letting yourself sit one (or several) out

Warning: This post became a lot more stream-of-consciousness rambling than carefully planned article. Sorry.

So, I've been missing a lot of class, recently. Annoying, but what can you do when you repeatedly injure yourself and then somehow manage to have two cats come down with emergency medical problems within days of each other? There is simply nothing for it, I'm afraid.
I always feel bad about missing class.
In a lot of cases I enjoy taking class on an otherwise stressful day because it's therapeutic. I simply can NOT think about anything but class while I'm there. There is too much to focus on and too much to remember. On days like today, though, when I am full-out emotionally exhausted (emergency cat surgery yesterday that ended up being so complicated and so expensive that my vet actually took us aside to apologize to us in person. No, really.) and the classes on my schedule are the ones that are HARD CORE ass-kicking classes that carry a certain amount of emotional baggage of their own... yeah. Not happening. All I really want to do is sleep, eat too much, and snuggle on the couch with my husband and kitties. Possibly drink cocoa and read Scarlet Pimpernel novels, because that is the most intellectually stimulating thing I am currently capable of.
Sometimes I feel a bit cheated when I can't go to class. In a way I feel like I am dancing in defiance of and in anticipation of the day that I can no longer dance. I know it's a day that will eventually come. And when it does I will be devastated. So I feel a bit annoyed with circumstances (an with myself) when things don't work out the way they are supposed to.
Sometimes I just feel guilty. There is this person that sits in the back of your head and grumbles to you "maybe you just don't WANT IT enough" as if it was your inner personal trainer. And then you have to cock a figurative (or literal, I make a lot of faces when I talk to myself) eyebrow and ask that little bastard what s/he thinks "it" is and why it is so damned important to want it in the first place. Because no one can piss you off or make you feel worse than you can, right? Screw that little dude.
Sigh...

Self-Motivation for Dummies

In all honesty I've been having a terrible time self-motivating this week. It's felt like the longest week in recent memory, and now that I think about it, it's probably almost two full weeks since I went to class. I'm claiming emotional exhaustion, PMS, and snow. Yes, it's snowing. I live in central California, which maybe hails briefly once or twice a year, but snow (especially vast accumulations of snow) is totally beyond my realm of experience. But here in the woods, oh yes, it snows. I have also been stymied in my attempt to occupy time by sewing stuffed bunnies for the babies in the family this xmas (six!) by a sewing machine that is on the fritz. I brought dance slippers with me, and even wrote myself a little list of things to work on in my spare time. Pirouettes, headlines, double frappes... but I just haven't worked myself up to it much. Not that the time isn't available, just that I feel like folding in to a ball when the opportunity presents itself.
*sigh*

Self-motivation...

So terrible. Hopefully posting this will make me feel so guilty that I will actually get on with it.

On a Scale of 1 to 10...

So nothing much is happening in my ballet world this week because A) I am on vacation celebrating my sixth wedding anniversary and B) I totally jacked up my wrist by slipping on the beach and planting my self face-first on to a granite boulder. In related news: "on an anemone" is a terrible tongue twister! Especially when you have to say it like fifty times in a row while sitting in the ER of an unfamiliar hospital. Try it! "I was trying not to step onananemone!" AWFUL!
I'm fine, it's been X-rayed and they think it's not broken, just sprained all to heck. I just have to keep it in my night-time brace 24/7 for a while. Anyhow, I don't feel like driving and I hurt and I am tired and I want to sit around and snuggle tonight. So. There. By next week I will be desperate to get back to the studio, and it will be great. Right now, though, I could probably use a bit of a break. Har har. I DIDN'T MEAN THAT LITERALLY, UNIVERSE!
Actually, it's darn-near miraculous that I didn't screw myself up any worse than I did. I could have broken an ankle so easily. As it was I got a couple little dings and scrapes, but I didn't even break my glasses. Thank heavens. Because (since starting ballet) breaking an ankle has become nearly as terrifying to me as breaking a wrist, which would keep me from working.
What I actually came here to write about was the horrible "how bad is your pain on a scale of 1 to 10" question that medical professionals always ask. It means NOTHING. It is totally arbitrary. My pain tolerance and your pain tolerance are not the same. My medical history and attendant experience with pain is a total unknown to them. Maybe you think something is a 3 and I think it's a 7. Or vice versa. I've had kidney stones, an IUD, and optical migraines. I've never given birth, broken a bone larger than my toes (though I have done that twice), or been hit by a car. What are you even asking me to tell you? If I am in terrible agony? Because couldn't you just say "are you in terrible agony?"
I said "background pain is about a 3-4, but when I touch or jar it it's maybe an 8?" so they kept wanting to give me painkillers. For a background pain of about 3? Really? I have a chronic pain condition. I have a background pain a hell of a lot worse than that constantly. Chill out. My 8 is when I start to cry. I don't think I have found my 10 yet. I'm sort of keeping it in reserve for some terrible thing that may happen to me someday. Maybe I'll be burned at the stake. You never know!

Stupid Sun, Who Needs it Anyway?

So several of my medications have photodermatitis warnings. Photodermatitis is when your drugs make you super sensitive to UV light and you burn easily. It can be bad. Like, BAD bad. When the western US was being settled and farmers were first raising cattle here they discovered that their cows were basically burning to death in the fields because they had been eating a native plant (which we now call St John's Wort, and use as a tranquilizer-type antidepressant) which caused this type of sun sensitivity. I bet they were some mellow cows, though. Anyway. it's not usually that bad. It usually just means you need to be really careful about wearing sunblock and a floppy hat or you'll get extra crispy on a fine Summer's day. My forearms tend to get tanned and freckled and in the past I have had the freckles stick around for a year or more. But I am usually pretty careful about it because I am so horribly pale, anyway.
But I totally forgot about all that this weekend.
It was Sunday and I was thinking to myself "aw man, I am super pale. These legs here, they are so pale that shaving doesn't solve the problem. These legs need some sunshine if I am going to wear skirts in public this season." so I popped out on my patio and had a little half-hour break reading mystery novels and magazines and letting my legs catch the sunshine.
And now my upper thighs are bright flaming red! Half an hour, guys! Half an hour.
Also? Not even at all comfortable to wear tights over a sunburn.
Not even at all.

Yoga For the Elderly, Decrepit, and Infirm

So, many moons ago (back in August, after my Summer job ended but before I started taking ballet) I was in the worst shape of my life and was seriously having trouble with the little things. Pain had become a constant in my life and I had just folded in on myself. Along with everything else, rheumatic conditions come along with a physical exhaustion that was not helped at all by the medications I had been prescribed, one of which is a sedative. And, my Summer job is HARD WORK, it's terribly brutal to my wrists and hands. I bring wrist braces to work and coat myself from the elbows down in Icy Hot two or three times a day. So, exercise? Not even happening. But, I decided that I was done looking sadly at the ballet studio's class schedules and that it was time to DO IT.
I knew I was out of shape and that it was going to be hard for me to get back in to the groove of regular exercise. So I decided I was going to do yoga every day in preparation for this whole ballet business. When I was in high school I came home every weekday afternoon and did yoga on the living room floor. My favorite things to do were shoulder stands (woo!) and sun salutation. I knew I couldn't put any weight on my hands and wrists anymore, so those were probably out. I looked around on Netflix and found "healing yoga for aches and pains" by these people. They aren't too annoying considering what else is out there (I have a preeeeeetty low opinion of most video exercise instructors).
I did it for a few days and I was feeling good! It was seriously difficult, though. I mean, really hard work. Now, this is what I affectionately call "old people yoga". Most of it is done sitting in a chair. Everything is modified for stability. But even so, MAN did I have a hard time with it. GEEZE. At one point in the video there is a modification of "eagle pose" (in which you cross your arms over each other at the elbow and link your hands to one another with your palms together) and it was so impossible that I quickly did a screen grab and this happened:

Anyway, so it was hard, but I was feeling progress. Unfortunately by the end of week one something was terribly wrong. My knees hurt. And so I stopped doing anything that could bother them. No weight bearing poses. Nothing. But then... they kept hurting.
They never stopped.
I started ballet class not long after that. The knees slowly became a part of my life. My doctor increased the dose on my pills. I learned to sleep with a heating pad and ice packs and spend as much time as possible in bed on any day when I knew I was going to be dancing. And yoga? I kind of forgot it.
So last week I decided to try out old "healing yoga for aches and pains" again. After all these months of ballet the entire thing is easier in a major way. It's not something you would notice if you were doing it consistently, but after a break for several months the difference is obvious. I still can't do anything that places my weight on my knees, though, so I have to skip the one posture they teach that involves that.
I was feeling pretty cocky about it after a few days and decided to try out another one of their videos, "yoga for common conditions". And boy howdey, that was a mistake. After the first three postures all involved either kneeling or folding the legs, I gave up. I can't even sit cross-legged on the floor anymore. So, my search for a new and gentle yoga program for ancient old codgers continues.
Updates as they become available!

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.

Quit While You Are Ahead

So, while we do changements facing the mirror I look myself over. And there are a lot of changements going on, so I get to take in the whole picture. And let's just say, the last few times, I have noticed a bit of... uh... wiggle in my walk. So to speak. Flubby thigh stuff kind of getting jiggy with it. It's a little sad. And every single time I think to myself "oh holy cats! That is awful! DIET". But then I go home and I'm all "BLT!" and I wake up the next day and I say to myself "Cookies for breakfast!" because I Do Not Understand dieting. And, basically, cake mix cookies are the easiest thing on the planet to make?
Sigh...

The Underpants Conundrum

So, I have special underpants that I save just for ballet. I know, I know, it sounds stupid. And, if you want to be serious about it, like professionals and students who are headed for ballet stardom, then you don't wear any panties at all.
But... uh...
I don't know. I just wasn't born to be a freeballer (or whatever the female equivalent would be. I can't think of anything that isn't SUPER RUDE). My mom was a supporter of the underpantless cause, but we were still trundled in to them as kids. And then a terrible thing happened when I was about 3 or 4. I was put in rhumba panties (you know, with the ruffles on the butt). And it was all over. I freakin' LOVED my rhumba panties. I was especially fond of a bright red pair. I wanted to wear those things constantly. Oh man. I've been an underpants fan ever since. I love fun underpants! So I never really go au naturel, or Scots proper if you prefer. And I am just not comfortable with clothes on without the panty barrier.
I could claim it was my professional wisdom speaking (underpants are a pretty important part of keeping your clothes clean and long-lasting. A bit of vajay goes a long way, as they say. Poetry unintentional. But run with it!) but to be honest I just feel a little squicky without my undies (you know. Stuff happens down there).
So anyhoo, I have these perfect underoos for dance class. They aren't specially made dance underpants (yes, they make those) or anything, they are just super sleek and snug and made with flatlocked elastic that is micro thin. So, no panty lines. They are awesome for skinny jeans and leggings, too. Cuz there ain't NO WAY I am wearing a thong. Okay, seriously? I hate to get sidetracked and all, but I have to rant a little about thongs. They are evil and wrong for anything other than personal sexy times. I used to work in a maternity store (it was HORRIBLE) and our hottest sellers were packs of maternity thongs. REALLY? Come on ladies. Be serious, now. What the what? Sheesh. Okay. I am done being sidetracked now.
The whole point was that I got these silly fabulous underpants at Costco about a year ago (which means they don't have them anymore, of course. That is how Costco rolls) and so I have to be super careful to sort them out of my laundry and pack them up with my leotards and tights so that I don't get caught half an hour before class running around the house like a crazy chicken shrieking "WHERE ARE MY UNDERWEAR?? YOU HAVE THEM DON'T YOU? I KNOW YOU DO! GIVE THEM BACK!"
Especially because I'm the only one home at the time...

No, Your Other Right Leg

That was what my teacher had to tell me at one point tonight.
Sigh.

So, I took a different class tonight than I usually do. One that is just a liiiiiiittle bit more advanced than mine. Like, six months and I will have this stuff down, but right now not so much. This was my first experience at attempting chaînés turns at any tempo other than painfully slow. There has got to be an in-between stage, though, because if I try to do them fast I just whirl away like an out of control ground flower on the 4th of July.

Barre was good. Solid. And then there were combinations in which we had to insert pas de bourrée in the middle of doing a bunch of other stuff. And do port de bras while also trying to remember which foot is supposed to be doing something. Anyway, that was interesting. Challenging. I am going to seize "challenging" instead of saying "oh mercy me, but it was so terribly difficult and I was all aflutter. Now, I must go lay down, as I think I have the vapors".
Or. You know. Something. I think that one got away from me.

Also, still struggling with assemblé. I am not getting better at it. Because I HATE IT. And so I don't practice it. See, I finally feel like I have gotten the hang of turning pas de bourrée, and I even feel confident about not tripping over myself too much during waltz steps. But, I practiced those. Because they are fun! And they look interesting! And they don't suck! Not like assemblé. Because assemblé is dumb and poopy and smells like pee.
That's right, assemblé. You suck.
Assemblé can't come to my birthday party, and that's that.
NOBODY LIKES YOU, ASSEMBLÉ.

Whatever, yo!

I had a dream last night that I was dancing, en pointe, in new shoes, with no padding, all day long. At the end of the day I took my shoes off and all my toes were squished and stuck together.
What.
I mean, other stuff was going on in the dream. There was a play or a parade or something. There was the Queen of England. There were people I was interacting with. But all I remember is my squished little toesies!
Maybe it's my subconscious way of dealing with the anxiety of the upcoming holidays. OR NOT.

Edited to add:
Oh yeah! Now I remember some more! I had to somehow produce 9 princess gowns (which were really more like over-dresses) for a show that started in an hour or something insane like that. TOTALLY an anxiety dream!

Of Gray Tights

Nylon. It is an interesting fiber. It is man made, synthetic, and has a unique property whereby it attracts and absorbs dye readily. Which is great, because that means it is one of the only synthetic fibers that can be dyed at home. BUT, it also means that if you wash a nylon garment, let's say two pairs of pink tights, in a washer which also contains dark colored garments, let's say two black leotards, then your nylon will suck up as much of the dye the dark colored items shed as possible.
Which I know, because I was the first person in something like five years to graduate from Textiles class with an A. And also because I was a total idiot yesterday and washed all my delicates in the same load. And now I have peachy-gray tights to wear to class.
:-/