I made sure and charged the battery to my camera, but I didn’t think I charged it long enough. My Kid had her open (for parents to watch) ballet class at the Mark Morris dance studio today. So after school I picked up my kid and walked with her friends and their babysitter to their apartment to do homework before dance class. I took my camera out of my purse. I had my charger in my purse for this very purpose… So after I took the battery out of the camera, which I set on the table, and was looking for an outlet for the charger… My Kid’s friend’s babysitter knocked over a glass of water which got water inside my digital camera so it wouldn’t work during my child’s public dancing and who knows if it will ever work again. Aghhhhh!!!!!!!
Life upon the Wicked Stage–or not
In a NYT article about the lack of strong leading women roles on Broadway this year, producer Arielle Tepper Madover said she worried that the dearth of great female-centered work remains partly due to family responsibilities for women, who are reluctant to sacrifice nights and weekends to rehearsals or leave their children behind to produce or direct shows out of town or on the theater touring circuit. She was referring to the kinds of directors, women, who are attracted to plays with strong female roles and have the means to shepherd the play through developmental process and the producers who get behind the show and gather the millions of dollars required for a Broadway production.
“Going to the theater every night, standing in the back to watch how your show is coming together, and staying late to give feedback — let alone going to Chicago for a pre-Broadway try-out — is not something a lot of us can do,” said Ms. Madover, who has three young children.
I can relate. My Kid turned one shortly after we moved to New York. I didn’t audition for anything because when I did the math the equation I came up with was that paying a babysitter market rate to stay with my kid for the hours it took to ride the train into Manhattan, wait to be seen and ride the train home was a cash up front and do it again for a callback meant that for each audition I needed to be prepared to pay about one hundred dollars. I just couldn’t justify it even though I had finally made it to New York. It was frustrating, but I made peace with it. Our life as a family has been more fulfilling spending evenings and weekends together. The Husband and I are probably still married because I didn’t met him each evening, when he came home from the office, by standing at the door with my coat already on, ready to hand over the baby and dash off to rehearsal or performance only to return after they had both gone to sleep.
I was in one play when My Kid was three years old. It was the result of a developmental process of more than a year, that produced a fascinating original piece of theatre called SIX. The diverse cast of six women, three Black and three white, ranging from new mother to retired grandmother. The production was spearheaded by the mother of a toddler who had been a professional director. We rehearsed once a week late evening after the toddlers were in bed and performed in a church. Few saw it. It was never remounted.
I didn’t look for another opportunity to perform on stage until My Kid was in kindergarten.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/theater/theaterspecial/16women.html
On The Red Carpet
So today I attended my very first ever mommy blogger event in Tribeca. There was a red carpet for us to walk on. How fun is that?
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
In the studio we work in silly clothes and red noses. At the gym I wear sweats which I then wear to after school pickup. If I’ve been cleaning or grocery shopping or writing at home I’m in jeans and any old shirt with my hair pulled back.
Yesterday I left the clown jam early to go to the blogging and branding event in Tribeca.
The other women took a break shortly thereafter.
They came into the bathroom where I was putting on makeup. I was wearing new jeans with heels and a push up bra, under my black blouse. My hair was down with product in it.
One of the women was startled when I spoke because she hadn’t recognized me.
Either I clean up good or I’ve really let myself go.
I’m a valuable marketing tool!
I did enjoy being told that I was part of a powerful group of women, both economically and politically.
I promise to use my blogging power for good.
The roundtable discussion about blogging and branding and that was pretty interesting. I haven’t been involved in a discussion about getting paid for the work that we do…Oh wait, I do theatre (Mike Daisey explains it best)….Oh wait, I’m a mom… Oh, wait…, I volunteer at My Kid’s school…
That woman was right when she quoted her husband who said, “There is no way a group of men would be still blogging for free diaper bags“
OK, I was feeling good, now I’m depressed.
No, wait, I won’t get discouraged. Some mom bloggers get free stuff to blog about and then they write about so much stuff they end up being hired by marketing companies.
Now I am really getting off course. I’m a clown, not an ad exec
So anyway.
It was a fun work day first in the studio with the women clowns at a studio in the Fashion District then at the blogging mom event in Tribeca.
So after yummy Brooklyn supper on the the stoop of delivery from The Smoke Joint I sit here now here I write on my MacBook while My Kid who was very excited about the Bejeweled video game and bottles of Powerade Play sports beverage I brought back from today’s event is enjoying her bath with the blue robot bath bomb from LUSH and soap from Carol’s Daughter–OK I’ll stop.
Nervous about new experiences
I was really nervous about attending this mom blogger event, meeting over 50 people who all write for public consumption is quite a lot to take in at once. And there was the matter of the clown jam.
On Thursday when I was in Manhattan to have lunch with The Husband, I went to the Gap and bought a new pair of jeans, dark blue so that my legs would look thinner. I knew I couldn’t wear what I usually wear. I had to step it up a notch to make myself presentable. I don’t know why we do that, don’t go to the effort to look good all the time, oh yeah, it’s a little bit time consuming.
In the morning as part of my getting ready, putting together two outfits for two completely different activities, clowning and PR networking, I was also focused on making sure that the toaster, the bread, the peanut butter and the washed apples were clearly visible so that My Kid could feed herself if The Husband was otherwise occupied. So when it came time to print the e-mail with the address so that I could be organized and have it in my purse and the printer was out of ink and wouldn’t print…I started to shake. Then when I had to wait longer than expected for a train…I had say meditative phrases to myself. And when I came up onto the street at Penn Station I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t go into the studio at all, I will be late and then I will have to leave early, it will be so disruptive I should just call with my regrets, I tried to do too much today. It wasn’t working out. I didn’t want to be disruptive by both coming late and leaving early. I was only 10 or 15 minutes late to a 3 hour studio session. Even though I had brought the Girl Scout cookies one of the clowns had purchased from my daughter, with me in my bag, yet another item on the list, I wanted to cancel. But, the message on my phone, so casual, the door will be closed but we’re in studio 1. So I went. It wasn’t a big deal. It would have been if it had been a rehearsal, but it was just studio time.
Clowning and Computing
I awoke this morning from a strange dream where I lost my laptop while at a clown rehearsal. It was so real I looked for my laptop first thing when I woke up.
With my laptop at hand, I looked up the online application for the New York Clown Theatre Festival. I’m OK with not applying.
Prep for Blog
So while My Kid is otherwise engaged with her piano teacher and lesson, I am looking at the blogs of the other moms who will be attending the brand/blogger event tomorrow and I am intimidated. That’s nothing new. I’m easily intimidated like by people from New York–and I live in New York–so it’s just something I live with. Anyway, a lot of these moms have blogs that are a lot cooler than mine and have a lot more links than mine. In the lead up to this event they are writing about how they have been to many of these events before. This will be my first one!
So, now I am having some angst about having a blog at all.
I didn’t set it up to review products in order to get free swag, but now that that is a possibility I don’t object. I love me some free stuff.
However, that’s not why I started this blog. I started it as a writing practice. It’s working. If I haven’t posted in more than a week I know that something is out of balance in my life and I probably ought to say something. Sometimes I just write whatever. But, more often than not, I become cautious and don’t want to post something until I’m sure I’ve not said anything snarky (which for some is the whole point of having a blog) because I come from the Midwest where “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”! That philosophy is the complete opposite of a lot of the really fun to read blogs that I can think of off hand.
So, anyway…
With that in mind, I will commence anxiety about what to wear so I won’t look too old and frumpy. How should I do my hair? If I wear heals and perfume can will avoid arriving all sweaty and smelly instead of ”Red Carpet Casual” ready to the event in Tribeca that I am going to straight from a clown jam at a studio in Midtown. I’ll also need a red-nose clown ensemble that doesn’t take up very much room in the bag I be carrying around for the rest of the day.
Oh well, time to move on with the day, the piano lesson is over.
Branding!
Cirque du Soleil is one of the companies with representatives at the blogging mommies event I will be attending tomorrow. How cool is that! I think I’ve found my tribe!
4th Street Subway Stop
She was coming off the F train going downtown as I was getting on the F train going uptown, surprise, exhanging hugs and a hellos with a playwright I knew in Seattle, an exciting moment of fun in the middle of my day!
