March Madness

Don't worry, I am not suddenly excited about sports. (I did fill out my March Madness brackets– based, as always, on absolutely nothing–but when I realized that I either forgot to save them or the website glitched, I immediately lost interest and have not followed the games at all). But March did end up being a bit of a whirlwind, so the alliterative title fits even if it is misleading.

The month started off with the last weekend of performances for I Remember Mama, and just as I reclaimed my weeknights, Oscar's track season began. He now has some kind of sports practice every weeknight, which is the busiest his schedule has ever been. But he has really enjoyed track– this year, as a middle schooler (I don't know why fifth grade counts as middle school, but I digress), he is not on his school's team but part of a citywide team made up of students from various Catholic and Christian schools. He is also one of only a handful of fifth graders and the only fifth grader from his school. But he has stuck with it and leaves every practice with a huge grin. Meets start in April, and I'm not really feeling emotionally prepared for what those days are going to look like, but we're really excited to see how much he is enjoying this and how hard he is working.

His other sport, taekwondo, continues to go well– his and Jeremy's most recent belt test involved a weapons routine they choreographed themselves, which was a lot of fun to watch, and they have both advanced in their breaks. (Jeremy got to break bricks this time!)

And then, suddenly/finally, it was time for spring break. We drove to Carlsbad, California, a little north of San Diego, for Oscar's first trip to the West Coast. The drive out was three days, but mainly because we wanted to stop in Tucson so we could visit University of Arizona, my mom's alma mater, and visit some friends we hadn't seen in fifteen years. (This feels impossible, but the fact that all of our children exist and are giant confirms it.) We had an amazing time catching up, and Oscar immediately hit it off with their middle child, who is about six months younger than him.

California offered us beautiful weather and way too much to do. We ate Mexican food almost every day. We went through a lot of sunscreen. Oscar got to log multiple hours in the pool. Here are some highlights:

• Legoland: Our first full day in Carlsbad was spent here. Because it literally backs up to the resort where we stayed, we were able to use a private back entrance, which meant the boys got to walk on to their first coaster of the day– twice. (They didn't have as much luck at the new Galaxy Coaster but declared that it was worth the long wait.) I especially loved Miniland and seeing sets from the movies.

• Balboa Park: We spent much of Tuesday wandering this gorgeous area, especially the botanical gardens. We followed it up with a quick trip to Old Town San Diego and a stop in La Jolla, where the sea lions had not yet reclaimed Sea Lion Rock from the birds.

• Universal Studios: I went back and forth for a while about whether it would be better to go here or Disneyland, and even though the drive up there was long (LA traffic, ew), I think this was the right choice. Our favorite experiences were getting a surprise express trip through the line for the Jurassic Park ride and the amazing studio tour. And the Nintendo area is incredible– it was like walking into a Super Mario game.

After all that activity and before the long drive home, we decided to stay closer to the resort for our last day. Oscar finally got to go down the pool slide, which had been closed every other time he visited, and to make up for lost time, he slid about a hundred times. Instead of lunch, we snacked on the four Universal Yums boxes we brought with us (this was a Christmas present for Jeremy that we kept meaning to get around to). We rated our favorite snacks from Greece, Korea, Brazil, and Poland, some of which were extremely delicious and none of which outright sucked. The champion was a bag of Korean peach gummies. That night, we ate by the ocean and put our feet in the water as the sun went down. Then we got back to the resort to discover there was a citywide power outage, which meant packing up in the dark (and of course the lights came back on just as we were finishing).

This trip also offered us surprise national park stops. ("Surprise" only because it didn't occur to me to check on the locations of Arizona's non-Grand Canyon parks before we left.) We got to see Saguaro National Park at the beginning of the trip and Petrified Forest National Park (and the Painted Desert, which is where we focused our time) on the way home. We didn't spend a ton of time in either, but they both had really interesting visitors' centers, so now we know a lot more about cacti and the CCC.

Books:

• Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera: Since I had extra time while Oscar was in track practice, I picked this one up as an audiobook. It's fine–a murder mystery involving amnesia and a podcast, which made the audiobook a good format for it. Not mentally taxing so exactly what I needed for those afternoons.
• Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson: I have always enjoyed this author's books, but this one was pretty flimsy, despite having some promising aspects. It just feels generally underdeveloped, like she saw the potential to explore interesting dynamics between parent and child and past and present and decided just to skim over them instead.

TV Shows:

• Vladimir: Ugh. Within minutes, I realized that I hated everything about this show. The terrible fourth-wall breaks, Rachel Weisz's terrible US accent, the general premise. It gets the basic dynamics (and look) of a university English department right, but it doesn't do anything all that interesting with them, and it seems to think it's a comedy, but it's deeply unfunny.
• The UK Celebrity Traitors: Although I missed Alan Cumming the entire time, I devoured this season, which featured some of the most charming celebrities and terrible game play you can imagine. As a longtime fan of The Great British Baking Show, I should not have been surprised at this, but the contestants here– including Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, and Tom Daly– were so nice. Every round table was full of compliments and apologies. The winner sobbed at having to deceive all of these people whom he had come to love. To be fair, though, the Faithful made it shockingly easy on him.
• Wonder Man: One of my castmates raved about this show, so we decided to give it a try despite the trailers leaving us 0% interested. Turns out? It's great. Ben Kingsley is obviously having a ball, and he balances out Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's intensity. It almost doesn't feel Marvel at all, and that's a relief.

Movies:

• Sentimental Value: A gorgeous, quiet movie about family dysfunction that really settles in to consider how much can be repaired and what might need to be abandoned altogether. Fantastic acting across the board.
• One Battle After Another: Wildly overrated.
• Zootopia 2: People seem to really love these movies, and we thought the first one was fine, so we were looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, aside from some great voice work from new cast members Ke Huy Quan and Fortune Feimster, this one didn't really leave much of an impression.
• Forbidden Fruits: This was billed as Mean Girls meets The Craft, which obviously sounds incredible. Unfortunately, it's not great. The cast is game, but the story is uneven at best, and it crams almost all of its horror elements into a bizarre two-minute window.

In stitching updates, I finished my Act I variegated stitch (I hoped to have it done by/during the last performance but missed that goal by a day). I also finished October in the temperature stitch. And since I had extra time in the afternoons while sitting through Oscar's track practices, I started the next stamped cross stitch for my aunt.