Susan Senator

I am having an incredibly good day. First of all, it was really warm! The snow has been reduced to ashen gray piles here and there with brown crackly leaves sticking out of them. Mud is everywhere. The sky has strange light; even Max commented on it!

And, aside from getting that workshop flyer finalized, I also had a class tonight with Melina, a teacher I’ve had before (a year ago), and I had forgotten how great she is! She is so bubbly and positive and lovely. Her style is Greco-Turkish, which is a little different from the Egyptian/Arabic style I love, which I’ve been learning (and will continue to learn with my pal Najmat). Greco-Turkish is a bit more wild and less straight up-and-down than the Egyptian. It seems a bit more suited to my body and my personality. You wear flowing skirts and fringed belts rather than the straight stretchy skirts. You can imagine dancing around a fire with a sword on your head with this style.

(And, by the way, I bought a real, curved sword while in San Juan, from a fantastic bellydance shop. I practiced with it in the store and the shopkeeper was quite impressed! It should arrive any day and that will be a whole new dimension in my practicing.)

She also makes class interesting by throwing in tidbits of Greek culture, Goddess references, and all with the same happy demeanor. She never criticizes or singles anyone out; she keeps everyone laughing but working very, very hard. We had bent knees and ultra-straight backs for long minutes at a time, practicing slow, controlled knee shimmies and also alternating hip lifts. The class was packed, and no wonder. We ended with a traveling step back and forth, and this looked really good en masse. We moved to the song, “Simarik,” by Tarkan. It is a great dance song, that starts with a kiss and periodically has the kiss sounds punctuating the ends of the phrases.

On another front, I have been very busing writing. I am nearly done editing Dirt: A Story of Gardening, Mothering, and a Midlife Crisis, (my novel) and so I will be sending it back to my agent for her to give it a final read before shopping it around! I absolutely love how it came out. I love the characters so much I don’t want the book to be done because I’ll miss them! It is just the kind of book I like to read, and I now think it is one of the strongest, loveliest things I’ve ever written.

And just now, quite incongruously, I had a gut-busting, pants-peeing laugh with Ned about this blog post he came across. (I hope no one is offended; I just think typos, etc. are so funny.) Ned and I first got together over having a similar sense of humor, and that, my friends, is the best adhesive a marriage can have!