Wishing you all a fine and happy Winter Solstice. Remember, anything you do tonight, you can do longer than on any other night of the year. Live it up!

Joie!

I got an A! Woo-hoo!

Doesn't this just fill you with Christmas cheer and goodwill toward your fellow man?

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum -- Same-sex marriage bill, as written, called a threat to social service contracts

"Catholic Charities, the church's social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church...'All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,' Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.* "

Lovely, just lovely. How very Christian of them.

The Washington Post article fortuitously links to the website for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and that site has a handy directory page with Chancellor Belford's email address. I don't often do this sort of thing, but I'm just disgusted. These people should be ashamed of themselves. Using this kind of threat against innocent people to blackmail the city into discriminating against yet more innocent people? WWJD?

So here's my email to Chancellor Belford. Feel free to send your own. And don't forget to include some cheery holiday greetings. Bet she doesn't have to go to a soup kitchen for her Christmas dinner.

Dear Chancellor Belford,

In response to the Washington Post's article "Catholic Church Gives D.C. Ultimatum," I just want to say how admirable it is that the church's religious mandate to discriminate against gay people trumps it's religious mandate to help the poor. It has certainly enhanced the church's public image to be seen punishing the innocent to make a doctrinal point. I'm sure this is exactly what Jesus would do. Congratulations on so thoroughly exemplifying everything the Catholic Church stands for. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

-----------------------------

*"Exemption language" refers to the proposed same-sex marriage bill up for vote next month, which says that "Religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians."

I just finished "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. Aside from an occasional guilty craving for chicken McNuggets, I don't eat a lot of fast food. It's unhealthy, tasteless, and tacky. But occasionally there's that guilty craving, or the unfortunate situation of being starving and trapped on the interstate with nothing but rest stops to choose from. So I do ingest the occasional burger or two.

About 3 chapters into this book I was determined never to touch fast food ever again.

About halfway through, I started seriously considering shopping at Whole Foods and buying all organic meats and dairy products. If you decide to read "Fast Food Nation," for the love of god, don't read the chapters on the meatpacking industry and e. coli contamination while you're eating. (Unless it's while you're eating a McDonald's cheeseburger--in that case, the poetic irony might be worth it.)

One of my chief complaints about swing dances is that they start so bloody *late*. The earliest dance in town is Hot Jam, and though that officially starts at 8:30, it's pretty empty til about 9. Wednesday nights at the Graveyard don't start til 9, and Swing Soulstice on Thursdays pushes things to 9:30. So I was extremely pleased to hear that the Graveyard was doing a holiday special dance this past Sunday, starting at an unheard-of 7 pm! Since I'd spent the afternoon at ahhhnahhh's place helping to clean up from rslatkin's birthday brunch, it seemed silly to go home and come back out again, so rslatkin decided she wanted to come out to dinner with me and watch the dancing.



I've been feeling a bit burned out on dancing lately, but Sunday was a great night. The band was hot, there was a nice crowd, and I was feeling good about everything. It was neat having rslatkin watch and see what I've been spending all my free time on for the past year. :)

Last night was Hot Jam's holiday bash, and they also had a live band in to play for the evening. It was another great night of dancing, and a lot of people came out who haven't been around for a while, so the crowd was a good size--almost too good, as I got stepped on a few times, and bumper-danced rather a lot.

While the band took a break, it was announced that there would be a "White Elephant Jack and Jill" competition. I assumed this meant that the prizes were white elephant type gift items, but went around joking that it must mean you brought a partner you didn't want and tried to trade up. As it happened, I was closer than I knew. The first person chose a number at random, and was paired up with the corresponding lead. The next person had the choice to either steal the first lead, or to pick another random number, and so on.

So when Nima announced that the competition was about to begin, and called for 7 follows and 7 leads, I found myself in the front of the crowd that had started to form, waffled a minute, and then said, "What the hell?" And thus found myself in my second Jack and Jill competition this year.

Some readers may recall my last experience with a Jack and Jill, where I didn't fare so well. This was different. Not that I won, or anything, but I know I danced well, even if I didn't quite follow everything perfectly. Best of all, the music was pretty darned fast, and I kept up with no trouble at all.

Ok, it helped that I had one of the best leads on the dance floor as my partner. This was no mistake--my original partner got stolen, and I had my pick of the other leads. Hell, I thought, let's be ambitious, and walked over to the winner of the advanced division of that last Jack and Jill I was so upset over. He's a nice guy, and when I said, "Ok, I know you're like twice as good as I am," he replied, "Hey, no, don't go there. Just have fun, that's my strategy."

And we did. It was a grand experience, and I went home feeling on top of the world.


(Thanks to Melissa for the picture!)

Sometimes when he's in a "mood," Z won't sit in his high chair to eat, but wants to sit in my lap and be fed. I know I should encourage independence and regular meal habits and all that, but I also know he won't fit on my lap forever, and someday I'll miss this. I don't want to look back and think, "I wish I'd held him more."

Some mornings we bring Z into bed with us for his morning bottle. I know I'm not supposed to be giving him bottles anymore, but it's pretty much impossible to get him to eat solid food first thing in the morning, and we like to snuggle him in bed while he drinks his milk, which we couldn't do if it were in a drippy straw cup.

I believe it was Stephen who likened snuggling his two-year-old son to being in bed with a sackful of ocelots. This is pretty accurate, except in this case the ocelots have been crossbred with octopi and chihuahuas, thus creating a hybrid race of hysterical eight-legged mammals. But...he won't want to snuggle us in bed forever, and at some point it will of course be wildly inappropriate. I don't want to look back and think, "I wish we'd snuggled more." (I try to keep this in mind when I wake up with a small foot or a pint-sized butt in my face.)

I knew that parenting a toddler could be a lot of tedious, frustrating, exhausting work. What I didn't know was that it would be so much sweet, snuggly, hilarious, ROFLMAO *fun*!

I love you, little guy.

Z discovers a new food and art medium. Hilarity ensues. (Click for full photo set.)

You who have been with me lo these many moons may recall that, shortly after Z was born, my doctor put me on Zoloft for post-partum depression. I took it for several months, and it was very helpful. So at some point I decided I had adjusted to motherhood, and carefully weaned myself off the Zoloft, happy to think I could go back to unmedicated normal.

This state of affairs held for a few months, and then just after the New Year, I began to notice a certain creeping, foggy exhaustion coming back into my life. I also found myself having a lot of difficulty and frustration dealing with the myriad developmental changes Z was going through as he got older and more complex. It came to a head shortly after Z's first birthday. One day in the car with Aaron, when I picked a fight with him for nothing I can recall now, and burst into tears. We decided that perhaps unmedicated normal was not all it was cracked up to be, and I went back to the doctor, who agreed to put me back on the same low dose of Zoloft.

Wow, what a difference. I am all about better living through modern chemistry. Most noticeably, when Z throws a tantrum or gets sick (which often go hand in hand), I am so much better able to deal with it than pre-Zoloft. Aaron says he has never seen me smile so much, and I agree with him that I feel happier than I ever remember being.

Which makes me wonder how long I'd been suffering from untreated depression.

When Aaron first met me, I was a bitterly angry person. If you'd asked me, I wouldn't have described myself as unhappy, it was just that I spent a lot of time being angry at the world for being stupid--which meant I spent a lot of time angry. Much of this stemmed from the abuse and social marginalization I suffered in middle and high school, which primed me to assume that the world really was out to get me, specifically. I wonder if I'd been able to have some kind of drug therapy or emotional counseling, if that would have helped me way back then. I'm not sure I would have accepted it, though--I would probably have been suspicious of it as an adult attempt to entice me to conform.

I also look back on my teaching experiences, which were incredibly frustrating and fed my anger at the world's stupidity. I wonder if I'd been better able to deal with the various academic stupidities, and the petty annoyances attendant on working with adolescents, if I'd had the Zoloft to regulate my moods. I was easily frustrated in those days, and tended not to stay in any one job, or location, for very long. I now wonder if the reason I spent so much time job hopping in the late 90s was that it was only the limerence of a new job that was keeping the depression at bay--and once that wore off...

I knew a lot of people on one kind of medication or another for depression, but it never would have occurred to me that I should be one of them. For one thing, I wasn't sad, I was *angry*, and that anger always seemed justified. But mainly it was that they always seemed to have much worse problems than I did--my life was good, my life was great, and I certainly didn't have self-esteem issues (quite the opposite, frankly). How could I possibly be depressed? This, of course, has an obvious answer--if life is that good and you're sad or mad or anxious anyway, then maybe these emotions aren't merely situational; maybe they have a difference source.

I try not to think of it in these terms, but...how much of my life did I waste this way? How many potential successes did I turn into failure through blindness to the fact that I needed a little help?

All of which is by way of saying, if you're feeling depressed, get help. It makes a world of difference.

I found him! The creepy Facebook ad guy offering Pell grants to moms! Now we know what retired immortal Russian Tsarist mystics do to pay the bills.

Oh...and this is why I love Wikipedia.

It's Dec. 10. See Nov. 13.

On the bright side, our pediatrician's office *finally* has a stock of both seasonal and swine flu vaccines, and we have an appointment Saturday morning to get Z a shot of both. I'm just hoping the irony gods haven't caught up with us, and that he hasn't *already* gotten one form of flu while waiting for the vaccine. :P

Today I went down to a local salon that does free charity haircuts, and donated 10" of my hair to Locks of Love. I had 10" to spare, really. My hair was so long it was like having an extra person in bed with us--and not in a fun way, either. I hadn't cut it in almost 12 years, so I figured it was about time. On the other hand, it had become something of a trademark, and giving it up felt pretty momentous. I was always Joyce with the looonnnnggg hair.

I still have long hair. In fact, according to Vicki Iovine, I'm still engaging in false advertising. But to me, hair falling to just below my shoulder blades is a huge change--I feel lighter and sort of bouncy. It's fun!

(No pictures yet, but really it looks exactly the same, except shorter. I have neither the time nor the inclination to futz with a hairstyle.)

Or at least extremely weird. Because I just got the following ad in my sidebar:



Who is this guy, and what does he have to do with Pell grants? Or moms?

Just sent off my final project for the semester to my professor, and got back confirmation that she received it. Woo-hoo, all done!!!

This was a fun project: we had to submit a proposal for a textbook, along with a table of contents and a sample chapter. I opted for a content-based course package with the theme of American cultural art forms. Content-based instruction (or CBI, as my acronym-happy field of study refers to it) basically means you learn language by means of studying some other topic entirely, and integrate language study into the topic lessons.

What got me thinking along these lines was that, way back in Intercultural Communication, we had this conversation. And I realized that I do, in fact, identify with American culture. It really doesn't get much more American than swing dancing. So, starting from there, I began brainstorming other American art forms, and damn if we don't have quite a few of them. So my textbook covers swing dancing, rock 'n' roll music, Broadway musicals, Hollywood movies, science fiction literature, and the Studio Crafts art movement. (That last one required some research--I had no idea if there even was a distinctly American visual art form. I wish I'd thought of comic books earlier, but oh well.)

Interested parties can download the proposal here and the sample chapter and TOC here. (Beware this last, though, it's a 10MB download, so it may take a while.)

Done!

We had our annual tree-trimming party this past weekend. Between cooking, hostessing, toddler-wrangling, and tree-trimming, I was too busy to take pictures, but luckily spambrian came to the rescue! His pictures are posted on Flickr for your amusement and perusement. His choice of subjects was a bit whimsical, though--did anyone else who was there get pictures of Z in his reindeer sweater?

Today I am grateful to have had several hours of uninterrupted schoolwork time, thanks to Aaron taking Z most of the day. Time to get started on dinner. I am cooking tonight, but not the traditional Feast of the Consumption.

Today I'm thankful for the internet. All the world's knowledge at my fingertips, plus cat macros, from the comfort of my own home. Truly, I live in the future!

Need a recommendation: what's a classic science fiction short story that would be appropriate for a high-intermediate (there's that word again!!) ESL class? (Or maybe an excerpt that's complete in itself?)

Today I am thankful for not falling on my head in dance class. I did fall on my ass, but only once.

This was the sequel to the lifts and drops class I took last month. We reviewed the babydoll drop that we did before, adding a variation and a turn (you can see it with the turn in the video below at 3:32), and then got into new stuff. The first new thing was the A-frame lift, which starts in a tandem Charleston position. The follow braces her hands on the lead's and *jumps* straight up in the air, kicking her legs out and sideways. You can see it in the video at :41 seconds. This was really neat, and not too terribly difficult to catch onto (note I didn't say "master"). We also did a funky barrel-roll kind of dip, which was *really* easy, since the follow doesn't really have to do anything except hang on. :)

The class culminated in the one true aerial, or air step, that we worked on. It's in the video at 3:33, right after the babydoll. Of course, we didn't do it this fast! Yes, I got flipped upside down in the air over the instructor's head. Three times. And I only fell on my ass the first time. I'm especially thankful for my dance instructors and the students spotting me for not letting me fall on my fool head.

The babydoll, the A-frame, and the froggy that we worked on the last time are all things I could see myself adding to my dance repertoire. The actual aerials, though, are something I could really do without. I have a terrible fear of being upside down, and the only reason I tried it today was that I was dancing with the instructor, who I could be absolutely sure wouldn't drop me. It's ok, though. I'm happy to know my limits. I can be a good dancer without flipping upside down. And it's nice to know I did try it. Three times, even.

I've decided I hate the word "intermediate." What does it mean? Not a beginner anymore, not yet an expert? But we all know that's a continuum, a vast gray in-between land of almost-but-not-quite.

The classes at Atlanta Varsity Showdown this year were divided into two levels: beginner and intermediate/advanced. Obviously if you've taken a bunch of lindy classes and go dancing every week, you're not going to opt for the beginner classes--which meant that the other level was smeared unevenly across that gray in-between land. Of the leads I danced with, only about a dozen of them really qualified as "advanced" dancers; the rest ranged somewhere between fresh-out-of-lindy-101 and what we might call "high-intermediate." It was a disappointment to me, bc I think I'm approaching that latter state, and was looking forward to pushing myself by trying the advanced classes this year, only to discover that there *were* no advanced classes.

The thing is, I've been an "intermediate" dancer for the last, oh, three years? In that time, I've become a much *better* dancer, fixing numerous frame and technique problems, adding to my repertoire of moves and variations and learning how to respond on the fly to changes in the music. But I'm still an "intermediate" dancer.

I've been thinking that it would be better to use some kind of larger scale that would subdivide the gray in-between. (Some major dance events do this--I think Beantown Camp and Lindy Focus have as many as five levels.) The way I've been thinking about it is that level 1 would be your raw beginners, your lindy 101 graduates who go to Hot Jam every week or so, but are still kind of stiff and uncertain. Level 2 would be "I've been dancing for about six months, and it's starting to feel like dancing and not just doing moves." Then you'd get to level 3, a sort of solid intermediate, "I've been dancing for more than a year, dance at least once or twice a week, take classes, and I'm ready to start really exploring things like musicality and variations." Level 4 would be something like "I've got a good, solid frame, a good standard repertoire, I can improvise and respond to the music, and I'm ready to do things like perform and compete." Level 5: "I'm a high-level dancer in demand as a partner, I know how to really communicate on the dance floor, and I can usually place in competitions, or at least make the finals." Then there would be level 6 for the really top-level dancers, the instructors and master-level folks. And I suppose we could add a level 7, for the late, great Frankie Manning and the other old-time gods of the lindy hop pantheon. :)

The way I see it, you generally social dance with people either at your own level, or one above or below. If you want to really work on improving your dancing, you need to be asking people 1-2 levels ahead of you to dance. I think I'm starting to feel like a level 4 dancer, according to my little taxonomy, thus I usually dance with 3s or other 4s, and try to work up the courage to ask the 5s and 6s to dance. I'm trying to push myself into level 5, so that some of them will ask *me* to dance!

Of course this isn't some kind of hard-and-fast rule--advanced dancers dance with beginners all the time, and that's both fun and important to the continuation of the dance scene. It's more just what I've observed on the dance floor, social patterns that emerge over time. (My Intercultural Communication class last year got me really interested in ethnographic observation.)

And speaking of my classes, this problem of "intermediate" shows up there too. What is an "intermediate" language speaker? As with dancing, I've been an intermediate German speaker since about the middle of my undergraduate studies. But the difference between me as a college junior and me as an adult, taking conversation classes in Munich, is huge. And let's not forget the regression I've suffered from not speaking enough German in the last several years. Am I still intermediate?

Man, I *really* hate that word.

Last night I joined Swingin' From the Heart to dance at Hammond Glen retirement community. We danced with each other and with the residents, who seemed very happy to have us. I mostly danced with Z, who would not hang out contentedly with my mom, but insisted only his Mommy would do. That was ok, though. I got a few dances in with other dancers, and enjoyed showing off my budding young lindy hopper.

Pictures here!

Thursday night I had a private Charleston lesson, and worked on a bunch of technique issues that have been bugging me on more advanced moves. I'm not yet a lean, mean Charleston machine, but I have high hopes. (Who says an ant can't move a rubber tree plant?)

I also got to stay out late both Thursday and Monday at Hot Jam, since Mom was here to get up early with Z the next days, and discovered something interesting. Usually I only stay at a dance for about an hour, since I have to be home early. What I learned from staying two or more hours is that that first hour is mainly just warm-up. I didn't really feel good and comfy with my dancing until I got into that second hour. This is problematic, since the dances tend to start late--Wednesdays at 9, Thursdays at 9:30! The earliest one is HJ at 8:30, and even then no one really shows up til 9. And I really do need to be in bed by midnight if the whole next day isn't to be a waste. I think I'm just going to have to get really disciplined about going right to bed when I come home--no computer time, no reading, no prolonged tea-and-snack, just shower, brush teeth, and hit the pillow. Because I had some really good dance nights this week, and I want more like that.