how old is your soul?

...and nice control, great penché, make sure
to straighten that base leg and point your foot. good job..."

i've been hobbling around my house, choreographing, pretending to attempt shoulder stands and waving my arms around as though i'm executing death-defying turn sequences. i rely on my dancing homunculus to determine whether certain movements are feasable. sadly, i don't even try anymore and it makes me a little sad. i miss dancing. i have dreams of doing five, six, and seven effortless pirouettes. i'm not joking. the spirit is willing, but the flesh is... scared.

recently, i discovered a quote from baseball hall of famer, satchel paige:

"how old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"
are you an adult impostor or have you always been beyond your years?

thea x-mou

greek food! my favorite... or something

so my aunt who lives across the street has decided that she can exert gentle but firm pressure on us to have plans with her. she's someone that, for my entire life, i saw maybe twice a year at weddings and whatnot, but just sunday, the doorbell rings. i am in the laundry room, thinking it's the pizza we ordered when i hear casey upstairs talking in a very animated voice, as though to a female as he's wont to do. i walk up the stairs while he's running down, yelling my name. we meet on the landing and, through a gritted smile, says "it's aunt x!" she's on the porch with her ancient bichon frise.

i go out and she grabs my cheek saying, "you disappear, poh-lah. where you bin?" she then tells me how many times that she called me and i don't pick up. now, i know she called once while we were in hawaii, and truth be told, i didn't call her back. her message was, "i bin busy with weddeens and chreesenings... and funerals and other bad thin's. an' now i call you for you to come to my house an' you not dere." needless to report, i was not exactly chomping at the bit to return that one.

to make matters worse, i asked her if she was going to my cousin's christening. i was going to offer to drive her since she doesn't drive on the highways. well, i guess she wasn't invited, i guess, so my attempt to be nice blew up in my face. she was severely bummed when i mentioned it -- apparently, she didn't know about it. given how large my family is, i can see that she might not have been invited, you know? you can only invite so many people to these shindigs.

so, she's basically cornered us to come to her house and have dinner. she quizzed us about what we ate ["you don' get weak from no eateen meat?"] and when we said pasta and salad would be totally great, got mildly insulted at our suggestion of such a simple meal. we offered several times to bring something and she declined. so we're on for thursday.

she's definitely big on guilting me into doing things [nothing like greek guilt], and up to now, i've been okay, but this can only last so long. something's got to give and it aint me!

after she left, casey shut the door and asked, "so we're moving, right?" what do we do?

monday is numbday

mmmm... mondays...

y'ever just feel like you're in suspended animation? like a savory morsel congealed in a mold of translucent, glistening aspic? okay, maybe you never thought of it that way, but... try for a second.

back to rita and the dance floor porn... well, hurricane rita scared us out of going to the wedding on santa rosa beach. we were supposed to fly through dallas and weren't about to chance it. the wedding ended up having to be moved to the steps of a building and off the beach, unfortunately. the reception was in a tent with an uncovered, cobblestone floor and my friend jeannine sprained her ankle dancing on it in heels. the bride, i heard, looked spectacular: tanned and high-lighted to spunsugar perfection. the food was scrumptious, and the favors were just so nifty and cute.

there's more to life than this... instead of flying down, we snagged a bubble tea and put together a björk mix for the dance team i'm teaching in three [count 'em: three] weeks. made up a pretty slick turn sequence already. ah, progress.

happy camper... we really wanna go camping. the problem is we always have this strong desire too late -- we have no weekends left and all the good sites have been reserved. doesn't matter: hiking in hawaii has given us the bug. we'll see if we can swing it -- this is the last weekend.

christening? seems an odd gerund, that: christening. anyway, i have one this weekend. what do i wear? what to i bring? i've been avoiding these for so long, i have no idea. help a heathen out!

svenska flicka!

now, if i could just get some veggie swedish meatballs...

i fired up treehugger today to discover more evidence that sweden is utopia. despite some facts about their health care and economy that can make your die-hard capitalist american turn a nose up in disdain, there's an idealism there that just makes me proud to be one-eighth swedish.

other reasons i love sweden:

• something like 100% literacy
  
• volvo's 'your concept car' designed by and for women
  
• beautiful furniture
  
• patronymic names are groovy
  
• the 'right of public access' law
  
• nudity is viewed as natural -- not always sexualized
  
• lots of really hot-looking people... naked!

pronunskiation

i think i actually get dumber every time i hear someone say the following words:

athaletics

missourah

realator

footay

this incantation sends me into epileptic fits. as a matter of fact, i have my wallet poised in my mouth at this very moment in case i adskfjasdkfjffggggggggggggggggggg

baby, can't you see... i'm callin'...

"take me off your mailing list... or i'll eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice venti mocha frappucino. ftt-ftt-ftt-ftt!"

it's a toxic time of year, people, and in the words of mama britney: i'm slippin' under.

calling non-returning customers: i am following up with people who did not use my company these days. it entails a lot of leaving voicemails and emails, and about a quarter of the time, i reach a live person. the process in and of itself isn't bad -- talking to customers and hearing about how they missed us always regenerates my mood. even having a discussion or email correspondence with those who are skeptical about us is really interesting, too. i love networking for networking sake, and i value my bonds with those that are in my field but not my clients. there is usually a fraction of people that elect not to return my calls or emails or divulge their opinions on things, and those people just confound me -- why not? why play hard to get? people that are just plain ol' ugly are the ones that wreck my buzz. i actually had a woman actually call me back to yell at me for leaving her a message at home. she didn't have any thing redeeming to offer except a nasty attitude which unfortunately remain in my mind when i think of that account. when politely asked why they didn't come back, she growled, "because we didn't feel like it, okay?!" wtf! you know the adage -- it takes something like eleven positive comments to combat one negative. well, the happy fairies usually rack up a big i.o.u. in the fall.

hurricane rita: i am also supposed to go to a wedding this weekend on santa rosa beach in florida. that was going to be a nice little detox, but the weather is looking like it may not be playing nice. we're supposed to fly through dfw and if things don't improve, we may have to cancel. i know i just got back from a glorious vacation, but i was still excited for another little trip. these excursions are like stepping stones to keep me happy and looking forward to the future, you know?

choreo': i have taken on another choreography job and things are moving very slowly... as in i don't even have music yet and i'm supposed to fly to them to teach in less than a month. the muses hover reluctantly, arms crossed, tapping their toes, looking for the exit.

early autumn just leaves me feeling so hopeless sometimes. it's such a steep denouement from the unavoidably cheerful summertime. i have camp crash and i didn't teach this summer. i have the back-to-school blues at 32.

follow me to see our kauai photo album!

kauai 2005

brennecke's beach

[tap, tap, tap] is this thing on? testing one, two...

casey and i went back to splendiferous kauai. this time, my sister dina and her husband rick came with us. what strengthened our love for this island is that, despite the fact that we felt we had done about everything there is to do there last year, we did even more this year! the trip was actually supposed to be only nine days, but about halfway in, we started to panic and decided to extend the day another two. now, i am inundated with much catching up -- just getting up to speed on all my blog-reading [let alone writing] gives me anxiety.

instead of chucking it all and not writing anything, or spending hours and hours with an extensive play-by-play of our travels, i'm striking a balance. this is an unprecedented decidedly un-sagittarian way to do things, folks. make note! here is a list of interesting things that transpired. here goes:

on tanness: i managed to cultivate a nice tan without scalding myself too badly. the only part of me that looks leperous is my upper back. i had applied spf 50 on everything but that area which i could not reach and forgot to physically grab someone and force them to stop all movement and baste me. we all got better at that as we went along. i graduated to spf 30 about midway into the trip, and by the very end, i was wearing spf 15. 15, people! see, we'd all caught a big case of the fuckits. i can no longer afford kinerase -- thanks to the folks from "friends" who are now endorsing my heretofore secret magical wrinkle cream, the price has skyrocketed. i don't buy leather -- might as well look like it instead, right?

on active endeavors: we did some fun and crazy hiking. we are not of rugged, outdoorsy ilk, but we got covered in red dirt with the best of 'em taking an hour-long trek down a steep trail to swim in wailua falls.

yes, it's the falls from the 80's television show, fantasy island. it was magnificent.

we also hiked along the kalalau trail which stretches across the na pali coast.
this entire trail was scented with fresh guava crushed in the red dirt underfoot and ended with a fresh water stream running into the ocean. upon arrival, pb&js never tasted so good.

on eating: speaking of things tasting good, i ate like it was my job. not only did i hone the eating skills to black-belt level mastery from a volume standpoint, i ate loads of just junk.

check this impressive list out, y'all:

• puka dogs almost daily!
• shave ice with macadamia nut ice cream on the bottom from brennecke's.
• pizza and koa golden ale from pizzetta in koloa town at least three times.
• ice cream and sorbet from lappert's afterwards.
• in addition to at least one beer a day, i also had copious amounts of pog [that's passion fruit-orange-guava juice to you] and rum as well as many full-sugar sodas. i attempted balancing these out with many water refills in my trusty red nalgene bottle.
• ever had a chick-o-stick? no, it's not made of chicken. it's a denuded butterfinger bar of sorts and helps combat salty seawater mouth syndrome quite efficiently.
  
  on bodysurfing: we spent many, many hours at brennecke's beach. when we weren't laying there eating and smearing on sunscreen, we were in the wild surf. we swam with sea turtles every day for hours at a time.
  
  i must admit it was a bit of a war zone. rick had a pieces of sand embedded in his cornea and the inside of his eyelid. before he went to the doctor to have it scraped out with the wooden end of a swab, he was one cantankerous son-of-a-bitch, but once it was out, he was back to being crazy pizzy mcrizzowitz again. dina got whacked on the shinbone. casey was hurled across his back on a rock. i did manage to get into an accident while boogie boarding -- got a really nasty ouchie on my elbow, abraded the skin on my hip, nicked a chunk of skin out of my ankle, and got a left hook to the jaw from a wave that has rendered me with an inner- and outer- ear infection. it feels like my ear needs to blow its nose, as p'tarded as that sounds. it was worth it. i love that stretch of lava-strewn sand and can't wait to jump in again.
  
  on reading: i read jhumpa lahiri's pulitzer prize winning interpreter of maladies. a compilation of short stories about indian people, it was the perfect vacation read. i also picked up mark haddon's the curious incident of the dog in the night-time on the way home and am almost done with it. it's written from the perspective of a teenage autistic-savant kid in england and i definitely recommend it.
  
  on helicopter rides: casey managed to score a "return-customer" discount on an island tour which had us descending into waimea canyon and cresting mount waialeale [the wettest spot on earth]. people, it's expensive, but it's so effing worth it.
  
  on classic rock: in the rental car, we jammed out daily to shaka [kshk fm 103.3]. i am not really a classic rock fan, but it's super-fun to listen to there. we wrote down all the songs we heard a lot and will make a compilation cd. i'll be sure to list the tracks once it's done.
  
  on the fern grotto: no, we didn't go to the f*cking fern f*cking grotto. don't even ask. we went to a thrift shop instead where i got some kick-ass kids t-shirts commemorating the kaua'i martial arts championship and native hawaiian community groups. they were 50 cents each. dope.
  
  on pictures: ever the intrepid historian, casey took a jillion photos of us and will be posting them in his excellent online photo album soon. keep checking to see them soon. i promise you that you'll wanna go yourself once you see these shots... especially the ones of bikini-clad me in a half-slump, pendulous abdomen full of mango relish and lilikoi mustard swinging low like sweet chariot. talk about hanging loose, hawaiian-style! aloha!