This is what happens when ...

Saturday I was driving to Perry to try on my wedding dress for the first time. I was happy for a few reasons:

1) My dress was lost in the mail for three weeks and was now found. Truly, they were pretty worried about it. I was a little bit. My mom was FREAKING out (not that I can blame her, I just hadn't heard her freak out in a while, so it was slightly entertaining). Love you, Mom.

2) I was listening to NPR. I love NPR because a) I am a dork. b) They have awesome Sat. music from Java House in Iowa City where in college, I stimulated my caffeine addiction as an excuse for better studying habits 3) They still tell news stories instead of having reality TV stars for interviewees. P.S. I make up for this by watching E News a lot.

3) John had bought me 4 truffles from Godiva just before I left and I ate 3 of them on my ride up. It's impossible not to be happy when you're eating 3 truffles. I then sadly let the other one melt while I tried my dress on, but was not above licking the melted chocolate off the bag until my sister looked at me slightly disgusted and said, "You know we have cookies at my house, right?"

So, upon my sister and my arrival in the store we were ushered into a dressing room where my dress awaited. I slid into it up to my thighs and then all sense of sliding stopped. I propped it up around my chest (what's left of it) and said, "Okay. Zip."

And my sister said, "Ummmmm...."

I looked at her face in the mirror and it's one I'd seen plenty of times as a child. One day, I "stayed home sick" with my sister and my mom caught us in our unfinished basement playing soccer and made us go to Wednesday night church. When my sister saw my mom that day at the bottom of the stairs I saw that face.

"No umms!" I said eyebrows sky high. "Zip!"

"Ummmm.....," she said.

And then we shuffled the dress into 20 different positions and suddenly it zipped.

Suddenly, I was also incredibly aware of my diaphragm.

"Ummm," I wheezed.

And my sister started laughing. "My dress was this tight. Soon, you're going to feel like you're sternum's collapsing."

Awesome. Sounds pleasant.

The seamstress came over and said, "How does everything feel? It fits fabulously!"

And I said, "Yeah. Um. I can't really breathe."

"That's perfect!," she said, and I was a bit miffed at how excited she was about my lack of air.

And then I started sweating. In air conditioning. Without lifting 19-month-old boys on my hips or smiling for photos or dancing or sitting in the Iowa September sun and I thought, oh heck. I'm going to be a puddle of a bride about halfway down my walk down the aisle.

And then I thought, well, that's okay. John has seen me with the flu. And pregnant as a whale with twins. And delivering twins. And So who knows, right? Maybe sweaty and stuffed will be an improvement?!

Until tomorrow ...

Tutus and Charleston Chews

In lieu of talking about everything that's making me want a beer right now, I've decided to flash back to dance class 1990.

First, I feel like I should tell you a few very important things.

1) I have huge thighs, and they were with me then, too. So at age 9, my huge thighs were plopped into pale pink tights. No, I can't imagine anything worse.
2) I sucked at dancing. Super sucked. I know with kids now I'm supposed to say things like, "Oh, honey, sucked is a bad word - and so strong - can't you say you weren't very good?" But the strong word is necessary here. I sucked.
3) There was only one thing I loved about dance class. There was only one thing I even liked about dance class. Afterward, my mom would take me to the grocery store right next door and I would get a candy bar. (See #1 huge thighs).

On this particular day, we were all preparing for a recital. I had my token place in the back row where I was no doubt preemptively weighing my options between a 3 Musketeers and a Charleston Chew when things got serious. The owner of the dance studio came in.

She was elusive. Sure, her name was on the outside of the building, but until then, the woman with big black hair and skinny legs was our teacher. Not this woman.

She had gray hair and stick thin legs and a voice like she'd been smoking for 137 years.

She also had a pointer.

She stood up front and said, "Dance monkeys, dance!"

Okay. Not really, but it felt that way. She asked us to run through our routine and every three seconds she would yell, "Stop the music!" and she would critique someone's stance or someone's wrist or someone's eyelashes.

I'd never been happier to be in the back row.

"STOP THE MUSIC!" she screamed a last time. And then her beady eyes settled on a poor slim girl to my front left. I remember her. I remember her hair. I remember her thin legs. I remember the way that the whole situation looked a lot like a hawk circling a mouse.

"Everyone, look over here!" she said, sticking her pointer right at the poor girl. "LOOK!"

"Thissssss....," she said narrowing her eyes and pointing at the girl's behind, "is why we don't wear underwear. Look at this ugly line!"  

I watched tears roll down the little girls cheeks and I thought about a lot of mean things I could say to this woman. And above all of them, I heard a voice screaming in my head, "You were not meant for dance. You always wear underwear!"

And that was it. That was my last dance class. There are moments in life when you realize you just weren't meant for something, and with my underwear and huge thighs and love of chocolate, I knew I wasn't meant for dance. I enjoyed every single bite of my Charleston Chew on the way home that night, and I started contemplating all of the chocolate bars I would get to eat now that I didn't have dance weighing down my snack time.

I'm ambitious like that.