I have taken a self-imposed partial vow of silence.  For the last five days, the longest conversation I have had was thirteen minutes long, and it was over the phone.  The only person I have spoken to face to face for longer than it takes to pay for groceries, was my doctor.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my appreciation of people.  It may have been happening for awhile, but I didn’t notice it until last week.  Every request or question, no matter how trivial, awoke in me a level of frustration and annoyance that I have not seen in myself.  I didn’t like that feeling, but it kept happening.  And then I got sick.  I decided to hermit myself away, and not think about work, or things I should be doing.  I slept, read and watched movies.  I ventured out for groceries twice.  I took long baths and listened to music.  I tuned out the rest of the world and spent time with myself.  And I realized that I’m pretty good company.

Tomorrow, I return to the world.  And I’m looking forward to it.

Tonight my desire for clean dishes outweighed the attraction of my faithful boyfriend, Couch.  As usual, I grabbed my ipod and put on my headphones so I could listen to something loud and suitably distracting for the task at hand.  Since I seemed particularly inclined towards nostalgia today, I decided to pick something that I hadn’t heard in awhile.  After scrolling part way down my list of albums (which I never look at), I came across something that made me laugh out loud.  I don’t know how it got there, or how long it’s been there, but somewhere in my travels I acquired the award-winning, life-changing album, Dance Mix ’93.  After making a discovering like that, you can’t NOT listen to it.  As the first few beats of ‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’ started playing, visions of my childhood came rushing back – sitting in my mom’s studio with my tape player and my Dance Mix ’93 cassette, listening to the same three songs over and over again.  Then the nostalgia ended, and the dancing began.  It’s really no wonder that there is a man in the apartment building across the alley that watches me all the time.  I can really shake my ass.

‘There’s a party over here
A party over there
Wave your hands in the air
Shake the derriere’

With lyrics like these, how could you not be moved to express yourself rhythmically?  And they give you the dance instructions right there in the song!  How handy is that?!

Even with all the ass-shaking and the hand-waving, I didn’t break any dishes.  I got me some mad skillz, yo.