Mumbling Madly

This is something I actually saw in Vancouver, WA not, surprisingly, in CO. I thought it was appropriate with all the elections bumbo jumbo going on.

My Dad usually insists on pictures whenever he spots this obese, furry, spokesmodel for the Rocky Mt. Chocolate Factory. This trip was no exeption…the bear was further molested by my sister.

Angela and I have long been confused, mixed up, and identified as each other. This picture after the show confirms this. We’re both in post show make-up and hair, further highlighting our similiar height and Italian features. Angela is actually three inches taller and a good ten pounds lighter than I, but that doesn’t deter people from confusing us. We both maintain top positions at the dance store, and people are constantly offended.

Just when I’m thinking, yeah, here I am, 27 years old and competant, straight forward and confident. Nobody can step on me, YEAH…I get burned. I suppose it was inevitable.
Let’s step back into time, a bit. For starters, the reason why I’m crowing over my self-confidence is that I came from a place of the worst self-esteem as a kid. Ok, ok, so we all had it rough growing up, we all had pieces of duct tape thrown into our hair. And yeah, it was the 80s, the Cold War was on, Reagan was yoinking funds for education and sucking up our budget. We all suffered…
But, I was a painfully sensitive kid, you looked at me wrong and I took it personally. I did not do well at slumber parties, day camp, or Bluebirds. I tried, but I was much happier sleeping in my own bed, reading a book, and making tongue depresser forts in my own home away from the Popular Kids. Now I had a fiery temper, sure, but nobody saw it. I didn’t have the skills to hone a true passive agressive nature.
It took years to stand up for myself. I actually contribute my two years at Starbucks for giving me an iron backbone. Man, if you want to get walked all over by a corporation and its customers, work at a Starbucks in the middle of nowhere in a remote tourist town.
Even at my current job I find myself talking on the phone using my Firm Voice, demanding an estimated arrival time for a box of pointe shoes. Majority of my vendors are located on the east coast…anyone who’s spent substantial time in NY knows that folks there can be abrasive, abrupt, and offensive. You have to speak the East Coast Language right back at them or else you’ll never get what you want. You have to use firm, short, sentences and punctuated diction. (”I don’t care if there’s a long shoreman’s strike, I need my tap shoes now!”) As a manager I am constantly using my Firm Voice (”Sorry, our policy states that tights are like underwear: NO RETURNS). It’s all in a day’s work, I suppose.
Anyway, three mornings ago, the doorbell rings and there are four construction workers flanked by heavy machinery at my front door. A sewage pipe burst and they’re going to be DESTROYING the alleyway to fix it. I had no idea they were going to tear the street limb from limb with jackhammers and bulldozers. The alleyway is the only entrance to our garage and our front door. Their fair warning wasn’t enough to prepare me for the cement carnage outside my window. When I returned from work it was even worse: Huge gaping holes, orange cones everywhere, the horrified face of my cat peering out from the second story window. I ran up to a guy with a jackhammer (ouch, my ears were killing me) and I started right in: “What IS all this? How am I going to get into my garage? You mean I’m going to have to park on the STREET…When are you guys leaving tonight? I have four jobs, I’m always coming and going, and my car can’t be locked in by your machines…When are returning tommorrow morning? How long is all this going to take? That’s my husband’s truck parked over there, is he stuck?” (what is didn’t say was: I was going to try and take a nap, jackass, you’ve ruined my plans). Anyway, I suppose I was yelling, (it was a construction site after all), but it was really more like my Super Duper Firm Voice in tip-top action. I wanted control, dammit, they might have the machinery but I wanted them to know that this was my driveway they were chewing up and they were making my life hell. (Did I mention I’ve always been somewhat dramatic, too?)
I must say that a lot of my stress is in direct relation to The ‘L’ Project opening up on Friday…and my family flying in on that day, and all the other stress of Opening Night. There’s no room for construction work in my busy life. So after I chewed out the foreman and several lackeys, I found my way into my front door and cried. Boo hoo. Of course Josh came home and talked some sense into me. (”They’re just doing their job, they have a right to be here, this isn’t our property, you need to be a Big Girl, it could be worse, it could be YOU working out there in the rain, etc. etc…”) Later, when Josh went to move his truck, one of them said: “Hey man, your wife came out and yelled at us.”
Oh Lord, YELLED at them? They said that? It reminds me of when my Dad used to use his You’re-in-Big-Trouble Voice and I’d whine: “Dad, stop yelling at me.” And he would roar: “I’m not yelling, you want to hear YELLING? I’LL SHOW YOU YELLING!” That’s kind of how I felt when Josh told me the construction guys thought I yelled at them, only I was more embarressed than anything else. OK, so I’m an adult right now, and I don’t want to turn into one of those crazy, yelling, old ladies who’s agitated by everything. I probably should do something nice for those poor guys out there who are literally pounding the pavement…probably.

I found this on the ground near the faternity up the street. My plan is to duplicate it and put it on other people’s cars.

So, those of you who are in the retail biz know that occasionally you have to deal with reps. These representatives are trying to sell you various goods for your business. In my store’s case, it’s everything from leotards made with tactel/nylon (read: SPANDEX) to stuffed bunnies. Sometimes a rep will come loaded with garment bags…other times the rep will pull up in a trailor and we’ll peek inside at all his wares. Usually the owner and I have to sit there and guess whether or not a certain item will be a success or not. This is never easy. Who can predict whether or not teens will go crazy for pink, rip-stop, plastic pants? You’d think it would be straight forward, there’s so much fashion on TV and in magazines. But F.C. is about two years behind everyone else in the fashion world. And F.C. is terribly conservative…so anything with any remote flair sits on the racks for months. Still, a store can’t stock black alone, we must salt and pepper our inventory with some cute cotoure.
So, there I am last Friday, staring at this purse and thinking: This is so ugly and retro, there’s no way anyone in this town would buy it. Seriously. The rep is trying to convince me that, because I’m 27, I don’t know what I’m talking about. “This bag is for the 8-14 yr olds, you wouldn’t know.” Now, it was early in the morning on a Friday, so I was too tired to defend myself. But I WOULD know, HELLO, on a weekly basis I teach 3-16 yr olds kids. If anyone knows what they’re wearing it’s moi. Maybe it’s because the first thing out of my mouth when the rep pulled out the bag was: “I think it’s hideous.” I’m sure that didn’t go over well with him…after all he’s a middle aged man selling purses and plush animals.
I couldn’t even decide if it was hideous in a good way or a bad way. I mean, kids in this town LOVE pink, everyone loves pink these days anyway. You know what sells in our store? Pink satin backpacks…You know what probably wouldn’t sell? Retro, yellow and purple bowling bags. Gimme a break. So than I picked up this purse and pulled it up under my arm like one would if one was carrying a purse that size, and I said, “Well, it’s a little too small to really do anything with.” And the rep says, “Well, again, it’s not for someone your age, so their arms are going to be smaller.” Okay, wait a minute…has he seen the average size of children these days? Kids are ENORMOUS…I’m tellin ya, the child obesity statistics are true in my opinion. I have seven-year-olds coming in wearing a size small adult and size 7 ladies shoes. I’m not kidding. Don’t tell me that my enormous, 27-year-old arm is no match for this retro bag. Besides, kids in this town are just not hip enough, who says this bag can’t be for cool teens and young adults? What the hell? Finally I dropped the bag and said, “I have things to do.” And I left the rep with the owner to hash it out, while I went to do my job.
What do you think?

Arlee and Darren rehearsing “Late” in my garage. We built a tap floor for the piece so they would have better sound quality onstage. Note Darren’s tap dance-able wooden briefcase to the right.

I had to kick a kid out of one of my dance classes yeserday. I use the term “kick out” lightly, not the way we used to use it as chillins where one would “kick out _____ from a secret club.” I mean “kick out” as in telling the Mom not to bring the child back. This poor girl was a prodigy of the whole Olympics Freak Out…you know, my kid is the next Paul Hamm? Truthfully, the child seems to enjoy the gym aspect waaay more than she enjoys ballet. And I gently explained this to the Mom. It’s always hard having a “dialouge” with a parent about why their kid, (yes, THEIR precious child), is just not cut out to take dance classes. USUALLY it’s because they’re freakin three-years-old, I mean who could focus for 45 minutes at three? Not very many of us, I know I wouldn’t be ready at three. And short attention span is one thing, not listening to me is an entirely different thing. It drives me crazy when I have to rationalize, reason, discipline, and negotiate with a three-year-old during class. So I don’t do it…not anymore. If a kid spends a whole bunch of time disobeying me and turning in repeated circles instead of standing qiuetly in first position I give em’ one more chance. I do everything possible to make it work, including asking the parents if they want to watch the next class and provide support for their kid. (Sometimes this works, other times the parents are distracting). Well, last night, the “one more chance” failed and there I am dialouging with a parent again about why their kid is just not ready for ballet at the moment and maybe we should wait six months until she’s a little older. It broke her heart, I could tell, and than she asked, “Will I get my money back?” Uh…sure, what do I know? Hey, sorry your kid isn’t the next Barashnakov.
Despite making the right choice I always feel bad…and than I feel irritated, like, “Get over it, Mom, are you really that out of touch that you can’t see what an annoying mess your kid was in class just now? For Christ sake, grow up.” I’m not a parent, however, and I’m sure that works for and against me being a dance teacher. I don’t know what it’s like to think it’s a great idea to put your three-year-old in a dance class and than be shocked when it doesn’t work out. I’ve noticed first born children are incredibly prone to parental dissapointment, trial and error. Usually when the second or third kid rolls into my class, the parents are super laid back about everything: “Oh, my kid sucks? No problem, we’ll just put her in T-ball instead…it worked for our oldest child.” I was the oldest child, and instead of over-enrolling me in everything, my parents actually over-sheltered me. I wanted to be a ballet dancer at three, but my mom made me wait until I was seven…(the same policy was made with Barbie dolls). So, I suppose it work both ways.

Hobbes is the first cat I have ever met who really, really, likes to lick stuff. She’s into licking plastic bags, price tags, garbage cans, your face…certain things just set her off and she’s licking manically like her life depends on it. This is a picture of her licking the fold out tag of my Levis…you know how companies like to attach a product brochure instead of a simple price tag? Well, Levis is no exeption. We actually have footage of her manically licking this Levis brochure for Girl’s jeans, and than several months later Josh bought a pair. So of course we baited her with the tag off his Levis and she ate it right up.
I’m actually having big problems with Hobbes…she keeps escaping. We have a very nice (well, maybe not NICE) fenced in backyard filled with tall grasses and weeds for our cat to romp in. Now this is for her own good, there are several very busy streets nearby and we live next to a parking lot and a gas station. Can’t a cat see this is for her own good? She’ll have none of it. Since we moved here she has been imbarking on Operation Jump The Fence. She has gotten stuck trying to scale the fence twice. Both times I’ve come outside and heard this pitiful meowing and rescued her. Usually she’s balanced, pricariously, on top of the rickety fence in a way that prevents her from going up or going down. The second time I had to literally pry her off the fence, because her claws were so deeply imbedded into the wood. Both times I have (naively) thought she had learned her lesson and would never go near the fence again. WRONG.
Yesterday was no exeption…I thought after her second terrifying rescue the days of climbing the wooden fence were over and I let her outside. An hour goes by and Josh asks: “Where’s Hobbes?” He found her wandering around behind the Laundromat. She scratched him during the rescue mission. Damn Cat. So now we’re debating tossing a little barbed wire on top of the fence, see if that deters her.