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.

All weekend I've been torn over Syria. 

The little angel caught some headlines as we were out and about and asked a bunch of questions. They were hard ones to answer. 

I don't know why people would hurt children.

I don't know whether we'll do anything about it.

I don't know know if we should do anything about it.

I agree, the whole situation is just terrible.

When it comes to policing the world, I'm ambivalent. Of course I'd love for a strong country like America to be able to help the world's wronged, but what if there are too many wrongs in the world for one military that's already so spread out? What if we have children who are hurting here? Is it our responsibility to attack if we were not attacked? Is this really about our fear they will use those weapons on us and not really about the children at all? And if so, is that a game-changer?

I started to educate myself better on the subject, then I realized that no one was going to come to me and ask me what to do. I am not in any way in charge of how the United States responds to Syria.

Sometimes the Internet brings the rest of the world too close to the window and demands I pay attention when I know in truth that to pay attention to something I can do so little about will only make me miserable, as it did every time I thought about it over the weekend.

I really don't want us to attack anybody else. I really wish we could bring all our troops home from everywhere and focus domestically. I wish we could fix healthcare and subsidize childcare and change funding so we don't have to buy our schools' copy paper anymore and improve care for mental health and beef up our infrastructure and and and ... do a million things with our energy that don't involve starting wars.

And so I close the window, on my laptop and in my mind's eye, and I stop thinking about Syria.

Y'all, I totally didn't watch the VMAs. a) I didn't realize they were on b) I have really never cared about music videos, even when MTV first came out -- I think it was the newness. I can't remember the last time I wanted my MTV. c) I hate awards shows, too.

So it wasn't until Monday morning that I realized Miley Cyrus had quite the bizarre performance. Such a performance that we actually created a series on BlogHer to house all the reactions. Now it's Friday, and I think it's taken me an entire week to absorb the stupidity of just all of it and the danger of at least one part of it.

I didn't even watch the whole video at first. After Miley-I-knew-that-girl-was-trouble-and-didn't-let-my-daughter-watch-Hannah-Montana walked out of a giant teddy bear and started yelling, I figured I was pretty sure how it was all going to go down. I didn't get to the full video watching until today, after I'd had time to read the responses and also pour bleach into my eyeballs. I've read a LOT of response posts to Miley -- people mad at people for judging her as a woman, people who are pissed about her gold grill, people who say as a society we've lost it.

Yeah, I thought she was pretty gross. Just as I really hated Madonna on a cross and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and any reference to bitches and hos no matter what color your skin. I hate all of it.

Was Miley's foam-fingered teddy bear worse or better? I don't know. But I really did think we'd come farther than this.

Get More:2013 VMA, Artists.MTV, Music, Miley Cyrus

Everybody in this medley had back-up dancers. The same red-pants-wearing black female back-up dancers appeared wearing teddy bears and not wearing teddy bears for Miley and for other singers, and they seemed to be doing fairly normal background dancer stuff. What I just couldn't figure out was this:

This woman in the tights was mostly shown ass-out to the crowd. You never really saw her face. Then Miley smacked that ass. Now. There are a variety of things going on here. While the robot teddy bears and the tongue wagging and the foam finger and the bikini are all annoying and just weird, the using a black woman as a prop and accentuating her ass in this way, THEN SMACKING IT just, no, Miley. And really, not just Miley, because who the hell produces this show? Where was the adult in the room to go OMG YOU HAVE NOW TRANSCENDED BAD TASTE AND MOVED INTO THE CULTURAL FUCK-UP ZONE?

You know, I never thought Miley was all that impressive as an artist, and that's fine. I don't have to like everyone. And I don't even watch this show, so it would be no worries to me except for that image above. That one is a little more powerful, and not at all in a good way.

I'm almost to the shitty rough draft stage with THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's about 10,000 words too short, but I don't know which 10,000 they should be. Also, I don't know the answers to certain questions myself, and those questions need to be answered in the draft. Finally, it's the clay and not the sculpture -- most of it totally sucks.

I spent about two weeks going through a printed-out version from StoryMill and trying to write connecting tissue because I'd written everything else just scene-by-scene and put it into the software. The export from StoryMill didn't look like a book. It looked like a bunch of scenes. So I ended up writing A on the paper and then handwriting out several pages of A in a notebook and so on until I got to Q. Then I went back in and typed all the handwritten stuff into the scenes in StoryMill and did another export.

Then I stopped. And I despaired a bit, I'll admit, because it just wasn't where I want it to be before I show it to my beta readers (God bless them). 

So I am taking this week to reread two books that have a bit of starlight to them, starlight I want to infuse into the characters of Helen and Parker in TBoPC. Perhaps if I wallow in the sentences of work I admire I'll get some inspriration by osmosis. Previous to this I've been reading a lot of dystopian stuff just for fun, but that's a totally different style than what I'm trying to achieve with TBoPC.

And so far, my sad little novel. Oh, it sucks. This part of the process is pretty frustrating. At least I've learned enough now to know I'm not done yet.

[Editor's Note: Prior to running the Warrior Dash, the blogger thought she was a badass. Also note: the blogger used a waterproof disposable camera, but it got "sent off" and will take two weeks to be developed, just like it's 1984, so she's relying on spotty memory of obstacles and their order.]

Oh, look! The starting line shoots fire! That's totally cool. FIRE FIRE FIRE

I probably should've trained on grass. Grass with lots of shale and sticks in it. 

No problem. I am doing awesome. I am going to try to stay with my brother-in-law, because I am a badass.

This is, well, quite a hill.

OMG, still a hill.

FUCKING HILL.

When will the obstacles start? Is this hill an obstacle or just a never-ending vertical slope?

Okay, a bunch of things to climb over. I've never really climbed over anything before. I should've played football.

That was not just a paper sign. That was a semi truck to crawl under. Nice job, Rita. Way to slam your back into it.

(at this point, my brother-in-law decides to wait for me after obstacles so he'll have someone to run with, as he puts it, or to make sure I don't die, as I put it)

Running, running.

Tires! High knees, hippety hop, look at me go!

HEAVY BREATHING. ANOTHER GODDAMN HILL.

Barbed wire. Why are these people just stooping over? Why not crawl? Here I'm crawling! And I'm passing people! 

Why did that bitch just tell me not to cut in line. Isn't this a race?

USE THE ANGER, RITA.

Eat my dust, sister. *passes immediately after obstacle in fit of immaturity brought on by extreme humidity and barbed wire*

HILL HILL HILL HILL HILL HILL

Oh, fuck. That is a twenty foot wall I'm supposed to climb over with a rope. 

Climb, climb, climb.

OMG, there is nothing but a rope on the other side.

WATER WATER WATER

Guess we're running again, huh?

Trenches! See, all those other people were going to have to crawl at some point, anyway. HA I SNEEZE IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION.

Running downhill is, like, so much better than running uphill. 

Climbing up and down chains. Anyone who has a child under the age of ten has a total advantage here. *scampers up and down over this oversized playground equipment*

Running through the woods. Sticks, rocks. Other people. OH, FUCK STEEP DOWNHILL. Make that quickly walking through the woods.

OH GOD NOW WE HAVE TO GO BACK UPHILL THROUGH THE WOODS.

I hate the woods.

More large walls to climb over. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. 

Running! 

Rope wall. Totally easy if you hold on to the top. Oh, boy. Not everyone is holding on to the top. Poor them.

WATER WATER WATER

Wait, what? Why are those people so short? You mean they are in a pit? And there is a giant dirt hill? And then another pit? SIX MORE GIANT DIRT HILLS WITH PITS?

This is it, I'm going to die right here. Look, they already dug my grave.

PANTING 

Brother-in-law laughing.

Brother-in-law teaching me the doctor way to quickly bring down your heartrate.

It so doesn't work for me.

Running through the woods again. So tired. Sticks.

OH SHIT I TRIPPED IN THE WOODS WITH TWO FEET OF TRAIL, OH PEOPLE ARE LEAPING OVER ME LIKE I'M AN OBSTACLE, TUCK AND ROLL, RITA!

BOING! I'm back up. Fuck it. Running.

No, ankle hurts. Walking.

No, dammit. Running.

Big tank of water with boards across. Under normal conditions would walk across. However, I just tripped over a stick in the middle of the woods and do not trust my balance at all right now. Sit on my ass and swing my way across. Ignore other people giving me the side-eye.

And there's the fire. I am so not jumping over fire. I would be the one person in the history of the Warrior Dash who trips and falls right into the fire and dies.

MUD AND BARBED WIRE. BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE RIGHT BEHIND THAT IS THE FINISH LINE! AND WATER!

*plop* Oooh. If I put my hands down I can just float under the barbed wire.

This mud feels incredible. I was so hot. I am not hot now. The mud is cool and peaceful.

I have just communed with pigs.

Trying to stand without falling over. This must be special mud, because I have seen mud before, and it has never looked so homogenous on people.

FINISH LINE!

We leave tonight for Iowa to run the Warrior Dash in honor of Beloved's 40th birthday tomorrow.

Hopefully will have pics on Monday, provided I can find a waterproof disposable camera!

Collapsing on the stairs after finishing a jog. In the humidity, the sweat forms like an internal dropper is pushing it out of my arms, my legs, even my hands, before it slides away to plunk in perfect circles on the cement. In the first few minutes after I plop down, all I can do is breathe and sweat and regulate my heartbeat back down to normal. 

I seldom think of sweating as an action, but in the thickness of Missouri's August, it is. Cicadas strike up the band and then stop as quickly as they started while I sit and sweat. Drink some water. Sweat some more. I become aware of a breeze I swear did not exist on the hills, but here it is, lifting just the edges of the leaves, sweeping across my skin until slowly, the bubbles stop forming and the rivulets slow. I can feel my heart slowing, too: crisis averted, she's not moving so fast any more.

My daughter is sick to death of summer and excited about school. She's tired of the pool, tired of barbecues, tired of the back deck, tired of the top down. I find myself clinging to these things and my favorite time of year and even the sweating, because sweating means I could be outside without a jacket, all day long if I wanted.

My breathing normal, the sweat dried enough to allow me back to the keyboard and the chair and the work, I reluctantly haul myself off the front step and walk back into my life, instantly forgetting the feeling of my skin touched by air.

---

I thought this post in my head the other day, and then I forgot all about it, and then I realized I really should write it down before I forget it again.

Since the last time I wrote, I've had acupuncture twice for my back. I really meant to write about this earlier, but man, this week just keeps slipping away from me. I did write a little ditty about what acupuncture feels like today on BlogHer. Hopefully tomorrow will last longer and I can write more.

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.