Learning To Dance In The Rain!

As you may have noticed, I’ve changed my Blog’s title. I think dancing in the rain is great, especially if it’s warm outside. I’m not really a fan of dancing in the sleeting, icy rain. That’s not as fun. It’s actually kinda miserable. But dancing in the rain is like looking at the positives of life… and hey, that’s my new motto!

Looking at the positives in life can be as simple as enjoying the small things you see everyday. A few weeks ago, the weather was really nice. (Now it’s back to being cold. I don’t like it when the weather plays mind games like this. It was raining a few days ago too.) But I started to notice a trend in people’s behaviors while the weather was still warm. They seemed happier and seeing people happy makes me happy. I also witnessed a few secret dances, which made me smile. Haha… I’ll explain.

On one of the first days it was warm outside, I went to get a late night dinner with some friends. We went to one of the main dining halls and we stayed and talked till we were some of the last people in the dining hall. As we were just kind of sitting and relaxing, Taylor Swift’s “Today Was A Fairytale” came on the speakers. It was a really great song for the moment and we were all sitting there enjoying it when we noticed someone across the hall. She was a dining hall worker who was cleaning the tables at the end of the hall. What made me smile was that she was dancing and singing to the song, unaware that we had seen her. She was using her spray cleaner bottle as a microphone and her washrag as… well… I don’t even know. She was just kind of waving it around her as she danced. She clearly didn’t know that we had seen her, but that’s what made it so good. It was just really happy to see someone like her having a wonderful time in her own little world. It was cute.

A few days later, I witnessed another secret dance. I have 8am classes everyday and usually when I leave my dorm, there’s only one or two other people leaving for class too. Most of the time when I leave, there’s one particular guy I notice leaving from a different section of Fred (Fred is the shortened name of my dorm, Frederickson). I always notice him because he wears these giant, bright blue headphones when he walks to class. This particular nice morning, he was dancing. He didn’t see me since I was behind him, so I guess he thought he was alone. But I saw you giant, bright blue headphone kid:) He was doing his own little made up dance jig. His moves consisted of doing a little hopping foot thing, bobbing his head from side to side, and moving his arms around in the motion of a train’s wheels. I don’t know about you, but I usually don’t feel like dancing at 8 in the morning, but again, I think the nice weather has made everyone a little happier.

Over winter break, I was actually caught doing my own secret dance. I was driving home from dropping my brother off at practice and I was blasting Cascada’s “One More Night” (If you haven’t heard that song, you should go listen to it…. It’s a really good dance song because it has a good beat. Well actually, I feel like anything Cascada does has a good beat so yeah) Anyway, I was jamming out to the song and I guess when I got to a stoplight and two people saw me. Normally, I would be really embarrassed, but the two people proceeded to have a dance-off with me while we waited at the red light. It was fun…. And I’m pretty sure I won:)

There’s so many other little things that make me happy too. I guess since I went on a run today and my endorphins were flowin’, I was able to think of them a lot easier. A few little things that make me happy include:

1)    Getting compliments. I got one a few weeks ago from a woman. She complimented me on the workout I had done.

2)    When people hold the door for me.

3)    When people smile, or say “thank you” when I hold the door for them. Or if they just smile just because they are nice.

4)    Music with the ukulele in it. Like “Hey, Soul Sister”, “I’m Yours”, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, and “Rhythm of Love”. (Doesn’t that make you happy too? I mean who doesn’t like at least one of those songs? I’m telling you… it’s because of the ukulele. It’s a really awesome instrument. I’m trying to learn how to play, but I seem to be failing a little… well, actually a lot)

5)    Anything on that list of things I like in one of my previous blog entries.

6)    Randomly, I really like when it’s warm outside and it’s raining. Like spring rain. It’s so fresh!

When I was little, I loved playing in the rain. For fun, my brothers and I used to do rain runs. We would stand in our garage while it rained outside, and then we’d find an object outside like a tree, car, or mailbox, and we would run as fast as we could to the object and back. And that’s about all the game consisted of. I don’t really understand why we thought it was so fun. Actually, I remember getting kinda angry with my youngest brother David because he would cheat. Since he was so little and couldn’t run as fast as Matt and I, he would always turn around and run back before he even got close to touching the object. Such a little cheater….

But I still think being out in the rain is really fun. Someday I want to dance in the rain with my Prince Charming;) I feel like it would be so magical! I picture it something like this…

But until then, I’ll just be dancing in the rain on my own having the time of my life! After all, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain!”