Another show opened! It has been a hard hard week for me, but the show opened and it looks really stunning. And the audience is super excited to be there; the feeling of good will is palpable.
We’re over a week into March, but I wanted to do a February recap, now that I’m on the other side of tech. I keep wanting to put tech week into this recap, but that was technically March, so it will go into the next recap.
February Highlights:
-New York City Trip with the 14 year old. Seeing Two Strangers (Carry a cake across New York), eating good food, people watching.
-Doing titles for a voice recital that was lovely and featured an elegantly charming set of Post WWI French cafe songs.
– Watching the Olympics. The stunning figure skating pairs long program. The heartbreaking Men’s hockey final. The mad dash of ski Mountaineering. The zen of curling. The colourful opening ceremonies. The opera-filled closing ceremonies.
-Super Bowl Sunday, which was combined with the Husband’s birthday. Seeing lots of friends, eating food, and celebrating. The game itself – couldn’t tell you what happened there. We had the Olympics playing upstairs while the game was downstairs, so I kept floating between events.
-Our Zojirushi hot water boiler. Best new addition to our household. Hot water instantaneously.
-Some warm days – going outside without being all bundled up.
-The 9 year old getting his first library card.
-Two more snow days. One I wasn’t working so I hung out with the kids. The other I had to work, so we paid the 14 year old to watch her siblings. It is kind of amazing not to have to worry about what to do with the kids on a snow day when both the Husband and I have to work.
-Lunar New Year – pineapple cakes, pomelos, and an excuse to get together and eat dim sum with friends.
-Lunch with a friend from college.
-A chill mid-afternoon hangout with two other families. There were sword fights and K-pop dance routines and grown up conversations.
-The 6 year old’s kindergarten performance of Arf!
-Happy Hour with the stage management team at a new-to-me restaurant with $1 oysters during happy hour. I love oysters.
-Watching the 14 year old play basketball.
-Elisabeth’s FIG Club, which encouraged us all to find joy in moments of gratitude during February – such a delight to read everyone’s FIGS.
-Starting rehearsals for a new show. The feeling of homecoming as we finally got down to rehearsal after six weeks (or really, a year) of turmoil at work. Gathering to do work that is familiar to us despite all the changes. I keep hearing the phrase “Flying the plane while building it,” and it did feel like that often. But, you know… when we understand the fundamentals of what needs to be done, the rest is just logistics and figure-out-able.
-Also there’s a banjo in our show. It makes me so happy.
-Favorite meals cooked at home: Ethiopian food (shiro wat, yellow lentils, and fried potatoes, eaten with injera), and Shrimp tacos.
February Lowlights
-Starting to develop some lower back pain. I’ve always been pretty healthy and pain free, so this kind of chronic pain is really annoying. I can usually make it feel better by stretching, but getting out of bed in the morning is an effort for sure.
-Not exercising. I did my yoga daily but didn’t run except for 15 minutes on the treadmill at the rec center before the 14 year old’s basketball game. The lack of exercise actually has a lot to do with the weather, so hopefully I’ll do better now that the weather is getting warmer.
-Some confusion about the 14 year old’s path in high school, forms that we supposed to be filled out that weren’t. This was VERY stressful.
-Our office at work is very very very cold. Which is usually fine, but it was a cold month. It has something to do with the fact that the thermostat is located in the hallway and regulates a few different offices.
-A bunch of adulting fails including getting a ticket for expired plates. (This is now fixed.)
-Having to work a lot of evenings.
– Pretty sad news about plans for a cultural institution that had been my home for the past twenty years. It’s pretty shitty and devastating for so many people.
Yearly Goals – not great on some fronts, but it was a very work intense month:
-Taking the stairs – I don’t specifically track this, but I think I did okay on this. I did have to take the elevator at work for a while because my id badge was deactivated and that was the only way to access the stairwell from the lobby.
-Creativity: I only painted one picture (It was a birthday card, and I still haven’t sent it); I wrote 3 haikus. I spent some time on the piano – we ordered the easy piano version of music from K-Pop Demon Hunters, so that was fun.
-Did not do any crossword puzzles because our Washington Post subscription expired and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it.
-Museums = 0/10. Hikes = 0/12
-3 vegan dinners. (Goal is 5/month)
-Exercise Goals: Strength training 6x (Goal was 8x/month). Yoga daily – CHECK!
-Family Goals: Game Nights =0 (though we do sometimes have an ongoing chess game going on); Date Nights =0; Call my parents once a week = 3 times, so close;
-Not a lot of time outside – only 17.5 hours in February. That’s less than 30 mins a day.
Quote of the month:
One of the singers I worked with this month was a collegiate wrestler before he decided to become an opera singer. I asked him if there was anything from wrestling that he still applied to life and he said that learning to step up to the mat no matter the circumstances taught him the importance of showing up, and being persistent and doing what you have to do. Then he said:
“I always say: I never lost a match; I just ran out of time.” I love the grit and determination behind this idea – the sense that you can lose a match but still have the stamina and fortitude to be on a winning path.
Looking Forward to in March:
-More sunlight in our days and Spring!
– Running supertitles for the next opera. The most exciting part of this is that I get paid the union stagehand rate to run titles.
-No school day for the kids on 3/20. No plans yet but I have the day off, so maybe we’ll do something special.
-Getting my tax information to our tax guy.
-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.
-March Madness.
-Spring Break starts at the end of the month. No plans currently; I probably have to work some that week.
-Cherry Blossoms!!!! Peak Bloom is predicted for as early as March 31st, though most media outlets are predicting the first week of April. We shall see….
-Not being in rehearsal all the time, so I will be able to do all the things I’ve been putting off, such as:
- Bake things
- Make dinner
- Put the kids to bed
- Clean out the kids’ clothes and prep for Spring
- Run (this is more about the weather than my work schedule, though)
- Game nights
- Taking walks in the warmer weather
- Paint, play piano, journal
- Go to the grocery store
- read books
Grateful for this Week:
-The stagehands, wardrobe crew, and wig and make-up crew – for making our show look so good and run so smoothly. And the assistant stage managers. The theatre where we are working has very limited room backstage and the ASMs are working miracles of organization and timing to get everyone onstage when they need to be, wearing the right clothes, with the right prop in hand. In one meeting, I gave them a shout out, saying “They are running New York City in the space the size of a postage stamp back there.”
-Cue lights! What are cue lights? They are lights that are hung around backstage that I use to indicate when a cue should happen. I turn on the light when the crew should be in “Standby” and turn the light off for “Go”. Most of the crew is on headset so they can hear me give the cues, but the cue light is also a good back up. Anyhow – when we first did a walk through of the theatre, we were told that they had ONE cue light. Well, this would have to go into the orchestra pit so I can indicate to them when to tune, meaning the crew wasn’t going to have any lights. BUT… the house crew at the theatre surprised us by purchasing a whole new cue light system! Hooray! It has SIX cue lights. (I only need five for this show.)
-My friend home from abroad. She and her family were in the Middle East (they work in the foreign service). They were sent home last week, given all the things going on. “Things” being the U.S. bombing Iran. I’m grateful that she’s home.
-That I didn’t lose my book. I had brought a book to read when I took the 14 year old to her voice lesson. And afterwards we went to a newly open cafe for sweet treat and to run lines. (It was opening weekend for the cafe and they were giving out free pastries!) Anyhow, I got home and realized my book was missing. I was in a bit of a panic because it’s a library book. But I texted the voice teacher and turns out I had left it at her house. Thank goodness.
-Panera Sip Club. Panera was running this deal where you could get 3 months of Sip Club for $3/month. Usually it’s $14/month. For $3/month, you could get all the coffee/tea/fountain sodas/lemonade/ice tea that you wanted. I think technically it’s limited to one every two hours. It’s not something that I would usually sign up for, but there is a Panera across the street from the theatre – it is in the Student Center (we’re performing on an University campus), and open until 11pm. And it’s tech, when I usually have more caffeine than normal to function/ pick me up during a long day. So I signed up and getting my cold Sip Club beverage is a nice excuse to get out of the building.
-Speaking of which – I’m grateful for getting to work on a University campus. I’m finding there’s something really special about university campuses – the students rushing here and there in non-homogeneous crowds: the squares with places to sit, even though we’re in the middle of the city; the sheer number of coffee shops and fast restaurants; the statues that greet you every few blocks. There’s just a youthful, hopeful air that I find energizing.
-Getting to drive home with my work BFF. We have a tradition of commuting together on opening night so that she can drink at the party and I can drive her home. It’s kind of our version of a friend date to run errands – we drive home and chat and catch up because even though we work down the hall from each other, the past few weeks have been intense and we’ve mostly been talking about work logistics when we cross paths.
-The snack box at work, which someone keeps stocked with chocolate, cookies, and other sweet and savory snacks.
-Freezer soup, for being a quick and easy thing to take for dinner.
-Kids being quiet. I took the 14 year old to school one day and when I came home it was eerily quiet in the house. I peeked through the two little kids’ door know and saw:
What We Ate: The Husband made dinner every night, since I wasn’t home in the evenings all week. I ate mostly leftovers at work.
Monday: Mac and cheese and hot dogs.
Taco Tuesday: Shrimp Tacos. This is the most requested type of Taco for Taco Tuesday.
Wednesday: Dumplings and green beans
Thursday: Zucchini Boats.
Friday: Pizza! I was actually home this night. The Husband made a pickle pizza and we ordered two pizzas from one of our favorite pizza places. We watched Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior. I don’t know how this movie came across my radar – it was released in 2006 on Disney Channel, but I only heard about it this year. How is that possible? Asian representation was so non-existent at the time, I feel like it must have gotten a lot of buzz in the community, no? (To be fair, I didn’t have a tv in the early 2000s and this was before you could stream everything.) Anyway, the movie was pretty much everything you would expect from a Disney movie, with some hilarious martial arts sequences thrown in. I don’t know that I would watch this more than once, but it was a fun and charming movie.
Saturday: Indian take out.
Sunday: Leftover Indian take out, tortellini with red sauce, and green beans.
Well, that’s the week that was. And the month that was. Here the weather is almost summer like, all sunshine and warm rays. Not sure how long it will last, but I’m going to try to soak it up this week.