gratitude – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Three Days in Niagara-on-the-Lake

We got back from our road trip to Niagara on the Lake earlier this week. I’m kind of rubbish at writing trip recaps that take more than one post to get out, so I’m going to put the whole trip in this one post.

Originally when we had planned this road trip, we were going to go to Indiana, Chicago and Niagara: Indiana because that’s where my in-laws are buried and for the Husband to see college friends, Chicago because it’s an awesome city and Niagara because the oldest had wanted to go ever since she was eight or nine and read a Geronimo Stilton book set at Niagara Falls. But then I got a last minute gig and we had to re-think our trip and we ended up cutting out the Chicago portion. The Husband and the kids left for Indiana on a Wednesday while I stayed home to finish out my contract. They visited Grandma and Grandpa’s grave sites, cleaned the tombstones, and then went to visit friends.

The Saturday after my show, I was on a 9:50am flight to Indianapolis. I had a moment of pause when I emerged out of arrivals at IND because this was where my in-laws would always meet us when we flew in to visit them- they were not the “We’ll pick you up outside” type people. They passed away ten years ago and we never fly into IND anymore because – well there’s no one to pick up up anymore so we now just drive to Indiana. Walking out into the arrivals concourse and not seeing their smiling faces just made me so sad for a moment, thinking about how the two younger kids will only know their grandpa and grandma through the memories of other people.

The Husband and kids picked me up and we headed to Bloomington, where the Husband went to college and where we met up with the Husband’s friends. We spent two nights in Bloomington. The first day, we had sandwiches at Dagwood, went to Hot Pot for dinner, then Husband, his friends, and the 9 year old played Role Playing Games deep into the night. (Shadow Run – I have no idea what this was, but from what I overheard, it sounded like people doing mundane things while trying to stay alive.).

The next morning we went to brunch at The Village Deli, where the pancakes were as big as my head. They had a cinnamon roll pancake that featured a swirl of buttery cinnamon goodness cooked into the pancake. Afterwards we wandered around the Indiana University campus, the Husband and his friend pointing out buildings and paths from their college days. The students haven’t returned to campus yet, so it was pretty quiet. There’s something kind of magical about a quiet campus, I think – all the simmering potential and the air that important things are waiting to happen. After stopping for ice cream, we said good-bye to the Husband’s friends and then we wandered around Bloomington for a while, we stopped at a few book stores (The Husband and I bought Alexis Hall’s recent book Hell’s Heart to read together – the Husband likes Science Fiction/space opera, I like Alexis Hall; we’re hoping we both like this book.)

Because we have a weakness for public libraries, we stopped at the Bloomington Public Library. They have a huge children’s section, a nice used book store, and a pretty awesome teen section. The teen room was what impressed me the most; it was a space where kids could truly gather. In addition to books, there was an area where kids could lounge and play MarioKart, there were several craft tables with supplies, there was a wall of ukuleles and guitars… And despite all that (maybe because of?) the room was relatively quiet even though it was filled with teens. I really wished our library had a teen room like that. One of my favorite things was they had a gumball machine that would spit out book recommendations. How fun is that? You turn the knob and a little plastic capsule pops out inside is a folded piece of paper:

We also stopped at a record store. The Husband loves buying vinyl. At the record store, they had a classical music section and I leafed through the albums, taking a trip down memory lane as I saw some albums that I remember from my youth. I think one thing that I lament with the advent of music streaming is the loss of album covers – what a lost opportunity for some great art. Such as these ones:

I mean seriously – this is what we’re missing out on with music streaming!

The record store also had listening stations throughout the store. Do you remember those? I used to love going to Tower Records and putting on a pair of earphones and getting to hear the music right there, close and intimate. The kids were getting a little restless, so I perched them on stools and had them listen to some albums and, surprisingly, it kept them rapt for a good 15-20 minutes. Do you remember just listening to music? No distractions, no multi-tasking?

That night we had Indian food for dinner, picked up some groceries from the Bloomington Co-op, then had an early night.

The next day, we set off for Niagara Falls, by way of Detroit. Why Detroit? Well, the Husband really wanted to try genuine Detroit style pizza. Have you ever had Detroit style pizza? The crust is thick and they put the sauce on top of the toppings. It was very filling for sure.

This was the personal size. I only managed to eat half of it.

After lunch, we got on the road again. We made a little unplanned detour in Sarnia, Ontario – the town where I grew up. I started to write about that pit stop, but the post got long and I had so many thoughts, so I’m going to save that for another time. We arrived in Niagara on the Lake around 9pm – enough time to unload the car and turn in for the night.

We had three full days in Niagara, and we managed to pack them very full – perhaps a little bit too full. Here’s how our time in Niagara On The Lake was spent:

Day One: Rental bikes and theatre.
Apparently a big thing to do at Niagara-on-the-Lake is to do a bike tour of the wineries. We aren’t big wine drinkers, but we do like biking. A couple weeks before I had found a place that rented bikes. I wrote them and asked if they also had 20″ and 24″ bikes to rent. The folks at Zoom Bikes got back to me within minutes and said, “Yes!” Zoom Bikes, coincidentally was a ten minute walk from where we were staying, and our first full day in Niagara-on-the-Lake, we walked over at 9:30am and picked up our bikes. I highly recommend Zoom Bikes – the staff there was super friendly and helpful in telling us which routes to take, they provide helmets and bike locks and each bike has a basket and bell. You can do a half day rental (3 hours) or a full day rental (until 8pm.)

We spent most of the day biking the trail alongside Niagara Parkway. The trail would have taken up all the way to Niagara Falls, but we didn’t feel up to doing the whole thing. Instead, we biked for about an hour and a half along the Parkway before turning around and coming back. The trail was nice and smooth and had good views of the Niagara River. On the way back, we stopped at Walker’s Market for sandwiches and baked goods. I had a butter tart, a bit of Canadian deliciousness that I never see in the States.

After lunch, we biked to Fort George National Historic site, a military fortification that was originally completed in 1802 by the British Army. It was largely destroyed during the War of 1812 and very little of the original buildings remain. It was a nice historical stop – they had costumed re-enactors who answered questions and engaged visitors. We watched a musket demonstration, wandered through buildings, ate cookies baked in a hearth oven, walked through a tunnel to a look out tower. The kids had little activity books to fill out.

After Fort George it was a five minute bike ride to Queen’s Royal Park, which was on the mouth of Lake Ontario and had a little strip of beach. We weren’t prepared to go into the water, but the 6 and 9 year old took off their shoes and socks and built dams with rocks while the Husband and the 14 year old relaxed in the shade.

Lake Ontario. On a clear day you can see Toronto.

Around 4:00pm, we biked back to Zoom Bikes to return our bikes and head back to our rental house where we rested before our next adventure. I have to say, when I first got the idea for a family bike ride, I was a little nervous about the two little kids, but I would say we biked maybe 10 or 15 miles that day and no one complained. Family bike rides are going to go on our list of vacation activities, I think.

The next adventure as dinner and the theatre. Dinner was at a local Irish Pub (because every city has one, even Kyoto, Japan). After dinner we headed to the Shaw Festival. Ontario has two world renowned summer theatre festivals: The Stratford Festival (which specializes in Shakespeare), and the Shaw Festival (which specializes in works either written in the lifetime of George Bernard Shaw, or set during that time period.) Growing up in Sarnia, we would often go to the Stratford Festival, but we never went to the Shaw Festival. I’ve always wanted to see something at the Shaw Festival, so this was a dream come true.

The theatre complex was stunning. There are two (maybe three?) theatres on the site, with an airy courtyard between the spaces and also a lovely garden out back where patrons can sit and enjoy nature as they wait for their show to start. In the garden, there were trees with poems attached to the trunk, each poem listing the staff member who chose it. I thought that was such a personal touch.

We saw an adaptation of the book Wind in the Willows and it was wonderful. The performances were high energy, the set was clever and inventive, and the show was performed in the round, which always lends a sense of intimacy and immediacy. I don’t go to a lot of straight plays, and I always forget how wonderful it is to see actors playing off each other, finding their own rhythms and paces.

After the play, there was a Q&A with the actors, which we stayed for. It was really fascinating to learn about the unique nature of the Shaw Festival – they are truly a theatre company, where everyone is there for the whole summer and plays parts in multiple shows – they might be a lead in one show and then in the ensemble of another show. I was proud of the kids for asking questions even though it was mostly grown ups who stayed for the Q&A. The family also gave me a hard time for not asking the stage manager (who was moderating the Q&A) a question – I feel bad because they were right, no one ever asks the stage manager questions… I really like theatre that has these audience events – if you ever go to a show that involves an Q&A afterwards, I highly recommend going.

Day Two: Niagara Falls
This was our day in Niagara Falls. We were originally going to take the WeGo bus from NOTL to the Falls, but we couldn’t get the purchase to go through online, so we ended up taking and Uber. Originally I hadn’t wanted to drive in because I had read that the parking can be really difficult and expensive. We later discovered that if you are willing to walk 15 or 20 minutes away from the main drag, you can find parking for $10-$20 for the whole day. If we ever go back to Niagara Falls, we will probably try that option.

Niagara Falls has gotten really developed since I was there as a kid. Back in the 80s and 90s, I remember there being a Ripley’s Believe it or Not and a Wax Museum but that was it for non-falls related entertainment. Now, the Clifton Hill area a few block from the Falls is lit up like a Vegas amusement park and there is no shortage of ways to be entertained or to spend one’s money, both at the Falls itself and at Clifton Hill.

Knowing that there were so many things to do in Niagara, we focused on just two things – the iconic boat ride to the Falls and a visit to the Niagara Parks Power Station with its tunnel to the base of the falls. The Boat Ride is the must do of Niagara and I remember doing this as a child. The Power Station seemed like a really cool perspective of the Falls. Our Uber dropped us off at the Power Station at 11:00am, and we got tickets for the 1pm tour.

To pass the time before the power plant tour, we walked over to take in our first views of the Horseshoe Falls. The Falls are huge. It is a lot of water travelling very fast. Niagara Falls is such a popular destination that it almost feels like a cliche, but seeing it never felt cliched to me – it just felt awesome and almost meditative to watch the water flow and hear it roar. I felt like I could just stand there and watch it forever.

For lunch we had brought some sandwiches from the Budapest Bakeshop in Niagara on the Lake (more on that below), so we found a table outside and ate those before heading to the Niagara Power Station. The Power Station was built in 1906 and then decommissioned in 2005. It is now a museum that combines history and science. Visiting it is great for people who like a little bit of nerdy information with their tourism. It was fascinating to think of how all the water was used to create electricity. The tour even took us up to the original offices of the Power Station and back to one of the control rooms.

The main exhibit hall of the Power Station.

The last part of the Power Station visit was a descent down to a tunnel that had been used to feed the water back into Niagara River. The elevator is glass so as it took you down you could see the inner mechanics of the power station. The tunnel now provides a walkway to the shores of the Niagara River where you can get a view of the bottom of the falls.

We spent the rest of our time at the Power Plant exploring the various exhibits – there was a good combination of hands of activities and informative placards. There was an audio tour included with admission, which I’m always down for an audioguide!

Soon it was time to head off to our boat ride. When I was growing up, the boat ride was called The Maid of the Mist, but I’ve learned that Maid of the Mist is actually the boat tour from the American side. The tour from the Canadian side is called merely Niagara City Cruises. We picked up our complimentary red ponchos and boarded the boat. The 6 year old didn’t want to go to the top level, so I rode in the bottom level with her. The views were still stunning, and we got VERY wet. The boat took us past the American Falls and then close to the base off the Horseshoe Falls. It was such a sensory overload of an experience – water spray everywhere, the roar of the water coming down, and the amazing sight of the falls. And on the way back to the dock, we even saw a rainbow!

Here’s the view of the boat that we took from above earlier in the day.

The boat ride was short – maybe 30 minutes, but I think it was the kids’ favorite activity of the trip. Following the boat ride we headed to dinner. We walked through the very crowded and neon touristy Clifton Hill area to the quieter area a few blocks further away for some Indian food. For some reason Indian food is one of our go tos when we travel – I think we like knowing that the food will be flavorful and we’ll get good vegetarian options.

Afterwards we got some (mediocre) boba and walked back down to the falls. One of my favorite memories of visiting Niagara Falls when I was a kid was when the Falls were illuminated at night. I really wanted to stay for that experience again, which meant staying out a little later than planned since the lights weren’t turned on until 8pm. I have to say, when the lights were turned on we were still half an hour until sunset and the skies were still bright, so the effect was a little underwhelming, but as the skies got darker, the lights on the falls became more saturated. It wasn’t as magical as when I was growing up, but it was still really pretty to see.

Around 9pm, we hopped in an Uber back to our house, we were all exhausted from our big day of walking and adventures.

Day Three – Hiking and Small Town Shopping and Beach Time:
Our third day started with a walk into town to get our van. Early that morning, the Husband had taken it to a charging station in town and since the parking meters turned on at 10am, we wanted to get the van before we had to pay for parking. It was almost like a mini date! We stopped to pick up a cinnamon sugar chimney cake from The Budapest Bakery – these were a new to me treat – dough is wrapped around thick cylinder and baked. Then the inside of the cylinder can be filled with sweet or savory fillings. (We had bought a bunch of their chimney cake sandwiches the day before to eat at Niagara Falls.)

Then we wandered a little down the street of cute shops. Not much was open before 10am, but one shop that was was Beau Chapeau hat shop. I love hats and had bookmarked this as a place I wanted to visit. The store was FULL of all shapes and sized of hats. And they also had an area where they built and repaired hats. This was a lovely shop and I walked out having indulgently refreshed my hat collection. I can’t wait to wear all my new hats.

After we got back to the house, we decided to head out for a hike. The 14 year old stayed behind, so it was just the Husband, me, and the 6 and 9 year olds. We went to Niagara Glen to visit the Nature Center and go for a hike. The hike took us to some gorgeous vistas of Niagara Gorge.

The hike was quite a bit steeper than I had thought it would be, so even though it was a short hike (maybe 90 minutes round trip), it was pretty intense in parts. We stopped at the halfway point to eat the peanut butter and honey sandwiches that I had brought. After the hike, the 6 and 9 year old changed into our swim suits and headed back to the little beach at Queen’s Royal Park, where we played in the sand and swam in the lake for a couple hours. The kids were really obsessed with building a dam and once I figured out that the water a few meters out was less rocky and actually had a nice sandy floor, I hung out there and swam back and forth. It was a nice cooling way to relax after our hike.

Around 4pm, we walked over to meet up with the Husband and the 14 year old at Balzac’s coffee shop. Next to Blazac’s was Fritters on the Lake, a shop that was recommended multiple times on Reddit (where I get a lot of my travel ideas, tbh.) They make only one thing at Fritters on the Lake – apple fritters. Basically they take apple rings, dip them in batter, fry them, and sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar. They also came with a little container of caramel sauce. The whole thing was divine.

After our snack break, we wandered around Niagara on the Lake for a little bit, checking out the various cute shops. I stopped at the candy store and picked up a bag of licorice – they had salted licorice as well as chalk licorice, two of my favorite kinds. We also stopped at the grocery store to stock up on our favorite Canadian snacks:

Photo taken after we got home – wine gums, ketchup chips, maple cookies, Coffee Crisp, Oh Henry, Smarties…

Then we picked up gyros and falafel for dinner from Gyros on the Lake (“On the Lake” seems to be a big thing here.) and sat in the nearby park and ate it. The Husband and the 14 year old had tickets to see Funny Girl that evening, so they headed off to the theatre.

We had only planned on one theatre excursion on this trip, but Wind in the Willows was so good that they Husband and 14 year old wanted to see a second show. One of the wonderful things about the Shaw Festival is that student tickets are only $28, so it taking the kids to see theatre didn’t break the bank. They said Funny Girl was also really really good. The show had six understudies going on that evening, which was unusual and the Artistic leader who came out to do the curtain speech gave a shout out to all the technical departments (including stage management!) for pivoting and putting six understudies on. I thought that was pretty cool because techies never get shout out and applause.

Meanwhile the other two kids and I headed back to our rental where we packed and did laundry and had showers and basically had a low key last evening in Niagara On The Lake.

And then we went home….

We went home via the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY, which I would also highly recommend. It’s a museum devoted to, as you would figure, glass – there is both glass art and glass artifacts, and it’s all breath takingly stunning. There are also opportunities to take part in glass activities – we did the sand blasting because the activity was rated for all ages and you could take that home with you right away. The museum also had opportunities to do glass fusing, etching, flame working, and glass blowing. For sand blasting, we used tape and stickers to make a design on glasses and then using sandblasting techniques created a frosted look on the glasses.

The finished product at home in our cupboard.

After doing our sandblasting project, we took one of the tours then wandered around the museum on our own. The kids really liked the hands on science exhibit and we got to watch someone make a wine glass using flame working technique. I loved how the exhibits were a combination of the exquisite (see below) and the mundane – there was a whole exhibit about Pyrex and Corning ware.

Nocturn 5 by Karen LaMonte. This piece was stunning.

These are from the collection of contemporary women artists.

I loved this one – it’s called Thousand Hands by Song Dong. It is made up of discarded hands that were found outside a factory that makes glass Buddhas.

We spent about four hours at the Corning Museum and then got in the car to continue home. We stopped the night in Camp Town, just outside of Harrisburg, PA where we had spent our reading retreat a month ago. It wasn’t a conscious effort to return to Harrisburg, rather it was a convenient place to stop since we like to stay at hotels in the Marriott family. In the morning, we spent an hour wandering around Mechanisburg, including some time in an vintage good store where we found some plates and a table top tennis game for the kids from the 1970s. Then we had lunch at Millworks, the brewery/ artist studio we had visited last time we were here, and grabbed coffee and chai at Denim Coffee, another of our favorite places from our reading retreat. We were on the road again by 2pm and then home by 5:30pm.

It was nice to get home not too late – we unpacked and clean up and ordered pizza and watched The Princess and the Frog for movie night. I had never seen that movie before – it’s delightful.

As nice of an adventure we had over the past week, it felt so cozy to come home and go back to having pizza and movie night.

Grateful For on this trip:
-That we had a safe road trip. And the Husband for driving almost the entirety of the trip. I think we are embracing the road trip as our summer activity. International/ plane travel is great and all, but I think it’s good to also explore what’s just around us.

-That we were able to see friends in Indiana and they made time for us.

-Our Bookings.com host who were super responsive and even sent us a detailed list of places we could charge the van. The house was perfect – we could walk to the cute shops of Niagara on the Lake. The house was well furnished – there were toys and games and craft supplies for the kids. There was a fitness area in the basement so I could go yoga and some strength training. Everything was labelled. I mean everything – light switches, cupboards, drawers. I liked not having to guess where things were. I would definitely stay there again.

-That all three kids are now old enough and proficient enough on bikes that spending a day biking was a feasible plan.

-That our contractor came and fixed our water damaged wall while we were gone and we came home to his beautiful repair job.

-Nature. And the fact that Niagara Falls, despite being a huge tourist destination, is still an amazing natural feature.

-That the kids were in a relatively good mood and got along in the car, mostly.

-Museums. For being full of beautiful and fascinating things.

-That, back home, our friends came over and fed the fish while we were gone.

-Time together with the family.

Well that’s the recap on the trip! I know I usually put our dinners on these weekly recaps, but it’s all in the recap. And if there is no dinner listed, it meant that we ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches and apple slices for dinner. I would say all in all it was a good trip. There were some unbloggable mishaps – not my story to share – but hopefully we got through it all okay. If anything, I would say I would have loved to spend one more day in Niagara on the Lake. The one thing we didn’t have was a lot of down time and NOTL is the perfect setting for some downtime. I’ll remember that for the future because I hope we do go back again.

Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? What kind of activities do you seek out when you travel?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye July, Hello August!

A theatre with the seats half filled. Onstage is platforms set with church pews and on the sides is scaffolding. A movie theatre frame, lined with lights displays movie posters. One poster prominently says "Tosca". — Photo taken by my friend who came to see the show.

Well another tech week and show into the history books. I had a good show. Some frustrations, but over all I worked with a lot of really great people who all worked super hard to put a show on very little time. One fun thing that happened on the day of the performance – there had been rain forecast, and we heard periodic rumbles. We were all hoping that the rain would hold out because we are in an outdoor venue and a large part of the audience sits out on the lawn, which is uncovered. Well, we were lucky and the rain did hold off. But just as the show finished and the heroine had collapsed on the ground dead, there was a huge clap of thunder and the heavens opened up. I guess God approved of our show….

August! Where did you come from? Here we are. How was July? Well here’s the run down:

July Highlights:
-Going on a Reading Retreat with the Husband over the 4th of July. We went to Harrisburg, VA and enjoyed bookstores, farmer’s markets, and lots of reading.

-All three kids going to Taiwan camp with my mother. They all had a great time and want to go back next year.

-Going over to a friend’s house one evening for S’mores over their firepit.

-A great swim season w/ the swim team.

-On that note – the Mom on the swim team who took over swim meet logistics when there was a sudden change in plans on a Saturday then personally contacted every swim team family to let them know of the change, even if it meant knocking on their door. (Our Swim Team Rep and many of the members of our swim team are shomer-Shabbat Jews.). This display of inclusion and kindness was a definitely a highlight of the month.

-Going to the theatre with the Husband.

-Impromptu dinner with some family friends. I always think it is such a hassle to host people for dinner, but it doesn’t have to be. Plus I like cooking for people, so it’s even kind of fun if I keep things simple.

-Watching the World Cup. I might have been late for work because I was watching the final game.

-The 14 year old cooking dinner and baking. I told her she has to do at least one analogue activity a day. She fulfills this request by making a mess in the kitchen. But at least it’s tasty and she’s learning some skills.

-A Belated Birthday trip to Dave and Busters for the 9 year old and a few of his friends, with dumplings and noodles afterwards.

-Discovering the Japanese market near work and stocking up on my favorite gummy candies and buying three different brands of ramen for our ramen taste test.

-Happy Hour with my Bus Stop mom friends. (I know this happens almost every month, but it is consistently a highlight of my month.)

-The two younger kids going to camp – gymnastics for the 6 year old and fencing for the 9 year old – and really enjoying it.

-Visiting the National Gallery of Art. I should go more often. They have such good things to see there.

-Peach Truck Peaches! 25lbs of peaches. Picked them up on Sunday. Half the box was gone by Thursday. I canned 9lbs. The 14 year old made a pie. The rest we ate, dripping peach juice down our chins.

-Favorite Dinner: Salmon bowls that became onigiri making. That was fun and tasty. I’ve been researching other onigiri fillings to make.
Also – snack dinner at the pool was a big hit – crackers, salami, cheese, cut up veggies and fruit.

-Favorite thing watched: I didn’t watch a whole lot this month because I was at work a lot (or commuting to work), though I did finally watch Season 1 of Bridgerton (pretty people. pretty clothes. lots of sex. I’m on the fence if I’ll watch the other seasons. But Benedict and Francesca’s books were my favorite, so I might just watch those seasons.).
Oh we also started a show called AP Bio about a Harvard Philosophy Professor who is fired and ends up teaching high school biology. It is very funny, but the sardonic academic schtick gets old after a while so I don’t find the show great for bingeing.
We also watched a few episodes of Nora From Queens. I never remember that I love this show until I feel like I have nothing else to watch.
And of course the World Cup. I really loved watching that.

Yearly Goals/ Aspirations:
Creativity:
-Haikus: 2 (18/52 written so far this year… needs more time)
-Painting: 0 (ouf this was a bad month for making time for creativity)
-Crosswords completed: 1

Consumption:
-Live Performances: 1 theatre performance
-Museums: 2 (visit to the National Gallery of Art and to an Artist’s creative space – not technically a museum, but there was a lot of art to be seen)
-hikes: 0 (Why is this even in this category? Is it because I’m supposed to be consuming nature? Well, I did pretty badly at that.)

Healthy Habits:
-Yoga: 27/31 days
-Strength: 3x (goal is 8x a month)
-Runs: 3x (not great, but I did swim…)
-Swim laps: 4x
-Vegan Dinners: 3 (Sesame noodles- twice- and Corn, Tomatoe, and Mint Pasta Salad. Goal is once a week, so this isn’t bad)

Quote of the month:
This one came from the 14 year old. We were sitting on the couch, hanging out watching tv and scrolling the internet together. I was reading some blog or substack or something with beautifully curated sleek (and expensive) houses and glowing impeccably dressed blonds with sleek smooth locks, everything bathed in gorgeous light with nary a speck of dirt or mess in sight. And the 14 year old leans over and looks at my screen and said:
“Mom – you don’t want to be her!”
And I said, “You know what? No, I don’t.” And I shut my laptop and pulled her in for a cuddle. It was just the reminder that I needed to make sure my inputs match the things I really value and love.

July Low Lights:
-The hot weather.

-The long commute. (But yay! now I no longer have to do that … til next year. And at the risk of toxic positivity – at least I have work during the summer.)

-Smoke in the skies and the bad air quality. I’m sorry Canada had to deal with this all.

-The exhaust pipe falling off my car as I was driving to work. (But the kindness of everyone who helped me was a highlight of July.)

-Sibling squabbles. It might have been a little too much together time for the kids this summer.

-On that note – the jury is still out on whether this uber unstructured summer was a good idea. (Each kid only had one week of camp all summer.) I think the kids loved it, but I feel like they might have done better with a little more structure to their days. Yet when I tried to impose structure, there was much protesting, whining, and yelling.

-Missing a piano lesson for the kids because I forgot that it was at 7:15am, after two consecutive weeks of 7:45am. Argh! I hate stupid mistakes like that.

-Discovering the waterline to our fridge misting water.

Looking Forward to in August:
-Our trip to Niagara on the Lake and Niagara Falls.

-Listening to our Road Trip Playlist. I can’t remember where I got this idea, but I read about someone who asks people she meets on her travels to add a song to a playlist she makes for each trip. I sort of riffed on that idea and all summer long, I’ve been asking people to add a song to my road trip play list. I don’t listen to a lot of music myself, so I don’t know that I could create a playlist on my own. By asking people to give me just one song for the playlist I find that I’m being introduced to an eclectic mix of music – and each song will be tied in my mind to the person who chose it. I’m still taking songs, so feel free to give me a song for the list!

-School starting. The oldest is going to high school!

-Routine. I’m craving regular rhythms and space in my day.

-The Maryland Renaissance Festival. We usually go at the end of August for preview weekend since it’s cheaper, but they’ve changed their pricing and so the first few weekends cost just as much as any other time. So this might actually be a September thing. It’s the last year that the 6 year old can go for free, so I feel like I should make an effort.

Grateful for:
-Lap lanes at the pool. I’ve been going to swim laps at the pool and it’s a really nice alternative to running when the temperatures at so hot.

-A day off that was relaxing and productive and social – checks all my free day boxes. I read and swam and went through some of the kids’ outgrown clothes and packed for my trip and had a friend over to can peaches and went to bed exhausted and satisfied.

six jars of canned peaches sit on silicone hotpads on a granite counter — Can’t wait until January!

-Uniqlo nylon culottes. Running a show at an outdoor venue in 80+ degree weather, is deeply unpleasant if I’m not wearing the right thing. My new discovery this year was these pants – they’re lightweight, look somewhat nice, and have rear pockets, which are perfect for stashing my cell phone. And because they are culottes, they give me the coverage of pants, but are as airy as a skirt.

-Company on my drive home – My friend came to see my show and he came to the afterparty with me and afterwards, I drove him to the metro stop near me so he could get home. I’m always a fan of a commuting catch-up – it was lovely to see him and to have thirty minutes in the car to chat.

-Having a parking pass in Zone 1. The stage managers get to park in the lot closest to the theatre. The singers have to park in the lot a little further down. I always have so much stuff to schlep with me that I’m glad I get a Zone 1 parking pass.

-That the kids can pack themselves. I make them packing lists and they just do it. I do have to check the 6 and 9 year old’s suitcases afterwards, but the bulk of the work is theirs. (The 14 year old gets a list, but we let there be natural consequences if she forgets something…) I’m so glad we’re at the phase now where I don’t have to pack for the kids anymore. Also grateful that we no longer have to travel with baby gear.

a piece of paper with a 14x2 grid. In each of the rectangles is an item from the packing list. — The packing list I made for the kids. Thank goodness for clipart. Plus I got to use my laminator!

-And incredibly bright moon, rising large and luminous on the horizon as I drive eastward home after a long day at work. I needed that shot of beauty in my life at that moment.

What We Ate:
Monday: Honey Chicken with green beans and corn. The 14 year old cooked. I heard this was tasty – there wasn’t any left when I got home.

Tuesday: Leftover Teriyaki tofu and miso zucchini for me at work. I’m actually not sure what the rest of the family ate.

Wednesday: I packed more leftover teriyaki tofu, but then they had leftovers from an event at work, so I ended up eat that – it was roasted vegetables, chicken, salad, and fruit. I love free food at work.

Thursday: My friend came over to can peaches and we had snack dinner – pimento cheese, leftover miso glazed zucchini, good bread… whatever else was in the fridge.

Friday: The day of our show! We went out to eat with our interns as a Thank You for all their work this season. I had a Buffalo Chicken sandwich. I love Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches, but my stomach does not like them as much as it used to, so I only have them sparingly these days.

Welp that’s the month that was… Just in time for the middle of the month. Eeep. The month is racing by and I’ve barely been able to catch up.

Tell me, what one song would you add to my road trip playlist? Do you keep a packing list for travel? Have you ever used a laminator? What are you looking forward to in August?

Weekly recap + what we ate: 4 good adventures and 1 not so good adventure

Well last week was a week of adventures, good and bad. Well not bad, really… just bothersome. None of these adventures involved packing suitcases or driving hours from home – they were all just (mostly) fun activities that added a dash of something new and different to our days.

First the good adventures:
1) Every day adventures: I had a pretty light rehearsal week, so I got to hang out with the kids. The 6 and 9 year old and I went on bike/runs three times and we went to the pool one day. Now that we’re out of summer swim team season, I feel like going to the pool is more fun – we don’t have to be there at a certain time, or stay until practice is over. We don’t have to eat dinner there. Everyone can swim together, rather than some kids being in practice while some kids are enjoying free swim time. So going to the pool feels more like a fun outing now. And because the pool is a summer time thing, it still feels like a seasonal treat to go. The nice thing about joining a pool for the summer is that we can easily go whenever we want and not have to pay each time. Also, like going to the museums in DC, I don’t feel pressure to spend all day at the pool to make it worth the price of admission. We went for 90 minutes and it was just enough time to get some energy out and move my body.

2) Slightly bigger adventure, but still small scale: One day, we went to the National Gallery of Art. Lest you think my children are some paragons of museum exploration – I did have to bribe them with ice cream to get me to come, and even then there were many protests of, “I hate museums!!!!”

We went to the National Gallery of Art because I wanted us to see the exhibit on Niagara Falls since we would be visiting there for an upcoming family trip. Also, there is a Mary Cassatt exhibit right now, and I do love Cassatt. So we took the metro down – which with four of us is actually more expensive than paying for parking in a garage, but so much more relaxing and enjoyable than driving through the city.

a sign for the National Gallery of Art, with a picture of the Mary Cassatt painting of a girl reclining on an easy chair. The sign reads, "Iconic art (and air-conditioning) this way" with an arrow pointing as the museum. — This sign outside the NGA made me laugh. But so true.

At the Museum, the 6 and 9 year old got activity books at the visitor’s drsk, which I think did help them be a little more engaged. The two activities that I thought were really effective were the colour hunting game – find something of each colour of the rainbow (which is something we often play when we are out and about ) – and the memory game. For the memory game, you look at a painting for ten seconds and then turn your back to it and list five things your remember from the painting. Then you turn back around and look at the painting for thirty seconds, and then again turn your back to the painting and list another five things. I thought that was a really fun game snd the kids liked it too.

two small children stand before a large landscape painting. — looking for details.

The other fun thing that happened as we were at the NGA is we were looking at the Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial an a docent walked up to the kids and said, “Can I tell you a little bit about this work of art?” And then proceeded to tell us a little bit about the history and features of the statue. I thought it was so cool that they had museum employees just wandering around to talk to people about the art. I find going to the art museum sometimes can be a little passive and isolating, and I loved that someone came up to us and engaged us about what we were looking at.

The Cassett exhibit was similar to when I saw in Philadelphia a few years ago in that it featured both paintings and preliminary sketches of Mary Cassett. The kids are getting antsy by this point so I didn’t stay long. The exhibit will be at the NGA until the end of August so perhaps I can go again and take my time once the kids are back in school.

The Niagara Exhibit was small, but featured a wide range of art- from Huge paintings to smaller ink works and even video install installations. It was a fun precursor to our trip.

two pen and ink drawings of Niagara Falls.

3) Date night adventures: The Husband and I went to the theatre! Without the kids! We saw Happenstance Theatre Company’s show Adrift. Happenstance is a little hard to explain – they use a blend of clowning, physical comedy, mine, and ensemble work to create theatre works that explore existential questions and feelings. Okay, that sounds really pretentious. I had never seen their work live before, only online, and some of the members perform at the Renaissance Festival, but I’ve always been struck by the humour and whimsy and pathos of what they are inviting the audience to experience. So anyhow – we went to see their show. In a theatre. It has a loose plot centered around a bunch of medieval people adrift at sea asking the question, “What happens now?” There was music, dancing, audience interaction, comedy, and a demon that reminded me of the 6 year old.

The view of a theatrical stage with props and set pieces. A hand holds a printed program up in front of the stage. The program reads "Adrift: A Medieval Wayward Folly. " by Happenstance theatrer.

4) Culinary adventures! The 14 year old made her first pie, dough and everything. She made a peach pie (since we had 25lbs of peaches to get through).

An unbaked pie shell sits on the counter. It is filled with cup up peaches, and a hand crimps the edges of the pie dough.

The kids also made the viral watermelon ice cream that involved cutting a well in half a watermelon, then freezing it. After frozen, you pour heavy cream into the well and then scrape the frozen watermelon into the cream, stirring until it makes ice cream. This was better than I thought it would be, but I would still prefer real ice cream.

A frozen watermelon is held in place by one hand while another hand scoops out the icy flesh from the middle.

And then my intern took me to the Japanese market near work and came away with so many things! I got four different onigiri (kelp, kimchi, spicy tuna, and ramen), Yellow curry flavored chips, six bags of my favorite gummy candy (Kasugai gummies – they had the lychee flavor on sale. I bought five bags.) And then a whole bunch of ramen.
One of my summer fun goals was to have some kind of taste test – so we did a ramen taste test:

Winner was the Menraku brand – the noodles had the best taste and flavor. Of course the 14 year old said I bought the wrong flavor (I bought three different kinds of soy sauce flavor ramen.) So maybe we’ll have another ramen taste test with a different flavor?

5) And then … The not so good adventure:
On midnight on Saturday, I was sitting up late reading suddenly the 14 year old’s voice came out from her room. “Mooooommmm! There is water coming from my wall!”
I went to her room and she had pulled her dollhouse away from the wall and pulled down the giant Hello Kitty that had been up on her wall. Behind it all was a horrible water stain on the wall and damp and discoloured floor boards underneath.
“I heard a dripping,” she said, “So I wanted to see what it was.”
I went to wake my Husband who was asleep and we started to investigate in a semi-panicked, semi-groggy state, asking each other where the water damage could come from.

Eventually, we thought about the waterline to the fridge – the kitchen and the 14 year old’s bedroom share a wall. We went into the kitchen and pulled the fridge out slightly from the wall. At first we didn’t see anything, but then I noticed that there was a fine mist coming up from the back of the fridge. Not a drip or a deluge, just a fine misting. No wonder we never noticed it before. Who know how long this has been going on?

We had an access panel in the basement ceiling to the fridge waterline, so we were able to turn to turn off the water to the fridge line. We then unplugged the fridge and (with the help of a YouTube tutorial), disconnected the water line. We moved the fridge to the other side of the kitchen and assessed the damage. Behind the fridge was a mess of plaster and water. It didn’t look pretty. By then it was past 1am and we were tired. The water was stopped, the fridge plugged back in and we thought it would be okay to go to bed and deal with the rest of it tomorrow. The 14 year old’s bedroom was a mess, so she slept in the living room. There is currently a big gaping hole in the wall behind where the fridge once stood and the paint is peeling off in giant sheets. Looking behind appliances is no joke.

All in all discovering a misting leak was not on our bingo card of home ownership, but as with a lot of other things, it could have been worse.

Grateful For:
So in the same vein of my Oodles of Gratitude post a few weeks ago when my car literally fell apart, here’s a bunch of things that made me feel grateful, despite discovering the fridge leak:
-I’m grateful that when we had the basement re-done six years ago, our contactor put a shut off valve on the water line to the fridge and an access panel in the the ceiling of the basement. “You’re going to want that some day,” he said to us. So true. Some day was midnight last Saturday.
-I’m grateful that our walls are plaster and not dry wall, since plaster is resistant to mold.
-I’m grateful that we finally know why there was moisture coming up from the floorboards in the basement.
-I’m grateful that we have a contractor we trust who came and looked at the situation and is a very calming person and nothing is ever a big deal or unfixable to him.
-I’m grateful that we had somewhere else in the kitchen to put the fridge.
-I’m grateful that the 14 year old heard a dripping and was curious to see what it was.
-I’m grateful that the Husband got up, even though he was dead asleep when I woke him, and together we figured out the issue.

Some other things that made me grateful last week:
-Having short rehearsal days – giving me time to do some life and have some adventures (see above.)

-Friends who we can invite over for dinner on a whim, and not have to worry that they will judge us because the hosue is a mess becuase life happens.

-Growing up eating Asian Food. I took part in a study last week that looked at Asian food habits and history. It involved a two hour interview with a graduate student where we talked about the food I ate growing up, and the food I eat now, and cultural identity. The interview brought up so many memories for me about how my mother managed to make familiar Taiwanese dishes while living in a small Canadian city with no access to a lot of ingredients she was used to. For example, my mother made her own sausage, and dumplings from scratch – she couldn’t even buy dumpling skins – she made it all herself. Also tofu. She made tofu from scratch. As in from soy beans. It was a three day process and took up half our kitchen. This is a core childhood food memory. I have many – maybe I’ll write a blog post about it some day.
Answering the questions for the study, I am simultaneously grateful that I don’t have to make my own tofu, and that my mother managed to find a way to feed us tofu from a young age. Because I love tofu and I’m glad it’s part of my culinary palate.

Looking Forward To:
-More Niagara on the Lake Trip Planning – I’ve booked theatre tickets at the Shaw Festival. Growing up, we went to the Stratford Festival many many times, but never the Shaw Festival, and it’s always been one of my dreams to see something at the Shaw Festival. We have tickets to see Wind in The Willows. One of the funny things is that a lot of the older performers at the Shaw and Stratfor Festivals are people I grew up seeing on stage – there’s something really cool about, thirty years later, knowing that they are still working.

-I’ve also booked a bike rental for the family – one of the days we’re there, we are going to spend the day biking around. The 14 year old wanted to have an e-bike; she was even going to pay the difference in fee herself – but apparently you have to be 16 in Canada to ride one.

-Not working on a show. My show has it’s one and only performance this week, then I don’t have another show to rehearse until late September. It’s been a long long summer. Actually, ever since January when we had a company shake-up, work has been a little unrelenting with gig after gig. “Booked and Blessed!” as they say. But also – it’s been a lot for the rest of the family too when I’m not home evening and weekends. I always feel ridiculous when I say I’m looking forward to time off to catch up on life, because most other people engage in paid work all year long and still manage to life.

-Very far off, but my brother managed to get a draw time for the LA Olympics in 2028, so he got tickets for all of us to go together to see Badminton prelims. It’s not the most high profile sport, but it was one of the few events with tickets available that was affordable (still in the $200-300 range per ticket). I’m excited; I played varsity badminton in high school so it will be fun to see it played at a high level. And I’ve never been to the Olympics before so just being there will be exciting.

-Just started this audiobook- it’s a cozy charming read.

A screen shot of a book cover. The title of the book is Welcome to Murder Week by Karen Dukess.

What We Ate:

Monday: Pasta with corn, mint, and red onions, a Melissa Clark recipe from the NYTimes. I had corn and tomato from the farmer’s market, and the request from the Husband was a pasta salad because I could make it ahead of time. I also threw in a can of chickpeas for protein. I thought this was really tasty – would make again, though only in the summer. It’s a peak produce required dish. I ate leftovers of this all week for dinner. Vegan because we ate it without the optional ricotta.

Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos w/ black beans, cabbage, cheese.

Wednesday: Noodles with tofu and mushrooms with green beans on the side. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Waffles and eggs. I had the corn pasta salad from Monday.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and some movie. Not quite sure what it was. Maybe Empire Strikes Back? Or maybe they watched that on Saturday?

Saturday: Gnocchi and sausage. The Husband cooked. I had the corn pasta salad from Monday.

Sunday: Salmon and tofu teriyaki bowls, which morphed into making onigiri. I made salmon and tofu with my favorite teriyaki recipe (from Vegan for Everyone from America’s Test Kitchen). Also had mango, cucumbers, avocado, nori, and rice (brown and white rice), to make bowls. But then the kids wanted to make onigiri, so we did that.
(On a side note – I discovered that HMart sells nori that is layered between cellophane, so you can make onigiri, wrap it in the seaweed and cellophane, and the seaweed doesn’t get soggy, just like how you get them when you buy them in the store. This makes onigiri much more portable, and I’m so excited to try it out. Onigiri is one of my favorite foods.)

On the table is a package of seaweed and an onigiri next to it.

That’s the news that was. This weekend I have the one and only performance of our show. I hope the weather will be not too hot since we are at an outdoor venue. Now that work will have a bit of a lull, I’m looking forward to planning August and the new school year. I’m still having activity angst, but hopefully having some time to sit and think and not have to wedge those moments in on my work breaks will give me a bit of clarity. There also looks to be rain coming, so maybe some cozy indoor activities are in my future.

Any fun small adventures lately? Any foods from your childhood that you still eat regularly today? What should be our next food for summer taste testing? do you like onigiri? Do you have a favorite flavor? When was the last time you looked behind an appliance?

Weekly recap + what we ate: oodles of gratitude

I started to write a post brain dumping all the things that happened last week, and it turns out that last week was one of those weeks where things were stressful, then they weren’t and I was just so grateful for the way people showed up to make things less stressful. So this is going to be a post of many gratitudes.

You know what makes gratitudes float to the surface for me? When unfortunate things happen and then suddenly everything is okay and you see your way through. There were two really stressful, unfortunate things that happened last week- two things that would make my monthly “lowlight” list. And not to be toxically positive, but in the end things worked out. So here we go:

Thing ONE: On Tuesday I was driving to work, listening to an audioplay of Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders. This is a pretty fantastic adaptation with added backstory and historical context and music and sound effects. When I first hear the high pitched whine as I was driving down the freeway, I thought it was just a sound effect- I had gotten to a particularly tense part of the action. But then after a while I noticed that the high pitched whine and scraping noise wasn’t going away. In fact, it seemed…. oh no… it seemed to be coming from my car. From underneath my car. I hit pause on the audioplay and opened my window just so I could hear better and it definitely was not coming from the play.

I was two minutes from work by the, so I just continued on my way. As soon as I got to work, I parked the car and looked underneath it. And this is what I saw:

In case it’s not exactly clear – above is a picture of the underside of my car with the exhaust pipe on the ground. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point on my commute, the exhaust pipe fell away and I had been dragging it under me down the freeway.

I did panic a little bit. My summer job is 20 miles from home and there was not really a way to get home without getting back on the freeway. I grabbed my things and went inside and called the Husband. I feel somewhat ashamed to say I called my Husband rather than taking care of it myself, but I didn’t want to feel like I had to solve this alone. He offered to call the tow truck, if I could find a place to which to get the car towed. Well at this point all my co-workers go involved and it began a cascade of things that went from “Oh my gosh this is terrible” to “I’m realizing so many lucky things!” If my exhaust hadn’t fallen off, the following amazing things wouldn’t have happened:

– That my boss has a nearby mechanic that solved the exact same issue for her two years ago, and she gave me his number.

– That my co-worker has a minor understanding of cars, having taken his side door panel off one time to replace a mirror, and when I showed him the picture he said, one could just tie/ gaff tape the pipe up to the chassis and be able to drive the car home.

-That the Husband could also just text our mechanic a picture of the whole debacle and ask if he had time to look at it tomorrow morning and Nestor said, “Yes.” so we decided to just try to get the car home and to Nestor.

=That the same co-worker on our lunch break would be willing to find two clothes hangers, crawl under my car, and attach the pipe to the chassis. In his nice work clothes. In a hot summer parking lot.

-That I would actually be grateful for the slow rush hour traffic home/ to my mechanic so I didn’t have to drive too fast with my clothes hanger-fixed car.

-That the mechanic’s is two blocks from the library so after I dropped the car, I had a nice place to wait for the Husband and kids to come pick me up.

-That we have a second car so I could still take the kids to their piano lessons the next morning and the 9 year old to camp.

-That even though it was going to be a pain in the ass to get to work the next day without a car – my summer gig is nowhere near a Metro station – my co-worker did not hesitate to say “Yes” when I asked if I could metro to him and ride in to work with him.

-That the 14 year old could get a ride to the swim meet the next day with our neighbors if she needed to.

-That another lady I work with actually lives five blocks from me and said she would give me a ride home after work the next day. “And I’d be glad for the company,” she wrote.

-That, amazingly, after all the texts and emails asking for help, our mechanic welded back a replacement exhaust pipe by noon the next day, saying that was faster and cheaper than ordering a new one. (Also he complimented the clothes hanger job that my co-worker did attaching the exhaust pipe to the chassis, saying he would have done the exact same thing.). And it all cost less than $400.

So in the end, I managed to drive myself to work and back the day after the whole incident, but knowing that I could ask for help getting to and from work and getting kids where they needed to be, was such a huge comfort and filled me with so much gratitude.

So the car was Thing One last week. Thing Two was the smoke from Canadian wildfires. I woke up Friday morning and the skies looked foggy. But it wasn’t fog. How awful the fires must be that we were feeling the effects so far south. But even among the smoke and terrible air quality, here is what I was grateful for:

-That we still had masks from COVID times so that when we did have to be outside, we could protect ourselves.

-That the people at work went to Home Depot and immediately bought us air purifiers for the rehearsals room.

-That even though we couldn’t go to the pool with visiting family, everyone went bowling and then to church together and it was still a lovely time.

-That it rained Saturday night and cleared the air so we could have our last swim meet on Sunday morning.

-And here’s the big one, the act of kindness that left me gob smacked (apologies in advance for the long backstory) So Swim Team Divisionals were last weekend. Because of the large contingent of observant Jews at our pool, our swim team does not swim on Saturdays. In this past, the other teams in our division just agreed to have Divisionals on Sunday, but this year, for whatever reason, the other teams wanted to stick to Saturday. So our pool would swim Divisionals on our own on Sunday, and our swim times would be submitted to the Saturday times for final results.

Well, the upshot was that late Friday night, because of the air quality the Saturday Divisionals were moved to Sunday, which meant that our swim team could swim with everyone else and not on our own. Yay. Only this meant that we would be swimming at a different pool with a warm up time of 7:30am, when previously we were supposed to swim at our own pool at 8:00am.

On top of all that, by the time these decisions were made, it was Saturday, and our Team Rep and most of the team were observing Shabbat, which meant that they weren’t using technology. Well one of the other swim team moms, M, stepped up and took over coordinating with the other teams about our team joining Divisionals on Sunday. Not only that, M texted every swim team parent individually to tell them about the change, and then, in case people were observing Shabbat, if she didn’t get a response to her text, she went to that family’s house, knocked on their door, and told them in person or left a hand written note to tell them that the meet location had changed for the next day. It was such an act of generosity and inclusion – a really awesome show of the human capacity for kindness.

So I guess last week I felt a bit of emotional whiplash, with bad news and anxiety alternating with good news and displays of kindness. I’m glad the tally ended up with more points in the good news and displays of kindness category.

Five more fun things last week:
-World Cup Finals. We watched the first half of the third place England France game during our lunch break at work, and then I distractedly followed the news coverage of the second half while in rehearsals. It was wild. I didn’t have to work on Sunday afternoon – rehearsal was specifically not scheduled during the game at the request of our Spanish conductor. I was actually late for work because I was glued to the tv once the game went into extra time. I did leave home once Spain scored, keeping my fingers crossed that Argentina wouldn’t have one of their dramatic comebacks.

-We are done with Swim Team for the season. Yay! But now that we don’t have to be at the pool five nights a week, I sort of miss it…. I love that at one of the last swim practices one of the coaches spent an extra half hour working on dives with the 14 year old and some other kids. And he even taught the 6 year old how to dive.

-On Wednesday, while the 9 year old was at piano lessons, the other two kids and I went to the park and I sat on a swing and swung. Maybe I’m too old to be swinging on a swing, but it is a glorious feeling.

-The 9 year old went to fencing camp last week. The Husband has been the one taking him to fencing classes so this is my first time seeing the facility. It can be quite loud. Also he has to put on a lot of gear to fence. Also – the first day, I walked in and was greeted by a guy with a baby strapped to his chest in a carrier. I thought, “Well I guess that baby’s good as protective gear…” Later on, the 9 year old assured me that the guy was just the person who ran the camp and he did not do any actual fencing with the baby attached to him.

-While the 9 year old was a camp, the 14 year old watched the 6 year old, even taking her to see the new live action Moana one afternoon. I’m glad they are having some bonding time. We do pay the 14 year old to watch her youngest sibling, but only if she invoices us. The Husband got her one of those receipt pads, and it’s been kind of delightful to see her submit invoices. (Although I do admit she does sell herself short – she doesn’t charge for watching her siblings on days that the Husband works from home and she doesn’t charge for watching the 9 year old because technically he can stay home by himself.) (Other note – I do ask myself if we really should be paying her to watch her siblings, or if that should be part of the general “being a responsible older sibling” deal. BUT – a) I want her to see value in childcare and other underpaid labour, and 2) I want her to see value in her own time. So if it’s just a trip to the grocery store, we don’t pay her, but for something more than an hour or two where she truly has to be in charge and maybe make them a meal and take them to the park, then, yes, we pay her. Thought we do pay her less than we pay an outside sitter.)

Bonus thing: The 6 year old lost a tooth. The tooth fairy brought her a dollar. Apparently this particular tooth fairy is not paying market rate for a tooth. Apparently the internet says the going rate for a tooth is $5. That’s highway robbery. The kids sure have some kind of racket going on.

Looking Forward To:
-Peach Truck! Our Peach Truck pick up is this weekend! 25 lbs of fresh peaches coming our way!

-I did book theatre tickets for next week, so excited for that.

-The Fall Opera season and our new office set up. We’re re-purposing space in our office and the stage managers will now share and office with the technical department – I’m looking forward to having them close by because they are such smart and funny people. I’ve spend many hours moving furniture and purging things from our office. It feels nice to throw out things that haven’t been used in 20 years.

-Our cleaners coming. This is super bougie, but the lady who cleans our house biweekly has been on vacation. We have been somewhat keeping up with cleaning, but there is some magical sheen about the house when our cleaner goes over everything. Plus she changes our sheets.

-Going to the National Gallery of Art on my next free day. I think I had mentioned that there is a Mary Cassatt exhibit and an exhibit on painting of Niagara Falls. I want to catch this before our Niagara Falls trip and I think next Wednesday is the one day to do it.

(but also – side note – there is this banner at the top of the NGA’s website:

The banner at the top says, “Due to our location you’ll need a ticket to the Freedom 250 Grand Prix to visit us on August 22 and 23.” I’m trying not to clutch my pearls too hard about it, to consider if I would feel so icky about this if, say, Obama had signed the Executive order to make this race happen…? But it seems and awful shame to close off the museum, and most of the National Mall to non ticket holders for two days. I guess at least the tickets were free??? maybe??)

What We Ate:

Monday: Snack dinner at the pool – charcuterie, crackers, cheese, and fruit.

Tuesday: Black bean and corn quesadillas and watermelon at the pool.

Wednesday: Pasta bake – the 14 year old made dinner. I don’t think she followed a recipe- just sauteed sausage and onions, boiled pasta, and then put it in a pan with cheese and put it in the oven to bake.

Thursday: Chicken drumsticks and broccoli at the pool.

Friday: Pizza and a movie. I’m not sure what movie – I was at work.

Saturday: Sausage sandwiches. A clean out the fridge meal.

Sunday: I made Sesame noodles – both a vegetarian version and a chicken version – for the Swim Team Pasta Dinner (that was originally scheduled for Friday night, but then moved to Sunday because of air quality.)

Welp that was the news from last week. This weekend, I’m working both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe I’ll get to go to work early enough on Saturday to visit the Farmer’s Market. The Peach Truck is coming! The 9 year old is having a long awaited “birthday” trip to Dave and Busters. I hear the family might go to Longwood Gardens while I’m at work? Next week is August – summer is wrapping up. I’m relieved and also sad. I still haven’t painted my nails or done a chocolate covered donut taste test…. But there is still yet time!

Have you ever had to McGyver something? What is the going rate for a tooth where you are? What should I do with 25 lbs of peaches?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Mundane things – small kitchen appliances in my life

So the other day at lunch, my co-worker made a comment about how I was eating my meatballs cold.

“I could never eat meatballs cold,” he said to me.

“Well, we don’t have a microwave, so I eat a lot of food cold,” I said.

“YOU DON’T HAVE A MICROWAVE???? WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A MICROWAVE???””

Maybe it’s just here in America, but I get that reaction a lot when I mention that we don’t have a microwave. But the truth of the matter is that the microwave did not convey with our current house and our previous microwave was a built in so we couldn’t bring it with us. And when we got to our new house, once we put the appliances out on the counter, there was no room for a microwave.

What is taking up an entire counter, you ask? Well, I thought maybe it was time for one of those posts about the mundane things in my life – namely small kitchen appliances. So here are the small kitchen appliaancea taking up space where we could have a microwave:

We call this “appliance row” at our house.

From Right to Left:

Vita Mix Blender – This was a present from my father who found it at Costco and decided we needed it. I scoffed at first – who needs a fancy blender??? The answer is I do. I need a fancy blender. Okay, I don’t need a fancy blender, but I do love it. We use it maybe once or twice a week, more often in the summer because we make a lot of smoothies. I use it to make Brazilian cheesy bread. I use to to blend the eggs when I make pancakes. I use it to make sauces. It’s one of those things where it would be a pain to haul out every time I needed it, so it just lives on the counter.

Kitchen Aid Stand mixer – I bought this as a present for the Husband for Christmas one year. But really, it was a present for me um… the family. It is a refurbished one so was less expensive than it could have been. This is also one of those things I didn’t think I wanted until we got one and wow – we can make cookies even if we forget to take the butter out of the fridge to soften.

InstantPot – another one of those things that I didn’t think I wanted until the Husband got me one for Christmas. Okay, here’s what I think of the InstantPot – the food does not taste better than with other methods, and it tends to produce mushy results if you don’t time things right. BUT… I love that it has a timer function so I can prep things in the morning and have the IP start cooking it in time for people to come home. I love that I set it and walk away. I love that I can use it to cook food from frozen for when I forget to defrost meat (see: no microwave above). I love that I can cook pasta, meatballs, and noodles all at the same time. So I love it for convienience over quality of food. All that aside, however, what I use it for the most is to make boiled eggs, 12 at a time. Two minutes on low pressure with quick release and I get a lovely jammy egg.

Rice cooker: This is actually my mother’s and only a recent addition to my counter. I have gotten so much slack in the past from other Taiwanese people when they learn I don’t have a rice cooker. They look at me with a mixure of horror and pity. I had always used my IP to cook rice if it was brown and stove top if it was white rice. But one day, I was making something in the morning in the IP and wanted to have rice to go with it, so I used the rice cooker and it was magical – fluffy rice with minimal effort and checking from me. (Side note – when I was a child, one of my jobs was to make the rice. My mother would call when she was on her way home from work and I would put the rice and water into the rice cooker and flick the button.) When my mom wants her rice cooker back, I’ll give it back… I’m on the fence as to whether or not to get my own, though. Part of me realizes that I’ve gotten along just fine without one but another part of me recognizes the ease with which it makes rice.

Toaster Oven: In the great Toaster Oven vs. Toaster debate, I am Team Toaster Oven. This might be our most used appliance. We use it for, obviously, toast, and also to reheat things and to roast small quantities of things.

Coffee maker: Mocca Master – some kind of fancy Dutch drip coffee maker purchased by my coffee snob Husband. Apparently it regulates how the water is dripped in for optimal taste. I don’t dink coffee, so I couldn’t say.

Coffee grinder: Another meticulously researched purchase for the Husband’s coffee habit.

Waffle maker: We should use this more than we do for the amount of real estate it takes up on our counter, but it’s so hard to store somewhere else.

Edited to add: The ktichen scale! How could I forget the kitchen scale. I prefer baking by weights and the Husband weighs his coffee beans in the morning.

Small kitchen appliances that are not on appliance row:

Electric can opener – This is a vintage item that came to us after my in-laws passed away. An avocado green relic of another era, the can opener has earned its place on our counter through nostalgia and functionality.

Hot water boiler: Maybe my favorite of all our small kitchen appliances. Hot water instantly, at the temperature I set. We don’t just use it for tea, we also use it to fill pots with hot water so that they boil faster when we are making pasta or steaming vegetables, or really anything that requires boiling a pot of water on the stove. The kids use this to make ramen, which is nice way for them to independently feed themselves. It’s probably my favorite purchase of the year so far.

Soda Stream – Is this an appliance if it doesn’t require electricity? My brother bought this for us a few years ago when he came to visit. He drinks a lot of fizzy water and didn’t want us to keep buying it for him, so he bought us this. It gets more use in summer than in winter tbh. I like that I can make the water as fizzy as I like. Lately, though, I’ve been buying canned seltzer because I enjoy the different flavors.

Crock pot – Again this is my mother’s. We used to have one and then I lent it to an intern and never got it back and I felt bad asking for it back because they make so little money. So we use my mother’s when we need it. Which isn’t very often, maybe once every two or three months or so. I prefer my IP to my Crockpot because the IP has a timer function and the crock pot doesn’t. Also I’ve always felt like the taste of food I make in the crockpot tastes somehow chemically. I think I’m in the minority on this, though. (No picture of it because, to be honest, I can’t remember where it is.)

Immersion blender (middle left shelf): This was a hand me down from my Sister In Law, when the oldest was a baby, which I guess makes this appliance almost 15 years old. She had given me the immersion blender because I was in my baby food making phase. I used this to puree a lot of food for my kids when they were babies. In addition to the blender stick, it also has a whisk, which is very useful for making whipped cream. I prefer the immersion blender to the Vitamix when making pureed soups – less chance for hot soup splash accidents.

Food Processor (bottom shelf, right hand side): This is another vintage machine. I’m not even sure of it’s origins, only that I “borrowed” it from my mother when I moved out of the house in my twenties. It has barely a 2 cup capacity, which makes it perfect for making sauces and such. I also love it for shredding parmesan cheese. From time to time I think I should upgrade and get a bigger capacity food processor, but this one is probably thirty years old and still going strong, so I don’t see the point in replacing it.

Hand mixer (you can’t see it, but it’s behind the cheese grater): This was a wedding present from my former boss. I had said something about having bought a hand mixer and it was very heavy. She got me this one with the note, “I hope this is lighter than the other one.” Since we got the stand mixer, I don’t use this hand mixer that often, but I don’t want to get rid of it.

Small Coffee grinder (next to the food processor) – This was our old coffee bean grinder before we upgraded to the above. I use it to grind spices. It smells like cloves.

Grateful for this week:
-Getting to spend time with friends. My current rehearsal schedule and commute makes it hard to do anything outside of work/ morning prep/ swim team stuff- all my free days are mid week. But I didn’t have to be in to work until 6pm last Sunday, so I was able to go over with the family to a friend’s house for a little bit and it was really nice to hang out and be social.

-The French bookstore near us. I wanted to get the kids something to read in French so that they didn’t completely slide on their French skills this summer (they are in a French immersion program at school). I had heard about this bookstore – Bonjour Books – but never visited and this was the perfect opportunity. The store was an absolute gem – a solid well-curated selection of books in French (for grown ups and kids), a used book section, and best of all, a charming and helpful owner who spoke French to my kids and encouraged them to find something that interested them. I spent a lot of money here, but I have no regrets and will come and spend more. Also really grateful for the other customer at check out who gently prompted the 9 year old in French to ask for Tin Tin books.

-Living near a trail so that it’s possible to squeeze in a run in the 45 minutes between getting home from work and having to leave the house for something else. After sitting in the car for the 40 minutes it took to get home, I really needed to move a little before getting in the car again. So grateful that living near a trail (with lots of shade!) made it easy to slip on my running clothes and go for a run.

-Three cooler swim meets. Swim meets in the summer heat can be brutal, and I’m glad the three meets lasts week featured cloudy skies. (I’m looking in my list of gratitudes in my journal and I literally wrote “cloudy meet” three times in six day.

-That my big boss brought in donuts for the first day of rehearsal. I love donuts.

-That summer swim team season doesn’t last forever. As much as I love the kids participating in summer swim team, it is a lot of work and logistics and I’m glad it’s almost over and that it doesn’t go all summer. We have one more meet and the awards night left – I was going over the rest of the schedule with the Husband and he said, “You mean we’ve almost made it through swim season this year?”

-That it’s peach season. Is there anything more delicious than a ripe summer peach?

-Period products in the bathroom at work. Am I the only one who goes to the bathroom to change my pad and then forgets to bring the pad? I’m grateful our work keeps a stock of period products out in the open.

Looking forward to:

-The 14 year old volunteered to sing the national anthem at the next swim meet. I’m really proud of her for stepping up and asking for the opportunity and I’m looking forward to hearing her sing.

-Going to the theatre with the Husband. One of my favorite local theatre troupes has a show this month and I want to get tickets – their shows are always such a blend of whimsy and emotionally resonance. I’m writing this wish here so that it will be true.

-Happy Hour with my school bus mom friends next week.

-Listening to more of this audiobook – it might be a bit of a heavy listen for my commute, but after seeing the Enola Gay at the Air and Space Museum, I find myself wanting to learn more about Nagasaki and Hiroshima:

The Devil Reached for the Sky: An oral history of the making and unleashing of the atomic bomb, by Garrett M. Graff

What we ate:

Monday: Sandwiches from the Italian Deli near the Husband’s work – Pool Dinner. We had gotten back from our trip the night before and no one had time to go to the grocery store yet.

Tuesday: Dumplings, edamame, and sour cream and onion chips – eaten at the pool

Wednesday: Sesame noodles and watermelon. Pool dinner. My Go To recipe for sesame noodles from the New York Times Cooking site.

Thursday: Dan Dan Noodles with eggplant from New York Times cooking. This was very tasty. At first I was worried about having two noodle dishes in a row but you know what? We love noodles, and could eat them every day.

Friday: Snack dinner – charcuterie, cheese, crackers, fruit. Another of those hastily put together dinners for the pool. After swim practice, we went to a friend’s house to make s’mores on the fire pit where one of the kids introduced me to the amazing ness of a layer of peanut butter on the graham cracker before adding the marshmallow off the stick. Mind blown. It was delicious. I don’t always care for Hershey’s chocolate so I’m glad I found an alternative for my S’mores.

Saturday: Pizza (take-out) and family World Cup watching. I was at work, so I had leftovers for dinner.

Sunday: We had dinner at our friend’s house. They grilled chicken kabob. I had to leave for work before dinner was ready, so I basically snacked all afternoon. Before I left I did grab a pita and smear it with whipped feta. It was delicious.

Welp, another weekend is upon us. I have to work both days. The Husband’s cousin is coming for a visit, and there are Swim Team Divisionals on Sunday. Oh and there’s a little soccer game being played on Sunday too. The air was not great today – swim practice was cancelled. Fingers crossed that the air will be better by Sunday for Divisionals. I feel really awful for people who are in the thick of fire and smoke. There was a thick haze over everything as I drove too and from work and we got the masks out from COVID times for when we had to be outside going to and from the car. So interesting how easily the kids just put them on. I hope everyone is staying safe, however possible.

Tell me about your favorite small kitchen appliance!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tall Ships and Swim Meets

It’s July, and a scorcher of a weekend coming up for the July 4th Holiday. Two of the kids are at Taiwan camp, we’ll take the third kid up tonight, and then the Husband and I will be off at our reading retreat! The first full week of summer break has been a little … laissez-faire. I didn’t have to work every day; my mother, brother, and niece came to visit; everyone stayed up late and slept in. There were library visits, dentist appointments, and lots of time at the pool. The lack of routine is starting to leave me a little discombobulated, so I think some structure is needed… after this holiday weekend.

On Friday we went to Baltimore for Sail 250, a festival of Tall Ships from all over the world gathering in honor of America’s 250th birthday. There were three harbors in Baltimore lined with Tall Ships, but we only had time to visit the ships in the Inner Harbour. All the ships were open to the public to go aboard for free, and they all had sailors available to answer questions. I found talking to the sailors one of my favorite parts of touring the boats – it really brought a human touch to our experience. They all spoke varying degrees of English, and all were eager to answer questions to the best of their abilities and we always managed to understand each other.

I like to encourage the kids to be engaged when we have these experiences, so I told them that if they asked five questions on at least two different vessels, we could have ice cream later in the day. The 6 year old started out by asking the same question on all the ships (“How many people are on this ship?”) but then we told her that she had to come up with something more original, and she did. Hopefully the kids can learn to tap into their sense of curiosity and asking questions not just an annoying thing mom makes them do….

All the modern tall ships are training vessels, aboard which navel cadets learn about navigation and seamanship and engineering while at sea. Some ships are also ambassador ships that sail to different countries on goodwill missions. We visited five working ships as well as two vessels from Baltimore’s Historic Ship Museum. As a bonus, these Historic Ships that are always in Baltimore Harbour were free to visit as well during Sail 250. We visited the following ships:

NRP Sagres, from Portugal – On the upper level of this ship was several casks of Portuguese port. This ship had three steering wheels in the helm (am I even using the right words?) – well actually four: three for regular navigation all grouped together and one on the other side of the mast for emergency navigation.

Gorch Fock, from Germany – This ship was HUGE, probably the biggest one we saw that day. The Husband asked if they also had casks of alcohol, given that the Portuguese ship had port and they said they had beer. Then the Husband made some quip like, “I guess you like your beer warm.” To which the sailor replied, “No, that’s the English.”
The other best thing about this ship was the lady who came aboard carrying a dog. She would go up to the sailors and say, “Do you want to say hi?” Which would gain her some very confused looks. Then she would say, “I figured you’ve been on the sea for so long, you might be missing the chance to pet a dog.” It was both bizarre and really thoughtful.
One other thing I loved about this ship was getting a glimpse of the cook working in the kitchen. Kitchens aboard a ship are such models of efficiency. They have to feed over a hundred people with a kitchen the size of a closet.

ROU Capitan Miranda, from Uruguay – I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Uruguay flag before, and I loved how big and sunny it was, displayed on this ship.

My favorite thing that I saw on this ship was how neat an precisely the ropes were coiled:

Twenty years ago, the first opera I worked on for my current company was Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (adapted from the Melville novella.), set aboard a Man-o-War. The opening scene featured the chorus and supers as Sailors rushing downstage and pulling ropes upstage from these neat coils. The stage managers spent so much time in rehearsal coiling ropes so that they would be set correctly and unfurl smoothly. So when I saw these ropes coiled on the deck of Capitan Miranda, I gave a gasp of recognition. Our ropes in the show had to be coiled like the circle in the background, not the figure eights in the foreground, but it was so cool to realize that we were doing something in rehearsal that sailors really did. I can’t even fathom how the figure eight coil is done. I might have to go watch a YouTube video on that.

USS Torsk – this was a submarine, built in 1944 and part of the Historic Ships collection in Baltimore Harbor. Visiting the submarine really brought home how close the quarters are aboard and also how efficiently space was used. The 14 year old ask the docent a question, about how accurate was the movie Crimson Tide. The docent laughed and said that while a lot of it was accurate, really the two movies which really capture life aboard the submarine were Operation Petticoat and Down Periscope. I immediately put those two movies on our movie watch list. The 14 year old also asked a very macabre question about how people are rescued from submarines when things go wrong.

INS Sudarshini from India – This was a smaller ship, but probably the one that came the furthest. It left India six months ago and sailed to America via the Suez Canal and through the Mediterranean. One thing that struck me about this ship was that all the signs and labels on the ship were in English – I asked the sailor about this and he said that there is a standard Indian English that they are all taught. Another thing I really liked about visiting this ship was that there were a lot of other American South Asians aboard and I loved seeing how they and the sailors would really engaged in conversations – imagine sailing half way across the world and finding people, hearing your language, from your home country in Baltimore!

USS Constellation – this was the second of the Historic Ships that we visited. It is a Sloop-o-War, built in 1854. This was the kids’ favorite ship because the second level below deck, were lined with canons. There was also one level – the level where the sleeping quarters were – that were lined with hammocks. I might have climbed into a hammock and dozed off for a few minutes. Here the 6 year old asked, “How do the ships get here?” meaning into the harbour, and we were told all about tug boats.

La Belle Poule from France – this was the last ship we visited and was one we made sure to visit since the two younger kids are learning French in school. (Well, technically, all three kids are learning French, but the 6 and 9 year old are in an immersion program and speak it more readily.) The 9 year old still hadn’t fulfilled his question quota by the time we got to La Belle Poule, so I made him a deal – if he asked his question in French then each question could count for two. And he did! He even asked THREE questions! “Is the food good?” “What kind of food do you eat?” and “Why is the ship called La Belle Poule?” This latter was funny because when I first mentioned this ship, the kids started calling it “The chicken boat” because poule/poulet is French for chicken. But apparently the ship is named after the King’s mistress. I think the French sailor was very amused by the little American boy talking to him in perfect French and I was really tickled by it as well. I’m feeling ready to send him to France on his own now! (Not really, but I feel like between my French and his French we’ll get by okay in parts of France outside of Paris…)

Ships bell- the placard on the wall has instructions on how to ring the time.

In between ships we had lunch from the food trucks that were in the Festival area. By the point, everyone was pretty tired so I left them at the food demonstration tent (where they watched a chef make peach gazpacho) and I went to forage from the food trucks. I got Jamaican food and some pupusas. The interesting thing to me about pupusas is that I love them, but I never get a chance to eat them, so I was very excited to order some. However, pupusas show up regularly on the school lunch menu and the kids were decidedly not excited that this is what I brought them to eat. “This is school food!” one of the kid said. Well fine – they ate the Jerk chicken and beef patties instead. (The the 14 year old went to get tacos…)

So all in all, it was a really great excursion – the weather was sunny and hot, but not unbearably so, the ships were fascinating to visit and (with prodding) the kids displayed a minor amount of curiosity and engagement. Sail250 ran for five days and I wished we could have gone back for a second day and seen more ships, particularly since on the weekend there was an airshow as well. When we were there on the Friday, we got to see some of the planes practicing their maneuvers, which was loud and fun, especially the trio of planes that puffed out red, white, and blue smoke in their wake. Most of the practice runs were done over another harbour, though, so we didn’t catch as many as we could have on Friday. I would have also loved to see the ships actually put their sails up as they came in and out of the Harbour. But I think going on the Friday was a good choice because it wasn’t too crowded and the lines to board the ships weren’t too long.

Grateful For (so many swim team related gratitudes this week!):
-A drizzly swim meet. On Sunday morning, the 14 year old had a swim meet – this is one of the more fun meets of the year because it’s the Relay Carnival, which is all relay races. The 14 year old, though, was swimming in events 20 and 22 (out of 22) and the Coaches race (she’s not technically a coach, but the team coaches couldn’t participate for various reasons and the 14 year old does teach the pre-team, so they figured that qualified her to swim the coaches’ race.) All of which meant, we arrived at the meet at 8:15am for warm up, and she didn’t swim until 12:30pm. I’m giving her big props for staying engaged and warm and cheering on her teammates. But also – it drizzled steadily for the whole morning. It wasn’t thundering or raining hard enough for it to be dangerous to swim, so the meet just persisted. I had to time during the second half of the meet, and all our timing sheets were in plastic bags so they wouldn’t disintegrate. And the meet to a long time because there were a lot of disqualifications, which means those need to be cleared up before the next race can start. One parent did the math and said he figured each race was taking 15-20 minutes to run because of all the DQs.
But you know, there were moments when I was out there with rain dripping off my head, wiping my glasses clean for the umpteenth time, and I thought, “Well thank goodness it’s not 100 degrees and sunny.” Because, I think I would really rather work a rainy swim meet than a blazing hot swim meet.

-Stroke and turn judges. This one is also swim meet related – all the swim meets are staffed by parent (guardian/grown up) volunteers – the race coordinators, the timers, the referees, the people inputting the times, the stroke and turn judges. I have thought about doing the stroke and turn training, but I feel like I would feel bad about DQing a kid and it feels like a lot of pressure. But my friend who is a stroke and turn judge says that they are told not to think of it as DQing a kid, but rather giving the kid’s coach the information to help the kid be a better swimmer. If no one notes when a stroke is being done incorrectly, the swimmer can’t correct it. I really like that framing. I’m always worried about how to give feedback and thinking about it as wanting someone to do well is a good way to look at it.

-Libby and Little Free Libraries for making books easy to come by.

-Swim practice being rained out so that we could have Family Game Night instead. We played Dixit and had a lovely quiet evening at home.

-The Pool that hosted Wednesday’s swim meet for keeping the baby pool open for visitors. A lot of the time during a swim meet, the rest of the pool shuts down, but the pool where we had the Wednesday swim meet at kept the main pool and the baby open so people could still use them while the meet was going on. I had to bring the 6 year old along to the meet, so I was grateful that she could play in the water while her big sister swam.

-That my mother can still come visit us. My mother is 77 years old and still has the energy and inclination to come visit even though it means flying across the country. I’m realizing, especially since we had kids on the later side, that every visit from my parents is a gift and I am so grateful for each moment we all have together. She is also very independent and eager to take the kids on adventures – I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about entertaining her when she is here; we can have life as usual, with a few extra adventures thrown in if we want.

-Online shopping. Okay, I know there are all sorts of ecological evils associated with online shopping, but I needed a new tankini top, and bathing suit shopping (well most clothes shopping, let’s be honest) is so disheartening for me. I’m very grateful that I could just order a bunch of tankinis from Title Nine and try them out at home. These are the two that I ended up with:

I feel a little frumpy at the pool, but the tankini is my swimwear of choice, particularly in a bright print – I can go to the bathroom easily, it covers my stomach, and these ones are also suitable for me to swim laps. I guess I’m just very practical pool-wise.

Looking Forward To:
-Our Reading Retreat! Is finally about to happen. I’ve also booked a tour of the Pennsylvania State Capitol while we are in Harrisburg. It’s going to be so hot! I almost regret not booking a place with a pool, but as long as we have AC and comfy couches, I think it will be a good time.

-Starting work on a new show next week.

-Hearing how the kids like Taiwan Camp.

-Listening to this audiobook on our drive to Taiwan Camp and Reading Retreat:

What We Ate:
Monday: Vegan Pesto Pasta Salad from NY Times Cooking. Meant to be an easy pool dinner, but it rained, so we ate it at home. Always a hit. Vegan.

Tuesday: Zucchini Boats. We had a bunch of zucchini to use up so I stuffed them with a ground beef/black bean/salsa mixtures, topped with cheese and baked. It wasn’t the idea pool food, but it worked well enough.

Wednesday: Sandwiches and leftover pasta salad at the pool for the swim meet. Though we also bought hot dogs and fries from the pool snack bar.

Thursday: Chicken pasta salad – based on this recipe for Cilantro Mint Lettuce Wraps from the NY Times. I had planned to make the lettuce wraps, but then we used the lettuce for salad, so I made the chicken into pasta salad instead, adding cucumbers and grapes for crunch. I don’t know that the fusilli worked – I probably should have used noodles – but I did like the flavors of this dish.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Operation Petticoat, 1959 movie starring Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and a submarine. We watched this after coming home from Sail250 because it was what the docent on the submarine recommended. This was such a delightful movie. Surprisingly, the kids all really enjoyed this one and asked, “Can we watch more movies that are funny like this?” So if anyone has any suggestions for screwball comedies with snappy dialogue, funny performances, and lots of physical humour, send them our way!

Saturday: Teriyaki Tofu and Steam Broccoli from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. My brother is vegetarian, so I always use his visits as an excuse to make some of my favorite vegan/vegetarian recipes. This one is always a winner. I had to work this night, so I prepped it all and the 14 year old baked the tofu, steamed the broccoli, and made the rice.

Sunday: We went out for Hot Pot. My brother is from Berkeley, CA and has so much good food there, that I always hope he doesn’t get bored of the food options when he comes to visit us. One thing he always wants to do, though, is go to Hot Pot – I guess our Hot Pot has the best vegetarian options that he’s found anywhere. A new feature at our hot pot place, though:

They now hand out bibs and hair ties! We made good use of those bibs for the little kids, and I will say the adults probably should have used some too.

Well that was the week that was last. I hope everyone who is affected by this heatwave is staying cool this weekend. Happy Canada Day to those that celebrate, and Happy Fourth of July to those that celebrate that.

Do you have a favorite “classic” film? Have you ever been on a Tall Ship? Are pupusas a common food for you? What is your swim wear of choice?

(bi) Weekly recap + what we ate: Top Five/ Bottom Five- driving the van

How was the Memorial Day weekend, for those that are in America? I did choose going into nature with the family over spending the weekend home alone, but I didn’t leave until Sunday morning, so I had Saturday evening to myself – I went to dinner with my colleagues, came home, cleaned, watched some TV (Bridgerton – we finally got on the Netflix bandwagon.), read, and packed for the next day. It was a nice amount of time to have on my own.

It’s funny – I have often suggested the Husband go away on his own to get some alone time, but he always reminds me that wouldn’t be as nice because he wants to be home and have alone time. And I completely see that – there is something nice about a getaway, but there is also something nice about being in ones own house without external demands, a level of comfort and autonomy that I think is unique to having one’s own place to oneself. Also when you’re home you can tackle looming domestic tasks, which I think is also deeply satisfying. We probably don’t give each other enough of that kind of time….

Camping itself was a soggy affair. It’s been a wet Memorial Day weekend. I will say, it was mostly drizzle/dry/drizzle/dry while I was camping with the family. The Husband and kids (who had left the day before) and our friends got the brunt of the wet weather. They actually ended up going to the movies Saturday morning to get out of the rain. But still, the company was good and the air was nice. Our friend is a super camper – he brought tarps and many camp stoves, a camp sink, even a pizza oven. So we were not suffering in anyway. To be honest, most of the kids were on some sort of screen or another for a large chunk of the weekend – by the time I got there there were many fights over power banks because everyone’s device was running out of power (including the parents.) So it wasn’t the most disconnected weekend ever. Not my favorite thing, but I’m resigned to it. The kids did manage to go on a hike between rain showers; I feel like any amount of time in nature is a win, screen or no screen.

I slept in the hammock for the first time on Sunday night. It was a bit of a rough go at first, figuring out how to get into the sleeping bag, but once I figured that out, it was rather cozy. The next morning, it was nice to wake up with the morning air fresh on my face, listening to the rain on the rainfly. I will say the hammock is one of my favorite pieces of camping gear.

Monday morning, we made bacon and pancakes for everyone and the packed up the tent. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at a dumpling place near Hersey, PA, and then for ice cream at a dairy further south in Pennsylvania. We are our cones in the sun then went to see the calves that were just around back of the ice cream store.

Now that we are the other side of Memorial Day, I feel like we are into summer for reals. Our pool has opened. Swim team practice starts this week. The weather is still deciding between rain and sun, making the air a little thick and humid, but temperatures aren’t scorching yet, which is good.

Because of my longer commute for my summer gig, I’ve been driving the van a couple days a week, mostly because I was afraid of burning out the clutch on our Impreza as I sat in stop/slow/go traffic all the way home. I still don’t love driving the van, but I have to admit that there are some nice things about it. So here – in the spirit of Elisabeth – is my Top Five/ Bottom Five of our van.

Top Five:

Apple CarPlay – The Impreza still has a CD player and my phone doesn’t always connect automatically to the Bluetooth. The van has Apple Car Play (and whatever the Android version of that is) – so it is pretty seamless when I get in the car to have my maps, playlists, audiobooks, etc. just pop up nice and big on the screen display. I know this is probably standard technology in vehicles, but it’s new technology to me and it’s magical.

The van reads me my text messages – This might be part of Apple CarPlay, but I love that when a text comes in, I can have the van read it to me. And also I can, with the push of a button, dictate a text message to send.

The van is an electric-hybrid – With gas prices what they are, I’m glad I don’t have to fill up the van with gas every week. There’s actually a charging station at work, which is convenient. I think we maybe fill the van with gas once a month.

It’s not a manual car – The Impreza is a manual car, which is fine and actually can be fun, but you know when driving a manual car isn’t fun? Driving it in rush hour traffic. I do appreciate that the van has no clutch to worry about and won’t stall out on me. Or I guess, I’m the one who does the stalling when I don’t shift quite correctly. I do like driving the manual car, but it is nice not to have to worry about shifting once in a while.

The trunk – First of all, the trunk is huge! We needed to transport some stuff for work, and I had to throw eight music stands, two large tote boxes, a stool, five boxes of stationary, and heaven knows what else into the back of the van. Everything went in easily; it wasn’t even a tight game of Tetris. It sure is handy having a large trunk. ALSO – another of my favorite thing: The van has that feature where you can wave your foot under the trunk and the trunk will pop open. This is especially helpful when I have an armload the groceries (or some boxes of stationary…) and I can’t reach my keys.

Bottom Five:

The van is HUGE – It doesn’t really fit in my parking spot at work. I can’t reach over and open the passenger side door from the driver side. When we first got the van, I complained that riding in it was like riding around in a mobile living room. I do realize that the size of the van could also be a plus – see above point about the trunk. And I do like that the van is big enough that the kids can all sit an arms length away from each other. And the 14 year old likes that she gets the whole back row to herself. But on the whole, it feels like I’m driving a boat and I’ve definitely miscalculated the turning radius a few times.

There are too many buttons – There are four separate buttons I could push to close the back sliding doors. FOUR. That seems excessive. But that’s on par for the rest of the van – there are buttons above, buttons to the right, buttons to the left, all the buttons on the steering wheel, the display. The temperature control can be run by both the digital display and the manual buttons underneath it. Also there are buttons in the back to control the temperature. I still haven’t figured out how to adjust the temperature control in the car. I had to call my husband one time because I couldn’t figure out how to close the moon roof. Also it’s push button start … I never know how many times to push the button to get the van to turn on. I always don’t do enough. There are altogether too many buttons. What do they all do?????

The shift button is next to the volume button and both are round – yes this is a button thing, but it is so egregious it deserves it’s own point. Take a look:

On the left is a knob to shift gears (which in and of itself feels weird to me). On the right is the knob to adjust the volume. I can’t tell you how many times while driving I’ve gone to turn the volume down and accidentally put the van in reverse. That just seems so dangerous, no? This is just a terrible design choice.

It makes a lot of beeps and random noises – There are a lot of safety features on the van – which is a good thing! – BUT some of those safety features involve beeping or chiming when something happens – if someone is in your blindspot, if you go over the speed limit, if you get too close to the car in front of you…. Granted with the size and shape of the van, visibility can be poor, so it is helpful to have all the features, but there are some beeps that I just don’t know what triggers them, and it causes a mild sense of panic whenever I hear them.

The van is keyless – Again, probably not new technology, but just new to me. And really there is a lot that is convenient about keyless entry, but I’m such a fuddy duddy and the keyless thing bugs me. I hate that I don’t have to put a key in the ignition to start it or take the key out of the ignition to stop the car. Why? Because if I don’t have a place to put the key when I get in the car, I lose the key fob. Clearly this is a me issue and not a problem inherent to the van. But gaaaaah! It’s so annoying when I can’t remember where the key fob is. I’ll have it in my hand to get into the van and then somehow chuck it somewhere and when I get to my destination, I’ve forgotten where the fob is. Also, I haven’t quite solved the question of where do I keep the key fob when I’m driving. The Husband says it should just live in my pocket, but have you see the size of women’s pockets??? Anyhow, the keyless thing drives me nuts.

I suppose in the end, the positives of the van outweigh the negatives. The things that make it good for our family at this stage in our lives are pretty fundamental while the things that bother me are probably just pet peeves. I suppose in the long run, I’m grateful we have both a smaller car and a larger car for us to use. I am starting to think about the 14 year old and how she will be learning to drive soon and what that means for our next car purchase in terms of timeline and type. I don’t think she can learn to drive on the Impreza because it is a manual car, but I also don’t know if she should learn to drive on the van. So perhaps we will have to get another car within the next two years.

Grateful For:

-Rain fly over my hammock. The hammock is such a simple thing, but I get such joy out of it. I was very grateful that I could sleep outside in the rain while the rainfly kept me dry.

-Along those lines – camping with friends who have lots of gear so we don’t have to pack as much. While there was much that made camping frustrating – I have a note to buy everyone camp pillows and the Husband needs his own sleeping bag – I feel very grateful that a we didn’t have to bring too much extra stuff because our friends had so much stuff that camping seemed luxurious.

-My Bus Stop Mom friends. I managed to get off work in time to meet my bus stop mom friends for Happy Hour one night and it happened to be Trivia Night. We had a lot of fun. And learned what an obelus is! And came in second to last. I’m also so grateful to these ladies because one day a few weeks ago, I had to be at work at 9am. The school bus doesn’t pick up until 9:10am, so I texted them to ask if one of them could take my kids to the bus and they both said yes. So grateful to have friends who can help me out when I need it.

-The not quite summer weather. It’s been sunny and 70s and not humid lately. If the weather were to be like this until Fall, I would be so happy. But, alas, I’m sure heavy hot humidity is in our future soon, as is typical for the DC area. So I’ll soak in this cool summer weather as much as I can.

-Leftover McDonald’s. I went to see the show my company was putting on, which I wasn’t working. There’s a whole section of the show that takes place in a McDonalds and the Prop person had to bring in 2 quarter pounders with cheese, 2 cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, fries and apple pies to be used in the show. None of which got eaten. So after the show, I went to say hi to the stage managers and prop head and I said, “What’s going to happen to all that food?”
“Nothing, do you want it?”
“YES!” I exclaimed.
Now I don’t really go to McDonalds very often, but there is something about the cheeseburgers with their soft sweet buns and the slight tang of the pickles that I do love. And of course I have a weakness for fries.

-Also in the vein of free food – I’m grateful for my Canadian director for being such a sweet and thoughtful person. He was popping home to Canada for Memorial Day weekend and asked if anyone wanted anything. I said jokingly, “Ketchup chips and wine gums, please!”
Well… he brought not just me, but each member of the cast and staff, a bag of ketchup chips and a pack of wine gums! Of course I was really excited to get my favorite Canadian snacks, but even more so, I’m so glad I work with someone who is always thinking of other people.

Looking Forward To:

-Reading retreat! Inspired by Stefany, I suggested to the Husband that we go on a reading retreat the weekend the kids are at Taiwan camp. We’ve picked Harrisburg, PA because that is near camp and there are three or four bookstores there. I’m so excited to browse bookstores and hunker down and read.

-Watching more Derry Girls. We finally got Netflix a few weeks ago. We might be the last people on earth to jump on that bandwagon. I was for sure the hold out in the family – I thought we had enough streaming services. But after March Madness, the Husband cancelled YouTube TV and signed up for Netflix. I think we’ll keep Netflix through the summer and then when football season starts we’ll switch back to YouTube TV. I foresee many nights of watching KPop Demon Hunters in our future. But also – I’m super excited to watch Derry Girls – I had watched season 1 on the plane back from South Africa last year and really loved it.

-Pool time! Our pool is now open and swim team practice has begun.

-This week’s Maycember events (even though it is June) – Piano recitals (for the 9 year old and the 14 year old.). Voice recital (for the 14 year old.) Swim Team practice (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – though not Friday because that is the piano recital), a birthday party to attend for the 6 year old. There are still 3 more weeks of school and I do feel like we are on a slow crawl to summer.

-Listening to more of this book -Once Upon a River – about a four year old that is pulled out of the Thames in 19th century England, and the three people who claim to know who she is. The Book has been a combination of engrossing and soothing, thanks in part to the excellent narration by Juliet Stevenson:

What We Ate (Two weeks’ worth, since I’ve fallen behind on posting this month):
Monday: Coconut Chicken Curry from NY Times cooking. I made a double batch, and froze half of it for later.

Tuesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked. (I was working and the Husband had happy hour plans with friends.) This was really tasty – she baked chicken chunks in the oven with a sweet and spicy glaze and steamed some broccoli to eat with it.

Wednesday: Can’t remember. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Bagels and smoked salmon.

Friday: Pizza and … some movie. I’m not sure what. This was the first weekend of Netflix, I think.

Saturday: The family was camping – I think they had steak. I went out for Tex Mex with work colleagues and had chile rellenos.

Sunday: Camping. Pizza and Caesar Salad. (Which, I learned during Trivia Night that Caesar Salad originated in Mexico.)

Monday: Snack dinner. We got home from camping this night and were tired. If it weren’t for the kids I don’t think we would have had dinner. But the 6 year old said, “Can we do that thing for dinner where you cut up cucumbers and cheese and eat it with crackers?” Yes! So easy and it makes people happy. (I had my leftover Tex Mex from Saturday, with a fried egg on top.)

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos for Taco Tuesday.

Wednesday: Chicken and Broccoli. The 14 year old cooked again. The kids were actually off school, so the 14 year old took her brother and they walked to the store together and bought ingredients for dinner and then she came home and made dinner for everyone. It must have been tasty because there was nothing left when I got home, though the house smelled so good. I was told the recipe involved lots of butter and lemon, all good things in my book. She also make a chocolate cake (from a box) with buttercream frosting (from scratch). I myself was at Happy Hour, where I had fish and chips and a Greek Salad.

Thursday: Pasta Salad at the pool The first pool dinner of the summer! I made a caprese pasta salad – tomatoes, cucumbers, mozzarella, fresh basil, marinated white beans, and a parmesan balsamic dressing.

Friday: I think the family had some kind of sandwiches.

Saturday: Pizza at a friends’ house while they played Dungeons and Dragons. I wasn’t home in time for this, so I had snack dinner and went to the grocery store.

Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce, bagged salad, and watermelon on the side.

Well, that’s the news in this corner of the world as we turn the corner into June. I’ve been thinking lately about how much time I spend writing here, and it feels both like too much and not enough. May was clearly an overwhelming month – there wasn’t a lot of writing or reading/commenting on blogs, and yet the time I get squeak in felt like I was stealing that time from other things. I don’t know if I will feel like I have more space in summer – the long commute to work certainly eats into my time to tackle both the necessary and leisure things. Part of me wonders if I just need to declare that posting will be light – more for myself than for anyone else. Or should I just see where things fit… thoughts thoughts thoughts….

Anyhow, have a lovely week, as we look towards a new month!

What kind of car did you learn to drive on? What do you love/don’t love about your vehicle? Keyless entry – yay or nay? How do you feel about free food – yay? or yuck? Tell me what I ought to watch on Netflix! I like shows – both comedy or drama – about ordinary people trying their best not to make bad decisions while loving the people around them. Also soapy period dramas.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye April, Hello May!

When did it become May??? When did it get to be half way through May??? When did it become 3/4 of the way through May????? Can you tell I’ve been plugging away at this post for a very long time?

Well, I guess I started May in tech for a show. Then I worked supertitles for two recitals, started prepping for my summer show and also stage managed a one night gala performance. That’s four contracts in two weeks. (Five if you count my contract for admin work as head of the Stage Management department, which is indeed a separate contract.) And on top of that so many May-cember things. That is where May has gone. But… I like having these monthly reflections, so here is how April was, just as we are turning the corner into June.

April Highlights:
-The show I was working on. It’s a musical, so it’s been a really different experience for me since I primarily work on operas. Musical theatre performers are so very very fit and pretty. The combination of athleticism and grace of what they do onstage astounds me. And they were each of them so very kind and friendly.

-March Madness and basketball fever at our house.

-Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I did participate and had a whole rainbow collage planned to show folks, but I never made it past yellow. Maybe I’ll still put the collage together.

-Take your child to work day. It was fun having the kids with me to watch rehearsals – they helped me set up tables for the scene we were doing and they helped me announce breaks. The performers were all so kind to the kids, and I’m grateful for that.

-going contra dancing as a family. Always a fun time.

-Farmer’s market trip and stumbling across the Black Health Fair and the collage-making workshop. It was a nice afternoon of art and swag.

-Hiking with kids. Finally went on a hike. First of the year. So far only of the year. I need to do better on this.

-Chorus Benefit concert. Our opera chorus holds a benefit concert every year. I’ve never been, but this year they asked if I would volunteer to stage manage and I said yes. The 14 year old came with me and was my assistant. It was really lovely to see the many chorus members and realize that I knew almost all of them. Some of them I’ve known for over 20 years. It is such a great community.

-Attending our friends’ B’not Mitzvah. So glad we got to celebrate this milestone with them.

-Grilling for the first time this year, one time when we hosted friends for dinner.

-First make-up buying excursion with the 14 year old. Thank goodness for the helpful lady at the counter.

-The AC in our office at work got fixed! It was amazing.

-My mother’s visit.

-Discovering Frixion Markers – erasable markers!!!!

-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.

-Easter and Easter Service at our church, which is a vivid multicultural affair.

-Favorite Dinners this month: Steak Fajitas from NY Times Cooking. Grilled Teriyaki Chicken, using the Teriyaki sauce recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Vegan cookbook. (The recipe is for teriyaki tofu, but the sauce works just as well on Chicken).

-Favorite movie watched: A Nice Indian Boy – a lovely rom com with some lovely people in it.

April Lowlights:
-Some delicate dynamics at work. Not bloggable, but it was tricky to navigate.
-Not being home a lot and feeling out of touch with the family.
-Teenagers. Gotta love them, but man….
But over all not a lot of lowlights in April. Or maybe the things that were tough at the time now seem figure out-able. I feel like it’s the same things all blurring together in my head that make life seem overwhelming, while the things that make me happy or brought me joy all are very specific in my head.

How I did on my various goals:
Creativity:
-Painted two pictures. (8/26 pictures for the year)
-wrote 3 haikus (13/52 haiku for the year… need to do some catching up on this.)
-1 hike. (1/12 so far this year – not doing so well on this goal)

Consumption:
– 1 live performance – Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas concert. It turns out this is the farewell tour for this fiddle and cello duo. I’m so glad we got to hear them play live.
-0 Museums. (3/12 for the year so far. Though we got free passes for the Phillips collection at a community event, so maybe that will happen in June.)

Health:
-4 sessions of strength training. (Goal was 8, but something is better than nothing.)
-Daily yoga – 30/30 days.
-5 vegan dinners. (Goals is 5/ month, so yay! This is making up for May where we’ve barely had any vegan dinners so far…)
-1 run. (Exercise was not a strong suit of mine in April.)

Quote(s) of the Month:
“I use he/they pronouns, but use whatever pronouns you want for me as long as you use them with respect.”
One of the performers in my April show said this on the first day of rehearsal as we went around and introduced ourselves.

“Our talent is our floor, but our character will be our ceiling.” Cori Close, UCLA Women’s Basketball coach.

Looking forward to in May (many of which have already come and gone):
-Well, the middle school musical was a big thing in our calendar. I’m kind of sad that it’s done and past. It was for sure a highlight of the month so far. The 14 year old was playing the lead – Marian in The Music Man, Jr. It was so amazing to see her onstage and to hear all the lines we’ve been running in context, and to hear all the songs she’s been practicing. I’m so incredibly proud of her for working so hard on this show. I felt like my heart grew every time I saw her onstage.
-Stage managing a gala concert. I feel like I’m being pushed outside my comfort zone with this one. It’s so very different from anything else I’ve done before – barely any rehearsal, big names, and one shot to get it all right. It actually makes me a little sick to think about it, but I’ve been reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck and her writing is inspiring me to look for opportunities to learn and grow. (This also just happened and it was a doozy getting there, but ultimately a really good experience.)
-Starting my summer show. And a long commute.
-listening to lots of audiobooks because of above commute. (Looking for suggestions!)
-The pool opens Memorial Day weekend! Swim team starts.
-A potential quiet house over Memorial Day weekend because the Husband is taking the kids camping with friends. (Update! I think we are getting Sunday and Monday off for Memorial Day weekend, so I might drive up and meet the family after work. Time in nature with family vs. time in a quiet house by myself…. it’s a tough decision, I have to admit.)

Grateful For (so far this month.)
-Middle school theatre and music teachers. Actually teachers in general.

-our van. I don’t like driving the van, but it does come in super handy sometimes. Like when I have to take 10 music stands, a stool, and two large bins of office supplies to our Gala location.

-Speaking of Gala – for finding free parking downtown. I had pre-paid for parking via SpotHero (do you know about SpotHero? It helps you find parking spots. We use it to book parking space at an airport hotel when we fly- it’s so much cheaper than airport parking.), but ended up finding free parking a block from our venue both days I had to be downtown. I was then able to give my pre-paid spot to my work BFF.

-All the people at work. What we’ve done at work is… I mean we’re not doing open heart surgery on infants or anything, but we had a massive pivot earlier this year and it’s been an amazing and challenging time. Everyone I work with has put in at least 110% to make opera happen and I’m grateful.

-A visit from my parents. I feel so lucky that my parents (who are 75 and 80) still have the energy and mental sharpness to travel to see us.

What We Ate: I’m afraid I don’t have much to report here because I’ve made it home for dinner only a handful of times so far this month. There was food. The family ate. No one went hungry.

So that’s a wrap on April. Aside from my horrendous commute, the next few weeks look a little calmer, and I hope to get back to writing here more regularly. Hope your May has been lovely and warm.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Three Jobs I wish I could do

Last week was a mish-mash sort of week – it started off with the kids off school on Monday, and then mid-week, I started prepping for a new show. We went contra-dancing. My mother came to visit, and good friends of ours had their twins’ B’not Mitzvah (I learned that’s what it’s called when the Bat Mitzvah is for two girls). So busy and full, but also I didn’t have to work in the evenings, so some luxurious swaths of time as well.

Three Jobs that I wish I could do last week:
1) Animal control. There was a bird in our office building this week for a little over 24 hours. A cute little chirping sparrow that had somehow gotten inside. It started out in another office, then flew through the halls a little bit, and then flew into our office, I think, because we have very large windows and it was looking for sunlight. At first, it was kind of cute – the birds twittering almost made it feel like we were working outside.

But of course keeping a bird inside, where there is no food or water isn’t sustainable. Our facilities person was chasing it (him? I think they named him), trying to encourage it into the rehearsal room because there is a door to the outside. What a frightening experience the little bird must have been having. ( Fun Fact – numerous animal control companies were called but none of them would come – either they didn’t do birds, or our ceilings were too high.) Anyhow, we did eventually get the bird into a rehearsal room and out the door, but before that happened, there was much flapping, and chasing, and prodding on our part. I don’t think we were doing anything right. At least we were not effective.

2) Make-up Artist. At about 5pm on a Friday, I was at work, and I got this text from the Husband:

The 14 year old wanted to try some make-up for her school dance. That night. The dance was at 6:30pm. I don’t have a lot of experience with make-up – there was a time when I put on some mascara and lipstick for opening night, but I don’t even bother with that anymore. The Husband knows less than I do. But all the same, we wanted to be supportive.

No limbs were broken, but this sounded like the kind of situation that I should bail on work to help with. I shut down my computer, told my colleagues I had a family situation come up, and packed up my stuff.

“Meet me at Ulta,” I texted the Husband as I walked out the door.

I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, having no knowledge of current (or any) make-up trends – my only make-up instruction came from a Mary Kay consultant that visited my church group when I was 12. (She was a mother of some in the group.) I just remember her talking about the face’s t-zone. But I figured I could meet the Husband and 14 year old at Ulta where there was a large selection, and then search Reddit for advice.

I arrived at Ulta at 5:35pm, little before the Husband and 14 year old, and was immediately overwhelmed. Rows and rows of displays and shelves and images of brilliant eyes, rosy lips, and perfect dewy skin. And there was the $6 lipstick and the $36 lipstick – what’s the difference? And so many colours and shades and was that even make up or was that hair spray???? The Husband and 14 year old joined me, looking at me for direction. “You’re a 40-something woman. You mush know what to do,” was the subtext. I did not know what to do. This is when I wished I were a make-up artist.

Then I saw a lady with a name tag (which I didn’t read – so sorry), an artfully messy updo, arms blooming with tattoos, and a friendly face. She said, “Do you need help?”

Oh thank goodness!, I thought.

“YES!” I said, pointing at the 14 year old. “She needs make-up for the school dance and we don’t know what we’re doing.”

And the lady helped us with calm, soothing tones. She asked questions, helped pick out colours while telling the 14 year old what different things would do. The concealer didn’t have testers, but she was a former make-up artist, and said that she was pretty good at matching colour for us. We left with lip stain (what even is that??), concealer and mascara – which I felt was a nice basic collection of things for a first time make-up user.

3)Stationary Tester. This is a fun one – My order from JetPens arrived and I spent an evening playing with everything I ordered. I bought monthly tabs for my planners and journals, a few new pens to try:

Look at my journal and my planner all nicely tabbed!

A stamp for my book journal:

and my favorite thing is this book clip:

Now I can read hands free (until I have to turn the page.) There are so many fun things on the JetPens site – how fun would it be if I could spend my days testing pens and papers and stickers and other objects of efficiency and purpose?

Grateful For:
– Sunshine and nice weather and the Potomac River. Monday was a no school day, so I took the 9 year old and the 6 year old and a friend for a hike to Blockhouse Point Trail – at last, my first hike of the year! Blockhouse point is one of my favorite trails because it is never crowded and leads to a stunning view of the Potomac River.

-The 9 year old figured out how to tie his shoes. Now all three kids can tie their own shoes. (yes, the 6 year old figured it out before the 9 year old…). They still need help with their skates, but for every day shoes and cleats, they can tie their own shoes. Seems like a milestone.

-The 14 year old cooked dinner one night, and she and the other two kids cleaned up afterwards.

– Having a contra dance two miles from us. When I was first introduced to contra dancing, it was at a location that was maybe a 20-30 minute drive away from where I lived in DC. (Washington DC has one of the biggest contradancing scenes in the country and there used to be two dances a week. Now there is one weekly dance and two monthly dances – which is still a lot more than many other places.) Similarly, when I’ve gone contradancing in other cities, I’m sometimes driving for up to an hour to get to a dance. But it’s fine – if the music and the people are good, it was always worth the drive to me. However, there is now a monthly contradance very close to us, and it makes going so much easier and lower stakes and also makes it easier to go as a family. We went dancing with the 6 and 9 year old last week and had so much fun. We danced for an hour and a half and were all home and in bed by 10pm.

– A walk with the 14 year old and the fact that she has been able to walk to school the past few years. She was in an off mood over the weekend, so the Husband and I took her on a walk to her school and back. I’m feeling a bit of the feelings that she’ll only do this walk for two more months and then she’ll be off to high school, and there will be other traffic patterns to figure out for her. As we walked together to her school, she gave us the rundown of the inner monologue that she has as she walks – who lives where, when she meets up with friends, all the stories she makes up in her head about the houses and people that she see, where she walks on the wall, when she crosses the street… It was such a delightful peek into her brain.

– Having friends who let us celebrate milestones with them. I’ve never been to a Bat/Bar/B’Not Mitzvah celebration before, and it was such a lovely experience. I will say the morning service was loooong (two hours), but I really loved the ritual of it all and also following along the Hebrew readings (there was a translation provided). I found there was something really cerebral and thoughtful about the Torah readings.

We also helped our friends set up and take down the party afterwards, and they let me run the popcorn machine and the cotton candy machine during the party! I’ve never done this before, but was game to learn new things. Besides the instructions were written right on the machines so it was pretty straightforward. The cotton candy machine was SO messy! I had cotton candy fluff all over me. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the machine stopped working about an hour into the party. But even after the first round, I was covered.

Which is all to say, there is something really nice about having friends that feel comfortable and trust us enough to ask us to come early and stay late for such a big event. They are there to help us and they let us be there to help them. There is something wonderful about being able to help. Sometimes I feel like I have people in my life that only want to help me and never let me help them in return and things end up feeling very loop-sided. I’m really grateful for this friendship where we get to lean on each other.

And we got to take home the balloon arch:

Looking Forward To:
-Maycember. Really April-to-June-cember. At this weekend’s family meeting, we looked at the calendar for this next quarter and I can’t say I’m looking forward to the pace of the next few months, but everything on the calendar are things I’m genuinely looking forward to – recitals, the middle school musical (with the 14 year old in the lead!), elementary school performances, a new show for me to work on, a vocal recital for me to do titles for, my parents visiting again, the 14 year old’s middle school promotion ceremony, a camping trip for everyone but me (I’ll be working that weekend, so I can’t go, but – yay! – weekend with the house to myself!)… all that on top of the usual lessons and activities.

-Summers at the Pool. And then my reward for getting through April-to-June-cember is that my last contract ends in by July 4th and I can spend the rest of the summer hanging out with the kids – there will be a lot of pool time.

– Starting rehearsals for a new show. It’s one I’ve always wanted to work on, so I’m excited to get started.

-Warm weather. Maybe too warm. It’s going to be like summer here this week. But… it also mean I get to break out all my cute warm weather clothes.

-Sunday night dinner with friends.

-Reading more of this book – I just started it and it is quirky and insightful. I think I like books that look at humans from the outside:

What We Ate:
Monday: Spiced chickpea stew with coconut and tumeric, an Alison Roman recipe from NY Times cooking. Vegan. This was tasty; I had it for lunch all week. I didn’t eat it that night because I went out to happy hour with friends and I had fish and chips.

Taco Tuesday: Black beans, Sauteed shrimp, guacamole, mango slaw. Hard and soft shells. Cheese and sour cream, of course. Taco Tuesday is so tasty. The Husband cooked this time and it was delicious.

Wednesday: Mac and Cheese (from the blue box) and steamed green beans. This is the night the 14 year old cooked.

Thursday: Nasi goreng. Indonesian fried rice w/ fried tofu. No recipe, really, just used up whatever vegetables I had around – broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, leeks. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza and Zootopia 2. It was a cute movie. I think I’ve seen the first Zootopia, but I can’t say for sure.

Saturday: I went straight to the B’not Mitzvah party from work, so I didn’t have dinner, but they had so much snacky/appetizer food. My favorite was the deconstructed pasta salad – it was a plate with cherry tomatoes, tortellini, and marinated mozzarella balls all laid out separately on a bed of arugula so you could pick and choose what you wanted.

Sunday: Tortellini with sausage, onions, and greens. Blanched green beans. I usually steam the green beans, but I had the hot water from the pasta in a pot and I thought, “Why waste a good pot of hot water?” So I threw the green beans in there for four minutes.

I hope you have a great week!

Any jobs you wish you could do lately? Do you tie your shoes the bunny ear method or with a single loop? Favorite party snack/appetizer? Have you ever sat through a service for a religion different than your own?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Good-bye March, Hello April!

Last week was spring break – we stayed home and had a relaxing staycation kind of week. Monday I took the kids down to the main library in downtown DC, and we also went to see some cherry blossoms. Other than that – we had some nice bike rides and playground time. Baking. A family trip to Costco. Hair cuts and dress shopping. Library visits and ice skating. It was nice to be home and living life at a relaxed pace.

The weekend was also pretty low key. On Saturday I dopped the 6 year old at an Easter Egg Hunt play date and went to get my emissions tested. The emissions didn’t take as long as I expected, so I stopped at Panera for my free Slip Club beverage and a BLT since I hadn’t had breakfast. Then in the afternoon, the Husband and the two little kids and I went on a nice long bike ride. In the evening, we watched the Men’s Final Four Basketball games. After the 6 and 9 year old went to bed, it was time to play Easter Bunny. The 14 year old was still up, and the Husband turned to her, dead serious, and said, “I have something to tell you. “

She looked at him expectantly.

“The Easter Bunny,” he said, “Isn’t real.”

I howled with laughter. The 14 year old helped us stuff eggs and then she actually went and hid all the eggs for us while the Husband and I finished watching the game.

Sunday, we went to 8am Easter Mass, which at our church is an English/ Bangla service. Reasons I really enjoy going to the English/Bangla mass:
-The rainbow of saris and kurtas that people wear are so fun to see.
-The homily is given in both languages, so it tends to be shorter.
-The music is provided by Bengali musicians and it is always upbeat and varied.

After Mass we went to breakfast at First Watch. We traditionally would go to IHOP for Easter breakfast, but the last couple of years, IHOP has always been so crowded so we decided to try something new. First Watch was for sure less crowded and the food was, in my opinion, better. The restaurant was having an Easter Egg hunt which was fun for the kids too. After breakfast we went home, had a nap. The kids hunted for Easter eggs. I made some lemonade and chocolate pudding for dinner, then we watched the Women’s NCAA Basketball final game while the kids folded laundry. The game was kind of a rout, with UCLA winning by 30 points.

For dinner we had burgers, tater tots, green beans, and lemonade. After dinner we went for a family walk – a rare thing these days to get all five of us to go for a walk together. The summer sunset sky was gorgeous! When we came home we had the chocolate pudding for dessert before sending the kids to bed. It didn’t feel like a fancy holiday weekend, but I think it was full of family, and good food, and what more could one want?

And now the calendar has turned to another month. April! Which means that 2026 is one quarter over. Here’s a look back at March:

March Highlights:
-Tech/Opening/Closing of a show. The Show certainly had it’s challenges, but I had such a good time with my co-workers.

-Family trip to the theatre to see The Sea Beyond the Ocean. Such a beautiful play.

-Supertitle recital gig of a lovely recital that featured Vaughn Williams’ Songs of Travel, one of my favorite song cycles.

-Running supertitles for another opera. I really like running supertitles – I get to lock into the music, but also I don’t have to talk to anyone else so I can just focus on one thing.

-Sunshine and warmer weather.

-It was a pretty negligent month for exercise, but I did go on my first run since November, and I did go to the fitness room at the rec center once.

-My friend L coming over to do laundry and getting to hang out with her late one evening.

-KPop Demon Hunters winning two Oscars, and seeing Golden performed on the telecast.

-My friend A coming home from their posting abroad. I mean not the reason they were sent home (they were posted in the Middle East), but the fact that I got to see her four months earlier than I was expecting.

-Going to the 9 year old’s Geobowl and the 14 year old’s Science Fair.

-Visiting the Textile Museum. Who knew horse blankets were so nuanced!

-Getting our tax information to our Tax Guy just in time.

-March Madness.

-Favorite meal cooked at home: Coconut Chicken Curry from New York Times Cooking.

-Cherry Blossoms. I never get tired of their fluffy delicate beauty.

Also – I snapped this picture while sitting in the shadow of the Washington Monument. I’m feeling a little down about the state of American politics, but I still feel inspired and hopeful by the symbols of our country, such as the American Flag and the Washington monument.

March Lowlights:
-Being sick. I was barely hanging on for a week mid-March. Turns out it was flu. I had to cancel so many plans that I had been looking forward to.
-News on the international front.
-News on the arts front at home. My heart aches for so many of my colleagues and former colleagues here in DC.
-A really hard tech process for the show I did. Everything was fine in the end, but there were definitely times when I thought I was just plain bad at my job.
-The back and forth as to the last day of school. This isn’t really a lowlight, but more like an ridiculous frustration. As the snow days piled up, the school district kept extending the school year, day by day until the last day, which was originally June 18th was pushed all the way to June 25th. I was glad I hadn’t signed the kids up for camp that week. But then…. then then… the week before spring break, the school district announced that they had gotten a special dispensation from the State to have a reduced number of teaching days and the last day of school would go back to being June 18th after all. ARUGH!!!! You know – I am find with whatever they decide to do, but to offer one thing and then change it back is… so annoying. I’m sure the school district knows how annoying this is.

How did I do on some of my 2026 Goals?
-Creativity – I only painted one picture; I wrote 3 haikus; I played piano several times – I’m trying to embrace the five minute piano noodle as something to do when I’m between tasks. So could do better on this front. But then I was sick for a week…

The one picture I painted all month. I guess technically it’s two. This was the leaf painting assignment from 30 Days of Watercolour.

-Finished one crossword puzzle. We didn’t renew our Washington Post Sunday paper til half way through the month, but it is now renewed so I can get back to doing my weekly puzzle.

-Museums = 1 (total so far this year, 4/10). Hikes= 0 (Not doing so well on the hiking goal)

-Vegan dinners = 3 (the goal is 5/month) I have to admit, vegan dinners are hard when I’m working in the evenings and am not home to cook.

-Excercise: not great. Strength training = 3x (goal was 8x/ month). Yoga daily = I missed two days when I was sick and 1 day when I just forgot. I did go running 4 times, once for only 10 minutes, but I’m still counting that.

-Family Goals: Game Night = 1 (Parcheesi; it was disastrous. Wait, I think there was a MarioKart night as well); Date Night = 0 (still); Call my parents once a week – I did horribly on this one; I think I called them once all month.

-Time outside: I tracked 14 hours, but it might have been more. I fell off the tracking wagon the days before and after I was sick.

Quote of the Month:
“I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.” from The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

Looking Forward to (the April edition):
– Contra dancing. We didn’t get to last month because of sickness in our household, so I’m hoping we’ll get to go this month.

-My mother’s coming to visit.

-Dinners and hang outs with various friends and families we know. The social calendar is a little full.

-An order from Jet Pens. As a gift to myself for getting through tech week (twice in one month!) and the flu, I ordered myself some things from JetPens – some monthly tabs so I can tab my planners, a new Preppy Fountain Pen, some new .25 point pens, and a book clip so I can clip my book open when I read while eating.

-Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas. I’ve been a fan of this fiddle and cello duo since their debut album in 2004 so I was super excited to see they are coming to play in our area. I very rarely go to live music concerts – usually if I’m going it live performance it’s opera or theatre – but especially these days, I feel like supporting live performance is important.

– Starting rehearsals for a new show and working with some of my favorite colleagues. (Okay, truth – most of my colleagues are my favorite colleagues. Now that I get to have a say in hiring stage managers, I don’t hire people I don’t want to work with… it’s a perk.)

– Reading in bed! I ordered a bedside lamp and it arrived!

Grateful for this week:
-Libraries. Particularly libraries that don’t have computers in their Children’s Section, thereby forcing my kids to actually look at books.

-Cadbury Mini Eggs. My favorite holiday candy. I got the big bag from Costco this year. Actually I got two. Last year I thought I didn’t need the big Costco bag of mini eggs so I didn’t buy them, and I regretted it ever since.

-A later piano lesson. The kids’ piano lessons are usually at 7:15am, but this week because it was Spring Break, their teacher was able to move the lesson to 8:00am and it was nice to stay home for that extra 45 minutes and have a leisurely morning.

-Bike trails and closed parkways. On the weekends, the parkway near us is closed to cars, giving us an endless length of road on which to ride our bikes.

-Spring Break and bonus time with my kids. Sure they periodically fought like tom cats, but overall I had a really great time hanging out with my kids this week. I think key to my great time was the fact that they play together pretty well, so a) I didn’t have to referee many arguments, and b) I could spend lots of time by myself without having to amuse them.

-Past me for making vanilla. Last year around this time, I had been given a mini bottle of vodka that I was never going to drink. So I tucked an vanilla bean inside to make vanilla. I had forgotten about it until this week, when I was making banana cake (this recipe – it’s really tender and moist) and realized we were out of vanilla. Panic! But then, I remembered that little bottle on our alcohol shelf. Past me to the rescue!

What We Ate:
Monday: Garlic-y Chicken with Lemon Anchovy Sauce a Melissa Clark recipe from NY Times Cooking. Eaten with rice and steamed broccoli on the side. I was looking to use up some chicken thighs I had in the fridge. This was really tasty.

Tuesday: Tacos from the taco place next to the barber’s. We had gone for haircuts for the kids and decided to grab dinner out before running some other errands this night.

Wednesday: Roasted Salmon and Potatoes with bagged salad. The 14 year old made dinner and it was super tasty.

Thursday: Kabocha Squash Japanese Curry from Hetty Lui McKinnon, and Pan Fried Tofu. I had picked up a Kabocha squash from the Farmer’s market and was looking for a way to cook it. I really loved this flavorful curry. I didn’t have Japanese curry, but Indian curry powder worked just fine. I think I’ve cracked the code on really delicious crispy fried tofu. This is my method:
-Press and drain tofu for at least 20 minutes. (I wrap it in a kitchen towel and then put my Dutch oven on it. Sometimes I start it in the morning so that it’s nice and dry by the time I get home after work.)
-Cut tofu into 1 inch cubes.
-Douse with soy sauce and then let it sit for at least 10 minutes to marinate.
-Toss in 1/4 cup of cornstarch, making sure all sides of tofu are coated.
-Heat about a 1/4″ of oil in a large skillet.
-When the oil is hot, add the tofu. Let it cook untouched for 3-4 minutes, until a nice crust forms. Then flip and cook for another 3-4 minutes on the other side.
-When nice and golden/ crispy on at least two sides, take out and drain on a paper towel.
The excessive amount of cornstarch seems to be ky.

Friday: Take out from local fish restaurant, because it was Friday in Lent. And for movie night: A Nice Indian Boy. I was looking for a rom com to watch since it was my turn to pick the movie, and came across this title from last year. It was just perfect – everything I want from a rom com: cute, appealing leads, offbeat secondary characters, believable conflict even within a quirky story, humour, heart, and wit. We laughed a lot. The movie tells the story of Naveen, a doctor, who yearns to meet the right man and get married. He meets Jay, a white man who was adopted by Indian parents, and much of the comedy and heart comes from the dynamics of Naveen’s family learning to accept Jay as the Nice Indian Boy they want for Naveen. I loved that everyone had a chance for a story arc, and the Indian wedding dance number at the end. This movie was the definition of feel good. Also Jonathan Groff is really pretty.

Saturday: Pizza (the Husband made – cheese, sausage and mushroom, fig and goat cheese, and a pepperoni).

Sunday: Burgers, steamed green beans, tater tots. Lemonade. Chocolate pudding. (Burgers, lemonade, and chocolate were all things that the kids had given up for Lent.) The Husband made the burgers and they were really tasty. The 9 year old at one point said, “It’s a good thing Easter isn’t on a Friday in Lent because we wouldn’t have been able to eat these burgers!” Um…..