The weather has been so bonkers lately! One day it is 80 degrees and then the next it is 55 degrees and spitting rain. It was a busy week last week. Often when I have a busy week, I do a “Week of Outfits” post because it’s something I can do a little at a time. Of course, I really should have saved “Week of Outfits” for next week when I’m in tech, but I think the first week of rehearsal is more interesting sartorially.
Monday – First Day of Rehearsal!
I like to get a little bit dressed up for the first day of rehearsal. I went with an all red theme because red is one of my favorite colours and I feel good in red. (Afterwards the executive director of the company said that red was the official company colour…) The hat was purchased this summer from the hat shop in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The red sweater is from Uniqlo. The Dress is from Wool& and the shoes are Geisswein.
Tuesday – Forgot to take a picture til 11pm after I got home from work:
Theme of the day was Orange! It was also 80 degrees this day. Hat another NOTL purchase. The button down used to belong to the Husband, but it no longer fits him so it’s mine now. Duluth tank (with built in bra). Cotton gauze pants from Old Navy (a last minute purchase two summers ago, grabbed as I headed to check out. They are one of my favorite summer pants). Black Allbirds – my father saw them on sale at REI, purchased them for the oldest kid, but they aren’t her thing, so they are now mine.
Wednesday:
Same hat and shoes as Monday. The dress is from a Japanese brand, a hand me down from my cousin. You’ve probably seen it on past “what I wore” recaps because I love this dress; it is so easy to wear because it is stretchy cotton, and also has interesting details so it feels like an effortless way to look like I tried.
Thursday:
Yet another hat from NOTL (I bought four!). Wool& dress with floral Uniqlo top worn over it. (I’m sure I’ve worn this a lot too.) Shoes are also Geisswein. I need to replace my Geisswein shoes; they are two years old and the treads are all worn out on this pair and the red pair. But it’s nearly winter, so I think I might wait until spring.
Friday:
No hat this day because I took my bike in for maintenance so I had to wear my helmet. I actually came to work in shorts and a t-shirt, rode the bike to the shop then came back to work and changed into this outfit. The top is Uniqlo, the skirt is from JC Penny, off the discount rack.
Saturday: My day off. I have no picture from this day – I put on my running clothes in the morning to go for a run while the oldest was at her voice lesson and then just never changed out of them.
Sunday: Flag football and rehearsals.
Photo taken by the 14 year old…
It was cool but sunny this day, which was a relief after having terrible weather so far for flag football season. After flag football, I went to work and was there til 10:30pm. The red knit cap is from (you guess it) that shop in Niagara on the Lake. I wore my fox overalls. I like to wear my fox overalls when work on the weekends. It’s a bit of dopamine dressing for having to be at work. The quarter zip is another hand me down that the Husband out grew. I think it’s from Joseph A. Banks.
That’s a week of outfits!
What other “Week of…” posts can I do…?
Grateful For: -Boone. My friend L’s dog passed away last week. I only met him once and he was such a sweet presence. I’m so glad L shared Boone with all of us.
-A smooth first day of rehearsal. Shhh … here’s a secret… I don’t actually like being the stage manager. It really stresses me out to be in charge. I much rather be the assistant stage manager. The first day of rehearsal stresses me out because there are so many new elements descending on me at once. But last week’s first day was very smooth and mostly routine and I felt like I knew what I was doing.
-on that note – I’m grateful for people of a higher pay grade than me to whom I can kick problems up the chain.
-My bed. I’m so grateful for my bed and being able to slide in between the sheets after a long day at work.
-Sally’s sewing machine. I am sewing Hallowe’en costumes on a sewing machine that was gifted to me by my late mother in law. It is a Spartan Singer sewing machine from the 1950s and only does straight stiches, and I’m so grateful to have it.
-Sewing tutorials on the internet. I don’t have a serger, but the patterns I’m looking at has all these serging instructions. The internet suggested I do a French seam instead. I’m so glad that there are a plethora of videos online that will tell me how to do that.
-Clear blue skies after days of rain.
Looking Forward to: -contra Dancing! Next Sunday, one of the Husband’s favorite callers is calling an afternoon contra dance and it’s on our calendar to go. Sometimes we loose steam and don’t end up going, but I’m putting this into the world and saying that we are going.
-Seeing a friend from my mom’s group. Her kid got cast in my show, which means that she’ll be bringing him to rehearsals. I’m excited because her kid is pretty awesome and is so excited to be in the show.
-The Hallowe’en costumes are coming together…. I can’t wait until they are finished! Both because I’m excited for how they turn out and also because I’ll be glad to be finished.
-Listening to more of this book:
I was really into this mystery(ish) series years ago, around when the oldest was born. It’s about an ex-Army helicopter pilot turned Episcopal Priest and a Police Chief of a small town in upstate New York who team up to solve crimes. (I call it mystery-ish because it’s not typical clues and red herrings, but then it’s also not twisty enough to be considered a thriller.) A few years back, the the author had a lull and the series fell off my radar. I just discovered that in the past few years she has published more books in this series, so I’m excited to catch up. I started listening to this one and realized that I did actually read it when it first came out, but it will be a nice way back into the series.
What We Ate: Monday: Mexican rice. The Husband cooked. We had a lot of rice leftover from take-out Chinese the night before so we are trying to think of ways to use it up. I went to tap class after work so I got home late and had snack dinner.
Tuesday: Chili black beans and corn burritos. The black beans and corn were from the freezer. I had leftovers for dinner at work.
Wednesday: Broccoli Quinoa Salad – a variation of this recipe from the NY Times cooking. I added mango and red peppers and didn’t add cheese or pecans. The cheese really does elevate the salad, but I was aiming for a plant based meal. Though the dressing does have honey. So…. vegan-ish. This was a great way to eat lots of vegetables. I had leftovers at work again.
Thursday: Any ground meat Bolognese. This is the meat sauce I made two weeks ago, pulled from the freezer. The Husband was going out so all the 14 year old had to do was warm the sauce and make pastas. I had the Broccoli Quinoa Salad at work for dinner, adding a few handfuls of arugula to it.
Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and the kids watched Asterix and the Secret of the Magic Potion. The 9 year old is really into Asterix – which is nice because it’s one of the things I can get in French that was originally written in French as opposed to other books her reads that are French translations of English books. They did watch the movies in English, though.
Saturday: Waffles and green beans. We made both Savory cornmeal waffles from the King Arthur’s Baking Cookbook as well as the Cinnamon Sugar Waffles that I had read about on Nicole’s Blog. Be warned! The Cinnamon Sugar Waffles says that it makes 5 waffles so I doubled the recipe. This recipe makes a butt ton of waffles. We had so many waffles left over. I guess breakfast for the week is taken care of.
These are the leftovers.
Sunday: I was at work and ordered out a tempeh panini because a friend was meeting me on my lunch break. At home the family went to play D&D at a friend’s house and they ordered pizza.
Well that’s the week here.
Tell me what’s your favorite accessory? Have you ever used a serger? They kind of scare me.
I started this post on a rainy rainy Saturday, while the oldest was at her voice lesson….
. The teacher is teaching out of a church and there is a little church library with comfy chairs and warm wood paneling and muted colours and wifi and it all feels very cozy. I have my tea with me, but there are no coasters here and I’m afraid of putting my mug down on a surface here without a coaster. All to say, I have 45 minutes, so let’s see if I can write a post.
Here is October! We flipped our 3 month calendar and December is in sight! (Note to self: Order a new 3 month calendar. Actually order planners in general.) October came in blazing hot with temperatures in the 80s, but now we are looking at another drizzly week ahead. The leaves are starting to be tinged red and brown. The season is moving forward for sure.
The leaves are changing colour!
So Hello, October. Good-bye September. Here was how September was:
September Highlights:
-The last week of our pool being open and swimming laps. Seeing the kids make leaps and bounds in swimming this year.
-Our Annual Trip to the Maryland Renaissance Festival – there was music, food, juggling, jousting, acrobatics, and the purchase of a giant wooden axe.
-The 14 year old got a part in the high school play!
-Some nice social time for me – Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends. Walks with a friend I met at a new mom’s group 7 years ago. Ethiopian food lunch with another friend. It always fills my cup to connect with friends.
-Long weekend trip to Monticello and Shenandoah for hiking.
-My parents visiting. We didn’t do a whole lot special (aside from the Monticello/Shenandoah trip)- just life with them around.
-Celebrating the birthday of the youngest. She is now Seven! We had strawberry shortcake the day of and the following weekend a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese with an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. AND she got all her Thank You cards out! I got to send snail mail for her – it feels really nice to send snail mail. (On that note – we watched a Kathleen Madigan comedy special and she has this line about how amazing the Postal Service is, “Here’s 45 cents. Please take this to Alaska.” I mean she’s right – that’s an amazingly cheap service. Although now it’s $0.82, which still seems like a good deal to bring a bit of joy to someone far away.)
-Biking to school with the kids.
-Starting Tap Dance Class. It’s been a challenge, but fun. I’m working on flapping with my left foot without accidentally scuffing my heel on the ground.
-Date night with the Husband – we had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and then went to a performance of Bernstein’s MASS.
=My cousins came to visit (Actually my cousin and her grown daughter, but I call them both my cousin). We went to Glenstone Museum and took a walk at the Botanical Gardens and just hung out.
-Summer: The Donna Summer Musical at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Our first dinner theatre experience and it was a lot of fun.
-Favorite Dinner Cooked: Crispy Tofu Tacos (so good we had it twice last month), Thai Quinoa Salad.
-Favorite thing watched: I finished Starstruck and found it such a sweet and funny show. We also started to watch Schitt’s Creek, Better Things, and Gilmore Girls.
Goals and Habits: -Painting: only 1 painting this month. I thought I would paint during our long weekend away in Monticello, but I didn’t. I think painting is taking a backseat in October since I have to finish the Hallowe’en costumes. -Crossword puzzle completed: 1 -Live Performances: 3 – Bernstein’s MASS and also lots of live performances at the Renn Faire, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical -Museums: 2 – Glenstone Museum and Monticello -Hike: 1 – Shenandoah hike on Turk Mountain Trail -Yoga: 18/30, but I think this was actually higher because I wasn’t good at logging and habit tracking last month. -Run: 6x (+2 bike rides and 2 laps swims) -Strength: 2 (My goal is 8x a month, but I’m finding it really hard to motivate myself for this one…i just need to find a consistent way to work it in) -Vegan Dinners: 4 (Goal is 4x a month, so yay)
September Lowlights: -The situation at the Kennedy Center being shut down. I’m not directly affected because I no longer work there, but the trickledown effect is huge throughout the arts community in DC.
-Our fridge not working, us buying a new fridge, then the old fridge working again and us regretting getting a new fridge so soon. Oh well. I guess the fridge was over 12 years old so it was getting unpredictable.
-Stressing about kids’ activity sign ups. I still feel like the kids are doing too much but also missing out on things. There’s no perfect solution here.
-Saying good-bye to a beloved work colleague who has gone on to a bigger job.
-Some non-bloggable stressors in life – I guess I’ll just say sometimes it’s hard to have patience with the world and those around me, for sure the fault is mine.
Quote of September: Don’t try to convince the other person during the argument. -Ron Friedman on the Radical Candor Podcast. This quote really landed when I was in the midst of the aforementioned non-bloggable things. Friedman’s point is that sometimes it is best to make your case and walk away and let the other person ponder, rather than pushing to change someone’s mind in the midst of the argument. People need time to come to conclusions themselves.
Looking Forward to in October: -Hallowe’en! I’m a little stressed about having to make the costumes, but I’m excited. I don’t have a serger, so I’ve been watching lots of YouTube videos on how to make a French seam. (Is this even necessary???) -Starting rehearsals for a new show. To be honest, I’m dreading this show a little – I don’t do well with change, and there will be a lot of new things to deal with since we will be in a new (to me) venue. I mean even the fact that I’m calling it a venue and not a theatre is kind of telling. Also not looking forward to the schedule – there is rehearsal almost every night for the next month. The Husband looked at everyone at our family meeting today and said, “Take a good look at mom so you remember what she looks like when you see her again in November.” BUT despite that- I AM looking forward to the stage manager colleagues coming in and to working with them. -My cousin is coming for a quick visit. -Theatre trip to see Come From Away (we just did this and it was FANTASTIC!)
lobby sign
-Supertitle gig. It looks like it’s a lot of songs from the Great American Songbook, which is always a great joy to listen to. And we don’t run titles for the popular song selections, so I just get to listen. -Elisabeth’s Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I was going to have a theme for every week’s walk, but this first week snuck up on me, so no themes this week.
-reading some fun books. In the busy season at work, books need to be gripping and fun. Currently reading:
I’m on an Annabel Monaghan kick ever since I read Dolly all the time.
-also, I started watching Bridgerton Season 4 and it’s been so wonderfully swoony so far. Looking forward to watching more of it. (i’ve skipped season 2 and 3 because I didn’t like those books as much as Sophie and Benedict’s story. Theirs is probably my favorite of the series. That and While He Was Wicked. The rest of the book series is very meh for me.)
Grateful for this past week: -The Library close to my mechanics. I had to take my car in for an oil change and was able to go to the library three blocks away while I waited. How amazing that there is this place with desks and wifi and I can park there for three hours – for free.
-Flowers even though it is autumn. There are some autumn dahlias in our garden that bring a cheerful burst of colour to our front yard.
-Sandwiches. What a perfect invention for when one is hungry! Bread, meat, cheese, mustard. All able to be slapped together quickly for a satisfying mouthful. These days, I’ll take whatever is in the fridge, but it’s been brown mustard, turkey, and cheddar cheese. If I have more time, and I have it on hand, I’ll add avocado or arugula.
-The rain letting up just in time for my walk to the Metro and then from the Metro to work.
-Naps and an unscheduled Saturday afternoon in order to take one. I had been feeling a little run down all week and ended up taking a 3 hour nap and felt much better when I woke up at the tale end of the afternoon. Also grateful to the Husband for taking care of dinner while I was napping. Naps are such glorious restorative things.
-a fun hair cut. So two nights before my appointment to have my hair cut, I had a dream that I was getting my hair cut. And in that dream, the stylist – who, incidentally wasn’t my stylist and I spent a good portion of my dream asking, “But where’s Alexei???” – the stylist gave me a super sleek 1920s bob with blunt bangs. So I go to get my hair cut and when I sit down, Alexei asks, “What are you thinking today?” And I tell him all about my dream. And he says, “Okay.” He starts snipping away. “I’m digging your dream,” Alexei said. “This is so much better than those people who come in and tell me, ‘AI told me I should do this.’ And the AI image has nothing to do with what their hair texture is like, or what what their face is like or anything.” And twenty minutes later – my hair was short and I had my blunt bangs. (Alexei works fast and charges by the hour…).
Sometimes I think I should try to cover the grey, but then I realize I don’t want to spend the time on the maintenance.
I’ve since washed the hair and it still looks cute. This has been my favorite hair cut in ages.
What We Ate: Monday: Salmon Pasta – the 14 year old made dinner. I don’t have the recipe for what she made, but it involved salmon, spinach, and pasta.
Taco Tuesday: Crispy Tofu Tacos from NY Times Cooking. We made these last month and everyone loves them. I served with cabbage and avocado. Vegan, though the kids put sour cream and cheese on theirs.
Wednesday: Ground anything Bolognese sauce and pasta w/ bagged salad. This was a “clean out the freezer” meal. I had three containers half full of crushed or pureed tomatoes, and a variety of ground meat in the freezer – sausage, beef, lamb, and pork. Though the pork smelled a little off, so I ended up throwing that out. Anyhow, it all went in a pot with carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and the left over tofu from Tuesday’s crispy tofu tacos. Hearty and oh so satisfying.
Very happy to get these out of my freezer.
Thursday: Thai Inspired Coconut Curry Soup from NY Times Cooking. We still had sweet potatoes and a cauliflower left from the CSA box our friend gave us while he was out of town, and this soup was a delicious way to use it up along with the rest of a jar of red curry paste in the fridge. This was really tasty. The recipe itself is vegan, but I added chicken broth to get it out of my fridge and a dash of fish sauce.
Friday: Pizza (the Husband made – sausage and mushroom; pickle; red pepper; fig and balsamic. All very tasty) and Funny Girl. Funny story here – it was the 14 year old’s turn to pick a move and she wanted to watch a movie musical, so she picked Funny Girl, having seen the stage show this summer when we were in Niagara-on-the-Lake. So we rented the movie from Amazon and put it on. And we’re watching it and I’m reading the credits and it says, “Songs by John Kander and Frank Ebb.” And I thought, “Oh I didn’t realize that!” And then we’re watching the movie and Barbra Streisand is frolicking onstage in a huge musical number and the plot unfolds, and I keep asking the 14 year old, “Was that part in the stage play?” And she kept saying, “No, I don’t think so.”
Then truth be told I might have fallen asleep for a little bit because the movie is going on and on, and I’m like, “When is Barbara Streisand going to sing Don’t Rain on My Parade???” And then I make some comment about how the movie version of Funny Girl seems very different from the stage show. And then the 9 year old pipes up from his corner of the couch:
Did you know there was a sequel to Funny Girl, called Funny Lady?
We had accidentally rented Funny Lady instead of Funny Girl. I guess the 9 year old noticed, but he hadn’t seen the stage show, so he didn’t clock that we were watching the wrong movie. By then we were half way through Funny Lady, but we stopped the movie, rented Funny GIRL, and pizza and movie night lasted an epically long time.
Saturday: Bahn mi sandwiches, take out. This was the evening I wasn’t feeling well, so we wanted something fast and easy.
Sunday: Sausage, tortellini, and red sauce – typical Sunday dinner.
That’s the dispatch from here. Hope everyone had a lovely weekend and a great week ahead!
And then I see the end of September just around the corner. Not sure when that happened. It’s been a bit since I wrote a re-cap post, so this might be a little bit of a brain dump. September has been kind of quietly inefficient for me. I’m only working 5-10 hours a week. The other day, the Husband asked me, “What do you do all day?” And I can’t really say where the time goes. I mean aside from the one morning that I ignored everything to finish Nora Goes Off Script….
Let’s see in this period of underemployment….
-I make dinner without feeling like I’m in a rush, even when we have to eat at the dot of 5pm so people can get to activities.
-I spend hours researching how I’m going to make the kids’ Hallowe’en costumes.
-I walk the kids to the bus and then go for a run afterwards, or even just walk the long way home.
-I even got to bike with the kids to school a few times.
-I bake muffins.
-I replace the torn screens on six of our windows. All by myself. This is actually quite easy to do; it took less than ten minutes per window.
-I have spent more time scrolling the internet than I should. Internet rabbit holes are my nemesis and always make me feel…. blergh-y. It is ironic how much time I spend reading blogs and articles online about maximizing productivity since it is precisely reading blogs and articles about productivity that is keeping me from being productive.
-Also clearly I haven’t been blogging a lot. This is one area I would like to be more disciplined about. Not because I think I have incredible content that must be pushed out into the world, but more because it’s a creative outlet and I like to try to do something creative every day in a routine way.
Anyhow, things are going to change because I’m on to a 20 hour a week (paid) work schedule starting this week. Which doesn’t sound like a lot of time in the office, but it means being in the office approximately 10:30a – 3:30pm. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for other, non-paid things. Maybe I can get a run in before work, or declutter one thing. Run one errand. Maybe it will make me more efficient. Or maybe it will stress me out and I will revenge bedtime procrastinate even more.
And then in October, I’m back in rehearsal and it’s game over then for leisure time. To be honest, I’m kind of dreading October until the end of the year. It’s going to be a really exhausting time at work, I can tell already. Usually when work ramps up, family is the first things that falls by the wayside and I want to figure out how to not let that happen this year. I will ponder….
On to other happenings….
Ever since the school year has shifted to starting before Labor Day, I’ve always felt like the holiday has come a very inconvenient time. We get momentum from starting school then… whoa. Here’s a long weekend to throw the routines out of wack.
The past couple of years, Labor Day Weekend has meant Maryland Renaissance Festival. They have a new ticketing system this year where tickets are released in two batches – one set in July and one set the Monday before the weekend. It was a little confusing, because if you check for tickets mid week it will look like everything is sold out. And then you will be sad. I guess I understand – last year tickets were being sold on re-sale sites for 3 or 4 times what they cost. All to say, the new ticketing system was very confusing and I was worried we wouldn’t get tickets. So couple weeks ago when I saw that a batch of tickets had ben released for Labor Day, I snatched them up.
On the day, I managed to get everyone out of the house by 9:00am and we got to the Renn Faire around 9:50am, then it took us another 15 minutes to get through the gates – it was very crowded. Aside from the 6 year old’s floral crown, no one got dressed up this year – we just went as we were.
Friends, I love going to the Renn Faire SO MUCH. As we were walking up to the gate, I was struck with a giddy sense of excitement for the day ahead. “I love this more than Christmas,” I sad to the kids. “It’s just as fun and I don’t have to cook!”
It was a really good day. We saw all our favorite shows – acrobatics, juggling, physical comedy, music. We saw the jousting twice; there are three jousting show throughout the day and we always go see more than one because there is a narrative arc built into the day.
We heard some new to us musicians – isn’t music grand? I don’t know that I’ll ever go to a rock concert or anything on that scale, but I do love listening to and seeing people play music. There were bagpipes! We browsed the shops – the 9 year old bought a battle axe that is over half his size. We ate turkey legs and other food and drank lots of Pepsi because it was super hot.
On the matter of hydrating – I made kind of a critical mistake this time. Last year water bottle fillers were installed, which was great. In previous years I always brought two big bottles of water with me because you had to bring sealed water. Well now with the bottle fillers, I thought I’d just bring my small Nalgenes and not weigh myself down so much. Well that was a bit of a mistake because the lines for the water filler were soooooo long. I think I waited at least 15 minutes each time I went to fill my water bottle. The second time, I did a little thought experiment as I waited in line – “If someone were to walk up to me now, and offer to instantly fill my water bottle for $2, would I do it so I wouldn’t have to stand in line?”
Because that’s the thing – the soda is $2. (It’s not a terrible deal and the soda stands are run by a rotating roster of youth organizations as a fundraiser. So really it’s more liek $3 because I like to tip. “Huzzah for the generous tipper!” they always yell when someone puts money in the tip jar.)
Anyhow, I don’t know what my threshold would be for paying for water vs. spending time standing in line, but I did miss the last few numbers of the bagpipe band, so maybe it would have been worth the $2 to have a cold soda and hear music. I find the internal calculator such a fascianting thing.
Next year, I will bring bigger water bottles. Any maybe also fill them with ice.
We stayed at the Renn Faire til closing, when members of the company sing a last parting song at the gates. Then we got in our cars and wistfully went home, eagerly looking forward to next year.
Because there will always be a next year. The Maryland Renn Festival is 50 years old this year. There were a series of signs up throughout the grounds this year with tidbits of history and blurbs about the people who had performed here over the years. What a beautiful tradition. May it keep going for another fifty.
Other fun things that we’ve been up toso far this month –
-Date Night. The 14 year old’s voice teacher was performing in a production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS, one of my favorite pieces of music. Although I’ve worked on MASS, I’ve never been in the audience for it – it takes a lot of people to put it on, dancers, singers, chorus, children’s chorus, orchestra…. So when I saw that it was being performed, I asked the Husband if he wanted to go. He said yes and it was date night! We even went out to dinner before hand – it was Restaurant Week in DC, so I picked a nearby restaurant from the list of participating restaurants. We ended up at Ottoman Taverna where the tzatziki was melt in your mouth smooth, and pita fluffy, and the meat grilled to perfection.
-One last swim in the pool. Most outdoor pools here close on Labor Day, so we managed to squeeze in one last evening at the pool. It was raft night so people could bring their floaties. I swam laps, we had dinner sitting in Lounge chairs, and we enjoyed on last relaxing poolside evening. I’ve already paid the membership for next summer.
-A Visit from my Cousin and a trip to Glenstone Museum. My cousin and her mom – okay technically her mom is my cousin, but I call them all cousins – were here visiting. I love how they just fold into the family. They help around the house, eat whatever we were planning on eating, cuddle on the couch, and put up with the noise and chaos of three kids with big feelings.
Glenstone Museum. Nature trails leading to a Richard Serra sculpture.
My cousin loves Glenstone Museum, so she got tickets to visit. Glenstone is a museum of contemporary art with several galleries set on 300 acres of land. There is also a restaurant and walking trails and many many outdoor sculptures.
Jeff Koons, seen from a skewed distance. This is a fun sculpture to see throughout the seasons. because the vegetation changes.
This time there was a striking exhibit of works by the artist and activist Andrea Bowers that were centered on issues of body autonomy and environment. There was a room that was papered with letters written to an abortion activist who was known for providing people with a list of abortion providers. It was really heartbreaking, reading all the letters from people – women, men, parents, all desperate for help. There were some stunning images drawn on canvases made of recycled cardboard, including one that had the tagline, “Women and the Earth have to tolerate a lot.” I suppose Bowers’ work had a little more politics than I was comfortable with for a sunny Friday afternoon, but I imagine making people confront their discomfort was part of the point.
-Back to School Night, including our first High School Back to School Night. Wow. It’s been a long time since I was in high school so it was a little surreal to once again be wandering hallways, looking for classrooms. It must be so hard this constant sense of change that high school brings – every few months, it’s new teachers, new classrooms, new patterns. I also wondered if my parents ever went to Back To School night? I don’t really remember; I certainly never accompanied them if they did go. But of course, school communication was very different back then. I’m pretty sure schools sending out email communication wasn’t a thing when I was in school.
-I finished watching Starstruck on HBO Max – I really loved this show. It’s about a twenty something woman who has a one night stand with a famous movie star which turns into more, which turns into on again, off again, what am I doing with my life? The show is funny, messy, and filled with just the right amount of existential angst and rom com warm fuzzies.
-I started taking tap dance lessons! I signed up for a seven week class. I feel frumpy and uncoordinated, but there is something very satisfying about intentionally making lots of noise.
-Funny Kid Quote: I asked the kids the classic question of if they would rather be a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond. The six year old replied, “I want to be in a big pond so I can have the whole pond to myself!”
Grateful For: -The Maryland Renaissance Festival. Every year we go, I just feel so lucky that we have the country’s best Ren Faire so close to us.
-My (former) work colleague C, who has now gone on to bigger and better things. She was so brilliant at her job, always logical and clear-eyed, and handled very difficult situations with grace and tact. I’m sorry to see her go, but I’m glad that she’s on to fulfill other dreams. I’m so glad I got to work with her.
-Music. Especially when it’s played in the car very loudly and everyone sings along.
-Free Bus Ride. The local county bus is free to ride. I had some errands to run the other day, and decided to take the bus. It was so easy to just get on and find a seat. I find this is a lovely use of my tax dollars.
-On that note – car free days. This year, the kids’ bus stop is less than a ten minute walk from our house. And then last week I was able to take the Metro to work. And then because there were no kid activities that evening – I managed to have a car free day. Driving always stresses me out, so I’m always happy to leave the car at home if I can. I realize I am very lucky to have a car to use when I need to, but I am also grateful that I can have a day here and there where I can just get on the metro and read my book.
-The 14 year old taking over some of her own communications. She had to re-schedule a voice lesson the other day, so I asked her to email her voice teacher, and she did. It seems pretty cool that she’s now of an age that she can take care of these things for herself and I don’t have to be the middle person.
-That my grandfather is home. My mother was supposed to come to visit last week, but then my grandfather in Taiwan went to the hospital, so she went to Taiwan to be with him instead. She’ll spend a few days with him then come to us. My grandfather got to go home not soon after my mom arrived, and we Face Timed with him briefly. I guess he was okay since they discharged him. My grandfather is 101 (102 if you’re counting the Taiwanese way), so every day with him active and alert seems amazing. I’m grateful for him receiving medical care and then being well enough to go home. I’m grateful that my mother could get on a plane to him. It’s not nothing to be able to purchase an international ticket at the last minute.
Looking Forward To:
– Come From Away! This is one of the Husband’s favorite musicals and we’ve never seen it live. It is being produced at a theatre here this fall so I got tickets for October.
-Monticello. We have a long weekend coming up for school, so we’re going to go to Charlottesville and visit Monticello. My father, who is visiting, has always wanted to go, and it’s not really that far. We’re going to make a two night trip of it and also get some hiking in…. (Note – we’re currently on this trip… recaps coming!)
-Speaking of which …. National Parks! Now that the middle kid is in 4th Grade, we get a free National Parks Pass for the year. We’ll probably take a trip to Shenandoah on the way home from Charlottesville/ Monticello for a half day hike. Closer to us, Great Falls has some really nice hiking along the Potomac. I’ll have to research more. Last time we had a parks pass, we went to the Smoky Mountains.
-A new mattress. We finally went shopping for a new mattress. Our current mattress is maybe 10 years old but it has definite lumps and valleys in it. Shouldn’t a mattress last more than 10 years???? Oh well. I’m looking forward to our new one. This one is flippable, which I ‘m finding is quite rare these days. (Also – side note, as we were wandering through Macy’s we saw an area that was all curtained off. Of course, we were curious, so we took a peek behind the curtains, and what did we see….?
(Christmas is COMING!!!!)
-We also have a new fridge coming. I might have mentioned the conundrum of our old fridge starting to work fine again after we bought a new fridge. Well we couldn’t stop the order and delivery of the new fridge, so the old fridge is getting sent for Recycling by Pepco (our electricity company). It makes me a little sad to get rid of a working fridge, to be honest. Argh. One of those frustrating things in life.
-Gilmore Girls. When Gilmore Girls first came out, I was just out of college and I didn’t have a television. Which, back in 2020, you needed a television to watch TV. (funny, that. Also funny that they still call them TV shows when you don’t need a TV to watch them these days.) So, partly inspired by J, I’ve decided to fill the Gilmore Girls sized gap in my cultural literacy. It feels so cliched, but I’ve been watching with the 14 year old. There are many many many seasons, so it will probably take me a decade to get through this show, but I’m looking forward to it.
-Reading this book – it’s about Taiwan, how could I not pick it up?
And listening to this audiobook:
What we ate: Oh wow – I haven’t post meals since the start of the month…. Okay. So here is three weeks’ worth of meals:
Monday: Pasta and meatballs and garlic bread. The 14 year old cooked. The meatballs were from the freezer – I had made them a while ago.
Taco Tuesday: Cuban Pork Tacos. from the freezer. I also made a pot of black beans to go with. And quick pickled red onions.
Wednesday: Chicken noodle soup, at the request of the kids.
Thursday: Pad Thai – the Husband made. I went to Happy Hour send off for my colleague C.
Friday: Pizza (the Husband made at home) and Avatar Last Airbender live action movie from 2010. The movie was not great, but also ended on a cliff hanger, so I’m a little irate that there isn’t a sequel. Also it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which I find fascinating.
Saturday: The Husband and I had dinner out for Date Night. The 14 year old made fried rice at home for her younger siblings.
Sunday: KFC eaten at the pool. Fried Chicken has always struck us as a perfect meal to bring to the pool, but for whatever reason fried chicken never made it on the menu all summer. Until the last day. It was crispy, crunchy, and delicious.
Monday: Ren Faire! We ate fair food and our own snacks throughout the day and weren’t hungry for dinner when we got home.
Taco Tuesday: Freezer Tacos again – the rest of the batch of Cuban Pork Tacos from the freezer that we had eaten last week. (We are in a major “clean out the freezer” phase right now.)
Wednesday: Thai Quinoa Salad. This recipe from Cookie and Kate, only I used coleslaw mix rather than red cabbage – I didn’t want to shred a whole head of cabbage – and I added edamame instead of snow peas for a boost of protein. This was really tasty and packed full of veggies and topped with a peanut dressing. I really needed this injection of vegetables. Vegan.
Thursday – Roasted Salmon and potatoes w/ green beans. The 14 year old cooked.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Aristocats. I had never seen Aristocats before – my cousin picked this movie; when we have guests visiting, we always let our guests pick the movie for pizza and movie night. And truth to tell, I still can’t claim to have seen this movie because I fell asleep about thirty minutes in. It was probably just as well that I fell asleep because afterwards we watched a music video for one of the musical numbers and there were some pretty problematic Asian stereotypes going on with that Siamese Cat. I don’t know… I still get super uncomfortable with slant eyed/ chopstick wielding/ sing song voiced characters in movies. Maybe I should squirm my way through them and have conversations with the kids about how terribly racist people are and how this is not okay to distill entire races down to one or two exaggerated elements. But you know… when I was growing up, kids pulled their eyes into slants at me and I really don’t need to subject myself to that willingly. So… sorry kids, you don’t get to see fake Asians on my watch. You’ll just have to settle for watching other egregious bits of racism – like Peter Pan. (All of this, I realize, makes Breakfast at Tiffany’s kind of difficult because it is, Mickey Rooney aside, one of my favorite movies…. Sigh. The world is complicated.)
Saturday: Butter Chicken with rice and paratha. My cousin brought a spice packet with her when she visited and the kids like chicken.
Sunday: Butternut squash curry with tofu and noodles. I know there’s a fancier name for this dish, but the Husband made it, so I don’t know what the real name is. But it was really tasty. And bonus – he used up a bag of butternut squash that was in the freezer.
Monday: Chicken Parm Pasta. The 14 year old cooked. This meal was very tasty, but more soupy than expected.
Taco Tuesday: We went out to eat because our favorite Mexican restaurant was having music and Taco Tuesday specials.
Wednesday: Soup. I can’t remember, to be honest, but I think this was some kind of soup that I pulled from the freezer and re-heated.
Thursday: Tofu rice bowls. Sort of based on this recipe from NY Times Cooking, only I made the tofu from this recipe, and added edamame and used brown rice. I love a good bowl where each person can craft their own thing. Vegan-ish since I used honey.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Air Bud. It was my father’s turn to pick the movie and he wanted something that was a comedy. After some really inappropriate suggestions (including Booksmart, and something in French), we decided on Air Bud – it’s got dogs AND basketball – something for everyone in our family. I have to admit, I might have teared up more than once during this movie. I hear there are sequels…. Wait I just looked it up. There are FOURTEEN Air Bud movies. Ouf. Not sure if I will make it through all (or any) of them….
Well, that’s the bits and bobs of September so far here… this week is a short school week, and we’ll be celebrating a few birthdays, plus my parents are in town, so that will be fun.
Do you have a favorite National Park?Have you seen any Christmas Decor yet?How much would you pay to not stand in line for 20 minutes to fill your water bottle?
Well school has started. We have a new morning bus stop this year that is walking distance from home. It’s actually where the afternoon bus dropped off last year, but for some reason last year there was no morning stop. Well they’ve added one. It’s been picking the kids up at 9:20am every day, which is slightly problematic because school starts at 9:25am. The kids are upset because they don’t get to have breakfast at school. My thought is boo hoo. They get breakfast at home. (Breaking news! The bus will now come at 9:04am! It has opened up my morning in amazing new ways!)
This weekend is Labor Day, and we are off to the Renaissance Festival. Labor Day is late this year, so it doesn’t quite feel like we are almost a week into September. But September it is. So how was August?
August Highlights: -Tech-ing a show and the one single performance. My friend coming to see the show and riding home with him afterwards. -Our Indiana/Sarnia/Niagara-on-the-Lake/ Corning Museum of Glass/ Harrisburg, PA road trip. -Swimming laps at the pool. Not having to rush to get to swim practice, but rather going on our own schedule. -Submitting passport applications for the two younger kids. -Read some really good books. (Reading recap coming soon!) -Peaches! I have some canned for January. -Lunch and walk with a good friend A. -Dinner and walk with good friend K and The Husband. -Slipping in one last Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends before school started. -Purged the kids’ clothes and made sure they had clothes for the cooler weather. -Decluttered our linen/medicine cabinet in the bathroom – things like bandaids, tampons and pads, COVID tests. We had so many masks from COVID times – like two drawers full. I’m torn on what to do with all the masks that I had sewn. On the one hand, I don’t think we’ll need them again, but on the other hand, they are an interesting memento of the times. Maybe I’ll keep one or two. -Two small fresh figs from the fig tree on our back patio, harvested and eaten before the birds got to them. -A day at the Maryland shore visiting my friend with good company, a relaxing pool, tasty food, and sheep. -First Day of School! This year the kids are in 9th, 4th, and 1st grades. -On that note – we have a high-schooler! My heart is bursts with pride watching her navigate life at high school. -Favorite Dinner Cooked: Well all the dinners I cooked last week were given heart designations in my log. See Below. Also Crispy Tofu Tacos from NY Times cooking was a big hit. -Favorite Things Watched: I think my favorite thing we watched was Derry Girls. We have one episode left and I’m so afraid to watch it and then have no more to look forward to. I also thought the Sheep Detectives was very entertaining.
GoalsAnd Habits: Painting: 2 (goal is 1/ week, so I’m falling behind.) Crossword Puzzle: 1 (also wanted to do one per week. I didn’t bring puzzles with me on the trip, so there was some missed opportunities.) Live Performance: Saw Wind in the Willows at the Shaw Festival. Museums: 2 – Corning Museum of Glass and Niagara Power Station Hike: 1 – Niagara Glen Yoga: I logged 23/31 days. I might have done more days than that – I wasn’t great at habit tracking last month. Run: 2 runs/ 5 swims. Strength: 3x, all while on vacation because we stayed in places with nice fitness set ups. (Goal is 8/ month… wump wump) Vegan Meals: 2 (goal is 4/ month or 1/week. We didn’t eat a lot of vegan dinners when we were on vacation.)
Clearly being on vacation is good for filling out some goals.
Quote(s) of the Month: “There’s meaning in making something other people enjoy, something they look forward to, and talk about, and write their own stories about.” -Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian. Sometimes I question my career choice, and this quote reminded me that there is value in bringing joy to people and letting them feel emotions.
from This interview with Ina Garten in the New York Times: “I just love having a good time, and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t, so I always go toward that. I go toward people that are happy. I go toward people and projects that will be satisfying. Fun isn’t always like going down a water slide. Fun is building something with people that you care about. “ Earlier in the interview she talks about how “fun” for her is about having a process or task that engages her. I think this is so important – fun isn’t always joy, but it should be engaging.
“I never get tired of cookies!” =The 6 year old. Yup. I totally agree.
August Lowlights -Feeling behind at work. The nature of my contract is that I’m not full time during the summer. I sit in on meetings, but I feel like I’m not getting the full picture of what is going on because I’m not as active as I am when I’m on full time. It gives me a bit of anxiety to think about playing catch up in two weeks.
-Some really bad behavior on vacation that I’m not going to blog about, but it was really tough.
-Our fridge might have died. I’m not quite sure. It stopped working for three days and we ordered a new one, but then our old one is up and running again. Not sure if we should cancel the order of the new fridge or not?
-I feel as if between the vacation and activity sign ups and the fridge and random repairs we’ve been hemorrhaging money this past month.
-The time I forgot my kid’s voice lesson. I hate making stupid mistakes.
Looking Forward to in September:
-The youngest will turn 7! (I had a realization last week that we are 13 months from never needing a babysitter ever again since in Maryland kids can stay home by themselves when they are 8.)
-The Husband and I are going to a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass this weekend. I love this piece – I’ve worked on it, but never seen it. It’s not produced a whole lot becuse it takes a lot of people to put on. This production is kind of being done as a response to all the shit that’s going down at the Kennedy Center since MASS is the piece that opened the KC.
-Family Visit. My cousins are coming to visit, then my parents.
=Renaissance Festival! Going this weekend. fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain!
=Declutter projects. Maybe I should just set one goal for this? Okay – I think the freezer situation is dire and I would like to get a handle on the bins of yarn in my bedroom. That’s two goals. Manageable.
=Starting Hallowe’en costumes. The children have chosen! I need to figure out if I can make them or if I’m just going to buy them.
-Tap Dance classes. I signed up for a 7 week Intro to tap dance class. Here’s trying new things!
-Easing back into work. No shows to rehearse this month, but I have a supertitle gig to prep for and I have to prep for stage managers starting in early October.
Grateful for: -Loaner fridge. When our fridge stopped working, we went to the local appliance place to buy a new fridge and they gave us a loaner mini fridge to take home. How cool is that? We have a fridge in the basement that we put everything in, but it’s a pain to constantly be going up and down the stairs. The loaner fridge is just big enough for milk and a carton of strawberries, but it’s enough.
-Trail to school. I’m hoping to bike with the 6 and 9 year old to school a few times this fall and I’m glad there is a bike trail most of the way there.
-Passport confirmations and patient post office managers. When we were waiting for our passport appointment, a man came into the post office in a bit of a frenetic state, cellphone stuck to his ear. He was on the phone on hold with the Passport people. Turns out, he had submitted an application a while ago with his girlfriend and his girlfriend got confirmation of materials received and got her passport, but he has heard nary a peep. He’s travelling in a month and, understandably he is in a state of worry and frustration. The conversation was seriously second hand stressing me out. The part of his conversation that really stuck with me was this exchange: Post office Lady: Did you apply for a new passport or a renewal? Stressed Out Guy: I applied for a new one. POL: Is this your first passport? SOG: I had one like twenty years ago. But then I had my daughter and… you know what, that doesn’t matter. But yeah, I had a passport before, but it’s been twenty years. Something about the link between having a kid and his passport expiring really got to my heart. The lady at the Post Office managed to talk him out of his tree and said she would try to find a paper trail on her end for his materials. He left, not rally mollified, but at least he seemed calmer. It is such a leap of faith, the postal system, right? You put your things in an envelope and hope it gets where it’s going. Anyhow, grateful that I got an email confirmation this week about the kids’ passport info and that the Post Office Lady calmly helped the frustrated man.
-That the pool is still open. Our pool is open Memorial day to Labor Day, and Labor day is late this year, so we’ve been able to go to the pool in the evenings. I’ve been embracing the 45 minute pool visit – we go after dinner, have enough time for me to swim laps for 20-25 minutes while the kids play. The pool is usually not crowded in the evenings and there is something so blissful about swimming under the pink sunset sky.
-That everyone had an uneventful first day of school. The bus came. The kids got on. The bus returned the kids to us at the end of the day. Hooray.
-Also this is super cool – the 14 year old is taking American Sign Language as her foreign language requirement for high school. Her teacher is Deaf and it’s fascinating to how he manages the classroom. I’m so grateful that the 14 year old has this opportunity.
-That my friend A, who’s husband had been posted to the Middle East for three years came home and we can have long walks and conversations. She’s been home since the Spring, but because they were sent home early, they’ve been living all over the area. Now they are back in their own home a few miles down the road. I’m glad they are safe.
-The 9 year old’s imagination. Yes, he asks for screen time constantly, but when I say not right now, he will go and play. He still gets dressed up and acts out scenarios (usually something to do with alien invaders), or constructs lego planes that he swoops through the house. The other day he said to me, “I’m grateful for my imagination.” Same, little guy. Same.
What We Ate: I was home most of last week to cook and we had some five star dinners. Monday: Chickpea noodle soup from NY Times Cooking. Vegan. I was not sure how this was going to go over because it has a heavy hand of tumeric and nutritional yeast in it, but it went over like gangbusters.
Tuesday: Fish Tacos from NY Times cooking. This was SO easy to make. We’re trying to have more fish in our lives. We had our tacos with cabbage, pickled red onions, avocado, and chipotle sour cream.
Wednesday: Eggplant pork stirfy with noodles. The Husband cooked. Another 10/10. Not sure where the recipe came from, but it was delicious.
Thursday: Ginger catfish (Trey Cha K’nyei). This is a Cambodian-ish recipe that is so flavorful. There is a huge amount of julinned ginger in the recipe. The ginger gets cooked first in oil and gives the dish a crispy spicy bite. The recipe comes together really quickly; the hardest part is julienning all the ginger, but I used a mandolin and that made pretty quick work of it.
Friday: Pizza (The Husband made) and Karate Kid. Can you believe I’ve never seen Karate Kid? It’s really a great family movie and I enjoyed it. Also a young Elizabeth Shue – so luminous! Also – did you know there’s a show on Netflix called Cobra Kai, which takes place 30 years after the fact and revives the old Daniel vs. Johnny rivalry. We watched the first two episodes and it didn’t quite get off the ground, but Reddit tells me the show really finds its footing in season two.
Saturday: Dumplings and green beans at home. Dumplings from the freezer from our favorite dumpling house. This was our last bag so we need to get more…
Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce. Cut up veggies and fruit on the side. Our standard Sunday Supper.
That’s it from over here! Happy Labor Day Weekend for those that celebrate. And plain happy weekend for those having just another weekend!
Have you seen any of the Karate Kid movies?thoughts on cookies? How old were you when you started staying home alone? What has you excited about September?
It’s July, and a scorcher of a weekend coming up for the July 4th Holiday. Two of the kids are at Taiwan camp, we’ll take the third kid up tonight, and then the Husband and I will be off at our reading retreat! The first full week of summer break has been a little … laissez-faire. I didn’t have to work every day; my mother, brother, and niece came to visit; everyone stayed up late and slept in. There were library visits, dentist appointments, and lots of time at the pool. The lack of routine is starting to leave me a little discombobulated, so I think some structure is needed… after this holiday weekend.
On Friday we went to Baltimore for Sail 250, a festival of Tall Ships from all over the world gathering in honor of America’s 250th birthday. There were three harbors in Baltimore lined with Tall Ships, but we only had time to visit the ships in the Inner Harbour. All the ships were open to the public to go aboard for free, and they all had sailors available to answer questions. I found talking to the sailors one of my favorite parts of touring the boats – it really brought a human touch to our experience. They all spoke varying degrees of English, and all were eager to answer questions to the best of their abilities and we always managed to understand each other.
I like to encourage the kids to be engaged when we have these experiences, so I told them that if they asked five questions on at least two different vessels, we could have ice cream later in the day. The 6 year old started out by asking the same question on all the ships (“How many people are on this ship?”) but then we told her that she had to come up with something more original, and she did. Hopefully the kids can learn to tap into their sense of curiosity and asking questions not just an annoying thing mom makes them do….
All the modern tall ships are training vessels, aboard which navel cadets learn about navigation and seamanship and engineering while at sea. Some ships are also ambassador ships that sail to different countries on goodwill missions. We visited five working ships as well as two vessels from Baltimore’s Historic Ship Museum. As a bonus, these Historic Ships that are always in Baltimore Harbour were free to visit as well during Sail 250. We visited the following ships:
NRP Sagres, from Portugal – On the upper level of this ship was several casks of Portuguese port. This ship had three steering wheels in the helm (am I even using the right words?) – well actually four: three for regular navigation all grouped together and one on the other side of the mast for emergency navigation.
Gorch Fock, from Germany – This ship was HUGE, probably the biggest one we saw that day. The Husband asked if they also had casks of alcohol, given that the Portuguese ship had port and they said they had beer. Then the Husband made some quip like, “I guess you like your beer warm.” To which the sailor replied, “No, that’s the English.” The other best thing about this ship was the lady who came aboard carrying a dog. She would go up to the sailors and say, “Do you want to say hi?” Which would gain her some very confused looks. Then she would say, “I figured you’ve been on the sea for so long, you might be missing the chance to pet a dog.” It was both bizarre and really thoughtful. One other thing I loved about this ship was getting a glimpse of the cook working in the kitchen. Kitchens aboard a ship are such models of efficiency. They have to feed over a hundred people with a kitchen the size of a closet.
ROU Capitan Miranda, from Uruguay – I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Uruguay flag before, and I loved how big and sunny it was, displayed on this ship.
My favorite thing that I saw on this ship was how neat an precisely the ropes were coiled:
Twenty years ago, the first opera I worked on for my current company was Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (adapted from the Melville novella.), set aboard a Man-o-War. The opening scene featured the chorus and supers as Sailors rushing downstage and pulling ropes upstage from these neat coils. The stage managers spent so much time in rehearsal coiling ropes so that they would be set correctly and unfurl smoothly. So when I saw these ropes coiled on the deck of Capitan Miranda, I gave a gasp of recognition. Our ropes in the show had to be coiled like the circle in the background, not the figure eights in the foreground, but it was so cool to realize that we were doing something in rehearsal that sailors really did. I can’t even fathom how the figure eight coil is done. I might have to go watch a YouTube video on that.
USS Torsk – this was a submarine, built in 1944 and part of the Historic Ships collection in Baltimore Harbor. Visiting the submarine really brought home how close the quarters are aboard and also how efficiently space was used. The 14 year old ask the docent a question, about how accurate was the movie Crimson Tide. The docent laughed and said that while a lot of it was accurate, really the two movies which really capture life aboard the submarine were Operation Petticoat and Down Periscope. I immediately put those two movies on our movie watch list. The 14 year old also asked a very macabre question about how people are rescued from submarines when things go wrong.
INS Sudarshini from India – This was a smaller ship, but probably the one that came the furthest. It left India six months ago and sailed to America via the Suez Canal and through the Mediterranean. One thing that struck me about this ship was that all the signs and labels on the ship were in English – I asked the sailor about this and he said that there is a standard Indian English that they are all taught. Another thing I really liked about visiting this ship was that there were a lot of other American South Asians aboard and I loved seeing how they and the sailors would really engaged in conversations – imagine sailing half way across the world and finding people, hearing your language, from your home country in Baltimore!
USS Constellation – this was the second of the Historic Ships that we visited. It is a Sloop-o-War, built in 1854. This was the kids’ favorite ship because the second level below deck, were lined with canons. There was also one level – the level where the sleeping quarters were – that were lined with hammocks. I might have climbed into a hammock and dozed off for a few minutes. Here the 6 year old asked, “How do the ships get here?” meaning into the harbour, and we were told all about tug boats.
La Belle Poule from France – this was the last ship we visited and was one we made sure to visit since the two younger kids are learning French in school. (Well, technically, all three kids are learning French, but the 6 and 9 year old are in an immersion program and speak it more readily.) The 9 year old still hadn’t fulfilled his question quota by the time we got to La Belle Poule, so I made him a deal – if he asked his question in French then each question could count for two. And he did! He even asked THREE questions! “Is the food good?” “What kind of food do you eat?” and “Why is the ship called La Belle Poule?” This latter was funny because when I first mentioned this ship, the kids started calling it “The chicken boat” because poule/poulet is French for chicken. But apparently the ship is named after the King’s mistress. I think the French sailor was very amused by the little American boy talking to him in perfect French and I was really tickled by it as well. I’m feeling ready to send him to France on his own now! (Not really, but I feel like between my French and his French we’ll get by okay in parts of France outside of Paris…)
Ships bell- the placard on the wall has instructions on how to ring the time.
Kitchen of the Belle Poule.
In between ships we had lunch from the food trucks that were in the Festival area. By the point, everyone was pretty tired so I left them at the food demonstration tent (where they watched a chef make peach gazpacho) and I went to forage from the food trucks. I got Jamaican food and some pupusas. The interesting thing to me about pupusas is that I love them, but I never get a chance to eat them, so I was very excited to order some. However, pupusas show up regularly on the school lunch menu and the kids were decidedly not excited that this is what I brought them to eat. “This is school food!” one of the kid said. Well fine – they ate the Jerk chicken and beef patties instead. (The the 14 year old went to get tacos…)
So all in all, it was a really great excursion – the weather was sunny and hot, but not unbearably so, the ships were fascinating to visit and (with prodding) the kids displayed a minor amount of curiosity and engagement. Sail250 ran for five days and I wished we could have gone back for a second day and seen more ships, particularly since on the weekend there was an airshow as well. When we were there on the Friday, we got to see some of the planes practicing their maneuvers, which was loud and fun, especially the trio of planes that puffed out red, white, and blue smoke in their wake. Most of the practice runs were done over another harbour, though, so we didn’t catch as many as we could have on Friday. I would have also loved to see the ships actually put their sails up as they came in and out of the Harbour. But I think going on the Friday was a good choice because it wasn’t too crowded and the lines to board the ships weren’t too long.
Grateful For (so many swim team related gratitudes this week!): -A drizzly swim meet. On Sunday morning, the 14 year old had a swim meet – this is one of the more fun meets of the year because it’s the Relay Carnival, which is all relay races. The 14 year old, though, was swimming in events 20 and 22 (out of 22) and the Coaches race (she’s not technically a coach, but the team coaches couldn’t participate for various reasons and the 14 year old does teach the pre-team, so they figured that qualified her to swim the coaches’ race.) All of which meant, we arrived at the meet at 8:15am for warm up, and she didn’t swim until 12:30pm. I’m giving her big props for staying engaged and warm and cheering on her teammates. But also – it drizzled steadily for the whole morning. It wasn’t thundering or raining hard enough for it to be dangerous to swim, so the meet just persisted. I had to time during the second half of the meet, and all our timing sheets were in plastic bags so they wouldn’t disintegrate. And the meet to a long time because there were a lot of disqualifications, which means those need to be cleared up before the next race can start. One parent did the math and said he figured each race was taking 15-20 minutes to run because of all the DQs. But you know, there were moments when I was out there with rain dripping off my head, wiping my glasses clean for the umpteenth time, and I thought, “Well thank goodness it’s not 100 degrees and sunny.” Because, I think I would really rather work a rainy swim meet than a blazing hot swim meet.
Gentle rain on the pool….
-Stroke and turn judges. This one is also swim meet related – all the swim meets are staffed by parent (guardian/grown up) volunteers – the race coordinators, the timers, the referees, the people inputting the times, the stroke and turn judges. I have thought about doing the stroke and turn training, but I feel like I would feel bad about DQing a kid and it feels like a lot of pressure. But my friend who is a stroke and turn judge says that they are told not to think of it as DQing a kid, but rather giving the kid’s coach the information to help the kid be a better swimmer. If no one notes when a stroke is being done incorrectly, the swimmer can’t correct it. I really like that framing. I’m always worried about how to give feedback and thinking about it as wanting someone to do well is a good way to look at it.
-Libby and Little Free Libraries for making books easy to come by.
-Swim practice being rained out so that we could have Family Game Night instead. We played Dixit and had a lovely quiet evening at home.
-The Pool that hosted Wednesday’s swim meet for keeping the baby pool open for visitors. A lot of the time during a swim meet, the rest of the pool shuts down, but the pool where we had the Wednesday swim meet at kept the main pool and the baby open so people could still use them while the meet was going on. I had to bring the 6 year old along to the meet, so I was grateful that she could play in the water while her big sister swam.
-That my mother can still come visit us. My mother is 77 years old and still has the energy and inclination to come visit even though it means flying across the country. I’m realizing, especially since we had kids on the later side, that every visit from my parents is a gift and I am so grateful for each moment we all have together. She is also very independent and eager to take the kids on adventures – I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about entertaining her when she is here; we can have life as usual, with a few extra adventures thrown in if we want.
-Online shopping. Okay, I know there are all sorts of ecological evils associated with online shopping, but I needed a new tankini top, and bathing suit shopping (well most clothes shopping, let’s be honest) is so disheartening for me. I’m very grateful that I could just order a bunch of tankinis from Title Nine and try them out at home. These are the two that I ended up with:
I feel a little frumpy at the pool, but the tankini is my swimwear of choice, particularly in a bright print – I can go to the bathroom easily, it covers my stomach, and these ones are also suitable for me to swim laps. I guess I’m just very practical pool-wise.
Looking Forward To: -Our Reading Retreat! Is finally about to happen. I’ve also booked a tour of the Pennsylvania State Capitol while we are in Harrisburg. It’s going to be so hot! I almost regret not booking a place with a pool, but as long as we have AC and comfy couches, I think it will be a good time.
-Starting work on a new show next week.
-Hearing how the kids like Taiwan Camp.
-Listening to this audiobook on our drive to Taiwan Camp and Reading Retreat:
What We Ate: Monday: Vegan Pesto Pasta Salad from NY Times Cooking. Meant to be an easy pool dinner, but it rained, so we ate it at home. Always a hit. Vegan.
Tuesday: Zucchini Boats. We had a bunch of zucchini to use up so I stuffed them with a ground beef/black bean/salsa mixtures, topped with cheese and baked. It wasn’t the idea pool food, but it worked well enough.
Wednesday: Sandwiches and leftover pasta salad at the pool for the swim meet. Though we also bought hot dogs and fries from the pool snack bar.
Thursday: Chicken pasta salad – based on this recipe for Cilantro Mint Lettuce Wraps from the NY Times. I had planned to make the lettuce wraps, but then we used the lettuce for salad, so I made the chicken into pasta salad instead, adding cucumbers and grapes for crunch. I don’t know that the fusilli worked – I probably should have used noodles – but I did like the flavors of this dish.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Operation Petticoat, 1959 movie starring Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and a submarine. We watched this after coming home from Sail250 because it was what the docent on the submarine recommended. This was such a delightful movie. Surprisingly, the kids all really enjoyed this one and asked, “Can we watch more movies that are funny like this?” So if anyone has any suggestions for screwball comedies with snappy dialogue, funny performances, and lots of physical humour, send them our way!
Saturday: Teriyaki Tofu and Steam Broccoli from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. My brother is vegetarian, so I always use his visits as an excuse to make some of my favorite vegan/vegetarian recipes. This one is always a winner. I had to work this night, so I prepped it all and the 14 year old baked the tofu, steamed the broccoli, and made the rice.
Sunday: We went out for Hot Pot. My brother is from Berkeley, CA and has so much good food there, that I always hope he doesn’t get bored of the food options when he comes to visit us. One thing he always wants to do, though, is go to Hot Pot – I guess our Hot Pot has the best vegetarian options that he’s found anywhere. A new feature at our hot pot place, though:
They now hand out bibs and hair ties! We made good use of those bibs for the little kids, and I will say the adults probably should have used some too.
Well that was the week that was last. I hope everyone who is affected by this heatwave is staying cool this weekend. Happy Canada Day to those that celebrate, and Happy Fourth of July to those that celebrate that.
Do you have a favorite “classic” film? Have you ever been on a Tall Ship? Are pupusas a common food for you? What is your swim wear of choice?
How was the Memorial Day weekend, for those that are in America? I did choose going into nature with the family over spending the weekend home alone, but I didn’t leave until Sunday morning, so I had Saturday evening to myself – I went to dinner with my colleagues, came home, cleaned, watched some TV (Bridgerton – we finally got on the Netflix bandwagon.), read, and packed for the next day. It was a nice amount of time to have on my own.
It’s funny – I have often suggested the Husband go away on his own to get some alone time, but he always reminds me that wouldn’t be as nice because he wants to be home and have alone time. And I completely see that – there is something nice about a getaway, but there is also something nice about being in ones own house without external demands, a level of comfort and autonomy that I think is unique to having one’s own place to oneself. Also when you’re home you can tackle looming domestic tasks, which I think is also deeply satisfying. We probably don’t give each other enough of that kind of time….
Camping itself was a soggy affair. It’s been a wet Memorial Day weekend. I will say, it was mostly drizzle/dry/drizzle/dry while I was camping with the family. The Husband and kids (who had left the day before) and our friends got the brunt of the wet weather. They actually ended up going to the movies Saturday morning to get out of the rain. But still, the company was good and the air was nice. Our friend is a super camper – he brought tarps and many camp stoves, a camp sink, even a pizza oven. So we were not suffering in anyway. To be honest, most of the kids were on some sort of screen or another for a large chunk of the weekend – by the time I got there there were many fights over power banks because everyone’s device was running out of power (including the parents.) So it wasn’t the most disconnected weekend ever. Not my favorite thing, but I’m resigned to it. The kids did manage to go on a hike between rain showers; I feel like any amount of time in nature is a win, screen or no screen.
I slept in the hammock for the first time on Sunday night. It was a bit of a rough go at first, figuring out how to get into the sleeping bag, but once I figured that out, it was rather cozy. The next morning, it was nice to wake up with the morning air fresh on my face, listening to the rain on the rainfly. I will say the hammock is one of my favorite pieces of camping gear.
Monday morning, we made bacon and pancakes for everyone and the packed up the tent. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a dumpling place near Hersey, PA, and then for ice cream at a dairy further south in Pennsylvania. We are our cones in the sun then went to see the calves that were just around back of the ice cream store.
Now that we are the other side of Memorial Day, I feel like we are into summer for reals. Our pool has opened. Swim team practice starts this week. The weather is still deciding between rain and sun, making the air a little thick and humid, but temperatures aren’t scorching yet, which is good.
Because of my longer commute for my summer gig, I’ve been driving the van a couple days a week, mostly because I was afraid of burning out the clutch on our Impreza as I sat in stop/slow/go traffic all the way home. I still don’t love driving the van, but I have to admit that there are some nice things about it. So here – in the spirit of Elisabeth – is my Top Five/ Bottom Five of our van.
Top Five:
Apple CarPlay – The Impreza still has a CD player and my phone doesn’t always connect automatically to the Bluetooth. The van has Apple Car Play (and whatever the Android version of that is) – so it is pretty seamless when I get in the car to have my maps, playlists, audiobooks, etc. just pop up nice and big on the screen display. I know this is probably standard technology in vehicles, but it’s new technology to me and it’s magical.
The van reads me my text messages – This might be part of Apple CarPlay, but I love that when a text comes in, I can have the van read it to me. And also I can, with the push of a button, dictate a text message to send.
The van is an electric-hybrid – With gas prices what they are, I’m glad I don’t have to fill up the van with gas every week. There’s actually a charging station at work, which is convenient. I think we maybe fill the van with gas once a month.
It’s not a manual car – The Impreza is a manual car, which is fine and actually can be fun, but you know when driving a manual car isn’t fun? Driving it in rush hour traffic. I do appreciate that the van has no clutch to worry about and won’t stall out on me. Or I guess, I’m the one who does the stalling when I don’t shift quite correctly. I do like driving the manual car, but it is nice not to have to worry about shifting once in a while.
The trunk – First of all, the trunk is huge! We needed to transport some stuff for work, and I had to throw eight music stands, two large tote boxes, a stool, five boxes of stationary, and heaven knows what else into the back of the van. Everything went in easily; it wasn’t even a tight game of Tetris. It sure is handy having a large trunk. ALSO – another of my favorite thing: The van has that feature where you can wave your foot under the trunk and the trunk will pop open. This is especially helpful when I have an armload the groceries (or some boxes of stationary…) and I can’t reach my keys.
Bottom Five:
The van is HUGE – It doesn’t really fit in my parking spot at work. I can’t reach over and open the passenger side door from the driver side. When we first got the van, I complained that riding in it was like riding around in a mobile living room. I do realize that the size of the van could also be a plus – see above point about the trunk. And I do like that the van is big enough that the kids can all sit an arms length away from each other. And the 14 year old likes that she gets the whole back row to herself. But on the whole, it feels like I’m driving a boat and I’ve definitely miscalculated the turning radius a few times.
There are too many buttons – There are four separate buttons I could push to close the back sliding doors. FOUR. That seems excessive. But that’s on par for the rest of the van – there are buttons above, buttons to the right, buttons to the left, all the buttons on the steering wheel, the display. The temperature control can be run by both the digital display and the manual buttons underneath it. Also there are buttons in the back to control the temperature. I still haven’t figured out how to adjust the temperature control in the car. I had to call my husband one time because I couldn’t figure out how to close the moon roof. Also it’s push button start … I never know how many times to push the button to get the van to turn on. I always don’t do enough. There are altogether too many buttons. What do they all do?????
The shift button is next to the volume button and both are round – yes this is a button thing, but it is so egregious it deserves it’s own point. Take a look:
On the left is a knob to shift gears (which in and of itself feels weird to me). On the right is the knob to adjust the volume. I can’t tell you how many times while driving I’ve gone to turn the volume down and accidentally put the van in reverse. That just seems so dangerous, no? This is just a terrible design choice.
It makes a lot of beepsand random noises – There are a lot of safety features on the van – which is a good thing! – BUT some of those safety features involve beeping or chiming when something happens – if someone is in your blindspot, if you go over the speed limit, if you get too close to the car in front of you…. Granted with the size and shape of the van, visibility can be poor, so it is helpful to have all the features, but there are some beeps that I just don’t know what triggers them, and it causes a mild sense of panic whenever I hear them.
The vanis keyless – Again, probably not new technology, but just new to me. And really there is a lot that is convenient about keyless entry, but I’m such a fuddy duddy and the keyless thing bugs me. I hate that I don’t have to put a key in the ignition to start it or take the key out of the ignition to stop the car. Why? Because if I don’t have a place to put the key when I get in the car, I lose the key fob. Clearly this is a me issue and not a problem inherent to the van. But gaaaaah! It’s so annoying when I can’t remember where the key fob is. I’ll have it in my hand to get into the van and then somehow chuck it somewhere and when I get to my destination, I’ve forgotten where the fob is. Also, I haven’t quite solved the question of where do I keep the key fob when I’m driving. The Husband says it should just live in my pocket, but have you see the size of women’s pockets??? Anyhow, the keyless thing drives me nuts.
I suppose in the end, the positives of the van outweigh the negatives. The things that make it good for our family at this stage in our lives are pretty fundamental while the things that bother me are probably just pet peeves. I suppose in the long run, I’m grateful we have both a smaller car and a larger car for us to use. I am starting to think about the 14 year old and how she will be learning to drive soon and what that means for our next car purchase in terms of timeline and type. I don’t think she can learn to drive on the Impreza because it is a manual car, but I also don’t know if she should learn to drive on the van. So perhaps we will have to get another car within the next two years.
Grateful For:
-Rain fly over my hammock. The hammock is such a simple thing, but I get such joy out of it. I was very grateful that I could sleep outside in the rain while the rainfly kept me dry.
-Along those lines – camping with friends who have lots of gear so we don’t have to pack as much. While there was much that made camping frustrating – I have a note to buy everyone camp pillows and the Husband needs his own sleeping bag – I feel very grateful that a we didn’t have to bring too much extra stuff because our friends had so much stuff that camping seemed luxurious.
-My Bus Stop Mom friends. I managed to get off work in time to meet my bus stop mom friends for Happy Hour one night and it happened to be Trivia Night. We had a lot of fun. And learned what an obelus is! And came in second to last. I’m also so grateful to these ladies because one day a few weeks ago, I had to be at work at 9am. The school bus doesn’t pick up until 9:10am, so I texted them to ask if one of them could take my kids to the bus and they both said yes. So grateful to have friends who can help me out when I need it.
-The not quite summer weather. It’s been sunny and 70s and not humid lately. If the weather were to be like this until Fall, I would be so happy. But, alas, I’m sure heavy hot humidity is in our future soon, as is typical for the DC area. So I’ll soak in this cool summer weather as much as I can.
-Leftover McDonald’s. I went to see the show my company was putting on, which I wasn’t working. There’s a whole section of the show that takes place in a McDonalds and the Prop person had to bring in 2 quarter pounders with cheese, 2 cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, fries and apple pies to be used in the show. None of which got eaten. So after the show, I went to say hi to the stage managers and prop head and I said, “What’s going to happen to all that food?” “Nothing, do you want it?” “YES!” I exclaimed. Now I don’t really go to McDonalds very often, but there is something about the cheeseburgers with their soft sweet buns and the slight tang of the pickles that I do love. And of course I have a weakness for fries.
-Also in the vein of free food – I’m grateful for my Canadian director for being such a sweet and thoughtful person. He was popping home to Canada for Memorial Day weekend and asked if anyone wanted anything. I said jokingly, “Ketchup chips and wine gums, please!” Well… he brought not just me, but each member of the cast and staff, a bag of ketchup chips and a pack of wine gums! Of course I was really excited to get my favorite Canadian snacks, but even more so, I’m so glad I work with someone who is always thinking of other people.
Looking Forward To:
-Reading retreat! Inspired by Stefany, I suggested to the Husband that we go on a reading retreat the weekend the kids are at Taiwan camp. We’ve picked Harrisburg, PA because that is near camp and there are three or four bookstores there. I’m so excited to browse bookstores and hunker down and read.
-Watching more Derry Girls. We finally got Netflix a few weeks ago. We might be the last people on earth to jump on that bandwagon. I was for sure the hold out in the family – I thought we had enough streaming services. But after March Madness, the Husband cancelled YouTube TV and signed up for Netflix. I think we’ll keep Netflix through the summer and then when football season starts we’ll switch back to YouTube TV. I foresee many nights of watching KPop Demon Hunters in our future. But also – I’m super excited to watch Derry Girls – I had watched season 1 on the plane back from South Africa last year and really loved it.
-Pool time! Our pool is now open and swim team practice has begun.
-This week’s Maycember events (even though it is June) – Piano recitals (for the 9 year old and the 14 year old.). Voice recital (for the 14 year old.) Swim Team practice (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – though not Friday because that is the piano recital), a birthday party to attend for the 6 year old. There are still 3 more weeks of school and I do feel like we are on a slow crawl to summer.
-Listening to more of this book -Once Upon a River – about a four year old that is pulled out of the Thames in 19th century England, and the three people who claim to know who she is. The Book has been a combination of engrossing and soothing, thanks in part to the excellent narration by Juliet Stevenson:
What We Ate (Two weeks’ worth, since I’ve fallen behind on posting this month): Monday: Coconut Chicken Curry from NY Times cooking. I made a double batch, and froze half of it for later.
Tuesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked. (I was working and the Husband had happy hour plans with friends.) This was really tasty – she baked chicken chunks in the oven with a sweet and spicy glaze and steamed some broccoli to eat with it.
Wednesday: Can’t remember. The Husband cooked.
Thursday: Bagels and smoked salmon.
Friday: Pizza and … some movie. I’m not sure what. This was the first weekend of Netflix, I think.
Saturday: The family was camping – I think they had steak. I went out for Tex Mex with work colleagues and had chile rellenos.
Sunday: Camping. Pizza and Caesar Salad. (Which, I learned during Trivia Night that Caesar Salad originated in Mexico.)
Monday: Snack dinner. We got home from camping this night and were tired. If it weren’t for the kids I don’t think we would have had dinner. But the 6 year old said, “Can we do that thing for dinner where you cut up cucumbers and cheese and eat it with crackers?” Yes! So easy and it makes people happy. (I had my leftover Tex Mex from Saturday, with a fried egg on top.)
Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos for Taco Tuesday.
Wednesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked again. The kids were actually off school, so the 14 year old took her brother and they walked to the store together and bought ingredients for dinner and then she came home and made dinner for everyone. It must have been tasty because there was nothing left when I got home, though the house smelled so good. I was told the recipe involved lots of butter and lemon, all good things in my book. She also make a chocolate cake (from a box) with buttercream frosting (from scratch). I myself was at Happy Hour, where I had fish and chips and a Greek Salad.
Thursday: Pasta Salad at the pool The first pool dinner of the summer! I made a caprese pasta salad – tomatoes, cucumbers, mozzarella, fresh basil, marinated white beans, and a parmesan balsamic dressing.
Friday: I think the family had some kind of sandwiches.
Saturday: Pizza at a friends’ house while they played Dungeons and Dragons. I wasn’t home in time for this, so I had snack dinner and went to the grocery store.
Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce, bagged salad, and watermelon on the side.
Well, that’s the news in this corner of the world as we turn the corner into June. I’ve been thinking lately about how much time I spend writing here, and it feels both like too much and not enough. May was clearly an overwhelming month – there wasn’t a lot of writing or reading/commenting on blogs, and yet the time I get squeak in felt like I was stealing that time from other things. I don’t know if I will feel like I have more space in summer – the long commute to work certainly eats into my time to tackle both the necessary and leisure things. Part of me wonders if I just need to declare that posting will be light – more for myself than for anyone else. Or should I just see where things fit… thoughts thoughts thoughts….
Anyhow, have a lovely week, as we look towards a new month!
What kind of car did you learn to drive on? What do you love/don’t love about your vehicle? Keyless entry – yay or nay? How do you feel about free food – yay? or yuck? Tell me what I ought to watch on Netflix! I like shows – both comedy or drama – about ordinary people trying their best not to make bad decisions while loving the people around them. Also soapy period dramas.
When did it become May??? When did it get to be half way through May??? When did it become 3/4 of the way through May????? Can you tell I’ve been plugging away at this post for a very long time?
Well, I guess I started May in tech for a show. Then I worked supertitles for two recitals, started prepping for my summer show and also stage managed a one night gala performance. That’s four contracts in two weeks. (Five if you count my contract for admin work as head of the Stage Management department, which is indeed a separate contract.) And on top of that so many May-cember things. That is where May has gone. But… I like having these monthly reflections, so here is how April was, just as we are turning the corner into June.
April Highlights: -The show I was working on. It’s a musical, so it’s been a really different experience for me since I primarily work on operas. Musical theatre performers are so very very fit and pretty. The combination of athleticism and grace of what they do onstage astounds me. And they were each of them so very kind and friendly.
-March Madness and basketball fever at our house.
-Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I did participate and had a whole rainbow collage planned to show folks, but I never made it past yellow. Maybe I’ll still put the collage together.
-Take your child to work day. It was fun having the kids with me to watch rehearsals – they helped me set up tables for the scene we were doing and they helped me announce breaks. The performers were all so kind to the kids, and I’m grateful for that.
-going contra dancing as a family. Always a fun time.
-Farmer’s market trip and stumbling across the Black Health Fair and the collage-making workshop. It was a nice afternoon of art and swag.
-Hiking with kids. Finally went on a hike. First of the year. So far only of the year. I need to do better on this.
-Chorus Benefit concert. Our opera chorus holds a benefit concert every year. I’ve never been, but this year they asked if I would volunteer to stage manage and I said yes. The 14 year old came with me and was my assistant. It was really lovely to see the many chorus members and realize that I knew almost all of them. Some of them I’ve known for over 20 years. It is such a great community.
-Attending our friends’ B’not Mitzvah. So glad we got to celebrate this milestone with them.
-Grilling for the first time this year, one time when we hosted friends for dinner.
-First make-up buying excursion with the 14 year old. Thank goodness for the helpful lady at the counter.
-The AC in our office at work got fixed! It was amazing.
-Easter and Easter Service at our church, which is a vivid multicultural affair.
-Favorite Dinners this month: Steak Fajitas from NY Times Cooking. Grilled Teriyaki Chicken, using the Teriyaki sauce recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan cookbook. (The recipe is for teriyaki tofu, but the sauce works just as well on Chicken).
-Favorite movie watched: A Nice Indian Boy – a lovely rom com with some lovely people in it.
April Lowlights: -Some delicate dynamics at work. Not bloggable, but it was tricky to navigate. -Not being home a lot and feeling out of touch with the family. -Teenagers. Gotta love them, but man…. But over all not a lot of lowlights in April. Or maybe the things that were tough at the time now seem figure out-able. I feel like it’s the same things all blurring together in my head that make life seem overwhelming, while the things that make me happy or brought me joy all are very specific in my head.
How I did on my various goals: Creativity: -Painted two pictures. (8/26 pictures for the year) -wrote 3 haikus (13/52 haiku for the year… need to do some catching up on this.) -1 hike. (1/12 so far this year – not doing so well on this goal)
Consumption: – 1 live performance – Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas concert. It turns out this is the farewell tour for this fiddle and cello duo. I’m so glad we got to hear them play live. -0 Museums. (3/12 for the year so far. Though we got free passes for the Phillips collection at a community event, so maybe that will happen in June.)
Health: -4 sessions of strength training. (Goal was 8, but something is better than nothing.) -Daily yoga – 30/30 days. -5 vegan dinners. (Goals is 5/ month, so yay! This is making up for May where we’ve barely had any vegan dinners so far…) -1 run. (Exercise was not a strong suit of mine in April.)
Quote(s) of the Month: “I use he/they pronouns, but use whatever pronouns you want for me as long as you use them with respect.” One of the performers in my April show said this on the first day of rehearsal as we went around and introduced ourselves.
“Our talent is our floor, but our character will be our ceiling.” Cori Close, UCLA Women’s Basketball coach.
Looking forward to in May (many of which have already come and gone): -Well, the middle school musical was a big thing in our calendar. I’m kind of sad that it’s done and past. It was for sure a highlight of the month so far. The 14 year old was playing the lead – Marian in The Music Man, Jr. It was so amazing to see her onstage and to hear all the lines we’ve been running in context, and to hear all the songs she’s been practicing. I’m so incredibly proud of her for working so hard on this show. I felt like my heart grew every time I saw her onstage. -Stage managing a gala concert. I feel like I’m being pushed outside my comfort zone with this one. It’s so very different from anything else I’ve done before – barely any rehearsal, big names, and one shot to get it all right. It actually makes me a little sick to think about it, but I’ve been reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck and her writing is inspiring me to look for opportunities to learn and grow. (This also just happened and it was a doozy getting there, but ultimately a really good experience.) -Starting my summer show. And a long commute. -listening to lots of audiobooks because of above commute. (Looking for suggestions!) -The pool opens Memorial Day weekend! Swim team starts. -A potential quiet house over Memorial Day weekend because the Husband is taking the kids camping with friends. (Update! I think we are getting Sunday and Monday off for Memorial Day weekend, so I might drive up and meet the family after work. Time in nature with family vs. time in a quiet house by myself…. it’s a tough decision, I have to admit.)
Grateful For (so far this month.) -Middle school theatre and music teachers. Actually teachers in general.
-our van. I don’t like driving the van, but it does come in super handy sometimes. Like when I have to take 10 music stands, a stool, and two large bins of office supplies to our Gala location.
-Speaking of Gala – for finding free parking downtown. I had pre-paid for parking via SpotHero (do you know about SpotHero? It helps you find parking spots. We use it to book parking space at an airport hotel when we fly- it’s so much cheaper than airport parking.), but ended up finding free parking a block from our venue both days I had to be downtown. I was then able to give my pre-paid spot to my work BFF.
-All the people at work. What we’ve done at work is… I mean we’re not doing open heart surgery on infants or anything, but we had a massive pivot earlier this year and it’s been an amazing and challenging time. Everyone I work with has put in at least 110% to make opera happen and I’m grateful.
-A visit from my parents. I feel so lucky that my parents (who are 75 and 80) still have the energy and mental sharpness to travel to see us.
What We Ate: I’m afraid I don’t have much to report here because I’ve made it home for dinner only a handful of times so far this month. There was food. The family ate. No one went hungry.
So that’s a wrap on April. Aside from my horrendous commute, the next few weeks look a little calmer, and I hope to get back to writing here more regularly. Hope your May has been lovely and warm.
Last week was hot hot hot! It was practically summer here in the DC area with temperatures in the high 80s. Which all makes me wonder, with a little bit of dread, what July and August will be like.
I’ve done “Day in the Life” posts before, but usually for a week day, never for a weekend. I feel like our weekends are just as full of details as our weekdays. Part of that is because when I’m on a show, I usually work at least one day on the weekend, which makes my weekend essentially just one day. Which makes it very un-weekend like. Either way. I guess life is full of details, right? (note – there aren’t a lot of pictures in this post because I never remember to take a picture when I’m in that headspace.) So here is a Weekend in a Life, starting with getting off work on Friday night – because isn’t that when the weekend starts?
Friday 4/17: 6:30pm – Walking out the door after work. Head home for pizza and movie night, our Friday tradition.
7:00pm – Arrive home and settle into the basement. Tonight, the Husband bought pizza from a Detroit style pizza place. It features a very thick crust and the tomato sauce on top of the pizza rather than in the pizza. It’s tasty, but oh so filling. I also eat an entire bag of salad. I might have eaten too many Mini Eggs at work today and felt the need to re-set. We watched Wicked: For Good. Maybe it’s because I missed the first 45 minutes of the movie since I got home late, but… I found part two not as satisfying as part one. There weren’t as many songs and I found the plot hard to follow. But even still the visuals were gorgeous and the performances stellar.
8:45pm – The 6 and 9 year olds get ready to go to bed. PJs, brush teeth. I floss and brush as well. I cuddle with each of the kids for a little bit.
9:30pm – scroll for a little bit on my phone while lounging in the living room.
9:50pm – Get up to go clean the kitchen. Call my sister-in-law; we’ve been trying to catch up all week, but she’s in California and the time difference makes it hard. I get a hold of her just as she’s sitting down for dinner so I tell her I’ll call her back.
10:00pm – Take a shower while waiting to call my SIL back. Once I’m out of my shower, I write in my journals for a little bit.
10:40pm – Call SIL back. Talk to her while I clean the kitchen, and then zest lemons for lemonade concentrate. (I made a batch for Easter dinner and it was a huge hit, plus with the weather so hot this week, it’s nice to have lemonade concentrate in the fridge.) I also get to talk to my brother.
12:00am – say good night to my SIL. Finish up the lemonade concentrate. The recipe involves steeping the zest for an hour then using the zest water to make simple syrup that ks boiled for thirty minutes. After the simple syrup is cooled, add the lemon juice. The recipe is a bit time consuming, but it makes a lemonade concentrate that is the right combination of mouth-puckering and sugar high. In between steps for the lemonade concentrate, I scroll some more and read a little bit.
1:30am – to bed and sleep.
Saturday: 6:45 am – Awake. I read in bed for ten minutes, then get up and do a 25 minute yoga video.
7:30am – get dressed. I usually don’t get dressed until I’m ready to leave the house for the day, but this day a friend is dropping her kid off at 7:45am for a playdate while she goes to her older kids’ tournament. The Husband and the 9 year old have gone out to run errands.
8:30am – eat breakfast and read another chapter of Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. Pour the lemonade concentrate into jars (it was too hot last night) The 14 year old heads out to a volunteer stream clean up service project. She has to complete three service projects for her church confirmation this spring. Our neighbor is her sponsor, and takes her to the clean up.
lemonade!
9:00am – I get out the watercolour paints and the kids and I paint for a little bit.
9:30 am – get ready to go to work. It’s a beautiful sunny day so I ride my bike. I haven’t ridden my bike in maybe a year so and am not as in shape as I was, so I have to walk the bike rather than ride it up the big hill by work. This is one of my fitness markers – whether or not I can bike up the last big hill to work.
10:00a – Arrive at work. Change clothes. Check email, then on to the first rehearsal session of the day.
1:30pm – Lunch and then a walk to the local coffee shop. I buy coffee beans for the husband and an unsweetened matcha latte for myself. (Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Husband takes the 14 year old to her voice lessons and the other kids to the park. And then everyone gets boba afterwards.) We also spend some time working on our office puzzle. This one is kind of a doozy:
2:30pm – Back to rehearsal. This afternoon’s rehearsal is mostly dancing. I am in awe of how dancers operate – how they take words and light instruction and turn it into art with their bodies. It’s beautiful to watch. I also spend some time in another room setting up 60 chairs for the director’s presentation on Monday.
4:30pm – Rehearsal is over an hour early! The Stage Management Team wrap up today’s rehearsal by doing a couple of notes for the rehearsal report.
5:00pm – Since we are done early, I join the team for some drinks at the $1 oyster bar. I proceed to eat a dozen oysters, fried calamari, and French fries.
6:40pm – Time to go home. I take the bus, which drops me three blocks from the house. I love public transportation! (I’ve left my bike at work – I need to figure out how to get it home.)
7:00pm- Arrive home. The family is in the backyard, the Husband grilling brats for dinner while the kids play. I’m not hungry, but I sit with them outside while they eat. It’s lovely to be able to sit and eat outside before the mosquitoes get bad in the summer.
8:00pm- game night! I have the kids do pjs and brush teeth first, though. We play Magical Athlete, a new game that my cousin sent us. The game involves racing your players to an end point but each player has a special power – one gets to move 2 spaces any time someone rolls a 6, for example. Or one can forgo rolling the dice and always move 5 spaces. Or one moves other players back two spaces if they pass them. This game was great for our family because it is pretty straight forward and doesn’t require too much reading or higher level mathematics.
8:30pm- The 9 year old and 6 year old go to bed. I give cuddles.
9:00pm – I spend 30 minutes picking up the living room and dining room while the 14 year old does the dishes.
9:30pm – Journal, then 20 minute dumbbell strength video while watching tv with the Husband. I can’t remember what we watched, but it was probably Brooklyn 99. Put in a load of laundry.
10:30pm – Hang laundry up. I’ve been on an air dry my laundry kick for the past year or so. I’m not sure if it’s really a thing, but I read somewhere that hanging your clothes to dry helps them last longer, so I’ve started doing that. I have a folding rack for hanging laundry, which I set up in the basement. (Usually it’s in the bedroom, but I didn’t feel like taking it upstairs.)
11:00pm – TBH, not sure what happened in this hour – I probably scrolled and read blogs for a little bit.
12:00am – Read in bed.
1:00am – lights out and go to bed, though I’d been nodding off as I read for the past half hour.
Sunday: 7:45 am – slept in a little bit. I wake up and sat in bed and read a little bit. The Husband comes in and we chat about the day and some kid things. Then I do a ten minute yoga flow, scroll some more musical theatre videos.
8:45am – Take the 6 year old to her 9am Agility Class, where I watch her jump and flip and climb while typing my Cool Bloggers’ Walking Club Week 2 post, and start this post.
10:00am- Agility Class over, headed home to change and grab the 9 year old. We then head to our friend’s house for a photo shoot. Our friend is running for a seat on the County Council and he’s taking photos for his campaign materials. He asked a bunch of the people he knew to be in the photos.
10:45am- photo shoot. Really we mostly hang out, eat snacks, and chat with our friends while the video and photo team sets up the various shoots. The kids do one set of photos and the Husband and I do another set.
12:00pm- head home to eat lunch. As I’m making lunch for the 9 year old, I realize that the soccer game I thought was at 1pm was actually at 12:30pm. I put his sandwich, carrots, and apple slices on a plate for him to eat in the car, he grabs his gear and we get in the car. (in the mean time, the Husband takes the 6 year old to a playdate.)
12:45pm- arrive at soccer game only 15 minutes late. The 9 year old plays full back and then goalie.
1:30pm: soccer over. I take advantage of the soccer game being close to a couple major retail areas and run some errands- -Penzys to pick up vanilla and other things. -Kid to Kid for shorts/ skirts for the 6 year old. (I find myself very resistant to buying new clothes for the 6 year old because she doesn’t have younger siblings to pass them down to, but summer is coming and she needs shorts.) -Target- stock up on pads and face cleanser, deodorant – you know all the household things that build up because one thing itself doesn’t merit a trip to the store..
4;00pm- home finally. Running errands was exhausting. I help the 14 year old make cookies ; i find retail draining. The 14 year old is having a moment because while making chocolate chip cookies, she accidentally melted the butter and thinks that she has ruined the cookies. I pull out the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooks Illustrated, which uses melted butter and try to salvage the mood.
5:30pm – eat dinner. We eat dinner early on Sunday nights because the 14 year old has swim clinic at 6:55pm. The Husband cooked, so I clean up the kitchen afterwards. I also boil a dozen eggs in the Instant Pot for easy breakfasts the upcoming week.
7:00pm – I take the 9 and 6 year olds for a walk to the park. A perk of the later sunset is we can go outside after dinner. We play at the park for 15 minutes then we walk home. On the way home, I see a puppy running loose, darting in and out of traffic, causing no small amount of fast braking. The dog stops and looks at me, but then runs away when I try to get it to stay on the sidewalk. I know nothing about dogs and I’m really scared he (she?) is going to get hit by a car. A lady pulls over down the street. “Is that your dog?” she asks. I tell her he isn’t my dog and the lady notices that the dog doesn’t have a collar. She follows him as he runs into other yards. I’m feeling quite useless, but I try to wave to drivers to slow down whenever the dog runs into the street. Eventually the dog runs up to the porch of the house across the street. The lady goes up and knocks on the door. Eventually someone answers the door. They, thankfully, turn out to be the owners of the dog. The lady waves good night to me, gets in her car, and drives off. We continue our walk home. (This whole time, the kids were waiting patiently on the sidewalk. I’m really proud of them for not waiting instead of trying to cross the road to go home themselves.)
8:00pm – The Husband puts the kids to bed and I go to Trader Joe’s for a grocery run. I don’t usually go to Trader Joe’s, but the Giant never has good produce on Sundays. I stock up on some TJ staples (Everything Seasoning, Pound Plus Dark Chocolate Bars, Frozen Mango, Crumpets…) as well as pick up enough groceries to get us through most of the week.
9:00pm – home. I spend some time chatting with the Husband and 14 year old before she goes to bed. Then I scroll/ read blogs for 30 minutes.
10:00pm – I make soup for the next day’s dinner. Mondays evenings are busy – the 9 year old has fencing at 6pm and the 14 year old has basketball workouts at 7pm; we usually have soup on Monday so that the Husband can heat it up when he gets home from picking up the kids. Since I have to be at work early on Monday, I make the soup Sunday night – Coconut Corn Soup from New York Times Cooking. While the soup simmers, I journal, plan the week, and scroll some more (I can’t even remember what. I don’t love that – I do have a pile of books to read, but I was a little mentally fried by this point.)
12:00am – go to bed. I think. I didn’t write down what time I went to bed, but I’m pretty sure it was not before midnight.
And that’s the weekend! Some reflections – Things that were not typical: -we didn’t have a family meeting. Those usually happen at 7:40 am on Saturday, but because I was working that morning the Husband wanted to run his errands before I went to work. There were a few things that fell through the cracks that I would have clocked if we had had the family meeting – like getting the time of the soccer game wrong and a couple agenda items and coming up with a game plan for Take Your Child to Work day – so lesson learned – make time for the family meeting! -We didn’t go skating – usually the two younger kids have skating lessons on Sunday, but we are between sessions. Which is good because skating would have conflicted with the soccer game. -The photoshoot – definitely a unique and one time event for us. (Though funny story – we were in our friend’s last photo shoot, so if you look at his old campaign material, you’ll see the 14 year old. This time, the 14 year old asked if she could list this on her resume as having done some print modeling. I told her no.) -The late night Trader Joe’s run. Usually the Husband does the grocery shop on Sunday afternoon, but I think he wanted to spend time in his garden this weekend, so it got pushed off.
Things that were good: -spending some social time (going to Saturday night happy hour and catching up with friends at the photo shoot.) -game night as a family. -family movie night – not just as an activity, but I enjoy having these traditions -I really enjoyed Saturday’s rehearsals – they were low key on my end, but the material we covered was energizing to watch. – I got to squeeze in some painting time. -we got to show up for friends.
Things I would have liked less of on that weekend: -less time in the car. This is partially why I like to bike to work on weekends, but in general -less time running errands – i guess I could have done a Target or amazon order for some of the stuff. But I do really like going to Penzy’s and the customer service there is so warm and welcoming. – less scrolling between tasks. (Perpetual goal.) -late nights/ more going to bed earlier.
Things I would have like more of: -more time outside. -more empty space. Ironically last weekend was supposed to be a pretty open one because there wasn’t skating, but then things came up like needing to take my one friend’s kid for the day and my other friend calling with the photo shoot. I do think there is something nice about not being so scheduled that we can say “yes” to last minute things that come up. -time for life/ home maintenance or to get ahead of tasks for the week ahead. -more time to read.
I think that’s the tricky part when I’m working on a show – we work six days a week, so our one free day tends to be full of errands and to dos. I try to squeeze in at least one fun thing, but there were a lot of errands to run this Sunday as it is the one day off. I can see why people turn to grocery delivery or Amazon when they don’t have a lot of time to go to a physical store. I need to remind myself, though, that the six day work week is just until July and then I’ll have endless days off for the rest of the summer. At any rate, the weekend was not relaxing over all.
Grateful for: -The lady who pulled over to help the lost dog. Seeing such moments of kindness makes me hopeful for the world.
-Our grill! Or rather our tenant who left us this grill. We’ve started using our grill this season – a sure sign that summer is here (or around the corner.) I used to be staunchly charcoal grill, then one of our tenants moved out and gifted us their gas grill since they didn’t want to move it. It was life changing. I miss the slightly woodsy flavor that charcoal grilling imparts, but being able to flick a switch and press a button in order to get the grill going – this has made grilling so much more efficient a process.
-That the kids are old enough to clean the kitchen without supervision. The Husband and I went on an evening walk because the kids were going to clean up after dinner. Incidentally when I was in high school, something similar would happen every night after dinner – my parents would leave for an evening walk, telling my brother and me to take care of the post dinner clean up. They were so trusting. My brother and I worked out a system where one person would do the dishes and one person would do everything else – we hated doing the dishes that much.
-Shady trails to walk along in 85 degree weather.
-The teacher at the elementary school who blasts up beat, happy music every Friday while working the carpool line. It puts such a spring in my step to hear that music as I approach the school with the kids in tow. Seems the perfect way to welcome the weekend.
-Frixion pens and Frixion markers. Discovering these erasable pens a few years ago was life changing. Recently, though I learned that they also make Frixion markers and I love them. I’ve been using them instead of Post Its to mark up my score – they are equally eye catching and don’t create as much clutter
Looking forward to: -Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas – Fraser is a fiddle player and Haas plays the cello and they play together brilliantly . I don’t know when I first heard of them, but I have their first CD and I remember listening to it on repeat constantly when I was in my 20s. They are coming to the performing arts center nearby this weekend, and I’m excited to go. One thing, though, I think it might be a little weird to just sit through a concert of Scottish fiddle music – I wonder if we can get up and dance in the aisles?
– More meals out on the back patio. One of my favorite things about summer is eating outside.
-Take your child to work day! (I took so long to write this post that this already happened – more on this next week.)
-Listening to this audiobook:
I had heard Hazzard on a Fresh Air interview years and years ago when this book about his work as a paramedic first came out. I really wanted to read the book but I didn’t remember the details afterwards. Well a few weeks ago Birchie mentioned a book about a paramedic and I looked it up, and this was that book! Thanks, Birchie! The book is pretty grizzly and graphic so far, but also funny, quirky, and thoughtfully observed.
What we ate:
Monday: Teriyaki Chicken, Cedar plank salmon and trout, bagged salad, roasted broccoli. Apple Cobbler for dessert. We had friends over for dinner – they brought the roasted broccoli; we grilled out. The apple cobbler was made with some apple pie filling that a friend had made and gifted me for Christmas. It was originally supposed to be an apple pie, but my pie crust went bad, so I made cobbler instead. It was still tasty.
Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. We had pulled pork tacos.
Wednesday: It was my mother’s last night with us so we went out for Noodles and Dumplings.
Thursday: BLT sandwiches.
Friday: pizza take out and Wicked: for Good. Like I said above – beautiful movie, confusing plot.
Saturday: For me- Oysters, fried calamari, and an order of fries. For the family – grilled brats and sausages and steamed green beans.
Sunday: Tortellini with sausage and marinara.
That’s it. I’ve taken so long to write this post that another weekend is right around the corner. Hopefully we’ll have our family meeting this week.
What about you? Do you prefer gas or charcoal for grilling? What are your “must do” things for a weekend? Do you prefer physical store or buying off the internet?
Last week was a mish-mash sort of week – it started off with the kids off school on Monday, and then mid-week, I started prepping for a new show. We went contra-dancing. My mother came to visit, and good friends of ours had their twins’ B’not Mitzvah (I learned that’s what it’s called when the Bat Mitzvah is for two girls). So busy and full, but also I didn’t have to work in the evenings, so some luxurious swaths of time as well.
Three Jobs that I wish I could do last week: 1) Animal control. There was a bird in our office building this week for a little over 24 hours. A cute little chirping sparrow that had somehow gotten inside. It started out in another office, then flew through the halls a little bit, and then flew into our office, I think, because we have very large windows and it was looking for sunlight. At first, it was kind of cute – the birds twittering almost made it feel like we were working outside.
But of course keeping a bird inside, where there is no food or water isn’t sustainable. Our facilities person was chasing it (him? I think they named him), trying to encourage it into the rehearsal room because there is a door to the outside. What a frightening experience the little bird must have been having. ( Fun Fact – numerous animal control companies were called but none of them would come – either they didn’t do birds, or our ceilings were too high.) Anyhow, we did eventually get the bird into a rehearsal room and out the door, but before that happened, there was much flapping, and chasing, and prodding on our part. I don’t think we were doing anything right. At least we were not effective.
2) Make-up Artist. At about 5pm on a Friday, I was at work, and I got this text from the Husband:
The 14 year old wanted to try some make-up for her school dance. That night. The dance was at 6:30pm. I don’t have a lot of experience with make-up – there was a time when I put on some mascara and lipstick for opening night, but I don’t even bother with that anymore. The Husband knows less than I do. But all the same, we wanted to be supportive.
No limbs were broken, but this sounded like the kind of situation that I should bail on work to help with. I shut down my computer, told my colleagues I had a family situation come up, and packed up my stuff.
“Meet me at Ulta,” I texted the Husband as I walked out the door.
I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, having no knowledge of current (or any) make-up trends – my only make-up instruction came from a Mary Kay consultant that visited my church group when I was 12. (She was a mother of some in the group.) I just remember her talking about the face’s t-zone. But I figured I could meet the Husband and 14 year old at Ulta where there was a large selection, and then search Reddit for advice.
I arrived at Ulta at 5:35pm, little before the Husband and 14 year old, and was immediately overwhelmed. Rows and rows of displays and shelves and images of brilliant eyes, rosy lips, and perfect dewy skin. And there was the $6 lipstick and the $36 lipstick – what’s the difference? And so many colours and shades and was that even make up or was that hair spray???? The Husband and 14 year old joined me, looking at me for direction. “You’re a 40-something woman. You mush know what to do,” was the subtext. I did not know what to do. This is when I wished I were a make-up artist.
Then I saw a lady with a name tag (which I didn’t read – so sorry), an artfully messy updo, arms blooming with tattoos, and a friendly face. She said, “Do you need help?”
Oh thank goodness!, I thought.
“YES!” I said, pointing at the 14 year old. “She needs make-up for the school dance and we don’t know what we’re doing.”
And the lady helped us with calm, soothing tones. She asked questions, helped pick out colours while telling the 14 year old what different things would do. The concealer didn’t have testers, but she was a former make-up artist, and said that she was pretty good at matching colour for us. We left with lip stain (what even is that??), concealer and mascara – which I felt was a nice basic collection of things for a first time make-up user.
3)Stationary Tester. This is a fun one – My order from JetPens arrived and I spent an evening playing with everything I ordered. I bought monthly tabs for my planners and journals, a few new pens to try:
Look at my journal and my planner all nicely tabbed!
A stamp for my book journal:
and my favorite thing is this book clip:
Now I can read hands free (until I have to turn the page.) There are so many fun things on the JetPens site – how fun would it be if I could spend my days testing pens and papers and stickers and other objects of efficiency and purpose?
Grateful For: – Sunshine and nice weather and the Potomac River. Monday was a no school day, so I took the 9 year old and the 6 year old and a friend for a hike to Blockhouse Point Trail – at last, my first hike of the year! Blockhouse point is one of my favorite trails because it is never crowded and leads to a stunning view of the Potomac River.
-The 9 year old figured out how to tie his shoes. Now all three kids can tie their own shoes. (yes, the 6 year old figured it out before the 9 year old…). They still need help with their skates, but for every day shoes and cleats, they can tie their own shoes. Seems like a milestone.
-The 14 year old cooked dinner one night, and she and the other two kids cleaned up afterwards.
– Having a contra dance two miles from us. When I was first introduced to contra dancing, it was at a location that was maybe a 20-30 minute drive away from where I lived in DC. (Washington DC has one of the biggest contradancing scenes in the country and there used to be two dances a week. Now there is one weekly dance and two monthly dances – which is still a lot more than many other places.) Similarly, when I’ve gone contradancing in other cities, I’m sometimes driving for up to an hour to get to a dance. But it’s fine – if the music and the people are good, it was always worth the drive to me. However, there is now a monthly contradance very close to us, and it makes going so much easier and lower stakes and also makes it easier to go as a family. We went dancing with the 6 and 9 year old last week and had so much fun. We danced for an hour and a half and were all home and in bed by 10pm.
– A walk with the 14 year old and the fact that she has been able to walk to school the past few years. She was in an off mood over the weekend, so the Husband and I took her on a walk to her school and back. I’m feeling a bit of the feelings that she’ll only do this walk for two more months and then she’ll be off to high school, and there will be other traffic patterns to figure out for her. As we walked together to her school, she gave us the rundown of the inner monologue that she has as she walks – who lives where, when she meets up with friends, all the stories she makes up in her head about the houses and people that she see, where she walks on the wall, when she crosses the street… It was such a delightful peek into her brain.
– Having friends who let us celebrate milestones with them. I’ve never been to a Bat/Bar/B’Not Mitzvah celebration before, and it was such a lovely experience. I will say the morning service was loooong (two hours), but I really loved the ritual of it all and also following along the Hebrew readings (there was a translation provided). I found there was something really cerebral and thoughtful about the Torah readings.
We also helped our friends set up and take down the party afterwards, and they let me run the popcorn machine and the cotton candy machine during the party! I’ve never done this before, but was game to learn new things. Besides the instructions were written right on the machines so it was pretty straightforward. The cotton candy machine was SO messy! I had cotton candy fluff all over me. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the machine stopped working about an hour into the party. But even after the first round, I was covered.
cotton candy selfie!
Which is all to say, there is something really nice about having friends that feel comfortable and trust us enough to ask us to come early and stay late for such a big event. They are there to help us and they let us be there to help them. There is something wonderful about being able to help. Sometimes I feel like I have people in my life that only want to help me and never let me help them in return and things end up feeling very loop-sided. I’m really grateful for this friendship where we get to lean on each other.
And we got to take home the balloon arch:
Looking Forward To: -Maycember. Really April-to-June-cember. At this weekend’s family meeting, we looked at the calendar for this next quarter and I can’t say I’m looking forward to the pace of the next few months, but everything on the calendar are things I’m genuinely looking forward to – recitals, the middle school musical (with the 14 year old in the lead!), elementary school performances, a new show for me to work on, a vocal recital for me to do titles for, my parents visiting again, the 14 year old’s middle school promotion ceremony, a camping trip for everyone but me (I’ll be working that weekend, so I can’t go, but – yay! – weekend with the house to myself!)… all that on top of the usual lessons and activities.
-Summers at the Pool. And then my reward for getting through April-to-June-cember is that my last contract ends in by July 4th and I can spend the rest of the summer hanging out with the kids – there will be a lot of pool time.
– Starting rehearsals for a new show. It’s one I’ve always wanted to work on, so I’m excited to get started.
-Warm weather. Maybe too warm. It’s going to be like summer here this week. But… it also mean I get to break out all my cute warm weather clothes.
-Sunday night dinner with friends.
-Reading more of this book – I just started it and it is quirky and insightful. I think I like books that look at humans from the outside:
What We Ate: Monday: Spiced chickpea stew with coconut and tumeric, an Alison Roman recipe from NY Times cooking. Vegan. This was tasty; I had it for lunch all week. I didn’t eat it that night because I went out to happy hour with friends and I had fish and chips.
Taco Tuesday: Black beans, Sauteed shrimp, guacamole, mango slaw. Hard and soft shells. Cheese and sour cream, of course. Taco Tuesday is so tasty. The Husband cooked this time and it was delicious.
Wednesday: Mac and Cheese (from the blue box) and steamed green beans. This is the night the 14 year old cooked.
Thursday: Nasi goreng. Indonesian fried rice w/ fried tofu. No recipe, really, just used up whatever vegetables I had around – broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, leeks. Vegan.
Friday: Pizza and Zootopia 2. It was a cute movie. I think I’ve seen the first Zootopia, but I can’t say for sure.
Saturday: I went straight to the B’not Mitzvah party from work, so I didn’t have dinner, but they had so much snacky/appetizer food. My favorite was the deconstructed pasta salad – it was a plate with cherry tomatoes, tortellini, and marinated mozzarella balls all laid out separately on a bed of arugula so you could pick and choose what you wanted.
Sunday: Tortellini with sausage, onions, and greens. Blanched green beans. I usually steam the green beans, but I had the hot water from the pasta in a pot and I thought, “Why waste a good pot of hot water?” So I threw the green beans in there for four minutes.
I hope you have a great week!
Any jobs you wish you could do lately? Do you tie your shoes the bunny ear method or with a single loop? Favorite party snack/appetizer? Have you ever sat through a service for a religion different than your own?
Last week was spring break – we stayed home and had a relaxing staycation kind of week. Monday I took the kids down to the main library in downtown DC, and we also went to see some cherry blossoms. Other than that – we had some nice bike rides and playground time. Baking. A family trip to Costco. Hair cuts and dress shopping. Library visits and ice skating. It was nice to be home and living life at a relaxed pace.
The weekend was also pretty low key. On Saturday I dopped the 6 year old at an Easter Egg Hunt play date and went to get my emissions tested. The emissions didn’t take as long as I expected, so I stopped at Panera for my free Slip Club beverage and a BLT since I hadn’t had breakfast. Then in the afternoon, the Husband and the two little kids and I went on a nice long bike ride. In the evening, we watched the Men’s Final Four Basketball games. After the 6 and 9 year old went to bed, it was time to play Easter Bunny. The 14 year old was still up, and the Husband turned to her, dead serious, and said, “I have something to tell you. “
She looked at him expectantly.
“The Easter Bunny,” he said, “Isn’t real.”
I howled with laughter. The 14 year old helped us stuff eggs and then she actually went and hid all the eggs for us while the Husband and I finished watching the game.
Sunday, we went to 8am Easter Mass, which at our church is an English/ Bangla service. Reasons I really enjoy going to the English/Bangla mass: -The rainbow of saris and kurtas that people wear are so fun to see. -The homily is given in both languages, so it tends to be shorter. -The music is provided by Bengali musicians and it is always upbeat and varied.
After Mass we went to breakfast at First Watch. We traditionally would go to IHOP for Easter breakfast, but the last couple of years, IHOP has always been so crowded so we decided to try something new. First Watch was for sure less crowded and the food was, in my opinion, better. The restaurant was having an Easter Egg hunt which was fun for the kids too. After breakfast we went home, had a nap. The kids hunted for Easter eggs. I made some lemonade and chocolate pudding for dinner, then we watched the Women’s NCAA Basketball final game while the kids folded laundry. The game was kind of a rout, with UCLA winning by 30 points.
For dinner we had burgers, tater tots, green beans, and lemonade. After dinner we went for a family walk – a rare thing these days to get all five of us to go for a walk together. The summer sunset sky was gorgeous! When we came home we had the chocolate pudding for dessert before sending the kids to bed. It didn’t feel like a fancy holiday weekend, but I think it was full of family, and good food, and what more could one want?
And now the calendar has turned to another month. April! Which means that 2026 is one quarter over. Here’s a look back at March:
March Highlights: -Tech/Opening/Closing of a show. The Show certainly had it’s challenges, but I had such a good time with my co-workers.
-Family trip to the theatre to see The Sea Beyond the Ocean. Such a beautiful play.
-Supertitle recital gig of a lovely recital that featured Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel, one of my favorite song cycles.
-Running supertitles for another opera. I really like running supertitles – I get to lock into the music, but also I don’t have to talk to anyone else so I can just focus on one thing.
-Sunshine and warmer weather.
-It was a pretty negligent month for exercise, but I did go on my first run since November, and I did go to the fitness room at the rec center once.
-My friend L coming over to do laundry and getting to hang out with her late one evening.
-KPop Demon Hunters winning two Oscars, and seeing Golden performed on the telecast.
-My friend A coming home from their posting abroad. I mean not the reason they were sent home (they were posted in the Middle East), but the fact that I got to see her four months earlier than I was expecting.
-Going to the 9 year old’s Geobowl and the 14 year old’s Science Fair.
-Visiting the Textile Museum. Who knew horse blankets were so nuanced!
-Getting our tax information to our Tax Guy just in time.
-Cherry Blossoms. I never get tired of their fluffy delicate beauty.
Also – I snapped this picture while sitting in the shadow of the Washington Monument. I’m feeling a little down about the state of American politics, but I still feel inspired and hopeful by the symbols of our country, such as the American Flag and the Washington monument.
March Lowlights: -Being sick. I was barely hanging on for a week mid-March. Turns out it was flu. I had to cancel so many plans that I had been looking forward to. -News on the international front. -News on the arts front at home. My heart aches for so many of my colleagues and former colleagues here in DC. -A really hard tech process for the show I did. Everything was fine in the end, but there were definitely times when I thought I was just plain bad at my job. -The back and forth as to the last day of school. This isn’t really a lowlight, but more like an ridiculous frustration. As the snow days piled up, the school district kept extending the school year, day by day until the last day, which was originally June 18th was pushed all the way to June 25th. I was glad I hadn’t signed the kids up for camp that week. But then…. then then… the week before spring break, the school district announced that they had gotten a special dispensation from the State to have a reduced number of teaching days and the last day of school would go back to being June 18th after all. ARUGH!!!! You know – I am find with whatever they decide to do, but to offer one thing and then change it back is… so annoying. I’m sure the school district knows how annoying this is.
How did I do on some of my 2026 Goals? -Creativity – I only painted one picture; I wrote 3 haikus; I played piano several times – I’m trying to embrace the five minute piano noodle as something to do when I’m between tasks. So could do better on this front. But then I was sick for a week…
The one picture I painted all month. I guess technically it’s two. This was the leaf painting assignment from 30 Days of Watercolour.
-Finished one crossword puzzle. We didn’t renew our Washington Post Sunday paper til half way through the month, but it is now renewed so I can get back to doing my weekly puzzle.
-Museums = 1 (total so far this year, 4/10). Hikes= 0 (Not doing so well on the hiking goal)
-Vegan dinners = 3 (the goal is 5/month) I have to admit, vegan dinners are hard when I’m working in the evenings and am not home to cook.
-Excercise: not great. Strength training = 3x (goal was 8x/ month). Yoga daily = I missed two days when I was sick and 1 day when I just forgot. I did go running 4 times, once for only 10 minutes, but I’m still counting that.
-Family Goals: Game Night = 1 (Parcheesi; it was disastrous. Wait, I think there was a MarioKart night as well); Date Night = 0 (still); Call my parents once a week – I did horribly on this one; I think I called them once all month.
-Time outside: I tracked 14 hours, but it might have been more. I fell off the tracking wagon the days before and after I was sick.
Quote of the Month: “I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.” from The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
Looking Forward to (the April edition): – Contra dancing. We didn’t get to last month because of sickness in our household, so I’m hoping we’ll get to go this month.
-My mother’s coming to visit.
-Dinners and hang outs with various friends and families we know. The social calendar is a little full.
-An order from Jet Pens. As a gift to myself for getting through tech week (twice in one month!) and the flu, I ordered myself some things from JetPens – some monthly tabs so I can tab my planners, a new Preppy Fountain Pen, some new .25 point pens, and a book clip so I can clip my book open when I read while eating.
-Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas. I’ve been a fan of this fiddle and cello duo since their debut album in 2004 so I was super excited to see they are coming to play in our area. I very rarely go to live music concerts – usually if I’m going it live performance it’s opera or theatre – but especially these days, I feel like supporting live performance is important.
– Starting rehearsals for a new show and working with some of my favorite colleagues. (Okay, truth – most of my colleagues are my favorite colleagues. Now that I get to have a say in hiring stage managers, I don’t hire people I don’t want to work with… it’s a perk.)
– Reading in bed! I ordered a bedside lamp and it arrived!
Grateful for this week: -Libraries. Particularly libraries that don’t have computers in their Children’s Section, thereby forcing my kids to actually look at books.
-Cadbury Mini Eggs. My favorite holiday candy. I got the big bag from Costco this year. Actually I got two. Last year I thought I didn’t need the big Costco bag of mini eggs so I didn’t buy them, and I regretted it ever since.
-A later piano lesson. The kids’ piano lessons are usually at 7:15am, but this week because it was Spring Break, their teacher was able to move the lesson to 8:00am and it was nice to stay home for that extra 45 minutes and have a leisurely morning.
-Bike trails and closed parkways. On the weekends, the parkway near us is closed to cars, giving us an endless length of road on which to ride our bikes.
-Spring Break and bonus time with my kids. Sure they periodically fought like tom cats, but overall I had a really great time hanging out with my kids this week. I think key to my great time was the fact that they play together pretty well, so a) I didn’t have to referee many arguments, and b) I could spend lots of time by myself without having to amuse them.
-Past me for making vanilla. Last year around this time, I had been given a mini bottle of vodka that I was never going to drink. So I tucked an vanilla bean inside to make vanilla. I had forgotten about it until this week, when I was making banana cake (this recipe – it’s really tender and moist) and realized we were out of vanilla. Panic! But then, I remembered that little bottle on our alcohol shelf. Past me to the rescue!
What We Ate: Monday: Garlic-y Chicken with Lemon Anchovy Sauce a Melissa Clark recipe from NY Times Cooking. Eaten with rice and steamed broccoli on the side. I was looking to use up some chicken thighs I had in the fridge. This was really tasty.
Tuesday: Tacos from the taco place next to the barber’s. We had gone for haircuts for the kids and decided to grab dinner out before running some other errands this night.
Wednesday: Roasted Salmon and Potatoes with bagged salad. The 14 year old made dinner and it was super tasty.
Thursday: Kabocha Squash Japanese Curry from Hetty Lui McKinnon, and Pan Fried Tofu. I had picked up a Kabocha squash from the Farmer’s market and was looking for a way to cook it. I really loved this flavorful curry. I didn’t have Japanese curry, but Indian curry powder worked just fine. I think I’ve cracked the code on really delicious crispy fried tofu. This is my method: -Press and drain tofu for at least 20 minutes. (I wrap it in a kitchen towel and then put my Dutch oven on it. Sometimes I start it in the morning so that it’s nice and dry by the time I get home after work.) -Cut tofu into 1 inch cubes. -Douse with soy sauce and then let it sit for at least 10 minutes to marinate. -Toss in 1/4 cup of cornstarch, making sure all sides of tofu are coated. -Heat about a 1/4″ of oil in a large skillet. -When the oil is hot, add the tofu. Let it cook untouched for 3-4 minutes, until a nice crust forms. Then flip and cook for another 3-4 minutes on the other side. -When nice and golden/ crispy on at least two sides, take out and drain on a paper towel. The excessive amount of cornstarch seems to be ky.
Friday: Take out from local fish restaurant, because it was Friday in Lent. And for movie night: A Nice Indian Boy. I was looking for a rom com to watch since it was my turn to pick the movie, and came across this title from last year. It was just perfect – everything I want from a rom com: cute, appealing leads, offbeat secondary characters, believable conflict even within a quirky story, humour, heart, and wit. We laughed a lot. The movie tells the story of Naveen, a doctor, who yearns to meet the right man and get married. He meets Jay, a white man who was adopted by Indian parents, and much of the comedy and heart comes from the dynamics of Naveen’s family learning to accept Jay as the Nice Indian Boy they want for Naveen. I loved that everyone had a chance for a story arc, and the Indian wedding dance number at the end. This movie was the definition of feel good. Also Jonathan Groff is really pretty.
Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made – cheese, sausage and mushroom, fig and goat cheese, and a pepperoni).
Sunday: Burgers, steamed green beans, tater tots. Lemonade. Chocolate pudding. (Burgers, lemonade, and chocolate were all things that the kids had given up for Lent.) The Husband made the burgers and they were really tasty. The 9 year old at one point said, “It’s a good thing Easter isn’t on a Friday in Lent because we wouldn’t have been able to eat these burgers!” Um…..
