A Little Morning Rock 'n' Roll

New Shoesies!

I went to the mall the other day (first time in a looooong time...) to buy pants for Ian, and ended up buying a couple pairs of shoes for myself. In my defense, they were cheap and most of my flats are falling apart--why don't shoes last forever? Maybe because I buy them for $25 or less. Anyway, I bought these super cute loafers!
And, even more exciting, these awesome jazz shoes! I've been looking for shoes like this for a long time--they make me want to start taking swing dance lessons. I used to be quite the swing dancer, you know. If only the swing dance revival had lasted longer! And if only my husband were a better dancer... I'm sure he could learn! For these shoes, I'd be willing to teach him.

Respect

Before starting grad school, Ian and I used to take yoga classes on a regular basis. We were getting pretty strong for a while there, even doing partner yoga, in which you sort of use your spouse's body weight for resistance. But then I started splitting my time, I wasn't home on a regular basis, and to be honest, I got lazy. Now that I've got my degree and a whole mess of free time, though, we decided it would be best to get back to our yoga-ing. So we signed up for Yoga Fit Flex & Flow through Yogatopia, with our favorite instructor.

I'd forgotten how many muscles yoga actually works and stretches. After our first class back, even my toes were sore. Though, to be fair, Tuesday nights are also cheap beer nights at Dupus Boomer's, where Ian and I are working our way through a list of 44 beers that they have on tap, and after yoga we took the bus over there and had two beers each. Bad, bad decision. Apparently the blood was still moving pretty quickly through us, so we ended up getting much drunker than expected, and then were miserable the whole next day. Of course, it wasn't as bad for me as it was for Ian because I'm unemployed right now and I didn't have to sit through eight hours of work, meetings, or anything like that.

Anywho--last night, before yoga, I was grumpy. It was a really sour mood. I'd managed to stave off some of the negative feelings that came from the six (count 'em--six!) rejection letters I got over this weekend because I also got an acceptance from Necessary Fiction (I'll let you know when my story is up on their website) and a notice that I'll be getting my copy of the journal Aethlon in the mail soon, in which appears my poem, "Curling." But then I checked the WSU jobs website, where I've been monitoring my application for an assistant job for about a month, and the damn position was filled. That led to a little ranting and raving. I mean, it's one thing to be rejected in a field where you know you're still growing and the competition is fierce and tastes vary dramatically, blah blah blah. It's another to be completely brushed off by a job for which you're insanely overqualified, which you would barely need to be trained for. Granted, I know that the overqualification might have disqualified me (I have as much education as many of the department's professors), but it still hurts. Especially because it means I might not get a job this year. In my little college town, jobs are sparse, and most of them ask for a two-year commitment; I'm only here eight more months. The eight months thing is cause for celebration, but the unemployment tempers it, huh?

So. There I was, straight off of a hissy fit, rolling up my yoga mat and heading to class. I kept hoping that yoga would have that magical effect where you spend the whole time so focused on balancing and the burn in your muscles that you couldn't think about anything else if you wanted to. I sat down quietly on my mat and waited for class to begin, trying to stay upbeat. The instructor had some poppy music playing, which I assumed she would change to the echoey yoga stuff she usually plays, but as we started to find our breathing, she didn't. Instead, while the instructor gave her usual speech, my breathing started to match some nineties song with encouraging lyrics. She made extra emphasis last night on respect, for ourselves and our bodies, and being compassionate with ourselves. She always tells us to throw judgment out the door, along with comparison and expectations. But being compassionate with ourselves--that just sounded like a good idea. And then when she played Aretha Franklin's "Respect" during our first flow, I couldn't help smiling.

Honey Bear

Isn't my husband the cutest? This picture was taken two summers ago, but I just love it.

We've been married almost four-and-a-half years... more like four-and-a-third. When we were hitched, I was twenty-two (I know! So young, and yet I did not think so at the time) and he was twenty-four.

He's at work right now. I have cake decorating class tonight and a bunch of errands to run this afternoon so I won't get to see him until 8 tonight. I miss him already.

I Heart Squirrels

Have you ever stopped on the street to chat with a squirrel? Maybe just to see how close you can get before they scamper away? Sometimes I just watch them run the telephone wires, those little acrobats. If you've ever seen a tall woman with curly hair, most likely wearing a backpack and a dress, standing on the sidewalk staring at the sky, that was probably me, and I was probably actually watching a squirrel.

In fact, I love squirrels so much, that I wrote a story about them. Sort of. It's also about my grandmother, and it started as a poem in the style of James Tate, but I submitted it last year to both my poetry prof (with line breaks) and my fiction prof/thesis advisor (sans line breaks), and my thesis advisor liked it more, so it became a short story. In fact, it got published on Monkeybicycle.net a little while ago. Check it out!

Book Recommendations

So, sometimes on Bark I post about books you really ought to read. Check out my recommendations here.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Sometimes, I forget how much I love old movies. My husband isn't one to watch and rewatch the same things (with the exceptions of Simpsons and Futurama reruns), and partway through most black-and-white or musical features, he tends to pull out his laptop and split his attention between the movie and his endless search for coupons (I mean, news... he's on the computer reading the news. Is that it, honey?) That's fine, for the most part, but sometimes it starts to irk me that he's not enjoying it enough to really watch. But last night, though his side of the bed was aglow from the computer screen, I didn't really care. I was too engrossed in Arsenic and Old Lace.

You see, I'd spent the weekend staying with a friend who is also an old-movie lover, and she'd mentioned that she'd had a hankering to watch the movie (of course she had; it's almost Halloween!), but we didn't get the opportunity to watch it together. And then I realized that I couldn't remember the entire plot; how did it end? Had I seen the whole thing? I had to find out. I went to my Netflix instant queue, and guess what? It was the very first title.

If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. It's my favorite Cary Grant picture, as far as I know. North By Northwest is pretty good, I guess. Though I adore Sleepless in Seattle, I've never gotten on the An Affair to Remember bandwagon. I saw him in something where he was a cat burglar. Bits and pieces of various roles. As a serious actor or a heartthrob, he doesn't thrill me. But as a comedian, boy is he worth watching.