Birthday Celebrations

I had a wonderful 40th birthday and I felt very spoiled for several days! The celebrations started the evening before my birthday. Jeremy, Lucy and I went to hear the Tallis Scholars concert at Saint James Cathedral. We dropped Sam and my MIL off downtown too, so they could attend the Paul McCartney concert that same night. (I was torn choosing between the Tallis Scholars and Sir Paul, but I decided to go to the Tallis Scholars since I have been lucky enough to hear Paul perform three times.) Of course I ran into Joy Sherman there, which was was a delightful birthday gift because she is one of the people I love and admire most in this world. Whenever I run into choir concerts, Jeremy jokes that he plans it as part of the celebration.

Lucy was kind of wiggly during the performance, but everyone in our family had a good evening!

The next day I had to work, but I had a break between classes. Carrie and Rachael took me out to eat for lunch at Café Flora, a restaurant that I love because of all of the vegetarian options. I love these women so much! This is our first official photo being members of the "40s Club" together - which only lasted a few weeks before Rachael had another birthday.

Here I am with my fancy in-house soda drink. I can't remember the drink, but probably pomegranate-flavored. I'm very predictable in what I order.

What I didn't know is that while I was at work, Carrie and Rachael also were busy decorating my lawn. I came home from work in the afternoon and saw that they had left a yard sign, heart-attack designs and 40 tulips on my porch! These women know how to celebrate and I felt so loved that day!

I think that evening we had Thai food for takeout. Sam had a cello lesson that evening, so our birthday meal was a quick one. But the great part of that evening was that Violet jumped through a hoop for me, not just once but multiple times. I have been trying to train her for months to jump through a hoop and she finally acquiesced on my birthday!

The rest of our celebration continued that weekend, when J and I stayed at Treehouse Point for a night while my in-laws watched the kids. We ate a fancy dinner at the Snoqualmie Lodge and even won $100 that night! It was a lovely date and the treehouse was charming.

The next morning, Jeremy dropped me off at the Rachael's house and we headed out for a Girls' Day celebration. We first went to Value Village and found some sequiny and fancy outfits to wear rollerskating. Then we took a long walk along the the waterfront toward Alki Beach, and I remember we had a long chat about sharing opinions about abortion rights and the constitution because of the Roe vs. Wade leak. I love the variety and intellect of the conversations that we have together. Then we ate lunch at Salty's and went out for pedicures at Daily Nail & Spa on 35th Ave (they did a really good job for a good price!).

Probably the biggest surprise of all was that afterward, Rachael and Carrie took me to iFly for a surprise indoor skydiving adventure! I knew that they were taking me somewhere for a surprise, and my only clue was that I needed to bring something to hold my hair back. When they told me this (the day before), I had joked with them in a text thread that the hair tie was for a skydiving activity. They laughed and diverted the conversation elsewhere, but I did get a bit suspicious when I told Jeremy later about my skydiving joke and he got a stricken look on his face and then tried to laugh at my joke. But I still was surprised when they took us to iFly. I wasn't sure if I would be nervous, but it really was fun and a very memorable way to celebrate with friends. I knew this would be an especially dear memory, knowing that Rachael would be moving away in just a few months.

We had a little bit of time to kill before the last part of our marathon Girls' Day Out - which was the one thing that I had planned and requested. So we hung out at the Southcenter Mall for a little bit, wearing our matching iFly shirts while we shopped at Sephora and ate at the food court. Then we headed to the Southgate Roller Rink for disco skating. (Although there wasn't really a lot of disco music, but that's okay.) It was so fun to be back on skates again and revive a dormant part of me that I never get to do anymore!

This video makes me laugh because we clearly are trying to be all cool with our "raise the roof" dance skills and thrift store purchases, but we're kind of fumbling around even more nerdy when I stop and say, "I think we're blurry!" Ha! I also like that I'm chewing gum in this video (because I rarely do now, but I did it a lot when I was a teenager so it fits with throwback disco skating vibe that night).

These several days were really wonderful and I'll always remember them. I feel lucky to have such a great family and such great friends. The Bruno Mars song "Skate" has been reminding me of this birthday adventure since it happened, and now that Rachael has moved away I keep thinking of how the Bruno Mars song "Count on Me" also is a good one to encapsulate our special friendship. I know that, despite the geographic distance, that the lyrics of the song still pertain to our friendship: we will always "be there" for each other and we will "never say goodbye" to each other.

Handel, but also Ukraine and Bach

Tonight I finished a piano dress rehearsal at Benaroya Hall. It is the first time that my choir has sung there since December 2019, due to the Covid pandemic. The last time we sang there was Handel's "Messiah" with Matthew Halls as the guest conductor, and it seems fitting that our choir is coming back to Benaroya to perform another Baroque concert with Matthew Halls again. He is a delightful person with an inspiring passion for music, and I remember feeling like I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience when I sang the "Messiah" under his direction. I feel very lucky to get to sing Baroque music with him again, and it truly feels like a special, unforgettable gift.

We are singing two Baroque pieces, with the major piece being Handel's Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day. There are some really amusing and clever things that happen in this cantata, and it's fun to sing the words "the double double double beat" in the tenor soloist's aria (see 20:52 in this clip when the tenor sings it for the first time). We repeat words like "charge, charge, charge, charge" and "hark, hark, hark" in that number, which also is fun. Our chorale director Joe rolls his eyes and thinks that Handel's lacking in some creativity here, but I think all of the repetition and diction-heavy words creates a lively song.

I also like how the imagery of our first number ("From Harmony, From Heavenly Harmony") is related to the creation of the world, as if the world was created through music and harmony (a fitting concept, since Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music). And at the end choral piece ("As From the Pow'r of Sacred Lays") has some interesting imagery of music "untuning the sky" as if the end of the world will also be brought about by music, as part of a divine plan. It also is fitting to have music "untune" as a great finale to the cantata. It is a fun piece to sing and Handel is predictable enough that I feel like I'm getting a chance to sing something akin to the "Messiah", which I haven't been able to sing for the past two holiday seasons. There is even a trumpet solo to make me feel right at home with this new Handel piece.

All this being said, tonight I feel like joy of singing again, especially the sheer pleasure to sing Baroque music under a talented conductor, is also bittersweet. And it's not because we have to sing wearing masks. I realize that singing is a luxury which many do not have right now, although I'm not thinking about Covid but the conflict in Ukraine. Tonight Maestro Halls was talking to our choir about how the timing for our second piece, the motet Der Gerechte kömmt um by Bach, is especially perfect and appropriate given the suffering and darkness in the world right now. This song, which uses the text of Isaiah 57:1-2, speaks of how those who are innocent will die and the world doesn't seem to care ("no man lays it to heart" and "none considering"). Matthew Halls even pointed out how the word "Unglück" that refers to evil and destruction, is associated with bad luck or "the unlucky." This is the translation:

Der Gerechte kömmt um

Der Gerechte kömmt um,
und niemand ist der es zu Herzen nehme;
und heilige Leute werden aufgerafft,
und niemand achtet drauf.

Denn die Gerechten werden weggerafft vor dem Unglück;
und die richtig vor sich gewandelt haben
kommen zum Frieden
und ruhen in ihren Kammern.

The Righteous Perishes

The righteous perishes,
and no man lays it to heart;
and merciful men are taken away,
none considering

that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come;
And those who walk in their uprightness
enter into peace
and rest in their beds. 

I certainly feel like this text, especially the first part, can relate to the innocent people of Ukraine. I have been following the news on the war with a heavy heart, but today my heart has felt particularly weighted down with the news that a Russian airstrike attacked a maternity hospital in Ukraine. Those mothers, who either are expectant or just gave birth to a child, are experiencing terrible trauma - even death - at a time that should have been one of the most wonderful moments of their lives. It's gutting. Is "none considering" the plight of these poor people and the evil that is inflicted on them?

I will be thinking of Ukraine when we perform this weekend. I feel very powerless in this situation and don't feel like I have many options for helping, besides offering financial support for humanitarian aid. But this weekend I will also lift my voice in song - an elegiac song.

Lucy and the Pandemic

 

Lucy made this self-portrait earlier this month, which depicts her in her bedroom. I love that she included details like window, her heart stained-glass decoration, her three dolls (Blondie Bloom, Felicity and Molly), as well as three of her Lego sets (camping, Poppy from Trolls and the hair salon with a pair of scissors on top). The closet is marked with a snowflake, because Lucy thinks the air in her closet is cold instead. And best, of all, the window overlooks our yard, and Violet is dutifully barking at a neighbor who is walking past with their dog.

When I saw this self-portrait, on one hand I loved to see a happy girl who was smiling in her room. And I think she is genuinely happy. But I also couldn't help but think about how that bedroom - and our house - has been so much of what she has known the past two years because of the pandemic. Sometimes I lament about how her childhood is so strange right now - the other day I got a little emotional realizing that she was not going to get the "recorder unit" in her music class because the kids can't blow on recorders and expel their breath into the classroom air.

I've also been reminded of how Lucy's childhood is so different because Lucy and I have been reading the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. We are just about to finish the fourth book in our Betsy-Tacy treasury, which is the last one! And while the girls in those stories lived about a century ago, some of the things they experience are timeless parts of childhood: playing with friends, using your imagination, and exploring the outdoors. I wish Lucy had a friend who lived across the street, so they could spend going to each other's houses, and spending their free time imagining and pretending together. She does have some friends that she likes, but the pandemic has prevented us from doing too many playdates.

And I realize some things can't be helped or changed. Hopefully the virus will get under control, of course, but we may never have a little girl move into our neighborhood. I am glad, though, that she has her brother to play with. It's not quite the same as a little friend that is your same age, but she really loves Sam and is really happy to spend time with him. And I'm glad that she does have one friend that she is getting to "grow old" with: Abby H. I like thinking about how Lucy and Abby have known each other just about their whole lives, and I like that they have a history similar to how Betsy, Tacy and Tib go through different adventures in each book as they grow older. Abby doesn't live across the street or even in walking distance, but I'm glad we can drive to her house in just 10-15 minutes.

Sam's Current Star Wars Projects

Sam lives and breathes Star Wars right now. Each day Sam listens to the podcast Star Wars Theory for at least an hour. He is reading The High Republic series and looks forward to watching The Book of Boba Fett on Wednesday nights. Today Sam came home from school and showed me this .gif of Darth Vader's Castle that he designed in his tech class:

For the final project in this class, he wants to make a short film that is supposed to be the ending a Star Wars fan fiction book (a possible series) that he has started to write. He has written about ninety pages thus far! I wonder where this love of Star Wars will continue to take him!

2021 Cross-Stitching Projects

In February, I asked for a William Morris Strawberry Thief cross-stitching kit for Valentine's Day. It took me several months to make it, on and off, but it was a fun project to complete during the pandemic. This is the project that I was working on when I visited Grandma J in May, and she gave me some of her unused embroidery floss (the light blue color) to help complete the project. 

It was fun to work on this project throughout the year. Not only did I work on it while I was in Utah, but I also remember taking it to Beacon Rock State Park when we went camping over Labor Day weekend. I just finished this bookmark about a week ago, but mostly because I stopped and started other cross-stitch projects in the fall. 

The next project I undertook was a bookmark of Munch's "The Scream." This project started as an idea after I went to Grandma J's funeral in the summer. When there, Auntie T brought my Grandma L's embroidery thread for me to have (since she knew that I had been working on the William Morris cross-stitch). I decided to use some of Grandma L's thread to make "The Scream" bookmark as a birthday present for my cousin A. I don't think that Grandma L would have ever envisioned that her embroidery thread would be used to make "The Scream" (!) but I think she would have been pleased to know that her granddaughter was using the thread to make something for another granddaughter. Grandma made cross-stitches for her grandchildren when we were little (she made one of my name and also a cross-stitch of our family as bears - I was represented by a little secretary bear at a typewriter). So I thought that this gift - from one granddaughter to another - seemed in line with something that Grandma would have enjoyed.

The next project also involved Grandma L's thread. For the several years leading up to her death, she would sent her great-grandchildren gingerbread house kits at Christmastime. In fact during one visit she wanted to remind Sam of these kits and introduced herself by saying, "I'm The Gingerbread Grandma!" I thought it would be fun to her use own thread to make some cross-stitch gingerbread houses for her great-grandchildren that she never got to meet. So I specifically chose this pattern so I could use her dark brown thread (for the heart, roof, and door). I hoped to make one for both of my sisters who have kids, but I only got one finished this year. I'll have to do the one for Baby O this coming Christmas instead.

It has been fun to work on these projects and feel connected to my grandmas. I've started one more project this year (and I have two more lined up), so these ones will be for 2022. Here is what I have been working on this week, while we have been snowed-in at RB:

Narnia Halloween!

Well, we did it. After our brainstorming and a lot of costume prep, we had a Narnia-themed Halloween! It especially felt like I triumph because I wrestled with my sewing machine a lot on the day before Halloween, as I tried to get my dress ready. I had never sewn on a machine with the such different kinds of fabrics, ranging from a stretchy white dress, to a gauzy netting, to faux fur. And my sewing machine skills are pretty basic to begin with. I even enlisted Lucy as a helper to help lift up the foot of the machine so that fabric would not get caught in the needle or the bobbin thread. Later that night, I found a little piece of paper next to the sewing machine, where Lucy had been documenting our slow progress:

   1. So far, so good

2. Keeps getting stuk :(

3. Haveing trouble

4. :( The dress is cout (caught)

5. Takeing a while :(

6. Good again!

My friend Katie had sent me some tips on what she did when she was the White Witch, and I followed some of those. I also found a webpage that explained how to make an icicle crown out of crystal clear hot glue gun sticks.

J made most excellent runes on the Stone Table

Here is the final product! I was the White Witch, S was the Stone Table, Violet was Aslan, L was Queen Lucy of Cair Paravel, and J was the Wardrobe.

We had a chili cook-off with our Dinner Group and went trick-or-treating around the Roses' neighborhood. It was the most delightful trick-or-treating experience that my kids have had, I think, because the whole neighborhood was filled with kids, and it was still light enough to see and appreciate the costumes of the kids. Normally we are some of the only costumed people out in the dark neighborhoods.

October is always a really difficult month for me, because I tend to teach more classes in the fall quarter and there always seems to be more going on. THis year was no different. I'm teaching four classes this quarter, helping out with two different art programs at Lucy's school, and serving on the national board of the WMS. So adding Halloween costume prep into the mix always seems untenable, especially because midterms happen the same week as Halloween. But somehow it all came together, after a lot of hard work and late nights, and it is always nice to finally say goodbye to October with a fun evening.

When we were driving home, Sam said, "What family costume theme should we be next year?" And J immediately replied, "Store-bought costumes. Our family theme is that we will all be wearing store-bought costumes next year." Ha!

My Grandmas’ Embroidery Floss

This summer I inherited two different sets of embroidery floss, one from each of my grandmas. My Grandma J gave me her embroidery floss earlier this spring. She had just moved into an assisted living center and I was staying at her vacant house in the evenings, while visiting her new apartment during the day. The floss was in the drawer of the bedroom I was staying in, and Grandma just happened to have the color floss that I needed to complete a cross-stitch project I had brought with me. She was very pleased to give me the floss and see me use it: I worked on my William Morris bookmark every day that we watched Hallmark shows and old movies together.

On this same trip, I showed my Auntie T my cross-stitch project and she mentioned that she had taken lots of embroidery floss from Grandma L's house, after Grandma L passed away a few years ago. When Grandma J died earlier this summer, Auntie T came out for the funeral and she brought Grandma L's embroidery floss to give to me.

So now I have two sets of embroidery floss, one from each grandma. I've been using colors from both of the sets for the current project I'm working on. Tonight I was thinking about how the ways that my grandmas chose to store their thread both remind me of them. They both are organized by color and number, although Grandma L kept hers even more contained by using small ziplock bags that are bound together by a silver ring. These threads are neatly wrapped in circles so they don't tangle. By contrast, Grandma J cut her floss into equidistant strands and tied them onto numbered boards. She left the strands loose, so they have a little bit of a quirky character as they enmesh and interact. 

I like to think about how these two collections - and two grandmas - form different parts of me: an organized, independent and slightly quirky person, who also feels the need to engage and intertwine into her community.