Tag Archives: Dancing

2,018 ideas for the New Year! Just kidding………..only 7…..

Humor, , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, here we are, the first week of January, where everything changes and becomes new. Where we get to be a whole new person, with a whole new life and whole new ideas about what the next 365 days will bring.

When I thought about that on the scale this morning ( I sure did ‘let it go’ the past two weeks!) I realized this January thing is the same damn thing, every damn year,  for the past 300 years for me. And I’d take the wager that most of you feel the same.

So here’s my January suggestions:

  1. It’s cold. Wear a hat.

    Maybe not these hats. But they do come with a snack!
  2. Stay hydrated. Your hands, lips, and skin are begging for water and you don’t drink enough because it’s cold. (Even if you live in a warm climate, do it anyway).
  3. Read a book. Even a pop-up book is a different experience than a screen. And how fun is a pop-up book? You know you love them.                
  4. Call your Mom, your best friend, your therapist or your spouse for no reason except to say hi. Better yet, take them out for coffee.
  5. Get some alone time. We all need it. If you get too much, go back to number 4. If you don’t get enough, repeat number 5.
  6. Dance. I just read where one of my Facebook writer friends has to dance around like a washing machine when she takes her new meds because it will keep her from getting nauseous. Dancing will keep all of us from getting nauseous every time we read the news. So dance like a washing machine!
  7. Make a list of all the things that you love to do and do more of that….not list making, the things you love to do…unless it’s list making, then do that.

None of this even remotely looks like resolutions or life-changing habits. But as I lather on lotion, dance like a washing machine, while being alone, searching for my hat to go buy a pop-up book and have coffee with some friends, I’ll tell you my list for 2018 already looks pretty darn fun………..that’s a revelation! Which is ever so much better than a resolution.

HAPPY JANUARY……….AND ALL OF 2018 TO COME!

“You Just have to Laugh………….”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

The best things happen while you’re dancing…..and then……..

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Recovery from a crazy weekend symbolized too much drinking, eating, carousing and not enough sleep. Good times. Recovery in the baby boom lexicon foreshadows peculiar changes.

Last weekend my husband and I went to two dinner dances. We love to dance. In fact, we took three different ballroom dancing classes this year.  Since ballroom dancing is one of the top five things you can do to stave off dementia, we figured a thrown hip or knee was a better choice than Alzheimer’s. You wouldn’t recognize ballroom dancing if you watched us, but we just love to dance and that was a legit way to get off the couch, do something fun together, and laugh at our mutual lack of skill.  Then we go back to our lounge lizard moves.

Now at our age, two late nights of dancing, in a row, is pretty risque. The problem is not the actual dancing. It’s the recovery. Saturday night’s gala lasted until midnight. Traditionally, at this affair, we are the last couple on the dance floor with our best friends. This is a country club affair, and if my husband is the recipient of an award  (which is often, because I married a winner in every sense of the word) then we dance more, he drinks more, we talk more and we recover more slowly.

Yes, he won.

Recovery now means we were up too late (past midnight!), too much physical activity

What dancing really looks like
What dancing really looks like

(dancing?) plenty of sleep (because we pass out in our bed as soon as we fall into it) and at least one person who was the designated driver and is only recovering from too much water. And yet, the morning after….the bones creak, the legs move slowly, napping is scheduled as a high priority the minute one wakes up, and the thought of grooming to a high level all over again is daunting.

The next day we both tried to lay low knowing full well our other set of best friends would expect dancing mania, especially since they just completed a course of ballroom dancing with us. We did not disappoint. Although, with 30 minutes of rock and roll left, I could see my intrepid husband slowing down.

“My legs are giving out,” he whispered, as he twirled me in towards him.

“My feet are killing me,” I said quietly, as I did the cha-cha around him.

Now I know what Ginger Rogers meant when she said something like: You try doing this in high heels and backwards….and Fred gets all the credit.

As we limped to the car, the second night in a row, I said to my dancing partner and life partner, “I don’t think we can do this again.”

He mumbled something back which was either, “sure we can, we love to dance,” or “I think we can refinance.”

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table the next morning, I hear my husband coming down the stairs mumbling, “Ow, Ow, Ow.”

I would have gone to the bottom of the staircase to help him, but I had just crawled over to the coffee pot and wasn’t about to do that again.

“You just have to Laugh…”

©Cathy Sikorski 2014

 

 

A Girl’s gotta’ take care of herself…..

Caregivers, Humor, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

In the vein of  every caregiver has to take time for herself, I was remembering that I started my caregiving journey over 20 years ago, first with my Nana and then with my great aunt Mary. Aunt Mary was a crotchety character, probably why she crocheted 10 hours a day. She thought she was  being crotchety but she was mixing up her letters.

I went to her house a few times a week, after my Uncle Buddy died because she only had a few nieces and nephews. Her son had sadly passed away before his parents, and her grandchildren lived far away.

Again, I was designated caregiver because as a stay-at-home mom, I had nothing else to do. Said the stay-at-home mom to no one.

Aunt Mary lived 30 minutes away and required grocery shopping, prescription pick up, supervising her cleaning lady, checking her mail and paying her bills. I took  my 3 year-old with me and it was just a few hours out of our day. But after having my Nana for two winters, and discovering I was pregnant. I was starting to feel tired, old, ugly and sad.

My husband saw the downslide and suggested we go to a fancy dinner dance at the club. Yay! A new dress, nails done, hair done, pretty, pretty, pretty me.

I hired a babysitter. I began the day with a fresh outlook. I was excited for the pampering and an evening of dining and dancing. My husband and I love to dance, and it had been a while since we danced the night away.

In the spirit of thinking everyone deserved some fun, I wore that rarely seen sexy thong underwear in the back of my dresser drawer. I kind of hate thongs. They are so darn uncomfortable. But under certain circumstances I must agree.  First, the dress looked ever so much better with no panty line. Second, my husband deserved a little fantasy. Which was probably the closest he would get to fantasy because if the evening went the way I thought it would, he would be a bit tipsy, we would both be exhausted from dancing, and we would fall into bed and be snoring a duet within minutes upon our return home.

So off to the ball we went. Cinderella (that’s me…code name caregiver) danced with her Prince Charming to every single song they played. Fast, slow, samba, mamba, polka, it didn’t matter. If music was playing, we were dancing.

Oh my, so much fun. I made sure to hydrate constantly. I was the designated driver, but I didn’t want to wake up to mommyville with a dehydration headache. At some point in time, I decided a trip to the loo was in order. I went in to the ladies room feeling, hot (as in sexy) confident, happy and just darn groovy.

I go into the stall hike up my dress, go to pull down my panties. Hmmm. I remember just then I’m wearing that darn thong, and gee, I didn’t feel the need to grab my own ass the entire night.  It is then that I see I have come across a new invention. I am wearing my ‘thong’ sideways.

Do it all the time now. Too comfortable to go back to tradition.

“You  just have to Laugh…..”

Cathy Sikorski