Car Dancing

Yes, I am a car dancer. What is a car dancer? Just what it sounds like.

My story begins around naptime today. Arden is turning into a true 2-year old, and will sometimes refuse to go to sleep at naptime just to prove that there is no way I can MAKE her go to sleep. Not because she isn't tired (she is) and not because she doesn't need a nap to function normally (she does), but just to prove that I can't control every part of her life. She is right. There is no way to force her to go to sleep. So, on days like today, she just stays up in her room, reading every book and playing with every toy and pretty much making a mess. That isn't the part that is the bummer, I really don't mind as long as I can stay downstairs and try to get some work done on my laptop. The part I do mind is the rest of the night, when she turns into Arden the grouch. Seriously. She breaks into tears at the tiniest little things and pretty much talks in her "whiney voice" nonstop until bedtime.

Anyway, knowing that this kind of lovely evening was ahead of me, I was counting down the minutes until Preston got home from work, when he called and told me he was going to be working pretty late tonight. Ohhhhhh crap, I thought to myself. I get to face 4 more hours of whineyness all alone. But then a brilliant idea struck me. I will take her to my mom's house! Arden likes my mom more than me, and so she will probably not even whine there! At the very least, I can at least deflect some of the whining onto someone else. So, we ate a quick dinner and joined the crowds on people on the I-15 headed towards Layton.

So, I am a mean mom, and I don't let Arden listen to "kids music" in the car. We do not own (and hopefully will never own) any music by the Wiggles, Barney, or anything like that. But, to make myself feel a little less mean, I burned a CD of some of the songs off of my iPod that Arden seems to like best, and that I don't mind listening to.

So we are in stop and go traffic, and our car was not moving very fast, but Arden and I were MOVING in the car. We were having a great time dancing around in the car. After about 10 or 15 minutes on the freeway, we had been dancing the whole time. I think we were listening to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" or maybe it was "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles, but anyway, Arden was waving her head from side to side and clapping, and I was wiggling around in my seat and occasionally clapping too (Hey, we were going like 10 miles an hour in a straight line!) and I am just singing at the top of my lungs, when I kind of sense that someone is looking at me. I immediately stop dancing and singing and try to oh-so-casually look out of the corner of my eye at the cars next to me. Sure enough, a car full of high school-age guys is watching me, and they are obviously amused by my little show. I am sure they were thinking something like, "This old woman has completely lost her mind. How sad." So, I smile an embarrassed little smile and try to keep my eyes on the road and pretend like nothing happened. Luckily, my lane was going faster than theirs and I was soon out of their sight, but my face was a little red for quite a while.

So, this makes me wonder how many other times have I done this and just not noticed the people watching me from the other cars! I am constantly "car dancing" and singing when I am driving around by myself or with the kids, so I am sure that I have unknowingly made a complete fool out of myself in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow-drivers. Heck, I probably made a fool of myself in front of hundreds of fellow-drivers today alone.

Oh well, I guess it is too late to stop now. So, if you happen to see me looking like an absolute idiot at the stoplight next to you, just roll your eyes and please look away and never mention it to me again. I will try to go back to pretending that I am somehow invisible in my car and no one can see my wonderful car dancing.