You can’t really see the veil in this photo, but above is Sophie, practicing to be The Bride in this week’s dance recital. She will be performing (something, I’m not sure what) while Annabelle sings along to a song called “Happily Ever After,” from a musical called “Once Upon a Mattress.”

The most interesting thing about this musical (which I’d never heard of,  it came out in the late Nineties and I think had a run of about five minutes) is that it starred Sarah Jessica Parker, who actually sings in it. She’s not half-bad. That could be because I’m tone-deaf myself. (Or because I still heart SJP, even after SATC2.)

We were almost to dance yesterday morning when I realized we’d forgotten to listen to the CD the teacher had sent home for Annabelle to practice to. Damnit, one more thing for the Bad Mom list, I thought, as I popped it in the stereo. There was just enough time to listen once before we got to the studio.

It’s a clever song. (I’ll put the lyrics in below, I couldn’t find a clip from the musical to post.)

At the end, Annabelle sighed and said, “You got your happily ever after, Mommy!”

I smiled. “Yes, I did,” I told the girls. “And I got you two!”

I hope the sweet moment made up for the typical rushing around that took place as we headed out the door. The words “happily ever after” lingered in my head, as I bid the girls farewell and went about the day’s business.

Happily ever after. Let’s be honest: What a fucked up term. All day I wondered, will Annabelle get her happily ever after? Will Sophie? (That’s a loaded one, I know.)

My parents’ 46th wedding anniversary is Monday. How many people do you know who can say that? It’s getting so rare. In my little world, the past year has been an avalanche of break-ups and divorces, one sad piece of news after another.

I have my own pretty strict definition of “happily ever after” (what do you expect, given my parents’ own happy ending?) and that’s not to say every moment is happy (that’s another blog post entirely, but chances are, reader, you know what I mean from personal experience).

But this past year, as I’m easing closer to the official mark of mid-40, I’ve realized there are other definitions. There have to be.

I’ll be thinking about that this weekend, as I attend the second wedding of a dear college friend. I remember his first like it was yesterday — the  most perfect wedding I’ve ever attended. Chicago, 1993. Lovely, low-key, Jewish, and let’s be honest: very expensive. I will never forget how the sun broke through the clouds and poured through the skylight of the historic building in Lincoln Park, just as the bride and groom said their vows. The couple couldn’t decide on a dessert, so they chose them all, and we passed exquisite pastries around the table and remarked on how perfect it all was, how perfect they were. How happily ever after.

And then she changed her mind. There’s a lot more to it than that, I’m quite sure, but was never privy to. In any case, this weekend, I’ll attend what I realize is my first second wedding. It will be a happy occasion, but I’m not so sure I’ll wish anyone a “happily ever after.”

Too much pressure.

“Happily Ever After,” from “Once Upon A Mattress”

Winnifred: “And so it was that soon after his encounter with the dragon Fafner,
young Prince Waldere fell into the enchanted mud and, before long, his head grew back, hmmm,
whereupon he married the Princess Gunthere…
and they lived happily ever after.”
(She closes the book) We’ll I’m glad.

Winnifred: They all live happily, happily, happily ever after.
The couple is happily leaving the chapel eternally tied.
As the curtain descends, there is nothing but loving and laughter.
When the fairy tale ends the heroine’s always a bride.
Ella, the girl of the cinders did the wash and the walls and the winders.
But she landed a prince who was brawny and blue-eyed and blond.
Still, I honestly doubt that she could ever have done it
without that crazy lady with the wand.
Cinderella had outside help!
I have no one but me… Fairy godmother, godmother, godmother!
Where can you be? I haven’t got a fairy godmother.
I haven’t got a godmother. I have a mother…
a plain, ordinary woman!
Snow white was so pretty they tell us
that the queen was insulted and jealous
when the mirror declared that snow white was the fairest of all.
She was dumped on the border but was saved by some men who adored ‘er;
Oh, I grant you, they were small.
But there were seven of them!
Practically a regiment!
I’m alone in the night.
By myself, not a dwarf, not an elf, not a goblin in sight!
That girl had seven determined little men working day and night just for her!
Oh sure! The queen gave her a poisoned apple.
Even so she lived happily, happily, happily every after!
A magical kiss counteracted the apple eventually…
Though I know I’m not clever I’ll do what they tell me I hafta!
I want some happily ever after to happen to me!
Winnifred maid of the mire, has one simple human desire
Oh, I ask for no more than two shoes on the floor next to mine.
Oh… Someone to fly and to float with
to swim in the marsh and the moat with as for this one…
Well, he’d be fine.
But now it’s all up to me…
And I’m burning to bring it about.
If I don’t I’ll be stuck with goodbye and good luck and get out!
But I don’t wanna get out! I wanna get in!
I want to get into some happily, happily ever after.
I want to walk happily out of the chapel eternally tied.
For I know that I’ll never live happily ever after ’til after I’m a bride!
And then I’ll be happily happy,
Yes, Happily happy!
And thoroughly satisfied!
Satisfied! Satisfied!
Oh Yeah!

Annabelle: “Sophie, are you proud of having Down syndrome, or embarrassed?”

Sophie: “Happy!”

I’m working late tonight, and look what arrived in my in box from Ray, taken in our front yard. I don’t think it needs any description.

Last night we were out for dinner for Father’s Day. So was the rest of the city.

Get this: I had a conversation with a complete stranger.

This happens less than you might think, particularly in Phoenix, a place where we all tend to travel in our own private little bubbles — a byproduct of the car culture.

But Sophie was interested in this woman’s little girl, and vice versa, and before I knew it, two year old Eliza was at our table watching Olivia on the iTouch with Sophie, then Sophie was sitting on Eliza’s mom’s lap, playing with her Droid.

So much for technology inhibiting communication.

By the end of the night, my mother had found out all sorts of personal information about these people (he’s an anesthesiologist, she saw a family friend of ours for counseling after her first marriage fell apart) and my father-in-law had given Eliza her first taste of marzipan.

When the pizza had been eaten and the checks had come and it was almost time to go, Eliza’s mom admitted she’d gotten a “flash of joy” from Sophie when she first saw her. But she said it in a cool way. Really. Turns out she’s a school nurse. She knows kids. But she didn’t know anything about Down syndrome, except that she was over 40 when she had her kids, so it was on her mind for a while, back then.

“She’s so sweet,” she kept saying, looking at Sophie. “What’s her prognosis?”

I told her Sophie reads at grade level, but she’s not so hot at math. I struggled for something else to say. Finally I just looked at her and sort of smiled and said, “We really don’t know.”

Then she told me something really great. She said that when she was pregnant with her kids, she never prayed for them to be healthy. (She’s a hipster, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her talk about yoga, but the prayer thing was out of left field; of course, I’d “known” her for 5 minutes.)

Instead, this woman told me, she prayed that she would have the strength to deal with anything that happened.

Amen.

Yesterday morning I got up extra early to make Annabelle’s birthday cake. I wanted it to be a stressfree experience — serene, happy, full of love — to avoid the pitfalls described in Aimee Bender’s new book “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,” which I wrote about last week and read last weekend. (The ending really creeped me out, that’s all I’ll say.)

The baking part went well. Last night, we arrived home to two cooled cakes — chocolate and square and made from scratch, just as the birthday girl ordered — and a batch of cupcakes. Annabelle had a vision (gee, I wonder where she gets it?) of decorating each cupcake to look like each of her party guests.

I had a vision of Annabelle getting to the third cupcake and burning out. I was right. Two and a half in, and she was done. If you look at the photo carefully, you’ll notice that the two in the lower left corner have real personality. The rest (mine) kinda suck. After a pathetic attempt to make Sophie’s bangs out of fondant, I didn’t even bother to make sure I had the right number of blue eyes and brown heads — I just cranked out an assortment. And I’m not proud of this, but I wasn’t particularly cheerful about it.

What can I say? I was exhausted from the early morning cake and a full day of work. To make matters worse, Sophie was at the other end of the table making an enormous mess with her own cupcake, icing and several hunks of fondant. And “Mary Poppins” was on in the background and I’m officially sick of that movie. Sorry, Julie.

So after all that, the cupcakes still might taste a little bitter, and they don’t look nearly as cute as they would have if Annabelle had decorated them, but there was no way to pace ourselves: You can’t devote two weeks to decorating cupcakes, if only because you’ll wind up with rocks at the end.

At least the party’s not at the house.

I’m a big believer in thank you notes.

Not voicemails or emails or texts or Facebook wall posts or tweets — the kind of thank you note that actually arrives in the mailbox with a stamp on it and handwriting inside.

That’s not to say that I always manage to get one sent, or that if I do, it arrives in a timely fashion. I can think of one thank you note I should have mailed back in March, which was about the time I was putting the finishing touches on the Christmas thank yous. Whoops.

But if it’s the thought that counts, I’m all over it. And I want to pass that on to my kids, since I’m passing so many less-palatable habits down, like not making the beds and biting the nails.

With Sophie, it’s hard. It’s not easy to get Annabelle to write a thank you note, either, but at least she’s fully capable. For Sophie, it’s truly a struggle. Handwriting’s one of the few areas where I really notice, anymore, how different Sophie is from the rest of us.

The other day Ray dropped Sophie off at her first day of zoo camp, and he was feeling melancholy about it. “At least she has Courtney there with her,” I said, referring to the sitter who is her aide all this week.

“Yeah, that made me sad, too,” Ray said.

That caught me off guard. More and more, Sophie is what she is, from my perspective.

But not when it comes to thank you notes. I hate the fill-in-the-blank ones (what a cop out!) but I snatched up some Olivia ones on eBay to match Sophie’s party theme and hopefully motivate her. That did the trick, and I’m proud to report that this morning, we finally finished the last of the cards — and a few days short of the one-month mark at that. Not bad.

Despite Sophie’s great pains (and the use of the usually-forbidden Sharpie), if you receive one of these notes, you’ll be hard-pressed to decipher it, except perhaps for the “Sophie” at the bottom.

But it’s the thought that counts, right?

Yesterday I stuck my hand in Sophie’s mouth, and guess what?

Four loose teeth. Including  the one in front of the shark tooth. Phew. Now if those little suckers can just hang on til the stationery arrives for Tallulah Fairbanks, Sophie’s tooth fairy.

Sophie informs me that she actually has seven loose teeth (her favorite number, to match her age) and that she’s quite certain her tooth fairy is named Olivia, but I’m continuing the TF tradition we started with Annabelle. I think she’ll be pleased when she finds the purple note under her pillow.

Most days I feel like the my family is indulging my tooth fairy thing (certainly Ray is). And I know you are, dear readers.

But last night at the dinner table Annabelle announced with great sincerity that Tabitha (that would be Tabitha Fairchild) is one of her best friends. And for a moment, all was right in my silly little world.

I went to Southern California and rode “It’s a Small World” all weekend.

But I wasn’t at Disneyland. Instead, another friend and I strapped ourselves in our dear friend Kathleen’s Honda Odyssey as she led a tour around the world — Little Tokyo, Little India, Little Saigon. We sampled sweet Japanese mochi from a shop in business since 1903; let an Indian woman “thread” our faces and sell us pointy-toed, mirrored shoes; and I caved and let a very sweet Vietnamese lady apply rhinestones and flowers to my big toes for the first (and, ok, last) time ever.

Three days later, I’m still sore from the Chinese massage, and I’m not entirely sure what I ate at lunch yesterday at a restaurant called Hanoi.

It was wonderful, but by the end I ached for home. I thought leaving your kids was supposed to get easier. For me it’s harder each time. On the return flight to Phoenix, my suitcase was literally exploding with bags of cute tchotchkes for the girls. I actually had to take items out, in order to cram it into the overhead compartment.

I took a lot of photos, but no image was nearly as good as the one I came home to, above.

If you don’t live in metro Phoenix, this won’t be of much interest. And even if you do, it may be of no interest whatsoever.

But in the interest of, well, shameless self-promotion, I’ll tell you that I will be teaching and co-teaching some writing workshops in July — one at Changing Hands Bookstore, the others at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Also, registration for Mothers Who Write begins July 1, and it tends to fill fast.

All details are here.

And this concludes our commercial break. Back to your regularly scheduled blog reading, everyone.

There is nothing worse than a friend who has vowed not to shop for the entire year. Unless it’s two friends who have vowed not to shop for the entire year.

Consider my good friends Robrt and Todd.

The other day, Todd sent me an email. Subject line: This is not a Hobby Lobby Coupon…

And inside: I lied. It is.

And it was. For 40-freaking-percent off. Thanks, Todd! Now I’ll need to buy more Rubbermaids (that I don’t have space for) to hold the additional craft supplies (that I don’t need) that I’ll purchase from Hobby Lobby simply because they are on sale.

Worst of all: I won’t be able to get Robrt to go to Target with me to buy the Rubbermaids.

Actually, the truth is that I held off on using the Hobby Lobby coupon. (So far, anyway.) But not on Robrt’s latest “helpful” offering, news that the book “Do a ZOOM Do, Crafts and Fun Ideas” by the creators of the old kids’ TV show ZOOM, was on eBay.

Guess what arrived in the mail the other day, circa 1975? I expect you both over ASAP to make stained glass cookies, gentlemen. I’ll even go to Safeway myself for the ingredients.