Tag: family movie night

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school and back to work

Three backpacks ready for school!

We are now into September! It seems like some switch of nature was flipped and starting on the first day of September we’ve been having breezy, cool morning. I would almost call them crisp! And the rest of the days have been warm, but not overbearingly so. I am glad for the shift away from the oppressive heat of this past summer months.

The two big kids started school this week. Starting before Labor Day still seems early to me, a kind of like a false start. And starting the Monday before Labor day certainly makes a long first week, particularly since I don’t believe we have any full weeks of school until October thanks to various holidays and half days.

I was a little nervous about the five year old starting a French Immersion program. It is total immersion – the teacher won’t speak English to the parents in front of the kids and parent volunteers are not allowed to speak English when they volunteer in the classroom. I’m excited to see how it all plays out, even though I have a billion questions in my head about the practicalities and logistics of how my son is going to get through his day. I have to remember that the program has been in place in our county for over 40 years, so I imagine they’re doing something right!

I did teach the five year old to say “les toilettes” before he started, though.

The ten year old’s bus didn’t come to the stop the first day so the Husband had to drive her to school. I’m so glad he took the morning off for the first day of school. I called the bus depot later that day and received a vague answer to my inquiries as to why the bus didn’t show. “The driver knows to stop there now. It will be there tomorrow,” I was told. And it was.

She is starting a new school, which I imagine must be tough to start new in fifth grade, but she seems to be liking it a lot. I certainly debated whether it was a good idea to pull her from her old school, and now I know for sure it was the right thing to do. She looks so much happier coming off the bus at the end of the day than she did last year. I’m kicking myself for not switching schools sooner, but hindsight is 20/20, they say.

With three kids at three different schools, I was a little nervous about morning logistics. The baby needs to be at daycare by 9, the five year old’s bus picks up at 9:06am at a location about a three minute drive away from home, and the ten year old’s bus comes at 9:00am, two blocks from our house. And through good luck and kind people, it’s been going pretty smoothly. We have neighbors whose oldest kid is also starting in the French immersion program, and whose youngest is in the same daycare class as the baby. So every morning the ten year old walks the baby to the neighbors and brings their older kid to our house. The neighbors do drop off and pick up for the two preschoolers. I take the two kindergarteners to the school bus, and the Husband picks them up from the bus stop at the end of the day. It works out well because my work day starts late and the Husband’s work day ends early whereas our neighbors have a more conventional work day so doing the bus run would be harder for them. It’s only been one week, but I’m optimistic that this can be a good long term solution.

So my first child free morning… I felt a little adrift. For three years, I’ve pretty much always had a kid with me when I wasn’t working – aside from my girls’ weekend earlier this year and that day the Husband and I went to New York. So with my kid free time, I ran some errands then decided to go to the local botanical gardens where I read my book for a little bit and had a phone call with my sister in law. Then one of my good friends texted, asking if I needed anything from Costco. And I texted back, “Can I come too?”

So yeah, I spent part of my first child-free morning at Costco. Buying all the snacks. I think there are times when I have to embrace the fact that I am a suburban mom. Mid morning Costco runs are one of those times. On the other hand, I love having errand dates with friends.

Summer at the Botanical Gardens

The last two days of the week I started back at work on a show that I’m very very excited about, Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. It’s a piece I’ve always wanted to work on, but it isn’t really an opera, and it requires a lot of singers and musicians so it’s not something I would have done in the course of my regular opera work. However, the symphony is doing the piece this month, and back in May when I found out my friend was stage managing it, I said, “I’m free in September, if you need an assistant.” And yay! Now I get to work on it. I’ve been listening to the music and the score is so so so good!

Some good things this week:

  • I confirmed dates for the supertitle job that I did last year. I’m really excited about being able to have more work dates to put in my calendar for the 2022-2023 season, plus I really do like doing supertitle work.
  • I found my work ID. I had thought I’d misplaced it but I found it right in time for my new gig. It’s such a silly thing, but finding it made me so happy.
  • I helped the 10 year old do something that I was kind of dreading and didn’t think I would have to do quite yet or be any good at. I’m being vague – it’s her story to tell, honestly, but it was a good bonding moment and I’m glad that we figured it out.
  • I met up with a friend for a walk, and we saw turtles in the pond along the trail! Also – this friend was just in Canada, and I half jokingly had asked her to bring me back wine gums since the baby had finished off the bag that I had brought home from our Montreal trip. Well my friend brought me back three bags! I was so excited.
Hello Turtle.
Happiness!
  • I canned and froze a bunch of peaches. This was also a bit of a loss because I waited a bit too long to can the peaches and some of them had gone bad before I got to them, which made me sad. But I still got seven jars and two trays of August peaches to eat in January.
Peaches to remind me in January what summer tasted like.
  • Dance parties in the kitchen as I clean up from dinner. The ten year old is great at helping wipe down the table and sweep the dining room, but the two littles are less helpful. They do provide some entertainment with their kitchen dance parties. I don’t listen to music enough to curate a cleaning play list, but luckily many other people have and I’ll often just type “cleaning” into the Spotify search function and hit play on whatever play lists come up. Usually it’s something that makes for great dancing:
Such goofy dancers. And the dishes still undone.
  • The Husband and I rarely have the same taste in tv watching, but we found a show to binge together – The Year of the Rabbit. It’s on Britbox, so we signed up for the free week trial just to watch this show, which I had read about on the website FrockFlicks. Year of the Rabbit is a hilarious, bizarre, smart comedy about a trio of Victorian era policemen – well two policeman and one aspiring policewoman who is trying to fight the patriarchy. “That isn’t even a thing,” she is told at one point. It came out in 2019 and there are, sadly, only six episodes. But given the Husband and my terribly track record for finishing series, six episodes was a perfect length for binging. Highly recommend.

And here’s the obligatory first day of school picture:

First Day of School!

We are headed into the last long weekend of the year. Plans and aspirations:
– Farmer’s market
-meal plan for the week. I’m working several nights, so I want to have solid dinner plans in place.
– Closet re-assessment, especially going into work season, figuring what I’m going to wear since nursing tanks and shorts isn’t really work appropriate.
-Order shoes. My current shoe have holes in the toes. I hate shoe shopping, so will probably just place a huge Zappos order and see what works.
-Pool with kids. Closing weekend of our pool so I want to get one more day in
– Renaissance Faire! I haven’t been since before the five year old was born, so I’m really looking forward to this. Huzzah!
-Run? I’m starting back into it now that I’m back at work. Going slow – a 1/4 mile at a time.
– Relax with a book. I like to rotate books, so I have in my current reading pile: Mother Trucker, The Self Driven Child, Boyfriend Material, Tiny Habits, and A Lovely War on audio.
– A little bit of work – I want to organize my score to feel better prepared for rehearsals to start on Monday.
– Order socks and underwear for the kids.
-Bake muffins for snacking next week.

What We Ate: I did clean out the pantry last weekend! I meal planned around some stuff that I wanted to eat up and made a mental note of things to use up in the near future. I gave myself permission to throw away the random ingredients that someone buys – usually from the Asian grocery store – because they they it will make me happy to figure out how to cook it (Good-bye, honey panko crumbs and dried lily root bulbs and five year old dried cranberries brought home from Canada.) And I set up a snack bin for the two big kids to be able to participate in packing their own lunches.

Actually the ten year old has mostly been packing her own lunches for a while, and I wanted to five year old to start doing it as well. It has been pretty hit or miss with him. I’ll make his sandwich and cut up the fruit and cucumber and he will put it all into his lunch box and then add a snack from the snack bin – I guess that is a good start. And then of course, one morning the baby pulled the lunch snack bin out of the pantry and got a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut open and eat a bunch of the snacks. This is why I can’t shower in the mornings.

We’re trying to have more vegan dinners this month and I managed three out of five weekday dinners to be vegan this week (Monday, Tuesay, and Thursday)- which I think is pretty good.

Saturday: Pizza at a birthday pool party.

Sunday: Pizza (made by the Husband) and Movie. Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2. Even though I hadn’t seen the first Guardian of the Galaxy movie, I was able to enjoy the second one without too much confusion. It was a surprisingly affecting movie.

Monday: Tempeh Arugula Sandwiches from Bad Manner’s Brave New World cookbook – I have the cookbook, but you can find the recipe here. These sandwiches were really good, though they involved a bit of prep – the tempeh had to be marinated and cooked ahead of time and so did the cashew cheese. But once I had all the elements of the sandwich, it was a pretty quick meal. I have to say, it was my first time making cashew cheese, and though I wouldn’t really call it cheese, it was certainly delicious and the leftovers made a great dip for tortilla chips.

Tuesday: Eggplant Pasta from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean. I also added zucchini because we had some to use up from last week.

Wednesday: Couscous with Tomatoes and Shrimp. The Husband was out that night, so I made shrimp, which he doesn’t usually care for. I used up half a package of couscous that had been lingering in the pantry. Recipe from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean.

Thursday: Instant Pot Black-eye Pea and Spinach curry from InstantPot Indian, eaten with naan. This was another of the pantry inspired meals. I was working this day so I wanted to make something for the family to eat in case I didn’t get home in time for dinner. The two littles pretty much ate the naan, but everyone else liked this a lot. I thought that bag of naan from Costco would last us for a few meals. I was wrong. We ate the whole bag.

Friday: Take out sandwiches enjoyed while chatting with friends and listening to music at the local golf courses’ Friday night music concerts.

Home and everyday adventures.

Incredibly beautiful blue sky

We’ve just come home from our summer road trip to Montreal. It was a wonderful time, and now I’m plunged into a week of unpacking/ school prep/ union negotiations/ baby’s first day (ever!) of daycare. I have trip recaps coming from our road trip…and I have to finish the Shenandoah recaps too. Whew. It feels like there was a lot of travel there, but I think we’ve just packed two trips into the end of the summer because the 10 year old’s swim team schedule took up much of June and July.

The weeks before we went to Montreal felt really packed. I had the two little kids with me for one week and then all three with me the next week. I had all sorts of fun plans for the week with the three kids, but then I got sick. Not COVID sick, thankfully, but aches, pains, sore throat, persistent cough, and low energy. And then at the end of the week, I got pink eye. I felt so sad to have to cancel the fun family plans that we had, but I think the kids were just as happy to hunker on the couch with me and binge watch Ugly Betty. (A show that I never watched when it was on air, because I didn’t have a tv then, but is really delightful.) Also, I discovered that HBO co-produced a Chinese version of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries called Miss S. It is set in 1930s Shanghai, so I also watched that to brush up on my Chinese and scratch the Miss Fisher itch. Miss S, was better at the brushing up than at the scratching of the itch. I think there are some cultural differences that make the Chinese version feel a little more superficial and melodramatic than the original. The costumes and the people, however, are just as gorgeous.

At any rate, before I got sick, we still managed to squeeze in some fun adventures with the kids. I knew we were going on a big trip, so I didn’t feel like I had to get too ambitious, and at the same time, I knew that getting the kids out of the house was going to be important to everyone’s well being. It turns out there are so many little adventures to have near home that require very little prep. Either they fit in a morning and we can be home for a late lunch, or I throw together a simple lunch (PB&J sandwiches, cucumbers, fruit, and some trail mix or cookies) and take it with.

Patapscoe State Park and A Day playing in the River then stop at Spicknall’s Farm Stand – I think this is one of my favorite day trips during the weekday. The river is always shady and quiet, there aren’t a lot of people. There is a fun bridge to cross over to get to the river, and the river is nice and shallow and cool. We were dog sitting the day we went, and I think we all had a very relaxing day. We spent a few hours at the river and then stopped at the playground at the park before heading home. On the way home we picked up some produce from Spicknall’s farm stand – peaches, melons, squash, eggplant, corn, and tomatoes. I’m always so surprised by how inexpensive the summer produce is when you get out of the city/suburbs.

Library for morning story time then books and a park – There is a children’s library near us that has the best story times. The librarian always does some songs and fingerplay activities as well as reads the funniest books in the funniest voices. This library is just for children so inside is all picture books and toys. It makes for an easy outing – 9:30am story time, then inside the library for an hour or so, then we walk to the park ten minutes away to play for a while. Typically there is little bakery nearby that we will walk to to get a treat, but it was closed the day we were at the library. So the kids immediately decided that we would just have to come back for storytime/library/park again. The baby has taken to saying, “I want to go back there tomorrow!” anytime we do something she likes and then have to leave.

Glen Echo Park for Carousel Rides and the Aquarium – We got wristbands to ride the carousel all day, but turns out the five year old was not as enamored of carousels as the baby. The baby would probably be happy to ride it all day. The five year old could only be convinced to ride three times. We also got tickets to to go to the aquarium. It’s a small affair – just one room of tanks, mostly focusing on the sea life of the Chesapeake Bay. Even still, we spent about an hour there. There was also a touch tank with horseshoe crabs and other creatures. And then outside the aquarium, a big sand pit to play in. We only did a half day at Glen Echo, but next time, I might also get tickets for the puppet show and stay longer.

carousel riders
Sea horse at the aquarium

The National Building Museum – With so many free museums in DC, it is easy for this one to fall off my radar because it does charge admission, but it is worth it. It is actually a really great museum for kids, though, and there are some really neat exhibits about architecture and building. Every summer they do a huge installation exhibit in their great hall – one year they converted the space into a huge lawn with fake grass and hammocks, one year it was a beach. This year, in a joint venture with a theatre company, they installed a theatre – Playhouse, they call it. During the evening the theatre company has been performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I thought it would be fun to go see the space and this theatre. We missed the tour so couldn’t go backstage, but we could look at the space from the audience and from above. The Building Museum also has a great Play/Work/Build room where kids can build with big and little foam blocks. There was also an interactive/ Virtual reality Notre Dame exhibit where you got a tablet and walked into a room with pictures of Notre Dame, and you could point the tablet at the QR code on the pictures and get at 360 degree view of what it was like when Notre Dame was being built. Pretty cool, and very high tech. There were a couple other exhibits that we didn’t get to see, so I do want to go back. We took the metro down, which always makes things seem like an even bigger adventure.

Play, Work, Build Room
on the steps of the theatre
Building Museum – Indiana University well represented.

Two Dollar Tuesdays at the Regal Movie Theatre – This was one of the outings I took the kids on when I was still feeling run down, but not so run down that I wanted to stay home since we had been home for two days straight already. Regal Theatres does $2 Tuesday matinees during the summer of older movies, so I took the kids to see the third How to Train Your Dragon movie. (It was either that or Trolls.) After parking, popcorn, and soda it really wasn’t as frugal an adventure as I had thought it would be, to be honest. Yet, the movie was pretty good, and it was the baby’s first time at a movie theatre. The theatre was a little more crowded than I had thought – when I reserved my tickets the theatre only had a handful of seats occupied, but when we got there there were several summer camp groups. Oh well… I feel like it still felt like a classic summer adventure – popcorn and Sprite and a movie in an chilly air conditioned theatre on a hot hot day. I had a good time.

Next time, I’m only getting one popcorn for them all to share!

And of course – parks, playgrounds, and playdates.

Sibling slide races.

Some other thoughts that came into my life in that past little while:

-I love Carolyn Hax’s advice column, and there were two things she wrote recently that really struck me – so much so that I screen shot them and saved them to my phone:

I think I’ve been struggling lately with expectations – of myself, of my kids, of my husband, of my work. Hax also had one column where she said that “All anger and resentment lie in the gap between expectation and reality.” It may sound defeatist to stop expecting change, yet I think there is a fine line between giving up your expectation that someone/something will change and being realistic about the future and acting accordingly. There are so many things, I think “Oh if only it were this way or that way, it would be better!” And perhaps I need to shift to accepting these things and seeing them for what they are and work with that.

– Perhaps in that same vein of expectations and adjusting, this quote via swissmiss, is so very true, I think:

-I thought this Wordle especially ironic as I solved it at the park while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes:

On that note – I’ve been shifting my Wordle strategy lately. When I started, I would try to build off the previous word I played and try to solve in as few steps as possible, but lately I’ve been trying to fully suss out all the letters before guessing the word – so I try to play as many letters as possible in the first three lines. Sometimes this method is more efficient, but it always pains me a little to play a word that I know will be wrong in the hopes of discovering more letters. There’s something a little poignantly sacrificial about that tactic. Well… any other Wordle tactics I should try?

-One day, when I was sick and hunkering on the couch in the basement, the Husband brought home take out for dinner. In anticipation of his arrival, I sent the kids upstairs to set the table. They were soon back, claiming to have accomplished the task. Skeptical, I sent the five year old up with my phone. “Take a picture for me!” I said. And he did:

Table set!

I don’t know why this picture delights me so much, but it does.

-The picture at the top of this post is just a picture of the sky. It’s been such a beautiful shade of blue these first few weeks of August. It’s not quite captured in the picture, but I wanted to remember that such a blue exists.

What We Ate, the pre-vacation, minimal shopping version:

Monday: Happy Hour with my mom’s group so I had nachos at the local brewery.

Tuesday: Tomato and Corn Tart and Salad. The tart is loosely based on this recipe. I had picked up tomatoes and corn from the market and wanted to make the full recipe, but the way the day went, I didn’t have time to make the cornmeal crust, so I used puff pastry. I’ve decided frozen puff pastry is a freezer staple that allows me to instantly pull off a fancy-ish dinner. Throw some sauteed veggies in a pastry crust with some cheese and egg. Bake. An easy elegant dinner in less than 45 mins.

Wednesday: eggplant snow peas stir fry – kitchen sink kind of dinner to use up some veggies in the fridge.

Thursday: Grilled sausage, corn and hotdogs with bagged Caesar Salad and cut up melon. We had a friend over for dinner and grilling is always the perfect easy meal for impromptu casual dinner with friends.

Friday: Pizza and Thor

Saturday: Farro and Snap Pea Salad from Dinner Illustrated. I was trying to use up some veggies and happened to have everything to make this salad.

Sunday: Dumplings and green beans. One of our go-to simple weekend dinners.

Monday: Spaghetti and Meatballs. A request from the kids. I used the InstantPot meatball recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners – so easy.

Tuesday: Take out Burgers and fries.

Wednesday: Chilaquiles, sort of. Another kitchen sink meal (can you tell I was trying to eat down the fridge before we left on vacation?). I wanted to do something to use up the package of corn tortillas in the fridge and the Husband had grown some corn in the garden that he wanted us to eat. There was a recipe from Bare Minimum Dinners for chilaquiles which was pretty much just salsa and tortilla chips and eggs. So I fried up all the corn tortillas – they turned out really really tasty and we almost ate them all on their own. Then I looked in the fridge and turns out we were out of salsa, so I dumped canned tomatoes, onion, and peppers in a skillet, added a can of black beans and the corn and cracked some eggs into the whole concoction to poach. It was kind of a combination of chilaquiles and shakshuka.

Thursday: Tortellini and red sauce and Alfredo sauce. I was trying to use up some cream, hence the Alfredo sauce. But then I realized I could actually just freeze the cream and use it when I got back. The Alfredo sauce was pretty tasty, though.

Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer delights

Summer morning walk in the woods. So hot, but not bad in the shade.

I just spent an hour and a half ordering backpacks for the two bigger kids, which clearly is the start of fall/ end of summer. I also threw in a couple of matching skorts for the ten year old and the baby because I was pretty close to free shipping and the two girls love to wear matching clothes and I think it’s super cute when they do. Of course ordering a couple back packs should not take 90 minutes, but when you have kids hanging out with you giving opinions and generally wrecking havoc and unloading shelves, it always takes more time than one would think.

And so onward to the last month of summer. The five year old had his last day of pre-school last week (sob!), and still he has been asking, “Is today a go to school day?”

“No,” I tell him. “Remember, you don’t have to go to school again until you start kindergarten at the end of the month.” And my heart constricts a little because how is it possible that my little guy is old enough to start school somewhere where I don’t get to walk him to the door and sign him in everyday, where he doesn’t get to nap and where he’ll be expected to go to the bathroom on his own? So many things that I wonder if he is ready for it… but no way better to be ready than to actually do it, I guess. In my head he seems so much smaller than the ten year old was when she started kindergarten, but I think he will always be smaller than her in my mind.

We are still on the fence as to where he should go to kindergarten. Our school district offers several immersion programs, the spots available via a lottery system in K and 1st. The five year old was offered a spot in the French Immersion program, so we are now trying to decide whether to send him there or to send him to our home school, where the ten year old will be come fall. (The ten year old was also in a Mandarin immersion program for several years, but this past year we realized it wasn’t the best fit for her, so she is returning to our home school for one last year before middle school. The five year old was offered a place in the Mandarin immersion but we couldn’t see sending him to a program that we just pulled our oldest child out of.)

It is truly a situation where the choice is hard because there are no bad choices, I don’t think. We have friends in the French Immersion and friends at our home school and both schools are equally beloved. When we first had the choice, I thought we would take our time to decide, thinking that a little bit of time might help us sort through the choices. But… it has been almost two months and, really, giving ourselves more time to choose is just… giving us more time to choose. Neither school has emerged as the clear choice. I think, that perhaps, as in many things, there is never a best choice, there is just a choice, and how we move forward from that.

Anyhow – it’s been a couple weeks of slight shifts and transitions. The five year old had his last days of preschool/daycare and will be home doing “Mommy Camp” until school starts at the end of August. The ten year old finished up county camp. She has one week of basketball camp and then will also be joining “Mommy Camp”.

Swim Team has also finished up – I am so proud of how the ten year old did this season. The last race of the season, Divisionals, she was only slated to swim one race (25m backstroke), but at the last minute someone got sick so she also swam the first leg of the freestyle relay. At the end of season party, the ten year old received one of the Coaches’ Choice Awards. It’s the award for the swimmers who aren’t necessarily the fastest, but who have great team spirit and a positive attitude and show up and work hard. In truth, these qualities are the main reason why I encourage her to do activities and it was so exciting to see her get recognized for being such a great person. I’m a little sad swim team is over for the summer – as much work as it was to get the kids to the pool five days a week, it was really fun to watch the kids swim and work so hard to get better and the every-day-at-the-pool routine was nice to have.

7am swim meet
Take your mark
Coaches’ Choice!

We had a camping trip, and prepping for that occupied much of my brain, if not my time. (More camping recaps to come.)

So that’s what’s been on my mind lately. But some of the fun things we’ve done the past few weeks:

  • One day the ten year old’s camp was closed because it was Election Day and her camp location was a polling center. So I took the ten year old and the baby to ClimbZone, an indoor climbing center where instead of the typical climbing walls one would find in a climbing gym, the climbing structures are in all sorts of fun shapes and structures – like bookshelves, Mount Rushmore, enormous blocks, the Empire State Building… It was a great way to spend a hot afternoon. The baby is already asking to go back.
Climbing sisters
  • We had dinner one night with some friends, and as we were sitting chatting at the dinner table, I noticed some of those acrylic press on nails. On a whim, I put one sparkly gold nail on my middle finger, and then found that I couldn’t get it off. So I went through the next couple of days with this whimsical bit of sparkle on my finger, and it made me laugh at how ridiculous it was… everything feels so much more glamourous with a shiny gold nail…. driving carpool, pushing kids on the playground, walking the dog….
Life is so much glamourous with sparkly gold nails. Or a single sparkly gold nail.
  • We went to another concert on the lawn at our local concert hall. I think one of my favorite things, aside from the music – Charm City Junction, a roots/bluegrass band – is that the location is perfect for soaking up golden sun set rays. The music was a lot of fun, and at one point, one of the musicians pulled out a gourd banjo and I was fascinated. Also particularly fun this time is that we struck up a conversation with the people sitting behind us and turns out they are contra-dancers. Since the Husband and I met while contra-dancing, we fell into a lovely friendly conversation with these strangers about the dance community. Then they pointed to a bunch of people in front of us: “Those folks are contra-dancers too.” And it turns out they were friends of the Husband from the days when he was a hardcore contra-dancer. Talking to the couple, made me realize how much fun we used to have contra-dancing and what a big part of our lives it used to be. I don’t know that we are quite ready to go back dancing with the current state of the COVID world, but hopefully some day.
Golden hour light and good music.
  • The Husband took a day off work and we went to the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibit by photographer Robert Adams. I was unfamiliar with him and his work, and I really liked seeing a large number of his photographs in one place so I could see the scope of what he did. Some of the things that stood out to me in the exhibit:

This Adams’ quote about silence. One often thinks of silence as an auditory thing, but Adams strove to capture silence in his pictures – both the silence of beauty and promise and the silence of destruction.

East from Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder County, Colorado

This photograph. When I first saw it, I thought it was a picture of a lake or the ocean seen from a mountain top. When I read the placard, I discovered that it was actually the suburban sprawl of Boulder beyond those trees. How strikingly similar they look. I spent ten years working in Colorado and many of Adams’ pictures reminded me of my time there – how bright it was, and how stark. Also, seeing the pictures during a heat wave, many of his photographs seemed to radiate heat, with their bareness and light, even though they were taken in the winter.

Concrete and Ice, Missouri River, Clay County South Dakota

This photo which juxtaposes the concrete blocks with the similarly solid ice. It was in pictures like this where I could really see what he meant by photographing silence.

Then no visit to the National Gallery of Art is complete without visiting the big blue rooster on the roof, and the Calder room next to the roof entrance:

I always feel so lucky that we live a short Metro ride from so many great museums. We can have a half day trip to see an exhibit and not feel like we need to see everything since it is easy enough to come back. I find that with museums, I much prefer this easier, more reflective pace.

  • I thought this interesting:

It’s a picture of the back of the building where I work. I’ve never actually seen it from this view before because there was another building that buts up pretty close to it, and the front of the building looks rather like the right side seen in the picture – very utilitarian and square. But they are doing some construction and have torn the building behind us down and the other day when I walked by, I was struck by how I’ve worked in this building for almost twenty years and never realized what lovely period architectural details the building had. There is something so delightfully surprising about seeing these details revealed. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something…. not sure what. I’m going to have to store this moment in my mental “metaphors to be used” file.

  • And one oops – The two older kids got their COVID booster shots, and I thought I’d save time and drop off the school medical forms for the baby as well. I handed the forms to the receptionist and she looks us up. “We can’t fill out these forms because she’s not up to date on her well visits,” I’m told. Wait what?!? Turns out I completely forgot to schedule the baby for her 2.5 year well child visit. Which should have happened five months ago. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I really felt foolish. Oops. So the appointment was scheduled for the following week, which would put her 2.5 year visit about a month before her 3 year old well visit. Not catastrophic by any means, but between this and double booking the ten year old for camp, I feel like I’m losing track of threads. In a lot of ways, life is a lot easier when I’m working and someone hands me a schedule everyday with where I need to be and what I’m supposed to be doing.

What We Ate:

Saturday- dumplings and green beans

Sunday- hotdogs and corn on the grill. Bundled up and taken to be eaten at the pool.

Monday- Smashed Zucchini with chickpeas and peanuts, New York Times recipe. I had a bunch of zucchini to use up, and this salad sounded interesting – the zucchini is eaten raw, just salted, almost like cucumber. I think I liked this more than the rest of the family.

Tuesday- BLTs. I over cooked the bacon. I like my bacon still slightly chewy, but the rest of the family likes it crisp.

Wednesday- take out bahn mi sandwiches and lawn concert – Charm City Junction.

Thursday- Chicken tacos from Toco Loco by Jonas Cramby. Love making tacos – if I cook the meat ahead of time, or in the InstantPot, the meal comes together so quickly when I get home – heat tortillas on the grill, make an easy cabbage salad (chop cabbage, two big pinches of salt, juice of one lime or red wine vinegar. Cilantro if I’m feeling fancy.), slice some avocados and put it all on the table. Some pickled onions if I have them. And then a meal that everyone can assemble as they wish. I feel like the ratio of tastiness to work is pretty high.

Friday – sesame noodles from Bad Manners cookbook for swim team potluck. The theme was Pasta dinner, and I was a little self conscious about bringing an Asian style noodle dish, but people still ate it, so I guess it was okay.

Saturday – Dinner at friend’s house – they grilled.

Sunday – Swim Team award’s banquet. Pizza and cake.

Monday – Pizza and Sneakerella, a Cinderella with a twist story. I thought it was a lot of fun, and it was neat to see a Cinderella movie where Cinderella was a boy.

Tuesday – Eggplant noodle salad from the Greens Cookbook.

Wednesday – Zucchini Boats with ground turkey. This recipe from Dad with a Pan is my go to recipe when I have zucchini. It’s so easy to put together and really tasty.

Hope your summer is unfolding with delights and adventures!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer week at home

Defense wins championships.

It’s been a nice chill, but full weekend at home. Saturday it rained all day – we had had a pool party birthday party scheduled but that got moved to Sunday because of the rain. I ended up signing up the ten year old for a basketball clinic at the rec center called “Hoops and Scoops” which involved basketball drills and ice cream. It was run by the local police department and Dick’s Sporting Goods donated basketballs. While the Husband took the ten year old to the clinic, I took the five year old to buy new shoes. Then we went back to the rec center to watched the ten year old play and also browse some books at the Library and Used Bookstore attached to the rec center.

Today there were two birthday parties, one of which was at a pool. The five year old was really excited to check out this pool because it has more features than our pool. In fact, we used to take swim lessons at the pool before the pandemic since it was walking distance from our first house. After a pool filled afternoon, I came home to find the Husband has set up the kiddie pool and the toddler was playing in it – we had a relaxing hour of sitting on the back patio watching the kids splash while reading books and eating pretzels. While I love the riches of activities that summer brings, I also love moments of sitting in the sunshine with a book. (I’m currently reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and it’s is so devastatingly good. I’m not one to cry over a book but this one has me pretty close to tears.)

The other “must do” item on my weekend to do list was to have the kids clean out the car. We are three weeks into summer vacation, and between camp and swim lessons at one pool and swim team at another and playdates for the toddler, I feel like we are even more busy than during the school year. There has been a lot of time spent shuttling kids around in the car, and the expected detritus accumulating – socks and random articles of clothing from kids changing in moving vehicles so as not to be late for swim practice, wrappers from all the snacks because dinner won’t be for a while, random art projects and books and stuffed animals and the “just in case” rain coats, reusable grocery bags, all the nature things that the toddler insists on bringing home, masks… so many masks, receipts. The mess and clutter was getting to me, so inspired by Kae’s blog post on kids’ chores, I decided that since the kids helped me make the mess, they should help clean out the car. It took probably longer than it should have but really only took about an hour and a half, so it’s nice to have that barometer for myself the next time I feel overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning out the car. And even though we didn’t vacuum the car because the rain made running electricity a bad idea, I did have the kids wipe things down with baby wipes and do the crevices with a q-tip soaked in Dawn and vinegar. I have to say, it’s made getting in the car so much less stressful. I’m sure hedonistic adaptation will mean that the calm that my clean car induces will eventually become a baseline rather than a high, but I’m lgoing to try to remember to lean into it for now.

I think he liked sitting in the front seat!

Other things this week:

– Wednesday’s swim meet got rained out spectacularly. How ironic that at 5:30pm we were commenting about the heat and humidity and by 7:00pm, we were drenched and chilled by a dry cool air. They initially did not call off the meet because it was not thundering, but when it was raining so hard we couldn’t see the bottom of the pool, they held for a little while and a few minutes later we were back at it. The second time the heavens opened up, around 8:30p, though, it was decided that we were done for the evening even though there were three events still to race. Watching the clouds start to gather on the horizon, and seeing the rain streaming from those clouds a couple miles away was mesmerizing to me. The ten year old swam two of her three events, and managed to drop a bunch of time on her freestyle, so I was super happy for her about that. She placed second in that race, which was the highest she’s ever placed.

– This article in the New York Times about how some theatres are making systematic and fundamental changes in order to pay their staff a living wage. It hit particularly close this week as we are in the midst of union negotiations, of which I can’t say anything, even though it has been taking up a big chunk of my time and attention these days. Suffice to say, I love my job and I also understand the staggering attrition rate in my field of late. Also – I’m not on the substack bandwagon but I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in the inner workings of theatre – it’s brilliant combination of gossipy and insightful.

– Saturday, the rain let up enough for me to run – which I haven’t done since I was working and my parents were watching the baby. I only managed to run a half mile and walked the other mile, but it’s something and it felt really good to do it. In the evening, we went for a family evening walk and saw some lovely things:

The picture on the right is a kind of wood ear fungus. I normally get a little squeamish around fungus (more so in the wake of reading Mexican Gothic.), but this fungus practically looked like a flower.

– One day this week, I ran errands around town with the toddler and we missed lunch and it was hot, so I (of course) decided to treat myself to a boba tea. I discovered a new to me boba place that also served onigiri, the Japanese rice balls that are filled with a savory (or sweet, but I prefer savory) filling and wrapped in nori. I was really delighted to see they had onigiri because you don’t see it a lot and my attempts to make it have always failed. It was the perfect pit stop for a mid afternoon re-fuel.

baby with onigiri!

– My other food related discovery this week, came via the tv show Younger, which I binged one night when the toddler would not go to bed except then proceeded to climb on my lap as I sat on the couch and she fell asleep. Younger is one of those shows I watch without the Husband – I love the soapy fluffiness about it and the very earnest people – there are no real villains here. Anyhow in one episode a character is asked the secret to her grilled cheese and she says that she uses mayonnaise instead of butter (which I think is a pretty common adaptation), but then… and here’s the best part… she sprinkles a layer of cheese on top of the mayo so that when the sandwich is put on the griddle, the cheese melts and cooks and creates a crispy cheesy crust on the sandwich. OMG. My mind was blown by the simple brilliance of how to improve a simple grilled cheese sandwich and I had to try it. It is pretty tasty. And really nice to look at too:

toddler lunch. Though I may have eaten some of that sandwich.

– A tool I’ve been constantly using lately – Photo editor:

With the kids in separate camps and swimming at separate times, I often don’t get a chance to talk daily after school logistics with the Husband. So I’ve taken to sending him a photo of important information sometimes. Like this week, I had made a smoothie for the 5 year old to have before swim and it was easier just to snap the picture and use the “Edit” feature to notate the picture so the Husband knows 1) where the swim bag is, and 2) where the 5 year old’s snack is. I’ve also taken pictures of marinating meat in the fridge so that know where to find it when he gets home. Picture worth a thousand words, indeed.

What we Ate:

Saturday: Pasta with red sauce and meatballs.

Sunday: can’t remember? Probably leftovers.

Monday: Fourth of July – grilled: Soy Ginger Salmon, Sausage, Corn, Shrimp, and Eggplant on the grill (to go into this salad), Watermelon and popsicles for dessert

Tuesday: Lemongrass Ginger Tofu and Sesame Edamame Udon noodles. The Husband bought me the latest Bad Manners Cookbook and everything I’ve made out of this vegan cookbook has been pretty good. Except the Zucchini Bundt Cake, but that was because I used waaaay too much squash and it ended up being too moist to bake even though it was in the oven for ninety minutes.

Wednesday: Swim meet – Leftover sausages from Monday.

Thursday: Korean Tacos from Dinner Illustrated. The ten year old calls this Buffalo Tacos because it is made with spicy gochujang.

Friday: Pizza (the Husband made) and Snoopy.

Saturday: Meatball Tortellini Soup made in the InstantPot since the meatballs were still frozen. I kind of just made this up, but it turned out really well – Sautéed diced onions and garlic in the Instant Pot, dump in frozen meatballs and brown them slightly, add the leftovers of a carton of chicken broth, a frozen cube of pesto, a can of low salt diced tomatoes, and then enough water to cover. Pressure cook on high for 7 minutes (actually was longer than that because I forgot to put the silicone ring in…. wump wump.) When finished cooking, quick release pressure, stir in frozen tortellini and pressure cook for 2 minutes on high.

Sunday: Leftovers for dinner. There was an article in the Washington Post recently about Fending for Dinner, and the New Yorker article that inspired the Post, which I thought delightful. I often fend for lunch and we usually do it once a week for dinner, this opening of the fridge and making a meal of the contents. We also call it “cleaning out the fridge dinner.” The New Yorker column had some great names for this kind of meal, one of my favorite being the Quebecoise term touski as in “tout ce qui reste” – all the is left.

Weekly recap + what we ate: tech and Mother’s Day

Stage Right Prop Table

It’s half way through tech week, and it’s been a particularly hard one. The show is on the large side – there’s ninety performers onstage, a gazillion props and costumes, and, the realities of doing theatre in a world that is very much still in a pandemic, people are constantly in and out on five day isolations or ten day isolations. Precautions are being taken, but … life, you know. I’m feeling constantly like I’m playing catch up, barely getting people onstage in time with the right prop and often in the wrong costume. It will get better and we will have a great show, but everything feels hard right now. As I keep saying when things don’t go right – everyone needs rehearsal. The singers get three weeks to figure out the show and for some reason everyone expects the crew to get it right the first time. But they need a chance to figure things out too and some shows are easier to figure out than others.

It’s my first time back in this particular theatre in over two years. Strange to think about. The crew is mostly familiar, but everyone has a wary air of tiredness, caution, and welcome.

Sunday was Mother’s Day. And a day off. I think if I’d had time to think about it, what I really wanted for Mother’s Day would have been three hours alone to catch up on bills and other computer tasks. And also to deal with the growing mountain that is my “floordrobe”.

Actually it’s more like a “bench-drobe”. Coming home after midnight, when everyone is asleep means that I don’t want to turn on the lights in the bedroom for fear of waking the Husband. So I fumble around in the dark to get into my pjs, shedding that day’s clothes onto the bench at the foot of the bed, and fall into bed. Inevitably it leads to a mountain of clothes, a week’s worth in a pile on the bench , spilling on to the floor. I could pretend that when I am not working til past midnight I carefully and thoughtfully hang up my clothes, or put them in the hamper, but truth… when I’m not working til midnight the pile is still there, but usually only three days worth.

A lot gets said these days about self care, but for me I think a big part of self care is tackling the looming things so I don’t stress about them. There is a passage in the novel Fleishman is in Trouble where the newly divorced main character’s therapist tells him to buy nice curtains for his new apartment, telling him to think of it as an act of self care. And Fleishman remarks that self care isn’t spending his money on new curtains, it’s saving his money so that he can move into a less crappy apartment. I think of this a lot when the question of “self care” comes up. I find that it’s easy to find twenty minutes for yoga or a run or to sit and read a book, but it’s harder to find the energy to tackle the things that really would make life better. Like figuring out summer camp for the ten year old (still not done yet!), squaring away the bills for the rental house. Buying pants.

This last is a big one. I came out of the pandemic without black pants that fit. Which is problematic when a large chunk of my job requires me to move around in the dark wearing black clothes. The last few shows I just pulled out my old maternity pants. Which was fine because I was stage managing so I pretty much stood i once place and my headset was attached to my console. Now that I’m Assistant Stage Managing, I need pants with a firm waistband so I can clip my flashlight and headset belt pack to a belt. Yoga pants do not serve this purpose. Post pandemic stage manager woes.

Anyhow, back to Mother’s Day…despite my desire for some life admin time, it seemed to me, that shutting myself in my room and leaving the Husband on child duty after he’s been solo parenting in the evening for two weeks was not the nice thing to do, Mother’s Day or not. So I said I would be happy getting some tasty food, going on a walk, and not having to think too hard about dinner.

And we did indeed do all that. Everyone let me sleep in until almost ten and there were pancakes waiting when I woke up. Sleeping til ten sounds positively indulgent but when I figured I didn’t get home from rehearsal until 2am the night before, 2:30am- 10am is actually a regular night’s sleep.

There was a card and a gift bag waiting for me. Inside the bag were a bag of almond flour and a package of lychee gummies. My reaction was a combination of “Huh… ooookay” and “They know me so well!” And then there was this priceless card:

I had originally wanted to give the Husband the day off from kid duty, but he insisted since it was Mother’s Day, we should do some family things. So we took the five year old to Sunday language class, then with the other two kids in the car we went for fun drinks and snacks at a new-to-us Cuban place. Empanadas and plantain chips for the win!

When the five year old was done language class, we went for a walk on the trails surrounding one of the local nature centers. We wandered down by the stream and practiced skipping rocks. I managed to skip one three times! I’d never been really good at it, but the Husband gave me some tips and I think I sort of got the hang of it. Then we ordered Indian food for takeout.

After dinner the Ten year old offered to clean up so the Husband and I were going to take some time to discuss all the life things that we hadn’t had a chance to connect about since we hadn’t really hd any waking hours together. But I fell asleep on the couch and that was the end of things for me. I think it was 7:30pm. But, we did check off all the Mother’s Day wishes on my list, so I think I will call that a win.

Some things that made the week better:

  • A Haiku for this week:

    April turns to May.
    Spring teeters on summer’s brink.
    Rain and sun and green.
  • Some time during the pandemic, our rehearsal rooms had larger windows put it, and the resulting flood of light is quite wonderful. During evening rehearsals, when we have almost ninety people in the room trying to stage a very busy village square type scene, I can look out the window and take a moment to savor the pink and orange sunset. I snapped this picture the other day of the late afternoon transforming my little corner of the rehearsal hall into some kind of of Dutch still life.
  • The toddler has started saying, “I love you, mom.” That makes me feel pretty good. She also, an independent soul, has developed her own “ism” where whenever she wants to do something, she says, “I want to do it by my own!”. I love it too much to try to correct her.
  • Also – irritating, but makes me laugh – the toddler getting ahold of my phone and filling my photo roll like this:
View from a toddler.
  • Scheduled a happy hour with the mom’s from my mom’s group. Something to look forward to.
  • Been baking some pretty good loaves of sourdough bread, using this no-knead recipe. My starter seems to have gotten back on it’s feet, after being somewhat lackluster for much of the spring. This recipe, is pretty hands off and each step fits easily into the windows of time when I’m home.
  • Overnight camping with some friends. The time outdoors was nice, and even though sleeping in a tent with a toddler is not restful – six o’clock in the morning she wakes me up with yelling, “It’s too bright!!” – there is something peaceful about being surrounded by dew and bird calls first thing in the morning.
morning view from the tent.
  • Re-discovering the tv show Pushing Daisies – whimsical, romantic, funny and visually stunning, I remember watching this series about a pie maker who can wake the dead when it first came out. The Husband and I have started watching it again, fifteen years after it originally aired. We watch one episode at a time, knowing that there are only two season and wanting to prolong the delight of watching it.
  • Discovering another lovely tv show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. This show out of Australia and based on a series of books is also great fun and super stylish. Some days when I work late, I tell the Husband to leave the kitchen for me to clean up. Partly I’m being nice, but also partly I want an excuse to watch an episode of this show, which I stream while I do the washing up.
  • Then of course, my co-workers who make me laugh even when we are literally in horse shit.

What We Ate:

Saturday: I was working, but this was the night the Husband took the kids camping with some friends. I showed up at the campground after work and had a couple sandwiches and ‘smores for dinner. I think everyone else had hot dogs and burgers.

Sunday: Leftovers.

Monday: The Husband made a tofu stir fry.

Tuesday: Not quite sure what everyone ate. It might have been Thai take-out.

Wednesday: Black Beans, made in the InstantPot before I went to work. Eaten with tortillas and pickled onions.

Thursday: Chicken tortilla soup. Also made in the InstantPot. Recipe from America’s Test Kitchen

Friday: Pizza and Hercules. I was at work.

Saturday: I think the family got take out. I ate leftovers at work.

Sunday: Mother’s Day Indian Food take out.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Spring Break

Contemplating the Hirshhorn Museum.

My brother’s family was in town the last week of March for their Spring break. It had been almost two and a half years since we saw them in person- last time they were here, the baby was eight weeks old. Of course there have been many video calls since them, but seeing them in person was pretty great.

I feel so lucky that we live somewhere where there is a wealth of things to see and do, and most of it is free. One thing my brother and sister-in-law really wanted to see was the new Yayoi Kasuma exhibit at the Hirshhorn, the contemporary and modern art museum on the Mall. I had missed the last Kasuma exhibit when it was here, so I was eager to go this time, even though it meant lining up at 9:00am for tickets on a Sunday. Fortunately, my brother and his In-laws went down on the early side to get in line and my sister-in-law, my mom, and I followed with the kids at a more reasonable hour.

I will admit the only work of Kasuma I had been familiar with were pictures of her pumpkins. The current exhibit featured two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, but first up was a pumpkin:

I was unprepared for how the pumpkin took up so much space and how looming it would feel in its dotted room. I also love how the precision of the dots contrast with the more organic curves of the pumpkin.

The Infinity Mirror Rooms were another kind of overwhelming and immersive experience. These are rooms where the walls are made of mirrors so they seem to extend without limits. There was a time limit on how long each museum patron could be in the room – 30 seconds for the first room and 60 for the second. I think there is something ironically claustrophobic about being in a room that seems to stretch for infinity. The first room featured all these stuffed protuberances that came out of the ground like a field of polka dotted cacti. It was kind of whimsical and fun.

The second room featured polka dot lanterns aglow in a dark mirrored room. This room reminded me a little of being out on Hallowe’en, and how disembodied one can feel in the dark, even when surrounded by lighted objects. (I’m sure there’s some kind of metaphor for life in that somewhere…)

After we went through the Kasuma exhibit, we also went to see the Laurie Anderson exhibit. The exhibit was a fascinating blend of sound, film, and visual images. There was one piece that featured projections of people sharpening knives, the sound almost symphonic. There was also several rooms with words and pithy thoughts scrawled, graffiti like, all over the walls and floors. Here were a few of my favorites:

good to remember…

I find the Hirshhorn rather overwhelming to visit, to be honest. In think contemporary art requires a lot of mental bandwidth from me, and a lot of it, while interesting, demands attention unrelentingly. At the Hirshhorn, a lot of the exhibits often have audio as well visual components and sometimes I don’t feel like I have room to process everything. And a lot of the time, I had to admit that I just don’t “get” what I’m seeing, even though I read the little placard next to the work. Sometimes I feel like I’m either overthinking contemporary art, or under thinking it. And honestly sometimes it just makes me giggle. I’m glad I live near and can visit in short bursts and take things in one exhibit at a time.

At the time of my brother’s visit, most of the museums were still open on reduced hours, so we spent one day walking around and visiting monuments since we couldn’t go to any museums. We saw the MLK memorial and the FDR memorial, those being two of the closest to the cherry blossom in the tidal basin. Of course it wasn’t officially peak bloom anymore, but there was still lots of blossoms to be seen. And lots of petals to rain down on our heads like snow.

Among all that, I had one last supertitle gig for this season, and perhaps my favorite of all the vocal recitals I worked this year. The pianist for the recital was also a composer and the second half of the program was entirely songs cycles that he had written. He introduced each song set and there was something wonderfully personal about a hearing a composer talk about the backstory of their own work.

Another fascinating thing that happened that week – I took my mom to the Mall to find an outfit for a meeting she had coming up. As we were walking to Macy’s, we saw a good wandering around the parking lot.

“Strange!” I thought. But I’d seen a lot of geese flying overhead recently so I didn’t really think much of it, though I have to admit that seeing a goose wandering in the Macy’s parking lot has a certain charm, so long as one stays out of the goose’s way. Then, as I was walking up to the door, I saw:

Why yes, that is a goose and two eggs in the planter in front of Macy’s. In my head I have a story (much like when my middle child was born) of a goose couple starting to fly off on a journey when suddenly the mama goose says, “We need to pull over now! The eggs are coming!” And she lays two eggs in the middle of a parking lot. (I, fortunately did make it to the hospital with my middle child…). Anyway, given that there were clearly two geese guarding the precious eggs, we figured it was better if we just went our merry way into Macy’s and let the geese have some family privacy. Or as much as one can have in the middle of a parking lot.

What we ate: we actually ate out more than usual because cooking dinner for twelve people seemed overwhelming.

Saturday: take out thai, picked up on our way home from the airport.

Sunday: We had dinner at a new to us restaurant with lots of outdoor seating and firepits. Though the evening was on the chilly side, the restaurant staff brought us blankets and lots of extra firewood for the firepit. Of course half our blankets were immediately commandeered by the kids to build blanket forts…. The food was pretty good and they had these fun smores kits for dessert. The fun thing about their s’mores is that in addition to the typical Hersheys chocolates they also had York Peppermint Patties and thin Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Such a brilliant idea!

building forts…

Monday: ordered Vietnamese food. We needed something quick because we were having family photos taken.

Tuesday: Terriyaki Tofu and grilled Korean Beef and grilled veggies. With rice and seaweed salad on the side.

Wednesday: I had to work so I got a take out grain bowl from Beefsteak.

Thursday: Japanese take out.

Friday: Pizza and movie night at our Tennessee AirBnB (more on that next post…). Pizza Hut, which was better than I had remembered, though they were out of mushrooms, which I have never encountered before.

Weekly recap + what we ate: blossoms and blooms

Continuing to catch up on things… but here’s the latest from the last half of March – (also, the internet ether ate my original post, so I’ve had to rewrite this weeks after the fact… grrr… but yay for me for sitting down to write.)

The week started off with a COVID exposure in the five year old’s classroom. Since he was fully vaccinated and didn’t have any symptoms, he was allowed to continue to go to school. He was one of only four kids in class for half the week, which actually suited him just fine. On the evening of the first day, we were doing “Rose, buds, and thorns” and when it was his turn to tell his “Rose”, he said, “My rose is that it was very quiet at school today.” Sometimes I feel like he is a very old soul who just wants to sit in his quiet corner of the world and think deep thoughts. And play with his trucks

The week was also officially peak bloom here in the DC area. It seems to come earlier and earlier every year. I think in my head peak bloom is still an April event, but … here we were in the third week of March and the trees were a riot of white and pink puffs. Everywhere I turned, I was greeted by

On my way to work:

I was at a stop light when I snapped this picture. The sky and blossoms and everything… so much spring!

On my dinner break run:

Unseen, but behind me is a traffic and construction vehicles.

I think I make it down to see the cherry blossoms every two or three years. This year, since my mother was in town, I decided to take her down. It was the last day of official peak bloom, and also the first sunny day all week, so of course the Tidal Basin was quite crowded. But we still had a lovely walk and basked in the beauty of all the cherry trees and did a lot of people watching. My sister in law told me that the Japanese have a whole slew of words for the various stages of cherry blossoms, and one of them is “hanafubuki” which translates to flower snow storm. Walking among the trees with pedals showering down on us with every strong breeze, I certainly could see what a fittingly evocative word “hanafubuki” is.

I took some quintessential DC pictures:

As well as some cute baby in blossom pictures:

Some other things this week:

  • I got some disappointing news this week about work and it put me in a bit of a funk. A job that I was hoping to get didn’t come through for unexplained reasons. I know that lack of job security is always going to be part of gig work, but it still shook my confidence a little. But, I guess not summer work means that I now can plan other adventures with the kids. I’m trying to look on the bright side even while being really bummed about things.
  • The baby got a spot in a vaccine trial for children ages 6 months to 5 years. She is doing a Pfizer trial and will get three shots, which have a two in three chance of being a real vaccine. Of course that means that she has a one in three chance of having the placebo. She took the blood draw and the first shot without any fuss or crying and she was super excited to get a sticker and a bandaid afterwards.
soo excited about that bandaid!
  • There is a stage manager, now no longer with us, who was known for saying “Life is short, Opera is long.” Well, the show I was working on certainly was long – 3 hours, 30 minutes from orchestra tune to the end of bows. Add to that the fact that I’m usually up on stage an hour before we start, and I’m on my feet for about 4.5 hours straight each performance. My legs were starting to feel the strain, so I asked the company if I could have an anti-fatigue mat for my console and they said yes. I don’t know why such a small thing made me so happy, but it did. I got the kind that has some lumps and bumps so I can massage the bottom of my feet when they start to feel restless, and I feel like my legs feel less tired at the end of the night now.
  • We went out for fancy bagels to celebrate the ten year old’s last basketball game. And since we got there at closing time, the bagel truck was handing out free donuts. Yay free donuts! I’m not sure if the donuts made up for losing the basketball game, but it was certainly a pick me up!
  • One day we went to the local botanical gardens. Things were still very bare and wintery, but there were some lovely things to see. Like this sculpture carved from the trunk of a tree that had to be removed. I thought this was just so cool:

There were also some flowers in the garden:

Seeing these flowers reminded me of a book I’m reading right now – Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her book is a collection of essays about what we can learn from observing how plants exist and co-exist with other plants. There is one essay, where she writes of how when she was applying to study botany, she said she wanted to know why the goldenrod and the aster were so beautiful next to each other, only to be told by a professor that wondering about such things was “not science.” Well, it turns out that there is a reason that goldenrods and asters are so appealing together – something to do with how the human eye perceives colour. I love how Wall Kimmerer’s book urges us to pay attention to beauty and how knowing why something draws our attention doesn’t make it any less breathtaking. Whenever I see purple and yellow together, I think of this book.

  • While cleaning out my desk, I found this list of names. When the baby was just born, she was nameless for about a month. The Husband and I are very indecisive about picking names. Well, I went back to work soon after the baby was born, and there was one chorister in our show that would ask me at every rehearsal, “Did you pick a name yet?” and the answer was always, “No, we’re still deciding.” One day, I came to rehearsal and she handed me this list.

“I had some suggestions,” she said. I was so touched.

I actually like a lot of the names on the list and one or two would have been a strong contender. I keep this list pinned to my cubicle because it reminds me of a time when someone was super nice to me when I was in the haze of having a newborn.

What we ate:
Saturday: Ordered out Peruvian chicken. And ate outside on our back patio – a sure sign of fair weather coming. I love eating outside, especially in spring, before the mosquitoes get bad in the backyard. When we eat outside, it’s almost okay that the kids eat meanderingly – running around in the backyard and coming to the table for a bite here and there.

Sunday: Leftovers. I had a matinee performance, so didn’t get home til on the later side.

Monday: Pasta and broccoli rabe from Dinner Illustrated. Not a hit. I love bitter taste profiles, but I seem to be the only one in the family.

Tuesday: Black Pepper tofu and asparagus stir fry. This recipe was pretty aggressive with the black pepper – it calls for 1 tablespoon of black peppercorns, coarsely crushed. It might have been a little much for the kids, but the adults liked it.

Wednesday: Zucchini boats. This is a pretty easy meal – ground turkey sauteed with veggies, dump in a jar of salsa and simmer then put into hollowed out zucchini halves, sprinkle with cheese, and bake. This is a good meal for make ahead because I made the filling before I left for work, and all the husband had to do was prep the zucchini, fill the boats and bake. Apparently the kids loved this one.

Thursday: Baked gnocchi. I had never tried baking gnocchi before, but I happened to have a pack in the fridge, and I saw a recipe so I decided to give it a go. This was a great kitchen sink recipe to use up veggies from the fridge. I also had a bunch of kale so I made kale pesto to throw on it as well. Really tasty, though leftovers taste better when heated up – the gnocchi sort of loses it’s soft chew when cold.

Friday: Pizza and Peanut Butter Falcon. This 2019 movie was hilarious and heartfelt and charming. It tells the story of Zach, a man with Downs Syndrome, who runs away from his group home to try to find his hero, a retired wrestler. There is so much to love about this movie – the gritty sense of place, the really lived-in performances, the hopeful and touching friendships portrayed. But I think what is also so awesome about this movie is it’s origins. The movie is made by two first time filmmakers who work at a camp for disabled people. The lead actor in the movie Zach Gottsagen has Downs Syndrome and attended this camp. Zach had studied acting for a while, and mentioned to the filmmakers that there were never lead roles for people with Downs Syndrome. So the filmmakers decided to write a movie with Zack as the lead. What strikes me about this is that I think for all the talk about needing diversity and representation in mainstream media, underrepresented people still need those who are in the majority to recognize that their stories need to be told and can appeal to wide audiences – because the people who hold the purse strings and make decisions in Hollywood, or what not, are often not from underrepresented populations. There was a spot of controversy earlier this month with the movie Seeing Red, the new Pixar film about a Chinese Canadian teenager hitting puberty. A certain critic had called the film “limiting in scope” because he felt that setting the movie very specifically in the Asian Canadian community made it unrelatable to many people. It is certainly fine for a person to not care for a movie – but to do so based on the grounds that the movie is not set in the world you come from, with the people that you see everyday… it seems kind of … insular. Anyhow, between Peanut Butter Falcon and Seeing Red, I’ve been thinking a lot about how writing stories featuring diverse people must be supported by a willingness from those who are able bodied, white, cis-gendered, male, etc. to produce and consume these stories, to see the value in what underrepresented populations have to say.

Weekly recap + what we ate: listless

daffodils in the snow.

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a month now… I’m feeling a little bit like finding the time and energy to finish it has been difficult mentally – see title of this post. But we are taking some time away and I’m hoping to catch up on life and get back to writing. I also have to remind myself that polished prose is great, but just the act of writing is incredibly fulfilling for me too.

The weekend kicked off with… snow!

Witch hazel in snow.

The evening before, the ten year old had gone over to the neighbor’s house to swim in their outdoor pool, and then we woke up the next morning to snow. Just when we had thought spring had arrived and we’d be done with cold weather. The daffodils and witch hazel that had just last week exploded in a riot of yellow, were now bending under a layer of snow and ice.

The two little kids greeted the snow with delight. I hunted down the snow gear and got them into it and out we went. It wasn’t terribly fluffy or fun snow- mostly wet and a little slushy but not packing consistency. I half heartedly tried to ball together a tiny snow man, and was pretty unsuccessful. The kids seemed happy enough just to push the snow around and shovel it into stacking cups. The five year old even made a good attempt at cleaning off my car, which I was grateful for as a couple hours later, I got in the car to go to work. It was opening night!

Good helper!

The day after opening night was Daylight Savings. Thank goodness I got to sleep in – the folks working on the other show we are producing at the moment had a Sunday matinee and had to be at the theatre by late morning. Ouf.

I took the kids on Sunday afternoon to give the Husband some childfree time. We dropped the four year old at Mandarin class, and the class was just the right length for us to go grocery shopping then be back in time to pick him up. Then we went on a little adventure to see a very familiar room:

In a great green room….

The room was an art installation at a local arts center which houses three floors of artists studios. During opening hours, you can often see artists working on new pieces of art – the works on display range from painting to photography to sculpture, fiber arts, ceramics… it seems every media is represented. I had heard of this place and always wanted to visit, so when I heard about the Good Night Moon Room, figured it was a good reason to visit. The kids were delighted to see so many familiar things brought to life. Afterwards we visited many of the other artists’ studios, though the little ones didn’t last too long. They didn’t have the patience for just looking and not touching. (Notably, the Fiber Arts Guild had a “touching basket” in their studio – which I thought was a great idea.) I’ll have to make plans to return sans kids, and I definitely had my eye on one or two pieces that might make a nice present for the Husband.

art gallery…

I’m not sure why, but the time change has hit me pretty hard this time around. Maybe it’s having gone through the intensity of tech week only to be robbed of an hour of sleep. Ironically, I had a supertitles for a vocal concert a couple days after opening, and this was one of the slides for a song by Rachmaninoff:

At any rate, it’s been kind of hard to motivate and get things done.

A while ago, I had read this snippet from the New York Times’ Little Love Story series (fourth one in the link), It’s titled “Listless, Lost, then Found”, and is a mini essay about how the author, a person of many lists, grapples with having the flu and being so laid low that they are unable to make lists. In contrast their friend says, “I’m listless! I’ve stopped making lists. I’m free!” What an interesting concept wed to a turn of phrase! I was struck by how aptly the term “listless” describes the malaise I feel after a show when I am so exhausted from getting to opening night that I can’t even pull it together to plan the days that follow. Am I listless because I have no lists to guide me, or do I have no lists to guide me because I’m listless? Unlike the author’s friend, I do not feel freedom in having no lists. (Well, maybe when I am on vacation? Though that hasn’t truly happened in a very very long time. )

Somewhat paradoxically, I find the I make better use of my time when I have less free time, than when I have more of it. Knowing that I have to be in rehearsal or onstage for nine hours a day encourages me to make plans for the rest of my time- fitting that run in on my dinner break, getting dinner prepped in the morning, playing Wordle while the toast is toasting. When I have no constraints or obligations on my time, everything, even Wordle, seems less urgent. (I have played definitely played a Wordle round at 11:30pm while sitting in the parking garage after work). Even when things are urgent – taxes!- they seem less so when I feel like I have the entire day to do them.

Well, then, I think I do need to pull out of the listless state. The literal one. Making the list is, I feel, step one for me to get moving on the urgent and important things.

At the same time – I’ve been taking the baby to some Toddler Time sessions at a local nursery school. It’s a morning of free play, crafts, stories, and outdoor play with a sandbox and bubbles at the end of the session. The teacher who organizes the session also leads an open forum for parents while the kids play in the sandbox. The school operates in a co-op model and there are lots of signs up, encouraging parents to engage with their child. This is one of my favorite signs, particularly the last point:

Life lessons from preschool…

In other news, both older kids’ school have gone mask optional now – the ten year old since mid last week, and the four year old just at the beginning of this week. Lifting mask mandates seems appropriate for the two year anniversary of the world spinning to a stop. The lifting also seemed to happen quite quickly here. I had been hearing in the news of other states and school districts lifting mask mandates – and indeed our indoor mask mandate had been lifted for a couple week now – but the email we got from the school district was literally, “Starting tomorrow…” The 4 year old’s school at least gave us a weekend of warning.

For the five year old, realizing that many of his classmates are still unvaccinated, we have told the teacher that we prefer he keep his mask on while indoors. When we asked him if he had a preference, he actually said that he preferred to keep it on. From what he tells me, all the kids in his class continue to wear masks inside. I wonder if it is because he has always had to wear a mask to school that he is in no hurry to remove it.

We left the choice up to the ten year old, although we told her that she needed to wear her mask indoors at school the week before my family comes to visit and while they are here. I don’t know if any of this is rational or not, to be honest.

One lovely benefit of the time change is longer days and I took advantage of the extra evening light to go on our first post dinner stroll of the year. Since I like to have dinner early, we often have from 7pm – 7:30pm to fill with some kind of activity before bed. The two littles seemed particularly delighted for the first evening constitutional of the year:

I love taking a turn around the block after dinner- the sky is painted orange and pink, the birds and crickets are out. We usually take the same path around our neighborhood, and there is a nice familiarity about it. One neighbor had a fish pond in their front yard and we always like to stop and watch the fish. And this time of year the trees are exploding with puffs of blossoms.

What we ate: (I seem to have large blanks in my memory of dinners this week.

Saturday: ?? Opening night… I’m sure it was some kind of leftovers

Sunday: Sunday leftovers.

Monday: Cornflake fried chicken and Arni’s Jrs. The chicken recipe is from Americas Test Kitchen’s Cookbook for Young Chefs and is actually baked, not fried. Arni’s Jr. are a salad from the Husband’s favorite childhood restaurant. It’s essentially iceberg lettuce, mozzarella cheese, cubed ham, cubed turkey, scallions, and radishes, all topped with blue cheese dressing. Oh, and croutons.

Tuesday: The Husband made Cincinnati Chili. I tried out a new place near work. I was excited to be able to order something with a large variety of veggies, though it was definitely on the salty side.

Wednesday: Kitchen sink yellow curry. I had some yellow curry paste and some yellow squash, eggplant, and tofu to use up.

Thursday: A special St. Patrick’s Day snack meal. Potted salmon, crackers, soda bread made from The Irish Pantry cookbook. Also roasted potatoes and cut up carrots. I had always been interested in the “potted” chapter of the cookbook – the idea of traditional methods of preserving meat with a layer of butter kind of appealed to my inner pioneer girl. I can’t say that the potted salmon was any more tasty than any other method of making salmon, and it was certainly more work than roasting salmon in the oven and then putting it in the fridge to keep it from spoiling. There is something that feels really indulgent in being able to try a preservation technique from hundreds of years ago. These high effort activities that were a necessary part of the every day kitchen of yesteryear have become a quaint kitchen experiment of today, it seems.

Friday: Pizza and March of the Penguins. I had to work and ate leftover curry.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Opening Night!

The show is open! Not without it’s share of excitement, of course. On our final dress rehearsal – the one with an audience – one of the singers called out sick and so the Assistant Director walked the role onstage while another singer sang the part from a music stand at the side of the stage. It’s not an uncommon practice when a singer goes down at the last minute during a final dress rehearsal, but it does necessitate a flurry of emails and phone calls. Oh well, as I kept reminding folks, better it happened at final dress than on opening night!

A shot of my book at the tech tables during an afternoon lighting session:

I go through a lot of Post-its and removable stickers while getting a show up. Everything I stick in my book is color coded. Like above – the orange post-its are my “Standby” cues where I warn departments of upcoming moves. In this case, those are descriptions for the follow spot operators, light cues and projection cues. The standard post-it yellow is usually notes about what is happening on stage – I don’t have to “call” it, but I need to know that it is happening. The yellow is just soft enough that I can ignore it. And then, at the very edge of the page are green stickers. And like at a traffic light, green means “Go” – that is when the move happens. In this case it’s a lighting cue, a Rail Q , and a projection cue all at the same time.

My supervisor sent me an encouraging text before a big rehearsal, expressing confidence in me, then gave me one piece of feedback. “… you may consider adding a few pleases and than you to your pages and announcements.” It was a great piece of feedback because I realized that while “Thank you” is pretty easy for me to remember, “Please” is harder for some reason. Yet if I think about it, I spend most of my job asking people to do things for the production. From sending notes to different departments, i.e. costume note: “Can singer X have a pocket in his jacket for a coin purse?” to actually calling the cues – “Standby Light Cue 35 and Rail Cue 2”. Basically my job consists of me being kind of demanding of people’s time, talents, and attention. So yeah, “Please” should be a bigger part of my everyday vocabulary, an indication of respect for said time, talents, and attention.

So I wrote myself a reminder in the notebook that I keep open next to me whenever I’m working:

(You can also see some of the other random notes I scribble – mostly times for breaks and when people are released from rehearsal – as well as some discarded stickies from cues that I got to take out of my book).

Anyhow, this is what my timelog/tracker looks like most weeks:

This is what it looked like last week:

pretty blank…

Clearly I didn’t make time to journal or log last week. The Husband says I should just scrawl “OPERA TECH WEEK!!” across the whole spread.

Thinking back, I was only at work a little over 40 hours last week, but many of those days I was there until midnight so I found myself prioritized sleep and family time and rest last week.

Things that worked well this past tech week:
– packing healthy lunches and not having to eat out.
– related to above – packing dinner from freezer meals – some of what I pulled out of the freezer was well over a year old, maybe even two. Or more. (We still have wedding cake in our freezer and we were married in 2009… not sure what we are saving that for!) Double win of not having to spend money to go out to eat and also eating down the freezer.
– managed to spend 20 minutes of my 1 hour dinner break on a run a couple times a this week.
– sleeping as soon as I got home. I have a terrible habit during tech week of coming home and being too amped up to go to sleep right away. And then also being hungry – so I usually stay up late eating junk food. This time I made a conscious effort to go to bed as soon as I got home, letting the hunger lie until the morning. I did eat half a container of kimchi one night, but then I went straight to bed. The kids are early risers and the Husband goes to work at 6:45am, so I kind of feel like I need to be up by then, and staying up til 2am does not help help me be up by 6:45a. As lovely as it is when the ten year old decides to get the younger kids dressed and fed, I don’t really want it to be her responsibility. (I worry about her falling victim to “Oldest Daughter” syndrome.)

Things that didn’t go well:
– having patience with my kids and family when I barely get to see them.
– Keeping up with non-work items – most notably I still have to get my taxes prepared.
– Being able to focus and be productive when not at work.
– Finding time to take the kids so the Husband can get some alone time.
– the aforementioned bingeing on kimchi late at night, when really I should have just gone to bed.

I don’t think any of the above is insurmountable, but I think/ hope I can have better systems in place the next time I have a tech week so that these stress points can be less … stressful.

BUT…. Spring is coming!

I saw my first cherry tree in bloom while driving to work! I was at a stop light, so I took a quick picture. I think we are about week out from peak bloom here in the DC area, but given how bare all the other trees still look, I was caught entirely by surprise by this tree.

Later in the week, the ten year old had half day of school, so I picked her up from school and we stopped for Blizzards at Dairy Queen (Heath Bar for me, Oreo for her) then found a park to sit and enjoy our frozen treat. Surely a blizzard and a blooming cherry tree are harbingers of warmer weather!

One day, I didn’t have to be at the theatre til the afternoon, so I met up with my friend from college for a walk. We saw these purple flowers:

And someone writing whimsy on the path:

spring choices!

The witch hazel in the front yard has burst into yellow blooms… a very tangible manifestation of sunlight. When I walk by the bush on my way to the front door, there is the sweet spicy smell that lingers heavily. The smell of witch hazel and hyacinths mixed together definitely says spring. Here is the easterly sun streaming through the witch hazel in the morning:

And in the westerly sun in the evening:

Other exciting happenings:

While I was at work one evening, this tree branch finally decided to break away from the tree in our front yard. I usually park under that tree, so it was lucky I wasn’t home. Although truth be told, the tree had been not well for ages so parking under it probably wasn’t terribly prudent. We’re waiting for the County to come haul the debris away. But in the mean time, I couldn’t help but to admire the intricate frills and pale green beauty of the lichen and moss growing on the dead branch. Or maybe it’s fungus? Not sure.

One of the two nights I was home was a basketball practice night. After dinner, the Husband took the ten year old to basketball and I stayed home with the two little kids. I asked them what they wanted to do, and they said, “Play in the toy room!” So I brought my book and sat and read while they built things with their Magnaformers. It was such an ordinarily quiet half hour, and I was really content. I mean it was probably an extraordinarily quiet half hour, since they don’t usually play so quietly and independently. But maybe we are turning a corner…?

What We Ate:

Saturday: Dumplings and Hamilton. As reluctant as I was to subscribe to Disney+, I was very excited to finally finally be able to watch Hamilton. We’ve been listening to the soundtrack constantly for a year now (I know… we were late to the party!) Sometimes I find watching stage performances on the screen a little frustrating because inevitably I feel like I’m missing out on something when the camera often only shows part of the stage pictures, and I did feel that intermittently. But even so, there were still lots of really fun, innovative, and beautiful staging moments. At the same time, I think it’s really a testament to the Lin Manuel Miranda’s work and to how well produced the cast recording was that I didn’t feel like seeing the filmed stage version added a whole lot to the piece. Anyhow, the four year old, who can quote large chunks of it – his response: “A little good a little bad.”
“What was bad?” I asked
“You didn’t tell me that people died!”
I was a little flabbergasted at that one. I mean this is the little boy who prays every night for “God please bless Hamilton’s son Philip.” So surely he realized that people died. Oops.

Sunday: Leftovers. I scrounged a plate together of odds and end: tofu with furikake seasoning, kimchi, and a leftover rice rolled up in Nori with cucumbers and ume plum paste.

Monday: Not quite sure… I think the Husband made some kind of stir fry. I worked and packed leftovers

Tuesday: Chicken Tacos. The five year old declared that he wanted Taco Tuesday, so Husband make chicken in the crock pot the night before.

Wednesday: Brussel Sprouts Nasi Goreng – essentially fried rice with Brussel Sprouts.

Thursday: the Husband made Breakfast Sandwiches. I worked in the evening, so packed leftovers.

Friday: Pizza and Luca. Charming movie. Something about movies that are centered on friendship really make me want to cry…. Or maybe it’s just Pixar movies in general… damn they are so manipualtive!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech Week!

And suddenly we are into March.

Sign of the times:

For work, we have to take a COVID test every other day. Somedays I forget to do it at home, and very often I end up swabbing my nose in the car on the way to work. One day during the week, I had to get gas so I ended up swabbing while waiting to pump gas. Then I looked at the gas prices. There is something so utterly surreal to me about swabbing my nose for an at Home COVID test while pumping $3.76 gas. It was like a summary of the world at that moment: The war in Urkaine, sanctions against Russia, the trickledown effect of soaring gas prices, and taking a test kit out of a box so that I am allowed to show up for work. The sad thing is, since I took this picture, gas prices have risen to over $4.30/gallon. Which, I realize, is not the highest in the country, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen gas prices that high. Google tells me it was over ten years ago.

This week we moved from the rehearsal room into the theatre – it’s tech week!!! It’s always a challenging process because the hours are long, we work late and we are finally adding so many new elements – sets, lightings, costumes, wigs, make-up, orchestra – that it requires a lot of concentration and clear minded-ness to feel like I’m doing my job properly. Still, for me there is something magical about moving to the theatre. The collaborations, the hushed whispers in the dark that bring about beautiful moments onstage, the stage crew who work really hard backstage for effortless transformations to bloom onstage, the wardrobe and wig crew who can turn one character into another in less than a minute. So it’s always a tough week, but also energizing in the way that tough weeks can be. Also, after two years away from this stage, I don’t want to ever take for granted the excitement of creating something for stage.

The opera I’m working on Cosi fan tutte is full of misogyny and problematic sexist and racist attitudes. (Are there any other kind of sexist and racist attitudes?) It was premiered in 1790, so it’s portrayal of women and men and foreigners is not entirely surprising. However, Mozart’s music is sublime and it’s not an opera that requires a lot of forces, so I suppose opera companies and directors will continue to present it and they will continue to grapple with the difficulties the opera presents. I actually really love the opera, but I definitely see it with different eyes now than when I first heard it twenty years ago. When I was in college I thought the whole “Let’s play a trick on our girlfriends and see if they will stay true to us or if they will fall for other men while we pretend to be away!” was kind of funny albeit ridiculous. I don’t think it’s funny or ridiculous now… I just think it’s stupid and mean, and the aftermath almost heartbreaking.

Despite all this, there are some really thoughtful and heartfelt things being uncovered in rehearsal, and the other day, I wrote down something the director said about a simple stage gesture. She said that the gesture of offering someone your hand palm up really was a physical manifestation of how we can “choose our partner with kindness”. And that really stuck with me – this idea that we choose our actions and can choose to carry them out with kindness -beautifully encapsulated a way of going through life with purpose and with empathy. I know she was talking about the characters in the opera and the choices they were making, but I also think this idea of “choosing with kindness” can inform so many things that we do offstage, and how we treat those around us.

I’ve been thinking lately about this idea of kindness. One of the assignments when I took the Yale Happiness Course was to practice acts of kindness. Kindness was something that was scientifically proven to boost a person’s sense of well being. I will admit that kindness doesn’t always come instinctively to me and that particular assignment, deep in a pandemic, was not the easiest one. But… this past week, amidst all the craziness of getting the show onstage, I realized that I had been the recipient of a lot of acts of kindness lately. Here are some:
-my assistant brought me a cookie from the work cafeteria when I had to work during my break – the chocolate chip cookies from work are one of my favorite things. They are huge, for one, and they are also just slightly underbaked, which I loved in my cookies.
-my boss who stayed for my tech rehearsals and gave me encouraging words and helped me think through some awkward situations.
– the assistant director who wrote the show timings in my score – a somewhat tedious process that I usually do myself, but I had gotten so behind that I never managed to do it before rehearsal started.
– The ten year old got her sibling dressed and fed them breakfast twice this week so I could sleep in a little bit. (By which I mean, I slept til 7:15am)
-The Husband vacuuming out my car when he had it over the weekend – it was practically as if it had been detailed. I usually am quite ungrateful when he does this because I don’t like having the stuff in my car moved around, but this time it was actually quite wonderful as my car had become quite a mess of crumbs and crushed leaves and various unidentifiable detritus.

Pithy quote of the week –

“The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold anything else.” via Seth Godin’s Blog

Made me smile:

Is there anything as joyful as a dog riding in the car with their head out the window, tongue lolling in the wind?

What We Ate: The Husband decided that this week was going to be wraps week! Having a theme certainly made meal planning easier.

Saturday: Take-out Chinese food

Sunday: Leftover from take-out

Monday: Breakfast burritos (The Husband cooked. I was at work and ate leftovers)

Tuesday: Sweet Potato tacos. I prepped the sweet potatoes so that the Husband just had to put them in the oven to roast when he got home. There was supposed to be black beans in them too (My favorite recipe from Dinner Illustrated), but the Husband forgot those. Oops.

Wednesday: Mushu veggies. I’m actually mildly proud of this meal- not because it was particularly tasty, but because I walked in the door at 5:45pm and we were eating by 6:10pm. There was a kind of zen kitchen flow going on where I just chopped and tossed things into the frying pan, but I managed to do it in the right order so everything cooked the right amount of time. I vaguely followed this recipe for the sauce and used whatever vegetables I had on hand – ended up being cabbage, carrots, green onions, snow peas, and mushrooms. I also mashed up a block of tofu and threw that in as well.

Thursday: The Husband made kung pao chicken and rice. By this point the kids were tired of eating things in wraps and asked for rice. I worked the evening and packed the leftover mushu filling for my dinner.

Friday: Pizza and movie night – the family watched Encanto. After much deliberating, we finally signed up for Disney plus. (By “we” I mean the Husband made a unilateral decision while I was at work. But sometimes I feel like if I’m not going to be home in the evenings for a week, he should get to make a couple unilateral decisions for the good of the family.) At work, I had ramen and cut up veggies for dinner.