So this knitblogger walks into a bar...

It's dance show season. I look like I've been taking
fight-club lessons from a drag queen.

Yes, I know. I haven't appeared in this space for an extremely long time. And since randomosity is really the only flight path I can follow in order to re-enter the blogosphere after such an extended break, you'll have to fasten your seatbelts, kids. I have approximately twenty things to say, in no real order of their occurrence along the journey. If you have a hard time following along, don't worry. It's not your four bottles of in-flight jesus-that-is-NOT-wine, it's just me getting my blogging wings back. Thank you for not smoking the life-vests.

1. I thought I would have more time to myself once I pulled the lance of the free from its once-permanent place in my thigh, but it's not true. My time is now far more structured, which leaves me far less wiggle room to do things like cook, pee and read blogs. Also, deadlines still suck rocks. I had deadlines before, but with good snacks, real coffee and comfy pants. Deadlines in heels and a skirt with a mug of battery acid permanently attached to my hand seem more painful, somehow. And when I get home, I am a 2.25mm dpn away from comatose. At which time I miraculously transmogrify into SuperMomChefTeacherKindnessOfMyHeartWife and supervise homework in French while I create something halfway edible for two mere mortals and me from one egg and a three-week-old asparagus spear. My daughter is learning some very creative linguistic phrasing, that's for sure....

2. When the scientific progress goes boink, we order sushi.

3. We order sushi so often that the last time daughter decided she would rather have the egg-and-three-week-old-asparagus-spear-miracle plus toast, the sushi restaurant people called us back to make sure we had not made a mistake in our order because her standard rice bowl and crabstick wasn't on it. They even knew it was for the kid.

4. You know things have gone from weird to downright wacked when the takeout sushi restaurant people are worried that I'm neglecting my daughter's nutritional needs and call me back to double-check.

5. I turned 41. It's like 40 with crappier-tasting vitamins and lycra jeans.

6. I ripped no fewer than three knitting projects. Ripped them right down to their three-year-old-bad-yarn-day selves. It felt good in a way, but now I just have piles of curly yarn, which feel less like possibility than the unfinished pieces did, you know?

7. Moping aside, the lace-armed sweater is next on the ripping block. I plan to transmogrify it into something solid and simple and v-necked. Great Big Sea in a semi-solid needs a simple pattern, and the photographic evidence will show that I do not need square necklines or sausage arms.

8. Muscle still weighs more than fat.

9. Everything still takes longer than I think it should. See number 5.

10. Yet I'm just as strong as the 20-year-olds I dance with. They don't believe I'm 41.

11. My husband, however, believes I'm 42. It's a French guy thing.

12. I try not to take it personally. Also, he can't do the MC Hammer thing and I can. Nyah.

13. I started lifting weights again.

14. It is absolutely incredible how my daughter, who has a talent of disappearing into her room when I need her to do something for me, suddenly appears out of nowhere to conduct an extremely lengthy dialogue right next to my head involving a question-and-answer session about where squirrels go when they die and how would you say "decaying flesh" in French? just as I lift enormously heavy iron dumbbells over my face.

15. It is very sad, what I consider to be enormously heavy in the way of dumbbellness. I used to deadlift twice my weight. Now some of my dumbbells are...lavender. Ewww.

16. I have, however, decided to enter the next phase of physical fitness in my life with a modicum of grace. The dumbbells are lighter, sure, but I have finally mastered a Downward Dog that doesn't embarrass me.

17. Much. I mean, dude, you have to point the business end of your ass directly to the sky and everything else directly to the ground. It's as if you're flashing the universe a big ol' "Kick Me" sign. ("Kick" being a euphemism for whatever version of universal shafting you see fit to express...) Modicum of grace? Not exactly.

18. Speaking of grace, I finally, finally got that bouncy thing going in hip-hop. "That bouncy thing" is the technical term for the subtle difference between Dorky Dancing and Missy Elliot.

19. I did that bouncy thing over the past two weekends in public: eight full-house shows in front of a total of nearly 8,000 people, including, for the first time ever, my mother. It felt insanely good, and I will miss it terribly for the next month...but the dance school is now going to offer adult classes in the summer for the first time ever, because many of us are totally addicted to that bouncy thing.

20. My husband has resigned himself to the fact that Miss Demeanor's in da house, along with dudes like Justin Timberlake and Kanye West. We make up for it, though, with late-night name-that-ABBA-tune office karaoke. Also, we're going to see Rush in concert this summer for the third time, at which time we will sing at the top of our lungs, jump around wildly, and marvel at how even though Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, and Alex Lifeson look truly old now, they still have the power and the talent to blow the audience away, every time. "Closer to the Heart" never fails to make me cry. Actually, so does "Red Barchetta." Leaves falling, a red convertible, and I am feeling seventeen, freewheeling, and way better looking than I actually was back then. And I can have a beer without lying about it. Also, the guy next to me is superhot, he knows all the words, AND he's my date AND he's staying. Doesn't get better than that.

21. I apparently have more than twenty things to say. How unlike me!

22. I miss you all terribly. I need a fiber fix, bad. I feel a quick and dirty knit extravaganza coming on. It probably will not be a sock, though. That damned 2.25mm dpn is the only thing between me and the end-of-day coma, dudes, so I'm afraid I can't spare it. Stay tuned for June's knit fix. And hopefully, this time, it won't make me look like a silk sausage or the loser of the Glitter Gladiator Smackdown.