Aaaaaah, April

Feel free to read that "Aaaaaaah" as a scream or a contented sigh. It was the kind of month that prompted both. Our calendar would have been extremely full if I had had the time to update it.

As soon as we got back from spring break, track season really heated up, so lots of practices during the week and meets every weekend. We learned a lot of important lessons during the first meet of the season, starting with You must immediately purchase bleacher seats or else you will never be able to walk correctly again. But Oscar has loved track and has even started getting up early to run a mile or two with his dad before school. And we got better at the meets, even though each one came with challenges.

In the midst of all that running and throwing and jumping, we had Easter weekend, for which I planned and executed one of the most reasonable fancy meals of my life. I usually overdo it, which is especially easy to do when you're only feeding three people, but I reined it in and made some good choices, including using the crock pot for the dinner entree. While that cooked, we went to see Project Hail Mary, which is so entertaining that even Oscar didn't notice it was two and a half hours long. We also found time that weekend to get to the Lego flowers I got for Christmas, which are gorgeous. (And now I'm hooked and have picked up a couple of other botanical sets to do at some point.)

Easter break also meant (more) time off for Oscar, so he and I took a quick trip to the zoo. Baby Sully is growing so fast– this time we got to see him climbing a little instead of riding around on his mom's back the whole time. We also got to learn about our resident hippos and hang out with this extremely not-afraid-of-humans chipmunk.

Oscar's class started a series of Friday field trips to Starbase, a STEAM program run by the Space Force. Since their school doesn't have a bus, these trips required parent drivers, so I volunteered and have so far endured three of the five round-trip commutes with a car full of fifth graders. Who are loud. But they really love Starbase– the first week, when I picked them up, one of the kids in my car declared that it was "like school but fun."

Fifth grade is also the year of the Battle of the Books here in the Springs, so Oscar and his teammates got to take part in that as well. Starting last summer, the kids who took part read some of the forty selected titles in preparation for the tournament itself. Ten kids from his class– two teams of five– took part, and they had a lot of fun, as evidenced by the (again) extreme noise levels in my car.

Aaaaand April wrapped up with the middle school musical, Mary Poppins Jr., and his school's annual fundraiser (they alternate musicals and talent shows). The fifth graders serve as "waiters" for this event. The main roles were played by seventh and eighth graders, while fifth and sixth grades filled out the ensemble, so Oscar got to play a bird, a passerby, and a chimney sweep, and we all had "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" stuck in our head for days.

We got to attend a couple of great symphony performances this month. The first was the poorly named "Wicked(ly) Broadway," which created confusion for folks who thought the symphony would be performing Wicked. Instead, it was an assortment of songs from Broadway villains, and it was great. There was a lot of Wicked– I could have done with less, actually, if it meant making more room for more Sweeney Todd or some shows that weren't represented at all (like Matilda). But the singers performed some gorgeous interpretations of songs from Phantom, Into the Woods, and Urinetown as well, and they wrapped up with "Easy Street" from Annie, which I have always loved. The second was a lively Price/Marsalis/Rachmaninov combo, only two-thirds of which makes sense as part of the symphony's celebration of American music for the semiquincentennial.

Finally, April is the month that we first met Turtle in 2024 and Nutmeg in 2025, and it is hilarious to see how much Turtle has not changed at all and Nutmeg looks like an entirely different dog. Nutmeg also got to take her first trip to daycare while the roofers were here (oh, yeah– we finally got the roof done after last summer's hail storm, which made for a noisy few days but seemed worth it when we got hail not even two weeks later).

Books:

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: This was a book club pick, and I'm glad that I got the chance to revisit it. I first read this novel more than twenty years ago during my first semester of grad school, and I had forgotten how detailed and chilling this text is.
• The Wedding People by Alison Espach: This is kind of a rom-com, but the premise is dark– main character Phoebe arrives at a fancy hotel planning to die by suicide only to strike up a surprising friendship with the bride whose wedding has taken over the hotel for a week. The ensemble is fairly well drawn, and the humor helps to take some of the bite out of the protagonist's original plan.
• Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake: I'm not sure when satire became so unsubtle, but this is the second or third girl rage book I've read that feels like someone is taking a hammer to your head to make sure you get the point. That said, it still has some fun and funny moments and would probably make a pretty swell miniseries.

TV:

• Bait: I am semi-obsessed with Riz Ahmed and believe that you should be too. In this quick, funny, sometimes cringy series, he plays a struggling actor who has a shot at playing Bond. James Bond. And even though things move quickly, the story really gets at the complexity of identity, family relationships, and representation. (Also, Sir Patrick Stewart plays a talking pig head.)
• Young Sherlock Holmes: This is a fairly forgettable little series, though it is greatly improved by Donal Finn as Moriarty. I also enjoy how they play with the idea of Sherlock's mind palace, making it a shared space with lots of flexibility in terms of geography and time.
• Rooster: This wasn't really on my radar, and I'm never really in the mood for shows about English professors, especially not after that whole Vladimir incident last month, but the preview sucked us in and we ended up really enjoying this. It's a Bill Lawrence series, so it feels a lot like Scrubs and especially Shrinking, which are good things to feel like. (Also, Lawrence seems to know as much about universities as he knows about hospitals.) A great performance from Steve Carrell and a fantastic supporting cast.

Movies:

• Project Hail Mary: I haven't read the book, so I don't know how loyal the adaptation is, but this feels like it was actually conceived of as a film, given the pacing and the emphasis on gorgeous visuals and truly creative alien character design. Ryan Gosling manages to balance his character's various, sometimes contradictory facets beautifully, and his interactions with both Eva (who leads the mission to save Earth from the death of its sun) and Rocky (the alien he meets along the way) are moving and funny.
• The Drama: This is a dark comedy, to be sure, and sometimes I wished it were darker, but I really appreciate how the film uses fragments (memories, snapshots, quick cuts) to reinforce its larger themes about how well we can know other people. Seeing not only Emma's fiancé but also others in her circle– close friends and acquaintances alike– react to her confession of the worst thing she's ever done is really fascinating.
• Merrily We Roll Along: I have never seen this show, but I love Daniel Radcliffe and enjoyed the few songs I already knew, so I gave this a watch. It isn't by any means going to top my list of favorite Sondheims, but the backwards chronology is interesting. Radcliffe is the best of the three main actors, but the whole cast puts a lot of energy into this.

Stitching updates are sparse this month. I've worked on the stamped stitch on and off, hoping to get it finished by our next trip to Texas. And I am getting so close to finishing the temperature stitch! Only one month left until the daily flowers are done, and then I'll need to go in to fill in details, but I'm still hoping to have this done and ready to frame by the time summer starts.