April and May Recap and Photodump

Some months, I look at the calendar and think about how nice and calm it is, how little we have planned to do, how much we can (potentially, not actually) get done in all those free weekends. Other months I get overwhelmed just putting dates and times in my planner.

We had a lot going on this April, with multiple concerts and trips and get-togethers with friends to enjoy. We went as a family to two symphony performances– "Bootlegger's Bash," which was Prohibition-Era jazz, and Gershwin/Price, which was one of my favorites of the season. Jeremy had punk or metal shows to see in Denver three weeks in a row. Jeremy and I also got to head to a Colorado Rockies game with his company. The weather was perfect for baseball, and the Rockies actually won.

During one of our few weekend afternoons at home, we built the LEGO space set we got as a family Christmas present, and it is now hanging out with Oscar's astronaut.

Other highlights: We drove down to Dallas to spend Easter weekend with family. I was worried about Oscar missing our normal at-home egg hunt so WAY overdid it on his basket– and then we ended up having not one but two family egg hunts while we were in town, plus Romie put together a mini-hunt in his room for when we got home. We visited Carol's grave for the first time, which was a quiet, special moment.

I also joined the Embroidery Guild of America and went to my first chapter meeting. This was inspired by my friend Summer, who joined her own local EGA chapter a while back and alerted me to a stitch-a-thon happening here in October. Then Summer actually came to Denver for a conference, so we got to hang out for a day– including an expensive trip to a stitching shop and our traditional pink drinks at lunch (unfortunately not pictured). It may sound silly, but getting back into cross stitch and needlework has been one of the biggest perks of leaving my academic job, which didn't leave much much time or energy to focus on that kind of crafting. And EGA is populated with a ton of women who have extensive knowledge and enthusiasm, which means I'm learning new things and feeling brave enough to try some needlework I've never attempted before.

In May, we had Mother's Day, field trips, graduations, another successful taekwondo belt test for the boys, and a visit from Aunt Jess. Since we moved here, my mom and I have been going to a local British shop for tea to celebrate Mother's Day. Last year Oscar joined us, and this year we brought a few friends along. Normally I don't love tea of any variety, but there's something about drinking it next to a big pile of delicious baked goods that really appeals to me.

Jess's trip coincided with a very rainy couple of weeks here, so we didn't go out to do a ton, but we did make it to Territory Days. This is basically a street fair that happens every year in Old Colorado City, and the last time we went it was sunny, warm, and packed. This year it was chilly and sprinkling the whole time, but the upside was that it was a lot less crowded and I didn't get a sunburn. We had fair food and came home with the requisite bag of kettle corn, and Oscar got to do his favorite bounce house.

Oh, and we added a new member to our family. Meet Nutmeg, aka Little Meg, our new Irish wolfhound puppy.

Nutmeg is named for Meg Murry from A Wrinkle in Time, which links her to our other book-named pup Turtle. Jeremy also pointed out that her name echoes our first spice-named scruffy girl, Ginger, whom we said goodbye to in 2019. "Little" Meg was about twelve pounds when we met her, closer to twenty when we picked her up a few weeks later, and is now about thirty-five. She is sweet, feisty, and playful. And she loves Turtle.

Turtle has really taken to being a big brother, though he obviously doesn't understand that over the next several months Nutmeg will be going from half to more than twice his size. In the meantime, he is teaching her a lot of things, putting up with a fair amount of puppy nipping, and occasionally giving us long-suffering looks.

These two months have gone by so quickly that it's hard to believe that school is out and we're fully in summer vacation. The fact that temperatures have warmed up (...with a few exceptions; it snowed on May 6) makes it a little easier to accept, but that doesn't mean I feel ready for summer. Oscar is signed up for a series of camps, as usual– including a weeklong sleepaway camp, which is a first– and that means that I have a constantly evolving schedule with a variety of different conditions to prep for. He also has summer reading for the first time ever, though currently he's ignoring it in favor of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

Summer is not less work than school for me anymore; it's frankly a lot more, since there's not a regular routine, which is harder on my ADHD brain. But it looks like it's shaping up to be a gorgeous one.

Books:

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: This memoir takes us through the author's efforts to navigate her mother's illness and death by learning how to cook the Korean dishes she ate growing up. The underlying messages here– about how much we can ever really know another person, about how our culture(s) shape us even when we don't see how we fit into them, about how choosing to love someone means resigning ourselves to eventual pain– resonated with me, but I was also impressed by how Zauner balances those weighty truths with humor and gorgeous descriptions of food.
• Yellowface by R. F. Kuang: A very sharp take on the publishing industry, particularly the question of who gets to write whose stories. Everyone in this book is a terrible, unpleasant person, but they're also not really caricatures, which is a fine line to walk.
• James by Percival Everett: Both of my book clubs picked this one, and then it won the Pulitzer Prize. (I'm sure the Pulitzer took our selections into consideration). This is a quick read, but I felt a little underwhelmed by it, though talking it through with other folks did make me pause and reconsider a few of my initial stances.

TV:

• The White Lotus: Despite the fact that this season has some of the most interesting themes of the series so far, we found it really dragged. As always, the settings are beautiful, and Mike White plays with the line between appreciating a place and its culture and highlighting how rich Americans want it to fit their ideas and expectations (though I don't think he's always successful here).
• The Four Seasons: I'm not sure why this is a series and not a movie, like the film it's adapted from, because the story really doesn't need to be stretched out over eight episodes. This is one of those situations where the cast is good, the locations are lovely, all of the surface-level stuff seems to work– and yet the show itself is not good. The chemistry is off all over the place, and the performances seem affected and weird instead of comfortable and lived-in. Steve Carrell probably manages the best performance (and reminds us that he is a silver fox), but his plotline is the most uneven.
• Etoile: I somehow missed that this show was happening despite the fact that it a) is by the Sherman-Palladinos, who created a couple of my all-time favorite shows; b) stars Luke Kirby, who makes everything better; and c) is about ballet without being about ballet. This one gets off to a little bit of a rocky start and does require you to be looking at your screen at pretty much all times (you know, the way we did before smart phones), but it pays off.
• Poker Face: Obviously you have to like (or at least tolerate) Natasha Lyonne's particular quirks– I do; I've loved her since But I'm a Cheerleader– but this show is a complete joy to watch. I'm admittedly a sucker for pretty much everything Rian Johnson does and am on record as thinking that he created the best Star Wars movie, but it's particularly fun to get to see his play with genre and skill with ensemble comedies on display here.

Movies:

• Bob Trevino Likes It: Carrying on my new tradition of going to see something based only on the cast and the Rotten Tomatoes score, I checked out this sweet little indie starring Barbie Ferreira. John Leguizamo, who has really navigated the transition from character actor to slightly-older-man roles quite nicely, plays a lonely guy who befriends a young a woman after she reaches out on Facebook, thinking he is her estranged father. Her actual estranged father is played by French Stewart, who turns in a great performance (and is almost unrecognizable from his 3rd Rock days).
• Sinners: Oh, man. You should see this, ideally knowing as little as possible about it before you go to the theater– which means, I guess, I should not say too much about it. This one demands to be seen on the biggest screen you can find. And Miles Caton may be a newcomer, but he is already a star.
• Thunderbolts*: The most fun we have had at a Marvel movie in a while. Florence Pugh is so fantastic at balancing Yelena's humor and pain, and the ensemble really comes together to form something more than the individual characters would have suggested. The action is fun, the pacing is good, and it manages not to feel so tied up with the larger MCU-verse that you can just enjoy it without trying to figure out what might be a breadcrumb or easter egg. More like this, please.
• Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: This is a streamer (Netflix), and it's a lot of fun. If you like Aardman at all, you'll find the usual charms here, plus some pretty wicked humor at the expense of British mystery series.