MALE DANCERS

I was telling Dave about my comparison of my family to a legal nuisance...and he said we were more like an "attractive nuisance". That’s another legal concept that says (basically) if you have attractive, but dangerous, stuff in your backyard, like maybe a pool or a trampoline, then you have to take reasonable precautions to keep small children who might be attracted to such items from wandering onto your property and getting hurt. So at first I thought Dave was being sweet and saying that my family is like an ATTRACTIVE BACKYARD POOL rather than a town dump. And naturally I was flattered...until I started analyzing the comment. Maybe he meant that my family is dangerous to small children. Or maybe he was thinking about how much maintenance a pool requires...and how some people just fill them in because they are so much work. Maybe he was trying to tell me something. I don’t really know now.

What I do know is that I’ve been promising that wedding post series, and not delivering on it. But it’s been so long now since the happy event that I’ve forgotten many of the details and I’m having to make things up as I go along. Everyone knows that fiction is much more difficult to write than non-fiction. So you’ll just have to bear with me. It’s like that festering boil...it WILL explode some day...but not before its time. Did I just compare my wedding posts to a boil? I do apologize...it won’t happen again.

Meanwhile, I have that fun stuff I promised you on the children.

Emily did not take the news that LeBron is heading for Miami well. She said she was disappointed and angry. I told her she shouldn’t let her emotions be ruled by the actions of a professional athlete. She said she hoped he would break his leg.

Meanwhile, she has compiled a list of old videos which we haven’t watched in years. They are titles such as The Buttercream Gang, Summer of the Monkeys, and Mighty Joe Young. She wants us all to watch them with her this summer before she leaves home. And we can’t say no because we are being held hostage by that "she won’t be around much longer" mentality. It’s depressing on more than one level, if you know what I mean.

Rachel continues to take her role as my professional trainer seriously. At times, anyway. Last night at the track she said to me cheerily, "Let’s jog this next lap." In the spirit of cooperation and compromise, I said, "Let’s jog this next curve." She said okay, and I proceeded to move my arms a bit more though the curve, and put a little bounce in my steps, and I think she actually thought I was jogging. At least for a minute or two. Then she said, "Try to pick your feet up a bit more." And that’s when I had to tell her that I couldn’t breathe and my knees were hurting. So she backed off. So far, since she’s been on the job, I’ve gained 2 pounds.

David is suddenly in high demand as a DANCER. True story. First he was asked to be in a Quinceanera...which is a big coming of age birthday extravaganza thrown by Latin American families on their daughters’ 15th birthdays. I’m not sure if I’ve told you this before but he thinks he’s Latino, at times anyway. Last year he got asked to attend a Latinos Make a Difference conference at school (I don’t know why) and that kind of sealed the deal for him. He also thinks he’s fluent in Spanish even though I’ve only heard him say things like "that’s a pretty chicken" and "put down your gun", so I don’t know how far that will get him.

But the point is he agreed a few months ago to be one of the attendants at this Quineanera where he has to perform these dances and he has to wear a vest and he wasn’t complaining at all. But then Rachel’s dance teacher asked if he would do this swing dance with one of her groups...and he said yes but then he found out the swing dance performance was on the same day as the Quinceanera. And he was torn. So he called me at work to ask for advice. And of course I told him that the Quineanera girl had dibs on him because she asked first, but he would have make his own decision. And I think he was really just worried about telling either of them no because he knows good male dancers are hard to come by in this town. But later he called me back and said he was sticking with the Quinceanera...because he didn’t want to be a loser like LeBron and switch teams. And I could accept that logic.

Dave is finally reaping what he hath sowed...and that would be a boatload of zucchini. We had a unofficial duel the other night...he whipped up a healthy stir fry dish with the zucchini, while I dipped slices of it in egg and cornmeal and fried it up in a pan. The kids were the judges, and guess who won?

I had no lunch today because I worked through the noon hour. But for dinner I had a slice of pizza at Sam’s. Pathetic, I know.