Tag: 4th of July

Mommy Camp went off with a bang and I am exhausted

Thank goodness today’s scheduled group Mommy Camp was cancelled because I am exhausted and I have to work the Macy’s Fireworks VIP audience tonight.

We decided on the way home from Coney Island yesterday afternoon that we did not need to get up early today and rush to the Painted Pot to decorate knickknacks in yet another fun-filled activity during our Mommy Camp Summer-Kick-Off Week.

On Monday we met at noon to see the 12:30 showing of Wall*E at Cobble Hill Cinema, afterwards we had pizza in a restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon with water balloons (some of us until after 6pm) at Peirrepont Playground on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.  On Tuesday we Met at Melody Lanes Bowling Alley at 10am (I ducked out to meet the cleaning lady at my apartment–she never showed–so I made phone calls about clown stuff and paid bills–she is here now with her mother–how embarrassing for me) and returned to meet the group again at Pierrepont Playground where we stayed until after 6pm.  Then I brought My Kid and her friend home for a sleepover.  We walked to Ft. Green from Brooklyn Heights through Fulton Mall, stopping at Cookies to buy cheap plastic walkie talkies CUZ WE NEEEEEED THEM FOR OUR SLEEPOVER!.  At home we made tacos.  The girls had fun cutting up tomatoes and lettuce with plastic knives.  Then at 9:30 we went outside and walked to Fort Greene Park looking for fireflies.  Two were captured.  Many never made it into the jar, then one of the two prisoners escaped.  The other was granted clemency and freed. The girls desperately needed a bath and so they had one.  They were asleep by 11:30.  But we had to get up early because I had a 9am appointment in Brooklyn Heights.  I was late.  The kids played Ninetendo in the waiting room.  Then we met up with the others and took the train and a bus to Chelsea Piers to go ice skating.  But, none of us had checked in advanced and the rink was closed to the public.  So we went, as scheduled to the water playground next to Chelsea Piers and then (as a quick Plan B) to Dave and Busters in Times Square where everyone ate greasy food and the adults drank overpriced tropical drinks and spent too much on games for the kids.  Afterwards we returned My Kid’s friend to her apartment where her mom had been home all day with a sick 4-year-old, a baby, and less than 24 hours to pack camping gear and clothes for a family of 5 before a flight to Colorado the next day.  My Kid and I again walked home from Brooklyn Heights through Fulton Mall. (Meanwhile Enthusiastic Mom took her son to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium and they got home at midnight)  I think we ate Chinese take-out.  I think we watched “So You Think You Can Dance” on TV.  I was beginning to wonder if the week of fun would ever end.  Nope not yet.  Next on the schedule–Thursday morning we met on the Q train for a trip to Coney Island; Astroland unlimited ride bracelets, Nathan’s cheese fries.  Sand and Sea.  And the inevitable melt-down.  My Kid was too short to ride the pirate ship but her friend was tall enough.  So My Kid got to play some games and win some MORE stuffed animals to add to the clutter in our apartment.

 Enthusiastic Mom had e-mailed us a spread-sheet schedule of the week’s planned activities. The kids were all supposed to wear the same colored shirt each day (so they would look like a group just like real day camp kids) which they took seriously.  Monday was white, Tuesday was red, Wednesday was blue, Thursday was yellow.  We discussed changing plans, but unfortunately our kids are old enough to read and in fact had been studying the schedule.  The children would not allow us to deviate much from what had been printed. (Thank goodness they were also exhausted by Thursday night so we could cancel today–which isn’t really a day of nothing since it is the 4th of July and that involves at the very least schlepping out somewhere to stand with a crowd to watch the fireworks and then schlepping home in the dark and possibly rain.)  That’s why we still had to go to Astroland at Coney Island even though we had spent the previous afternoon at Dave and Busters in Times Square.  They are effectively the same thing from a spending money for nothing point of view. 

All in all it was a good week.  But, I will be glad to get back to My Kid’s version of Mommy Camp which is much more like homeschooling with reading and writing, math and science, and art (what can I do that’s what My Kid said she wanted…)  But, we’ll be going to Montana for two weeks and accompanying My Husband on a business trip to Toronto in August so I don’t know how many days of this brand of low-key educational mommy camp she will actually get.

 

Stay At Home Mom –NOT!

When I was preparing to begin a blog of my own, in my random  cyber-wanderings I came across a blog that made me laugh. It wasn’t the wit of the writer, it was the subject matter.  A man, a professional athlete had just become a proud stay-at-home-dad.  His blog bragged about how smoothly his day went.  He got up early and got in a good workout before his wife went to her job. Then he managed the care and feeding of the baby all day, accomplishing other tasks and getting in more exercise while the baby slept.  He didn’t know why people complain about how hard it is to stay home with a child. There are no further posts. 

I don’t want to be one of those people who start a blog and don’t continue.  But, I also don’t want to chat and vent and whine.  I want to write about what I do or try to do making my way as a theatrical clown in New York City at the same time as I am a “stay-at-home-mom”  although apparently unable to stay home for more than a few hours at a time. Granted My Kid is in school now (except she’s not now–summer vacation has begun both “Finally!!!!!” and “Already???”) so it’s not like she’s a baby or a toddler.  But, it did seem that going on the science field trip, attending the Second Grade Field Day, the Brownie Girl Scout Badge Ceremony and taking cupcakes to her class in honor of her “summer birthday” not to mention, the cleaning, that I don’t do enough of, but spend a lot of time stressing about and the cooking, that I don’t do enough of but spend a lot of time stressing about, and the laundry, that I don’t do enough of but spend a lot of time stressing about, and the hanging out on the playground so that she can run and play (before the summer becomes too hot), during which time I think to myself:  “Surely there must be some high school or college student who could do this instead of me”.  Except that it was lucky for me to be there talking to the other moms on the playground when it was decided to organize a week of Mommy Camp for those of us who haven’t registered our kids daycamp starting-right-away-like-the-moms-with-real-jobs and so there is the problem of what will our kids do now that school is out and all their friends are in day camp.   I wouldn’t have been a part of this project if I hadn’t been standing around chatting with the mothers at the edge of the playground when the idea came up and Enthusiastic Mom ran with it and several multi-kid mom’s latched on because they hadn’t planned anything anyway because of upcoming travel or visitors or baseball or finances.

It’s a good thing I was there, because otherwise My Kid would spend all next week watching Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zach and Cody (I hate that show) and iCarly,  television shows wherein My Kid learns that  middle school is going to be great fun and grown-ups are sight gags. Meanwhile I would drink too much coffee and vibrate between the kitchen sink and my laptop trying to decide whether I should clean or cook or shop or do laundry or work on a clown piece or write or take My Kid to the park or the library or the beach or a museum and end up going to Target because it’s entertaining for her and has some errand accomplishing value for myself.

 Instead, for this coming week my friend, Enthusiastic Mom, has already  e-mailed me a spreadsheet schedule of when and where My Kid and I are supposed to be each day in order meet up with the other kids and mommies to do something stimulating and exciting with My Kid’s friends and assorted younger siblings. 

Meanwhile, there is some life in my life on the clown front.  The full-length show I proposed was not chosen for the New York Clown Theatre Festival this September, but they would like us to do a piece in one of their evenings of short works.  I forwarded that e-mail to my puppeteer partner but she didn’t respond.   Before I sent her another e-mail asking why she hadn’t  responded and would she be able to be in town to perform with me, and  what’s the matter didn’t she like the show we proposed or want to work with me anymore.  I googled the summer theatre where she is running the prop shop and noted in their calendar that they had 4 different shows open this week, so I let it slide for now.  I was on stage at the New York Downtown Clown Revue in a demonstration of Jef Johnson’s Clown Lab.  Kendall’s next project, “Clown Axiom”, went into rehearsal on Friday and I was there at Triskelion Studio on Williamsburg (after schlepping my kid to a begged-for babysit/playdate in Brooklyn Heights and the end of the day I took the girls swimming at the Y and then for pizza and then donughts with My Husband and then the next morning my kid’s friend’s mommy called and said her daughter was still asleep at nearly 11 am.  She reported that her child had gone from little girl to teenager in less than 24 hours.)  I attended some Clown Labs at Theatre Lab and The Producers Club and I got a 4th of July corporate gig through a Ringling contact.  So I’m not doing nothing.

But,

It feels like it sometimes.