Startling

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That's what I'm doing right now. Startling the animals in my house because I have decided to become a rock star and have been practicing my singing/dance routine in the living room. It's best to do this in your socks if you have faux wooden floor such as I do because it allows you to slide around much easier and it increases your repertoire of dance moves by at least 12%. Also, best to wear a tank top and blue jeans. Or a leotard if you're planning a lot of elaborate jumps. I guess I'm being kind of loud and probably not quite on-key (can't tell with my i-pod on) because my cats have their ears back like they do when they hear fighting outside or a sudden whistle or the lyrics of "It's the End of the World as We Know It" belted out with the necessary jumping up and down to accompany that particular piece. How about a less energetic one; how do you feel about The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights?" Nope, they don't much care for that either. Liz Phair's "Why Can't I?" causes EC to run up the stairs (prude). "Every Day is Like Sunday?" Definitely not a hit with them.

The problem is, I've just enough theater experience and you know, years of singing in the church choir, to have cultivated some confidence onstage and an okay voice (if I do say so myself). I asked Padhraig the other day if he would teach me the gee-tar and he said, "Feck no. Teach yourself like the rest of us." He's a good friend. I mentioned that I could play the piano. He suggested I buy one. We were waiting in line to get a drink and it was almost our turn, so he was really just trying to get me to shut up. In rereading my sad little middle school journals, I was reminded of how Wallis and I used to spend hours and hours listening to records and making up dances to go with them. I bet you anything that I could still do at least the first four minutes of our elaborate dance routine to "Allentown." I don't know when we expected we'd get to unleash this performance on the world. This was right around the time that MTV was getting started and so I'm sure we harbored fantasies about Martha Quinn coming to our largely elderly, retirement community in search of new performers, preferably awkward 8th graders in glasses and badly feathered hair held in place by cans of Aqua Net (we didn't yet understand about global warming).

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