The little angel has graduated to Level 2 at her ballet school. They are very formal there. Parents are neither allowed to watch class (except for very special parent watch nights) nor even exist on the same level as the classrooms while the children are learning their steps. The boys wear black pants and white shirts. The girls wear leotards, color determined by level. 

She started out pink. 

Then she was light blue.

And now she is red. This leotard has spaghetti straps, not the short or long sleeves of pink and light blue. Her feet are women's size six. Her classes are an hour and a half long, twice a week.

This is the first week of ballet school, and I'm finding myself with three hours a week for writing that I didn't have before. I'm excited and mortified all at once at the thought of losing my girl for three waking hours a week. My daughter has never played soccer or tball or volleyball or softball or any sort of thing that required her to attend practices without me multiple times a week. We have been together pretty much every day after school since we dropped after school care two years ago. 

She looks so grown up in her red leotard. Her father even did a double-take when he met us for that first class, thinking we were going to get the same parental talking-to as pink or light-blue. But instead, the teacher rushed through some basics and smilingly hurried us out of the room so she could get down to ballet business. I could tell we weren't the only parents sort of wandering aimlessly downstairs, wondering when our little pink and light blue babies grew up and turned red.

After red is blue. Then green. Then burgandy. Then black. 

I didn't think she'd still be doing this by red. I thought she'd lose interest. But on Tuesday night when she looked around and realized she'd graduated into the older half of the Lower School, her eyes shone. 

I took my manuscript and notepad down to the deserted conference room on the first floor and thought about the red leotard some more. Then I settled down to write.

My husband's been in Hartford all week. He left at 4:30 on Monday morning to make a 6 am flight. He gets home around 6 tonight. I'm going to make it.

All week, I've vascillated between really nice, easygoing mother and snarling hellbear. I'm really trying, seriously, but somehow going from midnight bedtimes on vacation to the first week of fourth grade was not an easy transition, especially not when the week kicked off with a bored child home all day Monday and Tuesday while I was working. At this point, we're bouncing off each other like pinballs.

This morning, we both had a hard time getting going. We got up on time to make the bus, but considering how she was lying like a sloth in her bed (I couldn't get her to go to sleep last night until 10) and the fact she needed to take a very heavy package of copier paper in to school (school supplies, right!), I decided to just drive her in.

We bounced off each other a little more getting through breakfast and getting dressed and getting into the car, and I felt my inner pressure rising with the ache in my shoulders and neck that has resisted stretches, Asparcreme, a heating pad, a massage chair and a Theracane this week. We made it to school with two minutes to spare, and I told her to take the paper. She has a Trapper Keeper-equivalent binder this year in her backpack, and a thing of water, and it IS heavy, and the paper IS also heavy, but she only had to go about 40 yards to get to the office to drop off the paper.

But she wanted me to carry it in. There was a car behind me, and I could see those perfect kids telling their mother they loved her and eyeing us with disgust.

"I can't. There's a car behind me. Take your stuff and close the door." Vicki the Sebring is a two-door car. I can't reach the handle from the driver's seat when the passenger door is open, and she knows this. The car behind me was still there.

"I need you to carry the paper. It's too heavy."

"There's a car behind me. Shut the door. You need to carry it. You can make it."

"No, I need you to ..."

And I lost it.

"SHUT THE DOOR. SHUT THE DOOR. SHUT THE DOOR. THERE IS A CAR BEHIND ME."

She stared at me with barely concealed rage. She bumped the door helplessly a few times with her hip, then when she saw the cold fury in my eyes, she finally got it bumped enough where I could reach it. The other car was still behind me, at this point likely texting all her friends about the idiot in the convertible in front of her who couldn't even get her fourth-grader to carry a package of paper half a block into a school building with one minute until the bell rang.

I pulled out of the drop-off line, freeing the minivan behind me. My girl hunched down on the ground, considering. I could tell she was waiting to see if I would come and save her, and I thought about it, then the fury sort of bubbled up again at all the things she'd asked me to do this week that she could and should do herself. It's not too much to ask a perfectly healthy nine-year-old to lug both a loaded backpack and a package of copier paper to a building, right? I didn't even make her take it on the bus. Finally, she picked it up and lugged it into the school, looking back once with laser eyes, though I don't think she saw me from where I'd pulled in to make sure she didn't just leave the paper there on the sidewalk.

All the way home, I vascillated, as I have all week, between feeling bad for her and guilty as a mom for yelling so much this week and feeling bad for me and guilty as a person for not taking better care of myself so I'm not at such loose ends and yelly. I'm not happy that she has gone to bed so late all week -- despite starting the bedtime process by 7:30 most nights --  so that there was almost no time for myself in the evenings. I'm not happy that I haven't succeeded in fixing my back yet. I'm not happy that instead of writing for the hour I wanted to last night, I only made it twenty minutes -- the one thing I wanted to do for myself, and I couldn't even make it halfway there. I'm also not happy that I can't seem to be successful at something I know all kinds of people do every single day -- parent by themselves and hold down a job and a household at the same time. I mean I got there -- I made all the meals, I washed all the dishes, I emptied the litter box and paid the bills and took out the trash and mowed the lawn and did the laundry -- but everything I did was half-assed and jumbled and negotiated around with my pinball twin, who also vascillates between being a really helpful and cheerful angel and a sullen tween whose only vocabulary word is "wait" whenever I ask her to do something.

In the end, I think it would've been easier to just park and carry the copier paper in myself. It certainly would have been faster. But me, stupid me, just needed to be obeyed for once this morning. At the end of the drive, I realized that was all it was. Even though I know it's not a contest, this morning I just needed to win one.

I'm not very proud of that. 

Today was my girl's first day of fourth grade. Fourth grade is a big year. The homework starts getting serious. You learn hard math. At least someone in your class starts wearing a bra for realz. The foursquare competition sizzles.

And apparently, you don't want your mother taking pictures of you on the first day of school, even if your father is on a business trip when you start fourth grade.

We woke up early to do her nails, white with gold glitter topcoat. Of course she touched them while pulling on her cowgirl boots, so we ended up slapping more gold glitter on while waiting for the bus. There is little that can't be covered with a thick coating of gold glitter.

When the bus pulled away, she didn't wave. She always waved in third grade. A little part of my heart hurt, and another part of my heart sighed with relief. As much as I want her nose in my neck, I also want her to face her challenges with the courage that comes from believing in yourself. You can't believe in yourself if you think you need your mama at your side all the time. I know this.

But as I walked back into a house suddenly silent after the past forty-eight hours spent just the two of us and Kizzy getting under each other's feet, I felt a little hollow as I started the process of adjusting -- as I have since I got pregnant -- to another new normal. 

[Editor's Note: After being gone part of last week and now behind at work, I don't have time to do this post justice. But I'm going to write it quickly, anyway.]

Last week we went down to Table Rock Lake. Saying we were going to Table Rock Lake was actually kind of a trick, because I didn't realize that Table Rock Lake is actually pretty much attached to Branson, Missouri, the Dollywood of the Midwest. 

Even though I knew I was in Branson, I had perhaps unfounded expectations for the entertainment. While visiting the amusement park -- Silver Dollar City -- I was, well, angered to be treated to a helping of rape culture on the train ride. 

(Note: In our version of the train ride, YANKEES were supposed to attack the train, because perhaps between February 2013 when this video was filmed and last week, someone informed Silver Dollar City that using a Native American war cry in your train robbing skit is uncool. Otherwise this would have been an even longer post taking on racism, as well.)

(Another Note: My rant has nothing to do with the person who filmed the video and put in an intro. I don't know her. I just know I saw the skit performed by these same two actors, and this was the most recent video I saw of the skit on YouTube.)

You may think I'm overreacting, but the train robbers actually talked about handing over a trainload of women.  What did they want them for? HEY HEY HEY. To shove something unwanted into the women's orifices, perhaps? 'Cuz that is FUNNY!

There was also a sign that I forgot to take a picture of on a bridge saying basically that bridges had coverings for the same reason pretty ladies wore long skirts -- to protect the underpinnings.

What, pray tell, from?

I'd love to see a sign hanging on a bridge talking about protecting a man's asshole from all the people bigger and stronger out to stick something in it. Because that would totally happen, right? And everyone would get the joke?

HEY HEY HEY

When we joke about women being raped, no matter how honkytonk and family friendly the ride is supposed to be, we teach girls and boys and men and women that it's totally natural for a man to want to rape a woman, and really, women should have to protect themselves from the randy males all around her. Or maybe if she can't, her man should protect her.

Or maybe she should just cover her underpinnings.

There is nothing funny about rape, folks. And this skit perpetuates rape culture. 

The best part? At the end of the ride, the conductor told us all to have a blessed day.

So I've been on about a ten-day social media cleanse. I drove home from Chicago two Sundays ago after BlogHer '13 with my sister. I was home just long enough to unpack, repack, pet Kizzy and kiss Beloved before the little angel and I drove up to Iowa last Monday to stay with my parents for four days, just basically hanging out with family, reading, writing and not working. 

We took shelter from a raging monsoon in St. Joseph and bought the little angel her first adult-sized pair of cowgirl boots.

We helped Blondie bestow extra BlogHer swag on our parents, who can't say no to a free coffee cup.

I went jogging in two different places on two consecutive days, and y'all, I ran wind sprints on my high school track, which is something I could not do in high school. I was so fucking proud of myself, yes, I was.

The little angel and I went to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.

She got some slippers shaped like flamingos, because really, why not?

My parents took the girl to see a dinosaur named Sue, and I spent three hours working on PARKER CLEAVES. We had aunts, uncles and cousins over for ice cream.

We drove back down to Kansas City on Thursday. We saw cousins and my uncle on my mom's side. My parents came with us and stayed Thursday and Friday nights. We made popcorn after dinner.

On Saturday after my parents left, we tried to go geocaching and got all full of bugs, so we ended up at the swimming pool instead. On Sunday, we went to the Kansas City Toy & Miniature Museum while it rained outside. The little angel and I watched The Great Outdoors AND Summer Rental and wished we could vacation with John Candy. I told her all about the eighties.

Today, I came back to work, remembering clearly what life was like before the Internet. 

It wasn't a total cleanse, because I did look at the mentions column of Tweetdeck and responded to anyone who talked to me. I hate leaving people hanging. And I checked my work and personal email a few times to delete spam and just keep things organized so today's re-entry wouldn't be too painful. And then I actually worked for a few hours last night, again in the interest of minimizing re-entry pain. 

Since I still used Google every 1.5 nanoseconds during my cleanse, I can tell you for sure I'm completely unable to delay information gratification anymore. If I don't know an answer, I get very agitated if I can't just look it up. But as much as I enjoy the social media part of the Internet while I'm working, I didn't miss it while I was away. I love all my friends, but I wasn't worried they would forget who I was or anything if I wasn't around for a few days. I didn't feel that lonely why is there no one to talk to weirdness I sometimes feel if I'm away from Twitter during the work day -- please tell me I'm not the only person who has ever felt like that?

I am coming to the conclusion it's vital for my continued forward motion to slam the lid on the laptop and use the phone as a phone for a few days every quarter or so. I can feel the beeping and zipping and zapping start to get to me at about the ninety-day mark. I'm really glad I stepped away for a little bit, especially right after the emotional and intellectual disco ball that is a BlogHer conference. I feel more equipped to deal now, at least for another ninety days or so. 

The Internet is a tool, not a life, right?

Hey, there. I'm leaving tomorrow for BlogHer '13. If you are there, I'm speaking on Friday and Saturday on turning your blog post into publishable essays -- if you come to either session, please come up and say hi and be patient with me if I look at you all glassy-eyed because presenting takes a lot out of me but I really like to meet people. Also, I may have met you thirty-five times before but will still ask you your name or your blog because I have the recall of a tree frog.

If you're not there (or you are there and seriously have time to read blogs) and you want to enter for a chance to win a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME, my latest Goodreads giveaway has another two-ish weeks on it.

And my daughter has pneumonia and I have to leave her, so send good vibes toward Kansas City, okay? And also me, because I went to test the thermometer by taking my own temperature and either there is something wrong with the thermometer or I have a low-grade fever, too. I bought three bottles of Purell yesterday and will not touch anyone without disinfecting them afterward.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends August 06, 2013.

See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.

Enter to win

Next week, the girl (who will hopefully be better) and I are headed to Iowa to hang out with my original nuclear, so posting may be light. I'll try to get some fun pictures from BlogHer for those who can't make it -- it's always a little surreal.

More soon!

There was a day last week when I thought I might crack in two. Something happened with the girl, something happened with me, and I was so stressed out I found myself in my garage with tears coursing down my face, knowing my husband and my daughter and my neighbors were waiting for me in their SUV, ready to take us out on their boat in a beautiful invitation to frolic on Blue Springs Lake.

I'm trying to pretend I am mentally healthy.

I'm trying to model a mother who knows how to deal.

Earlier that day, my girl dissolved into tears on the way to summer camp, and here I was, dissolving in tears in the garage. I wanted very badly to model self-control.

I forced myself into the neighbors' SUV wearing my sunglasses. Tears still streamed down my face, uncontrollable, but I just assumed no one would see because of my sunglasses. In my experience, most people don't actually pay attention unless you draw their attention to you.

At one point, my neighbor woman asked me a question, and I just nodded, too upset to speak.

I wanted to model someone under control, though, so I just sat there.

It was awkward, I admit.

My neighbors are wonderful human beings. They invited us out on the lake on a Tuesday night, and they had every intention of taking us, despite my obvious awkwardness. We got to the lake and backed the speedboat into the water, and upon seeing the expanse of blue I started to feel the tension ebb, just a bit.

"Rita, all you need is some HYDROTHERAPY," my neighbor man said. And he dropped in the boat.

For three hours, we played. We tubed, the little angel and I knocking against each other in two separate tubes, her face alight with glee. I waterskiied. The little angel and my husband got up on skis gripping the boom, their eyes wide, finally understanding what it feels like to flit like a waterbug across the surface of the water at high speeds. 

It feels like flying.

We swam, and we saw the two parent eagles and the two baby eagles calling SCREE SCREE SCREE across the sky to their nest. 

"Do we have time?" my daughter asked, looking to the water. 

"Yes, it's 8:15. Sunset's at 8:41," said my neighbor lady.

And as we pulled the boat back out of the water, I felt like a new person. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you for letting me shake off my mood. I almost didn't come because I didn't want to subject you to me tonight. Thank you, it worked, the hydrotherapy."

My neighbors grinned. They are happy, wonderful people. They are my parents' age. I want to be them when I grow up, logging their time on the water in a little notebook, telling stories of when they learned to barefoot ski.

I saw the sun set that night over the water. It was summertime, and none of the things I thought were so important mattered.

Kelly said she's leaning in, waiting to hear. She might not have been talking straight to me, but since Kelly is my race red pill, I heard her, anyway. I didn't want to. It's a week from BlogHer '13 and I had trouble with my daughter today and I have a million other excuses for why I don't want to talk about Trayvon Martin, but I hear you, Kelly, sometimes you have to talk about things that just piss you off because they are important.

I had just left a soccer match on Saturday night and was standing in line for the shuttle when I heard about the Trayvon Martin verdict. The older couple behind me were clearly trial junkies, as the woman started in on everyone from O.J. to Casey Anthony, and apparently she'd been following Trayvon, too. "Not enough evidence," she said. "I knew they wouldn't convict him."

I felt my color rising. I wished I'd watched the trial so I could speak intelligently, but I've felt this entire time like I didn't have to watch the trial to be pissed off. Trayvon Martin was walking home unarmed with candy and a nonalcoholic drink. George Zimmerman was packing heat and disregarded 911 telling him to stay away. The fact that he called 911 on a kid carrying candy is troubling enough. That he followed Trayvon with a gun? Where did this all go so badly off the rails?

With the law. 

I've thought and thought about this since it all went down, and the problem is with the culture that writes the laws. The laws are too vague. The laws may ignore common sense and ethics. And the laws and the court of public opinion have always been against the black man. (I am aware that George Zimmerman isn't white. Don't care.)

Think I'm wrong? Watch the local news in any city for five nights and tell me how many times an assailant or thief was described as a black man, then tell me how many black men actually live in that city. I don't watch the Kansas City news that often, but every damn time I SWEAR that I watch the news, a black man has gotten away with something! How many black PEOPLE are there in Kansas City?

White alone, percent, 2010 (a)	59.2%	82.8%
	Black or African American alone, percent, 2010 (a)	29.9%	11.6%
	American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.5%	0.5%
	Asian alone, percent, 2010 (a)	2.5%	1.6%
	Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.2%	0.1%
	Two or More Races, percent, 2010	3.2%	2.1%
	Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010 (b)	10.0%	3.5%
	White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010	54.9%	81.0%

I'm guessing about half of those black people are female. Those black people sure are busy!

Or are we just more worried about what they are doing than what all the other people are doing when it comes to crime? Other people commit crimes -- they just don't get covered as often on the news. 

Now, on the flip side, how often do we hear about white people who have been kidnapped versus black people? 

In all my reading, the person who has summed up my malcontent best is Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewoodand the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy.

You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen. 

And, so, Kelly, that's where this white lady stands. Am I pissed at George Zimmerman? Yeah, I am. But I'm more pissed that anyone could feel comfortable stalking an unarmed minor because he was black and wearing a hoodie.  (Emphasis mine)

Zimmerman

He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher

How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman

He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher

Late teens. Ok.

Zimmerman

Somethings wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher

Just let me know if he does anything, ok?

Zimmerman

(unclear) See if you can get an officer over here.

Dispatcher

Yeah we've got someone on the way, just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman

Okay. These (expletive) they always get away. Yep. When you come to the clubhouse you come straight in and make a left. Actually you would go past the clubhouse.

To me that "and he's a black male" sounds a lot like Paula Deen's "of course" when asked if she'd ever used the n-word before. "And he's a black male" -- as though that's all it takes to be a criminal. "Of course" -- as though using a racial epithet is a normal and acceptable thing to do. "It doesn't violate the law" -- once covered slavery. Listen, the law is just what's written down at the time. People write the laws, and society dictates whether those laws are left to stand or rewritten. 

Clearly there's a huge gap between the law and right/wrong in the Trayvon Martin case, and that really sucks. It's a problem so huge I don't know where to start. Unlike women's health rights, there's no concrete one law to point to, to say "change this and we'll be safe." The overarching climate that made it defensible somehow in a Florida court of law to clearly single out a kid because he's a black male who's staring is the thing that needs to change, and it's so nebulous it's hard to know where to start. 

So I start in my neighborhood. I start with my daughter. I start with the people I know. I started with the older couple in line behind me at the soccer match. I told them I thought the law and what was right were two completely different things. The older couple didn't see the forest for the trees, or maybe it wasn't a Saturday-night conversation. But I'll keep trying. I don't know how much influence I have on my blog or my social media, but I'll keep trying. I'm not ignoring it. I'm trying to figure out where the fuck to start.

But I'm leaning in. And you know what? I think the fact the Trayvon Martin case got as covered as it did in the media is maybe a good thing. How many trials do we see on the national news for black kids getting shot? Let's keep the conversation going.

Last year and this year, we've let my daughter stay home one day a week from summer camp provided she doesn't interfere with my work (well, more than making her lunch and things that can't be avoided). It saves us around $130 a month and it lets her get bored. Remember getting bored? And having to do something about it yourself? I think it's very important for her to learn to putter around the house so she doesn't follow her roommates around like a sad puppy in college.

On most summer Mondays, she watches way too much television, doesn't get dressed until five pm and folds her own laundry. I don't worry too much about her spending a day watching television, because it's one day and then she goes to camp the rest of the week and swims and bowls and makes stuff out of beads and does science experiments. Plus, watching TV all morning on a lazy summer day is fun. I'm jealous. 

And every once in a while, I walk into the living room to check on her and find an intricately constructed story hour so cute I can't even believe it.

She has way too many stuffed animals, too. But I don't care any more. Life's short.