It’s Saturday morning. My Kid and The Husband are still asleep. I haven’t had time to write at all since My Kid started school on Tuesday.
When I accompany her to school on the subway and drop her off at 8:30, I can be home by 9:30 but it’s usually more like ten. I have studio time scheduled from 12:00 to 2:00 most days (until my piece next week) and by 2:30 I have to be on my way to pick up My Kid again. A script in my head says I have all the time in the world “because I don’t work”. We were so busy I ended up ordering pizza delivery twice! The Husband has been out of town on business all week (again Paris, again without me, PARIS!). He was sad to miss The Kid’s First Day of School. I lost the morning hours I use to get myself and the apartment ready for the day. On Tuesday I was almost an hour late to my own studio time–with no one to feel guilty for but myself. I was going from bank to bank (“You have to have the number of a bank account in Paris to wire the money to.”) and making phone calls to American Express Travel Services (“Oh. No, we don’t do that anymore.”) trying to find out how to wire money to The Husband who had lost his wallet. We thought I could wire it to his hotel, but it turns out I couldn’t do that because I couldn’t call the hotel because it turns out I don’t have the international calling service in my calling plan (“Would I like stay on hold, and invent codes I will never remember and jump through other hoops to add this service now?” –“No I don’t, I’m standing in a bank, I’d have to go home to look up my husbands maiden name or serial number or whatever secret information I need to find or remember (which of course I don’t) in order change my phone service and then come back to the bank to wire the money. I’m trying to run this one errand and then get to my rehearsal studio because My Kid finally went back to school and I only have a couple of hours to work with.”)
Who knew Western Union is something done at the drugstore like dropping off film–except that you have to have a lot of cash in your hand.
Meanwhile. In the process of exchanging phone calls with The Husband in Paris (who I could talk to because we have a family plan on our cell phones) I can’t talk to anyone else in Paris and when he leaves Paris, I can’t talk to Paris at all. Sigh. What if that’s as close as I ever get to Paris….. Anyway, guess what we figured out: When The Husband called me to tell me to cancel his credit cards because he lost his wallet and I went OHMYGOD and got on the phone with the recorded voices right away!!!!!! –Well, I kinda cancelled my own credit card. Soooo. I had that to deal with as well before I could get into the studio.
I had to scramble on Wednesday to rush home between school drop-off and my rehearsal in Manhattan, to change the futon in the front room from the stuffed animal, doll and toy filled TV watching nest My Kid constructed into a bed for my puppeteer friend, Lorraine, who came to town to work on the show. I had to scramble to find another parent who could pick up My Kid afterschool on Wednesday so I could have studio time (between 2:30 and 4:30–school is dismissed at 3:00) with another clown to work on the “Contraction and Labor Dance” section of the piece. Meanwhile, I completely forgot to go to my appointment with the professional who tells me that “housecleaning is taking up too much of my mental real estate”.
Thursday. Already I don’t remember Thursday. Lorraine and I did some good work on the structure of the piece, in the studio from 12 till 2. Before we went into the studio we were talking about supplies for the Waldorf doll puppets I remembered that last year one of my neighborhood mommy friends was making a lot of felt art with bulk wool she had gotten upstate last year and I called her and she still had some and so she dropped it off on the way to pick up her kid from pre-school. I invited her to watch a rehearsal next week. After school My Kid sat fascinated on the stoop with Lorraine as she constructed a puppet head out of foam.
Yesterday, Friday, the manager of the studio space wasn’t there to let us in so we came home to work and have to reschedule that time next week. I had thought we would go to the New York Clown Theatre Festival parade and pie fight, but My Kid had her first Brownie meeting of the year after school. We ordered pizza again. I thought Lorraine and I would go to the Clown Festival Cabaret at 10 pm, but we would only have been able to do that if we took The Kid with us. The husband who had had to change plans and didn’t get home until almost 10:00 pm. THE HUSBAND CAME HOME!!! WE GOT PRESENTS!! WE CAN ALL RELAX NOW!