A Bit of a Jolt

I'm not against coffee or anything. With enough sugar and milk, it's rather yummy. Garsh, there are even times that I miss it so much that I smell it. You know what that means, right? Yes. Sticking my nose in my husband's cup. I'm not too proud to say it.

I know you're thinking, "Why don't you just HAVE some, then?" First, thanks for the judgmental tone. Not.

Secondly...just kidding. ;-) I've decided to cut it out of my diet while we're nursing because, well, I'm not the woman I once was. I had a tiny bit of coffee while pregnant (mostly half-caf) but quit that when I noticed the lil' fetus doing jumping jacks. These days, if I have coffee, I notice myself doing jumping jacks...and shaking...and, yeah, it's not pretty. If I have it past noon, the baby has a rough night, which is even less pretty.

So, I've cut out caffeine in its coffee-bean form. It wasn't really a challenge for me since pre-pregnancy, I wasn't coffee co-dependent. On rare occasion, I'll partake in chocolate (before, say, 2pm -- for above-mentioned baby sleep reasons) and often drink decaf and herbal teas.

Today, for whatever reason, I decided to have some green tea -- plain, ol' caffeinated green tea. (The norm is decaf, in case you didn't spot a trend.) I put a bit of sugar in it and was on my way.

No shaking this time, but I found myself in the "privacy" of my back room at school today, pumping, dancing what can only be described as a mash-up of an Irish jig and a Fred Astaire tap.

Let me say that again, slower, to let that set in. I was in the back room of our library today...attached to a breast pump...dancing. Not just the "stand in the back of the room and sway back and forth" half-assed type of dancing. No, I was full-on making noise with my shoes, moving all over the place, mugging for the audience dancing.

Take a moment. I laughed at myself, so you have more than a right to. Continue reading when you're ready.

The thing is, I'm not even a good dancer. There are a few things that I can do passably well (onstage, in particular). I can carry a tune, I can do comedy, I can pretend that someone's about to hang me and not make it seem INSANE that I'm not fighting tooth and nail, I can do an accent, I can scream like nobody's business, and I can act blonde in a blatantly horrible blonde wig and have a handful of folks actually buy that I am, indeed, blonde. I cannot, for serious entertainment's sake, dance.

It's not for lack of trying. My sister and I had to pull off a '40s-esque dance in a show quite awhile back, and since our dance instructor didn't actually exist (we were promised one...several times...but such is community theater, am-I-right?), I studied a handful of YouTube videos and threw something together that could only be deemed "awkwardly cute" at best. What can I say? I'm Mr. Ed when I dance for realsies. (Slow dancing, I can do.) Great for a comedy. Great for an email address with a shout-out to Elaine from Seinfeld. Otherwise, I keep it in my pants. Read: Nobody needs to see that.

The only thing that I can attest my sudden spurt of footwork to is that tiny bit of caffeine. I didn't suddenly have an out-of-body experience, nor did I have a song stuck in my head that found it necessary to make me boogie. There's just no other reason.

In order to protect any semblance of future pride, I'll have to stamp a reminder on the tea box: "Warning: May cause spontaneous dance parties while hooked up to a milking machine. Exercise extreme caution."

God. What would happen if I could actually consume alcohol again?!