Birthdays and Blues

It was my birthday this week.  I am officially on the downhill side of my second decade.  I find that I am not especially perturbed. I mean, I had that disturbing moment on WebMD last year where I realized that I was no longer in the 18-24 age range, but since then I've been pretty much fine with my advancing years (and everyone knows WebMD is just a disturbing place anyway).  But then, I've never had a problem with the idea of getting older.  Mine is not a lifestyle that I will struggle to sustain into my old age...

it's all about the sustainable lifestyle!

If you know me very well at all then you know that I dig birthdays in a major way.  Why wouldn't you?  Once a year, having a day set aside simply to celebrate the fact that you exist and that you are you, I can think of nothing better.  If I can get away with it, I actually like to stretch my celebrations out over a week, or at least a weekend.  This year, however, my birthday fell on a Monday--a circumstance I find that I rather dislike.  Birthdays should always be on a Thursday or Friday.  They just should.  Nothing so anticlimactic as wrapping up your party with a prosaic "well...I have to go to work tomorrow so I should go to bed..." 

screw Disneyland.  Everyone knows this is the happiest
place on earth.

Regardless of the unfortunate day upon which it fell, I had an absolutely lovely birthday.  Until now, my birthday has always been an excuse to get the day off of work; however, so much do I love my job that going to work seemed like a perfectly acceptable way for me to spend the bulk of my day.  Helps that my boss also happens to be one of my very favorite people.  Then I came home from work just in time for my self-organized birthday party.  While I appreciate the idea of a surprise party I've ultimately come to the conclusion that I prefer planning my own party.  Because I'm a control freak?  maybe.  Anyway, when you organize your own party you get to make fun stipulations.  Last year I requested that everyone bring me a present, any present at all, provided it was wrapped.  I love unwrapping things! This year I decided that all I wanted was flowers.  Initially I wanted fresh flowers, but upon further reflection I decided that since fresh flowers can be expensive, not to mention I love when people get creative, I would take any sort of flowers.  Except the nasty fake silk flowers.  Because those are gross.

these flowers are an insult to real flowers everywhere.  

I received some really beautiful flowers, predominantly fresh or made of paper.  Though there was one knitted one for me to clip in my hair.  But even better, a whole bunch of people who I love very much all came to my house and talked to me and each other and ate this cake that was made for me by my lovely roommate Callie.  And then we played the What If game, which is one of my absolute favorite games ever.  And then, though I wasn't originally planning on it, I had a mini blues party in my kitchen and danced with Griffin, John, and Caleb.  It was delightful in every possible way.

technically this is John dancing with me last year
but I very lamely forgot to take pictures this year...

And that is going to be my super smooth segue into the other half of this post.  Which is going to be about blues.  Which is why this post is called "Birthdays and Blues".  Should I continue to elaborate on this?

I went blues dancing tonight.  I didn't go last week because blues has been somewhat....less than fulfilling lately.  And I just didn't want to go and pay $5 to be less than fulfilled.  But this week there was a competition that I was maybe almost going to compete in.  Not to mention it is that wonderful time of year known as BIRTHDAY JAM!  Alas, I neither competed nor did I get a birthday jam (maybe next week?).  But what I did get was some absolutely marvelous dancing!  

aw man...homemade bread and jam!  Want!

My "on" nights are fewer and farther between these days.  I have been dancing long enough that I rarely get compliments any more.  So when both of those things happen it really makes my night.  And tonight I had both.  I realized I was going to pull John off at one point and actually managed to gain my balance and push him back on his so that we just kept right on going.  It was a beautiful moment and we both gave each other the "ohmygoshthatwasawesome!" face.  Mike Dymond said that he is always impressed at how "good your direction changes are! Dang!"  And Spencer asked me if I was in a good mood or if I was just feeling creative because the move I had just done (a backwards dip I've never in my life even thought about attempting before) was a "stroke of genius".  

I adore this picture!  Found here, this is more or
less what I did with Spencer

I don't list these compliments as a sort of litany of vanity.  Ok, maybe a little bit.  But I was proud of that moment with John, dangit!  But more importantly, I'm attempting to convey the feeling a spectacular night of dancing will give you.  If you have never experienced it it is very difficult to appreciate the joy that is connecting with another person and sharing a physical conversation in movement with them.  The ability to communicate is one of my favorite and most prized, and words are the joy of my life.  But to set words aside and find a line of communication underneath is thrilling and beautiful.  When you can feel you and your partner creating the perfect compliment to each other--feeling the movement and intention of his body and your body somehow moves you with him--the two of you are living, dancing, art.  As corny as that may sound. 

As someone who has little to no physical contact with people in my day to day life it's almost impossible to overstate how much a night like tonight means to me.  It reconnects me to the world.  After a week of lurking in my bedroom staring at my computer, going out and connecting with three or five or ten people at blues reconnects me to life.  It brings me out of myself.  

That's what will always keep me coming back for more.