Moves Like Jagger

Some times I wish I were a guy. Their biggest fashion question seems to be: Does a brown belt match black shoes? And they think, "Eh, no one will care." Where women twilly around how to match coral eye shadow to their light catrice nail polish. We are hypersesitive in that ideal.

So I may have mentioned that I am in a dance class. Well, crazily enough: We dance. Fun fact: Rebecca can't dance, which may bring you to the very obvious question of, "Then why would you take a dance class?" To which I have no clear or plausible answer. After some point in your life, answering, "Becaaause." just doesn't cut it. I passed that point.

Regardless, the routine we're working on for the final is to the pop sensation Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5. For those of your born without a taste in music or love for caricature-faced celebrities may not have heard of Mick Jagger. Short bio: He owns rock and roll.

In one of the first days of class, our instructor stops the music, and walks over to me.
"Rebecca," she says, at which point I'm terrified because no teacher should know your name by the first week unless you are especially terrible,
"You have the steps down, right?"
I nod. Making little sped-up miniature air mimes of the last few counts.
"But you realize you have no confidence in yourself, right."
 Wow Coach, thanks for the pep talk. Exactly what I needed. No, I had not realized I was crippelingly hiding in the back of the class avoiding attention for THIS VERY REASON.

She proceeds to explain how I need to be more like Mick Jagger and put a little swagger in my step.

Swagger. What does that even mean? Mick Jagger has more confidence than me when he's tracking around in this get-up than I've managed to accumulate my entire life.

So I've gotta look like THIS GUY?

I think we can all agree that what Micki here has and what I lack is not looks. Self-assuredness and an "I-own-this-joint"  attitude are probably what gives him some swagger.

Not the hat.Although it helps.

Mulling this over after classes one day, I just made up my mind to go and find me some swagger. Right then and there. Like deciding to quest for the Loch ness monster or Big Foot.

To the nearest cheapest hair studio (after doing a bit more research than my last haircut.) I ran, because gosh darn it, my self confidence does exist!  Made an appointment for the next day. Right then. Right there. Quick massage, hair styling, and many compliments later I walked out of the studio feeling a little puff-chested. Heavens me, is this what swagger feels like?

Perhaps it is. On the way home Moves Like Jagger came on the radio and I practiced my best Mick Jagger/Steven Tyler stage face. And somehow I feel like I learned a valuable lesson.: "When you look good, you feel good"? No, too vain. Maybe a little more, "You have to love yourself before you can others".

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend.

I wasn't going to do this. Ten years ago, I was ten and just chilling out in grade school. I came home and watched the news with the family--an odd occurrence, albeit--and everything was normal. The only reverberating thought I would have had that night was I was coloring and I wanted to show the picture to my mom and she shoo-ed me away, saying, "Not now." I felt hurt that she didn't want to see my picture, seeing as how diligently I had been working on it.

It was a genie coming out of a lamp. The odd details we remember so distinctly. 

So I wasn't going to do this. I was lucky as to not have been touched by it. But after receiving an e-mail from Niklas, a German, an outsider with a huge and philosophical heart, who has all the reasons in the world to not need be involved, I guess I am doing this.

He wrote me:


"Today is ten years after 9/11 and there were ceremonies around the world.

I didn't think off it much but then in the news, the German embassedor in the USA--who had hist first day on 9/11/2001--talked about how important solidarity was to the people affected. How important it was that the USA knew that they don't have to be world-police all alone anymore because they can't do that anyway, because they can be hit hard, too.

And then I remembered how depressing it was to hear that most people in Michigan didn't know how much support and grief they got from all around the world. Many still don't know... All they see is people celebrating in Iraq and Afganistan that night. They would ask, "Does all the world really hate us that much?"

But did you know that nowhere in the world, not even in the USA, did so many people gather as they did at the Brandenburger gate in Berlin, Germany? The same place where almost 40 years ago the beloved American president said the he, and the US, empathizes with Berlin and understands their fears and is there to support the City in its struggle to reunite.

Just like on 9/11 when the Berliner people got out to stand together and show that they feel with NY and with the USA, with the Union of NATO...

It is sad that the news of celebrating extremist over weighted the news of millions gathering in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin... But we can hope that a few Americans did get the news from their Allies and that they know that they have friends and that they have unconventional support in the defence against the brutal destruction of terror!

...

 But if you could pass on the word that the USA still has many strong allies in the world you would do a good deed..."

Nick wrote this to me on the 11th, saying he was feeling sentimental and that, "If I would have a blog, this is what I would have written today." That is like pressing the Okay to consent button in my list. 

PitE the Fool

Went to my first class of the year and I won't lie; It was jazz dance.

C'mon now, everyone needs a creative expressions class and who says I can't try and dance my way there? Plus, on a seventeen credit course load I am allowed one fun class.

(So true story...What I really wanted to take was pottery but I didn't have the schedule nor the money to make that work, so I rolled with the punches and took dance. I should have just coughed up the two hundred for the pottery.)

After finding the dance studio, which proved to be impressivly complicated, I sat on the floor and scoped everyone out. Should have stuck with the pottery class. I walked in with my "Save the Ta-tas!" Breast cancer awareness shirt and a pair of jogging shorts. Must have missed the memo about bringing your own leotard and leggings.

Primed and bred for dancing, those girls. Judging me up and down. Up and down.

And our first assignment was to create a piece of art that represented you as a person. I was scrambling. Honestly, can't we just bust out the jazz hands and top hats?

I think I'd be much more comfortable if everyone was wearing a top hat even in a judgmental dance class in one of the snootiest universities in Michigan. The dreaded day in my first German university class was better than that, at least there I couldn't completely understand their disdain for me. (And I got ice cream after.)

Major catastrophies, however, were adverted that morning, and pumped by how great I did NOT breaking any major bones I declared my second major in the afternoon. I am now a German/Program in the Environment major. Even got a sticker. It's official.

And walking out of the environmental offices I felt like all the Leotard-Strutting Girls and Bill Gate Jrs could keep judging.  Because I have found a bit of my place now, as an elite major of PitE and I'm starting to feel like I belong here.

As I was showing it off, I was elated.( "Invasive species got nothing on me!") until a friend of mine looked at it and chuckled. "Huh, PitE. You're a 'pity' major. Way to go." 



...Crap.

Labor of Love

Labor day. 
Such a ambiguous name. Because it's called Labor day, was originally started by unions for every man to celebrate their every opportinity to work BUT no one is supposed to work on Labor day because it's... labor day? Just take the day off to appreciate your labor done. Or something. I really don't know. Anyone want to google that? Because it seems like everyone works anyway.
At any rate, it's a big cunundrum, so I like to think of it by a more fitting description. Let's celebrate the ability to bring a child to term. Yaay, double meanings!

Twenty-six,-- check that, man, I'm old,-- twenty-six years ago my brother was born on Labor day. And around our area that means he was born near the Mama Ruth Picnic. A big hundred year long shindig for the people of the town to get together, bust their tukus' to put on a monsterous chicken dinner, and then relax and enjoy a beer tent all night. My mom was/is sort of the event lady at this dinner and so she's been there every year. Including one with a big ol' swollen belly the night she went into labor with Eric.
Boy, did Mom fool them.

No one believed Dad the next day as he went about talking about his first son. Apparently people joke about that more than I imagined. So no one believed her until she paraded that swaddled ball of baby that was tiny Eric. Years go by, Eric works every year at the picnic, brakes his foot/ankle? at the setting up and celebrates his birthday on crutches and I swindled (I say swindled because no matter how much I try the securitiy guards will let in anyone but me) my way into the beer tent to say, "Happy birthday, you gump. How'd you manage that?" and so is life. Labor day has always been Eric's time.

Now more so than ever.

I'll start by just saying they fooled me too. The first time in twelve years I needed to skip the clean-up portion of the picnic to drive back to school. And they let me! Suckers...

I was packing up my stuff when I get a call from my mom telling me to come up to the picnic "Just because."  And off I go thinking, "Great, 'just because' you need more help and I'm going to be working out in the cold of the first real day of fall when I should be driving down to Ann Arbor." Grumble, grumble. If only someone could read my mind.

That was until they showed me the ring.

And I scream and jumped and hugged, and then turned and punched Eric. "Why didn't you TELL ME!?" And I want to look at him and Alex and say, "How did you manage that, you gump?"

 Mom says he's just like dad was. Doesn't know his own strength. Big gump and always the life of the party. "He used to terrorize you girls." She says. But for me, he was my protector. Clark Kent turned Superman. Suppose that's just the luck of the sibling draw being the youngest girl.

In the end I didn't have to clean up after all, and I began my drive down to school with a smile on my face. It was a happy day. Eric's day, like always. I was even half way to Ann Arbor before I realized I had forgotten to put socks on.

The weather didn't seem to feel the same way as I did though. Grey and spitting rain at my windshield, I just felt like yelling at it and telling it to lighten up. Get warm. Let a ray of sunshine come through and bring a little warmth, man. Doesn't it know what happened today??

And then I laughed.

Maybe it was so cold today because Hell froze over.

An Ode To Summer

 How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my Soul when Your feeling of sand and grass beneath my toes is out of reach.
I love thee to the level of every day's most leisurely book read by most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as we drive with windows rolled down.
I love thee purely, as the windmills outside of town.
I love thee with the passion put into every beach volleyball game or in my old griefs knowing that band camp is still the same.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with every coming educational reason. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, and all my heart; and, if God choose, I shall love thee better next season.

Oh, my aching heart, how doth you handle this onslaught of fall semester? With agony and sorrow fit to spoil my last days, set to perish in the depths of sadistic Statistics homework. Or do you flutter before the prospect of education like a moth to the flame? Only to be scorched by the inferno.

Or you could possibly just draw up this wimpy blog post instead of actually doing the homework.

...But class doesn't start until Tuuuuesday....