Pocahontas

Hello from the parenting trenches. Whoo0-ya! I'm a parenting marine today! This hippy granola school that I so intelligently enrolled my children in is really busting my chops. I need an AUTHENTIC pocahontas costume by tuesday, I need a native american dish to serve four, I need a poster with 5 pocahontas facts, 3 pocahontas pictures, and a timeline with 7 events. The timeline must be memorized. I need one hundred paper plates and signed report cards to bring with me on tuesday for parent teacher conferences AND there was also a book report to do, due Monday.

It started at seven am with the "mommymommymommy, are you awake? Let me put the ass of the cat in your face!" There is nothing like waking up to the wrong end of a cat to put me in a great mood.

My husband was doing color commentary for a double header today, and took my beloved truck. No problem! Off we hiked to the drug store for posterboard. We cut and colored and copied. I can do posters in my sleep. We used genuine fall leaves, just for pizazz.

Then it came down to the costume. The real Pocahontas was naked. John Smith commented in it in his journal. All the boys were turning cartwheels, and she wheeled around with them, completely unaware of her heathen nakedness, to paraphrase. You can't go from the disney pocahontas, obviously. What does a 17th century Algonquin girl wear? That I have in my house?

Nothing. I can't find any useful resources online. Everything has seventeen years of beading and animal pelts involved. I get out the movie The New World, and the girl wears leather dental floss. I can't send my kid to school in that. I begin to get frustrated. I take down an old bedsheet, and start cutting and making fringe. Hours pass. Complete disaster. My elder daughter tells me she can't wear it. I say fine and sulk in the bathtub, grumbling fuckthisschoolandtheirgoddamnauthenticnative

americancostumedamandingvolvodriving

organicyogurteatingbunchoffuckingassholes, etc.

Now I'm out the material I was going to use, and the kids want dinner. I order chinese, and take down my husband's brown curtain in "The Man Room". Too bad. If you hadn't abandoned me and taken my truck, your window would still be dressed. I put in a completely child inappropriate movie that I like, tell the kids not to listen to the dirty jokes, and get out a needle and thread. I try to psych myself up. I can do this. I sew all the time. I got a B in home ec in eighth grade. I make dresses ALL THE TIME, if by all the time you mean never.

So, sew sew sew, eat a steamed dumpling, sew sew, check the book report, sew. Here is the finished product. It ain't no great shakes, but let me assure you, it is well, WELL beyond my capability. My daughter totally loves me, and tells me that she will remember this when she becomes a teenager and is tempted to hate me. She better.

I give you....Pocahontas.