Tales from the Steppes

2006-07-26

3:52 p.m.
Wednesday, July 26

All those moments
Lost in wonder
That we'll never
Find again
- Roxy Music

I am a total waste of cubicle space today. Completely unmotivated. My time wastage led me to some surfing of non-Dland blogs and I found several of people I know. People that even mention me. No, no, nothing bad. But I am left with a small quandry. Do I tell these people that I am reading their blog? It is not that I really care to have a conversation about it - more that it seems like it might be the polite thing to do. Might. On the other hand, when you post things in a public space, you should expect random people to read your mental drippings. But then again, maybe it would be a nice thing to just drop them a brief howdy email, just so they know that just in case they ever really want to write something nasty about me and do not want me to read it, this might not be the way to do it. Still, one of them is someone that I KNOW will want to talk about the whole blogging thing for hours. A sweet girl, but I am only good for about 1/2 hour with her before looking for an exit sign. Ok, 15 minutes.

What to do, what to do. Perhaps if I dither for another hour or so, it will just be time to go home.

The EM started ballet camp Monday at a new school. She was not 100% happy about this, as she loves her old school and would like to stay there. But the old school takes me 1/2 hour, at a minimum, to get to - there is no dropping off for class and coming back later, I sit and wait. Except for Saturdays, when she spends the whole day there. Perhaps if she was an only child, it would be ok. But she isn't.

Things were only going to get worse with the transportation to the school (there is no mass transit available) so I explained that we needed to find a new school. Earlier this summer, I spent a day with her looking at dance schools and we came up with the most likely candidate - a local performing arts center. It is a large beautiful concert hall with professional quality teaching spaces attached to it. They are just starting their studio program but they have excellent teachers already.

Still, it was going to be a crapshoot - whether the EM was going to like the place or not. After all, I was asking her to give up some people that she really loved. Her old teachers were very supportive and caring people. They were the reason I was willing to do all that driving to begin with. And she had friends there as well.

So far, she is really enjoying the new program. She comes home completely beat each night after dancing for 4 hours. Unlike her old school, the girls do not play around, as most of them are older and some of them have come from out of town for this experience. She is not fond of the hop hop component of the camp. But then, she does not like hip hop music or anything associated with it. (Hurrah!)

So far, the only glitch has been with the bus she is supposed to ride to get there. Yesterday was the first day she was supposed to ride it and she told the bus driver where she needed to get off. Instead, the driver dropped her off a mile up a major road. So she had to walk back to the performing arts center and was a few minutes late for her first class. Not a happy thing. I would ask my babysitter to drive her except that she has class at that time and has someone filling in for her who does not drive. Perhaps the solution is that I leave work every day and just run her to camp. I am still proud of her for negotiating this difficulty - many 11 year olds could not.