This is going to be short, I’m actually quite busy, on this last day before the holiday break.  And two days ago, I thought I was all done getting ready.  But over the last two days, I keep remembering all these little things, like buy batteries for the toys that I got for Bella that need them.  And I have lots of presents to wrap.

The schedule for this year is a bit different.  She will still wake up with me Christmas morning, then go down to her grandma’s.  She won’t be back to me til a bit later, about 2pm.  But once I get her back, I got her.  Her dad and his wife are heading out to Chicago for the week.  And I took a few days off next week to spend with her.  It’s gonna be glorious.

This will be a short one, and far less comp…comp…well put together than others, I apologize.  Christmas shopping is getting there, mostly catalogs again.  I’m actually diverting from those checkmarks my daughter made in the toy catalogs this year, because in the past, she has just ultimately shown no interest.  So, I’m picking out things that I think she’ll like.  We’ll see how that works out.

We’ll be spending New Year’s together, I think it’s the first one ever, except maybe her first.  She used to stay with her grandma and cousins.  Since her dad and I split up, she’s been with him.  Not sure what we’re going to do, my boyfriend is gigging that night.  Might be just the two of us at home, that would work out fine.  If my sister and her boyfriend have his kids, maybe we’ll go hang out there. 

Missing Yule at our witch friend’s house this year, that’s kind of a bummer, I hope that she maybe neglects to remember that it’s coming up.  I doubt it, she was totally bummed about missing Samhain.  Maybe we’ll have our own little Yule ritual.  Presents and all.

Can’t wait to see her this weekend.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret.  Do you know that back when my daughter was 2 years old, I actually had the gall to suggest that maybe that ritual ought not to become a regular part of our child’s life.  Well, far worse than suggesting that December’s jolly old elf might not figure all that prominently  in her childhood, suggesting we avoid the annual candy grab seemed tantamount to lopping off a limb of hers.  My thinking was simply that, until then, she was indifferent to candy, and I was concerned that perhaps introducing that amount of candy to her, free candy no less, all at once might give her a taste for the stuff.  Yeah, and, who was right?  Plus, I guess, with all the sickos out there, I thought maybe this was one safety hazard we could simply avoid.

Nevertheless, she’s been going now for 6 years, she LOVES getting the candy.  The actual act of dressing up and going door-to-door, she’s pretty indifferent to.  And this year, she was a zombie.  No more princesses, fairies and cute animals for her I’m afraid. 

School down in the City is going well for her, she got 3 100s and a 96 on last week’s tests.  The public school into which the silly lottery system they have down there put her in was not gifted with the gifted and talented program.  So her father found a private school for her to attend.  No wait, not just private, a CATHOLIC private school.  Yes I know, you’re thinking ‘what the…?’  But it’s certainly a better education than she’d get publicly, she’s already weeks ahead in math from where she was.  And as my ex pointed out, she already has a plethora of spiritual influences, agnostic (him), atheist (his wife), pagan (me), native (my boyfriend), one more won’t do any real harm, even one as cloying as the holy mother church I don’t think.

So, yes, I’m missing her, desperately, I can’t go an hour without picturing her smile.  And I get a lump in my throat and my stomach sinks every time I do.  I have to struggle these days to wrap my head around the idea that this really will be a good experience for her.  It will make her a tougher person, which unfortunately is more and more necessary in today’s ugly world.  And when we do see each other, it is simply glorious.  A week and a half more, I WILL do this.

Well, it’s not only that I actually haven’t had a lot of time thanks to the play and all, but it’s been difficult to post without her here.  Not difficult in the I’ve no material sense.  But every time I think about how much I miss her, my heart hurts.  Yes, she’s going to school down in Staten Island this year.  We’re taking it a year at a time, so far, she’s enjoying it, as much as any 8 year-old enjoys school.  Her dad is looking into private schools that we might be able to afford, the public school she’s at is just not providing the educational challenges she should be getting as a ‘gifted & talented’ member.  Yeah, at the end of the year, she was evaluated and was placed in the gifted ranks.  Duh…

Where did we leave off?  Her birthday was a success, they spent more time running around the theater than in any structured activity.  They liked doing improv the best.  I found they were less interested in just dancing under the lights than at Bella’s 4th birthday.  And actually more interested in the brief presentations I did on theater history and practice.  The school year ended with the aforementioned evaluation.  We spent a weekend in Boston with friends, doing the aquarium, and spending some time in Salem.  Then she went down to her dad for the month of July.  We did our annual excursion to Lake George, with just my sister this year, that was fun.  We skipped the Magic Forest and Great Escape, the former because I think she’s getting a little old, and the latter because of money, and my own distaste for the crowds.  Spent a lot of time swimming in the pool at the place we were staying.  She has absolutely no interest in the beach, preferring the cleanliness and relatively safety of chlorinated water.  She has become quite the little fish, underwater, jumping off the side of the pool and everything.

August was a crazy month, I was full-blast into directing at that point, and as it turned out, she didn’t want to be nearly as involved as I’d hoped.  So unfortunately, she spent a fair amount of time with other folks, family, friends, my boyfriend, but I felt that was pretty helpful too, everyone wanted to get a piece of her before she left.  I also took a fair amount of vacation during the month.  And finally, I took her down to her dad Labor Day weekend.  On the way back, I stopped off at Hooley on the Hudson, an annual irish festival in Kingston, to hear Barleyjuice, one of my favorite bands ever.  I managed to hold back the tears until I got off the road…

And here we are, the calendar is pretty much the reverse of the last three years.  Except there are a few more three week stretches for me than there usually were for him.  They have somewhere to stay up here, I don’t down there (don’t think I would accept their hospitality even if it were offered), and I don’t want her to make that interminable drive for only two days too often.  But he will still visit his family now and again, he’s graciously offered to try and arrange that for during those three week stretches.  There might be one or two weekends of staying in a hotel in Newburgh or New Paltz.  And I may even take a trip all the way down sometime.

In a more general update, she’s taking ukelele lessons from their upstairs neighbor.  Their downstairs neighbor is taking care of her after school.  And her dad’s wife is once again enciente.  For Bella’s sake, I’d love to see her have a girl, a little sister, she’d be thrilled.  For mine?  Well, I’m trying very hard not to wish for three boys…

Her dad will pick her up Saturday night, and that’s when she’ll get her cell phone.  Yes we’re getting her a cell, I just don’t want to have to go through her father everytime I want to talk to her while she’s down with him.  Sunday I’ll get her back early, and I have the first read-thru of the play I’m directing this summer that afternoon.  Yes, directing, why I agreed to do this I have no clue.  Except that they were hard up for a director for the first slot of the season.  And oh yeah, I’m addicted to theater.  But at least I won’t be keeping her up late on school nights while this is going on.  And she’s really into helping.  So this should be fun. 

School year’s almost over.  It looks like I’ll be missing Field Day again at her school, the big, end-of-the-year blow out, all day outdoors event.  But I’m taking a half day this Friday, and the full day two weeks from Friday, we’re going to Boston for the weekend.  I just didn’t think taking another Friday was entirely fair to the other support folks.  She really wants me there, but I guess there’s only just so much a working mom can do.  Being this is her last one at this school makes it even more poignant, but it’s just not doable.  Maybe…

One more week before opening, and after weeks and weeks of insanity, shuffling her from caregiver to caregiver, and finally having come up with the plan for this last week, the worst of all weeks, she decided last Sunday that actually, she would like to be in the show.  Last Sunday was tech day, which meant that after the cue-to-cue, everyone sat down to eat pot luck, and my boyfriend brought my daughter to the theater, so I could see her for a bit.  Then the cast went upstairs to get into costume and make-up.  Well, after being collaterally glittered up, and getting into a dress found in one of the dressing rooms, my changeling child decided maybe she did want to be in the play after all.  So, another fairy is born.  But it does make my life, if not her father’s, much easier.  I don’t have to worry about finding care for her the evenings of the shows.  And I get to spend time with her, and do a show at the same time.  Yay!!!

Her birthday is coming up in June, she’s decided she wants to do it at the theater again.  Works for me, I liked having it outside, but spending the week before biting my nails and glued to weather reports was not enjoyable.

I will say, I really do see some kind of scientific or engineering future for her though, she has a real interest in how things work.  This morning, I begged her to get herself dressed, because I had a toilet to fix and it was going to take at least 20 minutes.  Interested, she sleepily wanders in to the bathroom, I explained to her what had to be done.  She takes one look and says confidently, well, why don’t you just do this instead.  Yeah, thanks to her, took about 5 seconds…

So, about a third of the way through the rehearsal process, and we’re doing ok so far.  It’s very complicated, between finding care in the evenings and negotiating pick-ups and drop-offs with her dad.  But I’ve had a couple lucky breaks so far in terms of scheduling, and she goes down to her dad for a week in April.  Folks are more than willing to help, but between everyone else’s daring to have a life, and my reluctance to ask for help of any kind, it’s difficult.  Taking it one week at a time at this point.

I can’t believe we’re almost to April.  I’m directing over the summer for some insane reason, that starts up right after this current play closes, but that will be a little easier.  I get to set the schedule, she won’t be in school so keeping her up until 10pm won’t riddle me with quite as much guilt.  And then, come the fall (gulp) away she goes.  There was a little hiccup in the overall plan for her to be down in the City at this time, I won’t go into the details, they aren’t mine to go into, particularly here.  But, needless to say, she’s still determined to do this.  And I am determined to keep my wits about me, even though I do feel a little pang in my heart every time I think about it.

And finally, some sad news.  Shawshank, the cat my ex and I had for years and the one of the two we owned that he got in the divorce, has cancer.  Bella had to say goodbye to him over the weekend.  I asked her how she felt.  Sad, she said, but overall she seems to be handling it pretty well.  I have to admit, I’m a little sad myself.  We had the cat from the moment he was born, having adopted his mom from a shelter, of course not knowing at the time, we were actually adopting four cats.  He was the kitten from that litter we kept, Bella has known him all her life.  I asked her if they were planning on getting another.  She said that her dad said they weren’t going to talk about that right now. I can understand that.

But none of those are, sadly I confess, the main reason I’m doing this to us.

I’m doing this to us because, the gods help me, I NEED to.  Ok, need is possibly too strong a word.  I desperately want to though.  I haven’t been on stage in any significant way in…um…jesus, going on five years now.  Five flippin’ years.  I’d actually given up, let go and abandoned the desire to do anything theater-like, at least until the child moved out.  And by then I figured the desire to do this would be long gone anyway.  But when my mom told me last fall she was directing this in the spring, and wanted me for Puck, unfortunately I realized that the desire wasn’t going anywhere, probably never will.

But it’s going to be insane.  I leave work at 5pm, head 20 or so minutes south to pick her up, feed us, and get back downtown by 7pm.  An hour and a half to two hours a night, three to eventually four nights a week, then back home, get her homework done, the occasional bath etc. and bed at a reasonable hour, say maybe 9:30pm or so.  This is assuming my little drama queen cooperates ha ha.    Otherwise it’s maybe 10 or even 10:30 before she trundles off to la-la land.  Maybe, just maybe, a few weeks into this she’ll be so worn out, she won’t fight me so much at night.  Alternatively, she gets sick of it, and doesn’t want to do the play anymore.  Then my life would really get nuts, if I had to find care for her every night I have rehearsal…*shudders* let’s not think about that.

This is one of my all-time favorite plays, in which I will be playing my second-favorite character in the play (I’m a little short for my mom’s vision of the fairy queen), and I tried to explain to Bella the other night how important it is for me to get to do this.  That I love to act and that I haven’t been able to.  I tried to analogize it for her, by saying, imagine if someone told you you could never play with barbies ever again.  She said, I’d play with other dolls.  I said what if you couldn’t play with toys at all.  She said she’d find stuff to pretend were toys and play with those.  But I could see the wheels turning in her head at that point.  I thought it might have been an apt comparison, and maybe she might have gotten it, at least a little bit.  But I guess we’ll see.  She doesn’t typically suffer sharing my attention with anyone or anything.  But there will be numerous other little fairies for her to scamper about ancient Greece with, including my boyfriend’s daughter.  And she’ll get to eat a boat-load of hamburgers in the next two and a half months…

She’s off next week, she’ll be down with her dad, and I actually took a few days off as well.  Work has been crazy the last couple of months.  Plus now I realize it will be helpful to have time to get the house in order before I abandon it for two months…

Keep your fingers crossed for me won’t you?

Anyway, Christmas was a lot of fun.  As usual, not enough time spent with my child.  But I did have her for Yule again this year, and all Christmas morning, that was a treat.  I got her a fashion dress making kit thing, complete with a headless manequin which she has thus far, pretty much ignored, along with the bodhran my boyfriend got her.  But the LPS (that’s Littlest Pet Shop for the uninitiated) figures she can’t get enough of.  The Spy Kit did not go over near as well as her enthusiasm for the $50 kit from china would have led me to believe it would.  Such is Christmas with a 7 year-old, a hit or miss kind of thing. 

So it’s official, she will be going to school next year down in Staten Island.  Not sure how I’ll handle that.  My boyfriend’s question was, ‘Am I gonna have to wring you out every morning?’, referring to my occasional habit of overindulging in the drink when she’s not around.  My answer was, not if I’m still doing three people’s jobs next year.  My office has recently undergone a major transition, as a result, half the support staff jumped ship.  So needless to say, I have been on a roller coaster ride for the last six weeks, with no end in sight.  But nevertheless, the answer is no, I can’t allow myself to go down that road.  It’s a dead end.

She’s very excited about the change, as much because she will get to walk to school, as being able to spend vacations with me instead of her dad.  I’m excited about that too.  What concerns me more than anything is that, her dad has family and friends to stay with up here.  So every other weekend he has her they’re up here, and she only ends up doing that 4 hour trip once a month typically.  But I haven’t had much contact with the City since moving back upstate, I know no one, or at least, no one I want my child staying with.  So either she’s back and forth every two weeks, or I go three full weeks, or longer sometimes, between seeing her.  That really bothers me.  Then, there’s the guilt aspect.  With me naturally, there’s ALWAYS a guilt aspect, particularly when it comes to motherhood.  I’m actually just a teeny tiny itty bitty bit…well…kind of looking forward to, you know, being able to do theater, or go out on the occasional weeknight when, say, my boyfriend has a gig or whatever.  I’m such a loser…

In any event, school’s going pretty good.  She doesn’t love going to her caregiver, every few mornings she makes it very hard for me to leave her.  I’m not real crazy about the arrangement either.  The woman cares well for Bella, she’s very nice and keeps Bella safe.  And when you live in a small town you kind of have to take what you can get.  I bug the afterschool program almost weekly whether or not they have openings.  And after June it won’t matter anyway I guess…

Two birthday parties this weekend, a school friend, her ‘boyfriend’ she tells me, only he doesn’t know it yet, at a museum.  And her nanny at a hibachi place, I think Bella will enjoy that.

So, my shopping is about done, per my usual, there’ll be a few small things I’ll pick up between now and then.  I have to figure out her stocking, and then which of her already-purchased presents I’ll give her for Yule.  Probably the Barbie movie.  We’re going to see Santa this weekend, I was thinking I’d get her a Toys r Us gift card for him to give her, she loves gift cards.  Probably because it’s like getting two presents, first the card, then whatever she buys with it.

So this has been an odd Christmas season for me.  Normally, I start getting the cheer thing going maybe around the first week of December and it gradually builds straight through and peaks Christmas morning when Bella opens her presents.  Then there’s a sharp decline followed by a gradual fade until the tree comes down, and my bank account recovers.  This year, for some reason, I started hankering after listening to Christmas music a few days after Thanksgiving, and I think I peaked sometime last week.  Now I feel like I’m just holding my breath until the evening of December 25.  And it’s not as if Bella’s attitude toward Christmas is any different.  Just mine.  Curious…Anyway, doing mostly the usual schedule for Christmas, he’ll have her the afternoon of Christmas eve, bring her to me about 7pm.  This year I’ll have her all day on Christmas, he’ll pick her up about 4 or 5pm.  They are not going to Chicago this year.  S’ok by me.

We have a couple of events this weekend, as I said Santa on Sunday, and Yule on Saturday.  This weekend will mark a full cycle Bella’s been doing the rituals.  I never really imagined she’d get this far, but I’m glad she’s enjoying it.  My birthday is next week.  39.  After next week, I’ll be able to start saying, next year I’ll be 40.  Though why on earth I would WANT to say that is beyond me.