If It's Tuesday It Must Be Belly Dancing!

Um, yeah, belly dancing - again... that torture I subject myself to once a week... that torture that proves to me I am a white girl with no rhythm and my daughter MUST have been friggin' switched at birth to have the skill and grace she obviously possesses in dance.... yeah - it's Tuesday!

Ok - I dramatize. It's not torture, not entirely - it's fun, really - frustrating but fun. It's just hard to move your body in so many different directions - so hard to disjoint yourself enough to make your chest POP and your hips DROP, and your arms resemble mesmerizing snakes - all while leaning back as far as you can possibly go and making the coins on your skirt jingle - all at the same damn time! Really not an attractive exercise for a half dozen aging mothers to be partaking in - but hey, it is fun - and we do laugh - we laugh hard... which was sorta that point, well that and moving our hinnies in something akin to an organized activity. Bitch, bitch bitch bitch bitch.

Ok - so we get home from dance - Tuesday is an early night - we get home at 7:00 - WOO the HOO! We eat dinner together - the kids and me... my daughter and my son (oh yeah, y'all haven't been formally introduced: Joshua and Rebecca, the blog world - the blog world, Joshua and Rebecca) ... and so I try to have something in the crock pot or something easy to fix so I'm not tempted to do the whole "pick it up on the run" thing... you know the thing that makes us fat and sluggish and just plain unhealthy if we eat it too often... that's Wednesday's dinner. We eat, and then Joshua decides we need to carve a pumpkin 'cause I have three sitting on the porch and hey, guess what comes on tv just as he makes this declaration? Why, you're so right - It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! At the very exact moment - during the recitation of the most perfectly awesome line ever in cartoondom we paused - and listened - and heard:

"YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION! "

Sheer brilliance!

It was fate I tell ya' - the universe telling us to carve a pumpkin damn it - so we picked a template and Joshua scooped out the guts and Rebecca assisted and now we have a pumpkin - a real live carved Halloween pumpkin! It was all silly and serendipitous (Joshua's word choice).... and, once again, my children make me smile - my children restore me... they fill my heart with love, light and laughter. All the shit, it doesn't really matter at moments like this... yeah, it's all still there... but it doesn't matter - and it feels good....

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Jeff -

* oh, I've recently been informed that the pumpkin prefers to be called Jeffree (yes that's with two e's on the end)

And as I heard these lines in The Great Pumpkin I realized what a great blog post it might make one day soon. Read, file the idea away folks, you're gonna see it again...

Linus: He'll come here because I have the most sincere pumpkin patch and he respects sincerity.
Sally: Do you really think he will come?
Linus: Tonight the Great Pumpkin will rise out of the pumpkin patch. He flies through the air and brings toys to all the children of the world.
Sally: That's a good story.
Linus: You don't believe the story of the Great Pumpkin? I thought little girls always believed everything that was told to them. I thought little girls were innocent and trusting.
Sally: Welcome to the 20th century!