All I Know Is...

...I'm grateful for a good friend, a daughter who listens, and the handful of moms in her ballet class that actually read and follow directions.

We had dress rehearsal for Issa's recital last night--also known as H-E-Double Hockey Sticks! We are in a new venue on a college campus, which is an awesome experience for the girls. It is also a whole new world from a high school auditorium. The studio staff was trying to figure out the venue, which left little hope for the rest of us to figure it out. You know you are in trouble when one of the class moms doesn't show up and rehearsal starts twenty minutes late.

Thankfully, Crystal and I are the other two class moms, and we told each other about a bajillion times, "We got this." This is why I love her: she gets me and she has no ego. She looked at me early in the evening and said, "You're running this train wreck; boss me around." I know I started off saying please and asking questions, but in the interest of survival I think we ended the evening with gestures and grunts.

Here's the scenario: ten little, excited girls. That pretty much sums it up. We start in our tap shoes, and Crystal and I have to get them changed for ballet...in the wings...in the dark. Awesome. Now, half of the class consists of cherubs who listen and take care of their things. Their moms have labelled their shoes and placed them in the bag we gave them and sent all of their costume pieces. The other half of the class does not listen and, well, their moms missed the memo. Nothing was labelled. Stuff was missing.

When they came off stage from their tap number, we handed each girl her bag, asked her to put her tap shoes in it, and then put her ballet slippers on. We then tucked shoe strings, attached broaches, and put on skirts. This should be relatively simple--even in the dark. However, half the class opted for their own game plan, which essentially meant drop all your stuff on the floor, run around in the wings, and then wonder why you can't find your ballet slippers.

Crystal and I did the best we could to get everyone ready, and we all made it on the stage at the right time fully dressed. Unfortunately, some of us ended up with the wrong shoes. When we delivered the girls to their mothers--because they were too busy enjoying the show to come pick them up--they had the nerve to complain that the wrong tap shoes were in the bag. We explained we did the best we could, the directions we gave the girls, and when one mom got in my face I reminded her about the three sets of written directions and two class meetings we had instructing us to label shoes for this very reason. It was like working Central Office all over again.

On the way home, Crystal drafted an email while I drove. We reexplained the directions the girls have, that we are doing all of this in the dark, and several other notes like, by the way, pick up your child! We were very polite, though, and I only cursed a little bit when the mom who got in my face last night replied stating that she had no idea we were supposed to label anything. READ THE DIRECTIONS. Seriously, your elementary school teachers are crying right now.

But...the girls will be adorable no matter what. Issa had fun, and Crystal and I are a team. We got this.