Dance-all-day Day
Irish dance school performances day means a five-thirty alarm to pin up Patience's hair while Oxbear prepares a plate of breakfast to split...
Gone by seven o'clock to St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic School... the girls begin to gather in a gloomy gym, sharing Starburst candies with each other... one of Patience's best pals can't make it on time because they run over a ladder in the highway and it pulls the skid plate out from under their car... but performance three of the season is performed successfully...
Coast over in warming sunshine to Christ the King Catholic School in U. City... girls begin play kick-fighting at each other in full costume for no real reason other than that they can... before preschool through 8th grade packs in for performance number four...
Followed by boxes of Jimmy John's pre-ordered for all interested dancers... Mama sits in a corner of the room to decompress a little from all the noise for awhile... and Patience socializes with BBQ potato chips and Block Blast with friends...
Arrive too early for our third stop at Patience's old school... half the girls have lost whatever self-restraint remains and are running up and down the sanctuary aisles and dancing around the sound guy trying to prep the staging area, one young girl walking on the pews, as Patience hustles after them to cut it out... but no one's listening... later Patience declares indignantly to me about one particular perpetrator who had annoyed her the most... “And she just glares at you with her eyes and it's a more-bad glare because her eyes are blue and pretty and you can see the glare in them!” … so… despite everything, the show still seems to be appreciated... Patience's former 1st grade teacher texts me during the performance... “Just wow”...
We're not done though... downtown to a warehouse by The Foundry... packed out with parade floats and a workshop spilling over with paint, wood, bolts of cloth, hardware, and anything else you'd need to repair a parade float... after an hour of waiting – and exploring giant aquariums and gardens and a jumbo Ferdinand the Bull – it's time to tape the girls dancing for a Spectrum TV spot to air later... the exhaustion in their faces is evident by the end as they shake out the last steps on asphalt to a backdrop of castle and pirate ship... and Patience has a little blood in her nose...
Finally home ten hours later... under Sistine Chapel skies, stapled with violet blue patches over gold in the west...
Puck is already gone to J's in the van for the evening after Francis stops by to inspect his old gold car and advises it's time to start over (Oxbear makes him a burger for his trouble)...
Yali (who possibly "only" has another case of gingivostomatitis) is feeling pretty good... and then kind of off... and then good again and ready for dinner...
So the four of us leave in my car for a little A&W to way-way-way wind down the day...
Driving back home with paper bags stuffed with burgers and curds... Yali discusses his thoughts on becoming a teenager next year...”Even if I'm a mean teenager inside, I'm going to be nice to you guys...” he ponders this a moment then adds... “I just had tears in my eyes because that little sentence I said was so beautiful...”
Kids tucked into bunks for the night... Yali describes the current state of his nose... “When I smell...” **breathes in deeply** “...I smell wet cucumbers and French baguette...”