Girl With a Notebook

Living life with purpose and creativity. . . or trying to, anyway.

Oompa Loompa

Posted on | November 29, 2010 | 7 Comments

oompa loompa
I don’t usually get emotional on the kids’ birthdays. But celebrating five years of Tango’s little life got me all misty-eyed today. I didn’t want to emote alone, so I started talking about Tango’s wedding day (about forty years from now) with TM. He got misty-eyed, too. And then TM blinked real big and told me what he’ll do if any boy ever makes Tango cry. (scary, y’all!)

Our girl looked quite festive today for her birthday. She wore a hot pink plaid dress off the Old Navy clearance rack, leggings her Nonna sent her, and thrifted shoes. She accessorized with a headband topped with a pink plush princess crown.

The girl was ready to celebrate and be celebrated.

Her younger brother Foxtrot was not happy about a birthday that wasn’t his. Tango let him wear her new Hello Kitty lipgloss pendant for a couple minutes, but she put her mary-jane-clad foot down when he wanted to sample it.

“But I wanna buthday! ’Cause I just really do. . .  ”

Today Foxtrot encountered a key life lesson: it’s not always about him. I’m still working on that in my own life, how about you?

After dropping the kids at preschool, I walked a few miles at a local park. Walking, not running, because I’ve got shin splints right now from running last week. Probably my first injury ever as a result of a physical activity, unless you count the sprained wrist I sustained in the nineties during a high school dance team stunt gone wrong. Did I ever tell you about my days on the dance team?

It’s painful to recall. Short skirts. Weekly weigh-ins. Huge, white cowboy hats. And it only got worse from there. My junior year, we competed against all the other big Texas schools at a dance-off in Houston. There we were, the thirty members of the James Madison High School DOLLIES out on the gym floor dressed up like. . . oompa loompas.

We had orange face paint, green wigs and white pants that made our butts look like, well, oompa-loompa butts. I still haven’t quite recovered from that experience.  (Shudder. . .)

Tango just hugged me goodnight and headed upstairs to read with her dad, “I had a good day, Mom.” I’m so glad.

Now I might pop a Tylenol PM for my shins, lest I lay awake tonight staring at the ceiling with this tune in my head:

“Oompa Loompa, doopity doo. . .”

Just keepin’ it real, Val

 
Category: Motherness

Comments

7 Responses to “Oompa Loompa”

  1. avatar Bree
    November 29th, 2010 @ 8:08 pm

    Oompa loompas?!?! Really?!?! That would take some serious therapy to get over! Glad Tango had a great 5th birthday. I can relate to the pink-ness but in our house it is purple-ness. :) Someday before you move again & before we move again we need to get our girls together. L still talks about Tango & the fun they had. :)

  2. avatar Val
    November 29th, 2010 @ 8:41 pm

    That was TM’s reaction, too: REALLY?! Now seriously, B, could I possibly make this stuff up?

  3. avatar T
    November 30th, 2010 @ 4:52 am

    My “REALLY?!” reaction was to the weekly weigh-ins. What a healthy thing to do to high school girls!

    I just feel the need to appreciate you for choosing Gene Wilder instead of Johnny Depp. Why anyone on God’s green earth thought it was necessary to “update” that movie is beyond the capacity of my tiny brain to figure out.

    I just noticed that the James Madison high school’s dance team was called the Dollies. Seriously…….Texas is sort of stuck 30 years back there, aren’t they. That woudln’t go over very well in NJ in two-thousand whatever.

  4. avatar Val
    November 30th, 2010 @ 5:40 am

    The “subtle” differences between Texas and Jersey–don’t think this blog is big enough to contain that one! My dance team experience does seem like it was 30 years ago! Anyone else have a story of triumph over the pitfalls of life in high school? C’mon, it’s very cathartic!

  5. avatar Martha
    November 30th, 2010 @ 8:54 pm

    My reaction was not about the oompa-loompas but rather about you and dance team: really?! I was very bah-humbug about the whole high school thing. Most of the painful social rejection (that I was aware of) got itself over in 7th grade (in 8th I retreated back to homeschool) but one of the worst things I was forced to do was wear the orchestra uniform–a white blouse with a big black skirt AND cumberbund that had been worn by countless people before me (including Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band, who was once in that orchestra–or perhaps he didn’t wear it). How gross is that?? Thankfully my senior year we got beautiful black dresses, so they were new, we each got one tailored for us, and the suckers in the years after us got our hand-me-downs.

  6. avatar Val
    December 1st, 2010 @ 7:34 am

    Brace yourself–dance team is the least shocking element of my past!

  7. avatar angela
    January 8th, 2011 @ 10:56 am

    “O” has a 16 year old friend who is one of the funniest, cutest girls I know and she is by no means “slight”. She embraced her inner Oompa this past Halloween and dressed as one for the big costume party. I can’t tell you what a great job she did or how awesome it was to see her huge orange-hued smile and her sweet brown eyes offset by the green hair. Then again, Willy Wonka is one of my all time favorite movies. If I’d had to dress as one for dance team (which I never did since I’m uncoordinated as all get-out) I might feel otherwise. Oh, and I second your photo choice kudos. The original is still the best version. Gene Wilder is the only Willy wonka worth crediting.

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