weekly recap – Page 3 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: decluttering and swimming

We looked at our calendar and realized that it was going to be one of our only free weekends to take a day trip to Longwood Gardens, so we decided to go on Saturday. The Husband and two littles went to a volunteer garden clean up at the church in the morning and when they came home, we had lunch and then got in the car. We usually go to Longwood Gardens in the morning and spend all day, so this was a bit of an abbreviated trip. I wondered if driving two hours for a couple hours at Longwood would be worth it, and it turns out it was a nice outing. We didn’t go to the conservatory, spending all our time in the outdoor portion of the gardens, and we skipped the treehouses where we usually let the kids play for a bit. But we did walk the meadow path, which is something we don’t always get to do because it is a little on the long side. And we did see the vegetable gardens which is always one of my favorite things. Here is the Rainbow collage from our visit:

One big disappointment was that they have taken out the children’s garden – there used to be a section with a fountain the kids could play in and the gardens were set up with bee themed paths with nooks and crannies to hide in. It was the kind of space that invited a lot of imaginative free play. The Husband talked to a guide and they said that they’re implemented more “interactive” displays for kids – namely little signs with information and prompts for discussion. Which… let’s be honest, I don’t know any kid that is going to say, “Boy, this placard is a lot more fun than these winding maze-paths.” Anyhow, that was kind of a bummer, but even still it was nice to be out in the sunshine and flower and trees and grass. The 12 year old took charge of the two little kids and they wandered down paths together singing show tunes, and when they got tired of that, she would ask for prompts from her siblings and make up songs for them. It’s nice to have moment like that to remember when they are at each other’s throats. We stayed at the gardens for about two and a half hours and then we went home, stopping for BBQ on the way home. It was delicious. All in all, a nice day.

Sunday was Time Trials for the 12 year old’s swim team. I took her to the pool at 7am and then stayed to work as a timer. It was really neat to see her swim and take an interest in her results. She even went up to one of the stroke and turn judges during a quiet moment and asked about the rules and how people most often get disqualified. They weren’t DQing people at time trials, but afterwards, she still went and asked the judge if she would have been DQd so she could learn and work on those things. I think I’m realizing that even though I find parenting a tween really hard, it’s so cool to see her becoming a person and take things on herself. Makes me feel like I just need to trust the process more and talk less.

To celebrate time trials, I took the 12 year old for a smoothie and we tried a Mangonada – kind of a combination of mango smoothie with mango chunks layered with a swirl of sweet and spicy mixture called chamoy, and topped with a tamarind straw. It was amazing and I’ll have more! The rest of the day was occupied by a long visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while and then simple dinner and bed. All in all a nice weekend.

The week before was one of my few weeks without kids and without work. One of the big projects was to clean out the guest room. It has become a dumping ground for all the random things without a home or in transition in our lives. I spent a couple hours this week going through the boxes and boxes of kids’ clothes. It’s kind of a chore because they need to be sorted into stuff the little kids can still wear and stuff that no one will ever wear again. Then this latter pile is sorted into age and then girl and boy clothes. And then there are the shoes. So many shoes. I had a phase when I was obsessed with those Keen water shoes and would snatch them up anytime I saw them at consignment sales. It is kind of a problem. I have a pair in practically every size, and then some. Some sizes that are ridiculous because my kid certainly wasn’t walking when her feet were that size. So there are a lot of shoes. Which is kind of funny because we’re kind of shoe minimalists for the kids. They have a pair of running shoes, a pair of Crocs and a pair of rain/snow boots. And also a pair (or two of Keens).

This isn’t the “before” picture- it’s “during” picture, which I think is even more scary. Putting it here for a bit of accountability.

Also – over the years I’ve also amassed a motley assortment of breast pumps. Breast pumps were never covered in my insurance plan (this feature had been grandfathered in after Obamacare passed), so, counter-intuitively, I decided that I would spend lots of my own money on pumps. I had five electric pumps sitting around. Three of them I love, as much as one can love a breast pump – I mean I think there were days when I spent more time with my breast pump than with my family, so there was a kind of begrudgingly familiar relationship there. Two of the pumps were complete pieces of garbage. They weren’t efficient at all and had so many awkward parts. (I mean all pumps have awkward pumps, but these were particularly not streamlined.) Why was I holding on to crappy breast pumps??? What value were they adding to my life?

To backtrack a little, on the day before, my friend and I went to see an afternoon movie. We went to see Babes – a movie about two friends navigating their friendship as they traverse the waters of motherhood. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much in a movie theatre. The movie was so so so so funny. But also so on point about so many aspects for friendship and parenthood. There is a moment (spoiler alert) where one character encourages the other character to burn her breast pump. Oh my goodness, the triumphant glee with which they destroyed that breast pump brought me so much joy to watch. The next day, thinking back on the movie, I looked at those two crappy pumps sitting in the bottom of a storage bin and I was inspired. Those pumps were annoying as all get out to use – no point in trying to dispose of them in the perfect way. Chunk, toss. Straight into the garbage bag they went. I felt a tiny twinge of regret about throwing out something that was still in working order, but I’ll get over it.

Two of the other pumps, I ended up giving to a friend with a new baby girl. In addition to that friend, I have another friend (the one who came over on Sunday afternoon) expecting a baby in September, so I passed on a bunch of stuff to her too, including cloth diapers, a diaper pail, a baby sling. Why did I have a diaper pail still sitting around? I wasn’t even using it – it was in the attic, collecting dust and nostalgia.

In all honesty I could have just chucked everything into a donation pile and moved it all out of the house, but every time I pulled the clothes out, I got all sentimental, remembering when the outfit was worn. And when I got sentimental, I couldn’t bear to just sweep everything into a trash bag for donation; some of the pieces I wanted to pass along and know that they would get worn again. So I think that this week, between those two friends, I passed along four or five boxes worth of things – also a baby chair that I think I will need to get back because unbeknownst to me, the Husband is actually really attached to it – it cam all the way from Colorado with us when we had our first child. The guest room does not look any better, though, because most of the things I did purge were in bins, so they didn’t leave much visual clutter in the first place. If anything, the guest room looks worse because the things that were in bins are now all over the floor. Oh well, at least I know that progress is being made, even if it doesn’t look like it.

We’ve been swimming a lot this week. My skin smells constantly of chlorine and sunscreen and no amount of scrubbing will get that smell out. I’m really proud of the 4 year old – one day I forgot her swim vest at home, and she still spent an hour and a half in the pool (with time out for adult swim) – she can now touch the bottom in the shallow end. Neither the seven year old nor the 4 year old can swim yet, but they are comfortable paddling around in the 4ft section in their swim vests. We don’t swim much outside of summer, so every year it’s a bit of a surprise to see how the kids fare in the water. (Though there is a new aquatic center opened up near us, so maybe we’ll take advantage of that during the cooler months?). One of my dreams this summer is to get the 7 year old to swim independently. There were definitely 7 year olds swimming at time trials and their flailing perseverance was kind of adorably inspirational to watch.

We’re still trying to find our routine for pool nights. I’ve been trying to pack a big snack/dinner for the two little kids so they can eat at the pool after their swim session. Then I have them shower and change into pjs at the pool so that when we get home they just have to brush teeth and go to bed. The 12 year old either eats at home or eats at the pool. Sometimes both. The “coming home and going straight to bed” hasn’t been exactly working and there have been a lot of late nights. I don’t know if we just muddle through this erratic bedtime for the next five weeks, or if we should try to tweak the routine/schedule. Oh well, there’s only a couple more days of school and then we’re into summer, so maybe the relaxed evenings are what makes summer memories? Although, once camp starts, our mornings will be more hectic because camp starts earlier than school so we will have to be out the door earlier. My takeaway – there is no such thing as routine.

Towards the end of the week the principal called with the results for the four year old’s Early Entrance to Kindergarten assessment and he said that the 4 year old did not meet the criteria for early entrance. Wump wump. When I asked the principal what they thought she needed a little more time on, he said that she was actually above grade level for Math and letter recognition, but some of the reading skills weren’t quite there. Part of me thinks that if my child can already read, then she should be going into 1st grade, not kindergarten. I do wonder if early entrance to Kindergarten is about a child being highly gifted rather than just run of the mill “ready for kindergarten”. Anyhow, the principal said we can appeal the decision to the school district if we want. The first step would be a more in depth meeting with him.

I know I said I wouldn’t push the early entrance issue if the school thought she should wait, but it’s one of those things when faced with the realities, things always shift slightly. I think we will go ahead and meet with the principal and go from there. I think I also am a little concerned that her current pre-K teachers say she will be bored if she has to repeat pre-K so I want to know what can we/the preschool do to challenge her next year and keep her engaged? Or maybe we need to look into private Kindergarten? The whole thing has left me a little deflated because I had been really excited for her to start school next year – she is the most mature of the three kids, she does addition up to 10 on her fingers, she knows all the letter sounds and can write words if you spell them to her – all her teachers say she’s ready. She had even gotten a place in the same French Immersion program as the 7 year old, which meant that I would have two kids in one school. I’ve never had two kids in one school before! The Immersion program is by lottery, so I’m not sure if she’ll get a place the following year. And now it would mean another year of paying for childcare. Gah. All things that are a little bit of a bummer.

Haiku – I’m trying to take up the haiku habit again. It’s watermelon season, one of my favorite reasons for summer. Only watermelons are big, and not everyone in the family likes eating it….

Why did I ever
Buy a whole watermelon
Right before my trip?

Grateful For:
-My friend who came see a weekday matinee with me and the very flexible week at work that allowed her to do so. Is there anything as luxurious as taking in a weekday matinee? The theatre was practically empty and my friend and I ate popcorn for lunch and laughed loudly together. And afterwards we ran errands at Target together. It was kind of the perfect friend day.

-Laughing with my family. Inspired by a mention on Stephany‘s blog, I cued up some Nate Bargatze. Stand up comedy is not something that was ever really on my radar. But I like laughing, so I thought I’d give it a try and pulled up one of his albums the other day while cleaning the kitchen. Oh my did it feel good to laugh. And the 12 year old, who was cleaning alongside me laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time. We’ve had a lot of moody tween lately, so hearing her laugh kind of helped remind me that she can still find delightful things in life. She now wants to listen to stand up all the time – we listened to Jim Gaffigan on the way to Longwood Gardens. I’m discovering a whole new world of entertainment! I don’t always find the content appropriate – I think what was once considered “edgy” is actually kind of sexist/racist/ableist, etc. And body shaming seemed to be a big thing in a lot of the albums. Some of the punching down is uncomfortable, and not in a good way. So yeah, some of it has been a little hit or miss. But when the absurdities of life are brought front and center and I can relate to those absurdities, it’s kind of a hit.

-Music Teachers. We’ve had two music recitals the past few weeks and, let’s be honest, the enthusiasm outweighs the ability in many cases. And yet, it doesn’t matter at all. The teachers are as enthusiastic for the kid who played the 10 second piece as they are for the kid who played the 10 page piece. My kids’ music teachers spend their time day in and day out teaching kids how to make music and never seem to get jaded about what they do.

-Finding my journals. I lamented last week about feeling a little off because I had misplaced my journals. Well I found them! They were under a pile of things next to my desk. Hooray! I haven’t gotten back into the daily habit, but I did make time to jot a few things down every couple of days. It’s a little sad to me how blank May is, but when I look back, I’ll be able to tell that May 2024 was a very busy month, and that’s a kind of record keeping in and of itself.

Looking Forward To:
– Maine! I’ve been listening to podcasts on Acadia National Park to get inspired. Listening to travel podcasts is one of my favorite things to do when I’m getting ready for a trip. I just search my destination and I’ll get a list of podcast episodes that are relevant. I’m excited for hikes and beaches and lobster and seeing friends.

-On that note, there was a list in the New York Times called Read Your Way Through Maine. It’s part of an occasional series where they have an author recommend a reading list tied to a location. (There was one for San Francisco, which inspired some of my reading during spring break.) I love reading books set in places that I’m about to visit, so I’ve borrowed a couple books off the Maine list to read in anticipation of/while in Maine – Landslide is about a women, mother of three teenage boys living in remote Maine, trying to cope when her husband is hospitalized in a fishing accident. Night of the Living Rez is twelve interconnected short stories set in a Native community in Maine.

-Glee! Because swim team practice goes until 7:30pm, we have had to re-think our traditional Friday night pizza and movie. Similar what we do when the 12 year old had Friday night basketball practice, we’ve decided to replace the pizza and movie with pizza and a tv show. During basketball season we watched Galavant, but there was only two seasons of it and we’ve watched it all. We tossed around a couple idea – I had borrowed the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the library, and we thought we might introduce the kids to the Star Trek universe, but at the last minute I was in the mood for something a little more light hearted, and we decided to watch Glee. I had watched it off and on when it first came out, but I didn’t really have a television at the time, so I didn’t get to watch all of it. We are only two episodes in and it’s really fun. Some awkward adult content that I’m not quite ready to explain to the 7 and 4 year olds yet – I had forgotten the whole bit about the celibacy club – but they haven’t asked yet. The musical numbers are fun and the performances crackle; I’m enjoying it.

What We ate: We’ve survived our first two weeks of swim team practice. Last week the little kids started practice so it was the first week with us being at the pool from 5:00pm – 8:00pm. Dinner kind of felt all over the place.

Saturday: Leftover pizza and Kate and Leopold. It was my turn to choose the movie and I wanted a nice cozy rom-com. Does anyone else remember this movie? What a charming, sweet, perfect romantic comedy! And oh my gosh Hugh Jackman just glows through the whole movie. I feel like I’ve said it before here, but he’s just so pretty.

Sunday: Grilled chicken and vegetables. My friend’s 11 year old and my 12 year old have the same voice teacher, so Sunday after their recital, we asked if they wanted to come over for dinner. We stopped at the grocery story on the way home to pick up some chicken, my friend made a marinade at home and brought it over, and we had a great little cook out – chicken, vegetables, salad. Also – just as we were firing up the grill, our neighbor, who works at the farmer’s market, brought us four bunches of asparagus, so we tossed two bunches on the fire too. It was the perfect casual summer hang out with friends.

Monday: Vegetarian Tortilla Soup. Mostly this recipe from the NY Times, but I made it in the InstantPot and added black beans because we had some dried black beans that had been in the pantry for way too long and we kind of wanted the space back. I think my favorite part of this soup is that I dumped the last crumbs of a bag of tortilla chips into it to thicken it up (a trick I learned from Dinner Illustrated.) The chips had been sitting in the cupboard for a while and they were pretty stale, but no one ever wants to eat the tiny broken bits – how do you scoop salsa with that? I abhor food waste, so dumping the last dregs of the bag into the suit felt very satisfying. Vegan (we didn’t do the cheese and sour cream topping) . Everyone liked this a lot so I’m bookmarking the recipe.

Tuesday: Curry chickpea wraps. Pool dinner. This is the cool bloggers’ favorite curry chickpea salad, which I wrapped in tortillas along with some lettuce and brought to the pool for dinner. I love a curry anything and I even bought some mango chutney as the recipe called for (and then proceeded to eat a quarter of the chutney straight from the jar with a spoon. Was I hungry? Was it just that tasty?) I added a squeeze of lime juice to the salad to brighten it up a little. The little kids didn’t love this, but they still ate a couple bites. The 12 year old and I found this very tasty. Though she did say, “This would be better if you added chicken.”

Wedesday: Asparagus frittata and salad. Made from the other two bunches of asparagus our neighbor brought us.

Thrusday: PB & J and mac and cheese. I brought PB&J to the pool, along with cucumbers and apple slices. It wasn’t filling enough and the kids had mac n cheese (from the blue box) when they came home. Along with brie and Triscuits. I ate the brie smothered in the mango chutney. It was delicious. This is the kind of dinner pre-kids me would have eaten but also would have thought, “This really isn’t dinner.” But you know what? This is totally dinner. Smashing paradigms here.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee

Saturday: BBQ at Old South Smokehouse on the way home from Longwood Gardens. It was our first time trying this place, even though we drive past it every time we go to Longwood Gardens. It was tasty, but there were no collard greens on the menu. What kind of BBQ place doesn’t have collard greens on the menu? Also – we introduced the children to hush puppies. The 7 year old would not share his.
Also – not for dinner, but in the morning I did make a strawberry rhubarb crisp, based on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I had tried out a new farm stand in hopes of finding a replacement for the one I used to go to which is not opening this season. This new one was on the pricy side for me, of course it’s in our county, which probably affects the price. At any rate, I bought some rhubarb there and some strawberries, with the plan to make a pie. Well, crisp is so much less effort, so I did that instead. Only the kids ate the strawberries before I could make the crisp, so I ended up making it with supermarket strawberries, which was fine, but caused me a disproportionate amount of consternation. The crisp was yummy.
Also – side note – let’s talk about the price of strawberries. So right now, strawberries are in the $3.99/pound to $4.99/pound range at the supermarket. The strawberries at the farmstand were $7.50/pint. Which in comparison to the supermarket felt really expensive. But then as we were all enjoying the pint that I brought home, I realized I pay $8 for a large boba tea, and this pint of strawberries is more filling and is better for me than my boba. And I can share the strawberries with the family. So really, if I’m thinking of how much I pay for a treat (which, let’s face it, Boba – which is kind of my one indulgence – is definitely a treat.), then $7.50 for a pint of strawberries really isn’t so bad. Sometimes when I’m trying to weigh the cost vs. value of something I need to put it into perspective like that to help me decide if it’s something truly worth my money.

Sunday: Pasta and jarred red sauce, cut up veggies, leftover mushroom rice. Typical Sunday – simple supper and eating down the fridge.

Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: the Month of May

These last few weeks of May, after opening our show has kind of been a slog – after a show opens, I always feel like I’m like digging out of the hole of everything that’s piled up since I started rehearsals, but also wanting to relax and just sleep and eat junk food and do fun things. I’ve felt simultaneously unmotivated and also panicked about the length of the to do list, also summer is looming, but we’re all limping towards the finish line of school so things do not let up on the home front. Anyhow, the show is closed and I don’t have another show until July, so I’m hoping to make efforts on everything that’s piled up.

Current stressors (the big ones):
– My car. (Still). I did make progress on this last month – I sent an email to the high school program that takes used cars. It seems like it will be a pretty easy process to hand my car over to them. I just have to fill out the paperwork and find someone to take me since they don’t pick up cars.

– Cleaning/purging room clutter. (still) When my father was here, we moved a lot of the boxes of stuff that was in the guest room into the toy room. Then for our big meat party (more on that below) a week later, we moved the same boxes out of the toy room so kids could play, back into the guest room. Right now we’re just moving half a room’s worth of things we aren’t currently using back and forth and it just needs to be gone through and moved out of the house. It’s ridiculous that we have essentially two rooms in the house that no one can use.

-Swim season has started. The two little kids will start pre-team next week, but the 12 year old has started swim team practice already. It’s going to be hairy – four nights a week, pre-team is from 5:00pm – 5:30pm and then the 12 year old practices from 6:15pm -7:30pm. I don’t know when people are going to eat dinner. I was at first nervous that swim season would overlap with my work schedule, but luckily only the last two weeks overlap with my next show so I can be home to drive carpool. But again… when are we going to eat dinner? We usually eat dinner around 5pm/5:30p but I think that the 12 year old isn’t going to want to eat so close to practice. I might just have to let go of the idea of family dinners for a few weeks. I need to re-listen to this Lazy Genius podcast “How to Fix Dinner When You Are Never Home“

-Will the 4 year old get to go to kindergarten???? That’s the big looming question and a little out of our control. She does have her assessment scheduled so fingers crossed. One of our friends’ kids did not pass assessment, which made me little nervous. Apparently, they were told that their child didn’t know any sight words. Which – how many kids know sight words upon entering kindergarten?!?!?! I thought the point of kindergarten was to teach my child sight words! Anyhow – If the school says the 4 year old is not ready for kindergarten, then of course I’m not going to push it, but I really do think she’s ready and her teachers say that she’s ready and the she will be bored if she has to repeat the pre-K curriculum. I will admit that I’m being a little Tiger Mom and have been working on “the” and “and” with the 4 year old. Two little sight words probably won’t make or break things, but I figured it couldn’t hurt and she does seem to be curious about words.

-I’ve misplaced by journals. I haven’t journaled or tracked things in two or three weeks because I can’t find my journal stack. This is really stressing me out. I find that being able to write down my day and track things in life helps give me perspective on where my brain is and helps hold me accountable for how I spend my time. I know I could just write it down on a piece of paper, but the thought of loose pages just floating around doesn’t feel like the soothing exercise that journaling is supposed to be for me. I had thrown the journals in a tote bag to take to work on while the 4 year old was at agility class and I don’t know where I put the bag when I got home.

-My hair – (still) need to schedule an appointment to get it cut. Also need to schedule a well woman check up. This is just flat out procrastination and reluctance on my part.

-Speaking of hair…. There has been an outbreak of lice in the 4 year old’s classroom. I spent so many hours of the past two weeks treating and combing out hair. The last time we had a lice event in our house was when the 12 year old was in 1st grade and the Husband took care of it then – he would sit in the back yard with her and just comb and comb and comb her hair. So it’s kind of been a pain in the rear end – just inconvenient, not at all debilitating or anything.

I found the health notice kind of hilarious, to be honest.

Things that did get done in April/May (April Aspirations):
-We booked our tickets to Taiwan! That was a couple days of fast and furious emails and texts with the travel agent, but we’re are now going to Taiwan and Malaysia this winter. It feels strange because we never book tickets this far in advance – I think booking three months out is a long lead time. But now we have tickets six months out. We don’t have hotels or any other plans yet, but at least we know when we’ll be there.
-I figured out the summer camp schedule. Everything is booked. I have a few weeks I need to cancel because I had booked back up choices and then got off the wait list at our first choice. And I need to add before/aftercare for a few weeks because all the camps start at 9am and there are a few weeks where I can’t physically do two drop offs at one time or even be passably late because the camps are about twenty minutes apart. But at least I know where people will be.
-Finally processed the Duluth Trading Company return from Christmas.
-Bought a new Yeti tumbler. I got it from our local Ace hardware but then it leaked so I had to return it and get a new one, but I had thrown out the receipt so I didn’t want to deal with that. Eventually I did make it back to Ace and the folks at Ace were able to look up the purchase and do the exchange. Just in time for summer. Yay! (Have not purchased a new purse, or sandals or linen pants yet. Though I’m kind of obsessed with buying a new linen shirtdress – I have two that I wear constantly and I think one more will be make a nice uniform rotation through the summer. I really want one in a non-neutral colour. I love this teal, but wrap dresses don’t look good on me. Or this yellow one is cute… so many options!)
-And I did mow the lawn. Twice. I tried a third time, but the grass was too long and the mower stopped working so I gave up on it and the Husband fixed it and mowed the rest of the lawn. So… I still am behind on my mowing duties. One particularly busy week we did hire the landscapers to come mulch and they mowed the lawn while they were here, so that was nice.

Okay – so that was the laundry list of life. But we did have some fun adventures the past few weeks:

Harper’s Ferry. The week after opening was a pretty light week at work – just three evening performances and then time to do paperwork on my own. It was a good thing too, because Tuesday was a day off for all the kids as it was Primary Day. The daycare is used as a polling location, and probably also the public schools. Originally we were going to take the kids to Longwood Gardens but the Husband had to work instead, so it was just me and the kids and a wide open day. I was considering taking them to Shenandoah to go hiking, but then I had to go vote since I had forgotten to do early voting and by the time I got that done it was already almost 10:30am. (Shenandoah is doable in one day, but only if we leave by 9am.) So instead I decided to go to Harper’s Ferry. I had never gone before and there is hiking and some historical exhibits there. Plus it is only an hour away, so it would be an easy day trip. Harper’s Ferry Historical Park consists of some 19th century buildings that have been converted into historical museums, and a beautiful view of where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac River, and a bridge to some hiking trails.

We attempted to go for a hike, and made it across the bridge from the town to the hiking trails before deciding the rain was too much for us, and we turned around and came back. Since it was raining, we took shelter in John Brown’s Fort, just in time for the Ranger talk on John Brown. I thought we were in for a brief look at John Brown, but you guys, the talk was 1 hr and 15 minutes!!!! At first I was worried that the kids wouldn’t be up for it, and even though I did have to take the 4 and 7 year old outside eventually, the 12 year old was rapt. She sat through all 75 minutes of the talk, just drinking it all in, and even asked the ranger a few questions at the end. She was particularly fascinated by the fact that John Brown was white. I guess she has always thought that John Brown was Black, which I think kind of makes sense, and that lead to interesting conversations afterwards.

One thing that stuck out to me was when the ranger talked about how the women were melting the pewter to make bullets for the raid because there were no bullets – and I thought about how we think of history as a series of big events and most of these events are precipitated by men. Because women are at home doing the every day things that keep life going. And men get to /got to make the big gestures that go down in history – and maybe this is the flaw in how we perceive what are important historical events? A woman’s life doesn’t have as many grand explosive events. It has every day events, like births and deaths and the day to day of raising children and making sure people get fed. And what gets recorded in the history books is not these day to day perpetual tasks – it is important that the bullets get made, but not as important as what they were used for, apparently. The men get the credit for making history, and the women have to just keep things running.

We spent the day at Harper’s Ferry and left around 3pm to go for an early dinner. I Googled to find places and we ended up at Potomac Street Grill in Brunswick, MD – a homely little restaurant that look, admittedly a little run down, but the food was excellent and judging from the crowd that came in and out, it was a local favorite. Afterwards, we stopped for ice cream at Rocky Point Creamery, which was sort of on the way home. I first experienced this creamery because it was one of the stops on the Maryland Ice Cream Trail and we’ve come back a few times since. Their ice cream is so creamy and fresh tasting. I had the raspberry, the 12 year old had the birthday cake, the 7 year old had vanilla, and the 4 year old had mint chip. The kids like coming to Rocky Point Creamery because there is a playground with a play structure made out of an old tractor, which they wanted to play on.
“You’ll get wet!” I said as it was still raining.
“We don’t care!” they replied.
And I figured, if they want to play so much that they don’t care about getting wet, then why not let them play. So they played for a spell on the tractor and then it was time to go home.

The playground and the dairy in the back.

We had our meat party. It did rain for much of the party, but our friend set up a huge tarp and we all gathered under it and it made for a really nice time, almost cozy. Thank goodness for the tarp- I had braced myself to have 25+ people inside our house, but I was able to encourage them to all go outside and we hung out under the tarp. There was tons of food – we marinated 20 lbs of meat, dessert, sides, homemade salsa, good conversations, lots of beer. Also a 10 lb brisket and four bowls of chicken wings. Also – oysters. One of my friends said she always wanted to learn how to shuck and oyster, so another friend brough oysters and a shucking knife and a handy contraption with which to place the oyster so that you don’t accidentally impale yourself. It was all in all a lovely evening.

Between our canopy, patio umbrella and our friend’s tarp, we got this party covered. Literally.

Life skills – the 12 year old shucking an oyster. I always feel intimidated by preparing any seafood other than fish or shrimp at home, but I think shellfish is easier than I think it is and very doable at home. Probably cheaper too.

Going to visit a friend out in southern Maryland. I have a friend/colleague (T) who moved last year to southern Maryland. A few of my other friends from work decided that we should go visit her on our day off because she is awesome and we missed her – she wasn’t on our current show and couldn’t come to the meat party since she was on another gig. We had originally planned to visit and grill and play board games. But then T’s neighbor who lives next door offered to take us out on her boat. So of course we said yes. Only we got on the boat and pushed off and the battery was dead so my friend jumped to shore and pulled our boat back to the dock. Then T called another friend and asked if that friend would be willing to take us out on her boat. And half an hour later we were on a boat with two large dogs, speeding across the water. And the weather was beautiful and the skies clear. And the next thing we knew, the friend with the boat had pulled into the dock of a restaurant and we all got out and had drinks and fried food while the dogs ran freely around the patio – it was that kind of place. Then we got back in the boat and headed back to T’s place, and by the time we got back, it was quite late and we had to head home. Not the afternoon we had planned, but maybe even better. I mean what is better and more joyful than being on a boat with a couple of dogs, the wind blowing in our faces?

Also a little morbid, but fascinating – we saw a dead skate floating in the water

Evenings and Weekends At Home: to play board games(Castle Panic is our latest family game – highly recommend), to take kids to soccer and agility class, to cook dinner, to walk to basketball workout with the 12 year old, to have dance parties in the living room, to fold the laundry, to go on nature walks and hikes, to have playdates and go to birthday parties, to catch up on some tv, to kick off Summer with a Memorial Day movie outing. (We saw IF with some friends. Or at least, the kids saw IF. I couldn’t tell you what happened in the movie – I got up once to refill popcorn, once to take the 7 year old to the bathroom, and once to take the 4 year old to the bathroom. The Husband went to see the Mad Max movie with the other dad. I look forward to seeing IF at some point at home where we can pause the movie if needed.) It feels like we’ve turned the corner into summer. Why are there still two weeks left before school is out????

Some Wise Words I Read Recently – from a Carolyn Hax column. The Letter Writer decided not to go to her stepson’s wedding because of an acrimonious relationship with his father and her relatives tell her that she capitulated and let the ex manipulate the situation. And the Letter Writer asks if she was wrong. I loved Hax’s response:

I think too often I get stuck in the binary of right vs. wrong. I think it’s good to remind myself that that’s a false binary and life is so much more complex than that. Cultivating “enough”, however, seems like a stronger way to move forward.

Grateful for:
-The van. I have finally started driving the van. Yes, that’s the van that we bought in October. But with the excursion to Harper’s Ferry and the trip out to see my friend, I figured everyone would be more comfortable in the van than in the Impreza. The van has toooo many buttons for my tastes, and feels like I’m driving a small apartment on wheels, but I think I’m slowly getting used to driving it.

-Micky Mouse Club House. How did I get through hours of combing and treating the kids’ hair? I sat them in front of episodes of Micky Mouse Club House. The four year old now asks if she can have her hair brushed, which is really code for “Can I watch Mickey Mouse Club?” The instructions for the Nix, under “things you need to treat lice” literally says, “Something to keep your child busy (movie, game, etc.)” Can I pay for that out of my FSA?

-Long return windows – as in Duluth Trading Company. Of course part of the reason I took so long to process the Duluth return from Christmas was because I knew the return window was long (one year). I suppose if there had a been a shorter window, I might have gotten things done sooner. But as it is, I’m thankful that the return process at Duluth was pretty painless and I could return all the stuff that didn’t suit even though it is five months later.

-Costco. Because when you are having 25-30 people over, it’s kind of the obvious choice for many things. When we first moved to the area, the nearest Costco was about 30 minutes away. And now we have one two miles up the road.

Also grateful to have the capacity to shop at Costco.

-And grateful to the friends and colleagues at work. We had a couple aftershow parties last week since it was the last show of the season – one was an official company party and one was an unofficial “Everyone show up with food to celebrate” kind of affair. I have to say, I work with some of the kindest, funniest, and most talented people. Most people know what they will be working on next season and it’s so nice when we compare notes and find out we’re on the same shows. It’s something to look forward to, knowing that even though this opera season is over, we’ll see each other again in a few months. I don’t always like being the stage manager in charge – sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing (as opposed to being an assistant stage manager, which I do feel very comfortable doing), but knowing that the people I work with believe in me and think I do a good job really helps me conquer my imposter syndrome.

-And grateful for the Husband for keeping the house picked up and the kids fed and life moving while I’m at work, and for helping to set up for the meat party.

-The pre-summer weather. We’ve had some bouts of rain and some bouts of high heat, but in general, it’s been that perfect cool, crisp, sunny, not yet humid weather. I know the humidity is coming, though, so I’ll savor this weather while I can. I got the bike out and biked to work a few days and it was delightful.

Looking forward to:
-Piano and voice recitals coming up. Another thing on the calendar, but always nice to see the kids work towards something they can perform.

-Trip to Maine. I borrowed some travel guides and I’ve made plans to see a college friend on the way there, so I’m excited.

– Making food with our latest Penzy’s haul:

We made a trip to Penzy’s and I saw the dehydrated garlic and dehydrated onion on the shelf and decided to get some. When I was at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival last year, there was a cooking demonstration and the chef mentioned that he likes to use reconstituted dehydrated garlic in stir fry because it doesn’t burn as easily.

-Speaking of which – the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is the end of June – perfect timing since I’m off work and the two older kids won’t be in camp yet so I’m looking forward to going down to the Mall with them to take in all the exhibits. This year’s theme is “Indigenous Voices of America: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian.” The NMAI opened in 2004, and I remember being in DC when it opened – it was that year that I interned at the opera. So wild to think that it’s already been 20 years since I first arrived here in DC!

-Summer adventures. Our day trip to Harper’s Ferry reminded me of how in COVID times and how I would just pack the kids in the car and take them to parks or ice cream shops a car drive away. Even though it was COVID, I always had such fun taking these little day trips and seeing new places. I have three weeks off this summer, and I want to make sure to take some day trips with the kids. The Maryland Ice Cream Trail 2024 has been released and this year the map has pinpointed hikes near the creameries – hike + ice cream! what a great combination!

-This Audiobook, which I know some of you have read:

I’m listening to it with the 12 year old. Often it’s only way I can get her to leave the house – I promise her that we can listen to the book wherever we are going. Sometimes when we go out for walks, she will take one earbud and I’ll take the other and we’ll listen to it together. I feel really annoyed that I have to bribe her like this to leave the house, but I think I need to re-frame this as a sweet way to spend time together. And the book is hilarious.

What We Ate: So one thing about losing my journals is that I haven’t been writing down what we’ve been having for dinner. I’ve worked several evenings, so there’s been a good share of eating out. Some memorable meals, though:
– Creamy coconut rice with chili lime vegetables from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. This meal was a huge hit – even the 4 year old who will pick the vegetables out of everything ate all of it. The coconut rice is creamy like risotto, but baked so that it is a magical, hands off dish. And the vegetables are roasted and then sprinkled with a vinegary chili lime dressing. Definitely a keeper. I can’t find it online, but this recipe is worth checking out the book.
– Also from Smitten Kitchen – roasted tomato pasta salad. Very tasty. I roasted the tomatoes in the morning so that when we got home, I just had to boil the pasta and throw the whole things together.
-Meera Sodha’s Brussel Sprout fried rice.
– pasta salad made from the leftover grilled veggies from our meat party.
-Chicken on the Run – Peruvian Chicken – our go to take out when the 7 year old has sewing class since the restaurant is just down the block.
-There were various nights of take out wings and pizza. And movie nights – I think there was an Avengers movie, and some nature films.

Well, it’s the last day of May. Onward to June and Summer. How was your May?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Opening Nights and Mother’s Day in the City

The view from backstage. The Emperor’s throne is waiting in storage behind the projection screen.

I opened my show! The 12 year old opened her show! The 12 year old closed her show! Yay! It’s been a very packed week.

First of all – the 12 year old’s middle school production of Annie Jr. was delightful! She played Tessie, one of the orphans. Tessie is the one who says, “Oh my goodness! oh my goodness!” The Husband noted that he could pick her out in a crowd because of the huge plaid pocket I put in her pinafore. I couldn’t go to the first performance because I was working, but I went to the second performance, which was also the closing performance. It’s so funny seeing the whole show come together after spending all that time running lines with her. There is something very mechanical about running lines and I was so impressed by how comfortable she was onstage. (In the program, the 12 year old thanked her parents from runnign lines with her!”) And the whole production – I mean obviously the production values aren’t terribly high because it’s middle school, but it had it’s own handmade charm. There was one scene with a couch, and then the couch had to move downstage for the next scene so we watched the kids move it and afterwards I asked the 12 year old why the couch wasn’t on wheels? And she said, “Well, we borrowed it from the Teacher’s Lounge.” Which I think perfectly sums up the whole thing.

In the program, the twelve year old thanked, among others, “…her parents who helped her prepare for auditions, run lines, an boost her confidence.” I thought that was really sweet of her.

And that night after she came home from getting ice cream with her cast mates, she started crying because the whole thing was over and oh how I know that feeling – I think that is one thing that makes theatre so special – that high you get from doing something ephemeral and the low you get from realizing that it’s ephemeral. And even though you know you can audition for more shows, you’ll never repeat this very exact show again with these very exact cast mates.

The night after the 12 year old had her shows, I opened my show. There was a very fancy party afterwards. I wore a dress – the other dress I bought at Macy’s in March when I bought that red jumpsuit that I wrote about last month. This dress probably isn’t quite fancy enough for an opening night party, but it is comfortable and forgiving – the smocked waist is elastic – and flowy, which I like. I wish it came in another colour, because black/white/grey isn’t my favorite color palatte. I don’t wear make-up, and have no clue what to do with my hair now that it hasn’t been cut for a year and is looking a little overgrown, so I think maybe the whole look is a little unpolished – but there are limits to what I want to do with myself and hair and make-up don’t quite make it into those boundaries right now. I did wear heels, though, so there’s that.

The party had all sorts of tasty Asian inspired food, a photo booth, lots of loud music. I had fun talking to people I don’t usually get to talk to. The best thing, though was the fried pickled ginger. Who would have thought to do that? It was DELICIOUS.

The opening night party was the Saturday before Mother’s Day, so it was nice that I kind of had a pass to sleep in (until 8am!) then next morning. All week, the kids had hinted that they had planned a special Mother’s Day. Not to be a grinch, but I kind of don’t love celebrating Mother’s Day. (Or my birthday, or anything where I have to be the center of attention). I don’t like surprises, so the family was going to tell me what they had planned, but then they were giving out tickets to teh White House Garden Tour for Mother’s Day Sunday, and I asked the Husband if he wanted to go. And he said, “But we’ve planned Mother’s Day!” and I reminded him that my father was in town and he could watch the kids and when would we have a chance for free childcare while we go out together again? And he said okay. So on Mother’s Day Sunday, the 11 year old made French toast (perhaps with help from her siblings – I’m not sure since I was in bed), we ate the French toast, I took the 4 year old to her agility class and then when I got home, the Husband and I took the Metro downtown.

First stop was coffee. The Husband had wanted to check out this Indonesian coffee shop for ages, but we were never in the area at the right time. It is a fifteen minute walk from the White House so it was the perfect pitstop. I had a chai and a cherry croissant. The chai was delicious- bitingly spicy and just a hint of sweetness. I asked afterwards who made the chai mix and the barista enthusiastically pointed me to the company, Soul Chai. Definitely check them out if you like your chia spicy and not sugary. I’ll be ordering some for sure.

After coffee, we proceeded to the White House. Now getting tickets to the White House Gardens tour is not exactly a rarified thing. Thousands of tickets are passed out for each weekend of garden tours, and they are free. (Honestly, I’d be annoyed if they weren’t free…) However, I was able to get tickets through work, which meant that I didn’t have to stand in line at 8:30am to get tickets. tl:dr – I found the whole experience rather… underwhelming and would not stand in line for tickets unless you were an American history/government fan.

I think calling it a “Gardens Tour” was a little bit misleading. It was more of a “Grounds Tour”. The pre-ordained path allowed people to view the gardens from a distance, but there weren’t a lot of flowers to be seen as we walked along. My take away – the White House grounds is a lot of grass and trees. Which, I supposed makes sense – grass because you need to land helicopters, and trees because it seems like planting a tree is a beloved activity for past residents of the White House to leave their mark and/or honour an occasion. And I guess if I’m being honest, while the horticultural side of the garden tour felt pallid, the historical part of the tour did feel quite momentous. Here was a tree planted by the Obamas, here are the windows to the Oval Office, here is the Rose Garden and that walk way seen so many time on the West Wing. So I suppose what the garden tour lacked for me in actual garden, it made up in weighty historical significance and that did make for some pondering.

There was a military band playing music throughout the day. They played lots of Disney tunes.

This was as close as we got to the Rose Garden

That’s the oval office there, you can see if you squint.

Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden and Jill Biden’s cut flower garden.

This commemorative oak planted by Herbert Hoover came from Lincoln’s birthplace. I like the juxtaposition of that with the Washington Monument in the background.

After the Gardens Tour, we decided to take in a museum. The White House is next to the Renwick, which is an American Art Museum that focuses on craft and handiwork. I’ve seen several things there, and really found it intriguing so I was eager to go again. I thought there was an Amish quilt exhibit there, but when I arrived, I found that the Amish quilt exhibit was at the American Art Museum in Gallery Place/ Chinatown, which was seven or eight blocks away. Oops. We took in the exhibits at the Renwick anyway, the best being this exhibit of nets hung from the cieling. It was visually appealing, but also relaxing experience because you had to lay down on the floor to get the full impact:

After we took in the other exhibits in the Renwick, we decided to go to the American Art Museum and see the Amish Quilt exhibit after all since the restaurant that we picked for dinner was in that direction anyway.

Love the effect of the black squared to create negative space on this quilt.

I thought this exhibit was stunning and though provoking. What struck me, apart from the visual aspect of the quilts, was the idea that all these quilts hung in a museum, yet they were all labelled “Artist: unidentified” – it made me ponder the tension between quilts that are quite skillfully and and artistically assembled – the patterns and colours are quite intricate – and the Amish who are a modest, attention shunning people. Highly recommend this exhibit.

I love the piecework on this quilt – it looks random, but really has a lot of structure.

After the exhibit, we went to dinner. Recently the New York Times published and article entitled “The 25 Best Restaurants in Washington, DC Right Now.” (Hilariously, the comments are full of people noting that a lot of the restaurants on the list are in the Maryland or Virginia suburb, so the title of the article is misleading. I’m surprised by the vehemence of some of the comments.) Some of the restaurants on the list I’ve been to, but many were new to me, especially those in the city since we very rarely eat out in the city. There is no where I feel my suburban mom-ness more than in a hip DC restaurant. At any rate, we decided to check out a restaurant on the list, Baan Siam, a Thai restaurant in Mount Vernon Square, near Gallery Place. This isn’t like your standard Thai restaurant – pad thai and drunken noodles are nowhere to be seen. The food is from northern Thailand. The Husband and I ordered fried pumpkin, fried spicy mushrooms (enoki mushroom – this was novel because I’d never had fried enoki mushrooms and the long thin shape made it well suited for finger food), spicy chicken in banana leaf (very spicy, but also sweet, sour, and funky in a good way), shrimp chili paste fried rice with fried pork belly, and a small cucumber salad. It was all super flavorful and tasty. And for dessert, we had mango with sticky rice, because of course.

After dinner we took the metro back home, arriving back at the house aroun 7:45pm. When we got home, things were pretty quiet, so the Husband and I snuck in the back door and collapsed on the living room couch waiting for someone to notice we were home. No one did. Everyone ended up going to bed super late- not ideal for a Sunday night, but it was all fine.

Grateful for – the Tech Week edition:

-Blue highlighter. This is sort of a weedy work hack, but – There is one entrance I cue (the green post it) that is in the middle of an orchestral interlude. I like to think I read music pretty well, but I always felt iffy about this entrance, never confident that I was cuing it in the right place. Reading a piano reduction of the orchestral part can be confusing because there are so many notes in the page and I have to figure out which notes correspond to what I’m hearing, and if I don’t count it completely accurately, I get easily lost. Most nights it was kind of a prayer and a “feeling” for where the cue was. So one day during tech, I took a blue highlighter and highlighted the notes of the melody. And suddenly, I could see what I was listening for and I could follow the music and cue the sequence perfectly. Sometimes I just have to highlight what I need and ignore the rest of the notes and I won’t get lost. I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

-dropping my flashlight. One of my backstage tools is my mini Maglite. It is essential for lighting the way backstage when everything is dark. I converted my light with a kit so that it is push button operated instead of twist. Anyhow, at the start of tech, it was working somewhat sporadically which was kind of annoying and I was going to order myself a new one. Then at one point, I accidentally dropped the Maglite on the floor and it started to work! Yay!

-The Husband who held down the fort – handling pick up and dinner and bedtime on his own all week. Also while dealing with a whole slew of plumbing problems at our rental house. And then he even brought all the kids to my dress rehearsal, even though it meant a late night for everyone. I think the 4 year old fell asleep in the last act, but the other two kid watched the whole thing.

-middle school drama programs. For giving my kid such a great experience. For giving her an outlet to be silly and make friends. For giving her a place to go after school. For bringing the community together to cheer these talented and enthusiastic kids on.

Looking Forward To:

-Being home in the evenings – now that my show is open, I’m looking forward to being able to pick up the kids from the school bus, make dinner, put kids to bed and zone out in front of the tv with the Husband watching Brooklyn 99 or 30 Rock or maybe we’ll get to that third season of Ted Lasso.

-Swim Season – We’ve signed up for the pool, and I’m excited to spend time at the pool and to cheer the 12 year old on at swim meets. There were a couple days last week that were blazingly hot and I thought how it feels like summer, but we’re not quite there yet.

-Dirty Meat Party – There is currently twenty pounds of meat marinating in my fridge in preparation for the grilling party that we have every time a certain colleague/friend of mine is in town working on a show. It’s probably the biggest party we throw every year and while I don’t always like having 25 people descend on my house, I do love seeing everyone having a good time. There is some rain in the forecast, which makes me a little nervous because I am ill equipped to put 25 people inside my house. But we can’t postpone it because then the meat will be over-marinated. Also – the party has always been called the Dirty Meat Party, but maybe I should reconsider because as the 7 year old ran to the school bus, he called out, “I can’t wait to eat dirty meat!!!!”

-Reading this – middle aged female pirate goes on adventures. It’s proving delightful so far. I’ve laughed out loud so many times while reading it.

What we ate:
The only dinner I made at home last week was Friday night, my day off. I made this Pearl Couscous with Creamy Feta and Chickpeas . I added some shrimp in the last 5 minutes of baking. It was very tasty, but I wish there was a way to make it a one pot meal. perhaps just cooking it all on the stovetop and not baking it?

In lieu of the other dinners that week, here is another “At Work All Day” lunchbox picture:

Lunch: broccoli quinoa salad, which I had made last week and still working through. Plum.

Dinner: marinated beans with potatoes and arugula. Avocado and a boiled egg to eat along with.

Snacks: cut up apples and hummus, protein bar (from Costco, really just a glorified candy bar), two carrots (yes, I just toss them in whole. easier that way), beef stick (actually for the drive home to snack on when I get sleepy.)

Weekly recap + what we ate: Tech week and loving one’s job

Props are packed and ready to go to the theatre!

Half way through tech week! I had this idea that I would go one of those “Photo every hour” posts that Engie or Stephany do periodically- I thought it might be a a good way to capture a day of tech for me to look back on. Hah hah. Once we got into the evening rehearsal, shit gets real and I couldn’t keep up. Friday, our first tech rehearsal onstage, was particularly busy – our Production Assistant was out sick, so I had to do their job and my job. I logged 25,000 steps and climbed 34 flights of stairs that day. Part of the reason for all those stairs is that our set is three levels high. Here’s the view from the top level:

(Side note – it’s been much debated on how to refer to the levels of the set. There is a ground level, a middle level and a top level. Now if, in rehearsal, someone says, “Go to the second level,” which level would you go to? I would go to the mid level, but many people would go to the top level. We eventually just ended up calling them “mid” and “top” level.)

But I did take some pictures throughout the day, so here is a dump of pictures of that first day of tech last week, in and around the “intense, running around, and checking attendance, and listening to instructions, and relaying instructions to cast and crew, and why is everyone talking all at once? and making sure people didn’t get run over by the scenery or props, and took their cues on time and oh my god, and, how do we get thirty people onstage through that three foot wide gap? and yes, you should wear the hat now and no, now you take it off, here, just give it to me, and are people going to make their costume changes in time for their next cue? No they aren’t, they’ve just missed their entrance, and where are the dancers? and we need to give them a break, and what is that rule in our union contract? and the director wants to do things a different way, okay we’ll make that work, and we want to add fire? and this singer is now dead, can they go home or will we go back and do their scene again? and oh my goodness, we managed to tech through the whole show, thank GOD” part of the day….

Thursday was a set looks (where stage management and the director looks at the set for the first time and decide that, “Yep, this is what we were expecting.” and we make all sorts of discoveries as to how people will get onstage.) and then a Stizprobe (first time singers are with orchestra – sit and sing).

Friday was the first Piano Tech rehearsal, the first time onstage staging rehearsal for everyone. This is what was in my camera roll for that day:

6:30am – wake up – summer morning sunlight and I make the bed.

7:35am – roll out my yoga mat for 10 mins of yoga. The 4 year old helps.

8:30am – breakfast, eaten at the kitchen counter, with a book. Cottage cheese and blueberries – I’m trying to eat high protein/ high fiber breakfasts and lean away from the heavy carb breakfasts. Which is hard because bagels are tasty.

8:45a – quick 5 minutes of laundry folding before taking the kids to the school bus. Those three small folded piles all I manage to fold in five minutes.

10:30am- At work. paperwork. Make rehearsal logs for the day. Usually our production assistant does this, but they are sick this day. That’s my favorite brand of mechanical pencil – and I found that they sell it with a red barrel. Red is my favorite colour, so I ordered a whole box of them.

12:30p – lunch, sitting outside. I’m going to spend much of the day running around in the dark – Gotta grab sunlight when I can.

1:15pm – checking attendance. The rehearsal scheduling department gives me a list of people who are running late to rehearsal.

2:30pm – An hour into the first piano tech rehearsal. My music stand.

4:30pm – random picture of how we want to set this giant 30′ silk onstage – I take pictures of a lot of things because sometimes it’s easier than trying to describe to the crew how we want things to look. Sometimes I say things like, “That guillotine needs to be centered this spot on stage.” And it still isn’t clear because everyone has their own perspective and they move the thing here and there and I try to explain and then finally it goes in the right place and the crew says,. “You mean the upstage edge needs to split center?”. And I say, “Yes, thank you,” And I think to myself, “It probably would have been clearer if I had said it that way. Thank you for figuring that out.”

6:00pm – Run at dinner time. The weather was beautiful.

7:00pm – Quick picture in the bathroom of my piano tech outfit. I always wear the same thing – floral patterned top (Uniqlo) and linen joggers (Gap – patched in two places and maybe need to be replaced soon.). I like to wear bright colours during tech so I can be seen onstage. I do wear shoes, but I had just changed out of my running clothes and hadn’t put them on yet.

9:30pm – one hour left in the evening rehearsal, back at my music stand for a moment. These blue index cards are where I write who is making an entrance. If it’s just a handful of people, I will write it directly on a Post It, but when there are 30+, I write it on an index card and put it in my binder. I often only write first initial and last two letters of last name. ie. John Smith would be JSm. I had an assistant director once who called these the “airport codes” for each chorister. It’s a good feeling for me that I’ve been with these choristers so long that when I’m writing down the mass chorus group, writing their airport code takes no mental effort at all.

11:33pm – screenshot. Sometimes when I’m leaving and I realized I’ve I forgotten to log out of my timesheet, I take a screenshot of my phone so I remember what time I walked out the door. I get a lot of spam in my email.

12:10am – arrive home. I find that the lunchboxes I ordered for the kids have arrived. Yay! In the past week, one child has cracked their lunchbox and the other has lost theirs (I don’t want to be the one to open that lost lunch box when it is recovered…). I do have one extra for each child, but I like having a few spares for those times when the lunchbox doesn’t get cleaned the night before. I love these Sistema lunchboxes because they are relatively inexpensive and they can go in the dishwasher. And they are durable. We’ve had ours for about four years now. I was going to buy just one spare, but amazon also sold them in a four pack for about $12/each, so I went that route. They are getting harder to find, so I worry what will happen when Sistema stops making this size. Maybe I should order another 4 pack…

And that was a photo summary of Day 1 of tech. Day 2 of tech was Saturday, and I didn’t have to be at the theatre until 1pm, so I did a load of laundry (and hung it to dry), took the 7 year old to his morning soccer – the game was on despite the drizzly drizzly weather, and then dropped the 12 year old to her voice lesson on the way to work. On the days when I don’t have to be in until 1pm, I feel like the morning should be luxurious, but then it fills ups, especially on weekends. I spent the first part of the day at work light walking – basically we stand onstage while the lighting designer sets light levels – which is kind of tedious, but can be beautiful:

The evening was a piano dress rehearsal, first time in costume. It’s always a very long night, but we got through the whole show, which is always good.

Here is a random spot of beauty on asphalt, to break up all the work goings on, as seen on my run:

Doing Something You Love. I had a text exchange with a colleague last week. She was asking me about someone that had worked with me as a Production Assistant previously. (Side note: This really happens. Not sure how it is in other industries, but word of mouth is huge. It doesn’t matter who you list as a reference – if I know you’ve worked with someone I know, I will often have a casual conversation about you.). This former Production Assistant wanted to move on from stage management, and I replied to my colleague, “I think I knew she wanted to do something different. I’m always surprised when people don’t want to be stage managers because I genuinely like what I do a lot.” And my colleague wrote back – “Me either… I love what I do.”

Then I heard this interview with filmmaker Caitlin Cronenberg, who is the daughter of a famous filmmaker. And Cronenberg was asked about her feelings on nepotism, and she said, “You know, there are children of people doing things, and it’s because you look at your family member making art for a living and enjoying what they do. And you say, I want to love what I do. I want to make art for a living. And that’s why so many actors, so many directors and producers have children who are also in the business.

And it made me think how the 12 year old used to say that she wanted to be a stage manager, and I always thought that it was because she thought the work was interesting. But maybe, that isn’t it. Maybe she realizes that finding something you love to do – whether that is your job, or something outside of your job – that is important. And maybe she thinks, “Hey, there’s this thing that mom really loves doing… maybe I would love doing that too.” It made me think about how much my children pick up on the attitude/emotions/moods that I exude and how important it is to model that intangible quality – we all want our children to be happy, so they also need to have models of how to be happy. I hope that the 12 year old finds something that she loves doing. She doesn’t have to love it 100% of the time – I certainly don’t love my job 100% of the time; I most certainly don’t love parenting or painting or writing 100% of the time – but she has to love enough aspects of that thing that she finds periodic joy in doing it – not the results, not the end product, but in the doing.

Grateful For:
-The sanitation workers who pick up our trash and recycling. The other day, I came home after dropping the kids at school and the recycling trucks were making their routes. They just finished our house, and then I saw them take my elderly neighbor’s trash and recycling cans back up her driveway for her. It was such a nice thing for them to do! The Husband, who used to work for the county’s solid waste department, says that if you have difficulties putting your trash cans at the bottom of your drive, you can have your house coded so that the sanitation workers come get your trash cans and put them back if you want – there are special colour trash bins for this. I love that. I guess taking trash cans down to the curb was one of those things I took for granted (the 12 year old does it at our house), and I’m glad that there are provisions for people for whom it is difficult.

-Child minders. There are 20 children in our show. I am so grateful for the child minders to when the children to and from stage and keep an eye on them when they are not onstage.

-my sewing machine. I spent Sunday finishing up the 12 year old’s costume for Annie. I had to hem the pinafore, so I plugged in my sewing machine that has been dormant for several months now, and it worked. My mother in law had passed this sewing machine down to me – I believe it belonged to her aunt. It isn’t fancy – pretty much just does a straight stitch – but I don’t need fancy for where I am in my sewing skills. I was able to hem the pinafore. Then I added a pocket with some scrap fabric, because I know when I work on shows we are always asking for pockets in costumes. Then I looked at everything together, and the muslin pinafore looked a little bright, so I tea dyed it. It was my first time tea dying something and the process was pretty easy. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the pinafore is now a light brown color. Also – another skill I did for the first time, is I made a button hole! The top of the dress dipped a little low in the front, so I added a button and made a button hole. Oh – here’s another gratitude – I’m grateful for creators who post tutorials of how to do things on the internet.

Old faithful sewing machine. I say a prayer of thanks every time it manages to turn on and work. Look – it’s the beginning of a buttonhole!

Looking forward to:
-Opening Night for me!

-Opening Night for the 12 year old!

-Orchestra rehearsals. We start adding the Orchestra to our rehearsals this week. I often think how lucky I am that I get to listen to a full orchestra play all the time. The wall of sound, the colours of the different instruments, the bone vibrating sensation of six trumpets and six trombones playing backstage, right next to me. There is something so amazing about that degree of unamplified music -so immediate and so grand. I love it all.

-Watching Starstruck. I started the third season of this show while making lasagna last week. I loved the first two seasons of this rom com about Jessie, who unknowingly hooks up with a famous movie star Tom in Season 1 and the fall out from that. The show is hilarious and touching. I don’t usually like shows where people make a mess of their lives, but there is something I really relate to in Jessie.

What We Ate:
Monday: Butter chicken – I used the leftover sauce from the Butter Chicken I made a few weeks ago, but I probably should have cooked it on the stove rather than in the Instant Pot because it was very runny.

Tuesday: Not sure – Husband cooked. I took myself out for Thai food because it was the day of the final room run and I wanted to eat something special.

Wednesday: Zucchini Pesto Lasagna from Smitten Kitchen Keepers. We had a bunch of zucchini to use up. And I figured this would be good for leftovers as well. It was tasty, but very cheesy. I find lasagna is always a lot of work, and I could have the same results by just making the sauce and veggies and tossing it with noodles rather than layering and baking in a tray.

Thursday: Not sure – Husband cooked, I think…. I packed dinner, see below…

Friday: Pizza (take out) and an Avengers movie. I packed dinned, see below…

Saturday: No idea.

Sunday: leftovers/scrounge in the fridge. My brain was so fried by this point, I can’t even remember if I made the kids dinner. Oh wait. yes I did. I boiled some pasta, tossed in broccoli during the last three minutes, drained and mixed in the leftover ricotta sauce from Wednesday’s lasagna, for a cheesy, broccoli pasta. (See – I did just what I said above – mixed the lasagna sauce with cooked pasta and veggies and it was just a tasty a much less work.

Since I don’t really have an idea of what the family had for dinner for most of last week, as I was away most nights last week, I thought I’d take a picture of a typical food pack that I bring to work on any given day during tech week when I usually eat both lunch and dinner at work. This was actually from Thursday, but then I ended up going out for lunch that day and didn’t eat most of this and so just re-packed it and took it on Friday:

Lunch: Broccoli Quinoa Salad, avocado, hard boiled egg, plum

Dinner: zucchini pesto lasagna, cut up veggies and apple slices

Snacks for throughout the day: another container of veggies and apple slices, hummus, roasted chickpeas, mini pretzels, string cheese, mixed nuts. (Also at the office we have peanut m&ms, peanut butter pretzels, chocolate caramels, and gummy Nerds.).

Aside from breakfast, this all gets me through the day.

That’s it for last week. It’s been exhausting, but I am excited about the show. Also excited to be opened and to pick up around the house a little bit.

What do you love doing? And taking a poll: Which level would you call the “second level”?

Weekly recap + what we ate: getting ready for tech week

Some fun and random happenings this past week:

Blueberries: There was an episode of Hidden Brain this week called The Curious Science of Cravings, and the guest is psychiatrist Judson Brewer who researches cravings. At the end of the episode, Brewer talks about replacing his craving for gummy worms with blueberries. It was a very a propos episode because there have been the most amazingly plump and sweet blueberries in the store lately. I’m not sure what genetically engineered magic is going on here, but they’ve been a highlight of my food life right now. I can easily eat half a pint at a time. I don’t want to get too attached, though, because I recognize that this is just a season.

Bring your Child to Work Day. I took the 7 year old to work with me on Thursday. This was exciting because it’s the first time since COVID that my work has allowed people to come into rehearsal. Well, officially. The 7 year old actually went with the Husband to work in the morning first. I thought this was pretty cool – the Husband’s work had a diesel bus come and take the kids on a ride, then they switched to an electric bus so the kids could feel the difference. For lunch, I met the Husband and the 7 year old for sushi lunch, then I took him to work with me. We didn’t have any special activities planned this year, but he watched me take a Teams call, sat with me in rehearsal, played with the set model, and helped us move props around. At one point, he even stood next to me and helped me cue performers onstage. Afterwards he said he had a good time, though whether it was from actually being at work with me, or just from not having to go to school… who knows?

Outfit of the week: We had some really chilly mornings and sunny afternoons, so it’s been about layering this week. I originally wanted to just wear my hooded sweatshirt dress, but I also wanted another layer because the dress looks kind of shapeless if worn just on its own. So I threw on this orange pullover – the pullover used to belong to the Husband, but it no longer fits, so I rescued it from the donation bin when I was looking for an oversized sweatshirt last winter. I kind of love the colour combination.

Of course it’s going to be blazing hot this week, so this might be the last I wear this outfit until the fall.

-Shopping for Annie – I might have mentioned that the 12 year old is in Annie Jr. at her school – she plays an orphan. Tessie. She gets to play an orphan with a name! And lines! A couple weeks ago she came home with the costume list of what she had to bring for her orphan costumes – basically a ragged dress, bloomer, ankle socks and flat shoes. I’m hoping to get bloomers form the costume shop at work, but the rest of it, I thought we would just go to the thrift store and see what we could get. We ended up finding a green plaid dress – something very much of the 1990s, but could probably also work for 1930s and also – it’s rayon and says Dry Clean Only, so I hope the 12 year old doesn’t make any messes on it – or maybe that would be okay for an orphan look), a cardigan, and some sensible brown shoes. I have something leftover from work that could work as a pinafore, though it’s going to require some cutting and sewing. And the dress too needs to be hemmed. Here’s the first pass with things pinned into place. I feel like as things go, “Orphan” is a pretty easy assignment for a first time theatre mom.

She opens the same week as I do – so we will both be in tech at the same time. How funny is that?

Speaking of tech – this week is the start of tech . Fortunately I have a day off before we move into the theatre, so I can do some prep for the long days. On the list:
-Pick out my outfits for the week, so I don’t have to think about it in the morning when I’m going to be tired.
-Grocery shopping so I have food.
-Meal prep – I have some zucchini to use up, so I’m planning to make a zucchini lasagna so that the family can have one meal taken care of, and I’ll have leftovers to pack. Also prep some kale salad – that’s nice and hearty and will keep in the fridge.
-Boil eggs (or rather, I make them in the InstantPot) so I have a quick, easy source of protein.
-make a batch of marinated beans – again, a quick and easy source of protein.
-buy some office snacks – I like to bring a sweet snack and a savory snack – usually gummy bears or twizzler or m&ms, and then popcorn or Whisps. We’ll see what strikes my fancy at Costco.
-meal plan the rest of the week – I have some soups in the freezer that I can just take out for the family to eat.
-pick out a nice light read, for when I need a brain break, and an audio book for the longer commutes. (I think I picked a book – see below.)
– plan running clothes so I can go on runs during my dinner break.
-make sure all the bills are paid. Sometimes during tech I forget.
-Laundry.

Whew. It seems like a lot to try to get done in one free day. Plus get that Annie costume done. And I have another super titles gig that I have to prep the titles for. However, most likely on that one free day, I’ll go to Costco after the morning school bus run and then be exhausted for the rest of the day.

My goals for tech week – well my self-care goals for tech week:
-eat well (well, I mean eat the tasty junk food but also eat just as much, if not more, healthy stuff)
-sleep. Go straight to be when I get home late at night.
-find time to go outside – ideally running, but even just a ten minute walk around the building on a dinner break would be great.
-journal and reflect on how each day of tech went and what to do better. Tech can be a really stressful, and I always feel like I don’t have time to process all the stressors and inputs, but this time around, I do want to make sure I think about each day in a more mindful manner so that I don’t internalize the pain points in an unproductive way.
-remember to hug the Husband and my children. Remember to call home when I can. Find ways to connect even though I’m tired and never home at night or on weekends.

Grateful for:
-A cancelled music lesson and unexpected time with the 12 year old. On Friday, I had to take the 12 year old to her 4:00pm voice lesson. The lesson is usually on Saturday at 1pm, but her voice teacher is also in my show and we had rehearsals on Saturday, so we rescheduled it. It is a bit of a trek, and it was Friday rush hour, so I was a little anxious about being late. (side note – I’ve been trying to be less anxious about being late because lateness anxiety makes me a really bad driver and that is just dangerous. So now, I just tell myself, “The worst that can happen if you are careful is that you are late. The worst that can happen if you are not careful is that you get in a car accident.” And then I decide it’s okay to drive carefully and be a little late. Not that I’m being late in a cavalier kind of way, but in a “Just breathe” kind of way.) Anyhow, we were about half way to lessons when the voice teacher called and told me she had accidentally double booked us, and so sorry but can we re-schedule. Well, I wasn’t going to complain about not having to continue on around the beltway at 4pm on a Friday. So I impulsively got off at the next exit and the 12 year old and I went to get boba teas. And while we waited, we had some nice conversations and played War with a deck of cards a the boba tea shop and it turned out to be a really nice way to spend a newly granted 30 minutes of time.

-The local bike repair shop. There is a bike shop near work, so I took my bike in one day to see if it needed a tune up. The person working there, put it up on a rack, spun wheels, squeezed brakes, looked and squinted and prodded and then declared the bike was in great shape and I didn’t need a tune up. “You just need to remember to clean your chain,” he told me. And he suggested a cleaner to use. And I said, “How do I use that?” And he gave me a sideways glance because I’m pretty sure he was supposed to charge me if he was going to do maintenance on my bike. But then he said, “I’ll show you this one time.” And he cleaned my bike chain. And now my bike shifts much more smoothly. I did buy the cleaner and also two bike lights. My last bike lights went missing, so now I have new ones which is great because I can bike more safely in the evenings now. Since the bike was at work, a couple of evenings I went for a bike ride rather than a run on my dinner break – it’s just much more fun, zipping along, wind in my hair, than running. The terrain where I work can be a little hilly and as much as biking uphill is a pain, it was exhilarating.

-Wearing my running shoes to work. On Sunday I wore my running shoes to work because I wanted to bike home afterwards, and I hate wearing/ packing two pairs of shoes, even if it means doing something as unfashionable as wearing running shoes with a shirtdress. Anyhow – it ended up being a doozy of a rehearsal with us rehearsing in two rooms, having to move props back and forth, changing of original rehearsal plans, tracking down people… I logged over 10 000 steps in that day. At one point, I was rushing back and forth between the two rooms for the umpteenth time (side note – someone once told me that Stage Managers never run. I don’t know if I subscribe to that philosophy.), and I thought, “Hey, my feet feel pretty comfy!” And I looked down and remembered that I was wearing running shoes. I’m really glad that I made a sensible shoe choice that morning.

-Carpool and safe walking streets. Having kids in activities means getting people to places. And having a 4 year old and a 7 year old and a 12 year old means that when there is only one parent at home in the evenings, the little kids have to ride along to the big kid’s activities. Luckily, we’ve been able to find solutions for a lot of the 12 year old’s activities. Our neighbors also have kids in the same swim clinic as the 12 year old, so we alternate driving on Sunday nights. And knowing that I’m working most Sunday nights this month and next, the neighbors will be driving several weeks in a row – I’m grateful that they are happy to drive even when they drive more than we do. Also – the 12 year old can walk to her basketball workouts – it’s a 15 minute walk and now that it’s light outside in the evenings, it’s an easy walk; when it got dark at 5:30pm, I was nervous and would walk with her since even though there are lighted crosswalks, sometimes the cars drive faster than I would like. And then also grateful that the 12 year old’s school is doing Annie – I was disappointed when the 12 year old didn’t make it into the children’s chorus for my show, but I’m now realizing that logistically it is much easier for her to be in Annie because it rehearses directly after school and she can just walk home. (Being in my opera would have required a lot of really hard commuting and late nights.) I also just found out that the school has activity buses, so even if we hadn’t lived in walking distance to school, she still could have gotten home after rehearsal. So grateful that the school provides those buses for the other kids.

Looking Forward To:
-Getting to the other side of Tech. There is a lot of I love about tech and being in the theatre and creating moments on stage and helping people backstage. But also there is a lot that is exhausting and this is a big big big show (for an opera) and I am really looking forward to being on the other side and knowing that it all worked out. And going to Old Ebbits for late night happy hour oysters, which we always do to celebrate at some point.

-Making plans to make plans for a date with one of my friends from my mom’s group. I had lunch with a couple women from my mom’s group, but one in particular just had a baby and I always like chatting with her, and that’s kind of hard in a group setting. I had run to the restaurant for lunch so she offered to drive me home and we agreed to get together after tech and before her maternity leave was over. So I put a reminder in my calendar for the day after final dress rehearsal: “Ask T for a date next week.” I find it kind of silly to have to plan to plan, but I don’t always know what’s going to pop up in my calendar after opening, so didn’t want to schedule it right away. But I’ve scheduled scheduling it!

-I just started this book – I got it for Mother/Daughter book club – it checked the 12 year old’s boxes for romance and theatre. Seems perhaps apt reading for me in this next week. Kind of like when I read Milddlemarch while in Rome:

What We Ate:

Monday: Tofu tacos – the Husband cooked. I don’t know what recipe he used but they were tasty. There was even cilantro lime rice to go with it.

Tuesday: Sheet pan chicken and mustard glazed cabbage, from the New York Times Cooking. I prepped this in the morning and the Husband just popped it in the oven when he got home. Some family members did not like the cabbage, but the chicken was a big hit.

Wednesday: Grilled cheese sandwiches – the Husband cooked a variety.

Thursday: Pasta salad with marinated beans. My favorite marinated beans recipe mixed with pasta, chopped peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. I make the beans and chopped the veggies in the morning, and the Husband made the pasta and mixed everything together when he got home. Bonus – I got to eat marinated beans with avocado and eggs for breakfast one morning:

I added the avocado after I took the pictures. Sprinkled with pepper and some dill pickle sprinkle from Trader Joe’s.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Legally Blonde. It was my turn to choose the movie, and luckily it was my one night home. Sometimes if I’m not home, they skip over me and I don’t get to choose until the list cycles through again. I wanted a classic, fun movie. Legally Blonde was definitely that – I mean I guess classic for a kid of the 90s – what a fun movie – and more thoughtful than I had remembered. There’s some good empowering messages going on here.

Saturday: I was working, the family ordered wings.

Sunday: Leftovers – whatever people could find in the fridge.

Weekly recap + what we ate: better late than never – April aspirations

So I had a realization this week that between April 2nd and April 25th, I will have had exactly ONE day off work. Actually for the whole month of April, I will have three days off. We work a six day week when we’re in rehearsal, so it’s not as out of the ordinary as it sounds to have only a handful of days off – and of course, some of these long weeks is self inflicted because on last week’s day off, I had to work my supertitle gig. But still. Ooof. If I ever wonder why I feel so behind this month, this is why. I find myself re-writing the same to do list week to week and never being able to cross anything off. I did make a March reflection/ April aspiration list while on the plane home from California from Spring Break- so even though April is over half way over, I thought I’d share the list – you know, just another thing that’s behind these days….

March highlights:
-Spring Break trip to Berkeley and San Francisco – this was for sure the high highlight. I promise to finish the recaps, including the details on the trip to the emergency room.
-Lenten Women’s Group. This group that met Tuesday nights during Lent provided so much connection and thoughtful reflection.
-Going to lots of theatre, but especially the local high school production of Beauty and the Beast.
-Watercolour class. I learned SO much in this class.
-a really quick trip to see the cherry blossoms – literally a 15 minute run before a work meeting. I used to think going to see the cherry blossoms was something for tourists, but I’ve grown to love the magical feeling of walking among the trees in bloom, and now I feel like they are a yearly must see.
-On the work front – figuring out a new sign in sheet system for performers. Something that’s needed a bit of reform for a while and I’m so relieved that we’ve started to implement the new system. There are still some things to work out, but it’s a start.
-Daylight Saving and longer days and warmer weather.
-Going running with the 12 year old. Once.
– Dinner with a beloved colleague.

Lowlights – I’m not sure if there are any specific lowlights in March. Well, maybe the Emergency Room trip with the four year old, but even that was pretty chill once we got there. There is the daily tediousness of kids and chores and screentime struggles. I guess for me also, not having time to journal, which then makes it feel like life is slipping by unremarked upon, which always, for some reason, makes me panic a little and sends me into an existential spiral. Looking back, the are mostly the same lowlights as last month. I wonder what that says – maybe I’m stuck in a rut?

April Aspirations:
– ~~Taxes~~. Done by the end of the first week of April, which is early for us, but our tax guy had implemented an April 1st deadline for tax documents, which is helpful. Next year I need to do better accounting for our rental property, though. It was harder than it had to be this year.
-Research options to get rid of my car. (Still – have not made any progress on this one.)
-Process Amazon and Duluth Trading company returns. (The Amazon one is done. The Duluth one is complicated, so the box just sits forlornly in my bedroom.)
-Submit forms for the 4 year old’s early admittance to kindergarten.
-Purge the toy room.
-Finalize summer camp schedules. I think I forgot to sign up the 12 year old for basketball camp. I need to check on that one.
– Things that need replacing – 1) my purse/crossbody bag had a huge hole in the outside lining so needs to be replaced, 2) I need new sandals for summer, and 3) a new Yeti travel tumbler since I lost mine two months ago and it is nearing iced chai season for me, 4) maybe, for fun, new linen pants for the summer. Though I don’t find pants fun anymore.
-Decide on our Asia Trip.
-Mow the lawn twice. I promised that Husband that instead of hiring a yard service I would trade off mowing the lawn with him. He has now mowed twice and I have mowed not at all.

Okay, I am realizing that I’ve been blogging on and on about needing to get rid of my car and purge toys and what not for about five months now. I should make some movement on those so I can start griping about new things.

So the ironic thing is the Husband took the kids camping with friends this past weekend, and I didn’t go because I had to work. And I thought, “Great! House to myself! I’ll knock out some of those April Aspirations!” NOPE. The first night, I got home, picked up/tidied the living room, cleaned the kitchen, made baked chick peas, did a full load of laundry and then was too exhausted to even read my book. Saturday night was even worse, because for some reason I was soooooo tired, though I did manage to fold and put away that laundry that I started the night before. It’s so annoying how little life tasks got in the way of bigger life tasks.

Sunday morning, I drove up to the campground, which is only 40 minutes away, and hung out for an hour before having to head in to work. I had expected to show up in time to help the Husband break down the camp, but when I got there at 8:45am, he had already taken the whole thing down. My kids were eating breakfast out of red solo cups and barely said hello to me before running off into the woods with the other kids. Feeling pretty useless, I settled into a camp chair, wrapped in a blanket that my friend’s mom piled on me, pet the dog and just chatted with everyone until I had to go to work.

We had a weekend of really big rehearsals. The show I’m working on has a lot of people – 58 choristers, 12 supers, 10 dancers, 20 children, and 7 principal singers. That’s 107 people in the room. Well 100 on Sunday because some people were excused from that rehearsal. It is it’s own brand of organized chaos. I spent a lot of Sunday in dance rehearsals – the dancers set their choreography separately and then we merge them in with the singers. I find dance so fascinating – the process is mind boggling to me, how the choreographer says a few words, makes some slight movements, and out of it comes gorgeous feats of athleticism and movement. It’s such a different creative process and language from working with singers or actors. And how dancers remember all the steps and sequences – I am in awe.

Other fun things this week:
-Carpet of blossoms at the bus stop. The Kwanzan cherry blossoms, which bloom about two weeks after the Yoshina blossoms on the Mall. I love their huge puffs of pinkness. At our school bus stop, there is a Kwanzan cherry tree and the petals are starting to shed, making a bubble gum pink carpet on the green grass. I love the colour palette they make up:

And the four year old likes throwing the petals in the air like confetti:

– The vocal recital that I did the supertitles for this week featured the world premiere of a new song cycle. I thought it a beautiful piece, and especially loved the poetry. The text is by poet Jeanne Minahan, and a lot of the poems were about new parenthood. I loved these lines from a poem called After:

They say I gave you birth,
I think they may be wrong,
you bore me from that place
of no return, you pulled me
from myself, I’ve learned.

Sometimes I feel like that – like I don’t feel like the same person I was before I had kids – that they unearthed something in me, or perhaps because of them I’ve had to find a little bit more focus in myself.

-On the day of the recital, I had a really long dinner break. The weather was gorgeous – blazingly hot and sunny, and almost summer like, only without the oppressive humidity of deep summer. So I took a walk to Georgetown and treated myself to a boba tea. There are three or four boba places in Georgetown and I’m determined to try them all. I didn’t get out on a walk every day this week, so taking a walk on my dinner break felt amazing. I passed a guy playing bagpipes on a corner:

Squint to see the bagpiper. Hearing music unexpectedly is always so lovely.

Outside the boba place was this fun mural:

The actual boba place was okay- I liked that you could get your tea black and they had lychee jelly. I ordered a black oolong tea, 30% sugar, with boba and lychee jelly. It was fine, except the tea was still warm – a good sign because that meant it was freshly brewed and not powder- but I did want a cold drink and it took a while for the tea to chill because it had been hot. The other funny thing was that the place insisted that you order via a kiosk. When I got there , there was a group of college girls there (I think they were college age – I can’t tell how old anyone is anymore). They were all speaking French so i guessed that they were exchange students or something. But they apparently couldn’t pay via credit card and were super confused and ended up going to the counter and asking the lady at the register how to pay since they only had cash. The lady at the register took their order and payment at the register. Which made me feel like, “Why do I have to use a kiosk?” I hate using kiosks. Oh well. But watching these young ladies, I was full of admiration – I had badly wanted to study abroad in college and I didn’t manage to work up the courage to do so – but what a great adventure it must be for them to be living in a foreign country and have to navigate things like kiosks at the boba place. There is so much to learn about navigating life that I now take for granted, but I know that when I was young, the world was bewildering.

Boba and Georgetown canals and sunshine. A nice evening. Also – look how bright it is at 6:30pm!!!

Grateful For:
-Windows in our rehearsal hall. I’m pretty sure this has been on my list before, but it is still a wonderful thing. I’ve spent many a rehearsal process in windowless rooms, so to be able to rehearse in a room with floor to ceiling windows feels so luxurious. The other day, during a particularly tedious rehearsal, I was able to look out the window and see all the beautiful pink clouds of sunset and it was such a stunning little pick me up.

-The monitor set up that the Husband put in our guest room for when one of us has to work from home. When the Husband first set up two external monitors and a set of speakers on our little Ikea desk, i thought it was overkill. But now I fully admit, it is an awesome set up. When I had to format supertitles this week, it was amazing to be able to run the slides on one screen, edit them on another and have the original text up for comparison on a third. Plus, I can play the music via the speakers and actually give the titles a test run. It’s all so much more efficient than clicking back and forth, minimizing and maximizing screens when I need to look at one thing or another.

-Living walking distance to a Metro station. On Saturday, I biked to work, but then when I left it was dark and I still don’t have lights on my bike, so I was able to take the Metro home. It was really nice not to have to worry about how I was going to get home.
Although, on my way out of the Metro, I saw a sign:

Our stop is going to be closed basically ALL SUMMER. That is going to really suck.

Looking Forward To:
– Lunch with some people from my Mom’s group. Only one person could make it to the April meet up, but I think two or three can make it this time. It will be nice to catch up.
-Mowing the lawn. I actually don’t mind mowing the lawn, especially since we now have an electric lawnmower and it isn’t as loud or smelly as the gas one we used to have. And it is an excuse to be outside. I don’t do much yardwork – the mosquitoes and the fear of pulling up the wrong plants keep me away. But mowing… I actually look forward to.
-Just started this audiobook – picked because Richard Armitage (who was oh so dreamy in North and South) narrates it. The novel is gripping and feels appropriate reading for the time/times, but so very sad so far. I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way through right now – I think I may need a lighter audiobook to get through tech week. (I’m open to suggestions for audio books!)

-mornings off. Our rehearsal schedule is entering a period when we mostly work afternoon and evenings, so I’ll have a couple mornings off this week. Goals – take care of some of those April aspirations, run, meal prep. Of course this means that the Husband will be home almost every night on his own with the kids. I think a room full of 100 performers is much easier than 3 kids. At least when I tell the chorus what to do, they just do it and don’t argue with me.

What We Ate: I didn’t really meal plan this week because there were a lot of variables going on. I’ll need to do some prep this week and next, since I’ll be going into tech week the first week of May. (Also – how is next week the first week of MAY already?!?!?!)

Monday: Bean and parmesan soup, made in the InstantPot, with leftovers which I was able to freeze.

Tuesday: The Husband made pasta and green beans for the kids. I worked and ate leftovers.

Wednesday: The Husband and the kids went to dinner with a friend while I worked. I had leftovers again. And a massaged Kale salad with cheddar, apples, avocados, and pepitas.

Thursday: The Husband made mac and cheese from scratch for the kids. I was working this night and had a salad from the canteen at work.

Friday: I had leftovers (soup), the Husband and kids were camping and ate camp food, not sure what. .

Saturday: I had a kale salad and the leftover Mac and cheese – basically scrounge around in the salad and leftover-eating.

Sunday: The Husband brought home pizza. I had leftover pizza when I got home from work.

Weekly recap + what we ate + where I went

Still so many blossoms to enjoy! Spring!

I read an interesting diary method once that consisted merely of recording where one went. I thought it was an interesting idea, so here is last week, with approximate travel times.

Monday:
8:50am home –> school bus (5 minutes away)
9:15pm school bus drop –> work (rehearsal studio, 15 minutes)
3:00pm work –> nearby field to catch the Eclipse (10 minute walk)
4:00pm field –> work after Eclipse (10 minutes walk)
7:00pm work –> home (17 minutes)

Tuesday:
8:50am home –> school bus (5 minutes away)
9:15am school bus –> community college campus for art class (10 minutes)
12:30pm community college campus –> work (10 minutes)
6:45pm work –> home (17 minutes)
7:15pm walk around the block, after realizing that I hadn’t walked all day. (25 minutes)

Wednesday (kids were off school this day – the Husband worked from home):
7:10am home –> piano teacher’s house for kid #1’s lessons (7 minutes away)
7:17am piano lesson –> gas station (3 minutes away – my routine of getting gas while kids are at piano lessons – that way I do it every week and it’s a fixed thing in my schedule rather than a moveable one.)
7:30am gas station –> home to pick up kid #2 for piano lesson –> back to piano teacher’s house (17 mins, we were a little late for lessons. Usually all the kids ride along, but since the Husband was working from home, I took one kid at a time)
8:17am piano teacher’s house –> home (7 minutes)
9:00am home –> voice teacher’s house with kid #1 (25 mins – she usually has lessons on the weekend, but we had to reschedule last week’s lesson)
9:30am voice teacher’s house –> walk around the block while waiting for kid #1 to finish her lesson (25 mins)
10:05am voice teacher’s house –> home (25 mins)
11:00am home –> work (15 mins, while sitting in on a work call on zoom)
6:45pm work –> home (17 mins)

Thursday:
8:50am home –> school (10 mins). Actually to parking lot on the trail leading up to school. My friend who lived by the bus stop said that there was a water main break on her street and that it might be best just to drive the kids to school that day in case the bus was late. I parked on the trail because I kind of hate being in the carpool line –> walk up the trail to school with the kids.
9:15a school –> walk back to car –> home (15 mins)
9:50a home –> work via bike (25 mins)
1:15pm work –> Mexican restaurant for lunch (12 mins, walk)
2:30pm Mexican restaurant –> back to work (12 mins, walk)
6:45pm work –> home via bike (30 mins, going home is uphill, so takes longer)

Friday:
8:50am – home –> school bus stop (5 mins)
9:20am – school bus stop –> work (15 mins)
1:00pm work –> walk around the block on my lunch break (30 mins)
7:15pm work –> home (15 mins)

Saturday (Day off of work)
9:30am home –> voice teacher’s house for kid #1’s lesson (28 mins)
10:35am voice teacher’s house –> home (30 mins, google maps took me through the city for some reason.)
11:50am home –> soccer field for kid #2’s soccer practice and game (15 mins)
12:30pm soccer field –> coffee shop – while the 7 year old had practice, I went on a sort of run with the 12 year old, bribing her to run with the prospect of a treat at the end. (25 mins)
1:10pm coffee shop –> soccer field, walked back to the soccer game (25 mins)
1:50pm soccer field –> home (15 mins)
2:15pm home –> friend’s house in Virginia for cookout (45 mins – I vacillate between thinking Virginia is too far to go to visit friends, and thinking that it’s quite close and should go more often. But the GPS took us through the city, which isn’t ever that fun, so today Virginia felt very far away.)
6:30pm friend’s house –> home (35 mins – GPS took us home via the beltway. There must have some bad traffic on the beltway earlier in the day.)

Sunday
8:50am – home –> Agility Center for kid #3’s Agility Class (15 mins)
9:15am – Agility Center –> Grocery Store (5 mins). I usually stay and do some work on my laptop during agility class, but this was the only window for picking up some groceries this day. Around here, Sunday evening produce is pretty sad, so better to go earlier. I don’t like leaving because I’m worried I’ll lose track of time or that my kid will need me. But I set an alarm for 30 mins and just went for it.
9:38am – Grocery –> Back to Agility Center (5 mins) in time to see the 4 year old do some seat drops on the trampoline.
10:00am – Agility Center –> Home (15 mins)
10:55am Home –> Ice Rink with Kids #2 and #2 for Skating Lessons. (12 mins)
11:30am Skating laps while the kids are in lessons. Not really travel related, but I was moving.
12:50pm Ice Rink –> work (25 mins)
1:20pm work –> Farmer’s Market to pick up something for lunch (yogurt drink and empanadas) and apples and carrots. (walking – 5 mins, then 10 min stroll around the market)
1:35pm Farmer’s Market –> Work (5 mins)
6:00pm Work –>Home (15 mins)

Some thoughts on the week:
-I spent 8.5 hours in a car this week. That seems like a lot – that’s almost 20% of my week. And it will be more when we are at the theatre because that commute is closer to 30 mins.
-it was pretty typical for a working week in that most of it was the quadrangle of home to school bus drop off to work to home.
-I don’t really have a “third place”. I don’t know if I really have time for a third place.
-Wednesdays are exhausting, and there was more going on this Wednesday than normal. But I think between me and the Husband who worked from home with the kids that day, he definitely had the more exhausting day.
-One of the longest time in the car was taking the 12 year old to voice lessons 25-30 minutes away. Some days this is more like 35 mins. I really like this voice teacher and I think she is teaching the 12 year old good things (like how to keep time by conducting – I wish someone had taught me conducting patterns when I was starting out as a musician.), but I do wish the teacher lived closer.
-The grocery run was a little atypical. I don’t tend to run errands or do shopping when I’m working. Sometimes if I’ll pick up groceries on the way home if I need to, but mostly the Husband does the grocery shopping.
-getting off work at 6:45/7:00pm is annoying because it is too late to join the family for dinner or do anything after work, but is still close enough to bedtime that I’m tired when I get home. Also getting off at 7:00pm means going in around 11am or noon, and I don’t think I always make good use of that extra morning time. But maybe I should re-evaluate things and have a list of mini tasks I can do when I have that extra hour in the morning.

Anyhow – other things this week:

My watercolour homework, on the tea pot theme – I painted this sort of from a picture. I think the teacup turned out better than the teapot – the handle of the teapot is not quite right, but I think I got better by the time I did the teacup. Here’s the original sketch:

Here’s the painting – I’ve learned that a lighter hand is better with watercolours.

In class, we painted landscapes:

Last week was my last watercolour class. I’ve really enjoyed the class and the weekly assignments. There is one more class next week, but I have to be in rehearsals at that time, so I will have to miss it.

The Eclipse – I was a little “meh” about the eclipse going into the week. I guess I never really registered that it was happening so I didn’t get excited about it. But then I got to work and people were very excited – our general director did not give use the day off, but did say we should all step away from our desk to see it. So I went to the costume shop and asked if they had any shoeboxes and I used the shoe box and some tin foil and tape to make one of those viewers. And then around 3:00, a bunch of us trekked out to a park for a viewing. Our area was only in 87% totality, but it still got a little dark – there were points when I couldn’t tell if it was the eclipse that caused the world to go a little grey or if the sun just went behind some clouds. We all stood around, sharing glasses and chatting and it was a very nice break in the day. I was actually really excited that my shoebox viewer worked to show. Science!

Bare legs and just walking out the door! We had our first week of sunny and warm weather. So sunny and warm, it bordered on being summer. I’m not ready for summer, but the sunshine and clear skies is a good start. I left the house one day and looked down and realized that I was not wearing leggings under my dress, and the sensation of having my legs bare again was lovely. Plus… now that the weather had warmed up, it is “Walk out of the house without anything but your wallet and keys” weather. Just being able to walk out the door and not have to nag/wrangle kids into coats… well that just makes the mornings so much easier. This weekend I also rotated the winter coats into the closet and the raincoats onto the kids’ coat rack. Only then I realized that the kids still needed their winter coats for skating lessons and had to dig them back out.

Although… I was lulled by the warm sunny weather into leaving the house without a jacket on Sunday when we were going to the ice rink! And I tried to convince the 7 year old that he didn’t need me to skate with him, yet he insisted that I did. I was wearing a tank dress with a short sleeved shirt over it. It made for very cold skating. Let me tell you – it is a lot harder to balance while rubbing your arms for warmth.

Ants. Perhaps because of all the rain we’ve been having, there have been ants coming in and out of the house. The 4 year old has decided that the ants are her pets and she actually put food out for them in the yard. Not sure if this is problematic or not. There was one day, when she came up to me, oh so very very very excitedly , and she said with such joy, “My pets are in the dishwasher!!!” I was very confused but then I saw the ants crawling into the dishwasher, and I felt simultaneously charmed by the 4 year old’s reaction and also just… ick!

I am technologically challenged:
-Wednesday, I had back to back meetings at work, both of which I could just sit in on and not participate too much. The first one I dialed in from my phone because I had just got home from the 12 year old’s voice lesson. I started the call at home, got in the car, drove to work, then finished the call sitting at my desk. The second call, I logged on to my computer, opened up Teams, clicked on my calendar, then clicked on the link in the calendar for the meeting. The window popped up, then I minimized it so I could check email while waiting for all the participants to join. Well, the meeting got started and I went to click on Teams to maximize the window… and I couldn’t find the meeting. I could heard everyone talking, but I couldn’t figure out what I did with the window where the meeting was. I clicked on Teams again and again, closed some windows, moved other windows around… and the meeting still wouldn’t appear. It was like looking for my lost keys – move things aside in hopes of finding it, but no such luck. And now they were doing introductions and I was muted and I didn’t know how I was going to unmute and introduce myself if I couldn’t find the window where the call was taking place and I started to panic and spiral. And then… just in the nick of time I realized…. the meeting was on Zoom. Not Teams. Feeling like an idiot, I clicked over to my internet browser (because my work desktop is so old that I don’t have Zoom installed), and there everyone was. I unmuted myself just in time to introduce myself.

-Then I had to hook up my computer to a large tv monitor so that we could do a zoom presentation where the speakers would zoom in to a room of people. I was trying to figure out how to adjust the volume on the tv speakers and I couldn’t figure it out. There was no button visible on the monitor and whatever I was pressing on the remote just kept muting the sound. It was a universal remote and very sleek. Almost too sleek. I think the same could be said of the monitor. Everyone wants sleek aesthetics. Heaven forbid you put a button somewhere intuitive to find and operate!

I eventually had to google the remote to find directions. Turns out. the horizontal button by my thumb… you can toggle that up or down to control volume. Oh. My. Gosh. I didn’t even consider that as an option. Don’t buttons just get pushed?

Ethical dilemma – at the 7 year old’s soccer game, the 4 year old threw up in the grass. Not sure what is going on – some kind of virus – the 7 year old was actually sent home from school yesterday for vomiting on his chromebook. Well, because he vomited, not just because it was his chromebook. But then the teacher sent the chrome book home for us to wipe down. I’m a little mystified by that because she had called building services to wipe down his desk – couldn’t they have also done his chrome book? I mean I don’t envy anyone having to clean up vomit, but as long as you’re there… Anyhow – back to the 4 year old and her vomit in the grass. I didn’t have the supplies to clean it up, so we gathered a bunch of leaves and mulch and covered it up. And then I told the parents coming for the next game so they wouldn’t step in it. Though I went back and forth on telling the other parents because one the one hand I was kind of embarrassed that my kid puked on the field and maybe running into icky things out in the wild is par for the course and we did heap leaves on it. But it’s VOMIT. Wait, now that I type that out, I see what a silly internal dilemma that was. OF COURSE you should tell someone if they are about to step in vomit. Wow, where’s my moral compass?

Grateful For:
-My bike for being good form of exercising and commuting all in one. I love things that do more than one thing.

-My car. Because it rained on Thursday and Friday so I couldn’t bike to work. But I could still drive.

-Wifi at the Agility Center. Waiting for kids to get done with classes or activities can feel like a time suck. I’m always trying to figure out how to be productive with those 30-60 minute chunks of time while I wait. Sometimes I will go for a short run, sometimes I’ll read or journal. For those times, though, when I’m coming up on a deadline and need to get some work done, I am grateful for parent waiting rooms with wifi.

-Cozy, cuddly evening in. I’m about to start working A LOT of evening rehearsals so have been savoring the evenings at home watching Bad Batch with the kids. Whenever we can and the laundry cycle lines up, we like to all wear our matching flannel lounge pants that we had gotten in Vermont two years ago:

– Blossoms that are beautiful and oh so fragrant. One my walk during the 10 year old’s piano lesson, I walked past this bush and the smell was so sweetly floral. I’m grateful that I can enjoy smelling the flowers – literally, and, I suppose figuratively.

Looking Forward To:
-Starting rehearsals. We’re at the point where there are many questions and we just have to start rehearsal to answer them.

-Voice recital this coming week for which I am doing supertitles. It’s my last voice recital for the season – well, there’s one more recital, but I can’t work that date, so for that one I’m just creating the translation slides and marking the music and then I’ll pass it along to someone else to go on the day of the concert to run the slides. (I don’t actually do the translations – the singer are supposed to provide that.) I’m looking forward to this concert – there is a world premiere song cycle and lots of Argentinian music and a bandeneon!

-Started this book as part of Mother/Daughter book club. The 12 year old really liked this book and gave it to me to read. It’s by the same author as Dial A for Aunties, which I thought was a fun, if slightly ridiculous book. This book seems a little dark. Not quite sure where it’s going.

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What We Ate: I did not make it home for dinner any night this week, so we did some very strict meal planning, and I think it was a good dinner week – no desperation dinners, yet lots of pantry meals.

Monday: Butter Chicken in Instant Pot from the internet famous Butter Chicken Lady.

Tuesday: The Husband cooked – pasta, shrimp, and alfredo sauce.

Wednesday: Black Bean Chili from Smitten Kitchen’s Keepers. I thought this had a really interesting method where you roast (or broil) poblanos, garlic, and onions until charred, chop it (in a food processor) and use that as the chili base. It was pretty tasty. Vegan.

Thursday: Bahn Mi bowls (sort of this recipe, but we eat it over noodles) with tofu ground “meat”. This is in our regular rotation. It’s pretty quick and very flavorful- I made the tofu ground “meat” and chopped the vegetables ahead of time. The husband made the noodles, and sauteed the tofu to reheat for dinner.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and movie night. I was working so missed out. Apparently the Husband tried to show the kids the Batman movie with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, but the kids deemed it too scary. Then he showed them Raising Arizona, which I don’t know that the Cohen brothers ever made a family friendly movie, so that was kind of a bust too and they ended up watching an episode of Bad Batch.

Saturday: Went to friend’s house to grill out. Our first grilling of the season! We had burgers, asparagus, salad, and potatoes salad (a very tasty version mad with dill and mustard rather than mayonaise). For dessert we brought an assortment of Hostess snack cakes – for some reason we were feeling nostalgic and went to the store and bought all the Hostess snack cakes we could find – twinkies, sno balls, ho hos, cupcakes. It was a fun exercise. Also – she had just come back from Texas with a 10 lb bag of pecans and taught me how to crack pecans together to get to the meat. A new skill for me! How cozy do the pecans look, all nestled in their shell!

Sunday: I worked so I had leftovers from the fridge when I got home. The Husband made dumplings and green beans for dinner for everyone else.

I saw this sign at my friend’s house this week, and it made me laugh, so I took a picture and sent it to my Husband, with the appropriate edits. Tell me what made you laugh this week?

Weekly recap + what we ate: A week of theatre

I’ve been knee deep the previous few weeks in getting ready for our Sprig Break trip, but here are some random going’s on in this neck of the woods….

Through some coincidence, a few weeks ago was quite a theatre filled week.

Saturday, I went to the opening night of the show the Opera was putting on. I had seen the dress rehearsal, but then I got an invite to the opening night party and thought it might be fun to see the show again and then go to the party. However, I didn’t have anything to wear to a semi-fancy shindig. The past couple of opening night parties that I’ve been invited to, I’ve always been working, so I’ve gone to the parties in the black clothes that I wore to run the show. Nothing fancy, but I think people understand that I was coming straight from working the show, so it was okay. But this was different because I got to go to the show and then was coming to the party, so I felt like I did have to get somewhat dressed up and it had been aaaaages since I had done that. I think last time I had to get dressed up, I had a Rent the Runway subscription and found something that way. Also last time I was six months pregnant and hadn’t told anyone at work, so there was that added layer of finding the right dress And I feel like my body is very different from back then, even when I was six months pregnant.

I ordered a bunch of dresses off Amazon – did you know that Amazon has a partnership with Rent the Runway and sell their dresses? So I ordered some. But they hadn’t arrived by Saturday morning, and I was starting to get a little nervous. Then I realized the 4 year old had been invited to a birthday party at a play space in the mall. I emailed the host, “So…. is this a drop off party?”

Side note – I think this might be a statement of the evolution of my (lack of) parenting concern. There was no way eight years ago when my oldest was 4 that I would have left her at a drop off party at a hugely public place like the mall. I think even at someone’s house, I still would have thought twice unless I knew the parents really well. But with my current third child 4 year old… drop off parties are golden to me. You want to take my child for two hours? Please and thank you!

So I dropped of the 4 year old at the party and then took myself to Macy’s where I tried on a couple of things, got discouraged and sad and then I found something that wasn’t terrible – it was flowy and light, but even though it was a fun print, it was black and grey, colours I usually avoid. I wear so much black for work, I try not to wear it in life. So I was about to get the just okay dress, when I walked by a rack and my eye was caught by a bright red dress. I love red. It’s my favorite colour to wear, so I was immediately smitten. Only when I looked more closely, the dress turned out to be a jumpsuit. And I’ve always said that I’m not a jumpsuit person. How do I even pee in it?!? And I put the jumpsuit back. Then took another lap and came back to the jumpsuit and thought, “Okay, I’ll just try it on to see.” And it turned out to look kind of cute and I loved the colour, so I put aside my fears of not being able to pee quickly when I need to and bought the jumpsuit dress and hoped that I had an appropriate bra to wear with it.

Well, when I got home, I found that all the dresses I had bought from Amazon had arrived after all, so I tried them on, and I realize that my middle region is not longer ideal for comfortably wearing cocktail attire – or maybe it still is, only I would have to redefine my idea of “comfortable” to include sucking in my stomach constantly. But I go to opening night parties in large part for the free fancy food, so sucking in my gut was not going to solve anything. So even though I thought some of the dresses stunning, I decided to send them all back and wear the red jumpsuit. I paired it with my blazer, a purple scarf around the waist to give some shape, and the one pair of heels I own, which are super comfy until you take them off and then you realize that, no, actually, they weren’t that comfortable to begin with.

Anyhow, the show was delightful, the party afterwards was lovely and I got to ride hime with my work BFF, which is always nice because when we are in production, I sometimes don’t get to see her much since we work in different (though adjacent) departments.

The next day, was a) daylights savings, b) a family trip to see the high school production of Beauty and the Beast, and c) the Oscars. Daylight saving certainly crept up on me- I got hime after midnight from the opening night party and as I was puttering around pre-bed, it hit me- “Oh nuts! I have to set the clocks forward!” Then forgot and the next morning realized at 7:45 that it was actually 8:45 and we were going to be late for agility class (me and the 4 year old) and church (the Husband and the other two kids.).

Beauty and the Beast at the local high school was the second theatre excursion for me that week. This time, the whole family went, even the little kids. When I was growing up, our high school did not do musicals, so I’m kind of new to the whole “high school musical” thing. I didn’t know what to expect, and tried to go in with no expectations. It ended up being a really great time. There was low level theatre magic, a cast of many many many enthusiastic teenagers, and some very talented ones. There were body mics and follow spots and a full orchestra in the pit. What a huge undertaking! I’ll definitely be going to more in the future. I sometimes feel that I’ve spoiled my kids by taking them to a fair bit of professional theatre and opera, and lately I’ve been thinking that we should go to different levels of theatre so that they get a sense of the full breadth of theatre and know that it doesn’t have to be Broadway to be worth seeing. Sure a high school production is not going to be as flashy or polished as a professional show, but there is, I think, just as much value in theatre as a community activity. There is something really special about how theatre can build a community of makers and and those who participate and support them as the audience.

The third show I saw in the week was the touring production of Sondheim’s Company – his musical about a perpetually s8ngle New Yorker and his married friends. I had gotten tickets a few weeks before and lined up a sitter so that the Hsuband and I could go. I had been on the fence about going but then a friend of mine texted and said, “If you have a chance to go, the sets and scene shifts are worth it.” So I got tickets.

Only the day of the show, our sitter never showed up. She was supposed to come at 6:30pm, and we waited until 7pm. (In retrospect, I hope she is okay… I should check in with her. We’ve used her several times before, and she isn’t always prompt, but 30 minutes late is kind of a lot. The whole things is kind of discouraging; we have had terrible luck with sitters, and as much as I would love to have a date night once in a while, it has proven very difficult to find a reliable sitter. Well, next year the oldest child can legally babysit so maybe that will help solve things a little.)

Anyhow, at 7pm, it was decided that I should take the 12 year old and the Husband would stay home with the other kids. Not the evening of theatre that I had planned, but it would have to do. I had qualms about whether or not the show was appropriate for a 12 year old, but I figured she would understand it or not and we could talk about it. Or not. So we jumped in the car and raced down to the theatre, only missing the first five minutes of the show.

The show was quite well done, and my friend was right, it was technically very fluid. This production of Company does some gender switching so that the lead is now female instead of male – Bobbie instead of Bobby. Some of the gender switching worked for me and some of it didn’t quite. “Getting Married Today” was brilliantly funny. “Another Hundred People” had so much energy and momentum. “You Could Drive Personal Crazy”, in the other hand, didn’t quite work for me- it just felt like a campy musical number and none of these men seemed like they would really date Bobbie.

I think my biggest issue with this production, and maybe actually with Company in general, is that Bobbie/Bobbie is not a very interesting character. I know the show is a series of vignettes about single life, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care whether or not Bobbie found her way. And maybe this is also where I am in life right now- I remember seeing Company when I was in my 20s and the story spoke to me a lot more. But watching the perpetually and willfully single now is just not as appealing. I feel like I’ve lived through that, and it’s just a hair stressful to watch it onstage. So upshot for me: entertaining, love the music, but dramatically a little “meh”.

When I asked the 12 year old what she thought of the show, she said, “I like opera more. At least with opera there is a dramatic story.” I thought that was a hilarious observation.

Drawing class– colored pencils, (Also side note – when I was growing up in Canada, we called these pencil crayons, but in Marica they are called colored pencils and no one knows what I’m talking about when I say pencil crayons).

This flower painting is the first homework assignment and it featuresa variety of colored pencil techniques. One of my favorite techniques, which proves quite tricky is shaving pencil lead onto wet paper to create the “sparkle” at the top of the flowers, I think it would be cooler if I could distribute the shavings better rather than it clumping like it did in the picture.

The second homework assignment was apples on a branch:. I’m actually really pleased with how the leaves turned out. I think the more I do this, the better I get at drawing what things look like rather than what I think it should be, breaking visual elements down into lines and spaces rather than just drawing a “leaf”. The details of the apple could be better- the one on the right is a little too round. Still, I do love how colored pencils make it easy to blend all the different apple colors.

And then- here is the in class assignment. I didn’t finish it in class, but I thought it is fun to see the difference between the apples that are painted watercolor pencil (the apples in front) and those that are just watercolor pencil that I didn’t have a chance to paint yet (those in back). I still have to add in the background and finish the detail on the table too.

Other lovely things:

Board game night with the family. We played Ticket to Ride and for the first time, no one knocked the trains askew or stole trains to play with. it was a really lovely night. I did win, but it was pretty nerve wracking for a minute – I had to build Seattle to New York, and wasn’t sure if I was going to make it…

-We have traded our Saturday mornings on the basketball court for Saturday mornings one the soccer field as one kids’ season ends and another kid’s season begins. During the first soccer game, I challenged my 12 year old to go running with me while the 7 year old had practice. To my surprise, she said yes. Two bribes, though – a) I had to let her listen to something or her own choosing, each of us taking one AirPod, and b) a special treat, so we stopped at a coffee shop on our run. We managed about 1.5 miles together, most of it not at all fast, but hey, I got my tween to come running with me, so that’s a win either way.

– I parallel parked my car on the first try! That made me ridiculously happy. It usually takes me an embarrassingly long time wiggling back and forth to make it. okay, the space was a good size, but still!

– The 12 year old was the Mystery Reader at the 4 year old’s classroom. She did an amazing job- engaged with the kids, and told them to sit down when they got too close. The four year old’s teacher asked if the school could hire the 12 year old because she was so good with kids.

– A satisfying purchase– this three month calendar.

We have a calendar in our dining room already, but I wanted something with a more long term view. Most of the three month calendars I found on Amazon only came in quarter years and I couldn’t tell if you had to re-write each month as you move it up the chain. I finally found this one and the brilliant thing about it is that each month is movable, so at the end of the month, you just pull it from it’s current coil and put it on the coil one slot up. Plus it has lines for writing, definitely pricier than the other options, but so much more functional.

But also- much as I love the new calendar, it makes me panic a little because when I can see the year three months at a time, it reminds me that May/summer is pretty close.

–PEAK BLOOM!!!!!! Okay, this is actually a few days before peak bloom, but I had to be downtown for a meeting so I decided to go in early and go for a run by the Tidal Basin. I really wanted to make a trip to the cherry blossoms happen this year because 150 or so of the trees will be chopped down this coming year so they can repair the retaining wall for the Tidal Basin. Makes me sad, but it seems a necessary safety issue. Anyhow, it was a short visit, but still stunning:

Grateful for:

-Evening light. The mornings have been a little rough, but how I love that the sun sets later. There is natural light in our dining room for dinner, there is light for walks after dinner, there is light to go to the park after the school bus gets in.

– Along those lines, I’m grateful that the 12 year old’s basketball workout is walking distance from home. It makes it an easy excuse for an evening walks.

– also along those lines, I’m grateful yfor neighborhood parks. We live within a 15 minute walk of three parks and now that there is more daylight, they have become an impromptu gathering spot. We will often run into families we know there and it just feels like one of the first signs of spring, all these people emerging from hibernation to gather at playgrounds again,

– and one more thing (I guess all my gratitudes this week are centered around the weather/time change) I’m grateful for the back patio and being able to eat outside. We have a couple month’s window when we can eat outside before the mosquitoes get fierce, and right now is the time. I love eating outside – it just makes a meal seem more like an intentional event.

– vegetables from our neighbor. our next door neighbor works at a Farmer’s market and periodically he will just drop off a bunch of vegetables for us. Thanks to him we were able to have some pretty vegetable heavy meals.

Looking forward to:

– new suitcases. My old suitcase was probably twenty yesrs old and the wheels had fallen apart, so I ordered two new suitcases to try out. I’m still on the fence as to carry on backpack vs. rolling suitcase, but I think this next trip is a rolling suitcase trip, so we’ll go with that. The little ones wear super excited by the box that the suitcases arrived in

-Spring break trip to see my brother. (We might already be there, actually… details to come,)

– going back to work on a show. I miss being in rehearsal and having structure to my days…

What we ate:

Sunday: snacks and leftovers. The 12 year old had swimming and it was Oscar night, so we kind of all just fended for ourselves. Some kids might have had popcorn for dinner,

Monday: tofu broccoli stir fry

Tuesday: my notes on this day are hazy. It says leftovers.

Wednesday: Kale paneer, from Meers Sodha’s East. With homemade paneer. I always thing it is too much work to make my own paneer than when is done it, I realize it is really simple and much easier than finding it in the store.

Thursday: sheet pan chicken and potatoes. I don’t cook meat as often as the kids would like, so I decided that since I was going to leave them with a sitter this evening, I would make them a chicken dinner. Well, this was the night the sitter didn’t show up…

Friday: pizza (take out) and the first Avengers movie.

Saturday: pan fried fish and green beans – the husband cooked.

Sunday: pasta salad with marinated beans. Jenny Rosenstrach’s marinated beans are amazing, it’s a quick and flavorful protein that can be eaten alone or added to salads or grains. I used them this night as the base for a pasta salad. Quick vegan pantry meal.

Monday: Eggplsnt stir fry- the Husband cooked. It had a tasty spicy gochujang sauce.

Tuesday: chicken curry in the Instant Pot, cucumber raita on the sideWe had a friend over for dinner and this was an easy, homey make-ahead meal.

Wednesday: Chicken curry leftovers, with eggs added. Egg curry was one of our favorite new meals last year and it worked really well to add boiled eggs to Tuesday’s chicken curry.

Thursday: Leftovers since we are trying to eat down the fridge.

Friday: tacos at my brother’s house in Berkeley!

Weekly recap + what we ate: Jane Eyre, Into the Fire and mild obsessions

So I spent the better part of the previous weekend before in bed. I had something, not sure what. A chest rattling cough, aches, general tiredness. At first I chalked it up to a lack of sleep, but I think I was more than that and I ended up taking to bed for most of Saturday.

The Husband will tell anyone that I am a terrible patient, I get restless and bored and can’t stay in bed. I try to get up and do things when I should be resting. I can’t just veg on the couch and binge watch something because I need to rest without my glasses on.

So in an attempt to make lying in bed less tedious, I decided to listen to cast albums of musicals which were new to me. I figured there would be music and a narrative that I could somewhat follow if I wanted and that could be a good combination of engaging /not engaging to keep me from bed tedium. I started by listened to How To Dance in Ohio – there was a recent New York Times article of recent musical cast albums of note and this was on the list. How to Dance in Ohio is a musical based on a documentary about a group of autistic young adults getting ready for a spring formal. The musical got a lot of attention for, in addition to other things, casting autistic individuals in the lead roles. It’s a poppy, heart felt musical.

Next, I put on Ride the Cyclone, a musical about a high school choir that dies in a roller coaster accident and they are given the opportunity to audition for a chance to come back to life. This one was dark, man. Very very dark.

For something completely different, I turned to the musical version of Jane Eyre, which debuted on Broadway in 2000. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and I’m always interested in versions of it. This is a musical in the vein of the musical of the 1990s – romantic, dark, emotional period pieces. Things that are unfashionable in a musical these days. Jane Eyre I found not as tuneful as some musicals and some dreadful liberties were taken with the story. Also – and perhaps this is just the nature of the source material – but it seems like all the good music goes to Mr. Rochester, all the tortured, soul bearing solos. And once in a while, I found myself thinking, “Well, yes, but what about Jane???”

Anyhow – slight tangent – that sent me down a rabbit hole with all the various film adaptations of Jane Eyre and watching clips of them on YouTube. I’ve seen most of the recent ones. Here’s my take:

Jane Eyre on screen: Clockwise from top: 1983, 1997, 1996, 2011, National Theatre Adaptation and 2006

– 1983 BBC miniseries with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke. I think this adaptation included everything. Maybe? I saw this in high school so my memory is fuzzy. It was quite long and looked like it had all been shot on a soundstage. Timothy Dalton did ALOT of scenery chewing, I do remember that.

– 1997 TV movie with Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds. This version took many liberties with the book, which I guess you have to when condensing the book into a two hour movie, but still… why add needless action and out of character scenes? Some if it just didn’t feel in the spirit of the book. Not my favorite Rochester – I’ve loved Hinds in other things (the 1996 Persuasion, for example), but he was just too blustery and uncharismatic in this. Morton was fine as Jane. Honestly, I find that I love the character of Jane so much it’s hard to play her terribly – the source material is just really good. Sure one just has to be plain and mousy and passive for much of the movie, and as long as one hits the notes of ferocity in the right moments, one pretty much gets a passable version the character.

– 1996 movie with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt. I saw this in the movie theatre when it came out – I was in high school. What an odd odd pairing. William Hurt was much too old to be Rochester. I’m realizing that Rochester, while 20 years older than Jane is actually only in his later 30s, which, now that I’ve crossed into my 40s, seems much younger than it seemed to me when I first read the book as a teenager. So. William Hurt’s older and weary Rochester was perhaps a little too old and weary for me. Charlotte Gainsbourg was fine as Jane. This movie did also have the virtue of having Anna Paquin as young Jane.

-2006 mini series with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens – Ruth Wilson is my favorite Jane. There is something slightly off kilter about her Jane, and she found the humor in the character too. I think this Jane/Rochester pairing had the best chemistry – you could really sense that these two could be happy together for the rest of their lives. I could do without all that hair on Toby Stephens, though. I thought this was a very thorough adaptation – I need to re-watch it because I remember liking it very much.

-2011 film with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. Wasikowska is fine as Jane – she takes the outward calm and bland approach to Jane. Fassbender is my favorite Mr. Rochester – he has, I find, the right blend of humor and hope without being too gothic or grim or melodramatic, never mind that he is probably too good looking to play the part. But does any one every really believe that Jane is plain and Rochester homely looking?

-I have to say, though, my favorite adaptation is the National Theatre’s stage version of Jane Eyre. I watched it during the pandemic when it was made available to stream for free and I think it’s brilliant, as an adaptation, as a piece of theatre, as a piece of storytelling. The whole production takes places on a series of platforms and versatile group of eight (or six? can’t remember) playing all the parts, including the dog Pilot. There is something really visceral about this adaptation that I love. We all think of Jane as this really calm and collected and internal character, but somehow onstage, she can be just as histrionic as Rochester and it works.

After I worked through my Jane Eyre obsession, the next soundtrack I put on was The Scarlet Pimpernel, a 1997 Frank Wildhorn musical, based on the book about a bunch of English noblemen who, during the Reign of Terror in France, band together to save French aristocrats from the guillotine.

The musical got three different revisions on Broadway – so I feel like either it was amazing or amazingly bad. I’m in the camp of amazing. But it was also panned quite badly by the critics, so I’m probably wrong. I’ll never get to see it, so I’ll never know for sure. When I was in college, I remember watching on tv the Scarlet Pimpernel company perform the musical number Into the Fire on the Tony Awards and I was so very taken by Douglas Sills, who played the lead Sir Percy Blakeney. Into the Fire is the number where Percy persuades his friends that they must go to France and save the aristocrats, and if you ever need a hearth thumping inspirational “St. Crispin’s Day” speech type of musical number, this is it. Anyhow, the first time I saw this number on the Tony Awards broadcast, I was immediately smitten by Douglas Sills and the heartbreakingly enthusiastic optimism with which he led this ensemble. I remember thinking he was the most beautiful man on earth. You should go watch it.

There’s something about revisiting the obsessions of one’s youth and the way it can take you back. Sometimes I watch things that I loved twenty years before, and say to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe I liked that!” or, more accurately, “Wow, twenty year old me had terrible taste!” (I think Phantom of the Opera is like that – I still love all it’s schlocky melodrama, but I don’t think it’s as objectively good as I thought it was when I was younger.) And sometimes I’m like, “Wow, that still packs a punch!” Into the Fire is definitely the latter and I’ve been finding myself newly obsessed by the whole musical recently. I will admit that the soundtrack itself has a few too many “Love is miserable” type power ballads for my taste, but they are sung with heart and a certain lack of irony that is hard to find these days. And the bigger ensemble numbers are nimble and clever. It’s been fun re-discovering this piece and I’ve been listening to it on repeat and scouring the internet for YouTube for clips and articles and interviews about the production- I would say it’s been 95% of my Google searches the past week. It just has such a fascinating creation story – how it was written and re-written and re-written and how it launched Sills’ career, and how critics hated it. Every so often I get very fixated on something and go on a Google bender. I’ve even set Into the Fire as the alarm for the kids to get dressed in the morning. At 7:57, the first strains of Into the Fire plays and the two little kids – the oldest one has gone to school by then – go get dressed. And they know they have until the end of the number to emerge fully dressed from their room. It’s worked shockingly well this past week.

The other thing my recent obsession with Scarlet Pimpernel made me think about, as I dredged up pirated videos on YouTube is that I will probably never get to see this musical live. And certainly never with the dashing Douglas Sills in the lead. And that makes me a little sad, because it reminds me how ephemeral theatre and live performance is. This thing that I do for a living, what is the value if it doesn’t give people something they can bottle or hold on to or replay whenever they want? We create moments to savor, moments that you live in and then are left to remember rather than relive. Even when I watch grainy footage of musical numbers, I am very much aware that that was corner of time that I was not there for, and all I can have is this four minute shaky video clip on YouTube. And even thought that moment was captured on video, it kind of exists as a relic, not as the piece itself. It’s very different from a movie that was created, yes of moments that were filmed, but a movie is created to be frozen in time. Theatre is just not like that. Watching a video of a theatrical performance makes me very aware of how I will never get to experience that performance, that moment of theatre live. It’s a little sad, but also makes me realize how, whether I’m working backstage on a show or seeing it from out front, I am grateful to be part of that story that is being told that night and the people who are telling it. I guess this is also true of a lot of things in life…

Other things:
Watercolor homework – poppies. I feel like it’s a little unrefined and almost cartoonish. I still haven’t gotten a hold on how to blend colours seamlessly. Also part of the assignment was to paint the background first, and then paint the poppy over it, and I’m not really happy with how you can see the background through the poppies. But… the texture in the grass was done with a cool technique where you sprinkle salt on the paint while wet and as the salt dissolves in the paint, it creates cool swirls of colour. This is probably stuff that you learn to do in elementary school, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Then this week we are working on working with watercolor pencils, which is fun. Here was what we did in class, experimenting with the different ways one can use water color pencils.

Lunch Hack of the week:
One day, I asked the four year old what she wanted for lunch. And she said “Chicken!” So I stuck a Costco size package of chicken wings into the InstantPot with a bit of Cajun seasoning and made a week’s worth of chicken wings. Batch cooking has made for really easy lunch packing – a couple of chicken wings thrown into their lunch box, half an apple sliced up, cucumber slices, and two Oreos. I’m sure I’m breaking all sorts of food safety rules by having the cooked chicken sit in the fridge all week and having the kids eat it, but no one’s gotten sick yet…

I’ve also been on a muffin making kick lately. The biggest hits are Morning Glory muffins from the King Arthur Flour Baking Book and these chocolate muffins made with applesauce. The four year old has been wanting chocolate muffins, but most of the recipes I saw were too cake-like for me. I don’t know if these are necessarily any healthier, but the apple sauce gives it a firmer texture. The kids gobble them up. One day, I came home to find that of the 24 mini chocolate muffins and 12 morning glory muffins I made, all that was left were two mini muffins and 1 morning glory muffin with a bite taken out of it. It was so sad, I took a picture for my Husband. He told me it was too sad and not blog-worthy. So I’m sticking the picture here, just to prove him wrong:

Okay – traumatic experience of the week – My friend was showing me around her house, which they have been doing major renovations to. We walked through all the finished parts and oohed and ahhed over how great everything looked. And then she took me to her upstairs bathroom which was being gutted and renovated. It had been torn down to the studs, including the floor. It was just crossbeams and the floor beneath. Which was actually the ceiling of the kitchen below. Then her cat ran into the gutted bathroom, and my friend stepped into the bathroom to get the cat out and, stepping onto what seemed like solid floor, but was really only dry wall of the ceiling below, and her foot plunged through that drywall, the cat fell through the hole that her foot made, into the kitchen below, and then the rest of my friend plunged through the hole, only saved from falling all the way through by catching herself by the armpits on the crossbeams. OMG, I thought my friend was going to plunge to her death right in front of me. And the whole time she was saying, “Is the cat okay?” I quickly reached down and helped haul her back up and out of the bathroom and we decided that the door to the bathroom could stay shut. I always thing of houses as VERY SOLID things, but once in a while, I realize that they are actually quite vulnerable feats of engineering and craftsmanship. Like when you realize all that’s between you and the room below is couple of crossbeams and a piece of drywall.

Grateful for:
-That my friend did not seriously hurt herself – or her cat – when they plunged through the ceiling.

-The lady at watercolor class who came over to me at the beginning of class and said, “I noticed that you had the expensive watercolour paper, and I was wondering if you wanted this extra pad I had of the not so expensive stuff so that you don’t have to use up all your good paper?” I was so touched! When I originally went to the art store, they only had the expensive stuff – I mean it’s not the “so expensive I don’t want to use it” kind, but it was definitely better than the “buy it in a 30 sheet pad from Michael’s” pad that the teacher had recommended we get. The lady at class had accidentally bulk ordered the basic 30-sheet pad, so she had extra. Then she said, somewhat darkly, “It’s more paper than I’ll be able to use, given my age.” Which was also kind of touching and frank.

-Apple Music. I mean I pay for it, but to have all this music at my fingertips is amazing, especially since the last time I was really into listening to music, it involved expensive purchases and lugging three binders of CDs around with me.

-That running doesn’t hurt. I don’t think I will ever like running. But it’s good for me and I do feel better afterwards, so I will try to keep running a few times a week. I only started running the year that I turned 42, so I’m pretty new at it and it’s not terribly easy for me. I get tired and hot and bored and can’t catch my breath. Lately, though, I’ve noticed that mile 2 does not feel as impossibly hard as it did two years ago. Last week, I managed to run three miles on two of my runs – I don’t usually get that far, but I got to 2.5 miles on both runs and felt like, “Okay, I think I can just do that extra half mile.” I know 3 miles is kind of paltry to a lot of serious runners, but to me, it feels like a reach goal on an average Wednesday afternoon. But it’s getting easier to go that far, and I’m grateful.

-That the two younger kids don’t have cavities. Yay! The kids had their semi-annual cleanings, and after the ordeal of all the crowns earlier this year, I went into their dentist appointment on pins and needles, wondering if, despite all that, they still had issues. Apparently they have very grooved teeth. But thankfully, there are no cavities. The 7 year old might need to see an orthodontist at some point, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Looking Forward to:

-Cherry blossoms! Peak bloom will be during spring break, so I might not be able to see them, but I’m hoping to go down to the Tidal Basin next week and get my fill.

-Having a friend over for dinner. Sometimes I think I want to throw a dinner party and invite witty people and cook all the things, but I think I actually prefer just having one or two friends over at a time. It feels more low-key and easier to connect. I think I’ll make chicken curry.

-Going back to rehearsal in April. I’m ready for someone to hand me a schedule every day and to know where I have to be and what I have to do. It’s nice to have a lighter schedule, but I think I do better with more structure in my life.

What we ate:

Saturday: Pizza and Next Goal Wins. It was my movie night and I admit that I was in no small part prompted to pick this movie because it starred the above-mentioned Michael Fassbender. In addition to that, though, it’s great family friendly sports movie about the American Samoa soccer team, which was known as the worst soccer team in the world when it lost 30-0 to Australia in a World Cup qualifier match. Fassbender is the down on his luck coach who is tasked with getting the team to score just one goal in a game. It hits all the feel good predictable notes of a family friendly sports film.

Sunday: Pasta and red sauce. Basic, simple, and filling.

Monday: Black Pepper Asparagus and Tofu, eaten with rice. I had some asparagus in our produce box to use up. I would use more black pepper next time.

Tuesday: Chicken on the Run – Peruvian chicken take-out after the 7 year old’s sewing class. He is now making a pillow.

Wednesday: Mac and cheese and kielbasa and green beans.

Thursday: pizza and fries before the show. The husband and the two little kids had eggs and toast at home. I had tickets to the dress rehearsal of the operetta that my company was producing and I took the 12 year old, and a friend and my work BFF’s 11 year old and her friend. So that was me driving carpool with 4 pre-teens in the car and it was a fascinating experience. Preteens are so full of confidence and enthusiasm and bravado, even the quiet ones, and I had the curious experience of being invisible – a fly on the wall – driving them down to the theatre, privy to all sorts of conversations. It was such a strange experience.

Friday: pizza leftover from last Saturday, and salad and Galavant. Finished the series. Soooo sad! We are all really sad that there was never a third season of Galavant, even though they did end things on a little bit of a cliffhanger, so maybe we can hope? What ever will we watch next?

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Good-bye February 2024!

Our last weekend in February was delightfully filled by a visit from my high school friend. She arrived on Saturday mid afternoon and was with us until Monday when I drove her to her hotel where she would be staying for her conference. She’s the only friend from high school that I still keep in touch with, and even though we only see each other every couple of years, we always pick up where we left off. She has children a few years older than mine, and she has such a chill approach to parenting that it’s so soothing talking to her about kids and life and how things turn out. She also used to date my brother so there are things that she just gets about me, even when she doesn’t know the details of my life ant any given moment.

Before my friend came in on Saturday, the 12 year old had a voice lesson, and since the voice lesson was closer to the airport than our house, we decided to have a little adventure in the two hours between voice lesson and my friend’s arrival. (The 12 year old had a hang out with a friend, so she didn’t come along). I remembered that the Gardens at Dumbarton Oaks are free during the winter months, and I had always wanted to visit. It was about 15 minutes from where we were, so we drove down to Georgetown, parked our car, stopped for some coffee, and walked down Wisconsin Ave to Dumbarton Oaks.

So funny story – the only reason I know that Dumbarton Oaks exists is because Igor Stravinsky wrote a chamber symphony called Dumbarton Oaks, which was commissioned by Robert and Mildred Bliss, who used to own the estate. The estate is now a research institute, library, museum, and gardens. Ever since I heard the chamber symphony in college, I’ve wanted to visit Dumbarton Oaks. So finally, twenty plus years later, we went. It’s so funny what random bits of information I know because it has a connection to music.

The gardens were quite extensive and there was lots to see, even though it was still pretty dormant. We played our “Find the Rainbow Colors” game. Though we didn’t really find blue because the sky, which is often our default blue, was pretty grey and cloudy. But there were these cool green-ish blue rocks in the pebble garden, so I took a picture of those. And I can never find indigo…

The purple and yellow flowers always remind me of the passage in Braiding Sweetgrass where Robin Wall Kimmerer said she wanted to study botany to know why purple and yellow flowers always look so nice together. Turns out there is a scientific explanation for that – I can’t remember what, to be honest – but it’s always struck me, this idea of wanting to understand beauty.

We wandered the gardens until it was time to go pick up my friend. The rest of the weekend was pretty chill. I loved having a friend visit who didn’t feel the need to be a tourist, so we could hang out and not traipse all over the city. She just tagged along with us on our normal life things and we had great conversations and connections. Looking back, Sunday was a great day – it checked a lot of soul satisfying boxes:
-Connection – hanging out for 48 hours with my friend, including dinner at my favorite hot pot place.
-Exercise – we went skating together while the kids were in lessons. So not super strenuous, but we got our bodies moving for a good two hours.
-Creative – I had to finish my watercolour homework, so in the afternoon, I worked on that while my friend hung out and hemmed her pants. How wonderfully domestic does that sound?
-Outside time – We took the two little kids outside after I was done my homework and watched them while they rode their bikes around the block for an hour. Again, not as active as a hike, but still some quality sunshine and fresh air time.

I think the only box that didn’t get checked was some knocking some big household organization project off my list. But… you can’t do everything and the day overall had a nice leisurely pace. The Husband did do a lot of work in the garden, though, so maybe I can have him check off the “household task” box for us?

March is my last month at a reduced work schedule before I go back into opera mode. I feel like February wasn’t super focused. I was on an 8 hr a week contract at work so I could do some admin and stage management department duties, but I couldn’t get into a good rhythm of when to be at work. I wanted to be available for at least 30-60 mind a day to handle email and tasks, so then the questions became how to spend the other hours a week. I did take the weekends completely off, like didn’t-even-check-email-off, which was really nice. I did periodically have a sense of panic that I was shirking my job responsibilities, but then I had to remind myself that an 8 hour a week contract means I only have to work 8 hours a week. I wasn’t being paid to be constantly available, and there were certainly enough people at work that nothing depended on me alone. I ended up mostly working two three hour days – usually Wednesday and Thursday – and then splitting the other two hours between the other three days, working from home. But even though a three hour day sounds short, it breaks up the entire day in such a way that I felt like unless I was super focused – which I rarely was – I lost a lot of time in commuting and transitioning. I find transitioning between activities is when I loose the most time – it’s when I’m most likely to get distracted, start scrolling and then loose and hour or so. So then little tasks – especially little computer tasks – got dropped because the last thing I wanted to do after being on my computer for 3 hours at the office was to turn on the computer at home and pay the bills and do the kid sign ups, research how to get rid of my car, etc.

This week’s work from watercolor class:
First the homework from last week – the assignment was “sunsets”

Then the lesson was painting poppies. I didn’t love this one – I felt like it was a little un-refined. The lady who sits next to me in class makes such delicate paintings.

Anyhow, February 2024 is now past and we are onto March. I don’t always do a monthly reflection, but I did for February:
February highs:
– Starting water color classes.
-Getting back on my bike.
– Seeing the kids thrive in the activities we had signed them up for. I worried that it was going to be too much, but they truly love what they are doing – except piano, no one really loves to practice, though they say they want to learn to play…
– Hosting Super Bowl Sunday gathering with friends.
– Visit from my high school friend
– joining a women’s Lenten reading group. Having that connection, but also the daily readings, which somehow give me much to ponder even though I’m not Catholic like the others in the group.
-Making baozi. I want more cooking adventures!
-As a family, we made it to a museum, a hike and some gardens in February.
-The wonderful weather. Mostly.
-Watching Galavant with the kids. Only three more episodes to go! What should we watch next???
-The vocal recital that I did titles for. Such a beautiful program, beautifully sung.
-Lunches with the Husband. A good use of my lighter schedule.

February not so highs. (aka lows, but really, life is pretty good, so I don’t feel right calling them “lows” – they’re just life, the tedious, repetitive, papercut stresses of life. Or maybe I need a re-frame. Or more sleep.)
-Tantrums and chore cajoling. Ugh. When will this phase end? Though I ask that and my kids are all at different phases, so…. I guess never? When they move out? Also I realize chore cajoling could also refer to the pep talks I give to myself to stop scrolling and fold the laundry.
-Making little progress on some house chores, losing momentum and focus.
– The first grader and some communication issues with his teacher. Essentially he’s having accidents at school at least once or twice a month, either because his teacher wants him to finish his work first, or the teacher doesn’t realize he’s asking to go. I’m a little stumped by the whole thing. Also frustrated. Also trying to decide if it’s a problem because he doesn’t seem to mind…
-New duties at work that are surprisingly harder than I had thought they would be and not yet knowing how to make things better.
– Not finding/making time to journal and then not remembering or savoring the memories of what I’ve been doing with my days.
-Laundry. So much laundry.

Some aspirations for March:
-TAXES. This is the big one. If I do only one thing in March, it will be to assemble everything for our tax preparer. This is not an aspiration, but a MUST DO!!!!
– Figure out what to do with my car.
-Sort through summer camp sign ups. We registered for some second choice camps, but then first camp choice had slots open up, so I just have to take a minute to look at everything and sort it all out.
-Spring break adventures – getting through them.
-At work – some desk organization. I need to move desks – to the cubicle where the head of the stage management department usually sits, but I’ve been in my desk for over 15 years and I’m partial to it so this is proving psychologically difficult. Kind of like the car. Maybe I don’t need to move desks?
– Organizing a) my sewing corner, and b) the toy room.
– Lunch with my mom’s group.
-maintaining life habits – reading, yoga and exercise, journaling, writing here regularly, making 2 vegan dinners a week.
– sort out my county rec center pass, and actually using it. The County is once again giving all residents free passes to the rec centers this year. I want to get my pass so I can start using the gym and introduce some strength work to my life.
-continuing to find time for lunches with the Husband.
-Listening to more musicals. This is a fun one. I’ve been on a binge lately of those unironic big hearted musicals from the 90s – those musicals that were huge spectacles of stage and emotion. I’m currently obsessed with Frank Wildhorn and Nan Knighton’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. Up next, I think might be Titanic.
– Going to bed at a decent time. ie. before 11:30pm. Constant struggle.
-make some dentist and doctor appointments.
–maybe get a hair cut. I was realizing as I was writing in my 5 year journal that the last time I got my hair cut was this time last year. What?!?! I think I had a bit of sticker shock last time since my hairdresser had raised his prices. I’ve been with him for over ten years so I don’t know if I have it in me to find a new person. (Like my car and my desk at work….)

Grateful For:
-Sunny, warm weather. There have been some rainy days too, but the weather has been really mild. The hyacinths have come up along our front walk, and when I walk to the front door, their sweet peppery smell reminds me that it is early spring.

-Impulsive playdates and kids who can run free at the park without being watched. The kids had a half day of school on Friday, so I texted the mom of two of the 7 year old’s friends (they’re twins), and asked if they wanted to meet up at a park. They did and she invited two other kids from her bus stop to meet us there. We ended up spending two hours at the park. The kids ran around and did I don’t know what and I got to chat with the other moms. I don’t always find it easy to talk to other parents, but that wasn’t the case this time. We chatted about all sorts of things, and not just our kids, which is always nice.

-My friend at our bus stop who invited me to the Lenten Women’s Group. I think it’s always awkward to invite someone to something new, but especially something that is based in religion. So I’m glad my friend had the courage to ask me to join. It was nice to get out of the house and talk to other moms about their spiritual background and how they try to incorporate it into their lives. I kind of feel like a fraud since I wouldn’t call myself religious – Lent wasn’t a thing when I was growing up. But religion is important to the Husband and two of the three kids are Catholic, so I do want to understand how it makes up the fabric of our life and support that. I also really like thinking about the group readings. The book looks at Lent through the lens of the Seven Deadly Sins. We’ve covered gluttony and lust so far. The readings have made me really think about what it means to have enough and what to do with my energy rather constantly accumulating/wanting more.

-That I don’t have to be in tech. I stopped by the theatre a couple days last week since the show that we’re currently producing, but which I’m not working on, is in tech. I love my job. I love making the magic of theatre and music happen. But once in a while, it’s nice to just sit and watch tech happen and not have the pressure of having to be the one to make it all happen. I find it also good to sit and watch tech from the house sometimes, just to remind myself what it’s like out front. When I’m in tech, I have a headset on and I’m communicating with all the other stage managers and I’m talking to the crew, so I usually know what’s going on. Sometimes, I forget, though, that the people out front don’t necessarily have the same voices in their ear as I do and might not know what is happening backstage. So what to me backstage might seem like a frantic scramble to get, say, a prop ready to come out onstage while the singer onstage waits for it, is, to the people sitting in the house, sometimes… nothing happening. Watching the process without a headset is always a good reminder to make sure that the people without headsets know what is going on. Anyhow, as much as I love my job, I’m grateful that sometimes I don’t have to be part of that stress. (and also jealous because the show is super cute and fun.)

Looking Forward To:
-We booked a trip to Maine/Acadia for this summer. We got a National Parks Pass and I very much want to make sure we use it this year. We’ve had passes the past couple years (including a free one given to all 4th graders when the 12 year old was in 4th grade – it’s a great program!), but I don’t think I use it to it’s full capacity. We go to Great Falls and Shenandoah regularly because those are all close, but I’ve always felt like I want to do more. So this year we are going to Acadia. I’m looking forward to sunsets and hikes and lobster. (I don’t think we’ll be doing sunrise at Cadillac Mountain because of where our airbnb is located, but I think it would have been a hard sell for the kids. Another time…)

-Theatre trips! I have tickets to a couple shows coming up! Yay. The Husband and I are going to see Company, and the dress rehearsal/ Opening night for the next opera (which I’m not working on, so I’ll get to see it! Yay!). And then the local high school is putting on Beauty and the Beast and I think that will be fun to see too. I feel like it’s good to see the professional shows and the high school ones – for a sense of perspective.

-I have a contract for my summer gig and I am SO EXCITED! It’s an opera I worked on six year ago, an opera written in 2017 about the Christmas Eve truce of 1914 during World War I. The opera is just. so. beautiful – in my top 5 opera jobs ever. And it’s very rare one gets to do a contemporary opera more than once, so I’m super thrilled.

-Listening to this audiobook:

I saw this audiobook recommended on the site Five Books, and I really enjoyed Alexis Hall’s book Boyfriend Material, so I thought I’d give this one a try. I’m very much loving it – it’s an amnesia romance novel where the amnesia victim doesn’t really have amnesia. How’s that for flipping a trope on it’s head? Amnesia romances usually aren’t my thing, but this one’s pretty great. And the audiobook is pitch perfect; it’s like an audio version of my favorite British rom com in the vein of Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral. Fluffy and and warm and hilarious. I’ve laughed out loud so many times.

What We Ate:
Saturday: Chicken Ginger Scallion soup from Deb Perelmans’ Smitten Kitchen Keepers cookbook. This was a super easy soup, and I even make it with frozen chicken, just cooking it a bit longer. Nice pantry type meal. Everyone loved it. We didn’t watch a movie because my friend was visiting, but we did watch and episode of the new season of Bad Batch.

Sunday: We went out to Hot Pot with my friend. Our favorite place with a conveyor belt and a robot that delivers the food for you.

Monday: Chickpeas braised in tomatoes. This was leftover from the week before. I added some water and it was more of a soup than stew, but still tasty. We had it with bread. Vegan.

Tuesday: Beet burgers and tater tots. The beet burgers were this recipe from Post Punk Kitchen. We had beets to use up, so I tried this recipe. The burgers were really tasty, and pretty easy to assemble, though grating the beets did take a while and then because my food processor is small and only does 1.5 cups at a time chopping all the ingredients together took a couple of batches. If you had a bigger capacity food processor then these would be much faster to whip up. I highly recommend this as a veggie burger. The burgers also heat up really well, so I had them for lunches the rest of the week. vegan.

Wednesday: Take out Vietnamese – buns and noodle bowls. We had an afterschool playdate with a friend and her father brought dinner over afterwards. Tasty.

Thursday: Pork and tofu stir fry with udon noodles. The Husband cooked.

Friday: Pizza and Galavant.