Tag: weekly menu

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:

three bowls of instant noodles are lined up on a table. The bowl at the top of the picture is being eaten by a child in a purple robe. Each bowl is a different brand of ramen.

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: Kids activities give me existential angst

We had a lovely low key weekend –
Saturday, the Husband took the kids to Longwood Gardens. I stayed behind because I had to work. I ended up going out to dinner with my work friend after rehearsal because the family wasn’t home yet. We went to a mediocre Mexican restaurant – my friend wanted a Margarita. The menu featured some interesting Indian/Mexican fusion items like Paneer tacos and Chicken Tikka enchiladas. I was tempted to try the fusion-y items, but ultimately got ceviche, which was fine. At any rate, the company and conversation was good and sometimes I think the opportunity to commune is really what I’m paying for when I go out to eat.

Sunday, I managed to sneak in a run and trip to the Farm stand before going to work. Summer Produce!!! Makes me happy. I went to work for a very short rehearsal (only 1.5 hours!), and then I picked up the 14 year old from a friend’s house, went grocery shopping, and then joined the rest of the family for dinner at one of our favorite dumpling and noodle places. The Husband was already there with the 4 year old and the 9 year old and two of the 9 year old’s friends. They had gone to Dave and Buster’s earlier in the afternoon as a belated birthday celebration for the 9 year old. His birthday was in January, and we (I) just…. never got around to planning him a party then. But to my mind, Dave and Busters and noodles with two good friends is a better celebration than laser tag with ten so-so friends (which was his first choice that I never got around to planning).

I do worry that the 9 year old doesn’t seem to have much of a social life. Is this a boy thing? When our oldest was this age – well, it was COVID, so there’s that… but before COVID, she was constantly having play dates and hanging out with other friends. What do 9 year old boys do together? He’s mentioned video games, but I don’t think having another kid over for three hours of MarioKart is my ideal. Maybe I’m being judgmental and pearl-clutchy… He still likes Legos and building and imaginative play, and riding his bike but it seems that’s not the norm among the other kids in his class. He tells me that he’s the only kid in 3rd grade without a his own screen. I kind of doubt that. But maybe not?

Well in the world of other things I’m having existential angst about – I’m staring at August just around the corner, and I’m thinking, “Whoa, where did summer go?” Our school doesn’t start until the end of August, but I feel like I need to start thinking now about logistics of things. Actually I feel like I’m behind to figure out the logistics of things.

It always takes up a lot of mental energy to decide what activities to sign the kids up for. I feel really lucky that we live in an area where there are so many options for things to learn and sports to play, but also it makes for some really tough decisions. Or maybe they’re tough for me because I’m over thinking it? Okay, these are the ones on my mind right now.

Soccer- the 9 year old wants to play soccer, but his team from last year broke up at the end of the season because the parent coach decided not to coach anymore. It seems like in our area, by the time kids are 9 or 10 most kids play either travel or in more competitive leagues that practice 2-3 times a week. The 9 year old just wants a low pressure team that practices once a week, and there aren’t a lot of options for that. So I’m going to have to more research and see if I can find a place for him to play. There are maybe ten or fifteen different soccer leagues in our area…. Which is the right one? Will one of them be the right one???? Does it matter???

Tap dance- both the 6 year old and the 9 year old want to learn tap dances. But is that too many activities??? The 9 year old is an old soul home body so any time he expresses interest in doing something that will get him out of the house I want to jump on it.

Swimming – At the end of Summer Swim team season, there is always a lot of momentum around continuing swimming through the rest of the year. I had to silence the swim team parent’s WhatsApp group because the chatter about all the different swim programs (some competitive and some not) was starting to cause me anxiety and self doubt. The 14 year old wants to continue at the swim clinic she’s been doing for the past four years, but there were several parents on the chat that had really negative things to say about the lack of competent coaches in the program, which kind of got into my head. Also – we always carpooled with our neighbors to swim clinic, but I think they are looking for a different option for their kid who is swimming on her high school team now. All to say, I’m wondering if I need to find another swim option for the 14 year old. BUT it’s the one she wants to do and she’s not that serious- she just wants to swim laps once a week to stay in shape. So the easy answer is to just stick with the same thing.
Then there’s the question of the two younger kids. They could benefit from swimming all year – the 6 year old wants to do swim team next year and the 9 year old wants to get better at swimming. They aren’t good enough for the program the 14 year old does – so I have to find a different program for them. I don’t want to spend all my time on the internet researching swim programs, but i might have to invest some time.

Piano- I think we’re looking at 6:30am for the 14 year old’s piano lessons because of the early start time of high school. I don’t know why I’m having angst about this. It is what it is and at this point it’s just logistics. Also it means bringing the 6 year old with me at 6:30a and on the piano lesson / high school run because I can’t leave her at home by herself.

Gymnastics- the 6 year old wants to do gymnastics. Again there are at least four options to choose from, one of which – the closest one – we’ve done but is kind of a zoo so we would rather find a different one. So many choices.

Fencing- for the 9 year old. This i s not giving me angst because the Husband takes care of this.

And then there’s all those other classes and things that I think the kids would find fun, but really we don’t have the time or money or energy to do everything. But I feel like maybe I’m failing my kids not to let them try. And then also am I over-scheduling us? I had activities every night when I was this age, so it doesn’t feel excessive to me. But also – I work a lot of evenings and weekends so the burden would be on the Husband most of the time to get kids to activities. And on and on. And then I just put off thinking about it and then sign up s fill up and then we end up doing nothing. So. Maybe I need to make a spreadsheet.

Grateful For: Well, let’s turn from existential angst to things giving me existential joy right now:

-The 14 year old made me lunch one day this week when I was home in the afternoon. WE had gone to H-Mart and Costco that morning and she made me a plate of noodles, a bao, and onigiri. It was really sweet of her.

-The air conditioning works in our rehearsal room. The air conditioning is broken in the building we rehearse in, but at least it still works in the rehearsal hall. I am grateful for this every time I step our of the rehearsal hall and into the lobby and am immersed in a hot sauna of damp air.

-Cuddles with the 6 year old. Sometimes in the morning when I’m reading in bed, the youngest will get get into bed with me and just lie next to me while I read. It’s such a sweet moment. (Though brief because then she’s up asking for breakfast. )

-Two nights in a row I had an evening rehearsal cancelled because a singer was sick, and so had two unexpected evenings at home with the family.

-Going on a bike/run with the 9 year old after dropping his sister at camp – we went along Rock Creek Trail, he biked and I ran. The weather has been my ideal summer – dry, breezy, hovering in the mid 80s and rather perfect in the shade.

-Summer produce – Corn and tomatoes and beans and peaches and melons.

-My intern brought me an onigiri! It turns out there is a Japanese market ten minutes from work and he went there for lunch and brought me an onigiri. I don’t love gifting up at work, but he wouldn’t take my money, so I’ll have to repay him with an onigiri delivery another time. On that note, I’m really enjoying working with this intern – like me, he’s the child of Asian immigrants, so we’ve sort of bonded over our Asian parents and working in the arts and things like Asian hospitality (hence the refusing payment for the onigiri), and Asian fruit.

A cellophane wrapped triangle onigiri sitting next to a novel.
Mid rehearsal day snack and reading time.

Looking Forward To:

-Trying new Spindthrift flavors! Spindthrift is currently my favorite brand of bubbly water – I like that the flavours actually taste like fruit. Costco had this pack of new to me flavors- tropical passion fruit, cherry, and yuzu mandarin- , so I picked it up and am excited to try it. (I love passionfruit anything.)

-Tech week next week. It’s going to be fast and furious and hot. The venue is outdoors and currently the weather report is high 80s and 90s. I’m looking forward to the coolers of Gatorade that the venue stocks backstage and also the ginormous fans.

-One last day off before tech week. I’m going to boil eggs, set out my laundry, cut up fruit and vegetables, and stock up on candy (Twin Snakes! Gummy Nerds! Dark Chocolate). Also take my kids to all their activities.

-Hanging out with my friend K, who I haven’t seen all summer – we have plans to hang out on my day off before opening/closing night. (There’s only one performance.)

-what am I going to with all these peaches????

an orange cardboard box, full of ripe peaches
If you ever wonder what 25 lbs of peaches looks like – here it is.

-School supply shopping! Maybe. I love school supply shopping, but my kids find it tedious and thus make it painful for me.

-Bikes! We’re going to rent bikes one day while we’re in Niagara on the Lake, and I’m really excited.

-Reading more of this (so far) fun, frothy book (found in a Little Free Library!)

Annabel Monaghan's novel Dolly All the Time, a brightly coloured cover featuring a lady on a yacht. The book is in a sheet protector.
It’s in a sheet protector because I was reading it at the pool and I didn’t want it to get wet in my swim bag.

It’s crunch time at work, and I need all the light propulsive reads to get me through. I thought this was a fun list of page turners, both backlist and current buzzy novels.

What We Ate:

Monday: The family had pizza and cake at the swim team award ceremony. I was working and brought sesame noodle leftovers for dinner. The 14 year old got one of the Coach’s Choice awards – this is the third one that she’s got during her five years on swim team. I’m really proud of her – she’s not the fastest swimmer, but she’s an amazing teammate. The 6 year old’s paper plate award was “Born in the water”, the 9 year old’s was “Practice Hustler” (He didn’t swim in any meets, but they appreciated that he came to practices and worked hard), and the 14 year old’s was “Swiss Army Knife” because she could do anything. The 14 year old and the 9 year old also got their 5 year swim team awards, though the 9 year old spent 4 years on pre-team, so I’m a little dubious if he should be getting a 5 year award. But hey – not my call and it made him excited to get something that his little sister didn’t.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday returns after so many weeks at the pool! I made Cuban Garlic-y pork in the Instant Pot which the family ate with cabbage and guac. I had sesame noodles at work.

Wednesday: Roasted Salmon, with boiled Corn and steamed green beans. The 14 year old made dinner. Or started dinner. Then after she put the salmon in the oven, she threw up and went to bed and the Husband finished making dinner.

Thursday: Greek tofu lettuce wraps. The Husband cooked. I was at work (eating sesame noodles again. There were a lot of leftovers of that.)

Friday: Pizza (take out) and movie night. Not sure what movie was watched. I think it was a Ninjango movie. I had – you guessed it! Sesame noodles.

Saturday: Went out for Mexican with work friend. I think the Husband fed the last of the sesame noodles to the kids when they got home from Longwood Gardens.

Sunday: Noodles and dumplings and scallion pancakes and all sorts of yummy food at Yu Noodles.

That’s the news from last week here. I have one day of work and one free day this weekend so I don’t think there will be any grand adventures. But it will be nice not to have to rush around, I think.

Tell me, friends- what’s your favorite summer produce? How do you like to celebrate your birthday? What would you do with 25lbs of peaches? What was your favorite activity as a child?

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.

The McGyver repair.

-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: Good-bye June; Hello July!

We’re back from our holiday weekend of Taiwan camp (the kids) and reading retreat (the Husband and me). Last week was a short week of work for me, which was nice since my mother, brother, and niece were in town. My brother was only staying long enough to drop off my niece who would be going to Taiwan camp with my kids and my mother later in the week, but before he left, we did manage a trip to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.

The Udvar-Hazy Center is probably the more impressive museum here in DC, featuring two large hanger with over 200 air and space crafts. Some really famous aircrafts are there, like the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima), the Concorde, and the space shuttle Discovery. There is also an observation tower where you can see the planes land and take off from Dulles Airport. When we went up, there was a docent in front of a flight tracker screen and he told us all about how you can track information about commercial flights – their paths, their altitudes, etc. He was using an app called FlightRadar24 and it was really neat to see and think about all those planes taking all those people to all those cities.

It’s always fun to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center – also pretty cool that it’s a Smithsonian Museum so admission is free, though parking is $15. But you know what’s not fun? Getting home from there. The Udvar-Hazy Center is actually close to my summer job, and if you’ve been around here, I’m sure you’ve heard me complain about the commute. Well it took us almost 90 minutes to get home from visiting the aircrafts. So much ugh.

The rest of the end of June/ beginning of July was taking the kids to Taiwan Camp – twice! My mother, niece, and the 6 and 9 year old went up on Wednesday for the first day of camp, and the 14 year old went on Thursday because she was doing basketball camp that week too. After dropping the 14 year old, the Husband and I went on our reading retreat, which I’ll recap in another post, but here’s a preview:

One of the four bookstores we visited over two days.

We didn’t do much for the 4th of July since we were hunkered and reading and it was so very very hot and then there was that huge storm. Sunday we picked everyone up from Taiwan camp. After a stop for ice cream – actually two stops because the first place I wanted to go was closed because they had lost power, a sad fate for an ice cream shop – we took my mom and my niece to the airport – they were flying back to California that night. My nuclear family headed home where we unpacked, had dinner, played a round of MarioKart and then sent the kids to bed. The Husband and I watched the Mexico v. England soccer game. What a wild ride of a game that was!

I ended up staying up way past the end of the game because it turns out my mom and niece’s 7pm flight was delayed due to the weather – we’d been having super rainy thunderstorms. I thought I might have to go pick them up if their flight got cancelled, but it wasn’t officially cancelled until 12:30am. They got re-booked on a flight this morning at 6am so decided to stay at the airport. What a travel ordeal. What was originally a direct flight from BWI to SFO was, the next day, a flight from BWI to Chicago to San Diego to San Francisco. And after that they still had to get home to Berkeley. Props to my mom for dealing with all that. I hope neither my mom or my niece are terribly scarred by all that. Some times you just get really unlucky travel days.

And now I’m home and ready to jump into another show. But before I get too deep into the month, shall we look at how June 2o26 was?

June Highlights:
-Going to a weekday matinee of The Devil Wears Prada 2 with my friend.

-Piano recitals for the 9 and 14 year old. Voice recital for the 14 year old.

-Summer produce from the Farmer’s market.

-The 14 year old’s promotion ceremony – she is finished with middle school! High school here we come.

-Dentist appointments for me and the kids. To do checked off. (Did I mention my dentist has an office beagle???):

-So much pool time – swim meets, swim practices, swimming laps, cooling off in the waters.

-The last day of school for the other two kids. Yay we survived our first school year without day care payments. Not that life gets any less expensive. It’s just the money goes different places.

-My first foray to Royal Farms for their fried chicken.

-The first show at my summer gig – tech/ opened/ closed. Getting to work with a new to me Technical Director who was so good at her job and really cared about the singers not just being safe on stage, but also feeling safe on stage.

Our set – I think this is one of the prettiest sets I’ve ever worked on.

-Going to see Shakespeare in the Park – As You Like It. How lovely to be watching the residents of the Forest of Arden get matched and unmatched under the stars.

-Picnic lunch with three friends from college. So great to catch up.

-Seeing the Tall Ships in Baltimore Harbor.

-Visits from my brother, niece, and mother. Going to hot pot and the Udvar-Hazy museum.

-I went running three times! It’s pretty paltry, but it’s more than the month before, so I’m kind of stoked about it.

– Watching the World Cup. So we don’t have Fox, but we do have Telemundo via Peacock, so I’ve been watching all the games in Spanish, which is actually really fun because I feel like I can focus on the game and not get side tracked by the commentary. Plus I get to hear the most famous announcements of “Goooooooooool!”

-Favorite Dinner this month: Take out Style Sesame Noodles w/ teriyaki chicken. Perfect meal for the pool – can be eaten cold, packs a lot of flavor and vegetables and filling enough to fuel swim meets.

-Favorite thing we watched: Derry Girls. hilarious. The Husband said it actually reminded him a lot about his childhood growing up in Indiana.

June Lowlights:
-Some house things with my parent’s rental unit. Unbloggable, but it seems like every month there’s always something. I guess that’s just the price of owning a home. (literally….)

-The awful commute to and from my summer gig. Sorry if you’re tired of hearing about this one, but it is a truly awful time suck.

-Feeling very stretched. I think this is a lot to do with the point above – I spend so much time commuting that I’m finding I don’t have as much time for other life/family things. Spoiler alert – this will probably also be a July lowlight too….

-I got a stupid parking ticket. Again. This was totally my fault- I was just making a quick stop and I didn’t pay the meter. Stupid mistake.

Checking in on 2026 Aspirations:
Creativity:
-painted two pictures (10/26 pictures painted for the year.)
-wrote 1 haiku (16/52 haikus written this year… need to work on this.)
-finished two crossword puzzles (My goal is to finish one every week, but I got behind)

Consumption:
-1 live performance – As You Like It
-1 Museum – Udar-Hazy Center (see above!)
-0 hikes. (need to work on this….)

Health:
I was rubbish at tracking exercise in June. But I did start swimming while the kids were at swim team practice. It’s been too hot for me to go running consistently. But I did run inconsistently.
-Daily yoga – I think this was 25/30 days. Like I said – rubbish tracking in June.
-3 vegan dinners. Two of those were the Teriyaki Tofu from America’s Test Kitchen. It is that good. And easy. (goal is 5 vegan dinners a month, but given that we were at the pool almost every night, I’d say any vegan dinner is a plus.)

Quote of the Month:
“You can’t thrive for free”
-from Netflix’s Beef. Said by the Ali Wong character to her mother in law in regards to the cost of raising a child. I thought this was hilarious. Also we watched an episode of Beef and I don’t know if I’ll return for the rest – it’s pretty dark and full of people doing things that range from unfortunate to reprehensible. Not my jam. I know it was critically acclaimed. sigh. Sometimes I don’t feel cool enough for the critically acclaimed media that everyone loves.

Looking Forward to in July:
-Starting rehearsals for my second opera this summer. Excited to again be working with some great colleagues.

-World Cup. I have rehearsal on the afternoon of the World Cup Finals. Today I asked my stage manager if we could move rehearsal. I was only half kidding.

-planning our Niagara Trip. The trip isn’t until August, but planning is part of the fun, right?

-speaking of which, there is an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art featuring paintings of Niagara Falls, I want to try to take the kids before our trip – might be a fun tie in. Also there’s a Mary Cassatt exhibit there too. Might be the same one I saw in Philadelphia, but Cassatt is always worth seeing either way.

-Peach Truck Peaches!!! I ordered a 25 lb box of peaches from the Peach Truck.

-Digging into the pile of books I bought on my reading retreat:

Grateful for the week:

-$2.50 ice cream scoops for 4th of July.

I got a peanut butter chocolate pretzel.

-This imperfect country that celebrated its birthday last week. Look, there are a lot of not great things happening. BUT… I once had to spend three days at the INS office replacing my lost green card and I realized that there are much worse things going on in other countries. Things are messed up, but in the scheme of things, we’re really very lucky we live in America.

-That my mother, brother, and niece came to visit. It was nice to spend time with them. I got to have a few moments of one on one time with my niece, and we talked about books and school and food, and it was cool to see her becoming her own person.

-Slow mornings with the family and not having to rush to get to school or work.

-That the kids had a good time at Taiwan camp.

-Air conditioning.

-Food that lasts in the fridge. Actually refrigeration in general. We got home from our holiday weekend away and I was going to make our pantry standby of pasta with red sauce for dinner, but I was unexcited by the prospect, so I looked in the fridge and there was some ground turkey from before we left. I looked up ground turkey recipes and found this recipe for Italian Wedding Soup, and in addition to the turkey, it needed kale (which had been in our fridge for at least two weeks) and eggs (which were from at least two weeks ago), lemons (at least a week old), parmesan cheese (who knows how old that is..) and other things that we had in our pantry (chicken broth, pasta, panko break crumbs). Instead of parsley and garlic, I dumped the week old zhug sauce (from when we had shawarma earlier in the week) into the meatball mix. It felt really good to use up bits and bobs to make a really tasty meal that was a step above plain pasta and red sauce.

What we ate:

Monday: Cauliflower Sheetpan Shawarma with Tahini Sauce and Zhoug Sauce. My brother was visiting and he’s vegetarian. And I had a cauliflower to use up, so this was perfect. Honestly, though, it’s all about the sauces.

Tuesday: Chicken Wings and steamed green beans – eaten at the pool. My mother made her famous soy garlic chicken wings.

Wednesday: We ordered Indian Food for dinner – The 14 year old’s choice since it was her first time being alone with her parents since she was five, before we had more babies.

Thursday: Grabbed food on the road while driving 14 year old to Taiwan camp. I got Naan Tacos from a place called Tikka Shack Indian Grub, which I guess is a chain. They were really tasty.

Friday: Made dinner from stuff we picked up at the markets – Sage pork chops, steamed green beans, corn, salad, sauerkraut. it was delicious.

The salad is in a pot because the Air BnB did not have serving bowls. What the what????

Saturday: Went out to an Indian restaurant for dosas. Wow typing this out, i’m realizing that I had Indian for dinner three times this week. I do Love Indian food. If I had to choose a last meal, I would have a hard time deciding between noodles and dumplings or Indian Food.

Sunday: Italian Wedding Soup with Turkey Meatballs from NY Times Cooking. This was fast, and easy. I added dollops of Ricotta on top for added creaminess.

And onwards we move into July. 2026 now has more days behind us than in front of us – whew, that’s a thought.

What critically acclaimed tv show do you not get? What cuisine could you eat multiple times a week and not get tired of it? Favorite pantry meal? Are you watching the World Cup too? Can you thrive for free????

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.
Kitchen of the Belle Poule.

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.

Gentle rain on the pool….

-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: A Weekend in the Life

Last week was hot hot hot! It was practically summer here in the DC area with temperatures in the high 80s. Which all makes me wonder, with a little bit of dread, what July and August will be like.

I’ve done “Day in the Life” posts before, but usually for a week day, never for a weekend. I feel like our weekends are just as full of details as our weekdays. Part of that is because when I’m on a show, I usually work at least one day on the weekend, which makes my weekend essentially just one day. Which makes it very un-weekend like. Either way. I guess life is full of details, right? (note – there aren’t a lot of pictures in this post because I never remember to take a picture when I’m in that headspace.) So here is a Weekend in a Life, starting with getting off work on Friday night – because isn’t that when the weekend starts?

Friday 4/17:
6:30pm – Walking out the door after work. Head home for pizza and movie night, our Friday tradition.

7:00pm – Arrive home and settle into the basement. Tonight, the Husband bought pizza from a Detroit style pizza place. It features a very thick crust and the tomato sauce on top of the pizza rather than in the pizza. It’s tasty, but oh so filling. I also eat an entire bag of salad. I might have eaten too many Mini Eggs at work today and felt the need to re-set.
We watched Wicked: For Good. Maybe it’s because I missed the first 45 minutes of the movie since I got home late, but… I found part two not as satisfying as part one. There weren’t as many songs and I found the plot hard to follow. But even still the visuals were gorgeous and the performances stellar.

8:45pm – The 6 and 9 year olds get ready to go to bed. PJs, brush teeth. I floss and brush as well. I cuddle with each of the kids for a little bit.

9:30pm – scroll for a little bit on my phone while lounging in the living room.

9:50pm – Get up to go clean the kitchen. Call my sister-in-law; we’ve been trying to catch up all week, but she’s in California and the time difference makes it hard. I get a hold of her just as she’s sitting down for dinner so I tell her I’ll call her back.

10:00pm – Take a shower while waiting to call my SIL back. Once I’m out of my shower, I write in my journals for a little bit.

10:40pm – Call SIL back. Talk to her while I clean the kitchen, and then zest lemons for lemonade concentrate. (I made a batch for Easter dinner and it was a huge hit, plus with the weather so hot this week, it’s nice to have lemonade concentrate in the fridge.) I also get to talk to my brother.

12:00am – say good night to my SIL. Finish up the lemonade concentrate. The recipe involves steeping the zest for an hour then using the zest water to make simple syrup that ks boiled for thirty minutes. After the simple syrup is cooled, add the lemon juice. The recipe is a bit time consuming, but it makes a lemonade concentrate that is the right combination of mouth-puckering and sugar high. In between steps for the lemonade concentrate, I scroll some more and read a little bit.

1:30am – to bed and sleep.

Saturday:
6:45 am – Awake. I read in bed for ten minutes, then get up and do a 25 minute yoga video.

7:30am – get dressed. I usually don’t get dressed until I’m ready to leave the house for the day, but this day a friend is dropping her kid off at 7:45am for a playdate while she goes to her older kids’ tournament. The Husband and the 9 year old have gone out to run errands.

8:30am – eat breakfast and read another chapter of Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. Pour the lemonade concentrate into jars (it was too hot last night) The 14 year old heads out to a volunteer stream clean up service project. She has to complete three service projects for her church confirmation this spring. Our neighbor is her sponsor, and takes her to the clean up.

lemonade!

9:00am – I get out the watercolour paints and the kids and I paint for a little bit.

9:30 am – get ready to go to work. It’s a beautiful sunny day so I ride my bike. I haven’t ridden my bike in maybe a year so and am not as in shape as I was, so I have to walk the bike rather than ride it up the big hill by work. This is one of my fitness markers – whether or not I can bike up the last big hill to work.

10:00a – Arrive at work. Change clothes. Check email, then on to the first rehearsal session of the day.

1:30pm – Lunch and then a walk to the local coffee shop. I buy coffee beans for the husband and an unsweetened matcha latte for myself. (Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Husband takes the 14 year old to her voice lessons and the other kids to the park. And then everyone gets boba afterwards.) We also spend some time working on our office puzzle. This one is kind of a doozy:

2:30pm – Back to rehearsal. This afternoon’s rehearsal is mostly dancing. I am in awe of how dancers operate – how they take words and light instruction and turn it into art with their bodies. It’s beautiful to watch. I also spend some time in another room setting up 60 chairs for the director’s presentation on Monday.

4:30pm – Rehearsal is over an hour early! The Stage Management Team wrap up today’s rehearsal by doing a couple of notes for the rehearsal report.

5:00pm – Since we are done early, I join the team for some drinks at the $1 oyster bar. I proceed to eat a dozen oysters, fried calamari, and French fries.

6:40pm – Time to go home. I take the bus, which drops me three blocks from the house. I love public transportation! (I’ve left my bike at work – I need to figure out how to get it home.)

7:00pm- Arrive home. The family is in the backyard, the Husband grilling brats for dinner while the kids play. I’m not hungry, but I sit with them outside while they eat. It’s lovely to be able to sit and eat outside before the mosquitoes get bad in the summer.

8:00pm- game night! I have the kids do pjs and brush teeth first, though. We play Magical Athlete, a new game that my cousin sent us. The game involves racing your players to an end point but each player has a special power – one gets to move 2 spaces any time someone rolls a 6, for example. Or one can forgo rolling the dice and always move 5 spaces. Or one moves other players back two spaces if they pass them. This game was great for our family because it is pretty straight forward and doesn’t require too much reading or higher level mathematics.

8:30pm- The 9 year old and 6 year old go to bed. I give cuddles.

9:00pm – I spend 30 minutes picking up the living room and dining room while the 14 year old does the dishes.

9:30pm – Journal, then 20 minute dumbbell strength video while watching tv with the Husband. I can’t remember what we watched, but it was probably Brooklyn 99. Put in a load of laundry.

10:30pm – Hang laundry up. I’ve been on an air dry my laundry kick for the past year or so. I’m not sure if it’s really a thing, but I read somewhere that hanging your clothes to dry helps them last longer, so I’ve started doing that. I have a folding rack for hanging laundry, which I set up in the basement. (Usually it’s in the bedroom, but I didn’t feel like taking it upstairs.)

11:00pm – TBH, not sure what happened in this hour – I probably scrolled and read blogs for a little bit.

12:00am – Read in bed.

1:00am – lights out and go to bed, though I’d been nodding off as I read for the past half hour.

Sunday:
7:45 am – slept in a little bit. I wake up and sat in bed and read a little bit. The Husband comes in and we chat about the day and some kid things. Then I do a ten minute yoga flow, scroll some more musical theatre videos.

8:45am – Take the 6 year old to her 9am Agility Class, where I watch her jump and flip and climb while typing my Cool Bloggers’ Walking Club Week 2 post, and start this post.

10:00am- Agility Class over, headed home to change and grab the 9 year old. We then head to our friend’s house for a photo shoot. Our friend is running for a seat on the County Council and he’s taking photos for his campaign materials. He asked a bunch of the people he knew to be in the photos.

10:45am- photo shoot. Really we mostly hang out, eat snacks, and chat with our friends while the video and photo team sets up the various shoots. The kids do one set of photos and the Husband and I do another set.

12:00pm- head home to eat lunch. As I’m making lunch for the 9 year old, I realize that the soccer game I thought was at 1pm was actually at 12:30pm. I put his sandwich, carrots, and apple slices on a plate for him to eat in the car, he grabs his gear and we get in the car. (in the mean time, the Husband takes the 6 year old to a playdate.)

12:45pm- arrive at soccer game only 15 minutes late. The 9 year old plays full back and then goalie.

1:30pm: soccer over. I take advantage of the soccer game being close to a couple major retail areas and run some errands-
-Penzys to pick up vanilla and other things.
-Kid to Kid for shorts/ skirts for the 6 year old. (I find myself very resistant to buying new clothes for the 6 year old because she doesn’t have younger siblings to pass them down to, but summer is coming and she needs shorts.)
-Target- stock up on pads and face cleanser, deodorant – you know all the household things that build up because one thing itself doesn’t merit a trip to the store..

4;00pm- home finally. Running errands was exhausting. I help the 14 year old make cookies ; i find retail draining. The 14 year old is having a moment because while making chocolate chip cookies, she accidentally melted the butter and thinks that she has ruined the cookies. I pull out the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooks Illustrated, which uses melted butter and try to salvage the mood.

5:30pm – eat dinner. We eat dinner early on Sunday nights because the 14 year old has swim clinic at 6:55pm. The Husband cooked, so I clean up the kitchen afterwards. I also boil a dozen eggs in the Instant Pot for easy breakfasts the upcoming week.

7:00pm – I take the 9 and 6 year olds for a walk to the park. A perk of the later sunset is we can go outside after dinner. We play at the park for 15 minutes then we walk home. On the way home, I see a puppy running loose, darting in and out of traffic, causing no small amount of fast braking. The dog stops and looks at me, but then runs away when I try to get it to stay on the sidewalk. I know nothing about dogs and I’m really scared he (she?) is going to get hit by a car. A lady pulls over down the street.
“Is that your dog?” she asks.
I tell her he isn’t my dog and the lady notices that the dog doesn’t have a collar. She follows him as he runs into other yards. I’m feeling quite useless, but I try to wave to drivers to slow down whenever the dog runs into the street. Eventually the dog runs up to the porch of the house across the street. The lady goes up and knocks on the door. Eventually someone answers the door. They, thankfully, turn out to be the owners of the dog. The lady waves good night to me, gets in her car, and drives off. We continue our walk home. (This whole time, the kids were waiting patiently on the sidewalk. I’m really proud of them for not waiting instead of trying to cross the road to go home themselves.)

8:00pm – The Husband puts the kids to bed and I go to Trader Joe’s for a grocery run. I don’t usually go to Trader Joe’s, but the Giant never has good produce on Sundays. I stock up on some TJ staples (Everything Seasoning, Pound Plus Dark Chocolate Bars, Frozen Mango, Crumpets…) as well as pick up enough groceries to get us through most of the week.

9:00pm – home. I spend some time chatting with the Husband and 14 year old before she goes to bed. Then I scroll/ read blogs for 30 minutes.

10:00pm – I make soup for the next day’s dinner. Mondays evenings are busy – the 9 year old has fencing at 6pm and the 14 year old has basketball workouts at 7pm; we usually have soup on Monday so that the Husband can heat it up when he gets home from picking up the kids. Since I have to be at work early on Monday, I make the soup Sunday night – Coconut Corn Soup from New York Times Cooking. While the soup simmers, I journal, plan the week, and scroll some more (I can’t even remember what. I don’t love that – I do have a pile of books to read, but I was a little mentally fried by this point.)

12:00am – go to bed. I think. I didn’t write down what time I went to bed, but I’m pretty sure it was not before midnight.

And that’s the weekend! Some reflections – Things that were not typical:
-we didn’t have a family meeting. Those usually happen at 7:40 am on Saturday, but because I was working that morning the Husband wanted to run his errands before I went to work. There were a few things that fell through the cracks that I would have clocked if we had had the family meeting – like getting the time of the soccer game wrong and a couple agenda items and coming up with a game plan for Take Your Child to Work day – so lesson learned – make time for the family meeting!
-We didn’t go skating – usually the two younger kids have skating lessons on Sunday, but we are between sessions. Which is good because skating would have conflicted with the soccer game.
-The photoshoot – definitely a unique and one time event for us. (Though funny story – we were in our friend’s last photo shoot, so if you look at his old campaign material, you’ll see the 14 year old. This time, the 14 year old asked if she could list this on her resume as having done some print modeling. I told her no.)
-The late night Trader Joe’s run. Usually the Husband does the grocery shop on Sunday afternoon, but I think he wanted to spend time in his garden this weekend, so it got pushed off.

Things that were good:
-spending some social time (going to Saturday night happy hour and catching up with friends at the photo shoot.)
-game night as a family.
-family movie night – not just as an activity, but I enjoy having these traditions
-I really enjoyed Saturday’s rehearsals – they were low key on my end, but the material we covered was energizing to watch.
– I got to squeeze in some painting time.
-we got to show up for friends.

Things I would have liked less of on that weekend:
-less time in the car. This is partially why I like to bike to work on weekends, but in general
-less time running errands – i guess I could have done a Target or amazon order for some of the stuff. But I do really like going to Penzy’s and the customer service there is so warm and welcoming.
– less scrolling between tasks. (Perpetual goal.)
-late nights/ more going to bed earlier.

Things I would have like more of:
-more time outside.
-more empty space. Ironically last weekend was supposed to be a pretty open one because there wasn’t skating, but then things came up like needing to take my one friend’s kid for the day and my other friend calling with the photo shoot. I do think there is something nice about not being so scheduled that we can say “yes” to last minute things that come up.
-time for life/ home maintenance or to get ahead of tasks for the week ahead.
-more time to read.

I think that’s the tricky part when I’m working on a show – we work six days a week, so our one free day tends to be full of errands and to dos. I try to squeeze in at least one fun thing, but there were a lot of errands to run this Sunday as it is the one day off. I can see why people turn to grocery delivery or Amazon when they don’t have a lot of time to go to a physical store. I need to remind myself, though, that the six day work week is just until July and then I’ll have endless days off for the rest of the summer. At any rate, the weekend was not relaxing over all.

Grateful for:
-The lady who pulled over to help the lost dog. Seeing such moments of kindness makes me hopeful for the world.

-Our grill! Or rather our tenant who left us this grill. We’ve started using our grill this season – a sure sign that summer is here (or around the corner.) I used to be staunchly charcoal grill, then one of our tenants moved out and gifted us their gas grill since they didn’t want to move it. It was life changing. I miss the slightly woodsy flavor that charcoal grilling imparts, but being able to flick a switch and press a button in order to get the grill going – this has made grilling so much more efficient a process.

-That the kids are old enough to clean the kitchen without supervision. The Husband and I went on an evening walk because the kids were going to clean up after dinner. Incidentally when I was in high school, something similar would happen every night after dinner – my parents would leave for an evening walk, telling my brother and me to take care of the post dinner clean up. They were so trusting. My brother and I worked out a system where one person would do the dishes and one person would do everything else – we hated doing the dishes that much.

-Shady trails to walk along in 85 degree weather.

-The teacher at the elementary school who blasts up beat, happy music every Friday while working the carpool line. It puts such a spring in my step to hear that music as I approach the school with the kids in tow. Seems the perfect way to welcome the weekend.

-Frixion pens and Frixion markers. Discovering these erasable pens a few years ago was life changing. Recently, though I learned that they also make Frixion markers and I love them. I’ve been using them instead of Post Its to mark up my score – they are equally eye catching and don’t create as much clutter

Looking forward to:
-Alisdair Fraser and Natalie Haas – Fraser is a fiddle player and Haas plays the cello and they play together brilliantly . I don’t know when I first heard of them, but I have their first CD and I remember listening to it on repeat constantly when I was in my 20s. They are coming to the performing arts center nearby this weekend, and I’m excited to go. One thing, though, I think it might be a little weird to just sit through a concert of Scottish fiddle music – I wonder if we can get up and dance in the aisles?

– More meals out on the back patio. One of my favorite things about summer is eating outside.

-Take your child to work day! (I took so long to write this post that this already happened – more on this next week.)

-Listening to this audiobook:

I had heard Hazzard on a Fresh Air interview years and years ago when this book about his work as a paramedic first came out. I really wanted to read the book but I didn’t remember the details afterwards. Well a few weeks ago Birchie mentioned a book about a paramedic and I looked it up, and this was that book! Thanks, Birchie! The book is pretty grizzly and graphic so far, but also funny, quirky, and thoughtfully observed.

What we ate:

Monday: Teriyaki Chicken, Cedar plank salmon and trout, bagged salad, roasted broccoli. Apple Cobbler for dessert. We had friends over for dinner – they brought the roasted broccoli; we grilled out. The apple cobbler was made with some apple pie filling that a friend had made and gifted me for Christmas. It was originally supposed to be an apple pie, but my pie crust went bad, so I made cobbler instead. It was still tasty.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. We had pulled pork tacos.

Wednesday: It was my mother’s last night with us so we went out for Noodles and Dumplings.

Thursday: BLT sandwiches.

Friday: pizza take out and Wicked: for Good. Like I said above – beautiful movie, confusing plot.

Saturday: For me- Oysters, fried calamari, and an order of fries. For the family – grilled brats and sausages and steamed green beans.

Sunday: Tortellini with sausage and marinara.

That’s it. I’ve taken so long to write this post that another weekend is right around the corner. Hopefully we’ll have our family meeting this week.

What about you? Do you prefer gas or charcoal for grilling? What are your “must do” things for a weekend? Do you prefer physical store or buying off the internet?