I could have/should have/didn’t post this when it happened on because in my mind there was a lot more to write…
Friday May 1, 2009
After spending the afternoon in the studio with Kendall and the clown women I ran my daughters Girl Scout troop through a series of theatre games and some red nose time in order to qualify the Brownies for a Try-It badge and the Junior Girl Scouts for their Theatre Patch.
The Brownie Girl Scouts got their patches!
Last week I read “Home, A Short History of an Idea” by Witold Rybczynski, which is a historical study of the arrangement of furniture and people in private homes from the haphazard collection of family, servants and apprentices who lived together during the Middle Ages through the “conspicuous austerity” of Soho lofts in 1986 when the book was published.
When I finished that book I went to my bookshelf , picked up and blew the dust off the volume; “Feeling at Home” by Alexandra Stoddard, She’s an interior decorator who lives in an antique-filled, chintz upholstered, Upper East Side Manhattan apartment AND a “cottage” in Connecticut that has 38 windows. She’s into every day rituals like tea and ironed sheets and she uses lots of fresh flowers, scented soap, candles and writes notes on paper imported from France. She has a closet in her apartment with two shelves devoted to ribbon!
“My mother raised me with high standards of housekeeping. When I was little we lived on an old onion farm with a large garage and household help. There were a cook, a maid, a gardener (who doubled as a chauffeur), and an elderly lady who served our meals, smocked our dresses and ironed.” —Alexandra Stoddard
So this morning I awoke and came from the back bedroom part of the apartment to the front everything else part of the apartment to make coffee in the kitchen (a galley row of appliances against one wall of the toy-filled living/dining/media room) The dishes I was too tired to wash last night were still in the sink and My Kid was watching “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, an episode about making plant pots out of cow manure.
I don’t think people like me should read books by people like her.
As I approached my daughter’s school today there was a clutch of babysitters and nannies talking about the Hispanic icy lady who had just been arrested, put in handcuffs, her cart put in the back of the vehicle and taken away by the police. Some of the babysitter/nannies were wiping away tears as they talked about the injustice of it;
“Why they don’t just give her a ticket.”
“Maybe she don’t have a license. Why they don’t give her a warning!”
“She just trying to make a living!”
On the other side of the playground, the mothers who pick up their children after school at 3:00 in the afternoon hadn’t heard.
“What?!”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s not right. I’m going to check with the office.”
It’s shock.
It’s outrage.
But, it’s different.
I fear someone called. Maybe 311, maybe 911. Who knows. The PC mothers on the playground had been complaining about the icy lady with her unsanitary sugary wares on the sidewalk just outside the playground fence at 3 o’clock every day after school. But, they had complaints about how there was no garbage can to put the wet, sticky used Dixie cups from said icy treats as well. Our children begged and we acquiesced passing out dollar bills and waiting on line.
How is it that the Spanish speaking woman who sold the icy treats after school was taken away in handcuffs.
Why are the Island-born nannies and babysitters in tears.
Why didn’t the White Brooklyn Heights mothers even know it had happened?
I had every intention of going into Manhattan to see the Downtown Clown Revue and hang out in a bar with my clown friends after the show. But, it was so rainy today. And The Husband didn’t get home until 7:30. And we hadn’t had dinner yet. And he brought wine. And we are organizing what to send our respective parents in time for Father’s Day. Did I say it was raining.
So.
We watched the train wreck that is “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ the combined Rashamon episodes of that show and the same footage edited by the staff of “American Chopper”.
And I could have been with the clowns…
My baby, my baby, I put her on a bus and she’s gone to upstate New York she’s gone to overnight camp. It’s only two night’s less than 48 hours, but my baby’s gone away… AND she was all like “Mom stop kissing me!”
OK
So
It’s Mother’s Day and theoretically I get to choose the family activity (as there is no evidence that the family has prepared the Mom-gets-to-go-to-a-spa-alone option).
So there are two show’s (both closing their runs with a matinee today) that I would like to see/check off my professional tracking other professionals to-do list. They are “The Mechanicals” at the Bond Street Theatre (Because Johanna Sherman and Anna Zastrow are in it) and “Puppet Kafka” at Here (because Gretchen Van Lente is involved).
I let My Kid chose and ”Puppet Kafka” won hands down because we ran into Gretchen in Manhattan last week and she gave us a card for the puppet show at Here Art Space. The April 29 New York Times review of the show by Neil Genzlinger begins:
“There are people who love puppets, there are people who love Kafka, and there is almost certainly a subset of people who love both puppets and Kafka. Their moment has arrived.”
So we’ve just ordered the tickets online and that’s what our family is doing for Mother’s Day!
We saw the play tonight, a hard won date night, after difficulty finding a babysitter.
But it was worth it.
Studio 54
DATE NIGHT!
I love Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane was amazing.
Every line was pitch perfect.
We had drinks after at the bar opened and funded by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick during “The Producers”, Angus McIndoe
and now we’re home
the baby sitter’ s paid and gone
Waiting for Godot
Existential Angst (it’s not easy to get a standing ovation for existential angst!)
CLOWN!!!!!!!!!
why do I hear helicopters overhead?
I met Erja when our daughters were both in the playgroup at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene. At the height of our friendship her kids were 3, 8 and 13 attending three different schools. That seemed to me like a really difficult way to go about having and raising children. (Though of course all of it is only temporary.) At the time, I couldn’t imagine…
She reminds me of my mother. Calm. Oragaized. I miss her. We lost touch when our daughters went to different public schools.
Anyway…
She is apparently very successful now that all of her children go to school all day long:
Organization Woman: Lifetime spent in Brooklyns spaces, places leads to career
Copyright © 2008-2012 Katherine Horejsi.