A bloggable moment

I'm writing a quick e-mail, and Beloved happens to look over my shoulder at the monitor.

"Woot?" he asks, reading my first line. "What are you, an owl with a speech impediment?"

"Woot!" I say. "Sheesh, get with the lingo, dude. Woot is old skool now. Squee is the new woot."

He lowers his head into his hands, shoulders drooping. "I'm married to a thirteen year old," he sighs.

"This is a bloggable moment!" I exclaim brightly, clicking to open the Blogger dashboard.

He shakes his head in resignation and walks away muttering to himself.

Dancing with Beloved

Beloved and I were watching Dancing with the Stars the other night. I didn't actually mean to watch it, I just haven't yet gotten out of the habit of tuning in to CTV on Mondays at 8:00 to watch Corner Gas. It's not exactly groundbreaking, quality television, but there are worse ways to spend an hour than seeing that (relatively) famous people are almost as clumsy and awkward as I am. Almost.

Watching it reminded me that I don't think I've ever told you the story of the time Beloved and I took ballroom dancing lessons. I need to back up a little bit and explain to you that Beloved is a wonderful dancer. He's got a great sense of rhythm, and he's graceful. He loves to dance. Me, not so much. I like dancing in theory, don't mind going out and gyrating with the crowd to an uptempo beat, but I'm a bit stiff when it comes to actually dancing with someone, as opposed to simply dancing near them. Dancing near someone, it doesn't really matter if you flail madly and thrust randomly. Dancing with someone is a skill I've never acquired.

Anyway, I got it into my head that we (ahem, I) needed to take ballroom dancing lessons for our wedding. Now, if one were inclined to make an observation, one might note at this point that our wedding reception was a barbeque, a picnic in a park, and there was not a lot of dancing planned. None, in fact, save for the traditional 'first dance'. But that didn't really factor in to our my epiphany that we needed to take ballroom dancing lessons. And Beloved really is an agreeable sort of fellow. He was game for it, and so we signed up for lessons at our local community centre.

Now, I have to interrupt this story one more time for one more point of clarification. To truly appreciate this story, you have to understand the rather unique dynamics of the relationship between Beloved and me. He is, as I said, an agreeable sort of fellow, which is quite a perfect match for my inherent bossiness. I like to be in charge, he tolerates my enthusiastic if not occassionally misguided leadership. Most of the time.

So, ballroom dancing. We were on our third, maybe fourth lesson. We had covered the jive, and the tango, and a bit of salsa. We were working on the waltz, which is perhaps one of the most basic of all the ballroom dances. After 45 annoying and fruitless minutes of stepping on each others' toes, banging foreheads into chins, and general klutziness, Beloved finally threw down his arms in frustration.

"Do you want me to go into the bathroom and yank it off so you can wear it for a while, or is it MY turn to lead now?" he asked. There was no doubt in my mind what 'it' was.

Poor Beloved. It's not always easy being married to me. And I still couldn't waltz to save my soul.

In which I keel over dead from embarrassment

I've written before about how sometimes I wonder whether too many people in the office read my blog. As of now, I wonder no longer.

There's a really nice guy who used to work in tech support in my office. He's quiet, but kind, and I always enjoyed chatting with him. I knew he'd moved on to another job, and the way things often go in an organization as large as this one, I had no idea where. He slipped off my radar screen, as they say.

Out of the blue, I got an e-mail from him recently. He said,

Hi Danielle
In the fall I was using an old copy of a Ottawa Citizen for
protecting the bricks of my outside window 'cos I was painting it, and your mug was staring at me 'cos they did a story about your blog. I am like, that looks like Danielle at work!
So, I have been reading it and it is wonderful.
I especially like the 101 things...
As for #26, this will get better over time, trust me!
Take care and hope to run into you soon!

Now, I wrote that 101 things about me way back in the summer of 2005, when I had tens of readers each week. I've often thought about going back and updating it, partly because some of the stuff is out of date but mostly because there is one line in particular that I really always felt didn't need to be in there. I kept it there all this time out of some sense of moral obligation to editorial integrity, but I have increasingly come to believe that there is a "too much information" threshold that simply should not be crossed.

As I read this very sweet e-mail, I thought to myself, "He couldn't possibly be talking about that one, could he? Please tell me #26 isn't that one." There are surely more than 100,000 words on this blog, and only half a dozen or so that I would truly be uncomfortable discussing over coffee with my most intimate confidantes, let alone with a casual acquaintance.

Cringing, I clicked on my own link and scrolled down. And winced. And blushed. And wished for a giant hole to open up and swallow me and my damn computer whole. Read it while it lasts, because this weekend, number 26 gets plutoed off my list.

Do you think maybe it's too late to move to a pseudonym?