*****Dancing With The Stars 

Hi. It's been almost two weeks; pull out your black soled dance charts, and step to the Rob-dance. Left foot, right foot, shimmy, and... let me catch you up on the moves: I got a ticket (2,3,4...), broke my toe (stomp, 3, 4…), and fried my laptop (and dip). I had one of the best weeks ever!

No, no sarcasm, I'm serious. And yes you can mark this "No Sarcasm" moment in your Hallmark calendar. It's more rare than a blue moon outside an Alaskan winter. Ok, that's a little obscure; I'll give you a waxing gibbous hairy moon to think it through.

Sometimes the things we say make no sense. I know, coming from me, that's hard to believe, but stick with me, I may not make sense out of life, but I think I can make this statement ring true. By the time you finish this blog you'll swing with belief. See? You're already nodding your head to the beat. Ok, lets start.

As you know. The Pirate Queen made her California tour. She packed it with everything from a wine train to a job interview, and still found time to make a grumpy blogger feel wanted. How? She made Rob time in her everyday. She left yesterday and I'm still finding Pirate Easter eggs. This morning I cleaned the computer repair estimates from my dry erase board and found the words "I miss you" in a foreign scrawl. It made the Apple's numbers seem so small.

It's the little things. What little things did I do for her? I'll let her tell you. They're her little things, she can share them if she chooses. I did them for her, and not for the blog. So for now lets just say I did little to deserve her appreciation.

I know, I know, you want to hear all about her trip, but I don't know what I should tell you. It's not that I keep secrets, but so many things in life are improvised moves in the moment and don't make sense unless you're there. I mean if I told you that I laughed my ass off the second time she stomped on my broken toe, would that give you a greater understanding? Probably not, anymore than if turned my hand palm up, formed a finger cup and called it a pineapple. Do that to the Pirate Queen and she'll double over, and you can grab her booty. She may even do a Hammer Dance.

Stop! It's Hammertime!

That's the thing about relationships. Every laugh and tear is in the small and obscure. It's a location joke: you've gotta be there. Maybe that's why we had so much fun: we were both there. Whole Rob, whole Queen living through every moment. When two sides are that locked in a groove, then it's hard to move out of sync.

Oh, sure I talk like I've found the city of gold. Maybe I have. I've seen it. We all have, and we all know that once you leave you can never retrace your steps. Yet, you have to be there to experience the wonder. So why do we all step away?

Because life is a diamond and every aspect of our life is a facet. Our relationships sparkle with refraction of the light we shine into them. That is so easy when things are so new and the focus is so pinpoint precise. Unfortunately, life has other facets: work, kids, NBA finals, and the search for Spock. Everything deflects our crystal clear light, and turns our diamond relationships into a fortress of solitude. It doesn't matter if you're Superman or not, you can't escape it.

"I know Superman, and you Mr. Boyd are no Superman."

Yeah, this is no revelation. Just call me Jimmy Olsen. I fall way short; I still run with scissors, but I can still cut a rug. My mom had a great gig selling Folgers coffee in the 70s. That's how I got this really cool eye twitch.

That's why we all go through the dance of the blogger and the pirate. We're all one eye twitch or patch from eagle-eye perfection. Every spin step is an allemande left into somebody else's blind spot. We're looking for somebody who recognizes our moves and can join in the dance without feeling stepped on; somebody who can keep beat with our heart without stiletto heel skewering it.

We all dance differently though. Each move jives and clicks the inside individual dancers or it leaves us a tumble of broken limbs for outsiders to sort. What works, only those inside the dance know. Outsiders have opinions, but they can't move like we do, they can only watch and coach. Friends will tell you about what works for them: not you. Maybe yours is a taste of tango but your friends are all rusty robot flavored.

"The hairy butt is a dangerous butt."

"I don't know, I kind of like a guy I can press to a Velcro wall, and know he'll stick around."

That's the dance of the insider trying not to be an outsider. That's not to say that there aren't things we should avoid like the Chicken Dance, but a majority are swings and sways that we need to call on our own. Can she Macarena?

Driving the Pirate Queen to the airport, she told me that she wasn't really wild about chili cheese fries, then rolled down a window. I felt deflated! We'd eaten them three times! How could we possibly dance close with a chasm of beef and beans between us?

She countered by taking my hand. It worked. In the two weeks we were together a lot of things worked. Like life, other things didn't, and I'm not Big-Giddy blinded. I know that things still go too fast, and stuff still breaks. The dance of the blogger and the pirate is only one facet in either of our lives. Yesterday she returned home and I have to find a way to pay for the wreckage reflected in life's other prisms. Life didn't become one big fantasy simply because we shared a song.

I know, this isn't the step by step instructions you were looking for, but I don't want to confuse you with the convulsions of a klutzy blogger. You have your own dance, in the great ballet. When the light shines on you, you'll pirouette and bow and move in your own rhythm.

Let me just say that when the Pirate Queen smiles, the light refracts in her good eye I do dance on air; that makes my cleanup a lot easier. It also makes the time and distance before our next dance a little more bearable.