Saturday morning dawned cold and overcast with heavy grey clouds. I dressed, brushed my hair and teeth, and headed for the dance studio. I arrived fifteen minutes early to the big bright studio above the furniture store, all windows on one side and glass on the other, at least fifty feet of running room and high-polished oak floors.
Eugene's sleepy downtown hadn't stretched and yawned yet; plumes of steam rose from the roofs, from the sewer grates. No cars passed on the street below. I waited for the students and worked on the choreography; very basic moves, simple transitions, no fancy stepwork, and a lot of repetition.
I expected ten students at least but only two showed up, which was fine. It gave me more time to explain and break down the moves, and talk about the instruments, the music, and choreography in general. We had fun and by the end of class they could do it. They didn’t like the four-count spin (and initially I had a sixteen- count spin, but we improvised) but they did like the shoulder and hip accent on the short tabla drum solo. I love catching a drum beat; it's like part of my body represents the sharp quick sound of the drum. I've seen dancers do some amazing things with drum solos; sometimes they act as thought the beats were jerking them around, others work it to look like their bodies are responsible for the beats. It always requires strength, timing, and muscle control. And beads and coins help. Boom tak-a boom.
After class I returned home and collected S for some errands. We visited second-hand shops but the only treasure we found was a red star sticker at the feminist bookstore, sculptures of female anatomy and cheesy artsy fartsy greeting cards everywhere, plus some halfway decent literature. I took him out for hamburgers and beer, and then we did some grocery shopping. The store where we like to shop had a special sale for Oregon coast Dungeness crab, and we picked a big one. Crab meat is always best just after a cold snap, like the arctic storm we just endured. Last winter S went to the coast and I told him he'd better not come home without catching crabs, which made him laugh.
We also bought a decent bottle of wine, since for some reason the store always clears out the previous year's vintage to make room for the coming stock. Sounds counter-intuitive (clearancing "old" wine?) to me but I am keeping my mouth shut and loading those five-dollar-discounted bottles into my basket, thank you kindly. Dinner was sinfully good. And afterwards we had good clean fun.
We made soap.
Every year my office has "craft day" and someone brings supplies for everyone to make something. Last year we made bath salts and the year before we made little bear ornaments. I offered (yeah, my big mouth) to bring soap-making supplies for this year to have a fun day with all those crafty ladies in the office. But just to remind myself how it worked, I decided to use up a Neutragena bar and make sure I could remember all the steps. This is glycerine soap; we're not talking about Fight Club lye and rendered fat and dangerous stuff. I melt small chunks of glycerine soap in the microwave, add coloring, fragrance, and then pour it into a soap mold.
S wanted to make more soap, but making soap is dependent upon supplies, and we had used all the available glycerine until he remembered the reject soap I made last year. Some red, some green, and I had poured them into an ice tray hoping they'd be cute little soaps but they just looked like I had poured them into an ice tray. He chopped up both red and green chunks, insistent that brown soap was acceptable, like oatmeal soap or old-style cake soap. And at first it was a rather interesting sage green color, but when I stirred it I noticed big chunks of red that hadn't dissolved, so we used one of the gargoyle molds and it looked like green skin and blood clots. Delightfully disgusting.
S decided to stir it up and add more red. And then he added more green. And then I stopped him and told him he was making nasty dog-shit colored soap and we laughed so hard we shook the walls. There is no removing the dye from the soap. It was poop brown. The whole "Oh well, we'll just use it in the kitchen" was funny, too. Dog shit on the counter. Yick. We made another gargoyle but in retrospect we should have used the rose soap mold.
Cleaning up soap-making mess is easy... because it's soap. Just rinse and dry. Simple.
Sunday I did laundry, preparing for our trip to California on Wednesday. He cleaned the living room, and we moved the couch. After sweeping and vacuuming, while I was folding laundry, he changed into a nasty old t-shirt, holes in the back and busted at the seams, and a pair of sweats. He stood in front of me, puffed out his chest with fists on hips and said in his best superhero voice, "I am Wax Man." I very nearly peed myself.
He waxed our living room floor, which is no small thing; it's L-shaped and about 30 feet long by 20 feet wide, and he did it on his hands and knees. With an old wool sock. Wax Man, indeed. We took turns buffing it. I'm going to use a magic marker to draw a big honkin' "W" on his ratty old t-shirt.
Funny man. Fun weekend.
Eugene's sleepy downtown hadn't stretched and yawned yet; plumes of steam rose from the roofs, from the sewer grates. No cars passed on the street below. I waited for the students and worked on the choreography; very basic moves, simple transitions, no fancy stepwork, and a lot of repetition.
I expected ten students at least but only two showed up, which was fine. It gave me more time to explain and break down the moves, and talk about the instruments, the music, and choreography in general. We had fun and by the end of class they could do it. They didn’t like the four-count spin (and initially I had a sixteen- count spin, but we improvised) but they did like the shoulder and hip accent on the short tabla drum solo. I love catching a drum beat; it's like part of my body represents the sharp quick sound of the drum. I've seen dancers do some amazing things with drum solos; sometimes they act as thought the beats were jerking them around, others work it to look like their bodies are responsible for the beats. It always requires strength, timing, and muscle control. And beads and coins help. Boom tak-a boom.
After class I returned home and collected S for some errands. We visited second-hand shops but the only treasure we found was a red star sticker at the feminist bookstore, sculptures of female anatomy and cheesy artsy fartsy greeting cards everywhere, plus some halfway decent literature. I took him out for hamburgers and beer, and then we did some grocery shopping. The store where we like to shop had a special sale for Oregon coast Dungeness crab, and we picked a big one. Crab meat is always best just after a cold snap, like the arctic storm we just endured. Last winter S went to the coast and I told him he'd better not come home without catching crabs, which made him laugh.
We also bought a decent bottle of wine, since for some reason the store always clears out the previous year's vintage to make room for the coming stock. Sounds counter-intuitive (clearancing "old" wine?) to me but I am keeping my mouth shut and loading those five-dollar-discounted bottles into my basket, thank you kindly. Dinner was sinfully good. And afterwards we had good clean fun.
We made soap.
Every year my office has "craft day" and someone brings supplies for everyone to make something. Last year we made bath salts and the year before we made little bear ornaments. I offered (yeah, my big mouth) to bring soap-making supplies for this year to have a fun day with all those crafty ladies in the office. But just to remind myself how it worked, I decided to use up a Neutragena bar and make sure I could remember all the steps. This is glycerine soap; we're not talking about Fight Club lye and rendered fat and dangerous stuff. I melt small chunks of glycerine soap in the microwave, add coloring, fragrance, and then pour it into a soap mold.
S wanted to make more soap, but making soap is dependent upon supplies, and we had used all the available glycerine until he remembered the reject soap I made last year. Some red, some green, and I had poured them into an ice tray hoping they'd be cute little soaps but they just looked like I had poured them into an ice tray. He chopped up both red and green chunks, insistent that brown soap was acceptable, like oatmeal soap or old-style cake soap. And at first it was a rather interesting sage green color, but when I stirred it I noticed big chunks of red that hadn't dissolved, so we used one of the gargoyle molds and it looked like green skin and blood clots. Delightfully disgusting.
S decided to stir it up and add more red. And then he added more green. And then I stopped him and told him he was making nasty dog-shit colored soap and we laughed so hard we shook the walls. There is no removing the dye from the soap. It was poop brown. The whole "Oh well, we'll just use it in the kitchen" was funny, too. Dog shit on the counter. Yick. We made another gargoyle but in retrospect we should have used the rose soap mold.
Cleaning up soap-making mess is easy... because it's soap. Just rinse and dry. Simple.
Sunday I did laundry, preparing for our trip to California on Wednesday. He cleaned the living room, and we moved the couch. After sweeping and vacuuming, while I was folding laundry, he changed into a nasty old t-shirt, holes in the back and busted at the seams, and a pair of sweats. He stood in front of me, puffed out his chest with fists on hips and said in his best superhero voice, "I am Wax Man." I very nearly peed myself.
He waxed our living room floor, which is no small thing; it's L-shaped and about 30 feet long by 20 feet wide, and he did it on his hands and knees. With an old wool sock. Wax Man, indeed. We took turns buffing it. I'm going to use a magic marker to draw a big honkin' "W" on his ratty old t-shirt.
Funny man. Fun weekend.
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