Today was one of those spectacular spring days in the Pacific Northwest.  The sky was this amazing shade of blue, the sun was out, it was relatively warm. It is one of those days that teases us that spring is just around the corner.

I love this time of year.  It is the time of year that winter and spring war for dominion over the land so there are great swings in temperature and weather. The buds on trees are swelling with signs of the potential of new life.  The deciduous trees are starting to leaf out and there are so many shades of green that it almost hurts your eyes.  It is a season in which you can see the potential that the world holds, the promise of tomorrow. It makes my heart just sing.

On a day like today, I can’t stay in the house, I have to be outside.  I also needed to exercise so instead of going to the gym, I ran to a nearby park that has a great jogging path around it.  To get there, I had to go about a mile up a pretty busy street that has a really major hill on it. It is uphill there, downhill home.  So I put my music on, went to the park, ran a few miles, enjoyed the beautiful sunshine, laughed at the unrestrained kids that wave back when I wave at them, just in absolute awe of the beauty of the distant mountains (both the Cascades and Olympics can be seen from the top of the hill) and then turned around to head home down the busy street.

On the way home, my music trifecta comes on:  Good Riddance by Green Day, Learning to Fly by Tom Petty, and Wake Me Up by Avicii.  They are songs that were made for moving.  All of a sudden, with the sun on my face, birds singing, the glory of the big northwest evergreens all around, I just wanted to dance.

Now remember, I am walking down a really busy suburban road.  When I lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle, the sight of a 50 year old crazy woman dancing down the street in her black capri leggings and a big purple University of Washington hoodie wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow, in fact, there probably would have been people dancing with me.  However, where I live now everyone drives, no one is walking down the street let alone dancing. Hmm… didn’t change anything, when it is time to dance it is time to dance. So I danced. Guess what happened?  No one noticed.  I didn’t even get one glance. People were so focused and in a hurry to get wherever they were going that they failed to notice a crazy woman dancing down the side of the road. The less they looked, the more outrageous I got trying to get at least one person to honk at me and smile.

Social media seems to be filled with people who are sad and lonely, people longing for simpler lives with less stress, and to have the spirit and the joy of children again.  Guess what? In order to have that, you actually have to be willing to do it. You can’t say that you want a simpler life and not be willing to find the joy in simpler things, things like sunshine, fresh air, dancing, and noticing the world around us.  And you can’t be restrained by being worried about what other people are going to think.

Here is my advice.  Take the handsome man or beautiful woman you are with or, if you are by yourself, take the handsome man/woman that you are and go for a walk.  And while you are walking, just dance, arms in the air, unrestrained by what people think, heart and senses open to the world around you. You will feel fantastic.  What is the worst that can happen?  People might think you are crazy?  Guess what, being crazy isn’t a crime. You might make someone smile?  Yeah, that would be tragic. Of course, you might make it on YouTube like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSy7h3TPB-M.   If you do, I will be so jealous, I couldn’t even get one person to look at me.

Tonight, I am going to Drag Queen Bingo.  I am going to wear a feather boa. The great part about that is I am riding the bus.  Who wants to speculate about how many pictures make it to instagram tomorrow of the crazy old woman riding the bus in a feather boa? It is going to be a hoot.

Life is short, whereas, when divided by x is infinite as x approaches 0. Go ahead, divide by zero.