I danced.

Paying the price, but I danced.

So, I'm going through a down time.  I joke and say it's because Mercury is in retrograde (which I don't discount) but really it's emotional overload.  Don't really want to keep the momentum of it all going by mucking around in too many details.  But I try to be somewhat honest with myself and I'm going through a lonely stretch.  Deep.  And sad.

And feeling hopeless.  I mean, the most appealing man in this town right now is a guy at WeightWatchers.  With Down Syndrome.


(Not joking.  This is a seriously lovely human being who is a joy to be around.)

He's too young for me.

Anyway...

One of the PE teachers asked me if I thought the teachers would mind if they pulled the kids out of classes early Friday to dance.  Turns out they spent all last week and part of this teaching every kid in this school (1100 students) four line dances, and she thought it would be cool to bring them all out to the blacktop to dance together.

That little dormant dancer inside assumed first position.  I told her the other teachers would probably whine, but I would LOVE it!  And I wanted to learn the dances, too.  So, she worked it out with the principal (who is married to a professional dancer) to not only bring the kids out (they don't know it but they're going to be a flashmob) but also to take our staff meeting time yesterday to teach the faculty the dances.

Some of my happiest times have been on a dance floor.  I did Country Western line dancing for a year or so, until I found a clogging teacher.  Closest thing to flying I've ever known.  Not even my college dance years live up to moving across the floor to blue grass or rock or reggae with a good clogging cuer.  It was so much fun.

Until I got "hugged" by a 110 pound Labrador Retriever.   According to the MRI there are six things wrong with my left knee, one of which will need surgery.  I avoid stairs; curbs are a bitch.

And I don't dance.

Until yesterday.  Just simple stuff, stuff you can teach 1100 middle schoolers.  The hardest was the Electric Slide, which is the rankest beginner, let's-see-if-you-have-any-sense-of-rhythm-at-all, dance.  I took it easy.  REALLY easy.  Not my way at all.

And am still hobbling around like I spent the day doing Swan Lake rather than a half hour of baby-stepping on the gymnasium floor.

Heartbroken.

Just a piss poor start to the school year.  Barely started the fourth week but spent three days last week in a criminal jury watching a video of a city police officer try not to get killed by a whack-o in the park.  Fall is here and the rodents have moved on property (which means in the garden and garage).  I HATE killing things - won't even let my students kill the little spiders in the classroom - but every morning I have to go collect the bodies and reset the traps. And the students I was told all last year I was going to LOVE because they are so much better than the previous year are the worst!  I've started more discipline plans already this year than in the previous decade combined.  More, more, more.

And I can't dance.  Maybe not ever.  And since getting back to dance was the main inspiration to losing weight in the first place, all I want to do right now is buy every piece of chocolate in town, stretch out in the recliner and IV the stuff.

I won't stay here long.  I never do.  It's not who I am.  But for now, I'm thinking of sneaking in to re-attach myself in the Matrix.  Or enlist in a space voyage like the Earthlings in Wall-E.