Adventures at the Ballet

Portraits of People and Places

Last weekend my sister and I went to the ballet for the first time in at least 10 years. Truth be told, I’ve been avoiding the ballet. Not that I was ever one to buy season tickets or anything, but for the first few years after I quit dancing the last thing I wanted to do was go and watch people who were better dancers than me doing something I knew I’d never be able to do. So I figured, why pay money to torture myself with “what if” speculations?

But it’s been long enough now, and besides, my city’s ballet company has a new director who has been doing wonderful things with classics and new pieces alike. So my sister and I went to see the Nutcracker, and it was wonderful. The choreography was fresh and new, and even the story had been spiced up. (Clara gets the nutcracker, and she and her younger brother, Fritz, do their sibling rivalry thing. But her older sister Maria falls in love with the magician’s nephew, who later turns out to be the nutcracker prince.) In fact, the only disappointing bit was the grand pas de duex, and that was only because it was so conventionally beautiful compared to the rest of the ballet.

But going to the ballet wouldn’t, in itself, inspire an evening of typing. No. It was my seat neighbor. She and her middle aged daughter proved to be endlessly amusing. Darling daughter mentioned at one point that there weren’t as many kids in the audience is usual and wondered if parents weren’t bringing kids to the Nutcracker any more. She also spent quite a few happy minutes redesigning the theater so that fewer people would have to crawl over her to get to their seats (she was on the very end of the isle). And later she thought the viewing experience could be vastly improved if there were fewer kids in the audience.

Meanwhile, dear mama marked time. “Well, it’s 1:34,” she announced when the overture began. “A 45 minute party scene… my, my.” (I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.) It was 2:45 when the first act curtain went down and 2:57 when the curtain went up for the second act. The arabian couple danced for nearly 8 minutes, and it was 4:02 when the dancers took their final bows.

I hope they enjoyed the ballet as much as I did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version I liked more than this one, and the dancers (kids, apprentices, artists, and leading artists alike) were superb. And I thought they were just the right number of kids in the audience, and I’m pretty sure it was exactly the right length. Though what do I know. I haven’t been to the ballet in years.

O Holy Night

Randomness

I always worry just a bit when anyone with a microphone or a band thinks that singing O Holy Night is a good idea. Well, my uncle alerted me to what has to be the WORST rendition. Ever. I laughed so hard (especially in the last seconds of the song when … well, you’ll understand).

Listen to this at your own risk.

Kidney Wars

Living with Cats

You may remember that I’ve had difficulty traveling with my cat in the past. He clams up and refuses to pee… which can’t be good. But this time around, I followed my vet’s advice and launched a full scale attack in the first battle of the Kidney Wars.

When we arrived at our destination, I fed him a gruel of two parts water and once part Amazingly Wonderful Wet Cat Food, or AWWCF (that’s the cat’s name for the food, and I thought he’d know better than I, since it smells pretty vile to me). Then I let him sip some real chicken broth that my mom had made by … boiling a chicken. Then I have him some more of the AWWCF, followed by a handful of his dry food … doused with water.

The cat’s reluctant kidneys were no match for this onslaught.

Tonight, after arriving back at home base, the second offensive in the Kidney Wars is beginning, and I look forward to a voluminously successful outcome.

‘Tis the Season

Me and My Life

Cards of all sizes, sent with colorful stamps and mass-produced greetings, tumble from my mail box, each one a silent reproach against me and the stack of un-signed, un-stamped, un-addressed, and (most importantly) un-sent cards sitting on my desk. Long letters from half-remembered friends point out in tiny and ornate fonts that I have not had children (or grandchildren, or nieces, or nephews, or offspring of any kind), have not published a book, have not gone on a cruise, have not recently graduated from anything, have not started a not-for-profit organization or advocacy group (or a company of any kind). Nor have I recently adopted anything that would otherwise have gone homeless, or invented anything that will surely revolutionize … anything.

I will not be writing a letter this year. I have never written a letter. There’s a fine line between writing resume cover letters and Christmas letters, and I’ve seen too few actual Christmas letters to be any judge of my own writing during this season.

Truth be told, I’ll be lucky to send out a mailing of any kind this year, no matter how silently my stacked cards reproach me from the desk. And if I do, I will limit myself to an unimaginative, though legibly printed, “Merry Christmas, Love Iris.” I will concentrate on spelling names correctly and keeping names properly matched with addresses.

Next month I will go back to opening my mail box with anticipation rather than dread.