You know when you draft a post and then life hits you and you don’t post it and the post sits in your drafts folder? Well this is that post…. i had meant to publish it three days ago, but then I’ve been in bed with something the past few days. And now I’m sitting in urgent care so I can figure out what this something is. So why not go ahead and publish, while watching HGTV in the waiting room….
What was that bonkers weather we had here in the DC area last week? The first part of the week was so warm – in the 80s – I thought it was already summer. Then Thursday – SNOW! I thought we had moved past that. And it’s been chilly ever since. Crisp and clear and sunny, but still chilly. And Monday, the kids were released two hours early from school because of an impending tornado. That never happened.
Anyhow, it’s been a bit of a “recover from tech week” week. I had Monday off from work, and that really messed with my mind a little bit. Plus the time change – by mid week I had lost all sense of what day of the week it was. I felt like I just couldn’t catch up, and small things kept going wrong.
This week’s annoyances:
– I broke the interior handle on the driver side of my car. I don’t know what happened. I pulled the handle and it just got stuck. The exterior handle still works. So now I have to either get someone to let me out of the car, climb out another door (which – that parking brake makes that really painful) or I roll down the window, stick my hand out to open the door from the outside, then roll the window back up … all before I can turn off the car. It’s kind of annoying. It’s also kind of funny.
-I waited too late to sign up the 14 year old for a camp she really wanted to do and now it’s wait list only. I feel really terrible about this one. BUT also – the website kept saying that registration was still open, and it’s only when you click over to start the registration that the window that says “Waitlist only” popped up. I feel like this information should be on the website itself.
-Some unbloggable work things where people had big feelings, and I also had big feelings, but I can’t talk about them without throwing other people under the bus.
-My uncle (my dad’s younger brother) passed away. He lived in Taiwan, so I didn’t see him a whole lot, but my father was very close to him.
-I was late to bus pick up.
-General feeling of tiredness, myself and the kids. We had planned to go contra dancing last week but just couldn’t rally. There was one day when I just felt really run down and went to bed after dinner. The 9 year old got sent home from school one day because he was running a fever, and then proceeded to sleep until the next morning. I think we all just need a week of rest and cuddles.
Okay – so I guess lots of tiny things that made the week feel … ugh. Let’s not even mention news on the international/ national front. That is really hard to wrap my head around. BUT… maybe my malaise on the domestic front is just par for the course after tech week. Everything- the physical tasks and also the mental and emotional stuff- that I had been putting off while I worked on my show, just comes to the fore after opening.
I was having a conversation with a fellow stage manager, and she was saying that the third day after she comes home from a gig after being out of town, she is suddenly hit with a wave of restlessness and that “off” feeling where nothing is in the right place and her husband has let the house fall apart. And she said that after years and years of going away and coming home, she has realized that this is just the rhythm of coming off a gig. And she can now mentally tell herself, “Life isn’t falling apart- it’s just the emotional pattern of coming home.” So either she makes herself clean on day two, or on day three she reminds herself to give everyone grace. I know I’ve been working on shows and getting through tech week for twenty years, and yet I still have trouble managing the post tech mental and emotional and physical and household fall out. There has to be better strategies?
The highlight of our weekend was going to see a play – The Sea Between the Oceans. This is the Theatre for Young Artist (TYA) show that the Kennedy Center’s education department commissioned and produced. Sadly, it might be the last TYA show that the KC Education Department produces for a good long while, given current circumstances. This play was soooooo good! It tells the story of a 10 year old boy who goes to visit his favorite author to try to get her to finish the last book in her series. The play slips between the story being told in the book series (to do with pirates and adventures on the high seas) and the the story of the boy and the author. It was an hour and a half of adventure, sword fights, family drama, found family, and the power of books. I might have had a few moist eye moments. I was so inspired by the play that at bedtimes that evening we spent thirty minutes reading aloud, something which we hadn’t done for a while.
I need to take a minute to shout out TYA shows. TYA is a certain category of theatre contract that is devoted to, obviously, young audiences. While those involved aren’t paid as much as a non-TYA show, the hours of rehearsal are limited so that people can still find other work around the rehearsal hours. But even still, the shows are given the same I’m really embarrassed that I had never seen a TYA show at the Kennedy Center before because this one was so so so good and such a brilliant entry point for kids to experience the magic of theatre.
Sunday I took the 6 year old to agility class then went to work. I ran a show (the last performance of the run), had tater tots for dinner with my team as a last hurrah, watched a little bit of tech for the show after mine then went home and watched the last ninety minutes of the Oscars.
I’ve seen exactly zero of the best picture nominees, so that held little interest for me. What I was there for was KPop Demon Hunters which was up for Best Animated Film and Best Song. I loved this quote by the Maggie Kang, the co- director and writer, accepting the Best Animated Film award:
“Thank you to the academy and to all the fans who got us here. And for those of you who look like me, I’m so sorry that it took us so long to see us in a movie like this. But it is here, and that means that the next generations don’t have to go long.”
Growing up there wasn’t a lot of Asian representation in mainstream media, so I still get so very very excited when I see Asian faces on screens these days.
Grateful For:
-Evenings at home. I only had to work one evening the past week, so I got to be home for dinner and evening and bedtime routines. One evening we played Parcheesi – we hadn’t had a game night as a family in a long time. I have mixed feelings about Parcheesi – there is the opportunity to be a real asshole in the game and some people in the family took that opportunity. I guess they would think of setting up immovable blockades that grind the game to a halt as being “strategic” but it was highly annoying.
-weather nice enough to run outside. I haven’t’ been running outside since last fall. I’ve done a few treadmill runs, but I generally don’t enjoy those. It was wonderful to be out in the sunshine, shuffling along as my slow runner’s pace. Also grateful for the time to run outside.
-That the two little kids packed their own lunches. There was one morning when I was so exhausted that I slept in a little bit. When I got downstairs at 7:45am, I found that the 9 year old and the 6 year old had packed their own lunches. Yes there was mayonnaise all over the counter, but … small price to pay for not having to pack the lunches myself.
-Dogs on paths. While waiting for the 14 year old’s voice lesson the other day, I discovered there is a trail three block from her teacher’s house, so I went for a woodsy ramble. It was nice to be outside and among trees. But the delightful thing is that almost everyone who I passed on the trail had a dog. Sometimes two or three or four. It was such a joy to see the dogs running about.
(Side note – the dogs were all off leash even though the sign at the start of the path said all dogs should be on a leash, no longer than 4 feet. So I did think it was strange that almost every dog I saw was off leash. Dog owners – is this a thing? Or is it just the unspoken rule about this trail? I do wonder if the demographics of that part of town is part of the disregard for the sign? At any rate, I did love seeing all the dogs.)
-It’s Cadbury Mini Egg Season!!!! This is my favorite candy season. I haven’t been to the store in weeks, so I didn’t clock it until the Husband bought me three bags.
-A quiet living room. There were a couple moments this week when I had the living room to myself because the kids had gone to school, and the Husband was quietly working downstairs. A quiet living room, a cozy chair, a cup of tea, and a good book that slowly slides into a nap. It was nice.
-Theatre for Young Audiences.
Looking Forward To:
-Happy Hour with my bus stop mom friends. We didn’t have on last month, so I’m glad we made time this month. (i had to cancel this because I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday- bummer)
– Day off school. I think my friend and I are going to take our kids to the trampoline park. My friend is the one who just came back from overseas and her son says that one thing he’s missed the most about America was the trampoline parks. (This is TBD, depending on what happens at Urgent care)
-Getting back into a morning routine. After last week of being really tired and sleeping in, even on the weekdays, I want to get back to my morning routine: read, journal, make the bed, and yoga before I need to get into lunches, breakfasts, and cajoling children.
-Spring. Summer. The glimpse of warmer weather that we got this week made me eager for warmer weather and no more cold snow. The hyacinths are starting to bloom along our front walk.
-Reading this book:
I finished a lot of books this week, including The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which I loved, and this is the sequel.
What We Ate:
Monday: Ethiopian- misir wat, tikil gomen. I had bought injera over the weekend, which inspired this meal.
Tuesday: Taco Tuesday
Wednesday: Can’t remember. I think the husband cooked something delicious and I went to bed right after because I wasn’t feeling well.
Thursday: Vegetable Tortilla Soup. From NY Times Cooking.
Friday: Pizza and – not sure what the family watched. I was working this evening.
Saturday: We went out to eat after the theatre. I had corned beef and cabbage.
Sunday: Tortellini with red sauce and green beans. Sunday classic.