work life balance – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Another Week in October.

The Husband took the kids camping with some friends this weekend. I had to work all weekend, or I would have gone as well. It makes me a little sad since I’ve only gone camping once this year.

Anyhow, it’s been a pretty run of the mill week. I get up in the morning, I make lunches, and breakfasts (if the Husband hasn’t already fed the kids), 10 mins of yoga sometimes, then school bus drop off, and work/rehearsal all day. Home (later than I want), and bed (also later than I ought.) There’s been some running (twice), and I even biked to work again this morning since I didn’t have to think about squeezing out a couple more minutes with the kids. AND I made it up the hill that takes me into the part of town I work in. Last week, I did not make it up that hill – I shifted slightly too late and it was game over. That hill is definitely tough though and I don’t know if it will ever get easier. Maybe there’s a baseline hard that the hill will always have? (Is this a metaphor for life?)

One of the joys for me of settling into fall is that it become cozy clothes weather, which I am fully embracing. I love the turn from hot weather to cool weather when I get to pull things out of my closet and say, “Hello, old friend! I’ve missed you! Let’s go out for a spin!” Flannel and corduroy and all the cozy knits. And I love being able to accessorize again. Summer dressing is so simple for me – usually it’s a dress, sometimes with a gauzy cover up, or a t-shirt layered. Fall dressing, though – bring out the cute boots, the colourful scarves, the jaunty hats! And my favorite Uniqlo puffer vest. I wear this sooooo much. It makes me wonder where the line is between a signature item and lazy dressing.

Someone at work called this outfit “hipster fall.” Not sure what that means. I’m not cool enough for the things people label me. (Also this picture – taken by the 11 year old – is terribly awkward, but I thought the outfit cute, so I’m sharing with the world.):

I love that skirt, though I accidentally put it through the dryer so the hem isn’t even anymore. I still wear it a lot. Those are the boots I bought to go to Amsterdam.

And a peek at this outfit – a corduroy dress I bought last spring and I’d forgotten I had since it hadn’t been corduroy dress weather. My grandmother’s knitted vest. My rain coat and lunch box – important things. And these fabulous blue boots that I had bought last spring when we went to Amsterdam, but which I hadn’t taken with me because they aren’t waterproof, but I thought they were too cute not to keep:

I do have a distinct lack of pants in my cooler weather wardrobe, so I have to do something about that. If I weren’t working, it wouldn’t be a problem, because I usually just wear dresses and leggings, but I do prefer to wear pants when I’m teching a show since I might be up and down stairs and ladders and what not.

Some things on my mind this week:

I follow many many sites via feedly, but two daily ones that I love are Diaries of Note and A Poem A Day (actually there are a couple daily poetry sites I follow). The former site features diary entries written on that day in history and it’s a wide range of people – artists, writers, scientist, thinkers… I love getting a glimpse into what one person was thinking on that day. Some days there are historical events lived through, and some days it the entry featured on the blog is quite quotidian – life, lunches, work. Reading other people’s diary entries also gives me inspiration to keep journaling. Not that I think my words will one day be published or given to the world, but rather reading other journal entries makes me realize that everyday is worth mentioning.

The variety of poetry sites that I get in my feed offer both classic and contemporary poems. I don’t read every day, but I find that whenever I need a quiet moment of stillness and I can’t calm my mind, sometimes reading a poem helps to focus my brain. A couple weeks ago, I read a poem that I liked and bookmarked it so that I could return to it. This poem, called A Man in His Life – opens with the lines:

A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

This poem is by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, who was new to me, and I loved how perfectly he captured that urgency of “two things are true,” a mantra that parenting guru Dr. Becky often offers up. It’s not precisely a temporal urgency, that Amichai writes of, but an emotional one – this acknowledgement of how complicated and messy life can be. “To laugh and cry with the same eyes…” how beautiful a thought is that? To give ourselves permission to feel all the feelings at one time.

I have since gone on a bit of an internet dive on Amichai, and especially in light of the war raging these past few weeks, though he died in 2000, his words seem like something to be carried close these days. Go read his poem, “Memorial Day for a War Dead” as you read the news. Heavy thoughts on human lives.

Continuing in the vein of reflection exercises I mentioned last week, which I learned from the podcast The Fix:
What Went Well: On the personal front – I ran three times and had one bike ride and did 10 minutes of yoga 6 out of 7 days last week. On the family front – I had one evening where I managed to get home in time to take the 11 year old to basketball, and then came home and practiced piano with the 6 year old for 20 minutes before going back to pick up the 11 year old. It was just one of those evenings that felt packed, but the time felt well used – sometimes empty pockets of time are needed, but sometimes they make me feel restless. It just felt good that I was able to take control of my schedule to do some of the parenting tasks because I know, with tech week coming up, I won’t be able to be as physically present for a few weeks, which is hard on everyone.
On the work front, we had a rehearsal where we went through the whole show and it felt really nice to know that, after two week of rehearsing in bits and bobs and out of order, there is indeed a whole show emerging.

What didn’t go so well: Some bad family scheduling this week. On a couple later nights, didn’t make it to pick up the 11 year old from a couple activities like I had hoped because I didn’t leave work on time. And then, I hadn’t tracked that the Husband was going on this camping trip this weekend – I knew it was happening, just not when – and I scheduled a night out with some friends I hadn’t seen in several years. The dinner was fun, but then I wasn’t home to help the Husband pack for camping, which, since I’m the one who does most of the camping, made things more difficult.

Also I’m a little behind in work. I’m still haven’t figured out the best way to balance of my added work responsibilities so I can devote time to the needs of the stage management team and also get my own stage manager work done.

What do I want to do differently: I need to go back to putting thing in my planner so I can see work and life in one place. I’ve been working purely off my work calendar these days, so I’m missing the big picture of life happenings. And the Husband and I missed our weekly check in and week overview – which is where we usually talk through these things and plan.

Grateful for:
-The support I have at work. I had to have some Big Stage Manager in Charge type conversations this week. I know it’s part of the job as the stage manager to have the awkward and sometimes difficult conversations, and being a little non-confrontational, it’s always hard for me. I admire the stage managers who can have conversations confidently and without hesitation. I struggle a little because I find that I can always see the arguments from every side, and I want all sides to be right. But sometimes what is right for one person is not what is right for the rehearsal room or the show. Which is all to say, I am grateful that I have the support structure at work that I feel like I can have these conversations.

-Being able to afford bi-weekly cleanings. I am not a neat person, but being forced to pick up around the house twice a month in anticipation of the house being cleaned is certainly good for me. And then there is something so calming about coming home to a house with a sheen of clean and fresh sheets. It feels like a luxury to be able to afford this.

-Sticks. I took the 6 year old to the park one day and he proceeded to spend 90 minutes playing with sticks. Well maybe not the whole 90 minutes, but he was at it for a good long time – pretending that the sticks were his tools and using them to scrape each other. I am grateful for sticks for being a perfect toy.

Looking forward to:

-The Sunday Paper. We started subscribing to the Sunday paper this month. Like a “physical real life paper to touch, inky smelling, rolled up and cocooned in a plastic bag and deposited at the foot of our driveway” newspaper. When I was growing up, we always got the daily newspaper and I remember how excited I was every morning to see the fat cylinder in our driveway. On Sundays, my brother and I would I always fight over who got to read the coloured comics first. The comics and the advice columns were always what I read first. (I still do, let’s be honest.) Even though we have digital subscriptions, I thought it might be fun for the family to start getting a physical paper on Sundays. That excitement of “What’s going on today?” with my morning cup of tea, the kids fighting over the funny pages, and maybe reading some of the other sections. I don’t know how to describe it- it’s not the same as opening up the app on my phone. Also – there is something very insular about reading the newspaper on one’s phone. To the kids, it’s hard to distinguish between “Mom reading the news” and “Mom scrolling aimlessly.” With a physical newspaper, the kids can be involved and see that news and journalism is is important to us. I’m hoping it will foster a little more engagement from the kids with the world we live in.
And also – the crossword puzzle! I’m finding a lot of joy in having a crossword puzzle to work on in the mornings as I sip my tea. And even more joy when I manage to finish it!

Yes, I do it in pen. Pencil just doesn’t show up well enough for me. I also test drive words in the margins before I commit.

-Soup Swap! Someone suggested we do a soup swap at work so today we are each bringing in soup to share. I’m making Zuppa Toscana – sausage, kale, potato soup, an Olive Garden copycat. (note: this happened yesterday and it was so awesome!)

-Kimchi. Next week begins tech week for my show, which means I need to start thinking about tech week food. Kimchi is one of my tech week staples – it makes everything taste better and I don’t have to cook it. Only drage is the kimchi that I like to buy is sold at a Farmer’s market that I don’t often get to – it’s the farmer’s market down the street from work, but I don’t often work on Sundays so sometimes I go months without restocking. This weekend, though, I’m working on a Sunday, so I’ll get to visit my favorite kimchi vendor. Makes me happy. (Note: the kimchi vendor is not at this particular Farmer’s Market anymore!! Sad Face. I think they are at the farmer’s market near the theatre, so ‘ll hopefully stock up later in the week. )

-A Night at the Opera with a friend. The opera that is is being produced concurrently with my show is having it’s final dress rehearsal next week, so I have plans to go with my friend. I’m excited to see both my friend and this opera. It’s a new opera, and seeing a world premiere is always interesting. I’ve seen some rehearsals of it and it is quite impressive.

What We Ate:

Saturday: We went over to a friends’ house for meat. He has one of those Big Green Egg smokers and it makes the most delicious meat. The Husband also brought over his milk shake machine and we had milk shakes for dessert.

Sunday: Egg and toast and leftovers. Kitchen pantry Sunday, as is our habit.

Monday: Eggplant stirfry with noodles. The Husband cooked.

Tuesday: Lemon Chicken and Potatoes in the InstantPot. Recipe from the Washington Post. This was really tasty and very easy to throw together before I left for work. I used leeks instead of onions because I had one to use up and I think it made a big difference in the taste. (Oh now that I looked up the recipe to share, I see that it’s from a cookbook written by the author of one of my favorite Indian Instant Pot cookbooks – the famous Butter Chicken Lady. I need to check out this new cookbook.)

Wednesday: Pinto bean soup, made in the InstantPot before I left for work. Recipe from Dad Cooks Dinner. I added some frozen corn becuase it was a little spicy.

Thurdasy: Dinner with friends. I think the rest of the family had take out pizza.

Friday: Leftovers. When the family isn’t home, I mostly scrounge in the fridge.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Prep Week

Post It Box organized and ready for rehearsal!

This week was prep week for a new show. Prep week is always a more relaxed because I can pretty much set my own hours as long as I get my work done – I’m not bound by a daily rehearsal schedule. Ironically, though, this week didn’t get a lot of my “me” tasks check off because I used a lot of my work flexibility to take care of kid stuff – there were a few school bus pick ups that I took for the Husband, an appointment for one kid, and the baby had an Open House at her daycare.

This all meant leaving the office early, but also meant I worked through lunch a lot so that I could leave early, and lunch is usually when I take my daily walk. I’m still trying to track my 1000 hours outside and this week I think I had two hours total. It’s a little ironic that when my day is dictated by the rehearsal schedule, I seem to have more time to slot in things like my daily walk and exercise. When my work life is more flexible, I feel like I have to fit in more family/ life admin stuff since that stuff is harder to fit in around my rehearsal schedule.

Some thoughts from this week:

– We had some fans installed this week – a bathroom fan (finally no steamy bathrooms post shower. Also good for the walls), a bedroom fan (just in time for 50 degree nights. hah!) and a wall fan in the kid’s room (because a ceiling fan was a bad idea given the bunk beds). One night this week, we left the kids home with my mom who is visiting and the Husband and I went to Lowe’s to look at ceiling fans at 9pm. Date night, I guess. I was a little taken aback when I walked into Lowe’s and saw:

I’m not even ready for Hallowe’en yet!

– Out of the blue an old friend/work colleague reached out to me. We had done summer stock together twenty years ago when we were both fresh out of college, and then taken a couple of those road trips one does when one finishes a gig and is twenty and unemployed and has nothing better to do than see how far you can get on a tank of gas. Our professional paths crossed fortuitously in the years that followed, but then he got a teaching job at a University and I stopped travelling as much so we fell out of each other’s orbits. Anyhow, it was lovely to talk to him and catch up and see where we’ve each landed. It’s funny, when you’re twenty and starting out in opera and have thoughts of all the big companies and big ideas you want to work for, and then what you find you wants when you’re forty is a spouse and a home and to come home and cook dinner for them.

– Speaking of which… Listening to this Squiggly Careers podcast episode about how to take control of your career.

This has somewhat been on my mind lately – there have been lots of changes at work and it’s not so much that I am questioning if I want to be where I am, but it’s more that I’m wondering if there is anything wrong with wanting to want to be where I am. That’s to say, I think personally I am in a place right now where I don’t want to travel and gig and where I want to be able to take my kids to the school bus and snuggle with the Husband on the couch at night; to do that, perhaps I am giving up some career ambitions. And I’m okay with that mostly, but when I work with people who are doing the constant gig and hustle, I do think about how different my life is from that. I am definitely a little jealous of those stage managers who get to to take a show to Europe, but those opportunities don’t happen overnight – they come out of cultivating relationships long terms, and while pre-kids – pre-marriage, really- I might have been able to invest myself in developing relationships that might grow into an international career, it’s not something I can come to as easily now. I think there is taking control from a point of making career things happen, and taking control in terms of being happy where one is. And I’m in the latter. I know there’s a world of new technologies and ideas in companies across the world, and it’s been really fascinating these past few weeks learning about how different people work. In a way, the changes at my company mean that new ideas come to me rather than than I go to them. Is it a complacent place to be? Maybe. I think that’s okay for now, though. The podcast hosts did have one self-reflective exercise in the podcast that I liked – Take five minutes and finish this sentence in as many ways as possible: “Wouldn’t my career be amazing if….” That might be a good exercise for me to ponder.

-A shout out to Kae’s post “If you See Something Say Something” on taking time to express gratitude to others. I was inspired to write to my daughter’s swim team coach from this summer. The guy was just did so much to build skills and team spirit with the swim team kids this past summer, and I had been meaning to write him since August, but never did. So prompted by Kaelyn’s post, I did. It reminds me of the unit in the Happiness Course (aka Yale’s class called The Science of Well Being) that talks about gratitude, and one of the assignments was to write a gratitude letter – something I think I can think about and execute more regularly, I think.

On the aspiration docket this rainy rainy weekend – We were going to go apple picking, but the weather does not look ideal for that. It’s my last two day weekend in a while, so my weekend aspirations are trying to maximize family time and also life admin items:
– skating lessons for the five year old. Swim clinic for the ten year old
– Attic clean out
-Ten year old’s Halloween costume. Manageable chunk – maybe we will design and get supplies.
– going to a play then dinner out as a family.
– Supertitle work for my next titles gig.
– Seasonal sort and cycle the kids clothes. The weather’s getting cooler so I need to make sure we are set for long sleeve shirts, sweaters, and pants.
-meal plan and grocery shop for next week.
– try to squeeze in some outdoor time between bouts of rain.
– maybe an afternoon of hanging out and watching a movie on the couch.

What We Ate:
Saturday: This was the three year old’s birthday dinner at a local Mexican restuarant.

Sunday: Kitchen sink ramen. Ramen with whatever veggies I needed to use up thrown in.

Monday: Butternut squash flatbread from Milk Street’s Tuesday Night Mediterranean. I pre-made the filling and chopped some cucumbers to eat on the side so the Husband just had to fill the tortillas and pan fry them when he got home. This was quite tasty. Vegan, with optional cheese. I did grill the leftover halloumi to go with it – I’ve never done that before, and it was quite tasty.

Tuesday: White bean and tomato stew from Bare Minimum Dinners. This meal was kind of brilliantly simple – cannellini beans, garlic, tomato paste, water, ditilani pasta. On the Husband’s suggestion I made a double batch and the ten year old took it for lunch in her thermos all week. Vegan, except some people added cheese.

Wednesday: Mushroom and Grape Tartines from Milk Street Tuesday Night Mediterranean, with a quick panzella salad on the side. I was originally going to make a greek salad, but part of the tartine recipe called for hollowing out the baguettes so I decided to make a panzella salad with the bread pulled from the baguettes. That felt like a really frugal food decision!

Thursday: My mother made chicken wings and stir fry. Thank goodness because Thursday night was pretty activity heavy.

Friday: Pizza and Movie – we watched Thirteen Lives, a movie from this year about the Thai cave rescue. Overall a really gripping movie – the story is so tense, even though I knew the outcome. I do wish the movie had devoted more time to the story of the boys in the cave and how they managed, though I imagine twelve boys surviving by meditation sessions led by their coach might not make for gripping drama the way cave diving does. I also didn’t love the kind of “white savior” aspect of a bunch of white men saving a group of Thai boys, but in truth when one looks at any kind of high risk elite activity like cave diving, then the socio-economic truths of it is that it is indeed a white man’s game. For a podcast version of the story, we really loved the first season of the podcast Against the Odds which looked at the story over six episodes. The kids were captivated by this podcast.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Authenticity and THREE!!!

Glenstone Museum. One of this week’s bright spots.

This week was one of those “between jobs” weeks.

I did not knock out as much of my “To do” list as I wanted – partly because the week after a gig is always a slow re-entry for me, partly too because my cousin came to visit. I do want to be better at picking up life after I’m done a gig. Too often, the aftermath of a gig feels like … well, you know that scene in the Drew Barrymore Cinderella movie Ever After (such a good movie!!!) when Drew is supposed to meet the Prince, but she’s in her servant clothes so she races back to the house, goes in through the back door, and then emerges out of the front door in a gorgeous gown and pearl circlet, just in time to meet the Prince, and then the shot changes to behind the front door, where the servants are collapsed on the floor in exhaustion from having transformed her so quickly….

Yeah, aftermath of a job feels like the servants on the ground in a heap. I’ve spent so much time keeping the job related parts of life afloat, that the non-job parts of life, the parts that actually allow me to function, get somewhat neglected and left in a heap (by me, not by the Husband… he does a magnificent job of holding down the fort!). And when the gig is over, I have to pull the servants up off the floor and put everything back in order, but it takes a while for me to get in the right headspace for it. I fully realize it’s a privilege not to have to figure out how to balance work and life all fifty-two weeks of the year – big props to people who do it – so I want to get better at tackling the life stuff efficiently when I don’t have work stuff on my plate.

I’m pretty good at doing the things I want to do but don’t really get to do when I’m working – I went running three times, had lunch with a friend, made muffins, got to write in this space. It’s the life admin stuff that I struggle to find the discipline to attack – laundry, big organizational projects, paperwork that needs to be done – the adulting stuff, I guess. And now I’m about to go back to work and some of it still looms. I might just have to dedicate time for it when I am working so it doesn’t pile up for when I’m not working on a show.

Some thoughts and things this week:

– The ten year old has started piano lessons again, after a break for much of August. Her lessons are at 7:15am and I particularly notice the shifting of the seasonal light on those mornings when I take her (and the other kids) to these early morning lessons. We’ve passed into the season when the sun is just starting to rise as we pack into the car, and this week, at a stop light, I glanced into the side view mirror and couldn’t resist taking a picture of sunrise behind me. Even though the traffic ahead of me sat in misty morning grey, the cars behind me were bathed in a golden red glow. Soon, I know, it will still be quite dark when we go to piano lessons, but it was a good reminder to savor the beautiful golden moments when I can.

– I’ve been listening to the podcast Under the Influence with Jo Piazza. (Not to be confused, now that I’ve Googled it, with Under the Influence from the CBC with Tim O’Reilly, which also looks interesting).

It’s a series that takes a look at the world of social media influencers, particularly mothers. I’m only six episodes in, and it’s been fascinating and though provoking. Even though I have social media accounts, I had to quit them cold turkey a few years ago because they had become a time suck and just made me feel bad about my life and career. Still, the idea of being able to make a living through gathering a social media following is really intriguing. The podcast really dissects the cultural implications of how women, who would otherwise be home-makers or stay-at-home mothers – that is to say unpaid labour – have parlayed domestic life with children into a commodity that they can be paid for. The episode on Authenticity, particularly was pretty engrossing, and made me think about how the term “authentic” is often bandied around when describing influencers.
Being authentic is valued. But so is being happy and shiny. Yet there is this paradox where when one only posts happy and shiny content, one is labelled as not authentic. I don’t think not posting the rough and hard and ugly parts of life makes a person less authentic. There is something, to me, inauthentic about reaching for a camera and generating content when your child is having a meltdown, rather than putting your camera down and comforting that child. The hard moments aren’t splashed across the happy shiny Instagram, perhaps because people are trying to navigate them rather than share them. I’m all for sharing hard moments – and I really appreciate it when people are brave enough to share them – but I don’t think sharing the hard moments makes a certain person or post more “authentic” than any other. The thing is, any one social media posts can lack context and doesn’t really reflect anything beyond that moment. Even look at our annual Christmas card – I pick the cutest picture of my kids to send to people. Am I being inauthentic because I don’t also include a picture of me washing up a poop accident? It seems like demanding authenticity just sets people – women – up for failure.
They make an interesting point on the podcast about how Hillary Clinton was mocked for wearing a scrunchie when that was probably the most true to herself thing that she could wear. While Obama or Trump or any man could probably wake up, take a shower, put on a suit and be ready for a press conference in thirty minutes, Clinton probably has to go through an hour or so of hair an make-up before appearing in public. The degree to which we demand authenticity from women yet at the same time shame her if she doesn’t put on a face, really speaks to a double standard.
The conversations on the podcast also has made me think of how I present on this little corner of the internet. I don’t want to be an influencer by any means, and it’s made me realize that while I’m grateful for the handful of people who read, I really just want to write what I want to write and brain dump the things that are interesting to me. Like this podcast, which I highly recommend.

– My mother also came to visit while my cousin was here and I managed to get tickets to the Glenstone Museum, a private museum that specializes in contemporary art, mostly installation pieces from Post WWII. A big part of the collection are sculptures throughout it’s outdoor campus, which makes for a really wonderful afternoon of meandering through trails and sitting and enjoying nature and art. The tickets are released on the first of each month are are usually booked three months out, so I was really surprised when I looked on the website earlier this week and saw that there were tickets available for later in the week. Another things I loved about the museum is they don’t have the usual placards in place giving information and thoughts about the pieces. Rather there are very knowledgeable docents who will talk to you about the artwork and the museum if you want, otherwise they leave you to contemplate the pieces for yourself. I sometimes find contemporary art hard to understand, and being able to talk to a docent and ask questions made the artwork so much more accessible. Definitely worth a trip back.

Koons. We ran out of time so didn’t make it all the way to this one.

The buildings and gardens are also works of art.

– This piece of advice from the blog Ask A Manager:

I sometimes run into this situation with interns and I admit I don’t always have the patience to be gracious about coaching someone through steps that they already have documented in paperwork. “What have you tried so far?” seems to me a great way to help distill where the trainee might be getting hung up, rather than me just telling them how to solve things.

– The big thing this week, was that the baby turned THREE!!! I’m feeling all the feels on this one. The night before her birthday, the Husband says to me, “This is our last day of ever having a two year old.” And it just about slayed me. It’s been hard, certainly, to know that she is our last baby. I love babies – the sweet, cuddly, exploratory, needs-to-be-protected, blind faith, little personalities – they are just such great companions. I’m excited to see who the baby grows up to be, but at the same time nervous because I know I can’t control that. But who she is right now is an adorable, mischievous, intrepid, dexterous, opportunistic, happy, clever, and cheeky little child. She’s the most independent of the three kids and finds such joy in everything around her. Having a baby as the world shut down was not something that I could ever had imagined happening, but she was certainly one of the bright marvels that helped keep things interesting.

skating last weekend. I used to think skate helpers were silly, but I realized that for her, keeping up with her siblings was more important than learning to skate properly. So skate helper it was.

What We Ate: I was home all week and all three dinners I cooked were vegan. We’ll see how it goes when I go back to work next week – I feel like vegan meals aren’t as easy to make ahead of time.

Saturday: I was working the evening show. I was running late to work, so I just shoved two half eaten meatball sandwiches from the night before into a container and ate them at my desk. I might have also had an apple.

Sunday: I was working a matinee, so I had bubbly water and cake for dinner at the reception following the performance.

Monday: Orange Cauliflower with Fried Tofu and Rice. The cauliflower recipe was from the Bad Manners Brave New World Cookbook and was their vegan take on orange chicken. Aside from being made from cauliflower rather than chicken, this was healthier because the cauliflower was baked, not fried. Of course then I fried the tofu to go with.

Tuesday: Tacos with meatless meaty filling from Bare Minimum Dinners, with cabbage mango slaw and avocados. I’m really liking Bare Minimum Dinners. There aren’t a lot of vegetarian recipes in it, but this meatless taco filling was pretty great. It’s a combination of mushrooms, walnuts, and pinto beans with the sauce from an adobo pepper in chipotle sauce. It was actually on the spicy side, so I just heated up a can of black beans with cumin and a clove of garlic for the two little kids

Wednesday: We went to meet a friend at a local Biergarten. They have the best wings – they smoke them then fry them so they are so full of flavor. I feel like this evening definitely offset all the vegan dinners we ate this week.

Thursday: Curry Udon Noodles with Teriyaki Jackfruit from Bad Manners Cookbook. This was my first attempt cooking with jackfruit, which I hear touted as a substitute for pork. My verdict – Jackfruit is pretty tasteless, so good sauce is needed. It did mimic the texture of fplled pork, though. But also, I added a bunch of mushrooms in with the Teriyaki sauce, and I think I would be just as happy to eat this dish with mushrooms instead of Jackfruit.

Friday: Pizza (made by The Husband) and movie – Minions: The Rise of Gru. This movie was pretty hilarious in parts, but kind of lost steam towards the end. (Or maybe we lost steam?) And then to round things out…. we had cake. I made a cake for the baby’s birthday and we zoomed the rest of the family to sing happy birthday. (Also sent some store bought cupcakes to school, because I guess this is the times right now where we can only send store bought treats. I understand the reasoning what with allergies and COVID, but it still makes me a little sad.) My cousin helped with the cake – we made this chocolate cake recipe with vanilla frosting and then sort of followed the instructions for a pinata cake. I don’t think the cake was high enough to have the desired effect of m&m spillage. But maybe it’s one of those things that’s only perfect on Instagram?

Going to work is the break

There was a day last week which, on paper, looked to be almost leisurely. Rehearsal didn’t start until 11pm, so I had the morning to catch up on things, and I had scheduled the kids’ passport appointments to get them out of the way before I headed in to work.

But… it didn’t turn out that way.

For one, I had been up late the night before filling out the passport forms – my own fault for procrastinating. But it did mean that I didn’t get much sleep.

Then the jar of bean soup that I had pulled from the freezer to thaw in the fridge cracked as I was getting it out to pack for lunch. The bottom of the mason jar just fell clean off and there was a flood of bean soup everywhere, even in the little crevices of the refrigerator door. Curses and clean up followed. I was a little sad because the bean soup had been in the freezer for over two years and I was excited to finally eat it in a show of frugality. Oh well. But this was an added level of mess I didn’t need in the midst of packing everyone else’s lunches and breakfasts.

It was also the morning that our County summer camp registration opened and at 8:25a, I was glued to my computer waiting for the system to open at 8:30a. The camp slots go quickly, so this is the kind of thing that goes in my calendar and I set the alarm for. Luckily I was able to get the ten year old into the same camp as her friend from last summer, but the whole registration experience made me realize that there are some inherent equity issues with this system. I mean, 8:30am is an absolutely terrible time for camp registration to open. I was lucky that my mom walked the kids to school that morning, but if a working parent has to do school drop off or what not, they might not be able to log on right at 8:30am. It’s like you need childcare to sign up for childcare. Also – internet.

Anyhow, after that was done, I had an hour to get dressed, eat some breakfast, pay a couple bills, and make dinner in the InstantPot for the family to have when they got home since I had to work late. I actually felt pretty good about that hour. But of course, pride goeth….

9:30am, I had the two little kids in the car on the way to our passport appointment. I pull up twenty minutes early, get out to pay the meter and realize I had left my wallet at home, having taken it out to pay for summer camp. So I get the kids back in the car, drive back home, hit terrible traffic on the way home due to a malfunctioning traffic light, try not to panic, get home, find my wallet after some searching – I had left it in the bathroom of all places – arrive back at the post office only five minutes late for the passport appointment. I get to the passport window, pull out my wallet … and can’t find my ID. I realized that I had taken it out of my wallet the night before to make a scan of it to submit with out papers. I can’t freakin’ believe it.

Well, as long as I was there, I asked the postal worker taking passport applications to look at the baby’s passport photo just to make sure it would pass muster. And it doesn’t. Apparently, the baby giving her skeptical side-eye, was not looking straight into the camera enough. I felt like yelling, “Do you know how hard it is to get a two year old to stand still for a picture, let alone stand and look straight into a camera?!?!” Or maybe it’s just my two year old.

So I guess the appointment wasn’t all wasted, because now I know that her picture would have been rejected and I would have had to come back again anyway.

By the time we left the post office, it was only 10:30am. I was pretty much drained for the day.

This is life though, right? I don’t have a job that I can just take a personal day to do these things. And things do still have to get done. I mean there is plenty that doesn’t need doing, but even still, sometimes the scheduled list just seems packed. (A friend and I joked that next year we should get together on camp registration day and have breakfast and mimosas.) On the other hand, I do have lots of time between gigs that I can probably be better about planning when some things (ahem passport appointments) get done so that it causes the least amount of friction and stress.

And truth to tell, even though I felt depleted at 10:30am on that day, by the time I got to work there was something refreshing about putting on a different hat and solving different problems and shelving the disaster of a morning. Not that my job doesn’t have it’s challenges… But I go to work and listen to people with gorgeous voices sing Mozart. It’s not terrible. And no one whines at me or cries because I won’t let them put their egg in their cup of milk. It’s certainly easier to get fifty choristers onstage with the right prop than it is to put three kids to bed.

I had a text exchange before I started this gig with a friend. She wrote:

How are things with you? Is the job still on or do you have a break now.

And I wrote back:

Oh, man – going to work *is* the break!