BerthaBlog

The spirit of dance is not in me. In fact, I think it fears me. I am completely lacking in grace or coordination. Sometimes, going through a door, I miss. Last week I was trying to get my hair into a ponytail while walking down the hall, and managed to crack my elbow on the doorbell box. I’m so accustomed to these mishaps that I barely notice them; frequently I have scrapes and bruises with no memory of how they came to be there.

I remember taking ballet lessons when I was a kid. I was the remedial student. My only clear memory remaining is of a class exercise wherein we were all supposed to link arms and trip daintily from one side of the room to the other. I was about as coordinated then as I am now; I was a staggering wildebeest attempting to leap with lightly-bounding gazelles. I kept up as long as I could, and when at last I fell I brought the whole leggy troupe down in a slapstick domino chain that would have made the Stooges proud.

Glancing up from the floor I saw the instructor drop her face into her hands and shake her head. It was then that I understood that I was not destined to be a dancer.

What the hell, I wanted to be a superhero too. Some goals are simply beyond our capabilities—but we can still pretend when we’re alone in the house.

To that end I’ve started taking classes in belly dance. I may still be the remedial student, but at least in this one I won’t bring the rest of the group down with me. I can just twitch and flail harmlessly enough in the class, and then come home and pretend I am Karimah, Mistress to Sultan Imad and favorite of the harem. Hey, you gotta find your own ways to keep entertained while you’re doing the laundry.

Regarding that bruised elbow I whanged on the doorbell box—later that same day I made some comment to my mate about how I couldn’t parallel park, “even in my old Bobcat, and I could drive that thing like an extension of my own body.”

He was silent a moment. “I was going to say something about driving that car like an extension of your own body, but then I thought about how you maneuver your actual body, and I really couldn’t say anything.”

I do it every year. I think, this year I’ll be organized; this year, I’ll have the costumes and the decorations and the cards and the gifts all ready weeks before the holiday itself. At the beginning of the month, I even went out and got some fabric and patterns to make Halloween costumes for the kids. Weeks to go before Halloween. Finally, I was organized!

I was so organized, in fact, that I felt I had accomplished something and never felt any real urgency to actually make those costumes. This afternoon it occurred to me—as I was passing by the Halloween Express store—that Halloween is the day after tomorrow, I haven’t even started on those costumes I’ve had planned all month, and I know nothing about sewing. Given a couple of weeks—say, the couple of weeks I had when I started on this adventure—I could probably figure out how to make a passable costume. Given two days, and a temperament that tends to get freaked out under deadline pressure, and it’s a pretty good bet that hand-made costumes were not happening this year.

I went into Halloween Express and got some.

I always have such good intentions. I love holidays, and I always want to do lots of decorating for the events. But I’m also prone to overkill; my personal motto is “anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” I don’t just want a few Halloweeny trinkets on the table, I want Halloween lights around the gutters and Halloween tableaux on the porch, and cobwebs and scary things all through the house, and spooky music playing, and all the other geegaws that Wal-Mart trots out to tempt me at this time of year. Good thing I hate shopping or I’d probably wind up buying all of it.

Oh well. At least I’ve got the costumes and the candy, which are the main things the kids are interested in. And next year I’ll be organized and have the costumes and the decorations and the lights and the music…

On an unrelated note: I’m not usually into this sort of thing, but I must admit, these are some nice tits.