8 posts tagged “fashion”
Well, it's that time of year again. Parents across the country are gearing up and getting ready for ... Dance Recital Season! Whooo hooo!
Blehhhhhh. If you remember from last year, this whole situation kind of freaks me out. The kids are all so young, and there is so much hype. And it is all so expensive!
This year, when I signed Maggie up for her beginners dance class, I made sure NOT to send her to the hoity toity dance studio. NO! I signed her up for good old Fremont Rec. classes. Thinking, you know, "it's just a county gym class, there won't be a recital. That would be too elitist." WRONG!!!! I was so wrong. So very very very wrong. In fact, through the Fremont Rec. classes, there is not just one recital, but TWO! Oh my God -- a whole weekend of this craziness!
This dance class is made up of 4-6 year olds. Maggie is on the younger end. But she is a little trouper. The dance that they chose is not ballet (her favorite part of the class) but instead it is tap. And it is a really complicated routine. I still couldn't tell you all the moves she is supposed to learn. Let me tell you, a room full of twenty little girls between the ages of 4 and 6 in tap shoes is not a room that you ever want to be in. Especially if the dance is to the song "Witch Doctor" (you know the one..."I told the witch doctor I was in love with you -- bum bum bum bum.".) Yeah -- that song gets really old, really fast. But wait, there's more! Not only is their little tap dance number to the song "Witch Doctor", but it is also....sung by... The Chipmunks! What concentric circle of Hell have I found myself in?
And just to seal the deal, she got her crazy expensive dance costume last week. SO tacky! (of course, she absolutely loves it...) I swear, the thing looks like Madonna mixed with Minnie Mouse on crack. Totally 80s.
The first recital is on Friday the 30th. The second one is on Saturday the 31st. Two days of hours and hours of intermission-less dance routines. All of us sitting there, just waiting for the three minutes that our kids will be on stage. Pray for me. I will record the whole sordid affair. (okay, not the WHOLE thing, just her performance. I'm not cruel.) I will post it here, and I will force ALL of you to suffer with me! Mwah hah hah!
Okay, so, apparently my National Corndog Awareness Day on the 15th of August is not the only time of year when Corndogs are celebrated. There is a very large, and very computer savvy group of people who get together every year and combine March Madness Basketball with the devouring of corndogs. This year, it will be on the 17th of March. And I just went to their website, and laughed out loud when I saw some of their posters to commemorate the day. Some of the ideas I have used myself!
And while I would like to add that I have been celebrating N.C.D.A day since 1990 ( seventeen years, suckahs!) I think it is wonderful that so many people are taking up the cause. The more days of corndog celebration, the better. Please understand that I am not trying to compete or anything, but I must make mention that although these corndog parties are great and everything, they are missing the one secret ingredient that I alone posess....
The tiniest, cutest corndog mascot in the world:
And THAT is all I have to say about that!
Well, I have written before about how much Maggie loves to dance. Here is another example of her "Moves". When ever she is feeling particularly inspired by the music, she goes and finds her "dancin' hat" She has had it since infancy and she is sort of outgrowing it...But she insists that she needs this particular hat to help her dance. I dunno where she came from. But she cracks me up.
Know what also cracks me up? This dancing she is doing! What the...? I think that Mr. Miyagi has been coming to our house on the sly and teaching Maggie some tricky steps. Watch your back, Karate Kid!
Do any of you compost? I just started in January. It was my New Year's Resolution to start composting. That and writing this blog. Those were the two things I decided to pursue with enthusiasm. The blogging? I've been enjoying. The composting? Not so much.
It was Al Gore who made me do it. Damn him and his dreamy ass self! I love him. He is my hero. Kevin said I could French Kiss him if I ever got a chance. Really. And I am sure that now that I am composting, Al Gore will certainly hunt me down and find me and give me a big, sloppy "thank you for saving the world" kiss. Don't you think?
I watched An Inconvenient Truth and got really freaked out about the fact that we are all gonna drown in a big huge boiling tsunami of death from all the global warming. So I bought the fluorescent light bulbs, turned down the heat, looked into buying a Prius and started to do all 4 "R"s of recycling. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot. Mmmm, hmmm. Rot.
We don't even really have a back yard to speak of. It is maybe 10 feet by 10 feet. And most of that is a deck. We have some flowers, but they all die immediately thanks to my complete lack of gardening skills, so really, they are creating their own compost. So efficient!
But no! I wanted to save the world! So on January 1st, I called the "Rot Line". No, I am NOT making that up. The people at the Waste Management Department in Alameda are some very "punny" people. Along with my new composting stack, they sent me a video called "Do the Rot Thing" You think I am lying about that title? LOOK! It almost makes a person embarrassed to participate in the whole endeavor.
But I sat down and watched the video, and HELLO? This whole composting thing....it's a pain in the ass! It was my understanding that I could just toss stuff in, wait a little while, and VOILA ! -- fabulous, nutrient rich dirt was ready in no time.
Ummmm, NO.
You have to get all of the kitchen scraps (fruits and vegetables only, nothing else, thank you very much. Not even dead mouse carcasses, which is too bad, since we now have 6 of them piling up....) Anyway, you get all of the scraps, and you have to chop them up into little pieces, like so:
Alright, that picture is not a good example, as I got tired of chopping up the lemons in tiny pieces after the 40 billionth lemon (a gift from neighbors who obviously had way too many lemons in their backyard) But, you get the point. I am a sloppy composter, so sue me!
The next step in the process, once you have put the scraps in the compost bin, is that you have to add brown, dead plant matter to mix in with it. But, see, we don't actually have plants in our yard, and so I had to go out to the park to collect the damn stuff. This is ridiculous. But I did it.
I add the imported, dead leaves to the mix, coughing as I try to see through the clouds of compost bugs -- little flying creatures that apparently feast on the flesh of rotting plant matter. And you would think that that -- THAT -- would be enough to save the world for Christ's sake!
But no. There is more. You have to rake it around, mix it all up, kick up the bugs a bit more. And then, comes the final step -- dampening the whole thing to start the rotting process. This means that you need to walk over and get the hose, which is always impossible. Inevitably, it is all tangled up, or the kinks have made it impossible to wind out, or the nozzle leaks and sprays you with water every time you turn it on. Something. But... if you are very lucky, you may be able to find yourself a helper for this step of the composting nightmare. Because, as we all know, toddlers LOVE playing with the hose...
The helper that I found is also very fashionable and knows that it is important to always look your best when saving the world.
Oh, and then? After all that? You have to wait TWO MONTHS for the stuff to turn into soil. Two months! What the Hell?
I am telling you what. Somebody better call Al Gore and tell him that I am not doing this for nothing. I've got my altoids out and I'm ready whenever he is. It's now or never. I don't think I can keep this crap up for much longer with out some sort of reward!
My dear, dear child loves to dance. God love her. She prances around the house all day, flapping ribbons and pointing her toes. She stops and does stretches and leans on chairs and says that she is "at the barre". Anything that is elegant or graceful is pronounced as "something that a ballerina would do".
This past Christmas, she heard a choir singing Christmas Carols on the tape player, and she stopped, held up her hand and said "listen, Mommy, listen to that beautiful music!" I stopped and listened to the singing and agreed that it was quite lovely. "I think that must be ballerinas singing" she mused. When I asked why, she assured me that only ballerinas could make such beautiful music.
When she was two, anytime music came on, she was guaranteed to dance. Any kind of music, she loved it. We enrolled her in a dance class on Saturday mornings, but it was painful for me, personally, because it was WAY too early in the morning. And it was a weekend, AND I had to participate. Basically, it was drippy kids' music turned up a billion decibels, while small, amped up toddlers careened around the gym. Of course, the children weren't actually following the music's exhortations to "hop like a bunny!" or "wiggle your backside". No, it was the parents, who were desperately trying by example to get their kids to follow the music's instructions.
And did I mention that it was early in the morning? On a weekend? No thanks.
When, mercifully, that class finally ended, I decided that she needed to be enrolled in a "movement" class. This class involved lots of waving of scarves and marching around to a CD that the teacher brought along. The movement class (or actually, I believe it was called "bouncin' babies" God help me) was pretty good. Maggie loved it. She was into it. She marched around like a champ.
Unfortunately, the class had a little too much emphasis on the "babies" in aforementioned name and not so much "bouncin'" Well, actually, there was plenty of bouncing on Maggie's part, but the other children were really young, and there was lots of crying and nose wiping that went on. At the end of the classes, all of our nerves were a bit frayed.
So I thought -- okay, she's ready for a real dance class. With big kids. She was close to three years old, and so I signed her up for the county recreation department's tap and ballet class. Luckily, I didn't go that extra mile and actually BUY the stupid shoes. Someone loaned me their old ones. I also did not spring for a leotard or tights. 'Cuz, come on! She's not even three! Off we went to the first day of class. I had my video camera ready to record all of those precious moments. Ha.
And lest you think I am exaggerating, I present exhibit B:
Not such a good experience. This is what the entire class was like. A whole hour of Maggie dancing to the beat of her very own, personal drummer. And me, sitting on the sidelines hissing "Maggie...psssst...Maggie! Follow the teacher!" And it didn't get any better with each new class. When I asked her what she thought of the class, she said "Ummmm, the teacher wants me to practice tapping, but I want to do my MOVES" Sigh. We did NOT finish that class to completion.
And now... We are enrolled in another dance class. (Hope springs eternal). And I am happy to report that Maggie loves it. She loves her teacher, she loves the music, she loves her whole ballet getup (which, of course, always includes a tutu of some sort) And in June, she will be in a dance recital. In front of a HUGE audience of hundreds at the local college. The beloved dance instructor -- Miss Jill -- has already selected the ( odious) costume, which looks like some sort of Little Miss Sunshine/Jon Benet Ramsey creation of cheap shiny turquoise satin and ruffly tulle and lace. And the song that they will be dancing to? Are you ready? Some gross, treakly broadway number called "I enjoy being a girl". The dance moves include pantomiming curling her eyelashes and flipping her hair while talking on the phone. I am NOT kidding. After all my ranting and raving about how I refuse to stereotype my daughter, and about how all that princess crap drives me crazy! And yet....Maggie is loving it. So, I shut my mouth and go along for the ride. What can I say? She loves to dance.
I completely deserve this situation. It is totally my own damn fault. I bought the crappy ass glittery gown plastic princess kit for Maggie. I know that it is stupid. I know that Disney is taking over the world and turning little girls into mindless buying machines dressed all in pink. "Oh, I want to be a princess. Princesses are great. blah blah" I hate all that crap. But. My daughter loves Cinderella. She does. She always has. She sings the songs, she acts out the story, she dresses up in her fluffy bedroom slippers and insists that they are, in fact, "tiny glass slippers".
And so, when she turned three, I thought, "Okay, I will get her that Cinderella doll dress up kit that I saw at Target and give it to her for her birthday." Because, see, the packaging on the back insists that the kit is only for children three and up. I didn't want to frustrate her by giving her something meant for an older child. I got the thing, and I put it on the shelf, and I hemmed and hawed, and then decided that I didn't want to give her that! What was I thinking, anyway? Why would I buy into all that Disney hooplah? Was I crazy? I took it back.
Three months passed. She was firmly into the age of three. It was Christmas time. My mother convinced me that a snowglobe and box of wooden fruit wasn't gonna cut it for Christmas presents. So, I went back and got the hideous thing.
And of course, on Christmas morning, it was the thing that she wanted to play with for hours. Hours and hours of play with this goddamned thing that was so sticky, that the clothes wouldn't pull on and Kevin and I had to cut the stupid "glittery outfits" up the back, just so we, the adults -- way above the recommended age of three -- could slide the stupid things on Cinderella's body. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part...the tiny slippers. Emphasis on "tiny". Holy crap. What were they thinking?!? Check this out:
What the? And of course, the most crucial pair of all...the pair of infintesimally sized shoes that are critical to the whole story of Cinderella, are the practically INVISIBLE pair! Whose freakin' bright idea was that?
So, anyway, the point of this whole blog entry - the reason I wrote this in this first place, before getting sidelined by my opinions of Disney and the entire " Princess" Crapola... the point I am trying to put out there, for all of you who may some day follow in my footsteps, is THIS : When your daughter insists on taking her plastic dress-up Cinderella into the bath with her, and wants to bring all of the outfits with her -- all of the teeny tiny ridiculous wee little outfits -- AND insists on bringing the (invisible) glass slippers with her into the bath, as well -- Do NOT do it. I repeat. Do NOT allow her to take invisible glass slippers the size of your eyelash into the tub with her! You may well find them, but not until after much sobbing and gnashing of teeth.
Consider yourself warned.
So, it has been a while since high school, but it seems that I still have the skillz, baby. Yep. All those long nights of painting huge banners for pep rallies, woefully under attended dances and homecoming week spirit contests have finally come into use. Of course, I need my buddy Jen there, fluting the letters, and making everything look just right, but I am still able to create the masterworks of yesteryear.
I had the chance to show off my abilities to the world last week when Kevin and I organized a rally in Fremont protesting Bush's troop escalation in Iraq. Here is what I stayed up doing the night of Bush's speech:
Yeah. I was tired the next day. HOWEVER we had sixty people come out to stand and protest, and we had all kinds of people drive by and honk in support. So, that was good. Maggie stood out there, too. A tiny little peace marcher. She insisted that I make her a tiny sign just her size. And she requested that it be red. She also chose her outfit. I especially like the purple cowboy boots and the fancy shmancy tutu. I think they go nicely with the clown hat, don't you? Such a fashion maven!
So, there you go. My highschool education at work. Who says public schools are going down the drain? I also learned how to decorate lockers! Oh, and all that stuff in my classes, too. That.
By the way, I forgot to share this picture with all of my banner queen fans. When Kevin and I were driving from San Diego to the Salton Sea, we went through the little town of Julian, and drove by this ranch:
So today we were getting ready to go to Gramy and Grampy's house. We had a political meeting and Kevin's parents offered to babysit. Maggie was packing up her items to take with her. She came downstairs, carrying her furry blue purse embroidered with the word "Angel" (I did NOT purchase this for her, I need to make that clear. It was a gift. A gift which will have to be mysteriously misplaced...soon...) Anyway, she had her purse, and she sang to me:
"Okay Mommy, I'm ready!"
"Great Maggie, let's go."
"And I packed my knife"
"Um...why?"
"Just in case"
Just in case? Is there something I should know about these visits to Gramy and Grampy's house? That she needs to pack a weapon?
