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.):

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!

-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.