Dancing Queens

A while back, I wrote about the lost art of the mixtape. And I recently rediscovered one of the best. My first year of college, two friends and I created this tape to be the perfect dance mix, with built-in time to catch your breath. We laughed so much while we created it, and I wish I could scan in the cover art I made (we each made our own for our own copy of the tape). Think fishnets, and sass, and groovin' and love. Four years later, at a party shortly before graduation, someone put a tape on: it was the mix we had made! It had made its way around the school, passed on for its legendary powers to get people up on the dance floor. And we laughed and laughed as we danced. And here's how it went:

Side A

Dancing Queen - ABBA

Respect - ARETHA

Stuck in the Middle - STEALERS WHEEL

Into the Groove - MADONNA

Sweet Dreams - EURYTHMICS

Take On Me - A-HA

1999 - PRINCE

Groove is in the Heart - DEEE-LITE

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon - URGE OVERKILL

Vogue - MADONNA

A Fine Romance - LENA HORNE

I Will Survive - GLORIA GAYNOR

Side B

Let's Go Crazy - PRINCE

Tainted Love - SOFTCELL

Wonderwall - OASIS

Laid - JAMES

Jump - THE MOVEMENT

Big Time Sensuality - BJORK

Son of a Preacher Man - DUSTY SPRINGFIELD

Hooked on a Feeling - BLUE SWEDE

Take a Chance on Me - ABBA

St. Elmo's Fire - JOHN PARR

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps - DORIS DAY

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman - ARETHA

Girls Just Want to Have Fun - CYNDI LAUPER

And though we made this tape more than 15 years ago, and it was a mix of our different tastes, and it's a little scratchy from being played so much, and it breaks my personal mixtape rule of using the same artist more than once: it's still fabulous!

Be that girl.

Livin' La Vida Loca

Oh dear. I appear to have missed September completely. How did that happen? Actually, that kind of thing happens all too often these days. I say to a friend, "Let's get together soon," and soon turns into several weeks. Weeks that are full of not a whole lot, and at the same time, everything that matters. Hours spent chasing a ping pong ball as it bounces down the sidewalk. More hours spent hiking in the woods, baby boy snuggled close, twisting and turning to watch the dog scamper and pounce. Mornings at the farmer's market, afternoons in the park, ten minutes here and there climbing the back of the porch swing. The days just disappear, and I try to hold on to the moments.

Also - September means back-to-school, so that's been taking up a fair bit of time that I might otherwise be recording my grandiose opinions on the world. My head's been in Mesopotamia and Egypt, to the point that I'm not even sure who's running in the local elections. (and I've discovered that in some ways I'm incredibly unobservant: on a walk one day I'll ask if that house has always been that color, or that lamppost has always been there, and usually it has, and I've walked by it hundreds of times without noticing. So the political signs in people's yards are not so helpful)

It's not like I'm so super-busy doing this-that-and-the-other, although I get to the Y for yoga and pilates, and have the occasional game nights with neighbors. Not so many dance parties or poetry readings, not a lot of going out for dinner, or staying up all night being wild and crazy. Sometimes I miss those times, when I was just gearing up for the evening activities at a time I'm now usually in bed, maybe even asleep. It was fun, and part of me still wants to be that girl. Part of me still is, somewhere inside. But my life is loca in a whole new way, now.

And I am happy.