My Dancing Heels will Feel the Love

(Soundtrack: "Darling I Do" by Lucy Schwartz and Landon Pigg.)
December 9th on my calendar has a highlighter trim.  It marks fourteen months since the night David sang "Heaven's Light" and I kissed him at his front door.  The first sweet kiss of my life, but not the last.

Recently we've strayed away from having dates, real dates, when we go somewhere, do something special.  Like married folk, I guess, we've fallen into a routine: pick up a Little Ceasar's pizza, go home, watch a movie, kiss, hold, David plays and we sing, dance, and just hang out.

But today David asked me what I'd like to do for our next month-a-versary.  My eyes swept over the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.  "Why don't we eat at Panera Bread?" was my first suggestion.

Then, I felt the warm sensation, the desire to dance, melt over me.

We dance every so often on our regular days together and I wanted it to be more special, befitting the celebration of fourteen months.  I wanted to go on more dates.  To do special things together like we used to.

Baking an apple  Picnicking at our fountain.  Leaving encouraging notes at the library.  The Terrible Movie Marathon.  Finding the best smelling candle at Hallmark Gift Shop.  Our air hockey match.  (Which I lost, but not for lack of spirit.)

In my Facebook notes I have plans for dates never done.  Spend a day in the park, pretending to be an elderly couple, costumes and everything.  Make caramel corn.  Play on a swing set in the moonlight.  Yell funny things from the top of tall buildings.

What hinders the special time couples spend together? Is it only becoming complacent? Does time sap away our enthusiasm for such things? It seems that time wears down the greatest delights in life.  Going on dates and making love become things for which a couple must learn to make time.

Bill Cosby says in Cosbyology: Essays and Observations from the Doctor of Comedy that there are certain loving acts you do for your loved one at the beginning of the relationship that somewhere along the way you stop doing.  It's not because you don't want to do it, he says.  Or because you can't do it.  You just don't anymore.

Maybe this isn't bad.  Maybe it's just life.  However, David and I are young.  Our relationship is a fledgling.  And I am greedy.  For my fourteenth months spent with David, I want to dance and I want it to be special.

So.  We're going to drive to random places, find a nice floor, envelope one other, and dance to music he murmurs in my ear.  And I'll sing back... when I'm not kissing him.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.  You make me happy when skies are gray.  You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.  They won't take my sunshine away."

Silly Youtube! ... OMG Cat

I'm sorry, but I must pause the poetry, songs, and gentle reminiscence to interject something silly.

Have you seen OMG Cat? This is one of the only times I'll use the term LOL.

I know it's simple.  I know it's repetitive... but I laugh every time I see these videos!

My favorites are:

Orchestra Fail

Kitten with Tiny Hat

Ninja Cat

Meets Chuck Norris

The Ground Never Quite Touches the Sky... But We Try

This song began in Paint.  I've been reading two blogs, The Olive Library and 101 Bird Tales, and was inspired towards some cute art.  When swiping the canvas with green and blue for ground and sky, I realized that I couldn't make the sky meet the grass without ruining the quaint blades left by the paintbrush.  I titled the painting "the ground never quite touches the sky."

David saw the picture and wanted it for his album cover. 

The song is about a little boy who can't smile normally, never quite sure what his face looks like.  The little boy is, of course, based on David, who has Asperger's Syndrome.  He ends up baring his teeth like a little animal, which prevents him from making friends at school and invites their animosity.  It's the first draft, so be nice.

"The Ground Never Quite Touches the Sky"
Half-Hearted Elephant

There is a boy who doesn't quite know how to smile.  He practices in the mirror when he brushes his teeth, wearing the newspaper crown him mom cut for him because the scissors are mean to his fingers.  His mouth is a little castle and he is the king.  They explain that smiling is showing your teeth.  In the bathroom he brushes them until they bleed.  Orange spit in the trashcan.  He bares and he bears on the playground where he can't make friends.  And his two sisters knock on the door.  Their iron is burning.  His cheeks balloon, his gums gleam.  He bites his lip and bites his lip in the schoolyard where he can't make friends.  The mechanics of smiling are elusive again.  The white flags of friendship don't look like a grin.  He doesn't know why he can't get it right just like the ground never quite touches the sky.  But we try.  But we try.  But we try.  But we try and we try.  But we try.  But we try.  But we try.  We try and try.

Big Girls in Indie Dress

(For our listening pleasure, Peggy Sue, formerly, Peggy Sue and the Pirates, begins the soundtrack for this post.)

Shopping depresses me.  In the dressing room mirror, I always look pastier, doughier, and misshapen.  My deep belly button becomes a sucking black hole over which the cloth of my shirt/dress stretches.  It appears to be dressing a doughnut.

David likes my doughnuts, those flabby pouches of flesh and fat.  No matter the chins and cottage cheese that makes up me, he sings beautiful, beautiful.  And that's why he doesn't understand how tragic the shortage of plus size indie clothing is!

Crimes of Indie Clothing:

Manufacturers comprehend just how many big girls love indie clothing

Plus size models for indie clothing are not actually plus sized

I know it requires many inches of material, but $200 for a skirt is outrageous!

The number of thin girls dressed in indie clothing.  Making us want it.  Cruel joke.

(Interlude by Laura Marling.)

However, as I type, I am wearing an outfit I just bought for only 7 dollars!

The key, big girls who love indie clothing, is Goodwill, ribbons, imagination, and a sewing machine.  I didn't need the sewing machine this time, but I have a couple projects in mind for the future.

I found and gorgeous lavender skirt - a pixie skirt, fun to twirl in! I already owned a white blouse with lace trimming at the bottom.  I bought light gold flats and dove gray leggings.  The leggings were footed, which wouldn't go with the flats, but I took scissors and opened the seam at the toes.  Yay!

David and I have a date tomorrow.  Gigglepies and longkiss cookies... He's excited to see my outfit.  His exact text message was:

"GAH! [Buying a skirt is] a huge deal! That's my favorite thing on you! I can't wait to see my beautiful panda!"

"Panda" is his pet name for me, by the way.

(Now we switch to Lucy Rose.)

Want to see his Christmas present to me? I asked for a pretty dress.  This is what we found.  It's from a very nice, if not small, website of indie clothes for big girls, B&Lu.

Dear Santa,

This is Emily in America.  Please use your influence to augment the production of plus size indie, vintage, and artsy clothing! I especially like dresses, skirts, and blouses; cute floral prints; pearls; lace; and ribbons.

Sincerely,
A big girl who loves indie dress

Surprise Paper Bag

Lately, my mirror looks different.  That is, of course, because I look different.  I feel different and differently.

It's cheesy, but I'll say it.  I am that brave, after all.  And certainly that much of a softie.  I began metamorphosing about 15 months ago.

I saw a boyish bright face through the window of a car pulling up to me.  Amid the shadow and light polka dots provided by the overhanging tree.  On the way to a movie theatre out of town, out of the places I usually found myself.

But that's just it.  The places I were, I couldn't find myself.  I was a paper bag marked Surprise! stapled, taped, on the shelf of a 25 cent store.  Marked girl with a lackadaisical ribbon, but even that was debatable.  What's it cost to break inside? What would I find? Would I be a cheap squirt gun or a dolly with lopsided eyes?

Shy he found beautiful and loneliness and hiddeness, too.  Disney couldn't write a sweeter love story nor Austen one more true.  Our first date he held me, he held me the first day of my life.  And kissed my hair, his kisses kitty cat soft.  His lips warm as sugar cream pie.

The little girl in daddy's T-shirt and boys jeans stood gazing at the Surprise paper bag.  A yo-yo, a paddle ball, a penny whistle she'd lose in the sandbox.  What was she? And the sad part: she didn't know and she was twenty-one.

She'd been kissed but she never kissed, been caught but never caught, raised but never raised, told but she never told, loved, maybe, but never loved.

"Me either, me either."

Glow-in-the-dark stars.

"You're beautiful and I love you."

Pearl studded hair bow.

"You're you and I want to be with you."

Gold foil glittering glue

"It's all in there and I want to be in there, too."

And a pinwheel made of spoons.

I pulled out something new little by little and stashed the rest away, there's time to wait while I play with these few things.  I write stories at bedtime, drink cherry soda in the meantime, and learn not to hold it in when I want to kiss him.

Poets Metamorph into Songwriters, but I'm not a Poet...

My David is a lovely guitarist! His music has the charm of shooting stars and picnics on candy striped quilts, clean sheets, still a little damp and warm from the dryer... of a music box inside a teddy bear.  Melodious, sweet, atmospheric... Embellishments are his talent.  And fingerpicking (with his Aspie hands, ^^).  And he sprinkles harmonics through his songs.  Little Tinkerbells, I call them... He wants to compose for films.

For composing he'll use his name, but he also wants to write the sort of songs that have lyrics.  For that band, he's called Half-Hearted Elephant.

That's where I come in.  I want to write lyrics for his songs!  Little scared-of-meter, frightened-by-scansion me.  In these vast fields I feel like such a little bird.  But, maybe, the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.
But if ever there was a genre of songs for which I could possibly write lyrics, David plays it! Hyperliterate.  A style that concentrates on words without the "convention" of chouruses and lala's, nana's, or oh oh oh's.

John K. Samson, Emmy the Great, Colin Meloy, Ben Gibbard, to name a few, are hyperliterate artists...

I'm twitterpated with the idea of songwriting now.  If David and I wrote a song together... it would be an intimacy of our talents.  An intimacy worth being brave for for.

David told me, "Pick a subject and start writing the words and I'll write the music to it."

Motherhood.  Wifehood.  I'll write about my shyness toward it, my nervousness, and swallow confidence in my ability to be a good wife and mother.

Now on to gathering images and clips to use in the construction:

the dogeared pages of my diary

your cheeks resemble the pennies I rubbed with ketchup to shine

staple kitty's on every lamp post, fence, and tree

sing Beatles songs to our baby, don't forget to let her into your heart

origami wedding gowns made from sheetmusic

hope you didn't fall in love with Mary Poppins

never trusted fireflies to spell out words in the skies

I found love in you like small planes find love in the angeltread


Ah! Even if I fail, I'm having so much fun! I love collecting images! And David loves to compose music.  We can do this if we love it, right?

Love, Emily, pushing Publish Post...

Down on Deer in the Headlights St.

D is the side street that takes me home.  D, and nothing else.  Family member to, of course, E, F, C, B, and A.

This house used to be my Pa and Meemaw's.  Meemaw still owns it, but has graciously allowed us to nest here.  The house should be in a movie; it's painted green, square, surrounded by holly hocks, which I used to eat as a child, lily of the valleys, peonies, hibiscus, hen and chicks, clematis, tulips, lily trees, lemon mint, which I love to roll in my hands, and lilacs; there is a dilapidated shed with a black raspberry patch; green onions grow by a bolder.  Chain link fence.  Carpeted front porch.

David and I lay a quilt out and picnic, cloudgaze, and joke about taking a silver Sharpie to the green street sign and renaming D St.

Dinosaur St.
Danger St.
Ditsy St.
Doofus St.
Die Hard St.
Deoxyribonucleic acid St.
Darling St.
Daisy St.
Dukes of Hazard St.
Duh St.
Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead St.
Dig It St.
Dance St.
Dodo the Hobbit St.
Dingo St.
Deaf St.
Denno Coil St.
Digital Camera St.
Dorky Do St.
Depp St.
Dwight Shrute St.
D.A.R.E. St.
Disgusting St.
Deal or No Deal St.
Doodle St.
Darling, I Do St.

And we just sing, doo doo do do d-do d-do doo! Doo doo do do d-do d-do doo! Doo doo do do d-do d-do dooooo! (Duet Don't miss it!)