My husband came home on Sunday afternoon with a book. I, fresh from wiping ants out of the living room baseboards, misread "battle" in its title as "beetle." Greatly amused, I threw my arms in the air, sang "DA-na-na-nah, wop wop, NA na wop wop, na nah," and tried to dance as I imagined "The American Party Beetle" would if it were enjoying itself, infesting our house as so many other creepy crawlies do, swinging at least 4 of its six legs in the air as it gyrated its stiff body in circles. A dance style truly suited to the rhythmically impaired. It reminded me I don't dance for joy much: frankly, I suck at celebrating.
I turned 40 today. I have been mid-life-crisising about this for months as it caps off a year in which a got tenure (yay!) but admitted I'd be living in Baltimore permanently (boo!), and a decade in which I finished my PhD, taught an awful adjuncting job in Halifax, came to Baltimore, met and married my husband and had two children. Whew. It all makes me want to sit under the basement stairs and breathe into a paper bag. (Did I mention that I suck at celebrating? "Oh there goes Doomy," the world says as I, cloaked in excessively good fortune, hyperventilate about how stressed it all makes me.)
BUT, perhaps that's all about to change. For also this week, I got a letter from the Royal Bank of Canada saying that MY STUDENT LOANS ARE REPAID IN FULL. I can stop repaying them. What a gobsmacking, flabbergasting, spine-straightening, jaw loosening, energyenergyenergy inducing thought. My arms spontaneously shoot into the air when I contemplate it. And I gyrate, unrhythmically, with triumph.
Perhaps this is the era of the American Party Beetle?
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