habits – Life Off Headset

July so far + what we ate: Catching up

How is it already almost the end of July? It’s been a lot this month – and I drafted this post when it was a weekly update and it’s gotten longer and longer and now it’s practically a monthly update.

So the short version: The husband and kids came home from Chicago! I closed a show! My parents came to town! I went camping! My brother and his family came to visit! It’s a billion degrees outside and we sweltered! We went on all sorts of adventures while falling steadily behind in housework and life admin! The pile of laundry grows mountainous! I started rehearsing a second show! It never. lets. up.

I know most people work and manage life simultaneously all the time (like the Husband, for one), but prioritizing and balancing all the things is hard, and I’m not used to doing it for such long stretches of time. I’ve been working on one show or another – or sometimes two at a time – since February with only three weeks of in that time, and most weeks with only one day off. I’m always grateful for the work, but man… Usually when I’m in the thick of things, I can see a stretch of time off from work and can push tasks off til then, but it’s been harder to do that so far this year. Plus commuting for this summer gig. Spending 60-90 minutes a day in a car might not feel like a lot in the moment, but it does eat up my day. Compared to my regular gig which is like 30-60 minutes a day, this gig is an additional 30 minutes a day that I’m losing. Which might not seem like a lot, but that’s prime laundry folding time right there. Anyhow. I’m really excited by the projects that I’ve worked on and the people I’ve been working with this year, so I’m not saying I regret taking these jobs. It’s just a lot of balls are getting dropped right now. I need to remind myself that I’m lucky to have work in an industry where sustained work in one location can be hard to find and find better ways to tackle life tasks.

Ever since I opened my first show and the family got back from Chicago I’ve felt out of my regular routine – there was adjusting to the family being back and also to not having to be at the theatre every day for the week I was in performance, and being home with the six year old. Then my family visiting and then starting a new show, with a very different rehearsal schedule from my last show. I think I need better anchors in my life so that the constant change does not throw me as much. I haven’t even been keeping with the small habits like ten minutes of yoga or Wordle or Duolingo. Here’s the thing, I’ve realized, is that there are a million tiny adjustments – a combination of school being out and my current job – and it’s thrown a lot of the habits that I make based on my school year routines out of wack. For example:
– Writing here. For my current gig, I use my personal laptop, which means it mostly lives in my laptop bag and goes back and forth to work with me. Small shift. But it also means that the laptop isn’t sitting on my desk, and it then takes two additional steps to actually be able to sit down and write – 1) take laptop out of bag, 2) find a work surface. Two small steps are enough of a barrier that I’m not writing as much as I would like. I supposed I could write on my tablet or phone, but that’s not as easy.
– Duolingo and Wordle. I used to get to work about ten minutes early, sit down and do the daily Wordle and Duolingo before I turned on my work computer. But with my longer commute, I’m not getting to work with that ten minutes to spare. In fact, I’m usually five minutes late to work. So I’ve definitely lost all my streaks. Thanks, guilt-inducing green owl!
– Cleaning out my car. During the school year, I have a routine on Wednesday mornings. I drop the 11 year old at piano lessons at 7:15a, I go get gas, I go pick up breakfast, I pick up the 11 year old and we head home. Wednesday was always gas day. Even if my tank is 3/4 full, I still stop and get gas on Wednesday mornings while the oldest is at piano lessons. I very rarely have to fill my tank more than once a week so having a designated day and time to get gas takes that mental weight off my plate. Also while I fill my tank, I take all the trash out of my car and shake out the floor mats. Well, lately we’ve had a piano lesson hiatus. And then last week, my father filled my gas tank because he was using ti to run errands, so on Wednesday, there was not need to get gas.\. I was driving around the other day and I noticed that there was more trash in my car than normal, and then it hit me… I haven’t been doing my weekly piano lesson/get gas routine. Such a little errand, but the regularity of it ensured that my car got picked up at least once a week. No wonder the car looked kind of like a pit.
– Daily 10 minute yoga. I used to do 10 minutes of yoga the minute the 3 year old left for school. Inspired by B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits, I used the door closing behind the 3 year old as the prompt to lay out my yoga mat and do ten minutes of yoga. Well the 3 year old hasn’t been going to school until much later now that it’s summer, so the yoga mat hasn’t been laid out because we are all leaving the house at the same time. Yet another school year habit downed by shift in schedule. I think I might need to shift to doing 10 minutes of yoga first thing in the morning. This is absolutely fixable. Though when I try to do yoga while the 4 year old is home, I become a human jungle gym and it can be very distracting.
Anyhow, I feel like I need new anchor, new prompts- summer time routines, I guess. (Though the summer is now practically over?). Or maybe when each shift happens, I need to look at the schedule, and re-order, add, or delete things. Something to ponder.

So fun happenings…. After coming back from their trip, the eleven year old went to basketball camp for two weeks while the six year old and hung out at home. Since I didn’t have to be at the theatre every day, it didn’t really seem to make sense to put him in camp, so we just hung out all week and had some staycation type adventures. We went to the park (for four hours one day!), we went ice skating (perfect for an 80 degree day), we went to the library, we went to a puppet show at a different park. I know this would have been prime life catch up time, but I wanted to also prioritize having one on one time with six year old. Since he started school I haven’t had as much one on one time with him and I miss just hanging out with him. This is true for all my kids and I want to do better.

We had a fun family food adventure too – one day I had to be up in Rockville to retrieve my phone (see below, gratitude), and decided to check out a new-ish Taiwanese restaurant that was in the back of a gas station. I had heard about this place in the local magazine and looking at the menu, I could see that it had a lot of the foods I remember eating at the night markets in Taiwan. Walking in, I was a little skeptical. I mean this was in a gas station, after all, and the restroom was a little …. Well, let’s just say when we walked in, the six year old said, “I think someone died here.” But we ordered our food and sat down at one of three tables and waited.

And the food was really tasty! The moment it came to our table, the smells transported me to hot sticky evenings wandering the night market, the air heavy with the smell of fried food and five spice. We ordered popcorn chicken, fried chicken wings, dumplings, the pork chop bento box:

And the best was the stinky tofu. Stinky tofu is fried fermented tofu. It does in truth smell like the inside of an outhouse, but dip it in sweet spicy sauce and take a bite, the crispy exterior giving way to pillowy soft tofu inside. So tasty!

Stinky tofu! The six year old is eating the bento box – with pork belly on the rice.

The first weekend in July, we took the Metro down to the Mall and went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The two themes this year were the Ozarks and World Religions. We mostly explored the Ozarks section. There was a lot going on, and we only saw a fraction of the offerings. We went to a talk about boat building traditions, we listened to some bluegrass music while the Husband enjoyed some beer from the Ozarks Brewing Company. We talked to a basket maker.

Fishing boat. You stand where the three year old is and stab the fish!

Basketmaking. Making strips of wood from oak planks to weave into a basket.

We had some fried chicken and tamales – I love how the food matches the themes of each year. We talked to a lady who had an exhibit about cooking over an open fire outside with a cast iron pot. We went to a talk by chef Tim Ma, someone who has spent his career reconciling being Chinese American with serving American Chinese food. I really enjoyed hearing him talk about how he didn’t actually learn to cook until he went to culinary school, and how he now tries to. The eleven year old asked a question during the Q&A and I was really proud of her for doing that! Also, he talked about using dehyradted garlic in his cooking because you have to re-constitute it which makes is less likely to burn when you cook with it. Someone asked him where he gets it from, and he said, “I get it from my Chinese food supplier.” which is not helpful for me. I was hoping I could find it at HMart. I’m now on the hunt.

Tim Ma making Springfield Cashew Chicken.

The day was very very hot. At one point we ducked into the American History Museum to fill our water bottles and get a rest from the heat and boy did the air conditioning feel good. I also thought it was a great idea that the Festival was handing out cooling towels as swag. We grabbed one, but should have grabbed two!

After that we walked back up to Chinatown to have dinner at our favorite noodle place, partly inspired by something Tim Ma had said that afternoon. During the Q&A, someone had asked him what his favorite Chinese restaurant was and he said that he always encourages people to eat in Chinatown if they have one because Chinatowns are slowly disappearing across the country due to the pressures of economics and development. Of course we were more than eager to do our part!

The fountain at the Sculpture Garden, looking on to the National Archives.
I love how symmetrical DC can be.

Since it was still pretty early when we got to Chinatown, we decided to stop into the Smithsonian Museum for American Art and Portrait Gallery. The Husband and the 11 year old went to explore the galleries while I took the two little kids to the kids’ creative space where they spent most of their time playing with this video portrait set up where you could take multiple portraits of yourself. It was kid of fun to see a whole screen made up of small squares of the kids.

It was certainly a full day – Festival, Museum, Dinner and home before bedtime. How lucky we are that we can hop on the metro and so easily have such a great day!

The following week, my parents arrived and I took the two younger kids camping along with my parents. The 11 year old had basketball camp so stayed home. I have a whole separate post for that camping trip, but we had a good time and three nights doesn’t seem like enough time for camping anymore. Though I don’t know if I can fit more than three days’ worth of food in my cooler, so that’s a dilemma

The day after we got back from camping, I started my next show and my family came to visit. I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted with my family while they were here because I was working, but one fun thing we did was take a boat ride to Mount Vernon. My father has been reading a lot of books on the Revolutionary War lately and I thought it might be nice way to visit Washington’s estate by sailing up the Potomac. Much nicer than driving an hour either way, besides which we wouldn’t have been able to fit everyone in the two cars that we had. So we all got on the metro at 7am on a Sunday morning and rode all the way down to the wharf where we boarded a boat. I have to say my brother’s family and his in laws were such troopers about the 7 am departure, having gotten off a plane just the evening before.

Approaching Mount Vernon from the Potomac River.

The boat departed at 8:30am and after a gentle trip down the Potomac, we arrived at Mount Vernon around 10am. We disembarked at the pier and walked up to the mansion where we took a tour.

Some of the highlights for me –

Seeing this harpsichord – I always like seeing musical instruments:

This key to the Bastille, given to George Washington by Lafayette.

underneath the key is a picture of the Bastille.

George and Martha Washington’s bedroom. Martha had that bed specially made for George because he was so tall.

And I’m always fascinated by kitchens. This one was a separate building from the main mansion. Because of fire hazards and all that.

Also the outhouse. Because I find that fascinating too.

There are three toilet seats in there! Do three people use the facility at once? or is it to spread out the… ahem.. offerings?

I will say, I think going to Mount Vernon by boat didn’t quite leave enough time to fully explore Mount Vernon. We arrived at 10:00am and the return boat was at 1:15pm. Of course we had to eat lunch in there somewhere, so it really only left about 2 hours to explore. We did manage to walk most of the grounds in that time, and visit George and Martha’s grave, but we did not visit the Museum at all, or the farm, and we kind of sped through the gardens. I just wished we had time to stay and linger in the gardens and read every placard.

The rest of my brother’s visit was pretty low key. He and his in laws took off for Shenandoah for a couple days, and I went back to work while my parents stayed home with the kids. When my brother and co. got back they all went down to the Mall to see some museums, but I was working, so I didn’t go. But I think it’s great that there is so much to see in DC via Metro that I don’t have to accompany guests around all the time. I can hand them Metro cards and just say, “Have fun!” and they will be entertained.

We did go to a concert at Wolf Trap – it was actually the reason that my brother’s family came out in the first place. Joe Hisaishi, who composed music for the Studio Ghibli films, was conducting a concert of his film music. My brother and his family are huge Studio Ghibli fans. At first I was a little reluctant to go to the concert because it was late at night, and then it poured rain, and I was even more skeptical since it was an outdoor venue, albiet covered. But the weather cleared up in time for the concert and it was actually quite nice. I’ve worked at this venue, but I’ve never seen a concert there, and now I get why it’s such a big summer event – a warm summer breeze, and music, and fresh air… it just felt like summer in every way.

The last day my brother was here, we went to hot pot with. Hot pot is always fun and the place we went to now also has robot servers which will bring you your order, so that was fun and the kids got a real kick out of that. Originally we were going to get soup pots to share, but the kids all insisted that they get their own pot, so everyone got their own pot, including the 3 year old.

So that was the adventures so far in July. Now we’re back to the normal grind of things.

Fascinating read – this article about the mathematically correct way to tie your shoes. I never gave a thought to which was the proper way to tie my shoes – tie, one loop, wind around, pull through, tighten loops. But apparently, in each step, bringing the lace over or under makes a huge difference between a knot that tightens as it moves and one that loosens. Maybe it was because it was 2am and I was still awake, but I found this article so interesting and immediately grabbed my shoes and started making bows. (Revenge bedtime procrastination at it’s finest!) This also explains why using the bunny rabbit ears method of tying laces has never worked for me – it’s the wrong combination of over/under. Also – the six year old doesn’t know how to tie his shoes yet – well, he doesn’t have lace up shoes right now, so it’s kind of a low priority task – but I’m pretty sure the 11 year old was tying her laces at this age, though I didn’t teach her. I think she learned through a combination of friends and observation. Anyone have a tried and true method for teaching shoe tying?

Grateful For:
1) The kind person who found my phone and turned it in. I had gone with the six year old to meet up with a friend and her son at an outdoor puppet show. After the show, the kids played on the playground nearby while my friend and I caught up. The are moving across the country soon and I’m a little sad – she is someone whom I befriended randomly at an event at a park. One of those, “Hey you’re cool, let’s exchange numbers and hang out!” strangers who become friends. Anyhow, then it started to rain, and we made plans to rendez vous at the ice rink and have lunch at the snack bar there. Well, I got in my car and realized I couldn’t find my phone. (Side note – I thought it notable that not being able to find my phone meant that I had resisted looking at it for 2.5 hours. Part of me thought, “Wow… see, you can go a couple hours without your phone! Try to channel that more!”) But anyhow, I went back to the picnic tables where we were sitting and also to where the puppet show was, but it was pouring rain by then, so I gave up and just headed to the ice rink. Of course, I got in the car and realized that I couldn’t use the phone to navigate me to the ice rink.
Luckily I had a vague idea where we were, yet even still I did have to pull a couple U turns and at one point found myself driving up the drive to the county correctional facility, thinking it was just another residential road. It was not. I did eventually make it to the rink. We had lunch and chatted, and then I went back to the park to try to see if I could find my phone now that the rain had lightened up. Still no. So then I gave up and went home, thinking of all the things that I needed my phone for and low level panicking because we were about to leave to go camping and I didn’t want to leave without a phone.
Anyhow, I got home, all discouraged, and there was, curiously, a note tucked in my storm door. It was from a police officer, saying that my phone was with the Rockville Police. Relief poured euphorically over me and I felt like the luckiest person in the world. (I did wonder how they were able to track me down, but they are the police so I imagine it is in their best interest to be able to figure these things out.)
Anyhow, I called the police station and they said if I could get there before the shift change they could hand me my phone – something about after shift change the phone has to get catalogued and put into a lost and found and it’s more steps to get it. So the six year old and I zipped up there and got the phone – which they handed over without my even having to show any ID, surprisingly. And to celebrate, we got some boba tea (from a new to me tea shop. It was a little sweet for my taste, but the owner was very kind.). And then capped the day off with Taiwanese food. Man, to go from desperation over my lost phone to joy at having it back all in one day was exhausting.

2) Grateful for being hired for a gig and for the crew at the theatre for making sure everything went smoothly. I got a call to stage manage a small concert event for the Embassy of Peru and since I like working for pay, I decided to do it. I don’t do a lot of one off event type gigs – I like the comfort of rehearsing a piece and helping it develop and knowing it very well before we get in front of an audience. These gigs where I come in and a show magically just happens often involve a lot of uncertainty and quick decision making, and let’s just say it’s not my comfort zone. One the one hand, one day gigs are very high pressure because you only have one shot at it. On the other hand, they are kind of low pressure because you only have to do it once. How’s that’s for irony. On top of that, the person who hired me mentioned that the producer did not speak a lot of English. I speak no Spanish. I wasn’t really sure how it would all pan out. But luckily it was at a theatre that I had worked in many times with a crew that was helpful and who I knew had my back. And once I got to the theatre, I learned that the group actually spoke enough English to communicate what track should be played for which dance number, and when a microphone was needed, and which side of stage people were coming from, when something had to be moved in order for there to be space for the dancers. And another performer taught me how to say “Thirty minutes” and “Fifteen minutes” and “Ten minutes” in Spanish. So all in all, things went quite well and everyone was happy and I got to hear some amazing singing.

3)Peaches. It’s stone fruit season, one of my favorite fruit seasons. Is there anything more lovely than a ripe juicy peach – sweet, syrupy and fragrant?

Looking Forward To:
– Having the last half of August off. Like I mentioned above, I haven’t had a whole lot of time off this summer and I want to have day trips and pool days and ice cream trips. I just read about this Icelandic tradition of meandering to find ice cream and meandering back. Sounds lovely.

– Getting my show paperwork done early. I’m trying to be less last minute in getting my show running paperwork done. I used to wait until we’ve staged the whole show in the rehearsal room then just sit down and plug through the running cues for everything in one or two long sessions at the computer, but this time I’m trying to plug in the information into the runsheets as we stage each scene. We have a pretty short tech process for this next show, so I knew I wanted to get ahead of the usual paperwork deadline. It’s probably a more efficient way to do paperwork; I think I usually wait in case there are changes made, but I’m learning it’s easier to get the first draft of a document done then go back and make changes then it is to wait until I have all the information before starting the runsheet – there will always be changes so no point in waiting until there are none.

– Agatha Christie radio plays. I’ve discovered on Libby, a whole series of radio adaptations of Christie’s mystery novels. They are usually only and hour or two long, so perfect for my commute – long enough to really engage me, but short enough that I can get through one in a few days. It makes me almost look forward to my commute. I also have a bunch of CDs that I bought in college that I have never listened to, and since my car has a CD player, I think I might take time to work my way through some new to me works. Last week, I listened to the 2005 musical The Light in the Piazza, which I found touching though not very hummable. I think perhaps it’s better onstage than on CD.

What We Ate: So far in July… it’s been a lot of eating out…

Saturday: Pizza and Star Wars. (I’m pretty sure I was working this night)

Sunday: Chinatown Express -our favorite noodle place in Chinatown

Monday: Salt and Pepper Eggplant and Tomato/Egg Scramble. From Hetty McKinnon’s book To Asia with Love. The sauteed tomato with eggs is a traditional Taiwanese dish – I made it with canned tomatoes since I didn’t have fresh, and it was really tasty. Good pantry recipe. The Salt and Pepper eggplant was tasty, but the eggplant took too much of the oil and was a little soggy. I need to trouble shoot that for next time because I thought the dish was good enough to try again.

Tuesday – Thurday: Camping.

Friday – Pizza (The Husband made) and The Black Stallion. My mother chose this 1979 movie for movie night – I guess she had seen it when it first came out and the six year old reminded her of the boy in the movie. I enjoyed it, though I thought it ended rather abruptly and I do wish they hadn’t tried to race the horse, plotwise.

Saturday: Tortellini with red sauce, garlic bread, roasted zucchini, salad, turkey meatballs. This was the day that my brother and his in-laws arrived. I always feel like it’s nice to have a home cooked meal after getting off a plane, so offered to cook. Even though I was feeding twelve people, this was a pretty easy meal to throw together.

Sunday: We went out to eat with everyone. Sort of to celebrate my parents’ 50th Wedding anniversary. I had mussels and oysters.

Monday: The Husband made kung pao tofu.

Tuesday: The Husband made stir fried garlic eggplant.

Wednesday: I have scribbled down Yogurt/ wings. This can’t possibly be what we had for dinner…. Maybe it’s what I ate while at work?

Thursday: My brother and his family/ in laws came over for dinner again. I basically looked in the freezer and fridge and pulled everything grillable out and picked up some vegetables from the farm stand to supplement. We had: Grilled salmon, grilled tofu and tomatoes (from the Green Barbeque cookbook), grilled pesto gnocchi (also from the Green Barbeque – while I thought this was tasty and clever to grill the gnocchi, I think roasting gnocchi on a sheetpan gets much the same result and is less fussy. One of those, “Glad I tried it, but don’t need to do it again” recipes.), Black Bean Cucumber Cabbage Rice Noodle Salad (from Hetty McKinnon’s To Asia with Love. Love this recipe), also grilled zucchini and corn.

Friday: Dinner at a brewpub near Wolf Trap before our concert. I had mussels. I seem to like having mussels when I go out to eat. Maybe I should investigate making it at home?

Saturday: Hot Pot.

Sunday: Sushi take out.

Thoughts on getting more sleep

Last week was not a good week for going to bed on time. With my cousin visiting, everyone stayed up much later than usual, and when the kids are up until 9:30p/10p, I tend to push my own bedtime later. Not that they are really to blame; even when they do go to bed on time, I am plenty capable of staying up super late on my own.

I really want to get on a good sleep schedule for when I start rehearsals, but this past week there were a few nights when I was up until 2am. And in my head, I think “Well, 2am to 7am is five hours of sleep, I think that should be enough.” Then inevitably, the next night I fall asleep next to the kids while putting them to bed and leave the kitchen in a disastrous state, which always makes the next morning difficult. I know all the research says that poor sleep literally takes years off your life, so I really want to be more disciplined about this. Plus I’m getting too old to be unaffected by continuous nights of staying up til 2am, despite doing it plenty in college. Some things I’ve been doing that seem to be putting me in the right direction:

– Brushing my teeth when the kids do in the evening. A lot of times, I think “I can’t go to sleep until I brush my teeth!” so I stay up because the later it gets the more insurmountable a task teeth brushing seems. So I’ve started brushing my teeth when the kids do. I think it’s actually better for me because a) they brush their teeth to the Chompers podcast, so I know I’m spending enough time on each tooth, and b) it keeps me from snacking late at night. The biggest benefit, though, is that brushing my teeth with the kids removes one hurdle before bedtime.
–When I do finally make it into bed, I always take a minute to take a deep breath and fully savor my bed – the crisp cool sheets, the soap smelling hug of the duvet wrapped around me, the soft/firm feel of my memory foam pillow as it curves around my head. Some nights, I even say out loud (but softly because the Husband is usually asleep), “Ahhhhh Bed, bed, bed!” I think acknowledging what a wonderful place bed is helps make it a place I want to be.
– Just going straight to bed when I come home from a late evening at work. I used to think that when I got home at 11pm or midnight, I needed time to have a snack and unwind, but then I would just stay up even longer. So now I try to come home, hang up my coat, put away my lunch box, kiss the children goodnight and then get into pjs, brush my teeth and straight to bed. I try not to even get my phone out of my purse to charge because I don’t want to get side-tracked.

Things I should be better about to develop good sleep habits:
– On nights when I don’t have to work late, having a nightly routine and sticking to a time to start that and mindfully going to bed afterwards. In my ideal world, the hour before bed would be: 20 mins yoga, 20 minutes journaling, and 20 minutes reading. And this routine would start around 10:30pm. I think an offline bedtime routine would be good too. That would mean, though that the yoga and the reading would have to be done offline – currently I do a yoga podcast and read on my phone or iPad, so I would have to find alternatives. Then immediately to bed, is a big thing.
– Avoiding revenge bedtime procrastination. I ought to minimize screens in my pre-bed routine because scroll-creep is a big struggle for me. A lot of the time when I stay up, I’m on a device reading or scrolling. Once in a while I’m writing here. Carolyn Hax’s back catalogue of advice columns is a huge time suck for me, though I really like her advice, so I don’t think it’s an empty time suck, necessarily. Other internet rabbit holes. Even without social media, I often find myself clicking link after link while reading about something. I’ve also had nights when I’ve inexplicably spent hours re-organizing my Libby holds list and fall asleep on the couch. I just need to find tactics to take the things that I stay up late to do and make them into daytime activities. Maybe it will help to write down a list of things to google the next day when the late night urge strikes to go down internet rabbit holes. Also dedicating other time to write and so that I’m not writing late at night would help me feel like I have time to do it.
– Showering at night. Like tooth brushing, this is one of those tasks that seems more and more insurmountable the later it gets, but which I also really want to do before I get in bed some nights. There was a time when I could tell the baby that I needed to go take a shower so I couldn’t lie next to her until she fell asleep, and it was the only excuse she would accept. So maybe I should again link this to doing it directly after I put the kids in bed. (I’ve been reading B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits, and he talks a lot about linking aspirational habits to everyday trigger events, which is a tactic I think might be really good for me.)
– Getting into my pjs earlier. When it gets too late I just roll into bed in whatever I’m wearing, which isn’t the best, though I can’t really articulate why – I mean at the very least, I make the kids put on pjs, so I should walk the walk. Maybe the pjs should go on when I brush my teeth? I think the bigger idea is that I should frontload the pre-bed maintenance things so that they aren’t a barrier to getting into bed.
–Keeping tv time to just one episode or one hour.

I would like to have the following evening routine:

5:30p/6:00p – Dinner
6:15p – Clean Up. (It really helps if this gets done before dinner so that I don’t have to do it after the kids are in bed.)
7:00p – Time with kids. Game night, walk, Golden Girls.
7:45p – Start the kids to bed. I get into my pjs and brush teeth with them.
8:45p – little kids asleep. I take a shower if I need to
9:00p – Big kid in bed. TV time with Husband. (fit in the yoga/ exercise here if I want to do a longer routine.)
10:00p – work on my own project (writing, tidying something.) Think about the next day, prep things if I need to.
10:30p – Start bedtime routine – yoga, journal, read. STAY OFF SCREENS!!!!
11:30p – into bed!

Weekly recap + what we ate: putting on hard pants

Work clothes. Nary a sweat pant in sight.

The five year old is in a phase where he only wants to wear “soft pants”, meaning sweatpants or fleece pants. Jean, khakis, cords… these are all considered “hard pants” and not as desirable to wear.

This week, we’ve started rehearsal and I’ve put on hard pants again. I can’t remember the last time I wore my jeans. They feel stiff and constricting, pulling me in and making me stand up straighter. But maybe this is what they always felt like and I just can’t remember.

I suppose I’ve also put my metaphorical hard pants on as well, re-learning how to do my job and interact with people. I’ve definitely stumbled a few times and dropped things that used to be second nature to me. (I forgot to introduce the music staff to the singers at the music rehearsals. It’s a nice formality and no one died, but I’ve written a note to myself to remember for next time.) Part of me is so excited to be in rehearsal again, listening to singers and music and doing my part to bring things to stage. And another part of me keeps wondering if I’m getting things right. I mean it’s not the cliched brain surgery, and no one’s life is in my hands, but there are certainly a lot of moving parts and people to manage.

So how did I do on my “maintaining humanity” goals this first week of rehearsal?

Sleep – pretty good. I think I went to bed t 12:30am one night but all other nights I was in bed by midnight. Which is huge for me. Of course, there was the one night that the Husband fell asleep in the five year old’s bed during bedtime books (the man is definitely working above and beyond in the “unpaid labor” department these days). So the five year old decided to sleep in our bed. And some time around 1am, the Husband came to bed and then around 3am the baby also found her way to our bed. So… not a great night for sleep even though I was in bed for a good number of hours.
Outside Time and Exercise: I did manage to go on a 20-30 minute walk on each of my lunch breaks. And I did wake up early enough to do a 20 minute yoga podcast, though one time it was interrupted by the kids so it was more like 15 minutes.
Plan/Journal/Read – not exactly daily habit, but managed to do this three times this week. I almost forgot about the five year old’s appointment for his second COVID shot – we were about to walk to school when I remembered. Oops.
Meal Plan/ Healthy snacks – Well, it was Valentines Day week, so there was an explosion of chocolate in the office, which I didn’t even try to resist. One colleague brought in these dark chocolate Reese Peanut Cup thins, which were really really good. But I also managed to bring in healthy snacks – fruit, veggies, and string cheese. As for meal planning, the Husband and I split dinners and it turned out pretty well balanced eating week. The InstantPot was definitely the week’s dinner MVP.
Water – did better on this than last week!
Communication – Not great this week. I had to work later than I had anticipated most nights, so I missed dinner more than I had planned and wasn’t great about keeping the Husband updated as to when I would be home. It’s definitely a work in progress. Will continue to try to be better about this.

Some good moments:

The five year old did indeed get his second COVID vaccine shot! Hooray! I also managed to get a parking ticket while at the pediatrician’s office because the appointment went long and I am the Luddite who still actually uses coins in meters as opposed to pays with the app. So funny story, though, is that there were two tickets on my car when I returned, and as I went to read them, a wind came and blew the one ticket away – just snatched it and carried it off, leaving me holding the yellow envelope. I had visions of never being able to pay the ticket and the fee just building and building… I called the Husband in a panic and he said, “Just call the number on the envelope!” Which of course was the solution. Turns out my tags were expired. Like by a year. January 2021. Cue more panic and bemoaning the difficulties of adulting.

Okay, turns out I hadn’t forgotten to renew the registration. I had just forgotten to put the sticker on my plate. I got home later and dug through the mail bin and found the registration and sticker. This sticker has been sitting in the mail bin for. a. year. Yeah… major adulting fail. Expensive adulting fail. But hey, at least the COVID shot was free.

-One of the great joys about going on a walk on my lunch break is that I work in a really fun a quirky neighborhood. Some highlights this week:

A random swing on an urban tree next to a parking lot. One day I sat on the swing and ate my lunch. The sky was so blue and it was thirty degrees outside. There was something really soothing about lunch on a swing on a winter’s afternoon.

This cheerful, colourful house – bright yellow against the blue sky.

One windy windy day as I walked by a music store, I heard music. I looked up and there were windchimes buffeted in the gales, making music. I stopped to listen and savour, even as the same chilling wind that made music with the windchimes bit into my skin.

– One night (actually the aforementioned night of EVERYONE in our bed), I realized that the book I was reading (Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle – a very very good read), was due the next day, and since it was a Libby ebook, I couldn’t renew it. To add to that, it’s a pretty popular book right now so it took forever to get it off the wait list. The app said I had two hours left to read and twelve hours left in the borrowing period. So after I came home from work, put the kids to bed, and ate some dinner, I put on my pjs and climbed into bed with the book, determined to finish it. It felt so indulgent to just sit in bed an read. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Sure, I often read before I go to bed, but that’s often only 15 minutes or so. This was almost two hours. I tried not to feel guilty about the dishes not done or the laundry not folded. Maybe I’ll get to the point when I’ll be able to sit in bed and read the evening away and not feel guilty. Well, that might be what vacation is for.

In the end, I didn’t finish the book that night, but I woke up the next morning and finished reading it just in the nick of time for the book to disappear back into the Libby ether. The kids maybe had to fend for themselves for breakfast. But that’s what cereal is for.

-I’ve been taking part in the Wordle craze – it’s been a great brain break. I can tell when I’ve had a long day when I don’t remember if I’ve done the day’s puzzle or not, and it turns out I have. This week’s puzzle had a couple that definitely challenged me:

Both these involved random guessing and maybe some Googling. I don’t necessarily think of that as cheating. Actually, as I inch closer to that sixth try, I tell myself, “Well, at least, if I break my streak, I’ll have learned a new word.” So this week, I learned two new words!

For the record, an agora is an open space used for gatherings and markets. Pupal is the adjective version of pupa.

-The baby had managed to lose her mittens again. The other day, we were getting ready to go outside and she said, “Mittens!”
Then she ran downstairs and came back with two mismatched socks that she had clearly pulled from the mismatched sock bin and stuck her hands in them. How adorably innovative!

-Valentines Day! I don’t usually go all out for the kids’ Valentines day at school, but it’s been such a weird 23 months that I felt like I wanted to do something special. So for the ten year old, we ordered some fun animal post its for her to hand out. For the five year old, I ordered pop bracelets and made little valentines that said “You Make My Heat Pop!” I sat with him and we thought up of a nice thing to say for each of his classmates and wrote it on the card. I was really touched and impressed that he could think of something specific for each of his classmates. Though for one kid, he said, “I like E—- because he is not funny.” Which apparently caused some consternation on the part of E’s mother.

-Book props. In our show there is a book that we use as a prop. I love book props; they are usually supposed to look plain and period and you never know where they come from or what might be in them. It generally doesn’t matter what’s in them as long as they are the right size and look appropriately of the time. I like flipping through them; often they’re something dry yet flowery from many years past. The prop book in our show is from 1913, written by a man named James Whitcomb Riley who was a poet and writer and also responsible for creating Orphan Annie and the inspiration for Raggedy Anne. apparently he was quite popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What I found particularly interesting about this book was that most of the pages of this book are still unopened. I was originally going to say “uncut” but then I went down an internet rabbit hole and discovered that “unopened” is the correct phrase for this book with its pages still joined together at the edges. It’s There is something a little sad to me about a book that’s over 100 years old, and still unread. I did enjoy, however, getting to indulge in some poetry reading during a slow moment in rehearsal.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I wasn’t home in time, but the Husband made dumplings and green beans and saved some for me to eat when I got home.

Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday! In honour of the teams, the Husband made Cincinnati Chili and Orange Julius. Friends brought veggies and other snacks.

Monday: The Husband made Stuffed Pepper Soup. It was supposed to be a casserole, but didn’t quite turn out that way. Really tasty nonethless.

Tuesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry eaten with rice.

Wednesday: Pasta and meatballs in InstantPot. Made ahead in the morning so that there would be dinner ready when everyone got home. I really love making spaghetti and meatballs in the IP. It’s a little soggier than making everything separate, but so much easier to cook and clean up; everything just goes into the pot – sauce, noodles, meatballs on top – cook high pressure for 8 minutes. All done. I was pretty happy with the meatballs too – I didn’t have enough meat, so I threw about a cup of mushrooms in the food processor and then added that to the meat – it turned out really well!

Thursday: Black Bean Soup in InstantPot. Another make-ahead meal since I wasn’t going to be home in time for dinner. It turned out a little thick so the Husband put it in wraps and the family at it as burritos.

Friday: Pizza and Aladdin. The Husband made pizza. I made it home in time to eat leftovers, though I missed the actual movie.

Five Years Realizing Life

2016-2020 on the left. 2021-2025 on the right.

For Christmas in 2015, my husband bought me this five year journal. In it, he wrote:

Happy Christmas! I’m giving you this journal on December 25, 2015. I can’t wait to hear abut all the wonderful adventures you’ve had in 2020!

When I started this journal in 2016, we were in Taiwan, our first (and so far only) trip there with the 8 year old, who was then three. As we were were waiting for our flight out of SFO we received news that my grandmother had passed away. The trip became quite a larger family reunion than we could have imagined as all my aunts, uncles and cousins came back to Taiwan for the funeral. It was quite possibly the last time I was together with all my uncles, aunts and cousins on my mother’s side.

I think about where we were then. We were about to experience our third miscarriage in two years, and the idea of a second child, let alone a third, was seeming quite remote. That was the year I got to work on a Ring Cycle, that pinnacle of opera-dom. It was my last year working summer opera.

And here we are, 2020 just having ridden off into the sunset, taking with it times that I couldn’t have imagined, even if I were the type to speculate about the future.

Sitting down with this journal and a cup of hot tea has become a morning ritual whenever I can manage it. Over the years, my writing and pen tips have gotten smaller as I try to cram more and more thoughts onto the lines assigned for that date in that year. (I now use a 0.38 Pentel Energel Pen. Also periodically the Muji 0.3 coloured gel pens, but those tend to bleed, as I found out after an unfortunate incident with the baby and the aforementioned cup of tea.) As I write I like to glance at where we were in life the year before, then two, three, four years before. Often there are striking parallels – like coincidentally meeting up with friends on the same date two years in a row.

I tend to write about the day past, reflecting on what happened. I try to think of the whole day because so often what sticks in one’s mind is how the day ended. There have been many a day that have ended miserably that started wonderfully and I know I can’t let how a day ends define the whole day.

All in all, there are more entries that I thought there would be, even if, some days there is just a hastily scrawled “Tech.” or “Two chorus day”. No further explanation needed.

Even though sometimes there feels like there is a same-ness to life, that life has a certain repetitive rhythm, no two entries over five years are identical. Sometimes I do record an event that is recurring (case in point… “Still no sleep for baby”), but that event is nestled in a whole day that is different from the one before it. Similarly, the usual rehearsal/ tech / performance routine is only repetitive on paper; each show has its own challenges and moments of triumph. And when I look more broadly, at the weeks rather than the days, I realize that even when I feel stuck in an interminable grind, things do change and life does eventually move on to the next thing.

There are also empty entries. My second trimester pregnant with the baby is largely blank, for example. But this in itself is telling- I was horribly tired and working two operas back to back. I don’t need to have written it down to remember how I would steal away to take a nap in my car on breaks between rehearsals. Or how I didn’t tell anyone at work that I was pregnant again, even as I worked a gala in a slinky sequined dress and heels while six months pregnant. This I remember acutely without having written it down (and now, ironically, I’ve recorded here for posterity).

Such big things I do remember – glamourous once in a lifetime galas, births, deaths, family reunions. Also, surprisingly, the ranting venting entries of many frustrations all read surprisingly familiar. At some point in the past five years of looking back on journal entries, I’ve come to realize that I tend to remember how I felt about things more than what I did; the little things that annoy me still tend to annoy me. The rage and anger I felt about certain things have perhaps not been let go as much as I had hoped.

On the other hand, it is the mundane details of my day to day that that I have difficutly recalling and thus am most grateful for having a recorded. For some reason my memory of the daily grind is ephemeral. Looking back at the 183o (+/-) entries documented over five years really brings back for me the smaller moments of life- the long walks, the chilly days, what we ate, friends we saw. Sunshine. Playdates. Paperwork. Library visits. Naps. Snuggles. The banal. It is these things that Emily Webb speaks about in Our Town when she says:

“Do human beings ever realize life while they live it – every, every minute?”

Emily Webb is right. The anger and negativity, while definitely therapeutic to write down, is not what I want to remember. Realizing life I think is in those little moments of joy and security. I recently read a definition of bliss as “a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive and conscious.” (David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, quoted in Kieran Setiya’s Midlife). I don’t want to be inauthentic about what I write in my journal, but I do think that I need to remember to record the bliss as well as the blech – to balance writing for the moment and writing for my future self.

A couple of months ago, Levenger was having a sale on their five year journals. I scooped up three of them. At the time it seemed quite indulgent. These journals are beautifully made- the paper is smooth, the linen covers are durable, the binding is sturdy- and they are not cheap – though I suppose if you look at cost per entry, they are actually quite affordable. The Levenger sale definitely prompted me to stock up, hoarding them like toilet paper. When they arrived I looked at them – decadently packaged in an elegant silver box and wrapped in a soft cloth. And it struck me that I just purchased something that I intend to use in the year 2035. There is something comforting in that. I can’t predict whether or not my child will sleep tonight, or what the three year old will next have a meltdown about. But, if all goes according to plan, in 2035 I will write something in the last of these three journals that I bought in 2020. Suddenly I feel like I didn’t buy enough. There is a whole other lifetime beyond 2035.