The summer begins to sizzle, but hanging in there

After an unseasonably mild winter *glares* and then chillier spring (which I loved) the temperatures and humidity have finally begun to climb up here. Now, I'm not complaining, because it's already past mid-June and we just felt compelled to put the a/c units in the bedroom windows this week. That's not bad at all. Sometimes, it starts to get really warm in late May, which is just too early for me.

So I'm officially not complaining, although I do wish that the heat had waited until after Saturday so that I wouldn't have felt like I may melt at any moment during the hafla on Saturday. But I digress.

We can't put a traditional window a/c unit in Anne's room because she doesn't have standard sized windows, so our solution was to set up her Pack 'n Play (whereby each of my babies have only slept; there is no playing in there, they'd apparently rather DIE than play in captivity) in our guest room where we do have a window a/c unit. I was anxious about her throwing a protest rally and refusing to fall asleep in a new place, but this was our only option. We do have a fan in her room, but on really warm nights it's simply still uncomfortable.

Last night was the test night, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that she did really, really well in her temporary sleep space. She did howl when I first put her down, but she had her little duck lovey in there, plus her nightlight, so some familiar things. Within a minute, she realized that maybe howling wasn't the best course of action given that she was: (a) utterly exhausted, plus (b) a complete sweat head, when (c) this room was really cool and cozy. So she laid down and went to sleep. Thank the Lord above.

Yesterday was our warmest day so far this year, and naturally, that coincided with me having another belly dance performance. Our performance group was invited to dance at a voice studio show, and the venue was about a 30-40 minute drive for me. In a recurring theme for my summer existence, my car does not have functioning air conditioning. Thus, the drive down involved lots of sweating while Middle Eastern music blared out the open windows of my little Honda Civic. Upon arriving, I sweatily carried in 2 costumes, 2 veils, my dance shoes, an assortment of pins and makeup, and my sword. Tis the lot of the modern belly dancer.

The instant the lady at the ticket table saw sequins and beads peeking out from my garment bag and a sheathed sword in my hand, she pointed down the hall where I could see my wonderful dance ladies huddled in a circle. We were directed to a storagey-looking "dressing room" off the backstage area, but told to post somebody at the door so that no one tried to come in while we were changing.

!

It goes without saying that we all changed as quickly as humanly possible. I hardly think the high school voice students were dying to peep on us or anything, but the possibility of an unexpected interruption in that situation seems awkward, no?

All costumed up, we swirled our veils a bit, applied makeup, and waited.

And waited.

We were scheduled to dance at intermission, and unfortunately no one had told us that the first half of the show was a LOT longer than the second half. So we were waiting for a *really long time*. We'd crack open the door to hear various Celine Dion songs being belted out to quickly close it again and chit chat some more. Students frequently did happen upon us in there as they came in search of a music stand or a guitar, and seemed pretty surprised to see a group of women wearing sparkly green costumes lurking inside.

We continued to wait.

In the mean time, we began to have the opposite problem that we have been experiencing: cold air was absolutely *pumping* through the vents in there, and since we we merely standing around, we were freezing our sparkly buns off in no time. We were just contemplating sacrificing a few veils to begin a little bonfire when it was finally our turn.

I don't get nervous for group performances anymore, which is a nice thing. It was intermission, so I was afraid the auditorium would empty out, leaving us belly dancing for empty seats, but a LOT of people stayed, squinting their eyes at us in wonder. On the whole, they seemed to like us. Lots of people took pictures and videos, we were apparently a bit of a novelty.

Once again, I loved our improvised section much more than the choreography. Even though our first dance is a polished one that we've done many times, in my auto-pilot mode I came back down to earth a few times to find that I was screwing up. I just kept moving my hips, smiling, and caught up to what we were supposed to be doing, but it all reinforced my new belief in improvisation. Much more relaxed that way.

So, that was that. My ride home was much cooler, and I was thrilled to greet a cute husband and 2 sleeping children. Life is good.