T-Minus Five, Four...

Thursday is Dress Rehearsal, and with any luck we'll have costumes for the little kids. If not, Dad had the great idea to switch the plot of the show to a mysterious uncle who, instead of giving out toys to his niece, gives her clothes. This is just crazy enough to work.

I spent a lot of time in the costume shop behind the rickety old sewing machine, coaxing a few more stitches out of it, listening to the chaos around me and keeping my head down. Parents were told again and again; no colored underwear, no flesh colored leotards, bring your own tights, yes you were told, you just forgot, no your outfit is not here, and fussing on your way out the door makes us not like you. You want us to like you.

I altered four dresses, embellished four dresses, reseamed a pair of pants, hemmed a bunch of stuff and repaired a lot of trim. And the group costumes aren't here, so if they don't fit, those kids might be SOL. That sucks, because they paid their monies to be involved as much as any soloist, so it's not fair that they get shafted like this. If Stitch's costume doesn't fit, it can come home with me for a fast tuck and hem. But not every parent can sew. I'm temoted to bring in Johnny Weir and set up shop in the gym, just to get what I can done.

But wait, there's more! Early last Tuesday we got a Fax from the rink. It was the lighting rental list. We won't bid it since we don't do many ice shows anymore, but I dropped an email to the people who usually provide the rink's show lighting. He said they had not gotten a confirmation of anything yet. Suddenly I felt a distinct longing for my old nemesis, Big Bertha. Not one of the sequins we'd sewed would matter without her.

My stomach began to revolt late Friday, and when I wasn't sewing I was queasing around, looking for something to do. Or worse, something to eat.  I got locked in a vicious cycle of cookies to nausea to cookies to nausea and back to cookies again. And those Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. Stitch was enjoying my sudden junk food spree, not questioning it. He practiced and skated and rehearsed and had a grand time without me.

"How was rehearsal?" I'd ask him.
"Fun!" He'd say, and tell me all about how the other kids fell or messed up or made the coaches crazy.
I'd cringe at the pile of repairs on the sewing table, wondering if we'd have to bust out old costumes from the Sale to make do, to say nothing of doing it under stadium lights.
"Can I have a dollar?" He'd ask.
"For what?"
"A snack."
"Sure, here's a ten. Get me a bag of chips, a diet coke and a snickers bar."

Finally on Sunday I'd had enough of the Junk Cycle. I had to break it and soothe my tummy. Everything is going to be all right. Stitch and I bought two pounds of fresh ginger root, a bag of sugar, and went home to candy it.

Ginger, as you may know, is good for settling one's stomach. It's also spicy enough to keep you from mowing through it too fast. Using equal parts sugar and water, we boiled the sliced ginger for about a half hour and dried it for five hours after that. (We did errands and public skate while it dried.) We tossed the sticky slices in dry sugar, and we had the perfect show snack. The leftover syrup we kept in jars, and we're mixing that with seltzer water.

It's going to be all right. Next year we'll have a new set of disasters, and we'll laugh about those, too.

Oh, and my in-laws are coming in Sunday to see the show. They're staying overnight, too.