42 here and there

June 3, 2019

My 42nd birthday was this weekend. My husband took off from work that day, made us all lunch, bought me cake and balloons, my dad bought me Malibu coconut rum and an Audrey Hepburn movie collection, my sister mailed me the movie Ocean's 8, co-workers surprised me with cake, a card, balloons, and ice cream, and Joe bought me cards and decorations but under the pretense that they were "from the kids". 

My son who's honest to a fault, wanted me to know that it wasn't really from them, that it was in fact from Joe, as if I didn't already know this. I like my son's candor even though it drives me up the wall sometimes. But I got a big kick out of it that day so all is well.

42 seems to be a pretty special number for many reasons. 

I like that it was Jackie Robinson's and Mariano Rivera's uniform number, two players I greatly admire. And the number itself looks better to me than 41. I felt the same way when I turned 39, that even though it was older, it somehow looked better than 38, as did 37 looked better than 36. Anyone else share this weird number aesthetic thing?

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Today Julian DeGuzman, a very young, very talented dancer/choreographer, followed me back on Twitter. The first time I saw him dance was in a Unity in Diversity "bad and boujee" video on YouTube, he appears at about minute 2:15. In these type of videos, various dancers take turns doing a set choreography in front of a crowd while adding their own spin on it. He first caught my eye because he looked a lot like someone I used to work with, and by someone I used to work with, I also mean someone I used to have a little crush on. But then I also began to notice how well Julian moved and that he out-danced his partner who seemed to be running out of moves. It wasn't in a cocky way and his partner looked just as excited and happy for him. His own choreography comes off as smooth and effortless, even though it's clear that a lot of discipline is needed to pull that off. It reminds me of the way my sister edits videos in that sometimes it'll match the lyrics, sometimes the music, sometimes both, but always right down to the split-second.

After sharing one of his videos with my sister on facebook, I went to his Twitter page to see his posts and hit "follow", wondering if he might follow back but not thinking he would. I fan-girl often without expecting a follow back, but I do get them from time to time and when I do I'm always in awe, giddy and grateful. Like I pointed out before in a previous post, celebrities and their fans alike have more direct access to each other nowadays. I'm well aware that these guys don't have to follow us back if they don't want to. Julian certainly didn’t have to- dude already has over 42,000 followers (over 45,000 last time I checked, in a matter of hours!) So because of his kind gesture, I'd like to share some of his incredible talent with my modest number of readers here whom I apologize to for not being able to enable the comment section like I somehow was able to do with my last blog, "Catch My Drift." Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon xoxox

This is the one I showed my sister. Not sure I would have even liked this song if I didn't see them dance to it first lol

Here's his YouTube channel, check it out if you haven't already :) https://www.youtube.com/user/dvideo13