Nutcracker? More Like Ballbreaker.

My daughter, S, doesn’t want to be a mouse. She wants to be a snowflake. Not in real life, but rather in the Nutcracker Ballet that her dance school performs in conjunction with its sister professional ballet company. This is the last thing I thought would be an issue on a Monday night in September, but sometimes that’s how it goes. My daughters have been known to fret about their birthday party themes a full eight months before their actual birthdays. Pre-suffering is a constant theme in my house. That’s how we roll.

In the case of mouse versus snowflake, however, it was not premature at all. The day before, S auditioned for a part in the Nutcracker. Audition is a generous word for what took place, though, since every child who is enrolled in the dance school can participate as long as a parent wrote a check and agreed to the mysterious rehearsal schedule. So if your check clears and so does your weekend calendar for the next two months, you’re in!

I am sure more consideration goes into tryouts and assigning parts than it appeared, based on some incredibly complicated dance rubric that only the school director knows. My daughter was fairly stressed about the entire process, since we didn’t realize it was an automatic thing. When it comes to the Nutcracker, what’s one more mouse or party child, really? But S went through the motions, black leotard and pink tights on, her hair tucked up in a snood. She loves to say snood. When the audition was over, S was very excited about being in the dance and thought she did very well.

Cut to last night. My husband informed us that an email had been received from the dance school while I was reading bed time stories. The subject line read “mice recital.”

“Mice?” S asked incredulously. “I don’t want to be a mouse.” The tears began, the lip stuck out in a pout.
“Great,” I said to my husband, shooting him a look.
“What did I do? I thought she’d want to know.”

If there’s one thing I learned about my children, it’s that you don’t share news with them at bedtime. Not if you want them to sleep. I calmed S down the best I could using my arsenal of lullabies and back rubs.

No less than ten minutes after my husband left for the gym and the girls were tucked in bed, S came running down the hallway to where I sat on the couch watching television. She was really crying now and throwing herself on the loveseat, rolling back and forth. A tantrum, I think it’s called.

“What’s up?” I asked her noncommittally. “Is this still about the mouse?”
“Yessss,” she wailed. “I want to be a sssnowflakkke.”
“What’s so great about a snowflake? I’ve seen the Nutcracker a gazillion times and I don’t even remember a snowflake in it. But the dance with the mice is really important. Everyone remembers that part.”
“But the mouse dance is boring. And stupid. All they do is spin in a circle. Besides, I was a mouse last year in the school play.”
“Well, maybe they thought you would make a good mouse since you had experience. Or a better mouse than a snowflake. I’m sure they have a reason.”
“Yes, it’s cause I am a bad dancer. I’m never gonna dance again!” Fresh tears started, and S threw herself on the loveseat a couple more times.

Here’s my question: What do boys do? If they don’t get to play the position they want on a sports team, do they cry and carry on? How do they handle their disappointment? I don’t know, since I don’t have one of those. All I have are worrisome self-blaming drama queens. Not that S’s disappointment isn’t deserved nor understandable. It’s the leap from not getting the part to not wanting to dance anymore that I don’t get.

I tried to channel my inner Oprah and convince her that it is just an honor to be in the ballet. How wonderful that she will get to dance with grownups whose career path is dance because that is what they love to do. How next year she will probably get an even bigger part since she will have more experience. How she will be on the big stage, not the little one they use for the children’s theater. It worked well enough to stop her crying and drift off to sleep, her, not me. I spent the next two hours wondering if I was going to have to talk her off the ledge after each rehearsal.

A little disappointment is a good thing now and then. It will prepare her much better for adulthood than being a snowflake ever could.

Doggy Style

We all have needs. We need to eat, to rest, to feel safe, and to be loved. And as much as some people like deny it, we all have physical needs, sexual needs. Even chihuahuas.

My friend JR has a matching pair of black and white chihuahuas which shake and piss their way all over her house. They bark at the door bell and at men, pee on the floor , and strut around on their back feet before they settle down on the lap of the cat person (me) in the room, shedding only the white hairs all over that person’s (mine) clothes. If that person (me again) makes the mistake of making direct eye contact, the chihuahuas will dart their little tongues out and try to touch that person’s (mine) with theirs.

But sometimes, french kissing guests is not enough to satisfy the urges of one of the little dogs. While Bella, the more reserved and graceful of the two, prefers quality time reclining on JR’s pillow, Sprout, the more googly-eyed one, likes to get her freak on. Her unassuming partner is a Jewish dog toy, which I will a minute to describe. It is a blue plush dachshund shaped stuffed animal, but more generic dog-like than breed specific. He sports a little yarmulke and is clutching a dreidel in his front paws, while his back paws hang stunted and useless like flippers. He is about the length of Sprout’s torso, or at least from her front paws to her little puta nut. Sprout doesn’t just like her toy, she LOVES it. In fact, it is her lover.

JR has told me before about the intense chihuahua-dog toy lovemaking sessions that take place on her upstairs sectional sofa, but the other night, I was lucky enough to witness it for myself. JR and I were having a lovely time, sipping a little red wine and engaging in thoughtful conversation. Sprout was shaking happily on my lap. Then, we had a break in the discussion, and one of us (me) suggested that Sprout put on a show for us. A sex show. JR wasn’t interested in walking upstairs to get the nasty toy, but after I pleaded with her, she begrudgingly fetched it (ha!) for the dog.

Now, Sprout, like most ladies, doesn’t go from cold to hot without a little foreplay. To get her in the mood, JR had to toss the lover toy across the room a few times for Sprout to fetch and shake about before she was ready to get down to business. When Sprout had enough of the toy playing hard to get, she positioned it under her belly and kind of grabbed it with her one front paw in an awkward embrace. The other paw was on the couch for leverage, and Sprout tentatively gave the toy a hump or two. Getting everything just right isn’t easy for Sprout since she doesn’t have thumbs, so this step took a while. It was a delicate dance.

When the stars aligned and the mood was right, Sprout knew she was ready to power drive that toy. She wedged it up against her little Mexican jumping bean and started humping and grinding unabashedly. She went from pelvic thrusting to violent bouncing. Seriously, the whole couch moved. Being the pervs we are, JR and I sat and watched in sheer delight, with JR breaking the tension to ponder whether Sprout even has a magic button. The whole thing was over before we knew it, with Sprout’s little bulgy eyes showing her contentment while she snuggled into JR’s skirts. “It helps her sleep,” JR said. “It helps everyone sleep,” I replied.

We tried to interest Sprout in another toy, but without much luck. JR teased her a bit with a skunk road kill toy, which Sprout started to eat out, much to our amusement. But then, it was right back to the blue boy toy. After a brief rest, Sprout was ready to have another go, and before long, she was happily jack hammering away. Sprout didn’t throw back her head and howl or bark or anything, so it was hard to tell if she had a happy ending or just lost interest, but again, she rested and cuddled when she was finished abusing that disgusting thing.

“Dude,” I said to JR, “you gotta put that shit on YouTube.” I left soon after since JR and I didn’t really know what to say to each other after that. I think we both felt a little dirty. But Sprout slept the sleep of the innocent, without a care in the world.

Undercover at the PTA

Nothing makes you feel like you’re back in school like being back in school. Your child’s school, I mean. I went to a room mother’s meeting this morning at my daughter E’s elementary school, and it was like stepping back into my awkward school years, only not in a good way. Our family is new to the school this year, as my daughter finished her last year at the private school she has attended since she turned three. Now she is in the fourth grade, and it is like we are starting from scratch. I don’t know where anything is and I don’t know who anyone is, including both the staff who works there and all the moms sitting in the cafeteria that I could only find by following the color coordinated strip on the floor (orange for fourth grade). And I am not even the one in school. I can’t imagine how much worse it is for my daughter, so I concentrated instead on how it affected me.

I walked in the cafeteria which still held the stale odor of the free and reduced breakfast and took a seat near the front of the room. No one said hello to me, nor did I to anyone else. I sat there alone, fretting over the same things I did in school, only with a hopefully more mature slant. Am I overdressed? Underdressed? Why are they wearing flip flops? Can we even wear flip flops to school? We should set a better example for the children. Can anyone see my roots? I should have pulled my hair back. I need a touch up. I need some lip gloss. I’m so thirsty.

As more mothers strolled in, it became apparent to me that there were cliques here just like in high school. The thin pretty moms are seemed to know each other, and they chatted loudly in the back over the announcements of the former student council types who conducting the meeting. There were moms who looked sleep deprived and slightly disheveled and clearly had not showered for the occasion. There were the gym moms, all in their fitted tank tops and sporty little skorts. There was even one lone father who had fortified himself with a bible. I wonder if he knew what meeting he was attending or if he just saw it as another opportunity to spread HIS word.

I tried to focus on why I was there. But I don’t know why I was there. At one time, it had something to do with wanting to be involved on a more personal level so I can keep an eye on what happens in E’s classroom, which at this point seems to be a whole lot of nothing. I wanted to see what the kids in my daughter’s class are like, to help out her teacher so she can get busy with teaching. But sitting there, feeling alone with my chin acne and alcohol bloat from the long weekend, I realized that none of what that meeting detailed had anything to do with being involved in my daughter’s class at all.

In theory, we were all there to support our children and the school. The reality was more along the lines of one-up-man ship and controlling personalities. As we divided ourselves into grade levels and classes (by teacher, not socio-economics), I realized I did not fit in here much in the same way I did not fit in when I was in school. I defied classification then, and I still do. I had and still have a strong work ethic and desire to do the right thing, but a nasty lazy streak and fear of responsibility. At least I was smart enough to not head up anything.

It took a few hours for the awkward to wear off, when I could return to telling myself I was slightly fabulous and full of potential. It feels better when I’m at home making a tasty dinner or cracking a joke instead of being one more mom sitting in a cafeteria on a Tuesday morning. Feeling adequate doesn’t come easy to some, certainly not to me. Maybe those other moms are just better at faking it.

Another Reason to Shop at Barnes and Noble

“Bearing witness. Everyone has a story. Cry for everyone. From God we come and from God we return.”

Isn’t that poetic? I found it in a book at the library today. Only not as a quote the author wrote or chose to include in the first few pages. I found it scrawled on the inside back cover of a novel, hand written in a loose, flowing, feminine script. The novel itself was written by an American from Pakistan, and it is the story of a Muslim woman. That book is not exactly where I would expect to bear witness, but then again, neither is the public library! After all, it’s not like I was at the Christian Science Reading Room, where I would imagine most of the books to be a little on the preachy side. All I wanted was a good book to read before bedtime. If I wanted to read a book about God, I'd check out a bible.

That damn quote scribbled in the new release bothered me more than I thought it would. Seriously, is this what we have come to? Vandalizing library books in the name of the Lord? Really? Is this what Jesus would do? I doubt it. I’m sure Jesus would prefer you to clothe the naked or heal the sick, not force your righteous views on others through damaging library books.

I showed the offending book to the librarian, a friend of mine, who was at the circulation desk. She tsked and said, “Oh, and it’s a new book too,” as if were more understandable to minister to us by scribbling inside old library books.
“I guess this happens all the time, huh? You don’t seem so surprised,” I said to her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sadly. We even have a couple of old ladies who write their initials in the back of the large print books so they can tell if they’ve checked them out before.”
“That makes sense to me. That I can understand,” I said. “But this,” I pointed to the writing in the book,” I don’t get.”

She stamped the book as damaged so I wouldn’t get blamed or fined for it, which placated me somewhat. I don’t want to be labeled a bible thumper who defaces library books. What really angers me is that someone, or more likely a group of someones, thinks this is a perfectly acceptable outlet for preaching to strangers. I understand that the town where I live is conservative and overly Christian/Evangelical, but surely some people still think that vandalizing public property is a crime, if not a sin. I understand that the Constitution is second to the Ten Commandments for some, and the idea of separation of church and state is currently downright unAmerican. But a library book to me is its own form of sacred document. Even toddlers learn not to color in them.

When I check out a book from the library, I don’t want to find surprises in it. A book mark is okay. A library receipt is understandable. Cigarette smoke and what I hope are food stains are unwelcome but not uncommon, and thus can be overlooked. But sneaky handwritten proselytizing is unacceptable. I suppose it could be worse, though. At least the book wasn’t burned.

Movin' On Up

My friend MJ moved last week, with the help of a select few friends and her parents. Her father said at one point, as he sat to rest his back or, more likely, his heart, “You can really tell who your friends are when you move.” I answered him, “You’re right. You’re family, so you have to be here.” And he is right. By the looks of it, MJ is virtually friendless. She had me, her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s best friend, and her mom and dad. She also had some heavy ass furniture and a couple of flights of stairs, which might have had something to do with the scarcity of BFF’s. Or maybe because she moved on a Tuesday, when most normal folk are at work. MJ and her boyfriend work for themselves, her parents are retired, and I am a perpetual volunteer with trouble saying no, so we were it.

Did I mention the majority of us are over forty and have no business schlepping heavy boxes up and down stairs? Honestly, this isn’t MJ’s first apartment, and we are no longer in college. Over the years, a person accumulates more than just life experiences, and even when moving from one street to the next, as MJ did, all of that clutter, down to the last paper clip, needs to be dumped in a box and loaded in the U-Haul. It is one’s life reduced to a cardboard village, and it always takes more boxes than you think it will.

The obvious question is why didn’t MJ hire a mover, and since it is so obvious, let’s not even answer it. Instead, let’s reflect on my favorite part of the move. It revolves around a beautiful hand painted armoire that MJ had in her tiny office/storage space. I don’t know how tall the piece is, as it stands on delicate feet and has a cornice and post on top, which easily add a foot to the overall height. It does not have wood doors, more of a filigree metal decoration, all curlicues and ornate design. What it lacks in solid wood it makes up for in mirrors that line the back panel. It is the kind of piece of furniture that is best sold with a house, as it would take four men to move it. Only we didn’t have four men, we had three: one with a heart condition, one with a massive ego, and one with a sailor’s vocabulary.

“Motherfucker shit damn,” I heard from behind the massive armoire as it teetered on the top of MJ’s front stoop. MJ flitted about like a hummingbird on crank, trying unsuccessfully to find a way to be helpful. MJ has legs a mile long and the upper body strength of a rotisserie chicken. She would have been more useful in a tiny pleated skirt and some pom poms, cheering on the ego and his potty mouth cohort. The other man, her father, kept taking off his baseball cap and slamming it on the ground, like he was angry with an umpire’s lousy call. None of these theatrics was going to move that armoire down the stairs and into the U-Haul. I was there to help, but I’m no fool. I stood on the sidewalk and watched.

Eventually, with much grunting and yelling at each other, the armoire crawled its way down the five step stoop and over near the back of the rental truck. One of the armoire’s ankles cracked, much to MJ’s distress. In her mind, the piece was irreparable and should have been abandoned at the end of the driveway. I made myself busy packing boxes inside the house, so I don’t actually know how the goddamned motherfucking piece of shit got in the truck.

MJ and I loaded up the back of my car with more boxes and drove the half mile to her new home, a condo inconveniently located at the top of a full flight of stairs. When we got there, the three men were “debating” how to get the cocksucking son of a bitch off the truck without further causing damage to it or themselves. With an extra boost of machismo, they strong armed it out of the truck and onto the ground, at which point the cracked foot on the armoire snapped off all the way.

That snapped foot was the cue for everyone else to snap as well. MJ yelled at the ego, the ego yelled at MJ, MJ’s father yelled at his hat some more, and the best friend cursed. I stood on the sidewalk and watched some more. The ego was bleeding lightly from his well toned calf, at which point MJ decided to go for full castration by calling more men to help. MJ knows a lot of men who are willing to do pretty much whatever she asks of them. If she played her cards right, she would never have to scoop the kitty litter again; she only does it because she likes it. The ego and the potty mouth, knowing that more testicles were about to show up and get the job done, found the strength and vocabulary to get that monstrously large piece of furniture up the stairs. They grunted and groaned stair by stair, their mesenteric lining tearing with each heave. I watched all this from where I stood on the sidewalk. After they pushed it in the corner, the ego took the broken foot from MJ and wedged it in place, like Cinderella’s glass slipper. Good as new! This of course was when the other men showed up. Men have the knack of suddenly appearing when they are no longer needed.

With all the swearing, the fighting, the blood loss, the tears, and the drama, it already felt like a home. At least, it did to me, from where I stood on the sidewalk, watching.

Return of the Solid Gold Dancers

Have you been to a dance recital recently? No? Well, I have, and I must say, this ain’t your sister’s dance recital. Unless your sister is a stripper, in which case, my apologies. I don’t know if strippers have a dance school, but if they did, then I think I accidentally enrolled my seven year old there. Luckily, she was only taking a ballet class. It is kind of hard to make ballet whorish. Unfortunately, the opposite is true for most of the rest of dance numbers I saw that night.

The theme of the evening was “Rock Star,” which meant that the audience wished for ear plugs and blinders to make it through the two and a half hours of bad classic rock remakes and hip gyrations of the underage dancers. The dance studio that staged this alleged performance teaches dance from preschool to high school, and they cover ballet, jazz, tap, and hip hop. Keep in mind that the majority of their students are upper middle class and white, so you wouldn’t imagine a big need for hip hop lessons, but apparently all the cool kids are doing it.

And while the dance studio makes dance fun for its youngest students, it really concentrates on its competing dance teams, their bread and butter. Once a girl reaches grade school, she can try out for a variety of different teams, which drive around the region competing in dance offs, but not like in Grease or West Side Story. I hear it’s great fun for the girls, the spirit of competition, the importance of being part of a team, the sense of pride and responsibility, blah blah blah. For the mothers, it is a big pain in the gluteus, all the driving around, the cost of the costumes, the constant gelling of fly-away hair. So my daughter isn’t on a dance team, because there’s no way in hell I am going to do that. But come recital night, 23 of the 48 (yes, I said 48) dance numbers are from the competing dance teams, and we all have to sit through it. There is no leaving early, unless you can convince your young children they don’t really want to wait for their turn to walk across the stage in front of all the parents to get their trophy.

Now, I had no complaints with the preschool dance numbers. There is nothing cuter than a little row of mini girls in Shirley Temple dresses trying to tap their toes without falling over. Usually one kid per preschool dance number had to be carried on the stage, and would stand still, staring at the instructor off stage, as lost as if she had never had nine months of dance classes to learn the three steps the rest of the girls repeated over and over . The audience laughed delightedly, and the little girls onstage knew they were being laughed at, saving up the experience for therapy in thirty years.

Then there were the dancers my daughter’s age. These were classified as beginner classes, and involved maybe five of the performances. Each of them numbered over fifteen girls who would come out and perform rudimentary dance moves, ballet, tap, or jazz. There wasn’t much to report about them because they were what you would expect for girls learning dance. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but a chance to shine on a big stage in a pretty dress with too much of mother’s makeup smeared all over their faces.

But the reason that the fathers all stayed awake for the recital were the teenagers, especially the dance team members. There might have been one or two girls who were almost legal, but you couldn’t tell by their used up faces, scantily clad bodies, and erection causing moves. I don’t think a single one of them hid their navels, but perhaps we should all be thankful they removed their piercings for the dance numbers.

The tap dance numbers confused me, but I guess I am not up on my tap dance. Since when did it get so angry? There was as much chin jutting and foot slamming as there was tap tapping. I guess when tap shifted from Sammy Davis Jr. to Savion Glover, it became an urban form of dance, which was in turn bastardized by suburban dance studios across the country. That meant we were treated to tap dance smack downs, complete with Unabomber hoodies, which somehow still revealed a lot of midriff.

There were a few contemporary dance numbers as well, with their flowing garments, although I am pretty sure one performance was in pajamas. Nubile teens in pjs just cranked up the male audience fantasy factor, with all that rolling around on the floor in wife beaters and plaid flannel bottoms. the rest of the contemporary dance numbers involved classic rock songs with a new age-y feel, while the girls draped themselves around each other and turned themselves inside out. I can’t watch contemporary dance without thinking about buying a douche or changing my tampon. They are the stuff feminine hygiene ads are made of.

My favorite part of the recital, however, were the jazz numbers. Jazz used to mean Liza Minnelli and fishnet stockings, maybe a top hat and the obligatory jazz hands. Now it is lap dancing without the lap. There was actually one number that involved chairs, so you could really imagine what these girls will do in a year or two when they flunk out of technical college. Lots of squatting with knees spread wide. Splits. Lots of splits. With and without arched backs. I am pretty sure I saw outer labia during one performance. “Duck,” I said to my husband, “you’re gonna get hit with a ping pong ball.”

That dance recital was an evening to remember. Which is why I enrolled my daughter in a new dance school for this fall. Now her teacher’s’ credentials involve which theater she performed with instead of being the winner of the 24-K Klub wet t-shirt amateur night. I have already been to the open house, and I didn’t see a single belly button. I am looking forward to a tasteful and age appropriate dance recital, one where girls are judged by their dance skills and not how their abs look when oiled and glittered. But we all know it will be a big snooze. I have been meaning to catch up on my sleep anyway.