Four Classes!

I took four classes last week! It was... whew! It was intense. On the second consecutive day I was definitely feeling it. I'm starting to gain back some of the strength I lost over the past few months, though, and that is nice. Of course, now my stupid pointe shoes are getting squodgy. Wait, have I entered the unending cycle? You wear these things until they are finally comfortable and then POW! They die. Super awesome.
My mom once apologized for not putting me in ballet as a kid. But no, really, it's okay. For one thing I was shy and had body image issues and already ate myself up about my imperfections. And for another thing... we never really had money, you know? Like... ever. And a serious teenage student can blow through a pair of shoes in a week, easy. I am pretty sure we would have been selling plasma to keep shoes on my feet.
Anyway.
I haven't decided yet if I am going to try four classes this week or not. On the one hand I could use all the help I can get, and free classes are nothing to sneeze at. On the other hand... well. I am lazy. I mean, come on. I have important things to do at home. Like watch kitten cams and ignore the ever-expanding pile of dishes in the sink...
You know. Important stuff.

Skate

The olympics are over! Which really just means that I have now missed at least two olympic cycles with no proper TV, and therefore no ability to actually watch the figure skating. Because, guys, figure skating is awesome. When I was a kid I would pretend I was a skater, twirling around on the slick grass (AKA overgrown weeds) in our front yard at night, just the porch light on. I could never even stand upright on skates, and actually didn't really mind so much. The handful of times I even tried were all on school field trips. We took one trip to a roller skating rink and one to a super-ghetto ice skating rink per year. I steadfastly refused to actually *do* anything while I was there. For years. I would just sit in the stands and have a perfectly lovely time entertaining myself for several hours. I, mustering determination only slightly stronger than my omnipresent fear of failure, put on ice skates ONCE and oodged around the outside edge of the rink while holding on to the railing desperately. Yeah, that was enough of that. But I love watching the olympics. I think I am still slightly heartbroken that Timothy Goebel had to retire after only one medal. Looking at the videos now he looks so tiny and young! But at the time I could have just eaten him up! 12 years ago! I lived a totally different life in a totally different world 12 years ago.

The news coverage this year has been all Nancy Kerrigan v. Tonya Harding. All. The. Time. Which sort of cracks me up. I remember watching that year. I distinctly remember watching them do their free skate while I sat on my grandmother's bed with the other ladies of the family. The whole scandal had been EVERYWHERE for the past month, so everyone knew about it. But I was 12? It's not like I had an opinion. I had never seen either of them skate before. I remember feeling sort of dreadful for Harding, who skated like she was terrified and unprepared, and feeling utterly unimpressed with Kerrigan, who managed to medal (as far as I could tell) simply because everyone felt sorry for her. The girl who won gold was Russian and amazing, and she was wearing the ugliest costume on the planet. All fluffy maribou stuff to match her fluffly 90s hair.
It's weird the things you remember all of a sudden. Things that take you back to a different time and place. Green paint. A shelf of porcelain cat figurines. My little white leotard with pink rosettes just below the chin.

Spotty Spotting

I can't spot. Or, no, I can sort of spot. Like... I can look at that thing over there while I'm turning and whip my head around so that I appear to be spotting and travel in the general direction of my gaze. But it doesn't work, you see. I'm nearsighted.
Everyone in my family has completely whack vision, so it's not like this is something I don't know how to live with. My eyes really blew out on me to the point that it was noticeable in high school. I was awkward and bullied, though, so I scraped along with my shitty vision until I graduated. I insisted on getting glasses before college because I actually cared about college. Still, I only really wore them in class. The last time I had my eyes checked at the DMV (at age 29) I somehow managed to pass the test. Well, no, I failed the test. So then they gave me an easier test and said I was fine to drive with no corrective lens requirement on my license. Which really explains some things about California drivers, but anyway. As soon as I hit 30 it was like switching off a light. I have worn my glasses full-time for the past 2 years. Except in ballet class.
Because they get all sweaty and gross and fog up and when you turn they fly right off your face and across the room. It's just not worth it. It's not like I am reading any road signs in there, right? There are big neon colored sheets of paper taped to every surface in the studio, to give us something obvious to spot and aim towards. But... uhm... yeah... it still doesn't work. I can't quiiiiite focus my eyes on anything so my spotting is effectively useless and I end every turning combination dizzy as all heck.
So far my solution has been jumping up and down gently after each pass and hoping that straightens it out before I have to attempt the turns from the other side of the room. Very professional, I know.

Small House of Uncle Thomas

The theater where I work recently (like a week ago) staged the King and I. I think I saw the movie once when I was 17 and staying at someone's house to watch their cat while they were out of town. That was back when I was terribly industrious and used to get house sitting jobs to earn extra cash. At night I would sit around with the cat and watch my employer's video collection (remember when we all watched videos?) or read their books (Memoirs of a Geisha SUCKED, by the way) . Anyway. So, I saw it ages ago and aside from "Shall We Dance" (buh-dum-dum-dum) and the king dropping dead at the end the only part I really remembered was the ballet version of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the middle. Because it is SO freakin' weird, yo.
So. I went to see the dress rehearsal and found to my surprise that the crazy ballet is actually the best part of the entire show. Maybe I just have a greater appreciation for the dancers and details now, or maybe the antiquated /romanticized/borderline racisty stuff is just more glaring at 32 than it was at 17.
There is a bit when Eliza and the angel are walking across the frozen lake that involves all these little scootchy foot movements across the stage. As I watched all I could think was "I bet people think that is easy, but that shit looks HARDCORE to me". I totally had to try it when I got home. It TOTALLY IS hard! Dang!

This isn't us, but it's the best production I could find on Youtube. The scootchy feet are about halfway through.

PS: am I the only one who really only knows the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin through this movie? Sure, we talked about it in history classes when I was in school, but it's not like people actually READ the darn thing these days.

The Shoes Heard Round The World. Or Something.

Many years ago...
I took a belly dancing class once a week, along with my mom and sister and a family friend. It was probably terribly good for us. Anyway...
As I was practicing turns in the living room one day I caught my toe on the carpet, thereby folding it under my foot. And quicker than you could blink I stepped on it, breaking my toe. It was pretty dreadful. This risky barefoot tradition (with the attendant way your feet get all grubby on the floor during class) remained in my mind as the peril of belly dancing.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I had recently quit my retail job and I was stoked to start expanding my online store. I had been tossing around the idea of dying shoes for a while so I was on the prowl for cotton canvas shoe blanks that could be experimented with. I remembered my previous experiences with belly dancing class and decided that some canvas ballet slippers would probably be the perfect medium, with the added bonus of having an obvious market. Breaking toes is just so outré.
So I went online and bought some canvas slippers from Discount Dance Supply...
Which reminded me of all the pretty ballet shoes there are in the world...
Which reminded me of how much I wanted to dance again...
And the rest is history.

PS: I did dye those slippers! But then I discovered that the dye makes the leather soles go all crunchy and cardboardy... and I really hate lumpy soles anyway, so...
Yeah, I never actually put any of them in my shop.
But here they are, anyway, the shoes that started this whole crazy thing:

FLASHY.

*This Post May Contain Nuts

I was watching my classmates rehearse for the recital on Monday night. It was great fun to watch! I think choreography just makes my brain short circuit. The only choreographed dance I ever had to attempt was as a 16 year old drama nerd. Myself and two equally silly young things had to perform a weird little song and dance number smack in the middle of a play. And, to make it all even better? We were dressed as mermaids so we couldn't move our feet! Which subtracts a HUGE part of dancing, y'know? And therefore remembering your moves is a whole lot easier. Anyhow. In a way I am glad to not be attempting any of that crazy choreography business right now, but in another way... ooh! Pretty dresses! And twirly twirly twirling! Ooooh!
Siiigh...
In class recently I manged to hold a balance for ages. Demi-pointe on the left foot and the right off the floor in coupé. It was a total fluke, but it impressed the heck out of my teacher (I then totally failed to be able to do anything similar at all for the rest of the evening). I heard her saying something a bit later, about needing to advance some of the students in to the next level of class. I find myself desperately hoping she didn't mean me.

Oh, and PS:
In case you thought I was joking about the mermaid suits...

 I refuse to say which one I am.

Also, my 30-year-old self only keeps this photograph 

as a desensitization tool in case someone

tries to blackmail me later.

Poof, Puff, Pizazz!

The problem with ballet is familiarization. You stare at tutus and pointe shoes long enough and you slowly start to think of that sort of thing as... well... pretty. It's like when I worked at a fabric store. It wasn't a Jo-Anns type place it was a real fabric store that specialized in bridal, tailoring, and formal wear. And we had racks and cases and binders chock-full of sequined lace, Swarovski crystals, tiaras, tutu netting, etc. All the theaters in town, as well as all the pageant moms (shudder) and ice-skating costumiers shop there. And when I started I was kind of icked out by the bling, but after five years I had fully embraced the glitter and glam and I now paillet far more stuff than I probably should. I like to think I do it tastefully, but it is all relative. Anyway.
So. Ballet.
I was looking through best-and-worst-dressed celebrity lists (don't judge me!) and came across this on one of the latter:

 This is some variety of popular music star? I don't know, I haven't listened to radio outside of a grocery store in YEARS.

And anyway, I kind of liked it? I am not a big-skirt person. I kind of inwardly cringe whenever I attend a wedding with a bride in a giant poofy quinceanera skirt. My own wedding dress had a petticoat but was certainly not so big it forced my husband to stand several feet away from me. But six months of looking at tutus on the internet and I think this is adorable, guys.

 

6 month check in

So, it has been six months since I started ballet class!
Time for a retrospective? Hmm. I think ballet has done good things for me physically. I am stronger, more flexible, and generally more mobile than I was six months ago. My joints are never going to be pain-free, but being able to use them at all is pretty good. Dance has also been good for me mentally. Because I enjoy it and there are not that many things that I enjoy a whole lot sometimes. Because it gives me a chance to spend some time working instead of thinking. I spend an awful lot of time in my own head, which is good because I like my own company, but isn't perfect because no one in the world can screw with your mind like YOU can, right? Sometimes not thinking about things is just a nice break. And also, ballet makes me turn my standard modes of thinking on their head.
 If I have a fatal character flaw (aside from hardly ever spelling "character" correctly on the first try) it has got to be my deep frustration with myself when presented with something I am not immediately good at. This goes along with my other worst traits: perfectionism and an unfortunate tendency toward fatalism. I had a terrible time in school, the entire time, because aside from being bored out of my mind half the time and ignored academically almost entirely, I just didn't feel like I should have to work so hard at anything. Like, it never felt fair that I wasn't good at anything right out of the box. In my head I was totally awesome at everything, from music and dance to sports and science. All of it came so easily in my mind. But in reality there is all this frickin' effort and time and patience. Ugh, I was just so annoyed by that. This is why I didn't get my driver's license until I was TWENTY NINE YEARS OLD. Like, work ethic? What the hell? I don't need no stinkin' work ethic.
I always get kind of annoyed when people prattle on about my "talents". I actually had a customer congratulate me on my talent, once. Which is nice I suppose, in a way. But talking about "talent" makes it sound like my work comes easily to me and there is no effort involved. Like I sprang from the womb with mad design skillz and a firm grounding in clothing construction techniques. As much as I love and admire my mom, I must admit that my pre-birth experience was rather unremarkable and pretty much limited to growing limbs and floating around in goo. I went to college for this skill, and worked so very hard at it. I cannot find words to encompase the vast oceans of tears involved in the 4+ years that went in to honing those "talents". But, while it bugs me when people  find out what I do and say something stupid like "oh, I could never do that" or "that is so cool, I wish I could do that" (then... do it?) I understand where they are coming from.
Ballet totally reroutes this pattern of thinking, though. I won't ever be particularly good at it, but the process is enjoyable. And I need to keep that in mind because it is very easy to compare yourself to others and worry that you are lagging behind them in dedication, skill, or a hundred other things. Just because Sally Sue Someone was taking four classes a week and by the end of year one was en pointe every Saturday doesn't mean that you have to be, too. Your own path can be as slow or as fast or as exciting or as cucumber-cool as you want and need it to be. It's hard to let go of the knowledge that every day, in every single moment of your existence, someone is judging you and finding you lacking. But, at some point you also have to realize that an awful lot of the time that person is you.

Guess How Many Pills I Take Everyday. It is 7.

So. The next chapter in the saga of chemical substances that are being pumped in to my body.

I was feeling like the nortriptyline (a tricyclic used for treating chronic pain for those of you playing at home) was making me feel crazy and distressed. It has a suicidal ideation warning on the bottle, but the way I was feeling wasn't exactly depression. One of the symptoms of rheumatic conditions is depression, and it runs rampant through my family. Me and clinical depression are not what I would call old friends, but we are certainly old acquaintances. It was more like the sort of manic emotional state that you (okay, I) experience right before a period starts. You know, fine for a while and then tetchy and angry, and then despairing and fatalistic. Unable to concentrate on large quantities of anything. Extremely tired and unable to cope with people or things. Looking at the dishes like a mountain too high to climb. If you had never experienced clinical depression you might think that was what was going on.

Anyhow, so I emailed my doctor and said "get me off this crap, and make it snappy" and he emailed me back saying "no, we will just put you on another thing on top of it and that will solve the problem". I was FURIOUS. I actually spent a week or so sitting on it because I couldn't quite figure out what to say that didn't use curse words and would fit in the 1000 character limit that Kaiser imposes on it's emails. I also couldn't do research, because I would type something in to google and then look at the 11,735 related hits... and my mind would just shut right down and I would need to go take a nap and a shot. In the end I had to have my (poor sweet wonderful) husband research it for me and then cut and paste relevant bits of information, with highlighted sections so I would know what I needed to look at first, and send it to me as an email.
 Then I took about five hours trying to whittle down an email to a few talking points. And then I had my husband look it over to make sure it was intelligible. And finally, at 1am one morning, I hit send and off it went.
The bad news is I am now on ANOTHER !@#$ing drug on top of my original drugs. The good news is that I have been taking it for three days and feel a lot better (mentally, anyway) already. Cons: couldn't sleep last night which wasn't awesome. Supposed to make me gain even more weight. Can't wait to see how wide my ass can actually get before I snap in half. Pros: this is supposed to help with the pain as well as with the crazy. It's basically low-dose zoloft which is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and interacts with the tricylic (theoretically) to decrease pain and smack down some of the side effects.
We shall see.

Why Ballet?

Why did I decide to take ballet? Again? Hmm. Let's see. I love dancing, so I just really wanted to take some form of dance class. I have been looking pensively at studio web sites for the last six years or so (when I moved away from my suburban home and my community center belly dance class). I tried a few times to convince my husband (for whom, bless his heart, physical coordination is an afterthought) to take tango lessons but that was obviously not ever going to happen. I attempted to take a belly dance class with a friend of mine a couple of years back, but when we got to the studio the teacher and students were, and I am not kidding here, toking up on a bong in the classroom between sessions. I mean WHAT. There is another studio in my immediate area that does belly dance classes, but the instructor is an old nemesis of mine from back when I worked in retail. Woman is obnoxious. So I tried to find any kind of dance class at a community center or something... but there wasn't anything available for adults.
And then I went online and saw pretty ballet shoes.
Again.
It is my fatal flaw. I first decided I had to take ballet years ago when I ran across Gaynor Minden's website. I don't even know how I landed there. I just did. And then it was all photos of pointe shoes and pink ribbons and the logic center in my brain just turned right the heck off. This time I am pretty sure it was looking at the product photo for these Grishko technique shoes. I just died a little inside.
My natural dancing style is very unrefined. Far more Isadora Duncan than Darcy Bussell. I am particularly fond of dancing around to Florence and the Machine right now. In a sort of wild modern-slash-ballet hybrid. It's pretty ridiculous.

Crackin' Those Nuts

Tis the season! I was inspired to dig these up when I was over at my mom's house last weekend. These were supposed to be for the Nutcracker, which I had just seen performed live for the second time. I was maybe eleven. JUST eleven. I don't remember exactly but I do remember that this was the year I saw Nina Baratova dance as the Sugar Plum Fairy and I had a huge girl crush on her at the time so that was pretty awesome.
I was at an in-between phase where I had decided that no, actually I did not want to be a lawyer when I grew up, but didn't know what to fill in the blank with. I had always spent my free time designing clothes, but this was right around the age when I decided that it was a viable career option. I hadn't learned much about sewing and clothing construction yet, so you have to give me a break. Also, I don't have any idea who most of these were supposed to be for.

This was for the candy canes, though. The ones who dance with a hoop. I remember this one very distinctly, it was supposed to be white and the stripey bits were, of course, white and red. I dig that it's so unconventional.

I have no idea what this one is for, though. All I know is that my note on it says that it should have white bishop sleeves (I didn't know they were called bishop sleeves then, so it says "big poofy sleeves"), a green bodice, and a darker overskirt thingy. I honestly don't know what shape the skirt was supposed to be. Bell-type tutu?

 No clue on the wearer of this, either. But, the note says it's probably pink floaty chiffon, with rhinestones where all the dots are.

Another for who-knows-who. BUT I had to include this one because I thought it should be made from a fabric that my mom had a skirt made from. I am all about reduce-reuse-recycle, and I STILL HAVE some of this fabric. 

See! There it is!--------------------------------->

This one is obviously the snowflakes, which were always my favorite part when I was a kid (excepting Mother Ginger, my other favorite part). I am still not entirely sure why snowflakes traditionally wear long floaty romantic tutus rather than classical tutus, which are, you know, snowflake shaped. Anyway, I guess 11 year old me was a rebel. I still think this is a cute idea, if poorly drawn. It would take unconventional materials, but that is the rage these days anyway. 

Also, it totally reminds me of that scene from Fantasia! You had better believe I was influenced by that, too. -------------------------------->

Not Recreational Drug Use. I Swear.

There are a lot of different ways for adults to take ballet class. You can take a class for PE credit if you are enrolled in college. I am not. Nor did I take any PE classes while I *was* in college. Because I totally lucked in to a career degree that meant I only had to take fashion classes. For The Win. But anyway. Not the point.
You can take classes at a community center. The community center out where I used to live in the suburbs had classes. I took a belly dance class there for about a year. It was fun, but it was Not Serious.
You can take classes at a gym-type place. After all, everyone wants a body like whatserface in Black Swan these days (girl is too old to be that bony, though. I mean, I was crazy bony all through my teens and early twenties, I only weigh like 115 pounds right now, soaking wet with shoes on, and that is the heaviest I have ever been and includes two extra inches of butt fat that I have gained through the power of tricyclic medications. Also Not The Point. What was I saying? Oh yeah. But girlfriend is too bony, yeah? Even I think she's too bony and I am the queen of not telling people they are too bony. Because I got it ALL THE FREAKING TIME when I was growing up. People would straight up take my mom aside and tell her I had an eating disorder and she would be like "dude, no way. She eats like a million pounds of candy every day and ice cream for breakfast and then we go out for dinner and she's totally all over the second helping of mac and cheese. I think I know when my kid has an eating disorder, yo." Okay, still not the point.) ANYWAY. There is a place about a block from my house that has this sort of class. Also a $160 registration fee! And there is only one class! And it's in the middle of the day on a Wednesday! Also they have an ugly website that makes me feel icky! No, really! Your online presence is important!
OR you can find a dance studio and hope for the best. I have been through two ballet studios now. I took a year of ballet about ten years ago (I hate admitting it was that long ago, because it feels like I was a fresh-faced twenty year old full of promise just yesterday, but NO. It was totally TEN YEARS AGO. You are OLD MOTHER WILLIAM) Uhm... I lost my place again.
Oh yes. It was okay, but they were not terribly serious about the adult department. AND I was the only one who stuck with it for more than a few months, so the class kept resetting itself. The teacher was nice. A deeply handsome young man with blonde curls all up in yo' bidness. But he actually ASKED before he would touch you to make corrections. Dude, that is what I am here for. Touch all up on me, it's okay! I have janky posture, show me what I need to do! Anyway, after a year I wasn't progressing and felt annoyed by the whole thing. I tried the next level up, but it was obviously way beyond me and I actually had to leave the class early before I fell over.
My new studio. IT IS AWESOME. I didn't really know what to expect, but I love it! They have a full schedule of adult classes. Probably as many as they have for kids, almost. My teacher is very careful with our bodies and our restrictions. She is strict about posture and placement, but that is a good thing! I have two left feet, so sometimes she makes me redo things a million times. But that is okay! I won't get better if I don't practice, right? I kind of have a girl crush on her, because she is so freakin' awesome.

I am sure I had a point when I started this post.
Almost certain of it.
I probably should not have taken a vicodin before blogging :-/

Awesome Neighbor is Awesome

You remember my foil ballerinas? A few of them ended up in arabesque, but let's be honest, I am not that creative so most of them were just doing pirouettes like the five year old in me thinks they should. Another bit of back story: I happen to live next to a person who is associated with a professional dance company.

Well, after Thanksgiving I finished putting up the decorations on the ugly faux ficus tree in the foyer and called it good. A few days ago my husband came home and handed me a few ballerinas that had fallen off the tree. I went back out there to reattach them and it looked like someone (perhaps someone's small and rambunctious dog), had smashed in to the tree, knocking it over and tossing most of the decorations off-kilter. It was standing again, but the garland was a little askew, and a few ballerinas were just hangin' on by whatever the ballet equivalent of a wing and a prayer is. As I was putting things to rights I found this:

GRAND JETÉ! That is just showing off! LOVE. IT.

By the way I finally figured out how to make accented Es on a PC without cutting and pasting:

Hold down the alt key while inputting this code:

0201 = É

0233 = é

0232 = è

Rheumatic Princess. Take one.

It was hard to find a name for this blog. I kept wanting to make a play on the word "pneumatic" but what could I use that wouldn't just sound strange? Actuator? No. So, I gave up and used the first thing that came to mind. SO. The back story for people who don't know it:

I'm 30 years old, work in fashion and costuming, and live in central California. I have an undifferentiated (that is the fancy word for "unknown") auto-immune disorder that makes me feel pretty much like a 90 year old woman ALL THE TIME.
A few months ago my knees went, and when something decides to go it does not come back. So there I was, feeling annoyed and pained in this new and unhappy way. What was the best way to deal with it? Well, of COURSE it was to take up a new and punishing physical discipline! But seriously folks, I had sort of folded in on myself when pain became a constant in my life a few years ago, as a result I just reached a point where I realized I was WAY out of condition, my mobility was at an all-time low, and I just felt it was time to MOVE again before I collapsed. Also, looking at pictures of pretty dance shoes just about kills me.
SO!
I have been taking ballet classes for two whole months, now! I just "graduated" from the pre-beginning class and on Monday I will try my hand (er, feet) at the *actual* level I class! If I can get there before class starts without getting stuck in commute traffic, anyway.

So, there you have it. This blog is a place for me to babble about ballet and rheumatism and the exciting and horrible ways the two interact on a daily basis.
I will do some work on the horrible layout and design later. For now:
Welcome!