weekly menu – Page 2 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: The start of a new opera season and reflections on the last one

Where did the week go? I actually started drafting this post on Monday this past week, but I’m finding it hard to find time to write right now; I don’t think I’m adjusting well schedule-wise to being back at work. But anyhow here’s what’s going on around here – last week I started prepping for a new show. It’s actually a revival of a production we did nine years ago. Funny story, last time I did this show, I was five or six months pregnant with our second kid. I wasn’t telling anyone, just wearing lots of loose clothing. There was one singer, a dear dear mezzo I’ve worked with many times who had no boundaries in the best way (okay, that sounds terrible, but I actually adore her.). One night she was sitting backstage and she says to me, “Diane… is there anything you want to share with me…?”

I stammered and blushed and said something to the negative.

Months later, after the baby was born, I ran into her husband, who had also been working on that show with us, and he congratulated me on the baby. “Thank you, “ I said, “You can tell your wife she was right.”

He said, “Yes, she’s like that. I like to wait until the baby is out to mention it.”

Anyhow. Sometimes the only way I remember how long ago things happen is in relation to my kids’ births.

All that to say, I’m hoping this show is a pretty straightforward process. The singers are new (except for the mezzo I mentioned above- she’s back and as delightful and kind as ever.) but the sets, costumes, director…. They are all the same. So pretty much plug in new singers and repeat. I even took the sticky tabs I used to mark the scenes out of my score from 2016 and put them in my 2025 score:

Old score in the back. New one in front. Tabs are still sticky! What magic is in that Post It glue that it all still works nine years later???

As I was going through things in my office, though, I found the score for the opera I did last fall, and oh boy, I had to take a moment, because thinking on last fall unleashed so many thoughts and feelings. That show was one of the hardest rehearsal processes I’d ever been through in recent memories. There was a lot to figure out on that show and I never felt like I had time to do anything and I felt as if I was constantly behind and disappointing my colleagues. I accrued so much overtime on that show. Also my son was in the show and that made things really stressful for the family. When I think of last fall in my mind it is just endless weeks of get kids to school/ work/ work/ work/ drive home/sleep for a couple hours and then get up and do it again. I learned a lot last fall about what I (and our family unit) has the capacity for.

Looking at my score from last year, with all those Post Its and sticky notes… it made me realize that I’m really proud to have gotten that show open and that it was a very good show. I took a picture of my score to remind myself what a huge accomplishment that show was for me because when I think back on last fall and that show, I just remember how tired and overwhelmed I was the whole time. I do also need to remember how cool the show looked, how much, despite everything, I truly enjoyed working with the director, the designers, the singers, the crew, and my own staging team. I think it is important for me to remember the magic we made onstage, and not just how hard the show was. Each of those Post Its represent something that I worked with other people to make happen, and that was really cool.

That said, I never want to be as exhausted as I was last fall ever again. I’m too old for that. I do love my job, but it can be intense. I think fighting that exhaustion is a combination of steps I take for my personal self (making good choices in food, sleep, family, and connections) but also the career choices I make. Perhaps it means taking projects that I know will be less grueling, when I have a choice. And maybe stepping back like that will stagnate my career, but I think I’m here for the long game, so a little pause in moving up the ladder is fine as long as I’m not sliding back down. Where I am right now in life, if I spend the rest of my life doing revivals of small shows where I can just take the score out from last time and push play… well, is that so bad? This season, I’m doing two revivals and one new production, and to be honest, even though new productions are high profile resume builders, the new production is the show I’m least looking forward to. Look, if you’re reading this and you’re someone that hires stage managers, you’re probably thinking, “Well, I’m never going to hire Diane; she just wants easy work.” But you know what? I think there’s a difference between knowing your limits so you don’t burn out and looking to coast. Or maybe there isn’t. Coasting might be how you prevent your car from overheating. You know, like putting the car into neutral once in a while. (That may be a completely wrong metaphor… I’m not a mechanic.)

All to say, I’ve been feeling a little conflicted as I’m putting last season to bed – my desire to work on challenging projects battles with my desire to sleep and be home to make breakfast on occasion.

Soup Party Recap: Last week we had our annual soup party at work, and it was a huge success. We had five types of soup, home made sourdough bread, focaccia, cookies, chips and dip. There was so much food. The soups were: Zuppa Toscana (made by my work BFF – I love this soup), green chili chili, baked potato soup, lemony white bean soup, egg drop soup, and I brought vegan chickpea gnocchi soup.
The egg drop soup was made by one of our interns and when I asked her for the recipe – because it was delicious, even better than restaurant egg drop soup – she said, “I low key stole it from TikTok.” Which seems about right.
Things that I think made the party successful this year:
-inviting more people (I also invited people from the costume shop and a few of them came – it was nice to have a mixing of departments)
-bringing my extra crock pot so not all the soup had to be re-heated in the microwave.
-Note cards so we could label each soup.
-Specifically asking for people to bring ladles if they had them. A lot of the stage managers are from out of town and are at the mercy of their rental kitchen for utensils, so I made a point to tell people to bring ladles if they had them.
Note for next time: Ask someone to bring butter. Also maybe someone could bring a drink or two. I know soup is a liquid, but we still get thirsty eating it.
I wish I had taken pictures of all the soups lined up, but I forgot. You’ll have to take my word that seeing all the soups lined up in the break room was pretty warm and cozy.
I was so delighted with our work soup party that I now want to have a non-work soup party. This is something I say I want to do every year, and I never do. I have a pretty light January and February work-wise in 2026, so it would be a good year to do it. The one thing, though, is I don’t have a microwave, so people would have to bring soup in crock pots or something that can keep them warm. But how many crock pots can I plug in at our house?

Grateful For:
-Finding my office key and IDs. Not once, but twice. On Tuesday I went to the office and reached into my purse for my keys and the pocket where I keep them was empty. Cue panic. I need my ID to swipe into the building and my keys to get into my office. I couldn’t remember what I had done with them last night because I had left in a hurry at the end of the day. I got the spare office key, went to my desk, and OH THANK GOODNESS!!! my keys and ID were sitting on my desk. Such relief. When I left work that day, I mindfully clipped it to my purse. (It’s on one of those retractable badge holders.)
On WEDNESDAY, I went to the office and reached into my purse for my keys and the pocket where I keep them was empty. Cue panic. And also, Oh FFS, not again! Once again, I got the spare key, let myself into the office, but this time, my keys were NOT ON MY DESK, which I kind of figured because after the debacle on Tuesday, I made sure to be more mindful about putting them in my purse. I always put them in the same pocket. I tried not to panic for the rest of the day, but I did a little bit. That evening, I went to the 13 year old’s school to look for them, thinking they might have fallen out of my purse when I dropped her off at school. Nope. I was beginning to despair and I thought, “I’m going to search the car one more time.” I even got in the back seat and reached under all the front seats. First the driver side. Then the passenger side. And … there, under the passenger side, were my keys and ID. They could very well have fallen out when someone tossed my purse in the back seat of the car when they got in the front seat this morning….
Anyhow, all found. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to go get a new ID because that requires going down town and is really inconvenient.

-the Metro employee who told me exactly how to tap my phone. I’ve been tapping my phone in lieu of using my metro card when riding the metro lately, but I almost every time it takes me three or four taps to work. The other day, the Metro employee at the gate said, “Do you have an iPhone? Tap the top of your phone.” And magically it worked on the first try.

-Not having to work any evenings last week. I started prep for a new show and usually there are one or two evening music rehearsals to cover during prep, but there weren’t any last week so I got to be home most evenings by the kids’ bedtime.

-my sweet coworker who brought me Ketchup chips! I think there is only one place in the area to get Ketchup chips- it’s a Wawa that my coworker walks pst once in a while. And he always remembers that I like Ketchup chips.

-The PTSA. We went to our first PTSA meeting last week. Yes, our oldest is in 8th grade and we have never been to a PTSA meeting. We are massively neglecting our civic duty. We went to this one because the Superintendent of the School District was speaking/ slash taking questions. There is all sorts of agita going on with the schools recently. The school boundaries are being redrawn and magnet programs are being reconfigured and moved. The high school choice program that our 13 year old is participating in might be dismantled. A lot of people are upset, namely parents. The whole process has really made me think about the issues of equity and opportunity in schools when our county has such a wide range of socio-economic demographics. One thing the Superintendent brought up is that equity is not about making a school’s magnet program available to students all over the county, but rather to make magnet programs available in more schools. (There is an interesting statistic I saw recently about how most of the kids in one of our area’s STEM magnet programs actually are from a wealthier part of the county. I find that super fascinating…) Anyhow, it will be fine. Our younger kids might have a very different high school experience than the 13 year old, but all told, baseline we are in a pretty privileged part of the country. Everyone will be fine. (Though some will be finer than others…) Anyhow, that is all to say, I’m grateful for PTSA volunteers for stepping up and making these meetings happen and for giving us the opportunity to advocate for our kids’ education.

-sweet sibling moments. The 8 year old found the copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons and decided to try to teach his little sister how to read. Also they were wearing the (sort of) matching striped shirts that I got them, which makes me smile.

Looking Forward To:
-mom’s group brunch. I always feel bad suggesting Friday lunch with my mom’s group since I know many of them have jobs and can’t get away at that time. At our last lunch, one of the moms offered to host a weekend gathering. I’m excited to see everyone. We all met in a mom’s group in the months before COVID and that was an especially bonding experience, but we don’t see each other as much as we’d like anymore.

-Hallowe’en. Gotta get a move on finishing the costumes. We have plans to trick or treat with friends – it’s basically an excuse to hang out by their firepit and eat lots of candy.

-The Act Two finale of the Marriage of Figaro. Sublime. Can’t wait to work on it.

-My parents are coming to visit at the end of November.

-My latest audiobook. This memoir is written by a man who was laid off from his marketing job during COVID and gets a job delivering mail in rural Virginia. It is by turns fascinating, hilarious, and heart wrenching. I’m learning I really like memoirs that take a deep dive into a profession (like this book and also What the Dead Know that I read earlier this year.)

What we ate: I have to admit, I haven’t been spending time in my journal lately so I have only a vague memory of what our dinners have been. Also I’ve been working til 6:30p or so every night so haven’t been making dinner. But here’s my memory of dinners the week before….
Monday: Gnocchi chickpea soup. I made a double batch of my soup party soup and the family ate it for dinner. Except I didn’t put in the

Tuesday: Soup Party at work – see above. The family had ground beef tacos at home.

Wednesday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Thursday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs. The 13 year old cooked.

Friday: Pizza and … I’m sure there was a movie, I’m just not sure what. Our friend was out of town so he gave us his CSA. There were three heads of lettuce and a radicchio. The 13 year old made a salad and threw in 1/2 the radicchio. I rather enjoyed the bitter crunchy of the radicchio, but the little kids did not care for it.

Saturday: Dinner out at Yu Noodles after the 8 year old’s soccer game.

Sunday: Pasta and red sauce and salad. Again, using the lettuce from our friend’s CSA.

Well that’s some of the news from here last week. Or last last week… Next week I have a “What I wore” post planned. Which, I’m realizing, is what I do when I’m feeling swamped at work but still want to blog.

Are there things you are proud of that you never want to do again? Who’s ready for Hallowe’en? Ever had an awkward conversation with someone at work? What kind of soup would you bring to my soup party? If you have a work ID, how to you carry it? Retractable clip? Lanyard? Clip?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Checking things off the list, and looking towards the fourth quarter

Last week was my last week of true flexibility, so I had a bunch of things scheduled – picked up my new glasses (hooray! I can read again), flu shots for the kids, oil change (and then discovered the car also needed a new battery), annual check up for the 6 year old. I also got my hair cut. I like to get my hair cut before I start rehearsals because a) I feel more confident going into rehearsals if my hair looks put together and not over grown, and 2) I just won’t want to spend the time to get my hair cut once rehearsals start. This was the fastest cut I’ve ever had – even with the shampoo, I think I was in and out in less than 2o minutes. At first, I thought the bob looked a little more boxy than I usually have it cut, but I decided to live with it for a while because I’ve found that what I like in the chair often doesn’t grow out well. Anyhow, a few hours later, I decided I actually really liked my new hair cut – it’s long enough to tuck behind my ears, but short enough to look sleek and efficient.

The weekend, was also my last two day weekend until mid December, and we went on a little adventure to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. (As mentioned in my Cool Bloggers Walking Club post). I had said a few weeks ago to the Husband that I hadn’t been hiking in a while. Then the last time we were at a contra dance, there was a lady from Shepherdstown who said we should come to their dance. So the Husband planned a little half day trip for the family with hiking and dancing.. We left after lunch and drove to the Yankeur Nature Preserve, about twenty minutes outside of Shepherdstown. The Nature Preserve was farmland in the 1800s and then in the 1960s was given to the Nature Conservancy to be returned to it’s original forested state. The hike wasn’t a very ambitious, more of a nature walk through a forest via a trail. The loop peaked at a bench overlooking the Potomac where we sat and had snacks before getting back to the car.

After the hike we went to dinner at the Blue Moon Cafe, chosen because there had been a request for burgers. We sat in the outdoor garden, and ordered fried pickles for an appetizer. The two kids who had burgers said that the burgers were amazing. I had the crabcake dinner – the homemade crabcakes were really good too. From the restaurant we walked the couple blocks to the dance which was at the Community Club. The walk was really cute – Shepherdstown is a historic town – I think the oldest in West Virginia – and the downtown area is full of colonial architecture and little shops. Apparently it’s also the most haunted town in America and we passed by a group going on ghost tour.

The dance itself was very welcoming. The caller knew the Husband from back when he used to dance every week (sometimes twice) and go to contra dance weekends. When we walked in, she gave him a big hug and was so happy to see us all. The dance we pretty small and there were several people I recognized from the DC area there. Everyone was very forgiving of the kids being there, even when they kept going the wrong way during the dance. I was actually surprised that they danced as much as they did. Usually when we go dancing, they’ll do two or three dances and spend the rest of the time just running around chasing each other. Also this dance had snacks, which always helps. We danced til about 9:45pm and then piled back in the car and drove home. We got home around 11:30pm, but the nice thing about having a two day weekend is that you get to sleep in a little the next day. Or take a mid-Sunday nap. I have to be honest, Sunday was a little rough because everyone was very tired, but I do think it’s worth a day of being tired in order to have a nice adventure.

October Plans and Goals… or not. So I had originally titled this post “Fourth Quarter Goals and Plans” and I was going to write about my fall fun list/ goals for the rest of the year/ lofty plans of achievement. It seems early to be thinking about the holiday season already – I’m not trying to induce panic or anything in anyone, so sorry if you are having a bad reaction to my mention of the holidays. Though I’m sure many of you are on top of things and already planning holiday festivities. I don’t usually even think about the holidays until after Hallowe’en at the earliest. Sometimes after Thanksgiving when it’s too late and I do indeed panic. But I will say, I was a little taken aback when I got home and the kids were poring over a little something that arrived in the mail last week:

I was thinking about goals for October, but then the way my work schedule is, October rolls right into November into December and it doesn’t let up. It’s a downhill slide to the end of the year from here. After kicking around October/fourth Quarter goals for a few days, I thought, “Who am I kidding?” I start rehearsals in two weeks for a show and do two operas back to back. I don’t think I will be aiming for anything loftier than get through to the new year with kindness, grace, and patience. Because here is what is already in the calendar for the rest of the year:

-Two operas back to back. (Meaning two times through the prep week/ rehearsal weeks/ tech weeks/ performance cycles). Between October 12th and December 15th, I just have one day off a week. I haven’t double checked the calendar, but that is just nine days off – one of which is Hallowe’en, and one of which is Thanksgiving.

-Start prepping for hiring next year, all while in rehearsals/ performance.

-Parent Teacher conferences.

-a Supertitle gig – I can’t work the actual recital because of opera rehearsal, but I’ll be creating the power point slides.

-the 13 year old’s school play

-family photos

-Well woman appointment and mammogram

-usual slate of activities for the kids – soccer, piano, agility class, skating, basketball.

-The holiday trifecta of Hallowe’en/ Thanksgiving/ Christmas and all the joys and expectations those involve. I think my parents might be coming for Thanksgiving.

-Lenten book club (Though I guess we are easing into advent.)

-a few random days off school and half days for the kids

-Trip to Taiwan for my Grandfather’s birthday celebration.

All to say, I don’t know that I have it in me to make a ambitious fun list because I think I will need to maintain some blank spaces for me and for family time. Here’s the thing, though – I think I (we) can have a low key fall/ winter and still lean into the season; I don’t need to have big adventures on my one day off in order to feel like I’m enjoying the season. It’s about paying attention to the every day things that make October, November, and December different from the rest of the year, to give the things that I do daily a special holiday sprinkle. Some ideas for low key seasonal things that can fold into the regular rhythms of the life while still allowing restorative space:
-eat lots of apples
-spend time outdoors and savor the trees in all their fall splendor. Take time to notice holiday decorations as I see them – I might not have the space in me to rally a trip to one of the huge light displays, but I can take time to marvel at the Christmas lights I see on my commute.
-Tuba Christmas. The one tradition I’ll always make time for.
-change the clocks and savor the shift in light (It was pitch dark at 6:30am this morning and I felt like I didn’t know what was happening.)
-make and enjoy soups and baked goods. Or just buy and eat lots of baked goods. Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe Joes or Peppermint Stars?
-drink lots of tea.
-dress in seasonal colours and fabrics – warm oranges, yellows, reds, cozy sweaters and hats, and booties, and scarves. I love fall and cool weather dressing.
-pull out/ borrow Christmas picture books to have casually around the house. Maybe find a Christmas themed read aloud to read with the kids. Any suggestions? The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is well loved in our house.
-board games and hot chocolate (with candy cane stir sticks).
-watch Hallmark Holiday movies, even if it’s while I do the dishes at night. (The Hallmark Holiday Movie schedule is out! I’m am VERY excited for #26 – checks so many of my Hallmark Holiday Movie catnip boxes. Also there’s a time travel one, which I always love; and there’s a new installment of the Three Wise Men series! So excited. Also the movies start this weekend!!)
-read a big book. I’m thinking I might finally get to reading East of Eden. Though I’m also kicking around Anna Karenina ever since I listened to Nilo Cruz’s play Anna in the Tropics.
-eat my kids’ Hallowe’en candy
-write and send the holiday card. (If you want to exchange holiday cards – email me or leave a comment and I’ll email you!) And display the cards that come to us.
-journal reflections on the year that was and the year ahead.
-be grateful for the year that was and is, and ask the kids what they are grateful for.
-seasonal music during church services. Singing Christmas carols loudly in the car.

Notably not on my list is NaBloWriMo – Look, last year I really relished the challenge of participating, and also I really loved reading all the content that people created. But I am not a fast writer and I don’t like the pressure of cranking out content without being able to ponder and edit and edit again. I like the sense of flow that I get from writing, but that flow sometimes means that I can sit at my computer to write and two hours will go by in a blink of an eye. November is just not the time for me to be cranking out a daily blog post in that immersive way. I look forward to reading and commenting on other people’s posts and I will hopefully continue to post at my usual once or twice a week rate.

I may be over-estimating how tapped I will be this last quarter of the year, but fall last year was miserable with how packed our lives were – we had two kids in operas, and I was working on a really challenging show that just sucked everything from me. That was for sure a “never again” experience. I’m glad my kids got to be in the opera and experience being on stage, but it just about killed us to make it work. This fall/winter, I want more space so I can savor and give attention to what is important.

Things to prioritize in a busy season:
-Sleep.
-Breathing.
-yoga and other exercise
-sunlight and fresh air
-nutritious food and comfort food.
-family
-kindness and grace and gratitude
-hugs and kisses.

I might need to write that out and put it on a Post It somewhere to remind myself, especially when I feel like I’m not keeping up with everyone around me who are holiday-ing to the fullest.

Grateful For:

-Our mechanic. I’m grateful that we have a mechanic we trust to bring out car to. Funny story – when I took the car in, he asked me which car I was bringing and I said the red Subaru Impreza.
“Oh! The manual one?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“Yes,” I said.
“Fun!”

-Fast Internet. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole one night last week and at one point, I thought, “Man, isn’t it nice that I can watch this whole video on the making of Sense and Sensibility without waiting for it to buffer?”

-The Husband for driving when we go places. I don’t really like driving, so I’m always grateful that he gets behind the wheel.

-Time in the evening with the family. We’ve had a few nights without plans so after dinner we’ve been just hanging out. One night we did puzzles. One night we painted. One night we played Skyjo. By “we” I do mean me and the 6 and 8 year old. The 13 year old would rather watch YouTube shorts in her room. I’m trying to be okay with this, but I feel my self being all judgmental parent about it. The funny thing is she will email me links to funny videos, which is sweet, but I’m like, “DUDE! I’m sitting in the next room, just come show me!” She says it’s more fun just to email me. Sigh.

-A shady spot at the soccer game on an 80 degree day. What the heck, Fall???

-but on that note- the otherwise gorgeous fall weather. The cool breezes that help cut through the autumn heat.

-my bike.

-Thrift Stores. I’ve been on the hunt at thrift stores for things with which I can piece together the kids’ Hallowe’en costumes. The two little kids want to be K-Pop Demon Hunter characters. I found some clothes that I can use as a base, spending less than $10 per kid so far. And then I went and spent $50 on bling at Michael’s. I think most of that $50 of bling is going to get returned. Our thrift stores here are huge and not really curated, so it’s exhausting to go. But I did find some gems, including this puzzle which made me think of Elisabeth!:

Looking Forward To:
-Starting work on my next show.

-Stage Management Soup Party! For the past few years the stage management department has had a soup party in the fall and it’s a lot of fun. We have quite a few vegetarians, so I’m thinking of either making the Chickpea noodle soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone, or this Chickpea Gnocchi Soup. Or maybe a lentil soup? So many options!

-Walk with furloughed friend. The government shutdown pretty much sucks, but it does mean that some of my friends are available for mid day walks and lunches. Silver linings.

-Kabocha squash. It’s squash season! Kabocha squash was one of my grandmother’s favorite vegetables. I got one from the farm stand the other day and I can’t decide what to do with it – curry? fried rice (there is a recipe in Meera Sodha’s new cookbook that looks really good)? This squash, kimchi, and chickpea dish looks divine, but might be too spicy for the family.

-Just started this on audio – it’s cute, and fun and set in Baltimore – always a kick to read a book set somewhere close.

Also the author has a book coming out this week Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, which lead to this text exchange with my friend who loves Hallmark movies as much as I do:

-And tearing through this book as well. (partly because it’s a three week loan. I’m still on the fence as to whether I like it or not. It’s very well written, but some of it just seems like too much every day life things.)

What we ate:

Monday: Tofu and Tomato Stir Fry with Sesame Rice from Meera Sodha’s new cookbook Dinner. You can also find the recipe here in Sodha’s column in the Guardian that features vegan recipes. This dish was basically a vegan take on eggs with tomatoes which is a very common dish in Taiwan. The rice was drizzled with sesame oil to give it a bit of a pop. I thought this was very tasty and it was quick – ready in less than 30 minutes. I made this because I had a bunch of tomatoes to use up. Sodha’s recipes are always full of flavor and pretty simple, but I have to say this cookbook isn’t speaking to me as much as her other cookbooks: East and Made in India and Fresh India – this book seems more fussy somehow. Even still, there are a few more dishes I want to try before I return this book to the library. Vegan.

Tuesday: Pulled pork tacos for Taco Tuesday. The Husband made the pork in the crockpot and we had our usual accompaniment of cabbage, pickled onions, sour cream, cheese, and hard and soft tortilla shells. The kids like the hard shells. I guess it’s a good vehicle for sour cream and cheese.

Wednesday: Breakfast sandwiches. The Husband cooked.

Thursday: Spaghetti and meatballs with salad (bagged) and garlic bread. The 13 year old cooked. She also somehow made two whole boxes of spaghetti even though it was just four of us for dinner, so now we have a lot of plain pasta leftover. I froze it, but I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Freaky Friday, the 2003 Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsey Lohan version. It was my turn to choose the movie, and I picked Freaky Friday because I wanted to watch the sequel that came out this summer, but of course the kids had to see the first one first. Curtis and Lohan are brilliant in this movie. I will say, the romantic aspects didn’t seem as funny to me on re-watching. Mark Harmon (whom I have a huge celebrity crush on) trying to kiss Jamie Lee Curtis who is inhabited by her teenager’s mind- it just seemed icky. Was it funny twenty years ago?

Saturday: Dinner out at Blue Moon Cafe in Shepherdstown before the dance.

Sunday: Pasta (store bought ravioli) with red sauce. The 13 year old had leftovers because she had to eat earlier since she had swim clinic.

That’s the news from last week. This weekend looks to be rainy and I have to work, so it’ll probably be a good weekend to hunker and catch up on things. The house is due for a good “put back together” session. Hope you’re week went well, and you have good plans ahead.
Any suggestions for what to do with leftover (cooked) plain spaghetti noodles? Are you thinking/planning for the holidays yet? What’s your favorite soup?

Weekly recap + What we ate: Birthday celebrations, Unique moments, frustrating moments

For sure the highlight of last week was the 6 year old’s actual birthday. By some quirk of the calendar, her birthday fell on Rosh Hashanah and our schools were closed. We sort of joked that the schools were closed because it was her birthday, but the other two kids didn’t this this was funny and the 8 year old was actually quite salty about it. So we stopped saying that.

The Husband and I both took the day off to spend with the kids,. Originally we were going to go to Longwood Gardens but it wasn’t open, so we decided to go downtown and visit some museums on the Mall instead. A little selfishly, I chose to go to the National Gallery of Art because there was an exhibit on nature illustration that I wanted to see. We also let the birthday girl choose a second museum and she choose Natural History so that she could see the dinosaurs. The Dinosaur exhibit had undergone a major renovation in 2019, but I hadn’t been to visit it yet, so I thought this was a great museum to visit. We packed a lunch for everyone and headed for the metro.

First stop – National Gallery of Art and the exhibit Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World. This exhibit was a collaboration with the Museum of Natural History, and featured illustrations of small insects, animals, and plant life alongside taxidermy of those creatures and plants. I thought it was fascinating to think about artists paying such close attention to such small details. There was also one display where they demonstrated how some artists would recreate butterfly patterns by gluing the wings to the paper, and then peeling the wings off, leaving some of the scales behind. The artist would then use paints to touch up and enhance what was left behind.

Can you match the specimens to the drawing?

In a room near the Little Beasts exhibit was an exhibit called American Landscapes in Watercolor from the Corcoran Collection. The Corcoran was another art museum in DC that was dissolved in 2014, and much of it’s collection went to the National Gallery of Art. As the title suggests, this exhibit was all watercolor painting, and, since taking a watercolor class, I’m always interested in seeing what the medium can do. It was a small collection, but showed a wide range in style – from loose and florid to precise and brilliant. I’m always inspired when I see beautiful watercolor paintings, to try to figure out how an artist captures light and shapes so that I can recreate it myself.

I love the light on this painting by Val Lewton.

After the watercolor exhibit, we decided to sit in the sculpture garden and have our lunch – sandwiches and fruit. The table next to us had an intrepid little visitor:

Afterwards we wandered to the Natural History Museum where we saw the Hall of Fossils. To be honest, the Natural History Museum isn’t my favorite – it’s always loud and over run with kids and school groups, and I quickly realized that my kids love this museum because the new Fossil Hall has LOTS of screens and interactive features. I guess just reading placards isn’t good enough for kids these days. Sigh.

Oh well. There was an interesting exhibit on cell phones. There was a lot of information about how cell phones take up a lot of natural resources and minerals, but also about all the good ways that people are using cell phone technology. There was also this sculpture made of cell phones. Boy was that a trip down memory lane….

it was fun to see if I could find all the phones that I’ve ever owned.

After the Natural History Museum, we headed home to rest for an hour before we set out again for a birthday dinner at our local Mexican restaurant. We had invited our friend and his three kids to come along at the last minute, which made it a very merry party. We were commenting on how we never see each other now that their weekends are very full, but an impromptu Tuesday night invite was perfect. I know Tuesday was a holiday for many people – with obligations and traditions – but for us it was a bonus day off, and it was kind of fun to have a weekend kind of day in the middle of the week.

On my mind…I had mentioned in my last weekly post a feeling of interstitial ennui in my life. And that feeling kind of carried into this past week. I’m between shows, the kids are in school, and life is feeling a little routine. When I think about my week, it seems to be a string of morning rush/kids to school/work/kids home/dinner/bedtime/evening tv/sleep/ rinse repeat. I guess to some extent, if I zoom out far enough, every day is just going to be the same – wake up/ go to work (or do something with yourself)/ periodically eat a meal/ go to bed. We humans have (hopefully) many years of sleeping and then being awake.

A few months ago, Kae (at Grateful Kae) posted about a journal prompt: “What made today different?” The prompt has been kicking around in my brain ever since and these past few week, when I’ve been a little overwhelmed by the sameness of life (or is it underwhelmed?), thinking about what made the day unique or different has been a good reflective exercise; it’s these moments that make a day special and distinguishes one day from another. I’ve been writing two things in my journal: What made today unique? What made today frustrating? I added that second prompt because I feel like I can sometimes be either toxically positive or spiraling negativity, and I wanted to be able to look back on these days and see a balance.

So here are a couple unique and frustrating moments from last week:

Monday: Unique – a new team of stage managers started at work, and it’s always fun to see new teams come together; I started using my new computer; I made Ethiopian food for dinner.
Frustrating – listening to the new coverage of the Charlie Kirk memorial and being very disappointed by the hateful and demeaning rhetoric. I fully support honoring someone’s life, but to use it as an opportunity to put other people down and spew hatred is… distasteful.

Tuesday: Unique – going to the museum and celebrating the 6 year old’s birthday, detailed above.
Frustrating: The kids’ behavior at the restaurant was atrocious. They usually are really well behaved at restaurants, but I think we stayed a little too long and they were really excited to be with friends, so they were up and wandering about and just in general being a pain. (By kids, I mean the 8 year old and the 6 year old. The 13 year old was actually participating in conversation with her friend and the grown ups.)

Wednesday: Unique – the Husband and I started a new tv show (Paradise) which is unique because we don’t often start new shows together as it takes us so long to get to the end of a series since I work a lot of evenings. (Paradise is gripping, but the way, but maybe a little more suspense and tension than I want when I’m winding down late in the day.); Also my friend K called me and we chatted – she doesn’t often pick up the phone to call me, so this was nice.
Frustrating – the 13 year old was home sick. It’s not really frustrating, but just kind of a bummer.

Thursday: Unique – My friend L was at the bus stop in the morning, which she never is since the federal government took away WFH. After dinner, the Husband took the 13 year old to a high school open house and I took the kids to the library. I feel like we should have more evening library trips; the library is always so quiet and soothing, making it a nice pre-bed adventure.
Frustrating – I wasn’t very focused during the day and got distracted easily so I didn’t get as much work done on my super-title gig as I wanted. I need to figure out better methods for just buckling down and doing work. My current method is procrastinate and then work at a frenzied pace. That feels unnecessarily stressful.

Friday: Unique – I had first aid training at work. Good for another two years! We tried a new pizza place for Friday night pizza. It was fine. To be honest, most of the pizza around us is just fine. Or maybe it’s a me problem.
Frustrating – I didn’t check my calendar before I left for work and didn’t realize that my 10:30am meeting had been cancelled. Said meeting was the only reason I was going to our downtown offices. I had driven all the way downtown in morning traffic only to turn around and come home.

Saturday: Unique – We went to a birthday party for a friend of the 6 year old and had fun catching up with families from pre-school. The two little kids came with me when I took the 13 year old to her voice lesson and we got to go to the park by the voice teacher’s house. I did yoga in the middle of the afternoon because I didn’t have time to do it in the morning.
Frustrating: Our weekly family meeting did not go well. I don’t want to finger point or anything – just suffice to say we weren’t having a good communication day all around. Perhaps we need to rethink our expectations for them.

Sunday: Unique– I ran supertitles for a very lovely voice recital, and learned that Lakme is an opera with beautiful music and a cringe-y plot. I made fried green tomatoes for the first time. I got to go on a walk by myself after dinner while the rest of the family cleaned up.
Frustrating: Realizing, an hour before I left for work, that my new computer doesn’t have an HDMI port, which I need because I run the supertitle slides from a PowerPoint presentation off my laptop. Luckily my friend who was stage managing has a convertor.

Thoughts on the exercise: I’ve been recording unique and frustrating moments in my journal for a few weeks now and I really like it as a framework, especially for those days when I’m drawing a blank on what to write about how the day went. It helps me get very specific about the day. It feels like most of the things I note as being unique about the day are positive things, and I don’t know if that’s an entirely fair way of looking at my day. I do think that I need to uncouple the idea of unique/different with “positive”. On the other hand, you know how Anna Karenina starts, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”? Sometimes I think I feel the opposite is true for me; I can think of a million different unique things that bring me joy, but the things that make me unhappy and frustrated kind of boil down to one or two thing: people being unkind jerks is one of those things – whether that is Presidents or my own kids. Or even, a lot of the time, it’s me. I’m the jerk that’s making my own life frustrating.

Grateful For:

-The (now) six year old for being such a bright, energetic, happy, enthusiastic kid and for bringing such joy to our lives.

-The Husband packed the kids’ lunches one day last week so that I could go for a run with the 8 year old (he biked).

-Robert Munsch. There was a wonderful and touching article in the New York Times about the children’s book author Robert Munsch. When I was growing up, I LOVED Robert Munsch’s books. My favorite was Murmel Murmel Murmel, about a girl who finds a baby in a hole in her sandbox and tries to find someone to take care of him. I also loved The Paper Bag Princess, The Mud Puddle, Mortimer, and countless others. Munsh is now 76 and suffers from dementia and no longer can hold stories in his head anymore, which is so sad to me, but also makes me so grateful for the stories that he has already given the world. The profile talks about how Munsch was able to relate so well with children and be so creative in his story telling. I feel like there are many lessons to be learned from his unaffected trust of children’s intelligence.

-Flowers in our garden. Such a prefect dahlia.

–New York Times Cooking. Even though we meal plan on Sunday, there are days when what we planned just isn’t going to be what ends up on the table for one reason or another. For those days, I love my NYTimes Cooking subscription – I can type in what I’m looking to use up in my fridge, click the box for “Under 45 minutes” (or “under 30 minutes”) and click “dinner” and click “vegetarian” and I can reliably get one or two things to make for dinner. I know the internet can do this too, but NY Times cooking delivers just the right number of choices. And the comment section is golden.

– A rainy day, perfect for curling up with a book.

-But also that the rain let up for an hour so that I could go for a run.

-Free Museums. Your tax dollars at work. (Well maybe not next week, but…) Also grateful that no one has taken down the exhibits on Global Warming in the Natural History Museum yet.

Looking Forward To:

-Friday lunch plans with some moms from my mom’s group:

-Day off with my kids. We have a playdate planned. (In the most old fashioned of ways, the five year old came home with a note that said, “Hi’. Would like a playdate with us? K would love that. Here is my phone number. -K’s mom.” For some reason I found this delightful.) I kind of also want to check out a new craft cafe in the area. (Note – the play date did happen; the craft cafe didn’t. I’ll have to save that for another time…)

-Hallowe’en. The two little kids want to go as K-Pop Demon Hunter characters. The 6 year old wants to go as Zooey – I’ve picked up some things at the thrift store to make a costume for her. The 8 year old wanted to be Jinu. I was like, “Umm…. so you want to wear a white plaid shirt and jeans for Hallowe’en? Is that even a costume?” Really, I think we’re going to go with the black robe and hat look. (Okay – I just googled the hat – it’s a traditional Korean hat worn by noble men, called gat hat. It’s woven from bamboo threads and is truly an artisan craft. If you’re into super specific artisan videos, check out a video of the hat being made here. I was mesmerized.)

-Union negotiations finishing up. We are so close.

–Cool Blogger’s Walking Club. I always hesitate to say I’m joining Elisabeth’s Cool Blogger’s Walking Club because even though I do manage to get a good amount of movement in every day, I hate failing at things. Plus I struggle with the idea of being cool. But I feel like the point for me of joining a group effort is to be intentional about walking or movement – of making time so that I don’t fail. So I’m going to commit this October. I mean I do usually get some kind of movement in everyday, so I just have to write it down.

– Cool Blogger’s Book Club! Thank you, Engie for organizing! We are reading The Joy Luck Club, which I read years ago, when I was in college. (I think?). Bonus- I found a copy at the Library Book Store for $1! Joy and luck, indeed!

What We Ate:

Monday: Tikil Gomen (Meera Sodha’s recipe), shiro (Ground chickpea stew), Cucumber and tomato salad, and injera – an Ethiopian dinner. I was originally going to make misir wot (Ethiopian red lentils), but as I was standing in the co-op googling the ingredients, I came across a recipe for shiro, which I had never made before. The co-op had chickpea flour, so I thought I’d try something new and the shiro turned out to be really good. I ended up eating the leftovers as a sandwich spread throughout the week. Vegan.

I don’t usually take pictures of my food, but I was really proud of this meal.

Tuesday: Dinner out at the Mexican restaurant.

Wednesday: Zucchini Butter Pasta by Hetty Liu McKinnon for NY Times Cooking. I had a crisper full of zucchini and no plans for dinner. This was fast and easy and tasty. Maybe a little heavy on the butter, though.

Thursday: Thai-inspired Meatball Soup by Ali Slagle for NY Times Cooking. I used ground pork instead of ground chicken and basil instead of cilantro for this. This was very tasty and came together quickly.

Friday: pizza and “Light and Magic” a six part documentary about Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company founded to create the effects for Star Wars. We only watched the first episode, but it was so fascinating to see just how groundbreaking the technology and thinking on that film was.

Saturday: Leftovers! Cleaning out the fridge.

Sunday: Kind of a hodge podge dinner – I had some green tomatoes to use up (so much so that they were no longer green), so I made fried green tomatoes. Then we had pasta (ravioli from the deli case at the store), steamed green beans, and a caprese salad. It was kind of eclectic, but tasty. I don’t often fry food because it is messy and involves a lot of steps, but boy is fried food tasty.

That’s some of the news from last week. I can’t believe we are already into October – the last quarter of the year!

Did you read Robert Munsch books growing up? Do you have a favorite? What made your week different/unique? Anything make it frustrating? Are all happy families happy in the same way? Any Hallowe’en plans yet?

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Summer recap

Last weekend we had a birthday party for the youngest child (who is now six!). We let her decide what she wanted for a party and it was a low key affair – four kids and siblings, playing in the park, cookie decorating, lots of snacks. Cupcakes from Giant. I liked that we kept the party small so I felt like I could talk to the other parents. We ordered pretzels and picked up way too much food from Costco. The cookie decorating was a hit. WE ordered unfrosted cookies from our favorite bakery, and I got to finally visit the cake decorating store near us to pick up supplies.

Speaking of cake decorating store. It was amazing! More sprinkles than you knew what to do with. A whole wall of cookie cutters. I found citric acid, which I had been looking for for a while. And all sort of random cake and cookie and candy supplies that I didn’t even know existed, but seemed essential.

So many sprinkles!!! We also bought a pack of candy eyes. Those were a hit.

After the birhtday party, the 5 (now 6) year old and I had tap lessons where we learned shuffle step. Afterwards, we popped up to work where the costume shop at work was having a costume sale. Every few years, they sell off costumes that we are no longer using and it’s always a big hit with the Renaissance Festival crowd and pre-Halloween costume seekers. I didn’t buy anything, but it was fun to see all the costumes that people were trying on and how excited they all were for everything. Then I came home and our neighbor’s kids were over hanging out so the kids all had fun together while I did the online portion of the first aid course that I am going to take. It was almost three hours long, and to be honest, the section on what to do when you see someone bleeding was hard for me to sit through. So much gushing fake blood. I am really squeamish about injuries.

Sunday we had agility class for the 5 year old, and in the space of 90 minutes I had the worst moment of the weekend and the best moment of the weekend. First the worst was trying to get to agility class. There is an annual half marathon that shuts down the parkway that I take to get to the gym and the detour take you six miles out of your way to get to that side of town. Only the signage at the road closure was terrible – there were no signs telling you where to cross the closed parkway or how to get to the other side of town. I tried three or four different roads and they were all closed. So frustrating! Finally I asked the police officers who were monitoring the road closures and they told me how far up I would have to go. We ended up being 30 minutes late to class, and I was so very very very frustrated. Next year, I’ll just take the beltway to Agility Class when the marathon happens.

The highlight of the weekend, however, was on the way home from agility class. I’ve noticed there is a house that once in a while has a sign out front that says, “Honey for Sale” and I’ve always wanted to stop, but it’s on a busy road with no good place to pull over. Well the sign was out and we had just finished a jar of honey so I just pulled into the driveway. And there were two tables with jars of honey on them and a bunch of beehives lining the perimeter of the yard. And then a nice man came out of the house and started talking to us about honey and all the different kinds of honey that he had and and he gave us samples and he told us that he has hives all over the county – in exchange for letting him keep hives on their property, he gives people one jar of honey per hive. I learned so much about honey and bees in the fifteen minutes that we were there. He also said that the worst thing you can do if bees are bugging you is to violently swat at them, and the best thing you can do is to bend over and tuck your head down since bees are attracted to shiny things up high – namely your eyes. We came away with a jar of spring honey.

Some other things from the week that was:
-It was kind of a funky week for me – I felt a little restless. I can’t tell if it was because things had settled down or if it was because things felt unsettled. I kind of found myself in an interstitial space where all the big things had been checked off my list so theoretically I was in a resting place. But are there ever any true resting places in life? Or is that just where you are until something comes to knock you off your feet again? I just found that couldn’t relax because I thought surely something else must becoming down the way and I have to be prepared.

-I got to have lunch with the Husband – we went to a delicious Mexican place next to his work – they have the tastiest tortas. Afterwards we went to the cookie and cake decorating store and then I stopped at the smoothie place and got a papaya smoothie and a mangonada.

-Undercover Quinoa Crisps are back at Costco!!!!! Okay these are Milk Chocolate, which I don’t like as much as dark chocolate, but still… pretty exciting. I bought two bag and now think I maybe should have bought more. I was so distraught when they stopped carrying them earlier this year.

-We didn’t buy anything at the costume sale, but there was a child’s dress from a production of The Ballad of Baby Doe that the 5 year old tried on:

How cute is she? I didn’t buy the dress, though.

-Started a new jigsaw puzzle at work. Is there anything more satisfying than the “snap” of the first time you put two pieces together when doing a puzzle.

Summer Recap –I didn’t have time to write monthly recaps for June, July, and August, but I figured now that summer is officially over, I could roll it all into one big “The Summer that Was” post. The summer I thought I was going to have at the beginning of June was not at all the summer I ended up having. In June, I had no work booked and was envisioning three months of adventures with the kids – going to the pool, camping, hiking, county fair, cooking projects… See the whole aspirational menu of summer activities here, where I wrote about having an intentional summer.

Welp, I ended up being called in last minute to fill in for a colleague and working from mid July to mid-August. Suddenly all the time I had planned for adventures was no longer open. But you know what? Looking back on my “menu of summer activities” I find that I did actually do a lot of the the things on the list. Here are some things to remember about my summer:

Summer 2025 Highlights:
-The end of the school year! The youngest child’s last day of daycare. We are DONE paying for daycare. (Fun fact – even with three kids we have never had to pay for more than one kid in daycare at a time. The first and second kids are five years apart so the first was in kindergarten by the time the second went to day care. Then the two younger kids never went to daycare together because there was COVID and no one went to daycare for almost two years, and by then the second kid was in kindergarten. I feel very very lucky. I mean we still spent the money somehow, but at least not all at the same time.)

-South Africa Trip with the 13 year old. Probably the biggest highlight. More recaps of this are coming, I promise!

-The two younger kids going to Taiwan culture camp with my mother. They had a FANTASTIC time, came back obsessed with K-Pop Demon Hunters, and have said they want to go back next year.

-“Make a summer playlist” was on my fun list, but we just listened to the soundtrack to K-Pop Demon Hunters on endless repeat, so I feel like that was the soundtrack of our summer. And our fall. And our winter.

-Lots of time at the pool. Summer swim team meant being at the pool five days a week most weeks. So many people commented on how tan I was this summer. It wasn’t because I was on a beach vacation, that’s for sure. But… one thing that did get checked off the summer list was that the two younger kids finally figured out how to swim, and the youngest even learned to dive. And I also learned to dive. So that was pretty cool. And as always, I loved watching the 13 year old swim.

-Eating lots of peaches. Twice I scored a crate of peaches for super cheap so we ate lots of peaches. I made three cobblers, peach paletas, and canned eight jars.

-Kitchen adventures: we made paletas (watermelon ones and peach ones), tang hulu, and a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. (My go to recipe is the copy cat Mrs. Field’s recipe with oatmeal in it. The recipe says to blend all the oatmeal into flour, but I leave half of it unblended for a hardier texture.)

-We went to the movie theatre for the Kpop Demon Hunters sing a long. Also saw Jane Austen Wrecked my Life – a movie matinee date with a friend. It feels so indulgent to see the first showing of the day and have the theatre all to ourselves.

-Went to visit our friend out in Southern Maryland twice and got to enjoy her pool, good food, and vibrant company.

-One voice recital (13 year old) and two piano recitals (8 and 13 year olds).

-Going to New York City and meeting up with my sister in law and her family. We saw the Transit Museum (highly recommend) and had some ridiculously over the top desserts at Grace’s cafe in Koreatown.

-Went to the opera with the 13 year old.

-Went to the theatre with the 13 year old. chaperoning theatre camp field trip and saw a beautiful wordless production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was magical what people can express without uttering a word.

-The eight year old got a new bike and we had some good biking time with him, including biking to the farmer’s market. The 5 (now 6) year old hasn’t figured out how to ride a bike yet, but we’re still working on that.

-My summer job. It was one of my least favorite operas to work on in the rep (Carmen – you can read my guest post on Engie’s blog if you want to know why), but this time proved not so bad. I chalk this up to the director keeping things simple since we had very little rehearsal time, and everyone – the stage managers, the cast, the crew, the administration – being delightful and collaborative to work with. But even still, it was so so so so so darn hot the night we performed. And the theatre is outside.

-A glorious weekend at home alone while the Husband took the kids to Indianan on his own. It wasn’t totally on my own because I had to work, but at least the house was quiet. Maybe too quiet.

-The 13 year old and the 8 year old auditioned for the chorus of the Holiday opera that I’m working on. There was a large turn out this year, so I’m not sure they will be offered a slot, but I think it was a good experience for them to audition.

-Lenten book club where we discussed Mary and Martha.

-We got a new shoe rack and it’s been life-changing for our foyer.

-Visit from my cousin.

-going Contra dancing as a family.

-Discovering some new fun family games: Happy Salmon and Dixit.

-Everyone going back to school. We went to two Back To School Nights and got to see the classrooms and meet the teachers. It’s been a pretty chill school year so far. And that new closer bus stop has been amazing.

Summer Lowlights or just “meh” Some not fun things this summer (keeping it real, you know. I mean I don’t have a lot to complain about, but there were some things that were just… UGH.)

-Traffic commute to my summer job. That one time it took ninety minutes to get to work because a mushroom truck overturned. That other time it took me over TWO HOURS to get to work, via side streets, through parts of the DC area I only knew from maps. All that grossness. Periodically in a manual car, but more often than not, the Husband let me drive the van.

-Lots of things at work that I can’t really write about, but let me say… it’s making me real sad.

– The continued dismantling of America and the division that our great and fearless leader is perpetuating.

-mosquitoes.

-The 24 hours when my blog was down. But then thankfully fixed by … not sure whom. It could have been an AI chat bot for all I know. But anyhow, I was feeling a lot of despair during those 24 hours.

-I didn’t get a chance to go camping. I think this is the first year in a while that I haven’t taken the kids camping and I really missed being out in the mountains and trees. I guess I could do some fall camping, but work is starting to ramp up.

-That day where we tried to find a dresser for the 13 year old and it ended up with everyone hungry and tired and unable to think straight or look at any more furniture again for a very long time. (She still doesn’t have a dresser. I try not to look in her closet…)

-A tricky situation with our tenants that is now resolved in a friendly way, but did cause a bit of existential angst.

-I did not do ANY decluttering. Actually the Husband might have done some one weekend when I was working, but I didn’t really tackle much this summer. It’s kind of a bummer because the clutter areas tend to stress me out.

Things I learned:
-Pools are splashy places.
– how to say, “I see where you’re coming from…” when disagreeing with someone.
-Label the quick change booths. Label everything.This I learned from one of the other Assistant Stage Managers I work with. He was doing a show with a lot of quick costume changes and there were many quick change booths set up backstage. In opera if there is less than ten minutes to change a costume, we usually do the change backstage rather than have artists go back to the dressing rooms. (A true “quick change” in the opera world is five minutes. In theatre, five minutes is luxurious. For them true quick change is less than one minute.). Now just because the term “Stage Right Quick Change Booth” seems self explanatory, when you have just sung a big number onstage and then need to haul ass offstage and change costume in 2 minutes – well you don’t always remember what “Stage Right Quick Change Booth” means. Also if you’re a make-up artist coming backstage to give someone a scar in the Stage Right Change Booth, you don’t necessarily know which side is Stage Right or Stage Left right off the bat. So my colleague started putting signs on all the booths backstage along with who is changing in them. I thought this was brilliant!! Such a simple thing, but also hugely helpful in eliminating confusion backstage.

Welp that was summer 2025. Not the summer I had planned, but still a fun summer all around anyway. Onward to Fall!

Grateful For:

-The pretzel guy. For the now-6 year old’s birthday party, we wanted to order pretzels from The DC Pretzel Company. They are a go to for us for parties because their pretzels are vegan and delicious. Well, when I went on to the site to order… wump wump. Our date was unavailable. Cue panic. What are we going to do? So I emailed the owner. (Who, incidentally, is a federal worker who makes pretzels just on the weekends … actually I’m not sure if he’s still a federal worker…) He replied and said they weren’t taking orders for that day because they were baking pretzels for a local charity galas. BUT if I told him what I needed, maybe they could work something out. So I told him I needed 24 pretzels to be picked up any time before 9:45am on Saturday. And he said, “We can make that work. Can you pick them up at 9am?” YES! Yes, we can. I’m so grateful for Mr. Pretzel man for accommodating us. The pretzels are always the hit of any party we have.

-Umbrellas and rain boots and rain coats. When one remembers to bring them along.

-One extra hour to finish a book. I had a Libby hold that was due back so I was madly trying to finish reading it. I don’t know if this was a new feature, but when I got close to the time the book was due, I got this notice on my Libby app:

Well, I only had twenty more minutes left to read (according to that part of Libby that tracks your reading pace) so I clicked yes please and hunkered down and finished the book.

-Sunny weather for the 5 (now 6) year old’s birthday party. It had been raining all week and I was nervous that we’d have to move the party to our house – which would have been fine because there weren’t that many kids – but it’s much nicer when the kids can run and jump outside and not on my furniture. But luckily the day of the party was cloudy but dry. It actually started to rain the minute I pulled the car out of the parking lot as we were leaving.

-That two of my favorite friends and I were able to get together for Happy Hour. These are my two favorite bus stop friends – we used to chat all the time after the bus picked up, but now one friend has returned to work in the office and the other’s kid rides their bike to school, the bus stop is a little bit sadder for me. But we’ve been getting together every other month or so for happy hour (really by that I mean we have dinner at a favorite neighborhood bar) and it’s been really great to catch up.

-peanut butter and vanilla ice cream. My new favorite thing to do when I finish a jar of peanut butter now is to put vanilla ice cream in it and use the ice cream to eat up the last remaining bits of peanut butter in the jar. Makes me feel like I’m being thrifty.

eating every last drop of peanut butter.

-notepads on which to make lists. I’m very grateful someone invented lists.

Looking Forward To

-Jury Duty. I have that coming up in two weeks. I’m equally excited to be chosen as not chosen to be on a jury.

-Skating lessons. We’ve signed the 8 and 6 year old up for a mini skating session once the rink re-opens. I’m looking forward to being on the ice again too.

-A supertitle gig coming up. It’s a program of opera arias and duets and I think there will be some amazing singing.

-October! It’s right around the corner.

What We Ate:

Monday: Coconut Curry Chickpeas with Pumpkin and Lime, from the New York Times. I was looking for a cozy vegan meal and we also had a can of pumpkin to use up. This was very tasty. Vegan.

Tuesday: Chicken Orzo Soup from Dinner Illustrated. The kids have been wanting chicken noodles soup lately, so this fit the bill.

Wednesday: Tofu Bahn Mi from Dinner Illustrated. This was the 13 year old’s night to make dinner. It was very tasty.

I’m so proud of her that I took a picture of her meal!

Thursday: The Husband cooked dinner and I’m not sure what they ate – very likely eggs.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Worth It. Have you seen Worth It? It’s a show where in every episode the hosts try three versions of one food – one that is $ (affordable), one that is $$ (mid), and one that is $$$$$$$$$$ (Luxury). (One episode was :$1 taco vs. $47 taco. They’ve also done donuts, buffets, hamburgers, pizza…) Each episode is like 15 minutes long and the food always looks so good. I have to say, the really expensive food always looks jaw dropping, but I never feel like it’s worth it. But then again, I very rarely find the food I eat in restaurants completely worth it. The food isn’t really any tastier than what I can make at home. I think what makes eating out worth it for me is not having to cook or clean up myself, and also the company I have while eating out. Anyhow, it’s a fun little bit of tv if you’re looking for something short to watch.

Saturday: Dumplings and green beans and ate the decorated cookies, and watched Sneakers, in honor of Robert Redford’s passing. I love Sneakers so much! It’s such a great movie – suspenseful, smart, funny, and with a nice variety of characters. Also really appreciate that they didn’t pair Robert Redford with some twenty something in this film.

Sunday: Tortellini with either red sauce or pesto, steamed green beans, and Caesar Salad out of the bag. We’ve had tortellini and red sauce or pesto two weeks in a row now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes our Sunday night meal. There is something in me that thinks Sunday night meals need to be elaborate and celebratory. But also, it’s nice to do something low key before we go back into the week.

And look another weekend is coming up. I have to work both days this weekend, but I do get to take break and do “shuffle step” at my tap class. Hope you close out September with grace and style.

Are you ready for Fall? Any memories from summer you’re still holding on to? Do you have a go to chocolate chip cookie recipe? What makes a meal in a restaurant feel “worth it” to you?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Thinking about what I do.

Last week was kind of a quiet week, but still had some nice moments. My cousin was in town and I had a good time hanging out with her. We didn’t do anything touristy, just folded her into the usual household chaos. On Tuesday she drove the 5 year old to school so I was able to bike to school with the 8 year old. After we met my cousin at the school, she put both my bike and the 8 year old’s bike in her car and we went to a yoga class. My cousin is really good at finding fitness classes wherever she goes – she’s a bit of a digital nomad and is always travelling – she goes to Barcelona next. She found a nearby yoga studio that had a free first class offer so we signed up for a yoga core class. I was a little leery about that “core” part going in, but the class turned out to be super gentle. Maybe too gentle? But it was very relaxing.

Last week was also Back To School Night for the elementary school kids. I used to always skip Back to School Night when the oldest was in elementary school. her school was 30 minutes away and to trek up there didn’t feel worth it to me. I will say, I prefer the middle school back to school night to the elementary school one. In middle school we get to go class to class – it’s a little like human Frogger. In elementary school, the teacher gets 45 minutes, and we all sit there. I feel simultaneously bombarded with information and at the same time unaware of what my kids’ classes will be like. But still, it was nice seeing the kid’s classroom.

The weekend that followed was a very full weekend for us, but all good things. Saturday we had voice lessons for the 13 year old, a kids’ birthday party to go to, a soccer game for the 8 year old, and 5 year old and I had our first tap class, then I went to work and the Husband took the two big kids to church in the afternoon. Writing it all out, it seems like a lot, but I feel like everything flowed into one another and the Husband and I took on separate kid events. The birthday party was at a neighbor’s house, so we actually sent the 8 and 5 year old over by themselves so that I could mow the front lawn before heading over myself. I love that we are at the age of drop off birthday parties. I do like talking to other parents, but it sometimes feels as if we are constantly going to birthday parties, so it’s nice when we can just drop and go on with our lives for a little bit.

For sure tap class was a highlight. Tap class was LOUD, first of all. I should have expected that, but I was unprepared for how the room reverberates from movement and sound waves. There is something really fun about being able to make all that noise. I don’t know how much technique we’ll learn – the class is more like one of those Parent and Me music classes where the goal is just to get the kids to move. The instructor taught us a few ways to make noise with our feet and then we danced in circles and then in lines and did lots of twirling and pretending that we were rabbits and jumping across the room. There were a few parents that clearly knew what they were doing, and I felt very self conscious about not knowing what I was doing, but I’m going to try to get over that.

After class, I had to work, covering a chorus music rehearsal – this is where the chorus learns the music, so it’s a pretty hands off rehearsal for me. I mostly go to check attendance and make sure everyone gets the breaks they are owed per union contract. The tap studio is in the same building as the one we rehearse in, so the 5 year old tagged along with me to work, rather than me having to rush her home and then come back. Having her at work was kind of fun. She helped me call break warnings to the chorus: “Two minutes left in the break!” She was surprisingly loud. I had to do some paperwork while the chorus was learning their music, so the five year old did some collage projects with old magazines and had some hot chocolate that we had in the office.

Once I got off work, we headed over to our friends’ house. These were the same friends who had the birthday party earlier. I had felt bad leaving the party early to go to tap class, but our friends said to come over in the evening after work – they had rented a bounce house for the party and it wasn’t going to get picked up until 7pm, so the party was going to continue. The Husband met me there, and he had picked up dinner at a fried chicken and BBQ place. One annoying thing is that our order was missing things, but the restaurant is so far away it wasn’t worth going back – I’ve written to them to see if we can get our money back, but haven’t heard from them. So irksome. But the food was tasty. We stayed at our friend’s house until it was time to put the kids to bed and then headed home.

Sunday, we went contra dancing in the afternoon. The few dances we’ve been to lately have been at the Civic Center, but this Sunday dance was at the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park, where the Husband and I met. Back before the pandemic there were two contra dances a week at Glen Echo – one of Friday night and one on Sunday night. I think after COVID they went down to just the Friday night dance, but now a monthly Sunday afternoon dance has been added. I really like the Sunday afternoon time slot – we can take the kids and stay for most of the dance without worrying about bedtime or the kids having an exhausted meltdown. If the kids don’t feel like dancing they can go to the playground next to the ballroom and play there while the Husband and I dance. On Sunday, the 13 year old danced maybe four dances and the 5 and 8 year olds did two or three. During the waltz, all three kids made up some kind of dance and twirled each other around the dance floor. I had originally thought we would only stay until 5:00pm, but we ended up staying and dancing all but the last contra dance – it was a lot of fun – the music was hot (I had been skeptical because the band had a flute and a flue is not something I associate with contra dance music), the people were friendly, and the dancing was fast and flowing.

How do you answer “What do you do?” Between parties and the start of school, I feel like I’ve met lots of new people lately. Perhaps this is a very DC type of thing, but the instinct is always to ask (or be asked), “What do you do?” It’s kind of a fraught question these days, to be honest. I just never know if someone is a federal employee who has just lost their job or what. Anyhow, “What do you do?” has been on my mind a lot recently, and I’m reminded of something I heard once (maybe it was a Ted Talk or a podcast, I’m sorry I can’t remember) where this phrase was offered as a way to answer the dreaded questions: “I help X do Y.”

There is something I really love about that framing – it opens up so many possibilities to be descriptive and to really get to the heart of how I spend my time at work. I’ve been thinking of ways to answer “what do you do?” with that phrasing. Some things I’ve come up with something to say instead of saying, “I’m an opera stage manager.”

On a macro level: “I help people tell stories onstage.”

Or on an even bigger picture level: “I help people experience emotions through art.”

On a micro level: “I help singers know when to go out onstage.” “I help a director’s vision for a show come to life” “I help union members get their required break.” “I help technical departments know what’s going on in the rehearsal room.”

Of course, it’s not all about the work I get paid for either…

“I help my kids grow up to not be assholes.” Or at least I try.

There is something slightly self-effacing about this approach, to be sure. Sometime I think, “If I were a man, would I phrase my job as one of assisting rather than of being the main event?” But I also think that by seeing where I fit in the bigger picture of what my organization does, seeing my job as a facilitator of dreams and expression – I think that is a very grounding idea to keep in mind, especially these days. There are definitely days at work when I cling hard to the belief that telling stories onstage, providing a place for people to be immersed in music and escape the real world for a couple hours – that this is worthwhile work. Granted, on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs opera/music/art is hardly the base of the triangle, but don’t you think that in America of 2025 we should be able to aspire to the top of Maslow’s pyramid?

Back to answering “What do you do?” Another way I read lately to approach the question is to say, “You know how [thing that happens]? Well I [whatever part I play in the process]”

So for me, that might be: “You know how when you go to a show and the scenery moves or the lights change colours? Well, I’m the person who tells the stage crew when to make those things happen.” Or “You know when you go see a play and a character pulls a book out of a pocket? Well I’m the one who tells the costume shop which pocket the book comes from and how big the book is.” I like this idea of taking something that might be a common experience for every one and give people a behind the scenes view. I think we all do things – in work, in life – that are out of the public eye, or that might not be interesting to other people in the minutia of detail, but when seen in the context of something people are familiar with, the minutia of our job feels illuminating.

But all that to say – I’ve been trying to avoid asking the dreaded “What do you do?” question when I meet new people. To be honest I’m struggling a little with how to initiate conversations instead. Sometimes I ask where people grew up/ if they are from the area and see where the conversation goes from there.

I’m going to leave you with this bit of found poetry – the 5 year old loves to open up a note on my iPad and draw. Lately she also has realized that if you type in a letter or two, the iPad will automatically suggest a couple words. I mean she can’t read yet, so she is just choosing words at random from the suggested ones. Here is her opus. I can’t help but to think there is something worth embracing there:

Grateful For:
-A surprise half day with the kids and being available to pick up the kids early unexpectedly. On Monday the water main at the elementary school broke and the Principal sent an email at 12:50pm saying that the students would be dismissed at 1:20pm. Luckily my kids took the bus home, because from what I understand, pick up at the school was chaotic. I’m glad I didn’t have to battle the lines of people trying to find the kids they were supposed to pick up. I know a lot of parents just couldn’t pick up their kid with such a late notice for the early closure, so I’m glad I wasn’t working that day. At any rate, I had a bonus half day with the kids thanks to the water main break. We went to the library and then we went to Hmart, where the K-pop Demon Hunters soundtrack was on shuffle repeat much to the delight of the kids who started dancing in the aisle. Good thing HMart wasn’t too crowded at 2:30pm on a Monday.

-Discount bananas. There were bags of ripe bananas at the grocery store being sold for $2.99/ bag, so I grabbed a bag and turned them into banana chocolate chip muffins. I used this recipe from the NY Times and the streusel crumb topping really made this muffin sing. (If you make the recipe, I only used half a cup of sugar and the muffins still came out plenty sweet.)

-That it is still light in the morning. Granted the days are getting shorter, but I’m grateful that it is still light at 6:45am when I get up.

-Bike trails all the way to school.

-The bushes of Sweet Autumn Clematis that I walk by on the way to the bus stop. The smell so sweet, a nice pick me up reminder to breathe. Also grateful for the Seek app that identified the plant for me.

-People who are kind to my kids and make them feel welcome. Two things happened last week that made me grateful for people who accept kids as part of the fabric of life. When I had to have the 5 year old tag along to work, the chorus was all super nice to her. And when she announced the end of the break in her surprisingly loud voice, the chorus gave her a huge round of applause. Then at the contra dance, everyone was really kind to the kids. The two little kids like to dance as one person, three legged race style – which I’m sure can be annoying because in addition to having an extra body to navigate, the kids don’t always know how to follow the call. But I had a few people come up to us and say how wonderful it was to see kids at the contra dance, so I’m really grateful their presence was accepted and even celebrated. It could have been just as easy for people to be annoyed at the presence of my kids but they weren’t.

-A little bit of rain and the cooler weather that it brought.

-Fresh basil. I fear that summer is coming to a close and our days of fresh basil might be numbered. I will savor it while I can, though.

Looking Forward To:

-The 5 year old’s birthday party. We’re having just a handful of kids to play in the park and decorate cookies. We’ve ordered pretzels and we’ll have croissants and fruit and cake and maybe a charcuterie plate. It’s a morning party, so we’re not ordering pizza – I’m a little afraid I might get flamed for not having pizza. Pizza seems like such a staple of a kids’ party. But the party is from 10a-11:30am, so I thought to do more of a breakfast theme.

-Contra dance in Shepherdstown, WV. The Husband met someone at the Sunday dance who runs the contradance in Shepherdstown, WV and so we’ve decided to go for their dance in October. He’s paired it with an afternoon of hiking because I was lamenting that I haven’t been hiking in quite a while. It seems like an ambitious afternoon/ evening, but I’m excited to try.

-This is far into the future, but I’m looking forward to one day having shade. A few years ago, the county cut down a tree in our that strip of grass in front of our house between the sidewalk and the street. (What is that slice of grass called anyway? Google has soooo many words for it – verge, parkway, right of way, hellstrip??? This seems like a good summary.) And then about a year or so later they planted a tree. A little tiny tree. I look forward to the day that the tree is not so tiny and there is once again shade under which to park my car. Of course I guess that also means bird poop on my car too….

Someday, son, you will grow as tall as that baby tree on

-Just started listening to this – I wanted a nice cozy listen and this is fitting the bill so far:

What We Ate:

Monday – Coq au Vin in the Instant Pot. The 8 year old LOVES this recipe from the Good Housekeeping InstantPot book. The rest of the family could take or leave it. But it makes him so happy so I make it for him two or three times a year.

Tuesday – Crispy tofu tacos with black beans. Recipe from NY Times Cooking. These were very delicious. I made extra beans and had bean and cheese burritos for lunch the rest of the week. Vegan. (except the kids slathered their tacos in sour cream.)

Wednesday – Pasta with sauteed zucchini and spinach. This was Back To School Night and we had meant to order pizza because the neighbor’s kids were going to come over and the 13 year old was going to watch them while the parents went to back to school night. But at the last minute they didn’t have to come over so I decided not to spend money on pizza and made a catch all pasta with veggies that were leftover in the fridge. It was quite tasty.

Thursday – The 13 year old’s day to cook. She made cod baked in foil and roasted potatoes.

Friday – pizza (take out) and movie night. I think the family watched the Lego movie. Again.

Saturday – Fried Chicken Carryout at our neighbor’s house.

Sunday – tortellini with marinara sauce and fresh pesto. Steamed green beans on the side. Easy and filling supper to throw together after getting home from the dance.

I seem to be a bit behind in posting again what with the weekend so close and all. Oh well. Hopefully I’ll have another South AFrica Post for you all next week. In the mean time, hope you have a great weekend!

What do you say when someone asks “What do you do?” Finish the sentence: “I help _____ do ____.” What would you do with a bag of overripe bananas? What do you call the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street????

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: New things we are trying

Last week was a shorter school week because of the Labor Day holiday. It was also my last week on a reduced contract at work, so it was pretty light work-wise, though there were several union negotiation meetings to attend and lots of other adulting to do. All in all, though, it was a pretty low key week. I got to get some nice cooler weather runs in, the kids went to school, they came home, we had one soccer practice, I got to go on a pirate boat cruise on the Potomac, but other than that, not to much going on, and the weekend was similar. On Saturday, we had a 9:30am soccer game for the 8 year old, auditions for the 8 and 13 year old. After the auditions, we celebrated by sitting outside and eating the frozen treats that the Husband had bought at the nearby food coop. We were originally going to go out to get chais and horchatas from a local coffee shop, but the ice cream was a cheaper option and just as festive.

Saturday evening we went to visit my friend in Southern Maryland, where the kids had a chance for one last swim in a pool. It was probably a little on the chilly side for the pool, but the kids’ didn’t mind. I floated on an tube for maybe thirty minutes – it was the kind of weather where you wanted to either be in the pool or out, but it was too cold to be constantly switching. My friend is someone I know from work, so it’s always nice when we can hang out oustisde of work. She just rebuilt her deck by herself, and it’s amazing.

Sunday my cousin came for a visit and we just hung out around the house. We watched the US Open Men’s Final. I’ve never really watched tennis before, and I don’t know the rules, or whom to root for, but I do enjoy watching that ball go back and forth and back and forth. Also, I was unfamiliar with the tradition of the Grand Slam winners and losers making speeches at the trophy ceremony and afterwards became fascinated with this tradition. It seems so bonkers to me that the players play their hearts out for three hours, experience crushing defeat or thrilling victory, and then immediately after are expected to coherently speak to millions of people? And for a lot of them, English isn’t even their first language. Despite all that, the Grand Slam trophy speeches seem like an appropriately elegant part of a sport that I do think is very glamorous.

New Things For This School Year:
September always brings some shifts to schedules, routines, and habits what with the new school year starting and kids going to new schools, new grades, new activities. I once made a chart, and from now until the 5 year old goes to high school in nine years, we‘ll have only two years where September does not bring a new school for someone. The other seven years will always have a transition to a new school for at least one kid. So September always seems like a natural time to think about systems and routines and try something new. Here are some things we’re trying this fall:

A new shoe rack/ foyer/ landing strip set up – Our foyer is a mess of shoes and backpacks and tote bags and what not. We were constantly tripping over things in walkways or kicking things down the stairs, losing keys and single shoes and IDs and bills. We started looking for solutions for a more efficient drop zone, where we could keep the shoes and back packs in a more organized way but also have place for incoming mail and our keys and ids. The Husband found a really cool shoe rack on Etsy and we had our handyman stain it to match our front door. The rack has transformed our foyer. (So far. It’s only been two weeks…)

Backpacks are on the coat tree on the right. My messy drop bin is out of sight on the left.

Flow improvements:
-Everyone has a shelf for their most used shoes, so they are no longer sprawled across the entry way. We will still use the boot mats for boots, and shoes that aren’t worn regularly stay in the coat closet, but everything else goes on the shoe rack. There are 4 shelves for shoes and space underneath, so everyone’s shoes seem to fit while taking up a smaller footprint. yay for vertical storage.
-Moving the paper recycle bin next to the shoe rack so that the junk mail goes right into the bin and the important mail goes into the mail bin.
-Having the mail bin and the key bin to the top level of the shoe rack. These used to live on a bench, and it was always kind of awkward to get to them.
-A charging station. We are using one of the top cubbies as a charging station. So now, my phone has a “home” when I’m at home. I’m hoping this will lead to less scrolling and less losing of my phone. We’re trying to convince the 13 year old that her phone also needs to charge there, but I don’t know if we’re going to win that one. (That’s a whole other story…)
-backpacks moved from bins to a coat tree, corralling them in a smaller space. We used to have three plastic storage bins in the living room and they became a dumping ground for backpacks and anything else that didn’t have a home. Once a week, the kids would go through their bins and re-set. I love me a good catch all bin, but it was getting out of control. Now the kids’ activity bags and helmets go in their room and just school backpacks are the the foyer hung on the coat tree. We might need to investigate a different coat tree because the current one is a little tall for the kids’ to reach easily. (The 13 year old keeps her backpack in her room.) I still have my little red bin for my tote bags – I’m trying to figure out if there is a more elegant solution for my stuff – I like to be able to dump my things when I walk in the door because often I’m coming in so late and that tends to lead to a bit of clutter. Still pondering here.
All in all, our new foyer/land strip has made life a little less frustrating lately.

Fewer Activities for the Kids/ More evenings at home as a family – This is the activity run down for this fall:

13 year old – basketball workouts (1x a week, plus this year the coach wants people to practice on their own at least ten minutes a day. The 13 year old has been doing this as she waits for the two little to get off their bus), piano lessons, voice lessons, Religious Ed, Swim clinic (starts next month)

8 year old – soccer (1 practice, 1 game a week. He’s still playing the less competitive rec league.), piano.

5 year old – tap classes, Agility classes (this is like ninja warrior courses.)

This is a lot fewer activities than we usually do. One thing that we dropped for the fall is skating for the 5 and 8 year old because the rink is still under repair. We will likely add skating back in November when the rink re-opens. We also aren’t doing after school programming classes or sewing (for the 8 year old) or gymnastics (for the 5 year old) this fall. The 13 year old is auditioning for the school play, so that might be another activity back on the plate, although rehearsals are right after school, so it’s pretty hands off for us. The 13 year old and the 8 year old both auditioned for the children’s chorus of the Holiday opera I’m working on, so we’re waiting for those results, though those rehearsals don’t start until November.

Being light on activities is a bit of a shift for us. Usually I try to sign up the kids for activities when my work load is lighter because then we have two parents on hand to split driving and home duties. But this fall, we decided to try something different and keep the schedule a little lighter. Each kid still has one active activity and one artistic activity, though. I feel bad because skating, programming, sewing and gymnastics are things that the kids really love to do. I’m reminding myself that these activities all have short sessions and rolling enrollment, so we can sign them up for sessions later in the year too. Taking the fall off from an activity isn’t going to stunt their development in that interest or put them “behind”. Whatever that means. I do think it gets trickier when kids get older and start to get more serious about interests and require more commitment, but for now I think the stakes are not as high for the 5 year old and the 8 year old, and we don’t have to keep up with anything. Plus the kids love activities, but they also love just hanging out at home, reading books, playing outside, and getting into trouble.

I have to say, the pulling back on activities has actually been quite lovely. We’re not constantly rushing around on weekday evenings to eat dinner and get someone somewhere. We all have been cleaning up after dinner together, and then having family reading time, or family game time. Same thing on weekend – we have time to hang out together and kind of just do… well, I was going to say “nothing”, but reading books and noodling on the piano and playing board games and going on evening walks and having dance parties while doing the dishes and putting away laundry in a timely manner – these are all something.

Another thing that I think benefits from the lighter activity schedule is something that came up at Back to School Night – The coordinator of the French Immersion program said is that our kids really need time to decompress after school because they’re brains are working overtime being in a non-English school environment. I’m sure all kids need that space after school, but I guess I hadn’t really thought of the added burden of being in an immersion environment before. Anyhow, I’m really enjoying the less frenetic paces of our afternoons and evenings. I don’t know how long we will keep it up, but it does make for a nice soft start for the school year.

I’m going to give a shout out to our new favorite game, Dixit. It’s kind of like a combination of the Dictionary Game and Code Names – there are picture cards and one person says a word or phrase to describe one of their cards, then everyone puts in a card that might also be described by that word or phrase and everyone else has to guess which is the original card. Dixit works really well for our family because you don’t have to be able to read to play it. I also took a page out of Lauren’s book and instituted a rule that the winner cleans up after the game. I don’t know if it’s the rule or if the kids are getting better at not winning, but there have been fewer meltdowns when we have family game night now.

The 13 year old making dinner once a week – We’ve put the 13 year old in charge of making dinner once a week. She’s made dinner a few times, but not regularly. She’s able to make Mac and cheese (out of a box), breakfast sandwiches, pasta and meat balls, and oven fried chicken. I thought this was a good time for her to start expanding her skills by being regularly responsible for dinner, from planning to putting things on the grocery list to cooking. Last week, she made roasted salmon with potatoes and chimichurri sauce, and steamed green beans. I was in the kitchen talking her through every step of the way, but almost all the hands on stuff she did herself. I have this dream that eventually each child can be responsible for one night and then the Husband and I will only be responsible for 3 dinners a week (the fourth night is pizza and movie night.)

Labelling the Sheets – I keep the spare sheets in the bedrooms – ie each room has the sheets on the bed and one spare set in the closet. BUT they were kind of just on a shelf, in a jumbled mess. In the little kids’ room, especially, it was annoying because the 5 year old sleeps in the twin top bunk and the 8 year old sleeps in the full bottom bed. So when someone wets the bed at 2am, there is a lot of night time cursing and muttering as I pull out wrong sheet set after wrong sheet set. Well, I was determined to fix this and on our last trip to Ikea, I found these zip up storage bags. Now, each size of sheets has it’s own storage bag, AND I got out the label maker and labelled the bags. I love my label maker.

The new closer bus stop- I know this is the third week in a row I’ve mentioned the new bus stop, but it’s been such amazing shift for our routine. The 13 year old gets to shoot some hoops while waiting for the bus, the kids can have 15-30 minutes to play before coming home, and I get to walk down to meet them. Also it’s the first stop of the bus, so less likely to be delayed.

Well, those are some things that are making life a little less chaotic right now. Of course, I don’t know how things will be when I go back into rehearsal, but that is about a month away…

Grateful For:
-Little Free Libraries. There are a couple of Little Free Libraries that we pass by regularly that have some really desirable books. I’ve been amassing a collection. It might be a bit of a problem….

-That the kids are old enough to sort of clean the kitchen after dinner.

-That I learned how to touch type. I was painfully watching my kids hunt and peck the other day, and I had two thoughts – 1) how can the school them all Chromebooks and not teach them to touch type? And 2) I’m sure glad I can touch type so that I can type efficiently and without looking at my hands.

-Beautiful blue skies and fluffy clouds.

-leftovers for an easy dinner, plus more in the freezer for the future when life gets busy again.

-Bodies of water – the Potomac, the Chesapeake Bay, pools. There is something so relaxing about being on the water.

Looking Forward To:

-New glasses. I’d gotten glasses earlier this year and I was having a lot of trouble reading with them. They are progressives, but my last pair was too, so I couldn’t understand why everything I tried to read was blurry. I made and appointment for a re-check and the optomitrist determined that the part of the lenses that I am supposed to read through was too low. So a new pair of glasses are coming in a few weeks! I also ordered a new pair of sunglasses while I was there since my last pair is five years old and the lenses are quite scratched. I’m looking forward to being able to read text clearly again.

-Another new thing coming my way – a new laptop. If you remember my laptop died during tech week of my last show. The Husband has ordered me a new one and I’m excited to set it up and get to work. The old laptop top was at least five or six years old, which seems like it should last longer than that…?

-Tap dancing lessons!!!! I am so super excited for this one. The parent child tap lessons I signed up for start this week. I ordered a pair of tap shoes and they just arrived and I immediately tried them on and tapped around the house. I had zero clue what I was doing, but there is something so very satisfying about that tap tap tap sound.

-Starting the high school choice process with the 13 year old. Where we live, 8th graders can lottery into any one of 5 high schools in our general area and September/October is when all the schools have open houses and you can see what different programs are offered. If you home school is your first choice, you automatically get in. Though I just found out, if you don’t submit a form, you don’t necessarily get into your home school. I can’t even think about what the spreadsheets and what nots are for determining results. So okay, I’m not “looking forward” to this in the “can’t wait, I’m so excited!!!!” kind of way. It’s more like, “I have no idea what this process is like and I am eager for more information.” This is another reason I’m glad we pulled back on activities this Fall – there is at least one open house a week for the next four weeks.

-Chorus rehearsals. Work is slowly starting back up and the first big things I have to do are run chorus music rehearsals. These are the rehearsals where the chorus learns their music. It means I’ll be working evenings again, which is kind of a bummer, but I’m looking forward to seeing many familiar faces again.

What we ate– After a super busy summer, I’m really loving being able to dive into cooking dinner again, and having the time to sit and eat together as a family. (Another plus of less busy evenings.) Although now that I look at the week, I didn’t actually cook dinner all that much….

Tuesday: Pulled pork and coleslaw tacos. The pulled pork and coleslaw was leftover from the Husband’s smoking endeavor the day before.

Wednesday: I had pizza on a pirate ship. The rest of the family had breakfast sandwiches.

Thursday: Roasted Salmon and potatoes with chimichurri sauce and steamed green beans. This was the 13 year old’s night of cooking.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee. Because the 8 year old has soccer practice on Friday nights, we might go back to watching episodes of tv rather than a whole movie on Friday nights. Or maybe we’ll just watch shorter movies? TBD.

Saturday: Dinner at our friend’s house- she had a huge food spread – falafel and sausage and veggies and fruit. I brought two peach cobblers – a cardamon cobbler and a ginger buttermilk cobbler.

Sunday: Curry shrimp with peppers and cabbage, served with rice. This was a quick thrown together dinner from the cookbook Make This Tonight that I had borrowed from the library then lost and so I paid for it, but then we found the cook book in, of all places, the toy room closet (I’m a little salty about that – it’s a bit of a black hole) and so just decided to keep it. The recipes are pretty simple and straightforward, which is good for weeknight cooking. This curry shrimp was basically toss shrimp in curry powder, sauté peppers and onions (I added the cabbage myself), throw in shrimp and cook until they are done. Add more curry powder. Eat with rice.

Hope everyone had a lovely week – I feel like I’m posting a little later in the week than normal and the weekend is already here! The weekend is kind of packed for us, but all good things, I hope.

Any changes to systems or routines lately? Have you ever tap danced? What is your entry way/ landing strip like? Does your house have a black hole? What should the 13 year old learn to make next for dinner? Anyone else enjoy watching tennis speeches?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to School, Labor Day Weekend, and Moments not Mine

Beautiful skies and trees at the botanical gardens.

Hello from the other aide of Labor Day Weekend. We’ve turned the calendar to September and I feel like we now begin the new year in earnest- it’s a new school year and a new opera season. New activities beginning!

Sunday felt like the perfect end-of-summer day. We slept in – just late enough to feel luxurious, but not so late as to feel indolent. Which for us is 7:30/8am. Then I decided that I wanted to have special breakfast, so I made waffles. I usually make the buttermilk waffles from King Arthur Flour Baking Companion, only this time the 5 year old wanted me to put rainbow sprinkles in them, and I also made a blueberry waffle. I’d never put add ins in my waffles before, so I didn’t know how it would turn out – they turned out great.

After breakfast, we went to the farmer’s market. I biked with the 8 year old while the Husband and the other two kids took the metro. I was really impressed by the 8 year old – the bike ride is the same one I take to work. It’s about five miles and there is a big hill at the end. I often have to walk my bike up that hill, but the 8 year old put his bike in a low gear and kept pedaling up the hill. He did rest once, but then kept going. I’m loving how much he’s loving his bike. One vent, though, is that right before the big hill, is a stop light so ideally you get a green light and can accelerate through the light on a higher gear and get some momentum up the hill. Only you know those Lime Bikes? They’re those bike share e-bikes that you can find randomly around. Well, someone had left a Lime Bike in the middle of the sidewalk on the other side of the stop light. So we had to stop and any momentum we got coming out of the stop light was lost. I got SO MAD. I might have not too gently pushed the Lime Bike over and dragged it off the sidewalk. Sooooo annoying.

Anyhow, despite that we got to the Farmer’s Market where we bought vegetables (peppers, cucumbers, spinach, potatoes) and peaches and nectarines. There was not a huge peach sale this time, so we did not come home with a $25 crate of peaches. After the market, we all took the metro home. The ride was a little odd because we ran into the 13 year old’s math teacher, which it’s always a little awkward seeing one’s teachers out in the wild.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out in the backyard. The Husband was finally setting up the smoker that he had gotten a few months ago. Setting up the smoker involved cooking two pounds of bacon. “What are we going to do with two lbs of bacon?” I asked the Husband.

Apparently we were just going to eat it. The Husband doesn’t eat bacon, but the other four of us – we polished off that two lbs in less than an hour. It was tasty. No regrets there. Yet.

It was such a nice chill afternoon in the backyard. We planned the 5 year old’s upcoming birthday party. We talked to the 8 year old about some upcoming activity plans. I played a bit of soccer with the 8 year old backyard. I finished a book and flipped through the first few pages of a few options for my next read. I think if you had told me that I was going to spend three hours in my backyard reading and “life-ing”, I would have kind of thought, “What a waste of time. Shouldn’t I go organize my desk or something like that?” But you know what? It was just perfect. I guess this is what people do with weekends when they don’t have to rush off to activities or work.

Oh and then after that, we had a family cuddle session on the 13 year old’s bed. She had put “Family hug” on the calendar during the previous day’s family meeting. The Husband pointed out that we could hug for longer if we were on a bed, so we all piled into her bed and had an hour of cuddle time. Well I guess the Husband, the 13 year old, and I cuddled. The 5 year old and the 8 year old climbed all over us. It wasn’t relaxing, per se, but it was nice bonding time. Then I got up, and made dinner.

After dinner, I took the two little kids to the pool for one final raft night. Our pool closes on Labor Day, and since we had plans for Monday, if we wanted to get one last swim in, Sunday was the day. The pool was a little chilly, but we soon got used to it. Plus we had our inflatable rings, so we just floated along and enjoyed the sky and clouds.

The 8 year old took this picture at the pool because he said the sky was beautiful.

When I look back on Sunday, I think, “I would never have planned a day like that. But it was perfect.”

Which was nice because to be honest, the day before was kind of a disaster. We tried to go find a dresser for the 13 year old, driving all the way to Virginia because that is where the folks on Reddit say the best furniture stores in teh area are. Virginia is terrible to drive to/drive in. We looked at lots of furniture but couldn’t decide on what to get. Turns out we have a fundamental difference in overall vision for the 13 year old’s room, basically the disagreement is piece meal furniture vs. bedroom set. (And the 13 year old didn’t really care which way to go.) Most of our furniture in the house was obtained piecemeal, and one of us thought that maybe if we were going to buy one thing for the 13 year old’s room, we should buy a whole set since she didn’t really have a bed and was sleeping on a futon mattress. We spent thirty minutes in the furniture store disagreeing about set vs. piecemeal and finally left without buying anything.

We then tried to go to the really cool and tasty Vietnamese shopping center for lunch, but the parking lot was kind of a madhouse so we abandoned that. People in the van got hungry, then cranky so we ended up at a Laotian restaurant, though that required driving through more confusing traffic patterns. The GPS said it was 0.5 miles away. It was only a short distance away in miles, but it was miles in frustration. So all in all, not a great excursion. (But the food was really good – the crispy tofu lettuce wraps were divine.) I think we are scarred and likely won’t be going deep into the Virginia suburbs again for a long long long long time. (Apologies to any Virginia readers. I’m sure you feel the same way about driving in Maryland.)

All to say, after that disaster of a half day on Saturday, Sunday was everything I needed a long weekend day to be.

Labor Day Monday was our annual trip to the Renaissance Festival. The weather was gorgeous – the past couple of years it has been unbearably hot on Labor Day weekend, which makes the Ren Faire a little bit harder to navigate. But this year, the weather was high 70s, sunny with a breeze, and downright cool in the shade. That might account for the high volume of people going. The traffic was terrible. It usually takes us 40-50 minutes to get to the Faire. This year it took us 90 minutes. I’ve never seen it that bad. So we didn’t get through the gates until nearly 11:00am. (Our friends who were meeting us there took three hours to get there and they only live two miles from us.) I was probably the only one worried about not getting to the Faire right when it opened. The kids were happy in a slow moving van as long as they could put on KPop Demon Hunters and Broadway Show Tunes and sing along at the top of their lungs. I might have joined in.

Once we got to Revel Grove itself, we had a great time. The Ren Faire is such a multi-faceted event. You have all the shows and entertainment, you have the shopping, the eating, there’s the pirate ship playground, and games, and you also have the fun pageantry and people watching. It’s kind of like being in the middle of a parade, what with all the costumes that people were wearing. My favorite costumes I saw this year were the two people dressed up as Galinda and Elphaba, and also a stately older lady in this beautiful golden brocade gown with a headdress that had protruding spikes, as if she were the sun. It was pretty spectacular. The 13 year old’s favorite costume was the guy we saw dressed as Waldo from “Where’s Waldo”.

We saw all the familiar shows, including a 20 minute Macbeth. We saw the jousting. We ate turkey legs and other fried food. We let the kids play at the playground. The kids went through the maze and shot toy crossbows. The 5 year old was finally old enough to do the climbing wall, which she climbed with such ease. Next year she will have to do the “Medium hard” wall, I think. We listened to bagpipes and drums, the music so loud and rhythmic that you could feel the benches vibrate and the music under your skin. Going to the Ren Faire feels so familiar – I feel like we have a good routine and pace for how we tackle the day. I almost worry that we are in a Rem Faire rut, and I think next year we should go see at least a few new to us Acts and maybe try some new foods. I’ve started keeping a list of foods that go over like a lead balloon – so far on the list are the fried green beans (meh, so very much meh) and the apple dumplings (waaay too messy to eat while standing up or taking in a show.)

Leading up to Labor Day, though, was the first week of school. Monday was a “Transition Day” for kindergarteners (also 6th and 9th graders), so the older two kids were off school. After walking the 5 year old to school, we went to the Botanical Gardens and met up with some friends for a walk. In the afternoon, the 13 year old then had a voice lesson via Zoom, and we went to the 8 year old’s open house. The 13 year old did not have an open house. I guess at a certain point, they just expect you to show up at school and figure it out.

Then on Tuesday, everyone went back to school. Yay! I am so excited for the new school year, the new teachers, the new friends, and new routines. Everyone seemed to have a good first week of school. The 5 year old is excited to go every day, though she says they sit a lot. The 8 year old seems to like his teacher and the 13 year old – well, I think she likes the independence that she has at school.

Obligatory First Day of School picture. I don’t do first day signs though I love the idea. The 13 year old leaves for school an hour and half before the other two so I was lucky just to have everyone dressed to be in a first day picture together.

Fun fact – the 5 year old wore the same dress that her big sister wore to her first day of kindergarten. We even sort of recreated the picture from eight years ago:

I was thinking recently about how life with little kids seemed/ seems interminable for me. I look at the 5 year old and, also to some extent the 8 year old and think, “How are you still so young? It seems as if you’ve been little forever.” I wouldn’t wish the years away, but it does seem as if we’ve been in the “parenting littles” phase for such. a. long. time.

But, at the opposite end, with the 13 year old, time is flying. I am so acutely aware of (and completely unprepared for) the fact that she will go to high school next year; that two year (and change) from now she will be learning how to drive; that the years we have with her at home are fewer and fewer. We now have more years behind us than in front of us with her at home. (Unless she lives at home for college, which is actually a very real possibility. But that’s a future thing…)

Time passes simultaneously quickly and slowly when I look at my children. Sometimes it feels as if I’m living on two different timelines, parallel yet not quite concurrent. I was thinking that this slight dissonance is because as kids grow older, I’m getting fewer and fewer pieces of them. When kids are little, they are all ours – there is so much of them, a surfeit of responsibility, care, attention. When they are first born, they are with us 24/7. And even in the early years, they are either at school/daycare or with a parent. We take them to school, we feed them their meals, we take them to activities, even participating in those activities with them. Time with them moves slowly because there is so much of it.

But as they grow older and need us less and less, they also give us less and less. The 13 year old still wants time to cuddle and watch New Girl, but these days she also wants time alone. And coupled with all the time she spends at school, at basketball, at various lessons and activities, most of which she gets herself to and from – well, my time with her is just pockets. There is less of it – which is why, I think time with her goes much faster; there is just so little of it on a day to day basis. There’s a sense of time scarcity with the 13 year old that I don’t have with the younger kids. It’s not just that the years are fewer, but also that the moments are fewer. And on top that, the moments are no longer mine.

So here’s to savoring those moments I do get to share with her, and also letting her have her own moments as she becomes her own person.

Grateful For:

– Summer evenings with just the right amount of chill and light to remind me to savor the moments before winter is upon us.

-The Lenten Book Group and my friend who invited me to join two years ago. We had a meeting last week where we talked about Mary and Martha, and the Good Samaritan. I’ve always, to be quite honest, been bothered by the story of Mary and Martha. (Cliff Notes: Jesus comes to teach at Martha’s house and her sister Mary sits at his feet and listens while Martha works to prepare the house, serve the food, etc. Martha gets resentful and asks Jesus to make Mary help her, but Jesus says that what Mary is doing is important too.) We had a great discussion about actions being the manifestation of love, but also how sometimes just putting things down and listening is important too.

-School bus drivers, teachers, principals, and school administrators. Bless them all.

-A new bus route. We have switched the two elementary school kids to a different afternoon bus route that drops the kids by 4:15pm to a stop that is next to a park and walking distance from home. This bus was always an option, but in past years it didn’t drop off until close to 5pm. They’ve streamlined the bus routes this year, and while some parents are upset, it works out better for us. I’ll miss our friends at the old bus stop, but this new stop is so much better for life – the kids get off the bus sooner, and I can even can go to the playground for 20 minutes and still get home in time to make dinner. Also, the 13 year old can go down to the bus stop and shoot baskets while waiting for the kids and then walk them home. Anything we can do to minimize time in the car is a plus for me.

-Metro workers. On the train home from the Farmer’s Market, a man on our train car collapsed out of his seat. I went over to see if he needed help and he seemed a little incoherent, which was a little concerning. We had to get off at the next stop, so I told the Metro conductor, and I think he called for help because a police car and fire truck pulled up as we were leaving the station. I’m so grateful that there are people to help in those situations because I really felt out of my depths.

– The plethora of Ethiopian markets nearby where I can readily get injera. I had some time to kill between errands one day and realized I was in walking distance of two Ethiopian stores, so I stopped by one to pick up some injera. I love the stuff and can eat a whole package by myself. I hear it’s complicated to make, so I’m am grateful I don’t have to make it myself.

-This belt bag that I got as a hand me down from my cousin. I never thought I’d be a belt bag person, but it perfectly fits my phone, wallet, keys, and sunglasses, which makes it so handy when I’m out on my bike or am just running a quick errand, or to stuff in the swim bag. Hand me downs for the win!

Looking forward to:
-going to our friend’s house out in Southern Maryland. She’s closing her pool for the season soon and invited us up for one last swim. I’ll be making that peach cobbler again.

-Lunch and happy hours with friends. I tend to fill my social calendar up when I’m not working because my evenings and weekends get very packed when I am working. So I have lots of meet ups scheduled in the next couple of weeks.

-Riding bikes to school. This is a “Looking forward to” that is at least a year out. The 8 year old and I rode our bikes to his 3rd grade open house. It took just 15 minutes to get to school (though it took 8 minutes to find a bike rack and lock up the bikes…), and there is a trail almost all the way there. There is one major road to cross, but it has a traffic light there and lots of other foot traffic, so it’s not dangerous. I would feel pretty safe letting the kids ride their bikes the 2.3 miles to school. Right now, the limiting factor is the 5 year old doesn’t ride a bike yet, but once she figures it out, I can totally see the two of them biking to school together, and myself going with them sometimes. Their school is actually half way to my work, so it would be a convenient family commute.

-Back to School Night for the Elementary school kids. The middle school BTSN was last week (on the third day of school!) and that one was a lot of fun – we got to follow our 13 year old’s schedule and go from class to class. Being able to walk her paths gave me a lot of insight into how chaotic her days are.

-Fall cooking projects: I’ve decided that I’m going to try to make dosa from scratch this fall. Also I never got around to making Japanese milk bread and that is still on my list. And the 8 year old wants to make tang hulu (Sugar coated strawberries) since he missed out when we made it earlier this summer. I’m kind of leaning into the idea of having some good homemade snacks for when the kids get home from school.

-Reading this book:

Set near Johannesburg, it’s one of the books I had picked up to read while in South Africa, but I ended up not bringing it on the trip. This novel tells the story of a 10 year old white girl and a Xhosa widow whose lives intersect in a tragic way.

What We Ate:

Monday: Tomato and Zucchini Tart and Cucumber Avocado Salad. Really leaning into the summer produce for this meal. The Tart was super simple – pre-made pastry dough, covered with a mixture of cream cheese and mustard blended together, and covered with sliced tomato and zucchini. The cucumber avocado salad, was inspired by Julie, though not the exact of the one she posted.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! Shrimp and chicken tacos, made on the grill. I had a jar of green salsa of indeterminate origins so I used that to marinate the chicken. The family devoured this. I made 1 lb of shrimp and 2 lbs of chicken and it was all inhaled. I felt bad because we had a friend coming for dinner and she was running late so I fed the kids first and our friend only got two tacos because that’s all that was left. Oh, and for dessert I made peach cobbler, recipe from the NY Times. I’ve never made a peach cobbler before – friends! cobbler is SO fast and easy! And delicious! Will make again. (And I’m going to – see above about visiting our friend in southern Maryland.)

Wednesday: Dinner at Ikea as we went on our mission for a dresser for the 13 year old. The mission was a fail. But the meatballs were tasty.

Thursday: Meera Sodha’s Green Pasta – Trying to use up all the basil in our yard. I really like this pasta – you blend blanched spinach, basil, parsley, lemon juice, silken tofu and nutritional yeast into a creamy savory sauce for pasta. Then you top it with this olive/lemon/olive oil mixture. Well I did – the rest of family doesn’t care for olives. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza (carry out) and Dodge Ball. The 13 year old originally wanted to watch Forest Gump, but then realized it’s actually kind of a downer of a movie plus it’s kind of long, so she picked Dodge Ball instead. Which… I have to say, some of it is still hilarious (“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!”), but a lot of it is sexist, homo-phobic, body-shaming frat boy humor that hasn’t aged well for me. The kids liked it, but I gave a lot of disclaimers as we went along.

Saturday: The little kids and I went to a birthday party where there was pizza, snacks, and a cookie cake. The Husband and 13 year old went out for cheesesteaks. I was still hungry when I came home so I had angel hair pasta with the leftover olive oil/lemon/olive mixture from Thursday night.

Sunday: Sweet and sour eggplant with garlic chips, served with rice. Recipe from NY Times Cooking. Easy stir fry with the sweetest, silkiest Japanese Eggplant from the farmer’s market. I also added green beans and carrots since I realized that recipes that say “2-4 servings” won’t feed our family. Vegan.

Monday: Smoked pork sandwiches with Coleslaw. The Husband’s first smoking project was a delicious success. I’m not sure if he will become one of those guys who tries to smoke everything and spends all weekend with his smoker. From what he described to me, smoking meat is a combination of leisurely hands off and attending to the temperature of the smoker as if it were a colicky baby.

Hope you all have a lovely start to September.

What parts of life seem interminable to you? What parts seem to go quickly? Are you team furniture set or team piecemeal furniture? Any fun cooking projects lately? Have you ever made dosa from scratch? Any favorite movies from your youth that haven’t aged well for you?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Last week of summer!

This past week, we bought school supplies, squeezed in more pool time, one kid had a cavity filled, met the Husband for lunch (fried chicken and Boba!) . I also had some work meetings. We went to the Kindergarten Open House for the 5 year old. I was really proud of the 8 year old for introducing his little sister to the teachers. They are both in a French Immersion program, so the teachers aren’t allowed to speak English in front of the students. Some teacher even pretend that they don’t understand English. I could have introduced the 5 year old to the teacher myself, but I figured the 8 year old hadn’t spoken French all summer, so he could stand to start up again.

On Saturday, we took the kids to the K-Pop Demon Hunters sing1a-long in the movie theatres. Since we don’t have Netflix, I hadn’t actually seen the movie, even though we listen to the soundtrack all. the. time. – in the car, during breakfast, at clean up time… just whenever. It first came into our lives because the 8 year old had watched it at Taiwan Camp, and asked to listen to the music non stop. Then when the family was in Indiana the friend they stayed with put it on for them to watch. The kids know all the words, they make up dance numbers. They even took my phone last week while I was on a call and filmed music videos. Afterwards I found all the black clothing in the house strewn across the living room. Their dedication to the project was admirable. The videos involved costumes, props, choreography and dizzying film work. I was actually quite impressed. (Also happy that they were able to amuse themselves while I was on a two hour call.) Obsessed. They are all obsessed.

We didn’t tell the kids that we were going to the Sing-a-long, just that we had a “surprise outing”. They kept asking questions about the activity, as if we were playing a never ending round of twenty questions – “Does it involve food?” “Is it outside?” “Do I have to get dressed up?” “Does it involve food?” “Do I need to bring money?” “Does it involve food?” . Eventually we said that we weren’t answering any more questions.

As we were riding the escalator to the movie theatre, a couple was coming down on the opposite side; he was wearing a top hat and cloak, and she was wearing a shiny white mini-skirt and halter top. As soon as the 13 year old saw that, her eyes got really big and she got this huge grin on her face. “Are we going to the sing-a-long?” she whispered to us. I don’t think I’ll ever be the parent that surprised their kids with a trip to Disney, but I have to admit, seeing the joy and realization creep across the kids face when they realize they’re going somewhere fun is priceless.

For those who haven’t experienced it yet, K-Pop Demon Hunters is a Netflix movie about a K-Pop band that fights Demons, saving the world through their music. There is angst and intrigue, romance and fight sequences. I found the movie incredibly entertaining and satisfying to watch. After listening to the music on repeat for the past six weeks, seeing them in context made me realize that they are not just songs, but cleverly propel the story. This movie is as much a movie musical as any of the Disney classics. It’s sentimental and big hearted and not-subtle.

But also – there is something about taking my kids to see a movie where the protagonists are all Asian, and the whole movie is very much steeped in Korean culture. For one, the food scenes were so amazingly familiar – granted Korean food is very different from Taiwanese food, but seeing people eat noodles with chopsticks and then all the snacks… these things are part of the food culture I grew up with. I’ve written here before about representation in media and I’m always struck that my children are growing up in a world where they see the non-White part of their heritage reflected in mainstream media. I didn’t have that growing up, and I’m so glad they do.

Everyone had a great time, singing along and bopping. There was one funny thing that happened, though – before the movie started, this group of ten or so kids and grown ups came in, and many of them had balloons. Well during the last third of the movie, someone let go of their balloon, and it floated into the light of the projector. The shadow of the balloon string ended up dangling in the picture of the rest of the movie. It looked like the characters all had the same hair curl in every frame and was mildly distracting. I was alternately annoyed and amused. It didn’t ruin the fun, though.

Sunday, we went to the Farmer’s market for lunch and produce. The two older kids and the Husband biked the 5 miles there while the 5 year old and I took the metro to meet them. The plan was for all of us to metro back after having a special drink at one of our favorite coffee shops. (The 13 year old loves their house made chai lattes, and having one was on her summer bucket list.) At the farmer’s market, I picked up some beautiful Japanese eggplants, spinach, nectarines, and peaches. At one point I was checking out at one stand and noticed that there was a sign that said “Box of peaches $25”. Well that’s irresistible to me. Never mind that we had metro-ed to the Farmer’s market. I debated – can I get that home? I just canned a whole crate of peaches, do I need more? (the answer is always YES) – Then the Husband said, “You know you want to. We’ll get it home.” The thirteen year old helped me carry a little of the way, but she was also walking her bike, so I ended up carrying the box most of the way home. It was worth it. I don’t think I’m up for more canning, so I froze some and I think I’ll do some baking. That is if there are any left come this weekend. The kids go through peaches like termites.

The rest of the day was taken up by a pool party birthday for the 5 year old, and then I met up with some friends in DC for dinner. It was eerily quiet at the restaurant. But perhaps it was because it was 6pm on a Sunday night? Perhaps it’s because the National Guard is here. I mean they weren’t in the neighborhood we were in, but there is a general sense of tense gloom. It’s been really disheartening these days. I don’t have to go into DC very often, so the added military presence is not something I’m faced with every day – I’m sure it’s a little alarming for people for whom it’s a daily sight.

Other things I’m pondering lately:

-Trees – I’ve been painting trees lately, watching tutorials and then trying to copy them. I’ve noticed that after watching tutorials and hearing what the painters say about what they are trying to capture in a tree, I look at trees differently. Like I’ll see how the light comes through the leaves or something and think, “Oh! That’s why the painter uses yellow there!” It seems a little backwards to notice the light after learning how to paint it, though. Sometimes when the kids and I have just a half hour or so to kill, I’ll get the paints out and it’s a very soothing way to pass the time. (until the kids start mixing the colours too much and I have to bite my tongue and just let them….)

-Minor victory – The kids and I cleaned up the toy room that was kind of a disastrous explosion of toys. I basically pushed everything into the center of the room, put the empty bins beside the pile and told them to sort things back into their bins. We managed to clean it all up in two twenty five minute sessions, interspersed with ten minute popsicle breaks. I guess phrasing it as “sorting” rather than “cleaning” might have kept the whining down? I don’t know. But I’ve never been that successful at getting them to clean the toy room.

-there was rambutan and lychee and dragon fruit at Hmart last week! I’m always excited when the uncommon (to America) fruit is at HMart.

-answering the question of “What to do with that half can of condensed milk?” I had made peach popsicles the other day (Peaches, yogurt, condensed milk in the blender and freeze), and had half a can of condensed milk left. The Husband found this recipe – Cornflake Caramel Squares. It’s kind of a twist on Millionaire Shortbread. The Cornflakes are incorporated into a shortbread crust along with some shredded coconut. Then the half tin of condensed milk is used to make a caramel that is spread over top. Then top it with a layer of chocolate. It was tasty. (I’m also really intrigued by the idea of the website: Traybakes & More. I’d never heard of the concept of a tray bake – I guess a savory one would be a casserole and a sweet one would be like a bar cookie/ brownie type thing? But the recipes look less fussy – more like mix and dump and bake. Anyhow, I would like there to be more traybakes in my life. The sweet kind. I’m not a huge fan of casseroles.)

-Family Task Management- any suggestions? One struggle I’m having right now is keeping track of all the family to do items. The Husband and I tend to text or email each other when something comes up that we need the other to take care of – change the credit card on an account, fill out paperwork, pick up toilet paper and even bigger stuff like finalize the tenant’s lease, look into plane tickets for something, FSA receipts- but sometimes I lose track of the text or email before I complete the item. So I’m trying to figure out a system that these things don’t get lost in the shuffle. I really want to set up a system that we can have in place once I start back in rehearsal because there are long stretches when we are like ships in the night since I work so late and he goes to work so early in the morning. I guess what we need is:
– ability for both of us to add tasks (he’s Android, I’m iPhone)
– Simple to use.
– ability to check off tasks when complete, not just delete
– if there’s a way to get a notification when a task is added? Otherwise we’d be texting “I added something to the list” back and forth. Trying to streamline the process
-Some day will want to share with the kids, so might want to be able to make different lists.
-not a calendar. We already use Google Calendar for events.
-not really interested in a paid system (yet)
I feel like this is into Parents as CEO territory, but if anyone wants to share how they manage and share tasks with another person, I’m all ears!

Grateful For:

-Cooler weather. The weather has dipped into something practically fall-like last week. It was almost too cold to go to the pool, but we did manage a few “last hurrah of summer” swims.

-That the 13 year old made lunch for her siblings while I was in a Zoom meeting. AND they even cleaned up.

-College Friendships that still are strong. Last week, I got to meet up with a college friend, E, who was nearby to visit family. The kids and I drove up to meet her and we had Indian food and then went to a park where my friend and I walked while the little kids played. Then on Sunday E and my friend K met up for dinner (see above) – the three of us had met in college and all were heavily involved in music. E actually played the piano for my senior year recital. There is something so great about having friends who have shared formative years with me, and being able to reflect on that together, but also being able to talk about today and the future and who we are and want to be.

-That I don’t have to work on the weekends for the next six weeks or so. October through December will be very busy for me work-wise, so I’m glad I have weekends free for the next little bit.

-Butterflies for adding a flash of color and beauty to the world.

-Our Realtor who offered us some advice about a tricky tenant situation. He’s super pragmatic and chill and has been managing properties for a long time, and he gave us some good perspective on a situation we were having with the house we rent out. I’m always grateful for his advice and expertise and that he still takes our call even though we last bought a house from him five years ago.

-Collective bargaining. Unions are important. The right to form and join a union is also important.

Looking Forward To:
-Soccer season has started. The 8 year old is just playing in the rec league, so he has just one practice a week + 1 game.

-A return to routines once school starts. At one of our family meetings we talked about “expectations” for the school year and one of them was a regular pick up time and chores for the kids. We’ll see if pick up time can be come a routine, but I’m ready for the house to look less like a den of wild animals live here. (I mean – everyone was home all the time last week, so yeah, in a way, it was like a pack of wolves had taken over.)

-Having just ONE pick up to deal with. And ONE school calendar. The thirteen year old walks to and from school, so with the 5 year old entering kindergarten, she now rides the bus home with her brother, so we have one pick up to do. Also – because they are in an language immersion program, there are special bus routes and I just realized that this year there is one bus route that drops off walking distance from our house. So we are going to try that new bus route and see how it goes. (The old bus, which we’ll still take in the morning, picks up about 1.5 miles from us, so not a terrible distance, but still requires a car ride.)

-Lunch with mom friends. The mom’s group I joined when the 3rd kid was born kind of got a new breath of energy this month as almost all our babies all all going to kindergarten this fall. So we’re having a Friday lunch date.

-this book just came off my holds. It seems quirky and fun:

What We Ate:

Monday: Kale and Tomato Saag from Meera Sodha’s East. I didn’t have paneer (or the energy to make it) so we had it with tofu. Served with paratha, which I found in the frozen section of HMart. Vegan

Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos

Wednesday: Teriyaki Tofu w/ rice and steamed broccoli from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. A reliable hit. Vegan.

Thursday: Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce and Garlic Bread. I had some tomatoes our friend had given us from their CSA – so I roasted them with lots of garlic and Basil and mashed into a sauce. We ate it with angel hair pasta and I made garlic bread. I had forgotten what a great thing angel hair pasta is – it cooks in seconds!

Friday: Pizza and Ever After. It was my turn to pick the movie and I wanted something beautiful, romantic, and warm. Ever After is one of my all time favorite movies. It’s my comfort watch – Drew Barrymore being plucky, Dougary Scott giving the prince brooding self discovery, Angelica Huston. Melanie Lensky, before she took the world by storm. Love it so much.

Saturday: Movie theatre popcorn and peanut butter sandwiches when we got home.

Sunday: I went to Happy Hour with my friends (I had oysters, truffle fries, ceviche, and balsamic Brussels sprouts.) The family had dumplings and edamame at home.

Hope you are having a sunshine filled week! The kids have started school (will give a report next week) and already we have a long weekend coming up. We’ll go to the Renaissance Faire! Also hopefully tackle some decluttering and also relax and maybe one last trip to the pool before it closes.

How do you manage family tasks? Give me all the tips! Have you jumped on the KPop Demon Hunters bandwagon yet? Golden is definitely our song of summer here. What would you do with half a can of condensed milk? What are you up to this Labor Day weekend?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech/opening/closing; Motivation and Discipline

I’ve made it to the other side of the show. Last week we teched and then had our one and only performance. It’s been an intense week for sure, working until 1:30am two of the nights. The process has been fast and furious – only two days of rehearsal in the theatre before opening. Usually we have four days in the theatre, at least.

Lighting session. The view from Stage Right.

The thing that’s particularly intense about this schedule is that the first rehearsal onstage for the full cast was with orchestra and full costume, wigs, and make-up. Usually the first onstage tech rehearsal is just piano and no costumes, so we can get used to the set, figure out the staging, slowly work through tricky traffic. To have to throw set, costumes, orchestra, light cues at the process the first time most of the cast stepped onstage was a lot. But big shout out to our stage manger, who came up with a plan to keep things moving while stopping and allowing everyone time to work on elements that needed work – firing weapons, fights, offstage singing moments, balance notes, costume changes etc. The one costume change I was really worried about involved the entire 36 person chorus changing from a winter look to a spring look in 1 minute 30 seconds. It’s not a complicated change – mostly just taking off overcoats and scarves, and adding summer hats, but when 36 people have to do it all at once, it’s a bit of a madhouse.

But we did it, and by all accounts the opera was beautiful. Everything went smoothly, no noticeable hiccups. People backstage, cast and crew, seemed to not be too confused, so that always makes me feel as if I’ve done my job well. There is something gratifying about being a stage manager in that people always appreciate you. At least the people backstage and onstage.

Now I have a little break before I plunge back into rehearsals again. I took the weekend to relax. It was truly a plan-free weekend. We actually spent all of Saturday morning playing “My bed is my island” as all five of us cuddled and napped and read in the 13 year old’s bed. It felt so indulgent. Then we did a few chores around the house and went to the pool for a couple hours. Highlight of our pool time was that the 13 year old taught me how to dive! I’ve never really been able to dive – just kind of teetered at the edge of the water then belly flopped in. The 13 year old gave me lots of tips and coached me through it. Yay! I’ve always wanted to figure this out.

After the pool, we came home and had pizza and watched Glee. Then after the kids went to bed, the Husband, 13 year old, and I watched Jaws. I had never seen Jaws before, and as the movie is 50 years old this year, the Husband thought it a good time to watch it. There was definitely some screaming and clutching going on while we watched. What a nerve-wracking and entertaining movie. I don’t know that I need to watch it again, but glad I checked that off my list. All in all, it was such a perfect, lazy Saturday. This is what summers are made for, I think.

The thirteen year old teaching the 5 year old how to dive.

Every time I have a gap between shows, I like to think about routines I want to set up (or return to) so that when I am back into working nights and weekends I have some good practices in place. Along those lines, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately was this article by Leon Ho on Life Hack: Motivation vs. Discipline: Why One always Beats the Other (And It’s Not What You Think). The article made me think about how there were some things I was very disciplined about at while working (daily yoga, eating fruits and vegetables, finding time to get outside, making the bed.). And there were some things that just didn’t happen because I didn’t feel the motivation (journaling, running, check ins with the Husband, putting away my lunch box). It’s not like the former is more important than the latter – I just never felt like doing it. Reading Ho’s article really made me think about how waiting to be inspired to do something wasn’t going to work.

And because I’m a Questioner (per Gretchen Rubin), the article stuck with me because it broke down the brain chemistry of motivation vs. discipline to explain why discipline gets more consistent results. In a nut shell, motivation releases dopamine, which makes you feel awesome and powerful. Motivation lights up your brain and encourages action. However, these dopamine flows cab be fleeting and unpredictable. And this is why relying on feeling motivated to do something doesn’t work. Discipline, however, Ho writes, is about creating systems that will work even when motivation isn’t there – it’s the adulting pre-frontal cortex. It is really hard for the pre-frontal cortex to win out over dopamine, but you can build routines and habits that make it less of a struggle. This is the quote that really made me sit up:

“Picture Michael Phelps at 5:30 AM, staring at a chlorinated pool in Baltimore. It’s 2003, years before his first Olympic gold. The water’s cold. His muscles ache from yesterday’s 12,000-meter swim. Does he feel motivated? Hell no. But he dives in anyway. Every. Single. Day. Even Christmas.”

This was an eye-opening re-frame for me: Michael Phelps doesn’t swim every day because he wants to swim in a dopamine flood of motivation. He swims every day because that’s what he has to do to achieve his goals. So when people say you have to want things to get it, they aren’t talking about “wanting” to win a game or play your best in that moment, they’re talking about using that “want” to set up disciplined habits. So that your dopamine lacking brain will still do the thing even when it isn’t feeling warm dopamine fuzzies. It’s all about showing up, right? And towards that, thinking about how to show up. Or what can one do to make showing up a habit. Because you can’t rely on dopamine to get you there.

None of this is particularly groundbreaking or new, but sometimes a different framing can cause a lightbulb moment. So I started thinking of all the things I want to show up for, even when I don’t feel motivated. And here’s some of the list, and thoughts on how I can develop the discipline to do them.

Showing up for my physical self:
-Daily yoga. (Check – I do this by knowing that it’s the first thing I do in the morning)
-Sleep, specifically going to bed early. (I’m terrible at this – I need to be more disciplined about having a set bedtime. Maybe if it can be a time to be in bed, even if it’s with a book when I don’t want to go to sleep?)
-Eating fruits and vegetables with every meal. (Check – I stock the fridge with fruits and veggies and cut some up for myself every day when I’m prepping food for the kids. I can’t make them eat veggies, if I don’t do it myself.)
-Running or strength training every day. (working on this. Motivation is very weak on this one. I think I need a set time. I’ve been running in the morning with the kids following me on their bikes, but not sure if this will still work once school starts.)

Showing up for my mental self:
– journal
-paint/play piano
-write
-read
All these, I think, are about finding consistent time to do it. But there are only certain hours in the day. Some could fit into a weekly practice, though.

Showing up for my financial self:
– Monthly financial admin days to pay bills and review payments and any other financial housekeeping.
-monthly financial check ins with the Husband.
-Double check my pay stubs.

-not buying things impulsively and mindlessly
Again, I think a lot of these are all about scheduling and sticking to it. I think it’s hard for me to stay on track with some of these things because it’s very computer based and I tend to get distracted on the computer. Also finding time to meet with the Husband when we both feel like we have the mental capacity to talk finances is hard. But maybe we just have to schedule the time, and set the bar low – like 15 mins to look at the bank account together to start and then scale up from there? Or maybe we meet for lunch once a month and go over everything?

Showing up for my Work Self:
-Focused times to get ahead with paperwork so it’s not last minute.
A lot of ink has been spilled about productivity and focus at work. For me, I need to embrace the mantra “create before consume” and eliminate distractions for even just 45-60 mins of concentrated work first thing when I get in. (I need to get up and stretch after that anyway.)

Showing up for my social circle and far away family:
-spending time with friends – in a group and one on one.
-responding to texts and phone calls.
-sending texts and phone calls when I haven’t heard from then in while.
-offering support when they need it

– sending my parents pictures and updates of the kids regularly
I think the way to be disciplined about this might be to make scheduled efforts to reach out. Maybe every morning I send a text to one person to say, “Thinking of you.” Once a month see if anyone wants to grab lunch.

Showing up for My Family (Okay – some of these are a little more abstract, but I do think that for me it’s easy to neglect my family when I’m tired or busy or stressed. I think, “Oh, I’ll give them my attention once tech week is over”, as I rush out the door. And then when I do get home, it’s hard for me to remember to be loving. I want to figure out ways to show up for them when I’m not home on evenings and weekends and when my brain is full of work things. I don’t want to get prescriptive about these things, but along the lines of motivation vs. discipline – just because gestures of affection and connection and automatic and pre=planned, it doesn’t make them any less sincere. )
-Calling home on my dinner break. (I used to have an alarm at 6pm that was labelled “call home” so that I would remember to do this on long days at work. I should re-instate this. Sometimes at work I get caught up with what is in front of me – if it’s a work thing or a great chat with a colleague about potato chips, what not – and I forget to call home.)
-Weekly family meetings. (We currently do these at 7:30am on Saturday mornings. They are a little painful, but it’s a good way of checking in about the week ahead and making sure everyone gets the bigger picture of what is going on.)
-Being kind even when I’m tired.
-Tell them they are doing great. Sincerely.
-Giving them hugs and kisses every day when I leave for work, even though I’m in a rush. Along those lines, getting up before the Husband leaves for work so that we can have even one moment of connection. He leaves for work at 7am, and some days it’s hard. But this is where I think discipline can help me.
-Sneaking into their bedroom to give them hugs and kisses every night when I get home, even if I’m bone tired and they’re asleep.
-family rituals: Rose/Buds/Thorns, movie night, family clean up time

Whoa that was a lot of brain dump on that topic. Thanks for coming along on the ride (if you’re still here…) I think my big take away from that exercise is to wake up earlier, scroll less, and schedule my life more. For someone who love to have the ability to be flexible and capriciousness (for myself – let’s be honest, I can’t stand it in others.), discipline is met with resistance. But I guess that’s the point. Discipline allows me to fight against that inertia of not wanting to do something when I’m not feeling motivated. I think the trick is to balance a disciplined life with one where I can also have a sense of spontaneity and flexibility.

Grateful For – this week’s gratitudes, many tech week related:

-Tech week hero- The Husband, for recovering my files. The night before our first onstage rehearsal, my computer died at 9:30pm. I was only half way finished the wardrobe running paperwork and hadn’t saved the document into the cloud. (The wardrobe running is the document that tells the wardrobe and wig/make-up crew when people change clothes, what they are changing into and out of, where they will do this change, and how much time they have to do the change. For this show, because there are so many people and so many different costumes, the wardrobe running is a 10 page document.) Cue despair. For me, this was the ultimate version of the worst possible time for one’s computer to die. I mean it was such a horrific thing to happen, I couldn’t even have a meltdown because I just needed to finish the paperwork so I could give it to the crew for the next day. The Husband, calmly let me use his laptop and took my laptop to see if he could get it to turn back on. Meanwhile I started re-creating my paperwork from scratch. Eventually the Husband was able to pull my files from the computer and put it on a separate hard drive, even though the computer motherboard was dead. Thank goodness I didn’t have to re-create the entire wardrobe running from scratch!

-Duluth Trading Company tank tops with built in wireless bras. It was a hot and humid week to be doing outdoor opera last week. I usually don’t wear tank tops to work, but I made an exception for 80 degree humid weather. These tank tops from Duluth were my wardrobe MVP last week. They have built in bra cups so that I don’t have to worry about finding an appropriate bra to wear with them, and they are thick enough cotton that it doesn’t feel too skimpy to wear at work. I only have two, but I think I will order more next time they go on sale.

-I got a free t-shirt from our Fight Choreographer! I had asked him where I could buy swag from his business, and he showed up one day with this shirt for me!

He does fight and intimacy work for the stage.

-The crew, cast, creative team, and my co-workers for the show I worked on. Making opera magic happen! Having the opportunity to be part of making opera magic happen.

-my water bottle. And the coolers of ice and Gatorade that the theatre keeps backstage. Staying hydrated while I sweated buckets. Also the Coke that got me through the late nights.

– No more long awful commute. Friends, this will be the last time I complain about the commute to my summer job. At least until next summer. I’m glad I won’t have to drive those 18 miles again for a while. Though now I’ll have to find other times to listen to my audio book.

-This tomato sandwich because it represents friendship and summer:

The bread was from my co-worker at the opera. She is from out of town, and before she left for her next gig, she gave me two big bags of food that she hadn’t finished.
The tomatoes are from our friend who doesn’t like tomatoes so all the tomatoes in his CSA he gives to us.
The sandwich features basil mayonnaise, the basil plucked fresh from the Husband’s garden.
And eating it all outside on out back patio.
All these things made lunch just that much more poignant and full of love.

Looking Forward to:
-School starts in a week. Eeeep! I’m excited to start the new school year. I still have to get school supplies (note: this is done), and assess the clothing situation for the kids. They do all still have backpacks from last year so I don’t have to worry about getting new backpacks since that is often where the pickings are slim in mid to late August.

-Renaissance Faire!!!! Opens this weekend. We’re going to go Labor Day Monday, I think, for our annual Ren Faire Trip. Looking forward to shows and feats and turkey legs and people watching.

-Peaches in January. I spent Sunday canning peaches I had bought when there was a sale at the Farmer’s market. I kind of messed up and didn’t temper the first batch of jars and two of them cracked when I put them in the water bath. It was slightly alarming as I’d never experienced that before. I had to empty the canning pot, removing the broken glass and peaches floating the the water bath, and reheat the water again. So I have only 6.5 jars of peaches for this winter and lessons learned for next time. The kids wanted to eat the canned peaches immediately, but I said they couldn’t eat them until January at the latest.

-Lenten book club. Well, it’s not Lent anymore, and it’s not really a book club, but the group of ladies that started a Lenten book club has decided to continue to meet through the year to read and discuss life and spiritual things. This month’s reading is the parable of the Good Samaritan coupled with the story of Mary and Martha. I’m looking forward to a night of community and discussion.

What We Ate:
Sunday: Falafel sandwich and oysters. The stage management team went out to dinner together between rehearsals. The stage manager paid for my dinner, which was very nice of her.

Monday: Tofu and eggplant stir fry with Udon noodles. The Husband cooked, using some of the tenderest sweetest eggplants of the season that I had picked up from the Farmer’s Market.

Tuesday: Chicken Mole tacos leftover from the week before. I worked this evening and brought a salad from home – marinated beans, spinach, and arugula.

Wednesday: I had the same salad at work. Not quite sure what the rest of the family had.

Thursday: I went to a happy hour farewell gathering for a co-worker and had a BLT slider and fries. The family had mac n cheese, I think.

Friday: I had the same marinated beans, spinach, and arugula salad at work. The family had pizza and watched Star Wars: New Hope.

Saturday: dumplings and green beans and Glee.

Sunday: Tortellini and red sauce with roasted zucchini on the side. I sliced the zucchini into rounds, tossed them with salt, garlic powder, smoked paprika, oregano, and olive oil. Roasted for 15 minutes. Stuck parmesan cheese and basil in the food processor and then sprinkled it on the zucchini for the last five minutes or so of roasting. It was delicious. The kids ate the whole pan. I should have made more.

Hope you’re week is going well as the seasons change. I guess the season of life, if not the actual season. Here the weather has been distinctly on the cool side, that is tricking me into fall feelings, but I bet there are still warmer days in store.

Have you ever seen Jaws? Backpacks – Did you (or your kids) get new backpacks every school year? What are you disciplined about? What do you feel motivated about? Any tips for finding discipline for the things on my list?

(bi)Weekly recap + what we ate: Things I would replace immediately

Hello from a quiet empty house! The Husband has taken the children on the annual trip to Indiana and since I have to work, I have stayed behind. I won’t lie, it’s really nice. You know how they talk about secret single behavior in Sex and the City? The thing that people who live with other people do when they don’t have to be with or live with other people? My secret single behavior is:
-Sleeping with the blinds up so that the sunlight wakes me up in the morning.
-listening to NPR.
-Not emptying the dishwasher until there are so many dirty dishes on the counter and I need the space back.
-Eating snack dinner.
-Going to bed early. When the kids are home, I tend to go to bed late because after I put them to bed, I just want to stay up and scroll. But without kids, I can scroll during the day! and then go to bed early. (Though, TBH, there isn’t a lot of this going on because I’ve been working til 10:30pm every night.)

I feel like there are other things I do that would qualify as secret single behavior – wearing the same clothes for three days in a row (I do change my underwear), eating food from the back of the fridge that might be a little too old, making bodily function noises… But you know what? I do this when the family is home anyway, so it’s not really secret. And the family puts up with it and this might be one reason I love them.

The house is quiet. Almost too quiet. I was dog sitting for a couple days, but even the dog has now gone home, so it’s just me. I had all sorts of plan of things to do with my empty house, but between work and walking the dog and sleep, I find I don’t have as much time leftover as I would like.

You know that saying by Groucho Marx: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.”

Some sort of goals for this child-free weekend (or what remains of it.)
-Finish my book (I’m less than 100 pages from the end!)
-prep food for next week, since it is tech week. Boiled eggs, marinated beans. Maybe bake something (Japanese milk bread?). Chai concentrate. Lemonade concentrate?
-Blog post. Maybe prep a few more.
-Declutter the area by my desk in the bedroom.
-Consider if we can fit a camping trip in this summer.
-journal and reflect on July and plan August/ School year things.
-Farmer’s market?
-watercolor time

One thing on my list I did do was hang out with my friend K. We went kayaking along the Potomac – something I’d never done before and which I had always wanted to do. We went down to Fletcher’s Boat house, rented a tandem kayak for an hour and went upstream a little bit, then back down, all at a meandering pace, enjoying the wildlife, sunshine, and occasional breeze. I can’t believe I’ve never done this before – Fletcher’s Cove is easy to get to, there’s plenty of parking, and here the Potomac is gentle. It’s not so isolated that you can’t hear the airplanes flying into National, or see the traffic on the GW Parkway, but these are all very distant and being on the water feels like it’s own special place.

Afterwards, my friend K and I went to grab lunch at a nearby sandwich place. We split a salad and a tomato sandwich. The sandwich was made from the tastiest summer tomatoes and topped with with basil mayo, all tasting of sunshine and leisure. And afterwards we split a cup of strawberry ice cream. We were there for two hours, just chatting and catching up – it was just a perfect summer friend date. How wonderful it is to have friends (or spouses, or kids) who like splitting food so you never have to choose just one option, or you never have to finish that ice cream on your own.

It was a nice way to spend the day away from the opera and work, recharging my emotional battery for what will be a long week ahead.

The past few weeks have been lots of kid time and lots of work and lots of driving. Here are some moments:

The rehearsal hall strewn with flowers. There is a scene in our show where the chorus throws flowers all over the stage. The effect is quite stunning. It’s the kind of thing you only do once or twice during room rehearsals because it’s such a pain to have to clean up. Much to my surprise and delight, at the end of rehearsal, most of the cast stayed to help us pick up all the flowers and petals. What kindness.

Best commute of the week: driving from the 13 year olds’ theatre showcase to work. There is a farm stand on the way and I got to stop an pick up vegetables and peaches and plums.

Worst commute of the week: Friday evening after rehearsal. Which, you would think, it’s 10:30pm on a Friday night, why would traffic be bad???? Well it was, due to construction. I guess it makes sense to do construction when the traffic is lighter. Though it makes the traffic less light. It took me an hour to drive the 18 miles home. The Husband reminded me of a saying from when he lived in Minneapolis: In Minneapolis there are two seasons- Winter and construction.

Conversation with my the five year old:
5 year old: [Big brother] said I wasn’t smart.
Me: Is it true?
5 year old: No. It hurt my feelings.
Me: I would just ignore him, if I were you.
5 year old: Well, I’m not you.

Speaking of the 5 year old, we are all determined to get her to ride a bike by the end of the summer. Even the 13 year old is part of the efforts. I’m a little surprised because the 5 year old is quite fearless – she is already diving, even before she can really swim a full length of the pool – so her reluctance in bike riding has been giving me pause.

Swimming laps. While the kids have been away, I’ve gone to the pool to swim laps. I have to say at first it felt weird to go to the pool without the kids, but told myself I was being silly – we are all members of the pool, I get to use it too! Our pool is never crowded, and showing up at 11am, I practically have the whole place to myself, except for the biddies who sit under the cabana and gossip together. It’s been such a soothing thing to be able to swim back and forth and back and forth, just thinking about air and breath and movement. I’ve been feeling a little overstimulated lately – too much light and sound and constant singing in my ears. The pool has become the place I go when I want quiet. I’m coming to appreciate places I can go for just 30-60 mins for a quick recharge. Ducking into a museum, dropping by the pool, a quick library visit… Sometimes I don’t go places because I think I need to spend a few hours there, but really for places that are free (or to which I have a membership), going for a quick trip a couple times a week is just as much of a value as going for a half day once a month.

I checked something off the 5 year old’s summer fun list and we made popsicles. These are watermelon-lime-strawberry popsicles:

Sweet and sour snacks: Two snacks making my mouth happy these days are Haribo Twin Snakes and Taiwanese salty dried plums. The latter I brought back from Taiwan in January, and only now just opened because they are actually quite difficult to find the the U.S. and I knew once I finished the package, that would be it for a while. When I was growing up, my grandmother would bring these sweet/sour/salty treats from Taiwan when she visited us, and I would nibble the flesh off the seed, savoring all the different tastes swirling around, then I would pop the seed in my mouth and suck on it until all the flavor was gone. This brand of salted plum I got from Taiwan is seedless, so I can’t suck on the seed, but I’m savoring them all the same.

As for Twin Snakes, the 13 year old turned me on to these. They are like two gummy worms stuck together where one is sweet and one is sour. I love the sweet/sour combination.

But speaking of Twin Snakes. We might have had an incident where the two little kids ate the 13 year old’s Twin Snakes while she was out of the house. As a punishment, I had them write a card of apology to their big sister. Well, the 8 year old wrote it:

In case you can’t read 8 year old scrawl, it says, “Dear Lulu Sorry for eating your twin snak[e]s. Yell at me all you want. Don’t yell at dad. Sincerely A”

On replacing things….Towards the end of the previous week, my watch stopped working. In the middle of rehearsal. As someone who’s job it is to keep track of time, this was kind of a panic inducing thing. I ended up having to use my phone for the rest of rehearsal, which isn’t ideal because I find it distracting and annoying to have to keep pulling it out. I didn’t get around to replacing my watch for three or four days. In the past when my watch stopped working, I just went to Target to get a new one. It’s a pretty basic Timex digital watch. EXCEPT – the Target near me didn’t have them. Indeed, the sales associate looked at me strangely when I first asked where they were, since the watches weren’t in accessories where I was used to finding them. She sent me down to electronics. Of course, all they had down there were smart watches. The associate in electronics seemed somewhat confused that I would want a non-smart watch. Anyhow, after that bust of a Target run, I did end up ordering the exact same watch from Amazon, and the next day, my wrist felt not as empty any more.

Anyhow, it got me thinking of what other things in my life I would replace immediately if I lost or broke it. Of course there are the obvious things like wallet, ID, keys, phone, laptop – things that could be counted as “essential.” What, though, are the non-essential things that I would replace immediately? I feel like sometimes when things break or I lose them, I go a while before replacing them – I’ll try to make do with a replacement I already have at home, or just decided that I don’t need to replace them at all. There are, however, little luxuries that I have gotten used to, which feel almost essential to me now, that I would replace immediately if something happened.

-Gelrup slippers. I almost always wear slippers around the house and I love my Gelrups because they are made of wool so aren’t too hot in the summer, yet still cozy in the winter. If my slippers went missing, I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but there is something about walking on bare floors/carpet that makes me cringe a little bit and I would want my slippers back as soon as possible. (Probably large part due to the fact that we don’t sweep enough….)

-Yeti mug. I love everything about my Yeti Rambler with the Hot Shot lid. I love that it keeps my drinks cold or hot for hours. I love that it is dishwasher safe. I love that it doesn’t leak (unless I forget to close the lid properly) so that I can toss it into my bag and not worry about tea getting everywhere. I love the colour. I leave the house with this in my hand 95% of the time. I actually did lose this one time – I had left it behind in the lobby of the building where I had been taking art classes. I immediately went out and got a new one even though I have a few back up travel mugs. They just don’t do all the things I need them to do. I should probably throw the spare ones out, but I think, “What would I do if I lost my Yeti?” Apparently, the answer is run out an immediately buy another one.

-Airpods. Maybe this should fall under “essential” now that my phone no longer has a jack for earphones? Being able to listen to books, music, podcasts, etc, and take phone calls hands free – I would be sad if I had to go back to wired earphones. The 13 year old recently lost/broke her Bluetooth headphones and now wanders around the house using crappy old wired earbuds, the kind that you get for free on airplanes. We have DRAWERS of these crappy airline earbuds. Anyhow, there is something delightfully old school about seeing her with wires dangling. But me, I don’t think I could ever go back.

-Flip Belt. Look, I try not to let sad excuses stop me from running, but I will admit there have been days when I decided not to go running because I couldn’t find my Flip Belt. Running while trying to hold my phone and without my water bottle is just so…. inconvenient. I have thought about getting a second one as back up, but I do feel like I’m the kind of person who keeps better track of things when I only have one.

-pen holder. This clips to my binder and helps me not lose my pens and pencils. It’s from Muji and one of the best $3 I’ve ever spent. The sad thing, though, is even though I would run out and replace this if I were to lose it, I actually can’t because Muji doesn’t sell them anymore. In fact I can’t find them anywhere on the internet. So I better not lose this.

-Little alarm clock – This clock sits with me in rehearsal, so I can keep an eye on the time. Sure there’s a clock on the wall. Sure I also can look at my phone. But there is something more immediate about having the time at a glance, without have to pick up my phone. Once and a while I forget to bring it to rehearsal and I feel lost. I do actually have more than one of these.

-Travel Bluetooth keyboard. My keyboard is paired with my phone, my iPad and my computer, and it’s only a little bigger and thicker than an envelope so I can just slip it into my laptop bag. I love using it when I have to fill out registration forms on my phone – typing on the phone is not something I excel at. Half the time, I hit the wrong key and have to start over again – it’s very frustrating. Similarly, typing on the iPad is just not … convenient. This keyboard was a game-changer for blogging on my tablet – so much faster than typing on the screen. This keyboard has made my life so much better that when I lost it recently on our South Africa trip, I replaced it as soon as I got home.

I’m sure there are more things, but off the top of my head those are a few things that are panic-inducing if lost. I sometimes feel so materialistic when I panic over lost things and immediately replace them, but there are some non-essentials that do indeed make my life so much better.

Grateful For:
-Nature oases in the city. As my friend and I were floating along the Potomac, I was just so grateful that even though we live in an urban area, there are lots of ways to get to nature. Being among green things is so good for my soul.

-Lifeguards.

-Cooler weather. We’ve had a few weeks of unbearably hot weather. So glad it is cooling off a little bit.

-The 13 year old’s theatre instructors. We went to her theatre camp showcase and it was so much fun to see her singing and dancing.

-A perfectly ripe, juicy mango.

-Sleeping in. I don’t know if 7:00am counts as sleeping in, but it does for me, without kids to wake me up. Though the dog did wake me up once at 6:30am. I took him out for a walk and then went back to bed and slept for another hour.

-People who plant gardens so I have beautiful flowers to see on my walks.

Looking Forward To:

-Tech week. I don’t love tech week – it’s stressful, and moves quickly, and I have to be so very prepared to go into it because a lot of people rely on me to get them where they need to be so that the show can happen. And I’m always terrified of making a wrong decision or telling someone the wrong thing. YET when it goes well, it feels really good. But truth, I am looking forward to this particular tech week because it is in an outdoor venue, which means that we can’t have lighting sessions until it is dark. (Lighting sessions are tech sessions where we tweak the lighting without the cast onstage waiting for us to fix the light cues – this is particular to opera. In theatre, they usually set lighting cues with the artists onstage.) Which means that we usually have lighting sessions after rehearsals. So we will rehearse from 8-11:30p with the singers, then we will let the singers go and light until 2am. This sounds intense, right? I will admit, though, there’s a special air of bonding in the air when you are standing onstage at 1:30am setting lighting cues. Like only the strong get to stay behind and do it. But really, my favorite part of over night lighting sessions, and what I’m looking forward to is that the company feeds us between the rehearsal and the lighting session. Free food makes a lot of things better in my book. Maybe I’m cheap, maybe I’m a sell out. But free food, man, is irresistible to me. I’m really looking forward to that 11:30pm burger, fries, and Coke.

-The family coming home. I don’t think I necessarily miss having the kids around, but I am very excited that they will be home soon.

-Tap dancing lessons! The Husband and I had a session where we looked at activities for the kids for the upcoming year – trying to figure out where they will fall and what we have the budget and logistical capacity for. I’m not in rehearsals until the end of October, so we can be a little activity heavy the first few months of school. So I signed the 5 year old and myself up for parent/tot tap dancing lessons. I’ve always wanted to learn to tap dance, and the 5 year old wanted to take dance classes. I’m so excited. The 8 year old also wants to take tap classes, but I need to see what the soccer schedule is like first.

-Basil. The Husband planted a whole bunch of basil and it’s going gangbusters. I can’t wait to use it. There will be pesto. I also am thinking of making some kind of basil simple syrup to have with fizzy water. Any other suggestions?

-Next up on my audiobook cue – it’s come highly recommended by so many people – it’s not my usual fare, so I’m excited to see if I like it.

Whoa – I just saw that this is 16 hours long… not sure if I’ll finish it before the end of this gig. I hope traffic is not so bad that I do finish it….

What We Ate: Two weeks worth of dinners to record, but really the last few days here don’t really count because … well secret single behavior.

Monday: Caprese Pasta Salad. Tortellini, Buffalo mozzarella, diced tomatoes, basil, drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

Tuesday: Shrimp tacos. I prepped the shrimp and the mango slaw before I went to work, and when the Husband came home he just had to heat the tortillas and sautée the shrimp and dinner was fast and easy. (I had leftover pasta salad at work.) I think the Husband also make a tofu filling for the tacos too.

Wednesday: I had more pasta salad at work. The Husband picked up Bahn mi sandwiches for the kids. He himself went out for dinner with his friend.

Thursday: The kids and Husband had steamed green beans and leftovers at home. I was done rehearsal by 5pm, but it would have taken an hour to get home at that point, so I went to Yard House with the other stage managers. I had a really tasty Ahi Tuna sandwich.

Friday: Pizza and the Minecraft movie for the family. I had some kind of leftovers at work. I hear the movie was surprisingly good.

Saturday: The family had dumplings and steamed green beans. Leftovers again for me.

Sunday: We had spaghetti with red sauce, Caesar salad, and garlic bread. There is something so comforting and delicious to me about spaghetti with jarred red sauce. So simple yet often just what I’m in the mood for.

Monday: Eggplant and pork stir fry with udon noodles. I had the leftover spaghetti at work

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – chicken mole tacos. This is the mole sauce that I had made three months ago. Thank you past me for freezing three batches of the mole sauce for easy dinners later on.

Wednesday: This is the day the family departed so I’m not sure what they had for dinner. I had the leftover eggplant and pork stir fry.

Thursday: Family still gone. To be honest, I didn’t really eat dinner this day because I went to work late and worked straight through to the end of rehearsal. It’s not an abusive system, I swear. I just wasn’t hungry when I had time to sit down and eat, so I didn’t. I did have snacks througout rehearsal and then I did eat half an avocado and sesame rice crackers when I got home.

Friday: Family still gone. Another day without having to cook. And actually another day where I wasn’t hungry becasue we started teh day so late. I had yogurt and blueberries when I got home from work.

Saturday: Family still gone. I had snack dinner – brie, goat cheese, and Triscuits.

I hope you have a wonderful week as we round the corner of summer. We’ve flipped out three month at a time Calendar and eep! I can see October.

Do you have any secret single behaviors? Is there anything yo’ve always wanted to learnt o do? Do you remember who taught you to ride a bike? What should I do with all that basil? What things would you replace immediately replace? Tell me everything!