Kitchen Dancing

I don't know what the atmosphere is like among your co-workers or peers, but in my little corner of the world, you can feel the stress radiating off people. In fact, I know the stress I'm giving off at this moment is nuclear.

I'm doing my best to find positive ways to escape this stress - running, playing with the dog, cooking, sewing, kitchen dancing.

What, you don't dance in your kitchen? You don't put on the cast recording of In The Heights and pretend that you can dance to a Latin beat and that you aren't the white, private school kid you are? (In high school, my friends and I refined "The White Kid Dance" at G-ross sock hops; it involves opening your mouth and moving your fist in tiny circles. Hey, at least we embraced our uncoolness).

Well, for me there is nothing more fun than shaking my grove thing around my kitchen floor while Sully stares at me as if to say, "My human is so. odd." (Yeah, Buddy, we'll compare lists some time; mine starts with "He eats frog carcases.") Here you will see my kitchen dancing in action. This is me and my sisters demonstrating our skillz at our house warming party in 2007 (Thanks to Nica for capturing this):




I know, you're jealous. What can I say? It takes a lot of practice. Teresa and I spent many childhood afternoons working on our routine to "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" from Annie. It takes that kind of dedication to get to the natural talent you see today.

But if you find yourself needing to relieve some stress and want to start kitchen dancing, might I make some suggestions?

One of my favorites right now is "Say Hey (I Love You)" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. Mary sent me the You Tube video below a while back just so we could gush over how adorable our first couple is. I fell in love with the song because it instantly made me happy. And again, I could pretend I wasn't such a white kid. Ben has also demonstrated some fine dance moves to this one (now if only I had a video of that!). We both also like to get the dog involved as we dance to this song. I balance him on his back paws and sway his front paws. Ben picks him up and starts rocking back and forth to the beat, and Sully frantically thinks, "So odd, so odd, so odd" to the beat.




I also love the song "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson. When I look back at 2009, I think I will say, "Ingrid Michaelson got me through it." I love her. One day, when Ben and I both received discouraging news from different doctor's appointments, I started playing this song as he entered the house, and before either of us said anything, we danced on the kitchen floor. It didn't make everything better, but it made it bearable, if only for a moment.



My all-time favorite line in this song is, "I will help you read those books / if you will soothe my worried looks / and we will put the lonesome on the shelf." If there's one exchange I could make with all of my friend, it is that. Actually, when I listen to this song at the end of a long day, I like to envision dancing to this song in my kitchen with everyone I love around me. As more and more voices enter the song, I mentally fill my kitchen with more and more friends, both close and far away. It is particularly fun to decide who will be playing the ukulele and, inevitably, the image makes me giggle.

So if you are feeling stressed, know that you might be kitchen dancing, at that very moment, in my mind, and when your kitchen dancing, life is never as bad as it might seem.