That's the Way (Uh-huh, Uh-huh) I Like It

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

I do love my tunes.

I listen. I dance. I get lost in the beat. At minimum, I tap my foot in time to the song…on the other end of the spectrum, I’m belting it out with all the passion of Streisand or Sinatra. Of course, it may come out sounding more like Tiny Tim… but that’s not how it sounds in my head, so it doesn’t count.

Sometimes, I even dance in the kitchen, whilst doing my chores. Does this really surprise you? Hey, it’s good exercise...and if it makes me happy, why should anyone else care?

The only time I can see it being a problem is when I get a little….lost in the music. This was the case this evening…I was grooving to “Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car” by Billy Ocean. Now, don’t dismiss this too quickly…even though it’s a pretty sexist attitude for a title. Actually, the song’s not much better…but that beat…how could you not dance to that beat??

The boys were undecided (as was I) on what to consume for the evening meal, so we decided (read: I decided) to go with the old standby: breakfast-for-dinner. Tonight it was pancakes, which meant breaking out my handy-dandy Betty Crocker cookbook, as I don’t know how to make pancakes without being walked through it.

Of course, the recipe is for some antiquated amount…like 8 pancakes. Obviously, Betty has never been to MY house, where 8 pancakes would barely serve as an appetizer and she probably wouldn’t approve of my measuring technique, whereby I pour the lesser ingredients (say baking powder) into my hand, shake what I believe the correct amount to be into the mixing bowl and discard of the rest into the kitchen sink. The theme here is SPEED, people…accuracy is a very distant second…because if we've (I've) decided on pancakes-for-dinner, it’s probably already really late and the boys are starving.

So I have to triple the recipe in the cookbook, which requires some serious math. This means that I must press the “pause” button on my iPod, as there’s absolutely no way I can sing “867-5309” and measure out accurate ingredients at the same time.

However, when the food’s cooked and consumed, all bets are OFF. As in I’M OFF THE CLOCK, baby! So, the tunes go back on and I turn on the tap in the kitchen sink to see if the house will accept the call for water I need to do the dishes. (It’s sad that I know this insider-plumber’s term for water use...but alas, it’s a fact of life.) Whilst waiting for the water to heat up, I’m rocking left and right…hips swaying as I’m getting more and more into the song.
I do a little two-step, then break into a full Michael Jackson-moonwalk rendition followed by a complete 180…

I’ll be the sun shining on you-
Hey Cinderella…step in your shoe-
I’ll be your nonstop lover-
Get it while you can!
Your non-stop miracle….I’m your man-

BAM! BAM!

OUT OF MY DREAMS….GET INTO MY CAR…

Well, you get the idea. I’m stomping, twisting and turning…totally into it and that’s the moment that I stick my hand under the running water to check the temp and I GET BURNED.

YIKES!

That’ll teach me. From now on, I’m only listening to Broadway soundtracks during clean-up.