judiism

i put out the call on twitter, but want to ask here too…

do you know of a photographer you can recommend to me for family portraits in late august, in the ny/nj area?

pretty pretty please? it’s going to be my mom- and dad-in-law’s 35th anniversary present so you’d be doing a mitzvah to help me out.

first in a series, hopefully

today’s theme: some ways i’d like to spend my time if i didn’t have kids*

• learn hebrew
• golf with my husband
• train for a marathon (i mean it!)
• take piano lessons
• finish that scrapbook i started (yes, i did that… no, i never did one again) of my trip to europe in 2002 (haaaa!!)

*it’s important to note at this point that there was obviously A Time In My Life when i did not have my lovely, wonderful children - total joys though they are - occupying a large chunk of my time and could therefore have done any number of these things, or any others, and did i? certainly not. ok then. but just pretend right along with me that were it not for them i’d most certainly be vying for my spot on the LPGA tour any day now. naturally.

maybe by the time we make the bat mitzvah pilgrimage to israel i’ll at least have taught myself how to find the bathroom.

- yesterday the flats i was wearing got wet on my commute home, so i took them off in the vestibule; this morning i was rushing out of the house with heels on and decided i wanted to wear flats to walk in… shoved my feet inside and EWW. still wet. but i didn’t have time to go back inside and find new ones. ugh, so gross.

- greg and i are having a role reversal this week - he’s doing dropoff and i’m doing pickup at day care. other times that we’ve consciously tried to switch up our routine, it’s felt unnatural but this has been working lately. interesting…

- it smells overwhelmingly like pot on this train car.

- i love my outfit today. it is made up entirely of things i often look at fondly in my closet but never seem to actually put on. today, i finally did.

- i’m trying out the belt-over-a-cardigan for the first time today and i think i like it.

- happy hump day, friends!

yesterday was harley’s first ever dance recital.

i wish i could say she was into it, smiled as big and bright as the moon, had the time of her life, made memories for the record books.

instead, we woke her from her nap to get there on time*, shoved her madly into a scratchy, sequiny dress, and then left her in a classroom in an unfamiliar building to be escorted by teachers she didn’t know to a stage in an auditorium filled with HUNDREDS of people. (yes hundreds. i have so much to say about how absurd the event was but … meh. maybe that’s all i feel like saying, after all.)

if you’re guessing at this point that she maybe did NOT so much enjoy the experience?  you’d be guessing right.

when the curtain opened on the stage and she took in the sight of a thousand-or-so eyeballs pointed in her general direction… well, first her face just melted into an absolutely hysterical cry of terror.  and then after a few seconds of that, maybe her teacher off in the wings got her attention, but she stopped crying.  and then just … stood there. completely frozen.

when i went to get her in the same room where i’d dropped her off an hour earlier, she barely even noticed me when i walked in.  another little girl in her class pointed to me and then tapped her on the shoulder, “your mommy’s here.”  (how she knew me, i’m not really even sure.)

when we came outside to greet her eagerly awaiting grandparents, in pretty true harley fashion, she wasn’t outwardly sad or angry or upset.  she was… dazed. bewildered. not exactly …gloomy, but definitely not particularly happy, either.

so it was a little weird (nearly every little girl had makeup on. hopefully i’m not alone in tumblr-world for saying that that’s just entirely unnecessary). i wish we’d stuck with my original assertion that there was no point in attending this recital - all the pomp and circumstance type stuff is very overwhelming to my child and so if that type of thing is supposed to be for their benefit? for her it’s just a waste. it was a shame to be stuck inside a high school auditorium on a gloriously sunny summer afternoon (for $40!!), and not even get to see her smile.

after seeing the grandparents (her favorite people on earth, pretty much) and being given some flowers, this was the best we got.

(apparently even *i* couldn’t be bothered to put on makeup.)

(sidenote: i know this picture isn’t about me likeatall but is there anyway to photoshop those bags out from under my eyes? holy cow.)

operation: find a new (less ridiculous) dance school begins now.

*if you know me, you know what this asterisk means. whatever, we had a 2pm ‘call time’ for a 2:30 show, and harley’s group didn’t even go on until 3. my frustration with this whole experience goes on for days.