We're Out of the Special

I am ready to go on strike.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking; it's how I show my love.  Lately, though, cooking has become, well, a chore.  It seems every day my husband or my teenager is on a new diet. Add that to my other daughter who is allergic to half of all the food and hates the other half, and you try making one dinner everyone will eat. If these people I live with refuse to agree on some foods in common, then I am going to start just making what I like. And I like some pretty weird stuff.

I remember those Hamburger Helper commercials from when I was a kid. The Helping Hand was cute as hell, but his food sucked.  Who needs all that extra salt and fat, or worse, who needs a box of Hamburger Helper when there is a perfectly good box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  I also remember the Chef Boy R Dee pizza mix, and that was a treat. I suppose that was before Hot Pockets and Totino's Pizza Rolls and Bagel Bites, when people wanted a pizza but had no way to acquire one, hence the need for a shelf stable version.

Yeah, I don't make any of those things for my family. I make them real food, from real ingredients. I shop the perimeter of the store. Generally speaking, I cook from what’s known as scratch, and I do it happily. Only lately, not so much.

My husband, in an effort to lose ten pounds, the same ten pounds he has wanted to lose for years, has decided he is going to low carb it until he reaches his goal. Fine, whatever. The problem is, I don’t eat red meat, not even the other white meat, and I also don’t cook it. He, on the other hand, won’t eat any eggs or tofu, and also hesitates when the main protein is beans. Which leaves us fish and poultry. My teen is on an anti-poultry kick and read somewhere that soy is bad for teenage girls, so she is off tofu and all fake meat products.  My baby girl won’t eat seafood. She also won’t eat eggs, tofu, beans, or red meat, which leaves poultry. So much for a main course everyone will agree on.

OK, there’s always lasagna. Except the teen won’t eat dairy right now because it makes her acne worse. And the baby girl gets heartburn from red sauce.

You try cooking for these people.

Vegetables present a whole other issue. Three of us will eat salad unless I put cheese or beans or carrots on it. One will eat cucumbers if nothing else touches them. Two eat broccoli, one eats squash, and no one wants any more cabbage because I made it too often since I thought it was something they all liked.

Starch? Forget that too. The man is off of starch in any shape or variety. One likes rice or couscous, but won’t eat potatoes, not even the sweet ones. The other one is the opposite.

I keep trying to remind them that Mama ain’t running a meat and three, but it isn't working.

When my husband was growing up, he had to sit at the table until he cleaned his plate. He would sit there for hours, having a staredown with the green beans, seeing who would cave first. My mother played it a little differently. She would make things that no kid in their right mind would want to eat, like fried chicken livers or some sort of chicken fried cube steak, the tough overcooked version. If you didn’t eat it, she didn’t make you sit until it was gone; she made you leave the house. If you weren’t going to eat her nasty cooking, she didn’t want to have to look at the shitty expression on your face, so outside you had to go. Many a night I would sit on the back steps of the house, staring at my dumb dog who wanted to be outside with me on the other side of the glass sliding doors, waiting for the meal to end and the smell to dissipate. Why I never learned to just feed my crappy meal to the dog under the table, I'll never know.

What I mean is, back in the day, you ate what was put in front of you or you went hungry. If you ate at a restaurant, you had what was on the menu or you had a hamburger. There was no such thing as a kids menu.  There was no choice of chicken fingers or a grilled cheese sandwich, nor did everything come with fries. And guess what, my house doesn’t have one either. Now we are so concerned about overeating we don't make kids clean their plates, but we also forgot we aren't short order cooks.

Those people I live with are wearing me out. Don’t make something I love to do into a chore. Just eat the damn food.

My grandfather, Pop-pop, used to tell a joke about three cowboys out on the ranch. One of them had to be responsible for the cooking, and they drew straws to see had to do the chore. The loser told the others he would cook, but if they ever complained, that would be the end. So day in and out, the other two cowboys would go out, herding the cattle, and the loser would stay back and prepare the evening meal. Days turned into weeks, with never a complaint about the food. Finally, the cowboy was tired of it. He waited one day for the other two cowpokes to go out riding, and then he gathered up a bunch of cow patties. He floured them up and fried them in the cast iron skillet, even made a pan gravy, and served them up for dinner that night. They all sat around the campfire, the two cowboys chewing and swallowing but not saying a word. Finally, the cowboy asked, "How's dinner?" and one of the cowboys said, "Tastes like shit, but good!"

That joke is the basis of my cooking philosophy.

I’m thinking about going to a seven meal rotation, you know, meat loaf on Monday, tacos Tuesday, Spaghetti Wednesday, grilled chicken Thursday, and Fish Stick Friday. You don’t like what I make now; just wait until it’s meatloaf every Monday. You’ll be begging for some black bean soup or a lovely tofu stir fry.

Or here’s another idea. Make your own damn dinner.

Cast a Wider Net

Once a week, my teen has a guitar lesson at a music store that sells both new and used string instruments, guitars, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, as well as song books and accessories. Usually, I park myself in the very small waiting area while my daughter has her lesson.  I take a book along but just pretend to read it because the people that come and go in the store are more entertaining.

It’s nothing like when my daughters have piano lessons at a studio down the street that is frequented by home schoolers or Jesus freaks from the local unaccredited Christian fanatic educational institution. When I have to wait there, I am surrounded by breeders with a minimum of four children, none of which they attempt to control, and it’s the same people every week.  At guitar, you never know who will walk through the door, which lends an air of mystery to the whole experience. Plus, the waiting area is too small for large families, and they teach, gasp, rock music, so it’s not the same crowd at all.

One day, as I sat there with my younger daughter listening to the teen play the same chord over and over in the other room, the door burst open and in strode a young man wearing a shirt and tie, full of purpose. He shouted, “Hey, man” to the guy working behind the counter, then turned to where we sat and apologized to us for startling us. We were startled, honestly; it was so peaceful before he rushed into the room with such drama. I assumed he was friends with the guy behind the counter because his greeting seemed so personal somehow, as if the salesman had been waiting to see him all day.

He walked up to the counter and said, “Hey, man, do you know anyone who likes makeup?”

That wasn’t what I expected at all.

The guy behind the counter is new to the guitar shop, and clearly he has had no previous experience, both with working retail and with interacting with people. He doesn’t know how to do a credit card sale. He doesn’t know where they keep the guitar stands. And he doesn’t know how to answer the phone. He is definitely not trained on how to deal with make-up salesmen.  He wore a blank expression on his face, but with his head tilted just enough to indicate his confusion, much like a puppy.

“Um, my mom, I guess?” He answered the question with a question. He wasn’t really sure his mom liked makeup, but she was the only woman he knew.

“Well, listen,” the salesman said. “I have an incredible deal to offer you on a makeup kit. It’s got everything you need right in one convenient set up.”

My daughter and I sat there, mesmerized. I couldn’t believe the balls on this salesman. Who just walks into a store and tries to sell stuff to the guy behind the counter, who is, in fact, also there to do sales? Even odder, who walks into a guitar store and tries to sell make-up to an adolescent boy? Why didn’t the kid tell him no, or, better yet, try to sell him a guitar?

He continued on with his make-up spiel, about how useful and affordable it was, but it was clear he lost his audience, if he ever actually had it. The counter boy just stared at him, confused.  The odd part is that I was the only woman there, but the salesman never addressed me, only the teenage boy. Maybe he is authorized to sell make up to the employee of a retail establishment but not the other customers there.

When the salesman finished, he asked If the teenage boy might be interested in buying the kit for his mom, at which point the boy answered, “Um, not really?” like he wasn’t really sure but he should probably say no.

“Hey, no hard feelings, man,” the salesmen said. “Maybe not today.” And he flew back out, much as he did when he came in, like a blonde tornado.

We sat there in the silence, until the boy behind the counter said, “Well, that was random.”

Indeed, it was. It was one of those “did that just happen?” moments, one that leaves you more puzzled than amused. He certainly didn’t look like the Avon lady or Mary Kay. Who hires a twenty something straight blond man to sell make-up door to door? He never even indicated the brand of cosmetics, so maybe the whole thing was a ruse, but why? And why didn’t he try to sell it to me? Did I already look so good I didn’t need any make-up, or was I a lost cause that even his product, while fabulous and a must-have, couldn’t fix?

Little did he know, he lost two sales that day. Not that I would have bought his crap. But still, it feels good sometimes just to be asked.

Beware of Dog

Have you seen the Russian tampon commercial? Hopefully if you had not, you clicked on the link and caught up with the rest of us. Two of my male friends sent it to me, which is oddly flattering, although I hope it has more to do with my sense of humor than the desire that I die by shark attack during that time of the month. The part that makes it even funnier, funny ha-ha not funny weird, is that last week I was at the beach and, lucky me, I had my period.  Now, before you go thinking this falls into the Too Much Information category, just stick with it a little longer. I promise not to get all descriptive.

Anyway, one of these aforementioned friends, JM, had asked me if I was scared to go in the water while I was on my period because of the risk of shark attack. It is not important to know why he asked me that. Let’s just say it was happenstance that he had some sort of period/ocean curiosity at the same time I was menstruating at the beach, and so his question was unassuming and yet very timely. I explained patiently to him that I was a woman of my forties and knew my way around a tampon, and that I did not double as a chum bucket.

But is it a valid question, knowing that sharks can detect the scent of blood miles away? The Russians sure think so, and hell, are there even sharks in Russia? Let’s take a quick Google break. Okay, the short answer is there shouldn’t be, but because of the global warming hoax which apparently the sharks are in on, there are now.

So anyway, JM and I had discussed the likelihood of period related shark attack while I was at the beach, and not a day later, it was like a scene from “Jaws.” Not one of the good scenes when people get bit and die; rather, one of those scenes where everyone overreacts and it’s super annoying and you want them to get eaten by a shark just to make them shut up. Yes, I do root for for the shark.

My daughter and I were walking out to the beach when a man came up to us and asked us if we were going to the beach. That stupid question irritated me immediately, seeing as I had a beach chair in one hand and a bag of beach towels in the other, and I was wearing a bathing suit. No, idiot, I’m going to the Queen’s coronation, and I sure hope I’m not under dressed.

I remembered seeing this Einstein on the sand a few days before because at the time he was wearing an odd outfit, a green tank top and green swim trunks, the kind of green that makes you think this person must be colorblind. I politely told him that yes, we were in fact planning on going to the beach, and he said we needed to be careful because they had seen a shark that morning not even five feet from the shoreline. I asked him how big it was, and he said, again, five feet. He also told me that he had already informed the sheriff’s office, which would have reassured me if they were planning to arrest it.  I thanked him for his warning, and my daughter and I continued our way through the sand dunes to a lovely spot not too far away from the water line.

"Who calls the sheriff to report a shark sighting? That's like calling your dentist when you want a divorce," I said to my daughter.

As we opened our chairs and put down the bags and buckets, a woman walked over to us. She must have been the wife of the colorblind idiot town crier because she was also dressed oddly, in a Gidget style double knit one piece in red, white, and blue stripes. That suit had to be older than me, and I am not young. Come to think of it, I may have seen a picture of my grandmother in that suit, possibly with the same hair style. She asked us if we planned to go to the water, which made me wonder if this was the first time these people had been to a beach in the summer. Then she told me, get ready for this, that they had seen a five foot shark not five feet from the shore. Did they have a tape measure with them? I thanked her as I had with her husband, and she returned to her spot.

“Did they really see a shark?” my daughter asked me.

“I’m sure they did. They both think so, anyway,” I told her.

We sat there in our chairs, scanning the horizon and seeing, well, just a bunch of sand and water.

Another family stepped through the dunes, and before they could even get their flip flops off, the woman in the unintentionally vintage bathing suit swooped over to them with her warning about the shark and all the stuff about the five feet.  This family actually picked up their articles and left.

The colorblind man joined his retro wife under their umbrella where the kept a vigilant watch on the not even five foot waves lapping against the shore. Every so often, he would stand up with his camera and walk to the water, ready to document and possibly tag the man eating beast.

My daughter and I watched him watch the water and his wife warn other beach goers for about fifteen minutes, but then I got hot, so I stood up to walk to the water.

“Are you really going to go in there?” my daughter asked.

“Sure, aren’t you?”

“But what about the shark?” she said.

“I have news for you, honey,” I told her. “Every time we go in the water, there is a shark there. Where else are sharks going to be? Flying overhead?  That’s where they live, in the ocean. Let me ask you this: do sharks generally eat people? ”

“No,” she said.

“And what do they eat, seals?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said.

“Well, you are wearing a lime green bathing suit and you have long blond hair, and I have never seen a seal that looks like that. Plus, we’ve been sitting here for a while, and nobody has died yet. I think we’re good. And it’s hot, so are you coming or what?”

We bravely put our feet in the water, and then for good measure, I stepped out knee deep. And guess what happened? I got wet, and I cooled off. I didn’t even step funny on a shell and hurt the sole of my foot.

By the time the rest of my family came outside to join us, I had already decided to not tell them about the shark, not because I secretly want them to die, but because I didn’t want to seem like I was overreacting like the shark couple. I started to wonder if they were even real, or maybe, just maybe, they had been victims of a shark attack at that very spot, and now they haunted the beach, appearing only on the anniversary of their tragic deaths, waiting to warn families of the dangers lurking beneath the waves.

Later, I spent some time researching, and I didn't find anything about a fatal shark attack on that beach during the 1960's. In fact, it turns out that sharks do kill more people a year than tampons, but that's by accident. Sharks aren't even attracted to human blood. Sharks also kill less people than hippos. Hell, even more people are killed by their own dogs than sharks in any given year, and they are supposed to be man’s best friend.

Fear not the large fish with the rows of razor sharp teeth that is billed a killing machine. It’s just not that into you. And that goes double if you are on the rag.

Writer's Block

I want to write but it’s been so long since I’ve recorded a thought that I don’t even know where to begin.

I am starting by glancing out the window every time I hear a loud truck noise just in case it’s the UPS man. I don’t even think I am expecting a package, but I have a very Pavlovian response to the sound of a UPS truck. Maybe whatever I forgot I ordered is finally here, or maybe someone thought of me and sent me a little treat. Usually, it’s neither of those, nor is the UPS truck for me. More likely, it’s for the neighbor across the street. I’m convinced something illegal is going on over there, based on the frequency of the UPS truck stopping in front of their house. The UPS man isn’t even hot; I am really in it for what’s in the truck.

After that, I inspect the front yard for colorful birds. Today, it’s just a female cardinal, and not even male cardinals can get excited about that fugly bitch of the animal kingdom. Dukey brown boring bird. If I were a male cardinal, I’d be gay.

I also like to listen for the carpenter bees systematically dismantling my downstairs window. I am waiting for the glass to just fall out. Maybe the bee will shout “timber!” when it happens, and it is going to happen soon. It’s the worst sound, too; that bee’s chewing through wood sounds like children with loose teeth eating corn on the cob.

I next inspect my three flowering hydrangeas outside my office window. My husband planted them for me last year, and wonder of wonders, they have lived to see another season. Not only that, but they grew and have actual flowers actually blooming on them. Unfortunately, the heat of summer is making them all sad and droopy. I’m tempted to water them, but I’m also tempted to stay inside the temperature controlled house all day. I wouldn’t want to look like my hydrangeas.

In the other room, my teenager, E, is downloading music to her new iPod. Her last one died about a week ago, and in a fit of generosity, I offered to replace it. She’s especially bummed because whatever version she had contained a camera, which the new one does not. No more selfies that no one will ever see. I even spent an hour trying to find a refurbished Nano of that generation for her, but to my amazement, it must be some sort of geek collectible because it costs about fifty bucks more than a brand new one.

So I ordered her a new one. Did I mention it has an 8-pin thingy instead of a 30-pin thingy? This means about as much to you as it does to me, but the important part to understand is that it means none of the chargers, cords, cables, or speaker docks that we currently own will work with the new iPod. Brilliance on the part of Apple, as they continue to enslave all of the music and phone call making people of the world along with the Chinese child laborers who actually make their products.

She has the new iPod and is downloading music, one song at a time, which requires her shouting out the name of the band or singer, then playing it, then singing along with it, before finally downloading it to the damn thing. She is two hours into the process and is only on the D’s. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate when Teen Grandmaster Jazzy Fresh Princess is mixing her favorite one thousand songs within earshot? Maybe I should rethink the no computers in the children's bedrooms rule.

I have a cat tail on my keyboard, which also makes writing difficult. The minute I sit down to open my laptop, in walks one of my cats, who likes to sit next to me while I work. He thinks he is my  muse, but his incessant purring is very distracting, as is the way he tries to fit between the desk drawer and my lap. After he gives up on fitting his 14 pound cat body into a one inch space, he plops down on top of the desk and flicks his tail on the keys, while simultaneously getting his head stuck in the blinds and launching buckets full of unattached cat hairs in my general direction. There is a fine blanket of stray fur stuck on my monitor, enough to make a tiny sweater for, say, a chipmunk.

Writing isn’t easy.

Animal Enrichment

When will I learn to stop saying yes? This time, my daughter Sugarplum’s (this is for JM, who complained about me using initials in my blogs; I named my child for you, JM, but I am not naming you) teacher called after school. I immediately assumed my daughter did something bad, as if that sort of thing occurred frequently, but no, she called to ask a favor. The class had a field trip the next day, and two of her chaperones backed out at the last minute.

She already knew of my reputation, so no doubt she called me first, knowing that I would agree to fill in, as I did. My rationale? Well, Sugarplum is in the fifth grade, and next year she moves on to middle school. How many more field trips would I be able to chaperone? My older daughter, Edwina (again, for you, JM) has no interest in me stepping foot inside her school, let alone settling into a seat on the bus and accompanying her  and her friends anywhere. What if Sugarplum turned on me too? This had the potential to be my last field trip ever. So I said yes.

Plus, the field trip was to the zoo. I love animals, not in that creepy way, but more because I just like to see them. I drive through my neighborhood in the early evening sometimes in the hopes I might catch a quick glimpse of a bunny. At the zoo, animal sightings are all but guaranteed, and the possibility that those animals might do something weird or disgusting was worth the part where I had to go with other people’s children.

I wasn’t even chaperoning my own child; rather, I had a group of five kids, from first grade through fifth classes, whom I was to escort. This wasn’t just a run of the mill zoo trip either; the kids from all five grades had been working as a group on a research project. Each group was assigned a different animal to study, which culminated in observing that animal in the zoo habitat and comparing it to the wild habitat that they researched. The chaperones were then responsible for videotaping the group making a presentation about their animals, with a script that the group had prepared prior to the field trip. In between the observing and the recording was some free time to look at all the other animals and a quick thirty minutes for lunch.

The morning of the field trip, I woke up with what I thought was a cold, complete with sore throat, sinus congestion, and the flop sweats. Rather than also back out, I parked my car in the school lot and went inside with Sugarplum, where I sat outside the classroom waiting for the big song and dance. That’s when the teachers threaten the children with their very lives, that they will behave if they ever want to see their families again, before we boarded the buses.

I forgot that school buses don’t have air conditioning or seat belts, except for the driver, and what made him so special? Before we even left the school, my shirt  was stuck to my back from that dark green vinyl seat. Only about three of the windows could be lowered, the rest having broken about fifteen years ago. I blew my nose and tried not to complain even as my hair grew three sizes in volume and I developed a sweat bead mustache and goatee.

Once at the zoo, each chaperone held up a sign with their group’s animal, so that the kids could get into their groups. I was assigned the lion, which was so much cooler than some shitty snake. One by one, all five kids walked up to me. It reminded me a little of the Golden Ticket winners from “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” only none of these kids were going to win anything. There were two little girls, two medium sized boys, and a girl from Sugarplum’s class. And it was not just any girl; it was Sugarplum’s nemesis. This is a kid who had spent most of fifth grade making sure my Sugarplum felt badly about herself. She called her stupid and mean and fat and even developed a nasty little anti-Semitic streak, which I’m sure made her parents proud. I wasn’t going to let my feelings towards this mean girl get the best of me, but I also had no real interest in helping her succeed.

Immediately the third grade boy, a rather tall kid whom I had never met, grabbed my hand as we walked into the zoo. When your kids are young, you don’t think anything of holding another child’s hand, but that was some time ago, and this boy’s hands were bigger than mine.  We walked, hand in hand, toward the lion habitat, the rest of the group straggling behind us.

Once there, I encouraged the children to study the space and how the lions interact, which was pretty stupid on my part. The lions, two young males, slept atop Pride Rock from “The Lion King,” and the rest of the relatively small enclosure looked like someone’s overgrown backyard. There wasn’t a whole lot of interacting going on, unless you count the occasional stretch or swatting of flies with lion tail. After the kids burped and pounded on the glass, we walked around the rest of the zoo, my new little boyfriend’s hand in mine.

We walked past several animal exhibits, the animals staring at us with complete and total boredom, which was the same look the kids gave back. After stopping at every water fountain so Sugarplum's nemesis could have a sip, we worked our way to the farm animals. Our zoo has a small area of farm animals: evil goats, a disgustingly frothy mouthed black pig, some fancy chickens, and regular ducks. My little boyfriend read the sign about the chickens, which are unusual and thus zoo worthy because they have a crown of feathers atop their heads that they toss around like a wig when they peck at bugs in the sand.

“Plush chickens,” he read to me.

“Actually, they are Polish chickens,” I said.

“What makes them Polish?” he wanted to know.

“I guess they came from Poland,” I said.

“You sure do know a lot about animals,” he said, and his hand sweat all over mine.

The other kids started screaming, which is an annoying thing children do frequently. I looked and saw a black snake slithering its way along the fence behind the ducks. It was a good five or six feet in length, and the kids wanted to know if I should inform a zookeeper that the very lives of the water fowl were in danger. I pointed out that the zoo had many black snake crossing signs and they probably already knew about a snake in these here parts.

The snake bypassed the ducks and went straight for the water bowl and began to drink, not unlike Sugarplum’s nemesis. Have you ever seen a snake drink? It’s disgusting, about as gross as the inside of a turtle’s mouth, which looks like a portal to the Underworld if it were conceived by Tim Burton. The snake hung its head limply into the water dish, like a broken bendy straw. I gathered my group and headed for the picnic table farthest away from the snake.

By the time we sat down to eat, it was around ten thousand degrees. All the kids were actively sweating which just enhanced their natural musk, not yet covered with more pleasant deodorant fragrances, which reminded me I forgot to encourage them to wash their hands before lunch. I sat down and sipped from my plastic bottle of water, the cold long gone from it, when I realized Sugarplum's nemesis had nothing to drink. She ate her mushed sandwich and chips, staring longingly at my water bottle the whole time. So I did what any other parent would do; I offered her my bottle. I disclosed that I had taken a few sips, but she was desperately thirsty, took it from me without a thank you, and drained it.

Is it a good deed to share your water with a thirsty child? Possibly. But what if the child is horrible to your daughter and you have a cold and drank out of your water bottle first? Is it still a good deed? To me, it seemed like the right thing to do, on many levels. Besides, how many colds have you gotten from other people’s children?

After lunch, we went back to the lion enclosure so my group could practice their little performance before I was to videotape them. After a bit of food, though, they were all over the place.  One of them literally tried to climb a wall. Don’t tell me that Oscar Meyer Lunchables don’t have a little something-something in them. A couple of run-throughs later, they were ready for me to start taping.

Now, I’m no Martin Scorsese, but even I knew these kids needed some direction. After the first take, I had to remind them to speak clearly and loudly, to look towards the camera and not the floor or the sky, to not talk backstage while we are filming, and to stay still before I got motion sickness. During the second take, which was by far the best, an old redneck grandpa interrupted the last line of the whole thing by shouting “Lookit that there lion!” while walking in front of the camera. The third take involved one of the lions stretching, and then getting up to pee. The fourth take had the remaining lion on his back atop his rock, his hind legs splayed, revealing what was the poorest excuse for male lion anatomy. My neutered house cat could put him to shame, but that didn’t stop him from getting aroused during the taping. Which meant that the fifth take was of five kids flubbing their lines with a lion boner over their left shoulder in the background. They voted on attempting a sixth and seventh take, and by the eighth take, I said no more.

“It’s not going to get any better, guys, so why keep trying?” I said. “Can't you edit from the footage we have or something?”

Like I said, it’s probably my last field trip.

Dancing Queen

You think the winter holiday season is busy? Try May. Nothing compares to the nonstop clusterfuck that is the end of the school year. It’s one thing when your kids are little and you have to go to school to watch them “graduate” from kindergarten. Just wait until they get a little older, like my kids, or even worse, high school, with proms and graduation and going away to college and  sweet Jesus, slow it down.

Luckily, my kids aren’t quite ready to fly away. My teen, E,  is just finishing up seventh grade while my tween, S,  is three weeks away from leaving elementary school, but let me tell you, the older they get, the more pressure the merry month of May brings. Final exams. Last minute projects. Sports tournaments. And recitals.

Yes, May is recital season. My children are not exactly the sports tourney type, what with their pervasive fear of catching, throwing, and kicking, but recitals they can do. In fact, we had the pleasure of attending two on the same day last weekend, piano in the morning and ballet at night. Both my daughters performed in the morning at the local unaccredited Christian college, which makes up for its lack of scientific education by having a pretty stellar music one. They have an acoustically amazing auditorium and a rare grand piano, and even though driving on the campus gives me cold sweats, I can appreciate the quality of the venue.

Piano recitals are definitely not my favorite part of May. After listening to my children play the same two songs daily for about six weeks, I’m more ready than they are to hear a new piece of music. Add to that the other twenty five kids who are also sick of playing the same one song over and over, and you have a recipe for a seriously long hour. Surviving is just a matter of counting the songs until it’s your child’s turn, and then counting the songs that are left. I understand the purpose of recitals, but I don’t want to hear your kid mess up Bach any more than you want to hear my child butcher Beethoven.

The evening dance recital, on the other hand, was so much more than I even expected. You may recall a number of years ago, my daughter S used to take lessons from a dance school that had a very different focus from her current one. I could say that her current ballet school emphasizes classical technique while her old school concentrates on more contemporary and mainstream dance styles, but that is much nicer than the way I see it. Her new school is artistic, and her old school teaches preschoolers how to grind. Both teach dance in the same way that Sunny Delight is orange juice.

I obviously wanted to see my daughter perform in her dance recital, but I had to give up something I really wanted to do that night. My temple hosted their centennial gala at the same time and missing it was a big disappointment. If I’ve been there for so many of the less fun aspects of temple membership, I wanted to be able to enjoy, finally, something that had the potential to be a blast. But a mother’s work is never done, so I put on a smile and went downtown to support my daughter.

The recital was simply amazing. I mean it; I am being totally sincere, for a change. The costumes were tasteful, the choreography was challenging in an age-appropriate way, and the children demonstrated what they had learned for all those hundreds of dollars spent on dance instruction. The younger kids were fun to watch because they are so damn cute, but the high school students? Damn. They dance with so much skill and talent that you forget it’s a recital and not a professional ballet. And the best part is no one humped the floor or took off part of their costume.

One of the first performances was by three dancers, two girls and a boy, all young teenagers. The boy wore tights and a kilt. He is so gifted in dance that in addition to being able to leap and spin gracefully, he also can lift the girls, which is no small feat since both of them were taller than he was.

My older daughter, who hasn't danced in six years,  turned to me and said, “As if dancing in tights wasn’t bad enough, he has to wear a skirt too?”

“It’s called a kilt,” I said.

Plus, he was dancing with two girls. He had his hands on two girls’ waists, and their boobs were in his face for a large part of the number. That kid is seeing more action that most boys his age. I especially liked that the piece was a love triangle. In a way, it was his first threesome. Way to go, dancing boy! Take that, jocks!

My daughter S, to be honest, is not the strongest dancer in the class. She started pointe this year, and it’s been a struggle the whole time for her. She has loved dance since she was three, and looked forward to the year when she would finally get those satin slippers with the ribbons, to finally look like a real ballerina. What you don’t see about real ballerinas is how their feet end up like a witch’s, all gnarled and corned and callused and sad. And until your feet adjust to that level of abuse, well, it hurts. A lot.

I knew pointe class could be the breaking point for her love of dance, and to some extent, it has been. This is the first year that she hasn’t said she wants to be a dancer when she grows up. The minute she stood on her toes for the first time, she finally understood that not everyone can be good at everything, and that’s not an easy lesson to learn.

When S came out on the stage in the back row of dancers, she wobbled. She faltered. She struggled. In a class of graceful gazelles, she stood out for all the wrong reasons. But I couldn’t be more proud of her, because she didn’t quit. She knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, but she kept her end of the bargain. She went in front of that audience and tried and held her head up high and did what she could, the best she could, with a smile on her face.

In my eyes, she was the most beautiful girl on that stage. I knew how hard she worked, how what the rest of the class did easily reduced her to tears every week. And yet, she stuck with it, even knowing she could not do it. She didn’t give up, not because I forced her to dance, but because it was important to her. Even as my heart ached for her, I loved every minute of it.

I heard the gala at the temple was a brilliant success, but I was so happy being where I was, watching my child succeed in a way she doesn’t even know. She even wants to give pointe another year, to see if she can improve and find her way on those wooden toe boxes. If she does decide to stop dancing in a year or two or less, she hasn’t failed. She could teach a lot of adults, including me, a thing or two about perseverance and character. Now if only I could figure out what to do with that collection of recital costumes. 

Pillsbury Bake Off

I think I accidentally got high with my teenager.

We were in the car, driving home from her guitar lesson. Normally the drive home after guitar is uneventful, except for the scrawny teen holding an arrow-shaped sign outside of an oyster house. He wears a hoodie and has a rattail, which is very retro of him, and he holds a sign to the restaurant which he twirls in such an expressive way that you can feel his angst and boredom with every spin. We refer to this tormented soul as my daughter’s "boyfriend," and he is usually the highlight of the drive home.

Last week was unusual, and not just because we got stoned. Most of the time there is some afternoon traffic, but last week it was at a standstill, the kind of traffic that screams major car accident.We had no choice but to sit in it, inching slowly forward, moving maybe one car length per five minutes.

My daughter and I had already exhausted our conversation options. How was school? Fine. Do you have homework? Yes. Anything interesting happen today? No. After an obligatory fight over who controls the music, we settled on the next best thing, which was to study all the cars around us for anything amusing.

In front of us was a big fan of the Second Amendment, which we knew from his giant automatic weapon second amendment window sticker. I don’t know if it’s even a sticker, but whatever it was, I don’t understand how the driver can see with the entire rear window covered in guns.

To the right of us was a tricked out former police car, still with its spotlight on the driver side. It was a Ford something, navy blue, with oversized wheels, overly tinted windows, and a little personalized sticker that said “Mr. Fresh.”  The car vibrated with the excessive bass from whatever music was blasting within.

“Look, it’s Mr. Fresh,” I said to my teen.

As if on cue, the darkened driver side window rolled down, revealing a man with a ball cap and chin length cornrow braids. In his left hand was a thin cigar with a plastic filter on the end. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out of the window, in my car’s general direction. Then he began to dance. His braids swayed to the beat of the music, as he did this little shrugging thing with his shoulders, looking left and right, a giant smile on his face.

“Is that a blunt?” my teen asked me.

“How do you know what a blunt is?” I asked her.

“Wiz Khalifa. Plus, I’m in middle school. So, is it?” she said.

I was a little shocked, but with no good reason. When I was in middle school, I saw someone snort cocaine on the back of the school bus. One of my good friends in Gifted got suspended for possession of marijuana and had to go to that scary middle school, the one that was a minimum security version of juvie, the alternative to an outright expulsion. My high school had monthly visits from the Feds, complete with drug sniffing dogs that would smell every locker inside and every car in the parking lot. And that was the 80's. So what if she could identify a blunt? She could also identify a meth head. The more times change, the more they stay the same.

“Yes, it is. I guess that’s one way to deal with this traffic. Not that I am condoning drug use behind the wheel, because I’m not.”

“Mr. Fresh sure looks happy, “she commented.

“Indeed,” I replied.

We were trapped there, with the other cars’ exhaust mixing together with Mr. Fresh’s second hand smoke, until I kid you not, everything became really funny to both of us.

We giggled, which gave way to full laughing, until my teen said,” This is horrible. Now I know what weed smells like. I’ve lost my youth. My innocence is gone. Now I will know every time I go to a concert, every time I walk through a college dorm.”  She’s not dramatic at all.

I looked out my side window into the car on my left.

“Look at that guy,” I said. “He looks like an exploded can of biscuits.”

The teen peered over me to get a good look at the doughy man behind the wheel.

Then we laughed some more, with some snorting, and eventually a little choke, her, not me. She also had tears streaming down her face.

“Mr. Fresh to the right of us, and Poppin' Fresh to the left,” I shouted, laughing at my own joke.

“Who’s Poppin' Fresh?”

“That’s the Pillsbury dough boy’s name,” I told her.

“The Pillsbury dough boy has a name?” she said.

“You know what a blunt is, but you don’t know the Pillsbury dough boy’s name? Where have I failed you as a mother?” I said.

 

 

Traffic started moving, and we laughed our way home, slowing to a few giggles here and there by the time we pulled in the driveway. My teen ran inside and headed straight for the pantry, where she began to shove whatever she could find in her pie hole. This is commonly referred to as “the munchies.”

“Stop that,” I said, “It’s almost dinnertime."

We never did pass a car accident.