Today, it seems that both my blogging and my clowning are developing in a slick professional manner.

So, since this was likely to be my last free Wednesday afternoon, because now that the Citywide FIRST Lego League Championship is over, that particular after school program will go down to once a week and that once a week is most likely to be Thursday.  This was my daughters 3rd year on her elementary school’s FLL team.  Every year I tell myself; after tourist season I will take myself on up to Times Square of a Wednesday afternoon and get myself a half-price ticket to a Broadway show.  Every year I put it off week after week until I realize that this may be my very last Wednesday chance and then I do it, just the once.  Even at half price the tickets are expensive and even if it’s just one afternoon there are lots of other things I could or should do with my Wednesday afternoons.

Last year, on my last “free” Wednesday afternoon, after meeting my husband for lunch in mid-town I took myself the two blocks to Times Square and got a ticket to the play Angela Lansbury was in at a theatre so close it could be seen from TKTS booth which was an important consideration, since it was already 1:55 pm.  This year I did essentially the same thing, again choosing the show with Angela Lansbury in it;  A Little Night Music also starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Leigh Ann Larkin (who played “Dainty June” in Gypsy) was also in it.  She go to sing “The Miller’s Son”.  Her “Petra” was a continuation of the same story of the young woman she played in Gypsy, who must acquiesce like a child in her day to day work, as a Vaudeville  performer or as a ladies maid, when she is in reality a woman of passion and substance.  That could be an interesting piece…

Several of the singers had colds.  So does everyone else in New York City.  I still enjoyed their performances.

But, what I really left the theatre with was Stephen Sondheim’s music and the story.  I don’t know how much of what I saw and continue to think about was Sondheim and how much was the original inspiration for the musical, Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night.  (I’ll put it into my Netflix queue and find out.)

So…

Cirque du Soleil’s Banana Shpeel has again delayed its first performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre. The new vaudeville show, which had already postponed its start date from February 25 to March 17, will now begin performances on April 29.  In the bar after the New York Downtown Clown Revue on Monday night, I was talking to another clown who was saying there had been a big audition for the show recently.  The new opening night is six weeks away, that’s a whole rehearsal process.  I wonder if they are starting over from scratch.  I wonder if (as opposed to Bergman and Sondheim) they put the cart before the horse and tried to put up a show before they had a story.

NEW YORK, NY February 25, 2010 —Because of the snowstorm, the city has decided to postpone parent teacher conferences for junior high and intermediate schools, but Mayor Bloomberg says otherwise, it’s business as usual in the classroom.

“Our main objective is to keep our kids in school,” Bloomberg says. “That’s why we have an education system. And right now we expect that snowfall tomorrow will be manageable enough that we can keep all schools open.”

The mayor says the city will let parents know if they decide to close schools as soon as possible, but no decision has been made.

The mayor says the sanitation department also has 365 salt spreaders that can disperse 170,000 tons of salt and 1,600 snow plows can begin clearing city streets once 2 inches of snow accumulate on the ground.

But, because temperatures are in the mid-30s, the mayor says much of the snow that has fallen is melting on city streets.

Friday Morning

NEW YORK (AP) – Mayor Michael Bloomberg says safety was the reason for the rare decision to close New York City’s public schools.

In Albany, the sun was shining Friday and schools were open. But hundreds of schools – from Rochester to the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island – were closed. It was the week’s second snow day for many upstate districts.

New York City officials originally had hoped that the snowfall would be manageable. But Bloomberg says his top advisers spoke on Thursday night and decided keeping schools open “may not be safe.”

There are 1.1 million pupils in the nation’s largest school system. During a Feb. 10 storm, they enjoyed their third snow day in only six years.

Said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein: “Everybody better do their homework this weekend.”

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

So after I, being a cultural Catholic, “got my ashes” at Saint Patrick Cathedral and My reluctant Kid got a blessing, we had dinner at The Brooklyn Diner (ironic right?!)

On the C train riding home we found ourselves in the same car as Dick Monday and Tiffany Riley and their kids, in town for the New York Goofs classes and on their way to the hosting home of yet another New York Clown Family.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Do you like my hat?”

Actually that is not how we greeted each other– that’s some Dr. Seuss text…

So anyway…

It was fun to run into another clown family out and about in New York City.

We’re everywhere.

You’d be surprised!

Tonight after dinner, I wanted to upload a photo of myself to go with my bio for the syndicated blog that I am behind on because I got distracted by the PR for the clown show that opens tomorrow.

It’s not going to happen, the uploaded photo, bio and blogpost (which is written and waiting patiently in a file) will not go online again on this day as I had planned–yet again.

The Husband, my tech support, is tired and going to bed now.  He can’t help me anyway now.  His personal laptop is at TechServ awaiting a new part.

My Kid is crying… for a number of reasons; a Band-Aid that’s hard to pull off, a classmate who may not have played well with others, a science lesson which was measurements AGAIN! (instead of chemistry–good luck with that one, you’re in 4th grade!)

“You’re crying like you’ve been left in the woods.” says The Husband.

I am reminded of the fairy tale-themed clown show that I’m in.  It opens tomorrow.  We have the day off after our dress rehearsal last night.

That’s it.

Call it a night.

I feel guilty for beings so self-absorbed as to type on my laptop before everyone else has fallen asleep.

I have to stop now.

Tomorrow is another day.

Tomorrow is opening night.

Clown Axioms at La MaMa in New York City!

“They’re spraying a house and the lawn of the church.  We had to run all the way to get away from the bad smell!  We held our breath!”  They are perhaps a little too aware of environmental toxins. 

They’ve had a swimming lesson and Grandpa made pancakes.  The Boy Cousin has disappeared for a play date of his own.  The girls are getting their dolls ready to go to the library with Grandma.  They are dressing them in old baby clothes.  Girl Cousin said she has two baskets full and is letting My Kid borrow whatever she needs for her doll while we are here. 

Now the girls are looking at their respective mothers wedding dresses.  In one closet easily accessible are my wedding dress, my sister-in-law’s wedding dress, my mother’s wedding dress and the wedding dress of my grandmother on my father’s side.  I saw it today for the first time.  Brown and fluttery, silk lace with velvet flowers sewn to the back.  She and my grandfather were married Wednesday September 9, 1931–  according to the local paper at the time:

The bride was a charming pic-

ture in her dress of golden brown

silk lace with hat and shoes to

match.  She wore a crystal neck-

lace and carried an arm bouquet of

bride’s roses and baby breath.

                                   (the) brides-

maid, wore a becoming dress of 

brown silk crepe trimmed in coral

with hat and shoes of correspond-

ing hue.  she wore a coral neck-

lace and carried a bouquet of ophe-

lia roses.  The groom was attend-

ed by…

A wedding breakfast and wed-

ding dinner were served at the

farm home of the bride’s parents,

the thirty guests being relatives  of

the bride and groom and the mem-

bers of the bridal party.  Roses,

arranged in vases, featured the

decorations in the home.

Both…

born and raised in Colfax county 

and they represent two well-known

and prominent rural families.  Mrs.

Paternal Grandmother

 was graduated from the 

Schuyler high school with the class

of 1929 and for the past two years

taught in the rural schools of Col-

fax county.  She possesses a

charming personality and her

many friends greatly favor her as

a young lady with but few peers.

Mr. Paternal Grandfather

is one of our most ex-

empllary and highly respected 

young men.  He ranks with our 

progressive and industrious young

farmers and his numerous friends

hold him in the highest regard.

After a motor trip to western

points, Mr. and Mrs.

Paternal Grand-parents will

make their home on a farm in Wil-

son precinct.

The description of my grandparents wedding is amazing to me.  The other day I read an essay by someone commenting on the extreme weddings that show up on TV and in the wedding sections of newspapers.  Modern weddings are bigger but the commitment is smaller.  The big weddings that celebrate the marriages that ultimately end in divorce turn out to have been nothing more than a theatrical productions. The author wrote about small solemn weddings in a church or at the home of the bride’s parents were taken much more seriously and everyone in attendance knew it.

This clipping is probably the only newspaper article written about my grandmother.  She is identified as a young woman of some taste and education who has just given up teaching to take up the role of farm wife and respected member of the community for the next 50 years.  The few momentous acts that set in motion the rest of her life are so different from the tangled ball of seemingly random experiences strung together to form my 20′s and the young adult years of most of my friends.

I am stunned by photograph of this same grandmother as a little girl in her First Communion dress looking more calm and confident than I ever saw her as the worried farm wife who had lived through the depression after the deaths of her only sister and both parents.

”I’ve never seen this picture before“

”Oh I tried to show them to you last year but you were too busy“

I don’t remember looking at pictures last summer, but I don’t remember saying I didn’t have time to look at pictures last year.  I know I was running around town on my own a bit more than other visits what with The Husband there, friends’ wedding to go to and a search for an animal skin to use in Clown Axioms.

The girls looking at the wedding dresses led to photos.  As I looked at the photos and before I was done more would be handed to me.  I  started to copy down the description of grandma’s dress other pictures would be shown and I couldn’t even get through newspaper clipping description of the bride and bridesmaid’s dresses because of all the other pictures to look at right then as they were taken out of the box and displayed. 

The place the photos took me too in my head was wrong for that busy room of bouncing children and talking parents.

 The picture of my grandmother in her first communion dress is amazing and I could have stared at it for hours.

Sometimes when I have come home for a visit (especially the first couple of times after the move to New York) I  felt stunned almost to paralysis by the overwhelming waves of memories of my own from grade school, high school and college and raising my child in New York City instead of a place like Missoula.  One year when I arrived I realized I had not processed my grandmothers death the previous autumn because I hadn’t  been able to go to the funeral and so from my Brooklyn apartment it felt as though she was still in Nebraska where I couldn’t see her anyway and her death hit me at that moment, a shock I alone felt, amidst a hail of chatter about items from her house and photos from my childhood and conversation about what shall we give the children for their next meal. 

A wave of queasiness washed through me.

This trip doesn’t feel that way.  This trip is just an ordinary summer visit home.  Perhaps because we spent a week in Seattle first, I’m already used to Western attitudes and natural neutral comfortable clothing.  Other years arriving sprawling Montana town to do sit and do nothing on a day that began fighting the crowds at JFK can be quite a shock.  When we said good bye to The Husband at the airport in Seattle he regretted not having the time this year to come to visit Missoula where we are forced to adjust to a slower pace.  (Well physically anyway–the mind still spins.)

The there is so much power in that one picture of my grandmother in her first communion dress.  The child in that picture is absolutely centered.  She knows who she is and where she stands in the world.  It’s a photograph of a strong child.  Then, I imagine, her world fell apart around her.  Her teenaged sister died and my grandmother-to-be finished her sister’s school teaching contract.  Her mother died,  but she kept going; farming with her husband and raising her children and chickens and tending to the apple orchard, vegetable garden, flower garden, kitchen, washhouse and root cellar, sewing, baking, cooking for the family and the hired hands, washing, gardening and worrying.   A woman who worried constantly was the grandmother I knew.

Last Day

Up and awake and watching Discovery Network Shark Week.  The clock is ticking.  Today is our last day together in Seattle.  Tomorrow The Husband returns to work in New York City and My Kid and I continue on to two weeks with My Parents in Montana.  Last year the husband was able to take enough time to come to Montana with us (but the Seattle leg was cut short).  It’s so frustrating trying to combine parental obligations with a family vacation and also trying to see old friends in the city where we used to live.  We never get to succeed in doing it all.  I think we’re starting to feel that “sandwich generation” squeeze.

more Saturday 8/8/09

The pressure mounts on the last day of vacation, the last day of summer vacation for The Husband.  We left the Westin Hotel (the one that looks like 2 round nuclear plant cooling towers) for a walk to Pike Place Market.  I guess I was fantasizing when I thought we could eat them for breakfast every day of the vacation– on that first day when we took our walk from the other hotel through Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market the Nordstrom Rack and the rest of downtown in our relaxed “here we are again in old familiar–and also different since we lived here–traveling home to Seattle city day.

Today, we walked again to Pike Place market where we ate crumpets covered with yummy sweet and savory foods and unlimited mugs of tea (and we bought a dozen crumpets for his mother and my mother). We passed Goldmine Jewlery where our wedding bands were made.  I would have stopped but there was a “back in a minute” post-it on the door and as I said the clock was ticking. The thought crossed my mind, wouldn’t it be lovely to have her design a tiny gold ring for our little princess–maybe when she is older…  Then we walked on to Pioneer Square to take My Kid to Magic Mouse Toys.  She enjoyed her time there very much but didn’t find anything she needed to buy today.  Amazing.  My Kid can show amazing restraint.  (I mean come on, we were vulnerable parents feeling the pressure of a vacation ending, we probably would have bought anything if it brought a smile…)

We didn’t get to the pool today.  We never made it to the Pacific Science Center.  We never went for a boat ride.  There are friends we’d hoped to see who we never got to see.  Now our time is up.  When The Husband talked to his mom on the cell phone about all she thought still needed to be done there was so much tension that I ended up with significant shoulder pain from carrying the same purse I’ve been carrying around all week long.

We went up to The Mother-In-Law’s apartment to work on THE LIST.  We took some old chairs to Good Will and waited in line to drop them off.  We took some stuff to the UPS package express store and paid $100 to ship it to Brooklyn even though we don’t want most of it that is still the easiest way to deal because we are out of time.  (that list had 14 items on it when I looked–just sayin’)

Finally…

For dinner we had reservations at Etta’s, the Tom Douglas restaurant.  Our kid didn’t like the not-so-great-tasting-of-hamburger-grill crab cakes we got from the hotel room service last night and The Husband wanted to change her mind.  She wasn’t impressed with the Tom Douglas crabcakes either but that’s OK because we inhaled what she didn’t eat.  AND  My Kid ordered half a Dungeness crab for her dinner and ate it all by herself!!!  It was so good that when My Kid and The Mother-In-Law ordered desert The Husband and I split another half Dungeness crab.  It’s so much better than lobster or any other kind of crab even King crab.  Dungeness crab is the best shellfish either of us have ever had and it is not available on the East Coast.  Our meal was over $200.  But it was that time versus money thing and The Husband’s vacation time is so short and so not relaxing, we have to enjoy what we can.  We enjoyed the seafood at Etta’s restaurant in Pike Place Market very much.  

After The Husband dropped My Kid and I off at the hotel and drove his mom and her car home and returned in a taxi (more cash up front that seems extravagant to my people of origin who drive their own cars and carry their own food) he said his mom said something that acknowledged that he may not have had as nice a time as he might have had because of the numerous errands he succeeded in accomplishing for his mother.

Last night, we had a production meeting for Clown Axioms which I had been looking forward to because if I do too much stay-at-home-mommy-camp without a break I start to go a little nuts.  In addition we’re going to travel West tomorrow to see all of My Kid’s grandparents and cousins and there is the stress involved in that, cleaning the apartment, packing the clothes, which involves multiple trips to the laundromat both to drop off stuff to have washed (towels, socks, jeans…) and to wash clothes myself using my own detergent and pulling half the stuff out of the dryer while it is still damp (black clothes, brightly colored clothes, clothing containing spandex) additionally my husband has his shirts done and of course the wool suits are dry cleaned.  I grew up in Montana where maybe dress coats are dry cleaned in the spring but that’s about it.  My mother and her peers all had laundry rooms!  We washed jackets with tennis balls to fluff up the down.  Special t-shirts were routinely tumbled in the dryer to get the wrinkles out and then hung to dry.  Other things went on drying wracks or ironed on a board set up in front of the television.  When I was growing up during the last great period of economic downturn and environmental awareness my mother eschewed paper towels and used wash clothes that she threw down the basement stairs to end up in the laundry room.  I can comfortably handle only 1 or 2 wash clothes in the bathroom and at the kitchen sink and one hand towel in each place.  I have no laundry room, mud room, or back porch to hang wet anything.  I can’t seem to manage haul laundry down the two flights of stairs two blocks to the laundromat more than once a week.  I am always behind.

As a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t stay home I have had a great deal of difficulty getting a handle on the housework over the years.  I am experimenting with hiring a cleaning lady which friends of mine do without thinking and which I have a great deal of angst about,  possibly because I am descended from Nebraska farm wives and why shouldn’t I be able to get my work done by myself.  OK. So yesterday, the cleaning lady cleaned while I went up and down the stairs and down the street with six bags of laundry.  At the same time as I was saying good-bye to the cleaning lady I was telling My Kid to put on her shoes and get ready for her tennis class.  As soon as her tennis class was over I was telling her how we were going to take the train to Penn Station so I could go to a production meeting and The Husband would take her out to dinner in the city.

And so I found myself sitting around a conference table with the other clown women excited to see them and to get going on our next project.  At the same time all the talk about all the things that need to be done to take our company to the next level began to fill me with anxiety.  There was much discussion of fundraising and data bases and donor spread sheets and mailing lists.  I found myself feeling guilty for hesitating to “step up to the plate” at the same time knowing that I am already counting down the hours and things that need to be done before we check in at the airport tomorrow.  (Phone, Nintendo DS, and lap charges have to be collected and packed.  Windows have to be closed.  Electronics that must be turned off.  Suitcases that need to be packed.  If the flight is at 7 should I feed My Kid before we leave or pack food to eat on the road or buy something at the airport.  If we leave NYC at 7 and get to Seattle at 10 how many hours will we really be on the plane?)  I really couldn’t bend my mind around exporting the “vertical response CSV files” by the end of the week people were talking about.  I just felt vaguely guilty and incompetent.  When the multitude of tasks were being assigned I felt so much anxiety it crossed my mind that maybe it would be so much work that the performances at La Mama that I have been looking forward to for some time might not be worth it.  I held back and was careful with my volunteer choices.  Press kits.  That involves hand carrying original documents to Kinko’s and printing a set number of copies and arranging them colored folders in a particular order.  I can do that.  It’s immediate, tactile and physical.  Other jobs were so technical or so vague I knew they would leave my head as soon as I crossed the threshold of the conference room.  Then I would come back from my trip Seattle and Montana, finish up My Kid’s summer activities and get her settled into her new class and grade only to realize I’ve completely forgotten to do some clerical task for the clown troupe the dereliction of which will cause everyone in the company to hate me.

And then there was the doctor appointment I had this morning which was just a check-up but in the context of my anxiety over packing for a cross country trip to see the in-laws and the parents and the publicity and fundraising tasks of the growing theatrical company I was ready to throw in the towel and not even go when the voice mail from the doctor’s receptionist reminded me that the doctor runs on time and a tardiness of more than 10 minutes could cause the appointment to be rescheduled and or cancelled.  Since I had a different appointment in Brooklyn Heights at 9 am and then had to take My Kid back to Fort Greene to hook up with her friend for an outing to the Scholastic Store in Manhattan and get back to Brooklyn Heights in time for the appointment.  I had to be talked down from my fear of failure by someone who pointed out that it would not be the end of the world if the particular combination of car service and subway rides that I put together failed to get me to the doctor’s office by my check-up had to be rescheduled and the doctor I’ve never met probably would not have time to be upset with me if all the pieces of my life puzzle did not fit together at  exactly 11:15 am in a particular office in a particular building in a particular part of New York City.  

I don’t know who these people are that they have been talking about on the news who use way to much medical intervention.  (They must be hanging out with those “Welfare Moms” who go through pregnancy and childbirth not to mention living with a baby/toddler/preschooler/kid just for a few additional dollars per month.)  After I’ve been weighed and measured, had my blood drawn,  peed in a cup and wired for an ECG. It was just an office visit, completely anticlimactic given my fear of  cancer/heard disease/unknown.  I’m done!  Significant numbers of calendar pages will turn before I seek additional medical care.