AARGH!

Okay, I want to start this blog by saying I adore my daughter and my husband. I'm going to repeat that for my own benefit -- I ADORE my daughter and my husband.

But this particular morning, I could not wait for them to get OUT OF MY HOUSE! My kid has this thing about chocolate. When she gets even the littlest bit in her system, she gets hyperactive and schizophrenic all at one time. You can imagine a 3-year-old with those qualities, no?

And my husband cannot be on time for anything.

So, I wake up this morning to my daughter saying, "Mom, I've got poopies in my pull-up." Reminder, she's three. And three months. And she's not yet completely potty trained. A rather constant frustration.

I get out of bed at 7:30 a.m. on my Friday off, and change the dirty pull up, finally convincing her to put on big girl panties instead of another pull up. I also get up to a trashed living room, food from last night's dinner still on the dining room table. (Here I will say that I was so tired last night I went to bed at 8 p.m. and left my husband to get the kid off to bed.)

After cleaning up the dishes, I fix breakfast for the little one and me. Pop in a movie, play a little bit, and then my lovely daughter in her chocolate haze (she convinced me to let her have just a tiny piece), slaps me in the face. On purpose, mind you, she knew what she was doing. She was duly punished with a swift swat and getting sent to her room to think about it.

Then I realize that my husband, who is still sleeping, is going to be late getting the kid to gymnastics, which he had promised to do because his work schedule has not allowed him to do it for a couple of months. I go to try and wake him again.

The kid and I have a long heart-to-heart after she is able to come out of her room. Then I try to get her into her gymnastics leotard, only to realize that while she was in her room she took off her panties and put on a pull-up. And she refuses to put on the leotard. No, let me further explain. When I walk away from her, frustrated that she won't help me get her dressed, she screams, "No, I want help!" -- twice we go through this dance. Until I can't stand it anymore. I go into the kitchen, poor myself a cup of coffee, down an extra dose of my menopause vitamins, and wait for my husband to get her ready on his own.

I'm done being a mom this morning. I'm done being a wife, too. I want to be just ME in my house by myself doing only what I want to do for the short time that I get once in a while to just be ME. I'm sure I'm not experiencing a new situation or emotion. This is surely a universal feeling. But, fortunately, I don't have to feel if very often so I'm not practiced in coping with it. Anyone have a trick to get through this overwhelming experience? It's too early in the day for wine.

My One Wish

If I could be granted one wish by my Fairy God Mother (Mel), and it couldn't be for world peace or for my daughter to have her college education paid for, I would wish for the opportunity to try dancing full time. It may sound a little confusing, so let me explain.

I have always loved dancing. My parents said I was doing it before I could walk, mostly bouncing to the rhythms my dad played on his guitar when he was in college. But I grew up in a small Midwestern town and children's dance classes were limited to the local YWCA ballet and tap lessons. I stuck with it until I was in 7th grade, though, when I asked my mom if I could quit. You see, the girls in my class were a couple years older than me and all went to a much larger school together. Puberty was not the right time to be the odd man (or girl) out. Less than two years later, I found a new dance school and started lessons again. It was still very basic ballet, tap, and jazz in another small town.

In college, I tried out for the pom pon squad and did that for a year, then I found the Contemporary Dance Theater dance company. Ball State was not know for its dance school so again I was limited in my exposure to good choreography and talented instructors.

When I moved to Phoenix, I dabbled in some adult jazz classes, but really found something when I stumbled upon the movie "Swingers." In the final scene, the lovable but goofy lead guy shocks his hilarious but deviant dude friends by asking a girl to dance and sweeping her off her feet -- literally. I was watching the movie with a male friend and we kept repeating that scene to see if we could learn the swing dance moves they were performing on the screen. Soon after, we convinced a larger group of friends to check out the local club that was offering swing dance lessons. It was great fun for all of us but especially me. I felt like I had rediscovered my first love, and it didn't hurt that I was pretty good at it because of all my previous dance training. (It really makes the evening when the best dancers keep asking you to dance.)

About a year later, a female friend asked me to accompany her to a club so that she could get credit for her salsa dance class. The instructor made all of her students attend a certain amount of club nights as they turned a typical bar into a Latin club one night a week. I had tried salsa at a ballroom dance lesson with an old boyfriend but hadn't thought much about it. From that night on I was hooked. I danced with people who introduced me to more people, who told me about a dance school and tryouts for a performance team. The next thing I knew I was dancing 5-6 nights every week. And I was loving life! I didn't get a whole lot of sleep in those years but I had some of the most amazing experiences with people that I still call friends today. And if that wasn't enough, I met my husband on the dance floor. We're still dancing today, teaching Latin dance lessons to beginners.

So, that's where my love of dance has brought me. But I will always wonder how much farther I could have taken it. You know how life happens. You meet Mr. Right, get married, have a baby, move to a foreign country, yadda yadda.

My wish would be this, Fairy God Mother: If I could not work for a year (all my family's expenses would be magically paid), I would like to spend that year learning, practicing and dancing full time with the goal of competing and performing on the pro level. A year is probably not long enough, but if I was actually good at it, the money would sustain me for as long as I wanted to continue. If I wasn't, I'd be ready to say I tried it and now I'm done.

Now, are you ready to wave that wand?