The flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la) have nothing to do with the case.

I know that it is the kind of thing you either love or loathe, and that it makes me an irredeemable geek that I love it, but I was inordinately cheered up by seeing the local Savoyard production of The Mikado Saturday night. For approximately three hours, it made me forget how pissed I was that my eight-year-old had spilled water on my laptop and shorted out the keypad, and how guilty I felt when my four-year-old wailed inconsolably as I left him with a sitter. Because, no matter how much the mire of domesticity has felt like quicksand lately, you can always get a USB mouse, and, if you are four, be instantly consoled by a battle between the forces of Playmobil and Leg. And it was the genius of Gilbert and Sullivan to write an operetta that actually works better when it is performed with a fair amount of amateurishness and campiness—as long as the love and gusto is still there.

The Mikado is an amazing panoply of silly costumes, pretty songs and people motivated either by pure love or pure pettiness. My most musically literate friend organized what amounted to a field trip for us all last night: ten adults, seven kids, joining an already packed house (who knew?). Given the incredibly fond memories I have of my dad taking us to G&S productions every year, I had to bring my eight-year-old. And I have to say, the eight-year-olds—three boys, two girls—all seemed to enjoy it immensely. But then eight-year-olds do have a natural affinity for comically exaggerated characters and crazy turns of fate.

(picture of Tim Spall as the Mikado from Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy--a film about the making of the opera that I recommend no matter how you feel about G&S.)

Project Milliner

Yesterday afternoon, through no fault of my own, I saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

It was part of a negotiated agreement with H., for doing the spelling bee and multiple activities Saturday, and still getting to Hebrew School Sunday morning. He enjoyed it. J. was a little scared. As for me….well, I expect the degree to which you enjoy the movie has to do with how much you enjoy Tim Burton as a rule. The only Tim Burton film I've ever truly liked was Beetlejuice.

Mileage varies, I know, and if you like the Tim Burton aesthetic, you’ll probably like this one. To me, the tone seemed equal parts sour, lugubrious and cutesy. The Lewis Carroll books, which made a huge impression on me when I was a kid, get most of their charge by dealing with absurd (or disturbing) things in a matter-of-fact way. Now, I doubt that it was any part of the intention of the Burton movie to capture the feeling of the books, but it was still a striking contrast: it seemed to be trying to get that same charge by dealing with absurd (or disturbing) things in a bombastic way. With an extra layer of bombast on top.

Which is not to say that it didn’t have its moments. Most of them, needless to say, courtesy of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. I’ve never seen an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland that took the Hatter’s profession quite so seriously, and the best parts of the movie played like some kind of weird mash-up of Alice in Wonderland and “Project Runway.”

There’s a cute running gag about the way every time Alice changes size her clothes don’t fit any more, and have to be ever more cunningly re-cut, re-draped, or re-tied (a couple of times courtesy of the Mad Hatter). Alice spends a chunk of the movie slightly over-sized, stalking around the Red Queen’s castle in some hastily sewn together curtains (a la Scarlet O’Hara), looking like some Amazonian ‘80s supermodel.

And the Hatter gets some great scenes in which he—makes hats. And peddles his hats to the Queen. And fights people with his hats. And hat pins.

I wish I could say that it was all done with a light touch. But I guess that’s not what you go to a Tim Burton movie for.

The boys and I agreed that the CGI Jabberwocky was awesome, though.

NB: Kathryn Bigelow, in contrast, deserved that Oscar like nobody’s business!

H. vs. the Spello-Dragon

(H. won his school spelling bee in Jan. and competed in the Regional Spelling Bee yesterday).

Maybe I’m biased, but sometimes it’s nice to have an English professor as a university president. Not only did ours come down at 9am on a Sat. morning to address a bunch of grade-schoolers and their parents, but he also gave a kickass speech. “There’s going to be a basketball game later today,” he said, “and there will be big crowds and a lot of cheering. But I want you to remember that while basketball is a skill, language is what makes us human. You all are the athletes of the mind.”

And the spelling bee was certainly a parade of humanity: every size and sex and color of kid between about eight and fourteen. Those ages will give you a heck of a lot of human variety: some of the middle-school girls were easily twice the height of the elementary school boys.

I’ve been resisting seeing that documentary about the spelling bee, or even Akeelah and the Bee, because I didn’t want to be exposed to any more evidence of the craziness of these things. But now that I’ve witnessed a couple, I can see why dramatists are drawn to them.

Spelling has a special kind of crazy, internal drama. Each kid has his or her own style: fast, slow; staring into space or using their fingers to sketch the word on their palms; going deep, deep inside themselves looking for the right sequence. Sometimes, when they don’t know a word, they just railroad through, cobbling phonemes together in a desperate drive to get to the other side; sometimes, there’s a terrible pause, when they know they’ve said a letter wrong, a momentary dead space, then a decrescendo as they trail away towards the end. It’s mesmerizing—halfway between a basket of adorably wriggling puppies and a train wreck.

H. didn’t win, but he did great. He was remarkably poised, but so were almost all the kids. I kept expecting someone to burst into tears and run off the stage—either in disappointment, or just unable to stand the pressure and scrutiny—but no one did. He got through four rounds (“mirage,” “rouge,” “cafeteria” and “sashimi”), and was in the fifth round, one of only 12 kids left from the original 52, when he was stymied by “Provolone” (a cheese henceforth banished from our house). He exited gracefully, and was rightfully proud of his performance.

All the boys were gone after that round, and all but one of the elementary school kids. It had devolved into a battle of the geeky middle-school girls. They were all gawky and adorable and anxious, and the crowd loved them, gave each one a standing ovation when she got knocked out. It came down to a battle between an eighth-grade girl who was miniature version of Chloe Sevigny in “Big Love” (ramrod posture, righteous diction, floor-length skirt and hair scraped into a tight bun) and one who was a little more “Sons of Anarchy” (baggy black t-shirt and sneakers, waist-length lank blond hair). The Chloe Sevigny girl won, in a real nail-biter, and her teacher burst into tears behind me.

Just by chance, the night before we had read (again) the scene in Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire where Harry has to face the Hungarian Horntail with only his wand. What if he had to spell words at the same time, we wondered. What if he had to spell “nenuphar”? What if it were a spello-dragon? These kids would have taken it down.

Bats'll drive you batty

Maybe you remember how we had a bat in our house in January? And how the pest control people, led by Donny, the two-fingered man, came and supposedly sealed up the places where bats could get in?

Well, it didn’t take, and last Monday evening, at about 7pm, there was another bat careening around my living room. The boys and I ran screaming out onto the porch, and bat followed shortly after. Since then, we’ve been bat-free, but that may be because I’ve been leaving every light in the house on all night.

So, I thought the worst of this was that I would have to wrangle with the pest control people about coming back to finish the job. But then, last Friday, I heard two separate stories, about two different local families, who had had bats in the house, and had been told by their doctors that they all needed rabies shots.

Because rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. No. Really. They can.

I was equal parts disbelieving and freaked out by this bit of information. Our bats didn’t act the least bit rabid, and we never touched them (that we know of). But someone says “rabies” in the same breath as “your children” and it’s really all over.

So: I called our pediatrician’s office this morning to get advice. And, sure enough, it turns out to be a NC state law that if you have been exposed to bats you need a post-exposure rabies shot. Because rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. No, really, they can.

But, and here’s kicker #1: the clinics don’t stock post-exposure rabies vaccine. The only place to get it is the emergency room. Or maybe the County Health Dept, said the nurse at my pediatrician’s office.

I called the County Health people, and got the same information: rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know. Really, they can. But they don’t have the vaccine either—the only place in town to get it truly is the ER.

At this point, I called my insurance company. Now, I have very good health insurance, but nevertheless they told me that even though they would pay for the vaccine, I would still have an ER co-pay of $250 for each of us for each visit (kicker #2). The shots are given in a series of 3-4 shots. So, 3 x 3 x 250. I pretty much started to cry when I did that math.

Then, our wonderful pediatrician herself called and said, “It doesn’t sound like much exposure to me—maybe you don’t need to do that. Let me make a few calls.” I was hopeful for a few minutes, but then she called back and said, “yes, you need to go into the ER and start the shots: rabid bats can bite you while you’re sleeping and you’d never even know.” The only good news she had is that after the first shot, the boys can get the rest of them in her office, which will save me most of those $250 co-pays.

It was the middle of the day by this point, and I figured there was no point waiting for the ER to get busier. H. was already home from school with some kind of minor stomach thing (rabies? Probably not, says the pediatrician), so I grabbed J. from pre-school, and we headed into the ER of the excellent teaching hospital that is conveniently nearby.

And there we were for the next three hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever spent 2+ hours in a small cubicle with a lot of expensive medical equipment and two small healthy boys, but I wouldn’t recommend it—it’s like being inside one of those bouncy castles at a school fair, except with sharp things. H. had his DS with him, and I take back all the curses I’ve heaped on that thing, because it mostly kept him occupied for the duration. J., however, was literally hurling himself at the walls by the end of hour two.

Finally, they rounded up the immunoglobulin shots for the boys (I won’t even tell you how many steps that took). The eight-year-old cried through his four shots and the four-year-old laughed through his three.

Since we were in the pediatric section of the ER, for a while it looked like they weren’t going to be able to give me my shots there at all, and I was going to have to go back out and wait some more. But they figured out a way around that, thank goodness.

Another nurse handed me three Tylenol tablets. “Really?” I said She nodded. I took the pills.

An then we were into the comic portion of our adventure. Two cute young female nurses and one cute young male paramedic trainee had given the boys their shots. But for whatever reason, the girl nurses went away, and a big male nurse came to give me mine. The paramedic trainee stayed.

Whereas the boys had gotten their shots in the arm, I got five shots: one in the arm; one in each thigh; and one in each hip. And for “hip,” read upper butt cheek.

So just in case you thought motherhood allowed you to retain even a shred of dignity, picture this: there I am in the cubicle with four guys—my two sons, the nurse and the paramedic—dropping my pants. Miraculously, I had managed to take a shower that morning, but I really cannot answer for my underwear.

“They’re professionals,” I said frantically to myself, trying not to completely dissolve into embarrassed giggles, “they’ve seen much worse than my middle-aged thighs, right?”

H. remained resolutely focused on his DS, but J. watched the whole thing with utter glee. “Mama. I can see your underwear,” he announced delightedly; and then, even more happily, “Mama! I can see your blood.”

And then we were finally done. We’re lucky, of course—we’re healthy and not in pain, unlike the poor kid in the adjacent cubicle, and I have great insurance. But still: ugh.

On the bright side, though, I’m thinking of turning off some of the lights tonight—‘cause what’s the worst that can happen? Even if a bat does bite us in our sleep and we never even know, we won’t get rabies.