Tag: gratitude

Weekly recap + what we ate: Things I track and FIGS Week #2

Scaling mountains of ice and snow to get to school.

The week ended with weather that was positively spring like with temperatures in the 50s and, more importantly, blinding sunlight and clear blue skies. I am of the opinion that the sun and sky have more effect on me then the actual temperature. So much light and colour, the world can’t help but to feel like it is warming up. I left the house without my bulky winter coat a couple times and it feel so freeing! But this coming week looks to be a little on the grey side. Today (Sunday) was oh so rainy and chilly.

Anyhow, it’s been a week back in the office. It was fine. Everyone is overwhelmed and doing three jobs, but morale is high and we are all excited to be doing opera again. I want to remember to carry this feeling and remember it when the show feels hard – we are so very very very lucky to continue to tell stories onstage for people.

Stephany had a post a few weeks ago about the how she tracks her habits and goals and I was inspired to write a similar post. I’m fascinated by the minutiae of other people’s planning/tracking, so maybe other people will be interested in my methods?

So my current planner stack features:
-Hobonichi Weeks for day to day planning. (this might get it’s own post some day…)
-Levenger Five Year Journal, which I try to write in every day, with varying results
-A moleskin notebook that I use to track my reading; I write books that I read, and a few comments on them. This isn’t always a moleskin- it’s generally whatever blank notebook I have on hand when I run out of pages in the last one.
-A Hobonichi Cousin that I use to track routines, life, habits, some longer form reflections.

This has pretty consistently been my stack for the past five or six years. Last year, I tried a different planner, trying to put the planning and reflection/tracking in the same book, but that lasted less then a month before I went back to my tried and true method. I’m mostly going to write about how I use the Hobonichi Cousin here.

First off – Meals, media, and time outside:

On the top I track tv and movies that we watch. A lot of these are family movie night movies. Hearts are things that I really enjoyed.
Below that, I write down each day what we have for dinner. If we eat out, it gets a pink dot. If it is a vegan dinner, it gets a green dot. If it’s a meal we made at home that went over really well, I draw a heart so that I can go back and remember what was a hit with the family and make it again.
The last section is where I track time outside – each box on the grid represents one hour. I started doing this when I was trying to do 1000 hours outside, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to that in one year, so I now just track to see what is trending.

The Weekly Spread – Here I time track, writing down what I did every day in 30 minute segements.

This was a very light week for paid work.

I have a loose colour coding:
Green = work that I get paid to do
Purple = unpaid labor and family time (ie chores, making dinner, driving carpool, hanging out as a family)
Orange= time that is just for me, where I ignore (or don’t have to think about) the kids or family
Blue = Sleep.
Also on the left hand side, I write the books that I’m reading.

This is the section i’m the most inconsistent in filling out; I find I have a lot of nebulous time that is not accounted for….

365 Day Tracker – this is where I log my daily yoga. Here I also colour code according to how much yoga I do – pink=10 mins, orange = 15 mins, yellow = 20 mins, green=25 mins, and blue = 25 mins. There is something really fun and satisfying about this page. I sometimes think I should track something else for 365 days, but I’m not sure what that would be.

Daily Pages – This is where I write longer reflections that don’t fit into the 5 year journal. When I travel, this is where I write daily travel reflections, gather ticket stubs and what not. If I go to a museum or see a play, musical, etc., this is where I write my thoughts about what I saw. If I need to do a larger brain dump to problem solve something it goes here. I write haikus here for my weekly haiku project.
These daily pages also have a blank page at the start of each month and that’s where I write my monthly highlights/ low lights/ lessons learned.

The Monthly Spread – This is where the bulk of my tracking is. The categories I track here are mostly inspired by things I learned when I took The Science of Well Being, a free course on Coursera that is also known as the Yale Happiness Course because it is taught by a Yale Professor, Laurie Santos. Each week of the course, Santos talked about one thing that has been scientifically proven to make people “happier”, and gives assignments based on that topic. I took this course during the pandemic and it was really helped me focused on little things that I could be mindful about that could make life feel fuller, especially at a time that was really felt like a stressful daily grind. A lot of what her findings show is that people are really bad at predicting what makes them happy- the things people think they want are often inflated in their minds, leading to disappointment if it doesn’t come about. People find the most contentment when they focus on personal connection and what is right in front of them.

blank at the beginning of the year.
January. The first eleven days are blank because we were in Taiwan/I was getting over jetlag/feeling overwhelmed.

I like tracking things here because I can write a little more on what each thing is, allowing for a bit more reflection.

So what I track here:
-Hours outside (yes, I know I put this in two places, but I wanted also to see how much time I was spending outside on a daily basis.)
-Gratitude: at least one thing I’m grateful for each day.
-Savoring: one thing I take time to slow down and savor each day.
-Connection: at least one person I connected with that day. Santos has a week where she talks about the benefits of positive interaction. Sometimes for me, this is a long conversation over dinner, sometimes it is small talk in the grocery line or just a text exchange with a friend.
-Brush/floss: Okay, this one isn’t from Laurie Santos, but I used to be terrible at brushing and flossing, so I started making myself check a box for it. I’m not usually a box-checker, but in this case it really worked for me. One check for brushing, one for flossing.
-Exercise – I take this to mean movement. So the daily yoga and any work outs or runs I do go here, but also if I take a walk at lunch time, go skating with the kids, etc.
-Create: Here I write if I do something creative that day. To me this means write a blog post, compose a haiku, play piano, spend time painting, cook a fancy new recipe – basically anything where I create something from nothing.
-Anticipation: I write something I’m looking forward to. This wasn’t part of Santos’ course, but I read a NYTimes article about how anticipation boosts happiness so I added it to the list.

Along the bottom I track some of the habits I want to do this year:
-Paint 26 pictures
-Write 1 haiku a week
-visit a museum
-go on a hike
-do the Post Sunday crossword puzzle every week.

As a side note, some things that Santos talks about which improve well-birng that I don’t track:
-Sleep. My sleep is shit. I’m working on this, but I’ve tried tracking sleep and tracking does not motivate me to go to bed earlier, so I stopped.
-Meditation. I’ve tried, Lord know I’ve really really really tried meditation. I just can’t figure it out.
-Acts of kindness. This one was really hard for me to do mindfully without feeling performative. Some days I feel like the kindest thing I can do is hug my children and tell them I love them every single day, so I try to at least do that.

So that’s my system. I’m not a box checker, as I mentioned, so I don’t necessarily do these things to cross them off the list. But I do find it useful to see what things I’m making room in my life for. If I’m looking at my tracking spread and I notice I didn’t write something in a particular column for several days in a row, I will make an effort to find time to do it. But also, it helps when I’m in really busy time of the year to remind myself that there are certain things I still manage to do, even if it is as simple as brushing my teeth.

Anyhow, speaking of creating – here are my paintings from January:

This was from our hotel room in Beitou, Taiwan. Picture’s blurry because I didn’t actually take a real picture of this one and now I don’t know where it is….
The top picture is an exercise from Everyday Watercolor by Jenna Rainey; it’s a book of daily watercolor exercises. The bottom picture uses the salt technique where you sprinkle salt on wet paint to create a blotchy effect- it’s loosely based on a tutorial I found on YouTube on painting snowflakes.

Grateful For (FIGs, Week 2) – shout out to Elisabeth’s February FIGS collective, where she is gathering people’s gratitudes this month. These are some of my FIGs from last week.

-Libraries and printing. We aren’t fully set up with our IT at work yet, and I needed to print our music scores. So I went to the library to print them out. The process is so easy – log into the website with my library card, upload the documents and then go to any library and print. There is a thing where I have to have the librarians put a “fine” on my card to pay for the printing, but once I print the job, I pay off the “fine”. Also, the first 15 pages are free. This is such a great service.

-Sunlight in the morning. On Tuesday, I did my daily morning yoga in my bedroom instead of the basement. I pulled up my shade, and as I was doing my upward dog, I noticed that I could see pink sky when I had been used to the sky still being inky black at 7am in the morning. The days are starting to get longer.

-On the other side of the day, I walked out of work at 5:30pm one day and it was still light outside. After all those days of being stuck at home with the snow, the longer stretches of daylight are like fingers of hope and growth and the end of the tunnel.

-Our tax guy. I had to fill out new tax paperwork as part of the transition at work, and I was so very confused by the form. So I sent my tax guy an email and he told me exactly what to write in. Thank goodness.

-Getting to watch the 14 year old play basketball twice -once for her middle school team and once on her rec team. Her face always lights up when she sees me at her games, and I hope mine does too.

-Getting to pick up the kids after school. That moment they get off the school bus lifts my heart. I hope I never get tired of my kids coming home.

-To that end – school bus drivers. Some of the roads still are barely passable because the snow has not been cleared out to the curb. Grateful for the bus drivers that navigate that and get our kids to and from school safely.

-That quiet sliver of time between getting home with the kids and starting dinner. A few times last week, the 6 year old and I got the watercolours out and made a piece of art or two. A relaxing transition from the work/school day into the evening.

-Crisp clean sheets to slide between after a long day.

-Birdsongs and fat robins hopping in the snow. Spring is coming.

-Leaving for school a little on the early side and not having to rush up the path. There was time for the kids to pause and throw sticks in the still frozen creek, to tromp through the snowier path to school, and to summit the ice mountain that still sits in the parking lot between our path and the doors to school. (see photo at the top of the post!)

-A quiet office before the rest of my team arrives. I try to get to work half an hour before the rest of the stage managers get in; I love the stillness of the office in the morning and the ability to knock off some tasks without interruption.

-The Husband for helping make a tough situation better. We found out this week that when the 14 year old filled out her high school choice form, she had forgotten to also apply for the high school program that she wanted. (It’s a program that allows high school seniors to take a full year of classes at the community college for free.) So she got assigned to the school, but not to the program. I have to admit that the whole process was kind of confusing; we had thought you filled out the interest for after getting assigned to the high school. We were wrong. There were tears. So many tears. And yelling. And despair. All the stages of grief. This program was the whole reason she wanted to go to the school. Well, the Husband did some digging and it turns out that if she goes to the school counselor in the first week of school, she can still fill out an interest form for the program. So all is not lost. Thank goodness. I’m grateful that the Husband was persistent and called and emailed until he got an answer on the issue.

Looking Forward To:

-Starting rehearsal this week. Ready to dive in.

-Lunar New Year. It’s Tuesday. I have to work in the evening so no big celebration for us (plus it’s Taco Tuesday), but I will wear red and I did buy pineapple cakes, so I’ll bring those to work.

-Just started this audiobook, a memoir of growing up in Derry as one of eleven children being raised by a single father. It’s funny in that stolidly ironic way. On of my favorite bits is that whenever anyone asks O’Reilly’s father how he managed to raise 11 children on his own, he says, “Well, which of them would you have me give back?”

-Also started reading this book – I feel like it’s going to be the perfect read as I wait out the last of the cold winter:

What We Ate:
Monday: Chinese leftovers from Super Bowl Sunday.

Taco Tuesday: Middle school tacos – basically ground beef tacos.

Wednesday: Curry chickpeas with scallion and cilantro. From Milk Street Fast and Slow, their Instant Pot cookbook. Eaten with rice and paratha. We’ve discovered this year paratha from the frozen section of HMart. You cook the paratha on the griddle and it’s magical. Vegan.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and The Hitman’s Bodyguard. This 2017 film with Ryan Reynolds as a protection agent (bodyguard) who is hired to guard a notorious assassin played by Samuel L. Jackson. The movie was hilarious, with Reynolds and Jackson in top notch bantering form. Greatly enjoyed this movie. There is a lot of swearing and shooting in it, though.

Saturday: Dumplings and green beans.

Sunday: We went over to a friends’ house for a casual afternoon gathering, and ate lots of hummus and baba ganouj and fruit and Valentine’s candy. It was a lovely time – the big kids and little kids played together, then the tween/teens put on music and started performing K-Pop dance numbers. At one point, one of our hosts, who is a musician, started playing Part of Your World on the piano and the girls did an improv dance – I think they were all some form of seaweed. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. But all to say, dinner was … undefined. I filled up on snacks so wasn’t hungry when we got home. Of course the little kids were, so I boiled some ravioli and doused it with olive oil and parmesan and that’s what they ate.

I hope you have a sunny week! We have a lot of evening rehearsals this week, so I’m girding my loins for that. But I’m excited to get started with rehearsals.

How/what do you track or record? How do you transition from work to home life in the evenings?

Weekly recap + what we ate: January recap!

Hello, February!

January felt a very much like I was existing in a liminal space. There was upheaval at work. There was re-entry from our trip to Taiwan. There was snow and snow days and being inside, waiting for things to clear. It felt like a slow start to the new year. Wait, not slow… how about gentle? A bit of way finding, a bit of tweaking routines.

Even though we didn’t have any more snow after Monday, the world was super icy and buried quite deep. On top of the snow was a two inch thick frozen layer and everyone walked two inches taller this week as you could walk on top of that frozen layer. It was a bit like Russian roulette, being able to walk on top of the snow, but every so often hitting a week spot and plunging shin deep into powder. Even after our street was ploughed, there was still limited parking as the snow piles were feet from the curb. On Thursday night, two friends and I went out for a previously scheduled Happy Hour and parking was quite challenging to find. Once we finally got in the pub, it was a 30 minute wait for a table. It seemed everyone was eager to emerge for a warm room and beer and pizza. I don’t blame them. We stayed til almost 10pm and it was so nice to catch up and socialize and not have to wrangle our children.

The schools ended up being closed all week. A couple times, the 6 and 9 year old called their friends around the corner and set up play dates. It’s kind of fun to see them use the landline to arrange their own lives. One day our kids went over, one afternoon their kids came over to our house. One day we divided the kids up – two at one house and two at the other. Thursday I invited them over for a movie night. We watched Shaolin Soccer and ate popcorn. Have you seen Shaolin Soccer? It’s a fantastic movie, about kung fu warriors who start a soccer team. I could only find it in Cantonese/Mandarin, so I relied on the older kids to read the subtitiles aloud to the kindergarteners. Which they did for the first half. But then they lost steam, and you know what? it turned out it didn’t matter. I love that the older kids can watch movies in a foreign language and I love that the movie tells such a good story that the younger kids didn’t need to understand everything that was being spoken.

We ended up going sledding three times. The first time we walked to the nearby park that had some small slopes. The next day, I drove the 6 and 9 year old to the elementary school that was next to a big hill. The hill was quite icy and there had been a bump built into the snow so that if you hit it at the right angle, you would go sailing through the air. The kids sledded for about an hour and had so much fun that we went back yesterday as well. This time the Husband came. He originally said he was going to just drop us, but he ended up staying and went down the hill a couple of times. And so did I. Speeding down the hill, getting launched in the air and then over turning into the snow – it was winter fun all bottled up. We all had so much fun – I can’t remember laughing so much in a long long time.

There will likely be a two hour delay on Monday.

(breaking news: School has been cancelled on Monday because many roads are deemed unsafe still. So not a snow day, but a hazardous to walk to school day, I guess. It isn’t so much the snow, but the ice and the fact that a lot of streets/ sidewalks still haven’t been cleared. It reminds me of a section I read in the book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, about how there was a city in Sweden where they prioritized clearing side streets and sidewalks first then clearing the major roads, and they found that it hugely decreased injures and accidents. But of course clearing the sidewalks and side streets first wasn’t the default because those were pathways primarily used by women, while it was men who used the major roads. I’m thinking about this a lot this week as I walked in the street to and from the Metro, or the park with my kids, or to the grocery store, walking in the street because the sidewalks aren’t cleared yet. )

I have to say, coming out on this end, I didn’t mind the snow days. I can see how snow days can really derail life for people who have to show up for their jobs. Luckily I didn’t have to be in the office and worked from home in spare pockets of time when the kids were occupied and not fighting or eating.
The snow day good:
-Slower mornings, no rushing.
-Snow adventures. Sledding. Snow forts. Shovelling – tedious, but good work out.
-Being able to savor being inside and cozy.
-having time together as a family without having to worry about carpools or activities
-having time for playdates. I think with school the kids don’t get enough time to play with their friends on a day to day basis. I think they need time to learn how to be kind humans out in the wild.

The Snow day challenges:
-bored kids who nag at me.
-bored kids who push each other’s buttons.
-bone chilling cold and having to wear many many layers outside.
-not knowing when it will end.
-“Didn’t I just feed you?”
-the mess of everyone being home all. the. time. I don’t think our house was meant to be occupied 24/7. There were constantly dishes in the sink, the kitchen to be cleaned, pick up pick up pick up. It’s hard to be motivated to keep things tidy, to find a resting neat condition for the house when I know that with all of us constantly in the house, there is no “resting condition” – just constant movement and needs and wants and impulses. I think I need to think a little bit about what the “resting condition” of the house is like when we live in it every single moment of every single day.

January 2026 Recap – on to a big picture look at the month that was:

Highlights:
– The rest of our trip to Taiwan. Two nights at the hots springs in Beitou. Family. A long yet uneventful flight home.
-Birthdays for the two older kids.
– Two freelance jobs – one a title job of Brahms Choral Music, which I love. Another a stage management gig as support for a play based on interviews conducted with Israelis about October 7th 2023; regardless of your politics, it was a pretty powerful piece.
-The 14 year old getting the lead in the middle school musical.
– Visiting the National Museum of Women in the Arts
-Visiting the State Fair exhibit at the Renwick Gallery, then going to our favorite cheap Chinese restaurant and browsing the nearby bookstore.
– Visiting/ Hanging/ connecting with friends – Advent book group, Happy Hour, Lunch with mom friend, Having friends over for dinner, going over to their house for dinner.
-Watching the 14 year old play rec basketball
-Discovering a new Taiwanese cafe nearby. The boba was very good and they had the red bean smoothie that the Husband loves.
-getting in the habit of reading every morning.
-Writing down some gentle aspirations for 2026, and being mindful about carrying through with them.
-New bedroom furniture for the 8th grader. We bought this last fall, but it finally arrived this month.
-Snow. Going sledding with the kids. The Husband joining us sledding.
-Five Star new to us recipes: M&M cookies, Leek and Potato Focaccia, Masala Chickpeas with Tofu and Blistered Tomatoes.
-Favorite meal cooked: Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce w/ pasta and Turkey Meatballs. Eaten with Leek and Potato Focaccia and salad (from a bag)

Lowlights:
-The state of the world. The state of the United States.
-Big changes at work. It will all lead to good things, but it’s been a rough transition.
-having to say good-bye to so many people at work because of the transitions.
– Not getting my life together enough to plan birthday parties for the two older kids. wump wump. This happens every year, and I need to figure out how to combat this one.
-The heat going out at my parents’ rental the first day of the big snow storm.
-My sleep hygiene has been terrible. At first it was jet lag, but then I think it was revenge bedtime procrastination. I went to bed well well well past midnight most nights, then would take a three hour nap in the afternoon. I got a little bit better at this by the end of the month.
-Too much scrolling.

Quote of the Month: “Failure is Data.” I wish I knew where I first heard this phrase.

Looking Forward to in February:
-Going to New York with the 14 year old to see Two Strangers Carry a Cake through New York. I’m really glad I booked the tickets for the first week of February and not the last week of January.

-Superbowl Sunday. Which coincides with the Husband’s birthday. Unfortunately he is not getting the present of the Chicago Bears going to the Super Bowl, but we will celebrate with cake at half time all the same.

-The Olympics. I’m excited for this. I just learned about, Ski Mountaineering where the skiers hike up a mountain then ski down. I really want to catch that, it sound intense. I mean it’s all intense. Also looking forward to figure skating, hockey, and the Zen of curling.

-Lunar New Year. It’s the Year of the Horse, my birth year. I expect there will be dumplings, noodles, and red envelopes.

-A couple of get togethers already planned – lunch with friends, family hang outs with other families.

-the 14 year old’s Middle School basketball games. I think I can make one or two.

-Starting rehearsal for a new show. I’m actually a little nervous about this – it’s the company’s first show since our big shake-up, and the show is a new production, so I think the rehearsal process will be intense. It’s also going to be a lot of evenings. So I guess I’m more “girding my loins” than “eagerly anticipating” this one.

Grateful For This Week:
-Aquaphor, for protecting my lips and my skin from the bitter cold elements.

-The stage crew at work.

-Hoopla. There have been a couple times when I’ve wanted to watch a movie, but then it’s only available on Netflix, which we don’t have, or I would have to rent the movie from Amazon. But then I search in Hoopla and there it is! Hoopla also has the ability to check out a Hallmark bingepass, so I can watch ALL the Hallmark movies that I want in a one week period.

-Our stove top griddle that has enough space for me to make eight pancakes at a time.

-Hills on which to go sledding.

-Our freezer full of food.

-The “send later” function in iMessage. I often have a thought I want to share with someone, and this thought often strikes me at midnight or later. Well, if they have an iPhone, like I do, I can write a text and set it to send later. Then the thought is not taking up space in my brain anymore. I love anything that allows me to open some space in my brain.

-Hand Me Downs. As we frolicked in the snow last week, I realized that almost every piece of outerwear and winter gear the 9 year old and the 6 year old were wearing was a hand me down, either from their older sister or from a friend. It felt really good not to have to spend money on cold weather layers for the kids.

-That our school district is having snow days rather than remote/online learning days. Online learning just didn’t work for our family during COVID. There are a couple schools in our area that had remote/online learning days last week. I don’t know how I would have managed three kids with online learning. I don’t think I even have that many devices for them to use. I’m so glad we haven’t gone (back) there.

What We Ate:

Monday: mac and cheese from a box. This was the day we were at my parents’ rental all evening dealing with the lack of heat. The 14 year old was supposed to make them dinner, but halfway though making dinner, she said she felt faint, so she turned off the stove and went to bed. The Husband and I came home, finished up dinner, and served it with some cut up cucumbers and apples.

Taco Tuesday: Re-fried Bean tacos. I was originally going to make black beans for this pantry meal, but then I realized we were out of black beans. So I made refried beans instead, only I had just one can of pinto beans. So I threw in a can of cannellini beans and added some frozen corn, and voila! Dinner from pantry ingredients. This was tasty. I also made a pico de gallo from some sad leftover tomatoes and tossed some coleslaw cabbage in a bowl and called it done.

Wednesday: I had to work this evening and I brought leftovers. The Husband defrosted soup and made BLTs. Bacon is so tasty.

Thursday: Tofu Stir fy with Udon Noodles. The Husband cooked. This is the night I went out for Happy Hour. I had a half club sandwich and half Greek salad and an order of fries.

Friday: Pizza and Tangled. It was the 6 year old’s turn to choose the movie. Can we just say what a perfect romantic movie Tangled is? The songs are top notch, the action moves along with humour and heart, but at the same time the movie takes time to linger on emotional moments that need a bit of space. The slow unfurling of Rapunzel and Flynn’s relationship is wonderful to watch, and even better, both Flynn and Rapunzel have a character arc with true growth. Sigh and swoon.

Saturday: We were originally going to order out, but then ran out of steam and couldn’t agree on something everyone wanted, so I just raided the freezer and we had dumplings, bao, endamame, and steamed green beans. The Husband made milk shakes.

Sunday: tortellini and steamed green beans. Keeping it simple on Sundays.

Welp that’s what the world is like over here. Hopefully the kids will go back to school soon and we can carry on with business as usual…

What are you looking forward to in February? What’s your favorite/ least favorite part of a snow day – either a self imposed snow day or one imposed by outside forces?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Another museum, another birthday! And Snow.

Our world is blanketed with snow so thick and frozen that you can walk on it. We’re on Day Three of the schools being closed and they’ve already announced that they will be closed tomorrow (Thursday) as well. The kids were super excited. The six year old made this to do list:

For those who aren’t fluent in six year old pictogram, the list reads:
1. Build snowman
2. Throw snowballs at the snowman
3. Go sledding
4. Make snow angels
5. Build and igloo
6. Have a snowball fight
7. Shovel Snow.

The weekend featured the usual runs of voice lesson and a basketball game for the 14 year old. The two little kids were invited to a playdate so they didn’t come to the game. The 14 year old won her game so we stopped to get fries from McDonalds on the way home. Why are fries SO tasty? I had to work Saturday night, and took the Metro in, just in case the snow came early. The Metro costs $2.50 more than parking, and takes 15 minutes longer (though in rush hour, it’s actually faster to Metro). I figure the extra time and money is worth the stress I save from having to drive through the city. I got to read my book, and truth to tell, the walk to and from the Metro Station is always a welcome opportunity to move.

Sunday, we woke to several inches of snow on the ground, with more coming down. We hunkered, and shovelled a little. The two older kids and I walked down to the park- I live seeing it blanketed with snow. The snow was almost sand like, making it quite a workout to walk through it.

Sunday evening we had some neighbors over for dinner – our kids swim together, but since swim was cancelled, we thought it was a good opportunity to get together. It was a lovely evening- I made pasta with Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce, foccaccia, and we had bagged salad. Our neighbors brought cookies and cannoli. Afterwards one of their daughters introduced us to Imposter. Have you played? It’s loads of fun; there’s an app where everyone secretly gets a word (the same word) except one person who is the imposter. Then everyone goes around and says one word related to the main word, including the imposter who has to try to figure out what word to add without giving away that they don’t know the word. There was a lot of laughing.

On the bummer side, the heat at my parents’ rental went out o n Sunday and since the Husband and I manage the property for them, we were the ones who had to deal with it. Monday morning we managed to get our car out and drive over to their neighborhood. They hadn’t been ploughed out yet, so we parked two blocks away and walked up to the house with space heaters for the tenants. I dropped the Husband and drove back home, and I’m pretty sure I burned the clutch on our car getting it back home over the unploughed streets. (We have two cars, but the van does not have all wheel drive, so we had to drive the manual Impreza). Later that evening, we headed to the rental house to see if we could troubleshoot and open the faucets since we didn’t want the pipes to freeze; the tenants had checked into a hotel by that point. Given the lack of parking at the rental, the Husband and I decided that the easiest thing would be to walk over. So the Husband and I walked the mile there, some of it on the road since the sidewalks hadn’t been cleared. I pulled on my wool and silk underlayers, bundled up and it turned out not to be so bad of a walk. The streets were pretty quiet and the sun was setting and the snow was still white and smooth. As we turned the corner to the house, I looked up and it was golden hour. The Husband said, “At least the light is beautiful.”

We finally were able to find an HVAC company that could come out on Tuesday – most places were saying Wednesday or Friday at the earliest. The heating and gas were fixed, thankfully and we could all breathe easier.

Before all that happened, though… the previous Monday was MLK Day and we went on a family museum adventure to the Renwick Gallery. The Renwick is a Smithsonian museum dedicated to the art of crafts and handiwork. There is currently an exhibit called State Fair: Growing American Craft. It features work that was created and displayed at State Fairs around the country from the early twentieth century to today. I loved this exhibit. It was a great reminder that art is not purely the domain of the artists whose work hangs in the big museums, who have highly publicized exhibits. Art can come from the farmer’s wife, who collects fabric scraps and sews them into a beautiful quilt after the kids go to bed, or the insurance agent who takes up knitting as a hobby, or the art student who is just learning how to throw pottery.

I think this exhibit was one of the most diverse exhibits I’ve ever seen – it celebrated the work of people from a wide variety of cultures and races and backgrounds. While I was going through this exhibit, I thought of the Amish Quilt exhibit at the American Art Museum I had seen a few years ago and how all those quilts were made by “unknown.” I loved that the pieces in this exhibit all were able to credit the creators.

Some of my favorite pieces:

This quilt was made by Grace Snyder (1882-1982) of Nebraska. She learned to quilt when she was six to keep herself occupied while she watched the cattle. The quilt is made up of 87,000 small triangles. It’s almost like a Grecian mosaic.
Butter Cow! by Sarah Pratt and her daughters Hannah and Grace. I’ve never seen one of these before, and this made me super excited.
Hair wreath by Josephine Daly (1860-1939). This was made over the course of eight years, from real hair. I find this beautiful and creepy,.
Pyramid of preserves, canned by Rod Zeitler of Iowa City. . All I could think about when looking at this was, that’s a lot of toast. Also – are they going to eat it all?
Seed art by Linda Paulson. This is art made by gluing tiny seeds one by one. So meticulous – look at the detail!

I picked up a few things from the gift shop. I don’t often buy things from Museum Gift Shops, but more and more I’m feeling like since our museums are free, I should support them in some way. Especially these days. I got a hand made bud vase – I don’t like cut flowers, but a sprig of something or a single flower could be nice. I also picked up this this beautiful book of stickers:

How beautiful are these stickers? I almost don’t want to use the stickers, they are so gorgeous, but I think it would bring people a lot of joy to see them, making them perfect for including in mail.

Afterward the museum, we walked up to Dupont Circle and had lunch at our favorite cheap Chinese restaurant. When the Husband and I started dating, he worked within walking distance from this place and we would often meet here for lunch, usually ordering the same thing – kung pao chicken for him, chicken and green beans for me. We order all that along with orange chicken, combination lo mien, and Mongolian Beef. It was all so tasty.

After lunch, we walked back to the metro, popping briefly into Second Story Books to browse. I mean with this sign out front, who could resist:

In other news from last week, it was also the middle child’s birthday. He is now 9 years old! Happy birthday to this imaginative kid who loves stories and puzzles and thinking about life. You can always find him reading – he’s recently really gotten Plants vs. Zombies – playing with his swords and nerf guns. He likes making up adventure stories in his head and enacting them with his little sister. He loves to build, be outside, ride his bike, kick a soccer ball, and play Mario Kart. He doesn’t like practicing piano, being told to put his book down, or when his sister takes his Lego creations apart.

Grateful for (The Snowy Snowy January Edition):

-The people in Minneapolis who go out in the cold and protest and protect and bear witness to the sad and heavy things happening there.

-The beauty and quiet of a world covered in snow.

-people who clear their side walks.

-Snow plough drivers. Our street didn’t get ploughed until Tuesday afternoon, and boy was I happy to see the snow plough when it arrived.

-The magical alchemy that is baking – flour, levener, liquid. Butter. All that combines to make magical cozy things that comfort us by the mouthful. In addition to focaccia I also made M&M cookies (this recipe, really good!), and thumb print cookies (from Cook’s Illustrated – a little bland, TBH), which I made with pepper jelly and blueberry jam.

-That our heat works.

-That our Metro stop is underground. A lot of Metro stops in the suburbs are above ground, which makes it very cold when waiting for the train. Our metro stop and the metro stop at my work are both underground so I can wait for the train without being exposed to the elements.

-Hot chocolate. When we heard a storm was coming, I told the Husband we had to stock up on butter, eggs, and hot chocolate. These are the important things.

-the back up electric kettle. Last week, our electric kettle meet an unfortunate fate when someone tried to move the cart it was sitting on without unplugging the kettle. There was broken glass and tears. For as much tea as I drink, being without an electric kettle is DIRE. Luckily we had an old kettle in our basement that I pulled out. It’s not ideal – it’s plastic, for one – but it will do until we get a new one. OR… I’m really considering upgrading to one of these electric water boilers. It would be a splurge, but all the Taiwanese people have them – it keeps water at a constant temperature. How many times have I been late to work because I was waiting for hot water so I could fill my coffee mug and take it to go?

Looking Forward to:

-Cool Blogger’s Book Club! Reading The Age of Innocence. This is a re-read for me, but knowing how it end, has made some things in the first few chapters really pop for me. I stopped at our library’s used bookstore to find a copy, and there is was! I also picked up a few other fun things:

I got the Far Side and the Get Fuzzy for the 9 year old – they were two of my favorite Sunday comics when I was growing up and I wanted to share them with him. He reports that Far Side is “funny, but scary.” Upon re-reading it, I can see what he means.

-This is more of a “Some day in the future” rather than concrete plans, but when we were in Dupont Circle, II was thinking that I would love to take a child-free Dupont Circle Day some day. I do love spending time with my kids, but they don’t really do leisurely meandering. If I had a child-free day in Dupont Circle, I would go to the Phillips Collection, then spend some time browsing the various stationary and book stores along Connecticut Ave., and then find some tasty food or a refreshing beverage (Maybe from the Afghan Chai truck??) and sit on the circle and people watch. I think I will put this on my list of fun things to do this spring.

-Radishes. We had two bags of radishes passed along to us from our friend with the CSA – he doesn’t like radishes. So I’m determined to eat one a day so that they don’t go to waste. There are beautiful watermelon radishes that I’ve been slicing thin and eating with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil for breakfast. There are also some black radishes that have a very spicy bite. I ate one sliced with salt and pepper and decided that I couldn’t eat them raw, so I cut one up and put it in congee. I might miso-roast the other black radishes.

-the kids going back to school. Monday was a grading day so we weren’t supposed to have school anyway, but now school has been cancelled through to Thursday because of the weather. On the one hand I’ve been enjoying the cozy time with the kids, and I dread going back to routine – it’s like having a second winter break.- , but on the other hand, it is really hard to keep up with the dishes and the house hold chores when everyone is home all the time.

-Just started this audiobook, a historical fantasy set in WWI; it’s just gotten a bit creepy…

What We Ate:

Monday: I was going to make Ethiopian food this day, but then I fell asleep after getting home from the Museum. So the Husband raided the freezer and assembled a dinner of dumplings, soup, and edamame.

Taco Tuesday: reheated the honey adobo chicken from last week. (I had to go to work this evening, so I wrapped some of the chicken in a soft tortilla and took it with me.)

Wednesday: Butternut Squash and Leek Za’atar Pie, Ottolenghi recipe for NY Times Cooking. I made this in an effort to use up some delicata squash, leeks, and chard that our friend had given us from their CSA when they were out of town. This seems like a fancy dish, because it’s all wrapped up in puff pastry, but it was actually pretty fast and easy to put together. Puff pastry makes anything feel fancy. I thought it was rather tasty – the kids didn’t care for the fact that I didn’t peel the squash beforehand, but once the Husband took off the skin (I was at work), they ate it. Made for good leftovers.

Thursday: Pasta and red sauce. Simple fast dinner for a night when I had to work and the Husband had evening plans.

Friday: The family had dinner out with a friend (I think they had burgers). I was at work. Can’t remember what I ate, probably leftovers.

Saturday: Pizza Hut (the 9 year old’s special birthday request) and The Music Man. The 14 year old got the lead in the middle school production of Music Man. I’m so excited and proud for her! Although after seeing the movie, she’s decided that Marian doesn’t make sense – she spends the first half of the show yelling at Harold Hill and then suddenly has a change of heart. It told her that that’s the actor’s challenge, isn’t it?
(I had to work. I think I had leftovers before heading to the theatre again)

Sunday: Marcella Hazan’s oh so easy famous Tomato Sauce w/ pasta, Turkey meatballs (This recipe, but baked instead of fried), potato and leek frittata, and salad (from a bag)

Hope those of you in the path of winter weather remain safe and warm. Here’s hoping there is sunshine and clear roads in your future.

Do you go to your State Fair? Have you ever entered anything into a State Fair? If you could, what would it be? What was your favorite Sunday comic growing up? What do you panic buy make sure you stock up for when bad weather is coming?

Weekly recap + What we ate: 2026 Gentle Aspirations

Well it’s been an odd odd week. The sleep hasn’t gotten any better. At this point I don’t think it’s jetlag. I think it’s just revenge bedtime procrastination and the revenge is super working. Work has been in kind of a holding pattern, which has made me incredibly restless. I keep checking my phone for news. One day this week, I logged 12 hours on my phone. TWELVE. There were a couple nights when I couldn’t summon the will to go to bed, only finally turning in when my phone and table both ran out of battery. This is not good. And on top of that, the events foreign and domestic continue to be shit – I’m sure that doom scrolling was part of the 12 hours of battery draining screen time.

In and amidst all that, I made a list. A list of goals and aspirations for 2026. I’ve been brainstorming the list for a while, and last week I spent some time living with that list and seeing if it felt true to what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be.

As I was looking at the list, however, I felt that some of my goals were focused on the wrong thing. I think some goals and aspirations are focused on an end goal, but many are really about the process or the inherent pleasure of doing the thing. A few years ago, I read “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide” and he talks about how activities can be telic or atelic. Telic are activities with and end point; atelic activities are activities without an end point. This idea has stuck with me a lot. One of my biggest takeaways from that book is that as we enter the latter part of one’s life = and, let’s be honest, once you’re past your mid 40s, there are likely fewer years ahead of you than behind – we might not see the end point of everything we do, so perhaps there is value in focussing on atelic activities rather than telic ones.

So for example, one of the goals I had originally written was “Read 70 books.” Yet when I really thought about this goal, I realized that I didn’t want to read more books; I wanted to spend more time reading. If I just wanted to read more books, I could read shorter books; I could just read books that were easy and fluffy (which I do love); I could skim more books. But looking at my goal, I realized those things aren’t how I want to read. I want to read books that make me feel and make me think. I want to read books that are immersive and that spin a longer tale. I want to read books that tell good stories, fiction or non-fiction. I want to read books to learn. I want to read prose that sings, that I can savor. And these things, don’t mean more books. It means more time. I will never read all the books I want; I will probably die with a very lengthy TBR. But hopefully I will die having been enriched by the books that I do get to read.

Which is all to say, i think I’ve been going about some of my goals the wrong way. It’s not about what I want to accomplish, but about how I want to spend my time. I don’t want to do yoga every day so that I can check boxes off to have a streak – I want to do yoga every day because it feels good to move and stretch my body. I think sometimes when I make goals that are focused on hitting a number goal, I forget why I get enjoyment or growth or benefit from putting the thing on the list in the first place. In past years, I would say I want to do X Y number of times and then I would feel very disappointed not to get there. This year I want to flip the script – putting a number on certain goals is motivation to do it regularly, a reminder that these are things that fill my cup. It’s not about how many times I ultimately do the thing, but that I make time to do it.

So anyhow, here is my list of 2026 goals gentle aspirations. There are also things that I haven’t’ written out – mostly adulting things – not because they aren’t on my list, but rather because I feel like they are things that I do anyway, so they might not need special focus attention. Or they are things I don’t quite know how to articulate into a “goal”. Top on that list is that I would like to stop nagging the kids to do their chores. But, again, that is just the wearisome minutiae of day to day. And I think I wanted to focus on additive things and I don’t quite know what to add to my life in order for me not to lose my shit when my kids won’t pick up after dinner.

Anyhow, on to the list:

Physical Health:
–Take the stairs. Trying to incorporate more movement into my life, and this seems like a no brainer. I was talking to my cousins over the holidays and they said that being able to climb stairs is one of the first things that gets difficult as we age, but also that it’s really good exercise. So I’m going to take the stairs whenever possible.
– Daily yoga, with at least one 20+ minute session per week.
–Strength workout 2x a week. I know this is paltry, but I want to start somewhere, given that I’m past my mid 40s. I only have 5lb weights at home and want to get 7 or 10 lb weights to help with this goal.
–5 vegan dinners a month. This is a health aspiration, but also a creative one because I like the challenge and creativity of cooking vegan recipes that are new to us and which the family likes. (The 6 year old, always asks, “Is there chicken in this?” when I make dinner.)
–Set an alarm for bedtime and come up with a wind down routine. Sleep continues to be probably my worst personal health habit. But sleep feels so amazing. So I need to get myself there sooner.
–Find a PCP. This is probably second more egregious health deficit that I have. my gynecologist usually does my bloodwork and preventative tests, but I think I do need a proper PCP.

Family
–Date Night/ Activity with the Husband – Now that the kids can stay home on their own, I’m hoping the Husband and I will have more one on one time that isn’t at home in front of the TV. I think we do better when we have an activity to do together rather than just dinner, so I’m looking into some classes in the area.
–Go camping with the kids (and the Husband) – I would like to do a four night camping trip. I usually do three nights and I don’t feel like that is quite long enough to disconnect and reconnect.
–Road Trip. 2025 had a lot of international travel for us, so I think 2026 might be more in the realm of a family road trip.
–Go to the Philadelphia Flower Show. This is a big dream of the Husband’s and I would love to make it happen.
–Christmas at Home – after spending the past two Christmases in Taiwan, everyone has agreed that this Christmas will be at home.
–Weekly phone calls/photos to my parents – I’ve never gotten into the habit of calling my parents regularly. When we talk things tend to very often be about logistics – planning for trips, details with their rental, etc. However, on our trip to Taiwan, visiting my 100 year old grandfather, I realized that I want to know my parents better; I want my kids to know them better; I want them to know me better. This is somewhat hard for a variety of reasons that I probably need to unpack. But my family has been so supportive and I want to model good family relations for my kids as well.
–Family Game Nights, Family Reading Nights – mostly find ways to break out of the evening tv rut.
–Take more photos with the people I love and who love me. I realized when I was making a slide for my grandmother’s memorial service that I had only three pictures of her, and one of them was super blurry. While in Taiwan over the holidays, I tried to make sure to take photos with my grandfather and have my kids take photos with him – I think even when you can’t remember someone from your past, a photo can help you remember that you were loved.
–Set an alarm when I’m working to call the Husband to check in on my dinner breaks.

Social:
–Monthly Happy Hour with my Friends L and D.
–Monthly meet up with my friend K (who was my freshman year roommate!)
–Host one fun dinner party/gathering per quarter – Ideas for this- another soup party. Dumpling Party. Cookie Party. Invite another family for game night. Mom’s group reunion.

Work:
–Work ahead when putting calls and cues in my book. Put places calls in my score as we stage, so they are there before we move to stage.
–Come up with a timeline when I’m working on supertitles. And stick to it. I don’t like how last minute I am with my super title projects.
–Find more places to post when we are looking for interns. The past couple years we haven’t gotten a lot of people applying for our intern position. We’ve always filled the position with strong candidates, but I’d love to make more people aware of our internship because I think it’s a great program.
–Don’t Freak Out. Not really bloggable, but you might know about this if you’ve been following the arts news in DC. There is a lot of change happening for me at work. I’m going to try to keep focused and not freak out.

Home/Finance:
–Submit tax information to our tax person before March 31st.
–Track my spending. I’ve never done this, but I do want to get a handle on where our money is going. Maybe I’ll just start with one week.
-Monthly Financial meetings with the Husband.
–Declutter and come up with better organizational systems: Specifically the area under our console in the bedroom. My desk. The bathroom closet. My craft corner. The toy room and make it into a more usable guest room.

Self/Hobbies/ Mental Health:
–Less scrolling, more of the things below….
–Paint 26 pictures. I realized that 26 (as in 2026) is half of 52 (as in weeks in a year), so I thought a fun project to tie in to the year is to paint 26 pictures this year.
–Spend more time reading. I want to do this Classic Literature Challenge from the blog Tea and Ink Society.
– Write 52 haikus. This goal is about stopping to take time to notice things around me.
–Do the crossword puzzle every week. This is a goal to help me reduce my time scrolling. Also I like crossword puzzles.
– Write 64 Blog Posts. That’s one a week + 1 additional post a month. I think what I want this goal to be about is to be more disciplined in my writing. I would like to come up with a more regular posting schedule.
–Spend more time playing piano. learn some songs to sing with the family.
–Find time/routine for journaling.
–Go on 12 hikes. Take the kids and Husband with me on some.
–Visit ten museum, even if I have to pay.
–See 2 straight plays.
–Find a cooking project, TBD. Maybe bao again? Maybe croissants. I’ve done that once. Maybe revive my sourdough starter? Or some kind of stew?

Just for fun, here are three things that were on my list that I cut after contemplating what telic vs. atelic goals:
-Run 3 miles once a month. Okay, let’s be honest – I don’t love running. And now it is really cold outside. This is exactly the kind of achievement based goal that I realized didn’t serve me.
-Knit a hat – again, a telic goal that I feel like would just be a fail. I do have an enormous yarn stash that sits in my room (under that aforementioned area under the console table) and maybe a knitting project could be part of that decluttering. But putting a whole hat on my list seemed like an awful lot of pressure.
-Only pack meat for lunch if it is leftovers. This goes hand in hand with my desire to eat more plant based meals, but I realized mornings when I pack my lunch are really stressful times and this might just add to that stress.

Will I do everything on my list? I hope I can have regular progress at least. I read an interesting quote lately in the context of these yearly lists of goals – forgive me, I can’t remember where I read it, I think on some Substack:

“Failure is data.”

I think that’s a good way to look at when I don’t check off things from my 2026 list. Not doing something isn’t a sign of a weakness inherent in me; failure to is not objectively negative. It’s an opportunity to assess and see why things didn’t work, or if it even is something I want. If I don’t fail, I don’t have the information to move forward.

Grateful for:
-Fleece lined pants. The temperature has really dropped this week and will continue to do so. I had a conversation with a friend that went like this:
Me: What’s up with this weather. It’s so cold!
Friend: I think that’s called January.
Me: —
Which it’s true. It is January. I don’t know why I’m surprised that the weather is in the 30s. Anyhow, fleece lined pants for the win.

-Warm sunshine. Even in the bitter cold, the sun’s rays are still warm.

-That even though I messed up and booked my thyroid ultrasound for the wrong office, the people at the office I wanted to go to (because it’s five minutes from my house) managed to find a slot and get me in later in the day.

-My friend K. She came over for dinner and gave me a belated birthday card in which she had written the best message. We were college roommates and I love that we are still in each other’s lives, without judgement and without drama.

-My friend C – we had a lengthy coffee date of Saturday. I hadn’t seen her in a while and it was good to be able to be vulnerable for 90 minutes while sipping our hot drinks.

-That the 8 year old practiced piano. He does not like practicing piano. I bribe him with Switch time and he does it. I’m always glad when he does manage to practice because then I don’t feel like I’m throwing my money away on piano lessons.

-Free printing at the library. Our public libraries now have free black and white printing – up to 15 pages a day. We had to print some music for the 14 year old this week and it was so easy just to upload it online and then go to the library, swipe my library card and have the music printed. All for free. Well I guess my tax dollars and the cost of gas to get to the library.

-That the Chicago Bears had such a good season. Last night’s game was nail-biting and heart-wrenching. I don’t care much about football, but I do care about the Bears because the Husband cares about the Bears. The Bears had some magical moments during the game, despite ultimately losing. I know the Husband is disappointed that the Bears aren’t advancing, but this is the first season since I’ve known him that he has been truly hopeful for the next season. Being a fan is such emotional work.

Looking Forward to:
-MLK Day off with the family. We are going to go downtown to see a museum. Maybe in future years we can have a more service-oriented MLK Day.

-The 14 year old’s furniture arriving for her bedroom – bed, nightstand, and dresser. She can stop sleeping on a futon mattress. She can stop just shoving her clothes in the closet. And instead shove them under her bed.

-Walk with a friend next week.

-The 14 year old’s middle school basketball game. The first one is this coming week; the Husband will go to that. We can’t both go to the games because they happen at the same time as the bus drop off for the two elementary school kids. I’ll go to the home games. Last year I only went to one game and I want to go to more this year.

-Broadway Week! Last year the kids had a day off on a Wednesday in January, so we went to New York to see Hadestown. Well this year, we don’t have a mid week day off, but it is once again Broadway Week where tickets to select shows are 2 for 1, so as a birthday present for the 14 year old, I am pulling her from school and we are going to see Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Through New York). It wasn’t a show that was on my radar, but she loves the cast album for this show. I’m really excited! And train tickets for a Wednesday morning were less than $100 round trip. Something to look forward to in two weeks.

What We Ate:
Monday – Za’atar Roasted Tofu With Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Lemony Tahini from NY Times Cooking. I feel like this was very similar to the Masala Tofu and chickpea dinner I made last week, just with different seasonings, and made in the oven so it wasn’t as messy. Vegan.

Tuesday: Honey Adobo Chicken from NY Times Cooking. Taco Tuesday. This was actually kind of disastrous evening – one child made a really wise ass comment that was the last straw after a whole day of wise ass comments. I lost my shit and went into my room and proceeded to sulk and then fell asleep for three hours. When I woke up at 9:30pm, the 14 year old had fed the two little kids, cleaned the kitchen together, and put them to bed. I don’t deserve such a great kid.

Wednesday: Vegetable Soup and No-Knead Bread. A clean out the produce drawer affair. Vegan.

Thursday: Pork chops, steamed green beans and Greek Salad with Cannelilni Beans. Apple Pie. It was my late Father in law’s birthday so we had pork chops as we always do on his birthday. My friend K came over, but she is a vegetarian, so I added the Greek salad. She brought the apple pie. It was delicious.

Friday: Pizza (Take out) and movie night: Pride. It was my turn to choose the movie and I picked this 2014 movie based on the true story of a group of gay activists who, during the 1984 Miner’s strike in England, form Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), raising money and awareness to help the miner’s. It is a predictably heart-warming movie – one of those earnest and funny British films full of wonderful performances (Andrew Scott, Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, and more), with an uplifting message of perseverance and connection. I loved it.

Saturday: We checked out a Taiwanese restaurant that I had just heard about. We had beef noodle soup, fried calamari, fried tofu, braised beef over rice, popcorn chicken, and tomato chicken over rice. It was quite a feast and did very much remind me of Taiwan. Afterwards we all got boba (tea for me and the 14 year old, brown sugar milk for the two little kids), and the Husband got a red bean smoothie, one of his favorite things he had in Taiwan, but which I’ve never seen before on a menu here in the States.

Sunday: Leftover (me), Sausage sandwich (the 14 year old), Tortellini with red sauce and Caesar Salad (the rest of the family.)

Did you make a list of goals/aspirations/intentions for 2026? Anything you took off your list? What service does your library provide that you think is wonderful? (Other than the obvious, books) For any of you directly coping with any of the awful things happening in our country, I’m thinking of you.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Jet lag, Art by Women, airplane films

Ouf, it’s been a rough week for re-entry. I have not been able to get onto a regular sleep schedule. I’m by mid afternoon, struggle to stay awake, and end up taking three hour naps and then staying up until 2am and then sleeping til 8am, which is pretty late in our house. Overall not good for my goal of improving my sleep hygeine in 2026. The house continues to be a mess, the kids run amok on their own in the morning. On the bright side – the six year old got tired of waiting for me to wake up one morning and packed her own lunch…

I did manage to go to work – definitely not bloggable these days – make dinner a few times, meet up with my Lenten (okay, I guess Advent/Epiphany) reading group this week. But other than that, it was a whole lot of sleeping.

Some good news (since so much of it is shit these days):
We found out which high school our daughter is going to. She got assigned to her #1 pick, which is great. The results are kind of based on home school/lottery/random assignments, so it was a little up to chance. The school she is assigned to is not actually our home school, but it is closer to us, which is nice – actually in most of the redistricting maps that have been drawn, it would probably be our new home school in the future, so chances are the two other kids will also go there. I’m excited because the school is getting rebuilt – so next year she will be at at a holding school that is a little far away, but the new building will open up her sophomore year. I can’t quite believe my baby is going to HIGH SCHOOL next year.

Speaking of my baby – it is also her birthday week. It’s been a little low key because her birthday comes so soon after the holidays that I’m always negligent at planning anything. Oh well – we’ll gather with some family friends and have cake, and I think we’ll plan something for her and her friends at some point. She’s on the fence as to whether she wants a big birthday party or anything, so we’ll see what she wants to do. But oh wow… This little baby made us first time parents and now she is 14!!!!

She was such an itty bitty thing! Born at 34 weeks, just under 5lbs – we were completely unprepared for her arrival. Some day I might get around to writing her birth story here.

And look at us now!

A Museum Visit– I went to a new to me museum – The National Museum for Women in the Arts, where aside from a few exceptions, all the art in the museum is by women or non-binary artists. The NMWA is in DC, but not a Smithsonian, so I did actually *gasp* pay money to go. It was well worth the $16 (They do have two free community days a month, and I was going to wait, but the exhibit I wanted to see was closing soon, so I figured I would just pay…. such a foreign concept for me. I feel so entitled.) I had known about the museum, though given all the free museums, this museum was never high up on my list of museums to visit. But during the last government shut down, when the Smithsonian closed, the NMWA was on a list of alternative museums to visit – they even had free admission for federal workers – and I made a note to check it out.

The exhibit that prompted me to visit was called Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, showcasing female artist from the time of the Dutch Masters. The exhibit was about to close and I didn’t want to miss it. 1600-1750 was such a prolific time for art, but all the artists you hear about from the time are men – Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc. I never thought to wonder fi there were also women artists, and of course there were. Many of them were sisters, daughters, or spouses of artists and they were mostly from upper middle and upper class families. The exhibit featured not just paintings, but also scientific drawings, book illustrations, and – most fascinating to me – samples of lace. The exhibit talked about how lace-making is such an art, but lacemakers are never credited by name or even known. It kind of reminded me of the exhibit of quilts that I saw at the Smithsonian a few years ago – the idea of handicraft as art, but art that does not credit the artist, likely because it’s done by women.

Another artform that was largely women’s domain was paper-cutting. It’s not really on people’s radar because the finished project is so fragile that it seldom survives to be passed down. Of course there are painting of paper cuttings, delicate mobiles with intricate designs. One papercutting adjacent work they had was this portrait – how amazingly skillful is that cutting?

I particularly liked the art by Rachel Ruysch – her paintings featured such detail and sense of life:

One detail from the above painting.

(Also – I just googled Ryusch, and she had ten children while being one of the most in demand still life painters of her time. I feel conflicted as to whether one’s identity as a mother should be part of an artist’s biography, but, man just thinking of her having ten kids is just as impressive as her paintings. Or maybe no – maybe she was a shit mom who left her kids with their nanny all the time. But still… she gave birth ten times. That’s kind of bad ass.)

After I saw the Dutch Masters exhibit, I wandered the other galleries – the main collection, was interestingly enough, arranged by themes (Red, Lavender, Domesticity), rather than by era. I thought that was a really interesting way to look a pieces in a larger context. I particularly was awed by these huge watercolor paintings:

Painting watercolours this large is amazing.
love the detail.

Then on the third level there was another exhibit called Tawny Chatmon: Sanctuaries of Truth, Dissolution of Lies, featuring work by Black photographer Chatmon. She embroiders her photographs with richly colored threads, making a striking textured visual. Her work seeks to reclaim objects that have been used to stereotype African Americans by restoring them to objects of meaning and significance. For example this photograph of a woman with a watermelon where the fruit is given a place of royalty rather than ridicule.

There is also her project “The Restoration” where she finds racist antique dolls and re-draws the offensively exaggerated facial features and dresses them in rich African textiles.

I left the exhibit awed by the courage and creativity Chatmon has to change the narrative that surrounds her. The whole museum, in general was pretty satisfying to visit. Highly recommend.

Speaking of consuming art– Here is a list of all the movies I watched on the plane on our flights to and from Taiwan, most of them foreign films. I like to watch international movies on international flights. I very rarely watch foreign language films at home, but something about being on a flight, being held hostage for hours – I don’t want to watch popcorn movies, I want to watch movies that feel a little challenging.

This is my strategy on international flights – I first go through the menu and favorite all the movies that look interesting to me. Some of my movie catnip: films set in Taiwan (or the country I’m going to visit), films in Mandarin (so I can practice my language skills. French also.), films with romantic story lines, films that say “Award winning performance”, films that don’t look too dark, heavy, or gory (I don’t need to watch violence on a plane… or ever, really), films with an ensemble cast on the poster, films with people looking happy on the poster, film with women and not just men on the poster, films that are set on planet Earth, period films, films that are less than 120 minutes long. Then after favoriting movies, I just see what speaks to me in the moment. I don’t put on a movie until at least an hour into the flight. I like to watch a movie with my meal, and then see what else I have time for.

Here are the seven movies I watched over 30 some hours in a plane to Taiwan and back:

*The Family Stone – USA 2005: This movie is on so many “Classic Holiday Movie” lists, but I had never seen it, so I decided to put it on. Let me tell you – The Family Stone will definitely not be on any of my “Holiday Movie” lists. It’s full of terrible toxic people, and not even in a good, fun to watch way. I mean aside from the one “Check all the DEI boxes” couple (gay, interracial, and Deaf), everyone is kind of just clueless and unkind, and that in and of itself feels cliched. Holiday movies are supposed to fill me with warm fuzzies and hope for humanity. I just wanted to read all these folks the riot act.

*OMG! Mom’s Big News – Malaysia, 2025: This movie is about a couple in their 50s, with grown kids who discover that the wife is pregnant just as they are planning for retirement. I thought this was a cute movie – funny, warm, and full of quirky characters. It kind of felt like a Hallmark movie in the best ways.

*Mumu – China 2025: A film about a Deaf man who works odd jobs while raising his six year old daughter (Mumu) only to have their life together threatened when his ex comes back for custody of the child. The movie starts out as a heartwarming, quirky almost-comedy about a father and his child, but then bam! Mumu turns real dark and becomes a noir thriller as the father, in order to make money, gets involved in an insurance fraud scheme that requires him to recklessly crash cars, and then… well no spoilers. (I do find with a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese movies they tend to have both light and dark moments. There is no one way to categorize a movie often.) Its the kind of movie that on paper sounds as if it will be peddling in emotional cliches – and it does – but the performances are so genuine and delightful, the relationships so real, that I was just sucked right in. Worth a watch if you can find it, I think.

Tic Talk – Taiwan, 2024: A teenage boy with Tourette’s syndrome dreams of being a singer and also of finding his mother. One day, he meets a travelling singer and hitches a ride on his truck, travelling throughout Taiwan and helping him with his stage and sound set up. The cynical singer and the shy teenager bond. A buddy road trip movie. I really enjoyed the music, seeing the life on the road, and seeing the scenery of Taiwan in this movie. Taiwan is a very outdoors country. This movie has catchy tunes and sweet performances.

Road’s End in Taiwan – Switzerland/Taiwan 2025: Swiss Damien receives a letter that his father – whom his mother had told him died years ago – has just recently passed away in Taiwan. He travels to Taiwan for his inheritance and meets Steve, his Taiwanese half brother. Damien and Steve embark on a road trip through Taiwan to find the other two people named in the will so that the will might be read. Yes, another Taiwan Road Trip movie, though this one travels down the East Coast, so a little different scenery. This movie was kind of sad and bleak (Spoiler – the dead father was NOT a good person), but I was pretty invested in the story.

*Montages of a Modern Motherhood– Hong Kong, 2024: New mother Jing struggles with balancing childcare, work, in-laws, and her marriage in this unflinching look at early motherhood. There were so many moments in this movie that I felt very deeply – the bone dead tiredness of having an infant; the sense of not knowing what to do coupled with undeniable instinct for what your child needs; the crying, constant crying. Watching it made me feel angry on behlaf of Jing, but also I felt so lucky that I had the post-partum support that I did. The movie is bleak, but also those first few months with a baby can be so isolating and intense that I’m glad this movie puts out there how hard it can be.

*A Family Knight-Mare (Sin cobertura – literally “no coverage”) – Spain 2025: Fed up with her family constantly being on their phones, young Rita asks a fortune teller at a Medieval fair to make their phone disappear. Before they know it, the family is transported to the real Medieval Times. Will the family be able to get home before they are stuck in the past forever? After watching two bleak movies, I wanted something lighter. This is the kind of family friendly live action movie that Disney used to make all the time. I thought it was entertaining, cute, and fluffy. Not the most memorable or subtle film, but still pretty entertaining.

Grateful For this week:

-The Bears having an unbelievable season. It makes the Husband really happy.

-The Husband for picking up the slack when all I could do was sleep.

-The people at church who acknowledged 14 year old’s birthday. At our church at the end of Mass, they take time to acknowledge birthday and anniversaries. The 13–>14 year old didn’t want to stand up, and instead sunk down even further in the pew, which I think the priest saw and realized something was up. He came up after and wished her a happy birthday, and so did a few other people. I think she didn’t want a public airing of her birthday, but the quiet individual wishes really made her smile.

-Good books and Libby. I just finished the Daughters of Shandong and could instantly have another book to read.

-Raincoats for the soggy soggy week we’ve been having.

-my colleagues at work.

-The now 14 year old. What a bright, kind, empathetic, unfussy human being she is. She makes me laugh by sending me silly YouTube Shorts, eats salad, looks out for her siblings, always tries to do the right thing and notices when people aren’t doing likewise, avoids drama, and is there for her friends. She likes cuddles, food, Coke, and music. I’m so glad she’s in our lives.

Looking Forward to:

-Bao buns. We went to a new to us Asian grocery store – a small little shop full of wonderful things. We were looking for a restaurant, but it was closed and this grocery store was next to it so we wandered inside, thinking maybe the restaurant was inside the grocery store. Well it wasn’t but the store was a little mom and pop affair so it felt awkward to just go in and leave again, so we wandered the aisles and picked up some fun things – curry puffs, canned rambutan, home made pork bao, tapioca flour, and some cookies for the kids. I noticed they have a boba counter in the back, so we’ll have to make a return trip some time!

-Fencing! We signed up the 8 year old for fencing lessons. He’s always running around with his light saber and Ren Faire sword, so we figured we should try to channel that energy.

-Figuring out how to get on a regular sleep cycle.

-My goals gentle aspirations for 2026. Two weeks into the new year and I’ve finally taken a moment to think about these things. I’m definitely of the “New year can start any time” school. I do think I need some adulting type goals, though – something financial. I need to sit with these for a bit and then maybe I’ll share them here.

-Just started this book. Interesting concept but pretty sad in the first few chapters:

-Listening to this audio book – Two of my catnips – Christmas Carol-inspired and Will Watt as one of the narrators! It’s pretty funny and charming so far.

What We Ate:
Monday: Half Price Burgers

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – I made Tofu Chorizo from the NY Times Cooking. It was a little too spicy. Not sure if it’s worth my effort to make again – I have a recipe for soy ground beef that is easier and the family likes better. But otherwise we had tostadas instead of hard shell tacos, and those were well enjoyed.

Wednesday: Pasta with red sauce. I was supposed to cook this night, but I got home from work and fell asleep in our reading chair. When the Hsuband couldn’t wake me, he made dinner instead.

Thursday: Masala Chickpeas with Tofu and Blistered Tomatoes, from NY Times Cooking, served with Paratha (bought frozen from HMart and cooked on the griddle.) This was a huge hit. It was drier than I thought it would be – next time, I might add a can of diced tomatoes as well. Vegan (I used coconut oil instead of ghee.)

Friday: Pizza and movie night. Only we watched Indiana University football instead.

Saturday: We went out for Indian Food, the 13 (now 14) year old’s choice as her birthday dinner out.

Sunday: We went over to a friend’s house and they made pizza on the grill for us. We brought bagged salad and cupcakes.

Welp that’s some of what’s been going on here – hope you’ve had a great weekend and that the week ahead brings some wonderful things even when the big picture is bleak.

Do you have a method for picking movies on a flight? Or picking movies to watch in general? How many women artists can you name? (They sell buttons with this written on them at teh National Museum of Women in the Arts. I think I used to be just able to name Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo off the top of my head.. Now I have more!) Do you have any adulting financial goals? I need some inspiration.

Welcome Home and to a New Year. Hello, 2026!

We got back from Taiwan yesterday morning, leaving Taipe at 11:45pm on Saturday night and pulling into our driveway in Maryland at 7:30am on Sunday morning. International travel across the date line is kind of a mind warp, right? On paper, it only took eight hours to get home from Taiwan, but really it was twenty hours of travel. I mean we landed in Seattle, our connecting city, at 6:00pm on Saturday, which is before we left in Taipei. It’s almost like getting time back. But those hours gained are jet-lagged discombobulated hours; I can’t say it did us much good or that any of us were at our best…

The journey home was full of mishaps – we lost a beloved teddy bear and a travel pillow, the last leg of our flight (SEA —> BWI) was delayed an hour, and one of our suitcases came off baggage claim with a wheel missing. We were too exhausted to deal with trying to find someone to file a claim or a lost item report. The cost of exhaustion seems to be apathy mixed with helpless despair, it seems. International travel does not bring out my best ability to deal with a crisis. (Unlike my cousin, who didn’t realize until he was checking in for his flight that he and his family needed Visas for Vietnam. It’s a wild story, but they ended up in Singapore instead. I admire their sense of calm and ability to pivot.)

Anyhow, we got home and, despite my best intentions to unpack and try to get us back on Eastern Time, we all fell asleep around 11am and slept for several hours. I did get up before the others and started unpacking the suitcases. The rest of the day, between us, the Husband and I did six loads of laundry (folding most of it!), I made waffles for dinner, the Husband did a quick essentials only grocery shop (did you know Lemon Oreos are essential?), we watched Indiana play basketball before pouring the kids back into bed. Despite having taken that enormous nap in the middle of the day, they were so very tired by 10pm. (Which was 11am Taiwan time).

Of course, not so very tired that they weren’t up at 3am, coming into our bedroom.

“I’m bored,” the six year old said.

“Go play in the toy room,” the Husband suggested groggily, half asleep. 

She went away.

Around 5:15am, there was some kind of sibling squabble. One child wanted to play, one child wanted to read. (The 13 year old slept on… teenagers and their sleep…) I told the 6 year old she could come cuddle in our bed.

“How long?” She asks. 

“Until six o’clock,” I say, snuggling her down and going back to sleep. 

Then every five minutes she sat up to look at the clock. Until… 

“It’s six o’clock!” And she springs out of bed.

“Go see if your brother wants to play,” I murmur sleepily. 

Off she goes and I go back to sleep. In my dreams I hear them playing with the 8 year old’s new chess set – are they really playing? Who knows? And foot steps up and down stairs. And no more fighting.

Some indeterminate time later, I hear some one shout, “Bloody nose!!!”

Then the 8 year old: “Go to the bathroom! I’ll help you!”

And he did. When I woke up another indeterminate time later, there were bloody tissues in the trash can and on the floor in the bathroom and the Clorox wipes sitting open on the counter. I did step on a gob of blood, but you know… getting to sleep through a bloody nose is kind of a win in my book.

And then it was morning. Going to school 24.5 hours after getting off an international flight is hard, so I drove the 13 year old to school instead of having her walk. And 90 minutes later, I took the 6 year old and the 8 year old to school, though we were pretty late, squeaking in just as the doors were closing. The 8 year old has school testing this week, and we were a little concerned about him being able to stay awake and focus in class, so we wrote the teacher and she agreed to let him take the test on the make-up days. (Who schedules school testing for the week after vacation???).

I, on the other hand had grand plans of setting up my planners and journals, logging a few hours of work, picking up the house, and folding more laundry, and hanging out with the Husband since he had taken the day off. But… I got home, had breakfast and then ended up taking a three hour nap on the couch. I do feel a little guilty that I made my kids go to school while I came home and napped, but that’s a perk, of being a semi-employed adult. We’ll see how long it takes to get people back on schedule. We went out to an early dinner tonight since it was half price burger night, and the kids ate half their burgers then were like:

Trip Highlights
Here are some photo highlights of our time in Taiwan, in case I don’t get around to doing trip recaps (My track record for trip recaps is pretty paltry.)

*Sunset at Tamsui, a coastal suburb of Taipei. It’s at the end of the trainline, and where my cousin lives.

+So much food! Dumplings on Christmas Day:

*Visiting the cemetery where my grandmother’s ashes are buried.

Night Market – this one in Chia yi, where my family is originally from:

Lucid red tracksuits!

*View from our boat tour of the coastal waters off Tainan, where we learned about fishing, and spoonbills:

*Fish Market in Kaoshiong:

*Dragon Fruit at a produce vendor’s stall:

*More Night Market Food – this one also in Kaoshiong.

*Selfie with my grandfather – he is 100 years old and the reason for this family reunion:

*We took a two night trip to Bietou, where there are hot springs and hiking. (Though it ended up being to wet and windy to really hike.)

Thermal Valley.

And on our last day, we followed a string of red lanterns and found a moment of calm in the gardens of a Buddhist Temple:

Photo taken by the 8 year old.

The photos don’t really capture how full each an every day was – full of family, full of new sights/smells/tastes, full of new discoveries of how life on this island nation work. Also, though, full of chaos and noise, full of long bus rides, full of feeling lost in a language that I don’t quite speak, a culture I don’t quite belong to. Yet ultimately, full of love and bonding, meories and conversations, and that kind of discomfort that opens my eyes to other ways lives can be lived.

Oh so fittingly of the universe, this poem by John Updike showed up in my apoemaday feed yesterday:

How beautifully Updike captures the return to the mundane – I, too, feel like I’ve put the yoke back on, even while knowing that the world is not so small as it once felt and sometimes still feels.

Return Trip Gratitudes:

-That the kids kind of slept on the flight home, and that they are pretty good travelers in general.  I feel so lucky – they didn’t complain, went where we asked them too, didn’t get lost, carried their own backpacks, pulled their own suitcases.

-Airport play areas. I am so grateful for these areas for kids to run off some energy while waiting for flights. (The play area in Taiwan has a baby’s area attached that comes with a hot water dispenser, a fully stocked wipes warmer, and extra diapers!) I think the eight year old is technically too tall for the play area, but we let him play there until there were too many toddlers as well. And in SEA, they made some friends and played tag and said “Six seven” to each other.

-Wifi at the airport. The 13 year old definitely is not into airport play areas, but luckily in each airport she had wifi and a comfy seat so she was well occupied.

-That our fruit didn’t get taken away when we got home. Before we went to the airport, we bought a bunch of fruit and snacks for the trip home, remembering the time last year when we were stuck in Seattle for nine hours. Taiwan is super strict about letting fruit and vegetables into the couttry, so I half expected that the US would be the same. I declared them and everything, but no one took them from us. We came home with a bag of bananas, three passion fruits, and six or seven wax apples. Wax apples are one of my favorite Taiwanese fruits, and you can’t get them in the US. I cut them up for a late night snack last night, and the crisp juicy slices were a wonderful reminder of our trip. The 13 year old ate the rest of the passionfruit this morning. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t get one of the last two, but I reminded myself how much I love it for her that she easily slices and scoops out and eats this fruit that was so foreign to her a week ago.

-The Mobile Passport Control app, allowing for easy re-entry into the country. We don’t have TSA Pre-Check or Global entry or anything like that, but I found that airport security lines are pretty streamlined these days and moved pretty fast. The nice thing in Seattle, too, is that even though we submitted our info via the app, there was still an agent who directed us to the right line and scanned us through and said, “Welcome home.” Having someone say, “Welcome home” is one of my favorite parts of international travel.

-That the Qdoba in the Seattle airport is open 24 hours. After that nine hour at SEATAC episode last year, when were were in a tiny terminal without any food, I was really glad we decided to stay in Terminal B where there was a Qdoba and it was still open at 7:30pm. I don’t know if it was the two weeks away from America or what (seriously, I think we had cheese maybe twice the whole ten days), but the 13 year old declared Qdoba “even better than Chipotle.” This is quite a statement from her.

-That the Husband had the foresight to pack the kids’ winter coats in the car for the ride home. Also – he went to pick up the car while the kids and I tackled baggage claim, so that when we got in the car with our luggage, the car was toasty warm. In Taiwan, the 50 degree weather was considered frigid, so coming back to 30 degree weather in Baltimore was quite a shock.

-That it didn’t snow at home, so we didn’t have to shovel out the driveway or anything to get back in the house.

-That the house was clean and the fish were alive when we got home. Our cleaner was scheduled to come while we were away, and it was so nice to come home to a clean house – which admittedly was not the state it was left in when we departed two weeks ago. Also, our friends came over to feed our fish and also played Santa. The Husband, like he did last year, left our friends with a box of Christmas presents and some holiday decorations, and while we were gone, they decorated the little potted fir tree we keep in our living room, and put the presents out. The look of delight and wonder from the 6 and 8 year old when they realized that Santa still found a way to us was absolutely precious.

-That eggs and buttermilk keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. Before we left we had two dozen eggs and half a container of buttermilk in the fridge I contemplated throwing them out, not knowing if they would keep. I’m glad I didn’t throw them out. They did indeed keep and we had waffles for dinner. There is definitely stuff in the fridge that didn’t survive the two weeks, and throwing it out will be a project for tomorrow.

=That we even got to go on this trip at all (BIG thank you to my parents) and that we went to the other side of the globe and back safely. I mean I believe in science and physics and all that, but sometimes I look at air travel and think, “Oooooookay… I’m just going to have to really trust that this is huge hunk of metal is going to stay up in the air.”

Looking Forward To:

– All the planner, journalling, and 2026 goal setting that I meant to do today, but napped instead. I’ve started Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word 2026 workbook – I’ve never really been one about having a word for the year, but I see a lot of chaos and uncertainty coming up, so I do find my self drawn to creating grounding principal for myself. (Conaway also has a 2025 end of year/2026 monthly reflection workbook that I really enjoy working through – I discovered them last year, and they are free to download.)

– Firepit date with friends. 

= Lenten Reading Group happy Hour.

-Cooking food, doing laundry (not in a laundromat), Taco Tuesday, Family movie night, Sunday night football… basically all the every day things that we didn’t get to do in Taiwan. I asked my cousin what she was most looking forward to when we got home and she said, “Doing laundry when I want and not having to drag my clothes five blocks.” So true

– enjoying all the snacks I brought home from Taiwan.

-A New Year! Yay 2026!

A List of Some Good Things from 2025

There were certainly a lot of really hard things about 2025. News along the international front. News along the domestic front. We’ve had some really perplexing house issues. Work hasn’t been the most joyful of places at times; I’ve had a lot of well loved colleagues leave, and everyone is doing the job of three people. So I wanted to acknowlege that 2025 was a banner sucky year for many people in many ways. And it seems like the hits keep coming. But I am grateful there were also many things that didn’t suck for me. I fell lucky for good health, and my family, and a roof over our heads, and relative security.

Here are some other specific good things that happened in 2025, in no particular order:

-ringing in 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was the last leg of last year’s Asia trip. The food, the people, the heat, the rain. Some day I will finish my trip recaps.

-Taco Tuesdays – we’ve had tacos either home made or at a restaurant for almost every Tuesday in 2025. It started off with one Taco Tuesday, and then everyone loved it so much that the next week when we were meal planning, it was asked for again. And then again. And then again. When I look back at my dinner list in my journal, most of the dinners I marked with a heart – meaning the family really liked it – were Taco Tuesdays.

-Contra Dancing as a famly. Thank you to the Husband for encouraing us to go and for dancing with the kids, even if it’s awkward to dance with three kids at a time.

-Silly car games- Cows and Cemetaries. Punch Buggy (We used to play with Teslas, but there are so many of those around now, it’s not as fun.), Bonkers (Every time you see a yellow car, you yell “Bonkers!”, a green car is “Bankers!”, and an orange car is “Bunkers!”)

-New to us Board/Card Games that the whole family can play: Sky Jo, Happy Salmon, Dixit, Bohanza.

-Watching New Girl with the 13 year old, and Glee as a family.

-Rose Buds and Thorns – in January I started a special journal to record our Rose Buds and Thorns. We don’t do it every day at dinner, but maybe once or twice a week. One of my favorite things is to see how each member of the family changes/ understands the ritual. At the beginning of the year, the youngest always had the same rose (“I’m here with my family.”) Literally that was her response every time. But lately she’s been thinking of different roses, and that’s been kind of neat to see.

-The running track at the kids’ elementary school

-WhatsApp calling – lets me call my friend who lives in Oman, and also when we are travelling internationally, it’s how I am able to make phone calls. It’s not new technology, but I’m a bit of a luddite so it’s new to me.

-Finally getting rid of my 22 year old Subaru. Not a “good” thing, per se, but a necessary thing that had to be done, and which I found difficult. I donated it to the local high school’s technical program, which seemed like a good place for it to go.

-K-Pop Demon Hunters. Gonna be gonna be Golden!

-Hallowe’en, and making the two younger kids KPop Demon Hunter Costumes. Specifically, discovering Iron On Vinyl was amazing.

-Family Meetings. We started having weekly family meetings at 7:45am on Saturdays. They’re not the most enjoyable part of the week, but from a planning perspective, they really help get everyone on the same page for what is ahead.

=Being able to leave the kids at home alone. In Maryland, kids have to be 8 to stay home by themselves, and 13 to babysit younger kids. We hit those birthday milestones this year with the two older kids. So nice not to have to take the kids with us all the time when we just want to run a quick errand. Also, the 13 year old is enjoying making a little bit of money for watching her siblings.

-South Africa with the 13 year old. Trip of a Lifetime. I will finish the recaps some day.

-Working on The Little Prince with the 13 year old in the chorus.

-The Secret Garden at the high school – one of my favorite musicals. A beautiful production. Makes me excited for the 13 year old theatre kid to go to high school.

-Kunene and the King. Hey, I saw a play! With talking, and no singing or dancing. I haven’t seen a straight play in years. And it was beautiful. Not just the play itself, but the beautiful intimacy of two people on stage with just words.

-Small Wonders Exhibit at the National Gallery of Art – a fascinating examination of the intersection of art and science.

-The Duck Decoy Museum – new to me and delightfully niche.

-New York Transit Museum – also new to me and delightfully niche.

-A new afternoon bus stop that is walking distance from home and next to a playgroun.

-Tap Dancing Lesson, and learning something new.

-Lenten Reading Group. This year we started meeting monthly, or at least trying to – I think we met maybe eight times over the year. A lovely thoughtful community.

-The youngest starting Kindergarten – no more day care payments!!!

-Visits from my parents and seeing my kids

-Our new shoe rack. Trying to tame the foyer chaos.

-Finally getting new window treatments. I love that they are top down/bottom up. They look a little plain, but I’m calling it “neutral” or “versatile”.

-Injera from the Ethiopian market.

-Will Watt. Audiobook narrator of my dreams.

=getting my taxes done the first week of April, rather than at the last minute like I usually do.

-A good year for reading – I read 63 books this year – a new high for me.

-A good year of working on opera with really great colleagues, old and new. Feeling like I’m growing as a stage manager, even though I still make lots of mistakes. Feeling really supported at work, even when sometimes it feels like a dumpster fire.

-The two younger kids mostly being able to swim.

-Learning how to dive. The 13 year old taught me and her siblings.

-My Snoopy Sweatshirt. I bought a few new articles of clothing this year, but this is by far my favorite. I wear it almost every day off, and sometimes to work too.

-(almost) daily yoga. I managed to fit in at least ten minutes of yoga almost every day. Even days when I was travelling, I discovered videos of “standing yoga” that I could do while waiting for flights.

-The 6 year old figuring out how to ride a bike

-The 13 year old making dinner periodically.

-A New Pope!

=A new, less fussy sign in sheet process for the Chours, Supers, and Dancers at work. The sign in sheet we had before was full of symbols and hieroglyphics to indicate lateness and took like a 30 minute training session to teach new stage managers to use when they had to check attendence.

-Cany Cane Beets.

-Colevita cutomizable multi-pens. These are amazing! You buy the barrel (they make them for three, four, and five colors), and then can load it with your choice of colour and pen thickness.

-The youngest finally getting baptized. The middle kid’s first communion.

-a new chair for the living room- just the right size to lounge and read, either alone or with a companion.

-Some good TV: The Gilded Age (watched all) . Poker Face (watched all). Derry Girls (only watched the first season, on a plane. We don’t have Netflix, so I have to figure out how to watch the rest of it.)

-Down Cemetary Road on AppleTV. Okay, grisly crime/ mystery shows aren’t really my thing. You know, the kind that ratchet up the tension with weird camera angles and twang-y music. But… I will watch anything with Emma Thompson in it. The Hsuband has graciously offered to pre-watch the episodes to tell me if there is enough of Dame Emma in each episode to make it worth my trouble.

-Fun family photos on the Metro and in the downtown area.

-Audio plays. LIke Audiobooks, but shorter and more dramatic.

-Day trip to New York City with the two older kids to see Hadestown; a very good use of a random Wednesday off school. Also Hadestown was amazing – beautiful, bold, gripping, makes you think and makes you feel.

-Lucid red track suits. I finally fulfilled my life long dream of getting the kids matching tracksuits. An added bonus – the colour I got, Lucid Red, which is an almost neon colour, making is super easy to keep track of my kids at the airport and at playgrounds.

-printable labels. I’ve embraced typting up my cues and printing them on labels to put in my score. I used to think people who printed their labels were fussy, but I’ve discovered that if I have the cue list ahead of time, it’s actually faster for me, and it looks neater.

-Closing out the year in Taiwan, celebrating my Grandfather’s 100th birthday and the 10th anniversary of my Grandmother’s passing. Everyone in the family made it for at least some portion of the five day gathering- 5 uncles and aunts (+3 spouses), all 13 grandchildren (+8 spouses/partners), and 16 great grand children. We needed two buses to get everyone around.

-Six- seven. Was it annoying as heck? Yes! But it was also hilarious how second nature saying “Six Seven” became among my kids and how much joy they got out of saying it. Every day life became kind of a treasure hunt for them trying to find sixes and sevens out in the wild. There was something really awesome about how a meme that meant nothing could make people laugh so much. Maybe there is a lesson there about how we can find joy and connection in life even in nothing-ness.

I’m sure there were many more things that brought joy, delight, or added value to my life in 2025, but those were some high points. I was going to add pictures and links to past posts and make this post all pretty, but I’m trying to blog from a mobile device in a foreign country, and that feels a little beyond my mental capacity right now. So here you go, just words on a page. Here is a slight preview of where we are, though:

Bietou, Taiwan, famous for all its hot springs. Our hotel room features Tatami mat floor.

I hope everyone got to close out 2025 with some good memories, and that 2026 will bring good things too!

What made 2025 not suck for you?

Weekly Recap + What we ate: One last show before the holidays; Unique and Frustrating

The week before was exhausting and hard and I never wanted it to end. There is something really special about working on a show that I love with some of my favorite colleagues, and also to top it all off, having my 13 year old also be in the show. This is probably the last time I will get to work on a show with one of my kids. By next year she will have likely aged out of being in the children’s chorus, and my other two kids don’t show any inclination for theatre. So I really tried to savor this past weekend of shows, these moments in the theatre we are having together, all the hard work and concentration. I feel so lucky to be able to share with her the joy and wonder of being able to tell stories onstage.

She felt it too. During our last show on Sunday night, every time I saw her backstage she was crying. At one point, she was standing next to me as her group was getting ready to enter, and she was crying so hard, another of the kids went and got her a handful of tissues. With one eye on my score – because I still had to call cues, of course – I leaned over and gave her a big hug and said, “You can’t cry and sing at the same time. Go onstage and enjoy the moment.”

I’d been trying to keep up with journaling during this show because I want to be able to remember what a wonderful time it was. Lately when I don’t feel like I have a lot of time for dep reflective journaling, I write down one or two things that were different and unique about the day and one or two things that were frustrating. Here are some of the things from the week of tech/performances :

Monday:
Unique/Different: Sitzprobe day. If you remember my post where I talked about Stizprobe – well this was a true sitzprobe (sitting rehearsal) because it was in a rehearsal room and not on stage, so we couldn’t wandel (wander). But it’s always exciting to hear the orchestra and for many of the children’s chorus, it was their first time ever singing with and orchestra.
-I talked to one of the kids in the show as we were waiting for rehearsals to start, and had a hilarious conversation with her. I have to admit that I had been struggling with some of the kids’ behavior – there has been a general lack of engagement and focus in rehearsal from a handful of them. I know that they are just kids and for many this is their first professional experience, but I was feeling pretty frustrated with some of the attitudes and talking back and not paying attention and not learning their music and breaking of props when I told that the flashlight stars are fragile. To be clear, most of the kids were doing really well and focused, it was just a handful that had worn me down. Plus having three hours of rehearsals with the kids every single night requires a very specific kind of energy from me. But then at the sitzprobe, I had this quirky delightful conversation with one of the kids and it helped remind me that these kids were…. well, kids. And asking them to focus for three hours at a time was asking a lot. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just kids and I needed to meet them where they were.
Frustrating: The theatre space is very small and the stage managers share a small office with two other departments so it’s very hard for me to get focused work time because there are always people coming in and out. (On the other hand, it makes for a good sense of camaraderie.)
-I didn’t get the Christmas cards done yet. (or the laundry folded, or the dishes done…)

Tuesday:
Unique/Different: On the way to work, a Secret Service car pulled in front of me and blocked traffic. Three or four minutes later, a motorcade came through. I don’t get to experience the Secret Service moving someone through very often, and I find it kind of fun to witness, regardless of one’s politics.
Frustrating: It was our Piano Tech rehearsal and we didn’t get through the whole show. We got through all of Act One and only half of the second act. It’s always frustrating not to get through the whole show before we add costumes. But at intermission, the plane onstage took longer to move than I had allowed for in the schedule (it was the first time the crew had taken the plane off stage – they eventually added two more crew members to help with the plane and other things.), and also there was a lot of starting and stopping for things I hadn’t planned on. I get very down on myself when rehearsals don’t move at the pace I would like.

Wednesday:
Unique/Different: -The kids had a chocolate chip bagel with cream cheese. Wednesday is 7:15am piano lesson day for the 13 year old and the 8 year old. The 8 year old took the 7:15am lesson this time so that the 13 year old could sleep in a little more, so I took the kids to get bagels in appreciation for getting to piano lessons on time. Usually the 8 and 6 year old split an egg bagel with strawberry cream cheese, but this day they chose to have a chocolate chip bagel because they had never had that before.
-Piano Dress rehearsal – I called all the spot light cues for the first act. I very rarely get any spotlight cues in my book by Piano Dress, so it was really a big achievement for me to have put the cues in my book and been able to call them at this rehearsal.

Putting cues in my book during a lighting session.

-And we got through the whole show and had time to go back and repeat some scenes with the alternate cast member. Also – there is one really fast costume change that didn’t go well the first time – one singer has one minute to change from a rose costume to a fox costume. Often we will just move on and hope it goes better the next time, but I pretty firmly said that we needed to give the dressers a chance to do it again. At first I was worried it would be a big waste of time because it took almost ten minutes to reset for the change. But the dressers and the singers nailed the change the second time through and that felt really good. I want to remember this moment because I don’t want to forget that the crew – wardrobe crew and stage crew – need time to rehearse as much as the singers do and that I need to make sure they get that time as we move through rehearsal.
Frustrating: Oh man, this day had a trifecta of frustration:
1) The bridge from the trail where I park and the kids’ school was closed for some construction work. We were already running late and I couldn’t get across the creek to get the kids to school. We ended up having to get back in the car and I just drove them to the school, but I still had to walk them in because they were so late. On the other hand, seeing the 8 year old explain to his little sister what a tardy slip was was kind of cute.
2) Then I stepped in dog poop. I’m pretty sure I stepped in dog poop while trying to find a way across the creek, but I didn’t notice it until I was halfway to work and the car started to really smell. And there was no way to pull over til I got to work. UGH.
3) I got to work and realized that I had left my wallet at home. An appliance repair company had called about a job I needed them to do and when I reached into my purse to get my credit card to pay them… it wasn’t there. On the bright side, I had left it at home while ordering the Christmas cards, so at least those were done. Plus I was going to be at the theatre all day so didn’t really need my wallet. But UGH.
All that happened before 10:30am. The rest of the day went pretty well, though. And luckily the 13 year old brought me my wallet when she came to rehearsal.

Thursday
Unique/Different:
-I went for a walk after dropping off the kids at school. I’ve been crap about moving or exercising other than 10 minutes of yoga in the morning. So I took 20 minutes before heading to work and walked the trail next to school. The air was brisk and cold.
-We had an Orchestra Tech rehearsal with and invited audience, which essentially meant the first time we performed the show in front of an audience. I love the first time we do the show for an audience because I feel like I get to see the show with fresh eyes. I’d spent two days calling the cues in rehearsal, and when we get an audience, I try to experience the show fresh – each time someone sings, each time the lights change colour, I feel an excitement that someone is seeing that for the first time. The moment when the curtain flies out revealing the plane onstage you can hear the audience inhale in wonder. The first time the children start singing, “Light your lamps, take up your places, for another starry night…” it’s just so exciting to know that a story is coming. The Husband brought the 8 and 6 year old and also one of the 13 year old’s friends, and it was nice to seem them in the audience when I went out to talk to the director.
-Also – I got all the spot light cues in my book and called them. woot.

Frustrating:
-Some work stuff dynamic stuff that isn’t really bloggable. Nothing big but just frustrating chain of information flow.

Friday:
Unique/Different-A Dress Rehearsal at 11am with an invited student audience, meaning I had to be at work at 9:15am. Now, I know a lot of people have to be at work at 9am, or even earlier, but I am not one of those people for whom this is a regular thing. It is so. very. early.
-The Student audience was amazing – even from backstage you could feel how excited they all were. I’m also really proud that an idea I had three weeks ago came to fruition. I had said in a meeting, “Hey, why don’t we do the intermission scene change with the curtain out and show the kids how we take the airplane apart and get it off stage?” Everyone was game for this idea, so we did it, and I think the students really liked watching the stage crew work.
-Opening night. It was a super long day what with that 11am dress rehearsal and then a 7pm performance. But we got Seoul Spice take out for dinner and that was yummy. (Seoul Spice is often described as Korean Chipotle – you get to customize your bowl.)

The view from my console.

Frustrating: Okay, this one might be TMI, but I got my period the day before and during the morning rehearsal/show, I totally bled through my pad and my underwear. Luckily I spend the show standing up, so I didn’t bleed through my pants. I didn’t get a chance to change my pad til after the show – there is only one rest room backstage (not counting the ones in the dressing rooms, but I can’t use those ones during the show) and it’s pretty busy at Intermission. Anyhow, it was all fine, but sometimes I get so frustrated that I’m 46 years old and still bleeding through my underwear when I get my period.

Saturday:
Unique/ Different-The perfect scarf drop. There is a moment in the show where a scarf drops from above and lands into a puddle of light. For whatever reasons of wind and physics the scarf never lands in the puddle of light – it always drifts upstage or downstage and ends up in the dark. Well, during the evening show, the scarf landed perfectly in the center of the puddle of light and it was magical.
-Walking to get boba between shows with the 13 year old, each of us with one ear bud so that we could listen to our book together as we walked. We’re currently listening to:

Frustrating: I forgot to call the houselights out at the start of Act 2. The houselights are the lights over the audience. Usually as the orchestra tunes, I call the houselights out, but for some reason, during the matinee, I forgot and we almost started the 2nd Act with the houselights up. I realized just in time but it made for a kind of squishy moment. And then… in the evening show, I again forgot to take the house light out during the tune. I hate making the same mistake twice. Clearly I whatever I had written in my book was ineffective at getting me to call things in the right sequence. I was just really frustrated at myself for messing up.

Sunday:
Unique/Different: Last day of performances- two shows this day. The matinee was the last show for one of our youth leads since he alternates with another singer in the part. At curtain call, he came out crying for his bow. As soon as the curtain came in, the whole cast surrounded him in the biggest group hug I’ve ever seen. The joy and support the cast felt on behalf of the kid was palatable in the air. I get choked up thinking back on it. Here is the other thing that was amazing about this moment – I’ve done this show three times over the past 11 years, and it has always been a white child in the main role. This year was the first time I’ve done it with a Black child in the part. And there’s something really bigger than the sum of it’s part when you cast a child of colour as such an iconic character. For the child himself, for the rest of the cast, for the audience- it’s kind of a shift in what we accept about the stories we tell on stage and who can tell those stories. It’s been a challenging time at work, and I want to remember that we tell stories with open minds and to open eyes, even amidst all the uncertainty.
-Also there was a bit of a burning issue with the spotlights at the start of the second act of the show. That was exciting. We had to take the spotlights out for about ten minutes while the crew fixed the issue.

Frustrating: That we can’t do twenty more performances of this beautiful show.

Grateful for:
-All the things above, the unique/different and the frustrating. I feel so lucky to have had that experience.
-The Husband. For doing keeping the kids alive and getting them where they need to be; for making food; for bringing me food; for doing the laundry; for juggling all the other things of life. Also for dealing with the 6 year old’s bloody nose at 1am.
-A surprise brie sandwich. I had made a turkey sandwich with the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers, layering turkey, arugula, cranberry sauce, and some brie that I found in the fridge. Only by the time I’d gotten to work, I had forgotten that I had put brie in the sandwich and my first bite had a s deliciously pungent surprise. I had that same sandwich until the turkey and cranberry sauce ran out, and I now call it surprise brie sandwich. It brought much joy to my lunch life.
-Friends for driving carpool.
-The freezer section at HMart. Going into tech/performance week, I knew that the 13 year old and I would be eating a lot of food at the theatre. Thank goodness for HMart. I stocked our freezer with dumplings, bao, and aloo paratha, all of which I would cook in the morning and pack for dinners that were filling and easy to eat at the theatre.
-While we’re talking about food – grateful for people who bring communal snacks to work. Snacking is super important to me at work:

There is a Trader Joe’s next to where our prop head shops….

-The crew at the theatre for being amazing and game, and crawling on the floor behind the stage to fix problems. And literally putting out fires.
-All the people I work with. There’s a bit of a sense that we’re in the foxhole together right now and I’m glad I’m there with these people.

Looking Forward To:
I’ve been struggling with feeling excited about our upcoming trip to Taiwan. I feel really ungrateful for saying that about a chance to travel internationally. BUT we were there last year and the kids were really looking forward to Christmas at home. Also – it’s going to be a lot of family, which will be chaotic; there will be my kids complaining that they don’t have iPads like all their cousins do; there’s jetlag and people’s schedules being off; there’s the discomfort of not being home and around familiar things…. So I am trying to acknowledge my feelings, but also think of the things that I am looking forward to. So here are some things I’m looking forward to:
-Seeing my grandfather. The whole reason this trip was planned is that we are celebrating my grandfather’s 100th birthday. He no longer travels to America, so I think every chance I get to see him is a gift.
-Seeing family. I’m conflicted about this because sometimes I feel it hard to connect with my cousins, but I do want to see them and I am looking forward to all our kids hanging out.
-The food. The food in Taiwan is so delicious. I’m looking forward to it all – noodles, bao, soy milk, stinky tofu…
-The fruit. This gets its own category from “food” because the fruit in Taiwan is so amazing – sweet and flavorful, and so many varieties.
-Seeing Mr. K, our bus driver from last year’s trip. My mother booked him to drive us again. He was just so chill and kind.
-Relaxing at hot springs and hiking – my mother has arranged a couple days for us together to chill at the end of a the week of intense family activity. I haven’t been hiking as much this year as I would like, so I’m looking forward to this.
-Watching all the movies and reading books on the plane ride. My sister-in-law and I have decided to have a book club. We’re going to read these two books:

What We Ate:
This was the week of make-ahead or eating out:
Sunday: Made a big pot of Dakdoritang (Korean braised chicken and vegetables). Kind of based off this recipe, but I added Kabocha squash and daikon and shitake mushrooms. It was really delicious. The 6 year old who hates mushrooms actually loved the mushrooms in this dish. I ate it all week.

Monday: I ate leftovers. I brought dumplings, cut up apples, aloo paratha, and carrot sticks for the 13 year old. The Husband took the two little kids out for pizza and ping pong with a friend after he dropped the 13 year old at rehearsal.

Tuesday: I ate leftover dakdoritang. Same as yesterday for the 13 year old. The Husband and family had chili at home – he had made a big pot on Sunday.

Wednesday: The 13 year old and I split a jamon torta that the Husband had brought home for me the day before. Did the rest of the family have chili again?

Thursday: The 13 year old and I had chili at work.

Friday: Seoul Spice take out for the 13 year old and I. The Husband and two little kids at home made pizza and they watched… not sure, but it was some Christmas movie. Maybe Candy Cane Lane?

Saturday: Leftovers at the theatre. I think. The details are hazy when one is going onto day six at the theatre in a row.

Sunday: The 13 year old and I went out for dinner between shows with my stage management team. We split a chicken sandwich and a burger. It was so tasty.

Welp that’s the news from here lately. We’re rounding the corner to the holidays and a new year. This last month of the year has just flown by. I’m a little bit in a panic state about packing and prepping for our upcoming travel; I’m feeling a bit of guilt about dropping the ball on presents and teacher gifts/cards; I have a few Christmas cards still to send (should I Sharpie out “Merry Christmas” and write in “Happy New Year”?? ). Christmas is not going to be very Christmas-y this year, and part of me is okay with that, but also part of me is having an existential crisis about it. I think we’ve decided that Christmas cards, Tuba Christmas and Mass are “must do” Christmas activities. The rest… I’m trying to decide how sad I am that we missed out on some of the usual holiday things. More to ponder.

Hope you all are heading into the home stretch of 2025 with time to reflect and look forward as well.

is 9am seem early to you? Have you ever had a brush with Secret Service? If you journal, any prompts you use when you have journaler’s block? What Holiday traditions are “must do” for you?

PS: If you want to see the show that I was working on, you can see a clip here and here. If you don’t blink, you’ll see me!

Weekly recap + What We Ate: Good-bye, November! Hello, December!

It’s the final month of 2025! November felt like a blur – a rush of doing and not so much being and reflecting. This is what my journal/ habit tracker looked like for the month:

this is where I track dinners, movie/tv watching, and time outside.
This is where I track habits.

It’s not like I didn’t make dinner, or go outside, or watch any tv/movies, or felt grateful, or brushed my teeth, or or or or whatever else I usually track. I just didn’t for whatever reason, take the time to write it down and meditate on it. Which, then makes me feel like I don’t really know how I spent my days. Oh I know I went to rehearsal, packed lunches, did laundry and all that day to day, but I have no recollection of what made each day specific. And taking that time to acknowledge the specifics of the day helps me to feel like life is less of a daily grind. It’s that whole “what made today unique/different” exercise I sometimes do in my journal.

But at any rate, things did happen. Here’s some of them:

November Highlights:
– Mom’s group reunion. When the 6 year old was born, the hospital facilitated a new mom’s group. We’ve kept in touch off and on over the past year – lunches, play dates, happy hour – and this fall, one of the moms hosted a gathering. It was such a lovely time to re-connect and share stories and tips and recipes. Most of our kids entered kindergarten this year, and to think that we/they had all met when the kindergarteners were squishy newborns – pandemic newborns too! What a wild time it was to reflect on.

-Soup Party. I hosted another soup party for colleagues at work. People brought soup, someone brough a fire pit, and someone taught us how to roast our own coffee in a cast iron skillet. A cozy, social evening.

-Tech/ Opening/Closing of my first opera of the fall. One of my favorites – I never got bored listening to all the beautiful music. The cast was divine, the director amiable, and the show was gorgeous.

-Starting rehearsals for my second opera. Working with some long time friends. I’ve known many people on this show for fifteen years or more; we all started in the business together, as assistants and interns. And now look at us! We get to be in charge! How did that happen?? There were days when I kind of felt like I was putting on a high school show with my best friends.

-Running along the Potomac while tech-ing and in performances for my first show of the fall. It’s always such a nice part of my day when we are at the theatre. It might be too cold to run next week when my current show moves down, but I need to remember to take some dinner time walks to clear my head. There is something so soothing about watching the water drift by.

-My parents came to visit. Unfortunately it was at a super busy time for me, so I didn’t see them as much as I wanted. However, they were able to fully embrace having grandkid time, picking them up from the bus, taking them to the library and to museums, and playing Legos and trucks and Uno.

-Thanksgiving. We had a small Thanksgiving – my mother was still here, and our choreographer joined us as well. She is from Italy and when I heard she didn’t have plans for the day off, I invited her to come have an American Thanksgiving. I always think it’s hard to be away from home on a holiday, even if it’s not your holiday. I love making a big Thanksgiving dinner. We had Turkey (Spatchcocked so it takes bout 90 minutes to cook), green salad, mashed potatoes (made the night before), gravy (made the night before), cranberry sauce (made the night before), soy-braised squash and mushroom rice (instead of stuffing), steamed green beans, Hawaiian rolls, and home made bread. Oh and Rainbow Jello Salad, which the 13 year old made all on her own for the first time. For dessert I had an apple pie and a whiskey chocolate cake. I usually also make a pumpkin pie, but I really wanted to make this cake recipe, so I decided to skip the pumpkin pie. I don’t know if we offered up a traditional Thanksgiving for our choreographer, but I hope she still had a good time – she told us so many stories of her life as a dancer and a beekeeper, and watched as the kids did their K-Pop Demon Hunters dance numbers for her. It was all in all a lovely day.

-Reading a really good book in one night. I hadn’t done this in a while. But I started The Seven Year Slip and it was so good that I just had to find out what happened and next thing I knew it was 4am. Now I know what the term “book hangover” means, physically and mentally.

-Getting our family photos back. – so much fun. here’s a little preview:

Murals!
Yep, the photographer had my kids in a city planter.
Metro!

Thanks to our wonderful photographer William Petruzzo! He’s taken our photos since the 13 year old was a baby and he is so much fun to work with – calm, adventurous, and engaging with the kids. I love how his photos are so full of light and personality.

November Lowlights:
-The continued stress of uncertainty at work. Not bloggable, but looms in the background every day I am at work.

-Long work hours and only four days off work the whole month. I feel like I’m dropping a lot of balls. Things are on the back burner waiting to be taken care of, discussed, settled.

-Blank journals. As I mentioned above, this is one aspect of my daily routine that has really been neglected, and I do feel it. When I have time to sit and reflect and brain dump, it helps me with feel calmer and like I have the space to make good decisions. There were a couple bad decisions made last month because I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t have the mental capacity or time to think things through before I acted or spoke.

-I would also add the state of American and world happenings, but I’ve stopped reading the news. So it’s all pretty horrible, I just don’t know specifically why or how horrible it is.

Grateful For in November:
-Carpools. When the 13 year old got into my current opera, we knew that getting her to 4pm rehearsal would be a challenge. Thank goodness for friends who will drive carpool. Also she has figured out how to take public transportation from school to the rehearsal studio by herself.

-Coworkers and colleagues. Opera is such collaborative work; I’m always grateful for the kind and brilliant people who I get to work with.

-Working on two operas that are remounts. Also grateful for the stage managers on those shows who came before me. I was able to just re-create the prior stage manager’s book in my own score, copying the cue placements right into my book. Really grateful for those stage managers for doing all the hard work of putting cues in the book the first time.

-Hot tea and my Yeti mug.

-relatively mild weather for this time of year.

-End of daylight savings and the morning light that it brought.

-The Husband, always the Husband who keeps life moving when I’m at work until past the kids’ bedtime. He handles the evenings night after night, and that is Herculean.

Looking Forward to for December:
-Setting up my journal and calendars for 2026. I need to take a day after this show is over to just sit and go through the year. Maybe at the library or in a coffee shop.

-Trip to Taiwan to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday. It’s going to be a very large family reunion. I’m looking forward to seeing it, but also kind of dreading it. I don’t see my cousins a lot and our lives as County employees and workers in the arts is very different from their competitive, corporate funded, high adventure lives. I need to remind myself to remember what is important to me when I get envious of their lives and achievements.

-reading and watching movies on the trip to Taiwan. I actually love flying, love the sense of stepping away from the world and having nothing to do but what is in front of me. I am looking forward to 12 hours on a plane – it will be kind of like a retreat.

-TubaChristmas. Tuna Christmas. Longwood Gardens. We are not going to Christmas to the hilt, but we’ll enjoy a few events. I had written in October about making the most of the last quarter holiday season even when I’m in an all consuming phase at work. I went back and read that list and I think I’m incorporating a lot of those things into my life. I’ve eaten lots of apples, and already watched four Hallmark Holiday movies, with more cued up. There is Christmas music playing even now as I type this while watching the evening sky turn pink then purple then inky blue. This season is packed; there is so much joy and savoring to wring out of the end of the year even while carrying on with the regular everything else of life. But these quiet moments of being, listening, and paying attention are where I think I feel the holiday spirit the most.

-Lenten reading group. Okay, we’re into Advent now, but in my mind it’s always been the Lenten reading group because that’s when we started. The Husband takes umbrage that they are called “Lenten Group” in the calendar… I had to miss our last meeting because of work, but we will have one more meeting before Christmas and I’m looking forward to it. We are reading this book:

First, before all that, though, this coming up week is tech week . It’s going to be a long week in the theatre. I love the show, I love the work, but it will be exhausting. So today, my one day off, this is what is on my docket to make upcoming life easier:

  • Pick out my outfits for the week.
  • Boil eggs. These are my go to protein to have ready at hand for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.
  • Finish the Christmas cards so that it isn’t looming over me for the rest of the week.
  • Pick up the house so we at least start from a tidy place.
  • Bake something so I have convenient easy snacks on hand for me and the 13 year old who will be at the theatre with me.
  • Make a big pot of something l so that there is food to pack for lunch and dinner. I’m thinking of this Korean soy braised vegetable stew.
  • Spend some time reading so I feel like I didn’t spend my whole day doing chores.

What We Ate – I worked until 8:30pm most nights, so didn’t get to join the family for dinner most nights. I do miss the chaos of our family dinners.
Monday: Kabocha squash and tofu with noodles. The Husband cooked. I met up with some work colleagues after work and had a burger.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. It was my day off, so I made chipotle honey chicken tacos from the NY Times cooking website. . Very tasty.

Wednesday: Turkey Soup, made from Thanksgiving leftovers. I actually made this on Tuesday since I had the day off.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches. (I was at work and had sandwich and ate leftovers out of the fridge when I got home at 8:45pm)

Friday: Sandwiches from one of our favorite delis. A quick meal before the winter piano recital for the kids. The 13 year old and I were both at rehearsal until 7pm, zipping up to the 7:30pm recital just in time (the 8 year old played at the 6:00pm recital), so we kind of had snack dinner and cookies at the recital reception for dinner.

Saturday: Chicken wings take out as the family watched football on the couch. (I joined later after I got off work.)

Hope you had a restorative weekend!

How was your November? What are you looking forward to as 2025 comes to a close? Any favorite cozy meals that you can cook once and eat for the rest of the week? Anything you do to prepare for a busy season?


Weekly recap + what we ate: a week of tech meals

Lighting Session.

Well, since I last poked my head around here, I’ve teched, opened, and closed a show. And I also prepped and started rehearsals for my next show. I feel like we’re kind of in survival mode right now – long hours at work for me; the 13 year old is also in my upcoming show so has rehearsals several times a week – I’m really proud of her for getting herself to rehearsals after school; my parents have come to visit. And as always, the Husband is holding down the fort, keeping the kids fed, the house picked up, and my laundry folded. The hours are late because the opera I was in performances for is looong – 3.5 hours from orchestra tuning to end of bows. That’s long. It was a beautiful show, though. And I love the music – some days I feel so lucky that I get to live in Mozart’s brilliance for a living. It’s not always fun and roses, but there is a lot of beauty to be found in my job.

At the beginning of tech week, I thought it would be interesting post to capture what I pack in my lunch box during tech week. Lunch box is a bit of a misnomer because in it I also pack dinner and lots of snacks. Basically my formula is:

-Lunch
-snacks for rehearsal breaks
-Dinner
-Snack for drive home. I’m often driving home late at night so a snack helps keep me awake.

Sometimes if I don’t eat breakfast, I also pack breakfast. Usually it’s yogurt and berries with a swirl of honey. Sometimes it’s just a peanut butter sandwich.

So here is looking at Tech Week through the lens of what I pack for dinner.

Day one of tech – On the work schedule:
11am Set Looks and Spiking. This is where the set and furniture is put onstage and the director – and scenic designer, if there is one – gets the first chance to look at everything and tweak things that can be tweaked. It is also often the first chance for the crew gets to do each scene shift in order. They do it slowly, and not at all in time. “Spiking” refers to putting down tape marks where all the furniture will go. Our show was a revival of a show that we had done previously and the scenic designer was not present.
7:00pm Sitzprobe. A rehearsal where the singers get to sing with the orchestra, no staging or props or anything; everyone just concentrates on singing with the orchestra for the first time. Sitz is German for sit. Probe is German for rehearsal. We actually had a Wandelprobe – “wandel” means to wander – where the singers instead of sitting at chairs with music stands got to walk around an open set while singing. Note for future self, though – while in my stage manager mind, a Sitzprobe and Wandelprobe are similar in that we only have a reduced stage crew with us, they are very different for the singers. We had called it a sitzprobe on the schedule when really it was a wandelprobe and people were upset because they were expecting to just come and sit and sing. Singers prepare and dress differently for a Sitz vs. a Wandel.

Anyhow, what I packed to eat:

Pink snack box (Lunch): Empanada (from Farmer’s Market the day before), cucumbers, apple slices, hummus, a boiled egg.
Green Lid (Dinner): Smitten Kitchen’s One Pot Farro and Tomatoes. I often make one large pot of something to eat throughout tech week. This time is was this deliciously simple, filling, and versatile farro dish. I add a can of cannellini beans to bulk it up. Vegan since I leave out the cheese.
Orange snack box (Post show/ drive home snack): Trail mix (I make my own – pretzels, mixed nuts, M&Ms), grapes, apple slices, string cheese, cucumbers.
Extra snack: two clementines.

Day Two of Tech:
1:30p – 5:00pm: Piano Tech #1
7p – 10:30p : Piano Tech #2
Piano Tech is the first rehearsal onstage with scenery, and often lighting. We work through the show slowly, making sure everyone – performers and crew and stage management – can figure out what the traffic onstage and backstage is. This rehearsal is with piano not orchestra, hence the name Piano Tech.

What I packed:

Lunch box – Jamon Torta (wrapped in foil) – the Husband had gone to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants a few days ago and brought me back a Jamon Torta, my favorite thing on the menu. I didn’t have time to eat it then so I packed it for lunch. Apple slices, cucumber slices, banana muffin (I had found a bag of frozen muffins in the freezer! Nice treat)
Dinner: One Pot Farro with roasted delicata squash and a boiled egg. (Eggs are another of the things I always prep for tech week – fast, easy source of protein)
Snack box: Same as the day before. I didn’t finish it all, so I replenished it and packed it again.

Day Three of Tech:
morning – putting cues in my book, cleaning my book for the evening rehearsal
2:00p – 5:00pm – lighting session. Where the lighting designer sets lighting levels without any performers onstage. I have to be there to put the cues on my book and remind the lighting designer of when thing happen and where people are standing onstage.
7:00pm – 11:00pm – Piano Dress rehearsal. We add costumes to the mix. Still a piano rehearsal.

Lunch Box: Empanada (from the empanada run earlier in the week). Apples, cucumber and banana muffin. I think these were actually leftover from the day before. The torta was so huge I didn’t eat much of the other stuff I packed.
Dinner: One pot farro and tomatoes with roasted delicata squash
Blue Snack Box: apple slices, boiled egg, trail mix, sesame rice crackers from Trader Joe’s, Undercover Quinoa Chocolate crisps.

Then we had a day off!!!

Day Four of Tech:
Morning: putting spot light cues in my book. Spot light cues are the bane of my existence. They are fussy and a lot of words to say. For example “Spot 3 Standby to pick up singer in Frame X at 50%, head and shoulders as they come through the stage left door.” The Frame number tells them what colour to put in the spot light. The percentage is how bright to make the light. “Head and shoulders” is how big to make the light; head and shoulders means the spotlight should only cover the singer’s head and shoulders. There is also “full body”, which is the whole person, “3/4 body” which is about to the knees, “waist” open to the waist. The Assistant Lighting Designer writes the cue sheets for the spot lights, but I still have to put it all in my book to relay the information to the Spot operators.
Afternoon: Lighting session
7:00pm – 11:00pm: Orchestra Tech rehearsal. We finally add the orchestra to the mix.

What I packed:

Lunch (or dinner – it’s pretty interchangeable at this point):
-One pot farro, with delicata squash. Though this time I add arugula and eat it as a salad, dressed with some olive oil and rice vinegar.
-Green rimmed tupperware: Coconut chickpea curry with pumpkin. I had made it for dinner the week before, and it made good leftovers for tech week. Vegan.
Snack container: Trail mix, sesame rice crackers, undercover chocolate quinoa crisps, cucumber slices, string cheese.
Additional snacks: apple slices. Grapes and carrots.

Day Five of Tech:
Morning: Continue putting spot cues and fixes in my book.
Afternoon: Lighting session
7pm – 10:30pm: Orchestra Tech #2. Ran the show with the orchestra.

Lunch (or dinner)
-Round container: One pot farro eaten as a salad with arugula and raw golden beets and olives.
– Square container: Coconut chickpea curry with pumpkin, again.
Snack Container: Trail mix, cucumbers with furikake seasoning, boiled egg, sesame rice crackers, apple slices
Additional Snacks: aple slickes, grapes and carrots.

Day Six of Tech – Final Dress Rehearsal! It was Wednesday, which is when the nearby Farmer’s market is, so we went to get empanadas for dinner.

Day off!!!

Opening Night – Finally.

Just dinner this day:
-In the insulated container: Meera Sodha’s congee with celery and braised soy mushrooms. I made it for breakfast one day since I had a bunch of leftover rice in the fridge and had enough leftovers to take for dinner. I got the recipe from her latest cookbook Dinner, which features vegetarian and vegan Asian inspired recipes. This congee was delicious comfort food, and so simple and fast to make. The braised mushrooms magically had the consistency of pork belly – which for me is a selling point.
-In the snack container: cucumbers, grapes, sharp cheddar cheese, and a piece of apple cake. (About the cake – the day after final dress was a day off, and I was so drained that even though I had a laundry list of things to do, I just couldn’t do anything but sit in a comfy chair and alternate napping and reading a book. At some point in the afternoon, I felt the need to get off my behind and do something (not that napping and reading are nothing), so I baked an lemon apple cake with some apples we had that were past their prime. Baking turned out to be the right low energy activity. I need to remember that next time I am feeling in a post tech slump – baking is a good activity to bring me back into the world of productive “life-ing”. Not that I follow the cult of productivity, but I do think I need to have an activity that takes me out of the zoned out numb brain state that I’m in after teching a show. )
-Snack- carrots and apples for the drive home.

And that’s a tech week of food for me. There is something really satisfying about bringing all my food with me – I kind of actually don’t like to buy lunch or meals; it never tastes as good to me, and it takes too much time. I’d rather spend my time going for a walk.

Grateful For: I’ve been pretty lax about keeping up with my gratitude journal this month. I really want to get back to it because I find it really grounding. One day I sat down and did some aggressive gratitude-ing, and just did a gratitude brain dump, and I felt so much better after. So in that spirit, and given that it’s almost Thanksgiving, here is some off the cuff gratitud0ing, stream of consciousness style as I wait for the 13 year old to finish basketball.
-beautiful fall weather – cool, brisk, crisp and bright.
-the kid who just said, “Good pass!” To the thirteen year old at this basketball pick up game. Pick up is sometimes rough – right now it’s her and eight other middle school boys and, let’s be honet, boys can be kind of not nice to girls on the basketball court and there have definitely been not nice comments made. So it’s nice when a kid says something nice to another.
-being done rehearsal in time to be home to give the kids good night hugs and kisses.
-being done rehearsal in time to hang out with the Husband on the couch.
-My mom making dinner tonight and leftovers waiting for me at home.
-Friends who drive carpool.
-Will Watt, my current favorite audiobook narrator, and his expresive, silken voice, for making me almost look forward to my commutes.
-My portable bluetooth keyboard that allows me to type blog posts on my phone during kid activities.
-Whoever is in charge of the drop off line on Friday at the elementary school for blasting feel good tunes as kids are being dropped off. I look forward to walking the kids to school on Fridays, knowing that I’ll be greeted by upbeat music.
-That my kids walk hand in hand to school. I love watching them walk up to the doors together and disappear through them. I’m grateful that they always (almost always) are happy and willing to go to school.
-That I get to work on two of my favorite operas this fall. One is behind me and one has just started rehearsal.
-That I get to work on one of my favorite operas with my 13 year old in the chorus.
-That the prop guy at work retrieved the stage management snack box that I had accidentally left in our office at the theatre. I had meant to bring it back to the rehearsal studio, but it was so late when we left the theatre after the final show, I had forgotten. And the snack box is very important. I also didn’t want the mice to get to it.
-Butter, flour, baking powder, and buttermilk. Heat. And the strange alchemy that makes biscuits.

Looking Forward To:
-Thanksgiving. It’ll be a small gathering, but I’ll still be making all the food. Current plan for menu is: Buttermilk brined spatchcocked turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, rice with kabocha squash, roasted broccoli (or steamed, depending on time), rainbow Jell-o, apple pie, chocolate whiskey cake. Maybe bread. Maybe a green salad.

-Thanksgiving leftovers.

-A day off that isn’t Thanksgiving, so I can get life tasks done.

-Track suits! I used to order the kids matching pjs for Christmas, but the 13 year old wears adult sizes now, so it’s hard to find something for all three kids. This year I ordered the kids matching track suits instead, something that’s been on my “want to buy them” list for a while. I’m really excited.

-Curling up with hot tea and a book. Not sure when this will ever happen this month, but I’m looking forward to it.

-This was just released on Audible – looking forward to listening to it on my commute. (After I finish my current Will Watt narrated book. )

It’s by the same group of people who made the audio play version of “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, which I also really enjoyed. Peter Dinklage as Poirot was so much fun.
(Speaking of which – did anyone catch the broadcast of Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Twelfth Night on PBS’s Great Performances? Dinklage’s performance as Malvolio was brilliant – comic precision blended with strangely earnest pathos. I’ve always found Malvolio tedious, and this was the first time he seemed human.
The rest of the production – I have feelings. This was a star studded cast – Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong’o, Jesse Tyler Ferguson – and I think there was some really brilliant ideas in the production – the Viola/Sebastian relationship was really well done; the music; some of the minor characters were really well portrayed; the curtain call was brilliant, but also flabbergastingly lavish. But… the production wasn’t romantic. I think Twelfth Night is a very romantic play – the sincerity and depth of feelings of all the characters is what makes the play funny, even as people’s hearts are breaking. The gender bending love triangles here are played purely for laughs, and I feel like that makes them come off as without depth. Despite some great performances, I never believed that Olivia or Orsino loved anyone except themselves. And maybe that’s the academic, esoteric truth about Olivia and Orsino. But I don’t think – I don’t want to believe – the characters are as shallow as all that. Viola is such a great character – probably my second favorite literary character after Jane Eyre – that you have to believe that Orsino is worthy of her love. And in this production, he just … wasn’t all that. It’s a tricky task, to be sure, to deliver an Orsino that deserves Viola, but I have seen it done before, and it’s disappointing when you come out at the end of Twelfth Night feeling like Viola could have done better.
Anyhow, that’s my five second review of the production. I’d be interested to see if anyone else caught the production and had thoughts. It’s available to stream until the end of the year on PBS)

Welp that’s a whole lot of brain dump (written over ten days) for one night, and I desperately need to go to not stay up too late, so I’ll wrap it up. No weekly dinner menu because a) I didn’t write it down the past few days, and b) the Husband did most of the cooking and I wasn’t home a whole lot for dinner the past few weeks. I think there was soup from the freezer, eggs, chicken stir fry. Taco Tuesday… all of it filling and tasty, I’m sure.

Anyhow, I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving are gearing up for a lovely one, however you are spending the day!