It was a gorgeous fall weekend here. The skies blue and bright, the trees decked out in their best autumn colours. Unfortunately I spent most of the weekend indoors working. I had surtitles to prep for an upcoming recital and then we had opening night. And then I spent all of Sunday prepping more titles, and a good chunk of Monday too.
As opening nights go, it was a wowzer doozy of an opening night. I can’t share any of the details because what made it so memorable were some personal stories of those around me. Rest assured, all is well, everyone is healthy, the show went smoothly (except for an incident where two singers couldn’t agree on what to use for the fake whiskey onstage… Yes, these are the things I have to navigate – do you want iced tea? apple juice? coloured water? And EVERYONE HAS TO AGREE because you all have to drink it onstage. They couldn’t agree). Suffice to say, the season opening of our 2026-2027 opera season will go down in memory, but not for what happened onstage.
Afterwards there was a reception with speeches and drinks. I chatted with some folks then decided to go back to the office and do some work. There were artist meals left out for those of us who were performing or working the show, which was nice because I was HUNGRY by the end of the night.
I didn’t get home until after 1am and then slept til 10am Sunday morning. Which is unheard of. I’ve never slept that late before. The house was quiet when I got up, the Husband having taken the 7 year old to Faith Formation. My cousin and her boyfriend were visiting for an overnight. When they got up, we chatted for a little bit then it was off to the usual weekend barrage of lessons an birthday parties.
We are almost halfway through November, but I wanted to write my October recap so here were go….
October Highlights:
-Rehearsing/ tech-ing a new show in a new venue with an old friend. The director of this opera is someone I’ve known for over twenty years. We first worked together in San Diego when I was a baby Assistant Stage Manager and she was a baby Assistant Director. And now she is the Artistic Director of her own opera company and I’m the head of the stage management department of my home opera company. I knew from the first time I worked with her that she was going to do amazing things – she is just such a talented director, but also very practical and hard working. I work in an industry where the attrition rate is pretty high, so I really treasure when I am reunited with colleagues from my early opera years.
-Seeing Come From Away with the Husband.
-Contra dancing with the family.
-Hallowe’en and making the kids’ costumes. I’m really proud of how the costumes turned out.
-bike rides to school with the kids.
-Cool Blogger’s Walking Club (Thanks, Elisabeth for hosting! I still have one recap to do…) and Cool Blogger’s Book Club (Thanks, Engie for hosting! What a quirky book Convenience Store Woman was.)
-Beautiful autumn skies and sruprisingly warm weather.
-Not having to take the kids to piano lessons in the morning during tech week.
-Voting early.
-My cousin J came to visit.
-Did titles for a lovely recital which was a mix of popular songs and American art songs. This singer is singing with us next spring and I’m looking forward to working with him – he just seemed so down to earth and creative.
-checking my annual exam off my to do list.
-A bowl of Mushroom soup from the Thai place when I was feeling a little run down at work.
-A kid who I met when he and the 7 year old were in mommy-baby group together was cast in my show and it was so fun to see his mom/my friend and share a little of what I do with her.
-Soup Party at work. I was reading something today in my latest non-fiction read about how teams benefit from time together that is empty and not task-oriented. I thought the soup party was a great opportunity for that.
-Going to the local indoor pool with friends on a rainy Sunday afternoon. What a lovely gem. They need more family restrooms, though.
-Favorite Dinner Cooked: The Marry Me Chickpea Gnocchi Soup for the Work Soup Party. October was honestly a lot of dinners pulled from the freezer out of our asses.
-Favorite thing watched: Bridgerton Season 4. I didn’t love Season One, so I was on the fence about continuing, but An Offer from a Gentleman (the book season 4 is based on) is my second favorite book of the series (When He was Wicked is my favorite. Honestly, aside from those two books, I find the whole book series kind of meh – entertaining, but not particularly memorable.) I loved Season 4 – I thought Sophie and Benedict were so well cast and the romantic tension between the two of them was pitch perfect.
Goals and Habits:
-Painting: 0. I spent all my creative energy in October sewing Hallowe’en costumes.
-Crossword puzzle completed: 0
-Live Performances: 1 – Come From Away. There was also live music at the contra-dance. Does that count?
-Museums: 1. Ford’s Theatre, where Come From Away was playing is the theatre where Lincoln was shot, so the lower level is a museum all about Lincoln.
-Hike: 0. I’m doing terribly on hiking this year.
-Yoga: 26/31. Saturdays seem to be the hardest days for me to fit in a yoga routine. I think it’s because we have a family meeting at 7:45am, and I like to sleep in a little on Saturdays. I need to make a point to do an evening winddown on Saturday.
-Run: 4x (+4 bike rides )
-Strength: Hah! apparently 0 (My goal is 8x a month, but I’m finding it really hard to motivate myself for this one…i just need to find a consistent way to work it in)
-Vegan Dinners:4 (Goal is 4x a month, so yay!)
Quote of the Month:
“Gravity works 100% of the time.” – David Younts Train Engineer in the book Gig, on having to be careful and think ahead when guiding a train over mountainous terrain.
“Safe. Functional. Complete. Detailed.”
– I’m not sure who said this originally, but on of my Assistants said this as the stages of creating theatre; I think we were specifically taking about props. What they are saying is that, for example, you can’t obsess about the decorations on a prop knife if it is still too sharp for the singer to safely use in rehearsal. Or, a scenic unit needs to be secure and people need to be able to walk on it before you start giving notes about the facing needing to be attached, and even further down the line is the paint treatment. Hopefully by the time we move into the theatre things are at the complete stage, ready for the detailed stage.
October Lowlights:
-working a lot of evenings and not seeing the family much. I rarely saw the 14 year old – she leaves for the bus at 6:35am and is in bed by the time I got home. She’s also in a phase where her favorite place is her bed with her screen, so even when I am home I don’t see her too much out in the wild.
-The 14 year old not getting a part in the Children’s Chorus of the holiday opera I’m working on. She’s been in the children’s chorus two years in a row so she’s really disappointed that she didn’t get cast this year. I think it’s hard because she’s a good kid who does everything right – she goes to school, is generally kind and positive, she goes to her piano and voice lessons, she’s engaging onstage, and directors always have good things to say about her…. it’s hard when you do all the right things but you’re still not chosen. And you see other kids who were, honestly, kind of a pain in the ass to work with on past shows get a part. She is a soprano and I’m sure there were lots of sopranos who auditioned so it was going to be more competitive for her voice type. But still, it’s kind of a bummer.
-My mom crush bus driver got put on a different route. I’m going to miss his sweet smile every morning. (The new driver is very nice an friendly, but he’s just not the same. Also the new guy does not pull three point turns with the bus like the first driver does.)
-I had a lot of anxiety about the show and the new venue all through rehearsal process. Now that I’m on the other side of it, I see that the whole things came together beautifully, but the lead up, the unknown factors of being in a new venue – I spent three weeks doubting myself and that was pretty stressful.
Looking forward to in November:
-Doing titles for a recital (this happened last night and it was … well was memorable – more next week)
-Opening my show (this happened – see above).
-Sleep. I am so mentally and physically exhausted right now.
-reading books – I haven’t had a lot of time to read books yet this month, so want to make time to read more.
-the challenge of National Blog Posting Month. Thanks, San! I missed November 1st, but I’ve been doing okay for the first week. It’s been fun having new visitors here and also exploring new to me blogs to read.
-Running in crisp sunny fall weather. I don’t really like running, but fall is my favorite time to run if I have to run.
-Thanksgiving. Need to figure out where to find a duck and then how to roast it.
-Starting rehearsals for the Holiday opera at work.
-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends.
-It’s Hallmark Holiday movie season! There was one just released, part of their Holiday Touchdown series, that is set in Chicago and features the Bears. Think I can make my Bears-loving Husband watch it?
Greateful For – the Tech Week Edition:
-Snacks. The snack situation was intense this tech week. Usually people will bring some candy or chips or something to share during tech week.
-Rides home at night (I think I mentioned this last week, but it’s still true)
-Lumch boxes so I can pack food to eat while at work.
-The travel cutlery set that I got this summer from my summer gig. It lives in my lunch box and I always have cutlery when I need it. No more hunting for a fork. No more disposable silverware. It is really satisfying to just pull out my own set of cutlery during my meal breaks.
-Chai – the perfect pick me up between the metro and work.
-The Husband, who drove kids around, cooked dinner, put the kids to bed, handled tantrums and logistics while I was working 12 hour days.
-My stage management team. We have a rotating staff of stage managers, and since I do the bulk of the staffing, I generally only hire people I want to work with. Even still, I loved the team I had for this show – everyone was super supportive of each other, we solved problems together, everyone stayed positive and didn’t let their stress influence their work or those around them, and everyone was rock solid and reliable. It’s great having a team that you know has your back. So much of the success of a show from the stage management stand point is having a team that gels. I’m so grateful that we did.
-The Technical director and the Lighting Supervisor and the stage crew for transforming the venue into an opera stage. They worked miracles. Very expensive miracles, but miracles nonetheless.
-Getting to work with a legendary lighting designer. When I was growing up, Chicago Lyric Opera would broadcast their opera on the radio. At the end when they read the credits, the same man would always be named as the lighting designer. I grew up with this guy’s name in my head. I had always thought that he was a wise avuncular man. Welp, thirty years later, I am now working with this lighting designer, and he is indeed a wise avuncular man. Was he a wise, avuncular man thirty years ago? Probably. I don’t know if he’s just ageless or what. I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with him. This is the show where I realized that when a show is called well, it is as much because the show is well designed and well lit, as it is because of my skills as a calling stage manager. You can call poorly lit shows well, but then you have to work a lot harder.
-That the 14 year old is able to navigate public transportation by herself. A couple times recently she took the metro somewhere with a friend. I was a little nervous about letting her do it by herself, especially since her friends aren’t frequent Metro riders. But the 14 year old did great and got everyone where they needed to be. I guess I don’t know why she seems too young to be riding public transportation by herself – in DC all kids middle school and up get free metro cards because that is how they get to school; there are no buses to take them. Often on the Metro you’ll see groups of kids going to and from school. I think riding public transportation is a really good life skill to have.
What We Ate: I’m going to be real honest it was a veritable hodge podge of dinners. For every comment I get that says, “You dinners always sound so good!” there are weeks like this where despite having meal plan we all end up eating whatever we can shove into our mouths. This is what we eat when we are in the thick of evening work and activities. Keeping it real here.
Monday: I think there was some kind of stir fry at home. At work, I missed dinner because someone on my team was out sick and I had to create the evening’s rehearsal running order (known as the trian schedule) on my dinner break -something that is usually done by this other person. I don’t mind doing it – it’s actually fun for me to to think through the evening and how long each section of rehearsal will take. But still – it does take a bit of time. I probably had a handful of kit kats and a mandarin orange for dinner.
Tuesday: I think they had leftover back beans on tortilla chips. I missed dinner because, again, someone on my team was out sick and I spent dinner making the train schedule.
Wednesday: Box dinner for the two younger kids because they had activities- sandwiches, apple slices and peppers. This is actually exactly what I pack them for school lunch. I was at work for a little bit in the evening so I ate food when I got home. Can’t remember what it was. Probably something eaten cold out of the fridge. Did the 14 year old eat? If she did it was probably ramen.
Thursday: The Husband made a curry gravy – I think it’s called pub curry gravy, which he and the two younger kids ate with chicken and broccoli. I was at work and ate a tuna onigiri that I had packed. The 14 year old came to see my dress rehearsal and grabbed McDonald’s on the way to the theatre.
Friday: Pizza and movie night. It was my turn to pick the movie and I chose His Girl Friday because I wanted a classic movie to watch and I love Cary Grant. This was a BIG FAIL with 2 out of 3 kids. One kid fell asleep and one kid started crying about half way through the movie because they thought the movie was so boring and wanted to watch something else. “They talk too fast and don’t move around enough!!!!!” the child bawled. Oooookay. I thought the fast talking was what made the movie fun.
Saturday: Opening night! I was too nervous/ busy to eat dinner, so I didn’t eat dinner. Thankfully the opera provided artist meals for post show. The 14 year old was babysitting – I hope she ate before going over. Not sure what the rest of the family ate. Maybe leftovers? I had a meltdown that morning about how no one eats leftovers yet at the same time people complain that the fridge and freezer are too full. I might have gone a little ballistic.
Sunday: The Husband had bought me injera on Friday when he went to pick up pizza, so I snacked on injera all night. I also reheated the curry gravy from the other night and ate that with potatoes and broccoli. I think the family, in a good faith effort, ate more leftovers.
As you can see, the dinner situation is a little dire right now. BUT…people aren’t going hungry, and everyone is figuring things out. I guess there will be plenty of opportunities to eat vegetables in their lives.
Welp that’s the news from here. It’s ticked past midnight so you’re technically going to get two posts today for NaBloPoMo.
Any other life skills I should make sure to teach my kids? What are your favorite snacks when you’re facing crunch time? What is your feeling on leftovers? What classic film should I torture my kids with next?