Strategy for Homecoming

The Michigan Marching Band (MMB) requires that I show up for all rehearsals and call times to be a part of the Homecoming Alumni Band. I can do that.

I have practiced marching. I know I can do that, too.

I have NOT practiced saxophone.

I like to see how quickly I can pick it back up after not practicing for a year. Having to learn songs again really quickly is kind of a fun little test for my brain. Plus, I remember that when I was in the MMB, the alumni generally sounded a little rusty. The bar is not as high for us as it is for the actual band, and this is part of what makes it so fun to be in alumni band.

The expectations are low but the nostalgia quotient is high.

Go Blue!

Almost a Month

I’ve almost met my goal of blogging every day for a month. Sometimes my posts are kind of garbage, like this one, but there are good stories in many of them. I’m practicing not needing to be such a perfectionist all the time.

Moment of a Concert

At one point in The Shins concert that I go see tonight, the opening band, Joseph, plays onstage with The Shins. Joseph consists of three sisters, all singers, one who also plays guitar and a kick drum. When they join The Shins onstage, the three sing and bounce around in pretty white outfits.

Their bouncy girlishness contrasts with the men onstage, who stand a little more still and straight. There is one woman in The Shins, and the Joseph ladies sometimes dance and bounce with her. The gals exude a playful joy.

Moments like that are what I want to see more of. Women having fun, being joyful, and singing their hearts out. Performances of easy happiness.

Date Night

My day is fine until my daughter loses her shit after school. She loses her shit because her underwear is suddenly uncomfortable. I have been expecting this all day long. She tends to lose her shit after school, and underwear is just the worst. She is six. I handle the uncomfortable underwear apocalypse very well, meaning I don’t lose my shit.

My daughter settles down, and I head to Zoom couples counseling upstairs with my husband while our kids watch screens downstairs. In couples counseling, we mostly talk about the uncomfortable underwear incident and the fact that our daughter is seeking attention at the core of it. Yup, that tracks. I feel a bit like a shitty mom, but I know I’m doing my best.

After couples counseling, it is date night. I get to the bar/restaurant before Alex, and have an uncomfortable social interaction with other patrons when I ask if they would mind moving tables so we can use the dart board, which their table is in front of. The husband doesn’t mind, the wife obviously does mind. She doesn’t want to move.

But the husband says OK and starts to move, and while the wife stays put, I can see that I shouldn’t have asked them to move in the first place and I’d created an awkward situation. They end up moving, and the guy from the restaurant comes out and tells me they don’t do darts this early anyway. I feel like an ass, apologize to the couple one last time, and sit at my table two tables away.

My husband arrives, and during our date, we discuss an awkward situation involving our babysitter and the neighbor kids, and I feel weird about my communication surrounding that. I feel like I am stressed out and communicating poorly all around and just can’t win.

We come home from our date, and I want to avoid making a further ass of myself in front of the sitter, so I retreat upstairs. I arrive upstairs and open the door to the guest room, and our very angry cat bursts out. She has been locked in this room for three hours during our date. I smell cat shit.

I apologize to the cat for locking her in the room, she complains vociferously. I look for the cat shit. “Please do not have shat on my Moroccan rug,” I think to myself. I look in the bathroom, where I suspect that she would have shat, and to my great relief, she has shat on a towel that is crumpled on the bathroom’s tile floor.

“Good kitty!” I cry out to her when I find the shit in the towel. (Seriously, cat shit would have ruined that lovely rug.) I sing the cat’s praises as I clean the bulk of the cat shit off the towel and into the toilet. “Good kitty, good kitty,” I say as she circles around me.

Sooooooo, some date nights are just like this.

They are nights that include a child screaming about uncomfortable underwear, a weird lady (me) constructing socially uncomfortable situations surrounding a dartboard, and a cat, who is trapped, shitting on a bathroom towel.