St. Paramon & Companions

On facebook AnniPotts said that the fact that we’re taking days to post about The Duchess’s wedding this past Saturday is proof that a really, really good time was genuinely had by all.  I think there’s some truth to this.  It was a beautiful wedding, a beautiful day, and a wonderful thing to see my sister joined to the man who is so utterly right for her.  The Duchess was gorgeous.  Her dress turned out beautifully.  Standing in the bright sunshine, with the breeze wafting her exquisite cathedral length veil, surrounded by her bevy of ridiculously adorable flower girls, she looked so perfect it felt like we were in the middle of a really high end perfume commercial.  It was a great and good thing.

I’m so glad it’s over.

I did get my dress done in time.  Barely.  I finished hemming it 15 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start.  Every spare moment I had between Wednesday and the wedding was spent sewing.  The dress itself came together fairly easily, which was a nice confidence builder after the ordeal of the Cursed Bridesmaid Dress.  At the last minute I panicked a little because I couldn’t find my crinoline, which is usually necessary to make these 50s style dresses look right.  However, the lining and the dress fabric pleated together at the waist made the skirt just puffy enough that it didn’t need a crinoline after all.  I’m pretty pleased about how it turned out.  Plus, it really is that magical, mythical creature, the bridesmaid dress you can wear again.  In fact, I already have, to work on Monday.  It was pretty sweet.

My house is full of flowers.  There’s the two buckets still half full of roses in the dining room, the huge cornucopia filled with mums and deep red calla lilies on the table, the long boxes half full of stems and leaves in random corners, the other buckets with bits of leftover greenery, and the plates of forgotten boutonnieres that keep turning up in odd locations.  Last night when I was heading out the door to swing club, I found a plate of them (we were storing them on paper plates inserted into ziplock bags) on the floor next to my speaker bag.  I think they were the ones that were supposed to go on the fathers of the bride and groom.  I grabbed them, and took them with me to swing dancing, where I gave one to Ms. K for being an amazing swing club president, and one to one of the guys in my class for pulling his shirt halfway over his face as a makeshift ninja mask while he crept around his follow after Mr. Zoot told them that they should be swing ninjas.  What Mr. Zoot meant was that they shouldn’t be clumping their feet along as if they were wearing iron boots, but the ninja mask was so awesome.  And then, when I just about doubled over laughing, he did it again!  I think that’s totally boutonniere worthy.

The reason why we have random boutonnieres all over the place is because we made about a million of them.  The Duchess had a whole choir of musicians, and lots of readers, plus ring bearers and others, all of whom she wanted to have flowers.  So we made a ton of them, with different designs specifically for the different types of people we were making them for.  And then, on the morning of the wedding, somehow most of them never made it down to the church.  I’m not sure what happened to a lot of them.  I haven’t found any more today.  But you never know.  They’re… lurking.

And now, hopefully, we are done with the Year of Weddings.  Frankly, after all the weddings, the holidays are looking a bit like a walk in the park.  (Famous last words…)  Which reminds me, wasn’t there some Christmas knitting I was supposed to be doing?

Pictures soon!

All Souls’ Day

Monday night at Swing Club, Mr. Zoot and I were teaching a move called the Reject, where the follow walks forward into her lead’s arm.  Now if she turns as she’s walking, as she ought, she’ll end up with her back against her partner’s arm, ready to execute the second half of the move.  If she doesn’t turn, whether because she wasn’t paying attention or because her partner didn’t actually lead her to turn, she’s walking straight ahead into her partner’s outstretched arm.  Which can lead to, um, awkwardness, depending on height and/or hand placement.  Technically, the name for this awkwardness is Accidental Boob/Butt Grab, or ABG.  And, you know, it happens.  You’ve got two bodies in motion, sometimes people move in unexpected ways, and suddenly you’re touching something you really didn’t mean to be touching.  It’s an accident, you giggle, you apologize, and you move on.

Sometimes, however, it’s not an accident.  I remember dancing years ago with a certain friend.  The first time he got himself a handful, I was pretty sure it was an accident, so I let it slide.  The second time I knew for sure it wasn’t, and gave him A Look.  He turned a rather fetching deep pink, promptly apologized, and behaved with the utmost propriety for the rest of the dance (which is part of why we’re still friends).  Or then there was another guy who, whenever I danced with him, seemed to always work in the Inside Turn Speed Bumps.  He was such a very proper young man that it never occurred to me that this might not be an accident.  In fact, since he was much better than I was, I figured that somehow it was my fault – that I was turning too fast or something.  So, in all innocence, I decided to bring it up in our weekly practice session.  It’s a testimony to my blinding cluelessness that I was a little disappointed that the senior dancer I was working with didn’t give me anything to do to fix the problem.  It wasn’t until I thought about it later that I realized what was really going on, and then I had to shake my head at myself.  Still, I never had that problem with the guy again, so one way or another, the problem got fixed!

However, those incidents were small stuff compared with the first time I ever had a dance partner put his hands where he shouldn’t.  That time it was all Bounce’s fault.  I had only been dancing for a few months, and was taking Swing I for the second time.  Bounce was teaching with Belle, and when he was teaching Inside Turns, he made a big point about how the lead should drop his left hand immediately after leading the turn because, “you might get slapped, or you might make a new friend!”  The guy I was in the rotation with, much older than me and rather creepy in a everything-I-say-is-secretly-a-dirty-joke kind of way, decided that he wanted to find out if I was his new friend.  Even though he had led the move perfectly before Bounce decided to make his little joke, the next time he led it, he deliberately didn’t drop the hand.  And it was just so gross.  When the move was done I took a deep breath, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Next time, you’re going to drop the hand.”  He colored, looked shiftily anywhere but at me, and agreed.  And he dropped the hand.  Still, once burned… for months I couldn’t follow an inside turn without tucking my free arm protectively across my chest.  And the next time I took Bounce’s Swing I class (I ended up taking it 3 or 4 times because it was the only class WSU offered), I specially went to Bounce and requested that he not make that joke ever again.  Usually he remembers.

Anyway, to get back to my original story, on Monday night after we taught our students how to avoid Awkwardness while performing the move in question, I made a joke about how we didn’t teach the How To Feel Up Your Partner class.  That’s when Mr. Zoot told me that there were actual instructional videos out there on the interwebs on How To Feel Up Your Dance Partner.  He told me that they were made as a joke, but that they were awesome, and that I should check them out.  So I did.  And they really kinda are.  I would embed one or two of them here, but the website won’t allow it.  So if you’re not easily offended, and you’d like to laugh a little this gorgeous Wednesday afternoon, go check it out!

In other news, I have my little car Vanya back!  It’s such a relief to be driving it again.  I feel a little like Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd (at last my arm is complete again!), except for it’d have to be my foot, or perhaps my butt.  Whatever part of me connects the most with my car.  Regardless, I’m thrilled to have it, and it’s superb gas mileage back.

Also, holy cow, how did it get to be November so quickly?!

Sts. Cosmas & Damian

My dears, the cold lingers on, but I think we’re slowly but surely showing it the door.  On Saturday I felt better enough to be overconfident, and in a burst of energy, did a mammoth grocery shopping trip, and then came home and cooked up a storm.  I’d been craving chicken soup, and I remembered reading a recipe for roasted chicken soup where your roasted the chicken first for extra flavor before making your chicken broth with the bones.  So I put a chicken in the oven to roast on a bed of baby potatoes from the farmers market, and then started a big pot of vegetable soup.  I had a huge cabbage I’d brought home from Columbus the weekend before (it’s a long story), so I started that cooking with carrots, onions and celery, plus some ground venison for flavor.  And then, I have all these soup bones stashed in the freezer, and lately Rosie’s been making noises about how she’d really like to have more room for her stuff in there.  So I pulled a ham bone out and started a big batch of pinto beans in the slow cooker, adding a few jalapenos and some garlic.

Right about when everything was in ready to simmer for a while/safely in the oven/in the slow cooker, I completely ran out of steam.  I spent the rest of the evening curled up on the couch watching movies (Nacho Libre and Easy A), getting up every once in a while to stir my various pots.  By the time the chicken and soup were done, I realized that I had seriously overextended myself.  I had just enough energy to put the cooked food away in the fridge, and then collapse into bed.

Sunday I woke up just barely in time to get over to Mom & Dad’s for Sae’s birthday brunch.  I was all wobbly and weak again, and though my cough wasn’t as violent as it had been Friday, it was still pretty bad.  I spent most of the party curled up on the couch, working on the first of a pair of baby socks for Baby Schmoo.

Speaking of whom, Sae had many pictures from her most recent ultrasound to share with us.  Baby Schmoo is growing by leaps and bounds, though we still don’t know whether it’s a He-Schmoo or a She-Schmoo.  Both Sae and Mr. T are much happier now that Sae’s near-constant morning sickness is starting to ease.  Sae has a little color in her face again, and Mr. T has relaxed a lot now that his wife isn’t always on the verge of casting up her accounts.

There was a lot of family news to pass around.  Boy-O is making plans to move out of The Family Homestead in just a few weeks.  He and a few friends have gotten an apartment out by Wright State, and are planning to set up their bachelor pad together.  It’s a big change, to have the youngest in the family setting out on his own.  I think it’s a little sad for Mom & Dad, but Indy seems rather excited about it.  She’s already making plans to lay claim to Boy-O’s room as soon as he’s vacated it and turn it into an artist’s studio.

We also did a little Bridal Shower planning.  The Duchess’s big Weekend of Bridal Showers is fast approaching.  We’re going to have two, one for the younger ladies hosted by one of our old CL friends (I know she must have a nickname, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was) on Saturday, and another hosted by Mariah (she’s The Duchess’s Maid of Honor) for the family and older female friends on Sunday.  It’s going to be quite the weekend, especially since it’s the same weekend as the Yellow Springs Street Fair, and Mariah is trying to scheme a way to work that in there too.  We’ll see how that goes.

One of the cool things about the weekend was having AnniPotts with us.  It’s been so great having her so close – only an hour away in Cincinnati instead of multiple days away in South Dakota or Texas.  It’s actually been hard for her to choose to spend time down in Cincinnati with her roommates, whom she’s supposed to be living in community with, because her family is so relatively close and easily accessible.  And of course, we keep doing cool things and inviting her along (we’re just like that).  It’s such a delight having her around that it’s hard to remember that she has any obligations  besides us!

Now it’s Monday evening, and I’m home again after teaching swing dancing for the UD Swing Club.  Tonight we split the club into Swing I (which I teach with Mr. Zoot) and Swing II (taught by Bounce and Red) for the first time.  Mr. Zoot and I had a good time coaxing our Swing I students through the fundamentals of their first ever swingouts.  They were all pulling off actual recognizable Lindy basics by the end of the class, which is no small feat, and a lot of them stayed to dance for a while afterwards.  Sometimes I forget how deeply satisfying it is to coax new dancers through this first phase, when everything seems so impossible and intimidating.  I love watching them gain confidence, start smiling and enjoying themselves.  It reminds me of why I keep teaching.

It’s been a busy day, and despite my sickness, it was a busy weekend!  As soon as I hit publish, I’m going to turn the computer off and head off for some well-deserved rest.  Tomorrow’s going to be another full day.

Good night!

St. Anna the Prophetess

Swing club started up again Monday night.  It’s always interesting teaching again after taking a break for a while.  We had a big crowd – I have no idea exactly how many, but somewhere around 70-80 maybe? – and, man, they could not stop talking!  Bounce tried the Peter “Lindy God” Strom “1-2-3-shush!” technique, but alas, that doesn’t work so well for mere mortals.  I think we’re going to have to figure something else out.

This fall makes six years that I’ve been swing dancing, and a bit over four that I’ve been teaching.  It seems like a lifetime ago that I walked into the community center at Wegerzyn and took my first lesson.  I fell in love so hard and fast with swing dancing – my second lesson was the very next day, and then I went dancing again only two days later.  At the same time, it’s hard to remember a time when I wasn’t a swing dancer, when I didn’t know what to do with my body on a dance floor.  I know that I’ve worked hard to become the dancer I am today.  There are large parts of dancing that did not come easily to me.  But dancing always seemed so right for me, the kind of thing that made it worth conquering my fears and insecurities in order to be able to have the dances I knew were waiting for me.

I’m still not done as a dancer.  I feel like I’ve reached a plateau.  Some of the things that are holding me back from reaching the next level are physical (asthma, weight, etc.), some are psychological (see also: dipping issues), and some are a simple matter of logistics.  I can’t afford to travel to out of town events where I could get the instruction I would need, and the practice dancing with other dancers on my level.  I can’t afford the gas to travel to dances at nearby cities.  Sometimes it’s a struggle just to afford dancing here in town.  Maybe the slightly improved job situation will help with that, but we’ll have to see.  Still, there’s a lot that I can do to improve my own dancing even without taking the classes and workshops.  I feel like I am a much more relaxed and musical dancer now than I was two years ago, and I achieved that while barely travelling anywhere.  So maybe there’s hope for me yet.

In other news, today I finally made the phone call to start the process of becoming a Vigil Volunteer for our local Hospice.  This is a relatively new volunteering opportunity, in which you come in to sit with people who are nearing death and stay with them until the end.  Not everyone who comes to Hospice has family who can be with them, or sometimes that family cannot handle being there at such an intense time.  So I would be a sort of volunteer on call for when they needed me.

I heard about this opportunity a while back from The Girl Next Door, and I immediately thought that it was something I could do.  I’ve kept vigil at a deathbed twice in my life, once for my grandmother and once for my brother.  It’s important for someone to be there, to witness the event that is happening.  Plus, death doesn’t freak me out like it does some people.  Everyone’s going to die sometime.  From a certain perspective, death is what gives meaning to life.  Just like no woman should have to give birth alone, no one should have to die alone.  So hopefully once I finish my training, I can help keep a few people company in the last moments of their life.

I think this volunteering opportunity might be something big for me.  It feels like a big step towards something big and unknown.  Coming into contact with death changes people.  It’s that confrontation with something so much bigger than we are, something so inexorable.  I don’t know how it’s going to change me, but I think I’m, not ready, but willing for the change.

St. Athanasius

At Mai & Nameless’s wedding yesterday Bounce asked me what I was going to do with my Monday nights now that UD Swing Club is done for the year.  I told him that I didn’t actually have any free time until after the Weddingpalooza in June, but secretly I was really looking forward to having a free evening all to myself.  Then tonight, as I was chatting online with Big Brother, The Young Queen, and another friend, and texting Mr. Zoot while reading and commenting on blog posts, I realized that a nice quiet evening all to myself might be a little relative.  Still, it’s been lovely to stay home.  I even took a nap after work just because I could.  Well, and also because I’ve been tired all day, but that’s another story.

Actually, I think we’re about to enter the lull before the storm, and never have I looked forward to a lull more!  Mom and Dad are leaving on Thursday for Korea to attend Big Brother and Sunny’s wedding, so there won’t be any family gatherings for a while.  All the bridal showers are over, and there’s no more family birthdays until Rosie’s on the 20th.  I might be able to find the time to, I dunno, take a deep breath sometime in here.  And that would be a lovely thing.

All in all, for such a busy weekend, everything went surprisingly well.  Friday night I traveled down to Westchester and sat on the floor of Mai’s bathroom taking thorns off the stems of dozens and dozens of roses.  Saturday morning I got up early to make it to the BMV to renew my license plates and go grocery shopping for my birthday dinner before heading to Aunt & Uncle S’s to help get ready for Sae’s shower.  It was a very nice shower, which was wonderful considering I find most bridal (and baby) showers to be particularly refined forms of torture.  One of the drinks options was a large pitcher of very tasty sangria, which may have helped.  Also, instead of the ubiquitous Toilet Paper Bridal Gown game, we decided to make Plastic Wrap Lingerie instead.  It was kinda awesome.  Plastic wrap works much better (that whole sticking-to-itself thing), and the fashion show at the end had everyone laughing until they cried.  I may be a little biased – my team did win, after all, with a strapless confection with a pencil skirt with a flounce held on with a bow on the bottom, a rose stuck in the décolletage, another long-streamer-ed bow adding interest to the back, and a bird-cage veil fascinator rounding out the look.

After the shower, we cleaned up and then headed over to The Family Homestead for my birthday dinner.  Everyone was pretty exhausted, so it was mostly me, Rosie, Dad, Boy-O and Mr. Maker preparing the meal.  We had homemade pizza, a huge salad, and Armadillo Eggs.  I’d been wanting to make them again ever since the Superbowl, but this was really my first chance.  It was a good dinner, and I was touched that so many family members were able to make it even on this crazy weekend.  Even Mr. T drove up for it, recklessly ignoring his unvacuumed house (he was getting ready for Fleur’s First Communion brunch the next day).

I had been entertaining grandiose delusions of going home after my birthday dinner and sewing a version of my bridesmaids dress to wear to Mai & Nameless’s wedding the next day (I did have it all cut out, after all).  Unfortunately, I ended up getting sucked into the internet instead.  When I finally disconnected and started to go up to bed I remembered that what I had really needed to do was block Fleur’s First Communion shawl so that I could give it to her the next day.  At this point it was well past midnight, I was beat, and the only flat surface available for me to block something on was… my bed.  Still, if there’s anything I deeply believe, it’s that you keep your promises to children.  So I put a clean sheet on my bed, soaked the shawl in a little wool wash, blocked the shawl, turned a fan on to help it dry quickly, and went back downstairs to try to sleep on the couch.

Somehow I got up on time the next morning, and was able to get out the door on time.  Fleur’s shawl was dry, and beautiful (don’t worry, there will be pictures), and I made it down to Middletown in time to actually sit with Sae & Mr. T in the family pew up front.  Fleur looked beautiful in a ruffly cupcake of a dress with more sequins than you would think any eight year old would need.  I had just enough time after Mass to go back to her house, give her the completed shawl, watch the joy and wonder on her face when she opened it, and snap a quick picture, and then it was off again for Mai & Nameless’s wedding in Cincinnati.

It was a lovely wedding.  The best part was blowing bubbles around the table with my swing dancing friends, and taking pictures in the photo booth.  I came home tired out, with a whole armful of roses and much more than my share of the wedding favors: little potted up succulents.  I do love succulents.  And then there was some hanging out at home with Rosie and Boy-O, then stumbling up to bed.  And the day was done.