Famous among dozens
My favorite thing about this video is how gobsmacked I look at the end of each section I complete. After the 50-second mark, it’s all celebratory improvisation, so please don’t blame Mr. Kloss for my lack of form.
Ready? Let’s do this thing:
Next time? Sparklers.
Ed note: Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my Mighty Life List over the next few months. Things will be a little hectic over here for a while.
This is my tap dance teacher, John Kloss. Doesn’t he look hopeful? If you refuse to look hopeful while tap dancing, they pry the taps off your shoes, and point sternly at the studio door. Then they kick you on your way out.
See? Earnest! He’s a professional.
Anyway, Mr. Kloss is the founder of the Bay Area Tap Festival, and he teaches beginner drop-in classes on Wednesday nights at City Dance. I took one — it was the very first time I’d ever put on tap shoes. I quickly realized that I needed an accelerated course, because my plan was to re-launch Mighty Girl with a little tap routine. I had visions of sparklers! And a humorous, sequined tappy outfit!
In retrospect, my vision was overly ambitious (surprise), but Mr. Kloss graciously agreed to meet me on Sunday to teach me a routine. I then spent eleven hours practicing between Sunday and Tuesday. I lost like three pounds, and I’m also so sore I can’t hold the TV remote without whimpering.
Mr. Kloss had a very good sense of humor about my plan, and I did manage to record something on Tuesday. I am not wearing spandex (disappointment!), but I did get all the way through the routine without crying. I’ll post the video tomorrow, so you can enjoy my very stern tap face.
If you need me, I’ll be in an ice bath.
Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my life list over the next few months. So they paid for my tap shoes and studio time. Thanks, Intel!
So we’re already crossing off my first Mighty Life List item courtesy of Intel*:
Redesign Mighty Girl!
I tried to find a little trumpet sound to link here, but to no avail. So we’ll just have to use our imaginations. Ready? TA-DA-DA-TAAAAAAAAAAA!
Good work everyone.
The new design makes me seem so serene, doesn’t it? Peek behind the curtain and you’ll find me eating potato chips for dinner at 2 a.m., having left the shower without rinsing conditioner out of my hair. This morning, my pillowcase looked like I’d used it to line a platter of fried chicken.
I think the site is channeling some of Helen Jane’s even keel-ed-ness. I knew we’d have to do everything ludicrously fast, so I wanted to work with someone soothing. When I first asked her, she was a little leery.
She thought the process might be unpleasant.
But she does like designing things.
And then she realized what she could charge for a four-week turnaround.
Thanks to Intel, I could actually afford to pay her. She was worth every penny.
Thanks, lady!
Anyway, if you haven’t yet, please poke around and let me know what you think. The categories may seem hinky, because I haven’t had a chance to comb through all ten years of content yet. For now, I’m thinking of the site as a home that gives me room to grow.
As for the other life-list items I’ll be crossing off, you’ll know more in the next few days, but I want to keep some of them a surprise. Also, lots of you have been asking how I chose. The answer is, Intel offered me a timeframe and a budget, and that helped me shape a plan. It’s a mixture of grand things and small, happy things.
I want to do everything, but I also need enough time to savor it. The process has already taught me a lot, but we’ll talk about that later. For now, enjoy the new site while I nap. Thank you for all the incredible comments. You’re all right.
*What’s going on here? Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my life list over the next few months. Next week, I’m going on a Space Shuttle with the Rockettes!
New look! I’ll post more about it when the sun comes up, but for now I must sleep. The superhuman Helen Jane Hearn put this together lightening-fast, so I’ll thank you in advance for your patience while we iron out the kinks.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Attend San Francisco’s Black and White Ball.
As many of you know, about a year ago I started writing down 100 things I’d like to do before I die — peacefully, in my sleep, of extreme old age. I called it my Mighty Life List, and I wrote it because I wanted to start dreaming bigger.
Taste 1,000 Fruits.
I was embarrassed by the list’s audacity, worried some of you might think I was cheesy, or maybe overreaching if I told you my plans. That’s silly, of course, because I’ve noticed over the years that you guys are nice. You make it lovely to write here every day, and doing that has helped me realize I want to spend more time celebrating, and less time slogging.
Cross the Canadian Border.
I made the list, changed things here and there, gradually started crossing things off, and then my life took a turn for the surreal.
Make 1,000 lovely things.
Intel has decided to sponsor my life list.
I told you your jaw would hit the floor. I’ve known for months, and my brain is still catching up. So! How did this happen? I’ll tell you the full story in a couple of days, but here’s the gyst.
Intel started this Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign, it’s the one you’ve seen on The Tonight Show, and the one with the geek rockstar ads that have been making rounds online. As part of the campaign, they asked me to choose ten things I thought I could accomplish in the next three months, and then told me to go do them — they’d pick up the check.
Cut to me at the Oscar podium dipping Halle Barry and kissing her full on the mouth.
And so, Mighty Girl is about to get more interesting, and slightly more frantic. My designer friend Helen Jane Hearn came out of blog-design retirement to help me with a beloved new look for Mighty Girl, which will launch Wednesday. I will not be sleeping between now and then.
Next week, I leave for Puerto Rico to swim with bioluminescent plankton. In between I’m taking tap lessons with John Kloss, Founder of Stepology and patron saint of patience.
I need a nap, but I couldn’t be happier. I’m the stupid kind of happy, the let-the-toddler-eat-an-entire-bar-of-chocolate kind of happy. And here’s what’s happening in my head:
In my head all of you are with me in some ludicrous warehouse space, screaming, jumping up and down, blowing celebratory horns, and ducking champagne corks. This Very Good Thing that’s happening, it’s happening because of you. So thank you.
Cheers.
A birthday cake for Michelle!
Michelle’s artwork was just featured on NPR. She says this is her lucky year, and it’s looking pretty good already.
Lots of parents aren’t particularly concerned about stuff on their kids’ faces. This is because you can wipe a child’s face, leave the room to throw out the tissue, and return to find them covered with snot and dog hair. You’re standing there thinking, “We don’t even own a dog.” Well, that’s beside the point. The point is that keeping your kid’s face clean is like pushing a boulder uphill. Except the boulder has teeth, and can scream.
When I was child free, I’d laugh nervously when people passed me their baby food-covered kids. Then I’d lunge for the nearest napkin before the baby could slime my sweater. I always figured I’d grow out of that when I had my own kids, but instead I just chase Hank around with baby wipes all day. The result is a remarkably fastidious kid who would prefer not to touch anything that might leave a residue. He has a very conflicted relationship with bananas.
For some reason, I didn’t ponder this much when we took him out for his first ice cream cone. It was the first warm day we’ve had since he’s been old enough to hold his own cone, and I could barely wait. I’d somehow failed to remember that the kid who loves to play in mud and sand, and splash in puddles had to be taught that all those things were cool. We weren’t going to rush at him screaming, “Noooooooooo!” and then whisk off all his clothing to go soak it in the bathtub. Mud all over your shirt? Yes. Smoothie and dog hair all over your shirt? No. These are complex distinctions.
So we convinced Hank to hold his cone the way we convince him to do anything scary. Outright bribery. As you may recall, Hank will only be bribed with chocolate. Perhaps you think this is a no-brainer, because ice cream conveniently comes in chocolate form. Perhaps you have forgotten that ice cream remains on one’s face, long after one has requested that it be removed?
And apparently ice cream drips?
And this chocolate is cold? Which is unexpected when we’re talking about chocolate. And why aren’t you holding it, as any idiot can see that your manual dexterity far exceeds that of a toddler?
Why are you making him do this? It is disgusting. Are you not aware that he has teeth and can scream?
Eventually, through our laughter, we convinced him that ice cream on a cone would not grab his ankles when he walked by the bed, or secret away his security blanket while he was distracted by ice tongs. So Hank warmed to the idea of holding it himself.
He took about two bites and then thrust it at me, “You hold it?” Fair enough. He pointed at my napkin and held his hands out questioningly. So I obliged.
Then he ran back and forth on the sidewalk screeching happily while we finished our cones.
It was a good day.
Photo by Peter DaSilva for the New York Times
This is a photo of Bryan and some other guys drinking bourbon in the New York Times. So now he gets to check that off, while I add “shoot tequila for a profile piece in the New Yorker” to my list. Bryan is a constant source of inspiration.
Remember the pink sweater I started after seeing the project over at Orange Beautiful? It’s finished!
Is this not the grown up version of a tutu? It is quite possibly the pinkest thing I have ever owned. When I wear it, I smell like Bing cherries in a bed of warm cotton candy.
The original J Crew Version was $425, and isn’t available anymore, but I followed the step by step on Orange Beautiful to make this one.
I did things a little differently, because her version required more patience than I could muster, so here’s a run through if you want to make one for yourself. Start with a jacket or slightly boxy sweater, and then embellish it thusly:
1. Buy some fabric. The original rosettes are silk charmeause, but I chose polyester chiffon, because I wanted the flowers to be fluffy instead of cascading. You’ll need about 4 yards of whichever you choose.
2. Cut the fabric in strips and fold it to size. You want your petals to be about 4″ H x 2.5″ W. So I cut my fabric in strips, then folded the strips in half several times until I had a stack of material about the right size. This doesn’t need to be an exact science, but you want something that looks kind of like this:
3. Sew a knot in the middle of the stack to hold the pieces together, and then cut along the folds to create a grouping of square “petals.”
4. Cut the corners off the stack of squares until you have a roughly oval shape:
5. Here’s where it gets a little tedious. Take three layers of fabric at a time, bunch them by hand, and then pass the needle through a few times until you have the ruffles you want. Repeat with the next three layers and so on, until you have a finished rosette:
6. If you don’t like the effect, go back in with your needle and tease apart any layers that are too clumped or whatnot. The back of my rosettes looked like this:
7. When you have about 30 flowers, attach them to your sweater or jacket by hand. I’d wait until you’ve mostly finished the flowers to affix them, because your rosettes will get better as you go along, and you’ll want the prettiest ones up by your face, right? (I didn’t do this, and I wish I had).
8. When all the flowers are affixed, fill in any gaps by sewing down the top and bottom petals of the flowers in areas that need attention.
9. Pull away any stray threads from the flowers’ raw edges.
10. Wear your sweater around the house for a few hours, and pause to trade bon mots with imaginary dignitaries whenever you pass a mirror.
Cute! Now where am I going to wear it? Someone please get married. Thank you.
When I got married, I was looking for something just like this to don for my reception (after I’d shed my veil). I didn’t find mine in time, but maybe I can help you out, my blushing brides. Here it is at Handle and Spout.
Mighty Girl 