A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn .. and a time to dance.

Most nights, I relish the time when everyone is in bed. I get the house all to myself. No phone will ring, I can make cups of tea, bring out my hidden blocks of chocolate and think, dream, cry.

Last Saturday night was hard for everybody in this house ... nobody ended up doing what they wanted. Dave wanted sexy love time, but ignored me when I put his carefully cut-out starsign from the newspaper in front of him during dinner. I just wanted him to know that Leo's have amazing power lately, and he walks off to watch Australia's Funniest Home Videos. And then expects me to give it up? I don't think so. He went to bed frustrated.

Rocco was beyond tired but did NOT want to go to bed. I put him to bed amid howls of protestations. He went to bed super annoyed.

Max wanted to watch a DVD but it was all scratched, which is what happens when you don't put them back in their covers and they litter the floor. He went to bed disappointed.

Tim pretended he was sick to get out of helping us at the busy feral hour, by the time he came down his dad had already left to go pick up the Chinese food so he missed his lift to his girlfriends house. He went to bed in a huff. (Then he called a taxi an hour later to take him to his girlfriends house.)

I stayed up for a few hours, then knew if I didn't go to bed before midnight I would go past the point of tiredness, into the land of "You are too old for this shit and will pay for it tomorrow."

So dragging my feet, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I felt frustrated, annoyed, disappointed, AND in a huff. Life is crazy busy hectic fucked-up and it makes my head spin around ten times each day. I cannot keep up, and wait for the day when things will be more manageable.

I had my iPod on, with The Gossips new album "Music for Men." It's rare for me to connect with much these days, but this album stirred the rock in me and I started dancing in my bathroom. I could see myself reflected in the windows, black tracksuit pants and wild hair. I was surprised at how cool I looked, always feeling so haggard and ground down lately.

I danced harder. All over the bathroom, in and out of the shower recess, jumping up and down on the impossibly freezing and hard-to-clean sandstone tiles with all of my might, I seriously started to rock out. It was very uncoordinated at first .... I lost my groove sometime back in May, right between Dave's cancer diagnosis and Rocco's birth. Haven't really danced much since.
I love dancing. Peeling off my long sleeve-top, Beth Ditto launched into "Love Long Distance" and that was when things REALLY started to go off. My rhythmn came back, and fuck me if I did not dance the shit out of that antarctic bathroom down here in Edenland.

I *may* have started daydreaming at that point, that I was on a film set that had just wrapped ... some really cool movie that had Brad Pitt in it, and I was like, a Creative Advisor or some shit. And The Gossip were playing at this post-production party and Brad and Angelina were there but I *totally* did not hit on Brad, and Angelina was really nice and I forgave her over the whole husband-stealing fiasco. And I could dance but they couldn't because they were too famous but I wasn't famous and they were jealous of my cool moves.

I ended up dancing for at least twenty minutes. I even got sweaty, and seriously contemplated going out somewhere and finding a dancefloor. But I thought of trying to explain it to Dave, so I stayed put. But it was nice to know I still got it going on.

Maybe I have had my life quota of wild dancing. Lord knows I was the Queen of Nightclubs all through my twenties. Unfortunately I was also the Queen of the One Night Stand, Queen of the Broken Dreams, and Queen of the Cocaine. (Which in turn, led to the ultimate ... Queen of the Dark Places).

Motherhood marriage addiction re-parenting writing crying cancer remission recovery time-managing stepmothering second-guessing and fucking it all up. ALL OF IT.

But for twenty minutes last Saturday night, in the safety and privacy of my own home, I was the Queen of the Dance.

I slunk into bed next to Dave; matted hair, a sweaty face, and a beating heart.

I went to bed happy.