A Word About Dancing

My mom usually only comes to Seattle once a year, and so when she does Eric and I use it as an excuse to clean the house from top to bottom. I’m kicking myself for not taking “before” pictures so that I could show you before and after pictures of the house. Suffice to say, certain parts of the house were a total fright and now they are sparkling. The biggest thing we did was buy another bookshelf and organize our books. Eric and I have A LOT of books and all of my animal rights/studies books were stacked in piles on the floor because there wasn’t enough shelf space. Now they are all nicely organized in bookshelves. As soon as we finished that project I had an overwhelming urge to get started writing the dissertation, which was a great feeling. Anyway, while I was cleaning on Monday—dusting, vacuuming, etc.—I was bored. I find cleaning to be generally a pretty boring task, which is probably why I choose to do it so rarely. Maizy also finds it very boring and she and the feline residents of the house hate the vacuum cleaner especially. To make cleaning more fun, I launched one of my Pandora radio stations and cranked it up so that people could probably hear it on the street. Whoops! Cleaning dance party commence!

Contemporary Britpop is one of my guilty pleasures. The Ting Tings, MIA, Lily Allen… you name it, I love it. And just ask Maizy who her favorite band is. She’s tell you it’s the Ting Tings without hesitation. I have a Ting Tings Pandora radio station I use for just this purpose. As soon as I turned the music on, Maizy goes wild, jumping around, playing, grabbing piles of fur I’m about to vacuum up and tearing around with them. We dance together regularly (when no one else is home) and it’s amazing exercise for both of us.

About Dancing When You’re Not a Dancer

To be clear, I have no talent for dancing. I’m not good at it. I don’t have any ‘sexy moves.’ Nope. When I get dancing, I bust out every move I can think of and I make up new ones. Things jiggle and shake in all the wrong places. I fling my arms and legs out sporadically, jump around, clap and snap, do crazy what I like to call ‘interpretive dance moves.’ It’s not a pretty sight, I’m sure. But it sure is fun and Maizy loves it. There’s something great about dancing that releases endorphins like any form of exercise, but dancing can be such a joyful activity. I end up feeling tired and happy after one of these impromptu dance sessions.

I can’t remember the last time I danced in public—maybe at a high school prom?! Or a college dance? Not sure. I do wish I was less inhibited about dancing in public—it always looks so fun. I have some friends who are AMAZING salsa dancers. They go out dancing and everyone stops dancing to watch them, they’re that amazing. 

I am firmly an in-the-closet dancer. And I have some rules for this dancing.

• Dance like nobody is watching. And hopefully they’re not. Tip: Duck and hide when you see the mail man passing the window.
• Do NOT look in the mirror. Who cares what you look like. You’re not trying to impress anyone.
• Let loose and don’t think. Don’t think about what a move looks like—try it out and see how it feels.
• Shake that ass. That’s right. If you’re going to bother dancing, it might as well be a good workout. Get all those muscles moving.
• Choose music that fundamentally makes you want to dance. For me, I can always count on Brit pop. For you, that might be hard rock (I find it hard to resist dancing to AC/DC, for instance).   

Are you an in-the-closet dancer?

Follow