How I Spent My Saturday
Got up and put on my painting clothes, as I was going to TC to finish cleaning out the costume supply closet and help make sets.
Detoured by a call from Sis- could I baby-sit if she ran up right then to get her hair cut?
She returned in about fifteen minutes; they were jam-packed, so she made an appointment for later in the day.
Off to TC with my enormous Sonic iced tea. The regulars were already hard at work, stirring paint, unscrewing old platforms, consulting the painting schema and the mock-up of the set, which incorporates the whole theater - turning it into a Roman street.
I returned the random items from the closet to the prop and costume rooms. I can understand some of the things I found while organizing: five pair of tights and a couple of wigs make sense. But a doorknob? A bicycle lock? D batteries? It looks lovely now, I must say - all ready for the assault from “Forum”.
About whose costumes I’d had an e-mail from the director on Friday. Who hadn’t heard that we already had designs in the works from Sandy’s daughter. Though of course, I’d been designing in my head - costumers are incorrigible.
So, I’d produced a few sketches for my own fun, based on Pete’s plan of color-coding the cast by households. I used the figure drawing cheat sheets from the Threads magazine site - anathema, I know and a very bad habit. I’m looking forward to seeing the other designs and getting to work, once the show is cast.
Painted theater walls ‘til two, and made myself a set colors sampler on a paper plate for future reference. Returned home to find Ro and D. burning the DVD of the slide-show for the Theater/Speech Banquet, which she‘d helped edit. The B-Films touch: she’d combined three versions of “How Ross stole a stop sign (in front of an off-duty cop)” by intercutting between the narrators to produce a very funny four minute montage. Not up to the standards of the two previous years, which she did on her own.
But D. appreciated the help.
Took Sis a shirt box for her present for the lingerie shower they’re throwing for another D. This is a surprise and has taken only slightly less planning and maneuvering than the moon landing. The card she made to go with the gift is a masterpiece: bikinis and a teddy in patterned pink and vellum with chocolate scalloped lace. She is a paper genius.
Came home and blogged a bit, then picked up some money and got some dinner to take to baby-sit. Garlic bread and a garden salad from Goodfellas, which replaced the terrible restaurant that had been there.
At the Y’s, Bubs was in his chair, shoveling Goldfish in with both fists. I took him down so he could demonstrate standing up, which I hadn’t seen yet. And he can do it! Yay, Bubbins! Next - learning to go down the step into the living room, instead of sitting there and faking heartbreak until somebody picks him up and moves him,
I shared my garlic bread with Nini and she had some Subway that Jake brought home, as well. Then she joined Bubs in the tub, where he was soaking his red bottom - the result of Baby Boot Camp and not getting up at five a.m. One of those dreadful Mom dilemmas - change him and wake him up or let him fuss himself back to sleep, but chap his tushy?
After his tub, we had some hair-dryer therapy on the booty - it’s like baby spa. Then bed, firmly instructed by his sister.
Who was waiting to play Pet Shop. Now, when Ro was small, Pet Shop Pets actually resembled everyday animals. Now they’re the Keane paintings of the plastic toy world. We suspect the popularity of Bratz has something- bad- to do with this.
Our game tonight was not the usual Talent Show, but first a Spelling Bee, and then a Mathlon. One of the pups won the Bee and the Dog team, including the gecko, clobbered the Cat team, including the inchworm.
She declined a bedtime story and we discovered that “Ball of Fire” was the TCM Essentials film that night, so we watched that, off and on, while playing an abridged version of “Twenty Questions”, until I finally made her shut up so I could hear the Professors’s marital advice to Gary Cooper. You know, the plot to that movie is really quite complicated, especially if you’re explaining it to a five year old.
When that ended, we wound up in Mom and Dad’s bed, to watch “Guys and Dolls”. She was asleep before “I Got the Horse Right Here” was over.
This morning, Sis called to asked “Just exactly what movie did ya’ll watch last night?”
“Howard Hawks’ ‘Ball of Fire’ - Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.”
“Ohhh -- not the one about Jerry Lee Lewis, then?”
“Sissy, please. I do have some judgment.”
We have these conversations a lot about Ni’s version of events.
The Y’s got home at 1:15. Sis reported that the panty party was a great success. D. was completely surprised and very touched. The hi-jinks were enhanced by their waiter, who insisted on inspecting the gifts and choosing the order in which they should appear on the honeymoon.
“ This outfit - this leopard print teddy - this is very ‘Rrrowwww!” This you should save for maybe Day Three.”
Home to give the boys a midnight snack and so to bed.

"A Little Fall of Rain"

Picked up a copy of Robertson Davies’s Happy Alchemy in the Theater section at Half-Price Books and am trying to sip, not gulp; as it is very good and I would like the pleasure of reading it to last as long as possible.

In the chapters on melodrama and opera, which is just melodrama raised to its highest level - he explains something that has puzzled me since Les Mis. This was : why did I cry every single performance over the death of Eponine?

I wasn’t in the grip of theatrical illusion - just the opposite. Working backstage, I’d just been adjusting Marius’s sash and tucking in his shirt - again-; two hours earlier, I’d been wrestling Eponine’s recalcitrant Asian hair into witchlocks with the curling iron. I’d made half the clothes they stood up in, and that included the false shirt front the prop kids had sprayed with “blood”.
And yet every night, I was wiping my eyes.

It’s the combination of words and music, Mr. Davies explained - which is the original meaning of the term “melodrama”. This is how two nice suburban kids can make you cry because her life was so hard and he didn’t love her and didn’t even realize she loved him until it was too late and she had sacrificed herself to make him happy with another woman and it’s just SO SAD.

Awwwwww.....

Sissy reports that she and Nini were just chit-chatting when Ni asked her, "Mommy, when you were little did you like growing up at Mimi's?"

"Yes, I did."

"I know! Mimi's house is awesome!"

This just makes my day. I've never been awesome before.

Happy 19th, Ro! We love you.

Mimi in the doghouse, as it were

In my defense, let me say that I’m very much a non-spoiling grandma. Ni does not go home with new toys every visit, she must follow her Mom’s rules of behavior and she’s not allowed to eat a lot of junk at our house. About the only indulgences she’s permitted are eating Parmesan cheese out of a bowl and ‘stinky snacks’ (Triscuits with butter, P. cheese and half an olive on top, slid under the broiler for a minute).

Since they live here and we see them all the time, it’s to our advantage not to turn her into a brat.

But since I’m so good most of the time, when I fall from grace, I do a really good job of it.

Witness: Poop-Scoopin' Barbie.

Which we bought yesterday, during a quick trip to the local Big Box for some groceries, after costume stop.

I was after a cheap Barbie myself for a costume model and had not planned to buy Nini anything, but she requested a new Mermaidia, since Mom had forbidden any more regular Barbies in the bath.
If there is Barbie-buying going on, she’s there.

We were inspecting the mermaids when she saw IT.

Cleverly disguised as “Barbie and Tanner”. Tanner is her Golden Lab, who comes with a leash, lots of toys and some other paraphernilia. Jake’s brother has a Golden Lab, so we can see the attraction of the dog. But unless you read the box fairly closely, you don’t realize that the ingested dog treats reappear out of a hole in the dog’s backside, when you press his tail a certain way. Barbie is supposed to collect these, using her magnetic poop-scooping wand.. Then , they can be re-used as dog treats.

Yes, as Sis pointed out to us later, with tears of indignant laughter running down her face, the dog eats poo.

When I realized that dog droppings were a bit part of the action, several aisles away from the toy section, it was too late for negotiation.

“But I want this one!”

“Ni, Mommy is going to be really upset if we buy this.”

“We can leave the poop at your house!” Yeah, that’s not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear about a toy.

So we bought it. Because I’m a weak character, I’d had a long day and poo aside, it wasn’t otherwise objectionable. But let’s be honest - a toy that centers around dog poop? What were they thinking?

Good job, Mattel.

The Bubs Report

Bubs, genius baby that he is, is cutting a tooth and almost rolling over. At barely three months. The tooth is not unusual - they've all been early teethers. And pitiful it is, too, to watch someone with not much muscle control try to eat their fist to soothe their tingly gums.

I'm sorry to report that we'll watch him trying to roll over and getting increasingly frustrated for minutes at a time. All that tiny flailing and determination cracks us up. We do rescue him before he completely loses it - we're not that mean. Besides, it build character.

Nini was here, playing with the dollhouse in progress, which she had populated with all the hamburger dolls (you know what a hamburger doll is, right? All those plastic doo-dads handed out with the kids meals.) and the Disney playset characters. It looked like a kiddie version of the bar scene from "Star Wars". She was acting out some little dramas on her own, while I gave Bubs a bottle.

"Tomorrow," she announced to the assembled tiny Barbies and Madame Alexanders and Polly Pockets and Minnies and Daisys and Kelly and that invisible chick from Fantastic Four, "is the finalé. Everyone go to bed and in the morning you can try on the shoe and whoever wins will go to the big party."

"Finalé"? What kind of four year old says "finalé"?

One that's watched way too much reality TV, perhaps?

Today Ro leaves for college. We're taking two days to drive the 12 hours, because Bob can only ride so many hours in my little clown car, plus we're not 18. My first choice for her was the well-regarded university with the strong arts program thirty minutes up the highway, but out-of-state is the best decision, when you're almost 19 and your mom still treats you like you're 12.

Somebody got an I-pod, because somebody has the best brother-in-law in the whole world. Sissy gave her the practical present, a freshman handbook of everything. We had King Ranch casserole for dinner, our national comfort food.

Got the T-shirt quilt finished at noon, all but the tying. We'll do that tonight in the motel.

If this were a movie, there would be a montage here of her growing up - but we mock montages, so I'll skip that. And as the youngest of four, with three rather older sibs, there aren't a lot of photos of just her. I'll just say that she has always been an interlude of calmness and sweetness in the midst of the others's angst - when she wasn't undergoing her own angsty moments.

You know when the realization came to me that she'd do fine at college? At the Theater Banquet, when she was awarded "Best Technician". Seeing your child's peers give her a standing ovation puts her in a new light.

She was watching "The Long, Long Trailer" while she ate lunch yessterday. Glancing up from the quilt I was racing to complete, I idly said, "You know, you can't tell from the Technicolor there, but things really were the same color they are now when I was a little girl." She cracked up.
"The Fifties", she said, in her best announcers voice "were an oddly-hued decade..."
Oh, I will miss her.

We're doing the Countdown to College for Ro, part of which is cooking her favorite dishes for the last time for a while. Monday night was Beef Stew, the variant that borrows quite a bit from Julia Child. Then there is Mom's Beef Stew and Beef Stew with Roasted Vegetables, the least popular, b/c the potatoes get tough. And for Ro, Beef Stew is potatoes. Plus, she caught on that it's 'Martha's' and she's against her, for some reason.

I was using Mom's heavy stewpot to brown the meat. Over the years, my kitchen has incorporated a lot of items from relative's - some of them have been there so long that I only occasionally remember whose it was and think of them fondly. I keep my cooking utensils in an earthenware pitcher that belonged to Bob's grandmother. I cut out biscuits with my grandmother's cutter, whose handle had lost its paint long before I got it and is now bleached white.

When Mom died and we all got together to go through the stuff in the house so Dad could move - the things we had to barter over were the cookware. The good china and silver and the objets were easy - a lot of that had pretty much been decided years ago, but the Mirro aluminum? We piled it all on the floor and drew numbers, then took turns picking. I chose the stewpot, the nesting cake pans, the meat grinder, which I'm sure I'll use someday, muffin tins, a biscuit pan, the cake saver, the Pyrex loaf pan, a Corningware casserole so old it's got the blue flower design on it, assorted measuring spoons, the new potatoe masher - not the old potato masher from 1955- and the rolling pin. I felt guilty about that, though, and gave it to my youngest brother, who bakes.

Most of this was stuff that you could get at the Dollar Store, but their associations - the years that Mom cooked for all of us and that my sister and I spent helping her in the kitchen - were priceless.

Once, when Sissy was in college, we were at their house and all the seven local grandkids were there for supper. Mom literally had every cooking appliance in the kitchen in use. All the burners on the stove, the ovens, the stove grill and the microwave - cooking whatever any of the kids wanted to eat, making sure everyone got their special thing. It was chaos.

I leaned over to Sis and said "Now, you know I love you and I will love your kids but -you see this? I will not be doing this." "Oh, really," she said, "would that be because you're not INSANE?"

But back to the stewpot - I was thinking about the noumena of relics and why several hundred thousand people would file through to see Elvis's pajamas laid out on his bed in the Hall of State at the State Fair, and wondering what things of our will have the sort of meaning for the kids that Mom's cookware does for me.

Ironically, Bubs wore a pair of shorts with "Crabby" appliqued on the behind today, though he gave me my first social smile. He's been doing this for a while at rare intervals, but this was the first one I'd actually caught. At 8 weeks, he is still Mr. Serious Baby, wearing that baby frown that makes you think he's figuring out alternative energy sources or world peace in that baby brain.