Themes of Snow, Art, and More

Trip to Colorado

• Frank got sick a few days before we left, and between the flight, arriving late and going to bed immediately, and the altitude at almost 9000 feet, Frank woke up with terrible altitude sickness and spent the week on an oxygenator. He did get out for three snow tubes and one cross country ski day. 
• Waffles from the Waffle Hut
• Crepes
• The Pizza Pedl’r was yummy, though the service was not great
• A delicious blueberry muffin at the YMCA Snowranch
• Thanks for the good energy of the team at Back Bowl Soup Co.
• Great ski instructors for Zach
• Zach preferred downhill to cross country; he and I got out twice to ski cross country
• The Fraser library! Zach created art for their bookmark/t-shirt competition. They rent musical instruments and snow shoes! 
• Winter driving in a car that had bad tires. Had to learn/re-learn since Frank didn’t feel well enough to drive

Zach of Note

• Zach wrapped up indoor soccer, and his coach had such kind words. It was “an honor” to have Zach on the team. His last practice was a warm day, so we got ice cream!
• Zach’s right thumb got infected b/c he picks at his nails, so antibiotics galore and then his nail coming off
• Illness for Zach March 18-21; he missed two days of school, which did not seem strictly necessary
• Hot potato and other made up games
• Thomas came over and had a lot to say about the state of our house. I liked some of what he said, encouraging Zach to organize and take time every day to organize. Zach was not a fan. And Thomas talked non-stop!

School

Started the Spanish book club and signed up for the Lego club for his first forays into after school programs!

Emotions/Empathy Corner

• Partially because Zach opted out of Valentine’s Day; we started up Thoughtful Thursdays
• Anticipation of Ethan’s departure was harder than his absence; all seems to be going just fine

Zach's Words and Songs

• Soccer reading and World Cup and Mia Hamm book
• We’re Not from Here listening; the line: “We’ve flown all the way from Earth, and our arms are tired.”
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid (DWK) and tried the movie based on “The Long Haul.” Terrible! We loved the muddy hand from DWK: Dog Days
• Lots of stories
• Dance parties; he has some moves!
• From music class, Poor little bug on the wall, nobody loves him at all, No one to tickle his toes, No one to wash his clothes. Nobody loves him at all. 
• Zach really wanted the recorder at Kennedy Center gift shop

Sleep Update 

Time change was the toughest in quite a while!

Family Fun

• Just Add Magic
• Day trip down to Shenandoah National Park: muffins, snowy hike, and lunch at Death Ridge Brewery
• Lake Anne v. Forest Edge Basketball game; Zach loved dinner at Chipotle beforehand
• Dinner at Crust

Susan and Zach

• Trips down to the National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art
• Tried Milk & Honey
• Trips to drop off compost
• Library and a reading by an author
• Trip to the Kennedy Center because of their RiverRun festival. We enjoyed the Kennedy exhibit and the REACH was amazing with free art activities. Zach created a fish print and made a reusable bag from an old t-shirt!

Frank and Zach

• Legos
• Kitchen soccer
• Sky Zone
• Fort building
• General silliness
• Bought the Indy Pass to go skiing in 2023-2024; maybe a winter trip to Idaho or Montana for March 23-April 2, 2024???

Good Food

• Siga’s Shrove Tuesday Lithuanian doughnuts. Yum! 
• Cranberries
• Tahini Caesar
• Banana and pear cake (with almond flour and no added sugar; really just a vehicle for peanut butter for me!)
• Sesame tahini cookies again
• Frank’s air fried roasted broccoli with Parmesan cheese
• The Corner Store’s blueberry, carrot, and banana chocolate chip muffins
• Pistachio cupcakes
• Salmon hash
• Berry cake - great recipe - almost more like cobbler with berries and almond flour and whole wheat flour. Yum!
• Zaytinya w/ Zach
• Lemon blueberry and dark mint chocolate ice cream sandwiches

Connection

• Emily and Mom and Dad
• Zach played Pokemon with Andrew and I took a walk with Emily
• Chatting with Mary
• Walks with Katie
• The Lake Anne and Forest Edge basketball game with Susan and Jonathan and Mary and Cora, and Theo and family! Lindy went out of her way to say goodbye to me
• A “hi” from Lindy one day when I was hanging art at the school
• Hanging art for Mr. Johnson
• The librarian’s email signature - what she’s reading. I love that
• Lunch at Ted’s Bulletin with Judie and coffee with Jess
• Video check-in with Kathleen and Mary Kay
• Continued highs and lows sharing
• Check-in with Sofia re: Baby James and Zach at age 2 

Frank & Susan

• Cross country ski at Devil's Thumb
• Sheng Weng comedy special
• Friday afternoon walks and nosh-type foods and a show
• Questions: what’s the strangest thing a house guest has done at your house and what do you like most about your family?

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

Health Corner

• Anniversary of my bi-lateral mastectomy was 3/21/23. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for reaching out.) Tough. I did not and should have planned something to celebrate/acknowledge. In the end, Zach was sick, so it probably wouldn’t have happened. Need a do-over. We are planning a dinner out and an event where loved ones will share a sort-of toast acknowledging what/how they’ve seen me handle this past difficult year. Paige, Nicole, and Rae have already contributed! 
• Emily and I talked about flat resources and signed up for a cancer and careers conference in June
• As the weather has spiked up to be fairly warm, I've noticed my hot flashes more. Not a fan!

Personal 

• Focusing on showing and sharing with Zach a commitment to strong relationships
• Continued to focus on choosing connecting over just communicating, and Paige and I have been talking very regulary due to this effort!
• Empathy fatigue for so many reasons; a lot of pain for many who I am close to or who are close to those I’m close to. I know this pain isn't necessarily all consuming for any of them, AND it's hard to remember that. I don't have to solve the problems. I don't have to support them in just the way they need. All of Jim’s college buddies have died. All in their 60’s. Unbelievable
• Accountability partners with Nicole and Mary Kay - which has led to more connection! 
• A new Luke’s Diner hand towel!
• Tracking daily: gratitude, discomfort (lean into it), something new/scary/out of the ordinary, laugh (this is so much harder than it should be)

Watching

• Nothing Else Matters ice dance with Gage and Oona Brown
• Along for the Ride
• Finished Girlfriends; it was canceled w/o a series finale, so pretty anti-climactic
• Kim’s Convenience 
• Abbott Elementary
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit concert
• Real Women Have Curves
• Finished Season 2 of The White Lotus
• His Dark Materials
• True Spirit w/ Zach
• Love Actually deleted scenes
• Sheng Weng comedy

Reading

• So You Want to Talk about Race
• Genesis Begins Again
• 1619

Listening

• Big Feelings
• Accountability Leadership
• JOLT Method

Professional

• Chat GPT experimentation, pretty cool!
• Leadership accountability campaign
• We need 5:1 praise to every piece of negative feedback; we’re hardwired with a negativity bias
• Chatted with a recruiter for a National nonprofit about an open L&D position; always nice to be pursued, but he ghosted me, so…

Quote from Minor Feelings (shared by Mary Kay): Where does the silence that neglects her end and where does the silence that resprects her begin? The problem with silence is that i can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. An so the silence collects. Becomes amplified. Takes on a life outside of our intentions. And that can get misheard as indifference, or avoidance or even shame. And eventually the silence passes over into forgetting.

Fairly Full Cup!

Zach of Note

• Pokemon binder and Pokemon Battle Academy game
• Watching soccer games 
• Indoor soccer
• Unseasonally warm weather and playing outside with Gwen and the other neighborhood kids
• Diligence around writing out his 100 words in Spanish for the 100th day of school
• Thomas’ birthday and Stuck in the Stone Age
• Zach is a leader at school; he and Tom pull together his classmates at one table together when they get breakfast.
• He’s missing two adult teeth (a molar and one next to his two front teeth)

Emotions/Empathy Corner

• Waiting for his Pokemon binder and sleeves (delayed!) was hard!
• Calm is contagious! :)
• Ethan is moving away. I am so sad for Z, and I know it will be okay. 

Zach's Words and Songs

• We are starting lots of books and not finishing them. Lots that we’ve read before, and some not
• Crossword book that I love and he likes
• Reading, just reading!
• Stuck in the Stone Age multiple times, Diary of a Wimpy Kid - I particularly like The Long Haul. The parents of Greg are Frank and Susan. Teehee
• Also, Magic Treehouse, Dog Man, Jigsaw Jones, Pokemon, soccer books, history of the World Cup book
• He still loves being read to and stories!
• Audio Book: finished The Perfect Star and started We’re Not from Here by the same author as Stuck in the Stone Age
• Lots of music and dance parties abound; he loves “We Own Tonight” and “Remix, I Like the” as well as many more songs. Kids Bop Kids’ "Astronaut in the Ocean." Such a range! Cold Play, Men at Work. So good.
• We talked about the meaning of the words “pathetic” and “controversial”

Sleep Update 

Sleeps with me 2 nights a week. So sweet. 

Health Corner

Feeling pretty good. Still massaging my chest in am and pm. Got my ears cleaned out and made it through Cancer-versary on 1/26. Took off the day for my cancer-versary and got a massage and my final (3rd dose) of Hepatitis vaccine. I started the process back in Feb 2020! Also as part of marking the day, I had lunch with Emily and brunch with Mary Kay, Kate, and Kathleen in Baltimore at Silver Queen Cafe. I got to pick up pastries at Bramble Baking Co. Saw Schar Center dermatologist, and she prescribed Fluocinonide for eczema on hands. 

Family Fun

• We played Castle Panic over several days
• We’ve enjoyed carpet picnics; dinner and watching Mighty Ducks Game Changers (Season 2), Just Add Magic, and Annedroids
• Family brunch at Ted’s Bulletin
• Planning for winter trip to Colorado

Susan and Zach

• World championship of wheelchair fencing
• Down to the National Portrait Gallery and American Art museum twice. On our first visit we ate our way there and on our second visit we lunched at Hip City Veg and Zach and I enjoyed vegan delights.
• Some games: Trouble, dominos, and Wildcraft
• Great Falls hike
• Polar bear plunge and chocolates for V-day purchasing
• Bird feeder and birds in back yard

Frank and Zach

• Met up with Sam and Zahra and visited the National Zoo
• Sky Zone lots and play dates with Theo, including one at T's house
• Indoor pool fun
• Red card/yellow card game and kitchen soccer
• Tubing at Bryce and dinner with the grandparents

Good Food

• Tahini dressing
• Jodhpur Indian restaurant with unlimited Thalis
• Christmas lima beans
• Smoothies with zucchini in it for Zach
• French toast casserole and Andrew’s breakfast casserole
• Lasagna for Rae and family
• Banana bread with almond flour
• Crumbl cookies and chocolates for Valentine’s Day (chocolate cookie with strawberry icing - yum)
• Figs from Siga (they’d been in the freezer, so tasty)
• Seared chard with Muenster, Parmesan and black pepper
• Frozen passion fruit

Connection

• Weekly highs and lows sharing w/ Uber Ladies
• Tea with Katie
• Checking in with Rae and Ian regularly
• Regular calls to Paige (unscheduled, imperfect connection!) while Zach has had indoor soccer, so every Sunday for five weeks
• Catch ups with Auntie Em
• A couple carpet picnic dinners at Auntie Em’s house
• Brunch with Emily and Andrew and pokemon video game playing for Zach!
• Colonoscopy details sharing and support through procedure with Emily R. 

Frank and Susan

• We're keeing up the connection and staying on the journey
• Walks and dream house and month-long road trip ideas + best connection
• Date evenings with a glass of red wine for me and cheese and snacks while watching White Lotus Season 2 while Zach is at YMCA on Fridays

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

Personal 

• Emily’s house sold!
• Foster kitties
• Volunteering at Lake Anne and hanging art for one of the art teachers. So fun! Seeing neighbors and neighborhood kids. “Hi Zach’s mom.”
• Trying to remember to hone creativity and do new things. Walk a new route; walk a common route in reverse. Try new food. Go new places…
• Thinking about summer: camps, Brevard, and Michigan
• Music: Taylor Swift, Relatively Easy, Believe
• Les Mis TikTok that Emily shared
• Aiko Bethea workshop on Perfectionism and Toxic Positivity
• Went to see Nikole Hannah-Jones as part of a Fairfax County event. It was a great lecture and Q&A. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark 1619 Project. https://nikolehannahjones.com/
  

Watching

• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (all three)
• Abbott Elementary
• Girlfriends (on final season!)
• Kindred
• 1619 Project
• White Lotus Season 2
• Along for the Ride

Reading

• Continuing with One Drop
• Natural Causes - negative emotional response that had to investigat
• Motherhood So White
• So You Want to Talk about Race
• Started: The Invention of Wings; Till You Hear from Me; and He Said, She Said and My Monticello

Listening

• Big Feelings by Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien
• Coaching for Leaders and How to Start Managing Up (take out emotion and say: I see things differently…Working Genius with Pat Lencioni - focus on kids strengths, not their worst performance
• A Deeper Understanding of Creativity 
• The Happiness Lab and a “good enough job”
• Podcasts on OSHA and construction and safety and compliance - Wahoo!
• Accountability Leadership and the ideas of 5x praise for every negative thing heard. Remember we have a negativity bias!
• Extreme Ownership - This is just so over the top for me…but there is good stuff in there and EO is related to API
• The Daily on “Women Have Been Misled about Menopause”

Professional

• ARC sessions with Client Engagement Services team and telling their story: flying planes, body building, entrepreneurship, zest for learning and hard things
• Leadership Institute: Leaders Listen to Understand with only three left after the reorg. :( Added in a 4th
• DEIB goodbye with Ian, Nikki, and Liesl
• Eleana and strengths perspective and Tom’s kudos of Leadership Institute! 
• Resources for Cory and continuing to reach out to Ian and Rae
• The idea of a vulnerability hangover
• Safety and compliance in construction work and some insight shared around the industry, especially the “Day in the Life” video and interviews with internal and external stakeholders

Highlights...Pondering…Important

• Believe people’s stories; it is their truth. 
• Self-compassion and boundaries
• Remembering API - people are doing the best they can
• Creativity and cultivating it
• Not everyone is worthy of our stories...
  

A Breakthrough and So Much More

Zach of Note

• Kitchen soccer on his own and with Frank
• Zach had his 7-year well appointment; all was well. We talked about how the great soccer players eat lots of veggies!
• Camps during Winter Break; he was “walking sunshine” at Reston Camps
• Entering the world of Pokemon; we got a book from the library, but I was still confused. Santa brought him Pokemon cards and he got books. Wahoo!
• Legos - Poppy Star’s airplane and a box of fun Legos, so lots of creations
• Stories, so much story listening
• PBS kids games
• Renewed commitment to chores (developed a list together) and he was so proud of himself cleaning the sinks and making his bed! :) 
• Allowance in 2023 ($2/week)
• Started indoor soccer

School

• Out for two weeks and one day, so not too much school, but he didn’t really miss a beat going back. He didn't want to go to camp every day....
• Lost his soccer ball, but Auntie Em had given him a second ball. Whew!

Emotions/Empathy Corner

When Poppy Star’s airplane crashed, it was very sad. Frank and I did a good job of staying in the pain with Zach. Frank rebuilt it for him.

Zach's Words and Songs

• Stuck in the Stone Age - so good!!!! “This guy”
• Boxcar Children, Jigsaw Jones, and Magic Treehouse books
• Pokemon Books
• Reading, but he doesn’t love it. He does love stories and listens to so many audio books + I love reading to him. I think he feels like he doesn’t need to read, but he can…
• Stories: The Perfect Score, My Own Lightning, Stories podcast stories, Story Pirates, lots of Who, When, Wow on his own
• He asked me to buy him “lip stick”; he meant lip balm. Teehee
• Lots of music and dance parties abound; he loves “We Own Tonight” and “Remix, I Like the” as well as many more songs. Such a range!
• Mom and Zach and “rutabaga” and his “attitude” or “‘tude”

Sleep Update 

He’s sleeping a lot with me, as much as possible. It’s supposed to be 1 week night and 1 week day. It’s generally a little more than that. 

Zach slipped this under my door
when I was isolating b/c of COVID

Health Corner

• I tested positive for COVID for 14 days. I really did not feel bad for more than 4-5 days. Frank and Zach never got sick. 
• I had my annual physical, and my A1c was at 5.7. So frustrating that it just keeps going up. However, as Emily said, my body has been through so much this year, I should take it with a grain of salt. Still hard to do! In a year where I have greatly reduced my alcohol intake, which feels like a really healthy change and choice, I still need to make food changes. I have a tendency to want to be very compliant, but I need to keep my overall health in mind. So, I’m trying not to go nuts and am starting with reducing breakfast sweets and making changes to the breads and crackers I eat. Having a lot more peanut and almond butter and nuts and seeds. I really love peanut butter! My health has really seemed to go downhill fast as of 45! Menopause is no joke. I have allowed myself to get all the sleep and rest I need in 2022.
• I got a massage for Christmas. So nice. 
• I caught a cold from Zach. Sigh. I started to feel bad on Christmas Day and the cough and congestion stuck around for quite a while. 

Family Fun

• A hike (me and Zach) at Banshee (tried out their new scavenger hunt letter find) and then lunch at Quattro Goombas with Frank
• The World Cup was fun for us all. We enjoyed the final match of Argentina v. France! 
• After my bout with COVID was up, we went out on a driving tour of Christmas lights
• New Year’s Eve we got pizza and played Forbidden Island
• We took a family trip down to Sperryville and hiked the Hazel River Trail. Zach was so excited and we had a BLAST. We tried out the Copper Fox Distillery and had lunch by the Thornton River
• Night hike at Banshee Reeks and s’mores

Susan and Zach

• We took some nights to drive around and see Christmas lights and listen to Christmas music in the car.
• The Metro: we went down to Georgetown Glow - so fun and we went down to the Mall.
• We watched Arthur Christmas on Christmas morning
• Trip down on The Mall; we went to the National Gallery (there are naked sculptures there) and the transportation exhibit at the American History museum. The biggest hit was lunch by the waterfall at the National Gallery of Art
• Zach and I went out to breakfast at Ted’s Bulletin for my ½ birthday. So tasty!

Frank and Zach

• Sky Zone lots and a play date with Theo
• Indoor pool fun
• They play games with Zach’s animals and red card/yellow card and so much more. Frank is so good at these games!
• Frank and Zach went down to Charlottesville after Christmas and spent time with Ralph, Chuckie, and Jeff. They went to a UVA men’s basketball game and UVA women’s basketball game with Sam and Zahra, and they went snow tubing at Bryce. Whew! 

Good Food

• Sesame tahini cookies
• Almond butter, freeze-dried blueberry oat bites (They're actually really good.)
• Auntie Em’s chocolate tahini, molasses rye, and jam cookies
• Christmas Eve nosh and Christmas Day meal - Yum
• Chocolate tastings
• The River and Rail meal in Roanoke (whipped butter and pimento cheese w/ corn bread, chicken cassoulet w/ salt-seared butternut squash pieces, and chocolate cremeux)
• French toast casserole
• Peanut sauce
• The Grain Bowl from Ted’s Bulletin was delightful

Connection

• Weekly highs and lows sharing
• Support from Nicole, Rae, and Mary Kay
• Hanging out with Emily when we could post-COVID and video chats when we could not!
• Katie took Zach to play soccer while I had COVID
• Siga’s cookies and generosity
• Rachel and family’s sugar cookies
• Katie, Suji, and Vero’s generosity
• Cookie baking with Auntie Em
• A great Christmas Eve nosh at Auntie Em’s and Christmas Day
• We watched Les Miserables, and Zach really enjoyed “the play”
• Paige and I met in Roanoke and had THE BEST time
• Zach spent the night with Gamma and Daddy Bob; I got to stop by and have lunch with them
• I attended Emily’s Atlas of the Heart Book Club. So fun!
• Sunday coffee chat with Mom and Dad
• Calls to Paige (imperfect connection!)
• Video chat with Kate and Mary Kay

Frank & Susan

• Walks and best meals reminiscing
• We finished The White Lotus by watching simultaneously on separate devices
• Back to date evening on Fridays when Zach goes to the YMCA

Fun and Not So Fun Stuff (Personal and Professional)

Personal 

The trip to Roanoke was festive and awesome! I drove through Charlottesville and stopped at Cou Cou Rachou. Delicious pastries. I listened to a ton of Coaching for Leaders podcasts. I loved exploring, catching up w/ Paige, stopping by The Fresh Market, eating good food, and checking out the neighborhoods!

Watching

• Love and Basketball
• If Beale Street Could Talk
• Love Actually
• Firefly Lane
• Girlfriends
• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
• Abbott Elementary
• Sodium Day
• Started White Lotus Season 2

Reading

• Braving the Wilderness 
• Gifts of Imperfection
• Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask
• Shoutin’ in the Fire
• Surrender
• One Drop

Listening

• Michael Harriott on Black Belt voices
• Coaching for Leaders
• Final episodes of Unlocking Us
• Dare to Lead

Professional

• ARC session with Omar’s team; they really liked talking about different styles
• Leadership Institute: Leaders Build Trust (wrapped) and Leaders Listen to Understand (kicked off)
• DEIB
• Client Engagement Services training planning
• Then a 20% reduction in force, and lost some amazing colleagues (Rae and Ian)
• Energy-giving v. draining with the new form builders
• Offering ARC to Ian and a succulent + chocolate

My Breakthrough

• How to be an adult: ask for what you need and understand that you might not get what you need. 

• Connection over communication; have the imperfect conversation, it’s better than no conversation

• When I go into a negativity spiral, review the questions on Kristin Neff’s self-compassion test https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-test/ . I wrote these out for a quick and immediate review when in need. 

• Work on tendency to judge others on if or where I think they are on their wholehearted journey

• A foundation of this kind of work is critical to success. Learning, re-visiting resources, keeping up a habit of working on relationships allow those relationships to weather hard times

• In order to be self-secure, I need to work to share and share how I was hurt. 

• There is a give and take to everything. No experience is perfect We’ll all falter and should expect genuine human messiness. We all suffer and it’s not everything. It’s not all of who we are. 

What led to my breakthrough? 

• As I approached a situation that I knew would be hard, I asked friends to support me who had that capacity. (EMF, NJM, PB)

• I shared my experience with friends who helped me process it and provided resources (NJM, RS)

• When hurt, I overcame my tendency to want to isolate and shared my low with (MKP, KG, KS)

• My friends asked for more when I shared (MKP, KG, KS)

• Their questions led me to review past resources and insights (How to be an adult, Atlas of the Heart, and Kristin Neff’s self-compassion test) and a new one, the book, The Gifts of Imperfection - which led me to recall the Gifts of Imperfection work that Mary Kay and Kate and I did from the Brene Brown podcast and assessment.

• How did I have time to review those resources?

• I upheld my commitment to take the day off work for doctor’s appointments (because these appointments require a lot of work and energy and sometimes are emotionally taxing)