Tag: weekly menu

Weekly recap + what we ate: Some adventures and January Highlights

Chesapeake Bay seen from Havre de Grace

I think this week was the first time I noticed that there is more and more sunlight in the evenings. I was driving home at 4:30pmd, after pick up one day, and I noticed that the sky was still light. It’s February! Spring is coming.

It was an eventful week at home. We started off kind of rough with our second visit to the emergency room with a child ever. I guess in 13 years of parenting, having to go to the emergency room twice is a pretty good go. (The first time was last year while we were in Berkeley with my brother.) What happened was the oldest child had fallen and hit her head during her Sunday basketball game and still wasn’t feeling great on Monday morning, so the Husband took her to the ER. (So I guess technically I didn’t go to the ER, just the Husband and the 13 year old.)

After five hours, they were seen with the diagonosis being “mild concussion.” She was told to take it easy and no basketball games for a week. Practice was okay, but no games because they didn’t want to risk another head injury. I’ve never had to deal with a concussion before, so this was new and worrisome to me. (Well I did have an incident once onstage where a singer ran into another singer too hard during a fight scene and got a concussion, but I didn’t have to deal with that other than to fill out the accident form and send the singer to management.)

The thing about a mild concussion is that there’s not a lot we could do except limit activity and stay vigilant. So it felt like we were hovering between being on high alert and not having to do anything about it. We did go back to the doctor on Friday when there was some vomiting and general sluggishness, but we were told that it can take up to two weeks to feel normal again. So wait and see, I guess.

Wednesday the kids were off school because it was a grading day, and I took the two older kids on our New York City adventure. The day deserves its own post, but here are some picture highlights:

Bagels!
Iconic buildings!
Theatre!

Wednesday night was when that awful plane and helicopter collision happened over the Potomac. I didn’t know about it until after we got home from New York. DCA is such an important airport in this area- we fly out of it all the time. At work, I often see planes headed that way or coming from DCA, and helicopters are constantly flying overhead. Some of the footage of the collision was taken from the rooftop camera on our building. It all feels very close. There is something really cruel to me about the Potomac these days. Just last month, a pick up truck went off the Memorial Bridge, plunging into the river and now this. I can’t help but to think that Potomac is angry about something. Which I know sounds crazy, but I think that’s just the way things feel in D.C. right now.

The rest of the week, I worked from home, and it was a week full of meetings, so I felt like I spent a lot of time on Zoom. I like the flexibility of working from home, but I feel like I sometimes get distracted. After getting off a call, I would need a brain break and I’d go do laundry or read a chapter of my book, or what not, and then it would be hard to sit back down at my computer. I might go into the office next week so that I can focus better.

Saturday we had a little adventure to Havre de Grace, MD. It’s a little town on the bay, at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, about 90 minutes drive from us. We picked Havre de Grace because we wanted to explore a new to us museum that was on the list of “Reciprocal Museums” that we could see with our Walker Art Museum membership. On that list was the Duck Decoy Museum in Havre de Grave. YES! A WHOLE museum devoted to duck decoys.

I thought it would be a quaint little one room affair. Friends, this museums was two stories – three huge rooms of duck decoys and duck decoy adjacent exhibits. The information was fascinatingly niche. There were certain craftsmen who got a whole exhibit case to themselves, complete with life sized mannequins. The museum reminded me a lot of the handicraft wing in the American Art Museum, and made me realize how readily accessible creative pursuits are to everyone. These were not men (and they were all men, mostly White) who went to school to learn how to carve duck decoys. Most of them did this as a hobby while holding down jobs – grocers, post masters, military me. It was inspiring in a lot of ways, reminding me that I should also take time to do creative things.

Did you know that Cecil County duck decoys are characterized by a flatter tail and rounder body?
Just one of the many walls of duck decoys.
The tools and process of making duck decoys.

We continued our day in Havre de Grace with a walk to a playground so the kids could run off energy:

Then we went to Mass at a beautiful little church there. I’m not Catholic, but it’s always interesting to me to go to Mass at different churches and see how even when the people are different, the rituals are all the same. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a tasty seafood restaurant. It was a lovely little half day trip, all in all.

Well, it’s already February. Hard to believe at the beginning of this month we were on another continent. Some January highlights:
-Making it home from our Asia trip.
-Yoga (almost) every day. I’ve been doing 10-20 minutes of yoga a day, and there were two days when it didn’t happen, both days that I was travelling. Though when I think of it, I could have probably fit in something on those days. I even did 15 minutes of standing yoga the day we were stuck in the Seattle Airport for nine hours.
-Snow Days, snow delays, and sledding.
-Celebrating birthdays for the 13 and 8 year olds.
-Candy cane beets and crunchy winter salads
-The start of basketball season for the 13 year old.
-our NYC trip to see Hadestown.
-Dumpling date with my friend K.
– A very smooth and enjoyable rehearsal process for the new works that I stage managed.
-A January that felt like a real winter, and just long enough to not feel endless.
-Ice skating. The two little kids are taking skating lessons. They are now in the same class, so I go skating while they are in lessons. I listen to an audiobook while I glide around the rink. I have a vague goal of learning how to do a backward crossover.
-A cozy MLK day at home with scones and cookies and reading and games.
-playing Skyjo.
-That Duck Decoy Museum.

Some January lowlights:
-the 13 year old’s minor concussion.
– not getting out and running – the weather has been so cold. I know last year I ran in 20 degree weather, but I couldn’t rally to do it this winter.
– WTF is going on with the new administration? I mean it’s very clear that there is a strategy of strewing confusion and panic wide in hopes that no one will know how to fight back. The stress and worry and confusion is palatable in the air everywhere here. I try to limit my intake of news, but it affects so many people here that I feel like I should have some idea a what is going on.

Grateful For – Elisabeth has a series going on this month (just this month?) Called FIG (Finding joy In Gratitude). I usually include at least three things I’m grateful for in these posts, but for February, I thought I’d aim for seven things:

– Glimmers of sunlight still lingering at 4:30pm.

-Reciprocal museum memberships. How else would we have discovered the Duck Decoy museum?

-The old Subaru. Welp I did it. I took my old car in and donated it to the technical program at the high school. It wasn’t as emotional as I thought I was, which I guess means that it was time, but I still felt sad about it. That car served its previous owner for nine years and then served us for almost another thirteen years. It drove me to Colorado and back four times and ferried all of our children around when they were babies. I’m really grateful for that car. And for the friend who sold it to us.

– Smiles and laughter and hugs from the 5 year old at pick up time.

– Pianos and music making and my parents for signing me up for piano and voice lessons when I was a child. I spent an hour noodling around on the piano one evening. I don’t do that enough.

-Medical insurance and living four blocks from the hospital.

-That we are no longer in a pandemic. We watched a documentary this week – “Cirque du Soleil: without a Net” about what happened the the Cirque show O when the pandemic hit and then how the show came back. It was a little surreal to think back on March of 2020. When we asked the two little kids (8 and 5) if they remembered the COVID pandemic, they said “no”, and the 13 year old tried to explain it to them. That was interesting to hear her account. But also she talked about parts of being stuck at home and not having to go to school that she enjoyed, and that is something that I don’t think about very often. But all in all, I am glad that we aren’t living in a pandemic any more. Not necessarily because we were forced to stay home, but rather because that time of uncertainty was so so so so stressful.

Looking Forward To:
–February! We had our family meeting on Saturday and in addition to looking at the week, we flipped our calendar pages and looked at the whole month. There’s a lot to look forward to in February – birthdays, Super Bowl, some interesting gigs for me. It’s going to be a full month, but I’m not in rehearsal, so it will be a good month for quite evenings at home too.
– Every day things. I was inspired by all the comments on last week’s post on routines and a “boring” life. I loved this comment from Melissa:
“I probably get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from making the bead and opening the curtains so the sun streams in.”
The comments made me think about how I take these boring routines for granted sometimes. So this week, I’m going to make it a goal to look forward to doing these every day things the best I can. This week, I’m looking forward to:
-Making the bed every day, nice and neat.
-Wiping down the counters at the end of the night so that they are clean in the morning.
-Lining my shoes up in the boot tray when I come home.
-putting the window shades up to see the sun.

What We Ate:
Monday: Butternut Squash and Fennel Risotto. I always think risotto is a good idea, and then I make it and I remember that I don’t actually like eating rice as a main.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – We had a taco bar: Chipotle Chicken and Black Beans, Shrimp, mango cabbage slaw, pickled onions, guac, avocado, sour cream. The 8 year old wanted to try hard tacos, so that’s what we did, and they were tasty.

Wednesday: New York City – the kids and I had burgers after the show.

Thursday: Sunchokes and chicken. The Husband sliced the sunchokes thin and then baked them, so they were like chips.

Friday: Pizza (homemade by the Husband. He even make an Indian one with tikka masala sauce rather than tomato sauce. I think I liked that one more than other people.) for the movie, originally I had picked The Mummy, but the kids declared it was too scary after about 10 minutes, so we switched to we watched Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net.

Saturday: Dinner in Havre de Grace. I hade the Bouillabase. It was tasty

Sunday: Scrounge for yourself. The Husband made the kids egg sandwiches. I had an amazing loaded sweet potato – roasted chick peas, sour cream, cilantro, avocado, and green onions. I’ve never thought to load a sweet potato the way I load a baked potato and I have to say, I was missing out. This was so delicious. Or maybe that’s just the sour cream talking?

I don’t take pictures of everything I eat, but this was really tasty.

Hope everyone is having a lovely first week of February!

Weekly recap + what we ate: bitter and boring

Ice patterns on the creek, as seen on a winter walk.

It’s been a week, hasn’t it? My mind is spinning. When I think about this week, the word “bitter” comes to mind.

For one, bitter bitter cold. We had two days of delayed start to school because the cold caused morning freezes. Coming off the holiday weekend, it wasn’t the worse way to ease ourselves into the week, but I can say that since I have the luxury of being able to take my morning meetings from home. I’m sure the two hour delays were very disruptive to a lot of people. After two years of mild winters, I actually kind of love this bitterly cold January that we’ve been having. (Winter made my gratitude list last week…). It makes me more eager for spring in a way that I haven’t felt for a while. Who know if I will feel like this in another few weeks, but for now, I’m embracing the bitter cold.

The other bitter thing about the week was the days following inauguration. Well, even inauguration day too, I guess. A bitter pill to swallow. All of it. And getting more terrifying as the days go on. There are so many people who work for the federal government around here – the air is decidedly grim. I have no new words to say about this all. I try not to read the news, and then worry that I’m uninformed. I have learned that ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand – they look like they are when really they are looking after their eggs which they lay in holes in the ground. (Since, you know, ostriches don’t nest in trees.) I feel like there is a metaphor here – I’m not burying my head in the sand, I’m tending to my young…

MLK day, we had a cozy day as planned. I baked scones, we read books, we went on a snowy walk, we watched Modern Family, we had dumplings. We even spent an hour cleaning the toy room, while listening to the inauguration. I tried not to swear out loud too much in front of the kids as I listened to the address, but really, maybe I didn’t need to restrain myself. I debated whether or not to stream the ceremony, but ultimately, politics aside, I thought it was important to witness that process and for the kids to understand how power passed in this country. I don’t think the younger kids completely understood it. But they all know for sure, that I am very disappointed in the results of the election.

I worked from home all week, save for one day when I went in for a 90 minute meeting. I got to ride in and back with my friend so I was actually happy to go in even for a brief time. This is how my friend and I hang out during opera season – carpools and schedule meetings. It’s kind of our version of running Target errands together, I guess. Anyhow, the rest of the week I worked form home. Sometimes when I work from home I forget to eat lunch, so I was really pleased with myself that I threw together this salad. Isn’t it pretty?

It’s chopped up cucumbers, candy cane beets, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and fresh dill. I liked this so much I ate it again the next day, adding half a can of chickpeas for some protein. All the fresh vegetables were wonderful on a winter’s day. Highly recommend!

We’ve also been on an oatmeal kick in our house lately. Something about chilly mornings makes oatmeal seem like the perfect breakfast. The kids eat their oatmeal with milk, frozen blueberries, and copious amounts of brown sugar. I like to have my oatmeal savory, so I’ve been having my oatmeal with sweet potato, a boiled egg, and scallions, all of it toped with a sprinkle of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce. It’s kind of like congee, but made with oatmeal instead of rice.

The oatmeal is not as pretty as the salad above, but it is just as tasty.

Thinking about:
I recently read two articles that had me thinking about how underrated the every day pedestrian life was. First there was this article in the Guardian, “I’ve Had the Same Supper for 10 Years.” It’s a profile of Wilf Davies, a sheep farmer in Wales who, as the title says, eats the same thing every day for supper. He’s only left his farm in Whales once, thirty years ago. At one point he says:

“People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks. I could never do it. Walking around the farm fills me with wonder. What makes my life is working outside, only going in if the weather is very bad.”

Then there was this article in the New York Times, “How a Driving Instructor Spends Her Sundays.” The NYTimes’ series “How ____ Spends their Sundays” usually features people who seem to me impossibly cool – local celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes swanning around to brunch and coffee and workouts and dinner parties and Pilates class. This feature, though, this one was different. Shanti Gooljar, gets up at 5 am, and spends the day teaching people how to drive, goes home, has cream of wheat for dinner, watches Yellowstone, and goes to bed by 8:30pm. It’s not glamourous or hip, but it feels oh so real. After her husband died, she says, “my family wanted me to go to Florida — my mom is there, and my brothers and sisters. But I’m at the age where I like the same routine.”

I’m sure there are people who might read about Davies and Gooljar and dismiss their lives as boring and dull, but I was struck in these two articles by how content Davies and Gooljar were. And I know you can’t always get the full story in a newspaper article, but they did seem like they found great satisfaction in the unexceptional rhythms of their days. How different their lives and expectations were from the pressure I feel to fill my days with adventures and excitement. It got me thinking – what I do on an average, say, Thursday – the getting up, packing lunches, carpool, meetings, pick ups, dinners, cleaning up – is that just the tedious parts of existence, what I do to fill and enable the more exciting and exotic parts? Is that the boring part of life?

And then I think of Wilf Davies who sees the world of beauty in a cuckoo’s call or the view from the top of his valley, who sees all of humanity in his sheep. Or how Shanti Gooljar finds so much satisfaction in running her driving school and hiring the right people. And I envy how at peace they seem to be with their lives. Don’t get me wrong – I think there is so much to see and do in this world – and I for one would be sad if I never got to eat roti ever again. Yet at the same time, I wonder if the people who are the most content are the ones who are able to find as much joy and satisfaction in the every day routines and rhythms of life as they are to find it in new and novel experiences. I think there’s great satisfaction to be had in the consistency of pedestrian life – perhaps routine can kind of free your mind to see beauty in the things around you. And perhaps you can’t chase contentment abroad if you cannot find it at home?

Grateful for:

-Fleece Lined pants. I ordered these fleece lined pants form Duluth Trading Company when they were on sale at the beginning of the month, and they have been amazing! I wear them for walks in the cold, for standing outside waiting for the bus, even for hanging out at home because for some reason our thermostat is set at 66 degrees. (It’s a setting leftover from when I was working and there was no one at home during the day… I should shift it, but I always forget until I’m already cold.) These pants are so cozy and warm. What they say about “No bad weather, just bad clothing”, well I feel like these pants perfectly summed that up for me this week.

-The middle kid who turned eight. He is such a cerebral, goofy kid, bringing equal parts joy and frustration to my life. We celebrated with a special birthday dinner on the actual day and then he had a birthday party with a six friends at the duckpin bowling alley. It was a perfect size party, in my opinion. Also – he’s now old enough to stay home by himself legally in Maryland, but when I broached the subject with him, his eyes got really wide and he said, “I think I would be scared.” So I guess that’s not something that will happen soon. But it’s good to know that if I did storm out of the house in anger and left him by himself I would not have CPS knocking at my door.

-Trails for snowy walks. On Saturday, we had to run some errands in the morning before the bowling alley birthday party. We were so efficient that we got our errands done 30 minutes before we were due at the bowling alley. So we decided to stop at a trail on the way for a brief snowy ramble. (“This feels like a hike,” the five year old said. I can’t pull one over her, that’s for sure.) This particular trail is tucked next to the shopping Plaza with a Trader Joe’s, and you wouldn’t guess that it was there. But apparently this little creek gorge was a favorite place of Teddy Roosevelt’s – funny to think this little patch of nature about ten miles from the White House was once considered “getting out of town”. These days, it’s proximity to a major road makes it pretty popular and it’s far from pristine – I imagine it’s where kids go to make out, and there’s often discarded alcohol bottles around. But even still, I think it’s a beautiful little rocky corner of nature and I feel so lucky that it’s just right there.

From the placard at the trail. “Excepting Great Falls it is the most beautiful place around here.”

-For fresh baked cookies. On MLK Day, we wanted to make cookies, and since I had made chocolate/walnut scones, I wanted to make a non-chocolate cookie. I settled on Molasses cookies from the King Artur’s Baking Companion. The dough needed to be chilled overnight, so I didn’t actually make the cookies on MLK Day. The next day, I pulled the dough from the fridge, and instead of whipping up the whole batch of cookies, I just made six cookies and put the batter back in the fridge. And the next day, I just made a few more cookies, as many as we could eat in one go. And so on – the batter lasted all week. Indeed, I am inhaling the aroma right now as I sit typing next to the kitchen. I rather like this bake-as-you-go method of cookie baking – we always have fresh cookies and the house will always smell divine.

-That I live somewhere equipped for snow. Granted our schools had a two hour delay twice last week for the icy conditions, but I’m glad that the streets were clear so the the ice could be treated. I have a colleague who is currently in Houston and his rehearsals were cancelled because it snowed there and the city was not equipped to deal with the snow, shutting many things down.

-That I still get to work from home. So many people are getting summoned back to in person work, some with merely a weekend’s notice. How do the people who make these decisions think that people can accommodate this on such short notice?

Looking forward to:

-Our trip to NYC this week! The hardest thing will be getting the kids up early to get on the 5am metro to Union Station, but after that, I hope things will be pretty simple. (I realized that it probably would have been easier if I had gotten tickets out of the second stop on the train since that’s about a twenty minute drive from home and we could have left the house closer to 6am. Oh well. Next time.) I’ve bookmarked Kinokuniya, a Japanese Manga/Stationary store for us to visit, and it’s also next to the New York Public Library, which might be a fun place to duck into for a few minutes. I know I wrote up above about the joy of a boring life – clearly I don’t want my life to be too boring.

-Dumplings with my friend K, who I haven’t seen since the beginning of December. Looking forward to catching up. (This happened today. Dumplings were delicious and we’ve agreed to be better about scheduling time together – we have our date on the calendar already for March 1st since she’ll be travelling in February.)

– A family adventure day coming up next week. At our weekly family planning meeting, I realized that we had next Saturday completely open – no kids’ activities, I didn’t have to work, there were no plans of any kind. A free Saturday is very rare for us, so we’ve decided to have an adventure. It might be as simple as going on a hike. We might make it as far as going up to Longwood Gardens. Not sure what we’ll do yet, but a free day on the calendar is such a delicious thing.

What we ate:

Monday: Noodles and dumplings – we went out to eat.

Tuesday: Chicken sweet potato Thai inspired curry, recipe from Dinner Illustrated. This was hugely tasty and the kids loved it.

Wednesday: Cabbage Soup. Loosely based on this recipe from the New York Time. I used dill instead of parsley and Italian herbs because there was a comment that made me laugh: “Italian seasoning has no room in Eastern European cabbage soup. Use fresh dill instead.” So I did. Vegan.

Thursday: The 8 year old’s requested birthday dinner: soy sauce/honey chicken wings (my mother’s recipe), steamed broccoli and green beans, sesame brown butter udon noodles.

Friday: Pizzas (the Husband made these himself) and Bad Batch.

Saturday: pasta with yellow squash, mushrooms with tuna and steamed broccoli on the side. This was a kitchen sink kind of meal – basically sautéing whatever sad veggies we had to use up and then tossing it with tomato sauce. I served canned tuna on the side for protein.

Speaking of sad veggies – we have a bunch of sunchokes given to us by a friend and no clue what to do with them. – does anyone have ideas for how to eat sunchokes? (They aren’t actually sad quite yet – they seem to last a long time in the fridge.)

What other cookie batters should we make to keep in the fridge? What is it about your boring life that gives you the most satisfaction? I hope everyone has a heartfelt week, and wishing you warmth however you can find it.

Weekly recap + what we ate: thwarted plans

The Frozen Potomac

Last week’s pristine snow has turned soft and slushy, grey with dirt and continued living. Life going on. That’s okay. I hear there is more snow coming this weekend and next week.

I was down at the Mall on Friday (more on that below) and I saw rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of chairs set up for inauguration. I texted my friend/coworker and said “It makes setting up a room for a 65 person chorus rehearsal seem paltry.” The whole Mall was surrounded by temporary gates and to get from the Smithsonian metro stop to the National Gallery of Art was an exercise in finding the doorways. I walked down one football fields’ length of chairs to find worker scrambling at the other end to put the chairs away. I did not envy those workers, having to set up, then take down a mile’s worth of chairs. The whole experience was very much one of those, “Yep, you live in D.C.” type things. Every Inauguration is unique, I’m sure, but this one seems more unique than others. Here comes another era….

So many chairs….

It has been a frustrating few days. Plans just… not working. Why do I make plans? Case in point:

1)First scuttled plans: I really really wanted to catch Paris 1974 Impressionist exhibit at the National Gallery of Art before it closed this weekend. (Okay, never mind that in typical fashion, I’ve left it to the last minute. I should have just gone in September when it opened). I had a morning off from work this week, so I thought, “I’ll just pop down to the museum and take and hour or so to see the exhibit.” One of the wonderful things about living in the suburbs of D.C. is that there are so many free museums and so going to see art doesn’t require a special trip; I can just stop in and see something and then be on my way.

Well, it didn’t exactly work out like that – the entire city is getting ready for a National Special Security Event – this is literally what it is called in the email about road closures they sent at work . All the blocks and blocks and blocks around the National Mall were EMERGENCY PARKING only, and have been since the beginning of the week. Typically if you go in the morning it’s actually not difficult to find street parking near the mall, but on Thursday there was no place to park. I probably should have known and just metro-ed to the NGA. I circled for ten minutes then gave up and went to work. On the bright side, I instead called my sister in law and took a walk outside and saw the beautifully frozen Potomac River.

I thought maybe I’d go on Saturday before my show, but when I checked the NGA website it turns out that the museum was closed on Saturday for security reasons. So that left Friday. After a frustrating Friday morning (frustration #2 this week, see below), I finally made it to the museum. (See above’s adventure of walking the Mall three days before Inauguration.) Only when I got to the museum, the line for the Impressionist exhibit was TWO HOURS long. At that point, I thought that maybe I wasn’t meant to this exhibit. So I took a little wander around the permanent collection instead, which is really lovely and I don’t go see it enough. I had forgotten that there were three Vermeers in the permanent collection. What a lovely surprise to be wandering the galleries and then suddenly see these delicate works of beauty and light. So the trip wasn’t a complete wash after all.

Vermeer… As beautiful as they say..

2) Second scuttled plan. I had earmarked Friday as the day to finally take my car in for donation. You might recall, I have a 20 year old Subaru Legacy Wagon that was clearly in need of more work than we were going to invest in it anymore. I think it has 190,000 miles on it. I had bought it off my boss eleven years ago when the oldest was born and I had resigned myself to needing a car to do daycare pick ups and drop offs and other emergency errands. (When the oldest was born, the Husband said to me, “We have a kid now. For everyone’s safety and security you need to get a car and a smartphone.”) I am unreasonably attched to theis car – it came from someone really iportant in my ife and has eeen me through so much. But it was time for the car to move on from us. Probably beyond time. I was going to take it to an Automotive Training program at a nearby high school, where they would either fix it up, or use it for parts. Friday morning, cleaned out the car – discovering many hidden things, and throwing out a lot of masks, and boy didn’t that take me back to a time – remember when we just kept packs and packs of masks in the car? The car had been sitting for at least a few months undriven in our driveway, so I turned it on to make sure it would start and then – and this was my big mistake – I turned it off to finish cleaning it out. I really should have driven it around to charge the battery a little bit. When I finished cleaning the car, I tried to start it again and IT WOULDN”T START! And then, I couldn’t shift it out of park or take my key out of the ignition. I spent half an hour trying to get the key out of the ignition and get the car to start. I googled, watched YouTube videos, searched Reddit. My friend even came over to help me jump the car. NOTHING WORKED. ARGH!!!! I finally get the courage up to donate my beloved car and… wump wump. I just felt so. very. defeated.

Anyhow, bright side – the Husband managed to get the car started while I was at the Museum. And we will re-schedule the car donation. Typical of me, I left this til the very last minute so there is now a sense of urgency about getting the car off our hands before it becomes inconvenient in terms of insurance and car registration. The whole thing made me feel so incompetent at adulting.

In other life things –
-I’m done working on shows for a few months. I had my last show for a while this past weekend, and I’m grateful to be on the other side of Fall/Winter opera season. I feel like things have been non-stop since September. The show went well and people were pleased. We performed a series of 20 minute newly commissioned operas. It’s always fun to do new pieces. These ones weren’t particularly tuneful, but there were snippets that lodged in my head anyway. I said to my ASM, “When these new works get stuck in my head, it’s clearly a sign that I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to them!

-Adult Lunchables! I bought these linch containers for our trip to Asia, filing them with snacks for the plane. This past week, there was one day when the contents of our fridge looked dire – not quite enought to pack a full lunch. And I had the idea to pack a snack lunch with these containers. I packed: carrots, candy cane beets, hummus, blueberries, and a soy marinated egg. It was a surprisingly satisfying lunch.

-A good morning – I feel like I’m constantly trying to find the ideal morning routine. I think one of my biggest hurdles is that a good morning routine starts the night before with a consistent bedtime and my bedtime routine is crap. Partly this is working in the evenings so not being home consistently, but also a lot of it is Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. I’m trying to nail down a better evening routine for the nights that I am home. And for the nights that I work, I’m trying to stick to just going straight to bed when I get home. If I’m in bed before midnight then I can be up earlier. A couple times this past week, I was up by 6:15a, had a really great morning rhythm. I wanted to write it down so I can come back to remember how it’s done:
6:10am – wake up.
6:15am – 6:40 – 20 minute yoga (I’ve been loosely following Charlie Follow’s thirty day yoga challenge – I like it because it is gentle – maybe a little too gentle, but I add in an extra down dog if I need to – and also there is no music. On days when I can’t do the whole 20 minutes, I just choose another, or do a few sun salutations.) Yes, this 20 minute yoga takes 25 minutes because… kids. If I have time, I also do 10 minutes of strength.
6:40-7:10 – Read. (Current morning book is The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois)
7:10 – 8:10 – Breakfast/pack lunch. (Sometimes the Husband gets the kids breakfast when they get up at 6:15a. Often times they are hungry again by 7a. Or just bored and want more food.)
8:10-8:30 – putter/pick up/ get the 5 year old out the door (The neighbor takes her to daycare and I take their 2nd grader to the bus)
8:30-8:45 – journal.
8:45 – school bus alarm goes off and we head out the door.
Things to think about:
-I didn’t prep dinner these days, which I sometimes do and that usually takes 20 minutes of the morning.
– When I don’t go to bed before midnight, I usually sleep til 7am and then the morning is just about packing lunches and getting kids out the door. Of course, when I’m up by 6:15am, I am so so so so tired by 9:45pm. It’s a trade off. I can’t be tired at 9;45pm when I’m working an evening rehearsal.
-My two younger kids are early risers. They usually are downstairs the minute they realize the Husband is up (He gets up at 5:30am). I’d would like to figure out how to give him more quiet/ child-free time in the morning because he likes to read in the morning. But the kids also like to cuddle and want breakfast. Maybe I need the kids to be more in charge of their own breakfast?
-I’m really glad we’re at a point in our lives when the kids can all get ready by themselves. I barely see the 13 year old in the morning. She wakes up just in time to shower, grab random food out of the fridge, and then head out the door for school. The two little will get dressed and pack their school bags by themselves. Mostly.
-I wouldn’t mind more time to journal/plan the day. Or doing it earlier. Maybe I should journal/plan earlier in the day and read in the slot right before the school bus alarm goes off?
We’ll see how this morning routine goes. As always, it’s easier to have a routine/rhythm when I’m not working inconsistent hours. It always goes out the window once I’m back in rehearsal. I’m trying to tell myself these next few months are the time to establish a routine until I’m back in rehearsal. But I think I also have to remind myself that having a sporadic routine does not make it any less of a routine – there are cycles to life, you know?

-My mother sent me a box of oranges and lemons from her trees in Southern California. The oranges are sweet and juicy, perfect taste of sunshine on a grey January day.

Grateful for:
– Free Museums: It felt almost guiltily indulgent, to be able to go through the National Gallery of Art slowly, spending five minutes on a single painting, looking a brush strokes, and colours and thinking about the people in the painting and the artist who created them. But such is the wonderful things about living in a city with free museums – you can afford to spend five minutes, or ten, or sixty, on one painting because you can always come back to see the others. Tax dollars at work here (and donors and philanthropists), and for that I’m grateful.
–Winter. I was thinking this week, as I moved through snow and cold and bracingly brisk air – How wonderful it is to live somewhere with four seasons! Yes snow and cold can be tedious and hard to navigate, but there is something extraordinary about nature telling us when it is time for a slower pace and to rest. (Or maybe this is something very ordinary?) There is something about feeling the wind on your face when you step out the door, to remind you that you are lucky to be alive to feel this bitter cold on your skin. I think about how, if you live somewhere where there aren’t four seasons, how you miss out on being forced to adapt and cycle your life routines and patterns.
–My Friend L – I know she makes this list a lot, but I feel so grateful to have a friend who will pick up nuts for me at Costco, or “Kosher Takis” at Trader Joe’s, who will come help me jump my car, and drive me home after work.
–The Husband who actually did manage to jump the car. And who was home with the kids all week while I was in tech.
–Romance novels – I’ve been tearing through Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogues series and I love the books so much (well, maybe not the third one…). I’m glad there are people out there writing these cozy, angsty, escapist reads, perfect for curling up with a cup of tea in chilly weather. They make me so happy.

Looking Forward To:
–Monday off with the kids. Sometimes when we have these days off, I think about taking the kids on an adventure to a museum or something. But going to the Mall on Monday will be… ill advised. We had thought about going up to Baltimore, but with the forecasted snow, we thought it best of we stayed home. So the family brainstormed a list of cozy things to do at home. MLK Day will involve:
-baking (scones AND cookies)
-reading. (the Husband is on Do NOT disturb reading time until 7am)
-sledding
-hot chocolate
-movie
-Soup or dumplings
-board/card games
-30 minutes of cleaning out the toy room (okay, I admit, I put this on the list)
-piano
-laundry. Maybe. Hopefully.
This all seems really aspirational, but if we even do a couple things on the list and don’t yell at each other (too much), I will count the day as a win.

–The middle child’s birthday party. It will be at the duck pin bowling place. Should be lots of fun and low key. I can’t believe the little guy will be eight!

–Hadestown! The kids have a random Wednesday off in a few weeks, and I on an impulse I checked train tickets to New York, and they were surprisingly not too expensive – $120 round trip, half that for the 7 year old. And then I thought, “What can we do there?” and it turns out the last week of January is Broadway Week and certain shows have 2-for-1 tickets. I managed to snag tickets for Hadestown for $80 each. I never do anything so impulsive (I think it says something that booking a day trip two weeks out is impulsive for me….), but I wanted to do something fun, so I did it. I’m not actually familiar with Hadestown, but everyone seems to love it, so we are listening to it in the car and brushing up on our Greek Mythology. I feel like “the fun mom” for once in my life.

–Cool Blogger’s Book Club! L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle is the pick for the latest go round of Engie’s bookclub. I’m so excited. Now I just have to located a copy of the book – there are none available in my library system!

–Just started this audiobook. Grisly, but fascinating. I don’t know that I’ll finish it because I have a bit of a weak stomach, but I can’t stop listening to it.

What We Ate: The Husband was in charge of dinners this week, as I worked most nights.
Monday: Tortellini and red sauce.

Tuesday: The family had dinner out. I had rehearsal in the afternoon then a supertitle job in the evening. I had yogurt for dinner.

Wednesday: Pork chops. I think I had yogurt for dinner again.

Thursday: I had leftover chicken soup from last week. The Husband made tofu zucchini boats at home.

Friday: Pizza and Skeleton Crew. The 13 year old has basketball practice again on Fridays so we are back to having pizza and tv rather than pizza and movie. Skeleton Crew is the latest Star Wars series on Disney plus.

Saturday: I’m not quite sure what the rest of the family ate, to be honest. I worked this evening and ordered from a new to me place called Seoul Spice since folks at work were putting in a group order. Everyone at work raves about this place and it was indeed very tasty. It’s kind of like Korean Chipotle – a bowl with lots of things and then sauce. There was kimchi! Which is always a winner in my book.

Sunday: Our friend came over to watch football and brought chili.

What would you put in your adult lunchable/snack box? I’m obsessed with this idea now! What are your top cozy day activities? Are you bracing for more winter?
Hope you have a restful week!

Weekly recap + what we ate: hello 2025! Snow! Jet lag!

I feel like this past week was truly the first week of 2025 for me since we were still in Asia until the 4th. Coming back was rough – our connection in Seattle was delayed by 2.5 hours, so we were at SEA for seven hours total. Here’s the math – we left our hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 9am local time on Friday January 3rd, which is 8pm on Thursday January 2nd in Maryland. We pulled into the driveway at home at 8:3oam on Saturday January 4th. That’s a freakin’ long time to travel. 36 hours – hotel to taxi to plane to plane to plane to car to home. The world is big, friends. (Although, Earth is the third smallest planet – I can’t imagine what travel would be like on Jupiter…)

When we got home, we unpacked and zombied our way through the rest of the day. I was determined to battle jetlag and keep the kids awake until 8pm, which would be close to their regular bedtime. I lost that battle badly. We did an okay job of staying up on Saturday – there was a brief nap Saturday afternoon and we went to bed around 10pm – I was hoping the late bedtimes would help the kids stay in bed later. Nope. Sunday morning the kids were up at 4am. Sunday afternoon, I tried to keep everyone awake and we were all passed out in the living room by 4pm. I was seriously worried about whether or not the kids would survive school the next day.

But guess what? I didn’t have to worry about that. Because … SNOW DAY!

There was one point the week before, when we were in Kuala Lumpur and it was 90 degrees outside and I said to my Husband, “Let’s remember this feeling because next week we will be COLD.” Sure enough late Sunday night it started to snow and before we went to bed, the schools had declared a snow day. Both the Husband and I were supposed to work on Monday. His work ended up being closed. I worked from home. (Thanks to the Husband who wisely told me to go get my laptop from my office on Sunday night.). Even though I was very much looking forward to sending the kids to school, – after all we were at Day 16 s of togetherness – I saw the snow day as a blessing in that the kids had one more day to get back on schedule.

It was a cozy day of puttering. Is there anything more cozy than a blanket of snow outside and warm tea and wool slippers inside? We shoveled some snow. The neighbors invited the kids over to play in their yard. I did some work, had a few meetings. In mid afternoon, I logged off work and we all went sledding with our neighbors. Sledding was super fun. I was at first a little nervous about the hill they chose because there are several trees on this hill and – well have you ever read Ethan Frome? I read it in high school and (spoiler alert) there is a gruesome accident that involves a sled a tree and the loss of hope and happiness. As one does in an Edith Wharton book. So I wasn’t terribly eager to go sledding on this hill.

But turns out, a hill full of trees is a great opportunity for kids to learn how to steer a sled. We did manage to put a hole in our sled, but I think it still works great. And there were several face plants into the snow and tears. Afterwards, the seven year old notes that “Stumps are worse than trees. If you hit stumps you’ll fly off. If you hit a tree, you’ll just fall over.” But all in all, nothing that couldn’t be solved by hot chocolate afterwards.

Tuesday – another snow day. Crisp and clear. Both the Husband and I worked from home. Around three, I took the kids out for a snowy walk. The house was starting to become a bit of a pit. Kids fell asleep around 4:30pm. We woke them up for dinner, which was kind of a sad lethargic affair.

Wednesday – yet ANOTHER snow day. It was no longer snowing, but I guess there were schools up county that were still treacherously icy, so all the schools remained closed. The kids had piano lessons – fortunately moved to 9:45am rather than the normal 7:15am. Though honestly the kids were already up at 5:30am, so we could have made a 7:15 lesson with bells on. I took the metro into work in the afternoon, since that seemed more relaxed an option than driving. Home in time for dinner. Kids and I passed out at the dinner table at 6:00pm.

The kids finally went to school on Thursday and Friday. THANK GOODNESS.

This weekend we’ve been back into the swing of kids’ activities. Basketball season has started for the oldest kid – she’s playing in the rec league as well as on her middle school team. The little kids have skating lessons, and then there’s agility class for the 5 year old and the 8 year old will be doing a goal tending clinic with his soccer league. It’s also football playoff season and college basketball season, so I think we’ll have a combination of out and about and home on the couch this winter.

Other news: We have a teenager! The oldest turned 13. Every year we get through the new year and I realize that I haven’t done anything to prepare for the oldest child’s birthday. Every year, I vow to do better. I did not do better this year. I did exactly nothing for her birthday. We sang happy birthday, we had a very long family scheduling meeting and then I went to work. The two little kids made her a card and the Husband bought her a cake which we ate later in the evening. On the one hand, I don’t love celebrating my own birthday, so other people’s birthdays don’t always register for me. On the other hand, I need to recognize that birthdays are special to some people and honour that. (Okay, typing that out, I’m realizing that maybe the day that I gave birth and we became parents for the first time should hold more significance for everyone. I know!)

The oldest actually got invited to another kids’ birthday party on her birthday. Our former neighbor’s kid was having a party and they invited our kid along, so she spent the day running errands with the Husband and then our former neighbors picked her up and took her to their kid’s party. When the other family found out it was her birthday too, they bought her a special dessert and then took her to Dave and Busters. How awesome is that?

I can’t believe that we have entered into teenage years! Okay, one thing now, though, I can legally leave all the kids at home. In Maryland, kids have to be 13 in order to stay home with other kids. (They have to 8 to stay home alone). I don’t want to take advantage of the now-13 year old, so I want to think through whether or not she should get paid if we ever do leave her at home with the other two kids.

Grateful For:

-Neighbors to spend snow days and birthdays. It was nice to hang out with our neighbors while sledding this week. They let us take a run down the hill on their toboggan and it was a wild ride. And I’m also grateful for our former neighbors who made sure the 13 year old had a good birthday even though they weren’t originally celebrating her.


-Base layers. I took the metro to work a couple of days last week so that I wouldn’t have to deal with driving in snow and slush. It’s about a ten minute walk on either end. I’m really grateful for wool/silk base layers to keep me warm.

-Hand me down winter coats and snow pants. While we’re on the topic of winter gear – I don’t think I’ve purchased a winter coat or pair of snow pants for the two little kids in four years because I have a friend with twins who passes down her winter coats and snow pants to us once her kids outgrow them.

-That my mom is okay still. My mother lives about 10 miles south of the Eaton fire in the LA Area. She is not concerned about having to evacuate because she isn’t in the mountains, but even still I’m worried. I also have an aunt and two uncles in the same area. I texted my mom to ask her how the air was and she said, “Bad.” The mass of humanity that the fires are affecting is heartbreaking.

Looking forward to:

-Filling out reflection workbooks. I was looking for a more concrete way to reflect on my 2024, and look forward to 2025, and I found two (free!) reflection work books online that looked interesting, so I’ve printed them up and want to work through them. One is Year Compass and one is by Susanna Conway called “Unravel Your Year“.

-A busy week at work – I have a recital that I’m doing titles for, and then a little semi-staged evening of newly commissioned 20 minute operas. It’s going to be a busy week, but I’m working with some great people, so I’m looking forward to being at the theatre.

-And then work downtime for a while – after this week, I don’t have another show to work on until the end of March. I do have to do some work for next opera season and there’s some paperwork I want to update, but it won’t be evenings and weekends. I’m looking forward to two months of working at a quieter pace.

-Library book stack – on the Sunday we got back, in an attempt to get out of the house and keep kids awake, we went to the library where I checked out this stack of books to start my 2025 reading. (Actually The Riddle of the Sphinx and This is So Awkward were renewals that I haven’t finished yet.) I love browsing books and just picking up what looks good:

What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza and This Means War. We’re moving away from animated features for movie night. This 2012 movie stars Reese Witherspoon as a market researcher caught between two rival CIA partners/rivals, played by Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy. It was a lot of fun, perhaps a little risque for the littles – good popcorn entertainment.

Sunday: Sandwiches. I think we were all still really jetlagged and this was what the Husband fed the kids when we realized that even though everyone was falling asleep standing up, we should probably still make an effort to feed them. Thank goodness ehs’ here.

Monday: InstantPot Coq au Vin. Disappointingly more soup than stew, but still tasty. Though I think only 1 of the 3 kids stayed awake long enough to eat this.

Tuesday: Brussel Sprout Nasi Goreng, pan fried tofu on the side. We had a bunch of Brussel sprouts in the fridge from before we left on vacation so I made this -it’s my go to recipe for Brussel sprouts. I love this recipe from Meera Sodha. It’s really tasty and also a great way to get everyone to eat Brussel Sprouts. Vegan.

Wednesday; Coq au vin from Monday, reheated. Not what I originally planned, but quick easy meal on a busy snowy day. I think I’m going to lean into the cook once, eat twice meal this year. Although, we don’t have a microwave, so I need to figure out best methods of reheating food.

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches. The Husband made dinner since I didn’t get home from work til 8pm.

Friday: Pizza take out. I worked, came home, and fell asleep before the Husband got back with the pizza.

Saturday: Pizza take out (take two) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the 2005 movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as assassins unknowingly married to each other. I got home when the family was half way through this movie and made the family watch it again from the beginning after we got to the end. I was hoping there would be some kind of plot if I watched it from the beginning. There is not plot. Just a premise. And lots of action sequences. The kids really loved this movie.

Weekly recap and other gratitudes- NaBloPoMo #18

It’s been a wild weekend in my opera world. I’m still processing, so perhaps I’ll give the run down next week. I’ve fallen off the NaBloPoMo routine this weekend because it’s been busy, so here’s kind of a catch all post. I haven’t had a proper weekly recap post in a while, so I thought I’d write some of the random things that have gone on this week:

– I did the supertitles for a voice recital last week. It was a really fun program, though the second song set was not performed in the order I was given, so that caused a bit of panic, but I was able to catch up and get the right translation slides in place. Also – fun story – the artists added a song the day before the recital and the pianist sent me the music and text so I could make slides.
“Sure, no problem. I’ll do it tonight.” I wrote in response.
“Thank you!” he replied. “Do you drink wine? :)”
“I don’t actually,” I wrote, “But I do eat chocolate.” Which, normally, I don’t make gratuitous grabs for chocolate, but I figured, why not?
Well the pianist brought me three bags of those Lindt chocolate balls. I thought that was super kind.
The coda to that story. A few days later, I noticed the five year old had chocolate peppermint breath. I didn’t think anything about it until I saw an empty bag of Lindt peppermint truffles on the kitchen floor. The sneaky kid had eaten an entire bag by herself. There were tears and sad faces. I can’t tell if I was more upset that she snuck chocolate, or that I didn’t get to eat my peppermint chocolates.
Oh, also during the recital, the singer sang a John Denver song, Perhaps Love, which was a little unusual, but this line made my heart contract every time he got to it:

-Friday I had the day off, and it coincided with the Thankgiving party at the 7 year old’s class. I was on the fence about going – there seems to be many demands on a parent’s time from the school, and it was my one day off. I will admit I am not the most involved parent – I don’t PTA, I don’t Room Parent, I didn’t make it to Parent-Teacher conferences this fall. But I figured it makes the 7 year old happy when I show up, so I can do it a couple times a year. I signed up to bring an activity. After some late night googling, I decided to bring in decorative gourd bowling. I bought several decorative gourds and 12 bottles of water. I put food colouring in the water bottles – red, orange, and yellow, for some fall flavor. And that was it. I think the whole thing cost $15. At the school, I set up the water bottle like bowling pins and let the kids bowl with the decorative gourds. It was surprisingly popular for the amount of effort I put into it. Maybe not so surprising, though. I mean what kid wouldn’t want to throw produce at things? The fun thing, then, was when the bowling started getting a little out of hand, I took the 7 year old and sprung him out of school early and we went home. It just feels fun to be able to leave school early on a Friday afternoon.

=And then that night we went to a middle school production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a lot of fun. The weekend before we had gone to see A Year with Frog and Toad at the high school. Between those two productions, I’m realizing what an awesome thing school drama productions are. First of all, it’s a low key way to take my own kids to the theatre and that form of story-telling. And also, I love the sense of community- we had friends who were involved in both productions and it’s great to be able to support them.

-I haven’t written a dinner post lately, and that’s because I haven’t been home for dinner very much these past few weeks. One morning, I was packing all the snacks and food for everyone for the day and I think I packed more food to be eaten on the go than at home. I packed:

  • Three lunches (me, the seven year old, the four year old)
  • Two dinners (me and the seven year old since we both ahd a show that night)
  • Four snacks – two for the seven year old (one for school and one for the evening at the theatre), one for me, one for the 12 year old who had rehearsal that evening.

It seemed like a lot of portable food to pack for one day. Anyhow, the Husband has been making the majority of dinners this month. A few good dinners that I made, which I want to remember for the future:

  • Cornmeal waffles from the King Arthur Baking cookbook. These were savory and slightly spicy. The recipe suggested we top it with queso, which I might try next time. I actually mixed the dry ingredients ahead of time and the Husband did the rest when he got home.
  • Instant pot shrimp biryani from NYTimes Cooking. This was a pantry meal that I managed to make in thirty minutes one day when I had no plans for dinner.
  • Honey glazed mushrooms and udon noodles also from NYTimes Cooking – I had a head of cabbage to use up.
  • Happy hour dinner- crackers and charcuterie and I made a batch of Brazilian cheesy bread. Cut up veggies and fruit as well. The kids really love this kind of meal.
  • Not dinner, but my go-to lunch has been massaged kale salad. I prepped and washed a large container of kale ahead of time, and then in the morning, I massage a few handfuls with olive oil, sesame oil, and salt. Then I throw together with whatever I have on hand – roasted sweet potato, walnuts, daikon radish, avocado, apples… It’s sturdy so will keep in my lunchbox all day, and packed with vegetables so that it feels energizing to eat during long days at the theatre.

-I’ve been thinking lately about being nice. We have feedback sessions at the end of the each show with the stage management team. There was a comment at one point about someone not being very nice, having a very direct edge to their tone when they spoke to other people. I struggle with whether or not to pass this feedback along to that person. On the one hand, not someone being nice can have an effect on morale if you aren’t used to working with them. At the same time, I don’t believe that we all need to homogenous in our way of speaking or acting, and I do think we all need to learn to interact with people who have different styles of communication. And maybe it’s because I’ve worked with this person for many many years, that I have blinders as to whether the reports about them not being “nice” is a problem. Because they are one of the kindest people that I know. And to me, being kind is much more important than being nice. So I’ve been turning these ideas over in my head – about what place does personality have in work place culture and how to value different personalities as part of the whole package that someone is.

Things I’m grateful for this week: We’re going into Thanksgiving week – there are so many things to be grateful for and I was going to write a whole week of gratitude posts. Here are some small ones to start off:

Handles – this feels kind of silly, but my laptop sleeve has a handle and it makes it super easy to carry when I also have four other bags to bring to work. Every time I pick up the laptop, I think, “Boy am I glad there’s a handle!” I mean think about all the handles in your life! Doors, boxes, coffee cups… Handles make life better.

My apple box, and the prop guy who gets it for me – The stage management console at the theatre was clearly designed for someone taller than me. When I stand at it, my score is chest height, which makes it uncomfortable to turn pages and turn my cue lights on and off. (The cue lights are the colored lights that I use to tell the crew when to execute a cue. They are at the back of my console.) So I stand on an apple box. It’s not literally an apple box – it’s a wooden box about the size of an apple crate, which is why it’s called an apple box. Every time I call in this theatre, I ask the prop head for my apple box and he finds it, only giving me a little bit of grief for being short.

The seven year old and me backstage – he’s standing on my apple box.

Rock Creek Parkway – This is the road I take to the theatre. The thing is, though, the traffic goes into the city in the morning and out of the city in the evening. I, however, go into the city in the evening, so I can’t use it. So I end up having to drive through D.C. during rush hour to get to an evening performance call. Driving through the city is tedious in normal times; during rush hours it is soul sucking. I’m grateful for whenever I can take the parkway and not have to drive through Dupont Circle.

Ten extra minutes in the morning – Because of the late nights, I’ve been sleeping in a little later than normal and the mornings have seemed a little more breathless than usual. One day we left the house a few minutes late and I realized that we were going to miss the bus, so I drove the kids straight to school, parking on the trail and walking up to the school. Turns out, if we choose to drive them walk to school, I can leave a little later, buying me an extra ten minutes in the morning and I also get a little walk in up to the school and back to the parking lot on the trail. Those ten extra minutes give me the space to breathe and think through everything that I need for the day.

How was your weekend? Who is the kindest person you know? What quotidian thing are you grateful for this week?

I’m writing this post as part of NaBloPoMo – click on the icon below to see who else if participating. You can also leave me questions for an upcoming “Ask me Anything” post via this link. Happy reading and writing everyone!

Weekly recap + what we ate: filling time

Bored and Brilliant Challenge #3 was to delete one app from your phone. I deleted Feedly. I’m trying to figure out what value different apps bring me, and I thought Feedly was one that I could delete because it’s a bit of a time suck and also doesn’t have any essential functions in my life. Interestingly, though, my screen time actually went UP last week. I think the main reason is that I started rehearsal and have been doing a lot more messaging via Teams on my phone for work communications. I could just bring my laptop to rehearsal and communicate that way, but the phone takes up less space. Also, I don’t have notifications turned on on my phone, so I have to pick up my phone and look at it to see if there are any new messages. Maybe I should just turn my notifications on? But also, I’m very much feeling the point that was mentioned in the first Bored and Brilliant Challenge about how a phone is a distraction even just sitting on a table. I don’t want distractions during rehearsals or I’ll miss something. I think this goes back to thinking about how my phone can add value to my life.

Here’s another thing I noticed when I deleted Feedly – if I’m mindlessly scrolling, it doesn’t matter how many apps I delete, I will find a way to mindlessly scroll. I stopped checking Facebook about three years ago because I felt like it was becoming a toxic time suck for me. But you know what I realized? There will always be other sites that are a toxic time suck for me. Two big time sucks for me currently are askamanager.org, and corporette.com. They have very active comment sections and when I’m bored, I often find myself there. It’s not as bottomless as reddit, but it does have the same appeal, I think, of people posting questions or comments, and other anonymous internet strangers weighing in. Why am I so obsessed with other people’s problems or questions? This is actually one of the reasons I quit Facebook is that there was generally a lot of anxiety on the various groups I was in. I get it – life is huge and confusing and hard and people want/need support and to know they’re doing the right thing. I definitely have looked things up or posted questions when grappling with something and on the flip side, I think there is something in me that likes to solve problems, so when I read posts where people are looking for advice, I find myself wanting to help them solve their problems. And in various FB groups, I just started finding anonymous internet venting to be an overwhelming input for me. I think reading and responding to internet comments becomes toxic for me when I find myself reading about other people’s problems and thinking more about their problems than my own. And then it gets to a point other people’s problems just seem so overwhelming that I no longer have empathy for a commenter/poster and just get disgusted with humanity.

Which is all to say, I’m not sure what deleting Feedly has accomplished. Maybe I’m more thoughtful about my mindless scrolling – I have to choose to go to a website rather than it just popping up on my feed. Deleting Feedly was a good experiment in figuring out what kind of internet consumption I find enriching rather than deflating. I’m finding that I’m not missing the influencer type blogs that I mostly read in Feedly. Those blogs always made me feel like I wasn’t doing a good job of wringing the full potential out of life. I think I’d much rather just use my internet browser and go visit blogs where I feel a sense of kinship – likely if you are reading this and have a blog, I’m talking about you. I do miss getting my daily dose of poetry show up in my Feedly. But I can just go to that website on my own every day. I might even set up a widget that just opens that website.

The other thing I’ve noticed this week about my phone usage is that I’ve been catching myself looking at my phone as I walk to/from the car this week. Breaking that habit was the whole point of Challenge #1! I think there have been some stressors at work, and I want the slight distraction of easy media consumption the minute I walk out the door in order to decompress a little. But checking the phone doesn’t make me feel less stressed, I’ve noticed. Checking my phone is just a way to distract myself from the discomfort of feeling unsettled and agitated at work and thinking about what is really bothering me. So I’ve been trying to think of things I can do to help clear my head and re-set while keeping my phone in my bag. Some ideas:
-hard copies of books. I’ve started putting a book in my lunchbox so that I read on my lunch break rather than scroll.
-write haikus in my head (or on paper)
-Listen to more music. I guess this technically is phone usage, although a couple of times while driving to work, I was feeling really stressed thinking about the day ahead, so I put on the classical music station and that helped calm me down a little. I think when I am feeling overwhelmed, I need to be in a wordless environment for a while. Chatter tends to interfere with my ability to think, even if it’s just the radio. I like classical music because I can think about the musical lines and instruments, in a more abstract way than if I were to listen to something with a lot of lyrics.
-walking meditations. I’ve never really gotten into meditation, but sometimes being ultra-mindful of each step I’m taking helps me feel more grounded.
-jigsaw puzzles. We have a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle going on in our office. I’ve never done a puzzle with so many pieces before, and it’s certainly a challenge. I used to be of the school that one doesn’t look at the box when doing a jigsaw puzzle, but then someone brought in the 1500 piece puzzle and I’ve changed my stance.

Bored and Brilliant Challenge #4 is to take a faux-cation. Meaning dedicate a chunk o f time to be away from your phone. They even suggest setting an out of office message. That seems a little performative for me, so I don’t know if I’ll do that part. I’m not sure when I’ll take my faux-cation. I have friends visiting on my next free day and then I don’t have another day off for over a week. Maybe I can take a faux-cation morning before rehearsal? It’s a hard time in the work period to not be connected. Of course, it’s also the perfect time to be distraction free for a while since I have a lot of paperwork to get through. Maybe my faux-cation is just a couple hours to put my head down and plough through my paperwork?

A very nice free Day.
I had a great free day last Thursday! I got so much done. After dropping the kids at the bus, I took my car in for an oil change. I was going to run home while they changed my oil, but they said the car would be done in an hour so I went for a run by the mechanics instead, which was actually better because the mechanic is about a 1/4 mile from a trail and the fall leaves and crisp air made for a lovely run. I had forgotten my earphones, so I had to run i silence, which I thought was going to boring, but it wasn’t at all.

After I got my car back, I went to a consignment sale at a local pre-school (it’s their big fund raiser). I went to get pants for the 7 year old, but I also found this super cute t-Shirt for the 5 year old too:

Then I had lunch with the Husband at a really nice Mexican place by his work. The place had just gotten a nice write up in the paper, though the Husband has been coming since they were open. At the end of our meal, the owner offered us some grasshoppers! They were crunchy and spicy- like chips!

Then I went to the library because I had a hold come in and I also picked up a few other books:

The library is in the same building as the Rec center where early voting was taking place, so I also went to vote. It was the first day of early voting! The room was busy, but not crowded. I was in and out within ten minutes.

Then I picked up the 5 year old for gymnastics. I drafted a blog post while waiting for her class, which always feels super productive to me. Then we went home.

Next, I took the 7 year old for his costume fitting. I’ve never actually been in a costume fitting before, despite all these years of working in a theatre. It was fascinating. Costume people are amazing! The way they could look at a garment and know what seams to add or remove or take apart and put back together to make a garment fit was mesmerizing. It’s kind of surgical, the way they talk about clothes. Like you would never guess that this shirt was made for someone twice the size of the 7 year old, and since it was a rental shirt, they couldn’t cut it. So they just tuck and make a false cuff.

He looks a little like Fievel from An American Tail.

After we got home, though it all went downhill from there. The Husband was out with a friend, so I was solo parenting. No one wanted to help pick up or set the table or do homework. I was annoyed that I was making tasty pasta that no one seemed to care about. People yelled at me. I yelled at people. Then I told them not to yell at me, and I shut myself in my room until bedtime. On the bright side… when I was shut into my room the 12 year old dished up the pasta and fed the 2 younger kids. In front of the tv. I can’t decide if that’s a win or not.

But in an effort not to let one horrible hour torpedo the rest of a lovely productive and restful day, I cling to all the nice things and productive things that happened that day. And I did end the day by making a plum torte, so that was nice. Baking always helps, and this recipe (from New York Timing Cooking) was super easy to whip up. Apparently the recipe is run every fall. It’s legendary and people got mad when the Times didn’t publish it one year. It’s not the best thing I ever made, but the taste to effort ratio is pretty high.

Grateful For:
-Getting two runs in this week, on my dinner break and on my free day. Perfect cool fall weather for running. I can still wear shorts, but the sun isn’t torturous.

– My work BFF who is so so so smart and I can bounce thoughts off her when I’m trying to navigate a thorny issue. (She’s also a great friend not just at work, and our kids hang out together all the time. I joked with her the other day that one day one of us should go work somewhere else because between the two of us we have so many work-branded tote bags that we’re always getting our stuff mixed up when we hang out.)

-Leftovers. So glad to have leftovers for quick easy lunch and dinner packing last week.

-On that same note – grateful for past me for making a double batch of soup and freezing it for easy dinners last week.

-Wifi at activities. I’m really grateful that there is wifi in the waiting room at gymnastics so I can get some work or blogging done while I wait for them to get done activities. Maybe I should be watching them bounce on trampolines, but… the gym isn’t really set up to always be watching the kids.

Looking Forward To:
-A visit from a mentor, now friend.

-Hallowe’en. I think everyone’s costume is set. I actually have most of the day off, so I think I’ll get to go trick or treating from the beginning. I had originally been scheduled to work until 6:00pm or so, but now I’m going to try to get home by 5:00pm. I’ve been squeezing some costume sewing in when I can.

-Listening to this audio book – I wanted a cozy audiobook to get me through the next few weeks. The combination of an Alexis Hall novel read by Will Watt for 10 Things that Never Happened was the epitome of cozy romance for me (still disagree with you, Engie!), so I chose another Alexis Hall novel read by Will Watt, and it’s been the perfect, swoony and sweet audiobook for me right now:

What We Ate:

Monday: Turkey white bean soup from freezer

Tuesday: Fried perch and tater tots. The Husband cooked while I was at work. I ight have eaten the whole bowl of leftover Tater Tots when I got home at 11pm. It was just an excuse to use Trader Joe’s Dill Pickle seasoning.

Wednesday: Skillet pasta and sausage. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Cheesy pumpkin pasta bake with kale. From NY Times Cooking. This was really tasty. I wanted leftovers, but the kids took them all for lunch. I actually froze half of it before baking because it only requires 15 mins at 500 degrees to bake so it will make an easy dinner. I added a can of cannellini beans for more protein, and made it with silken tofu instead of cream, so it would not be as rich.

Friday: leftover soup and pizza

Saturday: Dumplings and the Pokemon movie (for those at home), kale salad (for me at work)

Sunday: leftovers

How is your week going? Is there one app you would like to delete? What is your favorite way – your most bucket filling way – to spend time on your phone?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Haikus not photos

We started rehearsals last Thursday. Starting mid week is always a little tough because you get the momentum of the first day excitement and then bam, you have a day off and it feels a little like letting the air out of your own tires. Oh well, it’s the schedule and I’ll take any days off that I can get.

Bored and Brilliant Challenge #2– No Photo Day. The point of this challenge was to force you to really look at the things you might be tempted to take a picture of, rather than taking your phone out to snap a picture. Studies show that taking a picture of something actually could lead you to remember it less. This challenge kind of hit home when I remembered how a few weeks ago, I wrote about the bright purple flowers in our front walk on a gloomy day. When I was writing that post, I looked for a picture to post of those flowers, but I couldn’t find one. “Surely, I took a photo of that moment,” I thought. “I remember that flower so vividly!” But I hadn’t taken a photo – I had just seen the purple aster popping out on a grey grey day and that memory had embedded itself in my brain. Would I have had such a vivid memory of that flower if I had taken a photo? I don’t know.


Last week, I took exactly three pictures:

I sent this to the Husband as proof I was logging off my comouter and coming home.
Took this one for last week’s post on books I was reading- I’m enjoying both.
The seven year old doing his homework in rehearsal. I sent this to the Husband as proof that he does do his homework sometimes.

And truth to tell, I had to look back at my camera roll to remember what pictures I had taken. on reflection, I think I took pictures to communicate something to someone else. These were not photos of things I wanted to remember for myself. I don’t know if this “No Photo” thing will stick. I do take a lot of pictures for practical reasons – to remember parking spots and grocery lists, to use at work when it is easier to take a picture than try to find the words to explain what I mean when I’m trying to give a note about a prop of some such. And I do like having photos of my family with me, capturing moments we have together. But I think because it is so easy to take photos, I have a higher expectation of these images I capture- I want them to be perfect, I want moments to be perfect. And some are. Sunsets, laughter, getting to the end of a hike. But also – I don’t need a million pictures of these things. I don’t need to take picture after picture, holding the camera between me and the things I want to capture. I can just take one, and maybe it’s imperfect, maybe not everyone is looking at the camera. But that’s the moment too. (Actually, the 7 year old is notorious for turning his back to the camera when I want to take a group picture – at least it’s honest of where we are.) Of course, when it comes to a family picture for the Christmas card, I reserve the right to try to get a nice one.

So last week, as part of the No Photo challenge, I challenged myself to write a haiku every time (well not every time) that I wanted to take a photo, as a way to think about why I’m struck by something. Here are some of the haikus I came up with:

This one is about those purple flowers on our front walk:
On a gloomy day
Purple asters line the walk.
Such bright drops of joy.

Inspired by the first signs of fall foliage that I saw:
Orange dappled leaves
Flaming amidst still green trees.
The first to welcome Fall.

Another one for fall:
Dropping temperatures
bring sartorial changes –
Cozy clothes season!

They play, chattering
Sharing imaginations.
Worlds only they see.

Full moon shines. The clouds
drift lie widow’s weeds across
transcendent beauty.

I will say, last week my phone pick ups did go down 21% from the week previous. (from 98 average pick ups per day to 78). And my daily screentime average was down 25% from the week before (2 h 42 m m vs. 3h 37 mins). I don’t think lower numbers is the ultimate goal in and of itself, but rather what I do with the time, that additional 55 minutes.

Bored and Brilliant Challenge #3 is to delete one app. I’m not sure which one that would be. I no longer check social media and I don’t play any phone games. My most used apps are text/messages, Feedly, and Safari. Safari is probably mostly reading blogs. So I guess that would mean deleting Feedly. Will report back.

Other goings ons–
-Speaking of phones. We got the 12 year old her first phone this week. It has been a huge decision and it’s actually a little earlier than I had wanted to give her a phone. Let’s be honest, if I could have waited until college, I would have. I’m kind of late to technology adoption and late to change. But with activities ramping up and with her being in a show this fall, I felt like for safety and communication, it was best to give her a phone so she could move around more independently. We got her a Bark Phone – the Husband did the research – and it seems like a low commitment way to get her a phone that had lots of parental controls on it. I had briefly contemplated a smart watch, but I wanted her to have something that she could leave in her locker and that wouldn’t be attached to her wrist and constantly monitoring her or sending her physical notifications. Before we got the phone, we all agreed to each come up with three rules about phone usage. If anyone else has guidelines or thoughts on phones and kids, I’d love to hear it. Right now we’re trying to figure out how we decide which apps she can download. I’m not opposed to her having some fun things to do on her phone, but I don’t want her to have so many apps that she is constantly switching between apps looking for that dopamine hit one gets when exposed to new and fresh things. Like you know when you constantly re-fresh apps looking for something new? Anyhow… lots to think about here.

-Soup Party at Work. This was a lot of fun. I make Chinese Corn and Egg Drop Soup. We also had Baked Potato Soup, Lasagna Soup, Sausage Kale Soup, Chicken and White Bean Soup, chicken orzo soup. Lots of bread and carbs too. It was a nice cozy way to gather. I want to have a soup party in the new year, maybe February? It seems like February would be a nice month to have a gathering.

-Family time on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon. My days off are all over the place this month. I had last Sunday off. I took the 12 year old to buy fabric for her Hallowe’en costume then we were home. We had lunch together outside on our back patio and then later we went together to the park where we played basketball together. The 7 year old and the 5 year old are comically unskilled at basketball, and it made for a lopsided game with people changing sides on a whim. But it was a lot of fun for all five of us to be doing something together, and the weather was perfect.

-I’ve been thinking about NaBloWriMo. (Thanks, San, for organizing!). November is legit bonkers busy for me, but I love the idea of a collective flooding of the internet of good old fashioned blogging. Maybe I’ll write shorter posts? My weekly posts have four parts – life update, gratitude, anticipation, what we ate – maybe I can concentrate on writing/posting one part per day?

Grateful for:
-Hand me down winter coats. I have a friends who gives us all her kids’ outgrown winter coats. She has three kids and each kid always has two or three coats, so it’s a lot of coats. I think between the two little kids, I’ve only ever had to buy one or two winter coats since they were born. (The oldest always gets a new (or thrifted) winter coat.) One day last week it was quite chilly and I needed winter coats for the kids, and I was really grateful that I had a whole closet of winter coats to pull from. The first onset of cold weather is always a scramble for appropriate winter gear, and it’s nice to know that I’m covered on the coat front for a few more years at least.

-Fall apple season. I think apples might be my favorite part of fall. There are so many kinds of apples at the farmer’s market and every apple is a kind of adventure of discovery. Is there anything more satisfying than biting into a perfectly crisp, tart-sweet apple.

-Cookbooks on Libby. For the Soup Party, I wanted to make a recipe from a book I had borrowed from the library, but I didn’t have time to get it from the library, so I checked Libby, and there it was! I find that cookbooks on Libby aren’t always formatted to easy to browse and read, but when I’m just looking for a recipe, it’s a good way to find cookbooks.

Looking forward to:
I have to be honest the next few weeks look like kind of a grind of work and activities, so I don’t have anything fun planned. This all hit home when I tried to schedule dentist appointments for the kids and there was literally no weekday until mid December where I could take all three kids at once to the dentist. It was hard enough getting two kids to back to back appointments.
– Fall walks. I’m going to try to go on a walk every day at lunch. On days when I’m working an evening rehearsal, I’m going to try to fit in a run since I have 90 minutes between rehearsals. I’ve packed my running clothes and shoes and they are at my office right now, so hopefully it will prompt me to go run.

-2025 calendar. Our 2025 wall calendar arrived! Can I tell you how much I LOVE this wall calendar? It’s the At a Glance Move A Page Three Month Calendar. It’s designed so you move each month up as you go so that you can always see the next two months as well as the current one. A lot of 3 month calendars that I looked at were just four pages of three months each, so you’d have to flip back and forth to see adjacent months if you were on, say, March. Or they were all three months on one page, so you’d have to re-write future months as they became present months. There is no re-writing necessary with this calendar. Also – this calendar has lines in the date blocks so it makes writing in it neater. I bought several different 4 colour pens, so everyone in the family gets their own colour on the calendar.

from here .

-Free Day to run errands. I have a free say mid week, so I’m hoping to get some errands done. I’ve scheduled an oil change, want to return library books, run, lunch with the Husband, and visit a local consignment sale- the 7 year old is in dire need of pants.

-oh the most important thing I’m hoping to do on my free day is VOTE! Early voting starts this upcoming week. I have a little trepidation and a little hope about the elections. I don’t trust the polling so I feel like anything could happen. I feel like we’ve been here before- is it just me, or has every election seemed nail bitingly unpredictable?

What We Ate: it was soup week here! Partly because of fall weather, partly because it’s an easy thing to make ahead of time when things get busy.

Monday: Chicken rice soup. Made in the Instant Pot. I’m trying to use up things in the freezer, and we had a bunch of chicken breasts, so I put them in the Instant Pot with celery, onions, butternut squash, turnips, brown rice, and chicken broth. It was really tasty and there were leftovers for all week.

Tuesday: Corn and egg drop soup and dumplings. I made a double batch of the corn and egg drop soup so that I could bring to the Soup Party at work. I used the recipe from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou. It’s actually just a corn soup in the recipe, and I added the egg drop part to up the protein. The dumplings were pulled from the freezer – we had bought from the Farmer’s market last month.

Wednesday: Soup Party at work! I brought the Corn and Egg Drop Soup. It was even more ginger-y because I had added ginger slices and let them sit overnight.

Thursday: Chili- the Husband made this on Sunday night. It was super tasty.

Friday: Pizza (takeout) and IF. I had to work this night and had leftovers.

Saturday: I had to work, so I had leftovers. Not sure what the rest of the family ate.

Sunday: Toast and leftovers. Sunday is usually simple supper/ clean out the fridge night.

How is fall in your area? If you are in the States – are you voting in person or by mail? Early or on Election day? What’s the last photo you took? What’s the last photo you sent someone?

Weekly recap + what we ate: September Review/October Aspirations

I was feeling kind of “meh” about September. We had a big goal of doing a lot of decluttering, but we had one major win (the attic), and one kind of fail (the toy room.) We have a plan for the foyer to manage our shoes and socks and drop zones, but it requires ordering new shoe storage. I’m excited about the shoe storage that we have picked out, but it is pricy, so I’m not sure when we’ll order it. And then on top of it all, the start of school and activities just feels overwhelming – totally my own doing, of course, but it’s stressful.

But when I went to journal about my September, I found there were some highlights tucked in there.

September Highlights:
– My parents came to visit.
-The youngest kid turned five!!! We had cake at home and also a birthday party for her with friends at the small local aquarium.
-The kids and I went to the Renaissance Faire. It was so much fun. I’m glad we went early because it’s been sold out for the rest of the season since mid September.
-Going through the attic and throwing out/donating/ passing along so much stuff. The space that this has opened up is amazing.
-Family Game Night. A wonderful, quieter alternative to big adventures.
-Discovered some tasty food near us – a Balkan restaurant and an Indonesian one.
-The County’s Friendship picnic – tasty falafel and bounce houses.
-On the work front – working a corporate gig (a new to me experience), and doing super titles for a Vocal Recital (familiar gig, nice to return to).
-We found out that the 12 year old got into the children’s chorus for the holiday opera that I’m working on. She was so excited. I took this picture of her reading the offer:

September Lowlights – funny how many of these lowlights are tied to the highlights:
-Trying to figure out the logistics of getting the 12 year old to opera rehearsals. Rehearsals start at 4pm, and that’s kind of a logistical nightmare. She doesn’t start until November, but it’s causing a lot of stress.
-My parents came to visit, but I barely saw them because I was working most nights that they were here.
– Not managing to work through the toy room declutter.
-Not having a chance to go on any hikes or visit any museums all month. This might be the first month all year where I didn’t fit in either a hike or a museum visit.

October Aspirations:
Okay, I had written a big long list for October aspirations, but I think I’ll just whittle it down to a few essentials:
– Survive our schedule, making sure everyone stays fed, rested, and gets where they are scheduled to be. In addition to the kids’ usual activities, the 7 year old is going to be a supernumerary (non-speaking extra) in the opera I’m working on. I might regret signing him up – it will be several late nights and will take thoughtful logistics, but he’s excited to do it, and I’m excited to have him in the show.
-Hallowe’en. I think we have costumes sorted out. I need to make them, but I’ve penciled costume work days into my calendar.
– Another effort on the toy room purge.
-VOTE. This is a big one. Early voting starts in ten days. If I don’t do anything else, I need to do this.
-Remember to hug the Husband and children every day.
-Daily time outside. Even the low bar of the Cool Bloggers Walking Club seems high to me right now, but here’s a reminder to step outside and breath the fall air every day.
-I had a bunch of other aspirations written down – the perpetual “get rid of car” project, planning for our Asia Trip, hike, museum, exercise, no-spend month, social plans… I think those are going on the “really, maybe, probably not this month” list. I’m setting expectations low here.

Other Things This Week:
-Contra-dancing! The Husband suggested we go contra-dancing this week. There is a new-ish contra dance about two miles down the road from us on the second Thursday of the month. The Husband and I met contra-dancing and we used to go several times a month. In our area you used to be able to go to a contra dance on Friday Nights and Sunday nights, and if you were willing to drive to Baltimore, you could also go to one on Saturday nights as well. It’s a pretty popular activity here. The Sunday night dance no longer runs now, thanks COVID. And we also haven’t been for a while, thanks, kids. I don’t think we’ve been since before the 7 year old could walk. Anyhow, the Husband told me about this Thursday night dance and we went, taking all the kids, and we all had such a great time. The music was amazing, the people friendly. There were several people that remembered us from when we used to attend the dance regularly. I laughed, I spun really fast, I moved my feet to the music, I swung my kids around, I made small talk with nice people. It was a really great time.

Blurry screen capture from video the 12 year old took of the Husband and me.

-Good talk with a teacher – One of the kids has been struggling in school so we set up a meeting with the teacher to talk about strategies. I’ve always been a little hands off with my kids’ schools, but this year, I’m realizing that there is a an element of collaboration that is needed – teachers and administrators want to know when kids are struggling, and it’s better to ask the questions rather than assume things will work out. I’ve always felt bad about emailing teachers about issues, and taking their time, but I’m seeing that there is a time and a tone for these communications, especially in the elementary/middle school years. I’m sure high school is a whole different ball game.

-Matching Overalls! We went to Duluth Trading Company on Saturday – the Husband needed some new shirts and pants. I’m doing a casual, no-pressure Buy Nothing month (inspired by Stephany!), so I didn’t buy anything for myself, but I did try on some jeans and they weren’t terrible. I might buy myself a pair in November. I haven’t worn jeans in two years and it’s hard to go back, but they are a really versatile piece of clothing and good for running around backstage. So I will marinate on that. But in the mean time, I couldn’t resist picking up a pair of overalls for the 5 year old. They have a super cute fox print pattern on them. And… the overalls come in adult sizes as well. The 12 year old and I both tried them on together. I was sooooo tempted to buy us all matching overalls, but they are on the pricy side and the 12 year old found a pair of ivory corduroy overalls she liked better, and I decided to resist the temptation and stick to my “no buy” intentions. But look how cute we all are!

-We finally finished watching a TV series! This is very rare for us – we often peter out of energy when watching something together, or if I’m watching something on my own, I am often reluctant to watch the series finale because I don’t want the show to end (I’m looking at you, This is Us). We watched the last episode of Ted Lasso over the weekend. (Though there are rumors of a Season 4…?). The last episode was predictably sentimental and heart-tugging to the point of manipulative, but I kind of loved it. I feel like it’s not “cool” to wear your emotions on your sleeve anymore – there is so much television about people being mean to each other, or being irrevocably lonely, or trying to get ahead, or having terrible things happen, and blood and sex and gore and ironic wise assery. And Ted Lasso’s big hearted optimism is the antidote to that. This last season – sure it was predictable and it seemed like they were box checking plot points, but dammit if there weren’t some genuinely touching moments and I might have been a little teary eyed.

-Bored and Brilliant Challenge. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m trying to work my way through the Bored and Brilliant Challenge – six challenges put together by the podcast New Tech City/ Note to Self in 2015 to help one re-set phone habits. The first challenge was to keep your phone in your pocket (or your bag) when you are in transit. As part of the episode, the host sat on a New York City street and counted how many people walking by were interacting with their phone. Of the 1000 people she counted, 30% of people were interacting with their phones, which actually seems low to me – but the episode was from 2015, so maybe people were less attached to their phones nine years ago? At any rate, one of the main points of this first challenge is how even when you don’t look at your phone, even having it out is a distraction and keeps you from truly connecting – with others, with your surroundings, with yourself.
I’ve been doing this “phone in pocket” challenge, and at the beginning I noticed that I would, out of habit, pull my phone out after work as I walked to my car. This wasn’t great, especially since I often left work late at night when it was dark out. But it was also something that I wasn’t even thinking about. What was interesting to me about this challenge, too, is that one would think that a behavior that requires effort (pulling out one’s phone) comes against more friction than something that requires no effort (leaving the phone in my bag). But that itch to check my phone – the discomfort of being bored – clearly was winning out over the inertia of leaving the phone in my bag. So when I started finding myself reaching for my phone while walking or in the car or wanting to take it with me when I walked down the hall to talk to someone at work, I tried to acknowledge the discomfort of being bored, the urge of wanting to be entertained, and sat with that a little bit. Like seriously, what is so boring about walking to the car that I feel like I need to be looking at my phone? I’m sure there are scientific studies that look at how the brain processes content from the phone vs. other inputs. Maybe this “challenge” will just become a habit.

Challenge #2 is to have a Photo Free Day, where you don’t use your phone yo take any pictures for a whole day. I do like to take pictures to remember things, and capture moments. Will report back on how this challenge goes.

Grateful For:
-Walking trails to school. Twice last week, I drove the 7 year old and his friend to school. The first time, was because we missed the bus, so I drove and parked along the trail that goes to the school and we walked the rest of the way – I kind of loathe sitting in the carpool line and thought this would be nicer. The 7 year old said to me, “It’s nice to start the day with a walk!” So on Friday, I asked if he wanted to walk to school again, and he did, so we once again parked on the trail and walked up to the school. I’m grateful that for living in a pretty urban suburb, there are still lots of ways to walk.

-Being home for dinner. Opera season is starting for me, which means a lot of nights and weekends. I’m grateful when I get the evening off and can be home for dinner. I love family dinners.

-Parks and playgrounds. On Saturday, the 12 year old had a birthday party. It was about 25-30 minutes away from home, and we didn’t think it would be efficient to drop off then return, so we took the opportunity to go grocery shopping and to take the two little kids to a playground. I feel so lucky that there are so many parks and playgrounds in our area. You can often find one (or two or three) within a 10 or 15 minute drive of wherever you are in our part of our county. So if ever we need to kill some time, going to a playground is usually a good solution. I’m also grateful that the kids still like playgrounds.

-Not quite getting rid of my car yet. Our van had to go into the shop and we were down one car for a week, so I ended up driving my 20 year old car while my husband drove the Impreza until the van was fixed. I know we are lucky to have three cars for situations like this – even if one car is 12 years old and the other car is 20 years old. Part of me thinks, maybe we don’t need to get rid of my car – it’s good to have an extra car for instances like this. But it is silly and expensive and hard to justify keeping a third car for emergencies when we live a 10 minute walk to public transportation.

Looking forward to:
-Hallowe’en. I’m not working on Hallowe’en this year, so I get to take the kids trick or treating. The costumes have all been chosen. There were some last minute changes, but I stuck firm that I wasn’t making different Hallowe’en costumes, so any changes had to be able to be sourced/purchased.

-Starting rehearsals. We’ve been prepping for the start of rehearsals. It’s always exciting to learn a new score and wrap my brain around new sets and costumes (well, new to me – the costumes are rented and the set takes parts of previous shows and uses them together). At a certain point, however, I am itching to move from the show being in my head to see how it is going to get up on its feet, to see what the singers and creative team is like, to hear the music sung by real live people.

-Soup Party! I’ve organized a soup party for my department at work. I’m excited – and the weather is just starting to turn chilly enough for soup weather. I think I’ll make Chinese corn soup – it’s easy to put together and very tasty. Not sure if I’ll make it vegan (tofu instead of eggs).

-Just started these two books:

In busy seasons, I try to find books that are fun to read and engagingly written right off the bat, and these two books are that, in very different ways. One is about navigating puberty- it gives the science behind the changes that happen and also gives ideas on how to kids about the changes in a wonderfully non-judgmental way.. The other book is a love story that straddles two eras.

What We Ate:
Monday: Pasta Salad. Made before I went to work in the afternoon. Jenny Rosenstrach’s marinated beans, pasta, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. Vegan.

Tuesday: Soba and herb salad with roasted eggplants and plums. This was simpler than it sounds, but boy was it tasty. I ate it for leftovers the rest of the week. Vegan.

Wednesday: Leftover pizza from the 5 year old’s birthday party.

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: pizza (take out) and Glee

Saturday: The 12 year old was at a birthday party. The husband and I weren’t terribly hungry after a big lunch, so we didn’t eat, but we did buy the two little kids a sandwich to split from the grocery store.

Sunday: Leftovers for me. Yogurt with berries and honey. Toast (again) – PB&J on English muffins for one kid, melted cheese on English muffins for the other kid. Cut up veggies on the side.

How is your October going so far?

(bi)Weekly recap + what we ate: Needs met, then unmet

Sometimes my writing schedule gets off and then I realize it’s been two weeks since and update even though my last post was just last week. Time can be funny like that…

I recently read this beautiful poem : I Remember the Carrots by Ada Limon. It starts with the lines:

I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be—
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire—
all these needs met, then unmet again.

Those words- “all these needs met, then unmet again.” has stuck with me. I’ve been thinking lately with regards to many things, work and life. In regards ot work, how there will never be a perfect system. We go through reorganizations and departmental changes, each time hoping that this is the optimal way to run things, but it is never a forever solution. People come and go and bring different talents, fill different holes with their different strengths. Different stressors come up, different duties, tasks to be done. You check the boxes then more things come up on the list. So there is no ultimate system, just a meeting today’s needs.

And in other parts of life – we adjust our lives and patterns to meet needs and then before we know it, things shift and once again there are unmet needs. Kids too. And oneself. Feed ourselves until we are no longer hungry, but then we will be hungry again. File the paperwork so that we get that insurance reimbursement then we have to go to the doctor again. But also things like, tell someone you love them, and then tell them again, because we can continue to meet that need of those around us to be loved. It is an exhausting cycle to think about. But also – there is some wonder in the thought that we can meet needs, that perhaps this is life’ work – to continue to meet needs – physical and emotional. Perhaps that’s the “good life” of the poem?

So along those lines –

It was a really busy few weeks for me. What week isn’t? (Side note – One of my favorite quotes is from an essay by Ursula Le Guin, who, when asked what she does in her spare time, says:
“In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.”
I never want to imply that the things that occupy my life and make my life feel frantic, this busyness of a hamster wheel that I feel stuck in sometimes – I would never want to imply that my personal busyness is morally superior than that which occupies anyone else’s time – we all of us occupy our time by living. When did being busy become a virtue? Or is that just the narrative I’ve internalized somewhere? )

Anyhow, the week before last, I took on an event gig, which required me to be at work at 8am. I know many people show up at work at 8am (or even earlier!), and props to them. 8am is a whole new world for me. I basically wake up at 6:00am, eat breakfast, pack lunches, get dressed and leave for work by 7:00am. It feels so much more efficient than my typical mornings which stretch longer (6:45am wake up to 8:50am leave for school bus) and where all those things seem to take up two hours rather than one. I mean, I do sometimes get a yoga stretch in, a bit or reading, a moment to journal. Or sometimes those stretches are occupied by looking for permission slips, or socks, or prepping dinner, or when I’m lucky a couch cuddle with a kid and a picture book. A 7am out the door, however, does not allow for those extra things, though.

The event was a two day affair, a symposium on mental health, and it went pretty smoothly. I was there mostly to help out the stage manager that the producing organization brought, facilitating communication with the crew. There was a lot of setting water glasses onstage and chairs and side tables for the different panels and speakers. Events are interesting to me because the stakes feel so high since you only get one go at it, but also at the same time you only get one try at it, often with minimal/no rehearsal, so the stakes somehow simultaneously feel oddly low. Like you just have to do the best you can to get people where they need to be when they need to be there and if it isn’t 100% smooth, it’s very rarely your fault. Event work is good money, to be honest, and I know many people who just do event work for a living.

But… I think I would miss rehearsal. I like going to rehearsal and creating something and being part of that process. I like taking a hundred people and stirring them all together to make a story onstage. I like watching artists discover how they tell stories and doing my part to make that story happen. And I like working somewhere where I know whom I’m working with and I don’t have to wonder if so and so is going to show up or if they have to cancel at the last minute to testify before congress. Or we have to re-arrange the PowerPoint last minute because the speaker cancelled. There is certainly a thrilling rush of adrenaline to work under the fast paced scenario of an event, but I think it would be exhausting to do that every. single. gig. Maybe I’m too comfortable where I am?

Which, on that note, I did finally move my cubicle at work, so I guess that’s a step towards discomfort. I’d been putting this off since I don’t like change and have been sitting at my original desk for almost twenty years. But someone pointed out that the desk of my predecessor in the Production Stage Manager role was probably better suited for, well, being the PSM since it was in a corner and was bigger and had a couch for sitting and chatting, which is something that happens more now that I have more work responsibilities. I’d delayed and delayed but then we were all getting new computers at work, so I figured it was as good a time as any to move cubicles. I don’t love it – I can’t see when people are in the office because of the way the cubicle walls are set up, but maybe I can move the cubicle walls.

Other fun things:
– Family game night. We often have pizza and movie on Fridays, and sometimes also on Saturdays as well. One week, though, the 7 year old demanded game night. So we had a Saturday game night. Everyone had different ideas for what they wanted to do, so we did all of it – we started by playing King of Tokyo, then we spent some time playing with the marble run and building domino topplings (is that a word?), and then we ended the evening by playing Uno. It was a great time – even with some sore losing and sore winning antics. I’m hopeful we’ll do more game nights.

You can sort of see the 12 year old in the chair at the top of the picture – she’s listening to an audiobook with her earphones on. But hey, she’s in the same room as the rest of us, so it’s still family time, right?

-FIVE! The youngest officially turned five. (Despite the unicorn cake of the last post, her birthday wasn’t until the next day.) They don’t get any younger, I suppose. This past weekend we had her birthday party at a nearby aquarium. It’s a small aquarium mostly focused on local marine life, with one room of tanks and then a huge play space outside. The kids got a tour of all the fish, and got to feed some of them, and also touch some of the animals in the touch tank. Then there was pizza and snacks and cupcakes and play time. I feel like 90% of the reason the 5 year old wanted to have the party at the aquarium was that the outdoor play space is in the shape of a pirate ship.

-No School Day/ Car Free Day. The two older kids had last Thursday off school for Rosh Hashanah. (I mean the calendar doesn’t say that – it just says Non-Instructional Day, but the school calendar doesn’t call it Christmas Break either…) It’s my last no school day with the kids for a while, and I wanted to have an adventure, but the 12 year old was reluctant to visit a museum or go on a hike (the two things I would have done), so we stayed close to home and it ended up being mostly a lovely day. In the morning we “ran” to a cafe and had special drinks and pastries. The run was the 7 year old’s idea. It was a very slow run, punctuated by much walking, but I think both kids felt good about it. At one point, the 7 year old was losing steam and the 12 year old grabbed his hand to encourage him along, telling him we just needed to make it to the next light.

We shared earbuds and listened to musical theatre soundtracks, singing along at the top of our lungs, which got a lot of smiles from other people on the path. After our special drinks and pastries, we walked home (still singing loudly) and had lunch. At some point during the walk home, I had it in my head that I wanted to have a car-free day. So after lunch, we took the metro to my work as an exercise for the 12 year old on how to take the metro on her own. I mean we were with her, but I had her lead the way. Then we went to the library near work, got some books – including Dogman books in French (Super-Chien!) – and then came home. The rest of the day, I baked Brazilian Cheesy Bread and brownies and we watched some tv as a family. It was a pretty low key day, but it was nice to spend time with the two big kids.

Side note: the library we went to was a DC Library, which we don’t often go to since we live in Maryland. I snapped this photo for their Busy Person’s Book Club- I love that idea.

-a new Costco snack. I went to Costco to pick up food for the 5 year old’s birthday party, hoping to also grab another bag of those Chocolate Quinoa Crisps, but they were no where to be found!!!!! Typical of Costco to lure me in with a fabulous snack and then not carry it any more. No worries! Costco does not lack for snacks, and I found a new one – These crunchy savory rice cakes – all my favorite Thai food flavor profiles in a bite sized morsel!

One Not Fun Thing:
-The decluttering has kind of hit a roadblock. I gave away the kids’ play tent on Freecycle. Several mistakes here – I should have double triple checked that they were okay with my giving it away, even though they said okay initially – but the biggest one was giving it away while the youngest was at home. There were tear. So many tears. Heart-wrenching sobs. Our youngest kid is perhaps our most pragmatic child and is the least likely to get upset or feed into melodrama. So when she does get upset, it feels so so heart-breaking. Anyhow, I feel terrible about giving away the tent now and am kind of petrified of giving away anymore toys from the toy room. So much for the toy room purge progress. This definitely needs to get back on track, though.

Two OMG things that I’m probably the last person on earth to have discovered:
– Shaking out the floor mats. Every Wednesday morning, I take the kids to piano lessons. While the 12 year old has lessons, I go get gas. I’ve gotten in the habit of throwing out the trash while I pump gas, and it’s such a simple way to keep the car tidy. Well lately, I’ve also been shaking out the floor mats as well, and what a difference that makes! Vacuuming the car seems like a lot of work, but shaking out the floor mats? With a quick flick, i get rid off all the grass and dirt and what not and the car looks almost like I vacuumed, even though under the floor mat is still covered in grass and dirt and whatnot. I guess this isn’t earth shattering, and I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before to do this, but it makes a huge difference.

-USB plugs! Despite using a computer almost every day of my life for the past thirty years, and having to plug in and unplug USB plugs, and often plugging them in upside down and getting frustrated and wondering if I was missing something – well, you know what? I was missing something. USB plugs are marked! The marked part of the plug is the top. What???? I feel like such an idiot not to have known this. I’ll never try to plug in a mouse upside down again.

Grateful For:

-Flowers in the front walk- a splash of colour during a grey week. The sun has come out now, but last week was so grey and drizzly. Coming home in the rain, I just wanted to rush into the house, but the purple flowers that line our front walk, poking their heads out reminded me to take a moment and savor beautiful things.

-The Husband booking the 5 year olds’ birthday party venue. I will admit I am not a birthday person. Witness the 7 year old not getting a party last year because I just couldn’t get it together. So this year for the youngest kid’s birthday, the Husband took it up on himself to research venues, run the options by the 5 year old, and then book the venue she picked. Done. Once a venue is booked, I’m good at food and other logistics. It’s that first push of the boulder that I’m not good at.

-The guy (D) who comes and fixes things for us. I am not a DIY/ Fix it myself kind of person. I might paint a room, and I have changed a light switch, and I did tile the basement of our first house. But in general, while I like the idea of doing my own DIY projects, I wouldn’t work on a timeline that is acceptable to other people in the house. Enter D, who comes in and will do both small and large jobs for us. He is careful and also honest – if something isn’t in his wheelhouse, he’ll tell us rather than try to figure it out. Anyhow, he was here to paint our new front door, and he’s done such a smooth job that every time I close the front door, I give it door an extra stroke because it’s just so glossy and pretty. He also replaced a light fixture in the kids’ room – I had always hated the fixture that was in the room when we moved it – everything was always so dark. Oh also installed a new medicine cabinet. Now the room is full of light. I’m grateful to D for making out home nicer bit by bit.

Newly stained door!
New (to this room) light fixture!

Looking Forward To:
-Starting a new opera. This week I’ll start prep for my next show. I’m excited to get back to a rehearsal room, but also kind of dreading it. The calendar is very full these next few months and I get overwhelmed thinking about it. One week, one day, one hour at a time, I suppose.

-Going contra dancing! The Husband sent me a link to a contradance that is ten minutes away and suggested that we go. It’s on a Thursday night and there are a million reasons we shouldn’t go – we haven’t been contra-dancing in years, and it might be a disastrously late night for everyone, the kids might hate it – but I’m looking forward to going. The Husband and I met at a contradance, so there’s a special place in my heart for dancing.

-re-setting my phone habits. I was listening to this 2015 episode of Note To Self with Sherry Turkle where she talks about how the mere presence of one’s phone is a huge distraction and I do find that it’s true for me. There are for sure things that I find valuable from having my phone, but also lots that just makes me fell sluggish. I want to be more thoughtful about how my phone plays in my life, so I’m trying this Bored and Brilliant challenge to re-set some habits. It’s supposed to be a 7 day challenge, but some of the challenges I think I’ll do more more than one day. The first challenge was to put one’s phone away while in transit – while driving, walking, on public transportation – and I’m trying to make that a longer habit. I think my goal is not necessarily to reduce time on my phone, but to reduce the number of times I pick up my phone.

– We started this tv show:

It’s sharply hilarious and skewers everyone on the political spectrum, as one might expect of a show about a gay public high school teacher in a school in Austin, TX. As I have a kid who is spitting distance to high school, this show fills me with dread and hope.

What We Ate (two weeks’ worth): I’m going to be real honest. I don’t know what the family ate while I worked the event. Upshot they were fed. Thank you to the Husband and my mother. We’re going into full on opera season, so I want to start thinking through more meals that can be made ahead or that the husband can make quickly.

Monday: Chicken wings and green beans. These are my mother’s chicken wings that the kids always ask her to make. It involves marinating the wings in garlic and soy sauce, pan frying and then baking with honey and more garlic. I could eat a whole panful by myself. Here’s the recipe:

Tuesday: no clue

Wednesday: no idea.

Thursday: Zucchini boats. The Husband cooked. Zucchini stuffed with ground turkey and topped with cheese. I told the seven year old to label the leftovers:

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee

Saturday: Toast. We had a lot going on this weekend and we wanted to make sure we had time for game night, so we had the ultimate simple supper. Toast. Some of us had toast and peanut butter, some had toast and jam. There was probably fruit and cut up veggies to go with, but I can’t be sure.

Sunday: Toast again. It was that kind of weekend.

Monday: Sandwiches (grilled cheese) and leftovers. Monday is very activity heavy so we usually have soup or sandwiches on Monday.

Tuesday: Eggplant Dan Dan Noodles, a Hetty Lui McKinnon recipe from the New York Times. Tasty and surprisingly fast, using Japanese eggplant from the farmer’s market. I added tofu, just fried it the same as the eggplant. VEgan.

Wednesday: Lemony White Bean Soup with Turkey and Greens from the NY Times Cooking site. This was really tasty – I started it on teh stove and the finished it in the InstantPot so it would be ready to eat when we got back from gymnastics. I didn’t have ground turkey, but in an effort to clean out our freezer, I took some chicken breasts and chopped it in the food processor. I also chopped up the chayote squash that came in our Hungry Harvest box and which had been confounding me, and threw that in too. After dinner, there was only two or three servings left, so I added another can of beans, a quart of chicken broth and the leftover ground turkey from the zucchini boats, cooked it in the InstantPot for another 15 minutes and then presto! had soup to go into the freezer for a quick leftover meal later this month.

Thursday: Chickpea Sweet Potato Stew when I read this recipe on Suzanne’s site, I immediately screenshot it to make since I had some sweet potatoes to use up. The twelve year old and I thought this was delicious. The rest of the family didn’t love it. The Husband doesn’t like too much coconut milk in his food. Maybe if I had made it with chicken they would have liked it more.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Rush Hour. I had never seen this movie before, and it was very entertaining. For those who are unfamiliar, Rush Hour is a buddy cop movie featuring Jackie Chan as a police officer from China who comes to China when his bosses daughter is kidnapped, and gets paired with a Black LAPD officer played by Chris Tucker to solve the case. I was kind of afraid before we watched that there would be cringe-y Asian stereotypes in it, something that I’m kind of sensitive to the kids seeing. (I had to turn off All Dogs Go To Heaven within the first ten minutes because my kids really don’t need to see a buck toothed slanty eyed dog from “Siam”. Same reason I’ll probably not show my kids Breakfast at Tiffany’s any time soon, even though Audrey Hepburn is sublime in that movie. I wouldn’t say “never” but there would have to be some conversations first.) But Rush Hour was surprisingly free of bad Asian stereotypes and racist jokes. There were definitely “race” jokes, but I do think there’s a fine line between jokes about race and jokes that are racist. And the whole Black Cop/ Asian Cop thing – I don’t know if my kids will ever get how really cool and revolutionary that pairing of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan was. Also -now I want to show them Shaolin Soccer.

Saturday: Leftovers and Bahn mi sandwiches. (I worked this evening)

Sunday: Pizza leftover from the 5 year old’s birthday party. I brought way too much food to the party, but it’s not a bad thing because now I have fruit salad and cut up veggies and chip and guac to last all week. And pizza. I froze one whole pizza for later – I’ve never done this, so I’m excited to try it out.

And now we are into October. Fall and Hallowe’en and all the things! And then the slide into the end of the year. Hope you are having a lovely week, that you are staying safe and dry where you are.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Where I went

First off – I hope people who were in Hurricane Helene’s path are doing okay. My friend’s parents are in North Carolina and luckily they are fine, but there are so many around them who are facing enormous challenges. The devastation is huge and heartbreaking.

We did not do any decluttering last week (though now two weeks ago – you know when you write a post and it kind of sits in your folder because you don’t have time to finish it? Yeah… that was the past couple of days. Which means there will probably be another weekly recap post less than a week after this one) Anyhow, decluttering took a backseat because my parents came into town and I had to work most of Sunday. But for the upcoming week, things on my list:

-List toys on freecycle that we are going to get rid of.
-Take car seats to Wider Circle [note – this is done!]
-Find seam ripper and deal with purple Fort cushions
-Sit in the toy room and imagine what it would take to make it functional
-Maybe tackle the mess under the console table in my bedroom.

We did clean out a large chunk of the fridge- the jars of random condiments, dressings, pickles, kimchi…. It was a little concerning some of the things I found. It seems as if somethings never go bad- I’m looking at you, cranberry relish from Thanksgiving. Though I feel like there was some fermentation happening. Also I have a lot of jars of sourdough starter. Maybe I need to see if there is still life there. I think I need to also do a freezer clean out soon too and eat it down a little.

While I contemplate those things, I thought I’d write another account of where I went this past week. I did this once last Spring, when I was prepping for a show. It’s an interesting journaling technique I read about, which is exactly what it sounds like – recording where I went – and I thought it would be interesting to see what I’m doing now in one of my slower work periods- I’m on a 20 hour per week contract right now.

Monday
8:55am home –> School bus drop off (4 mins)
9:15am school bus drop –> friends’ house. Their kids were sick and I went over to hang out for a little bit with their kids since my friends had to be at work. (5 mins)
2:00pm friends’ house –> trail for a run (3 min drive + 25 min run)
2:30apm trail –> Library to drop off books (10 mins)
3:00pm library –> home (10 mins)
4:00pm home –> pick up 4 year old from daycare –> home again (10 minute walk x 2)
6:45pm home –>12 year old’s basketball clinic the –> home. The gym is walking distance, so I like to have her walk when possible. When she is reluctant, I offer the inducement of going with her and listening to our audiobook together. Right now we’re listening to Permanent Record by Mary H. K. Choi. (15 mins x2)

Tuesday
8:55am home –> school bus drop off (4 mins)
9:3oam school bus drop off –> Target (pick up deodorant and shaving cream) (10 mins)
10:15am Target –> Library –> home (yes! Twice in one week! I had an exciting hold come in, see below) (5 mins/ 15 mins)
11:30am home –> work (15 mins)
7:30pm work –> home (15 mins)

Wednesday
7:05am home —> piano lessons (7 mins)
7:15am piano lessons —> gas station —> bagels shop —> back to piano lessons (25 mins)
7:45am piano lessons —> middle school —> piano lessons (20 mins)
8:20am piano lessons —> home (7 mins)
9:00am home —> bus stop (4 mins)
9:30 am bus stop –> trail –> run/walk (3 mins drive/ 25 min run/ 20 min walk)
10:30am trail –> Hmart to pick up groceries for dinner (10 mins)
11:30am Hmart –> home (10 mins)
12:30pm home –> work (15 mins)
3:00pm work –> pick up 4 year old –> gymnastics class (30 mins)
4:30pm gymnastics –> home (10 mins)
5:30pm home –> work (15 mins)
10:30pm work –> home (15 mins)
THAT WAS A LONG DAY!

Thursday
9:00am home —> school bus stop (4 mins)
9:20am school bus stop -> home (4 mins)
11:30am Home —> work (bike, 25 mins)
3:30pm Work —> home (bike 30 mins)
6:50pm Home—> friend’s house to drop off the two little kids so we can go to —> back to school night at 7 year old’s school (20 mins)
8:30pm school —> friend to pick up littles —> home (20 mins)

Friday
9:00 am home —> school bus (4 mins)
9:20 am school bus —> work (15 mins)
3:50pm work —> 7 year old’s school – he missed his afternoon bus home (10 mins)
4:10 pm school —> home (10 mins)
5:45pm home —> grocery store, to pick up supplies to make a cake (meanwhile, the Husband and the 7 year old went to sewing class) (10 mins)
6:30pm grocery store —> home for the night. (10 mins)

Saturday
10:30a: home —> 7 year olds’s soccer game (15 mins)
12:15pm Soccer game —> home (15 mins)
5:30pm Home —> airport to pick up my parents, or rather cell phone lot. (40 mins)
6:15pm Cell phone lot —> arrivals —> silver diner for dinner (20 mins)
8:15pm Silver Diner —> home (30 mins)

Sunday –
8:55pm Home —> agility class for four year old (15 mins)
10:00am Agility class —> home (15 mins)
11:00a home —> work (15 mins)
11:15am- work —> farmer’s market nearby (5 minute walk)
11:45 am farmer’s market —> work (5 min walk)
3:00pm- work —> coffee run —> back to work (25 min walk)
6:00pm work —> home (20 min drive)

Thoughts from this week’s account of going places: Not a lot of driving this week for myself – just mostly to the bus stop and to work. I’m glad I live near our rehearsal studios and that my commute is usually 15-20 minutes. Proximity is also key for kids’ activities – no activity is more than 15/20 minutes away. My friend’s kid got placed on a soccer team that practices 30 minutes away on a weekday afternoon- getting on the beltway at rush hour would get tiresome really fast.
-That’s 3.5 hours in the car this week. Not bad. that’s 2% of my week. The less time I have to spend in my car, the better.
-I’m glad I got to get on my bike and did some walking.
-For a week on a reduced work schedule I went into work 4 out of 7 days, which feels like a lot. I’m still trying to figure out if I need to find a better rhythm when I have 20 hour weeks – like do I need to work from home more? Do I need to be more efficient with my hours? But each week is unique – different meetings and things to cover, so it’s hard to have a set consistent schedule. (Which reminds me, I need to remove my Out of Office message from this summer…)
-I find having to run errands irksome – Target, grocery store, etc. But I also don’t love constantly ordering from Amazon. Why do we always need stuff?
-We live pretty close to three airports, but I always prefer picking up people at BWI because it’s the simplest to get to. DCA is close to the city so the traffic patterns can be funky, and Dulles has waaaaaay too much traffic to get there. On paper it looks 30 minutes away, but in reality it can take up to an hour. I like picking people up/ dropping them off at the airport whenever we can – I love seeing them on the curb waiting, I love that first happy wave and hug, I love the sense of arrival. Though I’m always reminded of the scene in When Harry Met Sally… where Harry says he never takes people to the airport at the beginning of a relationship because he never wants to get to the stage where they say, “How come you never take me to the airport anymore?” Even in this age of Uber, Lyft, and public transportation, that sentiment still feels applicable today.

Creative project of the week: I baked a cake! I had to work on the youngest kids’ birthday, so we celebrated the night before. She wanted a unicorn cake. The Husband works next to a store that sells cake and cookie decorating supplies, so he popped over there to see if they had unicorn figurines or sprinkles or anything that we could put on a cake. The people who run the shop are very creative and helpful and love to give advice. From the store, the Husband texted me these pictures:

I’ve never done a shaped cake before, so I was a little skeptical, but I decided to give it a go anyway. The 4 (now 5!) year old helped to make the cake, and even though we lost a small chunk of cake as it came out of the pan, I just stuck the chunk back on and frosted away. I was going to pipe the decorations, but by the time I started it was late so I instead really leaned into using the sprinkles:

Interesting podcast episode that I listened to: This episode of House Calls where Surgeon General Vivek Murthy interviews Adam Grant, and organizational psychologist who specializes in work place culture. I listened to this book while mowing the lawn. There was one part that was a little off-putting where Grant talks about finding ways to admit mistakes and be vulnerable at work, and in a lot of ways, I think this is a luxury men are afforded more than women. Why can men admit mistakes and it comes across as being strong but when women do it, it’s perceived as flaky? Is it a tone thing? or an attitude thing? Or my own preconceptions? Not sure on that one…

But aside from that I thought it was was great episode. Grant talks about defining success as process and values based rather than product or achievement based – I thought that was a great point. And about half way through the episode, a really interesting conversation about parenting evolved. Grant talks a lot about getting your children’s buy in. I really liked his suggestion of asking your kids for advice as a way to make them feel important. I’ve started doing this sometimes and I’m surprised by how direct their solutions can be. Usually they say something like, “Do something else.” Inspired by that episode, though, I talked to the Husband and I think we want to implement weekly family meetings. A time for everyone to look at the week ahead and know where everyone is going and see if anyone has any larger family topics to bring up.

When my aunt was visiting a few weeks ago, she made the comment about how nice it was that everyone has a chance to speak at our dinner table. She was referencing how we go around at most dinners and everyone says their Rose, Buds, and Thorns. (ie something good, something they’re looking forward to, and something hard.) My aunt said when her kids were little, they weren’t allowed to speak at the dinner table – they lived with her in laws and dinner was a time for the matriarch of the family to pontificate on what a good family they are and tell the kids how important it was for them to do well in school and activities. So I guess the idea of my kids all getting a turn to speak was novel to my aunt. Dinner is certainly a loud and unchecked affair at our house. There is talking and shouting and getting up and sitting in laps (still)… I don’t know… I kind of love it, this communal chaos. I mean maybe not 100% of the time – sometimes I do just want them to sit down and eat dinner – that’s when we have silent eating time – but I miss out on so many dinners because of my work schedule that I feel like when I can be home for dinner, I want it to feel like a time where we can share and bond. With everyone’s different activities and stresses, I think we will only feel more fractured as a family as the kids get older, so I want to put in structures and routines now – dinner rituals, family meetings, pizza and movie nights – that can feel grounding.

Grateful For
– My parents coming to visit. They are so good about entertaining the kids.

-School adjacent activities. The 12 year old joined the cross country team and the 7 year old is taking programming classes after school. I love that they get to fit in extracurriculars that they can go to straight after school, and I don’t have to drive them. I feel lucky that we live somewhere where they have these opportunities.

– All of you who validated my high school feelings about the preschool WhatsApp group last week. I’m glad I have a place to vent these stressors. So it turns out that the invite to the party went to the whole Whatsapp group the week before I joined, so I guess if I had joined the group earlier, my child would have been invited to the party. So it wasn’t purposefully excluding my kids. I think I’m still trying to figure out if there is anything of value in staying in the group. I do believe in parenting as a community and that we can all support each other, but is being in this group the way to do it?

Looking forward to:
-A new month! It’s October! I feel like after Hallowe’en begins the slow slide towards the end of the year, so October is my one month to enjoy fall. It’s also a really buys time work-wise. I’ve seen some trees with leaves tipped in red and gold already, and on the one hand I feel like it’s too soon, but on the other hand I can’t wait to see all the beautiful fall colour.

-The (now) 5 year old’s birthday party. By the time we got around to booking a place, the only time slots were two weeks after her birthday. Oh well. I’m hoping to keep it super simple – pizza, cake, snacks, fruit, applesauce pouches, juice, and water. Maybe something for the grown ups to snack on too? The party is from 3p-5pm, so hearty snacks are definitely in order. The venue doesn’t allow balloons, so I’m taking this as an opportunity to eschew decor.

-Reading this book, the sequel to The House in The Cerulean Sea.

I loved The House in The Cerulean Sea so much. Some might accuse it of being a slight bit twee, but it was one of my favorite reads the year that it came out. I got a notification from the library that my hold for this book, its sequel, had come in. I had put a hold on this book the moment I could, even before it was released, but even still, I was surprised that my copy had come in so quickly. I went to the library to pick it up, only to discover that I had accidentally put the audiobook on hold, not the paper book. There was a case of CDs waiting for me on my holds shelf. Oh no. I knew the waitlist for this book would be on the longer side, so I sighed sadly and took the book back to the check out desk and asked if they could take the CDs back and put me on the holds list for the book. The librarian looked up the book.
“You know,” he said, pointing behind me, “This book might be over there on the Lucky Day shelf.” The Lucky Day shelf is for books that you can borrow for just three weeks, with no renewal period.
I walked over, and yes, indeed! There was a brand new shiny copy of the book. I might have squealed with delight as I went to check it out. Next to me at the self check out, a man looked at me knowingly and said, “Isn’t it the best feeling when the exact book you want is on the shelf?”
Yes, yes, it is.

What we ate:
Monday: Olive Garden Vegan Gnocchi Soup. This is one of my favorite soups to make – it’s super easy and vegan! Made ahead since I wasn’t home that night.

Tuesday: Fried fish and green beans. The Husband cooked.

Wednesday: Quinoa Black Bean and Mango Salad from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. I should get this cookbook out from the library again – it has lots of easy vegan recipes. I made this ahead of time since again, I had to work that night.

Thursday: Baked chicken breasts and steamed green beans. The 12 year old had wanted to make dinner (Cornflake chicken), but she ended up being sick, so I threw this meal together.

Friday: Pizza (ordered from a new to us place that does Detroit style pizza. It was tasty, but apparently getting there is tricky because it involved going into a residential complex.) and movie (Hotel Transylvania. Not one that I need to watch again.)

Saturday: Silver Diner on the way home from the airport. I got the liver and onions.

Sunday: We celebrated the 4–> 5 year old’s birthday early because I had to work on her actual birthday. She got to pick the dinner and she chose Dino chicken nuggets, green beans, and tater tots. And of course the cake.

She did take the Elsa dress off before we had cake. She’s really sensible like that.