Pageantry

So, we’ve been attending a different church lately.  It’s the same type of church, just smaller and closer to our home.  I have mixed feelings about possibly leaving the church I’ve attended since Delia was a month old.  But that’s far too serious a topic for this blog!

At any rate, the long-awaited Christmas Pageant is tomorrow.  My kid is rather noncommittal about participating in it.  Last year we attended the old church’s pageant and Delia was a sheep, a role she feels is perfect in that it a) involves wearing a totes adorbs sheep costume, and b) has no pesky dialogue to get in the way of her art.  So, this year she opted out in fear that she may have to be something other than livestock, or perhaps speak publicly.

The other children, however, have embraced this pageant with their entire beings, if you pro-rate that to a 4- and6-year-old level.  They even demonstrated the level of their commitment by sitting through a rather lengthy, and, by the exacting standards of the under-7 set, boring rehearsal.  Until the 4-year-old broke ranks and raced around with the other 4-year-old, but that is to be expected.

The Lovely Rhonda is working this weekend, which means that I alone will be shepherding (ha!) the youngsters to and fro.  And photographing them in action.  O the joys!  I fully expect one or both of them to vomit/sneeze/urinate copiously on their costume(s) and perhaps on the Baby Jesus himself.  Really, we can expect nothing less.

In other news, I made my triumphant return to the gym today after a week of feeling crummy with a crappy head cold.  I expected the DeathMaster to kick my ass since I’ve been indolent and congested, but it went quite well.  This may be in part because I loaded Nirvana “Nevermind” onto my phone.  I like to listen to such things and watch people try to figure out the various weight machines while I mindlessly wander up the mechanical stairs for twenty minutes.  It’s oddly soothing.

I also braved a shopping mall this evening for reasons that cannot be disclosed at this time.  It was packed with a generous cross-section of society, with a particularly heavy concentration of stroller-bound toddlers who had reached the end of their abilities to cope with the mall.  They expressed their displeasure by screaming and kicking, something we all wish we could do at such times.  This is quite familiar to me and rather than become irritated by it, I found that I was so grateful not to be pushing a toddler around in a stroller myself that I was quite indulgently tolerant of the whole thing.

Also I saw several examples of people carrying tiny dogs around.  Generally these were women, surprisingly youngish and often heavily made up.  And, in case you thought “bros” only existed in Jersey, I saw several of these as well.  They are remarkable for their startling plumage and intricate mating rituals, which seem to involve shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch and bathing in cologne.  Also, they seem to appear only in pairs.  It was all I could do not to whip out my cellphone and snap some pictures, but my arms were pinned firmly to my sides by the crowds.  Besides, they can become violent and stampede if offended and who wants to die a senseless bro-related death in a mall?