Three Shows and a Late Night

Was woken up yesterday morning at 8:30 by B, calling to let me know she'd left her costume at home (yes, the one I told her to put in her bag last night). So, DH got home from dropping her off and had to turn around and go right back to the ballet school.

She danced in (and we watched) the pre-ballet show at 11:00 (she's one of the teaching assistants), then we had burgers for lunch and took her back to the ballet school for the 2:00 show.

Voci concert tonight from 8:00-10:00, then a bunch of us went out for some well-deserved food and drink. I finally arrived at home at 12:40 am--it's been a long time since I've stayed out that late!

Saturdays

What ever happened to Saturdays being a day off? (I guess that changes when you have kids.) Today I spent three hours driving three girls to and from the CMEA choir festival (and listening to the performance), then spent 2.5 hours observing ballet rehearsal (making a chart so that the stage managers know which kids are supposed to be where).

Fortunately, the evening was much more relaxing. DH had a delicious dinner waiting when I got home, and I spent over an hour playing Lego Indiana Jones with B.

Volunteers

This year, I'm in charge of scheduling the backstage crew (stage managers & runners) for the Nutcracker at B's ballet school. It's mostly straightforward--contacting the people who have volunteered (all parents are required to help with something), and trying to find the best arrangement of people & times. I just have one question for a certain parent: why on earth would you sign up for backstage crew if you have to work the first show weekend and will be out of the country for the second?

Scheduling Needs To Be Done Earlier!

It's November 1st, and I JUST received an announcement from B's choir teacher about the date of the winter concert. Naturally, it's on the same night as Nutcracker dress rehearsal. B has already been pulled from one of her Nutcracker performances because she's missing rehearsal this Saturday (she has a role in the school play, and was assigned to the matinee performance), and missing a dress rehearsal is grounds for removal from at least one more show. The last two years, the winter concert was the second Wednesday in December, so I had hoped that by not signing up for Nutcrackers that week (necessitated by my schedule and DH's schedule), we'd be covered for the concert. Looks like I guessed wrong...we're hoping that the choir teacher will be flexible about an alternate assignment.

We still have one potential conflict coming up--both B's ballet school and B's choir teacher have the afternoon of December 4th reserved, but neither one has a time! I can make an educated guess for choir (4:30 pm the last two years that M sang at the tree-lighting ceremony), but the ballet school won't tell us until the week of the rehearsal.

Six Performances

Current mental soundtrack: random selections from Sleeping Beauty, by Tchaikovsky.

Just got back from watching B's evening performance. She did a great job, and it was fun to finally see her on stage for an extended period. When kids first start performing in ballets, they're usually on stage for about a minute, and then they're gone. The entire second half of tonight's program was Sleeping Beauty, and she was in the opening number (4:48 according to the track list the stage managers were given), then stayed on stage as background throughout the first half of the work. (Did a good job acting, too.) She has one more performance tomorrow afternoon, which I won't see because I'll be at the Voci concert.

Checklist for tomorrow (I have to remember all of this when I leave in the morning):

• Ticket for morning pre-ballet show
• Money for lunch with B (she's requested Bongo Burger)
• Campus parking permits for lunchtime parking ease
• Voci concert outfit (top, skirt, socks, shoes)
• Silver jewelry for concert
• Makeup
• Hair stuff (curling iron, styling creme, hair clip, bobby pins, etc.)
• Water bottle
• Music
• Snack for self before concert
• Shaker for possible use in one piece
• Caramel pecan brownies for intermission bake sale
• Dinner (t.b.a.)
• Warm jacket & scarf 
• Black top & black jeans for evening ballet show (assistant stage manager). Keep black concert shoes & socks
• Notes for ballet show

DH is on chauffeur duty--he will be dropping B off at the ballet school at 8:30 tomorrow morning, then returning there at 2:00 with three of B's friends and my sister. After he drives everyone home (including B), he and the kids are going to a party at a colleague's house.

Garland Dancer

Current mental soundtrack: "Today, this Spring" by Libby Larsen

To hear my mental soundtrack, be sure to come to this weekend's Voci concerts!

B is performing this weekend in Sleeping Beauty, so I'm spending my "spare" time as one of the crew of stage managers.

Here she is backstage:

And here's a photo taken from the wings during yesterday's outreach performance:

It's fun watching her class progress. They started off as cute little beginners who mostly moved at the right times, but not always in the right direction. By now, they are starting to look like they know what they're doing. Their feet point the same way, they move at the same time, and they look like ballerinas.

Random Stories From Today

Today, after Peter Pan rehearsal, B and I stopped by the house to pick up M, as we had plans to eat dinner with friends while B was at ballet class. He was ready to go, as promised, but he was puzzled by faint music that he was hearing inside the house. He said it was all through the house, and a little louder when he put his ear next to the toilet and next to the heater vent. I asked him what kind of music it sounded like, and he reported it sounded like a guitar. Once he got in the car, he decided to turn on his iPod, to drown out the mystery music. Lo and behold, his iPod was already on, and had been playing music in his pocket! (He ranked this one up there with the staple episode.)

B had a great time at ballet class, because no one showed up to teach her two-hour class until halfway through! The girls were very diligent and did their barre work, making up their own combinations as they went along. The school pianist was there for the whole class, and B reports that he thought they did a great job. (Their regular teacher is away this week--they had a sub on Tuesday, and a different one today.)

One more M funny tonight: he has a French test tomorrow, so I was helping him study by quizzing him from the textbook:
     M: What does "ou" mean?
     E: Where.
     M: There! (pointing to the word "ou" in the book)
     E: WHERE.
     M: There! Oh...

A classic "Who's on First" moment!

En Pointe

Current mental soundtrack: "By the Rivers of Babylon" by Charles Loeffler

B got a letter from the ballet school last weekend, informing her that she has been approved to start pointe classes next year. The timing was really weird, and even her teacher agreed with that! The letter arrived before the last two weeks of classes, with instructions to buy pointe shoes for girls who are attending summer camp. Since B will not attend summer camp, she was told to wait until September to buy the shoes. So, yesterday the last half hour of class was devoted to checking the fit of everyone's pointe shoes, with a brief description on how to sew on the ribbons and elastic. Except for the handful of girls not attending camp, and the one girl B says did not get a letter. Now, if you were sending out promotion letters to all but one kid in the class, don't you think it would be courteous to send out a non-promotion letter to her, so she doesn't wonder if hers was lost in the mail? Or at least have a talk with her?

Our annual trip to the dance store is going to be an expensive one this year. Every time B goes up a level, she has to buy a new color of leotard. Last year was the year she moved up to a different style of tights, but fortunately those will stay the same from now on, so at least we won't have to buy those. She will get both pointe shoes and regular shoes (the ones I've been buying her at Payless are apparently inadequate, now that she's reached a higher level of dancing), at least one new leotard, and probably some miscellaneous stuff.

Hot, Hot, Hot

We're having a heat wave in the Bay Area right now. Even chilly San Francisco was in the mid-80s today. At B's afternoon ballet performance, it was so hot that the light board overheated, and lights started to turn off and on at random times. The second half of the program was performed with very dim stage lighting, because that's all that would work. Tonight's S&P concert was quite warm, too--the church we performed in is one of those where the sanctuary is upstairs. Concert went well, and it was nice and warm outside when we left at 10:00 pm. Come hear us tomorrow in Berkeley!

Off and Running

B has been delivered to the ballet school for this morning's pre-ballet show (teaching assistants get to perform, too), and DH and M are off to fencing class, followed by obedience class. I'm picking up B for lunch at noon, then it's back to the ballet school at 1:00 for the afternoon show. This evening is S&P--come hear us!

Unable to Commit

I've finally filled out the committment form for B's spring ballet performance, but I had to add several footnotes, as we don't know if we can commit to some of the things on the list! The ballet school requires students to indicate their availability to perform with either Cast A or Cast B, or both. By checking a cast, we are saying that we will be able to attend all the performances and required rehearsals for that cast.

Students are required to attend all rehearsals to perform, but they don't post the actual Saturday rehearsal times until the week before rehearsal, so we have to block out 12:00-6:00 pm on those days. B will have a spring musical performance on Saturday, May 2, but the producers don't know yet what time the performance is. So, at this point, we have agreed to attend two required activities on May 2, with no idea what time either one is actually going to happen.

Cast A (the best fit for our schedule) also comes with an outreach performance that takes place on a weekday morning, so she would have to miss a half day of school. Normally, that's not a problem. However, B's school has scheduled STAR testing that week. Naturally, the school doesn't yet know when her testing will be scheduled (a couple of tests over a two-week period), so we had to include yet another footnote on the ballet form.

Oh, and on the parent side of the form, I added a third footnote. I would like to work backstage, as I did for the Nutcracker, but I can only make the Cast A performances, and would have to leave dress rehearsal early. (I have my own performances at the same time as Cast B.)

Death March

Weekends just fly by around here! On Saturday, DH had to go to a work retreat, so he wasn't able to take M to The Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford). Fortunately, my parents are here for Thanksgiving, and my dad was interested in attending. So, we left the house at 10:00 am on Saturday, dropped B off for her pre-ballet class (she's a teaching assistant), then parked the car on campus. I got M and Dad started in the right direction, then Mom and I walked back to the ballet school to pick up B (on game days, parking in Berkeley is at a premium, so I didn't want to move the car). The three of us then walked to lunch, walked back to the car, and walked back to the ballet school for Nutcracker rehearsal. Finally, a last trip to the car (we hiked over four miles that day), where we hung out until the game was over. After a quick trip to Costco to pick up pizza and groceries, we finally arrived home around 5:30.

It was a good weekend for our football teams: Cal beat Stanford, and Harvard beat Yale :-)

Yesterday, we raked a small mountain of leaves. The green bin was stuffed full, and we had five or six bags of leaves left over, which are now parked next to my compost pile. After a quick trip to the grocery store, my sister came over for dinner, then I sprinted out the door to Voci rehearsal. It's a lot more rushed when rehearsal starts at 7:00 rather than 7:30--I was still scrambling to get my music in order during the first half of the rehearsal!

Thundering Ballerinas

Last night, while waiting for B to finish ballet class, I was sitting on the stairs outside the classroom. B's class was rehearsing their part for the Nutcracker next month. I was listening with half an ear to the music (the part that builds up three times before finally climaxing at the growing of the Christmas tree). Very pretty music. Suddenly, the mood was interrupted by what sounded like a herd of elephants! I'll bet you never knew about the elephants in the Nutcracker :-) (Okay, they're really soldiers, still learning the funny way that the soldiers are supposed to run.)

That section of the music always reminds me of the Nutcrackers I sang with the Boston Ballet in college. The growing Christmas tree was always our cue to quietly file out and prepare to sing in the next scene, so that music is firmly embedded in my mind.

Forms, Forms, Forms

The beginning of a new school year always brings with it an onslaught of forms to fill out. I don't know how people with more children deal with all the paper that comes home! I had thought that we were done filling out forms for a while (since school started at the end of August), but in the last week I've had two field trip forms (one multi-page, since it's for an overnight), and B just returned from ballet class with her Nutcracker permission slip. Off to consult the calendar now, to try and figure out which sets of rehearsals & performances we can actually get her to!

Back to School Shopping, Part 1

Over the last week or so, I've managed to finish the first part of back-to-school shopping. Once upon a time, I used to buy each kid a "nice" outfit for the start of school. A pretty dress for B (not a frilly one, but a play dress), and a nice shirt and slacks for M. Now that they are both preteens, the concept of "nice" clothes has gone out the window. This year, B got a pair of embroidered jeans (Lands' End) and a T-shirt (Target), while M got two black T-shirts (Lands' End) and a black sweatshirt (Target). (M already has plenty of jeans, thanks to my mom).

Then there were the new ballet clothes. B's ballet school, like many others, has a different color of leotard for each level. Since she moved up this year, we had to buy a periwinkle leotard for her, plus two pairs of new tights. She is such a tall kid that we ended up buying "petite adult" for her, which, of course, costs more than the kids' stuff. In addition, B is going to be a teaching assistant for one of the pre-ballet classes on Saturday mornings, so we bought a second leotard (I insisted she pick one out from the bargain bin, and she did), then splurged on a matching skirt.

Part 2 will be the school supplies, but you won't hear about those until next week, since we don't get our lists until the start of school.

Whew!

B and I love performing, but we are quite glad to to be done with this past weekend!

Friday's and Saturday's S&P concerts did prove to be quite warm, so the women went with short sleeves/sleeveless black tops. (The men left off their tux jackets.) We also decided, while changing in the bathroom, that we were all going to wear our black sandals and forget the hose + closed-toe shoes that are normally required. I was not the only woman who brought a whole bagful of black clothes--many of us wanted to see what everyone else was wearing and exactly how hot it was going to be.

We saw B dance on Saturday afternoon, and enjoyed the show, but we discovered that the Julia Morgan Theater does NOT have air conditioning. I felt sorry for the dancers--they looked really hot and sweaty.

Sunday's Voci concert was not as hot, so we wore our regular long-sleeved outfits. (We did all bring short sleeves, though, just in case.) The concert went quite well, and M even admitted to liking some of the music :-) B didn't like it, but she made some very creative alterations to her concert program. I'll try and scan it later this week, but the best one was the sketch after the translation for "Agnus Dei" ("Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world..."). There's a little drawing of "God's Lamb" with his "Sin Repeller," repelling a "Sin".