Monday, January 2, 2012

Day 9: Dance Like No One Is Watching

This post (minus some edits) first ran on January 2, 2010.
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It takes two to tango. And indeed, a pair of ladies is currently tangoing across my living room. Two more are waltzing their way between the ol' maids in the kitchen. There are nine in total, all wearing dresses of the Victorian era, with the final five focused on ballet-, belly-, break-, tap-, and pole-dancing, respectively.1 What I find most impressive, though, is that they’re all doing this to the exact same music. Currently, it's Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.”

My favorites are the two pairs of ladies cycling through the traditional ballroom and swing dances. They even let me cut in to see if I remember what I learned in a ballroom dance class eight years ago.2 The break-dancer spends the majority of her time on the floor, so she’s Sonya’s favorite, and has been tackled by the dog three times (and counting). The rest aren’t all that exciting, though I will say belly-dancing looks especially weird when set to rap music and done in a frilly turquoise ball gown.


I wouldn't belly-dance to that music. I'd tap that.

Nevertheless, with nine women spinning and swinging through the house, we had to roll up all the tarps, push all the furniture to the walls, and shift anything even slightly valuable to one of the upstairs rooms. And when I say we, I mean me and Denise. The eight maids — and the three hens dressed as maids — did nothing but sit back and watch us clean everything up.

The maids, though they’re a complete waste of space, aren’t costing me much as expected, since each one is still nursing the same drink she had yesterday. Everyone else, however, is slowly milking me of my savings. I now have to feed nineteen birds (including those uppity, brie-eating hens) and nineteen people (including the uppity, brie-eating ballet dancer), to say nothing of the dog (and the cat). I have to pay an exorbitant noise ordinance fine, and what I’m sure will be exorbitant cell phone and electric bills. And of course I’ll have to hire a plumber and a couple other specialists to undo everything the geese are doing in the basement.

I’ve been looking for ways to offset some of these costs. I haven’t heard back from Michael Phelps’ people about the swan race yet, but I’m in talks with HGTV to get the geese their own home “improvement” show, and Verizon is interested in doing a commercial campaign with the parrot. Verizon has been low-balling me with their offers so far, but I can wait them out, especially now that he's in the basement where I can't hear him now.

Ooh, sorry, I have to go: the upstairs bathroom is free. I don't mean I actually have to go, but with eighteen women in the house, it could be six hours before I get another chance, and—uh oh, someone's tap-tap-tapping their way up the stairs... gotta run!


1 That last one even brought her own pole.
2 Nope.


 

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