1m2aSandbox

Every year I kvetch about the school talent show, and every year I cry during it.

So just deal with it.

This year has been particularly stressful to me: the music teacher told students they were allowed to be in three different acts at the most, which Cora took to mean “You should really do three acts.” I would not care so much, except for the fact that Cora doesn’t really like to, how should I put this, rehearse.

Which gives me a great deal of agita and just might put me in an early grave.

We had a busy weekend with our new family business opening up Saturday morning at a farmers’ market, and while both girls had been a bit crabby about the earliness of the starting hour, it was nothing a little donut-for-breakfast couldn’t fix. By the time we’d gotten set up and ready for business, Maddie and Cora had kicked into Work Mode and were ready to go.

Ish.

We had a hard week here last week: we had to say farewell to a beloved family pet on Friday, as well as face the first anniversary of the death of a very dear friend of mine and Brian’s. Friday night Brian and I did a concert we’ve been working on for almost a year, and at the end of the evening we were exhausted. I looked at the girls, running and happy with friends when just a couple hours before they’d been sobbing about our pet, and knew that Saturday was going to be hard.

So I cancelled the weekend. All of it.

Every year for Christmas, my girls get “experience” gifts from their grandparents: tickets to a few shows each year, accompanied by the family, of course. These shows are always children’s shows, and usually a musical written out of an existing book, such as Fancy Nancy or Martha Speaks or something like that. We absolutely love going to the shows, and the girls think that seeing the book come to life is incredibly cool.

This weekend, we had tickets to go see “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. It’s been a favorite at our house, because it’s so darn relatable: Alexander starts off his day by waking up with gum in his hair and then accidentally stepping on a skateboard, and the day goes downhill from there. You can practically see the black cloud hanging over Alexander as the day goes on, and his mood gets fouler and fouler. As little pebbles are thrown at Alexander – no dessert in lunch, a teacher who doesn’t like his drawing of an invisible castle – those pebbles become an avalanche until all he can do is go to bed and hope that the next day will be better.

We’re coming up on that yearly event when the household goes into a panic and people are frantically rushing around, sorting through songs, debating dance costumes, and arguing with friends over lyric distribution.

Yes, it’s time for the annual school talent show.