OmegaMom

When the dotter had her "I don’t wanna do ballet" month and decided to stick to it to do the recital, I was thinking like the recital at the last ballet studio:  One day, at the local high school auditorium in the afternoon, lots of fun.  Okay, the week before was crowded with rehearsals, but they were after work/after school.  And, okay, looking back I realize that the older kids did two performances…

This recital, however, is a production, and not a small one.

This dance studio is attached to the Big City Ballet.

This recital will be at the Big City Performing Arts Center.

We have a full studio rehearsal the week before.

We have a tech rehearsal the kiddlies don’t have to go to (thank heavens!), at the BCPAC.

We have a dress rehearsal the kiddlies do have to go to, at the BCPAC.  We have to be there at 2:30 in the afternoon.  It goes to (wait for it!) 9 p.m.

We have two performances, one on a Saturday and one on that Sunday, and the kiddlies are in both.  The latest I have heard is that we need to be there for these, also, at 2:30 in the afternoon.  The performances are at 7 p.m.  Everything ends, once again, at 9 p.m.

I foolishly signed up as a den mother for the dress rehearsal.  I thought it would be a few hours.  The idea of wrassling kiddlies for seven hours, while they all get tired and bored and restless, makes my eyes bug out.

The idea of dealing with the dotter after three days of this…it makes my eyes bug out even more.

I am having palpitations.  My breath is panicky.  My mind is an utter and complete blank.

Oh, yeah, and the kiddlies?  The "pre-ballet class"?  When does their piece show up in the performance?  In the middle of the second act.  Oy!  Good way to drive parents of six-year-olds insane, ballet studio!

By the way–Big City is an hour’s drive from here.

Can I also mention the talent show tryout tomorrow afternoon at school?  Or the "Ultimate Obstacle Course" competition at the gymnastics place in early May?  What about various photo shoots?  Oh, yeah, and the school picnic in late May.  And the "parent appreciation picnic" at the ballet studio in early June?  They’d damned well better appreciate us after all of this!

I am soooo looking forward to June, July, and August.  All I have to do then is schlep the dotter to and from summer camp, which will completely wear her out every day.

Gratuitous kid pic…the dotter goofing off on a lake a few weeks ago:

For many years, my mom took me to see the Nutcracker in downtown Chicago.  I am trying to follow in her footsteps by taking the dotter as well.

Big City Ballet was showing the Nutcracker, so I bought (ack gasp!) (expensive!) tickets for the three of us for this afternoon.  Unfortunately, OmegaDad got the creeping crud yesterday and was feeling like hell today, so it was just the dotter and I.

Of course, we had already purchased the requisite fancy Christmas dress…last year’s is much too small, making me forcefully aware of how much bigger the girl has gotten.  (As Miss C. said in her commentary on my last post, OmegaDotter is forever three years old in memory.)

What might not be immediately evident in the above picture is the fact that this year’s requisite fancy shoes that grabbed the dotter’s fancy are…

…are…

Well…urg…they have heels.  ACK!

Strappy black shoes with heels.  I felt like I was introducing an innocent to something like crack.  Or like a traitor to feminism and battling the patriarchy.  Additionally, I felt like a dreadfully wussy woman, to cave to the dotter’s pleas for these shoes, no others.  But, dayum, they did look mighty cute.

In honor of the occasion, I, too, wore heels.

Let me just say:  I am out of practice with high heels.  My feet have gotten longer.  And fatter.  And flatter.  My darling husband, my the Kozmik All forever smile upon him, eyeballed the shoes and asked me, “You are going to take some ’sensible’ shoes with you, right?”  Quickly disabused of the idea of wearing them all the way to Big City and back, I backpedaled and said, ”Oh, of course!” and crammed my tootsies into my nice, comfy, ugly faux Ugg boots.

Thank heavens.

Because wearing the high heels and walking the two blocks from the parking garage to the ballet venue made me quite aware of how out of high-heel-shape my feet are.  By the time we sat down in our seats, I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I surreptitiously kicked my pointy-toed high heels off.

At intermission, out in the middle of the lobby while looking at kewl Christmas ornaments for sale, I slipped them off again, and just carried them with us wherever we went.

There was, of course, a whirlwind of little girls dressed in fancy dresses and holiday finery.  I adore looking at all the girly girls in their Christmas splendor, and sighed quietly at some of the dresses which OmegaDotter had nixed (in favor of that triumph of marketing, the fancy dress with the doll-sized version of the fancy dress hanging off, ready for your 18″ doll to wear to match you).

The problem was, at the end of the performance (which was splendid) I couldn’t just walk back to the car in my stocking feet.  By the time we got downstairs and outdoors, I was mincing and wincing with every step.

So say bye-bye to the pointy-toed high heel shoes.  They are hitting the “donate to Goodwill” pile as of this evening.  Too bad, because they are quite pretty…but I will not suffer for beauty!

(P.S.  For those who are wondering:  Yes.  That is a Christmas sweater.  Not only is it a Christmas sweater, but it has glitter and beads, to boot.  I have admitted in many previous posts that I am an anti-fashionista, and I’m sure the very fact that I have a Christmas sweater, let alone wear it, consigns me to the utter depths of non-fashionable depravity in some people’s eyes.)

In a comment to the previous entry, Kate said I should try the Lindy Hop.

Come with me friends, to a time long ago, a simpler time, a time when OmegaMom was a carefree single living in Chicago…

There was (and still is) a “lifelong learning” organization in Chicago called The Discovery Center.  After many times flipping through their monthly course catalog and looking yearningly at the dance classes, I decided to take the plunge and sign up for a Swing Dance class, even though (being single) I had no partner.

It was a great class.

The teachers started out slow.  We partnered up with each other, and switched partners after every little bit of practice, and then, at the end of the evening’s class, they put on some nice slow jazz and we’d practice our mostly-klutzy-but-slowly-improving dance steps.

(Part of the idea, of course, was to introduce singles to each other.  Sort of a pseudo-mass-dating scene.)

It was an eight-week session.  By week six, Mr. Police Officer Into Nudism and I were heading out after class to Jukebox Saturday Night, on Clark Street, and tripping the light fantastic on the dance floor.  We danced well enough, I might add, that we got applause and had people asking us how long we had been dancing together.

(Let us pause for a moment while OmegaMom preens herself.)

It was grand fun.  Let’s put aside the fact that Mr. Police Officer kept a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants at all times.  And that he really, really wanted me to come to the nudist club with him for a weekend.  And that I was too uptight to even consider it.  I got some experience with a radar gun and some dates out of the whole affair, and we both had fun at the nightclub.

The problem is that this was at least twenty years ago.

The additional problem is that OmegaDad has the rhythmic competency of a piece of driftwood:  i.e., none.

The third piece of the puzzle is that, while OmegaDad actually can dance if he is very carefully handled by my cousin Sissy (I have seen this with my own two eyeballs), my cousin Sissy has the patience of a saint.  I do not.  So any practice would need to be done by OmegaDad and Someone Else.  But OmegaDad is finicky about things…for quite a while, he would get insulted if some cute thing flirted with him in the checkout line, because he was Married! dammit!  My explaining that the flirter probably didn’t see his wedding ring wouldn’t cause him to pardon her; she was automatically placed into the category of Bad Person.  Anyway, I can hardly imagine how he would respond to dancing with some woman who wasn’t OmegaMom.  Except for cousin Sissy, who is a special case.

Anyway, once upon a time, OmegaMom could dance quite well, and all the credit should go to the method of teaching, which was:  slow, steady, and practice over and over and over again.  And have fun.

Which is what I was talking about in my previous post.

And to all and sundry who said they’d take one of these courses if I started one, I will merely point out that I am in Alaska, Land of Wild Freedom, and you all are Outsiders.  (That’s what they call the Lower 48 here: “Outside”.)  It would be quite difficult to hold a class for someone who lives in Kentucky, someone who lives in NJ, someone who lives in Oregon, and someone who lives in Arizona.

But!  If we were all in the same neck of the woods…!  Hey, we’d have to just hire ourselves a dance teacher and have a grand ol’ time.

Right?

Sooooo…Did OmegaDad return home with the blue Spiderman backpack as threatened?

Well, no.  He returned home with a pink thing that, even though it wasn’t a “pully” kind of backpack, which she particularly wanted, had lots of compartments and a water bottle, so it fully satisfied the dotter.

Onto other things:  A few weeks ago, I signed up for a ballet class for adults at the dance studio the dotter goes to for ballet.  I’ve gone to one class.  Last week I fizzled at the last minute, blaming Halloween pumpkin-carving and dinner makings.  This week?

Well, I think I’m not going to go.

Why?

Um.  Y’know…I don’t really like ballet.

There.  I said it.  It just doesn’t do anything for me.  And the class was all bar work.  Lots of pliés and footwork.  In a word:  boring.

So I’ve been watching the dotter’s ballet class, and it’s fun.  Her gymnastics class is fun.  They don’t push the kids; they move them at a slow pace, repeating things, making sure they learn each new thing well, and making sure it’s just plain fun.

Why can’t they do that for adults?  The dotter won’t be stuck into bar work for another few years.  But she’s getting lots of dancing and lots of basic moves and having fun.

I wanna have fun.   I wanna take a gymnastics class that lets me bounce on a trampoline and run an obstacle course where you do lots of somersaults and walk on a balance beam (over and over and over again) at a very basic level before being asked to do more.  I want a basic class that admits that, yes, adults can be klutzes, and, like children, need to repeat the same thing over and over and over again before it sinks into the kinetic unconscious.  This is why I back out of aerobics classes or step classes that are too advanced:  they whip you from one combo to the next when you’re just starting out, and the next thing you know, while the entire class is be-boppin’ in one direction, you’re doing a box-step in the other direction.  I don’t get embarrassed by it any more, it’s just the way I am.  But I do get frustrated, and I do end up box-stepping right into someone who’s be-boppin’, and it just isn’t fun.

But, when I do get a class where they take it slow and let klutzes like me learn the basic combos a bit at a time, and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse them before moving on, I do have fun.

Klutzes of the world, unite!  We need to demand fun classes that are slow-paced in the learning aspects, but not slow-paced in movement!

Woohoo! Join me, fellow rebels!

I was originally planning to do a post all about people to whom “status” is paramount.  I was going to be witty…cutting…pithy…

The best laid plans.

Did you know that OmegaMom, that paragon of rational thought, that believer in “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again”, lover of practicality, is, in reality, a sentimental marshmallow?

Yes, it is true.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, today, at the dotter’s ballet class, we were given schedules for recital stuff.  (We’re talking five meetings/rehearsals within one week in May!)  Teachers were scurrying around getting measurements and weights for the kids.  The jazz/ballet company (girls around 12 who had to audition for the company) was rehearsing in the big studio.  Miss Elaine had the primary/kindergarten class scuttle into the big studio and practice their routine right after the jazz/ballet company did their big production.

And I was just a mess.

It took everything I have to not dab at my eyes and start sniffling.

I was on the verge of sobbing.

This recital is designed to yank at heartstrings in multiple ways.  First off, it has a patriotic theme.  The p/k girls are doing their routine to a slow version of “My Country Tis Of Thee”.  The jazz dancers are dancing to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America”–a tear-jerker if there ever was one.  A whole slew of other patriotic songs follows.  And then there’s the fact that they’re just so damned cute.  And it’s the dotter’s first recital.

(The p/k girls are adorably uncoordinated.  I fully expect them to be turning in opposite directions, some to be stepping forward when they’re supposed to be stepping back, and a few collisions.)

If I’m like this for a silly class, just because the dotter is well on her way to her first recital, what on earth am I going to be like for the Real Thing??

Mush, I tell ya.  Mush.

I’ll do “status” tomorrow.

Technorati: Ballet, recital, sentimentality