Ao dai on The Strip

Audrey in her "ao dai" (Vietnamese traditional dress)
photo shoot on the steps of Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas

                                                 Photo Credits:  Duc Pham

Hi Ho Robin Hood!

Audrey was leaving for Las Vegas to compete in the Miss Vietnam Global Pageant on the 15th, but I had to stay behind so Lauren and Natasha could participate in the final show of their summer musical, Hi Ho Robin Hood.  Besides, I was scheduled for my second "required volunteer" shift at this event and had to prepare a dish for the cast party potluck afterwards.  Despite my penchant for procrastination, I'd signed up on the volunteer sheet pretty early to snatch what was widely considered the easiest shifts – selling telegrams to theater goers who wanted to send break-a-leg wishes to their favorite performers.  I definitely didn't care to volunteer backstage, as I'm rather clumsy and intimidated by the prospect of working with young children that were not my own.  With the number of costume changes in this musical, having an inexperienced helper like me working backstage could be disastrous.  During rehearsals, I've watched Lauren manage five costume changes mostly on her own, as she was one of the older girls in the youth ensemble, playing three minor roles -- royal dancer, peasant girl, and mime at the Nottingham county fair.  Natasha had four costume changes herself!  In one scene, Lauren had to get out of her tambourine dancer dress & flower wreath, change into a flower-child mime costume, and rush back to stage right on beat in the time it took  the company to belt out one and a half measures of a song.  The show's quick pace proved to be more than a bit daunting to me, but all the children were seemingly revved up by their collective theatrical energy and most excelled at being quick-change artists.  Nevertheless, I couldn't see myself offering much help in that hectic environment, and after learning that a young cast member was kicked off the show by the director for eating while in costume, I became convinced I wasn't cut out for supervisory duty backstage.  Working the telegram table, I thought, would be a snap, except that I didn't anticipate being chided by Sophia, the youngest telegrammer, for giving change to a customer.  "You're supposed to sell telegrams, not give our money away!" she intoned with a guilt-inducing stare.  For a minute I was paranoid that Sophia would get me in trouble with the director, but after I chatted her up and we became friends, she apparently forgot to report my "mismanagement" of theater funds.  Telegram sales were terribly slow at first and only began to pick up a bit closer to the matinee's starting time, but at ten minutes pre-show, all the telegrammers had deserted me to take their positions on stage and I was left with three undelivered telegrams.  I was relieved to find out it was perfectly OK to keep them in the theater's coffer until intermission when they could be ferried backstage to the intended recipients.

Lauren in flower-child mime costume

With her favorite telegrammer, Sophia

Natasha was super proud to see her piano teacher, Simon, at the show

 

Doca's family with Natasha at the August 14th matinee

Lauren carrying her little cousin, Gisele

Of all the children's theater programs we've participated in, Newport Theatre Arts Center had the best cast parties by far.  This year it was no exception and after all the children had changed into their street clothes and the handier members of the cast's families had helped out with the set strike, everyone got to enjoy an amazing potluck...  carved roast, a good spread of breads and dips, at least five different salads including my Thai beef salad, which received high marks from two moms, and a grand assortment of delectable desserts.  I would have loved second and even third helpings had we not been in a rush to get home in order to run a few school-related errands for Audrey, who'd probably arrived in her Las Vegas hotel room already by that time.

After a group clean-up, we returned to the theater to watch a wonderful slide show set to music (a live recording of all the songs in the musical) featuring the entire cast in various backstage poses and candid shots.  As we weren't allowed to take pictures during any of the rehearsals or performances, I was thrilled to find out that Ron, the producer, would forward everyone a link for his photos.
  

As the years go by, I discovered that I've become less and less enthusiastic about the happenings in my personal life and more and more devoted to my children's activities.  This could mean one of two things... either my life was getting increasingly staid, or I was naturally slowing down and comfortably settled in my supporting role for the family.  Either way, with four kids enrolled in different activities, something's gotta give!  Audrey did promise to start her driving lessons soon after she came back from Las Vegas, though, so there's a chance I could eventually count on her help.  Maybe (just maybe) I can escape chauffer duty in about a decade or so!

Straw field and autumn leaves

These pictures Audrey recently took of Lauren really captured her personality.  She is this exuberant half of the times...

... and equally dramatic the other half!

A Day in the Life of An Unglamorous Mom, Installment #3

Hello Blog!

Sorry I’ve been away for so long. I could not keep up with you and the other demands in my life as well. It seems wrong somehow to publish a blog entry that’s not contemporaneous with the happenings described in the post, especially when the blog title happens to be “A Day in the Life…” but I’d just have to do my best reconstructing the snapshots from my quick notes.

Day 3 (Friday, July 16, 2010)

8:00 AM – Found myself locked out of my own bedroom by the sleepover gang. That meant I'd have to take a quick shower in one of the secondary baths with the falling shower curtain if I didn’t want the girls to see me in my morning-after/homeless-woman state.

8:30 – Lauren tiptoed out of our master bedroom and ordered me to find the electric griddle quickly so she could make pancakes for her friends before they woke up. I knew it was buried somewhere beneath the surface clutter in our impossibly disorganized garage. Spent 15 minutes locating griddle and another 5 minutes cleaning it, only to find out it no longer worked. Told Lauren she had to switch to Plan B – making pancakes in smaller batches using my Teflon pan.

Miracle of miracles! Lauren was amazingly good-natured this morning and did not waste a single minute whining. In a half hour, she had set out our best china, served her friends faux cocktail drinks in frosted rim glasses, and followed up with a platter of chocolate-chip mini pancakes. It was funny seeing how intently lifestyle-oriented she was as compared to her siblings, who would be happy with just paper plates and plastic forks. Even for a swig of 7-Up with Natasha on our patio steps, Lauren would drag out our fanciest stemware and make it an occasion. The girl was born with a princess complex. If life doesn’t hand her a fairytale, she would surely create her own.

9:30 – Cleaned up after the girls' al fresco breakfast. Attempted to sort my 4-inch stack of mail. It is true that if you leave documents untended on your desk overnight, they breed!

Came across an old notice from Chase regarding my credit reduction. I had never found time to dispute the decision with their customer service rep!

What happened was Chase recently lowered the spending limit on one of my Visas from $15,700 to $1,900. Reason cited for the reduction was that I had initiated too many recent requests for new credit. Initially, I thought “What the heck!” and wondered if I'd fallen victim to identity theft.

As it turned out, I had unwittingly ruined my own credit by providing credit to my parents. They’d been dropped by their own credit card company because it could not make money off consumers who had super conservative spending habits and paid off their balances in full each month in order to avoid interest. Because my dad still preferred the convenience of a credit card for filling up at the gas station, I’d offered to add both Mom and Dad as authorized users on my Visa. Almost immediately afterwards, I discovered numerous suspicious charges on Dad’s card that he confirmed as unauthorized or fraudulent. It looked to me like he had succumbed to one of those work-from-home scams on the net, but my dad insisted he never signed up for any such scheme. Even though I’d successfully disputed those charges, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the affected account open, and decided to switch Mom and Dad to another account I had with Chase. That decision counted against me twice! In addition, I'd recently taken advantage of either a Lowe’s or Home Depot’s promotional discount for my recent spree of landscaping purchases, which required me to open a home improvement store credit card. Altogether, my doings looked pretty bad on paper.

Lesson of the day: Do not close out long-standing accounts and open new ones in this economy! You might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Fortunately, I still had ample credit from my other cards, thanks to my longstanding history of conservative credit management. But through this mishap, I’d begun to appreciate how the current credit tightening could put a sharp squeeze on the average credit card user’s pocketbook in these tough times.

10:30 – The girls asked to go swimming again. Played guard dutifully at poolside until 11:30. As we were walking home from the association’s club house, suddenly remembered that I had nothing for them to eat. Tried to gauge whether I had enough time to take everyone out to lunch before my girls’ ballroom dancing lessons with Paul. Decided it was doable as long as I chose a quick and friendly restaurant in Little Saigon.

Noon – Andrea declined to join us, saying she'd be happy to eat any leftovers we brought home. Found out as we were piling in the car there wasn’t enough room for her anyway, with eight of us heading out: my reduced family of four, plus the sleepover gang – Allison, Amanda, Julie, and Natasha.

12:15 PM – Dropped Audrey off at the Irvine FIDM campus to work on her sewing project and drove everyone else to Westminster. Asked the girls if they would mind if I ordered a communal meal, since we had precious little time to ponder the menu individually, and what their meat preference was. “Chicken!” Allison, Amanda and Julie piped up in unison. Julie added she didn’t eat seafood. Wondered if that meant the girls could only eat chicken McNugget-style!

12:45 – We lucked out today as lobster was on the menu for only $8.99 a pound at our favorite hangout, Capital Seafood Restaurant. As far as Lauren was concerned, it wouldn't be Chinese food without lobster, so she was happy as clams.

The maitre d’ came to our table showing off an impressive eight-pounder just plucked from the tank. Allison and Amanda let out a squeal and covered their eyes... they didn't expect to see their dinner menu live, up close and personal! Julie exclaimed this would be her first time eating crustacean and Allison chimed in that her previous encounters were rather traditional and much less graphic… she was used to having steamed lobster tails with butter and lemon. The girls were understandably a bit queasy. They squirmed a little more after I explained I’d chosen a female lobster in order to get roe!

1:00 – Humongous platter of lobster was set in the middle of the lazy susan at our table. The girls stared in wonder and whipped out their cell phone cameras to memorialize the novel culinary experience. Despite their reservations, everyone sampled lobster roe and pronounced it “not too fishy!” Hmm…

The meal was a great success, at least on the experimental scale. Julie and Amanda were sport enough to try deep-fried whole flounder, even though they didn’t know if they should chomp through the tiny bones. A less challenging dish that the girls deemed tasty was the popular French-style beef cubed steak (bo luc lac). And of course I had to order two chicken entrees just to be safe.

1:45 – Swung by FIDM to pick Audrey up in time for her dance lesson. She walked out with Mai, whom I’d never met but whose brother & sister-in-law were my dear friends for many years. We had chatted online infrequently but never met in person. Mai was warm and friendly as I'd imagined, and exceptionally well-dressed. Audrey had commented more than once that he had excellent taste befitting someone who worked at a fashion college, so I was a little embarrassed Mai had to see me in my everyday sweats. As we were driving away, Audrey shared with me that when she told him I was waiting out front, Mai asked if that was his cue to disappear. It was a reference to my refusing to meet him last time when I was dropping off Audrey at one of his fashion shows, ill-prepared and sloppily dressed.

2:00 – Dropped off 5 girls at Avant Garde Studio and quickly waved to Paul before returning home with Natasha & Kiet. Natasha had actually wanted to stay, but she herself had piano lesson at home later in the afternoon.

2:20 – Arrived home.  Called Andrea down for a late lunch. There was plenty of lobster left for her because Audrey had decided to go out for Mexican food with her friends right after dance class.

3:00 – Came back to Avant Garde with dance shoes for Lauren and found the sleepover gang on a bench in front of the studio looking unsettled. Paul came up to me inside the studio and explained that they had a little misunderstanding.  When Audrey began her salsa lesson with Paul, Lauren tried to run off with the girls to get a smoothie at Juice It Up two blocks away, but Paul had refused to let her leave the studio because he considered her his charge when I wasn’t there. Allison, Amanda, and Julie felt unwelcomed, so they’d purposely sit out to avoid getting in trouble.

3:10 – The girls patched things up with Paul and came back inside to watch Lauren practice her cha cha routine for You Can Dance. Technically, she was ahead of schedule, since she has gotten all her steps down. However, Paul had just revealed to me today he planned to take off the entire month of August for vacation. He promised to post youtube videos for the girls so they could attempt virtual practice while he’s away. I know that’s not going to happen!

4:10 – We said goodbye to Julie as her family had arrived at the studio to pick her up. Audrey happily went off with her friends. I was left with Allison, Amanda and Lauren.

4:30 – Home again. Found out Natasha had left after getting into a fight with her mom because she wanted to cancel her piano lesson in order to hang out with the sleepover gang. Lauren skipped off to enjoy the last bit of her time with Allison and Amanda, but not before smothering me with an exuberant kiss and a hug. Kiet glanced sideways from his Oblivion game and muttered “suck-up” under his breath.

6:00 – Everyone that’s not mine was gone!  Winding down my usual way by puttering around the house picking up carpet lint. Alternated between blogging and pecking away at the office paperwork. So relieved I didn’t have to cook tonight as Friday was the kids’ night-out with their dad.

9:15 – Finally by myself! The kids wouldn’t be back from dinner until 10:30 or so. After taking a prolonged snack break, sat down at the computer deciding what to tackle next. As usual, the chores that needed my attention the most were not those I was eager to finish. Concluded I wasn’t good for anything more challenging than mindless work right now, so input EOB’s (claim payments) for as long as I could.

11:00 – Kids came home carrying Target bags, so they must have gone shopping with their dad again. Audrey wanted to show me some gowns she’d found on eBay that she liked for her upcoming entry at the Miss Vietnam Global pageant held in August. One of the dresses looked like that infamous green frock J. Lo wore at the Grammy award years ago. Was going to veto that one immediately but Audrey seemed to have sensed my misgivings and conceded that it wasn’t her top choice anyway. According to her measurements, Audrey would be a size 4 on some sites and 10 on others. That would make me a size 12!! Why are Chinese size charts so funky? And their ad language just as alarming! Here’s a sample:

All wedding dress produced by our factory are classical, fashionable and outstanding, with designers’ 100% inspiration. Our wedding will let you as the most beautiful bride, bringing unparalleled honor and luck to you. We take contracts abidance, good faith and high quality as our business philosophy and take honesty first, mutual benefit and credit paramount as our principle. We have recognized and supported by customers, and we will provide higher quality and more favorable service for new and old customers in the future.

We hope to cooperate with you, and create prosperity together. Welcome your consultation!

Please email to: xxxxxxx@hotmail.com.


Midnight – Went to sleep dreaming of Chinese merchants with bad grammar.  I was about as tired as this squirrel!