Clownmommy

MAY CALENDAR REMINDERS

Attention 3rd and 4th Grade Families…
Middle School Workshop next Tuesday, May 11 at 6:00pm. Please RSVP to Blake Amos. Childcare will be provided.

DETAILS:

PS 8 PARENT WORKSHOP:

GETTING ORGANIZED FOR THE MIDDLE SCHOOL SEARCH

WHEN:    TUESDAY, MAY 11; 6PM TO 7:30PM

WHERE:  PS 8 AUDITORIUM

NOTE:     REFRESHMENTS YES; CHILDCARE NO

Come learn how to get on top of the search process and not make yourself crazy.

Agenda includes:

! Walk-through timeline to help you plan ahead

! Demystifying the application process – presentation by a pro, Joyce Szuflita*

! Doing tours, tour info, issues/questions to ask before, during and after tours

! PS 8/The School’s role in the process

! Resources – books, websites, people

This evening, after I read the e-mail about the Toronto Festival of Clown call for cabaret acts for June, I spent some time looking at the Brick Theatre website and the application for  the 2010 New York Clown Theatre Festival, due May 15.  I hesitate, because I don’t want do drop the ball regarding My Kid’s education.  The festival is in September and the word on the playground is that I have to be really on top of my game as an involved parent from the first day of school or my daughter will not get to visit and apply to the more interesting public middle schools.

Every grade presented a performance of some sort on the last day of religious education for the year. A few kids were happy to be on stage while others tried to blend in with the wall.  The microphone kept shorting out.  I particularly enjoyed the 4th graders with their cardboard Ark of the Covenant.

We had a clown jam today.  It was great to see the other women and share the hugs and greetings at the beginning of the session.  There were only 6 of us altogether but that’s a good number to have some solo, duo and trio improvisations.  The studio was nicer, a new floor was put in since we were last there and we were given specific instructions to avoid tap dancing and flamenco dancing.  Got it.  Not a problem.

My sister called me because of the shake up at Random House, she thought The Husband worked there, but he is at one of the other major New York publishing houses. My sister’s boss’s editor at Random house lost her job… It’s a shakey world for everyone.

She was going into a 4-hour board meeting. OMG!

I missed most of the fundraiser.  But, I did show up and I talked to some other parents, and the principal, and I had a glass of wine, and I have a lead on overnight camp for the future…

But, I didn’t get to experience much of the party.  I missed the lite dinner food, and I missed the live auction…

But,

I was there…

At least for a little while…

We really can’t expect anything more…

Friends will go see Banana Spheel tonight, the first night of previews. I looked up the cast on line. Patrick de Valette is in it! I met him at the New York Clown Theatre Festival. He’s a French street and cabaret performer and genuinely funny.  I have renewed hope for that show.

So while I was putting together some costume pieces for tomorrow I was singing the song “Anatevka” to myself.  It’s from A Fiddler on the Roof .  I don’t know what that was about.  I have been in two different productions of “Fiddler”…  Nope, still don’t know what it could mean.

We’ve got studio time scheduled tomorrow for the women of Clowns Ex Machina. It’s not a rehearsal.  It’s just some time in the studio to play.  Just a “clown jam” and yet I feel uneasy about going.

What if I’m not feeling “wildly fun!”?

Should I stay home?

Even if I don’t go I still have to contribute $10 towards studio rental, unless I give Kendall 72 hours notice and it’s too late for that .  That’s more notice, by the way, than my dentist or my therapist requires!  So, now I feel like I have to go because I already said yes.

I should be looking forward to it.  But, I dread the command to have energy followed by the command to stop being tense.

It is meant to be fun.  That’s why I do it.  It usually is fun.

But, the last production was so stressful.

I just got an e-mail from a neighborhood mommy who has an organizing business, Urban Clarity.

She sent out a friendly list of tips to keep from becoming overloaded.  The last one on the list; Say “No”.  That’s something I failed to do when I succumbed to perceived group pressure to take on publicity tasks in addition to rehearsal in addition to the rest of my life as a wife and mother

I remember my mother talking about how hard it was to say no to the League of Women Voters after she went back to school full time when my younger sister started first grade.

At the end of the day there are only 24 hours in each day, and it is so hard to say, “No”.

So I’ll be going to the BrooklynNite this evening, the annual spring gala and fundraising auction for my daughter’s school, I bought my ticket from the PTA president.  I wrote a check for her after she cornered me on the playground yesterday afternoon.  As I said, it is hard to say, “No”.

At least there will be cocktails and tasty snacks.

I got a text message from the babysitter of my daughter’s friend, she was running 15 or 20 minutes late and could I pick up the twins after school.

OK, I responded.

It was not big deal.  If the sun is out and there are no lessons or sports practices to rush off to,  the kids like to run around together in the school yard.  I was going to be there anyway for at least half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal at all to watch some extra kids.  The mom’s often call each other for help at pick up time, especially if we are just running late, about to get on a train and know we’re not going to be there right at 3:00 when the teachers let go of the children, but will be there in about 15 minutes.  The kids are taken back into school to wait for their adults in the auditorium, but if they can be picked up by someone else’s mom so they can involved right at the start of a game of wall ball or tag, all the better.

So, the babysitter never came.

The kids were playing nicely, and it was good for them to run around after a day of standardized tests, so I didn’t think anything of it until about quarter to 4.  I called her and she didn’t answer.  The twins used my phone to send her texts which she didn’t answer.

By 4:00 I was worried.  It was beyond a conversation running long or a subway train held in the station.

I told the other mothers on the playground and our imaginations were not generating positive images.   I called the mother of the twins at her office. I held off calling her as long as I could.  I didn’t want to disturb her at work.  She’s a friend of mine.  I know this her  the long day at the office, the one she she pays extra for.  But, she hadn’t heard from the babysitter either and the babysitter wasn’t answering her phone.

There was a 5:00pm baseball practice that would have to be missed, and that was upsetting to the boy who was starting to act out towards his sister and My Kid.

The father of the twins didn’t answer his phone.

I was going to take them to my apartment in another neighborhood until the father got off work.

It was getting a little scary.  I was getting worried about the pretty young babysitter who had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight in Manhattan.  I was still believing in a subway service interruption and/or a dead cell phone battery but my mind was beginning to create darker scenarios.

Finally at 5 o’clock the apologetic babysitter arrived at the school playground.

She was near tears.

She’s a dancer and had been to an audition at the Met in Lincoln Center.  She had been told her audition would be over by three.  They were in an underground studio with no cell reception.

I’ve been in that situation.

It’s so stressful.   Rent paying survival jobs are lost all the time because of auditions like that.  It’s one of the things that makes a career in the performing arts seem so impossible.  It isn’t always about the level of commitment to the art.  Sometimes it’s the level of commitment to other people that gets in the way of a career.