Dancing Around Reality....

(This is an amazing picture of me dancing, drawn by my husband, on a MagnaDoodle. Who can draw that dang well on a MagnaDoodle? I mean that's insane! A good kind of insane, some people's mediums are oils, acrylics or clay....my husband's is MagnaDoodle!)

I've got something to confess and I feel rather....guilty..no, not guilty. Ashamed maybe? Plain ol' embarrassed perhaps? It's just, what do you do when you find out a little, previously unknown, fact about yourself that you hadn't realized was there? Some tiny, dark corner of your brain that housed a secret desire that's been dormant until....now.
Sheesh, I've got rug burn on my derrière, the cats are hiding in fear and I'm running around the house like a mad woman with my husband in tow and all because of it.......
It just happened one too many times. One too many times and I became the victim of modern advertising. O.k. promo people, are you proud of yourselves? Do you go home all smug and happy at night because you did your jobs well and I've sold my dignity for a few minutes of......yet another reality tv show.
Holy Hannah, I'm such a sucker.
But I was bombarded by the same advertisements for the same show over, and over and OVER again. THEN to make matters worse, as if the television schedule and the BBC were conspiring against me I'd flip on the ol' telly and see...THAT show. At first I tried to deny my fascination.
Walking to the kitchen, rubber necking like mad so my eyes could stay glued to the screen. In the beginning I suffered a few bumps, bruises and odd looks from my husband who was wondering if I'd started secretly drinking during the day. (HA, I only secretly drink at night) Of course I had to lie and say I was hitting the sauce before supper just so I could have my pride and my secret romance with reality tv.
*hangs head in shame*
So many people thing reality tv is crap, and I think some of it is too....but not all of it. There I said it, I don't like the *crying and sobbing and my life sucks so have a super nanny, super cop, super fricking chef come in to my home and fix it up with corn bread and hand cuffs* type shows. But there are a few others that I do enjoy. You wanna make something of it?
Often I've found myself part of a conversation that winds itself around to subjects I have a hard time listening to. In the old days people had it easy, some one tells a prejudice joke, you just knock em up side of the head and be done with it. Some one says something about God you don't agree with you just slap your arse and holler "bite me"
Simple, easy solutions that were most effective in curtailing conversations that wandered into the gray zone. The murky area that lurks between two strongly differing opinions, love it or hate it. But what if you like some, love others and are mildly amused by a few more? Accckk!
So here I am, sucking it up, going to admit.....I watch.......
"Dancing With the Stars."
Damn Jerry Rice for hopping and bouncing all over my television screen, damn those professional ball room dancers for wiggling their asses so fast it's a wonder I didn't get an eye cramp trying to keep up.
At first I couldn't admit what I was doing, a day time drinking problem will only cover so much. Not to mention the fact the television is right behind where my husband works. Now I'll tell ya the man is a fricking genius at tuning out distractions like......oh I don't know...say some one is belting out show tunes, horribly off key, in the kitchen about 20 feet away. He barely bats an eye at screeching and hollering done by the same person as I...er...she makes yet another un-holy mess by spilling coffee grounds all over the counter, stove, floor and cat. He can even do his work while his wife watches yet another episode of the "Golden Girls" on Lifetime, even ignores the fact she's speaking in sync with all of the character's lines, cackling whilst simultaneously acting out Blanche Devereaux's part. (Yes, I love the Golden Girls, you're thinking "this she's not ashamed of but Dancing With The Stars she is???" Well it's easy, the Golden Girls is the MOST non-evil, amusing, and inspiring sitcom I have ever watched, then and now. So bite me. If you could put Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia in a blender and make a Golden Girls smoothie, that's who I want to be when I grow up...er....grow up more. A Golden Girl's smoothie. Sick...but tasty.)
Annnnnnnyyyy ways. The point is I can watch what I want and he doesn't really notice.....usually....until one day as I'm only about 12% committed to watching "Dancing With The Stars" season 2, which means I am at the couch but not on it. Rather I am standing behind it, draped casually over the back, eyes glued to some of the craziest dancing I have ever seen and I snort.
A small un-lady like snort as Jerry Rice stiffly hops about like a bunny rabbit. I hear an echoing snort.....I turn my head, slowly, my eyes meet my husband's. He's turned round backwards in his computer chair (which he stole from me but that's ok, I stole his) and he's watching the show as well. A HA!
We both straighten up, again slowly, as if moving through cold molasses and our eyes never leave each others. Neither of us cracks, neither of us admits what we're doing. And so we begin a dance of our own, a long slow dance to the tune of "you admit it first". We circle each other in ever tightening spirals, dizzy, the show forgotten momentarily, but it's ok it went to a commercial break anyways.
How long we would have circled I can't say, because the theme song for the program returns, and our feet start tapping a beat in unison, we stare, unblinking until...I can't take it any more. I crack like a bad paint job and run to the couch so as not to miss a moment more of my new best friend "Dancing With The Stars".
Alan settles beside me, I draw comfort from his warmth and we link hands, and everything is ok with the world because if I am one sick puppy for enjoying a reality tv show that has supposed stars bebopping all around a dance floor then I'm not alone. Alan likes it too.
Now about that rug burn. You can not watch a show that has cha cha's, rumbas and God knows what else with out leaping off the sofa during commercial breaks to whirl around the living room at break neck speeds trying them out.
Things we have learned, we can wiggle our butts pretty dang good and in sync too, we can't do the "one partner takes a flying leap into the air and the other catches them and spins them around their neck like a boa" Maybe I ought to have been the one playing the part of a boa....hmmm....anyways I highly recommend "Dancing With The Stars" or at least season 2 though I give you fair warning that parts of you are going to pop and crack like you aint ever heard before when you start trying to do what you just saw George Hamilton do on the tv screen.

• Definition of "Dancing With The Stars": the most fun you can have that doesn't involve coffee, a Nora Robert's book or a laser. Supposed *celebrities* team up with professional dancers and compete against each other, learning some freaky cool dances, sweating a lot and showing more of their navels than a California orange. I say supposed *celebrities* because...I'm sorry...Jerry Rice who? So yeah, it's that kind of show, you won't be finding the cast of StarGate on there or the latest block buster movie hero/heroine but dang....I'd pay at least 30 bucks to watch Samantha Carter, Jack O'Neil and Rodney McKay do the fancy dancing on that show....by the by if you don't know who those characters are then that means you must not watch StarGate and that must mean I hate you. Sorry, thems the breaks. O.k., I forgive you now. I'm fickle that way.