Sunday, November 16, 2008

Home Again Etc.

The QoBoho (people are getting confused by the term QOB. It means QUEEN OF BOHEMIA, not whatever other terrible thing y'all think it does and refers to my auntie and perhaps I will change it, thus, to QoBoho just so everyone can get even more confused. I mean, sheesh.) Anyway, she's home. She came home on Friday and seems to be pretty much fully recovered, if a bit lonely for the Relaxation Station. Her spleen is healing right up all by itself and she's feeling chipper. She's moved upstairs and seems to prefer it and eventually, when I get up the nerve, I'm going to drill a hole in the floor and pull the cable upstairs so she can have TV too. I mean, drilling a hole in the floor - what could possibly go wrong? Be afraid. I am.

My younger brother also arrived on Thursday evening, at which point we went out to dinner at Cocina Latina, which, I am sorry to report, was not as good as I had been talking it up to be. Sigh. So it's been kind of a full weekend what with one thing and another and thus I have not blogged although, actually, I haven't gotten all that much accomplished, alas. I hung up a towel rack, which was harder than you might think, and fixed a drawer, which was easier, and raked a bunch of leaves, which was unremarkable except for the part where I realized I was also raking up a lot of dogshit, ew. I also went to the library and the used book store and now I don't want to do anything but read anyway, but of course there are the usual bazillion things to do.

My brother asked me if I remembered the dance routine I did in 10th grade to a Jethro Tull song. I do, actually - well, I don't remember the dance itself, but I do remember looking for the song, because my roommate and I had to choreograph and perform something at the recital or fail Modern Dance. That's how dedicated a student I was in 10th grade: I nearly flunked Modern Dance. My friend and I saved ourselves at the last minute, though, by finding the single shortest song we could on our pooled records, which leaned heavily, in my case, towards Jethro Tull. Yes, I was one of those geeky teens who thought that she had found the secret of the universe in Songs from the Wood. Eeep. Anyway, my brother, who apparently has these vivid, more vivid than mine, memories of the whole thing, thinks it was this song and I believe he may be right. All I know is that it was as short as we thought we could get away with, we didn't fall down on stage and we got a grudging C or something from the evil and loathed Miss Hart.

Apparently they don't have Modern Dance in high schools anymore, which means that there are no longer flocks of teenage girls in black leotards rushing through the hallways with their arms behind them, for which, I suppose, we should all be grateful. But when I was a teenager, I had to take sports and one of the sports available for girls was Modern Dance, which was infinitely better than any of the other sports which all involved, shudder, actual sports activity. I thought I could rush around elegantly in a black leotard with the best of them but unfortunately I was, at age 15, as tall as I am now, which is to say 5'10" and fifty or more pounds thinner, which meant, basically, that beanpole was a compliment. I disappeared if I stood sideways or, that is, I would have if I hadn't been wearing, pretty much always, a giant checked lumberjack wool shirt over a torn Grateful Dead t-shirt, handmade denim skirt and Chinese black cotton shoes held together with safety pins. And, let us not forget, bottle bottom tortoise shell glasses. This amazingly elegant personal style statement, my complete and utter lack of coordination and my newly discovered fondness for illicit herbal substances meant that I was pretty much always falling down: my feet would get numb in those damn shoes and plus I couldn't see anything anyway, since I was always losing my glasses. So I was not exactly a star at Modern Dance but, hell, I did my part for the late seventies and danced at school - briefly, very briefly - to Jethro Tull. Thank god they didn't have video cameras yet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well if no one else is going to comment, then I'll say it. I'm sure you were spectacular in those spectacles. They must have made your big eyes look absolutely enormous. And black leotards to boot? My, my, my. ;-)