the pool who I hadn’t seen in over a year. It was nice to catch up and we’ve made plans to make plans in May after my show closes.

-organizing my pencil pouch and post it box. Getting rid of all the writing implements that I don’t use and having only the things I know and love and find useful in my pencil pouch.

Some day I will write a super geeky post about all my favorite office supplies I use for work.

-The clean smell of laundry coming from the dryer vents. As I was walking up the front walk late one night after work, the air smelled of clean clothes and soap- our dryer vents to the front of the house. I always love the smell of clean laundry coming from a dryer vent. Even when I’m out on a walk, and I smell warm laundry air from a random house, I inhale and feel so peaceful.

– One bonus thing ( which will make it Seven for Sunday, even though it’s now Monday)- the eight year old doing laundry. He has a favorite outfit, and one day we came home to laundry going. In the machine was a single pair of pants and a single shirt. Delight at him doing his own laundry co-existed with annoyance that he did a whole cycle for two items of clothing. It was a teaching moment for sure.

Grateful For:

-Group efforts to move a desk. Last fall, I realized that we had 11 stage managers coming in this spring and only 10 desks. But Fall 2024 Diane said to herself, “I’ll worry about that later” Welp a week and half ago “later” came and I realized that I would have to figure out how to get an 11th desk into the Stage Management Office. I’m really grateful for my work colleagues who helped me find a desk and rearrange the office to make room for the desk (while at the same time doing a major purge and decluttering of our space.). Also – the new desk is kind of small and doesn’t have drawers, so one of my co-workers made a drawer:

-People who plant flowers in their yards, bringing colour and beauty to my walks around the neighborhood. The tulips are coming out in full vibrant force and I love it.

-An evening at home. They will be few and far between in April, so I’m grateful for the few evenings I do get to come home before bedtime.

-The Husband for covering the evenings and the day the kids were off school.

-Past me for freezing soup. That feeling of panic and despair when I realize there is nothing in the fridge to take for lunch. Then the feeling of relief and excitement when I realize there is soup from January frozen in pint sized mason jars, ready to be tossed into my lunchbox and taken to work for lunch.

– My coworker who put air in my bike tires. My bike has been sitting at work for the past six months. I rode it to work one day and then for whatever reason did ‘t ride it home. And then it was winter. But now it is nice enough for me to bike again so 8’m looking forward to getting on the Ike again, only the tires were flat. I could bring my pump fr9m home, but my coworker said she had an electric pump in her car, so she pumped up my tires for me, Yay!

-Cool Blogger’s Walking Club, thanks to Elisabeth. I haven’t really officially declared participation because I don’t like failing at things I vow to do publicly, and this month is kind of optimal month for me to fail at walking every day. But knowing that CBWC is happening is a little bit of extra motivation to walk. Last week, my walks were mostly a quick walk around the block on my dinner break, or a walk to get coffee before rehearsal. A couple times, I embraced the “9pm post kids in bed” walk and walked loops around my block after dark. One time I even convinced the 13 year old to come on one of those late night walks. One day I walked one loop around the running track at school after drop off. Another day I meant to walk after I dropped the kids at the bus, but then I crossed paths with a fellow parent friend who used to work for USAID and I figured catching up with him was more important than a walk. (Though I guess I could have suggested that he walk with me.) And then today my uncle and mother are in town and we went down to the Mall and walked from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Air and Space Museum – DC is such a pretty city to walk in.

Looking Forward To:
-Kielbasa. The oldest and I stopped at The Kielbasa factory on Sunday. It’s a small mom and pop kind of place in a strip mall, just wide enough for one line of people to the deli/kielbasa case and one line of people at the cash register. We brought home three different kinds of Kielbasa. So looking forward to eating it. (Note – we did eat it, and it was delicious. I still have a tub of sauerkraut in the fridge, though. Some nights I come home and just eat that out of the container, it’s so good.)

-Spring Break. This coming up week is Spring Break. I have to work, so I’m not going anywhere, but the Husband is taking the kids away on an overnight. I’ll have the house blissfully quiet to myself for 36 hours or so. Of course I have to work for 20 of those hours, and sleep for 7 of those hours, so it’s not a wide swath of alone time. But it’s something. Certainly more than the Husband is getting.

-Final meeting of my women’s Lenten group – This also already happened, and it was such a wonderful meeting. They are talking about making this into a monthly meet up, which I would love. Would also give me time to actually finish the Lenten readings. I do think they are meaningful all year round, not just at Lent.

-Using my new Boba straw. We went for boba tonight and we got a free gift with our order! A reusable boba straw. I’ve been wanting one for a while now and I’m so excited to get to use it!

What We Ate (I seem to have two weeks of meals to account for…):
Monday: Butter pasta and green beans. I would like for the 13 year old to help with dinner more, so I asked her to make dinner one night this week. Monday seemed like a good choice since there wasn’t any school anyway. She wanted to make butter pasta, which in my mind is very similar to the blue box of mac n cheese she frequently makes. I asked if she had a recipe and she said, “I was going to cook the pasta and add butter until it looked good.” I understand there was also copious amounts of parmesan cheese as well. I didn’t get any because it was all gone by the time I got home from work. So I guess that’s good? The green beans were take out from our favorite dumpling restaurant. (On the plus side, even though there was no butter pasta left for me, the family did save me dumplings and noodles from the dumpling place.)

Tuesday: Middle School Tacos. I found the name of this recipe to be hilarious, and these were legit delicious. This is the classics taco in the hard shell with sour cream, ice berg lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. Funny story – I wrote “lettuce” on the grocery list, and the Husband asked, “What kind of lettuce?” and I said, “Taco lettuce” and he came home with a cabbage. Because every other taco Tuesday we’ve had cabbage with our tacos. But middle school tacos demand iceberg lettuce. So the Husband brought home an head of iceberg lettuce which, not to be a snob, but I don’t remember the last time we had ice berg lettuce. But once we tasted the tacos, we all agreed, ice berg lettuce was the right and only choice.

Wednesday: Waffles and eggs. The Husband cooked because I worked late.

Thursday: Tortilla soup from last week, taken from the freezer.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and National Treasure. I hadn’t seen all of National Treasure before – what a fun movie. Plot holes galore, but very entertaining nonetheless.

Saturday: The kids had pizza at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. The Husband had take out. Not sure what the 13 year old ate. I ate last week’s salmon and miso rice leftovers from the fridge when I got home from work.

Sunday: Chicken salad and apple slices. Our typical snack/scrounge Sunday dinner. I also had a beet and cucumber salad – diced raw beets, diced cucumber, olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, and dill. It was a tasty salad. We have some beets to use up from our friend’s CSA – I might packed this salad for many lunches this week.

Monday: White Bean Parmesan Soup. From the freezer. I can’t remember when I originally made it. Tasty and hearty.

Tuesday: Turkey Tacos – The Husband cooked since I was at work.

Wednesday: Tortellini and Kielbasa. I had leftovers at work, but when I came home there was a two inch piece of Kielbasa on the counter that the family had left for me.

Thursday: Dinner out with a friend at a local Mexican restaurant. I had ceviche and a horchata.

Friday: Pizza (ordered out) and movie night. They watched one of the Star Wars movies. I had the beet and cucumber salad at work, adding chickpeas for bulk.

Saturday: Kielbasa, green beans, and pan fried gnocchi. The Husband cooked and I think sometimes his strategy is “Put yummy food on the table and get it out of the fridge.” It was still tasty. My mother and uncle arrived later that evening, so I boiled some dumplings for them.

Sunday: Hot Pot. My uncle and mother are visiting so we went to our favorite hot pot place. I tried a new to me spicy broth – it was really tasty, but I don’t think I want all my food to be spicy, so I might not order it again. We really like this hot pot place – it’s our go to restaurant when we have visitors from out of town because it feels kind of special and it can accommodate a variety of diets.

Hope you have a sunny week!
Do you have a go to restaurant where you take guests when they come visit? Are you participating in the Cool Blogger’s Walking Club? If you blog, do you have a rhythm or routine to writing?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye, March and opera season resolutions

There goes March. It certainly went out like a lamb with a wonderful 70 degree weekend.

The highlight of my last week of March was going down to see the cherry blossoms. I went on a Thursday morning since I didn’t have to be at work. It was still two days shy of peak bloom, but the trees were still beautiful. Things I want to remember:
-an artist with an easel set up, painting. It made me long to get my paints out as well.
-a couple posing for pictures – her in a pretty pink dress, him in a matching jacket. As I walked past them, I heard the person behind me mutter, “I bet she bought that jacket for him and made him wear it.”
-The Japanese tourist with the most elegant pink felt cloche with lace flowers on it, a long pink sweater coat, and delicately pleated pink pants.
-The free music on the Tidal Basin stage – A couple of singers from The South East Asian Performing Arts Network who sang songs in both Bengali and English – a really fun mash up. And their voices were amazing.
-The dad trying to take a picture of his two little girls, maybe 5 and 8 years old. The little girls had cherry blossom head bands on and the youngest one clearly wasn’t having it as the dad posed them and tried to get them to smile. Then the older child pulls her little sister into a hug and says, “If you smile, dad will buy us ice cream.”

I wandered along the Tidal Basin and then found a bench and sat and read my book and ate my trail mix for a little bit while watching the people walk by. One of the things I love about people watching during cherry blossom season is seeing the wonder and joy of people who are seeing the blossoms for the first time. And many for the only time. Going to see the cherry blossoms always makes me think of my grandmother because she had always wanted to come to DC during cherry blossom season and never got to.

March Lowlights:

Well… there’s the continued state of the dismantling of America. So many people I know have gone from living in uncertainty and anxiety about whether or not they will still have their jobs, to flat out losing those jobs. There’s the erasure of underrepresented people. There’s the bully tactics. There’s the folks that fundamentally don’t understand why we make art. Or how about fundamentally don’t seem to understand why the government provides services and how they support us becoming a thriving nation.

I guess in light of that, all my other March lowlights are just… the regular pebble in shoe type of irksome things. Tweens, house messes, too much laundry, feeling overwhelmed by my to do list but also fighting procrastination inertia.

March Highlights:
So the Cherry Blossoms were definitely a March highlight. Here are some more…

-Going to see a play with my oldest child.

-Seeing a friend and re-visiting the Duck Decoy Museum with her.

-Pottery painting date with my friend K.

-Lenten Women’s group. We’ve been having some really great conversations while reading Walter Brueggermann’s A Way other than our Own. The readings and meditations feel very apt for our times, with his contemplations on what it means not to let anxiety force you to live a life you do not want to lead.

-Starting back up with running after not running all winter. (Though I found it hard to find time this week with being back at work full time.)

-Started going to the exercise room at the rec center while the youngest goes swimming.

-Calling my friend who lives in Oman. It was so amazing to hear her voice and catch up.

On the work front:
-Last super title job of the season. A challenging and rewarding recital program that featured several new to me languages.

-Minor triumph at work: So when I first started at this company as the intern, I remember complaining to my boss about how the lines on the chorus log sheet were too close together and I didn’t like having to write so small.
“Make a new one, then,” she said to me.
Well, twenty years later, I finally made a new log sheet, one with more space between the lines. I don’t know why it’s taken me twenty years. Change is hard for me. But I guess being the head of the department is as good a time as any to fix this one thing that’s been irking me for twenty years.

-Seeing our chorus again for rehearsals. I adore our chorus and it makes me happy every time I get to work with them.

On the “check things off my list” front:
-Registered the 5 year old for kindergarten. My baby! She is so ready to go and I am so ready to stop paying childcare tuition.
-Finally ordered window treatments for our living room! They will be here in 4-6 weeks, depending. Interesting story – the owner of the company goes to every house call himself – his store also sells other household goods – kitchen gadgets, towels, rugs, what not. He said that they were buying up inventory now, before the tariffs really hit. Now is definitely the time to buy things, he says, before the tariff costs get passed on to the customer. (Well, given this week’s news perhaps yesterday was the time to buy…)
-Submitted our tax documents to our tax person. These should be done within the week.
-Got new glasses.

Resolutions for Rehearsal Season to Keep me feeling human and healthy:
I start rehearsals next week for a new show and I feel a little out of practice since I haven’t worked on a show since January. Some guidelines for this month:
-Plan healthy meals and snacks
-Pre-plan what I’m going to wear every day so I don’t have to think about it in the morning.
-Keep up with my life admin goals – assign myself times to do the things, make the phone calls, pay the bills.
-Read fun books.
-Do my crossword puzzle
-Hug the children.
-Go on walks. (Or runs, or if I put air in my bike tires, bike rides)
-Continue daily yoga and journaling.
-Answer phone calls and texts from family.
-Hug my family in the morning and at night.
-Be decisive.
-Be kind.

I get a lot of anxiety when I’m about to start rehearsals. It’s a combination of lack of self confidence and fear of the unknown. But once I start, the day to day becomes clearer and it all works out and I really enjoy what I do. It’s this week before rehearsal that I don’t enjoy.

Grateful For:
-Beautiful sunny, seventy degree weather.

-The spilled jar of garam masala. This is a silly one. A few weeks ago, someone knocked a whole jar of garam masala over in our pantry. And now the pantry smells all warm and spicy. Now, every time I open the pantry door, I find myself pausing to take a moment to inhale and savor the lovely smell.

-Libraries.

-That we can eat a variety of foods. One day at dinner we had salmon wrapped in nori, and it was so delicious and I just felt so grateful that we have such a wide variety of foods available in our grocery stores and a wide variety of grocery stores, and that I can cook a panoply of cuisines for dinner.

-The lady at one of my gigs who sent me a copy of my 1099 after I had misplaced the original.

-Flowers and blossoms and all the beautiful colourful signs of spring.

-Reading while the kids cleaned the kitchen. The Husband was away for two nights last week, so it was just me and the kids. On the second night, the kids cleaned the kitchen after dinner while I sat on the couch and read my book. It was wonderful. When I was a teenager, my parents would go for a walk after dinner every day, leaving my brother and I at home to clean up the kitchen. My brother and I had this division of labor where one person did the dishes and the other person did everything else. When I think back on that time, I now realize how brilliant my parents were.

Looking Forward To:
– I have to admit, April is looking like kind of a slog because of starting rehearsals for a new show. There will be a lot of evening rehearsals, and we just have one day off a week. So I’m trying to remember to look forward to the little things. Like my tea in the morning. The satisfaction of making my bed. Kissing soft sleepy cheeks at night when I come home and everyone’s asleep. My morning yoga practice. Cadbury mini eggs. (I refrained from getting the huge bag at Costco last week and I now think that was a mistake.)

Some other things on my anticipation list:

-My mother is coming to visit for the kids’ Spring Break. (Although this means I’ll have to clean out the toy/guest room which is currently a mess)

-Starting rehearsals. Or more specifically starting rehearsals with a conductor. This show I’m working on is a contemporary opera and the music is probably one of the hardest scores I’ve had to follow. It is very repetitive and the time signatures change constantly so I have to count like crazy. I was listening to a recording to mark the timings in my score and I kept having to go back to the beginning and start again because I would just get lost. I am very much hoping the music will be easier to follow when there is a conductor to watch so I know where the downbeats are.

-Just started this audiobook, a death doula’s memoir:

What We Ate:
Monday: Vegetable Tortilla Soup from New York Times Cooking. I made this because I had sweet potato to use up. This was more like chili than soup. Definitely better the next day. Vegan.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! Carnitas made in the InstantPot.

Wednesday: Roasted Salmon in Miso Rice from New York Times Cooking. I brought out the nori and we ate this as handrolls.

Thursday: Easy coq au vin in the InstantPot. At the 8 year old’s request.

Friday: pizza and … I’m not sure what they watched. I think maybe basketball. I worked this evening.

Saturday: Spicy Korean Bowl – the family went out to eat and brought this home for me.

Sunday: Joy’s Creamy Green Pasta from Meera Sodha. A repeat of a meal we had two weeks ago because this sauce is just SO delicious and I had a bag of spinach to use up and I had to work in the afternoon and this meal comes together in less than 30 minutes. Vegan.

I’m posting this later than usual, so I hope you have a lovely weekend!
What are you most looking forward to in April, big or small? Have you ever changed something after living with it for way too long?