I took like four giant glugs of coffee this morning and felt super natural. I put Violet in her swing and did a couple karate kicks in the dining room; topped it off with a sweet Moonwalk across the wood floor, back into the kitchen, and pulled up once again out front the coffee machine. Moonwalking is a lost art if you ask me. And it bums me out that there's not really much written or passed along about technique and all. A few YouTubes of Michael Jackson in his wonderful prime...maybe some pointers if you know one of the OldSchool local legends. But for someone like me just trying to keep it alive by practicing the art in the sanctuary of my home (rental) there isn't much.
So... there was a twisted crunching as I pulled up to a full stop, a disturbing sound like I'd accidentally stepped on a tiny gnome. I heard his inch long brittle femurs just shatter. There was little backbone cracks and the unsettling creak and pop of his wee skull getting smushed.
What the?
I looked down expecting the worst; Salt Lake City man stoned by Right Wing Mob for the brutal murder of their beloved kitchen elf, Founding Father. Anything is possible in Utah.
It was a Cheerio. My breath circled my face a few times before it came back in. I'd dropped the damn thing earlier and been too lazy to even mull over picking it up. So here we were now, the small fallen 'O' pulverized under my mukluk and me half-seriously conjuring up one of my mid-level personal disaster scenarios at, like, 6-fuckin'thirty in the morning. Ugh.
Now I heard the familiar song of Milo's tags jingling off in the other room. He's coming. Clippity overgrown claws on tile. And then here he was, the man himself,all street casual strutting and ignoring me. He walked straight over to the cereal dust with radar sharpness and snorted it up without any pomp like some hungry junkie. To cap it all off? He hardly stopped moving and split without so much as looking at me. Dick.
I poured my coffee and Moonwalked back in to my daughter. Lately, I've been hesitant to mention this to anyone in fear of jinxing it, but (whispering!) Violet has been really warming up to me! The previous few weeks of hellfire crying and discontent have so suddenly been replaced. Here now we've been having wonderous days of walking the dogs in a springtime canyon. Just the two of us looking up and talking about the snow-capped mountains and the robins and bluebirds and watching the dogs eat mossy sticks and swim in wild creeks. Afternoons: peaceful feedings in front of a crackling FaceBook or time spent sitting in the driveway while papa mows the frickin Bionic grass. Evenings of recipe sharing in the kitchen while Daddy makes some dinner and sous-chef Violet squeaks out orders and stares at my vegetables with disbelief at their unfreshness and barks out pointless spice info.
And the nights, oh the nights. Nights of graceful glides down the grassy hills of exhaustion and into the valleys of slumber, where fawns and pink daffodils nip at her soft ankles and coax her deeper into the sleepy wood. The other night: two episodes of KING OF QUEENS and one ARE YOU BEING SERVED?, totally uninterrupted, chips and salsa, feet up where they shouldn't be, a dreaming precious Violet swinging away by the bookshelf. Yes, things have been way better. Maybe she is getting used to me, huh? It feels so damn good that I keep thinking someone's gonna take it away from me.
So anyhow, I Moonwalked back in to Violet, who was just kind of peering up at a scrap of shadow on the ceiling when I got there. Just like her pop. With a stoop and a snag, I lifted her up and took her for a spin around the rooms with the slick floors. We Moonwalked over to the bay window and looked out at the bay of rainy street. Then we Moonwalked past a curious Max who thought we wanted to dance with him. We Moonwalked past the bedroom where Monica is crashed and into the bathroom. We Moonwalked in place in front of the mirror where Violet goes to see this other cool baby who lives inside the wall. They stared and kissed and touched fingers. We Moonwalked out to the kitchen again and made some figure-eights and leg pops and lock-steps in front of the fridge. Then I had some more coffee and we did it again.
In other words, we're Moonwalking a bunch around here this week. While no ones looking or judging our skillz, we are getting exactly where we need to get to. We just look like we're going backwards, ya'll!