Sunday, May 18, 2008

Dance Recital Survival

Well, we made it through. This was dance recital weekend and we were busy. It started Friday with dress rehearsal. Now anyone whose done this before knows that a couple of hundred girls running around with parents in tow getting dressed in costumes and all excited is major chaos, and then some. I don't know how the dance teachers do it, but they do.

My daughter took her first year of dance this year and loved it. She is taking after her Mommy. After I got her ready she was very excited. We arrived at the civic center and went in to join in on the controled chaos. She was doing great. Every little girl loves to get dressed up and wear make-up. Okay, most little girls, okay. I know they all don't. Mine does.

We were sitting in some auditorium seats along with some of her classmates when suddenly she freaked out. She started crying and screaming; she wanted to leave. This is when it hit Mommy. I didn't give her the ADHD meds. Oh, crap. She's overwhelmed and I can't calm her down. Caffeine. YES. Run for the concession stand. Thank heavens, it was open. I took her into a quiet room and have her drink a soda. This helped alot. After much convincing I was able to take her backstage in time. She did not want to let me go. I knew she would pitch a fit and refuse to go on. When I saw her teacher I started hand signaling her about it. You learn this stuff when you do enough stage work. She came over and sent me away. Yahoo! Let them handle it. Sigh.

I went to the auditorium to watch, all the while hoping that she would be okay. Then I see her class come out and one of the teachers is carrying a child. NOOO. Yep, it was mine. refusing to dance. She watched from the sidelines.

The next day she took her meds and was just peachy about going out in front of everybody. She did it.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

If I do this again put me in a straight jacket

Two years ago we put new siding on our house. The house used to be blue. I liked it but decided to go to a neutral color. I put red shutters on the house, but wound up leaving the front door blue. People kept commenting on how pretty the door looked. In fact, even my own Mother thought I had painted it blue. UMMMM, it was always blue. The house was blue.

The one thing I never got around to doing was painting the bottom of the house to match the new siding so for two years it has been blue too. It drove me nuts that it wasn't complete. I've tried twice in the past year to get off work for few a days to paint it, but something always happened. Well, this week I managed to get the time off. I've needed the sanity break too. I spent Monday preping the house and then yesterday painting.

I wound up running back and forth to home depot yesterday trying to match the color. You see, the piece of siding we had kept for matching paint disappeared recently. I had put it away so I could find it and then my husband put it under the sink, so he could find it. Guess what, tadaaa, it's gone. No surprise there. I started to go with plain old taupe but that matched the garage and not the siding so I looked for another color that I thought would be a better match, and I thought I had found it. The paint chip looked good with the siding it was slightly lighter, but the same color. I thought I had done it.

Then I had to determine whether we had latex or oil based paint. This is important and I had no clue. The lady at the store was very helpful and told me to use denatured alcohol on it. It worked and came off. It was latex base. Yeah, for me. I will say this woman provided the best service I've every gotten at a home depot. She knows her paint.

I went back to the store and there was a man working, he mixed the paint I requested. The color on the can matched the chip so I went home and began painting. What the???? It's lighter than I thought. It will dry and get darker. Nope. I'll put on a second coat that will help. Well, the coverage is good, but it's still too light. I had resigned myself to this, but my husband was ticked off. He was mad because I had purchased two gallons and we were stuck with it. So off I go crying to the garage trying to find the stupid piece of siding. He came and told me it was okay. He didn't realize how much I had put into it. So I dove back in and finished painting which took all day.

Have I ever told you that I have large azaleas in front of my house. Well I do and painting behind them was a feat unto itself. I was crawling around and contorting my body to get in there. Thank heavens there were no unwanted visitors hiding in there. My body is sore today. But I'm finished. I absolutely had to finish it yesterday because rain was coming for today and tomorrow. You can't paint in the rain, at least not outside.

We have ordered new decking and I can't wait to see it on the house. When it is finished I will share a photo. Then you can see my insanity and my husbands. Oh, he got chased my a bumblebee last night while trying to dismantle the deck. I'm nice though I didn't start laughing.

I should say my husband may have upset me yesterday, but he really is a wonderful man. My birthday was this past Friday and he went all out to make me feel special and then did it again for Mother's Day. He doesn't take the easy way out and try to blend the two.