She’s killing me, I tell ya.

My Little Cake Boss Diva.

She is faithful… Faithfully late, that is.

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She reminds me of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.  By virtue of his timepiece, the rabbit knows he is late and is frantic about it.

And my Little Cake Boss Diva Rabbit also has a clock; it is the world’s biggest clock and it is on the home screen of her iPhone.  You know.  She has to swipe through it to get to her precious texting screen.

But unlike the rabbit, she does not panic when she sees the world’s biggest clock for it apparently serves no useful purpose.    Perhaps she is blind.  For her, it is better to be three hours late than one minute early.

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Believe me.

It is a daily school nightmare ritual when she stays with me.  The school bell rings at 8:55 am.  Sometimes, she finally gets into the car at 8:54 am… still barefoot.  But by the time we get to the school, she is still barefoot because she has been messing around with her hair in the backseat while looking at herself on her iPhone…  You know, the one with the world’s biggest clock.

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Her precious dance classes are no different.  Let us take one example; mind you, she has EIGHT dance classes a week.

Her ritual is this.  Say her dance class starts at 6:30 pm.

Brooke at 6:15 pm from her bathroom (with a mirror that the vain and wicked stepmother in Snow White would be jealous of), “OK, I’m ready.”

I can still hear her hairbrush clanking against the sink along with the occasional hiss from her hair spray.  I don’t move from my couch.

Me, at 6:25 pm: “Brooke, we need to go…”

Silence… but I can hear her rustling in her room.  Maybe she’s looking for her dance shoes.  She’s got four kinds of them, you know.

Me, at 6:29 pm: “Brooke, I’ll be waiting in the car, okaaay?”

Silence…

A minute later, out she comes…  Yes!  Oops.  She goes back in again.  Half a minute later, she emerges and runs to the car…barefoot.  But she drags along her bag that has Nordstrom’s entire shoe selection in it.  No kidding.  I guess she couldn’t decide which dance shoe to wear for this one class.

We get to her dance school in a couple of minutes but it’s 6:32 pm already.  I carefully drive into the cramped war zone called a parking lot; it is filled with crazed dance moms who stop their battle tank dead in the middle of the aisle instead of off to one side to let their daughters off.  One mother actually turns on her emergency blinkers.  Nobody can move until that mother moves.  But they don’t care… because their battle tank is equipped a 105mm cannon…front and rear.  Nobody dares asks them to move to one side.

Brooke?  She’s still putting hair pins into her “bun”.

There are other late mothers lining up behind me, still trying to battle their way through the war zone littered with SUVs and minivans going every which way except forward.  I can see she still is not ready so I need to find a parking spot in this war zone.  Unfortunately, these mothers in their SUVs think they truly are in M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and take up two spots.  They do it on purpose, relegating us lowly men to one.  They believe they are entitled to two spots.  After all, this is California, land of entitlement.

After a minute or two, I step out of the car.  I can’t stand to watch.  She is still fussing with her hair bun.  (Remember: she said she was ready at 6:15?)

Oh-oh…  Here she comes.  It’s 6:40 pm.  Class started ten minutes ago.

What’s this?!  She’s got her shoes on?  Golly-gee-willikers.  And she’s running like the rabbit?  Perhaps she has finally realized she is… late?

Nahhh….

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By the way…  I am always on time.  My oldest daughter is always on time, too.  She got that from me.

…But my Little Cake Boss Diva’s (non-)sense of time?  You can figure that one out.