Baby, Take a Bow

Squish, wearing the costume I didn’t get to see.

Omigod, am I glad that’s over with.

Recital hits us every year, and every year, I wonder that I have something new to blog about.  This year is no different–yeah, I was backstage this year, but that only made the experience, uhm, richer somehow.

Okay.

It wasn’t on my list of favorite things, no.

For one thing, getting to see my own kids was really frickin’ hard, and I actually missed Squish doing Ghostbusters, which was depressing because it was her favorite song.  I know, I know, other parents miss their kids, but you know what?  It still sucks.  Getting the two kids to the four classes a week bites, and Chicken literally got off the plane and walked into last week’s rehearsal to help, and she loved it, and felt really happy to spend her vacation doing that, but dammit, I would have liked to see it a little.

Okay, so there’s my whine. It’s vintage and aged in bitterness, perhaps we can throw it out now.

By the way– twelve five-year old girls.  If you ever have a chance to get twelve five-year-old girls in and out of costume, and set up with snack and set up in line and quiet in line, and not plucking the feathers off of their duckling costumes and not shoving the chopsticks out of their hair and not running to the bathroom six-thousand times a day and not guzzling water and not eating like locusts because they have nothing but snack between one in the afternoon and seven at night and not crying because of sudden onset mommy-missing and not climbing on top of walls with their duckling costumes and not falling out of their little mandarin outfits and not…

*flops backwards dramatically on the couch*

Oh. My God.

If you ever get a chance to do this thing?  Run the hell away.

I spent yesterday at the movies with my family and watching Monster’s University, and writing.  When I wrote, I literally sank myself so deeply into my work that the only reason the family knew I was alive was because of the twitch.  *twitch twitch* (And the sobbing.  Ethan Gold got sad.)  I would rather teach an entire week of high school than one day of five-year old girls.  The next time you meet a kindergarten teacher, by all means, weep on that person in gratitude– I know I plan to.  Jesus H. Christ, I’d sooner wear salmon cologne in a bear cage than do that on a daily basis.  At least the bears would make it quick.

But we survived.  The family recital team made it through intact, with only vague puzzling questions left in our wake.  Questions such as, “Why did I buy an entire package of wife-beaters for my son to wear when he was going to forget and leave his tank shirt in his dance bag when he put on the night shirt it was supposed to go under?”  Were eventually answered with, “Apparently I bought them so he could spend his summer looking like Thugs-R-Us, get over it!”

And then, the surreal, funny part of the day.

The entire family (sans Big T, who has essentially bailed on the entire dance thing since he was twelve with no regrets) went out to Chevy’s after the recital, because we were tired and hungry and hyper.  So, when we got out of the restaurant, this post-it was schwacked to my car window.

Now I know I’m asking for it.  I’ve got pro-Obama bumper stickers on the crapmobile because I’m actually way more political in my private life than I am even in my public life, and I’ve gotten used to being honked at and flipped off in traffic by random wild-eyed strangers in gas-guzzling pickup trucks that say things like “You can take my gun away when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”  (I always want to take them up on that, but, well, that pesky jail thing…)  This town is not pro on the president, because, as I’ve said many times, this here’s part of the Northern California Bible Belt, and I’ve got the ex-job to prove it.

But still.  This post-it cracked me up.  Because, you know, if this guy had only spelled “idiot” correctly I might seriously have reconsidered my entire world view.

Uhm, you know, it’s a post-it.  Maybe not.

But we survived!  Yay!!!  I’m so relieved.  We have an entire week off, and, well, without realizing it, I signed myself up to go to RWA in July right during the State Fair, which means that I don’t have to go to the fair when it’s a fifty-seven-thousand degrees outside and watch them forget their dances in a miasma of sweat!  God.  I feel bad not being there, but seriously– I wish I could claim credit for scheduling that on purpose.  A smart woman would avoid shit like this.

But then, I’m obviously not that bright.  I’m not an IDOT, but still.  I foresee a few more dances in our future, before we call this quits.

(Oh, hey– there’s a contest at Stumbling Over Chaos for an e-copy of Forever Promised.  I offer three copies at 125 entries–enter now!)