He's Just Not That Into SALSA

Ok...so everyone who knows me knows I married a man who could not possibly in any conceivable reality be into salsa dancing. I tried to change this. Change him. Change the laws of thermodynamics. And. We arrived at Copa at 9:00 p.m. sharp for the $5 salsa lesson. It is pretty informal, so they wait a bit for stragglers and random adventurers to be drawn in. I started out with a dry vodka martini, odd number of olives, Tito's. Sonic Stud started out with a dirty vodka martini. Dry & dirty, what a pair. So...we get started, doing the basic step (I've done this lesson at least three times in the last few years). I see that Sonic Stud (hereafter abreviated as S.S.) is having a bit of difficulty with the foot work. We get into turns: right turn then hook turn then right turn followed by a hook turn. S.S. is lost. I mean lost as in Land of the Lost lost. Just not in a salsa universe AT ALL. So we get started and he is bouncing up and down...and adding an extra step in the middle to increase the bounce. I tell him you can't just "add an extra step" and he says he will do it the way he wants to do it. I tell him that isn't salsa. He gets angry at me for criticizing him.

Fast forward thirty minutes. He is still not knowing the basics and I'm being spun around and around by some tiny nerdy latin lover type who has clearly done this before and is apparently there to introduce his date to the dance. I was like, wow...great things come in small nerdy packages. Well, who knows...anyway, I'm still invested in my marriage and wouldn't dream of dissing a great guy who has no soul (confer James Brown).

At the end of the lesson S.S. looked at me and simply said, "I'm done." I was like, "what?!" I had been looking forward to a fun evening of salsa and now S.S. is just as dour and uncooperative as he can be and emphasizes that he hates the music and he can't do it and he doesn't like it and that he doesn't mean to hurt me but that is just how it is and can we please leave now.

Hmph. Men take note: when a lady likes to salsa, you are a fool to hold back on her. Anyway, he agreed that it is fine for me to come out by myself and salsa and suggested I borrow Monkey Wit's husband for this purpose.

If I didn't have the most rock solid confidence in our marriage, I'd think this was a conspiracy to drive me away. But I know better. Next on the agenda: the Texas Two Step. S.S. says he'll try anything once.

Synthetic Chain of Being

I just finished Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932). This is a must-read. I don't see it as prophetic in the literal sense but I do see it as a powerful and prescient metaphor for some aspects of the human experience in Western civilization, specifically the U.S. We do love our bread and circus, not to mention antidepressants. I find it amusing that there is actually a very commonly prescribed drug currently in use called Soma (generic name Carisoprodol), which is a sedative and skeletal muscle relaxant with anxiolytic properties as well. I am amused by the audacity of the drug developer...the joke is on everyone who hasn't read BNW, apparently.

Meanwhile I could use a Soma holiday (the fictional Soma) while this nasty cold (or allergy attack?) works its way out of my system. I've never had full blown allergies but apparently January is peak Cedar allergy time. I hear it is really bad. I feel it, too. I started taking Claritin-D, which caused me to have bizarre nightmares and to become extremely irritable. For example, see the following conversation I had with my husband about 45 minutes ago:

I am reading the encyclopedia while eating some microwaved spicy Thai soup and rice. My husband is in the kitchen making his own dinner.

"I would like to travel to Maine someday," I quipped after reading about Winslow Homer in the H encyclopedia (an American watercolorist and oil painter who spent a lot of his life in Maine where he painted seascapes and the like).

"Why?" My husband's question seemed to have a tone that implied that there couldn't possibly be a reason why I'd want to go to Maine.

"Because I've heard it's beautiful and I want to go there. To see the coast. The whole state. Why wouldn't I want to go?"

"Well, ok..." He was clearly bewildered by the hostility in my tone upon responding.

I then told him that it must be the Claritin-D. I had visited an online forum earlier in the day to see if other people had had bizarre nightmares while taking it, which, apparently, many had. I also read about everything from hallucinations to losing girlfriends to feeling like a zombie to hands itching and on and on and on.

Ok, so I got off topic. I read a lot of reviews people had written on BNW and I sense that people feel a bit obligated to say how it scared them and how we're headed in that direction. Crap, if we are then I hope to be an alpha who gets to go live in the tropics with other "individuals" as a "punishment" for being antisocial, aka willing to take my lumps in order to feel (and not at the "feelies"). Ah, well. I think we're pretty far off from such a utopia/dystopia scenario and are more likely to see such scary things as bioterrorist attacks on our soil than we are to start decanting our progeny. Not that there aren't lots of ethically murky scientific developments on the horizon, but BNW is not exactly the direction in which we are headed. Again, a great read, a must-read nonetheless.

Krav Maga

So I started Krav Maga on Saturday. I'm incredibly sore. I will take it easy Monday in class, to the extent that is possible. I primarily want to get in shape and learn self defense. I'm 115 pounds and consider myself to be a skinny person who is secretly fat (I'm pretty flabby). I hope to be toned and strong by the summer when we go to the beach house. My husband is doing it, too. We made a 12 month commitment and we're both pretty excited about it.

Reading Brave New World as an exercise to quaff my interest in utopian literature.