Dancing with my dogs
I just need to write some silly nonsense because I need a break from yesterday's horrors.
I like to think about Chas, Andy and me as the merry men of Robin's Wood but most of our friends and neighbors think of us as monks and make jokes about our "monastery" because we lead such boring routine lives: up at the crack of dawn to feed the livestock; spend the day working either on the farm (fixing fences, clearing the forest) or in the business (repairing and maintaining the rentals, tedious old book-keeping, dealing with the tenants) then dinner on the dot every night at 6.30 pm after which we feed the dogs, wash the dishes, watch an hour or so of a video and off to bed at 9pm.
In fact our friends have stopped inviting us for "a night out on the town." A few months ago an old friend of mine thought that he would "surprise" us with a night out. He and his wife are professional singers. They bought tickets to a show by Seals and Croft at the Indian casino in the biggest town about 20 miles away from us and made dinner reservations at the fanciest restaurant in town. I asked what time dinner and the show was and had to say, "Thanks but no thanks" when I found out that dinner was at eight and the show was at nine.
Nine is bedtime for me. Well, it's when I "retire" to my own room, spend an hour or so reading or writing and go to bed at 10 pm. Our friends, being musicians, seldom go to bed before 2 am and could not comprehend that we would turn down their invitation. I explained that I start yawning at ten minutes to nine every night. (Being a polite fellow, I didn't tell them that I may have made the effort if Placido Domingo were coming to town but that I found Seals and Croft so boring that "Summer Breeze" would put me to sleep at 9am let alone 9 pm.) Needless to say, they haven't invited us out again.
I lead such a boring, routine life that, if I blogged about it, I could make a fortune curing insomnia. That's why I write about big bold world events. Who wants to read a blog that consists of the minutiae of my life?
"On Sunday I gave myself my monthly clean-up, buzzed the three remaining hairs on my head, trimmed as much gray out of my beard as I could, cut my toe-nails and went to bed a whole half an hour later because I couldn't find the wire-cutters to cut off the ugly old yellow gnarly nail on my broken left big toe. Woke up on Monday morning, yawned, stretched, blinked three times, scratched my armpits, got dressed, fed the chickens, let the dogs out for their morning run in the forest, had a toasted muffin and a cup of tea for breakfast, went to work, came home, had dinner, watched the first half of the new "Charlotte's Web" on DVD, started yawning and went to bed."
No, that just wouldn't do.
Of course there are occasional breaks in my routine like last night. When I got home from work, I did my usual thing: took a shower; had my gin and tonic (it's medicinal - I need the quinine in the tonic water for my "restless leg syndrome" and the gin makes it palatable) and then turned on the TV to watch the weather forecast on the local NBC channel. The news was still all about the VA Tech massacre. (Dinner was steak and kidney pie made from Sunday's leftover roast beef and a nice fresh calf's kidney all washed down with a glass of bag-in-the-box merlot.) In between bites of food, the three of us chatted about politics and world affairs as usual - only it wasn't that usual because of the massacre. We each shared what info we had gathered about it and, before we knew it, it was 8 pm.
Because the TV is already set to NBC, I usually watch reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" (I hate Raymond but I love Patricia Heaton) after dinner while Chas and Andy wash dishes and feed the dogs (hey, my buddies are 20 years younger than me and I've paid my dish-washing/dog-feeding dues a long time ago.) But last night, because it was later than usual, the unbelievably crass and disgusting "Let's Make a Deal" was on the NBC channel so I switched to ABC which was airing "Dancing with the Stars."
Now I'm not a complete country bumpkin and I had heard of this show before. In fact I even saw clips of Heather Mills McCartney doing the back-flip on her peg-leg and thought she was wonderful. Of course I'm on her side because I can't stand that superannuated hippie, Sir Paul the Beatle. My hunch is that she left him because he got drunk and/or stoned and beat her up. I wouldn't put it past him. Just because he's rich doesn't mean he isn't still a narcissistic peacenik solipsist.
Where was I? Oh yes, "Dancing with the Stars." I sat with my mouth agape watching Heather dancing a rumba backwards on her peg-leg. Apolo, the Olympic gold medal speed skater did a dynamite samba. Billy Ray Cyrus, the rather stiff and wooden (probably a prim and proper Baptist) country singer tried bravely to wiggle his fanny in a sensuous samba. John Ratzenberger - yep the mailman from "Cheers" - danced the rumba like a spring chicken rather than the old rooster that he is and Laila Ali, the boxing champ daughter of the former Cassius Clay, "oiled her way across the floor oozing charm from every pore" in a smoldering samba. I was hooked. It went on till 9.30 pm - way past my bedtime. I'll have to record it if I want to watch it in future.
The thing about "ballroom dancing" is that my dad taught me when I was just a nipper and I've loved it ever since. Dad taught me the waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and Charleston. He was a real fancy dancer and could spend the whole night dancing with my mom while my granny played the piano. Later, before my prom night, my then girlfriend and I took lessons in Latin dancing and I learned to enjoy doing the cha-cha, samba, rumba, tango and paso doble. I still enjoy dancing but nowadays the only partners I manage to get to do the tango with me are my dogs and sadly none of them have any sense of rhythm.
Here are some pics of Laila Ali in case you don't know what she looks like. I hope she stops boxing before she gets a broken nose and cauliflower ears - as I got from boxing. She is so beautiful that she could make an easier living in Hollywood just posing and looking pretty. Maybe it's because I was a boxer (or maybe it's just because I'm an old coot) but I must say that the idea of women boxers gives me the creeps - especially when you're as drop-dead gorgeous as this.
I like to think about Chas, Andy and me as the merry men of Robin's Wood but most of our friends and neighbors think of us as monks and make jokes about our "monastery" because we lead such boring routine lives: up at the crack of dawn to feed the livestock; spend the day working either on the farm (fixing fences, clearing the forest) or in the business (repairing and maintaining the rentals, tedious old book-keeping, dealing with the tenants) then dinner on the dot every night at 6.30 pm after which we feed the dogs, wash the dishes, watch an hour or so of a video and off to bed at 9pm.
In fact our friends have stopped inviting us for "a night out on the town." A few months ago an old friend of mine thought that he would "surprise" us with a night out. He and his wife are professional singers. They bought tickets to a show by Seals and Croft at the Indian casino in the biggest town about 20 miles away from us and made dinner reservations at the fanciest restaurant in town. I asked what time dinner and the show was and had to say, "Thanks but no thanks" when I found out that dinner was at eight and the show was at nine.
Nine is bedtime for me. Well, it's when I "retire" to my own room, spend an hour or so reading or writing and go to bed at 10 pm. Our friends, being musicians, seldom go to bed before 2 am and could not comprehend that we would turn down their invitation. I explained that I start yawning at ten minutes to nine every night. (Being a polite fellow, I didn't tell them that I may have made the effort if Placido Domingo were coming to town but that I found Seals and Croft so boring that "Summer Breeze" would put me to sleep at 9am let alone 9 pm.) Needless to say, they haven't invited us out again.
I lead such a boring, routine life that, if I blogged about it, I could make a fortune curing insomnia. That's why I write about big bold world events. Who wants to read a blog that consists of the minutiae of my life?
"On Sunday I gave myself my monthly clean-up, buzzed the three remaining hairs on my head, trimmed as much gray out of my beard as I could, cut my toe-nails and went to bed a whole half an hour later because I couldn't find the wire-cutters to cut off the ugly old yellow gnarly nail on my broken left big toe. Woke up on Monday morning, yawned, stretched, blinked three times, scratched my armpits, got dressed, fed the chickens, let the dogs out for their morning run in the forest, had a toasted muffin and a cup of tea for breakfast, went to work, came home, had dinner, watched the first half of the new "Charlotte's Web" on DVD, started yawning and went to bed."
No, that just wouldn't do.
Of course there are occasional breaks in my routine like last night. When I got home from work, I did my usual thing: took a shower; had my gin and tonic (it's medicinal - I need the quinine in the tonic water for my "restless leg syndrome" and the gin makes it palatable) and then turned on the TV to watch the weather forecast on the local NBC channel. The news was still all about the VA Tech massacre. (Dinner was steak and kidney pie made from Sunday's leftover roast beef and a nice fresh calf's kidney all washed down with a glass of bag-in-the-box merlot.) In between bites of food, the three of us chatted about politics and world affairs as usual - only it wasn't that usual because of the massacre. We each shared what info we had gathered about it and, before we knew it, it was 8 pm.
Because the TV is already set to NBC, I usually watch reruns of "Everybody Loves Raymond" (I hate Raymond but I love Patricia Heaton) after dinner while Chas and Andy wash dishes and feed the dogs (hey, my buddies are 20 years younger than me and I've paid my dish-washing/dog-feeding dues a long time ago.) But last night, because it was later than usual, the unbelievably crass and disgusting "Let's Make a Deal" was on the NBC channel so I switched to ABC which was airing "Dancing with the Stars."
Now I'm not a complete country bumpkin and I had heard of this show before. In fact I even saw clips of Heather Mills McCartney doing the back-flip on her peg-leg and thought she was wonderful. Of course I'm on her side because I can't stand that superannuated hippie, Sir Paul the Beatle. My hunch is that she left him because he got drunk and/or stoned and beat her up. I wouldn't put it past him. Just because he's rich doesn't mean he isn't still a narcissistic peacenik solipsist.
Where was I? Oh yes, "Dancing with the Stars." I sat with my mouth agape watching Heather dancing a rumba backwards on her peg-leg. Apolo, the Olympic gold medal speed skater did a dynamite samba. Billy Ray Cyrus, the rather stiff and wooden (probably a prim and proper Baptist) country singer tried bravely to wiggle his fanny in a sensuous samba. John Ratzenberger - yep the mailman from "Cheers" - danced the rumba like a spring chicken rather than the old rooster that he is and Laila Ali, the boxing champ daughter of the former Cassius Clay, "oiled her way across the floor oozing charm from every pore" in a smoldering samba. I was hooked. It went on till 9.30 pm - way past my bedtime. I'll have to record it if I want to watch it in future.
The thing about "ballroom dancing" is that my dad taught me when I was just a nipper and I've loved it ever since. Dad taught me the waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and Charleston. He was a real fancy dancer and could spend the whole night dancing with my mom while my granny played the piano. Later, before my prom night, my then girlfriend and I took lessons in Latin dancing and I learned to enjoy doing the cha-cha, samba, rumba, tango and paso doble. I still enjoy dancing but nowadays the only partners I manage to get to do the tango with me are my dogs and sadly none of them have any sense of rhythm.
Here are some pics of Laila Ali in case you don't know what she looks like. I hope she stops boxing before she gets a broken nose and cauliflower ears - as I got from boxing. She is so beautiful that she could make an easier living in Hollywood just posing and looking pretty. Maybe it's because I was a boxer (or maybe it's just because I'm an old coot) but I must say that the idea of women boxers gives me the creeps - especially when you're as drop-dead gorgeous as this.
posted by Joubert at 5:24 AM
The Alliance
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