Family meeting with Me, Myself and I

I’m having a family meeting.

We’re going over the calendar of upcoming events.

I’m the only one at this meeting.

The rest of the family have signed off on their delegates to this meeting.

Everyone has delegated to me.

So here I am

By myself.

Looking at the calendar and deciding which is more important.  For me to take My Kid to soccer practice or for me to not take My Kid to soccer practice and instead attend the: Workshop for Families: How can you support your third, fourth, and fifth grade students’ reading progress? Teachers College Reading and Writing Project staff developer, Emily Smith will share information to help you encourage and support your child’s reading growth across the upper elementary years.

I was going to go to that.

I had completely forgotten about soccer practice…

Let’s see, what else…

I called the piano teacher and moved My Kid’s lesson from 4 pm on Saturday to 1 pm on Sunday due to a conflict with her soccer game.

I am trying to decide if this will then affect my ability to participate in Eliza Ladd’s Tribal Epic improvisational workshop leading to a potential performance opportunity which is also on Sunday afternoon when My Kid has yet another soccer game in addition to the piano lesson which may end up being cancelled in favor of chilling and free play in the life of my over booked child.  And I’m not even going out of my way to put her in a lot of stuff.  I blame it on the two after-school days per week devoted to free test prep in preparation for the stupid standardized tests that will affect My Kid’s middle school choices.

Monday will require some finessing since there is not that much time between the end of My Kid’s ballet class and The Husband getting home from work and the Downtown Clown event I am planning to attend…

…and what about dinner and homework?

After “Annie”

Eleven o’clock at night and my 9-year-old is just now starting to do her homework.

We just got back from seeing our home schooled neighbor in the NYCHEA (New York City Home Educators Alliance) production of the musical Annie. Daddy Warbucks was played by an adult, the father of the girl playing “Annie” as it happens.  He was the oldest person on stage.  The next oldest cast member was 16, with the majority of actors in the 9-13 age range.  “Miss Hannigan” was 13 and “President Roosevelt” was 12.  I spent part of the evening watching the musical director as he conducted the orchestra of one trumpet and one drummer while banging out the tempo on the grand piano and occasionally mouthing the words.  Boy he really must love musical theatre!   Productions like this one drive home which elements are essential for a good book musical.

I can’t believe I’ve never seen a stage production of Annie before.  I wanted so badly to play “Annie” when I was a kid.

When Andrea McArdle was on the Tonight Show I stayed up past my bedtime to watch her come out and sing “Tomorrow” and then give a gift of some kind of special Philadelphia sausage to guest host David Brenner.

“Tomorrow” was my very first audition song.  I belted my heart out at my very first audition for the very first community musical produced by the Missoula Children’s Theatre.  (J.K. Simmons was in it.)  Unfortunately for me, they were looking for a boy soprano, the musical was Oliver!


Oops! I blew it again!

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”?

Well That Was Fun!

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!

Funundrum, Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey

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.

1. A riddle in which a fanciful question is answered by a pun.
2. A paradoxical, insoluble, or difficult problem; a dilemma
The acts were good.
Johnathan Lee Iverson is my favorite Ringling ringmaster.
And yet,
The show was oddly boring.
The music and the pace, driving driving driving relentlessly towards the finish.
But,
it was all the same rushed tempo,
Every single act.
The entire show as though to the same song.
The waitress at our local diner agreed with me.
Something was off.
There were only 10 clowns.  (Only one girl.)
Tigers and elephants and farm animals.
All my favorite acts were there, tightrope, trapeze, teter-board.
But,
The show didn’t quite work
A Connundrum

Listening to Carol Burnett on WNYC talking about her New York years

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.)

All Things at Once

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.

Adjustments

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.

Unwinding the Jet Lag and Almost Volunteering

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!