Clownmommy

This evening did not go well, and I feel guilty.  It is my want as I take the role of mother in this scenario also I’m Catholic so I’m very good at feeling guilty.

The day was spent focused on the physical aspects of the apartment aka housekeeping.

I picked up the kid at 4:30 post after-school test prep UGH!

So neither me nor my kid had spent the day doing the things we love…

So

Art?  Yes.  No… TV… Play…

What will we do?

How about a meltdown?

I can’t believe I told her, “If the neighbors call 911, you are going to have to tell the police why you are screaming because I have no idea.”  (My Mom is going to enjoy a schadenfreude moment when she reads this.)  Not my best parenting moment…

Can we please pull it together before Daddy get’s home?

Dick Van Dykely home from the Midtown Manhattan expecting Mary Tyler Moore and a kid in pajamas ready for a good night kiss…

More like Roseanne Barr’s “If the kid’s are still alive when my husband gets home I’ve done my job.”

Only the soup is ready.

Actually we still have to go…

…to the store…

before we can make dinner…

Arctic char, broccoli, fresh baguette, a little wine…

Sounds good…

But, it’s not, because…

The homework’s not done…

Oh, and there’s a hole in the pipe under the kitchen sink so… I have to wash the dishes in the bathtub!

God the daily dinner-homework-bedtime show can become downright Shakespearean!

AND IT’S ONLY TUESDAY!

Is there an emoticon for “kill me now”?

This afternoon just after I had climbed the stairs hauling my cart full of clean clothes from the laundromat my friend called.  She was in the neighborhood because she was going to a reading at Irondale.  I had an hour before I had to pick up My Kid from dance class at Mark Morris so we met for a beverage at a table in the sun and talked about New York Magazine’s ranking of our respective neighborhoods.  I was able to join her for the reading of Barbara Wiechmann’s play, The Holy Mother of Hadley New York. It was good AND my friend and I ran into another friend we both knew when we all lived in Seattle who has recently moved to New York and works for RipeTime, “a theatre company devoted to producing ensemble driven theatre infused with rich language, visual power and physical rigor”.  How cool is that!

For our Easter celebration we went to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus this evening.  It was the 7:30 pm and the last show in Madison Square garden, a full house with lots of little girls in pretty spring dresses.  The rigging was hauled away to be packed onto the truck at the end of each act.

Funundrum–what a strange title.

I could tell by the poster that the publicity machine had gone into action before the show had a headline act.

And, the show didn’t have a headline act.

co·nun·drum  n.

Carol Burnett was on the Leonard Lopate show today.  She talked about coming to New York and living at The Rehearsal Club, the real life role model for the boarding house in the movie “Stage Door”.  Of course it no longer existed by the time I was an aspiring actress.  I didn’t come to New York in the 1980′s even though it was a dream of mine, like Carol Burnett, to be on Broadway.  I was discouraged from the prospect as the reality seemed to be more “Taxi Driver” than “42nd Street” and I became pretty convinced I would be raped in a stairwell if I couldn’t afford to live in a good neighborhood.   So I stayed in Montana.  My friend came.  She did fine.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been such a chicken.  (But that worst nightmare did happen to Kelly McGillis in while she was an acting student at Julliard.)

Yesterday I read Mika Brzezinski’s book ALL THINGS at ONCE.

I bought it because I teared up in the store when I read her description of being so exhausted that she fell down the stairs while carrying her 4-month-old and landed on her baby.

The book was a quick read.  I identified with her…

…up to a point.

Today, I’m thinking about how Ms. Brzezinski and her husband decided they could max out their credit and pay for babysitters 24/7 if they had to so that she could continue her career in broadcast news.  That’s not the same math we did in our family.

I don’t identify with her anymore.

Waking late and my lower back and stiff and sore because I was up and oddly bent against the bed frame and on my laptop between the hours of 3 am and 6 am.  Jetlag.

My jaw is sore and I don’t know why.  Perhaps I am tense.  We flew the red-eye between Seattle and New York between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

There was an e-mail from AYSO saying there were more kids than coaches and unless some parents stepped up and volunteered and registered for coach or referee training our kids wouldn’t get to play soccer this spring.  I had talked myself into the idea that learning the rules of soccer and becoming a referee would be good for me.  Who doesn’t want to have official certification.  I even considered law school at one point just for the real job certification.  That reminds me, my CPR and Water Safety certifications have expired…

I’ve never played soccer, so I don’t know the rules at all and although I already go to most of my daughters games because I like to visit with the other parents.  Being a referee would mean that I would have to go to all of the games and I wouldn’t get to chat with the other moms.

If I were a referee I would have to make calls about the ball in play and other parents would inevitably yell at me that I was wrong.  The very thought makes my stomach turn, and yet, I was willing to do it.  Thank goodness The Husband got a e-mail from the coach so we know My Kid is on a team.  Hooray!  Now I don’t have to volunteer!

…Now, I feel guilty because I’m a slacker!

We have our hamster, Butterscotch Caramel, back from the neighbors who babysat him while we were out of town.  Owing to a twist of fate, our hamster is looking perkier today than the neighbor kid’s hamster.  We’re thankful for our healthy hamster and here’s hoping all the hamsters we know at this point in time will be healthy and happy by the end of the week.

So I have discovered that if I am sitting in a hotel lobby having a drink with my husband and visiting with my mother-in-law and My Kid is trying to log onto Webkins that it is not also possible to–at the same time–write a blog post