family movie night – Page 6

Weekly Recap + what we ate: mind wandering and meanderings

This week felt really routine. Morning – breakfast/pack lunches/school bus run. Then Work. Then home to eat dinner (never made it home in time to make dinner). Then kids to bed and collapse in exhaustion. I had a couple late nights when I stayed up late to work on the slides for a supertitle gig. That probably explains the few nights that I collapsed in exhaustion. Sometimes I think wistfully on “college me” who could pull four or five all nighters in a row. I can’t do that anymore. I mean I like sleep, but also.. it sometimes feels like a waste of time.

The week started off with Superbowl Sunday. We had friends over and lots of food. The kids ran around with minimal interest in the game, only coming down to eat periodically. I didn’t have druthers who won – I usually like just rooting for whomever is running with the ball. There’s something about a person running really fast while being chased that makes me want them to come out on top. It was a lovely social way to start the week.

Mind wanders and life meanders from the week:

It’s been taking a lot of mental energy to get through the decisions that have been thrown my way at work this week. Fine, we’ll get through. One of the Assistant Stage Managers on the show has brought in a jigsaw puzzle for the communal table in our office and we’ve been slowly working our way through. Or actually, not too slowly because it seemed like every time I came in in the morning, a new swath of puzzle was complete. Anyhow, a couple days ago, I came in to this:

My co-workers had left the last piece for me to do. Isn’t that awesome? I left it undone, saying I wanted to save it for a really bad day so that I’d have something that could go right when I needed it.

Haircut – I think I last got my haircut last year around this time. My modus operadi is to grow out my hair until it’s time to start a new gig, then to get it cut super short. I really should get my hair cut more, but I have to admit that my stylist is very expensive and it feels like his rates go up every time I get my haircut. Which, I guess if it’s only once a year, is understandable. Anyhow, my favorite part of getting my haircut super short- it now takes about five minutes to shower. Yay. When my hair gets long I sometimes am very reluctant to shower because it takes so long to wash my hair and then it takes a long time to dry. Oh – another perk, is I think the short hair hides the grey more. Or maybe not. I might just be kidding myself on that one.

Masking – I ordered another batch of masks for the kids this week, which led me to contemplate the current state of masking where I am. I would say that I am seeing fewer and fewer masks, but I do see them continue to be worn when I am out and about- mostly older people and people with children and service providers. Currently only the two little kids still wear masks to school. Except for a few weeks ago when there were 3 COVID cases in the 6 year old’s classroom and everyone was asked to mask for 10 days, masks are not mandatory. I think it’s interesting that the two little kids still ask for their masks as they head out the door for school while the 11 year old no longer wears one unless we ask her to, for example if we go to the theatre or something. Masking at work is encouraged but not enforced for me, in addition my company still does mandatory twice a week COVID testing. I do think that is on the more cautious end of the spectrum. I still mostly mask at the grocery store, though I don’t worry if I forget. I think right now, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that we’ll just continue masking for a while, but not to be too strict about it. I also realize that my approach to masking is probably not entirely rational and likely just habit right now; COVID levels are really low where I am. Also – I feel like there is so much other stuff goin on out there right now… if it’s not COVID, the kids are going to be sick from something else.

Petty annoyance of the week – Last week, spring swim lesson sign ups opened on Monday morning for our county swim program, and by the time I logged in at noon, all the slots for the beginner classes were taken, except for maybe 6:30pm on a Tuesday night, which is a little on the late side for us. I kind of knew the slots were going to fill fast and it still annoyed me mightily to have missed out. When the oldest was little, I would set my alarm for 6am on registration day to snag a swim lesson slot. I don’t know why I lost the will to do that these past few years. Second/third kid syndrome, maybe? I know if I were serious about getting the littles into swim lessons I would just sign them up for lessons with one of the private swim schools here. But they are so much more expensive. Anyhow, I think I will just try to take the kids to the pool more often during free swim time and then come summer sign them up for private lessons at our summer swim club. Sidenote story: A few months ago, I went to our local swim store to buy the eleven year old a new swimsuit and impulsively threw in a couple kickboards for the two little kids. Now the baby wanders around with her kick board asking, “When are we going to the pool?” She even has slept with it on occasion. So yeah, I think getting to the pool at least once this winter is on the to do list.

Another petty annoyance of the week: The weather was beautiful all week and I wanted to bike to work, but after I got all my gear on and unearthed the bike from the shed, I went to put air in the tires and the valve to the tire was broken. AAAARGGH!!! I need to streamline the process for biking to work so that when it doesn’t work out I’m not so devastated to have lost thirty minutes of anticipation and preparation time. Anyhow, I’m sure it’s an easy fast fix, but I haven’t had time to do it yet… and I’m feeling very annoyed that beautiful weather is passing by while the bike sits unused. I guess it was a week for foiled plans – I also spent an entire morning putting up a baby gate for my parent’s tenants because the door to their basement broke, and basement stairs+ babies = bad combination. The baby gate absolutely needed to be done, and I was happy to do it, but having my morning routine thrown off track was annoying. Oh well… expect the unexpected.

Proud Parent moment of the week: Last week was Valentine’s Day – a day that I usually mark with last minute trips to Target to survey the bottom barrel dregs of Valentine’s day cards available, or which I try to solve with Amazon next day shopping. I think my happiest moment last month was when the baby’s child care center emailed all the parents to notify us that the center does not celebrate Valentine’s Day and Valentine’s cards would not be necessary. Hallelujah!

But that still left the two kids in elementary school with Valentines to procure. I tasked the Husband to work with the 11 year old for hers – she just wanted to give out candy. I took on the six year old. He wanted to hand out stickers. The Sunday before Valentine’s Day we went to Michael’s, and to my dismay, the Valentine’s Day items were already relegated to a tiny shelf, to make way, of course, or Easter and St. Patrick’s Day. There were no Valentine’s Day Stickers. No heart stickers. Nothing. But…. luckily, we found some French stickers – perfect because the six year old is in French immersion school. So I grabbed those and called it done. I took them home and had him write his name on the back of the right number of sticker sheets. The next night, I offered to write his classmate’s names for him. He said, “I want to write Ada because it is short. The other names are too long.”

Okay, I figured that he could write Ada’s sticker sheet and I would write the rest of them. But… once he finished Ada, he looked at the rest of the names on his list and said, “I would like to try the other names.” And he did it! He wrote all twenty-four names of his classmates on the sticker sheets. I was just so proud of him for deciding that it was worth trying to do and doing it.

Also – check out his new favorite accessory. Cracks me up.

He’s overseeing the new construction of the Death Star, while writing Valentine’s Day Cards.

Grateful For This Week:
-The ridiculously mild weather. It was in the 50s and 60s all week. A couple days of rain, but other than that such nice weather. The crocuses are blooming which fill me with both joy and trepidation.

-The friend from my mom’s group who lent me the baby gate for my parent’s tenants. So glad I have a group of people I can just text for random asks like this.
– The ice arena nearby where the six year old has been taking skating lessons on Sunday mornings. I’ve really been enjoying our Sunday morning routine these past few weeks. The price of skating lessons also includes a punch card for the skater to come to free skate to practice. So on Sundays, I’ve been taking the three year old and the six year old to the 11am free skate, and then the three year old and I will continue to skate while the six year old has lessons from 12:15 to 12:45pm. Then we have a snack and go to the park, and get home around 2:00pm for a late lunch. It’s been a nice way to spend a Sunday morning, and I get to go skating too, which is always fun. I love seeing how even in these six weeks, both kids have gotten so much better on skates. I can skate for a quarter lap of the rink without anyone clinging on to me! And I initially thought that they would get discouraged by falling, but they haven’t; they just get right back up and continue skating. I’ve already signed up both kids for the next session and I’m looking forward to it!
– A friend and colleague whom I could just text with questions about my supertitle gig. (And this is where I get into the weeds of what I do…) Most of the translated titles that I format for these song recitals are for songs based on poetry. When formatting the projected titles, I’m always torn between maintaining the line of the original poem versus matching the line of the music. For example this poem by Edith Sitwell, set to music by William Walton:
Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, spangles
Pelt down through the tangles
Of bell flowers. Each dangles
Her castanets, shutters
Fall while the heat mutters.
(You can hear the full song here if you choose – it’s a charming song.)

Clearly the rhyming scheme doesn’t follow the line of the sentence. But the composer has set the musical phrases to follow the sentences, not the lines of poetry. At the same time, there is something so wonderful about the way the rhymes work. So the question is… is there an obligation, when writing the translation slides, to preserve the original line and rhyme scheme of the poetry?
Anyhow, I texted my friend for her opinion and she reminded me: “When the translation title fights the musical line, it can be distracting.” Which is a good reminder that my job is really to help the audience understand the music, not admire the poetry.
Also this question always good to ask: “Will the poet be at the recital?” My friend should really write a book on the art of writing supertitles.

Looking Forward To:
– Going to the theatre this week! I have tickets to see Into the Woods. At first I was going to go with the Husband and the 11 year old, but then the logistics of finding a sitter of the other two kids kind of overwhelmed me. (I know… we should be using a sitter more.) So the Husband and the 11 year old are going to go one night and I’m going with my friend/college roommate a different night. I’m so excited! My friend loves Into The Woods, and it’s her birthday week, so it feels celebratory. When we were in college we went to see a concert version that reunited the original cast for the 10th year anniversary of the original Broadway production, so this will be a nice throwback.
– Planning our Spring Break Trip. I know it’s a while away, but I just had a bunch of travel books come off my holds list for our destination, so I’m starting to get excited about what we might do there.
– Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. So I had been watching This Is Us while cleaning the kitchen. But it’s the last season and I’m not ready to be done that. (Okay, last year was the last season, but I seem to watch everything at least one year late.) So I’ve switched to watching old episodes of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. I loved this show growing up, and would watch it every week – well until my parents got rid of tv, but that’s another story. I’m realizing, though, that I only started watching it halfway through Season Two, so I’ve started watching it from the beginning. Is it sentimental and unabashedly wholesome, with life lessons every week and lives frequently in peril. Without a doubt this is not the kind of edgy, ironic, brutal television that gets made these days. People might roll their eyes at this kind of family friendly fare, but I do wish that there were more shows like this to watch as a family these days.
-Lent. I’m not Catholic, but the Husband is and I look forward to Lent every year because then we get to eat more fish. I mean we could eat more fish any old time of the year, but we actually make an effort during Lent.

What We Ate: I didn’t meal plan at all this week – it was a combination of the Husband cooking and us throwing dinner together from fridge and pantry. Worked out fine, but man… I find the day stressful when I don’t have a plan for dinner. Food takes up too much real eastate in my brain.

Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made) and Newsies. It was my turn to pick the movie for Family movie night and I wanted to watch a musical. I had forgotten how good Newsies is. I love this movie so much! The music, the dancing newsboys. Square jawed Bill Pullman. Christian Bale. Christian Bale singing. (“Santa Feeeeeee! Are you there? Can you swear you won’t forget meeeee!”) My only quibble is the serious lack of female characters. I understand they tried to fix that with the musical theatre version they made. There is a caputre of the Broadway version available on Disney+ and I haven’t watched it yet because I’m torn between being really curious about it and thinking that the movie is perfect and not wanting another version.

Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday – I made Cheesesteaks, and our friends brought ribs (though I made the BBQ sauce), and baked beans, and coleslaw. I also put out cut up veggies and we had an assortment of TastyKakes.

Monday: Leftovers from Super Bowl Sunday plus some random things that we found in the fridge. Mixing the creamy pepper past with baked beans was a surprising hit with the kids.

Tuesday: Grilled Tofu with tomatoes from the Green Barbeque book. The husband made dinner. (vegan, except then we supplemented with some leftover ribs. We’re learning that the Green Barbeque book recipe’s need to be doubled in order to feel our whole family…)

Wednesday: The Pasta e Fagioli soup from last week. I had frozen the leftovers, and the Husband heated that up for the kids to eat for dinner. I should probably do freeze meals for future dinners more than I do right now. It’s such an easy dinner option. (vegan)

Thursday: Roasted Cauliflower Coconut Curry Soup. I was inspired by this recipe from the New York Times this week and had a head of cauliflower to use up. The recipe was for a squash soup, but it featured the brilliant idea of roasting the squash directly in the dutch oven. So I chopped up a head of cauliflower, two apples, four cloves of garlic, two ribs of celery, and an onion – tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper in the Dutch Oven, then roasted them on 400 for about an hour. Everything got nice and caramelly. Then I put it on the stove top, dumped in 4 cups vegetable broth, a can of coconut milk and a tablespoon of curry powder and a teaspoon of tumeric. and brought it all to a boil and simmered for 15 minutes. At this point, I left it and told the Husband to puree it when he got home and serve it with bread. It was really tasty. Vegan.

Friday: Tortellini and red sauce. I think this is becoming our go-to meal for Friday Nights since we need something quick before basketball practice.
Anyone else have go to fast dinners for when there is just no time?

Weekly recap + what we ate: kind of a slog

Last weekend’s highlight was the Chuck E. Cheese Party. So overwhelming, but lots of fun was had. I think if I had to do it again, I would skip the party package and just take a bunch of kids on our own. One of the main features of the party package is the Chuck E. Cheese show, featuring a highly energetic birthday video and a person in a Chuck E. Cheese costume – both of which I think the six year old found bewildering. The whole thing was rather loud and frenetic, on top of the already loud and frenetic video games. Also Chuck E Cheese is an explosion of choice – so many games to play, and then at the end when you redeem your “point” for “prizes”. Part of the party package gives the birthday kid an extra 2000 points, which greatly increases the prizes you can cash in for. Most kids only managed to win enough points to get a plastic ring and a dum dum. The six year old had so many more options – none of them life-changing, though I kind of wanted him to bring home the light up gyro wheel. I think he spent twenty minutes starting at the prizes and came home with one of those sticky spiders you throw at the wall and watch them slowly climb down. Standing with your child at the Chuck E. Cheese prize counter is an excellent exercise in restraining parental judgement. At least for me.

This week following felt very full and kind of a slog. In that ordinary life is kind of a slog kind of way. The Husband was at an in town conference for two days. He still came home at night, but because of conference events he didn’t arrive home until after bedtime, so I felt on my own with the kids two nights in a row. Three if you count the night the Husband took the oldest to basketball practice and I had the two littles. Luckily they were the two days that there were no activities, so we could just be at home. I always feel bad complaining about how challenging I find solo parenting in the evenings because when I’m working, the Husband solo parents almost every night. He does six week stretches with lots of solo parenting evenings, so I should be able to handle two nights.

I think the most exhausting thing about being solo alone with the kids is the kitchen clean up. We clean up as a family after dinner, but when the kids are being reluctant about it, it adds a whole other level of emotional energy to cajole and supervise them. Some days I think it would just be easier if I cleaned it myself after bedtime. At least then I could watch tv or listen to a podcast while I do it. But I do want the kids to take ownership in the upkeep of their home. I remember when I was in high school, after dinner my parents would go out for a walk and it was expected that my brother and I clean up after dinner. He and I had this system where one person did the dishes and the other person did everything else because the dishes were such an onerous chore. I know I need to recognize that my kids are a long way from high school, so I can’t expect them to clean up after dinner by themselves, but there is a part of my brain that thinks, “C’mon, kids! You’ve been here for years. Why aren’t you more independently helpful?”

In addition, the two little haven’t been sleeping well. The six year old would wake up screaming. The baby would come to my room and tell me her big brother was screaming, then refuse to go back to bed. I think the Husband was in the baby’s bed at one point. There was bed musical chairs going on. Find an empty sleeping space and use that. One night the only thing that would calm the six year old down was sleeping in a chair in the living room while listening to his bedtime playlist, while I slept on the couch next to him. Every so often, he would wake up yelling that one song or another wasn’t supposed to be on the playlist and I’d have to get off the couch and delete it.

(Sidenote annoyance – the free version of Amazon Music has changed its format so that you can’t just play your playlists anymore; they mix up the songs on your playlists and insert other things they (or rather their algorithm) think you might be interested in. The reasoning is they’ve made all their music library available so there is more music available, but fewer options for how to listen to it, I guess. I was fine with a limited music collection that I could play as I wanted. Luckily I haven’t updated the Amazon Music app on my iPad so I can still play the bedtime playlist in the right order, but I’m annoyed at the conspicuous money grab to try to get people to sign up for a more expensive service. I get that nothing is free, but man it’s annoying. I should just pay for a music streaming service, I guess. I wonder if I can write it off on my taxes then? Because often when I need to listen to a specific thing it’s for work.)

Anyhow, I actually quite enjoy the bedtime playlist, so at least it was nice to listen to the tunes. The Current Bedtime Playlist:
Put on Your Sunday Clothes (from Hello Dolly! the recent Broadway version)
Octopus’s Garden by the Beatles
Put on Your Sunday Clothes (from Hello Dolly! the movie version)
Rocket Ship Run by Laurie Berkner
More I Cannot Wish You (from Guys and Dolls, sung by Betty Buckley)
Dear Theodosia from Hamilton
We’re Going to be Friends by The White Stripes
Waving Through the Window from Dear Evan Hanson
A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman
For Forever from Dear Evan Hansen
It’s Quiet Uptown from Hamilton

This last song was the source of much consternation because it was “too sad.” (He’s not wrong.) So I was instructed to take it off the playlist. But then on the next pass through, there were tears when it didn’t play. So now Quiet Uptown is back on the bedtime playlist.

Songs I had to remove from the playlist, having caused a crying fit in the post-midnight hours:
At Last I see the Light from Tangled (why?!? I thought he loved that song!)
Try to Remember from the Fantasticks (I like this song. I thought it fit in with the mix, but apparently not…)
Simple Song from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (this was was a stretch anyway… I love the piece and thought I could just slip it in. Nope)

Okay, it wasn’t all a slog, though. I got to go running a few times, after taking the whole week before off because I was stuck at home with a sick kid. I baked more bread. I got some walks in. I started a new show. Twice I went out for lunch with friends and both times the food was amazing. One time was to a taco place, and they had these really good mushroom tacos. The second time was to a Chinese restaurant and I ordered off the dim sum menu and got turnip cakes and shrimp chang fen and sticky rice in bamboo leaves, salty spicy tofu and Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce. It was so delicious. I don’t always love going out to eat, but these two places were definitely worth it.

One fun thing: On Friday, the six year old’s class was asked to dress up as what they wanted to be when they grew up. Six year old wanted to be a builder. I had a toy hammer for him, and we had a dress up construction hat. But come Friday morning, we couldn’t find the hat. This caused no small amount of consternation because it would have been the perfect accessory. And of course it was thirty minutes before we had to leave for school. So I asked him what else a builder would wear. And he says, “A Safety vest!” Sure. Let me just pull that out of thin air. But… I looked in his drawer and he had an old yellow t-shirt. So I got a pair of scissors and some electrical tape, and…

Instant costume. I think my favorite part is the plaid flannel shirt. He was a little resistant to wearing the plaid flannel shirt, but I googled pictures of construction workers to show him that, yes indeed, plaid flannel shirts are what builders wear.

Breakfast of the moment – Since the 11 year old got a waffle maker for Christmas – one of those gifts ostensibly for her, but really for the whole family – we will periodically have waffles for breakfast. I always make a double batch so we have waffles for breakfast the following week. They’re super easy to pop in the toaster over and reheat. My current favorite breakfast is a waffle with peanut butter, topped with banana slices and sprinkled with Everything Bagel Seasoning. Something about the combination of the sweetness of the banana along with the savory/salty bits of the sprinkle and the hardiness of peanut butter really hits the spot for breakfast. I love sweet/savory combinations. Plus it’s very portable and I can take it to work and eat it at my desk.

Interesting link: This quiz to help determine how much of a morning or evening person you are. Based on your answers to the questions, The Automated Morning-Eveningness Questionnaire then calculates your optimal bedtime plus when your body starts winding down. I thought it was pretty neat to fill out – the questions were about your current sleep/wake habits plus when during the day you feel most active. (Plus you get your results right away – not like some sites where you have to give your email address so they can email you your results … and lot of subsequent spam.) Turns out I am a pretty middle of the road person in terms of when I am the most alert, and my recommended bedtime is 11:30pm with at 9pm winddown.

Grateful for this week:
– Longer hours of daylight. This week was the first time I really noticed that there have been more and more hours of daylight. The sun is up when we drive to 7:15am piano lessons and there was still enough sunlight after school that I could take the kids to the park after school.
– My coworkers. I know I say this a lot, but I feel so grateful for the stage management team I work with. They are all so thoughtful and competent and they always make me laugh. I’ve worked places where the team dynamic isn’t great, bordering on toxic, and that is absolutely not the case at my current job. I don’t always love being the lead stage manager on a show, and having solid assistants makes it a much better experience.
– Leftovers. I sometimes complain that no one else eats leftovers at our house, as if it is some burden to eat the leftovers. Truthfully, the eleven year old will eat them, and the two littles will sometimes eat them if I put it in front of them, but they are nobody’s first choice when making consumption decisions. This week, I’ve been packing leftovers for dinner and I was struck by how easy it is to have a fridge full of leftovers that I can just package up and toss into my lunch box.

Looking Forward To:
– I got news this week that my cousin is coming to visit in a few months. Hooray! I remember babysitting her when she was a toddler and now she has a real job and everything!
-Getting my haircut this week! It’s been a year since my last haircut and I’m looking forward to having it short again. I usually get it cut before I start a job, but didn’t get around to it last fall.
-Starting rehearsal. Before each show begins rehearsal, I have a week called “Prep week” to work on paperwork. It is always a nice low key way to get ready for the show to begin. The first day of prep, I’m always glad to be able to take a pre-dive into the show material. But then there’s always a point midweek when I’m tired of just thinking about the show and ready just to get into the rehearsal room with the singers and director and start putting the show up.
– Supertitle gig coming up next week. The singer is someone whom I worked with when she was barely out of grad school; I’m excited to hear how she’s grown in the past five years. I need to get those translation slides done – I had a dream last night where I showed up to the recital without the titles done and it was quite embarrassing.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made), and Robin Hood, the Disney animated version from 1973. I remember watching this when I was a child. Truthfully, I fell asleep half way through, but the part I was awake for I thought was lovely.

Sunday: Quesadillas (for the kids) and leftovers (for the adults) and garlic green beans for everyone

Monday: Red Pepper Pasta. Only made with orange peppers. More or less this recipe from Minimalist Baker, but I use half and half instead of soy milk so it wasn’t vegan.

Tuesday: Sweet Potato Poblano Tacos from Dinner Illustrated. Vegan.

Wednesday: Pasta e Fagioli Soup. Vegan.

Thursday: Butter Chicken and cut up cucumbers. This is the internet famous InstantPot Butter Chicken recipe – it was the Husband’s request for his birthday dinner. I like the recipe because it makes extra sauce so we can have butter chicken again next week.

Friday: Take out – Fried Chicken and BBQ from Fryers Roadside Chicken.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: sick week

Last weekend was pretty chill. There was a basketball game, then a park. We don’t often go to a park all five of us – the eleven year old has almost aged out of parks. But there was a park near basketball, so we all went. And took some silly pictures:

Then we went grocery shopping as a family. Also a rare occurrence. It was our family adventure of the week, I guess. The grocery store we went to had shopping carts shaped like cars, which two kids could sit in at a time, so the two littles definitely felt like it was an adventure. (Funny story – when the oldest was a kid – before we had the middle child – one of the reasons she wanted a sibling was so that she could have another person sit with her in the shopping carts at Coscto. Well, the two kids are five years apart, and by the time the middle kid could sit up on his own in a shopping cart, they had maybe six months of tandem shopping cart sitting before the oldest got too big. Well, dreams can come true, just not forever, I guess.) We mysteriously seemed to have misplaced a bag with three cucumbers and a ball of mozzarella cheese. I hope that bag was left at the store and not moldering in some corner of the house somewhere.

After the grocery store and lunch, I managed to get a run in, and the skies and clouds were beautiful.

Sunday we had the usual skating and swim lessons, then the rest of the day was… nothing. Such a luxurious feeling! The Husband went to watch the afternoon football game at a friend’s house. I took a nap, and the kids played and read on their own. Around mid afternoon, feeling as if we had to do something, I pulled out a science kit from Christmas and we built a wind turbine – pretty much a windmill that lit up. But then realizing that we didn’t have the 2 litre soda bottle needed to anchor the turbine, we went out on a grey drizzly walk to CVS to purchase a soda in a 2 liter bottle.

Well, the rest of the week felt kind of downhill from there. The six year old was sick for most of the week the followed, so that was kind of a bummer. He missed three days of school with a temperature and a bad cough, and I stayed home with him. All my grand plans of cleaning and organizing before I went back to work next week were dashed. The first day, he mostly slept, but the second and third day he was still running a bit of a temperature – so sick enough to stay home, but not so sick that he stayed in bed all day. He would come up to me whenever I tried to get into a project…

“I’m bored.”

“The house is too quiet.”

“Can you play with me?”

“Read me a book, please.”

My time log for this week features a lot of entries that just say, “Putter.”

I was a little grumpy to have my week taken up with hanging out with the sick kids, but then I tried to lean into having the alone time with the little guy. For all that I was annoyed not to have the week that I planned, I had to remind myself that the days when I can cuddle and coddle are limited so maybe cleaning out the guest room can wait. So we had some lovely mommy-son hanging out time.

I taught him how to play Uno. And I didn’t let him win.

We went to the library and borrowed a huge stack of books, including several Vox books. And we came home and sat on the couch and read books together. I particularly liked this one, Seaside Stroll. There is a note in the afterward that the author was inspired by ASL poetry in writing this book -and I can see that in how a lot of the words in the book are not about strict rhymes but about sentence structure and patterns.

We had lots of hot cocoa. A friend of ours had moved to the Bay Area and for Christmas sent us eight pounds of Ghirardelli hot cocoa mix. It’s the kind that you can mix with water, so it’s easy to put the kettle on and stir up a cup. I add a splash of half and half to cool it down and for a bit of creaminess.

And sometimes, we just sat on the couch, tucked the blankets around us and cuddled.

And in between I managed to pay some bills, make some phone calls, read some books, and bake some bread.

By Thursday, he was well enough to go back to school, and off he went, a little reluctantly, I admit.

One of the things I’m so glad I did manage to do this week was make that sourdough bread. Hooray! My starter is still alive! I use this recipe, which is very simple and requires no kneading, and which I’ve had the most success with in creating a loaf that has some height. I’m so relieved that the starter is still alive – it’s over twenty years old, gifted to my by a singer I worked with, and I brought it back from Colorado the last summer I worked there. I would have been sad if I couldn’t keep it alive. We say we are cutting down on carbs in our house, but we are making an exception for the bread. The first loaf was gone by the next morning. So I made another one on Friday, and it is already almost gone.

Other things/ thoughts from this week:

The eleven year old using a dictionary. The other day, she asked me what “dilated” means. I told her to go find it in the dictionary. She said she tried, but couldn’t find it. Not the dictionary – we have two of those. She couldn’t find “dilated”. And then I realized that whereas you can just type “dilated” into google and get an answer, in a dictionary, you have to look under “dilate” and see variants. I’m realizing that I maybe took dictionary use for granted and that using one is something you have to figure out. Of course she can build things with minecraft that I have no idea how to, so…

Speaking of teaching skills, I also introduced the eleven year old to the concept of a shoe horn last week. She has a maddening (to me) habit of stuffing her feet into her sneakers in a way that wrecks the back/ heels of the shoes. Sometimes she just ignores the backs of the shoes and steps them down, wearing her shoes like a slipper. So I decided that she needed to learn about the wonderful invention called the shoe horn.

When i was growing up, we had a shoe horn hanging up in our coat closet and it was used all. the. time. Perhaps like Phantom of the Opera and Dictionaries, this is one of the wonders of my childhood that I felt my own child needed in her life. She was somewhat skeptical. But at least she now unlaces her shoes before stuffing her feet in them, if only to prove to me that she doesn’t need this odd old fashioned shoe horn thingy-ma-jig.

Also – the shoe horn, alright I ordered a two pack – the two pack of shoe horns arrived in a humungous box. The box was at least 24″x18″ big. Filled with lots of packing pillows. And two shoe horns. Oh and a oil decanter. I had to laugh. At myself, really, who got so excited by this huge box arriving on our doorstep, wondering what large thing could be coming into our life. I mean a shoe horn is exciting, but definitely not what I expected in the box of that size.

The shoe horns seem to be drowning in pack material.

Walking errands. I’m toying with the idea of walking, running, or biking if I have errands less than two miles away. This week, I had to pick up the 11 year old from her after school math tutoring session. Since I had been home all day with the sick six year old, I decided to walk to the school, which is 1.2 miles away. I had the time, and it was a good excuse to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. A couple weeks ago, I had to walk my friend’s dog and I decided to run to her house because I hadn’t gotten my run in yet. Combining exercise with a task felt really fulfilling for some reason. It seems like such a no brainer to not take the car whenever I can, but for whatever reason, my first instinct is usually to get in the car. I’d like to work on shifting that mindset a little bit. Of course, often time is a limiting factor, but perhaps I can be more mindful on when time is a truly limiting factor or just one of minimal convenience.

Fascinating read of the week. Do not read while eating. This rundown of ancient toilet paper alternatives had me riveted. I don’t think twice about toilet paper being the obvious choice for certain daily functions, yet reading about how past populations dealt with the bathroom tissue issue was eye opening. I guess, of course when “disposable” is not something you can take for granted, there has to be alternatives but I had never considered what the alternatives would be. And also… there are people who study this kind of thing.

Deep thought of the week: In my quest for finding fun playlists for running – Why, do the Spotify playlists that are labelled “Throwback” feature no music that I recognize, while the playlists labelled “Retro” feature all the hits of my childhood? When did my “Throwback” become “Retro”?

Along the note of music and nostalgia – after dinner one night this week, I sat and listened to Samuel Barber’s piece Knoxville: Summer of 1915. It’s a piece for orchestra and soprano and I always wanted to sing it, back when I studied voice, but I never really learned it. I had pulled the piece up because the eleven year old had read some Walt Whitman in class (which I’m impressed – I’ve never really understood Whitman.), namely his poem “I hear an army”. (note to self: There is something really lovely about hearing poetry read or recited – we should do that more. ) Barber had done a setting of that poem, so I cued it up to listen to, and from there (thank you YouTube auto-play) the next video that played was a performance of Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
The text is taken from a prose poem of James Agee, writing in the voice of a child who contemplates the moments of a summer evening and the people in their life. The passage was eventually used in his novel A Death in the Family, and I think it perfectly captures that ephemeral sense of security one has as a child and how it can be recollected but not recaptured. It is one of my favorite pieces of music, yet I hadn’t thought of it for years. Rediscovering it this week has been such beautiful experience. I could listen to it endlessly. If you have fifteen minutes, you can find one of my favorite recordings here. I love the entire text, but this is one of my favorite passages:

All my people are larger bodies than mine,
With voices gentle and meaningless
Like the voices of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are,
All on this earth;
And who shall ever tell the sorrow
Of being on this earth, lying, on quilts,
On the grass,
In a summer evening,
Among the sounds of the night.

Grateful For This Week:
– The Husband cleaning off my car after a little snow. We woke up one morning to a dusting of snow – the first of the season. Of course it had to be on a morning when the 11 year old has her 7:15am piano lessons. It’s hard enough to get out of the house in time for piano lessons, but to have to fit in cleaning off the car… I was certain we would be late. But the Husband offered to warm up my car and clean the snow off of it, and I didn’t say no.
-My raincoat. Between the sick kid and the weather I didn’t get any running in this week. Knowing that I wasn’t going to prioritize running, I made an effort to walk (see above: Walking errands). Once the Husband got home from work, I walked to do school pick up, despite the drizzly weather. Luckily last year I bought a proper rain coat and it proved very useful, overriding any weather related excuse I might have to stay inside and sedentary.
– Against the Odds podcast. Each season of this podcast tells the story of one event or situation that seems impossible to overcome. The first season was about the Thai soccer team that got trapped in a cave. We’re now on season two which tells the story of Aid worker Jessica Buchanan who is kidnapped in 2011 by Somali pirates. It’s really gripping storytelling – maybe a touch melodramatic. But I expect being kidnapped by Somali pirates is very dramatic.
Anyhow, the 11 year old was not happy when I showed up on foot to pick her up from her after school tutoring this week. She was expecting to ride the car home, not a twenty minute walk in misty drizzle. I had read this post on Cup of Jo last week, that talks about shifting conversations. Instead of talking about having to do the undesirable task, what about saying, “Well you have to do it, so what can we do to make it feel better?” So I pulled out that phrase. Pause. Grumble. Mutter. Sigh. (That last was me.) “What if,” I asked, “I gave you one of my earbuds and we listened to a podcast on the way home?” And her face lit up. “Can we listen to Against the Odds?” she asked. So we walked home, each with one earbud, listening to this engrossing podcast. And I got some one on one time with her, which I don’t always get these days.
-The eleven year old packing lunch for her siblings and including sweet notes for them. Afterwards she told me that she did it because I used to do it for her when she was in kindergarten. So many mixed feelings about this: 1) I don’t know how I feel about her doing parent like things because it’s not her job, and I don’t want her to feel pressure to be that figure for her sibling. (That song Surface Pressure from Encanto is all about her.) but 2) I love that she is thinking of her siblings and wants to give them something to cheer them up.

Looking Forward To:
– The six year old’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I’ve never had one of those birthday package parties, so this will be a new experience. But I’ve been told that a lot of the kids are sooooo excited. (Three of the five kids coming ride the school bus with the 11 year old and they’ve been telling her that they can’t wait for the party.) [This has happened and it was every more sensory overload than I could have ever imagined. Still, lots of fun was had.]
-Starting work on a new show. Getting to see familiar work colleagues.
-Super Bowl Sunday. Apparently we are hosting. We (the Husband) likes to have food that corresponds to the teams that are playing. I think that means we’re having Cheesesteaks (Philadelphia) and Barbeque (Kansas City). It seems awfully meat heavy. Maybe I can get away with some carrot sticks thrown in there. Okay, I just googled and Tastykakes are from Philly. I can’t decide what I want to do with that information.

One last note: Went to Bed, Bath and Beyond this week, and this was out:

Now I suppose home decor is different from chocolate and candy, but still… it feels awfully early. And what, did we just skip St. Patrick’s day?!?!

What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza and movie night. We watched Ratatouille – a lovely movie. It was the three year old’s turn to choose the move and she originally wanted Frozen, but her big sister convinced her to choose Ratatouille. Ratatouille is perhaps a little lacking in action and the three year old kept asking, “When will this movie be over?” Well she should learn to just stick to her guns.

Sunday: Solo parenting so I made breakfast burritos for the kids and ate leftovers for myself.

Monday: Mac n Cheese from Dinner Illustrated, with peas instead of chard.

Tuesday: Grilled eggplant with pickled onions. Vegan. The Husband cooked from the cookbook The Green Barbeque, which features vegetarian recipes for the grill.

Wednesday: Sheetpan nachos. Nachos covered with Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese, topped with pinto and black beans, corn, peppers, jalapenos (which were disappointingly not spicy), onions. Avocado and cilantro sprinkled on top after it came out of the oven. I also made some cashew queso to have on the side. Nachos are one of those super easy dinners that I rarely make because something in my mind doesn’t accept that it’s a complete meal. Yet, when you load them up, they really are a complete meal.

Thursday: Baked Cod and Garlic Green Beans (The Husband cooked)

Friday: Tofu Lettuce Wraps, this recipe. I used snow peas instead of water chestnuts. (Vegan). The three year old picked out all the mushrooms and snow peas from her tofu. And they were chopped in half inch piecesinterspersed in crumbled tofu. That’s a commitment. She claims that she doesn’t like mushrooms or vegetables, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eat any, so I’m not sure what she is basing her claim on.

25 Better and Brilliant Things, 2022

Admittedly, the first day of February feels very late to reflect on the year that was – I’ve seen 2022 reflection posts pop up starting the end of November, so this definitely feels behind the ball. Oh well. Here are 25 things that made my life better or brilliant in 2022. It is by no means comprehensive – I’m sure there are a million better and brilliant things I’ve left off, but it’s a start. Not all of them were things that were new in 2022, just new to me or even re-discovered in 2022.

BETTER and BRILLIANT VERBS:

1. Toilet Training -The 3 year old is fully day time toilet trained!!! Both my older kids toilet trained quite old – the oldest one was almost three and the middle one was three and a half. So toilet training the youngest wasn’t really on my radar last year. My mother, however, decided that she wanted to try. Bless her. I’m not sure what magic she did, but the baby was toilet trained by the time she was 2.5 years old, both poop and pee. She is still in a diaper at night, but I figure that is definitely easier than having to change sheets. I was a little sad to pack up our stash of cloth diapers, but I’m so glad not to not have to carry a diaper bag anymore.

2. Tap to Camera: Did you know you can program your iPhone to do certain things when you tap the back of it? (Elisabeth knows, because I commented about this on her blog :)) This was probably my most mind-blowing discovery last year. (Maybe hyperbole. Maybe not.)
Settings –> Accessiblity –> Touch –> Back Tap
Then you can choose a function for when you Double Tap and when you Triple Tap. I’ve set my phone up so that when I tap twice on the back of the phone, the camera will open. No more swiping until I find the camera icon – so much cleaner and faster. I love it. I also love how Accessibility features really make things better for everyone.

3. Spinning to Choose – with three kids, there is always a fight over who gets to go first. Who gets to pick the first book, who gets to sit in the middle, who gets to go first for “Rose, Buds, and Thorns”, etc. etc. This year, we solved this problem by implementing a spinner. I’m sure you can get a paper one, but we use an online one. The Husband uses an app. This simple tool has cut out so many arguments. Because you can’t really argue with a spinner.

4. Bike Commuting and Running– My bike has sat in the garage since before the three year old was born. Before kids, I used to bike to work – five miles one way – but after kids, I sort of fell out of the habit. This year, we bought the 11 year old a bike, and when he went to pick it up, the Husband took my bike in for a tune up. Pretty soon, I was back to bike commuting. The first few weeks were pretty hard, but I took it slow, walked the bike uphill when I needed to. I loved getting that bit exercise endorphin before I start my work day. It’s been too cold to bike commute lately, but hopefully I’ll be back at it for my next show. On the same subject – in late 2021 the middle kid attended Sunday Mandarin school. Parents weren’t allowed to sit in class because of COVID precautions, so I started going on little runs/walks while he was in class. Last year, I decided that I wanted to make running more of a routine. I didn’t really have any exercise routine and something about turning 40 made me think about ways to combat my mortality. Exercise is on all the lists of healthy habits so it seemed like a good idea. So in 2022, I started finding time to run. It also helped that I went back to work where I could find child-free time to run on my dinner break. I bought running shoes. (My last pair were at least 10 years old and the soles were falling off). I found a “Walk to Run 1 Mile” podcast, and just started there. I still don’t love the act of running, but I realize that it has helped my mental and physical health immensely, so I’ll keep at it.

5. Brushing my teeth with the kids: I’ve been working on removing barriers to going to bed at a decent time, and one of them had been the litany of things I felt necessary to do before I actually got into bed, including brushing my teeth. Last fall I started brushing my teeth with the kids during their bedtime routine, and suddenly one of the barriers to bedtime was removed early in the evening. Also has the side benefit that I don’t snack in the evenings anymore. (My hack for two minute teeth brushing is this two minute podcast. The kids won’t brush without it.)

6. Travel: Even though we had done a few overnights and camping trips, in 2022 we took our first big family vacations in two and a half years. In April we went to The Smoky Mountains for Spring Break, and in August we rented a van and drove up to Montreal, stopping at various places along the way. (I still want to do a recap of the Montreal trip here… just haven’t gotten to it.) After the past two years staying within a 2 hour radius of home, it felt so special to get away and to see new things. Both trips were a nice combination of activities and relaxation, and I realized that both are pretty important to me on a vacation. I want to see all the things, but I also want to sit outside and read my book. We have one big trip planned for this year (who knows if we’ll be able to afford another), and I’m looking forward to it.

7. Going Back to Work: This was one of the big things from 2022. After being unemployed for almost two years – aside from a couple supertitle gigs at the end of 2021 – in February 2022 I finally was back at my home opera company doing opera for an audience. There was very frequent COVID testing and masking and, yes COVID continued to be thing and threw many obstacles in our way. Even still, after two year of wiping noses and behinds and tears it felt so great to be with grown ups, putting opera up onstage.

BETTER and BRILLIANT THINGS

8. Vox Books – Our library has these books that have an audio box built into them. They come in a variety of picture books, but also early readers and non-fiction books too. It reminded me of those books on tape that I had growing up, where there was a “ding” and you knew to turn the page. Vox Books were fantastic for the two little kids, and even the 11 year old was into them. They were such a life saver when I really didn’t have the energy or time to read to them because they could operate the books on their own, making them a great screen free way to spend some independent quiet time. Some of our favorites were The Couch Potato, Frog and Toad, and the National Geographic non-fiction series. There was also a series in Chinese, which I thought was nice for getting some of the language in the kids’ ears.

9. Bedside Lamp: One of my constant goals is better sleep hygeine (see above -“Teethbrushing with kids.”), specifically to cut down on the screens before bed and go to sleep at a decent time. Decent is relative and in my case it means before midnight. I do like to read before bed and I found that reading on my phone or iPad often lead to the temptation to scroll and go down internet rabbit holes. So this year, I got a lamp for my bedside and started reading hard copy books before bed. I’m shocked that it took me this long to figure this one out. It doesn’t work every night, but I’ve spent more nights with a paper book in hand rather than random internet holes and I’ve noticed the paper book leads to an easier winddown and I fall asleep faster.

10. Flip Belt: I had originally gotten this running belt to hold my phone and keys while running, but then I started wearing it backstage. When I went back to work, I had no black pants that really fit so I mostly wore my old maternity pants. Only problem was maternity pants have a very loose elastic waistband and no belt loops and non existent pocket – so not practical at all for being backstage. I needed something to which to clip the beltpack for my headset and I also needed to be able to carry my phone and a Sharpie. So one day, I had the brilliant idea of using my Flip Belt backstage. It was perfect; it’s strong enough to hold up the beltpack and I can carry my phone and a couple Sharpies in it as well. And for all the same reasons, wearing a Flip Belt made it possible to wear a dress backstage, which I like to do periodically.

11. Leggings with Tech Pockets: 2022 was also the year that I crawled out from under my rock and discovered there existed leggings with pockets. I know. It’s kind of ridiculous that it took me this long to realize that even though I had embraced leggings with my first pregnancy. Similar to the Flipbelt, leggings with pockets allowed me to wear comfy dresses at work, but still have a place to keep my phone. But also … I use a Hobonichi Weeks as my work planner/notebook, and it is slim enough that it fits into the tech pockets of my leggings. Now I can be running around in rehearsal or backstage and always have my notebook with me.

12. Straw Lids: I drink a lot of water. I love water. I also love cold water, so I have several insulated water bottles. However, I don’t like unscrewing water bottles to drink – it’s messy and requires two hands. My preference is for a straw top. But my favorite water bottles do not come with straw tops; they came with screw tops. I always thought my options were – the bottle size and shape I wanted or a straw top. Well, this year I discovered that one can just buy a straw top for one’s water bottle. This is another of those things where if I dig around a little, I discover that I don’t have to just live with the original features of something. Such a simple solution. I’ve replaced all my water bottle tops with straw tops.

13. Bombas Socks – Several years ago, when my friend told me that Bombas Socks were simply the best sock out there, I didn’t really think anything of it because, honestly, they seemed awfully expensive for socks and I’ve always been a little skeptical of anything with a cult following. But last winter, I was trying to replace my Costco brand Merino wool socks and it turns out they were discontinued, so I gave in to the hype and ordered myself some Bombas. Reader, they were life changing. These socks are soft and thick, and just the right amount of snug to be secure but not too tight. They wear like iron, yet don’t chafe. I love them so much that I’ve become quite protective of them – gone are the days when I just toss my socks in the laundry basket to be washed, and then never get a matching pair back. The Bombas go into a lingerie bag to get washed so that I know where they are so that they always come back in pairs and no one else in the family will try to wear them. The family knows that the Bombas are for mom only. Wear them at your peril.

BETTER AND BRILLIANT FOOD THINGS:

14. Favorite new dinner to use up veggies – This year I discovered Sheet Pan Gnocchi and it has become one of my favorite ways to clean out the vegetable drawer and get dinner on the table in 30 minutes. Basically you take whatever veggies you have on hand, cut them up to a size that will roast in 20 minutes, mix the veggies and gnocchi in a bowl with olive oil, salt, pepper and whatever herbs and spices you want. Then throw it all in a single layer in a sheet pan and roast at 400 for 20-30 minutes. Easy prep, easy clean up, tasty dinner. What’s more brilliant than that? (It also reminds me of a tip once I heard that the first step for getting dinner on the table is that the first thing you do when you walk in the door after work is either put a pot of water to boil on the stove or preheat the oven. I don’t know why that tip has stuck with me, but something about starting that first step right away makes dinner seem like a very real possibility.)

15. Soda Stream and flavored balsamic vinegars – Back in 2019 my brother gifted me a Soda Stream. He drinks a lot of fizzy water. I liked the idea of the Soda Stream, but could never get it to work, so I put it in the attic. Well, in 2022, for some reason, I thought I’d pull it out and try it again. We had been buying fizzy water by the case from Costco, and while it wasn’t exactly breaking the bank, it also wasn’t the most convenient or eco friendly way to get my bubbly fix. Well, the Soda Stream gets used all the time now. I still drink flat water, but during dinner or when I want something that feels a little special, I’ll fizz myself up some thing. I love how the Soda Stream lets me customize how fizzy I want my water- I like it super fizzy so that it almost burns when going down – and also cuts down on the bottles and cans in the recycling bin.
Also last year, I went on a trip with a girlfriend and we came across a bar which served non-alcoholic drinks that were basically fizzy water mixed with fruit flavored balsamic vinegars. I became immediately obsessed. The sour tang of the vinegar combined with the slight fruity sweetness was just the right hint of flavor to make plain fizzy water feel special. Luckily, the bar was attached to a place that sold flavored balsamic vinegars and I bought several bottles to bring home. My favorites right now are white balsamic peach and blackberry ginger balsamic.

16. Sides from the freezer: I used to be quite snobbish about frozen/ prepared foods. This year, I embraced the brilliant convenience of pulling something out of the freezer, applying heat and having a side dish for dinner. The two things that changed my mind this year: tater tots and frozen edamame. These were two things we always love eating when we go out to eat, and it had never occurred to me that we could enjoy them at home too. Well, no more. They’re in regular dinner time rotation now.

17. Pizza dough from the Italian Deli: This is something the Husband discovered this year – that our favorite Italian deli also sells pizza dough. And it’s far better tasting than the pizza dough that we made at home. While there is something really satisfying about making our own pizza dough, it requires a degree of forethought that we don’t always have come the end of the week when we have our pizza and movie night. The pizza dough from Felippos bakes up beautifully and makes homemade pizza night so much easier. And that’s what we want on a Friday night – easy.

18. New favorite snack, Bobo Oat Bites: I saw these at Costco one day and picked up a box. I’m always looking for new snack options and I liked that these were vegan and gluten free. They are basically dense oat muffins with a dollop of jam inside. I always feel like oats make for a really filling snack and will keep the hunger at bay longer, though I don’t really have any real basis for this thought. These oat bites became my go to after rehearsal snack – portable, filling, and just a little sweet. I will say, the eleven year old did not like them – I think she thought they weren’t sweet enough. Oh well, more for me!

19. Favorite new easy protein, Marinated Beans – I found this recipe for marinated beans in Jenny Rosenstrach’s new cookbook The Weekday Vegetarian (another of my 2022 Better and Brilliant things). I was looking for an easy vegan way to have a protein always ready, particularly for when I came home late at night and wanted something quick. The vegan equivalent of standing in front of the fridge door eating lunch meat out of the package, if you will. These marinated beans were packed with flavor and so versatile. I could toss them in a salad, or with some grains, or just eat them on their own.

BETTER AND BRILLIANT MEDIA I didn’t include books in this – just tv, movies, and podcasts that made life better for me last year.

20. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries – This was my number one favorite show last year. Cozy murder mysteries, stylish costumes, an intrepid and madcap heroine, an uptight yet kind hero, just a hint of romance simmering. I am so sad they only made three seasons of this show. I watched it on Hoopla via my local library.

21. The Puberty Podcast – Most of the parenting podcasts out there are geared towards younger children. This podcast is one of the few that are focused on older kids. I love that it approaches parenting older kids with a blend of science and empathy. They explain what the physiological changes are and also how to navigate tricky subjects with tweens and teens. And I love that they will often give me the text I need to communicate with my kid. I find often advice books tell you how to approach your kids, but just not the words to use to take that approach. The episodes on body hair, periods, and how to talk about sex with your children were so eye opening to me, and I have used those podcasts to have conversations with my kids.

22. As It Happens – When I was growing up in Canada, we would listen to As It Happens every evening after dinner, an interview style news program on the CBC. Last year I discovered the podcast version of As It Happens and I listen to it every night as I make dinner and it reminds me of my childhood. I wouldn’t call As It Happens hard hitting journalism, but there is something really straightforward and empathetic about the subjects they choose to interview – it’s not always the people who are in the thick of an event – it might be an academic expert, or someone who lives in the adjacent building. What I love is that on this show, it’s okay for the guest to say, “I can’t answer that” because the interviews aren’t really about uncovering the truth, but rather shedding light on the humans behind the story. This show actually drives the Husband nuts because he thinks it is too subjective.

23. Family Movies: We watched some really great family movies this year, ones which weren’t animated features and which also managed to keep all three kids interested. (Well, the 3 year old has minimal interest unless it’s Frozen, to be honest). I feel like these kinds of movie that don’t get made anymore – the true family film that wears it’s heart on its sleeve and is full of positive messages. Some of my favorites we watched this year: Akeelah and the Bee, Secondhand Lions, A Little Princess (1995), Cool Runnings, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. (I’ll always take more suggestions!)

24. Long Thoughtful Conversation Podcasts: One of my favorite indulgences is to go on long walks while listening to a good long conversation – you know, those conversations where two people talk about life and living and our place in the world. My go to podcast for this was On Being, the original “What does it mean to be human?” podcast. On Being went on a little pause last year- though they will be back this week! In the meantime, I’ve discovered The Ezra Klein Show, Design Matters with Deborah Millman, and 10% Happier with Dan Harris. Although I will note, listening to these podcasts always makes me grateful that I have the luxury of being able to contemplate the existential life.

25. Bloggers – I started this blog in 2020, and just wrote quietly for a while, keeping in my own little internet corner. I think for the first year or so the only people who read were my mother and an old mentor/colleague. I loved reading other blogs, getting a glimpse into other people’s worlds and thoughts and philosophies and practices. Even still, though I love reading comments, I never really commented myself. All those blogs with lots of comments seemed like such a different level than my vomit of thoughts and recollections and life accountings. I think I’m a pretty private person and very slow to put myself out in front of the world. (Which maybe makes it ironic that I have a blog?). I don’t know what changed, but last year I started leaving comments here and there. I think I was really moved by all the thoughtful things that people were writing about, and wanted to respond to that. And the more I read the comments in other people’s blogs, the more I grew to love the sense of community and engagement that I saw there. And lo and behold, people started visiting on my blog, even leaving pensive comments and bits of humour and words of support and advice. The reciprocity of thought continues to feel like a gift every day and with every post. Discovering that I don’t write in a vacuum has definitely made the list of things that made 2022 Better and Brilliant and Beautiful. I hope you continue to visit and I will do likewise.

What’s making your life better and brilliant these days?

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: Bye Week

Lincoln with Washington in the background.

It was a week off work, so I spent much of the week back in the swim of school carpool (and this week, missed buses and forgotten backpacks) and internet errands – paying bills, making purchases, etc. The weather has been so erratic. Cold, gloomy, and wet one day and then the next, clear and sunny. It’s that clear and sunny that I expect in the Spring. But it is, in fact January. Where is the snow and chill? I absolutely blame it on the fact that I bought a sled in October. And snowpants for the oldest. If I had not prepared for snow, I’m sure we would have been knee deep by now. Or maybe not, given the state of the environment. Alarmingly, I saw some hyacinths poking their blooms out in the front yard today.

So last weekend was the one and only performance of our show. Actually two performances in one night – a 7pm and a 9pm. Everything went relatively smoothly. Some glitches as were to be expected when we didn’t really get to rehearse things a lot. But I did go in early to run scene shifts with the crew, and I was pleasantly surprised that the props crew asked to run the shifts an extra time. Often the crew doesn’t want to do it more than once when things are simple. But we hadn’t really had a chance to run things at the dress rehearsal – I had to pretty much coach them through it over the headset then. So the crew took it upon themselves to want to get it right, even if it was only for two performances.

I was in my nice backstage clothes, so I didn’t run on my dinner break, but I did get a walk in and reveled in how beautiful DC looks in the evening.

Sunday was Lunar New Year. We went to Taiwanese Breakfast in the morning. We always show up right when they open. My dad was with us and the waitstaff was really excited to see him for some reason. We usually order the same thing every time we go – sweet soy milk, savory soy milk, you tiao (fried dough sticks), soy bean and mustard green salad, egg pancakes, scallion pancakes, dumplings, and dan dan noodles. This time, we ordered some new to us dishes, and there was one pork noodle dish that might make it into our regular rotation.

Clockwise from the bottom: My plate (with cucumber salad, seaweed salad, bean curd noodles), bowl of savory soy milk with you tiao, seaweed salad, bean curd salad, dan bing (egg pancake), cucumber salad, you taio, cold dish of mustard greens, bamboo shoots, and edamame, sweet soy milke.

Other moments of the week:

-Finding a Christmas Tree. The Husband likes having old Christmas trees for backyard projects, but usually the Christmas trees I see on the curb are too big for me to handle myself. So when I saw a little tree in front of a house near the school bus stop, I dragged it into the trunk of my car. I texted him this picture (along with a note that said, “Don’t say that I don’t love you.”)

-Our second child turned six this week. What?!?

He did actually have a present to open- no evening Taki run for him. The Husband had ordered him two Transformers for Christmas, but then in the deluge of holiday packages we couldn’t find one of them when we were wrapping presents, only to have the missing Transformer reappear after Christmas. Which was probably for the best because two Transformers at Christmas might have been too many to get properly played with.

Anyhow, he has a Chuck E. Cheese party scheduled for later on, so he actual birthday was a small family affair. My father was in town and got him a bomber jacket from the Air and Space Museum, which looks super cool. I made his requested dinner – Ama’s chicken wings and Broccoli. Ama is the Taiwanese form of Grandmother – the wings are my mother’s recipe. And by recipe, this is literally what she sent me:

Obviously my mother does not believe in measurements.

I also made him a chocolate bundt cake, and then we couldn’t find the candles, so he ended up with a “3”, “1” “1” and a single candle on his cake. As long as the math works out, right?

He’s Six. Not Three hundred and eleven. In case you were wondering.

-Another fun thing this week is that we got to dog sit for our friends. We had this little guy at our house for the week:

He’s a really sweet dog. Except if there are other dogs nearby. Also he’s a little stubborn and always wanted to go in a certain direction on our walks, but it was in the direction of the big busy street so I tried to avoid it. But he just wouldn’t move and proved very implacable for such a tiny dog. I had to pick him up and carry him several times on our walks. Who was walking whom here?

But indoors, he is super affectionate, almost cat-like. I had many lovely moments relaxing with a book with the little guy curled up against me, a living heating pad.

Outside a book, a dog is a man’s best friend…

-It was also quite a social week. One night the Husband and I went out to dinner with a friend, and another night another friend came to our house for dinner. When I looked at the plans for this week. For the dinner out, we went into DC and had dinner at a tapas restaurant on Capitol Hill. It was funny being down there and seeing how much that area had changed in the past fifteen years since we left DC for the suburbs. One of the first things I noticed was that there was a Little Gym and a Mathnasium there now when it used to be mostly restaurants and bars. The Husband says, it’s a sure sign of permanent change when the new business coming in are geared towards kids. We don’t go into DC very often these days, but it always strikes me how different it is from when we lived there. Also nothing makes me feel my suburban mom-ness more than a swanky city restaurant.

-I also got out my watercolours and made some art this week. One of my friends from college has a birthday coming up and I wanted to make her a birthday card. I’m super happy with how it turned out. I thought about just leaving it with the watercolour flower bursts (on left), but I went back and added the detail with the pen. I’m on the fence as to which I prefer – on the one hand I love how you can see all the nuances and shades or colour without the pen, but I also love how articulate the version with the pen detail is, and how it made the flowers really pop. Which version do you prefer?

Read of the Week: This essay in The Cut about Monterey Park, where there was a(nother) mass shooting on Lunar New Year. Monterey Park is a predominantly Asisan suburb, a couple cities over from where I grew up, but it was very much part of the fabric of my teen years as the child of immigrant parents. My uncle’s medical practice is in Monterey Park, and is, in fact, only a few blocks from the shooting. This article beautifully articulates the importance of these immigrant enclaves. I have no words for the state of gun violence in America, just a lot of sadness for victims and, yes, for perpetrators.

Podcast Listen of the Week: I listened to this episode of the Happiness Lab entitled “Stop Looking for the Perfect Job” while out on my walk one morning. It coincidentally came the day after I had a conversation with someone at work about next season. Long and short of it was, they said they were contemplating offering me a large show to stage manage, and I told them that I didn’t feel like I was at a place right now where I wanted to stage manage something of that size and potential complexity. I would be happy to assist on the show, but I didn’t want to be the one calling it. Afterwards, I got off the phone, I sort of wrestled with whether or not that was the right thing to have said. I don’t want to come across as being unwilling to accept challenging work or peg myself as someone who only wants to do easy shows. I actually love working on a big new production with a huge cast. But at the same time, I know that taking on something that I’m not 100% sure I can handle will certainly make me stressed out and miserable. And lord knows, if I want to be stressed out and miserable, I can certainly do it for more money that I’m making right now. I wouldn’t say I’m unambitious, and I know there is a saying to “Do what scares you” – even still, I think “what scares you” should also be “what excites you.” I think in a few years I’ll be happy to take on such a project as I was offered, but I want to climb that ladder slowly.

Which is all to say – the above episode of The Happiness Lab came at a perfect time for me because I was seriously questioning the merits of being unambitious professionally. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about work ambition this past year, lots of feelings of jealousy when I see people with sky rocketing careers. This episode reminded me that work doesn’t have to be my defining aspiration. In the podcast they quote Esther Perel as saying, “Too many of us bring the best of ourselves to work, and bring the leftovers home.” I’ve definitely been guilty of this, and I want to mindfully avoid it as much as possible.

Mysterious Question of the Week: Where do all the hair ties go? Both the girls have long hair. I also have ponytail length hair these days too. Usually I keep my hair short with a pixie or a bob, but I find myself less motivated to cut my hair when I’m not working. Anyhow… that makes three ponytail wearing people in the house. I feel as if I’m constantly buying hair ties. Where do they all go?!?!?! In the morning, the girls go off to school with hair in ponytails. When they come home, there may or may not still be a ponytail. But inevitably, the next morning when it’s ponytail time … I can’t find any hair ties. I feel like I’m buying hair ties at least once a month. Also … the three year old will only wear thick colourful hair ties, despite her having the thinnest wispiest baby hair. At this rate, I feel like I should just hit the Amazon Subscribe and Save for hair ties.

Grateful For This Week:
-That my dad was able to visit for two weeks. He went home this week and I’m always a little sad when he leaves. He tends to visit while I’m working so I never feel like I have enough time with him. Even though there is something about me that from time to time resorts to being a moody teenager when I’m with my parents, I am always grateful that they come and are active and involved and self-sufficient.
-Good coaches. I’m really grateful for Coach Rob, who volunteers as the coach for the 11 year old’s rec basketball team. Every game, I see him really encouraging the players and making sure they have fun. I’m just really glad that there are people encouraging my kid to do well. On that note, received news this week that the summer swim team coach at our pool will not be returning. This news hit me harder than I thought it would. He had been such a positive coach last summer – encouraging the swimmers to be good swimmers and good teammates. I’m so super bummed that he won’t be back. Good coaches are hard to come by and I’m grateful for those who have the knowledge and the skill.
-Running Lights. I had mentioned in my Christmas post that the Husband bought be a plethora of lights to clip to myself when running in the dark. I don’t really have any intention of running after sundown, but I love the gesture. (I did wear one of the wrist bands when running the hour before sundown, though.) Anyhow, sometimes if we have time between dinner and bedtime, and the 11 year old is at basketball, I’ll take the two little kids on an evening walk. This time of year, though, it is dark by then so we’ll go on a flashlight walk. This week, I had the brilliant idea to give each kid a running light for our walk, and they loved it! Even the dog got one. It make the walk much more fun.

Looking Forward To:
– Lunch plans mid-week with moms from my mom group.
– Another bye week from work. I have grand plans to work on some house decluttering. I think I’m going to pick one area to work on each day: 1) the ~~pile~~ mountain of outgrown clothes in the guestroom, 2) my sewing corner in the guestroom, 3) the collection of random boxes in my bedroom, 4) the linen closet, 5) label the spice cabinet. Now that I’ve typed it out, it seems awfully ambitious.
-Turning the calendar page to February. Whoa, the end of the month has really snuck up on me. But here we are, a few days from February. Another chance to plot and plan and think of how to bring my best self home.

What We Ate:

Saturday: I worked, and packed leftovers. The rest of the family had pizza and wings and it was someone’s movie night, but I’m not sure what they watched. Oh wait – they watched Avatar. The first one.

Sunday: Lunar New Year. I made a rice cake stir fry and dumplings. The dumplings were bought frozen from our favorite dumpling place. The rice cake stir fry in black bean sauce recipe was from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food. Rice cakes are a traditional New Year dish because the word for rice cake sounds like the words for “high year” so it’s auspicious. Truth to tell, I’m the only one in the family who likes rice cakes. But yay, more for me!

Monday: Ama’s chicken wings, broccoli stir fried with garlic and chocolate bundt cake. For the birthday boy.

Tuesday: Meatballs and pasta (in the InstantPot) for the kids and my dad while the Husband and I went out to dinner with a friend.

Wednesday: Pav Baji – Meera’s Sodha’s recipe from Fresh India. I describe this as Indian Sloppy Joes. It’s eggplant, onions, potatoes and cauliflower cooked in a tomatoe gravy, eaten on a buttered roll. Vegan, for those that chose not to butter their rolls. (I used coconut oil to cook the veggies) I also made this really tasty cucumber and peanut salad on this side.

Thursday: Cheesy Beans from The Weekday Vegetarian. My friend came over for dinner, and she brought a Greek Salad.

Friday: Asparagus and parsnip frittata and roasted russet and sweet potatoes. Another very satisfying clean out the fridge meal.

Holiday/ Christmas Movies 2022 – Part 2

Christmas was a month ago, but never too late to finish up the rundown of the Christmas movies I watched in 2022. And there were a lot of them…

Last Christmas – Okay, this sounds like it’s a Hallmark movie, but it isn’t a Hallmark movie. Emilia Clarke plays Kate, a down on her luck aspiring actor who works as an elf in a London Christmas store. She couch surfs, insults her friends, is vile to her mother and family, and basically is kind of an awful person, but awful in an adorable-there-must-be-more-to-the-story kind of way. When life seems like it couldn’t get any worse, Tom (played by the super dreamy Harry Golding) comes into her life and charms her into becoming a better person by showing her how to enjoy life. There is also Emma Thompson who plays Kate’s mother, doing hilarious and touching Emma Thompson things. This movie ripped my heart out. I loved it so much. Big feelings, big reveal (which you could probably figure out by just watching the trailer), and absolutely has its heart on its sleeve. I would watch it every year, but I don’t want to cry so much at Christmas.

Santa Camp – This documentary is about a camp in New Hampshire that trains Santas, and addresses the question of “Who gets to be Santa?” Clearly Santa has historically had some diversity issues, and Santa Camp decides to tackle those head on by admitting a Black Santa, a Santa in a wheelchair, and a transgender Santa. It’s an interesting and moving look into an American subculture but also into why representation is important.

Hip Hop Nutcracker – This was an adaptation of a stage show, filmed for Disney+. It was fun to hear Tchaikovsky’s score being tweeked and re-imagined, and seeing the variety of dance styles, but ultimately, as I usually find with filmed adaptation of stage productions, I just wanted to see it onstage. I felt like all the fancy camera work detracted from the dancing and I couldn’t really get a sense of what the bodies were doing. It was short, at least.

We also watched It’s A Wonderful Life and Meet Me in St. Louis, but those are such classics that I don’t know that I have anything to say about them. Plus, I slept through Meet Me In St. Louis, so I really don’t have much to say about that one.

On to the Hallmark stuff. And again, these aren’t all strictly Hallmark movies.

The First Noelle – Noelle’s ex-boyfriend comes back to town for Christmas, bringing his new girlfriend with him. She also happens to be named Noelle. Plus she’s super nice.
My Catnip: BIPOC leads – (this movie was on BET), best friends to lovers (I prefer when the leads don’t spend too much time getting on each other’s nerves)
The ridiculous: Like most Hallmark movies, I wonder “Is this really how [insert industry] works?” In this case, it was publishing.
My favorite parts: Spoiler Alert – I really liked how Noelle didn’t end up with the guy at the end. There was a hint of a romance to start, but not a big happy ever after ending. Well, not a romance based happy ever after. I know the point of these holiday movies is romance, but I actually thought the personal journey Noelle goes on in this movie made for a really great story arc.

Three Wise Men and a Baby– Three brothers end up having to take care of an abandoned baby just before the holidays.
My Catnip: Cute brothers, babies, Cute Men with babies
The ridiculous: I know that this is a Hallmark movie, but the attempts at romantic matchmaking for each of the brothers just felt… superfluous. Who needs romance when you have three clueless men trying to put together a baby swing? Also – one of the brothers is a pet psychologist. Is that really a thing? (Well, I did have a cat once that was on Prozac, so maybe?) Also – it’s always really distracting to me when supposedly newborn babies look like they weigh at least fifteen pounds.
My favorite part: Watching the brother’s struggle with a baby. That zombie “It won’t stop crying” look on their faces… I’ve been there. This movie was actually a lot of run. Would watch again.

Jingle Bell Bride – A Wedding Planner to the stars flies all the way to Alaska in search of a specific flower for her client, only to get stuck there in the company of the very handsome nephew of the lady who grows the flowers.
My Catnip: Interracial relationships. Alaska. Cute kids. Only there wasn’t cute kids – I had read the blurb wrong.
The ridiculous: Do people really wander around outside in Alaska in December wearing just a sweater? I swear no one in this movie looked even remotely chilly.
My favorite part: This movie was pretty… just okay. It wasn’t terrible, there wasn’t any stand out moments. Kind of the apex of average in the genre. To be honest, I wanted to watch it because there were so few movies that featured a BIPOC male in the lead opposite a white female and this was one of the few movies I found which was the case. It’s always a BIPOC female and a white male, for whatever colonialist casting subtextual reason. (Am I reading too much into that? Maybe? Probably not.)

Something from Tiffany’s – A mix up leads to Rachel’s boyfriend giving her an engagement ring that was actually meant for Ethan’s girlfriend.
My Catnip – interracial romances, baking
The Ridiculous: The bad boyfriend. Is really bad. Like appallingly, “why are you still with him” bad.
My Favorite Part: Rachel is a baker. There is some serious bread porn in this movie. I want all the carbs. Also – I thought it kind of great that the heroine is also Jewish, so it’s a Christmas move, but not really. Also Zoey Deutch who plays Rachel is adorable in this movie. I didn’t realize until afterwards that she is the daughter of Leah Thompson (of Back to the Future). And now that I know that, I can’t unsee it.

The Ghost of Christmas Always: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are sent to haunt a grocery chain executive with a heart of gold, a man whom the Ghost of Christmas Present (Katherine) just might have a connection to and with.
My catnip: Christmas Carol spin off, period movies, really nice, decent guys.
The ridiculous: I guess being visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future is always going to be a little ridiculous. But that was the whole premise of the movie.
My favorite part: One of my favorite bits is when Katherine who is from the 1940s is supposed to step into the present and she magically changes from her period looking wool coat and beret into … another wool coat and beret. It was just kind of funny to me how timeless a wool coat and beret is. Her hair did go from period curls to a blunt bob, though, in case we couldn’t figure out that she was supposed to pass for a lady of the 21st century. I liked this movie a whole lot – it’s probably one of my favorites this year. The chemistry between the two leads was great and the movie was so full of whimsy and humor and made me laugh out loud. I thought it a better take on the Christmas Carol trope than Spirited.

Noel Next Door – Single mom and waitress Noel starts exchanging angry notes with her neighbor whom she feels is terrorizing her kid, at the same time, she strikes up a relationship with divorced composer Jeremy, a customer at her diner. Guess what? They’re the same man!
My catnip: grumpy men, single moms
The ridiculous: People! stop leaving passive aggressive notes for your neighbor and just go meet them! Movie over.
My Favorite Part: It’s always fun to see the classical music world portrayed on screen, even if it is wildly different from real life. Also, there was sweet chemistry between Noel and Jeremy.

A Hollywood Christmas. A director who specializes in making Christmas rom coms finds the studio has sent a studio executive to her set to trim the budget.
My catnip: behind the scenes of movie making, Asian leads
The Ridiculous: The guy who shows up to play Santa says, “I had to park my reindeer.” Also, after having their budget cut and not being able to hire any musicians for the big final scene, a bunch of the crew members happen to play instruments and are roped into playing for the final scene. That would never ever happen, given union rules and what have you.
My favorite part: The behind the scenes, ultra-meta effect of watching a Christmas movie being filmed as the back drop for a Christmas movie. Like who knew all those cozy sweaters were just dickies worn underneath winter coats?!?And the bit where the director says, “We don’t need sound for this scene, it’s just for the montage.” And then there follows… a montage of said director pining as she continues filming her movie. This movie was pretty fun, actually.

Santa Bootcamp: Party Planner needing to find the perfect Santa for a high profile gig, goes to Santa Camp to poach the best talent.
My catnip: Stars of yesteryear (Rita Moreno)
The Ridiculous: Typical Rom Com movie time line where a bunch of people are convinced to put up a huge gala/Christmas party with practically no notice. Also… (spoiler alert) there is a flying car in the last scene. Also there was very little chemistry between the leads here.
My Favorite Part: I liked how the lead’s mother was deaf and signing was a pretty casual part of the story. But otherwise, I thought this movie was pretty flat and heavy handed at the same time. To be fair, heavy handed-ness is pretty much par for the course, but this one was moreso than most.

Lights, Camera, Christmas! When a movie shooting in her small town loses it’s costume designer, Kerry a boutique owner with dashed fashion aspirations, is tapped to fill in.
My Catnip: movies about movie making, fashion
The Ridiculous: Do people just randomly hire a boutique owner to costume a film? With no experience? And was there really no one else available for the gig? One thing about the entertainment industry, I know, is that there is always someone available. You just have to pay them enough.
My Favorite Bit: I always like “behind the scenes” type movies. I thought the Movie they were shooting “My Favorite Santa” was just the right blend of ridiculous and plausible. And there were not one, but two budding romances to follow in this movie – I actually liked the secondary “second chance” romance between the producer and the director better than the main one – the main couple had some nice chemistry, but not a lot of emotional investment.

Well, that’s it for the Christmas movie recaps. (Not that I’ve stopped watching them… I sneak a few in throughout the year.) Until next Thanksgiving, then…

(Bi) Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to Work

Last week, I started a short gig. Life has been a little work heavy. Work always feels all consuming when I’m in the thick of it, and I’m trying to work on that balance. This week I feel like I haven’t been showing up for the “life” parts of work/life balance. (I don’t love that phrase to begin with, though. Balance seems to indicate that there is a sense of equilibrium that is ideal and I’m not sure I believe in that. Maybe “balance” is just a sense of peace or resignation. Also “Work/Life” seems to indicated some kind of dichotomy, but work is part of life, not the opposite of it.) I’ve been pretty bad about getting home when I said I would. Something comes up, or I try to send that one last email, or attend to one detail. I know it’s hard on the rest of the family when “I’ll be home for dinner” becomes “I’ll be home for bedtime” becomes, “I’ll kiss them goodnight once I’m home.” so I want to get better at this. I’m trying to figure out if this is an issue with how I manage my work or if the issue is with the work itself.

On my self-maintenance habits: I did manage to run five times in these past two weeks, did at least ten minutes of yoga every day, and journal every day, and do my Wordle and Duolingo, so that’s in the “check mark!” column. On the other hand, I did not go to bed at a decent time most nights, and I skipped a lot of meals and ate a lot of midnight snacks, so I have demerits in the “sleep” and “eat” columns. I think partly because the rehearsal schedule was a little different- one big rehearsal in the middle of the day rather than two shorter rehearsals with a meal break in the middle – so there wasn’t always a “typical” time to have lunch. I did bring lots of snacks, so it was just a matter of making sure I took time to grab a snack whenever we had a short rehearsal break. I think, though, in constantly snacking, I missed having a sit down lunch so my brain would think I was famished when I got home after rehearsal and I’d eat less mindfully than I would like. So maybe I need to work on more filling snack meals, or just remembering to eat when I can, not when I have to. Kind of like peeing. Or just to not snack when I get home.

Good things:
– The Husband had given me a National Parks Pass for Christmas so we went on a hike/walk to Great Falls on Saturday. It was a great day for a little walk, and the kids liked climbing on the boulders. Now that I have a park pass I’ll be sure to go more often. I also need to plan other National Park visits.

-We took down Christmas. It always feels like a lot of work – we never remember which ornament goes in what box or how to Jenga all the boxes back in the storage bin. There must be an easier solution. Also now that the Christmas tree is down, I’m relishing how much space we have regained in the living room.

-One Saturday night after dinner, we had impromptu family reading time. We’ve been borrowing Vox books at the library for the two little kids – these are books with a build in audio player so that the kids can work it themselves. They love them. And I don’t have to read Frog and Toad 192,853,782 times. The oldest didn’t read because she was practicing piano, but it made a nice accompaniment for the rest of us, ensconced in our chairs with our books. Until she complained that she couldn’t concentrate on practicing because the Vox book was too loud. So we rearranged ourselves and put the two littles with their Vox book on the other side of the room and all got back to reading and practicing. All told, family reading time was perhaps only 30-45 minutes, but it seemed so indulgent to all just be able to sit together in a room for that amount of time – no laundry to do, no carpool to drive, no homework to think about.

-The Oldest kid turned eleven! Despite all the the trials of birthday celebrations I had written of in the last post, I think the now-eleven year old had a pretty good birthday. She got to choose her birthday cereal (she picked Frosted Flakes), and got to have her favorite dinner (The Husband’s kung pao chicken). Then on the next weekend we had some friends over for a sleepover and movie matinee. I was all concerned about what they would do at the sleepover, as I hadn’t planned anything, but we had the kids make individual pizzas and they played Apples to Apples and watched tv and drank soda and everyone seemed quite happy with that. The next morning I made three batches of waffles and we had some more friends come over, then the kids and dads went to see Puss in Boots. Initially at the beginning of the week, the only Sunday morning movie listed was Avatar and I was a little leery about having the kids watch a 3 hour PG 13 movie, but luckily when I checked on Thursday, Puss in Boots was playing, so I bought tickets for that. I think everyone had a great time.

-The day of the sleepover, I had to work, but I also still had to do the grocery shop for the sleepover. So I put on my efficient speedy shopper hat and went to the grocery store at 8:45am, stopped at the Deli to pick up the requested rainbow cake for the party, and was home by 10am and had time to put away the groceries before getting to work in time for an 11am rehearsal. For someone who has to read every food label, grocery shopping can become quite a drawn out event. But that morning, I had such a sense of flow… It just felt like a huge accomplishment to have all the shopping done and groceries put away before 10:30am.

– At our production meeting after our final dress rehearsal, the director of our show made a point to tell everyone what a good job she thought I was doing. It’s been a fast intense process and whereas typically I have at least one assistant, this time I didn’t have any assistants since the show was supposed to be pretty minimal. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a large show by any means, and it wasn’t terribly complex, but it was more involved than this kind of project has been in the past. On our tech day, I logged 13 000 steps/5.7 miles and 11 flights of stairs. This is actually surprising to me somewhat that it’s so high because typically as a stage manager, I’m tethered to my console so i don’t get as many steps in. So … 13 000 steps – not as high as an Assistant Stage Manager who constantly is running around backstage, but definitely higher than when I stage manage. Which is all to say, it was a lot of hats to wear for this one show and I was really touched that the director acknowledged that in front of everyone.

-We ate the peaches! The weather has been remarkably mild, so the thought of eating the peaches that I had canned last August didn’t occur to me. I often think I need to save them for the depths of winter. But last week, we decided that January was a fine time to eat the peaches. They were lovely and redolent of summer. Just opening up the jar and inhaling brought back summer days and sunshine.

– I have a co-worker, a conductor and pianist, who often comes into the rehearsal room in the morning to practice before rehearsal starts. Often I’m in there setting up and I like to listen to him practice. One time I made the offhand comment that I love how he plays Bach, so now he will always finish his session with a little bit of Bach if I’m in the room. What a wonderful privilege to be able to listen to him play as I bustle around in the quiet before a rehearsal, setting tables and chairs and refilling pencil cups. This is one of the joys of my job.

Grateful For:
– My work bestie, also good friend outside of work, who thinks of solutions that I can’t see, and who can do time math so effortlessly.
-Actually, all the people I work with. They are all so smart and good at their jobs and they make me laugh and remind me that what we do is as beautiful and thoughtful as it is sometimes ridiculous.
-The opportunity to work on such a cool set of short operas. I’d say “Buy tickets now!” but it’s already sold out.
-Music. I’ve been trying to listen to more music and this week, I’ve been listening to Baroque music as I run and contradance music as I work. I’m by no means a classical music expert, despite studying music, but fast baroque music is one of my favorite things in life. I found a Spotify play list called “Baroque workout” – doesn’t it seem like there is a playlist for everything? I’ve been using it for my runs and it’s been a great motivator. As for the contradance music – the Husband and I used to be big contradancers. We haven’t been in years, and I would love to go again, but I don’t think contradancing in a mask would be very pleasant, so we’ll wait for a bit. I happened to stumble across a contrandance playlist last week and listening to it reminded me of when the Husband and I met, and going to dances and the the swirling colours of the dance hall, and the toe-tappingly catchy music that just dares you to sit still. The playlist made me really happy.
-The Husband, as always, for holding down the fort. He is the reason I have clean clothes to wear and that the kids get dinner when I’m working. And even though I tell him to leave the kitchen for me to clean when I get home, it is almost always shining when I get home.

Looking forward to:
-Making bread. I had thought my sourdough starter was dead – I had been feeding it for almost two weeks with little result. This week, I gave it a little rye flour because I read that rye flour is extremely reactive. And lo and behold, the sad little starter has started to bubble again. I’m hoping that next week the starter will be in a place where I can make a loaf of bread.
-The five year old’s birthday! He has a Chuck E. Cheese party in a few weeks, so next week will just be us low key celebrating as a family with the tradition of his birthday cereal of choice, dinner of choice (he chose Ama’s chicken wings), and a small cake. Maybe I’ll venture to get him a balloon. And this time make it to Party City before closing.

Aspirations and weekend plans:
– Well, opening night. Probably a little bit of work to do in the afternoon to get ready for the show. It’s been an intense fast process and my calling score is a mess. So I have to go back and fix those Post-Its.
– morning basketball game for the 11 year old. Incidentally I kind of love this sign that hangs in the gym where the kids play basketball:

– skating lessons for the 5 year old.
– It’s Lunar New Year! My father is here visiting for the kids’ birthdays and coincidentally Lunar New Year. I always feel unprepared for Lunar New Year and then I vow to do better the next year, but then I forget. Luckily my father is here so he came up with a plan. We will go to Taiwanese breakfast and have dumplings for dinner and he will give the kids red envelopes. (And I’ve just taken two seconds to put a reminder in my calendar for Lunar New Year next year – February 10th, 2024 – so I’ll plan something. I’d love to have a dumpling party.)
– uncovering the bench in my bedroom that has become de facto clothes storage these past few weeks.
– picking up around the house, get the kids to tidy the toy room. (When I mentioned this task to her today, the 3 year old today asked me, “What’s the difference between ‘tidy’ and ‘clean’?” I guess, in my mind clean involves purging, and tidying involves just putting things back. Or pushing them aside so I can see the floor of the room again.)
-Outdoor time, probably a park or a nature ramble.

Something Thoughtful I’ve consumed lately:
A few weeks ago, in Emily Oster’s newsletter ParentData she wrote an essay “There’s No Secret Option C”, which I thought a really great way to frame decision making. Often when faced with a choice to make, I delay and dither, thinking that there is a perfect solution, just I haven’t thought of it yet, or this perfect solution just hasn’t presented itself to me yet. But, as Oster says, “There is no secret option C.” “In these complicated moments,” she writes, “we are often waiting for a secret third option. No matter how unlikely it is, how impossible, it’s hard not to imagine it.” But usually, there is no other option and delaying making a decision will only… delay things, often until you end up having not choice at all. (Which is another was to make a decision, but kind of a passive-aggressive way to go through life.) In a way it reminds me of what Oliver Burkeman says about recognizing the finite so that you do not getting bogged down by the infinite. It is not about the options to choose from, it is about choosing an option and moving forward with life knowing that the option isn’t perfect, but that you can deal with it.

What We Ate – There was no meal planning these past two weeks. The Husband actually cooked dinner all week. I admit I am a bit of a control freak about dinner, so it felt like I was majorly dropping the ball to have him fully take over dinner. But he made a pretty awesome week of dinners. And as much grief as I give him for being a meat and potatoes man, there were a lot of vegetables involved.

Saturday: Pizza and Catherine Called Birdy. We’ve been having pizza and movie night on Saturdays because of basketball practice. Catherine Called Birdy is based on the book by Karen Cushman, which I remember reading when I was a preteen. (Although I think I liked her Midwife’s Apprentice better.) The movie was a lot of fun, though I felt like it went in a different direction than the book.

Sunday: Leftover friend rice. As in fried rice made from leftovers from the fridge.

Monday: Cucumber salad and roasted poatotes. Funny story, the Husband likes recipes from the BBC Cooking website and this recipe was for Courgette salad. But the Husband bought cucumbers instead because he didn’t know what courgettes were. Which, I think actually ended up tasting better than squash would have.

Tuesday: Taco Cups. I wish I could find and link all the recipes that the Husband used because there were all really good. This one was probably my favorite. It involved lining muffin cups with flour tortillas, filling them with black beans and cheese and then baking til the tortillas were crispy and the cheese melted. I came home from work and promptly devoured all three that were leftover. And easy to eat with one hand too. Bonus.

Wednesday: Kung Pao Chicken and cake. This was the now-eleven year old’s birthday dinner request.

Thursday: Eggplant and Halloumi stacks. This sounded complicated. Fried eggplant slices, layered with Halloumi cheese. I think there was a sauce. It was delicious, clearly since there were no leftovers by the time I got home.

Friday: Sheet pan gnocchi. I actually cooked this one – Sheet pan gnocchi has become one of my favorite ways to use up veggies. In this case, carrots, mushrooms and broccoli, mixed with olive oil and pesto. And the meal comes together in about thirty minutes.

Saturday: Pizza and sleepover night. And Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was our first Indiana Jones movie as a family. I’d forgotten how funny they were. Even the fight scenes – they all have this impish air about them. The five year old had this observation: “A good way to save someone is to shoot the driver of the truck.” I’d say that’s a pretty accurate takeaway. Also: “Indiana Jones knows lots of tricks!”
All the Indiana Jones movies are now on Amazon Prime, so I feel like they will be in our near future.

Sunday: Take out Chinese.

Monday: Vegetable omlettes. Due to a spousal miscommunication in advance of the now-eleven year old’s sleepover, both the Husband and I bought two dozen eggs that morning. Which makes four dozen eggs, in addition to the dozen adn a half we already had at home. So now we have a lot of eggs to use up.

Tuesday: Migas, – This was tasty even eaten cold straight out of the pan three hours later.

Wednesday: Carrot Parsnip Soup. I actually prepped this one for the Husband. I did all the initial steps in the InstantPot and then set it to cook. When the Husband got home, he pureed the soup in the Vitamix and then served it.

Thursday: Egg bake with potatoes and mushrooms. Also delicious cold eaten out of the pan four hours later. I was told, however, that the three year old carefully picked all the mushroom and onions out of this.

Friday: Breakfast sandwiches eaten with grapes. Fast meal for a basketball practice day.

(Bi)Weekly Recap + what we ate: The week after Christmas and into a New Year

Well we are into 2023, so here’s a “coffee date” style recap/info dump of what life post Christmas has been like…

The day after Christmas, the Husband bundled us into the car at 6am and we headed on a little overnight getaway. Our first stop was Steamtown, a National Historic Site in Scranton, PA, dedicated to steam locomotives. I had first heard of this place last year when thinking of places where we could use the ten year old’s free National Parks Pass, though it turns out Steamtown is actually free to visit. (The ten year old’s Pass, given to all fourth graders in the country, went sadly underutilized; I have five years to figure out how to make the most of it when the five year old gets his free Parks Pass…). I had thought this historic site might be fun for the train-lovers in the family, but we never made it because Steamtown was in Scranton, PA, four hours away, which made it a little far for a day trip. When we were looking for a quick getaway for after Christmas, though, this seemed like a good option.

Steamtown features a huge collection of steam locomotives. The museum portion of the park, where there were displays on train history and technology, was having some facility issues so it wasn’t open unfortunately, but there was still lots to see. The roundhouse housed many trains and there were park rangers available to answer questions. The ten year old had many many questions for the park rangers. In the outdoor portion of the Roundhouse, there was a locomotive that we could climb into and even ring it’s bell.

After Steamtown we spent the night in Consohoken, where we visited the Edwards Freeman Nut Company – a shop with aisles and aisles of nuts, dried fruit and all the candy and chocolate one can imagine. There were wine gums (yay!), and four different types of black licorice, and dried peaches, and an impressive assortment of chocolate malt balls – dark, milk, mocha, mint… We came away with a lot of treats and snacks. Each kid was allowed to also pick some candy- the ten year old picked out a giant bag of Double Bubble and some Bazooka flavored soda, this latter which the kids all tasted and decided was not very good. But it’s good to try things. The five year old picked out a pack of Skittles – but it was Smoothie flavore Skittles, so quite a novelty. The three year old picked out a Kinder Joy and some Chocolate Pretzels.

Then we had dinner at a local restaurant – chosen because the website offered, “Burgers! Tacos! Sushi!” Though they didn’t serve sushi on Mondays so we had really tasty burgers and Tacos instead. Then off to the hotel, which is always a high point for the kids. They are always super content just to sprawl in a hotel room and watch TV and go to the pool and eat those waffles from the hotel breakfast bar. The pool, unfortunately was not working, but we were all exhausted so sprawling and watching tv seemed like a pretty good option. Eventually everyone went to bed, except the three year old, who proceeded to try to interact with the sleeping people in the room, so I took her out for a little stroll around the hotel. We rode the elevator, checked out the lobby and walked up and down the hallways. At one point, she started singing, “I’m never going to be sleepy.” Over and over and over.

She did eventually go to sleep and the next day, I got a run in while the Husband took care of getting the kids hotel breakfast. After I got back, we packed up the room and went to Longwood Gardens. The gardens still had their Christmas display up, and I enjoyed seeing all the festive decorations. The conservatory was an explosion of Poinsettias. My favorite thing, was a fascinating picture of a poinsettia in the wild. They are actually trees and grow to be eight feet tall, looking nothing at all like the plants we get at Christmas. Also – I didn’t realize this, but the red/pink/white parts of the poinsettia are actually the leaves. The flowers are the small yellow buds in the middle – which makes sense when I actually looked closely at a flower, but I had never really thought about it that way before. It’s always really fascinating to learn about something that seems so every day and familiar.

This one was for the birds – there are bird seeds in the gourds.

We also took in the train display and wandered all over the grounds. (Okay, side note re: trains – apparently trains are a huge deal in the Fire Departments around Baltimore and almost all of them have train displays. And there is a very nice person/group that collects all the places that have holiday train displays and posts them on a website which I must now bookmark for future use.) There is something beautiful and barren about gardens in the winter. Sure, the conventionally beautiful time of the year to see the garden is in the Spring and Summer, but I love how in winter when things are brown and sparse, I can really see the shape of things – the pointy and specific spikes of grass and tree and branches.

I know Longwood Gardens has a spectacular light exhibit, but we’ve never stayed late enough to see it. We’re usually on the road at 4pm so that we can be home in time for dinner. Every year, as we are leaving, we tell ourselves that we will make it out to see the lights one year. This year, the lights were starting to come on as we headed for the exit gate, and I dragged our family down one walk so that we could see some of the lights before we left and it was indeed very pretty.

A gorgeous book end to our trip – when we left the house on Monday at 6am, the sky was dark, except for the single strip of sunrise. And on our way home at 5pm, I noticed that the sky again was gorgeous with a neon orange strip of sunset. I love the contrast:

The rest of 2022was pretty low key, but surprisingly social. The baby went to daycare, but the two school kids were home, so I planned some playdates for the kids. One night we had the neighbors over for dinner, a pleasant evening which made me vow to invite people over for dinner more. We had chili for dinner – simple to make ahead and easy to customize.

The Husband ended up having half a day off on Friday before New Years, so we went to lunch at our favorite dumpling house, then went to Lake Needwood for a walk and some playground time. The weather was pretty mild, but the lake had frozen earlier in the week and there were still pretty ice patterns to be seen. I had been to this trail before, but didn’t realize there was a playground with one of those zipline type structures on it. The kids had a great time. I even took a turn or two. The five year old, who initially balked at the idea of going to this park said, when it was time to go, “I didn’t have enough outdoor time!” Which is always something that I love to hear from my kids. So we went to the same park again two days later, this time I suggested it as a meet up location for my mom’s group, which had been trying to get together for a while. I had met these kids when the three year old was born and it was fun to see how our little squishy babies have all grown. Of course, with ten kids running around, I didn’t really get to chat at length with too many other parents, but I guess that’s what happy hour is for.

In between, trips to Lake Needwood, was New Years Day. It was pretty quiet. new years eve we went to church then came home, had dinner and watched the ball drop in Times Square. Actually the Husband and the ten year old watched. The five year old, three year old and I fell asleep on the couch.

New Years Day was nice and low key. We went to Taiwanese Breakfast, and had bowls of warm soy milk – savory for the grown ups, sweet for the kids – with fired dough sticks (you tiao), and dumplings and noodles and egg pancakes. Then we went to the park for a few hours, skipping lunch because we were so full from breakfast. After we got home, I decided that I needed to do one house project so cleaned out the fridge. I’m a little embarrassed by some of the things in the back of the fridge – there were three containers of sourdough starter, all sorts of pickles and more “mystery” containers than I care to admit. The trash was very full by the end of all this. I won’t pretend out fridge is absolutely uncluttered now, but I have started to be more mindful about where things are in the fridge. For example, all the pickles and fermentation experiments will go on the top right shelf. Leftovers on the left. So when I’m madly looking for leftovers to take for lunch, I’ll know where to look.

In a fun bit of “use it up”ness, I found some garlic butter from one of the Husband’s pizza nights. There was also a container of butter and Worcestershire sauce mixed together, leftover from a failed Chex mix attempt. I combined the garlic butter and the Chex mix butter and made more Chex mix. It was a very successful batch of Chex Mix, and very satisfying to finish up the various butters and *not* put containers back into the fridge.

We also had a very “use it up”ness dinner, which was so satisfying, and then we played Kings of Tokyo before bedtime. So it wasn’t a New Year’s day with grand plans, but there was a good mix of tasty food, family outdoor time, house project time, and family evening. Which was actually, upon reflection, a very good ordinary day.

Then it was back to life. I have to admit, I was so glad when everyone went back to school on January 3rd. I love my kids, but having them gone also felt amazing. It took me a few days to get back into the swing of life on my own terms. The first day they were back at school, I wanted to go for a run, so I parked at a trail after doing the bus drop off. Then it started to rain. And I was so unused to having my time dictated by only myself, I didn’t know what to do. My brain was stuck in, “This is your time to run.” but it was raining out so I clearly couldn’t. (or I could, but I don’t really have the right rain gear to run in the rain right now.) I ended up sitting in my car for ninety minutes before I decided to go to the library and pick up some holds and wait for the rain to subside. The rain did subside and I left the library with some good books. And I did go for that run after all. But man, that first instance of blank, unscheduled time was… not well spent.

Grateful for:
– 2022. Another year in the books. I’m glad I got to see the end of it.
-2023. Another year to live. I’m glad I have the chance.
– The other mom, L, at the bus stop. I was late for school bus pick up twice this week. Twice. The bus has been arriving about thirty minutes earlier and I just mentally wasn’t prepared for it. You’d think I’d figure it out after the first time I was late, but I was late the next day too. There is nothing that combines mortification and fear for your child like being late for the school bus. L was there and texted to make sure I was on my way and sat with my kids until I arrived. So grateful for her.
– Another mom at my bus stop, A. We’ve been chatting at the bus stop for a while now and before the winter break, I said, “One of these days, we should just walk down to the cafe and have coffee rather than just chatting here in the middle of the street.” Well last week, I had a package to return at Whole Foods, and I asked if she wanted to walk down with me, and she said yes, and it was a lovely morning.
-YouTube. Yes, I find a lot of YouTube insidious, but last week, I was reading the book “The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom” to the kids. It’s a book all about children in a band. At the end of the book, the author’s note revealed that all the kids in the book was based on real musicians, most of which I hadn’t heard of. So I was able to pop on YouTube and pull up videos of these really obscure yet talented musicians, including Jazz trumpeter Valadia Snow, flautist (and Jethro Tull member) Ian Anderson, Oboe player and composer Ruth Widdy Gibbs, and so many more. I love picture books about music, and it’s always so much more tangible when we can hear it too.
– The Husband for driving on all our road trips. I don’t like driving. I suspect the Husband doesn’t like me driving either. At the same time, I know that driving can be tedious and tiring, so I’m glad that he takes the wheel when we go places.

Looking forward to:
– Going back to work. It’s just a short gig, two weeks. I’m almost done the first week and it’s been nice to be back at work.
– The ten year old’s birthday party. “Looking forward to” might be too strong a way to phrase it, but I’m certainly excited for her to have a party.
-My father coming to visit. He’s here for the kids’ birthday.
– Having time to sit and plan and think about the year. Maybe not this week or next week, but soon…

What We Ate:
Monday: Road Trip – we had dinner at Guppy’s Good Time. The tag line is Burgers, Tacos, Sushi. Unfortunately they don’t serve sushi on Mondays, but the tacos were tasty, as were the cauliflower bites.

Tuesday: Indian Take Out, picked up on our way back home.

Wednesday: Breakfast for Dinner. Waffles and Eggs.

Thursday: Vegetarian Chili from The Weekday Vegetarians.

Friday: Pizza take out and Hip Hop Nutcracker and The Bad Bunch.

Saturday: Yaki Udon noodles with tofu. A recipe from Mark Bittman’s Dinner For Everyone. This cookbook is great because it gives you three variations on each recipe – one fast (under 30 mins), one vegan, and one super fancy (aka time consuming.) We did the “fast” version. Also – life lesson: everything looks better sprinkled with sesame seeds and green onions:

The Husband always says when I’m unsure about a meal, I sprinkle it with sesame seeds and green onions. But I actually think this meal is pretty tasty.

Sunday: Fridge leftovers – used up the lamb from Christmas – part of it I made into sandwiches, some of it I chopped up and threw into the leftover Indian food from Monday. It was so satisfying to use up little bits of food that way.

Monday: Dumplings and green beans. Standard “We don’t want to cook” dinner.

Tuesday: Lentil Soup, loosely based on a recipe from The Weekday Vegetarian. I didn’t have chard, but I used some leftover cabbage that I had in the fridge. I also made zatar flatbread to go with it – pizza dough, flattened and sprinkled with olive oil, garlic powder and za’tar and then baked – the taste to effort ratio is really high on that one.

Wednesday: Brussel Sprout Fried Rice – Meera Sodha’s Nasi Goreng. (vegan) This is the dish that makes the family groan when I mention it’s for dinner, but then everyone devours. I also threw in the last bits of the cabbage and it felt really satisfying to use it all up.

Thursday: Corn and Tomato Pasta from The Weekday Vegetarian. The recipe calls for fresh corn and tomatoes, none of which I had on hand, but I thought this was pretty tasty using frozen corn and canned tomatoes. I think the secret is that the recipe starts with caramelizing a whole red onion.

Friday: Baked Teriyaki Tofu with Broccoli Mushroom Stirfry. (vegan)

Weekly Recap + What we ate: Christmas is around the corner! Try not to panic.

Christmas Train Display at the Trolley Museum.

The festive events are starting to really populate our calendar. Last weekend, we took the kids to the Trolley Museum for their holiday display and trolley ride with Santa. This checked a lot of boxes on the Holiday fun list – there was model trains, Santa, and crafts. The two little kids went on the trolley ride twice so got to ask Santa for toys twice. The first time, the baby asked for a rubber crocodile. The second time, both kids asked for a train set. Spoiler alert – they are not getting a rubber crocodile.

Sunday the ten year old and I went Christmas shopping at the mall. I haven’t done that in an age! We also had lunch there, and there was a really tasty Korean noodle place in the food court. I love how food court options have really expanded since I was a kid. The ten year old had Shake Shack. I find malls a little exhausting for all the choice that is there. We were there to get calendars, but also ended up in the candy store. There were wine gums and Dairy Milk, so I guess it was an okay pit stop. The we stopped at Michaels and we indulged in that fad of taking pictures in the floral section:

Monday was Merry TubaChristmas! It’s a concert where tuba players of all ages from across the region get together to play Christmas carols. The Husband and I have been going to TubaChristmas since we were dating; it’s one of our Christmas must dos. I think one year I was working and couldn’t go, but except for that year, and 2020, we’ve gone every December. It’s always fun to go see all the tubas decorated for the holidays and to hear them play Christmas tunes and feel the floor vibrate for the very lowest notes. They always invite the kids up to sing Jingle Bells, and the three year old took to the stage without hesitation, with the ten year old running up behind her to make sure she could get up onstage okay. The five year old didn’t want to go up at first, but when he saw that his sisters were both up there, he went up too.

That’s a lot of brass. And there were even more in the balconies.

The rest of the week was pretty chill. There was a “snow” delay on Wednesday because of an anticipated storm. It ended up just being rainy and cold, but I was still fine with school starting two hours later and having a slower morning.

I went to the library one day and hoped to pick up some holiday/Christmas books, but the pickings were super slim. I guess that is to be expected mid-December. I usually go the week leading into Christmas but since I wasn’t really going to do Advent books this year, I didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. Maybe I should just buy some more Christmas picture books?

The five year old’s class had a gingerbread house decorating event on Friday morning, which I went to. It was actually graham crackers attached to small milk cartons with frosting, but I’m sure it’s all the same as long as there is a surface to attach candy. Lessons learned:
– Get the thick popsicle sticks to spread frosting. The tongue depressor size.
– do not get the shrink wrapped candy canes. By the time you get the plastic off there are broken pieces and frustrated kids.
– the cutting edge on the Saran Wrap is sharp.
-kids like decorating with those red and white peppermint candies, but do not like to eat them.

Also … one parent brought Hot Tamales candy. I thought that was a curious choice. Maybe a little unfortunate for those kids who were unfamiliar with them and thought they were Mike and Ikes. But I don’t know… maybe there are kids out there who like Hot Tamales? My did certainly did not.

Thank goodness for the mask, otherwise enforcing the “no licking, no eating” rule would have been hard.

One week til Christmas and hopefully I’m in an okay place. On the to do list still:
-grocery shop. I have the menu mostly planned.
– Holiday cards for the kids teachers. We’re going to paint some blank cards this weekend. I have to pick up some gift cards to go in them this week.
-Put our Christmas cards in the mail. They are all addressed and stamped, I just have to walk them down to the mailbox. This feels pretty late. Every year I say I’ll do it sooner, but it never works out that way.
– Order presents for my brother’s family. They don’t celebrate Christmas so I’m not that concerned with making the December 25th deadline for this.
-Order present for my parents. I’m gifting them Storyworth this year. It’s a service that sends the recipient weekly questions about their life and the recipient writes and answer, and can upload pictures. At the end of 52 weeks, the company take all the answers and put them together in a book. It’s a virtual gift so I don’t feel panicked about that either, as long as I order it this week sometime.
-Pickup one last present for the 10 year old. She wanted some Barbie accessories. This stuff was specifically on her letter to Santa. I’m always surprised that she still plays with Barbies, but I think she just really likes setting up little scenes. I’m going to pick up some plates and tiny food from the craft store. (The stuff says “for decoration only. Not a toy.” so I had a moment of pause. But I figure it’s fine for a ten year old.) The rest of the kids’ presents are mostly done. I think. The Husband is in charge of the toys. I try to stick to some version of “Want, need, read, wear” categories for the kids, plus one Santa gift. I take care of the “need, read, wear” and the Husband does “want” and “Santa”. Clearly he’s the fun parent.
-Stocking stuffers – mostly candy and snack food, but other things if the mood strikes. Last year, in a somewhat self-serving mood, I got everyone a small kitchen gadget. This year we’ve got small things from the arts supply store and matchbox cars so far.
-Maybe one more present for the Husband if I can make it to the right store.
– organize some activities and playdates for the winter break. Also buy tickets to a Christmas movie.
-Pre-make cookie dough. We’re having some kids over to decorate cookies during winter break.

So not too much, I hope, to get done in one week if I’m purposeful about it.

Speaking of baking… I’ve been thinking about my Holiday Baking aspirations. Most of my ideas this year comes from the Cooks Illustrated Holiday Baking magazine – some of the recipes are a little fussy, so the holidays are the perfect time, I feel, to put in the effort. This year I would like to bake:
-Molasses cookes (chewy and spicy kind)
– Sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for decorating
-Sticky Toffee Pudding, our traditional Christmas dessert
-Eggnog Bundt cake. Because the Bundt pan I got this year has been woefully underused.
-Cinnamom buns for Christmas morning, as is our tradition. This I usually use the recipe from either The Irish Pantry or King Arthur’s Flour.
-Chex mix. Have to have something savory.
-rolls for Christmas Dinner.
-And I’ve already made apple cranberry crisp. It was a recipe from that Cooks Illustrated magazine and it was a great way to use up the leftover bowl of cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I’m going to put this crisp into post Thanksgiving rotation because we always have so much leftover cranberry sauce.

Grateful for This Week:
– The ten year old’s school music program. They had their Holiday Choral Concert this year and it was really cute. At her old school, Choir was an extracurricular so kids had to opt in to do it and got pulled out of class. At her new school, it’s just part of the regular music class. I really like that the school feels like music performance is important enough that all kids should participate.
– Finding parking just a half block from the restaurant on Monday night after TubaChristmas. Also grateful for the Restaurant itself, Chinatown Express, where tehy hand make their noodles. We went to this restaurant, partly because the Husband had been there with the kids the day before and had left the 5 year old’s hat there. So aside from this place having really really good food, we had a practical reason for going there. But… it is also smack in the middle of Chinatown, next to the arena and there was a game that night so parking was a challenge. We circled the area for about fifteen minutes and were about to give up when someone pulled out and we snagged their parking spot. And it was just a half block from the restaurant. A true holiday miracle. And the staff at the restaurant are always super nice and they put up with my attempts to speak half in Chinese and they smile when the kids’ say “xie xie.” The biggest surprise was that the baby loves Chinese broccoli! She grabbed the thick stalk in her hand and just chowed down on it and then had two more pieces. She ate a vegetable!!! So exciting!
– Libraries and librarians. I had a book that I just can’t find – it’s in the house somewhere, but I don’t know where it ended up. Anyhow because of that book being waaaay overdue, there is a hold on my library card. I was going to just pay for the book, but the librarian gave me that sly look that they do and just clicked a few things and electronically returned the book and re-checked it out to me. “I’m just going to give you nine more weeks to find it,” she said to me.
– Not being at my old summer job. I’ve been off Facebook for over a year now, but this week, I popped back on as I was doing Christmas cards and I have a few friends who had gotten married and I had to Facebook stalk them to figure out the correct last names to put on the cards. Anyhow… it was kind of an overwhelming vortex black hole of … noise and news and happenings. Before I could log off, I saw a whole bunch of posts about this one company that I used to work for. I had left under difficult circumstances, and I had been very sad to leave, and I always somewhat regret not being there still. It’s also a part of why I no longer log into Facebook since I found I couldn’t deal with seeing any news about the company or my colleagues and friends working there. Anyhow the company now seem to be embroiled in some union negotiations that are, let’s just say, not going well. The whole thing just seems really sad and toxic. Over the past five years I’ve have bouts of great sadness about not working there anymore and I really miss my colleagues and the work we did, but after reading about the union negotiations that are happening, I am really glad I’m not part of the contentiousness happenings and drama.

Looking forward to:
-Anniversary Date Night with Husband. We hired a sitter and everything!
-Zoolights with friends.
– Going to see a musical with the ten year old and the five year old and our friends!
-Ticking everything off my Holiday to do list above.
-Christmas dinner and family time.

What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza (Husband made) and Arthur Christmas (see my last post for the run down on that movie).

Sunday: Sheetpan baked gnocchi. This was one of those pantry dinners that never seem like pantry dinners. Toss whatever roastable veggies I have in olive oil, salt and pepper – in this case it was butternut squash, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, turnip, rutabaga – add gnocchi. Pour into sheet pan. Roast for 25-30 mins.

Monday: Dinner out at Chinatown Express – we had duck noodle soup, roast pork stir-fried noodles (both these dishes with fresh noodles), Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, green sauteed with garlic, soup dumping, pork dumpling and kung pao chicken. So much food! Sooooo good!

Tuesday: Kale Saag Paneer from Meera Sodha’s East. I had a bunch of heavy cream and half and half to use up as well as two bunches of kale, so this seemed like a good recipe to use. The paneer didn’t turn out great – I think using heavy cream instead of all half and half makes for a softer paneer so the texture didn’t quite hold up in the saag.

Wednesday: Farrotto with roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts from The Weekday Vegetarians. This was billed as risotto but with farro. It never got as creamy as risotto, but it was still pretty tasty.

Thursday: Red lentils from The Weekday Vegetarians. Vegan. Something quick and tasty that we could eat before the 10 year old’s holiday concert.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Charlie Brown Christmas and The Ted Lasso Holiday Special from last year.

Holiday Movie 2022 Recap #1

Halfway through the month so I thought I’d run down the Holiday Movies we/I’ve watched so far. Spoilers ahead.

First off, the Non-Hallmark stuff:
Spirited – Musical on AppleTV with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. The Ghosts of Christmas (a la Christmas Carol) try to redeem one person in our modern world. There are big musical numbers, tuneful yet forgettable songs, lots of funny bits and lots of heartfelt bits. I liked it mostly for a) Octavia Spencer being all sorts of charming and sassy while singing, b) Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynold’s great chemistry, c) the dance numbers, d) the clever wit. I did not like the plot detail of one child cyber-bulling another. I had a good time watching this movie, but I’d be very reluctant to watch it again.

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special – We picked this because it was short and we could fit it in after the ten year old’s Friday night basketball practice. I thought this had all the good holiday warm fuzzy ingredients: Aliens trying to understand this “Christmas” thing, human re-discovering the spirit of the season, family, a dash of action, a big dash of quirky humor and so many Christmas lights. If you’re looking for a 45 minute holiday pick me up, this would definitely fill that.

Arthur Christmas: Animated film from 2011 about Santa’s sons – one of whom, Steve, has optimized the gift delivery process to such a high tech degree so that everything happens as stealthily and efficiently as possible, and another son, Arthur, who answers the letters and has to save the day when one lone present gets left behind. Even though this movie came out eleven years ago, I’d never heard of it. It was on every single “Family Christmas Movie” list that I googled, so I figured there was something to it. I thought this movie was wonderful – it’s funny and smart but also has some really heartfelt moments. We laughed so so hard. I also loved the “peek behind the scenes of Santa’s workshop” aspect of it. And the cast – James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Laurie, and Bill Nighy as Grandpa Claus and Laura Linney as Santa’s computer-was perfect.

AND… the Christmas Rom Coms…I have to acknowledge that the rest of the family does not want to watch as many Hallmark Holiday movies as I do. Well, maybe the ten year old. But she loves watching anything on tv.

(Note – I say “Hallmark”, but really I use that term, probably incorrectly, as a genre rather than a network specific descriptor. I really mean any of those hundreds of cute, fluffy, predictable romantic movies about the holidays that come out this time of year, be it on the Hallmark Channel, or Lifetime, or Hulu, or HBOMax… whatever channel or platform.)

So while we have watched a couple as a family hunkered on a couch, I have also watched a few on my own as I clean the kitchen at night. It does not (should not) take 90 minutes to clean the kitchen. But sometimes, in December, it does.

Anyhow, here is what I’ve watched so far, and my thoughts and feelings (Definitely more spoilers ahead!):

Inventing the Christmas Prince – Rocket scientist widow convinces her grumpy boss to pretend to be The Christmas Prince for her daughter.
My rom com cat nip: Widows, Grumpy uptight men, diverse leads, stars of the 90s (Tamara Mowry-Housley from Sister, Sister)
My Take: This movie was cute, though the whole idea of a “Christmas Prince” who grants twenty-four wishes every Christmas season was a little much – I mean if you are going to make up a Christmas legend for your kid, that one seems kind of excessive. Like maybe one or two wishes. But 24 is just setting yourself up for failure.
The ridiculous: Do rocket scientists really work in cubicles?
Favorite bit: The pocket protectors for the rocket scientists, and cozy sweaters for everyone else. Actually the cozy sweaters are one of my favorite things in these movies. Seriously, right next to Santa’s toy shop is a knitting shop where elves spend all their time knitting the coziest chunky sweaters for the Holiday movie season. I want them all.

A Big Fat Family Christmas– Newspaper photographer Liv is teamed up with new reporter Henry to cover the Chang family’s annual holiday party. Twist is, the Chang family is her family and she is trying to keep it under wraps.
My rom com cat nip: Asian leads, stars of the 90s (Tia Carrere of Wayne’s World)
My Take: Plot-wise I thought this movie was a little silly. I don’t love screwball “quick hide so people won’t see me” type plots. But the leads were both really cute and charming and I liked how the movie addressed the main character’s feelings about growing up as a minority. Another thing I thought interesting about this movie is that they had all sorts of Asian people in the movie and then felt the need to explain it. Like Tia Carrere is Filipino-American, and her character is married to Yee Jee Tso who is Chinese – and there is a specific line where one character makes reference specifically to the fact that the Tia Carrere character is Filipino. They also go out of their way to explain the background of the main lead, who had a South African accent. So I really appreciate that they didn’t cast a bunch of Asian actors in this movie and pretend they were all Chinese, even if it was a little heavy handed at times.
The Ridiculous: I spent a lot of the moving thinking that Yee Jee Tso looked way to young to be playing the father figure, then chalked it up to good skin. But then I googled him and he is only two years older than I am.
Favorite bit – the scene where the Chang family sits around an wraps dumplings. This feels so nostalgic to me, even though I’ve only done it maybe once.

The Royal Nanny – MI5 agent Claire goes undercover as a nanny with the royal family, winning over prankster children and Prince with the heart of gold.
My rom com catnip: Nannies, Prince, British accents.
My Take: The romance component in this one was surprisingly understated to the point of non-existent. The main plot point of this movie revolves around a threat to the king, hence the agent going under cover, and trying to unravel the source of the threats. Also – the main character looks a lot like one of my friends and I spent a lot of the movie just staring at her. I was overall pretty “meh” about this one – there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between the leads and the Royal Family just seemed like any other suburban family with work/life balance problems, only they had body guards and chauffeurs. I wanted something a little more fantasy/magical.
The Ridiculous: The prince falling in love with Claire pretty much based on a single game of charades. Like I said, the romance component of this movie wasn’t great. Also Claire taking down the villain with nothing but an umbrella was pretty silly.
Favorite bit: Greta Sacchi as the lady who runs a Nanny school and who trains Claire. I thought her bits were all very clever and entertaining.

A Christmas Spark – Widowed grandmother goes to visit her daughter in Vermont and gets roped into directing the small town holiday play starring the town’s handsome bachelor.
My rom com catnip: Widows, putting on a show, mature people in love, stars of the 90s, diverse couples
My take: I will admit the number one reason I wanted to watch this was because it stars Jane Seymour and Joe Lando. And lest you think the Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman smoldering couple-ness was a fluke, it was/is not. Their chemistry is so off the chart amazing and their banter is adorable. I have to admit I loved this one. I mean how often do people in their 60s/70s get to star in a holiday rom com. Also – Jane Seymour is ageless and Joe Lando wears striped tights.
The ridiculous: Having a final dress rehearsal where the final monologue isn’t written and then improvising it on the spot on opening night.
Favorite bit: Any scene that involved Jane Seymour and Joe Lando bantering and making eyes at each other.

Steppin’ into the Holidays: Out of work former dance show host Billy returns home for the Holidays and helps dance teacher Rae put on her Holiday Dance show.
My rom com cat nip: Stars of the 90s (Mario Lopez of Saved by the Bell), putting on a show, dance numbers, multicultural family
My Take: This movie was a little meh, mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot of chemistry between the leads. Regardless, I really liked the other characters – Billy’s family, especially his sister, is a lot of fun. For that matter, so is Rae’s sister. Hmmm … this seems to be a movie where the sisters are more interesting than the leads.
The Ridiculous: The duet Billy and Rae dance through the strangely deserted streets of town and the very obvious added stick poking out of the street lamp pole so Billy can grab the stick to swing around the street lamp a la Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Gene Kelly did not need a support stick.
Favorite bit: The Christmas show montage. The original dance show evolves to a show featuring talents of the residents in their small town, a decision inspired by the singing firefighter who helped to fix up the barn where they have their show. There’s even a ventriloquist. It’s kind of hilarious and silly.

The Holiday Sitter: City workaholic bachelor Sam agrees to help his sister out by watching her two kids in the suburbs when the baby their adopting is born early. Out of his depths, Sam enlists his sister’s neighbor Jason to help him out. They like each other.
My rom com cat nip: gay romance, nannies (well, actually a sitter), babies
My Take: I thought this movie was really cute and charming. The Chemistry between Sam and Jason was great – I love soulful stares from across the room and there was a good amount of that. Jason was a little too good to be true, but that didn’t bother me because Sam was such a hot mess. I have to say, as I was googling movie reviews to narrow down what to watch, I came across a few sites that refused to review this movie, calling it “not family friendly” and also taking issue with other movies that have gay couples as supporting characters. It’s so disappointing. I want to be fair minded about this all and respect people’s beliefs, but it’s hard. I mean I’m also watching the World cup in Qatar, so maybe I’m not taking a strong enough stance?
The Ridiculous: Sam’s sister and her husband drive three hours to get the baby they are adopting, and bring home the newborn the day after it is born. Through a snowstorm in Buffalo. I know everyone wants to be home for Christmas, but oof….
Favorite bit: Jason’s dimples. It’s so shallow, but there you go. Also – Jason, the perfect Uncle, makes some amazing looking pancakes shaped like Christmas trees.

A Jolly Good Christmas – David, an American working in London, hires Anji to help him find a Christmas present for his girlfriend.
My rom com cat nip: London, Asian leading lady, interracial romance, British accents
My Take: I thought this one was pretty good, though movies where the leads fall in love whole-heartedly over 24 hours always strain credulity for me. I always think, “Wait… maybe you want to go on a second date or something first?” Of course I’ve never been one to kiss someone on the first date, so… I also liked that this movie was as much about David as it was about Anji. Sometimes these rom com movies tend to be about the heroine’s journey and the man (typically it’s a man) is this perfect cloud that she has to learn to be worthy of.
The Ridiculous: see above. Whirlwind romances are not my thing. Also – I know costume choices are a great way to show character development, but the guy who appears at work in the first scene in a three piece suit, and then in the last scene in a velvet blazer worn over a black t-shirt. I don’t know that I buy that wardrobe development.
Favorite bit: It might be sappy, but Anji’s speech at the climax of the movie where she says, something to the effect of “As a professional shopper I used to think everyone wanted a unique gift, but I’ve learned that everyone wants the same thing… to be loved.” Christmas with a bow right there.

Whew. That’s a lot for half a month. More to come, though, I’m sure.