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 fun activities that added a dash of something fun 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 fun treat to go. The other 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.
At the Museum, the 6 and 9 year old got activity books to fill out, 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.
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 docents 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 it was really cool that the NGA had employees who walked around and engaged people about what they 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.
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.
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).
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.
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 the giant Hello Kitty that had been up on her wall down. 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. 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.
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.
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.)
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?