Datebook: Thursday, August 23rd ~ 2007

I feel like I am living in a sequel world.

No, not another Bruce Willis action adventure of Die Hard V, or an update of Sandy and Danny in Grease III, or Napoleon and Pedro go to college in Napoleon Dynamite II.

I’m talking “Lake Placid II”.

Next week I am going back to the Adirondack Mecca in the north for the second time in less than 30 days. This is a little frightening because I just lost the twitch in my right eye and that feeling of something furry caught in the back of my throat from the first excursion.

But, I ask myself, how often can this happen? A Junior Grand Prix over Labor Day weekend, within a workday driving time.

It seems like fate, or at the very least, fated.

I realize this event will be different. Ann Greenthal won’t be able to work all of her magic at this competition because the ISU dictates how some things operate, but I’m sure she’ll be on the scene-- smiling, and finding some way to boost the spirits and cheerlead Team USA.

Anyway, I am staying at a different hotel for a change of venue and I’m probably staying out of “Charlie’s” as my last “Backporch Lemonade” in their lounge left a slow blur of some events—possibly not a bad thing.

If I were having T-Shirts made for the event, I would label them the “Examination of the Soul Tour—2007” and the cities listed underneath would be Lake Placid July31-August 4 and then, Lake Placid August 30 – September 2 . The logo would need to be some type of beaded belly-dancing German Rock band motif, but not too much pops up when you search that in Google images. The color would have to be red, but the red that fades a bit in the first washing much like a partially licked candy cane.

Examination of the Soul is what I have felt like quite a bit this summer. Some of it has little to do with skating—I mean, really, on the evening news Katie Couric was doing a piece about bulletproof school backpacks!

But some of it does have to do with skating.

Every year I look at our non-existent savings account and pray for a money parachute to fall from the sky. And it’s not that I regret spending the money, it’s just that it seems so excessively, well, almost grotesquely expensive.

We are all spending about the same.

We are paying coaches 85.00 to 120.00 dollars an hour to offer expertise and guidance in this sport, and we pay about 15.00 for an opportunity to practice at 45 minute clips of time. And we all probably have about 10,000.00 worth of costumes for this season and a few we might be able to use from last season, hanging in the closet. Yet when we go to a competition, almost any competition, we find out something needs to be changed, or something needs to be added, or taken out.

I’m just not sure who the experts are anymore. I’ve certainly lost the ability to have any say in what happens.

And even as I berate myself for this excess, sometimes seemingly without rhyme and/or reason, the Examination of the Soul is reflected in that I am secretly harboring-- on my dining room table-- the Fed Ex box that came this morning.

The gold waltz dress arrived—refitted and with additional beading and stones.

And seriously—nothing should be this beautiful.

When this is all over, I am having this beveled gown mounted in one of those shadow boxes to be displayed on my family room wall like a Cher outfit in a “Hard Rock”, (well that is unless Ann requests it for the wall at Placid).

And trust me, no dress has ever brought tears to my eyes like this one (well, maybe the dress with an accordion collar that my mother made me wear to a 9th grade Sweethearts Dance).

And what I probably should be thinking is how many children in a 3rd world country would the cost of this dress have fed, but, what I’m actually thinking is where is that photographer from Lake Placid One now?

You remember, the one that lets you buy a disc with every photo taken of your team (about 800 photos) for $260.00.

That clearly falls into the “need” category in the decision of needs and wants. Don’t worry; I will have T-Shirts available soon for all of us.

Mombo