A Week in the Life: April 2026

This year has absolutely flown by. I mean, how is it already June?! Though it feels like every week has its own flavor of hectic lately, there are some weeks even more packed than others. This one random week in April turned out to be one of those. 

Sunday, April 19

For the past several years, I have been suffering the effects of some kind of witch's curse. It's a very specific type of spell that, luckily, only impacts me in one very niche area: Lake Street Dive concerts. Namely my inability to attend a Lake Street Dive concert. It's not that I can't get tickets! Oh no, I'm allowed to purchase as many tickets as I want. I am cursed to never, ever use them, however. (This has happened three separate times over the past six years, okay...I'm not jumping to conclusions!) 

Well, currently knocking on wood as I announce this, but I think it's safe to say the curse has finally lifted. That's right, on Sunday, April 19, I was finally able to see Lake Street Dive at their concert in Charlottesville. I went with my friends Molly and Evan, and it was (almost) delightful! We sat outside enjoying the balmy spring weather at a pretty venue (positive!) that was FAR too small for the crowd LSD attracts (negative). Being jostled in a crowd isn't that unexpected when attending a concert, especially an outdoor one, but apparently our particular spot on the grass was a well-known thoroughfare to everyone but us. (People stomped on our blankets all night as they made bathroom and beer runs, oblivious to the actual path to our immediate left.) Ah, well. Humanity!  

Monday, April 20

Matt and I were invited to present at a local elementary school's Career Day on Monday! Well, we were last minute fill-ins after the people the school actually wanted cancelled or couldn't show. It's alright, though! We can't all be One Direction, and I was glad to be 5sos* for the day to spend some time with our teacher friends and their hyper kiddos. Well, turns out they didn't even want the backups! So, Monday was a pretty normal day that ended early with a slice of Shyndigz' Spotted Cow in the bathtub (IYKYK).

*This joke would've started wars on Tumblr back in the day, btw. I can speak with a sense of authority on the subject bc of my moderately successful midsized fanfic blogging experience during the peak 1D Tumblr era. Harry Hospital One-Shot, anyone? 

Tuesday, April 21

On Tuesday, I woke up at 4 a.m. so I could make it to Old Rag for a morning hike with Michael. I wrote all about it already, but TLDR: "God, this hike was hard."

After the hike (aka when my body started shutting down), I had yet another outing. On the same day. On a SCHOOL NIGHT! Little pre-narcolepsy-diagnosis Kate would be so in awe of me right now. Molly, Evan, and I continued our mini streak of concert-going with the St. Paul and the Broken Bones show at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens.

I discovered St. Paul  & co. two years ago during a random Wednesday morning NPR radio interview featuring clips from their album Angels in Science Fiction. It has since become one of my favorite albums of all time and it wouldn't be hyperbolic to say their song, "Fall Moon," tangibly improved my life when it debuted last fall, stuck as I was in a (minor) pit of despair. 

The show was a riot! Brother Wallace opened and did his best with the most seated crowd I've ever encountered at a concert. (Thankfully, the reluctant bunch sitting on their derrieres in the VIP section did, in fact, stand when St. Paul & co. took the stage.) Y'all, I'm such a sucker for a band with a brass section. My poor legs were wobblier than a two-legged stool, but I was grooving. 

At one point, lead singer Saint Paul donned a splendiferously sequined muumuu and waded through the crowd. (I was entirely unprepared for the utter magic of his vocals, btw. I'm a pretty large fan, I'd say, and they still surprised me!) He eventually climbed a ladder—whose origin was no mystery as the lucky roadie who bore it followed Paul from the stage, the bright yellow apparatus thrust over his head like a Home Depot-branded scepter—and Paul sparkled brilliantly in the night sky at the back of the crowd like a great homing beacon beckoning us all to the exits. (It was the final performance of the night.)

I don't remember getting home or falling asleep, although I know I did because...

Wednesday, April 22

"Okay, so you're probably going, "Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?" 

On Wednesday, I had to be up and out before 6am because I was catching the Amtrak to spend a day tagging along on a school trip through Arlington National Cemetery and Mount Vernon!

If you weren't aware already, allow me to assure you: Arlington National Cemetery is f*cking big and there are approximately 1,000 stairs and even more hills, so it's definitely not smart to, I don't know, HIKE a MOUNTAIN the day before you need to keep up with a caffeinated tour guide leading a group of 40 teenagers around the suburbs of Washington D.C. 

Okay, hissy fit over. Needless to say, my body was just an eensie weensie bit sore this day. It's probably much better for my recovery that I had such a packed calendar, though, because I fear the tense muscles would've saturated in their lactic acid and hurt much, much worse if I'd spent Wednesday in bed recovering the way I normally would. 

Hair was hair-ing that day, for sure

Thursday, April 23

After sleeping for at least 11 hours Wednesday night, I was grateful to have a normal Thursday with minimal plans. It was Richmond Restaurant Week, so Mom and I picked Echelon Wine Bar to try. It's a cute, little farm-to-table place downtown that advertised a delicious-sounding grilled broccoli di ciccio appetizer. Yummy! Sedate vibes, though it was a Thursday night, to be fair. 

Friday, April 24

The sedate vibes didn't last very long, thank god. Tessa arrived from Williamsburg after work on Friday and we scooted our way over to Dreamhaus for a show that our friend Corrine sold to me as "feminist gore shadow puppetry." Quickest RSVP of my life, obviously.

This was our first time at Dreamhaus, which is a really cute venue! (I heard a rumor they were on the brink of closure, so I'm glad they're sticking around. The Dreamhaus vibe is vaguely Parisian noir cabaret. That is to say: fun, unique, and very red.) The show was actually a double feature, so once the three of us caught up to the fact that the first act was distinctly not the feminist gore shadow puppets, we were much more on board.

I've been experiencing a bit of a personal puppetry Renaissance lately (a Puppaissance, if you will), and it's really unlocked some fresh creative energy! I have Corrine to thank for that—they brought me to my first ever puppetry slam in early fall and I've been hooked since. (Though, I do owe a special shoutout to my college friend, Miranda, who honored me with the invitation to be her sole guest at the final showcase of her puppetry class senior year.)

There's something ineffably fascinating to me about puppetry's ability to be both blithe and poignant, incredibly simple yet highly evocative, and to oscillate with ease between the extremes. Last week (we're rolling with the blatant anachronism), Matt and I attended a sound show with my friend Liv. The first act was decidedly postmodern (or metamodern, depending on your particular definition...really picking my battles here) and one of the elements that has stuck with me the most was the band's ability to evoke tangible sensations, thoughts, or emotions through discordant, seemingly nonsensical sounds. Puppetry is (often) a more literal and digestible version of that.

Saturday, April 25

This is one of my favorite pictures of Corrine and I, of late, settling in for a watch party of The National Theatre's production of The Importance of Being Earnest 

On Saturday, Tessa and I bopped around some of my favorite antiquing spots in the city. Namely, Class and Trash, Vintage Glass and Pottery in Lakeside, and—a new discovery that has quickly become a standout favorite—Paul's Place. The perfect ending for what turned out to be a Paul-heavy week.

That afternoon, in the pleasantly drizzling rain and before a small crowd of loved ones, two of our friends participated in the time-honored ritual of high camp that is a fake gay wedding. This one was even turned up a notch, though, in that it was a faux gay vow renewal after the initially fake gay wedding that took place 2 years ago. 

I adore my friends for many reasons, paramount among them for prolonging the fecklessly abandoned art of play well into our young adulthood. This event was so much more than mere camp, though that would be reason enough for a festive gathering. The two "spouses" are real-life best friends and the vows they wrote and read to each other about their friendship were deeply moving and, TBH, much more feeling than some of the vows I've heard at 'actual' weddings. 

C & Z, it was an honor to be invited to celebrate your friendship. May we all take the time to reflect on the vows we owe our most treasured loved ones outside the romantic sphere, and may we continue to queer the hierarchy of value that frames marriage as the greatest endeavor and incontrovertible proof of a successful life.