While I was being all Single Working Parent last week I decided consciously not to panic about Christmas. I usually do my shopping in November, so I can relax into the holiday season and focus on baking instead, but then I was thinking to myself such comforting things as there will be plenty of time in December and sometimes they change their minds and you have to return stuff anyway and there’s not that much shopping to do this year after all.
And then I went to the big box store shopping area near me last Saturday morning, and HOLY JESUS, THAT is why I do my shopping in November. What has come over the world? I was not aware that many people lived in CANADA, let alone within range of the Canadian Tire in western Ottawa.
I would like here to say that I am Above It All, and condemn the shoppers and the shopping, but the truth is I care, and care deeply, about getting my kids just the perfect thing for Christmas. I am commercialism. I own it. No one is getting any gift certificates for hugs or handmade sweaters over here. I MUST BUY THEM THINGS.
So this week I decided I better swing into high gear, and I got my lists together, and cleared it all with Sir Monkeypants, which means the gate has dropped and I’m off to the races. Yesterday I started at the Target, which had a particular LEGO set that the Captain wanted, on sale.
Here, an aside: we have a lot of LEGO. We have, quite possibly, ALL THE LEGO. So it was kind of painful to think about getting yet another LEGO set to add to the dozen bins of it we already own. But then I was thinking: we are very, very close to being out of toy range for the older two. Already when the Toys R Us flyer arrives, it’s full of dolls and action figures and tiny sports play sets that they have outgrown. This could be our very last year to get him an actual toy, and have him want it, and have him feel the thrill of opening something Christmas morning that isn’t just a gift card and being excited about that, so I decided to go for it.
And, an aside to the aside: when did you, if ever, move from thing/toy gifts to gift cards and cash? For our older nieces and nephews, we moved to gift cards around age 13, and then straight up cash around age 15. For our one niece I found I could still shop for some “thing” – makeup, purses, jewelry, or clothes – but for the boys in particular once they were out of the sports jersey stage I found them impossible to shop for, so it was video game gift cards for a few years before we went cash. You?
So! I went to Target to get this LEGO set, and they were ALL OUT. So then I went to the Toys R Us, and they were ALL OUT. Then I started to panic, and I ran to the WalMart and got the VERY LAST ONE (which they nicely price matched to the Target sale price). And again, I hate to admit it, but if I had been completely unable to get said LEGO set I would NOT have been all, “Oh, there are tons of other sets, I’ll just get one of those instead,” but rather, “CHRISTMAS IS RUINED.”
I had a very similar experience just today with a Barbie thing that the Little Miss wants, which they did not have at any of the first three stores I went to, and then I found ONE at the fourth store I went to, which I happily paid full price for and felt immense relief at scoring the exact thing my kid wants for Christmas morning. Because I AM COMMERCIALISM.
All this is to say that I have found new reason to shop early, and this is like a little note to my crass self that shopping in November is worth it for many reasons. Ready, set, go!
A loving family sits down to a dinner of fajitas. The kids, who have been outside frolicking in the season’s first snowfall, are changed out of their wet clothes and into their PJs. People are filling their plates and chatting.
The Mother: OH. CRAP.
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Monday. 6:01 p.m.
The father rushes out the door, still chewing a bite of dinner, with the middle daughter, thrown into a uniform pulled from the laundry bin and a button-up shirt with misaligned buttons. They’ll barely make Girl Guides carpool.
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I’ll leave the blank space as an exercise for the reader.
The other day I was driving in the neighbourhood, and it was cold outside – around 2 degrees, and I had on a hat and gloves, and my winter coat (not my Post-Nuclear Winter coat, but my ski jacket that is one level up). Then I passed a mom walking on the street with her toddler in a carrier on her back, and the toddler’s blond hair was billowing about in the breeze, and I thought to myself, dear Lord, why doesn’t that baby have a hat on? And then I shuddered, remembering all the times I have been on the opposite side of that equation, and sighed to think about how quickly one forgets, and chided myself because the kid seemed happy as a clam and surely the mom knows her own kid better than I do, and thanked the stars that I wasn’t standing next to her where surely I would have said something embarrassing.
Sometimes I think I need to write down all the silly, eye rolling, annoying things that have happened to me so that I can actively try not to become that which I have mocked, and then I remember I have a blog, so there’s that. Sometimes a new perspective isn’t always a better perspective.
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This past week I was working in an actual office, which meant actually getting dressed in the morning and leaving the house. On top of that, Sir Monkeypants was away the entire week for work, so I was suddenly thrust into the role of Single Working Parent. Let me tell you, it was quite a shock. I can now say I truly understand the glory that is coffee.
I managed to get the lunches made and the kids to and from school and the laundry done, more or less, but man, it required me to be on my tip-top game for organization all week long. The really hard part was the cooking. Because of my kids’ allergies, I have to make so much of their food from scratch (all our bread, for example), and squeezing that into the week was tough – thank goodness I had a bunch of stuff stocked up in the freezer to get us through. Not sure what I would have done if things had gone into a second week – as it is, I’m home today and I’m frantically making about six different bread products at once to replenish.
I’m grateful for the luxury of being able to work from home, to set my own hours, and to spend as much time making bagels as is required to feed my kids. I survived my trip to the other side but it’s hard, really hard over there. Sometimes a little change in perspective can help you see that things are pretty darn good just the way they are.
It’s already November 10, and I haven’t even begun to think about Christmas yet, and that is very, very unusual for me. I’ve been swamped with work, which is good because people paying me, yay! But also bad because suddenly I have been thrust into full time working mother mode, and no one is doing any laundry or cleaning or homework supervision or remember to send wrapping paper to Scouts this week, let alone making Big Christmas Plans and Doing The Shopping. EEP.
So while I am struggling to get my head above water, you’ll just have to enjoy my November column for Capital Parent, which is now up on their website. Go now!
If you like my Facebook page, where I post family-oriented Ottawa events on a weekly basis, please note that due to Facebook’s poor ability to actually share stuff with people who want to see it, I’m going to move the events listing to a newsletter.
The newsletter will come out weekly and be delivered to your inbox, and of course, your email will never be sold or shared.
If you’d like to sign up for the newsletter, go here.
If you want to see this week’s events, you can see this week’s newsletter here (and then if you like it, you can subscribe by clicking the button in the upper left). You can also put the newsletter into your RSS reader, I think, by viewing it and then clicking on the RSS button in the upper right.
Please feel free to send me any and all feedback on the change – I’m just experimenting and learning this format so I’m open to any and all ideas.
Me: Well, if someone is doing something you don’t like, it is a good idea to ask them nicely to stop it, or they won’t know you don’t like it.
LMS (with many emphatic hand gestures): I couldn’t, because it was RECESS, and then she ran AWAY.
Me: Well, maybe you could find her later on the schoolyard and tell her.
LMS: But by then she was crying.
Me: What? Why?
LMS: Because Beth* kept chasing her and chasing her.
Me: Why?
LMS: Because I was crying…
Me: Because SPLEDADO?
LMS: Yes, and Beth was running after Sally to tell her that I didn’t like it, only then Sally cried, because she wanted to be alone.
Me: Oooooookay. So, it’s very nice you have a friend who will stick up for you. But in this case I think everyone was a little bit on the overreactive side. I don’t think Sally meant to hurt your feelings, she was just excited about recess, and next time, you should speak for yourself.
LMS: I COULDN’T! I was CRYING! It was TERRIBLE!
Me: Yes, yes, dear. I’m so sorry. And now, let us have repeat viewings of the videos to “Let It Go” from Frozen, and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” NO REASON.
Sir Monkeypants: SPLEDADO.
* Names changed to protect those who were got hit with the shrapnel from my perhaps overly sensitive daughter. Is there a lotion available that thickens the skin? SHEESH.
I wasn’t planning on blogging about the Dance! Show! Live! Show!, because really, how much dance show can one poor little blog take?
But it was good. Really, really good, and I loved it, so now I must take a (hopefully very small) moment to gush.
LOVED. IT.
The live show was sort of like the finale that should have been, but never was. It was all dancing, like continuous dancing, for two hours. One pair would finish, and as their number was winding down, the next couple was already on stage getting started. I would guess that about three quarters of the numbers were from the show, but it had been enough time and the interesting ordering/blurring together of performances made them interesting again; while another quarter or so were brand new and all of those were just plain old good. Choreographer Mandy Moore was the force behind the live show, and I adore her, and so it was really just one fantastic thing after another. I can’t say enough good things about it and would go again in a heartbeat if it ever comes back to Ottawa.
One of my favourite things was that the top 10 got to perform a solo. It made me realize how much I miss the 1/2 hour “results” show, which used to allow those in jeopardy to oh-so-dramatically “dance for their lives.” The plus there was that getting to know the dancers individually like that went such a HUGE way towards loyalty and investment in the show. The solos at the live show showed me more about the dancers as individuals than I ever got from the show. Add more solos, please, dance show!
Also: Ricky’s solo was SO AMAZING. Like, a) he blew everyone else out of the water, and b) he can practically fly, and c) so, so deserved to win. No doubt. He was literally mind blowing.
Know who else was amazing? Teddy, who, it turned out, was the mysterious *crackle* guy from the phone call interview. He never really impressed me much on the show but on stage, he OWNED it. He literally stood out from the pack in all the group numbers he was in, and he had a couple of duets that were amazing. Where was that guy during the show? And also rocking it: Tanisha. She was EVERYWHERE, and she was FEROCIOUS. She took over the “snake” part in the King Tut hip-hop number with Emilio, AND did the Amy part from After The Rain with Zac, AND she did almost every number from the show with Rudy, AND had featured rolls in almost all of the new numbers, and just WOW.
For those who wonder if they’d be bored seeing the same numbers in real life that they’d already seen on the show, I’d say that one of the best things was being able to watch the group numbers from my own viewpoint – that is, not controlled by the camera angle. You really get the full effect of the group choreography and it’s dazzling. They did pretty much all of my favourite group numbers in real life – the top 7 girls (GORGEOUS, this was the one with the pretty pink and purple flowing dresses), top 7 guys (so cool – this was the one with the waves), the “chess” based hip hop, the “love runs out” group number by Travis (which was super complex and nifty to see in person). But my favourite was this one:
A Sonya routine! Who would have guessed? You can watch the YouTube clip, but although the cameras can get nice and close up to see the expressions on everyone’s face, this particular number was SO much better in person – the group dynamics were amazing and the way they seemed to move as one unit was so impressive. I think I may have gasped out loud.
My only real complaint is that there was, I thought, not enough ballroom. They tried to diversify a bit – my absolute favourite part was when they ran together the Sing tap dance number with the Happy Jive number and the Rudy and Tanisha Sing Sing Sing number with the canes, which I had actually forgotten about so I’m linking to it here:
And then, those three couples did a group number with a Broadway/50s feel that was SO AWESOME. They did a small Spencer Liff segment (oh, that reminds me – most of the show was “sorted” by choreographer, which I LOVED, it was so cool to see pieces by the same choreographer next to each other like that), and they did force poor Bridget and Valerie and Ricky to revisit Bollywod (with poor Rudy taking on the disco Bollywood with Bridget, and although it was a nice change of pace it was really just as dreadful in real life as it was on the screen). But other than those smaller parts, it was mainly contemporary with a sprinkling of hip-hop, and although everything was super, super good, I found myself wondering when they were going to get around to some ballroom, and they never did. Tanisha and Marquet were on hand, yet no salsas or sambas or anything; no Leonardo and Miriam tangos, or Jean-Marc’s paso doble for Zack and Jacque (which would have given Jacque something more to do, as she was underrepresented, I thought). The jive and Tanisha’s solo were, I think, the only ballroom I saw.
Well, that’s about five times as much as I wanted to write, and I’m sure six times as much as you were interested in reading, so I’ll let it go now. But really: SO AWESOME. I’ll see you there next time!
I’m a stickler for voting in every election, because I think it’s important, even though these days it can feel more like choosing the least of evils, or negative voting, where you vote for one party not because you actively like them but because you’re so terrified of somebody else. We have a municipal election coming up on Monday here in Ottawa, and even though my riding is borderline acclaimed (incumbent Alan Hubley running against two other guys who a) don’t even live in my ward, and b) have no political experience whatsoever, and c) both registered on the very last possible day purely because they didn’t want there to be an acclaimed situation, which is honourable, but does not necessarily make you a valid alternative); and in the mayoral race, who is going to vote against The Beloved Jim Watson, anyway.
But! While doing my basic due diligence, which involves reading the interviews with each candidate in the paper and visiting their websites, I learned something surprising: there is an alliance of candidates in this election whose specific platform is to abolish the green bin composting system.
I’m personally strongly in favour of a green bin program. Yes, it gets messy and gross sometimes. Yes, I often find myself on summer evenings at the end of the driveway with a bottle of bleach, trying to kill maggots. Yes, we keep a smelly bin thing in our garage to keep it away from raccoons and squirrels, and that means we can’t always actually park in our garage.
But when I think about all that waste going to landfill…ugh. Remember a few years ago when the city decided it was no longer in their financial interest to pick up some plastics? And how putting margarine and yogurt containers into the garbage just felt wrong? So wrong, that there was a massive backlash and they had to start picking it up again?
For me, getting rid of the green bin now would feel the same way. I couldn’t imagine putting a banana peel or apple core into the garbage, now. I like that our garbage output is less than a bag a week. I like it that the city is looking for non-landfill options for organic waste, and other stuff too. The idea that we take all our waste and just throw it in a big hole and cover it up is getting stranger and stranger to me all the time.
The folks running on this platform are trying to make it an economic issue, and there seems to be no doubt that the city loses money every year on the program – both because they have to pay a base fee to have the waste collected, and because low participation in the program means they pay a penalty for not hitting their waste goals. But cancelling the program would also be expensive, and I’m really not sure what the landfill strategy would be after that. With all the compost waste now going back into the landfill stream, what would the plan be? The Carp landfill has already had its close date extended several times, and there just isn’t another location right now that can take our garbage. I can’t imagine the expense of opening a new landfill somewhere, or even paying fees to truck our waste to an existing landfill somewhere else, or the environmental issues involved in extending the life of the Carp dump yet again (not to mention the quality of life issues for those who live near it, who have been promised that “it’s closing soon!” time and time again).
What do you think? Are you a green bin fan or would you love to see it abolished? Will you be voting for any of the candidates running on this platform – or will you be negative voting against them? I’m really curious to hear what the general public thinks about this (or at least, the very small sampling of us who read this blog) – even if you’re not from Ottawa, let me know what you think about compost programs in general.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know two things: a) I love me some Dance! Show!, and b) I am too lazy to seek out sponsorships/interviews/special perks of blogging. But when I bought my tickets to the live show, they were pretty far back, and I felt like I wanted things to be a little more, I don’t know, special. So I thought to myself, hey, I’m a blogger, and bloggers get stuff all the time, like cars and coffee makers and tickets to things, so I rather boldly called up the Canadian Tire Centre and announced myself as a Dance Show Blogger Extraordinaire, ready to do whatever it took for whatever they were willing to give me.
And they thanked me very much and then nothing happened.
But then! The SYTYCD PR team wrote to Allison, asking if she would be interested in interviewing some of this year’s Top 10 dancers as a publicity thing, and she was all, “Um, haaaaaave you met Lynn?” And thus, I was IN. For absolutely no compensation whatsoever, other than the glory of getting to be a total geek-out fangirl, I got on the list. SWEET.
I got to choose which dancers I wanted, and I picked out Jacque (the ballerina) and Bridget (the only contemporary girl to make it to the top 10) because I had some specific questions for each of them, although truth be told, I would have been happy to talk to ANYONE, SQUEE. Jacque and Bridget, however, were just so nice and thoughtful and well spoken and it was an absolute pleasure talking to them.
So here’s how it went down – I talked to the two girls via phone while they were on a break in Minnesota. Unfortunately the line was a little crackly on my end, and I didn’t have a recording device, so most of this won’t be direct quotes, but at least my brush with fame can be your second-generation brush with fame, you’re welcome.
Me: How are you doing? I imagine you’re exhausted.
I still actually imagine they are exhausted, but both girls said that although they are now on their 13th show of the tour, they’re still finding it a thrill. They’re excited and really enjoying being on stage and getting to see a few new places.
Me: We don’t often see the tour here in Ottawa, so can you tell us a bit about the show?
I thought the live show was a mixture of the Top 10 and all-stars, but no, it’s just the Top 10, plus four “special guests” selected from the other 10 dancers this season (they are Carly, Marquette, Emily, and (…crackle…) (guess that last one will have to be a surprise, although I would think it is Serge, as they need a classical ballroom guy in the mix). They’ll be doing some of the numbers from the show, but there are actually several brand new numbers choreographed just for the live show, including several group routines, so that’s cool. Each of the Top 10 gets to do a solo as well, and Jacque mentioned that there are some cute and funny videos sprinkled in, too.
Some of the all-star numbers will be recreated with other dancers filling in for the missing all-star, which is good because some of those routines were SO GOOD, however, I assume this means we will not be able to see Jacque and Chehon’s ballet in person as no one else could recreate that, which is sad. SAD FACE. (Still pumped, though.)
Me: I felt like both of you – Bridget with Emilio, and Jacque with Zack – had the kind of special spark that makes a couple stand out, and that this chemistry propelled all four of you into the top ten (as well as Valerie and Ricky). Was this something you lucked into, or did you work at it?
Okay, so I kind of cheated here – if you look back at my posts from this season you’ll note that I was not always 100% sold on the Zack-Jacque pairing. But I meant what I said about Bridget and Emilio, though – I think their spark helped get them both into the top 10.
In any case, Bridget said that although she didn’t know Emilio at all before they were paired up, they clicked right away. She has three older brothers, and he’s a few years older than her, so they quickly fell into a joking/poking/affectionate brother/sister dynamic that really worked well for them. She said that they never got tired of each others’ company the entire time which I think is really sweet.
Jacque had similar things to say about Zack – that she didn’t know him at all before the pairing, but was excited to have him as a partner because she’d seen him dance and knew he had the skills, and not just in tap. She said that Zack was a fantastically supportive partner, and always knew how to calm her nerves and reassure her before a performance, which helped them both do well (awwwww!).
Me: Question for Bridget. It’s really unusual for there to be so few contemporary girl dancers in the top 10 – you were the last one standing (and lived through some tough elimination rounds). What do you think was the key to your success?
Here I may have also geeked out and mentioned that Bridget was my favourite of the contemporary girl pack. Remember when I actually pegged her for the win? Good times, good times. I really thought she was a stand-out.
She talked here about how her whole approach to the competition was to be really open to anything, and to commit fully to any crazy new style she was given. She didn’t think much about the competition part, but rather just tried to embrace the experience. It sounds to me like she was really able to set aside nerves, and just run with whatever was thrown at her, which I do agree is a real secret to success on this show – once you start thinking you can’t do it, then you can’t.
I have to say it’s a shame we didn’t get to see Bridget perform more in her own style. I forgot to mention this during the interview, but her contemporary with Stanley in the first week “meet the dancers” show was a highlight of that night. Check it out if you’ve forgotten it:
Me: Question for Jacque. You had some great numbers that I was hoping to see in the finale, but didn’t get chosen. What number of yours was your favourite?
Jacque surprised me by picking her Sonya jazz routine that she and Zack did in week 3 (Back to Black) and also mentioned the hip-hop they did in Week 2 (Stay With Me). In truth I think she kind of liked everything, and didn’t have a bad word to say about any of her numbers.
I had to jump in here, though, and mention my own personal two favourites (both of which I was so sure would be picked for the finale, but were not, because they totally messed up this year’s finale, GAH) – her ballet with Chehon, and her 99 Red Balloons number with Will. Then we got into a talk about Sean Cheeseman, who did the 99 Red Balloons number, because he’s Canadian (he and Jean-Marc, ROCKING IT). So that led to a discussion of the crazy African Jazz number she did with Zack in week 1, remember all the rainbow-coloured body paint and backdrop? And Jacque said that the African Jazz actually may have been her favourite, because it was so out there, and so different from anything she’d ever done, and there was a great audience reaction. I am sadly guessing we will see none of these three in the show as they require too much costuming/makeup/mad ballet skills, but they were all three some of the best this season so I’m glad we got a chance to talk about them.
Me: Speaking of favourite numbers – let’s talk styles. One thing this show is great at is pushing you outside your comfort zone and forcing you to try new styles. Jacque – I thought you were surprisingly good at hip-hop, which is about as far away from a ballerina as you can get; Bridget, I just loved your jive with Emilio, it was one of my absolute favourites of the season. What was your most surprising new style? What did you dislike the most? Do you think you’ll continue to explore new styles?
Jacque was super happy to hear that I liked her hip hop, because it was clear that that style had made her the most nervous. She talked about her number with tWitch (what was that, like top 6 maybe?) and how nervous she was ahead of time, and I assured her the audience absolutely could not tell. (In fact – don’t tell Jacque – I believe I predicted that number would be a mess, and then she totally pulled it off and I was forced to admit that I was wrong, wrong, wrong.) Jacque talked quite a bit here about the All Stars in general, and how their advice and encouragement and ability to empathize went a long way, and made the top 10 weeks much more fun and bearable. She again mentioned the African Jazz as being one of her favourite new styles.
Bridget agreed with me that the jive she did with Emilio was great – she said she had so much fun working on it and loved the energy and pep of the number. She said she was really excited to learn the style as she’d never done it before (which surprised me because I always think the dancers look at ballroom as The Worst). Then we got into a talk about Bollywood, which is what Bridget got in the top 10 week (the week she was eliminated), and I ranted a bit here about how Bollywood is THE ABSOLUTE WORST, and should be bumped from the show. And Bridget was very gracious and said that yes, it was one of the hardest for her and she was kind of sad it was the last thing she did on the show, but at the same time it is fun and has good energy and she had a good time dancing with Brandon.
But Bollywood still SUCKS, Dance Show. TRUST ME.
Did either of you get injured on the show? What do you do if there is an injury?
Both girls were happy to report they were relatively injury free throughout the competition and tour so far, although in a dancer’s world, “relatively injury free” is possibly not defined quite the same way as for you or I. Jacque had some ankle issues during the show but got regular physical therapy (remember the Big Injury Season, when Alex had to quit, along with a few others? Sounds like the show is being better about preventative therapies now). She also had an infection on one of her feet but it’s better now.
Bridget actually has been dancing on the tour with a broken toe and sprained ankle. She didn’t seem to think this was a big deal – just some of her shoes for various costumes had to be swapped out. Some people are more hardcore than I am!
What are your plans for after the tour? Would you like to come back as an all-star?
Bridget is in school, college (I think she’s 20 or 21), and she still has a year left. So after the tour she’ll be going back to school in Philly and finishing her degree, then considering her options after that. Jacque is only 18 (but will be turning 19 next week, in Canada, WOOT) and is looking to stay on the dance track for the immediate future – not sure if that means looking for a performance job, or going to dance school, but definitely something in the field.
Both girls would love to come back as all stars – they loved their experience on the show and really valued the experience and advice from the all stars they worked with. Jacque said she’d love to pay it back by being a mentor like that for dancers to come. Which is AWESOME.
So that’s it! I’m off to the show next Friday night. I’ll be the one screaming loudly in section (I think) 101 if you want to come by and say hi (that includes you, Bridget and Jacque!). Dance! Show! Forever!
TurtleHead 