Studio 4109

I got to do something fun last night. Epically fun by my weekend standards (see also: will I rearrange the pantry? Or will it be my sock drawer again?). I got to host an SNL-type show on campus. With a bunch of sweet, talented little cupcakes, who are also full-time college students.

Ah, 'twas so good to my soul.

Something about being back with the thespian-types. Goofy and spontaneous-like. I love the camaraderie, the encouragement, where the only competition is who gets to make the biggest blooper in front of the biggest audience.

I used to think all those things that people think about people who do theatre: how they're all shallow narcissists who can't connect with their own identity so they have to borrow ones that someone else wrote.

But the business of theater, the actual getting-down-to-the-studs exercise of performing live on stage with a bunch of other flawed humans, is one of the most edifying experiences. Rather than putting on someone else for a little while, one grows more into himself and herself. Certain unexpecteds emerge, certain trills in voices, certain resistances to making ugly faces, and one learns and grows and trusts a great deal.

I hearted last night a whole bunch.

photocredit Studio 4109

What my children taught me about play

One of the four billion things I didn't know before I became a parent and which I needed my children to teach me is that they actually tell me who they are through their play. Loverpants has always said that children's first language is play. So I knew that, intellectually. But seeing how my children school me in the characters that they are forming and the needs that they are expressing is just...profoundly humbling. I hear my daughter talking in a nurturing voice to her brother and I hear the echoes of how I strive to talk to her. On my best days, I try to use that voice. And she tells me through her play that she has absorbed those moments and I give thanks. Then I hear my little man falling to pieces because he cannot find Buzz Lightyear and doesn't want to settle for Luella the American Girl doll. I know that he has seen me simmering (usually over nothing) and then suddenly bubbling over my pot in similarly graceless fashion.

I am also suddenly smacked by memories of my own girlhood and how hard it was for me to play as a child. At least not in the traditional sense, which, now I realize was my language of being a stressy kid. I had no time for frivolity. I would organize my room and all the drawers of my bureaus for hours. I loved playing school, but only if I could teach and lend order to my "classroom." Going over to the house of some girls whose mother was a single parent was totally stressful for me. Their mother babysat children by day and their house was unfathomably messy. I would fantasize about cleaning their house, wall to wall, scrubbing floors and clearing the Easy Cheese off the countertops of their kitchen. "So. What do you wanna do?" the girls would ask, and, I would always say, "Heyy, let's clean!" like it was the most normal activity. Like it was second only to styling Barbie dolls or riding bikes.

I see my daughter's little nooks and nests of activity, each sacred in its purpose, "This is my library, Mama. And why did you throw away that magazine?! That was for the waiting area to my beauty parlor." Even though the floor of her bedroom is a minefield of dolls and books and Legos (murder weapons to bare feet), I am glad to behold the mess because it means she feels free to play. She is not so anal-retentive about her space that she does not enjoy it. It is not work for her, right now, and that is what she is telling me through the Chernobyl of toy store aftermath on the carpet. At least, that is what I tell myself.

***

Went to an Enchanted Maze the other day. Or, as Little Man said, "The Chanting Maze." There were no monks chanting, though that would have been equally awesome and contemplative. Just a lot of pumpkins and tractors and haybales. Our time there was pitch perfect.

Pound puppy

As you may recall, there's been a puppy-shaped hole in my heart since last summer when we tragically lost Toby.

Fast forward to last week, my darling granny sent me some birthday $$ because I'm in my twirties and my granny still does this. Geatest. Granny. Ever.

I read the card which chronicled all the places Granny had gone on her senior bus pass. And then that check enclosure spoke to me. It said, "Kendra, nothing would make me happier than to see you happy. Why don't you go buy yourself a puppy?" It was practically a sign from G-O-D (which, nota bene, spells D-O-G backwards!). Seriously, it was now my mitzvah to adopt a dog.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you are already grumpy, woman!

I cased Petfinder.com and stared at mut mugs day and night.  I decided on a particular pound because it's a high-kill shelter. A part of me thought maybe this would reduce my carbon footprint or whatever if I saved one dog from euthanasia.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking what about Loverpants? I told Loverpants of my plans and ::insert hubby eyeroll:: it was clear he was so over my wet blanket routine about dog ownership. So he said, "Okay, fine. Just don't get an actual puppy. Get an older dog that doesn't need to pee every 4 seconds."

The wee ones and I ventured to the shelter after school. Little Man was completely underwhelmed by the animals because he was overwhelmed by the smell of tinkle.

Baby Girl was completely flipping out, "Ohhh! We're gonna get the puppy of my dreams!"

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, this is not going to end well at all.

The yellow lab mix in kennel #6 threw a lasso around my heart immediately. She licked Baby Girl's hand and was just so mild and lovely.  We took her into the little play area and she whizzed like a racehorse. The police officer dog catcher fellow who was bald with a jolly smile and a big mustache leaned over the play area and explained, "That's what I do when I get excited. I just pee myself!"

We also discovered the yellow lab was probably in heat. Oh. Cool.

Baby Girl informed me that we should name the dog Mirabelle.

Punch

me

in

the

gut.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, YOU CAN'T LET HER NAME THE DOG YET!

We couldn't take Nameless Yellow Lab home yet though because her owners still had 24 hours to come claim her. And also, she was in heat and stuff.

Later that evening, we told Loverpants of our puppy selection and he stood mystified that I really went through with this and then he really felt duped. Cue 24 hours of marital awkwardness and eggshell walking.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, you can't believe we do that, too. 

Yesterday, Loverpants and I had an honesty session and he conceded that fine, just get the dog on Monday.

And then I thought about how summer might be a better time to do this, when I'll be home all day and can help a dog adjust. Then I thought about burying my face in the fluffiness of a dog's warm coat and about the yellow lab's sad eyes longing for a home.  Then I thought for the 2398402384th time about how my kids are still so young and how they need me totally focused on their needs a lot of the time. Then my heart started beating really fast. I don't know if I can pull the trigger. I don't know if I can do this.

Later last evening, I was gathering up my belongings to go to hot yoga and I realized my yoga mat was shredding something fierce and getting pilly little plastic bits all over the floor. Gross.

I decided then and there that I could no longer handle the adrenaline of thinking about a rescue dog and how it's going to change everything.I took the $$ from Granny and headed to the yuppy outdoor store and bought a new yoga mat.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, Oh no she just di-int.

To which I say, Oh yes. Yes. Yes, she just did.

So, to review, instead of using birthday money from my granny who has lived her whole life in sacrifice to others, I elected not to rescue a dog from being ground up into salami.  Instead, I bought myself a new yoga mat so I could continue to perpetuate whole industries built upon stuff that white people like.

And then you all decided I am the worst person in the history of the world and I didn't deserve to own a dog anyway.

Then I cried a lot because turning a year older and realizing you are more of a yoga person than a dog person is a lot to handle in the heart all at once.

Then I listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen because it's his 64th birthday, and I wondered if he was more of a yoga person or a dog person. Or if he sometimes does yoga with his dogs. Which one might even call doga.

The end.