St. Aloysius Gonzaga

From far off in Philadelphia, Indy heard our cry for Midsummers pictures and posted them to facebook last night.  And now I share them with you!

First, the stars of our show: The Boys.  From left to right, Boy-O in his mu-mu, MDoS, Captain Amazing’s brother (who really needs his own nickname), Abel, and 007.  Not pictured: 007′s boots, which he was still wearing.

AnniPotts had a rather impressive, judicially-inspired costume this year.  Here she is posing with Odd, Indy’s friend from Philadelphia.

A better look at AnniPott’s inspired wig styling!

The Girl Next Door, looking lovely in her black lace draped purple negligee.  Flo sports a pearl-trimmed silver gown, accented with a skirt repurposed as a cape, and a tulle-trimmed hat.

And this year’s wearer of The Prawn Necklace!  You may recall that Sae wore this last year to great effect!

Not everyone is comfortable dressing up, with is just fine.  Here is Flo standing next to her brother, who graciously consented to wear exactly one costume piece: our Russian fur hat.  Next to him is Sugar Ray, who seemed just fine with putting on ridiculous things.

And in case you wanted a better look at that costume, here he is again in his purple velvet pimp hat, red faux snakeskin jacket, and Western riding chaps.  Nicely done!

And the cutest member of our ensemble, Little D, pictured here with her parents.

And more baby cuteness, just because I can.

In case you were wondering, this is what I wore.  You may recognize the Cursed Bridesmaids Dress, accented with two hip wraps and a ribbon belt, black fishnet mitts, a necklace worn backwards, bottle cap earrings, and hat ornamented with St. Patrick’s day headpiece.  I also had the skirt pinned up with a rhinestone brooch to show the crinoline underneath.  I think this may be my favorite of my Midsummers costumes so far!

And a Midsummers picture post wouldn’t be complete without showing you the food.  Every year Mariah goes all out to give her guests something not only tasty, but different enough to fit the occasion.  Here we have vases of cherries, blueberry and raspberry tarts, smoked turkey breast with grilled vegetables, hard-boiled quail eggs with a dipping salt, caprese salad, and various exotic fruits including lychee, longans, dragon fruit and cactus fruit.  There was also baked brie with rhubarb chutney, but that hadn’t come out of the oven yet.

I kinda love this picture – it looks like something out of a home decorating magazine.  These is the drinks table, with ice water, sangria, fizzy lemonade and iced tea.  There were also zinc tubs under the tables with beer and cider.

And more of the baby!  :D

 

St. John Baptist Zola

So on Saturday we had our annual Midsummers Eve party, and as I looked around Mariah’s house, crammed full with many of my nearest and dearest, all dressed up in the most ridiculous costumes $5 at a thrift store can buy, I thought to myself, “Finally, some hijinks!”  You see, as I have started to emerge from my post-Weddingpalooza haze, I have started to notice a sad lack of shenanigans in my life.  The weddings were beautiful and fun, after all, but they were not characterized by, say, madcap hilarity and silliness.  And, you know, girls just wanna have fun (and you should totally watch that video, if only because the dress she’s wearing in the beginning is pretty awesome, and reminds me of my costume Saturday night).  So Saturday night was good.

Every year the Midsummers party is different.  This year we had a strong cross-dressing theme, which was entirely unexpected.  Boy-O led the way, choosing a turquoise mu-mu for his costume, followed by his best friend Abel who picked out a dainty black sequined evening dress.  Then MDoS chose a black and cobalt blue bridesmaids dress, accessorized with a blond wig, fancy hat, and rose red shawl as a sash.  Captain Amazing’s brother wore a red fringed flapper dress, and even 007 got into the act with a dramatic hot-pink sequined number accented by a leather biker hat.  It was awesome.

This year we also got through the play in record time.  I think Abel was definitely our MVP, performing Helena in a breathy falsetto that cracked people up every time he spoke.  Boy-O pulled the part of Oberon, and was hilariously determined to rhyme his lines.  Sugar Ray also turned in a creditable performance as Puck, in a costume he put together himself consisting of a purple velvet pimp hat, red snakeskin jacket, and AnniPott’s black leather chaps from her Western riding days.  However, the cutest member of the cast was definitely little D, all of eleven months old, wearing nothing but a diaper, a white onesie, and sweet brown curls.  She was possibly the most photogenic baby I’ve ever seen.  I tried to get a picture as proof, but unfortunately my camera doesn’t do well with low-light situations, and it didn’t come out.  Hopefully I’ll have other pictures for you soon.  Indy was our designated picture taker.  Unfortunately, when she headed off to Philadelphia Sunday morning she took all the pictures with her!

Besides the Midsummers party on Saturday, probably the closest thing I’ve come to hijinks in the last few weeks was when Sugar Ray took me for a ride on his motorcycle.  I mentioned that it was going to happen, but then I never mentioned it again, which is kinda unconscionable, especially considering that this was something on my bucket list: “Ride on the back of a motorcycle, preferably behind a cute guy, going fast.”  The ride fully lived up to that whole description.  The problem, and this is why I didn’t blog about it right away, was that I didn’t like it.  And I know, I’ve been looking forward to this for years.  What girl in her right mind wouldn’t love riding on the back of a motorcycle, holding on to a cute guy, going fast?  And yet as soon as we started to move, I felt my stomach clench in a very not-good way, and thought. “Expletive.  I’m going to hate this.”

The problem was that I really hate feeling off balance.  I was talking it over with Rosie later, and we think this is at least partly because I never learned how to ride a bike when I was little, so I never learned that the feeling of giddiness when you’re off balance could be ok.  For me it has always meant incipient pain, and I cannot stop my stomach from clenching tight in a painful knot of irrational terror.  This is why I hate roller coasters, and also a big part of why I am so reluctant to let myself be dipped.  It’s a fear that I can overcome, with repeated, gut-wrenching desensitization.  It also usually takes a very patient, persistent partner.  I would still only be doing the most cautious, tiny dips if Mr. Zoot hadn’t been so determined that I would dip all the way.

So the motorcycle ride itself was really fun.  Sugar Ray was fun to ride with, and when we were going straight, I loved the rushing air and the feeling of speed.  It was just when we made even the smallest swerve that my body tightened up and I had to take deep breaths and remind myself that I was not about to die.  And you know what?  I didn’t.  And it was good.

Bl. Thomas Pickering

So remember how last Monday I was all looking forward to this lull I was sure was going to happen?  That magic time when I could maybe, like, take deep breaths and finish things?  Yeah, I lied.  There has been no lull.  In fact, this past weekend was even crazier than the one before.  I mean, we had pinatas, we had Princess Bride, we had prank calls at three in the morning, and then the weekend really got started.  If I took you through the weekend blow by blow, this post would be ridiculously long.  Plus, I feel like I’ve been posting too many of that sort of posts lately as it is.  So I’m going to try to focus in a little.  We’ll see how it goes.

The biggest thing this weekend was the Naptown Stomp DJ Workshop featuring Mike the Girl.  It was an invitation only workshop put on by the Indianapolis local swing dancers who are hoping to nurture some local DJ talent, and not incidentally, improve the quality of the DJ’d music at their dances.  One of my friends who lives there had gotten me the invite, though for a while I wasn’t sure if I could afford it.  It wasn’t the cost of the workshop itself (which was ridiculously low), but the cost of gas to get there and back.  But then I had my birthday, and when my parents asked me what I really wanted, I said, “Well, there’s this thing in Indy…” and that took care of that.  I was so excited to go, partly because I felt honored to be included, but also because while I’ve been DJing for years, but never really knew whether I was any good or not.  I was mostly DJing for the local university swing club, whom I also teach.  While they seemed to like what I played, most of them don’t know about music or swing dancing to be able to tell a really good swing song from, say, a hole in the wall.  They’d dance to just about anything.  One part of the workshop was that, for an extra small fee, you could have a DJ slot at the dance that night, after which you would get feedback from the dancers, and from Mike the Girl.  I was thrilled about this.  I figured that if I turned out to be pretty good, that would be cool, and if I turned out to be bad, well then I would know.

I also have been wanting to expand into DJing for our local weekly dances.  I really start to miss DJing over the summer break.  It would be nice to be able to play my music in more places.  Plus, if you DJ you don’t have to pay for the dance, and frankly every little bit helps these days.  Plus, as things stand, our dances are always being DJ’d by the same three people.  They’re good DJs, but sometimes a little more variety would be nice.  Over a year ago I gave SD a sample playlist, which I am almost sure she has actually looked at.  We talk about it every once in a while, but so far nothing has happened.  She has told me that, honestly, it’s just easier to have the same people always DJing than to have to set up a schedule and worry about whether people will show up.  I can understand that, but, well, I really want to DJ.  So I’m also hoping that perhaps, with a little more training under my belt, I might be able to persuade SD to give me a chance.

The workshop was wonderful.  I feel like I learned a lot, some about technical details, like how to help funky tracks sound better, and some about the theory behind playing a set of songs that make people really want to dance.  It helped me think about the music I play in new ways.  I left the workshop feeling inspired to dig deeper into my music, and to start to focus a little more on building my library of swing music.  You would think that after years of playing for swing dances, I would have a huge selection of swing songs, but the thing is that the music I really love is blues, Motown, and soul.  I tend to play a lot of that because it’s the music I feel deeply connected to.  However, a lot of it isn’t actually swing.  So I think over the next few months I’m going to challenge myself to start listening to a lot more swing music, searching out those songs that will grab me the same way that, say, Down Home Blues does every single time.  I also want to know more about musical styles, so that when someone starts talking about, say, Delta Blues vs. Boogie Woogie, I actually know what they’re talking about.

Even better than the workshop, however, was doing my DJ set.  I was so tired – I’d only slept three hours the night before (the First Saturday Women decided to have a slumber party, and no one actually sleeps at slumber parties), and then Mac and I got talking at dinner, and then I got lost on the way to the venue.  Plus, did I mention that  just when I started driving to the dance the skies decided to open up and try to wash Indianapolis off the map?  Yeah, that made things exciting too.  When I finally found the dance venue, and then found parking, it was ten minutes before my set was supposed to start.  I grabbed my bag, shoved my dance shoes in the top, and started hauling butt down the street to get there.  Thankfully, once I got upstairs, I was told that since they had gotten started late my set was pushed back twenty minutes, so I actually didn’t go on for half an hour.  I heaved a huge sigh of relief, fired up my computer, and then went to change my shoes.  And there was only one shoe in my bag.  To put this in perspective, a swing dancer’s shoes are one of their most treasured possessions.  These in particular were my beloved saddle shoes, saved for and extensively window shopped for after I’d literally danced holes in my other shoes, perfectly broken in, the shoes I hope to be wearing for the next five years.  My mind seized up in a moment of panic, and then I realized that there were really only two possibilities: either I’d accidentally left one of my shoes in my car in my hurry, or else one of them had fallen out as I was hurrying towards the club.  It didn’t really matter at that point what had happened, because right then I didn’t have time to go back out to my car, and I definitely didn’t have time to go searching around outside.  Either I would be able to find the shoe after my set was done, or it would be gone for good, and there was nothing I could do about it.  So I took a deep breath and headed back to my computer.

Did I mention that my computer was giving me fits too?  I updated my music software a little bit ago, and it decided that it now couldn’t find half my library of music that I knew was there.  For a little while I couldn’t even get the software to open.  But eventually it did, I was able to find enough good songs that my software would admit existed to put together a decent sized selection, and was able to start right on time.  And people danced.  I ended up playing a lot more Charleston songs than I really wanted to, mostly because at the beginning of the set that was what everyone seemed to want to dance to, but by the end of the set I was in more comfortable territory, ending the set with one of my favorite Bobby Darrin songs, A Quarter To Nine.  And then, when the MC was announcing the switchover, he said, “And by the way, is anyone missing a shoe?” and held up my beloved missing shoe.  It was half soaked through, but it was intact, and I think with a little TLC, it will be just fine!

And then I got feedback!  Almost all of it was good.  While I didn’t get too many superlatives, no one hated me, and most seemed to like me pretty well.  The best, however, was from Mike the Girl.  She just about covered my sheet front and back with notes, which was awesome!  She said that I was “very promising” and that she wanted to see where I would go.  And that was just great.  We talked about it some afterwards, which was also helpful, and then I decided that while I still had energy I wanted to drive home.  This probably was a very bad idea, and Mac did try a little to talk me out of it, but I just wanted to be home.  The rain had stopped, I cranked up my tunes, got a vat of coffee at the nearest drive through, and headed out.  And it was good.

To be honest, I spent most of Sunday recovering from Friday and Saturday.  I did go to see Thor with my siblings (all seven of us in driving distance made it), and I have to say that I love seeing movies with my family.  It probably isn’t very fun for the other people in the movie theater, but I have a hard time caring about that.  I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie for months, and it did not disappoint.  And now I’m looking forward even more to Captain America (coming out in August), not to mention the Avengers movie next year.  Good times ahead, my dears, good times!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I got an e-mail from Big Brother that my parents arrived safely in Korea, slept well, and got up to go to Mass the next morning.  So all is well in that quarter too.

St. John Baptist Con

On Sunday I had coffee with The Kiddo, who had just finished trying out for the Gem City Roller Girls, our local Roller Derby team.  We had a great time talking about that and other things, and I enjoyed myself a lot laughing at the faces she made while trying to find a sitting position that didn’t press on her large butt-bruise from falling during try-outs.  We went to Mass together afterwards, and I enjoyed myself even more snickering at the faces she made while slowly carefully pulling herself to her feet for the Gospel, or lowering herself to her knees to pray.  It was awesome.  I’ve been a little interested in roller derby ever since a link for Coraline related knitting took me to Joan of Dark’s blog, which has lived in my Google reader ever since.  (No, I haven’t seen Whip It.  Yes, it’s now in my Netflix queue.)  One of the cool things about roller derby is the awesome names all the players choose, full of punny attitude, names like Abby Noxious, or Betty Ford Galaxy.  I asked The Kiddo what her name would be, and she said she didn’t know, that she would have to earn it by mastering certain skills, and then given it by the team.

This made me start thinking about what roller girl name I would want.  At first I thought some kind of pun on B or Bee (B is the only nickname I’ve ever gotten that has ever stuck).  Except I couldn’t think of anything appropriately feisty.  I thought of something to do with the one joke on my name I know (Q: What do you call a pyromaniac who owes money?  A: Bernadette – burn-a-debt.  Yes, I know it’s not very good.).  Or I could go with something like Mabel The Destroyer, after my character in the feature length movie we made (I would love to see that character done over as a derby girl), or maybe Sacralicious Sue.  There aren’t any Mabels or (Mables) on the list, but they already have a Sacralicious, to maybe that’s out.  Of course, in order to get a roller derby name, first I’d have to be a roller derby girl, which means I’d have to learn how to roller skate.  I don’t roller skate.  Not ever.  So I guess I’ll have to content myself with bringing my knitting to the home games and cheering The Kiddo on from the stands.

It was really a fun weekend.  Friday evening I drove down to Westchester (about halfway between here and Cincinnati) for a swing dance the young adult ministry at St. John the Evangelist was putting on.  Marilyn, a girl I know from our Wednesday night swing dances, had been promoting it.  She’s one of the few practicing Catholic swing dancers I know, and I thought it would be wonderful to know a few more.  Plus when I looked at the list of people who had said they were coming on facebook, I saw Sugarbowl, one of my favorite leads, on the list.  So I printed off the directions and headed down.  And, you know, it was fun.  It ended up being a pretty small dance, so I didn’t meet many other Catholics.  But there were some dancers from Cincinnati there, and a few other friends.  The Hat also drove down from Dayton, so we were represented.  The fun part was that there were more guys than girls, particularly among the swing dancers Marilyn had recruited, so I danced to my heart’s content.  I stayed until the end, picked up some flyers for the retreat St. John’s is putting on in January, and came home tired and happy.

Speaking of Sugarbowl, I don’t usually explain nicknames, but I think I kinda have to explain this one.  He and I always have a good time dancing together, particularly since we both have a very playful attitude towards dancing, always ready to be silly and ham things up.  One night when we were dancing, he kept leading me in the moves for “I’m a little teapot”, including pouring the tea out on various other couples on the floor.  It was awesome, and afterwards I tried to tell him about a silly thing I’d seen, where a guy sang the first two lines of I’m A Little Teapot, except instead of putting one arm out for the spout, he put both hands on his hips, then looked down at himself and exclaimed, “I’m a sugarbowl!” I was acting it out, and when I got to the punchline, Sugarbowl gave me a very appreciative grin and said, “Well, yeah you are!” So, um, yeah.  He’s Sugarbowl.

On Saturday, Mariah had her Autumn Dinner.  A while back when she took possession of Jacob’s fire pit, she decided that she wanted to have a small group of people over to hang out by the fire pit and enjoy cigars and port.  However, in order to lure the people over, she decided to have a dinner first.  It was myself, Rosie, Sweetness and Sweetness’s dairy farmer (apparently there are perks to moving way up north to farming country), Mr. Maker, the Thinker, and a few others who don’t have nicknames yet.  We had a great dinner, but although Rosie had a roaring fire going in the fire pit afterwards, the night was too cold to lure most of us out.  I had a great time, particularly getting to know Sweetness’s farmer a little better.  He said that one of these days he might actually bring me a duck to roast.  (Him: What condition would you like the duck to be in? Me: Dead.)  And then afterwards I got to go home and sleep a little longer than usual.  Very nice.

St. Faustina

So at the party Saturday night some of the guys decided to try to spook me.  They saw a PVC pipe in the back yard fall over for no apparent reason, and this gave them the idea that maybe they could convince me that my house was haunted, and get all freaked out and stuff.  I think it’s sortof the same principle as a little boy shoving a frog in a little girl’s face to watch her scream and run away.   Anyway, the first I heard of this was when PM found me in the kitchen, all full of suppressed excitement.  He started with asking me whether I’d heard of haunted PVC.  I looked at him a little over the rim of my glasses and replied, “Haunted… PVC?”  He stopped a moment and said, “Uh, I mean, the, um, Pueblo Village Community!  Those poor Indians were buried… (big pause here for dramatic effect) UNDER YOUR HOUSE!” 

I started to giggle.  I don’t think this was quite the reaction he was looking for.  Right about then The Thinker and Stalwart poked their heads through the doorway, their faces bright with anticipation.  I swallowed my giggles and waited to see what would happen next.  PM turned to the other guys for reinforcement.  “Yeah, the, um, Pueblo village massacre.”  “Oh, yeah!” chimed in The Thinker, “The one in 1832!  And then they buried them somewhere right around here, right?”  I looked at him, and my giggles turned into full out laughter.  You would think at that point they would give up, but these guys are persistent.  They kept trying to convince me first that there were Indians buried in my basement (my reaction: “Woohoo!  Holy martyrs who can pray for me!”), second that I should be spooked by this idea.  And, well, I think I just didn’t watch the right movies when I was a kid.  After a while the guys did get a little frustrated and asked me what would freak me out.  And, well, I couldn’t think of anything.  Except there was that time a bunch of us were spending the night at an ex-convent in northern Wisconsin, and we thought there was a dead body in one of the rooms, except it turned out to be the life size body of Jesus they had taken off of the cross in the church while they were doing renovations.  That was pretty freaky.

True story.

Anyway, it was a great party.  I laughed a lot, drank a little, and fed people delicious food.  We had a good group of people.  It was a lot of fun seeing our various groups of friends mix.  That’s one of the fun things about having parties like this: seeing people who otherwise wouldn’t know each other make connections.

In other news, I’ve got an interview tomorrow.  Not nervous about that at all, no…